Sudden Traveler
Page 9
Live That You May Live
My daughter wakes in the night. Mummy, she calls, there’s a bird! There’s a bird in my bed!
I go into her room, switch on the bluish night light. She is standing up, holding the sheet above her head. Mummy, she says, the bird was flapping on my pillow. It was just a dream, I tell her. Lie down, go back to sleep. But Mummy, she says, its wing was on my face. Oh, that was just the blanket. No, Mummy, no. There’s a bird. It was winding round my neck. It was trying to fly me.
Together we search behind the pillow. We look through her hair—tarnish-colored, wild from its double crown—and under her small, bare feet. We unbutton her pajamas, down the soft wall of her chest. Just a dream, I tell her. Lie down, go back to sleep. She sits and thinks for a moment. There’s a dream and a bird in my bed, she says. She holds a finger to her lips. Shhh, Mummy, don’t wake them. She settles on her side, feet splayed like a mermaid’s tail, archer arms, her bow finger touching the wood’s dark veneer. Childish. Mythic. I kneel and stroke her back, tell her she is safe, tell her I am here. Her eyes are bright and open. My chased and searching girl. She is already quarry, already hunting reason, lost between imagined worlds.
So the artists make us. So the storytellers promise.
But I made her, in a womb once cut apart, stoned, and sewed. Cells and strings and hope. I made her bed—eight bolts, twelve screws, five panels of false mahogany—foolproof for skill-less artisans, unbreakable when she jumps. Nails, dovetails, glue. Mummy, she says, tell me a story, about birds and dreams and me. Hush, I say. Close your eyes, sleep. Tell me a story, Mummy, but only say what’s true. The flicker of her old-gold lashes. A twitching foot. The rustling sheet. Then she is still and quiet. What shall I say?
Once there was a girl.
One night, when she was sleeping, birds came to take her. They were creatures of extraordinary plumage, white as fire, with beads of blood for eyes, and long necks that wound around each other. They came as if from nowhere, on creaking, muscled wings, calling out across the skies until they found her.
They lifted her bed upon their shoulders, bore it like a carriage from the house, and flew her up into the sky. They flew her far from home. All through the night her bed was towed. Up, over the little island and the great, cold roof of Europe. Over lands of men and commerce, where wars raged. Over lands of women, who wept and loved without hesitation. Over the smoke of poor villages and smoldering cities, valleys of wild red flowers, the longing sea.
They flew her along the withers of black mountains and down mirrored rivers, through great falling doorways of water, past empty palaces and earth-filled fountains, stone salons of fate and time. They flew her past the undecided moon.
She did not know where they would take her.
When they arced down, their wings beat sheets of cloud. Their beaks tore the shroud of night and let the sunlight enter. They came to ground on black webbed feet, the hot engines of their breasts cooling, landing the girl in places she could never have imagined. In raised and ropeless towers, shadowlands, broken reefs and windless deserts. In scented gardens and forcing houses, the lair of dragons, witches’ caves. They set her gently into stiff schoolgirl shoes, green silk gowns and glass-edged heels, loaned from other women’s wardrobes. They landed her into soldiers’ boots, and baskets of fish carried by grandmothers. Into beauty, secrets and knowledge. Into the theater of desire, where she saw the art of painted faces, lust’s brokerage, holding fire inside the mouth and hand. Into the arms of unhearted men, and sick and ardent suitors, into the poet’s hand, into love’s abandoned chances.
They took her to the place where queens are made, from murderous ends, from iron tides, sacrifice, fury, tinder, powder, destructed elements, no materials known to man. The birds’ feathers burned pale as fire. Her little bed was gone.
The birds left her there. They raised their wings, lifted their heavy bodies in the air, and, red-eyed, calling to each other, they flew on.
She called for her mother to come. She waited hours, days. She split her heart open and held it like two bowls to catch her tears. She drank the rain. She ate the snow. She watched the stars spin overhead, coveted as jewels, ruthless as choices. Then she lay down, curled warm inside her suffering. When she woke, she tried to find her way back home.
She walked. She ran. She rode the rumps of bony cows and breaching whales. She wove shoes from bark and wicker. She stole saucepans, coats, and candles. She sold her hair to pay for bread. She followed the red throne of the setting sun.
On the way she slept in other beds. Beds left empty. Beds full of water. Beds made of timber, bone, and silver. Beds carved from the forest’s heart, hardwood that ballasted slaves, that glossed the emperor’s table, built fortune’s ports, drew coins slowly through its sap. Beds heavy as ice mantles, ordered for courtesans to serve the wealth of love’s needs, cut by desire’s machines. Beds watched over by longing crowds and the creatures of the sea. Beds in which she learned to read. In which she conducted passion, rode lovers like falling trees, tasted rivers of seed, broke open others’ hearts, was broken, bound, was owned as she was free. Beds where she was all her selves and none.
When she was alone again, she slept naked under roofless stars, and in ocean rooms. In salted heavens, libraries, frozen doorways, in grass forms on the moors. She slept between the blue, spilled hearts of lakes, and on the great, hot breasts of resting swans, inside the belly of monsters, the very eye of the moon. She saw light emptying and filling in the called-out skies. She remembered flying. She looked for the birds, but they were gone.
She walked. She ran. She joined the herds; she swam with shoals. She caught eels and quartered them. She drank wine and milk and milkless pauper’s tea. She learned to count money, learned to speak in tongues. She painted mountains, mended torn hems and nets, thatched, mapped waterways. She left suitcases on the road. She forged papers. She crossed borders and crossed borders and crossed borders, hoping to find where she was going. She took the name of saints, hope, sorrow, ruin, all her names, chosen, every one. She took titles, husbands, brides, collected rings, memories of peat and silt and hurt, carried lanterns, stone boats, blessings, coffins.
She burned everything. Forgot the names of enemies. Forgot the name of her mother. She drew no face in the river. She believed only in living, believed in every breath, except the last. She did not find her home, though she had tirelessly traveled. She knew that she was made of roads; she knew moving was her spirit.
And so she lay in one last bed, unbreakable as death, and closed her eyes. And in her hand, plucked from the ashes, she held a feather.
Mummy, my daughter whispers. Tell me. But she is already sleeping. I draw the blanket up, turn out the light and close the door. She is another story, not this story. Not the archer, or the mermaid’s foot, the queen or consul’s wife, mistress, maker of peace or moons, mother of children, siren, widow, sign. She is not mine. She is of what I cannot know. Unmade. Ready. The birds are coming. They will wind her forward, every night. I will be old, and wakeful, my body too weak to build anything, mother to the daughter of time. They are coming on white, definite wings.
Acknowledgments and Thanks
Versions of these stories have been published or recorded by the following:
“Who Pays?”—T magazine (the New York Times), and T24, with Turkish translation by Aydin Mehmet Ali and Buğu M. Rıza
“Orton”—The Amorist magazine
“Sudden Traveller”—Audible Original’s Bard: The Short Story Collection, the BBC and Comma Press
“Live That You May Live” (previously “The Swan and the Courtesan”)—Sotheby’s
Thank you to Peter Hobbs, Kate Nintzel at Custom House, and Lee Brackstone at Faber & Faber for editing work, to Silvia Crompton for copy-editing, and to Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Damon Galgut, Andrew Miller, Jon McGregor, Rowan Pelling, Belinda Bamber, Tracy Bohan, Michael Miller, Lila Azam Zanganeh, Alex Bowler, and Jane Kotapish for critical reading. The following peo
ple provided fantastic and generous assistance with research: Richard Thwaites, Jarred McGinnis, Metin Myumyun, Hamit and Necmettin Sert.
I am extremely grateful to the Royal Literary Fund for giving me a grant in 2017.
To those not already mentioned, who offered practical and creative support, love, and kindness over the last few years—Anthony, Jonathan, and Sally Hall, Fiona Renkin, Johanna Forster, Rebecca Watts, Eimear McBride, Naomi Wood, Imogen Cloet, Soyokaze Japanese, Norwich Montessori School, NR2 Supper Club and Blackbirds parents, Erik Rosenwood, Miss K. Stanley, Pete, and Rowan again—THANK YOU.
To Hamit, teşekkür ederim, canım.
And Loy, my inspiring little traveler.
And Mum, you are in every page.
About the Author
SARAH HALL was born in Cumbria in 1974. She is the prizewinning author of five novels—Haweswater, The Electric Michelangelo, Daughters of the North, How to Paint a Dead Man, and The Wolf Border—as well as two short-story collections. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award, the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, and the BBC National Short Story Award, among others.
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By the Same Author
HAWESWATER
THE ELECTRIC MICHELANGELO
THE CARHULLAN ARMY
HOW TO PAINT A DEAD MAN
THE BEAUTIFUL INDIFFERENCE
THE WOLF BORDER
MADAME ZERO
as co-editor
SEX AND DEATH
Copyright
Quotation here from Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Penguign Group, 1974, p. 131 copyright © 1961, 1969; quotation here: Micahel Meller Literary Agency for an extract from The Essential Rumi, HarperCollins Publishers, 1995, copyright © 1995 by Coleman Barks. Reproduced with permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SUDDEN TRAVELER. Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Hall. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published by Faber & Faber in 2019.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover Photograph © Lacey/Trunk Archive
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-295924-9
Version 09132019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-295922-5
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