Yellowcake - Margo Lanagan [45]
Sheegeh stood beside him, and put his arms out.
‘Look straight back at us,’ said Michael.
The others were not very much different from corpses, lying there, but a head was raised here, those shoulders were hunched as corpses’ never were, a foot tapped. Bored as they were, they were full of thoughts and little movements.
‘Keep looking,’ said Michael. He threw away one of the stones and took a different one out of his pocket, and put it in Sheegeh’s hand.
‘That’s a funny one,’ Sheegeh said amiably.
‘It is a funny one,’ said Michael. ‘Don’t look,’ he added, ‘but you can feel it.’
Sheegeh felt the lighter stone. ‘Pattern of squares,’ he said.
Michael was between him and the stone. He looked at Sheegeh over his shoulder. ‘Yup. I just have to adjust something. Now, you just stand there very still, when I go. Don’t squeeze the stones, don’t drop them, don’t let them flop by your side. Just hold them out and stand there. All right?’
‘All right.’ It was nice to hear a kind voice, telling him what to do. It was a relief. He knew it was Duwazza, but not all Duwazza were so gentle.
Michael held his hand around the stone and made a sound there as if slicing part of the stone off with a single knife-stroke. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Stay exactly like that.’ He leaped away towards the other boys. They were all sitting up now, and looking out at Sheegeh.
Sheegeh looked back. He did just as Michael had told him. Michael went higher than the other boys up the rubble and crouched there. He didn’t move, though the others kept having little impatient spasms, unfolding, folding back up, staring, waving their arms. A voice called out, ‘Squeeze it!’, then ‘Squeeze them both!’, but because it was not Michael’s voice, Sheegeh did not do so.
The sky was low and grey with seams of silver sunlight throbbing through it. A breeze trickled through the place; Sheegeh couldn’t see it because there were no trees, no cloths, no blowing rubbish; he could only feel his own coat edge gently bumping the back of his knees. A bird came down, black, with a sticking-up tail; it bounced down onto a brick, eyed him, flaunted its tail one way and another, bounced—boint, boint, boint—away from him, then took itself off again. Sheegeh was good; his arms were getting tired, but he stayed where he was told.
Then someone ran towards him, one of the bigger boys. As he got closer, Sheegeh saw that he didn’t have Michael’s kind face, that in fact he had an ugly, injured, bristling face. But it was all right; Michael was watching; Michael had clearly told him to come.
‘Here, giss that,’ he said. Sheegeh gave him nothing, but he came and took the strange stone. He started walking back with it. ‘Yeah, it’s a dud,’ he called to the others. ‘It’s got that same look as the ones we got from Throwbrow’s.’ And he strolled back, gently tossing the stone into the air, gently catching it.
Would it be all right now to lower his arms, Sheegeh wondered? Some of the boys leaned back on the pile of rubble; some of them scrambled; all of them put up their hands as if to warn the ugly boy off.
Bang! The stone blew up and the ugly boy fell. Silence packed itself into Sheegeh’s ears. The cloud of the explosion passed upward and was lost against the sky.
Sheegeh came from one side and the Duwazza from the other to look at the dead ugly boy. By now, Sheegeh was used to seeing all kinds of bodies, fresh and not so fresh. This one was not too bad. He regarded the bright colour of the peeled head in the middle of all this greyness.
Some of the Duwazza came around his side to properly examine the boy.
‘He’s not gunna wake up and start moaning, is he?’ said one unhappily. This was a boy Doppo’s age who Sheegeh never learned the name of; he had woken up screaming of stomach pains two nights later. The Duwazza had carried him off to the Red Cross doctors and Sheegeh had not seen him since.
‘No, no,’ said