Way Down Dark Read Online Free PDF

to his flesh, digging in. I can’t be sure, but the edge looks lined with something sharp—metal or glass. His skin is scarred where it’s cut into him, a ring around his throat. It looks punishing.
    “Reading these will change your life,” the first woman says, and the other two murmur their agreement with her. “This is the true story of Australia , of life before Australia , and of why we are here.”
    “I’m sure,” I say. I can’t even count the number of supposedly true stories of Australia that I’ve been told in my lifetime and how disappointing each one is. No stories ever have a happy ending, I know that, but there’s some promisewhen people talk about what came before. I don’t tell her that, though. I can’t predict how she’ll act. That’s the worst: when you just can’t tell.
    I step backward again—another of the ship’s unspoken rules: Never turn your back on somebody you don’t know —and make it to the stairwell. I wave to them in the distance. Seems like the right thing to do. It isn’t until I lower myself to the floor below that I feel the sting in my foot and every muscle in my leg twitches to stop me from putting any weight onto it. I crane my neck and bring my foot up, and there’s the end of a needle jutting from the fleshiest part, right in the middle. If it had gone in near the ball or the heel, there’s every chance it wouldn’t have made it past the skin, which is so much tougher in those places. That skin is so thick it’s almost like bark. But no, just my luck: right where it’s softest. I pull the needle out, but something snaps. These things are so fragile. I squeeze the hole, feeling for the bits of sharpness in the wound, and then pluck the final piece of the needle out. My foot is really bleeding now.
    Shit.
    I step, but it hurts. More need for the shoes than ever now. I walk on my toes, tiptoeing forward on them, slower and more delicate than before. This was stupid. I should have wrapped up my feet. I’ll never learn. Feels like I’ve been told that a thousand times before. I think about the jobs in the books that my mother used to read to me. One was a ballerina. This is how they stood. They could manage it, so I can.
    I drop down the stairwell to the next floor as gently as I can, and again, and again, and then I’m on the thirty-first andsuddenly Australia becomes a different place. What was quiet and sad is suddenly vibrant; shopkeepers everywhere, their calls and cackles loud as they try to pimp whatever they’ve got to whoever happens to be passing.
    You don’t come here unless you’ve got a hankering, but it’s always busy. Everybody wants something. And there’s still so much color! It’s almost too much to take. Where the rest of the ship is all blacks and grays and reds, the Shopkeepers have these clothes that they’ve made themselves, dyed and bright (or as bright as they can get them), patched and stitched. They have converted their homes into stalls along the entire length of this floor, right up to the edge of the Lows’ half of the ship: fabric coverings dragged out and tarpaulins stretched across the gantries to make warm, colorful caverns. They play music, they shout, they laugh. They hang whatever they’re selling on the sides of the walls, or they arrange it on their beds and on tables.
    Outside some berths, there are trays of food fresh out of ovens. I focus on the buns and twirled pastries, made from what they’ve bought and then recycled. But they’re sold at such steep prices that I have only ever tasted anything like them a handful of times, and even then only a quarter . . . a fifth of one. That was years ago, when I was far younger than I am now. I can’t even remember the taste, not exactly, but still sometimes wake up craving it, even to this day.
    “Go on,” one of the sellers says to me as I pass and gaze. He is tall, his skin a sickly shade of pale yellow, and his teeth glimmer, polished glass set into the