When Dark Roots Hunt

WHEN DARK ROOTS HUNT WHEN DARK ROOTS HUNT ZENA SHAPTER First published 2023 by MidnightSun Publishing Pty Ltd PO Box 3647, Rundle Mall, SA 5000, Australia. www.midnightsunpublishing.com Copyright © Zena Shapter 2023 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers (including, but not restricted to, Google and Amazon), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of MidnightSun Publishing. Cover design by Abby Stout Internal design by Zena Shapter Typeset in Book Antiqua, Orator and Linotype. Printed and bound in Australia by McPherson’s. The papers used by MidnightSun in the manufacture of this book are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well managed forests. Because trying is all anyone can do. CHAPTER 1 No matter how gently I unlatch our cabin door and ease it open, it’s always too loud; especially when I’m the only one awake in our soundless sleeping village. Ancient hinges groan, then give a final creak so sharp they could sever the antennae off a water-ant across the lake. My father’s sleep-breathing shifts, lightens. I wince and stop moving. The mudskipper bag in my hand swings. My furry black pointer Spyke sniffs at it. Fresh mudskippers. He bucks at the scent, then looks up at me with knowing: this isn’t another practice. He snaps his long downy snout around to assess my father, slowly raising two of his six leg-spikes to the door frame. Is he preparing to tap? To wake Father? I place my hand on his rear, just before his bushy green-feathered tail, and give him a tap of my own. When he faces me, I shake my head and mouth a firm ‘no’. In the moonlight, I know he can see my face. He huffs loudly, his only way of making sound. But Father was up as late as anyone last night. Too tired to be roused, he rolls over and drops back into his dreaming. Thank keei. May everyone’s sleep be as solid tonight. I usher Spyke outside, close the door and steal through a crisp motionless air, sneaking barefoot along stilted boardwalks, salty lakewater rippling underneath. Rhythmic and steady, they mask our passage with a dark lullaby, curling around the village’s lakeside shadows, serenading us with a half-hearted promise that, as long as I slink under open windows in wyann-wood walls, as long as Spyke taps gently over boardwalk connections and doesn’t jump or skip, no one will hear us. A quiet blanket of night will wrap itself around us, weighted with a familiarity that whispers: everything is going to be alright. I have a good idea, the only idea, and everything will be alright. A lacklustre gust threatens to disagree, limping its tired warning through a nearby keei-scale wind-chime, tinkling to tell me, ‘go home, Sala’; because who am I to think I know better than elected councillors? I shouldn’t even care, given no one else does. As we near Aten’s cabin, I check the sky. A bright gibbous moon amid a neverending darkness. No more comet. No more… My foot catches on something and sends me falling across the boardwalk, across someone. I thud painfully to my knees. My mudskipper bag spills, scattering the crunchy morsels across planks and into the water. ‘Sala?’ mumbles a familiar voice. I push aside the wiry dry hair falling about my face as a dark ragged curtain. Aten unfolds his arms and pushes himself upright. His usually smiling ruddy face seems glum in the shadows. With his back against his cabin and legs across the boardwalk, it looks like he drank too much dag last night and fell asleep out here. But Aten wouldn’t do that, which leaves only one other reason he’s here. I free my foot from under his thigh and use his frame for balance as I crawl across him. My hands find firmer muscles than I expect in his arms and chest. All the heavy lifting he’s been doing for the clinic has clearly bulked him out. Not that I’m going to tell him I’ve noticed. Aten doesn’t need that kind of encouragement from me. ‘What are you doing out here?’ I ask casually. ‘What am I?’ He rubs his eyes of sleep, then leans out of the shadows. His tufty white-blond hair gleams in a moonbeam. ‘I knew you’d try something tonight.’ He knows me so well. ‘So you’re here to help?’ He tuts like the answer is obvious. I smile as a warmth lifts me in its arms and gives me a hug. If Aten believes in me, I must be doing the right thing. I straighten out my shorts and the oversized hoodie I wear everywhere in Itta, tie my hair into a rough ponytail. ‘Does anyone else suspect?’ ‘You mean did I tell anyone? Of course not, Sala.’ ‘Thank you,’ I mumble with a smile, then loosen my bag’s drawstring, feel along the boards to find what mudskippers I can and stuff them back inside. ‘Truly, this is incredible, Aten.’ I hope he can hear the gratitude in my voice. ‘I mean, I know we’re best friends and all, but this is above and beyond.’ Spyke taps onto Aten’s lap, nuzzles into him. Still groggy, Aten gives him a head scratch. ‘So you’re really on your way to the lake? What about the water-ants? Just one ant sees you, and the entire colony will scout our side. They’ll find Itta, they’ll attack us.’ ‘Nah, they’ll never risk the ivy. They’re too scared of all that.’ I gesture at the immense ivy-clad perimeter fence that hides our village from the lake, and at the cracked brown barrel-sized shell of a water-ant carcass just visible above its upper trellises