Yellowcake - Margo Lanagan [62]
But there, the back end of it was now over the sea-rim, and the front was shouldered well in, up to the eyebrows maybe—Figuro wished he could see. Spray flew up off the front edge and onto the roof. Would it float? Figuro hoped it would finish as something like a crocodile, just the top of it snaking its lumps and spines away into the sunrise, the legs working invisibly below.
The first water swirled pink and silver across the roof. Figuro was disappointed to see it, but still he had to admit that it was beautiful, it was right, just as when you washed yourself in the sacred river you had to immerse yourself completely, not merely splash water up onto your head-top but go right down, hold your breath and be part of the river for a moment. Figuro had opened his eyes under there, seen the pale misty water and the brown level of stirred-up mud, and his Uncle Pooti’s trousers flapping in the current as in a strong wind full of dust.
Down so went this creature entirely, piece by blockish piece, following itself ungainly into the sea. And behind its last legs and trailing tails, Figuro ran back and forth at the water’s edge, his cries lost in the sluicings of the shallows, in the up-bubbling blasts of air and wreckage. The mystery muttered against the sea-bottom; on the surface it left a slick path, edged with ragged fountains, from Figuro to the new sun a bright peck-mark out of the horizon, from the new sun a golden fingernail, across all of the sea, to the milk-man running on the shore.
I reach the edge of the world. There are no lice here, and no louse-carriages. Soft fur strokes my sore torn paws, and then even softer stuff, a kind of cloud-ground. It gives somewhat before holding, relenting.
Out there beyond are two skies, both shining full of hope. The gentlest colour creeps upon the upper one, colour of Ladies’ Underwear, and with a lace of clouds there, yes, a trim, accents. The same kind shade swims upon the water, cresting its night-darkness, spilling forward on its foam.
I step off into space, all itching. It’s cold, the morning, the water. It clings close in my crevices; it climbs up my outsides and into the lower beginnings of my innards, the first rooms there and the cavities; it soothes the broken places; it lifts the grit and grain off me. The loose pieces wag and break off and are gone from their dangling and banging.
Ah! I open my face. It rushes in, the morning, the light, the universe, the cleansing sea. I sink into the relief and it laps and laves me all around, hurries across the top of me to cover me, and rushes and spurts in all my compartments, soaking and floating the disordered goods there, dousing the memories of my electronica, pouring ruin along my walkways, tossing and tumbling my shelves, my stacks, my store-rooms of louse-ephemera.
Down farther I sink, quite covered now, quite gone from the world’s sight, from the world’s crawlings. Collected airs bleed upward through me; gouts and threads of bubble stream lightward. Everything is blurred here and stirring; every sound is muffled and closed in; the hollows resound differently, deeperly; nothing is sudden. Temperatures trail slow strings across my face, and softness sucks below. Rocks crack my underparts over themselves; growths lie down and make matting for my wounded belly.
I lie, all my itches gone or going, shifting this wing or that corridor to blub up a bubble, to complete my skin of cool, of wet, to drown the last louse-traces, any eggs they might have left, any irritants. Around me the vast blur moves, out and empty of those scraping creatures and those squalling. Instead come smoother others, moving without benefit of flooring, arriving on the slow treacly winds of the sea, eyeing me, kissing and nibbling my surfaces, rolling into