Flock of Shadows Read online

  ‘Librada took the old woman at her word. She avoided the market and spoke to no one, to keep her plans safe and away from gossip. That night when the silver-white thread came down again like a snake from a tree Librada caught it in her hands. It was thick and strong and covered in slime. It writhed and gripped her like a python on a branch. Librada could see the strange, warped face looking down at her shaking with rage and anticipation, lips drawn back exposing its fangs. Librada brought the knife down quick and it shone blue in the moonlight. The thick white tip of the tongue lay writhing and churning in the dirt of the floor spraying old, black blood and clear saliva everywhere. The creature shrieked, loud enough to rattle the flimsy palm-wood walls of her house and wake the children. It flew off clumsily into the clear black night.

  ‘The next day Librada wandered around the market observing the women. At the fruit stand she spotted Haliya surrounded by her usual crowd of jabbering market girls. Haliya greeted librada with a smile, but did not speak a word. Librada had kept her eyes on the mouth of every woman in town and had not seen anyone who spoke with any difficulty at all. She tried baiting Haliya, asking her questions and prodding her to speak. Haliya made no response beyond a nod or a shrug. Librada lost patience, she thought that she knew, but lives were at stake. She needed proof. So she brought her foot down hard on Haliya’s big toe. Haliya screamed and her mouth was empty, only the base of her tongue remained, a ragged pink stump; her throat was filled with glistening blood.

  ‘Librada ran. She was worried that since Haliya knew that her secret was out she would not transform but would instead run off to heal and later attack another poor woman in another small village. But she didn’t guess the power of the monster’s need. That night Librada drew another salt circle around her children and smeared their faces with fresh garlic paste. She prayed three times to the Christian’s Blue Virgin. Librada waited, shaking with rage, until her little loves were asleep and then she set out into the night, her machete clutched in her hands.

  ‘Librada made her way to the monster’s house, keeping her eye on the sky and her ears open, listening for the shushing sound of leather wings. When she reached the hut (it looked like any other palm-wood thatch) the lights were on and smoke was rising from the chimney-hole in the roof. She could see Haliya’s legs abandoned on the floor, shapely middle-aged legs, well-turned and hairless, but of the monster there was no sign. Librada walked in silently, cautiously, her machete raised above her head, but when the monster swooped at her from its place above the door it still managed to catch her by surprise.

  ‘The thing fought with its teeth and nails, slashing at her with its fangs and pummeling her with its powerful arms. Librada stabbed at its torso and slashed its face as the clawed hands clamored towards the baby in her belly. Librada sliced one of its hands off completely at the wrist and its blood blistered her skin like acid. The creature screamed and flailed. Finally, with one well-placed stroke, Librada severed its trailing heart. It fell to the ground with a meaty thud and lay slowly beating out blackish blood onto the packed dirt of the floor.

  ‘The creature fell and clutched at itself with its one remaining claw and Librada fell panting to her knees. Librada fell asleep there beside it, drained by exhaustion, and we found her there in the morning. She had not moved at all.

  ‘The creature was quite dead and its lower half had already rotted, having originally belonged to someone who had died long ago. This kind of monster always finds a use for spare parts. The priest came down from his parish near the base of the mountain. It drenched it in Holy Water, the head and the bottom, and they withered away in bright plumes of smoke.

  ‘A few weeks later Librada gave birth to a boy, perfect in every way. He has glossy black hair and wide almond eyes. She has married a fisherman younger than herself and they left the village together and, as far as I know, they have never come back.’

  Bae Lin looks at me and smiles. I don’t like it when she smiles like that. ‘You know, your Momma’s getting pretty big. Soon, you’ll have a little brother yourself, either that or your Momma will have a handful of bones.’

  When she takes off that ring to make my lunch I will hide it in the back yard. She is too mean to wear it. She doesn’t deserve that pretty blue stone.

  Towards the Sea

  Laura Wilkinson

  One-eye Boy saw her first, though no one believed him on account of his missing organ. No one but me. He claimed she was a mermaid, long of limb and tail, with hair like newly spun rope, flaxen and thick, falling over breasts sweet as blancmange, nipples cherry-shiny.

  He was wrong; she wasn’t like that at all.

  ‘She were sitting on t’rock at left of bay,’ he stuttered. The small, mostly disinterested, crowd edged away from the bar as the reek of cockles dispersed into the air. Me? I pushed a jug of beer towards One-eye, leant on the counter and beckoned him over with hooded lids and a flicker of an eyebrow.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘was she combing her hair?’ knowing full well that wasn’t her style.

  He shook his head, spittle flying from his slack mouth, and grasped his groin, jiggling the contents as he laughed. Dirty boy with his missing eye and reason, he would never know the tender touch of a woman, other than his mother’s.

  One-eye told me she stroked her breasts, her nipples peeked between the coils of her hair. ‘Knockers,’ he called them and I flinched. I asked about her tail, which he said was eel blue, and slimy, as if she’d just come out of the water. It slapped, hard, against the rock and echoed across the bay, the sound swallowed by the roar of the incoming tide. My stomach knotted, and as he spoke of the ropes of her hair I tugged at the skin of my wrists.

  She comes.

  I lost interest when he spluttered about her fishy smell, repulsed by his vulgarity. ‘Cockle-cunt,’ he dribbled, as if he knew. Certainly, she smelt of the sea; the tang of iron, strong and unbiddable, fresh. Her perfume shifted, as she did, with each rolling, crashing, lapping lick of the water. I bent down behind the bar, and snatched a cloth from the sink. One-eye hobbled away.

  The tide rose and cockling became dangerous if not impossible. Anticipating more customers, I dried pint pots and stacked them next to the pumps. A gust of wind dragged across my neck, and the saloon door slammed. Tom McManus strutted across, the echo of his footsteps reverberating off the sticky walls. He slapped a coin on the bar and flicked his chin, words unnecessary. I was already pulling the pump handle, the muscles in my arms straining, the dark liquid squirting into the pot in explosive bursts. The barrel was almost empty.

  Tom grabbed the draught with a grunt and swallowed, the pot not leaving his mouth till it ran dry. He placed the glass down and nodded. I passed him a whisky, single malt, which he knocked back in one.

  ‘Bad shift?’ I said.

  Tom was a crew leader, well known for the bounty of his hauls. Cocklers feared him, his bullying approach, and the risks he took with the tide.

  He shook his head, eyes glazed. Tom liked me, which made me unusual round these parts, and I might have liked him once. Might have. On the other side of the room, One-eye guffawed, and Tom turned his head, sharp, then back again.

  ‘Boy says he saw a mermaid,’ I laughed. ‘Blonde and buxom, with nipples like cherries and a kiss like heaven.’

  Tom caught me in a stare, his violet-blue eyes almost mesmerising against the caramel hue of his weathered skin. Almost. I didn’t fall at his feet like other women; I thought that’s why he liked me. ‘She wasn’t like that at all,’ he whispered, glancing over his shoulder, ‘she was pale, with raven shiny hair and a voice like honey.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘was she singing a love song?’ knowing full well that wasn’t her style.

  Tom told me hers was a song that was hard to remember, hard to distil. Like the tinkling of bells or the plucking of a harp, it was musical but without melody. Like the beating of a drum, it resonated through hi
s body, from his core to the soles of his feet and the top of his skull, but it was without rhythm. It cloaked him like the embrace of a beautiful woman, sweeping over his flesh, its touch like magic. Her legs were long and lean, her arms reached to the cobalt sky and as he buried his face in the triangular patch of hair at the apex of her thighs he felt as if he had reached paradise. He spoke like a man in love, or hypnotised. My breath hitched as he spoke of her snowdrop skin and emerald eyes, her strong fingers, and a mouth that held the promise of another world, deep and dark and dangerous.

  Certainly, her voice was spellbinding. Full and wet and tempting, her mouth held many treasures. Her tongue played many a tune on the curves, folds and deep, deep grooves of my body. I ached for her touch and pushed another whisky across the bar, tired of Tom’s romancing, longing to be alone with my thoughts once more.

  In the cellar I changed the barrel, taking my time, enjoying the solitary darkness, stroking the slits in my neck below each ear. When I returned to the bar, the stragglers from Tom’s crew had arrived. Impatient, they banged on the counter. When all but one had been served, I wiped my brow and took a draught of water from the jug reserved for me, the salt biting my lips, seeping into the cracks at the corners of my mouth. Months ago I had loathed the taste, but now I relished the sting and took another gulp.

  She returns.

  Old-man-Wharton hovered, the last to be served. He brushed my hand as he passed over his coins, then held my fingers, too long, too tight, as he pondered what to order. It didn’t bother me the way it did the other girls of the town, the way he did this – pawing young flesh, pushing himself up against girls, and worse. Some said he’d never been right in the head since his wife died. Others said he was a dirty old man who should be locked up. Me? I almost pitied him. Almost.

  I pitched forward, elbows resting on the bar, squeezing my breasts together so they pushed over the neckline of my blouse and beckoned him in with my eyes.

  ‘Tom says he saw a siren, out on the bay,’ I said, my words little more than breaths. ‘Tall and pale with raven hair and a voice like an angel, she stood with her arms raised to the sky.’

  Old-man-Wharton gripped me tighter and said, ‘She weren’t like that at all. She walked across sands, without no clothes, long brown hair falling down her back in tangled knots, like seaweed. Her skin were glossy and brown.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘did she drag her seal skin behind her?’ knowing full well that wasn’t her style.

  Old-man told me she was slim of hip and small in the breast; her hair was so long it pulled on the sand behind her, marking her path from the shore to the rocks. As he drew nearer he realised how short, and young, she was, how brown and wet and playful, and that her long, long hair, was not hair at all, but a pelt. A pelt so soft and tempting he dived into it, allowed it to drape over his shoulders and across his back, warm his flesh and caress his heart. She slipped over and round him, twisting and turning, giggling. Fast and sleek, she was dizzying, with tentacles that coiled about him. Her prisoner, he said, though this was a gaol he would happily live in forever.

  Certainly, she was playful, like a child. Full of joy, she was impossible to resist. I liked being bound to her, her captive. Diving and rolling and skimming beneath the surf, she wrapped herself about me, sliding over my earthly flesh, before diving away, weaving between the riptides, fishing nets and clusters of weed.

  I feel your pull.

  Old-man let go of my wrist and pulled himself up, sighing. ‘She were a child, more lass than lady. Just how I like ‘em.’

  Appalled, I walked away, out of the confines of the bar to the window overlooking the bay. I pressed my palms against the glass, and stared out to sea. Grown high as my knuckles, the webbed flesh between my fingers glowed pink against the midday light.

  Hours passed, the tide rose and sidled back once more. The cocklers gathered, taking a drink to sustain them for the hours on the muddy sands. They checked their boots and bundled up in hats and scarfs against an easterly wind, bitter even in summertime. Tom McManus appeared and began shouting instructions, warnings, which most could barely understand and others would not heed.

  ‘Tide’s high and dangerous, you mark my words. Fill your buckets, but no risks. We’ll want no more drownings round here.’

  Murmurs and grunts of agreement rose from the small crowd, and my fists clenched, my nails pressed into my palms till it hurt. The saloon emptied and I went about my work, clearing up, preparing to go home, to my lodgings along the seafront. I was almost done when I smelt her. The tang of metal and salt descended on the bar like fog, mist rose from the floor like sea spray, and subsided as quickly. I looked about, to see if the remaining customers had felt it, seen it, smelt it, as I had. They had not. No one felt her the way I did, no one remembered, or cared. I took my coat from the peg and left without a word.

  I heard the cries as I scurried along the promenade, head bent against the wind. The shrieks and wails and screams. I stopped and turned. The horizon was obscured by a mist, and as I peered, out came the shadowy figures of the cocklers, running, buckets and rakes abandoned.

  ‘Came from nowhere it did, nowhere,’ one cried, as much to the air as me.

  ‘What did?’

  ‘The tide. The tide. Not due for hours, but it came sudden and swift. They didn’t stand a chance.’ It was a cockler of many decades. She was always furthest from the sea, her crooked legs too tired to walk where pickings were richer.

  I took hold of her bony hands; the veins bulging despite the chill of the mist. ‘Who?’ I said, though I already knew.

  ‘We must get help,’ she said.

  ‘Who didn’t stand a chance?’ I repeated.

  ‘Old-man-Wharton, McManus and One-eye. Out ahead, they were. Miles it seemed. I saw the tide coming in, unexpected, out of time, but coming in all the same. Circling round them, creating an island. There was time for them to get back. We screamed and yelled, but they didn’t move. They stood there, like they was hypnotised.’

  At the mention of the island, she appeared before me in my mind’s eye. A moving image from that terrible day. Held back by two men, I’d watched, as the sea stole up around her, trapping her, on an ever-decreasing patch of sand. The pinky-pale skin of her bare arms gleamed against the sky, her skirt whipped up revealing shapely legs, her blue eyes filled with watery terror. Flame red hair billowed above her head, creating the illusion that she might take off, might fly above the surf. McManus stopped and watched. Behind him, stood Old-man-Wharton and One-eye, the water not even reaching the tops of their wellingtons. They did not even try to save her. I heard her voice, rich and melodious, remembered her words. ‘I’m going on ahead, can’t stand these two,’ she’d jerked her head in the direction of One-eye and Old-man, ‘sliming all over me. Give me the creeps, they do. McManus won’t care how far I go.’

  I’d wanted to go with her but, afraid of the water, I’d lingered behind. After that day, I learnt to swim and never went cockling again. I searched for her, over and over. With each dive I went further, went deeper. But I found nothing, returning to land and loneliness, again and again.

  The old cockler shook me. ‘Are you alright?’

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  ‘We must get help.’

  ‘Hypnotised, you said?’

  ‘They stood there, Tom, One-eye and Old-man-Wharton, then they walked into the sea, as if someone called them, the waves swallowing them up before rolling towards us.’

  She is here.

  The cockler tugged at my arm, but I ignored her pleas and walked towards the beach, towards the sea, towards my love and the promise of another world, and all that is deep and dark and dangerous.

  Storm Dogs

  Jo Mazelis

  Pen y Cae, October 1949

  Dorothy met him in the Ancient Briton not far from the small village where each of them had ancestors. Sh
e had deferred her place at Wellesley for a year in order to see Europe and her maternal grandmother had given her fifty dollars and a camera, a black and silver Leica in a tan leather case. Then she had extracted a promise; Dodo must go to Wales, must take photos of the old farm, the mountain, the church, the gravestones of the Thomas’s, the Craddocks, the Vaughns and Dandos.

  Everyone stared at her when she entered the pub; she had the sense that she had barged into someone’s private living room, though the door had Public Bar engraved on its glass. She stood out amongst the local women in her crisp sky-blue slacks, crew-necked sweater and saddle shoes. They seemed mired in the mud and heather, the tree bark and tea stains by the colours of their clothes, all of them in skirts and worn looking winter coats and stout-looking dress shoes. Not that there were any women in the pub at mid day.

  He had approached her at once, handsome and smiling, making her feel welcome. He bought her a glass of warm beer. Then he had sung a haunting song in the language of his (and her) people. Everything had stopped in that moment, no one moved, no one touched their drink or spoke or lit the cigarette that dangled from their lips. All eyes were on the black-haired young man as he leaned almost jauntily on his stick and lifted his head and voice to heaven.

  When she said it was time for her to go, he walked her outside and asked if he could kiss her. She understood that he had been in the war, that his leg had been damaged by shrapnel or gunshot or mine. She said yes because she was ashamed to say no.

  ‘Marry me!’ he said and she laughed and skipped away out of reach.