Chapter Four
The next morning, Shazza followed a thinly track round a mountain covered in pines. She came to the place Fo mentioned, what he’d called an “inglorious hole next to a pile of shitty rocks”. The hole was still a huge portal for Shazza, but much smaller than Fo’s cavern; it had marks at its entrance where something had struggled to squeeze in.
Charlie wasn’t far inside, because there wasn’t very much inside to speak of. He made room to let Shazza in, squishing himself against his wall until his tail came back around and whomped him in the face.
“I’m sry, I’m still movin’ in, I don’t have much furniture yet,” he said, in a deep-ish voice that didn’t have quite the same, or any, of the amplification of Fo’s.
“Yeahnah, it’s fine, no worries,” Shazza said, repositioning herself to stop her feet sliding in the mud.
Charlie was a brown dragon less than half the size of Fo, with a skerrick of thinning, pale feathers atop saggy leather. His forehead was wide and blocky, casting a wave over his narrow, mossy green eyes, the rest of his face buried in a forearm. He shifted and his soggy tail whacked him again.
“Can I offer you a uuhh…” he looked about the bare cave, “can I offer you a dirt?”
“Nah, ta, I had some berries and stuff not long ago.”
“And ya didn’t bring any?”
“Nah, sry.”
He sighed: “Figures.”
“How many berries would it take to satiate you?”
“Ohhhrrr… a lot, yeah, it’d take a lot. I don’t eat ‘em much because I tend to eat the whole bush and it’s… not great, it’s rabbit food with fruit in it at that point. But if you mean, like, picked berries… I dunno how many bushes I’d go through.”
“I only had a couple of berries, so, yeah, and I ate ‘em already.”
“Ohr, yeah, well… still, you’re a guest in a stranger’s home ‘n all.”
“Oh, this is your… home?”
“Uuuuh… one of ‘em… yeah. But times are… well anyway what do you want? What’s the… why are you here?”
“I was talking with Fo yesterday.”
“Orh yeah, that drag. Spose he told you I was a major downer?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Did he? What else did he say about me?”
“That was about it.”
“Figures.”
“Yeah, yeah. So, anyway – I was hopin’ to slay a dragon and I was wonderin’ if I could slay you? Fo said you might be into it.”
Charlie lifted his head and gave Shazza more attention.
“You wanna slay me?”
“Yeh.”
“And… I’d be… dead?”
“Yeh.”
“How long would I be dead for?”
“Uuuuh… forever.”
The sad lookin’ dragon gave her more attention still.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. That is how it works, yeah.”
“But what if I came back?”
“Back from…? What?! Death is permanent, ya realise that, right?”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Everything I’ve ever slain is still dead, I promise you that.”
“Well, what else have you slain?”
“Uuuh – we get mice in the field sometimes, it’s not nice but they eat the corn-flake cobs ‘n that. Aaaand… what else? Some fish of course, couple ‘o fish. Spiders. Eurgh. Yeah, slay them. Uuuh… yeah, probably a few other things, I dunno, you lose track after a while.”
“Would I be the first dragon you’ve slain?”
“Yeah, ohr yeah, for sure.”
“Well, that’d make me special wouldn’t it?”
“I mean, it’d make you the first, but yeah, the quantum of the event, the slaying part, my part, that’s pretty special for sure, that’s why I came here, I’ll always remember me slaying you.”
It was hard to see through his loafy brown scales, but it looked as though Charlie might be blushing. He shifted and his tail hooked his nose, then he flinched and scraped his bum on the wall of the cave. He groaned.
“Okay, yeah, get into it.”
“Yeah? For real? I can slay you?”
“Yeah, fuck it, you’ll save me the hassle. Is that your weapon, what is that, bombs?”
“No, this is just food and stuff…”
“So you did bring food?!”
“I have a rifle, a gun, I borrowed it from Gary Ranger, just give us a sec and I’ll set it up, hang on.”
“Yeahnah, do your thing. I’ll just be over here, in my conservatory, thinking of the really great last meal I’m not gonna have.”
Shazza took her backpack off and looked for somewhere to put it that wasn’t a slick of mud. The best she could find was a small bumpy rock that would at least stop it from sliding. She unslung the .222 and unzipped it from its case. She looked for somewhere to put the case, tried holding it under her arm – no good – and then between her legs – but she needed more grip in the mud – so she folded it and stuffed it into the top of her backpack. She reached into a compartment in her bag and took out a couple of bullets, put most of them in her pocket, loaded one into the rifle.
“Okay, are you ready?”
“Orh yeah, absolutely, let’s do this, carn.”
Shazza pulled the trigger!
The rifle ripped back into the socket of her shoulder. Shazza felt as though she were being yanked apart like a wishbone. The gun flipped up, but she hung onto it by good fortune of its strap.
“Fuck me!” She screamed. “Orh! Orrrrhhh! Fuck! Fuck!”
“What happened? Did it work, am I dead?”
“No, fuck! The kick of that thing obliterated my shoulder. Did I get you? Is it painful? How you doin’?”
“Yeah, nah, all good, I felt a ting on my neck here a bit maybe, I dunno.”
“Wow, you are tough.”
“Sry about that.”
“Nah, it’s not your fault, you’re a dragon, orh, fuck, my shoulder.”
She took another bullet from her pocket, her teeth bared in pain as she juggled it into the barrel of the rifle. She lifted it, nestled it in her arm, groaned and released it, let the rifle hang again. She sighed until it became a hiss through gritted teeth. She rolled her shoulder, rubbed it.
“Okay, I guess I’d better aim for somewhere softer.”
She breathed rapidly, exhaled, lifted the rifle and settled it tighter against her arm, pushing into the pain, and pulled the trigger. Charlie reeled back, screaming, his head smashed the roof of the cave. He winced and scratched at his face. Shazza slid backwards, screaming, her shoulder becoming limp, the rifle dropped into mud.
“Ow fuck! My fucking eye! You shot me in my fucking eye!” he said.
“Ow! Fuck! Fuck! My shoulder! Fuck!” she said.
“Ow! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he said.
“Fuck me! Fucking ow!” she said.
“Ow, fuck my life, fuck! Why’d you shoot me in my fucking eye?”
“It’s soft there!”
“Well now I’m…” Charlie began, and opened the eye, tendrils of red splitting across it like cracked ice, “I’m not blind but you are ugly and you are blurry in that order!”
“Orh, fuck you!”
“Gah, it stings, it really stings! Aaah, bugger me bum, I’ll do it myself.”
Charlie let go of his eye, left it watery, bloodshot and shut, and dug his long black claws into the brown leather of his chest. He tore it open, revealing his heart, and light fell out of it like a split star, inking the cave in a kind of cosmic aura it had never imagined, a millennia of light, instantly.
“Shoot it!” He roared, as mud bubbled.
Shazza shielded her eyes. She felt blindly into her pocket, took out another bullet, fought the searing glow and the pain in her shoulder to load it into the rifle. She took a deep breath and then squeezed it from her lungs, and she raised the gun and fired.
The dragon screamed and let go of its chest. Darkness resumed.
“Ow! Fuuuuck! How did you miss again?!” he roared.
“Orrh my shoulder! Fuck! Fuck! This doesn’t get any easier! I think it’s dislocated now, fuck!” she seethed.
“OWW! Fuck! I’m right here, this cave is tiny! How did you get me right on the tittle?!”
“Because yer dragonboob was too bright and – wait, what? The tittle?”
“The tittle, it’s the part between the finger and the claw, this bit, it fuckin’ hurts when someone shoots you in it!!!”
“I think that’s called the quick.”
“What would you fuckin’ know about quick?!”
“Okay, fuck! Just… hang on… mnnnngggh.”
She reached into her pocket again, took out another bullet. She uncocked the rifle and the spent casing spun out to splat in the dirt. She punched the bullet into the chamber, cocked the gun.
He gripped his chest, grimacing.
“You ready?” She screamed.
“Fuck, I dunno, just do it.”
“One… two… three!”
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( or... back to chapter three )
Chapter Three
The road was dusty at the driver dock. A shed with four entrances sat atop an intersection, a dusty tinwood cross. Loading bays on every side gave quick and easy access to different routes. Shazza stood in Eastern bay, fending off queer glances from packerboys who thought a picker an oddity in a dock. Shazza was just grateful for shade.
In the ceiling, hanging above the intersection and then again protruding from the roof was a crow’s nest, where lookerboys gazed through telescopes up the four ways of road. Northboy sighted something and pushed forward a metal switch. A buzzer sounded in West bay, and there, packerboys stood to attention. A few moments later northboy descended a ladder, into the reverse nest inside the shed, which hung like a basket of a dusty tin balloon. He leaned over the edge with a megaphone.
“Northways-go-West,” he boomed, “route 75, Wayne Driver.”
Below, a packerboy ran along an elevated platform in West bay, first selecting signs and then sliding them into a bracket. He took a rag from a railing and wiped a chalkboard clean, scrawled in a name. When he was done, the wall of the bay had “N-GO-W R75” signed and “Wayne Driver” chalked.
Within a moment a bulbous red truck appeared on the horizon, a skirt of dust churning in its wake. A few minutes later it was inside the driver dock, a thundering machine of chrome and smoke, its elevated wooden flatbed at the same height as West bay, a person-or-so above the road.
Packerboys rushed to the truck and uncoupled its side wall, five of them removing a long frame of wooded panels, and carried it to grooves in the cement behind them. When they were done it looked like they’d added a wooden fence to the dock. They set to unloading the truck by a scheme known to packerboys, leaving other crates and boxes to continue a journey. It reminded Shazza of ants taking over a glazed cherry.
A lookerboy rushed down the ladder and held his body over the basket.
“Westways-go-East,” he boomed, “route 33, Darren Driver.”
***
The truck rumbled about her as Shazza sat up font, watching the horizon change slower than the road was et below her. Darren Driver sat unhinged, like he was on the head of a pin, shifting glances sideways at Shazza, asking a child of the question for the umpteenth time.
“Why you say you wanna slay a dragon again?”
“Didn’t say.”
“Ohr yeah.”
The rumble returned to rattle the bottle he topped from the kettle he tattled a battle to straddle while ridin’ the road. Silence for a bit.
“Can ya even…”
“Do you like what you do?” she interrupted.
“Hey?”
“Drivin’. Do you like it?”
“Well, wadda ya mean?”
“You drive this truck every day?”
“Nah, Monday to Tagifday, I get weekends off.”
“So, on those days, Darren Driver, do you like drivin’?”
“Do I… like drivin?” he asked, a smile crawling across his chin like a secret falling open. For the first bit since dragon became the only talk he seemed to find an inkle in somethin’ else; an idea, taken root, in the pleasure part of Darren Driver’s thinkin’, like he could taste a new colour and it wasn’t bad.
“I’ll put it another way,” Shazza Picker said, and Darren readied himself for the gooey centre of another egg of wonder. “Would you rather be doin’ somethin’ else than drivin’?”
“Doin’ somethin’ else? If I did that it might crash the truck.”
“Yeahnah, not right now, generally – tomorrow.”
“Well, golly I uhhh – would I rather be doin’ somethin’ else? I can’t think of anythin’. I think I like drivin’. Ya know, I think I do… yeah, maybe. That’s me answer, yeah.”
“How do you figure?”
“What?”
“Why do you like drivin’?”
He chewed on the question for a bit, his lower lip seeming to juggle the one above it. His body bounced and swayed with the rhythm of the road. Comin’ outta denim were hands that saw much of mother-sun, coarse, hairy knuckled, grippin’ a wheel that wont to mind its own. An answer spoken slowly as it conjured.
“I see the same places… all the time, same places. They’re far, far apart sometimes, oftentimes, and in between them it’s not like it’s… distance, yeah, nah, I mean it is – course it is, I drive a lotta klicks, it’s… difference. Like, I can drive the same road two different days and everythin’ between ohrr, say here and there, wherever it is, somewhere East, I could drive this road two days and everythin’s the same, which makes all the different stuff stand out.
“Like, this sunset the other day, couple of hours up the road here. I’ve seen mother-sun settin’ there lots of times but the other day it was just… I dunno… different. Yeah, nah, I dunno, ya had to be there, it was somethin’ special. But then lots of it is, it’s all the same difference… ‘n yeah, so – I guess ya gotta be somewhere to see a thing, ya know?”
“And drivin’ lets you do that.”
“Ohhrr, yeh, I like drivin’.” Darren Driver said upon the rumblin’ of the road.
***
The visitor’s information centre was only a short walk from where he dropped her off, a log cabin with an old diner attached that closed down a great many moons ago. Rangers for the national park had taken it over.
Shazza went inside, tripped a bell hanging above the door. Booths with cracked leather seats were occupied by an assortment of officely things: boxes, boxes of stationery, toilet paper, boxes of toilet paper, a pyramid of pine cones, loose rock warning signs, unicorn warning signs, measurement equipment, a whiteboard with its stand squeezed into the seating but then the board itself tilted on its axel so that it created a large white hat across the booth, a cage of angry chipmunks, a cage of guns and tranquilisers, a box of case files, a box of tissues, a juke box and a ranger asleep under his hat.
A different ranger sat up from his island desk in the kitchen.
“Howyagarn? Carn on in, what can I rustle you up? Nah, I’m just playin’, this ain’t a diner no more.”
“Nah, yeah, good one.”
“What can we do yer for?”
The sleeping ranger unslept and looked to Shazza like she was a bright object.
“I’m here to slay a dragon.”
The kitchen ranger laughed. The other ranger wasn’t sure he’d woken.
“Ya… ya gonna slay a dragon? That’s what the rifle is?”
“Yeh.”
“What makes you think there’s dragons here?”
She pointed to the giant, glowing neon sigil for the national park, hanging on a chain in the window. It was a dragon. She pointed to the name of the national park: Dragoncrest.
“Ya can’t slay a dragon.”
“Yeah, nah,” said a raspy booth ranger, “ya can’t slay a dragon.”
“Is there a law against it or…”
They laughed. The angry chipmunks hated that.
“Course not, because ya can’t slay a dragon! Boots be praised, I’m with the ovens, but you’re the one who’s cooked!”
“Well, where would I find a dragon round here?”
The kitchen ranger stood up from his swivel chair and walked past his piles of critical casework that kept him up at night and limber and determined and detached and away from his wife and kids dammit ‘cause it was all for them, they’ll see, and a blender and a toaster and the scarcely penetrable soles of his hiking boots slapped cold tiles in precisely the same rhythm as his precision gait to the counter where he hovered a foot behind his tittering gray moustache and declared:
“Little lady, ya not gonna find a dragon.”
***
Shazza found a dragon about twenty minutes later in a cavern by a river. Stalagmites and stalactites glowed blue and sent light to be shattered upon jewels embedded high above in the stone ceiling. A waterfall’s water fell and stirred bioluminescence in a moon pool that chanced to sing of neon.
Shazza ran behind an embankment of mud and crouched. She peeked over the earth to study the mighty dragon: longer than the truck that rumbled her here and twice the height. Its underbelly was a scaley maze with the patina of a fingerprint. On its back and wings were autumnal feathers that shivered with sunset plumage and quivered like tickled goosepimpled flesh.
An eyelid peeled open, and an orange eye rolled to stillness, levelled at Shazza. She ducked behind the ridge. The dragon lifted its head from under a wing; its face had crystal spikes that sparkled valleys of constellations. It hovered above Shazza, dwarfing the picker.
“Howyagarn?” the dragon boomed. Its hefty voice caught in the cavern like trapped thunder.
Shazza cupped her ears and waited for the echoes to recede, then she stood up and faced her dragon.
“Hey… hi, hi there! I’m Shazza Picker, hi.”
“I… am… FO,” it roared, and the cave reacted. The stalagmites and stalactites pulsed and chucked a mirrorball tantrum to the roof. The waterfall hissed loudly, the moon pool trembled and tossed schools of semi-transparent koi into the air.
“Hey Fo!”
“Sup?”
“Ohr, yeah, nah, not much, I was hopin’ to slay a dragon and wonderin’ if maybe I could slay you?”
“Ohr, brah, righto, I mean… that’s a choice,” it boomed.
The glow of the cavern sagged, the koi went coy and the waterfall lost its gnash.
“Umm… yeah, nah, sry about that, I uuh – I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure what I expected to find here.”
“Right… right.”
“Like – how big you’d be or whether you could talk, or how angry you’d be. Are you angry, though? That I want to slay you?”
“Well… gee, I mean… I’m not charmed by it, brah, I can’t say I’m lovin’ the idea, it doesn’t slap. I’ve had some good ideas lately, they’re a lot better than… well, slaying me.”
“Ohr yeah, like what?”
“Well, like what if – and you can’t steal this idea.”
“Nah.”
“Promise, you have to promise you won’t steal this idea.”
“Yeah, nah, I won’t.”
“Say it. Say you promise.”
“Yeah, nah, I promise – I promise I won’t steal your idea.”
“Okay, I’m trusting you, brah. I’m trusting you with this. So, imagine a brush that had like a little moon pool that you could put essential oils in and stuff and like, you know, you could put product in it, right? And when you brushed, it helped it through your feathers, the oils and the product, helped them through. That’s a good idea, I’d be thrilled about getting one of those, that’s an idea that slaps.”
“You could call it a brosh!!!”
“Yeah… or something else, I’m sure I’ll come up with a name for it.”
“Yeah, nah, sry, brosh just came to me quickly, tip of the tongue and that.”
“Nah, no worries, no bad ideas in brainstorming. Though speaking of ideas – why shouldn’t I just eat you?”
“Orh, nah, you wouldn’t like me.”
“Naaaah, probly not. People taste like arse, and not in a good way.”
“Fuck, the more I think about it, that brush thing is a good idea though.”
“I know, right?!”
“It’s a heaps good idea.”
“Yeah, so that’s what I’m sayin’, that’s an example of a good idea, whereas slaying me or me eating you…”
“Nah, yeah, I see it – it’s not as good, it doesn’t slap.”
“It doesn’t slap. Hey… what about my friend Charlie?”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah, Charlie the dragon. Bloke’s suicidal, I reckon he’d be into it, most def!”
“Ya reckon?”
“Ohr, yeah. Word! You should hear the way dude carries on sometimes, it’s enough to make a dragon molt.”
“Okay, thanks, Fo, I’ll look into it, if you reckon he’d be okay with me slaying him.”
“Yeah, nah, if you slay him, you’re doin’ the three of us a favour.”
That night Shazza pitched a tent aside a mountain. She’d seen pictures of tents with campfires by cliffsides, fat and happy moons beside, and while her tent hung like a pair of chucked dacks, and her moon hung like the chomped off nail of a thumb, the eve was still and the stars were plentiful and gracious with their winks.
She gathered bits of forest it didn’t want of itself and built a fire, lit it, and lost hours to its cackle. She took out a tin of tuna and a satchel of macadamias and ate them in the warmth she’d called into the world, and she thought of home, and Wednesday steaknight, and Beattie drawing heinzup people on the paper of her plate.
( or... back to chapter two )
Chapter Two
The next morning was cool, and still, and the grasses around accommodations glinted in the dew. A peewee stalked timber by oregano, its walking a stopstarting, skimming for bugs that Shazza never saw.
Beattie was slow down the wooden steps by the veranda, sticking to the edges, riding the rail. She didn’t trust the middle of a step. She smiled at Shazza, her puffy, cherry cheeks pushing her eyes smaller, no matter, for need not have large eyes those who look to see.
“Mornin’ lovey,” she said.
“Thanks for comin’ with us, Bea.”
“Ohr, you silly thing, course I would. Carn, let’s go see a bloke about a gun.”
They walked together by a river clutching fog. Masked lapwing plovers etched cacophonic screech that scratched like records skipping. A duck bowed to its stream. Cuts of a sleepy mother-sun carved new fingers that re-emerged round every bend. A tirri tirri shot its bum at the day from rusty fencewire, facing sixteen directions at once and barking orders to all, it’s crown a permanent frown for an eyebrow.
“Where you gonna find a dragon?”
“Mountains, probly.”
“Orh yeah. Which mountains?”
“I was thinkin’ the south?”
“Bit cold.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Why don’t you go east? Darren Driver goes that way a bit I think.”
“East, ya reckon?”
“Yeah, I’d say East. Course, I don’t know nothin’ about slayin’ a dragon.”
“Ohrr, nah, me either,” Shazza said. “You don’t think I’m mad?”
“I reckon where you go, madness follows.”
“Yeah, sry about that.”
“Naaah – I don’t mean it as an ill thing, lovey. I like watching you goin’ about the place, doin’ the things you do. I just wished you’d like it, too.”
“Ohrrr, just gotta do stuff sometimes.”
“Needs doin’, gets done?”
“Yeah, but also… for me. It might not need doin’, but it still needs to get done. Does that echo a sense?”
“Course. All you are is you.”
Shazza took Beattie’s hand and gave her a landing for a cuddle, which Beattie took in that loppy way she does, never as a crutch but an amalgam, her body shorter than Shazza’s - always ready for touch; to synchronise, in sitting or singing or stepping, and to be around, to have around, and in its orbit nourish.
“Howyagarn?” asked Gary Ranger.
Ranger accommodation was a bit up the river, on a rise in a forest clearing. Gary sat on his veranda, whittling a limb into a unicorn. Wooden filings pirouetted from the plain of his blade, some of them landing in the hair on his toes.
“We’re good thanks lovey, do you remember Shazza?”
“Ohrr yeah, yeahnah, I remember Shazza. Mornin’ Shazza.”
“Mornin’ Gary.”
“Shazza’s lookin’ for a gun, Gary.”
“Ya are?”
“Yeh.”
“Ya want me to shoot somethin’?”
“Nah, she just wants the gun.”
“Just the gun, Gary.”
He stopped mid-whittle, his blade sunk. When he got momentum going again, the action would leave an imperfection in his unicorn, but Gary didn’t seem to mind ‘bout that, not to worry, Gary didn’t seem to mind.
“Ya… but I’m… gun… and you… wadda ya wantin’?”
“Shazza wants to borrow a gun.”
“Borrow a…” he mouthed the words like they were eggs with character, “wadda ya wanna borrow a gun for?”
“I wanna slay a dragon.”
“She wants to slay a dragon.”
“A dragon? But ya can’t slay a dragon…”
“Gary Ranger!” snapped Beattie.
Gary dropped his unicorn. He sat up like he had bindies in his dacks; back straight, knees straight, bolt still, eyes at nothin’, and frozen at that.
“Sry Beattie, it’s just the guns are ranger guns, and Shazza’s not a ranger – ya not a ranger are ya, Shazza?”
“Nah.”
“Yeh – Shazza’s not a ranger, so I shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, they said he’d say that didn’t they Shazz?”
“Wh… who did?” asked Gary.
“Ohr, no-one. But they did say it.”
“Yeah,” Shazza added, shrugging, “guess they were right.”
“They were?!” whined Gary.
“Yeh,” Beattie said, and started walkin’ away. “Ohr well.”
Gary Ranger stood up. A dandruff of curled wood shed from his lumpy body.
“Nah, yeah, nah, but if they said it… and I’m… hang on…”
“She needs a gun to slay a dragon, Gary.”
“She can’t slay a dragon.”
“They said you’d say that.”
“Wha- they did? Why’d they say that?! Hang on…”
“He mustn’t like being right, Shazz.”
“Yeah… nah… Gary Ranger mustn’t.”
“Nah, I do! Being right is one of me favourite things, I’m heaps good at it.”
“Well, that’s what we heeeeard, Gary, but we needed to see. And if ya don’t give Shazza the gun, she can’t not shoot the dragon to prove her wrong, to prove all of them wrong, and prove you right, can she?”
“Ohhhrr… ohrrrrrrr… yeah… yeah, that makes sense, yeahnah, yeah.”
He stared at them, wearing an expression of confidence as whittled as his wood. The longer he held it, the more it threated to fall off him, so he scratched his head and squinted at rising mother-sun. Later, Beattie would call the pose: inherently fuckable.
They wandered back along the river. Shazza carried the gun, a .222 rifle, in a leather holster. When Gary had asked how many bullets it might take to slay a dragon, she threw out 27, though she had no idea, so he gave her 26 bullets, now he did.
“Oh, look, look, look – it’s a fish, see!” Beattie said, with a thrill worth a bottle.
Shazza looked about the water but all she saw was water, and pretty riverstones under. Beattie lined her arm down Shazza’s gaze, pointing to a spot not far from the shore.
“You see him? Same colour as my bracelet, he’s lookin’ back at us I reckon.”
And then Shazza did see him, a rainbow trout. How a creature born of rainbows could be so elusive Shazza didn’t understand, but she was glad it had shine, and glad again she’d seen the fish.
“He’s a clever one, isn’t he?” she said, and she chucked the rifle back up on her shoulder, finding a more comfortable spot.
“He sure is,” Beattie said.
But how she said it was a bit funny. The joy she’d wrought to bring the fish to gaze had since diminished.
***
Once accommodation was nicer. It was bigger, even with way less people to live in it, and it was never the wrong temperature, its residence got first walk at dinner and guaranteed seats at restaurants outside of homeplace, and extra windows because once accommodation had gardens, too, and rooms with a view.
Shazza went to accommodation thirty-five-one-oh-six. It was twice as much accommodation as regular, with stairs to reach beds up top. Paris Server answered the door, at once relieved and afraid to see Shazza Picker.
“How is she?” Shazza asked.
Paris looked a foot beyond her shoes and Shazza knew the answer. They found her father out back by his homeriver, grading Tekimiti Cleaner’s effort. Shazza waved to Gilbert Cleaner tending to the piano inside, and Samantha Gardner tending to roses.
“There’s a slippery feel on the ladder, Tekimiti Cleaner. Do you think the homeriver ladder should be as slick as a riverstone? That isn’t something you should think, not at all, stop thinking that. That’s it, all around, Tekimiti Cleaner, all around.”
“Father.”
“Daughter,” he said, puzzled to see her. “Why are you at my accommodation at this hour?”
“How’s mother?”
“How’s your…?! Why aren’t you in the fields?”
“I’m off to slay a dragon; see, I have a rifle.”
“Ohhhhrrrrr what?! How? You can’t have a rifle.”
“He said you’d say that.”
“And ya can’t slay a dragon! Cripes, you’re bloody cooked! Tekimiti, tell her –“
“Yes, sir, what would you like me to say?”
“She reckons she wants to slay a dragon; bloody tell her she’s cooked.”
“Of course, sir. Shazza Picker…”
“Sharon Picker, Tekimiti, use her true name.”
“Sharon Picker, sir Ash once-Picker asks me to tell you you’re cooked.”
“No, don’t say it like that, tell her – she reckons she can slay a dragon; she’s cooked! Tell her!”
“You reckon you can slay a dragon, she’s er- you’re cooked.”
“Cripes...” father once-Picker sighed before turning his attention roseward. “Samantha Gardner, my daughter Sharon Picker reckons she’s gonna slay a dragon.”
“Does she? When’s she gonna do that?”
“Wh- never!!!”
“Heading off after this, Sam.”
“K.”
“No, she’s not – no you’re not, ya can’t slay a dragon, ya bloody can’t!”
“Is mother upstairs?”
“You’re cooked, daughter. Cooked as her. Yeah, she’s upstairs.”
Upstairs, Paris waited for Shazza to be ready before she inserted the thin key into the copper padlock. The sound of the key, the scrape of the lockhook unsheathed from the bray, the vibrations could be felt through the wall, it was well to be ready.
Paris held the handle.
“Miss once-Picker, your daughter Shazza is here to see you. Are you receiving visitors?”
The silence that ensued was a gravity.
“Thanks Paris.”
Shazza entered.
The room was as big as Shazza’s whole dorm, but it was mistreated and carried an odour of fresh rot and fast acid. For all the fortune of a riverview the windows stood clothed in shame, denying mother-sun, and in its embrace, day; only the trickiest of slips cut malingering fingers into that place unwanted. Framed photographs, their glass long removed, were strewn about the floor as downward as jammed toast. The wallpaper, once flowers, was now an abstract of dried and drying liquids among holes.
“Have ya talked to Alison Medicine for me?”
The form of two gaunt feet stuck out of a cupboard.
“No, Mumma. She can’t give you milkflower.”
“You! Wouldn’t!”
“I’m goin’ away for a bit, Mumma. I’m off to slay a dragon, and I just wanted to pop in and see you and Father ‘for I went.”
She let something a lot like silence linger. The smell of being there never diminished, but it did change. Toilet smells and badfood scents and the aromas of cleaning and uncleaning; in a way they talked now, a spoken wordless cacophony, another kind of funk.
“Okay. I love you, Mumma.”
The cupboard stirred.
Shazza looked to see a hint of face in the darkness, the glint of whites on blacks on sunken orbs.
“I don’t regret havin’ you. I regret I didn’t do enough to watch you slide into this world stillborn.”
***
Shazza found Beattie in the field. Even with a late start she had already overtaken other pickers. She hummed and swayed her secret tidal, and for the gentle tussle of morningwind the corn-flake stalks might have followed her tune.
“Well howdy howdy babydoll,” said Shazza.
Beattie beamed and offered palms.
“Look at ya, lovey, ya seem fixed for adventure.”
Shazza straightened the rifle on her shoulder and showed off her backpack.
“I am.”
It returned then; that thing which sucked an edge off whimsy, a slow leaking that willed to sadness. Beattie felt it. Shazza felt it. It was plenty.
“Ya gonna be safe?”
“Yeahnah, yeah. Course.”
Then Beattie upped and cried the kinda water the stalks weren’t livin’ for and in doing became lost to them, and littler, and those palms shook with an offer. And Shazza upped and cried the same and went to her to be replenished.
“Bye Beattie.”
“See ya with ya dragon, Shaz.”
They held one another in the corn-flake stalks, bent funny.
( or... return to chapter one )
“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 )
Shazza Slays a Dragon
by
Cadance Bell
An introduction from Cady
When I sat down and wrote this novel in April of 2024, I wasn't sure what I was writing - a novel or a suicide note. The cost of living, the hopelessness I feel about housing, violence against women, the state of politics and the death of the natural world was all weighing heavily upon my heart as a kind of... madness.
So, I gave myself 21 days to bottle it inside these words.
Welcome to Shazza Slays a Dragon.
Author’s note:
The original lyrics and melody of “No Vacancy” are copyright Colin Bailey, and used with permission of the artist.
Dedication:
The following women were murdered in Australia in the time it took me to write the first draft of this novel:
Emma Bates
Yixuan Cheng
Pikria Darchia
Dr Ashlee Good
Erica Hay
Yolonda Mumbulla
Redacted (10)
Dawn Singleton
Molly Ticehurst
Jade Young
I wrote this novel in three weeks.
It is dedicated to them, others, and the hope of none.
- Chapter One
- Chatper Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- *** Chapter Five *** Members Only from chapter Five onward
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Ninteen
- Chapter Twenty
I am SO EXCITED to reveal the cover for my new novel, Shazza Slays a Dragon!
This September the first chapters of Shazza are dropping right here, exclusively on Ca.dance! Only members will be able to access the story, with Shout Members getting the first look!
A new chapter of my bonkers new book will be available each week!
