Margo Lanagan's electrifying stories take place in worlds not quite our own, and yet each one illuminates what it is to be human. They are stories of yearning for more, and learning to live with what you have. Stories that show the imprint love leaves on us all. If you think you don't like short fiction, that a story can't have the depth or impact of a novel, then you haven't read Margo Lanagan. A writer this startling and this original doesn't come along very often. So for anyone who likes to be surprised, touched, unsettled, intrigued, or scared senseless, prepare to be dazzled by what a master storyteller can do in a few short pages. From the Hardcover edition.

Margo Lanagan is a highly acclaimed writer of novels, short stories, and poetry. Black Juice, her second collection of stories, won a Printz Honor Award and the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection. Ms. Lanagan lives in Sydney, Australia.


From the Hardcover edition.

“Well, at least it’s a fine night,” said Mum.
She looked enormous, but that was mostly the bedding she’d gathered as she hurried out of the hut. Her hair, coming undone from its nighttime tail, was a shock of silver on her shoulders.
“Though how we’ll sleep with this moon I don’t know. It’s like the floodlights at the Cricket Ground. We need to find a place in the shade. Not under these gums, though–if they drop a branch, we’re dead. Down by the creek there, among the casuarinas–”
A bellow interrupted her. Everyone looked up at the hut. Mum walked away down the hill, trailing a corner of the quilt across the moon-white grass. “And a good distance fromthat.That could go on for hours. Days. Come on, everyone, let’s get settled.”
Dylan followed her slowly. She wasn’t acting right. Anything to do with babies and births, Mum usually took over. She became queenly herself, moving differently, spreading a radiant
peacefulness all around. She paused the world so the baby could land on it safely. Yet here she was,walking awayfrom a woman in labor.
“I think we should get thepolice,” grumbled Ella, lumbering down the slope. She was pregnant, too; she was what Mum described asabout ready to drop.“It’s outrageous. Whoever heard of it? Where did those people escape from–some kind of costume party?” Todd gave an enormous yawn. “Dunno what you’re moaning about–you weren’t asleep anyway. Younever sleep,remember? ’S what you’re always saying.”
“Idonever sleep,” said Ella. “Not these days. Or nights.” The family moved down the slope ahead, in among the darker trees. They weren’t nearly alarmed enough; that must be part of the magic. Dylan was panting, as if his body were trying to pump out the strong, wet-grass smell of bear and replace it with the proper bush smells of eucalypt and pine.
“Check for sleeping snakes,” Mum said when they reached the creek side, where the ground was flatter. “Bang about a bit.” So everyone stamped around in their pajamas. It would have been funny if Dylan hadn’t been so frightened. Weren’t theyworriedabout that bear? Weren’t theyupsetabout what had happened? It was eerie that they were positioning air mattresses and spreading blankets and plumping pillows. Titch and Edwin were already asleep–look at them. They hadn’t even cried. It was all a dream to them. Dylan pinched the inside of his elbow hard; he rubbed his arm roughly against a tree trunk; he breathed in and stared at the frills of white water along the creek, at the shadow people and the shadow trees, at the millions of stars above among the needly casuarina twigs. He smelled the smoke from the hut chimney. That funny man must be building up the fire. You needed boiling water when a baby was coming. What for? Dylan couldn’t remember.
“Come on, Dylan. Come and settle down between Dad and me. We’ll protect you against jibber-jabbers.” Her smile was the only part of her face that was moonlit. “Jibber-jabbers,” said Dad dozily. “That’s going back a long way. What were those things, anyway, Dyl? You never told us properly; you were too scared even to talk about that nightmare.” Dylan crawled up the valley between them, laid his head in the pillow cleft, and shuddered. “They were these horrible creatures, hundreds of them, about up to my shoulders. They had big heads, big jaws, lots of teeth.Jibbrah-jibbrah,they said,jibbrah-jibbrah-jibbrah-jibbrah.They rushed at me out of the wardrobe and snapped their teeth.” Dad snored gently.
“I still don’t like to think about them,” Dylan said to Mum.
“Don’t, then,” said

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Excerpted from Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan
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