Welcome to a new regular posting! Every Saturday, I’m going to post an unedited snippet of whatever I was working on the previous day (usually Friday!). It’s going to be totally pot luck whatever you get to read. Maybe it’ll be a short piece from a series I’m working on (no spoilers, I promise), or part of a short story for my Patreon supporters, or a first draft of an anthology contribution. Or an angry letter to my bank. (Kidding!)

This week’s snippet is from a short story I’m working on based on my Shadows of the Void series. The story is about a life-changing incident in the young life of Carl Lingiari, Jas Harrington’s Australian pilot love.

Hope you enjoy it!

***

It wasn’t the first time that Carl Lingiari’s dad had tried to persuade him to take part in the Australian Aboriginal initiation ceremony that would make him a ‛man’ in the eyes of his father’s tribe.

Carl’d just got in from dusting the farm’s crops, and he was dustier than the fields he’d recently flown over. His father met him at the back door as he went inside to take a shower, blocking the way with his tall, gangly frame—though Carl was quickly catching up with him in that respect.

Mr. Lingiari had his hands on his hips and the sternest look the usually gentle-mannered man could muster.

“I want to have a talk with you, son, about something very important to me and your mother.”

The words ‛very important’ and ‛me and your mother’ told Carl all he needed to know about exactly what that talk would entail.

“The answer’s no, Dad, like it was yesterday, and last week, and at Christmas when we had that talk in front of Aunt Raylene.” He closed his eyes and gave a shudder at the memory. His father’s sister knew all about the ceremony, even though as a woman she wasn’t supposed to. She’d looked positively elated at the idea, and pushed Carl had to accept. Easy for her to say. No one was going to take a sharp stone to her bits—with no anaesthetic.

He tried to side-step his father, but the older man was still nimble on his feet, and he moved to close the gap Carl was trying to slip through.

“But, Carl, it’s part of your heritage.”

“It’s half my heritage, if that. You’re not even one hundred per cent. What are you, fifty per cent? Thirty-three and a third?”

“Percentages aren’t important, son. Not to us. You’ve got my tribe’s blood in your veins, and that’s all that matters.”

Father and son stood nearly eye to eye, Carl thinking of a way he could distract his father’s attention. “By the way, I had a good look around as I was flying today,” he said. “I thought I saw some rumpabug damage in the southeast corner of the top field.”

His father’s eyes widened. “Krat, they’re not back are they?”

As he went to step outside, Carl began to ease past him.

“Hold on.” A fatherly arm leapt across in front of Carl’s chest and grabbed the door frame. “Did you think I was born yesterday? The top field’s too dry for rumpabugs. They’d never go up there. You made that up, didn’t you? Thought you’d get out of our father-and-son chat.”

Carl’s shoulders slumped.

“Never joke about rumpabugs, Carl.” His father’s finger waggled in front of his nose. “Those little bastards are a serious matter.”

Carl rolled his eyes. If it wasn’t the initiation ceremony, it was the farm. His father expected him to take on managing it when he got too old. The matter was another sticking point in their relationship. Carl loved to fly and wanted to be a pilot. Except he wasn’t good enough. He’d tried out for pilot school and failed the test, even though he’d been flying the farm’s old plane since he was twelve.

“Dad, I know what they do to the boys in that ceremony, and no one’s doing that to me.”

“Now it’s coming out. I thought that was your problem. Is that all you’re worried about? It’s just a little cut. Hardly hurts at all.”

Carl stared with disbelief into his father’s eyes, and the man returned his gaze without blinking. Was his dad lying? Or had he forgotten, it was so long ago?

It was Carl’s mother who came to his aid. While the man and teenager were trying to outstare each other, she came into the kitchen.

“What are you two doing? It’s dinner time. It’s nearly ready to put on the table.”

“I’m trying to talk to Carl about his roots,” his dad says. “But he’s not having any of it.”

“His roots?” Carl’s mother asked, putting her hands on her hips. “His…Oh.” She shook her head and chuckled as the penny dropped. “You’re on at him to take part in that Aboriginal circumcision ceremony again.”

“Initiation. Initiation ceremony. Not circumcision.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Carl’s mum said.

Mr. Lingiari gave a huff of frustration. He broke his stare to turn to face her. “That’s supposed to be a secret.”

“Pfft. Everyone knows. There was documentary about it.”

Carl took advantage of the momentary distraction to slip through the door.

“Hey, not so fast,” his father said. “We haven’t finished talking yet.”

“I have,” Carl replied, and made to leave the room.

His mother gave a sigh. “If only he’d been a girl. We wouldn’t have all these problems.”

Stopping in mid-stride, Carl turned to her. “Mum, I’m right here.”

“Oh.” She playfully flicked the tea towel she was holding at him. “You know I’m only joking.”

As Carl left, she gave a second, huge sigh.

***

Carl turned on the shower water and stripped off his clothes while he was waiting for it to heat up. The dust clung to his brown curls—he let his hair grow long because he thought it made him more attractive to girls—ended at a sharp line on his neck and arms where his T-shirt had been.

His parents’ farmhouse was very old, and the rooms were laid out in a strange, haphazard manner. Apparently random staircases and landings connected them, and the windows were different dimensions. The bathroom window was long and thin, beginning at the height of Carl’s knees and ending just above the top of his head.

Through the window, Carl could see his parents’ farm spread out, the crops green in the fields, which were edged by wattle trees and eucalypts. It wasn’t that he hated the farm, he reflected. He’d loved every minute of growing up there. It was just that he wanted to do more with his life. He raised his eyes to the empty sky, which was deepening in the twilight.

Remembering his conversation with his father, his eyes dropped to his groin. A protective expression formed on his face. No one was going to town on his private parts with stone-age cutting implements. And no anaesthetic. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Yoohoo,” came a voice from outside.

Carl’s eyes snapped open. There, in the farmyard, her arms around a basket of laundry, was his mother. She raised a hand to wave.

Carl clutched at the bathroom curtains and jerked them closed. Why was everyone acting like his body was public property?

The hot shower water washed away some of Carl’s annoyance as well as the day’s dust. In a way, though not as much as his father apparently hoped, Carl could see the older man’s perspective. Your background, culture, heritage, or whatever, wasn’t something you should ignore. Carl was proud of where he came from. One of his ancestors had been the first Aboriginal land rights protestor, for krat’s sake. He was very proud of that.

But it was probably time the tribe allowed certain painful, bloody practices to become a thing of the past. Carl didn’t need to be given a permanent, scarred reminder that he was on his way to becoming a man. He’d figured that out all by himself.

***

The following day, as he was getting dressed, Carl made up his mind to finish the crop dusting for that season in one day if he could manage it. School was starting up again soon, and he wanted to get in as many flying hours as he could. If he could pass the test to transfer to a flying course, he wouldn’t have to study calculus or the history of the twenty-first century ever again. What was more, if he got his pilot’s licence, after that he could learn how to fly starships.

Carl imagined himself wearing a starship pilot’s uniform. He imagined two female shipmates hanging on either arm. He smiled to himself. Now that would be something.

Carl’s dad was waiting at the bottom of the staircase.

As soon as his spotted his father, Carl said, “No.” Then when he drew level with him at the bottom, he repeated, “No. Not happening.”

“You can’t blame a man for trying,” Mr. Lingiari said to his retreating back.

Carl folded his breakfast into a napkin and took it out with him to the farm’s plane, which he’d left on the short, dirt runway the night before. He climbed into the cockpit of the two-seater, started the engine, and checked the gauges. He had plenty of fuel, enough to last hours it would take to dust the remaining fields. He’d refilled the hoppers with the insecticide at the end of the previous day.

He was all set. He would practice some maneuvers in between dusting the fields too. Carl put on his ear protectors, unfolded the napkin on his lap, and took a huge bite of an egg sandwich. His cheeks full and his mouth working to draw in the remaining crust that hung outside it, Carl started the plane along the runway. When it reached the correct speed, he pulled back on the stick, and the plane took to the skies.

Wind spilling over the edge of the windshield dried the sweat on Carl’s skin that had formed even though the hot, Australian sun was only just rising. Carl stuffed more of his breakfast into his mouth and banked the plane to starboard, heading for the western edge of his parents’ farm.

From his high vantage point, Carl could see a wide swathe of landscape, from the distant river, across the houses dotted beyond the farm’s outskirts, to the country road that led to the freeway, which went to Sydney. There was a spaceport in Sydney, where shuttles from the other side of the world arrived, and even from starships that hung in orbit after returning from space flights. Carl had been to the spaceport once.

Carl lifted the remains of his sandwich to take another bite, and a golden-brown shape barreled into it, knocking it from his hand.

“Krat,” Carl exclaimed, staring down at the creature, which had rebounded from his hand onto his lap.

The creature seemed to have stunned itself. It was standing up unsteadily—its sharp claws digging painfully into Carl’s thighs—but wobbled and fell down again.

The animal looked like a cross between a bat and a sugar glider. Its body was the color and shape of a glider, but its wings were bat-like and transparent. It was blinking its eyes. Its pupils grew large and small.

Carl was no expert on Australian wildlife, but he was pretty sure this animal wasn’t known to science. And it had flown right into his cockpit, seemingly from out of nowhere.

The animal regained full consciousness and Carl braced himself, waiting for some more painful digs of its claws when it realized it was sitting on a human and flew away, but instead, it looked up directly into Carl’s face and opened and shut its mouth.

If it hadn’t been the stupidest idea ever, Carl would have thought it was talking to him.

The creature crawled up his shirt using the hooks on its wings, grabbing Carl’s sparse chest hair. Carl’s eyes became so wide the whites showed all the way around. Was it going to bite him? It had a mouthful of sharp, white teeth.

Instead, it pushed Carl’s ear protector away from one side of his head.

“You’re going to crash,” it shouted in his ear.

Carl’s head flicked up. Distracted by the animal, he’d forgotten to maintain the plane’s levelness and altitude. The ground was disturbingly close. Carl pulled up the aircraft’s nose sharply. Too sharply. He was going to roll, and he was too close to the ground.

He forced the nose down, but he wasn’t in control of the plane, and he knew it. Was this going to be it? Was his young life going to end so soon, before he’d had a chance to do anything with it? Were his father’s dreams of surgically inducting him into the mysteries of Aboriginal manhood going to be cut—haha—tragically short?

***