Keri Hulme - The Bone People

The sand sprays outward, and Joe keeps coming, hands clawing for the boy. The man's eyes are blank.

I've driven him over the edge? her body smoothly assuming a stance of defence.

How did she move so fast? It feels like I'm swimming in glue.

Nope, he's okay. If that clout had connected with your shell-like ear me sweet chy-ild though, it woulda broken de temporal bone

and de mastoid process and de styloid process, ho hum,

as her hand caught the edge of Joe's fist and sent it flying harmlessly downwards. Her right foot arced into his kneecap a split part of a second later.

He sees the blows coming as blurs and can't avoid them. He goes down hard on the sand, but shoves himself back to his feet with extraordinary strength and quickness.

All right, woman, you think you can fight a man?

and strikes for Kerewin's face.

She weaves, seemingly. Her hand flows in between his moving fist and her face somehow creating a vacuum that sucks his hand upwards, outward, over her shoulder. She twists away from his falling body.

As he goes, This is wrong that's not what she should have done, and again he lands bone shakingly hard on the sand. Kerewin kicks him in the side and dances round Simon, who is lying nearby, flat on his face. She calls out, "Easy meat! So easy!" She is grinning wildly, her teeth bared.

Even as he scrambles to his feet, awkward and gasping, he wonders why the taunt should make him so angry.

Careful, that's Kerewin, someone says in his head but he yells at them "Fuck her!" crouching as he yells and powering his fists in a flurry of blows into her. This, he thinks with satisfaction, bloody kick me would you?

But none of the blows connect. It's like beating on air. She slips past the flailing hands and hits him on the mouth with the side of her open hand. It feels like being hit with a board. He staggers, is spun round and kicked viciously in the back.

"Upsadaisy," calls Kerewin. She is high with amusement, wavering and bobbing on her feet and grinning like a gargoyle.

He gets up raging. Stop her mocking, get her, stop her, but he whimpers as she whacks his face again and then steps sideways and drives her knuckles across his midriff. His breath fails him. He feels his hands drop, clench over his belly, thinks No what did I did she? feels his knees buckle, and the hard knock of a fist beating the small of his back, his kidneys, his bare spine. As he falls, Kerewin boots him in the ribs again. "Huh…" gasping continually, halfconscious and groaning for air. It aches when he tries to draw breath, chest and stomach, and his back is still curling away from

the pain at its centre. He can feel blood trickling from his welted mouth. And somewhere, in the background, Simon is crying.

But I didn't hit you… o sweet God it would be so easy to die-

His breath is coming more easily. He keeps his eyes shut. But I better get up or Haimona'll be scared.

Haimona is.

All morning the feeling had grown, start a fight and stop the ill will between his father and Kerewin. Get rid of the anger round the woman, stop the rift with blows, with pain, then pity, then repair, then good humour again. It works that way… it always did. There isn't much time left for anything to grow anymore. It must be in this place, or the break will come, and nothing will grow anymore.

So start a fight.

Easy.

It had been.

But he didn't know what would happen after Kerewin winning. He thought, They'll kiss and make up, or I'll get a hiding, or maybe both, but he had shied away from thinking much about it. He hadn't reckoned on this, Joe bloody and moaning and breathless, and Kerewin gone white and screaming to her knees beside him, and neither of them capable of anything else.

Everything's gone wrong. The world's turned on its head. Simon weeps.

She had stood gloating a minute after Joe went down for the final time, Ahh little eater of people-hearts, relish this… aren't you glad you never let me loose in a more warring time? Or maybe you howl and gnash your pointy teeth for the mistiming? Speaking of howling, trust old heart-and-flowers to be crying his eyes out… where do your sympathies lie, child? Entirely away from yourself? Survival ain't that way, Sim… though I do feel vaguely sorry for the fella myself now… she is starting to feel queasy at Joe's hard hurt breathing, so she goes to help him. Press the two points: one either side of the nose, pinch the heel, and it'll all stop, man… kneeling down to do it, and then screaming convulsively. She falls the last few inches to the ground. She twists over to one side, hands pressed deep against her belly, a simulacrum of Joe's agony a minute back.

It isn't mockery. The only thing she can think about the searing pain in her gut is that someone has stuck a knife into her.

"It's not, it's not," moaning aloud, hands still kneading.

"What's matter?"

He has got himself to his hands and knees.

"Fire-er-er," word lengthened sobbingly by the stabbing anguish, "O no, it's not."

It is diminishing. She huddles over, keeping her hands tight, lest

her intestines fall out. Seppuku I kidded, it kids me not… what slipped or tangled or pierced? Joe presses her shoulder gently.

"Get your hand off me," she is panting hoarsely and sweat runs in steady drops down her face.

He takes his hand away. He sits wearily back on his heels, and reaches an arm out for his child. Whispering is all he can do, "Aue, tamaiti…" and Simon scrambles to him as though the arm were the only shelter left in the world.

She was still pallid and sick and ill-tempered when they got back to the old bach.

She'd refused help in walking, Joe's or Simon's.

"Okay, you lend me your shoulder, Himi, I can use it," the man said ruefully, and leant enough weight on the boy to kid him he was helping.

She'd refused food and drink and all care offered, and ignored Joe's tentative apology. She climbed into bed with her clothes on, burrowed under the eiderdowns and fell asleep, immediately, deeply, unnaturally.

She didn't wake until it was dark.

Joe says, unintentionally louder than anything he's said for the past two hours, "Well, maybe they only go when she whistles at them or something, honey, but I can't get them to light."

She whistles, a sharp three notes like anyone calling in their dogs.

"Nope?" she questions into the silence. "Hell, we'll just have to use matches after all"

They laugh. They laugh heartily and immoderately considering the feeble nature of the joke, but it is warm kindly laughter.

And with undertones of anxiety yet, thinks Kerewin, but she grins at them widely from round the side of her bunk, a supple grin, an easy grin, a white flag of a grin for their white flag of laughter.

It seems silly to keep a war going. She is so deep in peace her very bones feel soft with it. And they're waiting, their smiles still at the ready, Joe with his hands cupped over the child's shoulders, Simon hanging with both hands onto one of his father's.

Like he's trying to throw him, judo fashion, she thinks irreverently, but likes the forgiveness and acceptance implicit in their pose.

"All right, people," she says, and swings her legs over the bunkside. The movement doesn't bring even a twinge to her belly-muscles.

Weird, me soul… snatched out of thickets and thatches of furze and turned around taverns where thorns drank us… a rip from a burning bush or a ghost-dagger in the gut, but

not even a small bulge of hernia or tender swollen muscle to show where-

The boy has danced away from under the shelter of his father's hands, coming to her, by her before her feet hit the floor.

Eyes so wide and dark you can read the question like type coming up on a screen, Are you all right now?