zombies of widgeroo – chapter seven

chapter seven – of the elder and younger runes, holy sites as dimensional gateways, the dangers of necromancy, shamanistic sex magic, and demonic sacrifices.

by the time we made it to the new highway, cen had learned a little of the primary rule and understood it a lot more than she did when we first started.

“it’s not that hard,” i told her. “it’s merely perception and study.”

she looked up at me, a crafty look playing across her face. “no, it’s not!”

i ruffled her hair. she needed a bath. “you’ll make mage one day.”

“tell me about runes.”

“runes? well, they’re power signs. usually, they’re ancient signs, but there are younger runes. runes which have some power, but obviously not as powerful as the ancient signs.”

“what is the difference? are the younger ones weaker because they’re young, or some other reason?”

“we might say the ancient runes are more powerful than the younger because they’re older, but the younger are not weaker because they’re younger. no, it’s a little more complex. let’s just say that the ancient runes were crafted from thought, whereas the younger were crafted from need.”

“the war?”

“something like that.”

“were you in the war?”

“i played a small part.”

“did you kill many people?”

“some. that is the nature of war.”

“with magic?”

“sometimes.”

i answered her questions more out of habit than of interest, and the answers seemed dull to me. cen kept asking, though. the thoughts of the war had opened some memories for me. i don’t know why, as usually i managed to ignore the war. probably because my mind was drifting so i might find an easy way to teach my new student.

i remember blood, slipping across my hands. i could have gone anywhere, such was the ocean of red which covered the land. i could have done anything.

i was drunk on the smell of it, and revelled in its flavour. i felt a thousand lives were being slashed into my mind, piece by piece, cut by cut. i remember durious, his eyes lifted to the heavens, his arms stretched wide, singing words of destruction, and all about him was exploding. his gaze caught mine during one such wave, and he laughed.

“we are on the edge of a new age, old friend!” he howled. “the world is hours away from its rebirth!”

i had nodded, eager to see the end.

i raised my arms with him, pulled a rune from my mind and cast my spell wide. so wide i couldn’t see where it ended. durious’ eyes glazed over and he swore. “my god, what a spell!”

i crumpled to the earth and felt the aftermath.

like acid poured down my back it dribbled down my shoulders, my arms and pooled between my fingers in the dirt.

durious siezed my shoulders and shook me hard. “what have you done!? what was it!?”

i struggled for an answer, and settled on the one primary rule of magic. “i don’t know.”

durious saw something, then. even as the dead rose from their graves and stumbled across the field toward us, he sensed something had gone terribly wrong. he let go of my shirt and threw a spell at the shuffling dead. “they’re not stopping,” he shrieked. “why won’t they stop! our words mean nothing! what have you done!?”

i shook my head, and tried to stand, but the trembling in my bones would not stop. the dead moved closer. durious screamed at me to stand, to do something, to stop whatever i had done.

“i can’t,” i told him. “it wasn’t mine to stop. you wanted a new age. well, it seems we have it.”

and with a calmness born of void, the dead reached us. they lay their hands on durious, who thrashed in their grip, but it did him no good. then they pushed him down into the dirt and began to eat.

blood sprayed outward and across me. my robes were stained, and his black blood ran down my face. my tongue tasted it. bitter. he had no memories worth keeping.

the dead gnawed on, their teeth slipping against his bones. i listened to the cracking of gristle and the chewing of meat and wondered what i had done.

a new age. they had wanted a new age.

that’s all the war was about.

it was not about money, or sex. it was not about power, or rebellion. it was merely to play herald to that which would come after destruction.

whatever spell i had cast, it was mine no longer. i didn’t think it had ever been mine. i thought of the salamanders and their offering. another spell which was not my own?

i wondered what it would do. would it destroy the world and bring another age? that would be fitting.

the dead, when finished with durious, had turned to me, their eyes glowing a sour green in the night. their mouths opened and closed. their gums clicked together. broken teeth littered the dirt.

one stepped up to me, and i waited to be torn limb from limb as durious had been, but instead the zombie bowed its head and knelt. the others soon followed suit.

i fell beside it and i stayed there, kneeling among the dead for days as they bowed their heads before me in silent worship.

my robes were torn.

it was there i learned the trick of the sands. i swam beneath them all, leaving them there with their thoughtless minds. they didn’t need me. they were dead already. they didn’t move. they just kept bowing to the spot where i had been.

waiting.

breathing.

inward.

expell.

breathing.

“have you ever been to widgeroo?”

i blinked.

“i said, have you ever been to widgeroo?”

i glanced at the girl, who was now plaiting weeds. “why do you ask?”

my new apprentice threw the weeds away. “because i’ve heard there’s stuff there.”

“stuff? what stuff?”

“well, they say there’s strange lights and, y’know, stuff. have you been to widgeroo?”

“yes, i’ve been to widgeroo.”

“did you see the lights?”

“when i was there? no, i didn’t see the lights the people talk about.”

widgeroo again. i didn’t want to hear the name.

my first sight of widgeroo was of an open plain littered with scrub and small boulders. the nearest road was over fifteen kilometres away, and to get to widgeroo, you had to fly in on one of the flying machines which worked before the second coming was completely manifest. i had flown in on one such thing in the middle of the morning.

the sun kind of slid across the ancient earth, its face searing into the rocks, punishing the stone skins and scraping across the dry leaves of the scrub. small animals lived there, in the shadows. they only came out at night, but that was a long time ago.

nothing lives there now.

i went the first time with my second teacher, sidney. he was an old man by any definition, having lasted since the alchemical years. he knew the comte when the comte was just born. he told the comte all about the stones, and what they meant, and how to find the invisible threads which run across the globe.

each thread, when you first touch them as they erupt from the earth, is like touching a sleek stream of sand, only it’s softer than sand and feels wet, but no more than moist. it’s like flesh, if flesh were dead. it’s like steam, but without the heat. it’s like an ocean without waves.

as it brushes your face, each bursting molecule fusses with your bones and worries at your teeth. you feel more alive than ever before. you can course them through your veins, just like the earth courses them through its own veins, keeping it alive despite the scars and wounds machines used to inflict.

i remember the first time i stepped on an oil rig.

the smell of old blood and carnage. the pulsing sensation of something close to death, and yet above us, ignorant of the drilling, those threads flitted through the skies beneath the wings of an albatross who saw nothing but the sea and knew that the time of machines was at its end.

sidney pointed up to the sky and traced one of the lines. “you see that? that’s time. pure time.”

and then he took a notebook from his pocket and wrote today, i saw the sands of time, and they were infinite. though we might try to cut them off from their source, or drag them screaming from their mother, these children of the deep will never be our slaves. in our delusions, we thought we might direct the currents, but instead we merely made atlantis fall once more into the depths.

my student had to jog to keep my stride, but i didn’t dare slow. not with the enforcers so close. i could almost feel coogs breathing on the road, sniffing the wind for my scent. would he find me tonight?
i clenched my fists and concentrated on my insurances.

“i am insured,” i said.

“what’s that?” cen asked, double-stepping to catch up. “what did you say? i didn’t hear you.”

“i said, it’s not the ritual which matters. it’s the concentration.”

“what do you mean? you’ve been making me scratch dollar signs into everything we’ve nearly stepped on, and it all means nothing?”

“it only means nothing if you failed to concentrate.”

“do all masters speak in riddles?”

“only the real ones.”

she was silent for a long time, and in that time i had the chance to find a clearing among the bushes beside the highway. a wombat had died near here, once. i could feel its ghost sitting on a rock, watching the trucks go past. it was watching with dread, but it couldn’t stem its fascination.

“we’ll rest here for the day,” i told her. “in the evening, we’ll walk some more. maybe even find black rock.”

“why a rock? it’s always rocks. can’t it be a hotel? or an abandoned sea resort? why rocks?” she kicked the dust and sneezed. “always fucking rocks.”

i turned and picked up a pebble. i held it close so she could see it clearly. “it is the micro to your macro. it is the infinite to your finite. it is above, and below. you see, but you don’t see the patterns. it can channel energies, or it could bounce them off like stones from a crab’s back. it is many things,” and i threw it over her shoulder. “and it is nothing.”

“i’m beginning to think i’ll never be a mage.”

i shrugged. “who can say?” and i lay down on the dirt. i held out my arms and she came to me. she snuggled into my shoulder and i could smell her hair. “it’s time to sleep.”

and then we sank into the earth and into dream.

as we slept, the threads slivered through our bodies and the vampires were held at bay. they were out there, cruising for empty trees and open veins. they needed water. they needed life. they needed.

a few trucks shouldered past, their vicious lights hacking through the morning air. during the day, nothing moved. it was too hot. most things would sleep.

a snake drifted above us, curling on the rock the wombat’s ghost had occupied. it hissed and tasted the air. it knew we were there.

it could feel my vibrations.

if i wasn’t afraid my insurances might lapse, i would have reached up for it and let it eat into my spine. let it float up through the vertebrae until it bit its way into my brain, then snap its way back out through my forehead and be on its way. it would leave a hole in my skull which would bleed eternal, but i would feel no pain – only solitude and a sense of becoming like no other.

i wondered how my brain would look exposed thus to the world.

for some reason i thought of those faces in the temple. of a smile, shining like the moon.

oh, danaya. with lips so warm and fingertips like ice. sharp fingers tracing the line of my jaw, down my neck.
“cen,” i whispered. “let the snake eat of the apple. don’t be afraid.”

and there, beneath the sands, our bodies writhed like serpents, and when i burst inside her she cried out and her mouth filled with sand.

we could have been dead.

we could be sleeping beneath a heavy lid.

we could be wide awake inside our coffins.

instead, we floated far.

wake.
from your sleep.

and in the morning when she woke, she knew the first pains of the mage.

“what happened?”

i told her she was now one of my kind. “you are what you asked to become.”

“i thought i had to learn! i thought you would teach me!”

“i taught you. i changed you. magic is a disease. it is not a gift. it is not learning. it is purely a disease which can be suffered. it is knowing you are not what you were.”

i knew she wouldn’t understand. i wondered if i’d made a mistake, but as we emerged from the sand, and brushed ourselves clean, i saw the thing i’d been searching for.

the drying of your tears.

black rock.

skull of the goanna king.

cen sat down on the rotting carcass of a discarded ute. i knew she wouldn’t come with me.

i must have felt sorry for her. my own master had taken me in more or less for similar reasons. i guess that’s how magic continues, through those of us who were pathetic enough to desire more.

we weren’t satisfied. we were too small to be significant, yet we wanted to be something different. we wanted to be someone else for a change.

i felt the curse inside me stir a little.

i thought of widgeroo. i didn’t want to go there. but i would have to.

soon.

no.

i shouldn’t go there.

i should stay away. the curse can’t be all that bad.

not that bad.

stupid.

of course it was bad. the demonette had been pissed. she wasn’t really incompetent, just arrogant. she thought no human mage could beat her. well, she might have been right.

she could still be right.

sidney had taught me what i knew of demonettes.

he summoned one before me in a place just like this. right in front of a giant rock, he summoned her. he’d calmly informed her that she would submit, to which she’d laughed at him – until she saw the spell in which she was caught.

and then she’d screamed.

sidney cut her into small pieces and drank her blood. he chewed on her heart and licked her brain.

“see, my boy? this is what demonettes are for. they are for those of us who know what to look for. they are for places such as this, where the threads create gateways between worlds. this is one of the magics the chaos lords left behind. not many know of it. come, eat her flesh and know what real magic is all about.”

after we feasted on the demonette, we burned her remains and returned to the city.

that night, sidney showed me how to break a curse. “you must find a place,” he said. “a place where the threads meet in tune with your own soul. i know where my place is, boy. i know where your place is, too. if you tell me where your place is, i’ll give to you a gift beyond all understanding.”

without hesitation, i told him and he gave me a ballpoint pen.

“this then will guide you. draw strong, young one. now, leave before i destroy you, for two such as us cannot live long in each other’s company lest we fight like lions across the carcasses of lambs.”

two nights later, the world was ripped apart when the capitalist overlord came for a second time to the world. before he came, i had hoped to one day join the ranks of the multinationals templar. when sidney gave me the biro, i still thought i might one day wear one of their uniforms.

“are you alright?”

i blinked and twitched as cen laid her hand on my shoulder.

“master?”

i swallowed, and my throat felt like sandpaper. “i am not your master, cen. i have given you all you need.”

“you’re tossing me aside? but i’ve hardly begun training!”

i smiled. “no. you can follow, but you can’t learn anything from me. you can only learn from yourself. it’s all relative, you know. pieces of this and that. know the numbers. multiply the one and you still end up with one. know what i mean?”

she frowned and bit her lip until blood stained her teeth. “fuck.”

she’d be alright, i thought, as i sifted through the swirling dust to place my palm on the black rock which marked the entrance to the town.

the rock felt like an orchid. like human flesh, only not so warm. beneath the skin, i knew nothing of what bubbled inside. that was as it should be, though.

i didn’t think any more of cen. instead, i hummed an old tune from before the breaking of the corporate multi-nationals.

ben weasel was a philosopher. i thought of his work as i slid through the rock.

Tags: zombies of widgeroo