“Man shall be trained for war.
Woman for the recreation of the warrior.
All else is folly.”
- Some Man
Chapter One
The corn-flake stalk bent funny. It just had this way about it, like it was hanging onto its cobs for dear life, clutching them, like it didn’t give a fuck how all the other stalks were bending. That mighta been what done it, or it coulda been somethin’ else. Either way, Shazza upped and said it:
“I reckon I’m gonna slay a dragon”.
Beattie Picker popped up; her chubby frame suddenly as erect as the stalks. She held a basket of corn-flake cobs at her side, way more than Shazza had picked that morning.
“Lovey, did you say you wanna slay a dragon?”
“Yuh.”
“What you wanna do that for?”
“Dunno.”
“Sharon Picker, the things you say,” laughed Beattie. She gripped a fresh corn-flake cob and yanked it toeward, like she was pulling down Ricky Picker’s underdaks, or, to a lesser extent, Bobby Picker’s.
It snapped.
Shazza studied her own, weird, corn-flake stalk. There was just somethin’ about it. She put her hand on it, and freckles caught her eye. A constellation of brown islands rising on her silky arms, tattoos from a feckless mother-sun. When did they happen? She squeezed her stalk with the grace one might clutch the neck of a baby bird; an arm upon an arm, the both of them solar powered, the both of them bent funny.
Beattie chucked a cob in Shazza’s basket.
“Staring doesn’t build a stairway, lovey.”
“What’s that?” Shazza drawled.
“You, goose. Where are ya? You still thinkin’ about your dragon?”
“Nah. Orhh - I dunno, a bit maybe.”
“How would ya slay a dragon?”
“I’ve been wonderin’ that, yeah. Probly a sword, a gun? I’m not sure.”
“Don’t think we’ve got many swords ‘round here.”
“Yeah, nah.”
“Maybe a couple of guns. Gary Ranger might lend you one.”
“You reckon?”
“He’s a sweet boy, dumb as a box of hammers. He’ll lend you one.”
“Ta, Bea.”
Shazza stroked her strange stalk, stopping to peel pale, browning sheaths from its dehydrated body. The skies these past moons had been idle and unrepentant, a hissing dryness that gave orchestra to bugs. Maybe the stalk was this way because it had so little to drink, or maybe it was somethin’ else.
“Off she goes again,” said Beattie.
“Orh, sry! I’m… yeah… my mind’s wanderin’ today.”
“You’re not cooked, are ya?”
“Nah, I’m not cooked.”
“Well, that’s good but I reckon ya are. You’ve been hanging onto that corn-flake stalk like it’s handsome; are ya gonna pluck it or ya gonna fuck it?”
“Nah, let this one be, Bea.”
“Why?!”
“Look at it!”
Beattie looked at her, lookin’ at the stalk.
“Yeah, ya fuckin’ cooked, look at ya. Carn, let’s find you a riverboy.”
“Yeahnah – nah, yeah - orright, I’m thirsty.”
“Yeah, carn lovey, I reckon we both get drink.”
***
They found a riverboy named Mack resting in the shade of a tin shed. Good lookin’ fella with wonky eyes no good for lookin’.
“Macka River, whatchu slackin’ off about?” Teased Beattie.
He smiled at her in an earnest way, a joy infectious. He squinted to place them and Shazza wondered what he saw when he saw and oversaw them; what shapes they might make, and she felt the release which came to be unappearable.
“Beattie Picker! Who’s that with you?”
“It’s Shazza, Mack,” Shazza said.
“My two favourite people! What can I do for you today?”
“Shazza’s cooked, Macka.”
“Ohhr that’s no good, that’s no good at all. You’ll be wantin’ drink then, carn my loves, needs doin’; gets done.”
They followed him into the shed. Morning light sipped at holes in wood and tin, cutting the swill of a dusty air. Crates rested with bright rags hanging off them in a kaleidoscope of colours. Macka intuited his way to a stockpile and rested his hand on a crate. He felt for a cavity in its lid and opened it to reveal clear bottles of clear water nestled among straw.
“This is from Four K River, last week. Double filtered, pretty good.”
“Have you got tank?” Shazza asked.
“Mhmm a tank girl, I could have guessed from the almonds in your hair. And you say she’s cooked, Beattie?”
“Cooked as a chook, Macka.”
“Then it’s all but done, my loves, and what a treat for you!”
He whistled and clicked his fingers, pushing one foot out and drawing a half moon in the floor straw. With a hop in his step, he wandered between pyramids of crates, his head tilted a funny way like the stalk.
“Here. Now don’t you go tellin’ anyone I gave you this or there’ll be a reckonin’! You remember that storm we had about 3 moons back? The one that knocked the uuuh, the what’s-is-face tree…”
“The peppercorn?”
“The peppercorn! That was our last great rain, and the tanks were fresh, and I tell you tank girl I don’t mean clean, nah, I made them clean and then we ran them through before the storm – primed them fresher than a virgin’s babe – from glorious sky to the lick of your lips by my bottles, yes, yes, yes, this batch is Peppercorn Storm.”
He opened a crate with a purple flag and plunged his wrists into straw, removed two concealed bottles.
“Thank you, Macka sweetie,” Beattie said.
“I loved that it had a story, I’ve never seen a riverboy do that, it feels like I’m drinking something special now,” said Shazza.
“You loved it? I love that you love it! I know it’s just drink but drink is sacred, and I reckon drink can have a bit of razzamatazz, don’t you?”
“You should tell more stories with drink.”
“Well then I will,” he beamed, and smiled true.
They returned to their corn-flake stalks. Beattie hummed a tuneless tune secreted from lips replenished with Peppercorn Storm. She set about decapitating cobs, her third basket of the morning breaming. Shazza poured some of her special water down her funny stalk.
Beattie had a hum for that, too.
***
Later, at dinner, the hall rumbled with day stories, short or long or cunning deductions of the observed, and powered by chicken Chuseday. The skylights gave them stars that gave out over rows of strings of biddielights. Shazza and Beattie sat at the end of a table, where Bale Stockman flirted with Anna Medicine.
“If you wanted to, I could show you,” he said.
“I bet you could. I just wouldn’t have a dress to wear.”
“Well, I’ll find you one, it’s no trouble.”
“You’d do that?”
“For you… I would.”
“For a root, he would,” added Shazza.
“Yeah! I’d love a root if I got you a dress,” Bale said with boyhood enthusiasm, “Shazza, do you want a root, too? I could get you both dresses!”
“Fuuuck a duck,” sighed Shazza.
Anna wasn’t sure what to say, and not for lack of trying. Her eyes flitted like a candle caught between tunnels. She curled a finger into the air as though she were hooking onto something, but ultimately, she threaded a:
“Gosh…”
And then Beattie upped and said it:
“Shazza reckons she’s gonna slay a dragon.”
“A dragon?” asked Bale.
“Mhhm,” agreed Beattie. She dipped some of her chicken into a pool of heinzup and used it as a brush to draw a smiley face on her paper plate.
“Did you say Shazza wants to slay a dragon?” asked Joel Mechanic, from the table behind them.
“Yeah, don’t ya lovey?”
“Orhh, yeah. Might wanna. Thinkin’ about it.”
“Why you wanna slay a dragon?” asked Bale.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinkin’,” added Joel.
“I dunno, just cause.”
Anna Medicine had frozen. Beattie gave her heinzup man a nose. A bloke next to Joel Mechanic turned around, and then the bloke next to him turned around.
“Ya can’t slay a dragon,” said Joel Mechanic.
“Why?”
“Well… ya can’t.”
“Yeah,” said the bloke next to him.
“Yeahnah, but I can. I dunno how yet, but it’s somethin’ I’ve been thinkin’ about, and I reckon I can.”
“Nahyeah, ya can’t.”
“Yeah, ya can’t.”
“Wadda ya wanna slay a dragon for? Plus, ya can’t.”
“Yeahnah, ya can’t slay a dragon.”
“Nah.”
“Yeah, nah.”
“Nah, ya can’t.”
Shazza stood up and carried her plate a couple of metres to a bin, dumped it. A green light circled the bin lip, followed by a chime.
“Thank you,” the bin said.
Instead of filing through the parlour, or heading to the entertainment hall, Shazza charged back towards the kitchen. As she passed her table, nervous voices tittered like hollow reeds in a current unrelenting.
“Why she wanna slay a dragon?” asked Joel Mechanic.
“That’s what I was wonderin,” said Bale Stockman.
“Why don’t you ask her?” stabbed Beattie.
“I thought I did…”
The kitchen was packing up for the night, trays were plucked from the searing blaze of a bain-marie and carried into the elsewhere. Shazza approached Page Server, a chirpy woman in a green apron and hair net.
“Hey Page, I’m heading off to slay a dragon tomorrow, so can I please have some more chicken tonight?”
Page stared at her, underlit by a peachy heating lamp, her mouth lulled open, expression absent. Sarah Server reached past her and removed another tray. A convoy of steam folded its escape, uppercutting Page. Her glasses were left whitened from the damp, her brain so disconnected she’d gazed through ghost.
“Do you have any vessels, or a container of some kind?” Shazza continued. “Could you put a little bit of chicken in one and I’ll have it in the mornin’?”
“You wanna have chicken Chuseday dinner… in the mornin’?”
“Yeh.”
“Chicken?”
“Yeh.”
“On a Wednesday?”
“Yeh.”
“Before you off and slay a dragon?”
“… Yeh.”
“I mean… I can have a look for a container.”
Shazza ate her second chicken Chuesday dinner with an audience. They murmured about her and shrugged and conducted their arms symphonically, providing hooks on which their thoughts could muster.
“Don’t rush yer stuffin’, I’ll wait for you, lovey,” Beattie said. In front of her was a finished masterpiece: her heinzup woman, with spry red hair that curled in ridges on the circumference of the paper plate.
“Ohhrr, that’s swell, Beattie Picker,” Shazza enthused with a mouthful of chicken, and above the consternation of her middling crowd.
Beattie smiled a really great smile.
“Well, she can’t slay a dragon…”
“Why does she wanna slay a dragon?”
“That’s what I said…”
“She can’t, yeahnah.”
“Yeah, nah, she can’t.”
Beattie walked with Shazza through the parlour, where word of Shazza’s reckonin’ had spread. Father once-Picker summoned her to the hearth for a word. The shadows of his beard rendered glass snakes as they lit and unlit in the boogey of flame.
“Daughter, Charm Packer tells me you’re to… slay a dragon, is it?”
“Yeh, dunno, maybe.”
“Nah, ya can’t slay a dragon.”
His mates around him, a flock of which is known as a murder, were definitely in agreement on this, and they were so seldom in agreement on anything, she was glad she could provide that for them.
“She can’t slay a dragon, Ash Picker, she can’t.”
“Yeah, nah, she can’t.”
“Nah, yeah, she can’t.”
“Can’t slay a dragon.”
“Daughter, are you quite right? I mean mentally, of course? Steven once-Medicine could see to you, perhaps? These drought days are long and hot, surely you must be cooked.”
“That’s what it is, Ash once-Picker, she’s cooked.”
“Aaaah, your daughter’s cooked.”
“Makes sense, it’s what I said.”
“Yeahnah, it’s what I said, too.”
“Dragons? Really. I’m sry that you’re cooked daughter, though perhaps you could apply the same innovation and gusto to picking?”
“But…”
“You might not much fancy it, but, sweetie, why don’t you do it anyway?”
“She can’t slay a dragon.”
“Yeah, nah, ya can’t.”
“Nah, ya can’t slay a dragon.”
“Yeahnah, she can’t.”
As they went around the room, each telling her what she couldn’t do, she felt her piss bubble. A cool electricity became her; the will to shut the fuck up and endure it; the will to ignore every last one of the cunts.
( or... return to Introduction )
