Holmes Figurehead

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-914595-06-6
Verlag: Parthian Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 296 Seiten

'(An) impressive first collection ... skilfully orchestrated' - Publishers Weekly 'starred' review 'This truly is quality literature of our modern times' - The British Fantasy Society 'To read Carly Holmes is to be enchanted. Luscious, flowing prose that is never afraid to peer into the wild' - Angela Readman Beneath her soft skin covering, my mother was once made of twigs and branches. Sometimes in the autumn I swear there was a gleam of berry in her eye, a sloe-shine peep between the thorny tangle of her lashes. In this debut collection of stories Carly Holmes peers into every corner of the strange fiction genre: from rural gothic through to traditional ghost stories and the uncanny. Mothers turn into trees when the sun goes down; Russian Dolls mourn their missing sisters in rotting houses; men offer sacrifices to the monsters who embody their inner wildness; and murderous demons protect young girls' virginity. Ranging from flash fiction to novelette, these stories are in turn chilling, playful, and melancholy. The bonds of family and of community, both in their fracturing and their healing states, the uneasy relationship between living in the present and yearning for the past, are themes that thread their way through Figurehead. Every tale is rich with landscapes haunted by loss and longing.

Carly Holmes lives and writes on the banks of the river Teifi in west Wales. Her debut novel, The Scrapbook, was shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award, and her prize-winning short prose has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Ambit, The Ghastling, Shadows & Tall Trees Volume 8, Uncertainties and Black Static. Her latest novel, Crow Face, Doll Face, was published in 2023.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Holmes, Carly

Leseproben

MISS LUNA

I got the job because of the cheeky sparkle in my eye and the way I could project my voice so even the people at the very back of a queue could hear my words, clear and immediate as a sheet of paper torn in half right beside their ear. The sparkle I achieved by wiping a clove of garlic across my eyelids, just enough to make my peepers smart and gleam; the vocal projection came from being the youngest of ten children in a family where crying and whining didn’t get you fed.

Despite these attributes I was almost overlooked, so I was told afterwards, because of my slight frame and complete lack of facial hair. I could have been mistaken for a boy ten years younger than my twenty-five years. Rolled into my blanket by the campfire that first night, still dressed in the cape and stiff boots that had made a circus barker of me, still glowing from the Ring Master’s praise for the crowds I’d drawn to the Freak Show tent at a penny a person, I tried to chuckle when the muscled, whiskered trapeze twins jeered at my creamy jaw. They rasped matches across their thickened cheeks and lit cigarettes, grinning above the flaming sticks before flicking them casually away.

You should go and see Miss Luna, one of them said, jerking his head towards a tiny wagon resting beside the tiger cage. See if she’ll gift you some of her trimmings. She’s got more than enough to share.

The laughter rolled over and past me, gathering speed until it reached the boundaries of the field and forced its way through the hedges. The sound slammed caravan windows closed and flattened the ears of the dusty lions who paced and spat every waking moment of their sorry lives. But I hadn’t been raised the youngest, weakest child of ten without learning the value of shrugging off insults as if they didn’t sting. I matched their laughter with my own, hurling it higher and further than theirs could ever travel. The campfire keeled over and the Ring Master, sealed behind plush walls half a mile away, groaned and jerked in his sleep.

In the sudden smoky darkness we all settled into silence and the moon slipped her blanket of cloud and raced us to dawn.

Miss Luna was bathing in the river with the elephants the first time I saw her. Her beard, more black than brown, spilled from her lips in a torrent and ended at her navel in a delicate froth. Almost a ringlet, that pointed tip that twisted around her belly button; almost girlish. I wanted to plunge my fists into it and wind it around my palms, feel it slide over and between my fingers as I parted it to reach the hidden breasts.

She turned and saw me, took in my open mouth and riveted stare. I couldn’t read her expression behind the veil of hair, but she flinched a shoulder up to her chin and waded away, offering only her back and buttocks to my gaze. I would have called out, begged her to turn around, but then one of the elephants trumpeted mud-wallowing ecstasy and grasped her around the waist with its trunk, swinging her high into the air and onto its back. I stood and clapped as she tumbled for balance on that broad, rough platform and chided the creature lovingly, peeking at me as she finally settled herself, cross-legged.

The breeze at tree-top height fanned the beard away from her body and her nipples rose like cherry flags from the pale cage of her ribs. I fell to my knees on the muddy bank, hands pressed to my heart to keep it in my chest.

I went to her wagon late that night, after the circus had finished its last show and my duties were complete. The trapeze brothers, hunched with the lion tamer around the campfire, called and whistled after me. Ask her for a pair of heels while you’re there. Raise you up a little, stripling. I ignored them and tapped on her rotted door gently, easing cowslips from the pocket of my trousers while I waited.

Her eyes, when she opened the door just enough to look out, were slits of suspicion and fear. She saw the cowslips before she saw me, thrust as they were with such eagerness into her face. She spluttered and spat petals but took the bruised bouquet, sliding a thin arm across the threshold separating us. Thank you, she whispered. I had no breath to answer her, my knees rattled in their sockets. We both stood and waited a moment, me half-leaning against the wagon to stay upright. I tried to see past her into the scented dark of her home, wishing myself inside, and then she said thank you again and turned away. The door creaked back into its frame and I heard her sigh.

I walked back to the campfire to gather up my blanket and tin mug and then returned to her wagon. I spread my blanket on the ground beneath her window and lowered myself so that I lay fully stretched on my back, arms across my chest. On guard and close enough to hear each minute scatter of dust loosen from the floorboards and drift down onto the earth beside me as she trod the narrow safety of her home. The phases of her insomnia rode through my dreams with rocking horse rhythm, so that I woke whenever she paused, and only slept again when her feet resumed pressing miles into the worn wood.

That’s how our courtship began: the traditional way, with flowers and sleeplessness and unspeaking acts of tenderness.

My mornings peaked to joy when she stroked back the curtain at her window and leaned out to take my mug, returning it to me brimming and bitter with coffee. I’d sit with my back against the wheel of her wagon, blinking into the sharp dawn light, sip-wincing as I listened to her brush through her hair and beard and splash water at her bowl. Sometimes she hummed to herself or murmured to the threadbare tigers who guarded the far side of her wagon almost as well as I guarded the entrance. Other times, when the nights had been vast and she’d paced blisters onto her heels, she muttered words I could never quite decipher but nevertheless understood as sounds of sadness.

After she’d dressed she opened her door and joined me outside, and the sight of her drove a hook into my throat so that my pulse leapt and flailed and my voice was more gasp than greeting. I think she found my speechless boggling more amusing than anything else, but I couldn’t be certain because her lips were hidden and she rarely spoke to me. Side by side on the grass, our legs and arms close enough to set my skin on fire, she watched the circus come to life around us while I watched her. In the sunshine her beard would suddenly spark and ripple like light glinting off black ice on a lake’s surface; threads of ruddy hair writhing through that depthless dark. I longed to plunge my hands into it and draw it over my face, into my mouth. Wear it like a mask as I kissed her.

Every bustling moment that drew us into the day drew her a little more away from me, so that by the time breakfast sizzled in the pan over the fire and the Ring Master’s shadow appeared at the edge of the field she was pure ‘Miss Luna The Bearded Lady!’. After she’d eaten she shrugged herself into her role as effortlessly as she shrugged off her dress, striding in her flimsy slip towards the tent that would be her world for as long as there were paying crowds. Wolf-whistles mocked her across the field but if she understood the insult she didn’t react by as much as a stumble or a scowl. It was I who spun and dared the whistler to pucker up once more so I could plant my fist into the insolent sound and smear it across their face.

Despite the greater reveal with her semi-nakedness, that delicate slide of bone beneath skin and the shadow between her thighs, this woman was much less knowable than the Luna who lay or fidgeted above me every night. I hated to watch her become strange as she walked away. I hated calling the crowds to gather round, hated tempting them to peep through the tent flaps for a single titillating glimpse before they reeled away in delighted revulsion to call their friends over.

When they’d handed me their penny they were allowed in past the entrance, into the gloomy lair of The Bearded Lady, to spend as long as they liked watching her recline on a chaise longue and comb through her beard with her fingers, plaiting its length and teasing glass beads through the silken ropes. She shifted position regularly, playing the punters with sly awareness; crossing her legs slowly and then taking her beard in her fist and tugging it, hard and fast, so that their desire collided with their disgust and they left the tent abruptly, uncomfortable and hot.

After the bell had been sounded for the show in the Big Top the thrust and chatter of the crowds ebbed away into the gloaming, chasing the glitter and roar of the main spectacle like dizzy moths. This was my evening’s peak towards joy: my patrol around the side-show tents; ushering stragglers, tying flaps closed, collecting paper twists of chestnuts from the ground to save for our supper. Circling Luna in ever tighter loops until she finally stood framed against the canvas triangle of her working day and I rushed to her side, coat outstretched to drape around her shoulders and joy an explosion inside my head so that my eyeballs bulged with the force of it. ...