Fearless Genre Warriors

by Steve Lockley

  FEARLESS GENRE WARRIORS

  A Fox Spirit Sampler

  www.foxspirit.co.uk

  Fearless Genre Warriors © Fox Spirit Books

  Edited by Jenny Barber

  All works reprinted with permission of the authors.

  Cover Art copyright © 2018 Vincent Holland-Keen

  http://www.vincenthollandkeen.co.uk

  Internal Art copyright © 2013 Kieran Walsh

  Introduction copyright © 2018 Jenny Barber

  Formatting by handebooks.co.uk

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form in print of electronic formats.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by:

  Fox Spirit Books

  www.foxspirit.co.uk

  adele@foxspirit.co.uk

  Stories © as per Extended Copyright page at rear

  Contents

  Introduction

  Part One FABLES AND FABULATIONS

  The Dragon’s Maw Cheryl Morgan

  Palakainen K. A. Laity

  The Band of Straw and Silver Andrew Reid

  From the Womb of the Land, Our Bones Entwined AJ Fitzwater

  The Itch of Iron, the Pull of the Moon Carol Borden

  Tits Up in Wonderland Chloe Yates

  Fragrance of You Steven Savile

  Kumiho V.C. Linde

  The Ballad of Gilain Sarah Cawkwell

  The Ballad of Gilrain lyrics Sarah Cawkwell, music Adam Broadhurst

  Art is War Alasdair Stuart

  Part Two BEFORE DAWN

  The Alternative La Belle Dame Sans Merci Jan Siegal

  Thandiwe’s Tokoloshe Nick Wood

  Unravel Ren Warom

  The Cillini Tracy Fahey

  Katabasis K T Davies

  Train Tracks W. P. Johnson

  Sharkadelic Ian Whates

  Feeding the Fish Carol Borden

  Antichristine James Bennett

  Lucille Alec McQuay

  Carlos K. A. Laity

  A Very Modern Monster Aliya Whiteley

  Part Three Touch Magic, Pass it On

  You Are Old, Lady Vilma Jan Siegal

  Winter in the Vivarium Tim Major

  Always a Dancer Steve Lockley

  The End of the World Margrét Helgadóttir

  The Holy Hour C. A. Yates

  In the Mouth of the Beast Li Huijia

  Kokuri’s Palace Yukimi Ogawa

  A Change of Heart A Babylon Steel story Gaie Sebold

  Indiana Jones and the Pyramid of Envy Alasdair Stuart

  About the Skulk EDITORS

  AUTHORS

  About the Books Anthologies

  Collections

  ~Fiction

  ~Non-Fiction

  ~Poetry

  Extended Copyright

  Introduction

  It’s a funny thing, short fiction. On the one hand it’s widely agreed that short fiction is the lifeblood of the genre. Any genre. All the genres. Yes, even that one over there hiding behind the bushes. On the other hand… on the other hand there are fewer anthologies being published by mass market publishers and far fewer available in your average high street shop making discoverability of awesome short stories something of a challenge.

  Stories shape the world.

  Stories inspire the world, and given time to get their boots on and travel long enough and far enough to kick people in the brain-pans, stories change the world.

  But to do that, they need to be accessible. They need editors who will love them enough to help put them in their best clothes, and publishers who’ll take them by the hand and introduce them to all the readers at the party.

  Which is why those of us hungry for short fiction are lucky to have a range of alternative venues available – we have the podcasts and online ‘zines who deliver fantastic stories for free; we have the magazines that straddle the lands of digital and dead-tree; but most importantly we have the independent press – plucky small publishers who’ll give us anthologies and single author collections covering both wide themes and the narrowest of niche subjects; and introduce us to the writers we never knew we wanted to swoon over and the stories we never knew we needed to feed us.

  Which brings me nicely to Fox Spirit Books and this rather substantial anthology you’ve downloaded onto your device of choice.

  Fox Spirit Books, and its patron goddess in human form, Aunty Fox (aka the incomparable Adele Wearing) is a publisher with a rocket-launching revolution-starting kind of deep passion for finding and publishing the best and most diverse fiction. It’s the kind of passion that makes every one of us in the Skulk – artists, writers, editors, and readers alike - convinced the world is ours and anything is possible. Fox Spirit is a place where genres are mixed and remixed, where your weirdest works can find a place, where the voices and stories of those who are traditionally shadowed by the mainstream are welcome, where a band of cheerfully enthusiastic fellow Skulk members will raise you up and shout about you, and your work, to any and everyone in range.

  The Skulk is not a cult and Fox Spirit would never ask you to drink the Kool-Aid, but if you follow the path of the fox you’ll find yourself in a place where your voice is heard, where there’s fuel enough to keep a spark of hope burning inside you and space enough for you to share that hope with others.

  And so, Fearless Genre Warriors and its as yet unnamed companion volume.

  Fox Spirit has produced a hefty amount of books in its six years – at time of writing, twelve adult novels, eight novellas, twenty eight anthologies, eight collections (including poetry and genre non-fiction) and five YA novels (and that’s before we get near its Fennec, FoxGloves and Vulpes imprints) – and because we want to share the fiction love, we decided to gather together a selection from (almost) every one of these and put them in two handy samplers for your reading enjoyment.

  The long fiction will get its turn to shine in the next sampler, but here in Fearless Genre Warriors we’re proud to showcase a selection of short fiction, poems, and non-fiction from the Fox Spirit anthologies and collections – twenty six short stories, three poems, and two pieces of non-fiction, with illustrations by Kieran Walsh and cover art by Vincent Holland-Keen. Here you’ll find a wide selection of comedy, horror, fantasy, crime, SF, poetry, and genre commentary – sometimes all in the same piece!

  In Part One: Fables and Fabulations, you’ll find folklore and fairytales told with humour and heart, with ancient gods in far-flung times, ravens and foxes, shamans and sacrifice and earthquake gods, werewolves and faeries and mad science, classic tales seen anew, fiction and reality colliding, bards and dragons and mighty heroes, oh my!

  In Part Two: Before Dawn, you’ll find the tales told in the graveyard hours, of twilight terrors and the pre-dawn dread that comes so close to overwhelming you. There’s tales of death and resurrection, human monsters and monsters of legend, tricksy creatures both fae and other, from desert and hillside and moor, to the depths of space and the deepest sea.

  In Part Three: Touch Magic, Pass It On, you’ll find stories of transformation and transference, of hope and revolution and survival and moving on. Stories where worlds are changed, new homes found, and lives altered for the better.

  Like all things Fox Spirit, this sampler is a collaborative effort and I’m extremely grateful to Adele and all the editors, authors and artists whose generosity and enthusiasm was essential for
putting this epic volume of foxy goodness together. Go Skulk!

  So welcome, beloved reader, to Fearless Genre Warriors – we hope you enjoy the diverse range of fiction and non-fiction collected within, and if you want to read more, don’t forget to check out Fox Spirit’s range of anthologies and collections as listed at the end of this sampler, or visit the Fox Spirit website www.foxspirit.co.uk

  Part One

  FABLES AND

  FABULATIONS

  ‘There have been great societies that did not use the wheel,

  but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.’

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  ‘People think that stories are shaped by people.

  In fact, it’s the other way around.’

  Terry Pratchett

  The Dragon’s Maw

  Cheryl Morgan

  From: The Girl at the End of the World, Volume 2

  Mine is the last voice this universe will ever hear.

  I have recordings, of course. My flagship carries within it the cultural histories of a thousand civilisations. I could urge myself forward with the rousing speeches of the greatest of leaders. I could play stirring martial music from the most warlike of peoples. I could listen instead to the voices of my followers, my friends, my family, now all taken from me. I choose none of these things. I go forward instead accompanied by the roar of a beast that has become dear to me. My flagship is named Lioness, and I go into battle on her as I have always done. I am Ishtar, Queen of Heaven, and I fear no one.

  It was not always thus. Mine is a long life, almost as long as that of the universe itself. In the beginning, when Tiamat, the Dragon of Chaos, gave birth to all things, I was there. When gas clouds gave birth to stars, when stars gave birth to planets, when planets gave birth to oceans, and when oceans gave birth to life, I was there. I was there when life gave birth to thought. I was there when thought gave birth to language. And I was there when language gave birth to civilisation.

  I was there when people first knew to worship me.

  Oh, what tales they told. My loves, my battles, became legendary. Above all I fought against my sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Dark. Death herself was my enemy. What I gave, she took away, to hide from sight and obsess over. She was a collector, my sister. She wanted everything. I only wanted to make things, but she wanted to have them; and have them she did.

  ‘The dead shall outnumber the living.’ That was the threat she made. Everything I created she took, and hoarded. One day, they said, she will bring them back; her army. Where is your collection now, O sister? What remains of the dead? Like everything else, they are torn limb from limb, flesh from bone, membrane from cell, atom from molecule, quark from proton. The dead cannot outnumber the living, because there are no dead any more. There is only me. And I, I AM NOT DEAD.

  Yet.

  No, the dead are not quite all gone. One of them rides with me. Mostly they are gone, because I needed energy. The dead cannot fight for me, not even dead gods. But I can fight with them, with what I make from them. From chaos we came, and to chaos we return. Only one corpse could I not bear to feed to the furnace. Tammuz: heart of my heart, giver of life to my creations.

  We fought, of course. The stories tell of that. Over so many aeons, who would not? Besides, we were gods, it was our function to be everything that mortals might be. Is there a world in which no man has ever cheated on his wife, as mine did? Where no woman has ever coveted her sister’s husband, as mine did? Where no cozened wife ever took revenge? Maybe the universe would have been better if there had been. Maybe it would still exist. But I doubt it; I think it would be lifeless.

  We fought, then, but we loved more, in many different guises. We wore so many masks, on so many worlds. I have forgotten more of them than I remember. The databases remember them, but soon they too will be gone. In the final battle, everything that flies with me will be destroyed.

  It was, inevitably, a matter for philosophers. Would the world we knew grow and learn forever, or would it shrink back into the void from whence it came? So brave, those mortals were, to ask themselves questions that could only be answered over the lifetime of gods. In the end, of course, this end, it has all become clear.

  How long have we been fighting the last battle? How long since the first galaxies began to wink out of existence? How long since we admitted to ourselves that the end was inevitable, that the slow decline was irreversible. Again I cannot remember. It seems like I have been fighting forever, and yet I remember a time when it was not so. Those memories remind me why I fight.

  Who is my enemy? Tiamat, of course. The Dragon of Chaos did not die giving birth. Instead her essence was spread throughout the universe. Part of her lurked at the heart of every galaxy and sat there, dark and brooding, waiting until thermodynamics favoured her once again. And she fed. Bit by bit, star by star, she consumed her children. Then, having eaten a whole galaxy, she sought out other parts of herself, to join together as one once more.

  There she is now, on the screens of the Lioness. This is all that remains of the universe. I cannot see her, of course, Nothing escapes her grip, not even light. The last few clouds of gas spiral helplessly towards her, unable to escape the mouth that has eaten all that there is to eat. Their death agonies illuminate her position. Before long they too will be gone, and there will only be her and me. She has a mouth, and I, I have a weapon.

  I call it a spear, for I wish it to fly straight and true. I call it ‘time’, though truthfully it is far more than that. Over the centuries, Lioness and I have gathered the energies of dead galaxies and gods. I have built engines the like of which have never been known before. So much has been sacrificed to give me the power that I need. And now, it is time to strike.

  When nothing else remains; when I am the only thing that exists outside of the Dragon’s maw, I shall ignite those engines. Lioness will become my spear, and I shall cast her into the very centre of the maelstrom. I have the energy I need, and more. My machines have calculated that carefully for me. With that energy, I shall rip through the very heart of Tiamat. I shall take all that she has eaten, that solid pearl of everything that is the core of her being, and carry it with me to freedom.

  I am Ishtar, Queen of Heaven, and very soon now I shall give birth to a whole new universe.

  Palakainen

  K. A. Laity

  From: Dream Book Unikirja

  He came with raven feathers, or so it seemed to me. He came to woo our daughter. Had the wind whispered her secrets into his ear? For she would not have become the wife of any ordinary man, Kommi my husband made sure of that. Swanlike she was born, swanlike did she grow, with white hands and a graceful neck and eyes that looked unblinking at you. The servants, who all grumbled day and night about their work, would give her the best of the cream, the finest weaving, the sweetest olut. Her brothers and sisters too, who should have been jealous of the attention our little star received, instead protected her, coddled her. Her sisters did the mending rather than let her prick her fingers. Her brothers gathered kindling, which should be her job, carried hay to the cows in winter, rather than let her chap her hands. Swanlike they stayed, white.

  The wind must have carried her sighs to the ears of Kojo’s son. For all her gentle ways, for all her pampering, she dreamed as any child of growing up, of going away. No ordinary husband would be good enough. Kommi had sworn at her birth, when the white shock of hair made us all gasp, sworn that she would be protected, cosseted, loved. No fumbling farmboy would wed this child, no simple smithy get her hand. She was the sweet light of our hearth. And so it has always been, until now.

  Kojonen did not send his son. The youth came of his own accord, much to his father’s surprise. He had already set out on his own, put up his own farmstead, brought his cows to pasture, brewed his own taari. His father would have gladly shared his home, passed the keys to his fine son, passed the wealth. His son only smiled
and declared that he needed his own household, required to see himself a man. And so alone, with only servants, his father kept a lonely home while his son toiled in new fields and ploughed up rough the earth, making his wealth even richer, making folks remark at market, ‘Kojo’s son is his own man. Wealth has not made him afraid to work.’

  It seemed a good sign, when he came calling, seemed a faint squeak of hope that a worthy suitor had arrived. But Kommi would not make it easy, though he knew there was no other, though he thought that Kojo’s son might well make a man worthy of his swan. She was no more keen to his offer, sat by the hearth and said not a word, though the slightest scarlet blush climbed her lanky soft white neck when Kojo’s son came a-calling, came to plead his lover’s suit. But the wind, it must have heard her, when she often, in private, had sighed with longing true for a man who could keep her, guard her love and shelter her downy head.

  So he came to our window, calling out to Kommi loud, ‘Kommi, let me have your daughter! Swanlike, graceful—she’s the one to brighten my poor homestead, to gently hold my tired head when the night is darkest and cold. Say you will give her to me!’ There he was with hair as black and shiny as the raven’s wing and eyes like hardened coal, and I felt a shiver go through me, like a piece of winter ice floating down the springtime river, come from the far north, from the distant lands of Pohjola. But I knew Kommi would not give her, not give up without a trial.