She's small, is our Lucy, pocket-sized, smaller on her haunches scrubbing, rubbing with a yellow sponge bigger than her hand. She's got old-person hands now, water-wrinkled and loose, and old-person shadows round her eyes, and the kind of purple grab-bruises that an old person gets on her arms if you just squeeze her very softly.
- But Lucy Ferrin's only fifteen years old.
Monday, and she's in her favourite place, the Insect House, in the almost-dark, the heavy humidity, lulled by the whispers of innumerable wings. She's wearing denim dungarees, hair scarf-bundled, huddled over her bucket. Her hand sweeps side to side, swishing, wishing, washing a clear path to the door, a bright white tile trail through footclodded grey.
- “I can read. They learned me it at school,” says Lucy. She can read the Sun, and sometimes she picks up a story magazine, letters double-shadowed through grease-soaked pages. Her finger traces the story through the salt and vinegar and she almost disappears inside of it. She doesn't take it home, though, because her Da would say, “You got time for reading books, miss, you've got time for something else.”
- And she'd rather not have time, thank you, Da.
Lucy can read, but she doesn't always understand the words. Sometimes she'd like to have someone explain them to her, but she tried that at school once, staying behind at the teacher's desk, book in hand, waiting, waiting, but he never saw her. So she never tried again.
- She's buffing up the information boards now, cleaning right into the corners. Hard chewing gum is easy to dislodge - just get your fingernail under it and lift - but the spitty sort sticks to the yellow duster and stretches into strings that snap. The writing is black, and sort of slanted.
“Arachnocampa luminosa
New Zealand Glow-worm”
- The words bump in her brain, stopping abruptly at buffers, connections. Arachno-phobia, a film … the green hands of her alarm clock … campa … a luminous spider perhaps - but why a glow-worm?
- She watched them last week, while she cleaned the windows, wiping off sticky child-height finger-marks, snot-streaks from noses pressed against the glass, lip-prints saying, “Where are they then? Is that all? They're just boring. Let's go and see the elephants.”
- She'd cleaned the glass so she could see clearly. Lucy watched the tiny pupa jerking on its thread, noosed like a half-hanged man with his tongue sticking out. It cracked, segmented, and daintily the legs appeared, piked pointed joints stepping out onto the empty casing, huge dark eyes, antennae tasting new air. Still the wings were furled, wet-folded, but her body began to glow, to luminesce. Fluid filled her wing-veins, and they startled, just started to lift, to flicker, chased with a delicate tracery of light.
- And a male flew over, bigger, heavier, latched onto her body and started to mate with her, pumping, pumping, on and on.
- And her light died.
-
Lucy can't reach the top of the window to clean it. She balances on the narrow tilted sill and stretches.
“Here … Let me do that. Watch out. Careful now.”
Luke. She doesn't turn round. She knows him from the voice, that “Careful now.” She's heard him soothe snorting, stamping horses with it, softly whistling between his crooked lips, gentling them as he swept and laid fresh straw. She's heard him murmur it to nursing does as he approached their fawns to ear-tag them. And now his great blue-black hands appear, bridged against the glass on either side of her, and within the protective cage of his braced body, not touching, she steps down from the ledge.
- She looks at his soil-sodded boots. The scarf is slipping from her hair; she unties it and stuffs it in her pocket. Luke takes the duster and the spray and starts to clean the window top quickly, efficiently, wiping away the marks of her balancing fingers.
- She watches, following the movements of his hands, her back to his belly, and his face in the window reflects softly above hers, the darkness distorting the devil-split of his hare-lip into a smile.
- “Sssee,” he says to her. The sibilant stretches, unem-barrassed. “The egg clusters, there, and there … sssee the light where they're hatching out.”
- “Those're eggs? I din't know. I watched her doin it, but I thought she was hurt, bleedin or someat.”
- “No, they're her eggs. She lays them there, hiding in the darkness, in root crevices, under rocks, somewhere the babies won't be disturbed while they grow - where they're safe from predators, where they can feed. Look.”
- “They're lighting up.”
- “Yesss.”
- They press their faces against the window, lip-printing the clean glass.
- Pin-points of light are worming, squirming from the jellied heaps. Each minute larva wriggles away from the others and stops, fluoresces, begins to exude.
- “Luke … what they doing now? What's that stuff?”
- “They're going fishing, Lucy, hanging out their lines.”
- “Fishing? How?”
- “Like ssspider's silk, but sticky. Sssee them glow, the drops of light caught on the threads … It's how they feed. They trap insects on the lines and pull them up and eat them. That's how they grow.”
- The crack in the tree-bark dangles with dolls-house Christmas tinsel, minute rapelling lines studded with glowing baubles. As they watch, a gnat blunders into the sticky trap, its wings tearing as it thrashes, its end inevitable, inescapable.
- “Where's she gone, the Mum?” says Lucy.
- “She's finished, tired, worn out. She's died. But she doesn't mind. She's done what she had to do. It's over.”
- “I'd best get on.” Lucy looks back towards the door. Her shining white tiles are foot-printed with clods of straw-stuck mud.
- “You mustn't hide here in the dark, love. Come out with us, some time. There's other girls not much older than you, keepers, handlers … other cleaners. Lunchtimes we usually grab a sandwich, eat it out in the sunshine.”
- “I dunno … Me dad'd … I got no money, y'see.”
“Don't be shy. I won't bite. Come on, come with me now - get out of here, meet some people. You can finish up later. I'll buy you some chips.”
- “You sure, Luke? O.K. Cool.”
- Lucy follows him outside. She drops her yellow sponge onto the floor and walks it with her foot, wriggle-wriggle, swish-washing the tiles back to their gleaming whiteness behind her.
- She perches on an aubretia-topped wall in the sunlight. Her eyes are huge, dark-pupilled. They flicker. She watches visitors and staff weaving the paths with movement, excitement, purpose. Luke buys her a cheeseburger dripping with ketchup, medium fries. She picks up each thin chip delicately, examining it, licking off the salt before bending it, stuffing it into her hamster cheek.
- Tuesday, chicken sandwich. Wednesday, filet-of-fish.
- Our little Lucy blossoms in the sunlight. The hollows of her cheeks are curving now; her belly's curving too, straining at the fastenings of her dungarees, stretching the denim.
- Thursday follows Thursday, Lucy's sixteenth birthday. Evening. Luke walks her home; streetlights stretch along the road, a rope of matched pearls gleaming through the mist.
- Da's at the door. He gazes up at Luke in his black immensity. Da's a little man, little but quick, lithe.
- “What've you got to ssssay for yoursself? Look at her. What kind of father could …”
- “Mind your own business. What's it got to do with you anyway? Want her for yerself? That why yer allus buying her stuff?”
- Luke swings his giant fist, misses. Da weaves around him, feinting, jabbing, tying Luke in steps of tangled confusion. A right hook splits his devil-mouth, opening up a scream, a dripping grimace of a smile, satanic. Heavy drops fly, spattering Lucy with red life-blood.
+++++
Lucy's at the hospital alone. Her huge belly's been snipped open. It's empty now, drained, flapping in white folds across her narrow hips. She doesn't know about it. She's lost so much blood, tried so hard, done what she needed to do. It's all over.
- The last thing she sees is little Lucas, curled in the glass-sided tank. He's terribly small, is Lucas, with jaundice yellow skin. He's wearing a tiny cap tied on his head, dark glasses, and a sunlamp shines over him, buzzing softly, faintly flickering. His skin absorbs the light, drinks it in, phosphoresces, almost seems to glow.
+++++
Lucy could read, but she didn't always understand the words. Algebra, equations were way beyond her. The teacher never noticed her when she waited after class, hanging back, patiently hoping he'd explain.
Luciferin + Luciferase + energy + oxygen
=
Excited product + Luciferase
=
light
