Excerpt: Thunderhead by Miranda Darling
It is dawn in the suburbs of the east, and the sky is on fire. It moves from deep blue through purple and into psychedelic pink, fat lozenge clouds hovering low like alien saucers, before bleeding into red, orange, and ending in an inferno of fiery gold. Ablaze, the sky telegraphs a warning, red sky in the morning …
Lying in my bed, I am transfixed. It is impossible, surely, not to believe in Absolutely Everything upon waking to a sky like this: miracles, angels, aliens …
I am trying to ignore my racing heart — far too fast — as though I have woken up mid-sprint. It’s hard to breathe. I can’t get enough air IN.
Look at the glorious sunrise!
I am dizzy now … I lie still and hope it passes.
Distract! Think!
My dreams had been unsettling, come to think of it. Perhaps the warning of the dawn had crept into my sleep and lodged there somehow …
I had been swimming in the sea, underwater. Kicking and drifting, caught in some vast undersea current, invisible, but full of the primal power of the ocean itself. It wasn’t particularly terrifying. I recall more a sense of unending giddiness, of knowing my legs and feet were pointing the wrong way, up towards the sunlight, and my hair streamed out behind me. I kicked downwards. All I needed was motion — to keep moving — to move, to swim, to kick out; motion the panacea, motion the veil. It could perhaps have been a euphoric experience if I had been swimming towards Glory and Infinite Possibility, but even in the deep I knew. I was swimming to escape what I had, swimming to leave it all behind.
I sit up and reach for the blue notebook beside my bed, my pen: my hands shake so much I can’t form the letters; I can’t read what I am trying to write and my saliva tastes metallic. My mandible tingles uncomfortably. My lungs struggle to fill.
Breathe in for four counts, hold for four, out for four, hold for four …
Repeat.
Slow, deliberate pen strokes. Slow, deliberate breathing. This is how you make a list; this is how you make it through.
Up, up, up!
Get up!
These are my stolen hours, the ones I can keep just for me, and they are too precious to spend under the covers. I glance at the large, sleeping mound under the duvet beside me. It snores. I have time — an hour beforethe Small Ones wake and a tiny tornado of little hands and feet sweeps over me.
I swing long legs from the quilt in a bold, decisive movement that mimics purposefulness — oh cold, rose- scented air! — and place the feet firmly onto the floor. My legs feel as if they are made of wood, so I focus on my feet: my white cotton pyjamas make them look very tanned. I let myself drop gently to the floor and sit, cross-legged, my back leaning against the bed, eyes closed, out of sight. I am thirty-five and still playing hide-and-seek.
I will my heart to slow, my breathing to return … I know I am not dying because this happens a lot.
Collect yourself. Focus on your work. Work is Safe.
I reach — careful, light fingers — up to the bedside table for another notebook, a pink one this time. I keep them in a pile by the bed next to the jar of blown roses, for Thoughts that may eventually, when strung togetherin some narrative involving yearning bodies and geographical locations, become another book. (I write what mypublisher categorises as Romantic Fiction. I prefer to tackle the intricate problems of relationships that I can solve. It’s very reassuring to be able to resettle the upturned order of the world in a few paragraphs. It is a good superpower to have up your sleeve.)
My pen is a Sailor fountain pen and, along with my grandmother’s pearls, my most treasured possession. Itnever fails to have something to say. This morning it wishes to consider the Anna Karenina Effect.
Some animals cannot be successfully domesticated. Just as all happy families are apparently alike, so are all animals that take to being tamed. A deficiency in even one of the six qualities identified as necessary is enough to render a species ungovernable, impossible to live with; impossible to tame, break, discipline, cultivate, or reclaim. In other words, a single deficiency is enough to keep them wild.
LIST OF QUALITIES FOR FAILED DOMESTICATION
Finicky or picky eaters: for domestication, a species must be easy to feed. Finicky eaters make poor candidates. Non-picky omnivores make the best candidates.
Growth rate: animals that grow too slowly, don’t grow (or even shrink?!) are not feasible.
Captive breeding: the need for privacy, or long-protracted mating rituals such as chases across countries/continents, prevent breeding in a farm-like environment.
Disposition: some species are too ill- tempered to be domesticated. The zebra is of special note: recognised by Europeans in Africa as extremely valuable, it proved impossible to tame. (The characteristics that made the zebra hardy and able to survive in the harsh environment of Africa also made it fiercely independent.)
Tendency to panic: species are genetically predisposed to react to danger differently. A species that bolts is a poor candidate for domestication. A species that freezes, or mingles with the herd for cover in the face of danger, is a good candidate for assimilation.
Social structure: species of lone, independent animals make bad choices for domestication. A species that has a strong, well-definedsocial hierarchy is more likely to be tamed. A species that can imprint on a single human as thechief of the hierarchy is best. (Different social groups must also be tolerant of one another.)
Perhaps you, Winona, are single-handedly spear-heading the re-wilding of suburbia.
I see myself as a zebra, walking down New South Head Road during rush hour, parting traffic, hardy and independent.
Yes!
The idea pleases me very much.
You embody every deviant characteristic on that list — you do realise …?
This thought is not as pleasing as being the zebra.
Please focus on the work you need to do.
I am trying to resolve a dilemma faced by Nora, the heroine of my latest novel: she yearns for a fulfilling life, one of small satisfactions that run deep, of emotions deeply felt, opportunities seized. She is, however, in a relationship with a man for whom maintaining appearances is paramount. He is dedicated to this maintenancein the way that people dedicate their lives to religion or revolution. Surface is all. She believes she loves this man, but she cannot seem to break through the membrane of his facade to something more real. The situation does not feel bad enough to leave, but neither does it seem entirely satisfactory.
Things have been brought to a head as he has recently,on a trip to Venice, asked her to marry him. Nora is unsure. She has asked him if he is sure … Of course he is!She has smiled brightly and begged for a day to think about it, pleading overwhelming emotions. She does not trust herself to make the right choice: YES and be bound to him forever; NO and lose him forever. The diamond ring is very big and heavy and for some reason it frightens her. Right now, she is trying everything she can to stir him to something more authentic that will reassure her that marrying him is A Good Life Choice …
Perhaps she too should consult the List of Qualities for Failed Domestication.
Venice in the snow, a moonlit night, the canals are inky and mysterious … I can see the frost on the curl of the gondola.
I set my novels in all the stirring places I have been to: Switzerland, Russia, Norway, Azerbaijan; Morocco, Namibia, Italy; Sweden, Scotland, Japan, Indonesia, Turkey … There are many. It allows me to inhabit them for a few hours a day — to walk the cobbled streets, or the snowy paths, to smell the woodsmoke and trail my fingers in that blood-warm sea — in between the domestic chores and the daily ephemera and the feeling everynow and then that slugs me in the solar plexus of the sheer distance between me and everything else I ever knew.
The stories bring me nearer; I write to close the gap in my life.
Nora is about to cast herself adrift from her own life. I suddenly realise she is making a huge mistake. Panic seizes my heart.
It’s a story, Winona!
But it is more than that.
There is no time to consider this further. The little thunderclaps of bare feet on floorboards grow closer. It is time to gather up my Loves and fully inhabit my morning with them.
This is an edited extract from Thunderhead by Miranda Darling, Scribe Publishing, $29.99, available 3rd April.
Read our interview with Miranda for our Emerging Writers Series here!
Miranda Darling is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. She read English and Modern Languages at Oxford then took a Masters in Strategic Studies and Defence from the ANU (GSSD). She became an adjunct scholar at a public policy think tank, specialising in non-traditional security threats. She has published both fiction and nonfiction; Thunderhead is her fifth book.