A NewTale from the Dark Mountain by Pat Johnson

Pat Johnson has published stories and poetry in dotdotdash, Re-Placement, 2008, and Lines in the Sand, 2008. She has been an editor for dotdotdash magazine, covering poetry and short stories, and is currently looking for a publisher for her first novel, co-written with writer and editor Lisa Litjens.

The story that follows will be published in the next edition of Windmills, the Deakin University Literary Zine

The Red Flower

Far away on the other side of the world a village rests on the face of a dark mountain. Early every morning when the villagers awake from their night time dreams they hurry out into the pale sunlight. Dressed for a day of work, they walk together down the mountain.

The mountain is high; its highest peaks disappear in the clouds. If anyone wanted to go to the village, they would have to walk for days up from the foothills below. The people who live there have their houses and their fields on a large plain that is level and fertile from a mountain spring that runs through it. They feel lucky to be able to live there.

Today is washing day and the women gather up all the dirty clothes into great baskets and take them to the stream to wash. The children are very excited to go so far away from the village. They pack their lunches, grab their baskets and off they go.

Down by the stream, the women are washing and the children are playing in the field. They are picking flowers, flowers that look like a red sun with dark veins of blood running through them. Neither the women nor the children have ever seen such flowers before. They are the most beautiful flowers on the mountainside and there are hundreds of them. As they collect them, the children examine the strange petals and their mothers watch them and feel glad that the children are close by.

A pair of red eyes rises above the surface of the water, and the mothers back away. As the head lifts above the water they see it is a hideous creature with many tentacles. A monster in the stream! A monster that looks lost and wild!

‘Bring me my flowers!’ it screams, ‘bring me the children!’

The boys and girls run up with their red flowers and give them to the monster; as she eats them she glows a bright and horrible red and when she is finished she licks her lips and the great tentacles shoot through the air. Each one grabs up a child, and drops them one by one into her gaping red mouth.

The mothers scream and run, bumping each other and falling to the ground. When they are swallowed, the children do not go into the monsters belly but to the tentacles. In the tip of each one a child appears struggling against the membrane of the skin, calling to the mothers, ‘Help! Help!’ But the mothers cannot help; what can they do? They beg and plead, but out in the stream the monster is wild and oblivious. They have no weapon and if they did, they might hurt their own children by mistake.

Inside the red monster it is warm and sweet like honey; there is beautiful music in their ears and the children begin to feel languid but powerful, more alive than they have ever been in the village. They eat the flowers that float round them. A humour seeps into their blood, and everything is light and fine. They see that the world and everything in it is magical and each thing has its own song and significance.

The children did not want to go into the monster; they did not want to swallow the flowers that were inside her. But that is where they are and what they have done. They see their mothers through the membrane and call to them, but they know they are alone; their mothers are as far from the children as if they were at the bottom of the sea. The mothers have not been caught and changed. The children want to get back to their mothers but the more they try to get out, the more the flower sensations hold on to them.

Although the children cannot get to their mothers, they realise they still have each other. The distressed children are afraid that they will go into the honey and never get back so they begin to signal to each other. The mothers see them open their mouths and call to one another inside the red tentacles but they cannot tell what they are saying. The children have decided to work together. There is knowledge in the flowers they have eaten; a knowledge they never wanted but that they now have. One thing they have learnt is how to hurt the monster; they start to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster. They are spinning so fast that each one is just a blur.

The monster screams. She pulls herself under the water head first and the arms follow. The last to disappear are the children, spinning at the ends of the arms. Faster and faster they are spinning. The water froths. Will they drown? The monster thrashes madly; unable to keep herself from her pain.

As the women watch, a child pops up in the stream. She is dripping, covered in red, shaking and crying, but she is no longer in the monster’s arm. The women rush to her and pull her out of the water. The child points to the red head rising malevolently.

The red mouth screams again as another child comes spinning out of another of the arms, flying over the ground and landing thwack! on the ground. And then all the arms explode and spinning children fly through the air. Thwack! Thwick! Thwuck! More red children are landing in the trees, on the bank, in the water.

Mothers, aunts and grandmothers are running everywhere, gathering up their children. In the stream the monster is losing colour as the children escape from her, turning a slimy monster grey. Children go spinning through the air and monster screams are drowned in water. She is furious, robbed of the children she had claimed. She glares around her with red eyes.

The women do not care. They are counting their children. The children are all they care about. They know that the monster cannot leave the water, and now her arms are broken and bleeding. They fear her, but not as much as they care for their children.

But those children know better than their mothers and aunties! They have been inside the monster and tasted the warm honey; they know not to take their eyes off her. It was good to be able to work together inside the fear but they are still afraid. They watch the enemy as she scans them and does not blink. They stare back, ignoring the grown-ups, watching for signs, for what they must remember. They do not look away.

The monster sinks at last into the stream. They can see her body floating slowly away, almost invisible except for the small red glow. Only when she is well out of sight do they approach the stream. The children are still covered in red and they walk into the water and begin to wash.

The red won’t come off! All of the children, even the one that popped up in the water first, are the same horrible red. The stream is full of wet red flowers and livid children. The clothes that the women were washing have floated away.

The men and the older boys come streaming over the mountain top. Far away in the fields they heard the screams and dropped their rakes and hoes and began to run. They have run a long way without stopping because they are very afraid. Out of breath now they are surprised to see that the children have turned red, that the children are fighting. They watch as the mothers wash and scrub them, dunking the children under the water, but the red does not come off.

Everyone is tired. After a while the women stop washing and sit on the ground and the men go to sit on the banks of the stream and study the children. What is wrong? What has happened? They do not know, but they can see that their children are very unhappy. They punch and kick. They start gagging. They get redder and redder.

Striding into the water, one of the fathers picks up a child and holds him upside down and hits him on the back. Out of the child’s mouth pops a red flower. Immediately the child resumes a normal human colour. All that red is gone!

Soon all the men are in the water, turning children upside down and watching as red flowers come flying out of mouths. Whack! Whack! Whack! go the fathers and soon those children are all asleep, all lying on the banks of the stream.

It is time to go back to the village. They walk up the fields, men and women carrying sleeping children in their arms. Although the flowers are gone, the children are dreaming of their taste. They are remembering the pleasant lull and the wonderful visions, the sense of knowing that they had. Some of the children had more of the flower than others and these are restless in their dreams. Perhaps, not tomorrow, but soon, they will go looking for that flower, just to see, just to find out what it can really do. They fear her, but the monster has gone; and the children are curious.