Best of British Fantasy 2018

by Jared Shurin

  The rattling chain caused her father to turn. “Work, child. Work and forget.”

  “And then what, Father?”

  “Then you’ll be free.”

  She stood up next to him, elbow to elbow. A horse shoe glowed in the flames. When her father opened the farrier’s tongs she put her hand in the fire, grabbed the horse shoe with her fingers and carried it in her steaming hands to the anvil, where the sparks flew under his hammer. Her father turned his face towards her and smiled.

  That evening, after Alva’s father had left her and as the setting sun bled the sky red, the pipit flew in through the door, landed in her lap and dropped a single stalk of moss in her palm.

  “Thank you, pipit. How beautiful?”

  The pipit chirped at length. She listened to every note, trying to fit them against an ever-eluding pattern.

  “I am afraid I can’t understand you, pipit. I am afraid I will never drink from the stream again. I am afraid I will never see the forest awaken again. I am afraid... Yes, I am afraid.”

  Again the pipit chirped, hopped around and flapped its wings once.

  “To fly? I wish. But look, I can’t even walk from here.” Alva stretched her hand through the open door, away from the forge. Her fingers turned blue instantly and when she knocked her hand against the door frame, her nails shattered and clinked to the ground where they melted from the heat of the forge.

  The pipit flew up, pecked the drop on her forehead and landed back inside her cold hand, where it rested down and fluffed up its feathers as if to warm her.

  “It’s of no use,” she said as she lifted the pipit up and held it against her cheek. And with that the pipit took to the air and flew towards the forest.

  The stalk of moss in her hand, she kissed it gently and inhaled the smell of earth deep, deep, deep inside her lungs. “You will live here now, with me,” she whispered and poured some water into her mug. “But do not worry, I will hide you from him.” And she stood the stalk with its roots in the water and pushed the mug into the shadows of a nook where one of the wooden beams entered the ceiling. Then she fed the fire, so as not to freeze during the night, and rolled her mat out on the floor. But as she felt herself drift off, she sat up and spoke towards the stalk of moss in the nook. “You must tell me if you’re not happy here. Pipit will come for you. I could not bear for you to be unhappy.”

  The wind knocked branches together, rustled through dead leaves on the ground. A shadow fell across her dreaming eyelids as the earthy smell of fungi flowed through her nose on the crest of her sleepy breaths. Never before had Alva felt cold in the forest, never before had the ground felt so hard, or the heart so empty.

  A sudden roar and burst of heat made her wake. In front of her eyes a thousand tiny green dragons furled and unfurled, frayed wings and snouts stretching and folding. “He’s not an evil man, child. It is just what love does to some people.”

  Alva sat up and shuffled backwards until the chain clanked to a stop. The old woman was feeding the fire with pine cones out of a woven basket as big and round as Alva’s wash tub. The fire crackled and popped with greed, as it consumed fistful after fistful of cones.

  “Who are you?” asked Alva.

  The old woman’s joints creaked when she turned and peered at her with her rippling blue eyes. “Tonight, I am your guest, child,” she replied and pointed upwards, towards the nook by the beam. “Now, you must move closer to the fire, or you won’t be long for this world.”

  “The stalk of moss?”

  “Is a part of me…”

  “…as I am a part of you,” whispered Alva. “As you are a part of me?”

  The old woman nodded and tugged a patch of moss from her hair, large enough to make a rug to sit on in front of the fire. She grabbed Alva by her arms and carried her stiff body closer to the heat. And there they sat, side by side, staring into the dancing flames. Soon Alva’s hair began to thaw and water dripped onto the moss. At the same time, little bubbles of damp began to boil on the surface of the old woman’s earth-coat and to rise in tendrils of steam. Alva followed their journey upwards with her eyes. “I will never see the mists of dawn rise from the forest path again,” she said.

  “What rot you talk, child. Why ever would you not?”

  Alva lowered her head. Her legs had sunk deep into the moss rug and her bones no longer ached from the hard floor. “He fettered my ankle.”

  The old woman raised her foot as if to smash the cuff with her lichen-covered rock-boot. Alva closed her eyes. Would her leg be crushed? But all she heard was a clink as the lock snapped open.

  “See that, child. The iron remembers the rock.”

  “Because it is a part of me...” whispered Alva.

  “As I am a part of you, child.”

  Alva traced the rugged texture of the old woman’s skin with her fingers – rough like the bark on the fir; she patted the moss flowing from the old woman’s head – soft like the forest floor; she caught the drop falling from the old woman’s eyes – cool and fresh like the stream. Alva rested her head on the woman’s shoulder, the earth of her coat forming around her cheek, her own hair mingling with the moss hair. “Mother?”

  The old woman nodded and smiled. “Of course, child. Of course.” And they were as one, before the flames.

  “Of moss and moon were you conceived, child, of dew and dawn were you born, to a man wandering lost in the forest, who laid down to sleep under the branches of a fir. The mist weaved in and out between the trunks and the moon shone bright as day in the night sky as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  “I waited, before I lay down next to him. Such strong arms he had, and so restful he lay on the moss. You must understand, it was my time to have a child and he was not unwilling.

  “And I tried to live with him. Under a roof, between walls. Wearing frocks and sleeping on a straw mattress. Yes, I tried. I did try, child. But every day, at the hour before dawn, I would find myself wandering naked and barefoot through the forest, slipping into tree trunks, running down the mountain waterfall, joining the dawn chorus and sliding up the first rays of the sun. Always with you in my arms, suckling sap from my breasts.

  “But after you were born I began to mulch, so much faster than him, and I realised that my cycle would end many seasons before his. How he raged when I told him I could not stay.”

  “Why could you not stay, Mother?”

  “He fears the cycle so.”

  “And what did he do?”

  “He took the sledge hammer and went off to the mountain for three days and three nights. When he returned his skin was as black as a moonless night and he sat on the bench outside the forge for another three days and three nights, turning over rocks in his hand, chipping away at them. Finally, he disappeared into the forge for another three days and three nights.”

  “And what then, mother?”

  “He gave me this to wear.” She touched the crystal drop on Alva’s forehead.

  Alva shuddered and lowered her head. “What did you do?”

  “I refused.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this stone, although it may look like a dew drop, is a stone that dripped into being over slow centuries in icy darkness under the watch of the sleeping rock, until the moment it was hacked from the ceiling of the great mountain hall by a man with a craving for possession. Its sole purpose is to bind and to blind.” With her gnarled finger she touched the spot in the middle of her forehead where the drop would have hung. “To mulch is to give life, child.”

  “I no longer understand pipit,” said Alva and looked down at her hands.

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “I tried to hack it off, Mother.”

  “A dew drop will dangle and fall, child, whereas a drip-stone will fuse and cling.”

  The flames rose with a roar as the door flew open behind them and let in a cold gust of wind. The candle flames in the chandelier above flickered and died, leaving wisps of smoke in their stead. “I t
hought it was you I could smell, old Metsa.”

  “Father...”

  “Be quiet, child.” Broad and tall he stood, pushing the door frame with his hands as if trying to stop it from clamping him.

  “Dear old harrowed Rufus. Come sit with us by the fire.”

  “Do not try to bind me with your magic, Metsa. Child, what has she done to you?”

  “She unfettered me and comforted me, Father.”

  He glanced down at her foot and the steel cuff gaping open next to it. “Told you stories, did she?”

  “Yes.”

  “A story is one thing, the truth is another,” he said.

  “The truth, Rufus, shapes itself to the person who does the telling. Now, come! Sit!” Metsa ripped another slab of moss from her hair and placed it to the other side of Alva.

  Rufus’ hands dropped from the door frame and hung along his sides. He stared, from the old woman to the fire and back to the old woman. “I’ve a mind to see you burn, vixen.” But the force had left his voice.

  “By all means, turn me to ash, Rufus. By dawn your forge will be a mound of planks rotting beneath moss and fern. Now, sit. I do not have much time.”

  Beside her Alva felt her father’s body sink into the moss, heavy, heavy, heavy. And for a while they sat silent in the night, letting the flames soothe them. Each time her father sighed heavily into the fire, a flame sprang back into life for a flicker of a moment. Alva reached out her hand to let the fern fronds on her mother’s skirt curl around her fingers. And as the moss hair crawled down her mother’s neck, a part of it crawled onto Alva’s shoulder where it continued to grow, as if it were her own. On her other side, her father’s hand, rough and large as a baker’s paddle, reached for Alva’s. But he let go at first touch, as if struck by an adder.

  “You’re cold, child.”

  “Yes, always, Father.”

  “I am afraid...” he said. “I was afraid...” And he cupped his face in his hands.

  Metsa reached her arm around Alva and placed her twiggy hand on his neck. “You see, Rufus, that I am no longer in bloom. My bones have hardened and my flesh has softened. I will go now and I will take Alva with me.”

  “But she will die if you take her,” he said.

  “Perhaps I do not mind so much, Father.”

  “What rot!” said the old woman as she turned to Alva and lifted the braid clean off her head. The skin on her forehead had healed smooth. Only one strand of the healing moss had taken root just below her hair line. Metsa touched the strand gently with her fingertip “...as I am a part of you.”

  Alva’s eyes brightened and she smiled. “Mother, I can hear the wind. It’s telling us to rush, rush, rush. We must hurry. And the grass sings that it will carry us. Oh, the stars, the stars say to follow them to the stream, and the stream... I cannot hear so clearly yet.”

  “The wind is always rushing. But perhaps it is time for us to go.”

  Rufus stared at the braided silver chain in Metsa’s hands. “But I followed the ritual: ‘Reaped from rock, forged to fuse, for love to last, through ice and flames’. You can’t just lift it off.”

  “For love to last, through ice and flames, did you say?” asks Metsa.

  “Yes.”

  “And did the love last?”

  “No, I lost it.” he said, and frowned at Alva, who could meet his eyes only briefly before looking down at her fingers that were now glowing pink in the heat. Then he looked into Metsa’s blue eyes, where the rippling stream began to flow backwards through time until he found himself lying on the moss under a tree with a woman whose skin shone under the moonlight, whose hair fell over his cheeks like a silver rain and whose hollow back echoed with the wing-flaps of bats, the rustling of leaves and the purling of water. “Yes,” he said, “it did last.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, and smiled. Then she held up the silver braid for him to see. The metal glimmered in the fire and the drip-stone dangled back and forth. “You forged this for me, Rufus and not for our child.”

  They left him sitting by the fire as they walked out of the forge. Mother and daughter, hand in hand, down the lane, past the meadow and into the forest. Alva filled her lungs with the night air and opened her chest to the stars. The pre-dawn hour flowed inside her veins, telling her legs to dance across the moss. The tall trees, the roosting birds, the webs strung up for prey, the hoots of the owl, even the putrid mushrooms and the fox that had just caught the rabbit, all of it hers. It was only when she got to the stream that she noticed she’d let go of her mother’s hand. Alva rushed back down the path and found her hobbling along, leaning heavily on a cane.

  “Why so slow, Mother?”

  “Because you are so fast.”

  “You are moulting earth, Mother?”

  “Help me to the stream, child. There’s a tree there, with low sloping branches.”

  “Yes, I’ve danced with it. It is where pipit lives with his wife.”

  “It is where your father fell asleep on the moss fifteen years ago.”

  “A good place to visit, Mother.”

  By the time they reached the stream, the sky shone orange and red with the birth of a new day. Alva helped her mother sit down on the ground. They rested their backs against the tree trunk, wrapped the low-hanging branches around them like shawls, and Metsa smoothed her fern skirt over their legs. The moss of Metsa’s hair flowed down the tree trunk and her skirt began to spread across the ground until the bank of the stream was covered in a carpet of ferns. The tree trunk seemed to become one with Metsa’s brown craggy skin, while the toad stool buttons of her coat dotted themselves in a circle around the roots of the tree.

  “You look as if you are taking root, Mother.”

  “You could say that.”

  “But how will you rise again?” asked Alva.

  “I will not rise again, child.”

  “Are you dying?”

  “No, I’m giving life, child. For as long as the butterflies flutter to the chickweed, for as long as the pine cones fall and take seed. For as long as you live, my child.”

  “As you are of me.”

  “As I am of you.”

  “Will I too find a man in the moss, Mother?”

  “That I cannot say. You must walk your own path.” Metsa’s words were now just creaks in the wind and when Alva turned to look at her mother; her eyes were two tiny puddles of water gathered in hollows in the bark, her hands had turned into gnarled roots stretching their fingers across the ground until the fingertips dug into the moss and where she’d held the braid of silver, a single snowdrop grew. Alva touched the head of the flower; cold and smooth.

  “I will not pick you,” Alva whispered. “You have already been picked once.” She bent over the flower, towards the tree and kissed the bark. “Sleep well, Mother.”

  “The end, Alva, is no different to the beginning,” replied the wind.

  Back at the forge her father still lay in front of the dying fire. On hearing her footsteps, he rose and took a step towards her. Then his chin sank to his chest. “Why did you come back to me, child?”

  “I will come back to you, Father, as long as you permit me to leave,” she said.

  He opened his arms to receive her. “I won’t keep you, child.”

  We Can Make Something Grow Between the Mushrooms and the Snow

  Kirsty Logan

  The Mushroom House

  Eco-friendly and ripe for development, this highly unusual dwelling will make the perfect home for the right occupants. Buyer be aware that house is set on a bed of mushrooms with most of the organism below the soil surface, providing a sturdy and constantly growing base for the structure. The organism’s above-surface aspect forms the walls and roof. Three public rooms, two bedrooms, family bathroom – though these will expand as the organism grows. Damp proofing recommended.

  Richard’s notes: Three seconds in this house, and I feel my body pulse fertile as earth. It’s perfection. We can have children here, I know it. Three, f
our – eight, ten. As many as we want, no effort at all. What can I say? It’s a house made of sodding mushrooms, and I bloody well love it! I really can’t see a single problem. Where can I sign?

  Carolyn’s notes: This is not a house. It’s a pit of rot. The walls are grey and spongy and everything stinks of decomposition. My feet are mired in dirt. Every time I breathe I feel I’m inhaling spores, invisible things that will wriggle and burrow and grow inside me. I could never work in a place like this. I need space and quiet, cold and clarity. This grimy, mildewed house is the opposite of that. How quickly can I leave?

  The Bluebell House

  This charming and unique cottage is situated in the centre of a bluebell wood. Previous owner was a witch, but the house has been professionally cleaned with bleach and appropriate rituals. Bijou, but still with all the necessities. Big enough for a family, assuming the family is one person, or multiple people who are very small. Living room, two bedrooms, outdoor bathroom. Good-sized kitchen, particularly the oven.

  Richard’s notes: Carolyn wouldn’t take the mushroom house, even though she got pregnant right after we went there – I knew it was a fertile place! I’d happily have stayed there. But hey, marriage is about compromise. It’s creepy to me that a witch lived here. Cast her weird spells and curses, thought her nasty thoughts. For all we know, she cooked stolen children in that oven. The estate agent didn’t say that, but I’ve read the stories. Still, perhaps bringing a child here would be a good thing. Perhaps it would cleanse it. I mean, we’re certainly not going to put any children in the oven! I think we could make a good go of it here.

  Carolyn’s notes: The flowers on the ground here are thick as dust. The second I got near the house, I was choking on pollen. But I’m trying. I even brought my research books with me to see if I could do some work, just as a test. He goes on whether or not he likes the place, but for me it’s more complicated than that. If I can’t work, I can’t earn, and we’ll lose whatever house we’re in. I left him talking to the estate agent and tried to work. Nothing came. I can’t think. Can’t breathe. The pollen is inside me.