All Our Shimmering Skies : A Novel (2020) by Dalton Trent

Author:Dalton, Trent [Dalton, Trent]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2020-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

THE DEVIL’S HEARTBEAT

The silver road glitters brighter than gold in the daytime. For almost two hours Molly’s been walking along the winding track that shimmers with silver light and still she stops to look at what presents to her eyes as flakes of clear cut-crystal glass beneath her dig boots. Each flake bouncing light and turning that light, up close, to flashes of pink and purple and aqua. Millions of clear flakes piled upon each other over time, which, seen as a whole, form a gleaming road of silver that Molly feels like she could mould together to form the shining armour of a Camelot knight. Or she could turn all the flakes into building bricks and she could make a glass castle that she and Greta could escape to after all this searching and questing is over.

She sweeps her hands over the silver road flakes and she cups them in her palm and they feel like fish scales but their colour is more magnificent, like they are the scales of silver mermaids from deep down in the kinds of seas sailed by Odysseus.

‘It’s ground mica,’ Molly says. ‘Rock crumbs left behind by time.’

Flakes as thin as the film stock they load into the projectors at the Star, but clear enough and twinkling enough to form the fake night sky that hangs above the picture house marquee. In some places the clear mica sheets have joined together in layers to create silver book-like structures that Molly can grip between her fingers and whose pages Molly can count, with one eye closed for clarity.

‘Isn’t it beautiful,’ Molly says. ‘Sam told me about the silver road. He called it the glass river. He reckoned a Dreamtime serpent snaked through this whole deep forest here and that serpent was made of stars and it was slithering through here for so long it kept shedding its skin. The serpent meant to leave the star skin behind because it knew the silver road would help people find their way through the forest at night.’

The silver road winds through a valley of cycads lining a narrow creek where Molly and Greta stop to rest and eat. They share a can of tinned corn from Molly’s duffel bag and Greta asks the gravedigger girl for an update on their food stocks. Six cans left in the bag, half a tube of condensed milk. Two cans of baked beans, one of oxtail soup, one of ham, one of corned beef and a can of peaches, which Molly keeps resisting the urge to open.

‘What else you got in that bag?’ Greta asks. ‘Looks like more than six tins of food in there.’

Molly’s fingers run over the blood-red rock she took from her mother’s chest.

Then she pulls out a book.

‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare,’ she says. ‘Well, if we have to lie down and die somewhere out here,’ Greta says, ‘at least we’ll have the Bard to send us off to sleep.’

Greta rests by the creek, Yukio’s pistol in her hands.

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