Dark Fires Shall Burn by Anna Westbrook

swastika,’ her mother had joked. Nancy had not thought that funny at all.
    After mass they were sitting in the kitchen with a lunch of cold curried eggs, her least favourite, and instead of eating she had been chattering on about The Wind in the Willows when the knock came. Her mother opened the door and took the telegram from the squeamish boy’s hand, looked it over, and then ripped it into smaller and smaller pieces, standing at the sink with her back turned. Nancy, unable to get a word from her, had run for Mrs Roberts next door.
    Aunt Jo — well, great aunt, really — had come from Tuggeranong so she could keep an eye on the family. Jo was Nancy’s father’s aunt, and she felt the duty, having mostly raised him, his mother having died a long while ago in Perth. Kate mostly avoided her: often whole days went by without her stirring from the darkened bedroom, dampening the pillows, wearing only her kimono, not eating and not talking. In contrast, Aunt Jo was a muscular, always active woman, who was ‘made of sterner stuff’, as she liked to remind Nancy. She moved busily around the house, often quoting Shakespeare and telling Kate to screw her courage to the sticking place.
    Nancy gives the backgammon tiles another go-round before the candle gutters and goes out and she’s sitting in the dark. Cold fingers pass across her. Answer me this , Lily says, her voice silvery, slippery.
    â€˜No.’ Nancy shivers. ‘I don’t want to play now. Why didn’t you come
    before?’
    What lives without a body, hears without ears, speaks without a mouth, to which the air alone gives birth? Lily continues, dauntless.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Nancy replies, and turns on her belly and clamps the pillow over her head.
    Think on it. Hears without ears, speaks with no mouth …
    â€˜I don’t know. A ghost?’ Her voice is swallowed by the pillow.
    Wrong! Stupid! Lily crows. Guess again.
    â€˜No.’
    Guess again , Lily insists.
    â€˜God?’
    That answer’s even thicker than the last . Lily cackles meanly.
    â€˜I don’t want to.’
    Suit yourself.
    Car headlights turning into the street rake the room through the window, and Lily’s shadow breaks like a dozen rabbits gone to ground.
    Nancy wakes from a sleep and realises she has not eaten. ‘Mum?’ she calls out, to no answer.
    The house is dark. ‘Mum?’ she calls again. ‘Aunt Jo?’ she tries reluctantly, but there is still no reply.
    She goes downstairs to the kitchen. It is approaching midnight, the clock tells her, and she has a neglected ache in her belly from missing tea. No one has been to the store — no one has really gone since Aunt Jo had the fall a few weeks ago and twisted her back.
    The kitchen is empty except for a chop that Mrs Roberts had brought over three days ago, still wrapped in butcher’s paper on the bench, wearing a shawl of ants.
    Nancy walks down the corridor and opens the doors to the sitting room. The fire in the hearth has dwindled down to a glowing scree. A cigarette butt perches on a trunk of ash in a bowl, next to a matchbook and a tumbler with a veneer of whisky remaining. At the foot of the bookshelf, her mother lies on her back. Nancy gets down on her knees. She lowers her ear close to her mother’s lips, straining to hear her breath.
    â€˜What on earth!’ Kate’s eyes suddenly widen at Nancy’s levitating face.
    â€˜Uh — sorry!’ Nancy leaps up. ‘Sorry, Mum.’
    â€˜What in God’s name are you doing?’ Kate grapples with the floor, trying to drag herself into a sitting position. She takes Nancy by the shoulders and briskly shakes her. ‘I’m alright, you goose. Is that what you needed to know? Did you think I’d gone and done myself in?’ She laughs, but it comes out more like a bark.
    Nancy, not knowing what to say, mumbles, ‘No.’
    â€˜Well, not quite yet,