Hub - Issue 34

by Marianne de Pierres / Scott Harrison / Lee Harris / Paul Kane / Andrew Edwards

  Hub

  Issue 34

  24th November 2007

  Editors: Lee Harris, Alasdair Stuart and Trudi Topham.

  Proofreader: Ellen Phillips

  Published by The Right Hand.

  Sponsored by Orbit.

  Issue 33 Contents

  Fiction: The Flag Game by Marianne de Pierres

  Reviews: Torchwood – Complete Season 1, New Writings in the Fantastic, 30 Days of Night

  Feature: Author Profile: Alan Moore

  Our New Website

  Longtime readers of Hub might not have visited our website for some time – after all, many of you get Hub delivered direct to your inbox. Well, our web monkeys have tinkered behind the scenes and upgraded our site to a spanking new Wordpress-based affair. As well as emailed subscriptions you can now subscribe via the magic of RSS (web monkey tells me that this will mean something to the hip and happening kids out there!), and we’ll be publishing commentary and news on the site that won’t necessarily make it into the pages of Hub itself. Well worth a look.

  About Hub

  Every week we publish a piece of short fiction, along with at least one review and sometimes a feature or interview. We can afford to do this largely due to the generosity of our sponsors over at Orbit. If you like what you read here, please consider making a donation over at www.hub-mag.co.uk. We pay our writers, and anything you donate helps us to continue to attract high quality fiction and non-fiction.

  The Flag Game by Marianne de Pierres

  On occasions butterflies swarmed Carmine Island, blown in by the spirit winds during that hot, unsettled spell when summer cavorts like a lively, beautiful woman.

  My first time, I stood in wonder as they engulfed me on the dunes above Bara Beach. A swirl of wings: exotic, dancing petals whisking me inside their kaleidoscope. I stood still, lost in the fluttering, marvelous eccentricity of it all.

  Eventually, they drifted away down to the giant sandcastles that made Bara Beach unique, leaving me curiously bereft. My impulse was to follow but as always, when it came to Bara Beach, I hesitated. In my early days on Carmine I had been warned from visiting there on the understanding that it was a place only for the locals.

  Still not considering myself a local, or wanting to, I decided instead to ask Katrin and Lauren about it, on one of our evenings together on the patio of my beach shack at Glimmer-by-Dark.

  On those evenings the three of us would drink pink champagne and gaze at the sea in its tidal flux. More often than not the wind blew warm and moist from the north wrapping us in its damp, salty cloak.

  Mainlanders blamed the warm northerly for the strange happenings on Carmine, saying it brought the canopy of spores that had settled like a translucent, gauzy canopy over the Island, anchored to the sand by whim or chance.

  Perhaps it did.

  ‘Butterflies signal a fertile year,’ Katrin pronounced with a teasing in her voice that bordered on wistful. She stroked her beloved Lauren’s hair in a restless ‘Katrin’ way.

  Lauren strained to see her, for truly her sight worsened daily now, a legacy of the spores that had cured her terminal illness, only to leave her near blind.

  I had known them a year or more now. While our silences had become more comfortable, our memories ached in shared recollection: the murder of the journalist Charles Mills-Thomas and the gaoling of Lauren’s husband for his part in it; then later, the strange incidence of wealthy Blade Reeves and the kadaicha at the Carmine Ritz - another spore-driven tragedy.

  ‘And the sandcastles on Bara Beach?’ I asked. ‘Is there a connection?’

  ‘You are finally learning, Tinashi. Nothing on Carmine Island is unrelated.’ Her face twisted in cruel amusement. ‘When the butterflies swirl on Bara Breach it's time for The Flag Game. You will be eligible this time.’

  ‘Katrin,’ warned Lauren in an uncommonly stern tone.

  I stared between them.

  Lauren held out her glass in an appealing manner. ‘The sandcastles are spore work, Tinashi? No one knows quite how they remain standing against the tides.’

  I thought of the immense, rose-tinted citadels that stoically endured wind and water. How I yearned to climb their ramparts at low tide and learn their secrets. Like everything on Carmine, the most dangerous things were the most enticing.

  ‘When the butterflies swirl, the locals play a game among the castles. It must be completed before high tide, for no swimmer can survive against the water’s pull.’

  ‘And what does the winner receive?’ I asked, intrigued despite myself.

  Katrin regarded me from underneath her lashes. I saw a flash of cruelty. ‘To outsiders the prize is seen to be a parcel of land but the truth is that the spores decide. They say, one year, they got the winner with child,’ she said.

  ‘How is that possible?’ I allowed scorn in my voice, though my heart pounded.

  ‘On Carmine anything is possible. You should know that by now.’

  Her answer tumbled me: a breaking wave from underneath which I could not catch my breath. I left them, stumbling down the steps of my bungalow and into the darkness of the dunes.

  A child. When mine had been taken from me. Had she guessed my secret I wondered? Did I wear my tragedy on my face? Is that why she delivered her words with the acuity of a sadist?

  I stayed alone with my past on Glimmer Beach until they finished their champagne and strolled home, arms entwined.

  In the ensuing days I avoided their shack and the beach as if denial would make the memory of the evening vanish. But as the butterflies swelled in numbers and Lauren came to see me.

  ‘Have I offended you somehow, Tinashi?’

  So typical of Lauren to seek fault in herself and not in her partner. I made her black tea with honey and cinnamon in my only cup and marveled at how unaffected her sleek, blonde glamour was by the sightlessness behind her dark glasses. Katrin must fix her hair.

  ‘There is little that offends me,’ I lied.

  ‘Strange, she said, ‘you left so abruptly when Katrin spoke of The Flag Game.’ Feeling ahead with one hand, she placed the cup carefully on its saucer.

  I refrained from helping her. She needed her confidence.

  She clapped. ‘So we are still friends. I would so hate to lose you, Tinashi, especially at Festival. You will accompany me tomorrow won’t you?’ She leaned forward, anxious lines creasing her forehead. ‘I have a surprise for Katrin.’

  ‘But I am not permitted on Bara Beach and in The Sapphire Lounge. From the very start...’

  She clapped her hands. ‘Oh that is a nonsense; a ploy to keep the tourists away. You’re one of us now, Tinashi.’

  *

  One of us...

  That night I slept restlessly; Lauren’s words an echo that I could not escape. What did they mean, I wondered, in those wakeful spaces between dreams?

  Sometime before dawn, even the dreams left me, and I could no longer deny the despair I had sought to avoid by coming to Carmine. Louis’ faced drifted before my eyes like a page in water: blurred and sodden. Dead in my arms. My beautiful son. My only child taken by a pain and illness that no doctor could explain.

  Mama, don’t let me die…

  But I did. I was not clever enough to stop it.

  Grief claimed me between dark and dawn. I moaned and uttered shameful sounds: crude noises that should never be witnessed nor remembered. And as their intensity abated I knew that when Lauren asked me to help her again, I would say yes. Forever it would be ‘yes’, until I found a way to assuage my sense of failure.

  *

  When Lauren arrived mid-morning, she wore a cool, white dress revealing the straps of
her bathing costume underneath, and a flush on her cheeks that was excitement, not heat.

  ‘You must wear your costume to play The Game, Tinashi,’ she said.

  I stared at her. ‘You asked me to accompany you to the Festival, not in The Game. The way that Katrin spoke, it sounded dangerous. If you cannot…’

  ‘See? I know – but you will help me Tinashi. You won’t let me down.’ She reached her hand out to me in a gesture of trust.

  Mama, don’t let me die…

  And there it was.

  A puppet to my foolish need for atonement, I donned my bathers and took her arm.

  We walked the long way to Bara Beach and, on Lauren’s insistence, paused above the headland.

  She turned her face to the warm wind. ‘Describe it for me,’ she said.

  I stared down at the sandcastles scattered the length of Bara Beach rising like miniature palaces - work of the mysterious spores, bringing recognizable form to random matter. Although wind and water had blunted turrets and collapsed rampart walls, somehow they survived tidal ebb, soldiers in a perennial last stand. The rocky headlands that buttressed them were cloaked in brilliant splashes of algae.

  ‘The tide is low and the beach is covered with brown weed. Can you smell it?’

  She sniffed. ‘Yes, I can. What of the sandcastles?’

  ‘Worn down I would say. Blunt-edged.’ Somehow I could not impart their beauty or sense of mystery to her. It did not seem right to try when she could only imagine.

  ‘You are a kind one, Tinashi,’ she sighed. ‘Katrin would tell me how beautiful they were, and how much I was missing.’

  I did not reply. It was what I would expect from Katrin.

  Lauren laughed at my silence. ‘Do not think ill of her for it. Cruel is her way, but so is honesty. I cherish that after Quentin’s dissembling. He was sleeping with young Jaella Armagh, you know. I didn’t find out until later. Katrin told me so I would stop visiting him in gaol.’

  Lauren referred to her husband, incarcerated for the murder of the journalist Charles Mills-Edward. ‘I’m sorry, Lauren.’

  ‘Don’t be. I am much happier with Katrin. Her wildness is precious… irresistible.’ She dragged me closer. ‘That’s why I want to do something for her. Something she could not possibly forget.’

  ‘Lauren?’ The intensity of her expression alarmed me. So did her fingers on my wrist. Their grip was neither gentle nor winsome but the clasp of determination and, dare I think it, slight madness. Had the spores that robbed her of her sight spoiled her mind as well?

  ‘Now tell me, Tinashi,’ she urged. ‘Can you see the butterflies?’

  I let my gaze return to the sand castles. Already there were people on the beach setting out flags and ropes for the festival. Snatches of carnival music drifted up to us. I squinted against the glare from the jeweled waves. ‘Yes. I think so. Above the last sandcastle, I can see something like a cloud of smoke.’

  Lauren bit her lip. ‘We will have to be quick Tinashi. The last sandcastle is the most dangerous when the tide comes in. Two years ago the sea took poor Ditter Along. You remember Aloys?’

  Aloys Along. The name bought back that night at the Ritz when the MalconFunk sensation had performed his synthetic rap to the full moon and Blade Reeves had thrown himself from the balcony. ‘Is Ditter his wife?’

  ‘No. His sister. Aloys has had deep ties with Carmine since the poor girl got swept to sea from atop Popo. He will perform today in her memory.’

  Suddenly my doubts outweighed my longings. ‘I don’t think this is a -’

  But Lauren put her fingers to my face, trailing them across my cheek until she found my lips. ‘Don’t let me down, Tinashi. This means more than anything. Anything,’ she implored.

  *

  I led her down the winding, steep sand-path to Bara Beach. People called to her as we threaded between wind-blown tents. She was so loved for her beauty and grace.

  I recognized most of them and their wares. Freddie the Frog, nouveau Earl of Territories, busily poured jugs of his pica-brewed beerwine, setting them out on a pristine, white tablecloth. The blue-blood, Comtesse Vonny Plessis-Belliere, reclined on portable chaise lounge under the haunting bone chimes being strung in lines by Shaka the Island’s Voyant.

  ‘Tinashi! What brings you in for the festival?’

  It took a moment to register the question was for me and not Lauren. I turned to find Inspector Messier standing behind me. The sweat stains under the arms of his white uniform shirt were as dark as old blood and he puffed with the exertion of walking on the sand in polished shoes.

  I hesitated, unsure of what to say him. Our acquaintance hinged on the murder of Charles Mills-Edwards and Blade Reeves’ suicide – neither incident conducive to an exchange of light conversation.

  Lauren rescued me. ‘Is that you Samuel?’ She reached out.

  He took her hands and kissed them. ‘May I say, Lauren Carson, that your beauty nothing less than eternal.’

  She gave a sweet laugh and her cheeks flushed with pleasure. ‘You are too kind, Inspector. But tell us, what brings you here?’

  ‘Festival time has had its problems and The Bureau wants no tragedies this year.’

  ‘I am comforted to hear that,’ she replied.

  Vonny Belliere appeared at Lauren’s elbow wielding a pai and melon-garnished cocktail in one hand and a strip of flowing silk in the other. ‘Lauren, do come and feel these scarves. They are simply exquisite, my darling.’ She drew Lauren away to a nearby stall.

  Messier took the opportunity to lean closer to me. ‘I should warn you, Tinashi, that Professor Wang has returned. He was granted parole just last week. I applied for a stay on his residency but the court dismissed it.’

  I felt a lump obstruct my breathing, remembering Wang’s pleading…

  Let me cut him…you promised I could cut him…

  ‘And the rest?’ I asked.

  ‘Safely incarcerated: Geronimo and Carson have been denied appeal.’

  The lump eased a little. ‘Then why is Wang free?’

  He sighed. ‘The law can be obtuse at times, I’m afraid. His mere desire to cut the journalist’s body up when he was dead - as came out in the trial evidence - was not sufficient to render him a first-degree accomplice. The parole board has allowed him to return to the Island to pursue post-doctoral research. It’s the spores, you know. The world is desperate to know more about them, but frightened to take up internship here for fear of infection by them. If Wang can uncover their secrets then no other scientist will be put at risk.’

  We exchanged a look of understanding - the spores changed everyone who lived on Carmine Island, sometimes in ways they did not even comprehend.

  ‘Thank-you Inspector. I will be careful,’ I said.

  I left him and made my way past the line of fluting bone chimes to the Admission Tent where I paid our entry to The Flag Game to a girl with a bulging forehead and brilliant, aqua eyes. I recognised her from the Realtor’s office.

  ‘You’re still here then?’ said the girl. Her eyes appeared to turn emerald as she spoke - some quirk of refraction in the bright sunlight. ‘Please sign the indemnity clause.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, scrawling my signature. ‘And yes.’

  The girl chewed her gum thoughtfully. ‘Good luck and watch out for that last sandcastle. They call it Popo after a volcano somewhere or other. It’s the one that Ditter got swept from… and you’d better hurry, it will be starting soon. First prize is land on Los Nidos and…whatever else.’ She winked and her eyes became aqua again.

  Whatever else. That thought haunted me as I searched for Lauren. I found her still at the scarf stall. ‘I have paid our entry. Are you - sure?’

  Lauren turned to me in the way nearly sightless people did, with her jaw angled too high, her neck a little stiff. ‘Surer,’ she laughed, knotting a bright rose and emerald strip of silk around her hair like a bandana. ‘Let’s play.’

  *

  Freddie The Frog reca
pped the rules to contestants: locate one of the flags hidden on each sandcastle. First to return with all nine flags would be proclaimed winner.

  ‘N-no l-late entries and assistance on the c-course brings dis-s-squalification. R-remember, l-last one h-home’s a-a d-dead duck!’

  No one laughed.

  I glanced along the starting line while Aloys Along took the microphone and gave a staccato rendition of the ballad ‘One More Kiss, Dear.’ The contestants were all women, middle-aged mostly, excepting for one pretty, young thing wearing only the briefest of scarlet swimwear and transparent reef-walkers on her feet.

  Jaella Aramagh! What was Quentin Carson’s young girlfriend doing entered?

  Lauren trembled. ‘It’s Jaella isn’t it?’

  ‘How did-’

  ‘I can smell her perfume,’ said Lauren. ‘I could smell it on Quentin.’

  And then The Frog dropped his cravat and The Game began.

  Jaella streaked ahead of the rest to the first sandcastle and began to climb its ramparts effortlessly. As Lauren and I reached it base, most others were already halfway up, scouring the many crannies for evidence of a flag. I began, what became the first of hours of instruction to Lauren. ‘Right leg high – there is a ledge that you can step onto. Left hand…’

  ‘TINASHI!’ Katrin’s voice pounded at our backs like a blow from a hammer.

  I turned towards it.

  She stood at the start line, hair wild, arms restrained by the marshals. ‘Damn you, Tinashi, bring her back!’ she shouted.

  ‘Don’t listen to her,’ hissed Lauren. ‘She cannot stop me. Here!’ She brought forth her hand from a crevice and showed the crumpled flag.

  At that moment I realised the extent to which they had drawn me into their lives. I was the third partner, the invisible lover – the fool and the foil. I should have walked away then, left them to their fates, but my own needs towed me forward.

  We repeated the pattern at each sandcastle. While the other contestants ran between castles and climbed quickly, they wasted time searching for the hidden flags. For Lauren and I the walking and climbing was painstaking, but it seemed her sightlessness heightened her other senses, and each time we caught up with the others by finding a flag in a timelier manner.