Kieran Morgan

1

A child’s foot stepped hesitantly onto the quicksand, and began to sink, ever-so-slowly.

“Howie… you’re sinkin’,” a small voice piped up.

The foot spread its small toes as wide as it could, and moved just a little bit sideways, and the sinking slowed. It didn’t completely stop, but it was unhurried now, as imperceptible as one of those slow bubbles that form on the surface, taking hours to pop in a sloppy belch.

“No he ain’t. Look at the way he spread his toes, Thipi. He can’t sink, he’s too skinny.”

The five children on the bank held their breath. The eldest had spoken, and when she spoke one had to listen, or a swift twist of armflesh or deadleg would result.

“Yes he is, he’s sinkin’.”

The youngest, Thipi, had spoken. His brother put a warning hand on his arm, which he shrugged off angrily. He glared at Howie, egging him on with his eyes to sink faster, so he would be vindicated. You always sunk if you stood still on the quicksand. Even if you were skinny like Howie.

Howie smiled.

He didn’t sink. Thipi opened his eyes wide in surprise, and then grinned.

“How does he do that, Kala?”

“Shh!”

Kala turned to administer a punishment, and there was a sudden breaking of ranks. The other children sprinted off across the quicksand, slapping Howie’s hand in high-fives as they dashed across to the safety of the log. Kala came last, sprinting across the quicksand with her breath held, the helpingstick firmly clutched in her hand. As she ran she felt herself sinking, her feet accumulating the sandy slush which sped up the sinking process, and by the time she reached the log her feet were sinking in up to the ankles, even though she splayed her feet wide and used the helpingstick for every step.

Gettin’ too old for this. She was nearing her twelfth birthday; almost an adult now. She leaned the helpingstick’s wide, flat shoelike end onto the quicksand and pushed, using its stability to lever her foot out.

“How far can you go, Howie?”

Thipi’s brother had spoken. Howie had turned in the quicksand and was watching them quietly.

“Yeah, don’t you ever sink?”

“How do you do it, Howie?”

Howie opened his mouth to speak, running his tongue over a toothgap. He hovered uncertainly on the edge of speech, then abruptly clamped his mouth shut. He looked puzzled for a moment, as if his own actions didn’t quite tally with the orders from his brain, then he smiled.

“He don’t speak, stupid. Not since his sister died, remember?”

“Now, are you children pestering poor Howie?” a deep, adult voice interrupted. Kala turned. It was Yile, one of the hunters. He had appeared at the quicksands edge, moving with his uncanny silence. She smiled at him, and he nodded back.

“Why don’t you lot run along now, while I talk to Kala,” he said, shooing the children away.

When they’d gone, he sat down next to Kala.

“You’re doing well, Kala,” he said. She nodded .

“What I mean,” he said , “Is you’re taking care of them. Howie especially. That’s good-he’s had a bad time, losing his sister and all that. But some day he’ll be alright again.”

“Yile… will he ever talk again?”

Yile looked at her with his unfathomable look.

“One day, I think so. Children his age are surprising, Ka,” he said, poking his spear in the sand. With surprise, she realised he had just grouped her with him; with the adult population, by referring to the “children”.

“They forget about things,” Yile continued, “And that’s how they get better. One day he’ll forget he’s meant to be sad, and he’ll talk again.”

Kala nodded. She felt a strange sense of accomplishment; an almost intangible upgrade in her standing, and at the same time a renewed sense of responsibility.

“And don’t spend too much time on the quicksand. It’s not a good place to be, you know?”

She nodded. Yile placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and trudged off.

2

As Yile walked back to camp, he cast his mind back. While he did think Howie would one day forget, the event was still lodged in his own memory like a fishbone, and try as he might, he couldn’t put it out of his mind. Yile had been the last person, besides Howie, to see Millie alive. He closed his eyes and sighed, the memories returning unbidden, as they often did these days.

One year previously, he had been returning from a successful fishing expedition, a large brownfish slung over his shoulder in a string bag. Halfway back home he’d seen Howie and his sister, crouched on the beach. He had stopped, a little ways apart, and observed them for a while, unnoticed.

Millie had been patiently sorting through a little string bag, inside of which, Yile guessed, she’d been collecting seashells. Howie had been examining something intently. He didn’t yet have a toothgap. At length, he raised his head from his reverie and looked around for his sister.

“Look at this, Millie.”

Millie had trotted over to where Howie crouched on the sand, the little string bag dangling off her wrist. From Yile’s vantage point, he watched as a starfish emerged from her bag and attempted to escape, moving with the slow, patient grace of their kind. Millie unpeeled the starfish from its hold on the string and carefully dropped it back in her bag.

“What is it, How?”

Howie smiled and raised his hands, one cupped over the other, hiding something. Yile couldn’t see what it was. Millie reached out and tried to prise his fingers apart, and the next thing a crab claw came wriggling out of the gap, its pincer sliding over her finger, trying to find a purchase upon which to nip her. Yile grunted with quiet amusement.

“Ow!”

“Did it nip you, Millie?”

She shook her head. Howie lifted his hand to reveal the small crab. As soon as his hand was raised, the crab waved its claws in the air spasmodically, opening and closing in furious puffed-up rage.

“It’s only a little one, Millie. Can’t hurt you much, even if it does get hold of you.”

“Can I hold it?”

Howie had held the crab out carefully, offering it to her.

“Gotta hold ‘em on their end, like this,” he had said, demonstrating how he held the crab’s rear end in a pinch, just out of reach of its pincers. Millie delicately replaced Howie’s fingers with her own, slightly smaller ones. She almost dropped the crab when it reached underneath itself with a pair of pincers, but Howie flipped upside-down so she could adjust her hold. She took the wriggling creature and examined it.

Howie dug his hands into the sand and scooped out a narrow hole.

“Here, put ‘im in the hole.”

Millie held the crab delicately over the hole, and dropped it in. The crab fell, spreadeagled, and landed on the bottom. As soon as it touched the ground it righted itself, waving its claws in the air suspiciously.

“Think we can cook it?” Millie asked.

“Maybe. I…”

Howie paused, looking over Millie’s shoulder. He had noticed Yile, and waved, smiling. Yile nodded and stood, brushing sand off himself, and went over to the children. He sat down next to Millie, reaching a hand out to ruffle Howie’s hair.

“Hi big brother, little sister.”

“Hi, Yile,” they chimed in return.

Yile had taken the fish he’d caught out of his stringbag. Howie had helped him put the big fish down, putting the stringbag under it so it didn’t touch the sand. Its throat had been expertly cut and drained.

“It’s a good catch, Yile,” Howie said.

Yile inclined his head gravely.

“Thank you, boy. He was a strong fish, and put up a good fight. Almost broke my spear.”

Howie opened his mouth incredulously.

“No!”

Yile shrugged. His spear was firehardened, as strong almost as bone, and tipped with a three-pronged barb. There was no way a mere fish could break it, but sometimes a little exaggeration helped a story along. He watched Millie, who had been stroking the fish with admiration, absorbed in the way the firm fishflesh yielded slightly under the pressure of her finger.

“Yile, what happens to fish when they die?” Millie piped up .

“Well, generally they get eaten, Millie.”

He was teasing her, but gently. Millie shook her head, her brow furrowed earnestly.

“No, I mean, what happens to their souls?”

“They go back to the ocean, Millie, where they swim around with their ancestors.”

“Can we bury the fish in the quicksand?”

“No, Millie,” Howie broke in impatiently. “We can’t bury fish in the quicksand, because they come from the ocean. If we put them in the quicksand, their souls’d be trapped on the land.”

Yile nodded, pleased. Howie was good at this, grasping the lore of the tribe quicker than most others his age.

“Why do we bury our dead in the quicksand then?”

“Because we come from the earth, Millie, so we have to go back to the earth. If we buried our dead at sea, they wouldn’t know where to go. They’d be swimmin’ around in the cold ocean all by themselves, no-one to talk to… Howie, tell Millie and me what happens when our bodies reach the bottom of the quicksand.”

Howie smiled. “When our bodies reach the bottom, our spirits keep goin’, into the earth. Then we join the ancestors’ tribe.”

Millie prodded the crab, which had reached the top of the hole. It toppled off and fell to the bottom, raising its claws indignantly.

“Does the crab have ancestors?”

“No, girl, the crab doesn’t have ancestors,” Yile said, chuckling. “Look, that’s enough talking for me. I’ll see you later, okay? Howie, you take care of your sister. If you two decide to go swimmin’, mind you don’t go too far out.”

3

This had been the last time anyone, apart from Howie, had seen Millie alive. As Yile had walked away from the scene, his soul filled with contentment, he had had no inkling, no funny feeling at all, about what had happened next.

Later that afternoon, when they brought Millie’s body into camp, he’d been honing one of his spears, wrapped in the tranquillity this activity brought. They had marched sombrely into camp, one of the men bearing her little body in his arms, a strange silence radiating out from them until it reached Yile’s tent, and he’d looked up and seen her as they laid her out on a blanket. He saw Howie’s ashen face, locked eyes with him for a moment and observed the unbearable sorrow there.

When he’d gone over to join the silent crowd, his feet carrying him there as if under their own volition, he saw that Millie’s lips were blue and her ankle all torn to pieces. She had been exploring some rockpools, they told him, and the barnacles had torn her ankle up as she fell, even as the poison spread quickly through her limbs.

Twisted around her wrist was her little collectingbag, and in it was the thing that had killed her-a delicate pink-and-blue coneshell, its blue an eerie match for the blue of Millie’s lips.

When they moved Millie’s body, the coneshell’s stinger had come sneaking out, a questing tentacle of poison, and old Wonna who’d been gripping Millie’s hand had dropped it as suddenly as if it’d been a snake-why, she’d almost been stung herself! The stinger had probed around in the air for a while, trying to work out who to sting, and then it found Millie’s dead flesh and stabbed into her again, and everyone could see quite plainly the little stabmarks on her wrist from the creature.

Just one jab was enough to kill a fully-grown man in the height of health, but there were nine marks on Millie’s wrist. Nine!

Someone had cut a small hole in Millie’s collectingbag, and used a stick to poke the coneshell out. Yile had wanted to smash the thing, and indeed he’d already picked up a rock, intending to pulverise the creature, but the others had restrained him.

“Let it go down with Millie,” they’d said.

And so it had. It was only right, and he’d seen their point. They put the creature back in Millie’s bag, laced the end up tightly so it couldn’t escape and left it on Millie’s wrist.

Later that day they’d painted her body and laid her out on the quicksand. Yile had watched, from a distance, as her mother howled her anguish and the women of the tribe wept. Millie’s body had slowly sunk into the quicksand. Gone to join the ancestors.

Yile had left shortly afterwards. Secretly, he hated the quicksand. As he shuffled along he thought of how, at night sometimes, he would wake up sweating, remembering Millie’s body being slowly absorbed into the slush. He wondered sometimes if a few of the ancestors hadn’t slipped through into the spirit world, but had gathered on the bottom instead, their bones gathering power until they were ready to reach up and grip the ankles of the unwary and drag them down to the bottom, as the children’s stories went.

Once, a while after Millie had been buried, Yile had awoken from a dream where he had been out on the quicksand, lost in the mist. Slowly, he had sunk down, unable to move, struck with that strange paralysis that comes upon one in dreams. He had sunk up to his neck, and that’s when he had felt something soft, something a little ticklish, brush against his paralysed body. As he struggled against the paralysis, feeling his dread rise, a bubble rose ponderously to the surface and swelled, and as he stared it kept growing and growing, until he realised with horror that it wasn’t a bubble at all; it was a body of one of the dead, returned to the surface. As he jerked and mumbled in his sleep, more and more bodies rose in his dream, coming onto the surface like odious cocoons. As he struggled the bubble nearest him began to take on human shape, slowly pulling its fat, suppurating arms and limbs out of the ooze. It began to wriggle towards him, its features all clogged up and dripping quicksand. As he watched, helpless with terror, it had vomited out quicksand from its bloated lungs and belly… More of the bubbles began to move, wriggling towards him like sandworms, and a sickly sweet waft of rotting flesh hit him, and he realised with numb shock that the features of the corpse nearest him were beginning to become distinct. It was an elder who had died when he was just a boy. He looked around and saw the features of the other corpses firming, although their faces were horribly bloated from rot, and there was… there was little Millie. He had wept when he’d seen her …

Yile wiped a hand across his nose. Goodness, he was crying. That wouldn’t do; not at all. A hunter did not cry. Silently, he trudged back to camp, shaking his head.

4

Kala stood on the quicksand bank with the rest of the children, like a small tribe of her own. It was a cold, wintry day, but on a day like this there was a mist that gathered over the quicksand, and when it got dark one could see the fireflies gather and watch their bluefire bodies trace patterns in the mist.

“Gets real foggy in there, don’t it,” Thipi’s big brother observed.

Kala said nothing. She was waiting for Howie to reappear. They’d been practising spear-throwing at the edge of the quicksand when Howie had suddenly stopped, his spear poised mid-throw, and stared across the quicksand, into the mist. A moment later he’d sprinted in without hesitation, not even casting a backward glance.

“Is he gonna come back, Ka?” Thipi said, his small piping voice interrupting Kala’s reverie.

“Yeah, Thipi. He’ll come back.”

“Maybe he’s gone to join the bones, Ka. Gone to join his sister,” Thipi’s big brother offered.

“Shut up, idiot,” Kala said sharply.

“Should we go after him?” Thipi offered.

“Sure you wanna go in there, Thipi? What if you get sucked under?”

There was a silence whilst the children pondered this thought. Suddenly, one of the girls shouted, “There he is!”

Kala jerked her head up. A gust of wind had whipped some of the mist away and there was Howie, just visible through the grey swirl. He was staring intensely into the fog, his legs spread out to absorb his weight, his body poised as if to run.

“You lot stay here. I’m goin’ after him.”

There was a murmur of protest that quickly died away as Kala stepped onto the quicksand. She used the helpingstick with each stride she took. The quicksand was cold beneath her feet, and sticky. She slowed as she approached Howie, who had chosen a firmer part to stand on-one of those little reefs in the quicksand which are slightly more solid than the others. He didn’t show any sign of having heard her approach. Kala pushed on the helpingstick, distributing her weight evenly. Even this solid stuff was getting too much for her these days, even with the helpingstick. She cleared her throat.

“Um, Howie? Are you alright?”

Howie slowly turned. Kala almost took a step back when she saw his eyes. They were vacant, inward-looking.

“Howie?”

Suddenly he shuddered, blinked several times, and looked at Kala. After a pause he grinned an uncertain grin and opened his mouth, hesitantly moving it over unformed words, nothing coming out.

Oh, it was agony! It was like watching someone trying to chew a mouthful of riverpebbles.

“Ungh,” he managed finally. He seemed a little surprised at the noise he’d made. Then he turned and ran lightly into the quicksand, skipping over the slush like it was firm ground, and soon enough he was just a shadow in the mist, and even though Kala squinted her eyes in a moment the shadow was gone.

A little plopping noise interrupted her concentration. She looked down, and saw that her feet had sunk up to her ankles in the quicksand. As she hurriedly dragged her feet upwards, leaning heavily on the helpingstick, a sudden thought entered her mind-an image of those skeletal, ancestral hands reaching out their fingers to stroke the bottom of her feet tenderly, and she jerked her feet free with a sucking noise. Why don’t you stay here awhile? it seemed to say, and she sprinted back across the quicksand as fast as she could. She burst onto the firm sandy earth and the others gathered around her. She cast a quick glance back into the mist. It had closed over, hanging heavily over the quicksand.

“Ka, did you see ‘im?”

“Was he sinkin’?”

She silenced them with a gesture.

“Shut up you lot, and give me some space to think.”

She paused, casting another glance into the mist.

“He’s gone to join his sister.”

There was a collective muttering.

“What are we going to do?” someone spoke at last.

Kala fixed Thipi with an icy stare.

“Go get Yile.”

5

It had taken Thipi minutes, running as fast as he could, to burst into the camp, run straight to Yile and explain what Howie had done. What a commotion that had caused, Yile thought, smiling wryly as he bound the laces of the broad, canoe-like quicksandshoes tightly around his feet. They were like lilypads, with their flat bottoms and their tilting-up edges, too high for the quicksand to spill over. The bottoms were polished to a smooth sheen.

The boy, Howie, had always reminded Yile of himself. Not a great talker, but a good thinker, and quick on his feet. He had gladly volunteered to retrieve the boy, despite his dread of the quicksand. It was a childish thing, really, that fear of his, and in a way he knew he was testing himself as much as he was fetching Howie.

Two of the elders stood by, staring over the quicksand . Yile held his hands out, and the elders pulled him to his feet, handing him the two helpingsticks. The mist hung over the quicksand, deadening all sound. It lent a chill to the air, though a large fire had been constructed on the bank, to guide him back to the elders.

Yile pushed out onto the quicksand, and the elders nodded a grave farewell. His feet slid over the sand, slushing up little ripples against the prow of his shoes. The mist gathered around him like smoke from a dead campfire, and he shivered.

Yile , cast a glance at the surface of the quicksand. Summoning up his voice he called “Howie!” but the sound came out hoarse and muffled, much weaker than he’d expected.

“Howie! Boy, can you hear me? Where are you?”

The words were sucked up by the mist. He waded onwards, the slushing of his quicksandshoes and his own breathing the only sound.

He froze. Soft childish laughter rippled over the quicksand. He turned his head , reaching into the darkness with his hunter’s senses, trying to determine the sound’s origin.

“Howie? Boy, you there?”

Yile had intended to shout, but his voice was hardly above a whisper. That laughter should have warmed his soul, coming after a long silence . He shivered, and cast another glance over his shoulder

Yile called again, louder, and his sharp eyes picked something up. A faint bluefire sparkle, and then another. Fireflies, lighting up in the darkness. As Yile watched, more fireflies appeared until the whole place was covered in them. There was a sudden, surprised shout up ahead-a child’s voice. Yile thought it sounded like Howie and he saw a distant child’s form hurtle through the assembled firefly cloud like a dancer vaulting a campfire . His dread lifted, and he let out a brief, delighted cry-”Howie!”. He pushed forward , moving towards the dancing shape. As he went, fireflies surrounded him, and the mist thinned , becoming wispy, ragged, and he stepped forwards, into the clear starlit night.

He stopped dead. The mist, behind him and still touching its soft wet arms against his back, flapped raggedly against the gap. In front of him were two small shapes, huddled together around some small object, facing away from him.

He looked down. Half of his quicksandshoe-the rear half-was extended over the quicksand. The other half was suspended over space, the little stars burning brightly beneath him. No, it wasn’t space, Yile realised as a breeze rippled the surface. It was water-ocean water, reflecting the starry sky above . Its surface rippled a little, like water should, but… why wasn’t he sinking?

He looked up. The children had turned, and were staring at him with puzzled expressions, like he was a great distance away. It was Howie and Millie . Millie was blue, not cold-dead-blue, no… she was firefly-blue, as though she was made up of a cloudy mass of firefly-light, accumulated into human form. He could see the scar on her ankle, that deep gash from the barnacles, and it was healed now. He opened his mouth to shout out a great yell of joy to see Millie whole again, but the words receded back down his throat like seafoam.

“Children, I’m… Millie, can you hear me?” Yile whispered.

The children frowned, squinting at him as if he were a long way away, as if they were having trouble seeing him. He saw that Millie’s firefly hand was laid gently on Howie’s arm, holding him back.

“Howie! Can you hear me, boy?” Yile shouted. His words seemed to be sucked away by the slight breeze . He slid one shoe towards them and he was pitching forwards, into the emptiness. He threw his arms out for balance, whipping the helpingsticks round and catching himself mere inches above the cold, starlight ocean.

He jerked his head away. For a moment-just a moment-he’d seen something under there. Something swirling, something which had twitched, reacted to his presence, moved upwards for a closer look; something that had a human form, although there was something not quite right about it . The way it moved… Now he was standing up, the surface just reflected the stars, as perfect as the night sky, except for the odd ripple. He retreated , onto the quicksand. When he looked up the kids had turned, facing one another, and Millie was chattering excitedly to Howie, except he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He leaned forward, straining his ears to catch the sound. He saw Millie reach into her collecting bag and take out the coneshell, and he watched in horror as its little stinger waved this way and that . She held it out to Howie and as he reached out and took it, Yile opened his mouth to scream his horror coming into his mouth with a taste of bile . Howie accepted the coneshell. Yile found his voice and forced the air in his lungs to make a noise, although it came out all mangled and horrified it didn’t have any power. The children’s heads turned and saw him, Millie waved, but it was too late-

Too late-

Yile saw the little stinger wave around in the air and snicker into Howie’s wrist.

Howie watched it curiously, when it sank in he didn’t react like he’d been poisoned, he just examined the small mark for a moment. He smiled up at Millie, who put the coneshell back in her collecting bag. She slipped her arm through his, and as they turned Howie cast one final glance at Yile, who extended a hand forlornly. The helpingsticks splayed out to his side like a broken insect. With a sucking, rushing of air the scene lengthened and stretched, and mist roared into the gap.

Copyright © Kieran Morgan 2009

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Kieran Morgan currently divides his time between fiction writing, full-time work as a technical writer, running a small business and renovating a house. He is currently at work on approximately 340 unfinished stories, and having faith in democracy is giving them equal time, intending to publish them in one huge lump in the year 2040. At this point he will achieve instant fame and fortune, publish his memoirs and live like a king off the royalties.

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About “Howie and the fireflies” This story came from a dream. From what I remember I was running across water (not quicksand), sprinting so lightly that I wasn’t sinking. The “I” in the dream was me but as an Aboriginal kid; I remember my little brown legs tapping lightly across the water, and the sheer thrill of being so light and unsinkable. I think this probably harks back to my childhood – I was one of those extremely skinny kids with stick legs and skinny arms, and as a consequence extremely light on my feet. The cone shell bit came from a book I read many years ago, and yes, some of them (the tropical ones) can be extremely poisonous. I can’t remember the title exactly but in my mind I classify this book as “The Myriad Of Things That Can Poison, Stab And Kill You At The Beach”. It scared the pants off me so naturally it lodged in my memory. I still consider it very sinister that a pretty thing like a coneshell can harbour a tiny monster laden with deadly neurotoxin. The rest just came together naturally, and with a bit of help from my fellow members at Critters.org and the editors at ticon4.

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