Skulls and Hourglasses | World Storytelling Day

 

In honour of World Storytelling Day, I have narrated my Hookland story The Black Biscuit Baker (or Skulls and Hourglasses). If you enjoy, do check out my Hookland novel Creeper's Cottage. An unsettling tale of strange happenings. Hookland is the creation of David Southwell. It's a mythical county in England where folklore lives and breathes. 'Ghost soil,' as he calls it. You can also find me talking about the inspiration for the novel here.

Tales Fae the Shed

 

If you like slightly strange folktales in a thick Scottish accent (a niche market, full of the best people), then check out Alan McClure's Tales Fae the Shed channel.

Short Story Reading: Mother of Words

Back in May I posted about winning the Bet Tuppi Near Eastern Historical Fiction Prize. I've just got a better microphone so rerecorded the reading. You can listen to the story above, or go to the beginning of the video to get some background.

Resolutions Anthology

Woke up this morning to a lovely surprise - author copies!

I entered the Bridge House Publishing competitions earlier in the year and was selected for their anthology Resolutions.

This is a collection of challenging and thought-provoking stories. All stories need a resolution and these provide ones that will astound and delight you. We looked for: story, good writing, interpretation of theme and professionalism.  All of the stories submitted had those elements. Here  we offer a variation to cater to our readers’ eclectic tastes. Sit back and surrender to the Bridge House magic.

Grab Your Copy Here

 Interview 

 

Gill's Blog Interview

 

As I've mentioned before, I have a short story out later in the year with Bridge House Publishing. 

Ahead of that, I've just done a little interview with their CEO, Gill James.

You can read the interview here and you can find Gill on her website and Twitter.

Reading: Mother of Words

 

I decided to do a little reading of Mother of Words.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel if you like it.

Mother of Words

 

I mentioned last week that I had been shortlisted for the inaugural Bet Tuppi’s Ancient Near Eastern Historical Fiction Prize.

Well - I won.

Read The Mother of Words

[update: there is now an online reading.]

The story was selected from ten amazing shortlisted stories, all of which you can read here. 

Public feedback:

We love the unique take on Enheduanna, the first named poet. The story really encapsulates the essence of Mesopotamia, which is known not only for its empires and violence, but also as the birthplace of writing and literature.

Notification feedback from judge Matthew Parkes, MPhil in Assyriology at the University of Cambridge:

We specifically loved how you drew upon the source material. For instance, considering the namelessness of many of Mesopotamia's authors whilst also exploring the power that writing brought to these early civilisations. It was truly a pleasure to read your story!

I just want to take a moment to explain why this means so much. 

As regular readers will know, I have been writing a novel about the Akkadian Empire for the past year. It's very nearly coming to a close. The story began as the telling of Enheduanna, but, in order to get there, I needed to retell The Legend of Sargon, her father. What was supposed to be a background chapter soon ballooned to over 100,000 words and became a full-blown novel of its own.

I've been working closely with Leif Inselmann, a wonderful research scholar at the University of Göttingen. Leif also happens to be a German author and you can find his books here. He has been incredible in helping to clarify things and preventing me from wandering into the absurd. Although, he didn't proof the story I submitted to the competition, which is why there was a slight metallurgical historical slip-up in there. I wrote it late at night and in a hurry to hit the deadline.

But, just pause for a moment and consider what it was like, having been completely obsessed with the Akkadian Empire and ancient Sumer for over a year, to suddenly see a writing competition specifically asking for Sumerian, Akkadian and Assyrian historical fiction? I mean - what were the chances? I almost didn't enter because I thought, how gutting would that be if I didn't even get placed? 

Well, I'm glad I did enter, and I'm absolutely blown away and very thankful to have impressed the judges. I do occasionally think that Enheduanna glances over the shoulder of every writer from time to time. We've swapped clay and stylus for paper and pen, but we're all just continuing her 4,000-year tradition of writing down our thoughts. 

I'll sign off now, but it's always an incredible boost when a story you write connects with its readers. As writers, we're used to rejection and it's easy to feel overlooked and to doubt ourselves, but one win wipes away all of that. If you're a creator, keep creating. Keep putting yourself out there. Keep spinning stories and breathing life into them. Eventually you'll catch a little luck in your web. 

Sinjye wahera hahera Enheduanna.

Ghostwoods: Open Call for Short Stories

Having just waxed lyrical about Ghostwoods Books yesterday, they have an open call for submission at the moment. Information here. Stories between 5-8,000 words. Deadline 7th June 2020.

The Black Biscuit Baker

Long-term readers will know my affiliation with Hookland (@HooklandGuide), a mythical county in England where folklore lives and breathes. I set a previous novel there, Creeper's Cottage (UK/US).

Some years back, there was talk of a Hookland anthology, but it went wandering out across the misty moors and never returned. That happens a lot in Hookland, so here's a little story I wrote for it. If you make it to the end, there's a picture of some real funeral biscuits my mum made using the recipe at the beginning. She said they tasted 'gritty'.

The Black Biscuit Baker
or Skulls and Hourglesses

8 lbs. of flour
1½ lbs. of butter
1¼ lbs. of sugar
¾ lbs. of charcoal powder
½ pint of eggs
Milk as required

That is how you bake death.

Like my mother and her mother before her, it has been my duty to keep alive the tradition of funeral biscuits. Each is embossed with a sigil. In the east of the county, they are baked with a skull. In the west, with an hourglass.

Here at Panhurst Drift, we do things proper: one of each.
 

A skull to remind us that we are going to die.
 

An hourglass to remind us that we still have time.
 

You cannot see time, you cannot hear it or taste it, but when there is none left, you know about it.
 

Come, take my hand. I will show you how to make them.
 

Funeral biscuits are an ancient custom, baked black with charcoal. 

In the depths of night on the new moon, I walk the ancient corpse road from Panhurst Drift to the village down the valley. You may choose to light a lanthorn if you wish, but I have walked this path my entire life, and need no such guide.
 

It is only in the dark that you can hear the voices of those who have walked this route before. On late summer eves they whisper to themselves amongst the trees, babbling through the brook and laughing as their spirits chase one another across the marshy morass. See there, those little balls of light which seem to know one another, and move away as we approach?
 

In winter come the angry ones. The olden spirits who died in battle, aggrieved by foes, calling out the names of all their deeds left yet undone. Their voices scream up from Devil’s Scar, intent on stripping flesh from bone. You’d do well to pull your shawl about you tight and make for hearth and home.
 

It is not my place to follow the playful dead, nor fear the vengeful. 

I serve Death, and in so doing, he leaves me be.
 

Follow, a little faster now. Pick up your feet where the road grows rocky.
 

I’ll take you with me on this journey, yet when we arrive hold all complaint. You asked to come, and I am willing, though I shall not have you act surprised, nor listen to you opine upon my methods. The dish I cook has filled the stomachs of those five hundred years dead. It is not for a new-born to curl up their nose at the food of their ancestors, for it will be your food, and the food of your young, and for many a generation left to come.
 

Watch. Take note if you must. But do so in silence.
 

See down there in the valley – the lights of Panhurst.
 

When I was a child, I used to look upon those glowing bulbs as stars. See how dark it is about, as though we step through space itself. Minor gods glancing down upon a galaxy. That bright one there, the glowing sun of John Maudlin School, around which all other planets circle, drawn by the weight of intellect.
 

We will not reach that far tonight.
 

Under the Myrtle bush we roam, thrice together and thrice alone. O’er the moor and up the hills, through the crags and down the rills. When grandma calls you home for tea, go to her or follow me.

That’s a song my mother used to sing as we walked. She sang so that I would never wander further than her voice, lest I lose myself in the dark. My throat is sore from age, so I trust you will stay close behind the sweep of my cloak.
 

There in the dark, that crooked finger pointing to the sky. That is the shadow of the church. When we arrive you’ll see a well before the gate. We each must throw a penny in to pay our way, though you will never hear it hit the bottom.
 

And now that we have paid, the dead will let us pass.
 

So many names here. People I have known in legend and in life.
 

There’s the grave of Mary Bay with weeping angels at her brow. She was the first I ever baked for. Three days in labour for a still-born son. She wept three days more before walking out into the snow and lying down to numb her grief. In some counties they would not allow her a burial on consecrated ground, but here our land belongs to those who sweat and suffer. God may visit if He pleases.
 

There, beneath the yew is the body of Brown Man Muirs. The stone that marks his place is worn by weather, yet some say he walks the valley as a black fox with a silver-tipped tail. Poachers beware on the full moon, for he moves the traps and tricks the hunter into hunting himself.
 

Up there by the porch is a plaque to Lady Eleanor Mordant, see the eyes carved beneath the inscription? She watches all who walk beneath, trusting none. For they say it was poison what took her, administered by the hand of her own husband who caught her once with a stablehand.
 

And there, over by the wall, a twisting cross of ivy for the resting place of Marjory Blue. She was a healer in my great grandmother’s time, walking the woods and the moors, collecting all manner of herbs. She mended bones and calmed the cough of infants and the elderly. They call her Blue because the whole summer through, a bright ring of forget-me-nots flower about her grave.
 

Enough now, we have work to do.
 

Follow me to the back of the bone hall, and mind you step on no one’s grave. The dead consider that an insult and your dreams will be disturbed for a month.
 

To make this dish, we must make charcoal. Only the wood of the weeping willow will do, and here is an ancient one. Take my slicer with the bog oak hilt, that wood is five thousand years if it’s a day. Burry the blade in the earth, kiss it, and repeat these words:
 

I come to you mother of sorrows, to take from you a branch or two. You, whose roots lift the shrouds of the dead, whose friends, the worm and grub, will be my friends too someday. I take no more than I need. What I take will comfort the grieving. Within three days I will return your kindness with flesh to strengthen your bow.

Mother Welig, Sallow Sue, she never minds a branch or two.
 

When women have their monthlies, or a young buck breaks a bone, I make a tea of willow bark to ease their pain, though I never take from a tree in the old bone hall for that.
 

So, now we have what we came for, it’s a slow steady march back to the Drift. You’re thirsty. I can tell, but don’t let food nor drink pass your lips in this place. Let’s get beyond the wailing rock, there’s a stream there with water fresh from the hills.
 

They call this the wailing rock because they say it’s the furthest point that mourners’ heartbreak can be heard. When they inter the dead, when mothers cry for their daughters and fathers their sons, their laments echo up the valley. Yet grief must have its end, beyond which life continues its merry jaunt. Here is that point.
 

Sip from my cupped hands and quench your thirst.
 

Always drink from the fast-flow, never the eddies, for it is in the silent pools that fay folk dip their feet and enchant the water.
 

Here, now, as we enter the Drift, keep your quiet. The folks round here know that I hold my own hours, but it does no one good to remind them. If you should meet someone on the path, hold your breath and bow your head. Come morning, they will have forgotten they ever saw you.
 

Come, wipe your feet upon the mat. I do not want bone hall soil across my floor. Stoke the fire and let us take some bread and cheese before we set to work. We have journeyed far and not every footfall met with solid earth. We must bring ourselves back to this world before we go further.
 

Throw your crumbs into the fire. These flames helped to cook that bread, and now must reap their reward.
 

Yes, please. A little cheese for Sula, for she protects the house when her mistress goes out walking. There has always been a cat at this cottage, black as the biscuits we bake. She welcomes guests, as you can see.
 

You are warm and your belly full, so let’s begin before you grow tired. Stoop your head, for the back door is low. People were shorter once upon a time, when this house was built. Its stones have absorbed many ouches and buggers from people who were not wary.
 

Can you smell the lavender and the rosemary? That is bergamot over there, it flowers flame-red at summer’s end. And here, lemon thyme. Rub your fingers through it to improve your mood. There is sage, and fennel, and over by the wall a shaded patch of jack-in-the-hedge, which smells of garlic and garnishes leafy salads.
 

Bring logs from the wood stock and help me place them in this pit. We’ll build a fire high, and let it burn low. Once the embers rest and sigh, we’ll strip the willow of her bark and place her in the dottie pot.
 

Pass me a branch and watch how I do it. First you pull away the leaves. Put them in a pile, we’ll compost later. Take your slicer and cut it gently just behind the brown. Hold the bark to the blade with your thumb and pull, peeling it down top to tail. If it snags, slice and pull again. All the way around until the stem is green.
 

My thumb is hardened from years of this, but if you start to sore, I have a plaster you can wrap about. We’ll need maybe twenty of these to make enough for baking. Five for you, fifteen for me, it’ll only take a little while.
 

Now cut the stems three inches each and put them in the dottie pot. This one here’s the oldest. A gift to my grandmother of buttered shortcake. That was a true luxury in those days. This one here you might recognise, an old tin of Quality Street, the memory of a long-ago Christmas past, all the colours burnt black.
 

Hold the tin up to the fire and you’ll see the dots. Eight little holes through the lid to allow the spirit of the wood to escape. Pack your strips of willow tight, and pop the lid on tighter. Now place it across these two sticks and I’ll lower it into the embers.
 

See now, as it starts to smoke? That’s Mother Welig breathing out. It’ll take an hour or more for all her breath to leave her. Pass me that stick there and I’ll poke it in the ashes till it catches, then set light to the vapours. That’s how you know it is done. When you light the dotties and nothing burns, that’s when the dragon sleeps.
 

Let’s you and I refresh ourselves whilst we wait. I have dandelion coffee on the shelf. Baked the roots myself and ground them down to powder, a little honey to sweeten.
 

Raise your cup to the sky and keep your eyes wide for falling stars. We see them often round these parts. Christ folks say it’s God casting another angel out of Heaven, but stars have been falling long before angels walked on earth, so perhaps it is simply the Infinite waving hello.
 

Tonight we bake for the dead, but many’s the living I’ve bake for, too.
 

We call the biscuits titch cobs, little lumps. If a woman be wanting a brood and all her huffing and puffing beneath the blankets yields her none, then she comes to me for a red cob, baked of her monthly blood and carmine. A lover’s cob, with a dash of a man’s seed or a woman’s slick excitement, means the one who consumes it will never leave. Bake a briny cob, mashed with spit, and ill fortune will afflict the one who eats.
 

Folks round here pretend they’re above it, but every moon I have a dozen customers or more.
 

Though it doesn’t always work the way they’d like. When I was still a cub myself, I baked a lover’s cob for Anabel Clark. She’d had her eye on Duncan Polter, as had all the girls. Duncan worked the fields beside his father, sleeves rolled up, muscles slick with sweat. What a fine sight he was. All the women, maiden, mother and crone, would find an excuse to pass by the field when Duncan was hoeing.
 

She paid me handsome with coin and pheasant. We mixed the batter together, cinnamon and sugar, baked until the butter crumbled to the touch. She placed the biscuits in a little box, tied it up with a green ribbon, and left them by his door.
 

The young man came home hot from the sun, washed himself down in the trough and ate the entire lot in one sitting.
 

When he awoke, all he could think of was Anabel Clark. She weren’t the most attractive girl in the Drift, nor the plainest neither. Yet something about her sparkled. A little voice whispered to him that she was special, and that he would be a fool not to seek her out and propose before the day was done.
 

That night she went passing by his place and he happened to be awake, fondling thoughts of her, as you might well imagine. He looked out his window to see Anabel there, lit up by the swollen moon.
 

That night he took her to bed, next month they were wed.
 

A happy story, you might think. Two young’ns in love.
 

Three years they were happy, two sons they had. Duncan was still a handsome man. Briding hadn’t turned him to wine, nor stuffed his belly fat with oats and stew. He continued in the field, working that extra weight into muscle. Many women tried their luck, but he refused them all. Faithful to the core, was Duncan Polter.
 

Then, come harvest, a terrible misfortune befell.
 

Duncan, his father, and his men were out loading hay onto the cart, when a flock of birds took wing, spooking the horse. It shied and reared, twisting in its harness. Duncan’s father ran to calm it, but all too late, for the cart came over, right on top of poor Duncan.
 

There was naught to be done, for it crushed his legs completely. They brought him to Old Shrewdie, who patched him up proper. She kept the rot out, splinted him straight with wood and clay. He lay like that for months. Anabel was by his side every day until they lifted him into the chair. She broke her back pushing him up that hill to home, for she wouldn’t let another do it.
 

Yet, as the days went by and the seasons changed, her feelings towards him waned with the harvest. No longer working, the oats and stew began to fill him out, and the wine pitcher lay empty. Her children kept her busy all the hours long, yet when night falls, a woman needs her husband’s warmth.
 

Duncan would not die, and he could not leave. The spell she’d cast in youth had aged into a burden. He would weep whenever she left his side, and cling to her skirts like a babe. Three children she had to wash, not two. Three to feed, three to dress, three pots to empty every morn.
 

Eventually she found the warmth that she’d been missing. A farmhand called John Under, who had no qualm in sharing her bed whilst her husband slept by the hearth.
 

John wanted Anabel to wife, and she was desperate to accept. So, one night they conspired beside the flames, to press poor Duncan’s pillow about his face until his broken heart gave out.
 

How many biscuits do you think I had to bake that month?
 

Three batches.
 

One for Duncan, and two for those who had put him in the earth.
They said Anabel and John had died of grief for their wicked sin, found swinging from the ash in Ploughman’s Copse. Yet round these parts, there are those who hold to justice tight. Those who come for others in the late hour of the night, to remind them of their wrongs.
 

You may well ask why I still bake, when my own flour-dusted hands played a part in their sad story. Well, baking is my business, and fate is theirs. Of more than twenty-dozen lovers’ cobs I’ve mixed, that was the only tragic end as I recall. Every baker’s batch turns out one duff cob now and then.
 

Speaking of which, look there, you see? The dottie pots have ceased to squeal, the flames have tapered out. Help me lift them from the fire, we’ll place damp cloths atop them and then we’ll head to bed. We’ve worked the night away, and soon dawn will grey the horizon. We’ll wake late and I’ll crisp bacon on the pan until the sides turn brown. We’ll eat it with goose eggs and a steaming pot of coffee, then set upon our next task.

*

Rested, let us pop the lids.
 

Have you ever known such black velvet in your life? Take a piece and break it, see how it crumbles, leaving your fingers sooty and smooth as silk. Artists down in Panhurst bring thicker branches for me to turn to vine. They sell it in the shops in Hook, to Bohemians and students who like to draw in old-fashioned ways.
 

This is destined for the pestle, though. Come, bring your pot to the kitchen and we’ll lay down paper to catch the black. One small handful at a time, we’ll add it to the mortar and grind it into powder so fine it feels like flour.
 

Now for the dough. Measure out the white flour along with the charcoal, we’ll sieve it together to remove the crumbs. Mother’s earthenware bowl is large enough. Add the butter, fresh churned from Greenfeather Farm. Get your fingers in there, nice and sticky, rub between your tips until it starts to bind.
 

Pass me the wooden spoon right there. We’ll make a well in the middle to crack in the eggs. We have a hundred biscuits to make, so you take five and I’ll take five and we’ll take turns to break them. Leave a couple of shells on the ground, Sula likes to lick them.
 

Now to add the sweetness. Roll up your sleeves and beat that batter hard with the spoon. Try not to think of angry thoughts or lustful ones. They’ll help you beat the batter harder, but a baker’s thoughts flow into the mix and will haunt the dreams of all who eat. Fix your eyes upon a single spot and whip and whip until your arm aches. If you must think on something, think on that ache. Enjoy it, for it means you are working hard.
 

When the spoon gets stuck, lay it aside and get your hands back in there. Knead with your knuckles, get your full weight behind it. Don’t worry if your sweat drips, the salt will mix with the tears of the mourners. Pummel and punch, roll and raise.
Bring it over to the table here. I’ll dust it with flour and we’ll roll it out the full length.
 

Over there in the wall beside the fire, you see that iron door? Put on the oven mitts and pull it open. We’ll stoke the hearth and that will heat the box. That’s how everyone used to cook in the old days. You can do a fine roast in that, chicken with sage stuffing and skin that melts on your tongue. A nice leg of mutton with rosemary and plum sauce.
 

It’s small, though. We’ll have to bake the biscuits in lots. I’ll cut the dough into quarters and we’ll likely work through until midnight. Another late night, but you’re not tired, are you?
 

That’s it. Roll it out nice and thin, then take the glass, hold it upside down, and cut those circles close together.
 

Remember what I said about the sigils?
 

Well, I’m going to show you a family heirloom. Rosewood handles, solid silver stamps. See how they’ve tarnished through time. My mother held these, and her mother, and her mother before. Ancient, these are. Tonight I will allow you the honour of holding them, for all the help you’ve given an old woman at her work.
 

We’ll do one batch of skulls and one of hourglasses. They’ll go in separate baskets. Each guest is offered one of each.
 

Now, onto the tray and into the oven with them.
 

It will rain tonight, I can smell it in the air, and the pine cone by the window has closed.
 

They say it is good luck to have rain before a funeral. It means the sky is weeping, and it only weeps for those who have lived a good life. People buried in dry earth are forgotten quickly, but those buried in the damp bloom memories in the minds of others for years to come.
 

I like the smell of rain. It reminds me of the night I gave birth to my own daughter. She was small and pale, and did not last the night. Yet when I pressed her to me and smelled her forehead, it felt as though the world were at peace.  The rain hammered against the window so hard I thought a hundred souls had risen from the bone hall to come look through the glass and love her.
 

When eventually they took her from my arms, I set about baking straight away. The whole of the Drift came, and half the inhabitants of Panhurst. I did not cry, for although she would never live, I knew that she had been born whole, complete.
 

Those stamps there will go to the grave with me. Once I am gone there will be no black baker left in these parts. Some may remember the tradition and try to copy, but baking titch cobs is a lifelong calling. It is not simply something one does, but something one is. Few would give up their modern lives for the dedication it demands. Why walk to a graveyard and grind your own charcoal when you can simply order it online? Why take the time to learn the names of the trees, and their courtesies, when lumber yards in Coreham split the logs and deliver to your door?
 

It is not only people who die, but traditions also.
 

Come, let us not think on sad things this evening. I can taste the charcoal on my tongue, that batch is close to baked. Let’s ready the next so that the heat of the oven won’t be lost.

*

And so all the cobs are crisp and cooling.
 

We have worked hard these past two nights, and now it is time to rest. In the morning we will pack them into Oval Eddies, tuck them in with blankets, and take them down to Greenfeather Farm. Elmen keeps an ice house down on his land. That’s where we store the dead until it’s time for them to go along the corpse road to the church.
 

Old Man Merriton will be tuning up his flute, and little Arthur Arnot has been practising his drum all week. He plays in the cadet band in Coreham, and can keep a marching beat well enough for a ten-year-old.
 

So, to bed with you. We must wake early, for the procession starts at sunrise.

*

Were your dreams pleasant?
 

I find that mine are often far-reaching the night before a day like this.
 

Sometimes I feel as though I leave my flesh beneath the quilt, whilst I head out across the moors. I swoop and reel like a kestrel at its prey. The wind sweeps me high across the burnt landscape, the marsh lights and the mist weaving a shroud below until I barely feel I know my way home.
 

You still have sleep in your eyes, but the sky is starting to lighten and we must leave if we are to do our duty well.
 

Take your waterproofs. The dew on the grass will seep through your soles, soaking your socks. My father taught me from the war, that the most important thing a person possesses is a dry pair of feet.
 

Come now, leave Sula in her basket. Her paws are twitching, she’s off across the field chasing phantom mice.
 

I can hear the call of Merriton’s flute already. His fingers never miss a hole, though when he practises I do not know, for he only ever plays in public for funerals and births.
 

When we get down to the farm, you mind your footing. The cows walk the track twice a day to the milking parlour, and they’re none too mindful where they spread their dung. It’s slippy along the path, and there’s no dignity in turning up to a funeral covered in ripe.
 

There’s more people here than I’d expected.
 

Make your way over to that corner there. I’ll take an Eddie of skulls and glasses, whilst you watch the stock. Mrs. Witburn already has her eye on me. She knows I’m needed, but she’s one of those Christ lovers who dislikes reminders of the old ways. I’d best go give her a smile and a cob.
 

My basket’s empty already.
 

Here, let me take the second round.
 

You just stay and watch. 

*

 

That’s it. All our hard work handed out. A sombre breakfast for a sullen crowd. Only Old Man Merriton seems to be enjoying himself, and little Arthur Arnot. His mother is so proud he’s leading the march, and he’s so proud that she’s so proud.
 

The procession is lining up outside and the pallbearers taking their places.
 

Here is where I must leave you.
 

I’ve never been much for the pew. The bone hall calls me down at night, but come daylight I prefer to give worship to the hills and the rivers. They birthed me, and when the time comes, they’ll claim me.
 

But you go with them now. They’re all good folks, they’ll see you right.
 

And when they put you in the ground and cast that first fistful of earth upon you, do not be afraid. Remember these two nights we’ve shared, and know that where I roam I will remember.
 

You will not be forgot.
 

And know that though you leave us, others will come to take your hand. Mary Bay and Eleanor Mordant, and Marjory Blue with her delicate wreath of forget-me-nots.
 

We are none of us ever alone.
 

Where they’ve been, you shall go, and I will follow after.

Tales From The Hanged Man

Really like this guy. His story is heavily influenced by David Southwell's Hookland.

Ok folks here is this weeks original story. The Hum. Greatly inspired by @HooklandGuide enjoy! https://t.co/EQkKMRirQb #hookland #folkhorror #horror #narration #youtube pic.twitter.com/eT1QJG9uOT

— Tales from the Hanged Man (@FromHanged) July 19, 2019

If you want more Hookland, check out Twitter,  and my novel Creeper's Cottage.

Dara Passano

Huge shout out to my friend Dara Passano, whose short story Fellowship appears in Issue 42 of Meridian, a magazine of the University of Virginia. You can order a copy from meridianoffice@virginia.edu but only if you're in the US. Good news, though, it's currently available online here, P. 24. Do have a read, it's extremely good.

We’ll Become the Stars

A short story by Gábor Csigás, who did the cover art for Those Rosy Hours. 

We’ll Become the Stars

Nyiragongo Fire

There are faces in the clouds. Grimacing mouths and wide eyes winking as they cross the sky. I have been watching for days, here on this rock with the box tucked beneath my legs.

Yaka awa, the clouds call, come here.

I can hear it in my heart, the liquid flow of Lingala, that old, dead language, bubbling up from the molten lava as it flows towards the lake. Like the lava, I want to flow over the land, effortless and elegant, across the sharp black rocks and up the side of that mountain without breaking sweat. Yet I know this is a dream. For as long as I am made of flesh and blood, and not of fire, the journey will exhaust me.

My body is covered in Maoplasty. There was a time, in the beginning, when they only provided boots. Then one day a white woman fell. She put out her arm to cushion the fall, and she never used that arm again. After that, we were all issued with body suits of seal grey, sticking like a second skin. They are beautiful in their way, brightly webbed patterns of turquoise and gold, glaring red at the hottest point. It’s hard to tell the heat of the land. Sometimes the charred earth looks cool when in fact it is less forgiving than lífelo. Our suits tell us when it is time to find another path.

I stroke the top of the Arcticase, feeling the smooth blue cover beneath my fingers. How absurd it seems to be carrying ice across fire like this. So disrespectful to deny nature her natural course, in order to restore her natural course.

Some days I wonder, as I look at Nyiragongo in the distance, whether we are best to forget. Then I remind myself that is what the religious people once thought, and their complacency destroyed half the planet.

Today feels like the day. I eat my breakfast: airtight dried fish and a sachet of rice which crunches as though raw. Then I relieve myself on the rocks. As I squat, my urine forms a pool, tipping over the edge and down towards the shrubs below. Before it reaches them, it hits a vein of heat and evaporates. My stream of water becomes a stream of steam.

Hoisting my bag onto my shoulder, I pick up the box and find its balance point. It hovers three and a half feet off the ground as I walk, my hand resting on top. With every step I take, I glance down at my feet to see the colour of my skin. Grey for ten steps, a flash of turquoise, then gold. Grey again, and then red. I step to the side and proceed.

It was so cold in the meeting that my skin rose like plucked feathers.

“Your great-grandmother, eh?” Colonal Batabe asked, standing in the centre of the room with his feet wide apart.

“Yes, sir. She was of the Hemba people.”

Batabe nodded as though he knew exactly where that was.

He did not.

When there had been borders, his own people had come from Botswana. It had been one of the last countries to relinquish its territory to the Free Movement of People Act of 2083. Botswana had been fiercely independent, guarding entry with an enthusiasm teetering on rude. Its last president, Seretse Makwala, had made a moving speech:

“Outsiders caused the heartache in Africa. Westerners came and they took what they wanted. They left us with nothing. For over two hundred years we have run their race, handicapped as a one-eyed horse. We raced as hard as we could to catch up. Now, just as we stand on the brink of equality for the descendants of Africa, they come and they take Africa away.”

His words rang loudly in the ears of every generation past, but he was overruled by the youth. The world had become one so quickly. In almost a hundred years, since the dawn of the internet and Berners-Lee’s valiant refusal to capitalise on his invention, people from every corner of the globe began to unite. In between a shared love of cuddly kittens and cult TV memes, humans started to meet with their own humanity. Rights atrocities that would once have gone unreported, now plastered the walls of social media. The European Union’s Maastricht Treaty of 1992 was followed by the African Passport, unveiled in 2016, allowing freedom of movement for citizens within those zones. It would be almost another seven decades before the Wall of Nations, as it had been dubbed, finally crumbled.

“You must be excited to return to the land of your ancestors,” Batabe said, a statement not a question.

“I know nothing of it,” I replied.

I was born believing the entire world to be my inheritance. Every river, mountain and canyon was my home. No one had the right to stop me from wandering at will, and none would ever try, for they were born as free as me. Yet, I had lied a tiny bit. My mother had no photographs or jewellery from her grandmother. Even in those days of the first digital cameras and infant iPhones, our kind were too poor to afford such technology, and too unobtrusive for Westerners to find us worthy of study.

Instead, my mother had three masks which hung on my wall as a child. Two looked as though they were smiling, but the middle one was thick-lipped and toothy. It scared me.

“These come from the region of your long-past,” she had told me. “From what was once the DRC, in the far south-east where it bordered Zambia. These belong to you now. Like our forefathers’ forefathers, we hold no sway with boundaries on a map, but we do hold sway with history. Their blood is our blood, it ties our stories together through one open mouth. The song of our lives rises with a single voice, which you were born to hear.”

I had always tried to sing my own song as clear and sweet as I could, but deep inside I felt as though I missed a drumbeat. Perhaps I might find it in the land of lakes and volcanos.

“It has been eight years since Kivu turned over, following the eruption,” Batabe said. “We concluded our preliminary expedition in May.”

“What were the findings?”

“In short? That it is a mess. Nobody expected the lake to explode. Rwanda in particular took huge steps to extract the methane, running two-thirds of their country’s electricity from it by the time of the disaster. Sadly, Rwanda is a small country, and Kivu is a very large lake. The DRC was neck-deep in conflicts of its own at the time. They had neither the stability nor the investment in infrastructure which would have allowed them to join in the venture. Boom went the lake.”

The volcanic eruption of Nyiragongo had triggered a limnic eruption of Lake Kivu. Almost three and a half million people died in their sleep as a thick blanket of white gas crept up the shoreline and out across the land, hugging the throats of those sleeping on ground mats and low-resting beds.

The levels of gas in the lake had been monitored carefully, yet the ancient volcanic crater belched so swiftly that the warning had not come soon enough. Before an exploration could be mounted, years had to pass. Firstly, the lethal levels of CO2 had to dissipate. Secondly, the insects needed time to repopulate.

When the lake turned over, it not only killed people but all living beings: mammals, birds, fish, lizards, insects alike. Without its fragile ecosystem of ants and grubs, the bodies remained, rotting in the midday sun.

The dead needed to decay before the living could look upon them.

As I walk, I start to see bones.

People lie exactly as they fell. Larvae has stripped some of their flesh, the rest have dried like paper, as though someone has pulled a crumpled cloak over them. No large animals have returned to the region. No wild dogs or big cats to chew over the corpses and move them from their resting places.

I stop when I hear a crunch. My foot has fractured a skull so thickly coated in dust that it is indistinguishable from its surroundings. I swallow my revulsion. I must. There will be many, many more crunches before I reach the shore.

I start to sing to myself as I walk: Shake it, shake it up now. Shake it, shake it up. It’s the latest smash hit by Kofi, but in this desolate place it feels almost like a taunt.

In silence, I continue.

Alpha Team flew me into Gisenyi International Airport six days ago. After the eruption, it was the only airstrip within fifty miles that was still serviceable. Then it was a four mile walk across to Goma, at the northern tip of Lake Kivu.

The problem from there was the giant fissures and veins of liquid rock which had hardened to calluses. It took me longer to walk across Goma than it had to walk to Goma. The Arcticase doesn’t hover well over inclines, so I had to strap it to my back, its weight dragging me down.

My family live in a cool zone, in sector two-five-two-one. Before 2083 it had been a village in Canada, close to the American border. My parents were both scholars who had met in Ottawa, and the night we moved to the sectoral system they held a farewell dinner for the country that had taught them science and how to love.

It has taken me the past six days to acclimatise. My skin is black, but the sun burns. I suck constantly from the straw between my teeth, hooked to a Platypus hydration system on my back. So much extra water makes it necessary for me to relieve myself more often, all the while wiping sweat from my eyes with vintage Nike sweatbands, a gift from a friend at the academy.

When I finally crest a mound of black pumice to see water, its brilliance almost blinds me. During my harsh struggle across hot sand and sharp rock, I never considered such beauty might exist. It is not simply the vibrancy of cobalt against coal, but the wonder of what that water represents. Lake Kivu appears as a soothing Band-Aid across scorched earth.

It takes me a long time to remember that this soothing Band-Aid is as much a threat as a blessing. That those inviting waters once seeped such noxious fumes, suffocating infants and adults in their sleep.

An hour later, I am sitting in a patch of long grass by the water’s edge. I take my Scythe from my backbrace and cut a circle so that I can stare ahead. As the stems are severed, a sliver of smoke twists towards the sky and I apologise.

“You are brave plants,” I say, aloud. “The first to grow after so long. Then here I come, cutting you down. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”

As the sun sets, it dresses the surface of the lake in crimson and gold. A gentle breeze blows shifting shapes across it, a million tiny ripples chasing from one clump of reeds to the next.

I cannot resist.

Touching the button at the back of my neck, I shed Maoplasty like snakeskin.

There is no finer feeling in the world than to stand naked in the face of nature. To feel the last of the evening light warm your womb, the breeze brush against your breast like a sensuous lover.

I take a deep breath and put my toe in the water. It feels cool. Cautiously, I allow my foot to sink in the silt.

Water winds through me, between my thighs and over my face. Turning onto my back, I float for a while, looking up at approaching Night. Although I know those waters to be safe, I cannot help glancing about for slippery wet knots of muscle – nyóka, the serpent.

The silence of the lake disturbs me. At this time there should be a thousand cicadas chorusing, singing to the Ibis and the piebald Kingfishers as they fly home to roost. It saddens me greatly to think that I am perhaps the only creature breathing in this barren, beautiful land. 

“It’s not that I don’t want children,” I lied. “I told you, I’m perfectly happy for you to take a sample down to the gesterium.”

“Lisanga.” Owen pronounced my name with a sigh. “You know how I feel about that. I know we’re a modern family, but some things it’s good to keep traditional.”

I couldn’t take that conversation one more time, so I pretended to pack. I studied Women’s History at college, and I knew this struggle to be never-ending. Whether women have the right to vote, to work, to terminate a pregnancy, and today’s topic of choice: to have a child without giving birth. I have loved Owen since first grade, but every time he opens his mouth on this topic, I just want to put my fist through him.

“Look, all I’m saying is think about it whilst you’re away. Then, when you get back, perhaps we could start trying?”

“If you take a sample to the gesterium, we don’t have to try. We’re guaranteed a healthy, bubbly baby.”

“And what are you going to tell our child when it grows up? ‘I’m sorry sweetie, mummy was too busy carrying her project to carry you as well?’”

“Owen, for a modern man, you can be a fucking Neanderthal sometimes. What I am going to give our child is a role model. A mother who travelled the world, helped save that world, and came home to read bedtime stories. I’m going to show them that wonderful things are possible.”

“Our kid is going to be nothing if not independent,” came his retort.

“You say that as though it’s a bad thing?”

We stared at one another, that flash of anger eventually soothed by love.

As my mind clears, I realise that I can hardly see the shore. Nightfall comes on fast near the equator, six o’clock every day of the year without fail.

Arm over arm, I pull myself back to dry land.

I press my ear to the side of the Arcticase. I don’t know why, but I always expect to hear a heartbeat. A hundred thousand heartbeats. I feel more comfortable with my face against this case than I would with Owen’s face against my belly, though we’re listening for the same sound.

“Good night, little ones,” I say, curling up in the tall grass to float upon a darker lake.

The morning light wakes me, devoid of dawn chorus. Bright gold glitters across the surface of Kivu, calling me back for an early dip. The water holds a chill that was not present the night before.

“Forty-two hours,” I say to myself, dragging the Arcticase to the water’s edge.

I pull the lever which releases the C-shaped clamp. This holds the case to the land, to prevent it floating off or sinking to the depths. Once I can feel that it’s secure, I glance at the thermostrip on the side and record the temperature in the mud with my finger.

“Forty-two hours,” I repeat, wondering what I am going to do with that time.

I’ve brought a Folio with me, onto which I’ve transferred the entirety of Paul Akabeya’s Master of Heaven series. I’m halfway through the first book. It’s enthralling, a sweeping drama set against the space race and man’s natural desire to build empires which inevitably must fall.

Yet I have a lifetime to read Akabeya, and only a short time to explore this strange landscape, more remote to humanity than any distant galaxy.

My eyes are drawn to Nyiragongo.

When I was a child, I used to watch adults blowing smoke rings with their aetherisers. I was convinced that they were creating clouds. That the breath leaving their bodies floated up to the sky, and that is why the clouds have faces, reflecting the features of the people who birthed them.

Now, looking at this conical mound with its gaping O, I realise how misguided I was. There is no doubt in my mind that Nyiragongo is a god. Like his sister, Karisimbi, these are the Titans of old. The giants who hold up the sky, feet rooted in the underworld, heads resting in the heavens. These are the true cloud factories, whose breath girdles the globe.

It is well into the afternoon by the time I reach the foot of this stratovolcano. The height of it terrifies me. I can feel its sulphurous breath against my skin like a panting beast. I reach into my backbrace to remove a meal pack, crunching away on rice, washed down with tepid water.

“Do I get to climb you?” I ask. “Am I welcome, or would you rather I went away?”

I place my hand upon the rocks before me. The web of my fingers glow gold for a moment, fluttering to grey. Believing this to be my answer, I climb.

I am barely a thousand feet off the ground when the sun begins to set. I have less than an hour of light left and I need to decide whether to descend or bury myself against Nyiragongo’s breast for the night.

As I am wondering this, I reach a natural ledge. Beneath, petrified larva rolls down the side of the mountain in thick globules, as though the entire volcano were a melting candle. Those globules are the size of heads, one or two screaming as they fall.

This is the edge of the world, I think to myself. This is Earth a million years from now, when humans cease to walk, and Nature reasserts her rights.

With all the trees reduced to saplings, I have a good view of Kivu from here. Once upon a time, this land bathed in blood. Two-legged hooligans haunted the forests, raping and slaughtering, for what?

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter now.

Victims and perpetrators alike have been purged from this sector.

I feel a soft purr from the earth, as though Nyiragongo approves of my thoughts.

I dream.

The moon is full and I wake on the ledge. It takes me a moment to realise what has woken me. The night is no longer silent. Crickets and cicadoidea rub their hind legs up and down the scale. I hear Congo Owl hoot, his heart-shaped face hovering no more than a moment before me, gliding back into darkness to search for prey.

Saplings have grown to Maasai warriors overnight, tall and stately. It seems impossible to hide in the jungle, as though a thousand eyes watch my every move.

Thinking there is someone at my back, I turn.

There, where the sheer rock guarded my blindside, is a cave.

I stand and take a step towards it, before remembering to glance down. My Maoplasty has peeled away, and I find myself naked. There is no way to tell how hot the rock is, and no protective layer between the heat of the earth and my vulnerable flesh. If I am to continue, I continue on trust.

As I cross the threshold, I feel that warmth again, as though I step inside the mouth of a yawning lion.

Yaka awa, the darkness whispers.

Foot before foot, I do as I am bid.

Yaka awa, many voices whisper.

Here in the heart of the volcano, I return to the beginning of my being. A tarn of molten lava casts myself in shadow against the wall. My shadow-self is tall as the trees, my hair tangled in the blackness above.

Women appear from that blackness, climbing down the sides of the cave like spiders. Old women, their breasts drooping beneath thin cloth, their necks and wrists bound in beads. Even straight, they are crooked.

“Mwana mwasi,” they call softly.

Cloistered within these rocks, their voices reverberate until the very air thrums with words. My skin tingles with the weight of what they have to say, as ancient syllables slip from drooling lips, pooling in my mind.

“I do not understand,” I reply, in the language of my world.

“You understand, daughter,” one of the women speaks.

She comes towards me, straighter than the others. White hair piled high above a face of furrowed leather. Her skin is blacker than my own, so dark I can barely see her features in this light.

“My blood is your blood, my voice, your voice. I opened my mouth and I sang you into being. You were born to hear my song, and it will continue, on and on, until there is no one left to hear.”

In that darkness, everything about her seems familiar, from the touch of her calloused hand to the faint scent-stain of smokehouse eucalyptus.

I discover that I cannot remember the name of my great-grandmother.

Searching my mind, I realise that I never knew it.

I panic.

Sweat-drenched, I open my eyes to a new day.

The trees have shrunk to saplings once again. I can still smell that sweet smoke, as though I have slept the night by a campfire. Collecting my thoughts, I begin my descent. Dreams and delusions, the patterned fabric of this world.

Between the base of the volcano and the ridges of rock which led to the lake, is an open plain. This is truly nobody’s land, where nothing dares grow. Every second step turns red, and I make my way in zigzag fashion, afraid to melt.

Halfway, I feel the ground tremble. It is such a definite sensation, more deliberate than reality gives weight to. As soon as it comes, it is gone. 

I take another few steps and the earth judders.

Falling to my knees, my hands glow tamarillo and I roll until they return to ash.

Glancing up at Nyiragongo, I fancy I see a flood of wet rock slide down its gaping jaws, yet when I blink all is solid.

“Oh, hell no.”

My legs sway beneath me as I stand.

Then it happens.

Eight, nine, maybe ten.

Tiny holes appear in the ground, jets of white steam the height of a pawpaw tree.

I begin to run towards the lake, yet each footfall slows the next.

Yaka awa, I hear them hiss. Yaka awa.

“What?” I call back, turning.

More jets plume to either side of me, and in those broiling mists I see faces form. Women, men, children. They look at me and laugh. Some scream. Others twist as though dancing.

“Who are you?”

Though I know who, with every hard thump of my heart.

Those are the people of this land. The souls who sleep forever beneath its mantle. Boundaries which man built, tore down and drew again, mean nothing to the dead.

Only one line defines us.

I do not sleep tonight.

Kneeling beside Kivu’s shore, I stare across the depths of space reflected in her waters. The sky kisses the earth and all the stars birth twins upon her surface.

It has been more than forty-two hours and the thermostrip glows blue, but I do not care. I do not want to open the case at night. Partly, I want to wait for daylight so that I can watch my babies venture into their new world. Watch their ichthyoid features gulp as they inherit an estate spread over a thousand square miles. Though the greater reason is that I do not want them entering that new world in darkness. How scared they might be; how alone.

As the speckles of light fade, the tail of a shooting star draws a line across both heavens.

I take this as a good omen and make a wish, the words of which I cannot tell you.

“It is time,” I whisper to my children, releasing the catch on the case.

With a hush of air, laced in coils of smoke which hover for a moment before vanishing, I reach in and remove the first tub. Oreochromis Macrochir the label reads: Longfin Tilapia. My mother’s people would once have caught these in abundance, though the gas in the lake meant they grew stunted, unlike those imported from Uganda to the north.

I submerge the tub and wrench the lid as though cutting an umbilical cord.

A hundred tiny fish rise in stunned uncertainty.

Each one is smaller than my little finger, but that does not matter. There is nothing here to eat them. These are the lucky few. The first generation. Who will never know a predator. Who, bar sickness or injury, will live to adulthood. A long, happy life with friends of childhood beside them.

I smile as they collect by the shore, reluctant to venture into deeper water. Like me and my snakes, their minds conjure danger from shadows, even when there is none.

Next come the Redbreast Tilapia, the Ripon Barbel and the Clarias Catfish. There were once twenty-eight recorded species in this lake, but we begin with six, to see what will happen. Another repopulation program has worked well at Lake Nyos, in what was once Cameroon.

I remain, staring at my own reflection, long after the fry have floated away.

The pit of my stomach is a cherry stone. I feel bereft. For three years I have worked towards this moment. My days were an endless cycle of training, talking and exercise. Now it is over, and all I have left to contemplate is what comes next. There was a madness in this land once, and I start to feel as though it has infected me like snail fever.

I should never have swum in those waters. I should never have climbed Nyiragongo.

Now that I have, it feels as though I can never go home.

Home to what?

My mission is finished, my pensionable imbursement awaits, as does my husband, eager to plant a seed in my belly.

How can I tell him that I do not want to be a mother? I never have.

My children are here, in this lake.

Slowly, I remove my knife from its sheath.

It feels heavy in my hand, its edge serrated like tilapia teeth.

I am an only child. If I die, who will be left to hear my ancestors’ song?

Sliding into the water, I roll onto my back and kick away from the shore. I live in a world where the land is like the sky – borderless. Yet still I know that Africa rests beneath me. These were the waters my people drank from, bathed in, defecated and bled into. This is the amniotic fluid of my birth.

A thick ache weighs my arms as warmth reddens the cool waters.

“Come my children, feed.”

My song returns to the land that first gave it life, and will continue forever in every fish in Lake Kivu. Part of me will remain, immortal. I fill the bellies of my babies, who will fill the bellies of birds, and reptiles, and eventually people.

I will feed this nameless land with myself, and it will nourish eternity.