The Knife Sharpener (49)

49.

Bohemian Bob Tells His Version of the Wastes (4)

In a culinary obsessed city, we can kinda look at it like a bunch of ingredients, yeah? Everything was simmering in the pot, but the flavour wasn’t quite right for it to really pop. We had fictional gold mines all over the east, gold hunters flowin in and getting into places they didn’t belong, Aayden Taylor starting to put his nose in where he shouldn’t, Rudiger finding passion in love and lust, and an ancient grudge boiling suspicion and greed into lethal fumes. But it missed the seasoning.

            Helmut’s boys took care of that, didn’t they?

            The Carers weren’t much liked by the Ministry, which didn’t have time for their shaman hocus pocus. Their gift was to fuck with the inherent value of things. This didn’t really mix with the Ministry worldview. Biffs had been chasing them from one end of Melbourne to the other for years and a few had already escaped out east.

            They were mostly welcome out there. Both the Taylors and Walkers liked to keep a few on staff at any given time. In advisory roles mostly. They thought them wise and wordly, but they were also superstitious about those kinds of things – not wanting to make the magics of the world agro, that kinda shit.

            You’d think they would’ve long ago weaponised em, but. Had em turn a couple of forks into weapons of mass destruction, twist a couple of spoons to scoop the other family out of existence.

            It does not work like that.

            That right, Helmet? Really?

            Mostly. More complicated.

            May be so, but I saw some weird shit from a few Carers when I was a kid. A saucepan that simmered the air around it. A pepper grinder that minced molecules into finer forms of dust. Real sorcerers. Alchemist shit. You folks – you had power, Helmut. Might’ve been careful in its application. But it was there.

            Anyway, the Walkers and the Taylors, they’d reached a kind of truce long ago about using Carers in their conflicts. A few Cared utensils out in the east, in the hands of the wrong kinda folks – they knew that that kinda escalation could spell annihilation. Pointless to be in charge when there’s nothing to lord over.

            The so-called Great Gold Rush disturbed that worldview.

            A few of the Carers that came over, they weren’t happy at their banishment. They’d had good lives in the city, doing research in universities with their banished Gardner Creek Guardian friends. Working in restaurants at the height of the dining craze with chefs like Maxwell Olinda – before Ministry took control of eating regulations. Or, just doing as Helmut here does, getting around, helping people out with their tools, bringing out the best in their potential. The Biffs that came for em, but, had no sympathy. Took their hands mostly. They was an enraged order, Nicky, and they came out east with that fury.

            Some say that the Carers got greedy over the gold. Saw a resource that was scarce in the world to weave their magic into. An element that was naturally imbued with a kind of magic lustre. A material to be fabricated and Cared into tools to enact their revenge against the Ministry.

This was partly true. But they didn’t see the gold as a part of their magic. They saw it as a source of revenue. The Carers were as eager as any gold hunter out in the easts and significantly more dangerous. The east was suddenly flooded with Cared cutlery and a few Cared chef knives. A part of Belgrave was sucked off into a black hole opened up by spoon in a nasty disagreement between some gold hunters who pillaged a careless Carer.

You can see that the story was getting out of my hands now. Poised on the edge of some bottomless chasm. Waiting for either the Walkers or Taylors to make their move and push the other in. Both had been rattling sabres. Trying to flush out the nuisance gold hunters. Control the flow of Cared items. And both were getting greedy to find the other’s gold.

Rudiger was wrapped up in Sharmayne during this. Letting the carnage bubble away. Ever dutiful to his mission, he did his part in spreading misinformation, fanning the flames, but with none of the vigour I’d seen in him at the Taylors. The man was deep in the business of his love. They both were. The queen of the east was usually the first to arms. Cos of their affair, but, Sharmayne had been pulled away from the Walker business. She had been an absent spark to the whole disaster.

I wonder sometimes if your dad did it on purpose. Kept her back long as he did.

The reverie and tension were bound to intersect.

Two things happened almost simultaneously. Firstly, Roy Taylor came home. His name has been seared from existence, Nicky. It should be a fucking parable of hubris and careless arrogance. If the Carers had a leader, he was it. A brilliant man who saw no limits to his skill and was unafraid to announce or demonstrate it. He loathed the Ministry. He was their terror. Out east, he came with rage and a posse of dangerous Carers to implore his brother, the head of the Taylors, for funds – gold – to fight back against their oppression. He had an apprentice with him – Helmut, over there, but a different name back then.

Secondly, Aayden discovered Rudiger and Sharmayne’s affair. He had been snooping around the Walker estate for weeks, hoping for glances of his apparent beloved. I had seen him on my frequent wanders with the bottle on their grounds. The Walker matriarch at the time, lovely woman, she’d show me the wattles and we’d have a toke and a chat about who was boning who. Gave me all kinds of juice for my stories.

Aayden was always disguised, never particularly cleverly, but sufficiently to go unnoticed by any who had been fortunate enough to not spend time near him. I didn’t rat him out. Wanted to avoid such confrontations. I regret that.

On one of his stalks, he discovered Rudiger with Sharmayne, in the rear of her Holden, together on one of their clandestine flings. Aayden was contorted with jealousy and betrayal. He pulled his gun and indiscriminately fired it at the couple.

The only bullet that hit though was one which went through the eye of Sharmayne’s mother who I was pottering through the garden with at the time. She was just finishing tellin me bout some ancient footy match, when the Walkers and Taylors weren’t quite so violent, when I was suddenly covered in eye goo. I could hear this weak, whining wail from nearby, and crashing bushes as Aayden nicked off. Then Rudiger calling out, asking who was there. Sharmayne came running to her mother and she didn’t weep a tear, Nicky. She got up, pushed away Rudiger who didn’t really know what to do – he stood there with his arms out and pupils dilated – and ran off to the house.

Aayden fled back to the Taylors and found his uncle Roy. Together they hatched a plan to get back at the Walkers: for Sharmayne’s betrayal and for their gold.

The truce was broken. The Carers went to work. Sharmayne was cold and distraught. And I saw the strains of my story begin to fray at the edges as both sides committed to the other’s complete destruction.