After the Rain

After the Rain

Edited by Tehani Wessely

First published in Australia in April 2011 by FableCroft Publishing

Available to purchase in print from http://fablecroft.com.au

Smashwords Edition 2011

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

http://fablecroft.com.au

This anthology © 2011 FableCroft Publishing

Cover illustration and design by Gaston Locanto

Design and layout by Tehani Wessely

From the dry heart to the sea ©2011 Joanne Anderton

Powerplant ©2011 Dave Luckett

Daughters of the deluge ©2011 Lyn Battersby

When the bone men come ©2011 Peter Cooper

The birth of water cities ©2011 Angela Rega

Wet work ©2011 Jason Nahrung

Fruit of the pipal tree ©2011 Thoraiya Dyer

Europe after the rain ©2011 Lee Battersby

Heaven ©2011 Jo Langdon

Visitors ©2011 Peter M Ball

Mouseskin ©2011 Kathleen Jennings

Offerings ©2011 Suzanne J Willis

The shadow on the city of my sky ©2011 Robert Hoge

My flood husband ©2011 Sally Newham

Eschaton and coda ©2011 Dirk Flinthart

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry (pbk)

Title:After the rain / Tehani Wessely, editor.

ISBN: 9780980777048 (eBook)

Subjects: Short stories.

Other Authors/Contributors:

Wessely, Tehani.

Dewey Number:A823.4

The editor gratefully acknowledges the kind assistance given by Joanne Anderton, Elizabeth Disney, Gaston Locanto, Carol Ryles, Mitenae, and the graciously wonderful authors, in the production of this book.

As always, Tehani would like to thank her wonderful husband and children for their enduring patience and support, without which this book would not exist.

ALSO EDITED BY TEHANI WESSELY…

Australis Imaginarium (FableCroft Publishing)

Worlds Next Door (FableCroft Publishing)

New Ceres Nights (with Alisa Krasnostein, Twelfth Planet Press)

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #4, #16, #27, #31, #36 (with Lucy Zinkiewicz) & #37 (Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-operative Ltd)

Shiny #4 and #5 (with Alisa Krasnostein and Ben Payne, webzine, Twelfth Planet Press)

CONTENTS

introductiontehani wessely

from the dry heart to the seajoanne anderton

powerplantdave luckett

daughters of the delugelyn battersby

when the bone men comepeter cooper

the birth of water citiesangela rega

wet workjason nahrung

fruit of the pipal treethoraiya dyer

europe after the rainlee battersby

heavenjo langdon

visitorspeter m ball

mouseskinkathleen jennings

offeringssuzanne j willis

the shadow on the city of my skyrobert hoge

my flood husbandsally newham

eschaton and codadirk flinthart

contributor biographies

Introduction

This book came about thanks to early morning wake ups and lack of sleep. The title rose from my subconscious in the pre-dawn hours when I couldn’t go back to sleep after my youngest child had been up.

Coming from a country upbringing where rain played such a vital part in our lives — many of my fondest memories are of swollen creeks and flooding rivers in the aftermath of storms — I thought it sounded like just the project for FableCroft’s next anthology.

I was overwhelmed with submissions, receiving almost 100 stories during the reading period, and it was a difficult task to whittle it down to the fifteen finest you will read here. Many others were also superb, but just not quite right for this collection, and I felt privileged to have so many authors send me their work.

I had begun the editing and layout process with a number of stories in January while holidaying at my family’s property in Queensland. Our trip had been delayed by a week due to flooding in the region, but we thought we were safe to go, once the waters had receded. How wrong we were! Not only did the area go under again (along with so much of the state!), but Toowoomba and the bottom of the range were devastated by the astonishing flash flooding that horrified us all. We were glued to the television and our online networks in disbelief, seeing the destruction that came out of nowhere, and during that terrible day, I realised that while we couldn’t physically go to help and support those affected, there was something I could do.

With the generous help of the authors, I pulled thirteen of the fifteen stories chosen for After the Rain into an ebook, which we sold by donation to raise money for the Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal. It’s important to note that the two missing stories were not held back by the authors, but rather were not included because I was unable to contact them soon enough to have them included. The ebook version also included reflections from three Brisbane authors/editors, Trent Jamieson, Ben Payne and Angela Slatter, who freely offered their thoughts for inclusion in the special edition. With a super quick proofing turnaround by Carol Ryles and Mitenae, we managed to get the ebook available for sale within days of the Toowoomba disaster that inspired it. In addition to the sales through the FableCroft website, Wizard Tower Books and Weightless Books, ebook stores in the UK and US, both offered to stock the ebook in their online stores, and with the marvellous signal boosting on Twitter, Facebook and blogposts, we were able to donate a total of $2414.00 to the Appeal, in just a four week period.

Such a thing would never have been possible without the support of the contributors and those who talked about the ebook online, and I’d like to publically thank everyone involved in the fundraising, particularly those people who made a donation. Your support was greatly appreciated.

The book you hold in your hands is different from the fundraising ebook. More than half the stories were not in their final version when we put the ebook out (although all were of a quality publishable standard, regardless!). Some have changed a little, and there are the two extra stories here as well. I hope you gain even more enjoyment from this edition

Thank you for picking up this book. I hope the stories resonate with you on many levels, and that you love them as much as I did.

Tehani Wessely, Editor

March 2011

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From the Dry Heart to the Sea

Joanne Anderton

The first wave brought industrial waste, caustic to touch and poisonous to breathe, heavy with arsenic, mercury, chrome, and dangerously alkaline. The people of Town called it acid, unaware they were making a pH faux pas. So let’s just call it acid, shall we?

Grandfather was selective when it came to traditions. As a ferryman he stuck to the old ways, even though the river had dried up when he was still a young man. He hauled his ferry down to the tracks every morning — with a truck, at first, then a large draught horse when the petrol ran out — and carried customers, livestock and goods across the vast riverbed of cracked, dry mud. Each evening he dragged his ferry back up the hill, cleaned its sunpanels and waxed wooden hull, and locked it in his little white-painted shed.

He taught me to do the same. When he realised he would never have the grandson he wanted he decided a granddaughter would do well enough, renamed me ‘Damla’ — after the water that no longer flowed — and set me to work as a ferryman, the first female one in all of Town’s history.

Our ferries ran on iron tracks now, not currents, and there were too many boats running for the small number of people unable or unwilling to cross the riverbed on foot. Still, I learned well, and once Grandfather passed Ararat to me I worked hard to prove that Damla, ferrymaster, belonged in Town.

Because the world was Town, and Town was the world.

When the first wave came, it was his well-learned traditions that saved my ferry. While the others burned and dissolved, Ararat remained solid, waxed and clean, in the little white shed I shared with her up on the hill.

It began in the dark of very early morning, with a great roar like something living and in terrible pain. Lamps flickered on all across Town, on both sides of the riverbed and even in the farming outskirts. I stroked my boat’s crystalline sunpanels like my touch alone could comfort her — like she was a creature that needed comfort — only leaving her when the slow dawn broke to reveal the river, running.

The new houses and rest stops erected along the riverbed tracks were simply gone, smoothed over by furious water. Storerooms and feed pens built too low and close to the river were torn from the rock and burned as the flood carried them away. Smoke rose in the wake of their remains and any who breathed it in began burning, themselves, from the inside. I watched them dancing, covered my face with cloth, and decided not to take the ferry to the dock that day, for the dock too was ashes and the tracks deeply submerged.

Instead, I left the small white shed on the hill and went down into Town.

I spoke to Market street shop owners, wearing nightgowns and huddled in groups, and learned that all ferries at dock or on the riverbed were destroyed. Only Eden’s Call on the western bank, and Ararat on the east, survived.

I was glad, because I was not the only one left. And because Adam, son of Eden’s Call’s ferrymaster had surely survived along with his boat. Of the few young men I knew in Town, he didn’t deserve to burn as he drowned.

The farmers who lived and worked on the outskirts hurried into Town to lend aid where they could. They reported that the sunfarm was unharmed, but the thick cables that carried power west had been eaten through. Any animals grazing near the river or wandering its banks were dead, too.

Because the water was acid and destroyed anything in its path.

I tried to find Grandfather in the poorer areas, close to the riverbank, among buildings that had once been warehouses, before the defences were installed and all outside boats turned away. Even as a dry-river ferrymaster Grandfather could have afforded better accommodation, but this was where Town had put him when he arrived, and he had never moved.

The old warehouses and unused loading docks were chaotic, a mess of bodies and smoke, physicians working and victims screaming. The Mayor’s razor men, working crowd-control, turned me away. I listened to them talking.

…reports coming in from both ends of the river say the defences have been breached. Shock fence is down. The steel barricades upstream have melted and the ones downstream are starting to fall.

That’s impossible, nothing can breach the barricades.

They’re talking sabotage. Reckon someone must have weakened them and let this acid-stuff in.

Someone? But who would—

And they noticed me loitering, turned their masked faces to me and lifted their hands so lantern light shone from wire-wrapped wrists. On your way, outsider.

I hurried back to the little white shed on the hill. The single tattoo on my cheek seemed heavier, that night.

The second wave came right on the first’s alkaline heels and rolled thick with debris. A continent of buried rubbish unveiled by the rain, gathered up by the flood, and carried along like a school of plastic and metallic fish. It stretched for kilometres and took weeks to pass through. And though it did not look it on the surface, it was filthy, and deadly, and dangerous.

Neither Ararat nor I knew how to swim, and at first that didn’t matter. She may have had some residual memory of water, haunting her propeller and rudder where I stored them at the back of the shed, but the second wave was so heavy with rubbish and muck that it was almost solid land. Grandfather returned as soon as the razor men let him through. He helped me remove the sunpowered track-wheels from her hull; Ararat didn’t need them any more. When the acid eased and as the rubbish rolled in, I’d seen the melted tips of steel where the tracks now ended, right on the river’s edge.

I relied on a long, thick pole to propel myself through the second wave. It made me slow, and my shoulders and back burned from the effort at the end of the day. I knew now how Ararat felt, during her long hot days dragging cargo along the tracks. And I told her so regularly, keeping my voice low, keenly aware of the presence of my passengers and that Town didn’t need to know about the conversations I had with my ferry.

We saw Adam for the first time in weeks in the middle of the river, when his father grew too sick to master his boat. They had not let Adam sail before then. He was the son of a family with Roots, and a ferrymaster in training. Too precious to risk. Not like me.

How’s your father? I asked, unsure what else to say. Glass and plastic bottles rattled between us.

A shadow seemed to cross his face. Unwell, he said. The physicians say he has been poisoned. The Mayor’s third aide even questioned me, as though I would poison my own father. He shook his head and long, blonde hair fell across his eyes.

They thought you would do that?

So I could master his boat, yes. To meet you, like this, in the middle of the river. They thought I would do that to my own father, because I haven’t seen you in so long.

Because of me? I lowered my gaze and turned my face, angling the tattoo away from him. I had been born in Town, but as the granddaughter of an immigrant I had been tattooed as soon as it was humane to do so. It had never meant much to me. We were safe, in Town. We had power and medicines and food. The world could go to hell outside of our defences, and it never mattered to us.

But since the first wave tore through us, I understood what that tattoo meant. It seemed to burn with fresh-needle fire every time I overheard a whispered conversation or caught the edge of a speculating glance.

It meant I didn’t belong here.

It’s not true, Adam said. He reached across the rubbish, but our boats were not close enough for him to touch me, and I didn’t reach for him in turn.

Of course its not, I said. You would never do that.

I’ve told them not to blame you. I told them we’re not even courting. They seemed to think… His voice trailed off, strained.

Thanks. Well, it was the truth, wasn’t it? Just-friends was hard enough.

Children screamed and laughed in the distance. I glanced over my shoulder to see them pulling a muck-clogged bike from the rubbish. All sorts of treasures had been retrieved from the river’s second wave. Batteries and wires, plastics and glass, even toys. Adam’s father had run his ferry day and night, carrying lamps and a team of ten strong men to rescue as much useful material as possible. I assumed Adam would do the same.

I had not volunteered to use Ararat the same way.

Instead, I carried passengers, and the sunfarmers working to restore power to the western side. Doing my bit for a Town that didn’t trust me.

I pushed the pole, biting my lip against the blisters it rubbed on my palms. Gradually, Ararat and Eden’s Call separated. Best keep going, I said. It’s a full day.

Yes. Adam was using his engine. The propeller squealed against the debris-thick river, and I felt the vibrations through the length of the pole. I’ll see you on the return.

I nodded, but didn’t reply.

Though we passed each other several times, I didn’t stop long enough to let Adam start up another conversation. I listened, instead, to Ararat’s whispers, as she parted the rubbish, as she groaned and creaked around me. And I whispered back, my own noises without words. She didn’t care about Roots and she couldn’t see my tattoo. We understood each other, the ferry and I.

By nightfall I was shaking with exhaustion. As the horse and I hauled Ararat to the shed on the hill I could still hear the hum of Eden’s Call’s engine, its light a single speck in the river’s darkness, collecting.

I cleaned the sludge from Ararat’s hull and smoothed the nicks and scrapes the rubbish had left. But as I was about to collapse on the mattress and blankets I had moved to the corner of the shed, where I could touch the rudder and propeller as I fell asleep, the Mayor’s third aide came visiting.

He wore an insignia of three razor-wire coils on his breast and his arms, from wrist to elbow, were wrapped in barbs.

You appear fatigued, Damla ferrymaster, once tattooed. Daughter of Ozge, twice tattooed, and granddaughter of Asqu, who bears the three marks of an outsider.

I resisted the need to touch the mark on my cheek, because that was just what he wanted me to do.

Perhaps mastering a ferry all on your own is too much for a girl of your seventeen years.

"Ararat is mine, I said, straightening. Passed down from my grandfather, my family have mastered her in the service of Town for three generations." My mother had not so much as stepped on her deck, but I did not mention that.

The ferry belongs to Town, the third aide said, his smile brittle and his eyes hard. As all things, and all people, here do.

And I am her master.

"And a sorry job you are doing, Damla. Ferrymaster. His smile settled into a smirk. Dawn to dusk is only half the day. Eden’s Call sails day and night, collecting the river’s gifts. You refuse to do so."

I do not trust the river. Don’t you remember the sound it made? Don’t you remember the burning and the stench? Even though the acid was gone, I didn’t want to touch anything brought here by the river. Ferrymaster I might be, but I hated the river. It had torn Town apart, it had stirred fear and hatred, and I didn’t trust its mud-clogged peace offerings, no matter how useful they might be.

All I got was a shake of the head and a look that said, so clearly I could almost hear him thinking, that outsiders like me simply didn’t understand. Perhaps you need the help of someone who will.

I swallowed, hard. It was difficult to argue with the third aide to the Mayor. Even if I managed to convince him to leave Ararat in my care, the second aide would come, and then the first, and the Mayor, even, if that failed.

Will you not even compromise, Damla ferrymaster, for the good of Town? Like good Townfolk should do?

There was water, in the third wave. Clear stuff, wet stuff, it smelled of thunderstorms and wild winds and all the distance it had travelled. The food it carried with it — tempting peaches, taut nectarines, prickly pineapples and burgeoning mangoes — had not been seen so far south for generations. The people of Town picked this bounty from the clear, fresh river and did not question how it could have travelled for so long, in such perfect condition. How it remained ripe and unbruised. And they could not know that none of the fruit, really, tasted quite right, because there was no one left alive with the memory. Even the oldest Townspeople had only ever eaten them from cans.

I nearly drowned the first time I led Ararat into water. Her strength and her buoyancy — as I scrabbled against her hull and clung to her wood for my life — were all that kept my head above the terrible rush and pull and cold. Once I climbed onboard I stumbled about on her deck, my stomach rebelling, my legs wobbling, my