hear this month.’ Kitty set up her work station with brushes, photographs and palettes of colour. She had, on Trudy and Marcus’s urging, applied to become a fully qualified mortuary worker, so that she could conduct embalming and reconstruction work as well. With their letters of recommendation, submitted with the application, Kitty was almost certain to be accepted despite her twenty-one years.
‘I’ll be an hour or so.’ Trudy left to change out of her work clothes and run errands.
Kitty compared the dead girl in the casket with the photographs propped on an easel for reference, assessing the differences so she could compensate for them with her palette.
Kitty’s tools and materials were laid out on the bench – the brushes and sponges, the special make-up designed for use on skin that had no warmth or blush of blood beneath it; skin that perished more every passing moment, despite the best preparation. It was a body’s business, after all, to return to the component parts from which it came, like it was the soul’s business to go wherever souls go.
Using a sponge, Kitty first restored colour to Maddie’s exposed arms and hands.
When the make-up had dried and was ready to be touched again, Kitty wound Jasper’s collar around Maddie’s wrist, the royal blue of it matching the pattern of blue flowers scattered over the dress. She arranged Maddie’s hand to be cupped open and placed the phone charm of the outraged red bird into the hollow. Matthias’s necklace was in a box on the workbench, ready to place around Maddie’s neck after her face was made up.
As Kitty worked, she hummed a wandering melody, inventing words to go with it as she sang.
Once outside, Steve pulled his phone from his pocket and checked his messages. One had arrived from his nephew, Angus.
Of course we will. Nothing could make us happier. We’ll sort out tickets and meet you and Harper soon.
Well, that was something. Gretel would be cared for the way Alex and Kurt would have liked. And if Steve hadn’t told the rest of the band yet, well, it was partly that he didn’t want to say anything until everything was confirmed.
Truth was, he was reluctant to involve Yuka and Sal in the arrangements. They’d been right about Kurt and Alex’s lack of wisdom in becoming parents, and they loved Gretel, but their early opposition still rankled. That little girl was the closest Steve would ever get to grandkids. He was going to do right by her, no matter what it cost him.
It was high time he retired, anyway. Sometimes Steve couldn’t believe he’d made it this far without being killed or losing a limb. The band had operated under three names – AnnaTomic, Dragonsbane and Rome’s Burning – since he’d joined them at fifteen years old. When Anna died, he’d accepted his probable fate. The idea that he might make it out alive had never occurred to him before Budapest.
Now, though. Now. He was starting to see the appeal in it. Sitting on a porch in a rocking chair, singing to Gretel as she grew up. Dying twenty or thirty years hence in his own bed, of some nice old people’s condition, not bitten in half by a dragon or poisoned by an enraged witch or murdered by vampires, or any of the ways he’d lost other friends in the last forty-odd years.
Steve stabbed at the text pad on his phone, squinting at the letters, until he finally sent: Good. See you then.
He jammed the phone into his pocket, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and ambled towards the centre of Melbourne to see what was going down. All these decades travelling and he’d never made it to Australia before. It had to have more going for it than simply being a long way away from Hungary.
The stretch of road along which he walked wasn’t giving him much to go on. Perhaps Melbourne’s charms were more of the hidden type. Some cities were like that – garden variety on the surface and all buried treasure once you started poking around underneath. Of course, where treasure was buried was mostly where the monsters were found, too. At least it wasn’t boring, he supposed.
Today, Steve Borman was not in the mood for surprises. Garden variety was fine by him, if the universe would be so obliging for once.
His feet led him finally past an elegant, colonnaded Victorian-era building sheltering a café and filled with the enticing scent of coffee beans and toasted sandwiches. The building ended where a traffic-free plaza began, split in two by tram tracks down its middle.
Steve regarded the collection of tall posts at the top of the plaza, which bore narrow flags advertising a recent art exhibition. At their feet was what looked like a giant, pink, narrow, naked backside. A few steps took him to the front of the thing, which showed it to actually be a giant marble coin purse.
Well, okay Melbourne, thought Steve, I kinda like your big pink ass-purse. What else you got for me?
That’s when he heard the music, playing from halfway down the length of the plaza. Even half a city block away, Steve sensed that special something humming through the notes, and promptly went to investigate which one of the band was not garden variety.
The four-piece was set up in front of a department store, a folded square of cardboard declaring them to be Firedog Brigade followed by a list of their social media sites. The sound was unpolished and threatened constantly to slip out of rhythm. The lead singer strained slightly at the high notes. On the surface of it, they made up a perfectly fine busking indie band. The thrumming core of power in them came from only one of them. The bass player.
Turn to face the sun
Blazing bright
Everything warm and light
But there’s something colder
At your shoulder
Behind you, you know
There is a shadow
A young man bent over his bass guitar, fingers flying over the strings, his feet braced wide and steady. From the throbbing low notes to the counter-melody that wove through the higher register, that boy was the one knitting the players into a whole, keeping the drumbeat in line, keeping the lead guitar from wavering off into blurry fingering, tugging the singer back into key and rhythm. His was the power bringing out the inherent threat of the lyric yet also keeping it at bay: a careful balance.
Keep your eyes on the light
Keep your back to the shadow,
Dark as night
And maybe you won’t see it
And maybe
It won’t see into you
Steve folded his arms and watched the bass player. The kid was in his mid-twenties, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, with strong and graceful hands, his focus entirely on his instrument. He seemed unaware that he was guiding the others to be better than they would have been alone.
That shadow
Eclipses your better self
There’s strength in that darkness
When you need it
You’d better, you’d better
Hope to god you won’t need it
Steve
