Stories of Hope Read online

  Stories of Hope

  An Aussie Speculative Fiction Charity Anthology

  All proceeds from this anthology will be distributed to the WWF Bushfire Relief Fund and Red Cross.

  Published by Deadset Press in 2020

  www.aussiespeculativefiction.com

  Copyright belongs to the individual authors in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission.

  Cover artwork Copyright © Sarena Flanigan

  Cover design Copyright © Rachel Nightingale

  Photoshop work by Jamie Le Rossignol

  Cover font: Children of Starlight by Cat B, used with permission.

  Edited by Alanah Andrews

  Proofread by Helena McAuley, Rebecca Bowyer, Noor Olin, Maureen Flynn, Carolyn Young, Neen Cohen, S. John. Davis, Clare Rhoden, L.J. Kendall, Stacey Jaine McIntosh, & Alanah Andrews

  Formatted by Rebecca Bowyer

  www.aussiespeculativefiction.com

  Foreword

  DECEMBER 2019/JANUARY 2020 saw the razing of many communities by horrific, and unprecedented, bushfires in Australia.

  People lost their lives, their homes; untold millions of animals lost their lives and habitat. Some will be pushed to extinction.

  But among the scorched earth and broken dreams, like fresh green shoots or the sprinkling of cooling rain, there’s always the one thing that people—when faced with such adversity—excel at.

  Hope.

  Survivors hope that their lives will become less fractured, that they can rebuild or that someone can help them carry and lighten their burdens—just for a short time, just to catch their breath.

  Others hope that what little they have can offer hope to survivors—human and animal—in some small way.

  This anthology is a collection of speculative fiction short stories, all and any topic, but each one with the underlying theme of hope.

  We—the Australian Speculative Fiction Group—hope to raise money with the sale of this book, the proceeds of which will go directly to support the efforts of recovery for humans and animals, through registered charities.

  Remember, when you buy this book, you are buying something special—hope.

  Carol Bott on behalf of Aussie Speculative Fiction.

  PS. THIS BOOK FEATURES Australian spelling such as colour, favourite & realise.

  Acknowledgments

  IT WAS NEW YEAR'S EVE and Australia was burning. There didn't seem a lot to celebrate, as we refreshed the emergency app for the thousandth time and watched the dark silhouette of the fire draw closer and closer to loved ones.

  We felt helpless, and asked the question, ‘What can the Australian Speculative Fiction community do to help?’

  We participated in #authorsforfireys and it felt good to raise some much needed funds, so the idea was born out of the ashes... What could we do to raise even more money? How about a charity anthology?

  It needed to have one thing. A theme of hope.

  73 authors and over 100,000 words later, Stories of Hope was created. The Australian Speculative Fiction community is truly amazing.

  Thank you to the following people who made this anthology happen:

  Sarena Flanigan for the gorgeous cover artwork.

  Rachel Nightingale for the flawless cover design.

  Rebecca Bowyer for formatting this book.

  Our dedicated proof-readers who went above and beyond: Helena McAuley, Rebecca Bowyer, Noor Olin, Maureen Flynn, Carolyn Young, Neen Cohen, S. John. Davis, Clare Rhoden, L.J. Kendall, and Stacey Jaine McIntosh.

  Jessica McMinn for creating our promo pictures.

  The authors who donated their stories in order to support the chosen charities.

  All members of the Australian Speculative Fiction group, for being endlessly positive, optimistic, and willing to try new things. I’ve never met a nicer bunch of people in the online (or offline) world.

  You, for buying and reading 100,000 words of hope.

  Alanah Andrews

  Aussie Speculative Fiction

  www.aussiespeculativefiction.com

  Contents

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  The Power of the Birds by Maureen Flynn

  Practice Child by Rebecca Bowyer

  Wings by S.F. Flanigan

  The Wooing Of Sweetheart by Clare Rhoden

  One Imperfect Soul by Helena McAuley

  Slowly Rising by S. John Davis

  Just a Little Tail by Neen Cohen

  Dangerous January by L.J. Kendall

  Hope by Carolyn Young

  The Dawning of Spring by Stacey Jaine McIntosh

  A Touch of Hope by Shay Laurent

  Daring to Dream by Jessica Drake

  The Forest at the Edge of the World by Jessica A. McMinn

  Meet the Superhumans by Deanne Seigle-Buyat

  Cicada by Maggie Veness

  Green Grapes Red by Roger Patulny

  Dragon Slayer by Paul Mannering

  The Gardens of Hades by Suzannah Rowntree

  Hope Moves by Belinda Brady

  The Wandering Flame by Jon Ray

  Breakaway by Rhiannon Bird

  Tomorrow by Alice Lam

  Queen of the Tides by Zoey Xolton

  dust (and earth) rising by Frank Prem

  The Cat Who’s Always Right by Caterina, aka Helen Lyne

  Our Meeting Place by Holly Sydelle

  The Optimist by K.B.Elijah

  Twig by Alby Grace

  Words from the Future by Eva Leppard

  Cloudy with a Chance of Smoke by Nikky Lee

  The Wishbone by Sylvia Petter

  Raven’s Sacrifice by Heather Ewings

  Last Man Standing by Amanda McLeod

  From the Ashes by Natasja Rose

  Springs Eternal by Lachlan Walter

  The Love of Plants by Sean Bellairs

  Muddy n Milli by Cage Dunn

  A Town Called Hope by Silvia Brown

  Icarus and Memory by Alan Whelan

  Lesson by Ishmael A Soledad

  Other Gods than Ours by Fallacious Rose

  Light in the Dark by L R Johnson

  Lady of Wings by A.P. Morse

  Consequences by Jacqui Greaves

  Haunted by Amani Gunawardana

  Out Of The Shadows by Manna Clarke

  Whiteflower Duet by R.A. Goli

  Reunion by Fiona Lohrbaecher

  Fragments by Judy Peters

  Bazza and the Ring by Evelien Clarke

  Just like Veronica by R. J. Rodda

  Breakthrough by Zena Shapter

  Fire Dragons by Sarah Gover

  Homeward Bound by Gordon Clarke

  The Old Mage by Phoenix Addison

  Open for Business by Phil Hore

  Together we can fix it by Laurie Bell

  The Experiment by Jo Davidson

  Mourning is Broken by Philip Barker

  The EverLasts by Eleanor Whitworth

  Fire Audit by Kingsley Benjamin

  The Kangaroo said to the Emu by Victoria Greenaway

  The Hope of Cobblescreek by DJ Elton

  Human Nature by Emilie Morscheck

  Fairy Tale of Hope by Margie Riley

  The Cure by Barbara Smith

  Red Paper Dog by Rachel J Fenton

  The Dragon Master by Melony R Boseley

  What We Bring With Us by J. Hepburn

  Time and Again by Ian Harrison

  Bearing Fruit by Shannon Kelly

  Shift by Sasha Hanton

/>   Edge by Alanah Andrews

  Thank you

  ALSO BY DEADSET PRESS

  The Power of the Birds by Maureen Flynn

  SANDY SAT IN THE YARD on an over-turned brown milk-crate, right in front of the ugly red-brick apartment she called home. Small diamonds of plastic pressed into her bottom through her old lycra gym pants, but she didn’t dare shift to get comfortable lest she scare off her friends. Cockatoos, lorikeets and king parrots hopped closer and closer as she flung milk-sopped bread and damaged fruit their way. Every day, more and more came for her singing, her conversation, her food and her water.

  A blush ran across her cheeks as she glanced up at the apartment windows and back again. If her neighbours, Laurie, Steve, or even little Emma, saw her now, they’d watch and laugh and walk off whispering.

  “Weird Sandy Jones. Can’t make sense of the world to befriend a normal person, so she makes do with pests like them cockatoos,” Steve had said once, not realising that his hurtful words had carried to where Sandy sat on the drying grass. Well, aside from them, the world ignored her. Men and women wearing business suits and clutching polished leather handbags and suitcases hurried past on the grey path by the apartment letter boxes without a second glance at the scrawny woman crooning to the wildlife.

  “Hello, little one,” she said aloud, in a sing-song voice, as a cockatoo sidled close to her bare feet. “It’s been a rough summer for everyone.”

  The cockatoo tilted its head to one side, its sharp beak hovering above the bread clutched in its raised, clever claw. Steve’s wife, Laurie, might be right that they were mischievous scavengers, but Sandy loved them as much as the smaller, more colourful birds that chirped at her now.

  “You’re like me,” she whispered to the cockatoo. “Sharp and shy and dismissed.” She suppressed a sigh as loneliness flowed through her in a sudden wave.

  She blinked away images of hugging her pillow into the long night, of being awake at the touch of the early morning red sun. There’d been women in her youth, but they’d left her one by one, always turned off by her spiralling anxiety and dark depressions. Not so the birds. The one constant in her long, dull life.

  Sandy clenched her fists before she could stop herself. She wanted to be noticed. Couldn’t these business people see the important work she was doing, helping our wildlife? Why did no one care? She’d never understood the constant demand of mobiles, the cars, tall sky-rises. Only with her toes curling into the grass, her face turned up to the sun or the rain, did she feel truly alive. And only when she talked to the birds.

  “Hello.” A voice sounded by her left ear, making her jump, legs bumping awkwardly against the crate.

  Shoulders hunching, she let her eyes skitter towards the path to her left. A middle-aged man smiled down at her.

  “I didn’t mean to alarm you,” he said.

  Gaping, she grasped for an appropriate response, but she could think of nothing to say.

  Sandy couldn’t help but stare. Though the man wore a neat white shirt, navy tie and polished, sensible shoes at the bottom of his navy suit pants, he surprised her. His green eyes sparkled without mocking, their energy as vibrant as the green of the parrots huddling in groups before her. His nose was pointed, bent like a hook, as though he’d been in a nasty fight that had left its mark. But it was his skin that was the strangest part of him. He’d rolled his shirt sleeves up against the heat, revealing feather tattoos spiralling across his hand and up his arm. Under the black-ink, his skin glinted gold one moment, pale as milk the next, and then a funny shade of copper-green, like he was going to be sick, then back to gold again. A trick of the light, she told herself.

  “You feed them every day, don’t you? I’ve watched you as I walk past to the train station,” the man said.

  Probably feels obligated to make conversation, Sandy thought miserably as she made herself look down so as to break the intensity of her stare. Nothing else explains it. “Every morning. Sometimes afternoons, too,” she said into the brown-green grass.

  “What do they eat?”

  She wasn’t used to rapid-fire questions, or any interest in her doings, so she was stunned into answering honestly. “Scraps from left-over meals, mostly. You know, old and bruised fruit. Stale bread. That kind of thing.”

  The man smiled, a finger stroking the end of his sharp nose. “Anyone else ever join you?”

  “Never.” Sandy was sure her face was as red as the half-rotting strawberry she threw to a nearby questing lorikeet. There’d been one time when Emma—but that didn’t matter now—Emma had listened to her parents, Laurie and Steve. And, other than Emma, there had been no one else.

  He studied her, head tilted to one side. Bird-like. The thought came to her quick as a lightning flash in a creeping desert. Don’t be silly, Sandy. You’ve spent so much time amongst the birds, you can only understand your own kind through the lens of your obsession.

  “Shame,” he said, giving no indication he’d read her thoughts.

  And thank goodness for that. She thought he’d turn away then, his polite small-talk spent, but he rolled his sleeves up further, sweat on his forehead as he stepped closer.

  “It is a shame, Sandy Jones. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  She recoiled from him, heart pounding. How did he know her name? Was he a friend of Steve’s, someone sent to mock and torment her? Even Steve couldn’t be so cruel.

  “I’ve watched you for some time,” the man went on.

  “Oh-h-h,” she stuttered, wondering if she should make a run for her front door, or would that be giving him what he wanted?

  The strange man pointed at the birds clustering around her milk crate. “They’ve travelled from far away.” He said it as a statement of fact.

  “Yes. ’Cause of the fires, you see?” Passion laced her words. It always did when she thought of her beautiful friends racing to escape the flames, their damaged homes, the coming starvation and thirst. “They have nowhere else to go.” Like me, she wanted to add, but didn’t.

  “They’ve come from the Blue Mountains and national parks to the south-west, and from the coast down south, and even further afield than that.” The man spoke with a conviction that made Sandy suddenly interested. She wouldn’t flee after all. Besides, he was probably right. Since this bushfire season had begun, she’d seen the number of her bird friends increase threefold. So, she merely nodded her agreement.

  “They’ve come here because of you,” he went on, stepping so close that he towered over her and cut out the sun.

  She stared up at him, wide-eyed, but somehow unafraid. It was the most interesting conversation she’d had in years, and she no longer felt afraid of the enigmatic stranger before her.

  “They have called to me, the birds. They told me to come, that a reward was due.”

  Sandy thought she’d misheard. She’d never been rewarded for anything, not unless you counted the end of year school concert when she was five and everyone had ‘won’ a prize. Besides, no one she’d ever met had understood and talked to birds like she did. Deep down, she knew she imbued them with false conversation, that there was no way of knowing what they really thought. But this man was like her, and she knew she liked him for it. She would indulge him.

  “Did they?” She managed a smile.

  “Yes.” He drew his face to hers so their cheeks almost touched. “Take my hand.”

  She did as he asked, suppressing a half-laugh and a twinge of trepidation. What did he want?

  She felt his touch like a bolt of energy through her body that made her quiver and shake. The sun felt suddenly hotter and brighter. Without realising it, Sandy had closed her eyes.

  She made herself open them. The man had moved parallel to her, so that the sun’s rays reached her again. The tattoos on his arms were moving, squiggling around his skin like worms. His nose looked greyer and harder and his skin a brighter gold and vibrant green.

  He gripped her hand tighter as her eyes widened.

  �
�Yes,” he said. “The birds are grateful. They saw your unhappiness and your loneliness and they summoned me.”

  What did he mean? Surely not—no such thing was possible, was it?—but she could feel her bones and muscles grinding and re-shaping. She could see the world shifting to three times its normal size.

  “It cannot be,” she whispered.

  “I am Serafeeka,” the man said, somehow centimetres shorter than he’d been five minutes ago. “And I am the Spirit King of the birds in these parts. They begged me to help you, and so I have come.” His features softened in response to her confused fear. “Imagine how it will feel to fly, to join in our song and to truly understand us. We offer this opportunity to few, for few care for us as you have.”

  “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  “It is your kindness, your compassion that drew us to you.”

  “I . . . I can’t leave,” she protested, even as she yearned to feel the wind under beating wings. “Who will remain to do the feeding and watering?”

  “Everyone deserves a second chance, Sandy. Even you.”

  “But—”

  “They will find another.”

  Sandy felt her nose harden and twist. She brought her hand up to her face to touch beak.

  “Emma saw you that one time,” the bird-man, Serafeeka, said, his arms now stretched wide in giant, feathery wings. “She is enough.”

  Sandy opened her beak to protest, but a caw came out instead of intelligible words.

  It didn’t matter. The bird-man understood.

  “Emma suppressed her respect for you. A child that young is like a sponge, soaking up the emotions and sentiments of the adults around her, but she will not forget you, Sandy Jones, oh, no.”

  “You’re sure?” Her words came out as more caw-caws, but Serafeeka understood.

  The bird-man lifted a glistening wing to a window three storeys up. Laurie and Steve’s apartment. Sandy could just make out Emma’s small, round face peering down on them.

  “I can change you back,” Serafeeka said. “It’s not too late for you to return to human form.”