short story Archives - Page 2 of 41 - Andrew Knighton Writes

A Heart Full of Feathers – a fantasy short story

When Russ was young, he would stare out the classroom window, disinterested in the teacher, the helpers, and the other children, just watching the birds. Robins hopping through the hedgerow. Crows perched on lampposts. Gulls soaring on the breeze. To be so light, freed from the grasping hands of gravity, seemed like the most wonderful thing. The lives of birds made sense.

Whenever he saw a fallen feather, however small or battered or filthy, even if there was blood at its tip where some predator had torn it loose, Russ would keep that feather and take it home. His mother, though unsettled to see how he lined his bed, chose not to nurture one more argument in a household full of hurt. His father snapped that Russ should at least clean the damn things, but Russ ignored him. What if he cleaned off something important? What if he washed away the magic of flight?

The pile of feathers grew, day by day, week by week, month by month. Urban feathers and rural feathers, falling from either side of their home. Feathers from the garden, from school, from the woods, from weekends away with one parent while the other cleared their head. Wherever he went, Russ came home clutching a precious new treasure, light in his hand and soft on his skin.

As he added each feather to his bed nest, he imagined what it would be like to be that bird, to be clothed in feathers and fly free, away from all the strains and pains of the world. From trying to make sense of the things people said, of the words on the pages of books, of the rules that no one explained.

On the night his father left, carried away by the car’s angry roar, Russ clutched the feathers tight. They were so familiar, he wasn’t sure where his skin ended and the birds began. Out in the twilight, another feather fell in slow spirals. Russ opened his bedroom window and reached out. The feather landed in his palm, soft and heavy as sorrow. He added it to his nest, then settled in his sanctuary and fell asleep.

He woke to find his window open, letting in the dawn chorus and a breeze that lifted him off his feet. Feathers clung to his arms. He ran his fingers through their softness, and shivered into a smile.

As he jumped onto the windowsill, the sky cried out to him. He understood the movements of those wheeling shapes. His mismatched feathers could never compare with their beauty, but he could be among them.

He kicked off through the window and took flight. He glided in a giddy spiral over streets and fields, spinning toward the heavens.

In his dreams, this had been the moment when the world opened up to him, comprehensible at last from a bird’s eye view. The network of streets that bound his home to school, shops, and playground. The river’s route to the sea. The border between town and countryside, opposites that until now had blurred through hedges, verges, and paths. But streets were hidden by houses, the river by hills, and the town still oozed across blurred boundaries.

With swift strokes, Russ flew higher, determined to rise until the world became clear. But his arms were growing weary, the feathers that had buoyed him up becoming a burden. Their lightness was a lie, one more trick the world had set to confuse him. What had been weightless as the air was dragging him down, when he needed to soar.

He ripped out fistfuls of feathers. Black and white, stripped and speckled, they all tore free, mementoes of dreams crumpling between his fingers. He let the wind snatch them away, tumbling toward the ground.

The last feather out was the last one he had found. With it came his father’s shouts, his mother’s sobs, the slam of the door and the smell of petrol fumes. It felt weighty as a rock, but when he let it go, it drifted instead of plummeting.

With a lurching of his stomach, Russ realised that there was nothing left to hold him aloft, any more than to drag him down. He hung suspended, exhilarated and afraid, not knowing which would claim him, the earth or the sky. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and the wind rushed around him. Was he rising or falling? All he knew was that soon the world would make sense.

***

This story was inspired by a workshop on writing the uncanny with fairytales, run by Claire Dean as part of the Leeds Literary Festival. It was an excellent session, which I left with a brain full of bright, buzzing ideas, and with the first half of this story. Huge thanks to Claire, and to Dan Coxon, who made the uncanny strand of the festival happen.

If you enjoyed this story and would like to read more like it then you might want to sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll get a free ebook, updates on new releases, and a flash story straight to your inbox once a month.

***

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is silver-and-gold-cover.jpg

The goldsmith Cualli lives in a land of endless summer, where blood sacrifices hold back the dark of winter. Through her craft, she grants power to priests and soldiers, channelling the magic of Emperor Sun. But what matters to Cualli is not power; it is proving herself as the empire’s finest goldsmith.

Not everyone feels blessed by the empire’s blood-stained faith. Dissent is turning to rebellion and the rebels want Cualli on their side, whether she likes it or not. When the season of sacrifice threatens the lives of her closest friends, Cualli must face a choice: will she fight for change through the illegal magic of silver, or will she bask in her own triumph and the endless golden summer?

Silver and Gold, a novella about friendship, magic, is out now.

Shadows of Stones – a fantasy short story

Shadows stretch like memories across the field, outlines of ancient stones hiding details of the modern ground. The longest shadows of the shortest day. A time to end and to begin. I follow those shadows away from the stones. The cheers and chants from behind me sound false, forced, a faded imitation of past glories.

The rhythm of my footsteps takes over. I abandon thought, drift into movement, let my self go. Years of practice have made me a master. My mind is blank by the fourth step, refilling by the fifth, as memories left by past walkers rise to meet me.

I’m wearing furs and hides like the others around me, hands worn and muscles aching from a satisfying day’s work. We look back, see the stones we’ve set in place, smile. One of the women is leading a young pig, fat and sweet. We’ve earned our celebration.

I’m a farm girl walking with her lover, the two of us flushed and giggling. No one knows what giant set the stones down, but everyone knows that these places grant fertility. Soon, we’ll be a family.

I’m a scholar in a powdered wig and tailcoat, my servants scurrying behind with the surveying instruments which will prove my theories. I turn too quickly, and a silver button flies off my coat. If only I’d known how to still my mind, I could have walked with my ancestors and had all my questions answered.

I’m myself, the modern me, three years ago. The air’s colder than I remembered, the sky just as bright. I take off a glove, reach into my pocket, grip the ring box. I summon my courage and turn around. I see you there, framed by the shadows of the stones. Your eyes are blank. You’ve fallen into the trance, stepped into memories, and it’s only later that I’ll realise you’ve slid into mine. You know what I’m thinking, and you have an answer before the question is out. Your eyes focus, and you shake your head.

I watch you walk away. Every detail of this moment is as stark and cold as I remember.

Sadness sinks me to my knees. I dig into the dirt, find that elaborate silver button, tarnished by two centuries. It’s round like a ring, round like the circle of stones, the circle of regret that I came back to break.

A shadow stretches towards me, a promise of new memories. I don’t know if she’s here and now, or if I’m still caught in the past. I don’t know if I’m me or if I’m a memory, revived by footsteps a hundred years from now. I just know that I’m ready to go somewhere new.

I smile and hold out the button, a silver decoration shining in the bright midwinter light, a gift from the past and a promise to the future. The old year is ending, a new one ready to begin.

***

Like “Winter’s Shroud“, this story was inspired by a prompt from the British Fantasy Society and first published in their monthly bulletin. If you’re based in the UK and you want to get more involved with fantasy fandom, or to meet like-minded writers and fans, then I totally recommend signing up to the BFS. They do a great job of providing a home for Britain’s fantasy community.

***

Silver and Gold, a novella about friendship, magic, is out now.

One With the Waves – a fantasy short story

On the first day of summer, Steve walked out of the ocean, and the tips of his fingers dissolved into sand, running in a slow slick down the damp surface of his board. He gave his hand a shake, half expecting that the sand would flick off and he’d see that everything was normal. Instead, a part of himself spattered into the tide line, with the stranded seaweed and the empty shells.

Bewildered and frightened, he walked up to the house, found his phone, took a picture of his fingers, their ends blunt and grainy. He wanted to send the picture to someone for help, but who was there? No doctor would believe him, and his friends would ask what he was going to do about it, a question to which Steve, on principle, only ever gave one answer: make great art.

Damp and salt-crusted, he walked from the lounge into his studio, stared at the potter’s wheel. He hadn’t touched clay in months, not since Diana’s departure. Instead, he’d gone to the sea every day, to wash away the past. Even art had seemed unimportant.

He found clay, water, tools, and started the wheel spinning. The clay ran through his fingers, soft and familiar, and he sank into the work like he was sinking into the waves. The clay became gritty as the ends of his fingers sloughed away, until he found the boundary between his body, his art, and the world. Then the sand stopped flowing. The pot he made wasn’t his best work, but he was steady in a way he hadn’t been for months.

The next day, a toe disintegrated, breaking his balance as a wave hit. He fell from his board, spluttering and frustrated, and headed for the beach, where he realised what had happened. This time, he went straight to the wheel. The clay flowed through his fingers, the side of his foot solidified, and at the end of the day, he had work worth firing in the kiln.

On the third day, he woke with sand in his bed and flesh missing from his thigh. For the first time in years, he didn’t go to the ocean. He went straight to the wheel.

Throughout his life, art had meant peace to Steve, but now he worked with a feverish intensity, throwing everything into the clay. Hunched over the wheel, he lived in the tension between his work and his body, on the cusp of a wave that was forever about to break. Every day, some part of him collapsed into sand. A clump of hair, a chunk of arm, a strip of flesh along his side. Creating stopped the collapse for the day, but every morning he woke with a knot in his belly, feeling for the grit between the sheets.

He wondered if this was a message from his muse. If he could make the perfect pot, could embody his essence in art, perhaps this would all end. He would be solid again. But less than a day after he set his best ever vase on the mantle, he woke with a hole in his cheek.

For weeks, he fought the slow collapse. Pot after pot piled up, while the sound of the sea through the windows called to him. He forced himself to ignore it, to find that crucial solidity. Still, every morning, there was less of him.

One evening, he faced the open door of the kiln, hairs rising as he was blasted by its heat, and he considered climbing inside. Perhaps that was the answer, to fuse his sand into glass, a crystal clear image of the man he was right now. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, to become hard and unyielding. What was life without change, life closed off from the world?

He looked through the window at the waves he hadn’t felt in weeks, heard the call of the breakers on the shore. He stopped struggling to maintain his body. Sand trickled down his arm and, instead of fear, he felt peace.

Leaving a print of sand with every footstep, Steve walked out of the house, across the beach, into the surf. Waves washed over him. The tension in his belly vanished. There was nothing in his world but the lapping of the ocean and the sound, oh so peaceful, of the waves. He let his mind drift and the water washed him away, one grain at a time, as he became one with the sea.

***

Silver and Gold, a novella about friendship, magic, is out now.

How to Edit a Heart – a fantasy short story

Heart as brain — Image by ElisaRiva via Pixabay

I squeezed hand sanitiser from the dispenser, the smell of alcohol mingling with the coppery scent of the library. It was important to be hygienic in a place like this, especially for the writing group.

Helen had set up folding seats around a plastic table in a side room, past crowded shelves, their raw red contents pulsing with life. Not the neat, shapely hearts of valentines, but the real ones. The ones that held stories.

The other writers looked up as I came in. Each of them had a cup of coffee or a bottle of water, one of Jim’s homemade cupcakes, and a reading cloth set out on the table.

“Oh good, you’re here at last.” Helen always smiled. Sometimes, I thought she meant it.

“Sorry,” I said, though I was only two minutes late, straight off a long shift. I took my seat, unfolded my cloth, reached for a cupcake.

“Why don’t you start, now that you have our attention?”

“Me?” I fumbled my cake, hastily swept up the crumbs. They formed an awkward little pile in front of me. “It’s not my turn to start, is it?”

“Go on.” Cheryl nudged me. “Your story’s so interesting. We’re all dying to read the next chapter.”

As far as I was concerned, I was only a heartbeat away from writing cop show fanfic, but the others looked at me expectantly. I unbuttoned my shirt, opened my chest, and with trembling hands, laid my heart out on my reading cloth. Blood ooze into the thick cotton as I pushed it into the middle of the table, careful not to catch an artery on my ribs. They say that many of the best authors die young, leaving a story full of confidence and vitality, but I was in no rush to find my place on the shelves.

The others leaned in. I ran my tongue around the inside of my dry mouth, wishing I’d had time to take out my water bottle. I clasped sticky hands together in my lap to keep from fidgeting, and looked from face to face, anxious to hear what they would say.

“I like the childhood anecdotes,” Cheryl said, “but they slow things down, and it’s at the hospital that things get really good.”

I nodded, leaned forward, pinched a strand of the heart’s muscle between finger and thumb. Helen had a professional editing scalpel, with a personalised grip, and when she made changes, she cut away with confidence. I wouldn’t dare wield one of those, even if I could afford it. What if I made the wrong cut?

I peeled off that piece of heart, laid it on a small cloth next to the cake crumbs. For a moment, I felt dizzy, like I’d missed a breath.

“Your description is still clumsy,” Helen said. “Here, here, and here.”

Her finger jabbed out, and I froze as she almost touched my right atria. I liked the parts she’d singled out, but everyone said that, to write, you had to be willing to get your heart broken, and Helen was so clear on what made good writing. I pinched away a piece of flesh, then another, and another, feeling weaker each time.

“Is this the best way to resolve the new chapter?” Jim asked. “The twist doesn’t feel right.”

With a pale hand, I took that part too, added it to the pile of discarded flesh, a monument to my mistakes. Cheryl watched me from the corner of her eye. I stared at the pile of crumbs, trying not to blush at my embarrassing attempts to tell a story.

“I know it’s not my genre,” someone else said, “but does this business with the talking crow make sense?”

“The villain’s motivation feels weak to me.”

“I’m not convinced by the scene in the gardens…”

I sighed, summoned what strength I still had, started peeling more pieces from my heart. With each one, the room became more distant, the voices flatter. I could bear to hear them, as long as they came that way, as long as I told myself I didn’t care. My heart beat quieter, its steady thump fading. I grew colder, weaker, my thoughts slow.

A hand on my wrist, holding me back. I looked from my blood-slicked fingers, to that other hand, up the arm to Cheryl’s face.

“Maybe I was wrong,” she said. “Those anecdotes at the start, they give your character life.”

“But you…”

“Try putting one back.”

Uncertainly, I picked up a piece, set flesh against flesh. A small part of my story knitted back together. Someone murmured approvingly.

“What else do you think is worth keeping?” Cheryl asked.

I looked at those discarded pieces. There was a strip of description that I loved. It didn’t fit now, but perhaps it could, if I grew the scene around it. I took that piece, felt its strength between my fingers. Helen glared disapprovingly, and for a long moment I hesitated. But owning a scalpel didn’t make someone an expert storyteller.

My heart beat louder as I put old pieces of story back in a new place.

***

Silver and Gold, a novella about friendship, magic, is out now.

The World Turned – a historical short story

Isabelle froze, her hand on the kitchen door frame, her heart hammering in her chest. She had heard it again, the wet thud of the guillotine blade slicing through a neck to the block below. A sound from a hundred miles away, and from her nightmares.

The sound repeated, not the guillotine but Henri chopping meat, his cleaver slicing through a leg of pork. He was a terrible butcher, but madam had only been able to bring two of her staff when she left Paris. Isabelle and Henri had to make do.

He looked up at her, and there was a gleam in his eye. The cleaver glinted as he waved for her to come close. He smelled sour, sweaty, old ale oozing from his pores.

“There’s a rumour in the valley,” he whispered. “The committee have decided that it’s time for her to pay for her crimes, like monsieur did.”

He pointed at the ceiling. Somewhere above them, madam was waking the children, ready for the tutor they brought in once a week.

“Madam didn’t do anything wrong,” Isabelle hissed.

Henri shrugged. “She threw wild parties while the people starved. Sounds bad to me.”

“Then why are you here?”

He shrugged again. “It’s my job.”

The cleaver hit the meat, with more force this time. In Paris, Henri had been the senior servant of a powerful household, a figure of prestige. Then the world had turned. Now he chopped logs and swept chimneys. Isabelle had seen the same change, and she didn’t have his bitter tone.

“They reached the village last night,” he said, returning to the news of the day. “Pierre says they’ll be coming up today, soldiers and officials, ready to take her.”

“What about the children?”

“What do you think?” He waved the cleaver. “Can’t have the kiddies coming back for revenge. The republic is at stake.”

Isabelle ran from the room, a hand over her mouth, trying not to throw up.

“That’s right,” Henri called after her. “Go have another cry. That’ll bring back what we had.”

Isabelle stopped in the hallway, steadying herself on the bannister. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t let him be right.

But those poor children…

Isabelle ascended the stairs. Every footstep sounded like the thud of the guillotine blade.

She couldn’t linger. Henri might assume that as a servant he was safe, but the mob didn’t think like that. If they were coming, then she needed to be gone.

She stopped at the top of the stairs. Her room was to the right, with the bag she left packed every night and the few coins she had stowed away for a moment like this. From her left came childish laughter. In her mind, soldiers marched up the hill, their hats decorated with the tricolor cockade. All she had to do was grab her bag and run.

Instead, she turned left.

A riding crop hung on the wall of the children’s room, a memento of their father. Isabelle remembered its sharp lash across her back. Madam sat in an armchair beneath it. She had watched those beatings without comment, without tears, without the least sign that she saw Isabelle as human. Sometimes the sound of the riding crop came from her own chambers, when monsieur came back drunk and raging at the world. Like Isabelle, madam never cried out.

“Isabelle!” The children grabbed her legs. “Play with us.”

“Later. Right now, we’re going for a ride.”

“What are you talking about?” madam snapped. “You can fetch that lazy tutor by yourself.”

“Men are coming. Men from Paris.”

Isabelle kept her voice light, for the sake of the children. It was for the sake of the children that madam’s face fell and her voice ran cold.

“They can’t. We’ve done nothing. The law…”

“Madam, they are the law now.”

“It’s not fair!”

“You know how little that means to angry men.”

“We’re not ready, I’ve packed nothing, we haven’t—”

“Madam!” Isabelle was shocked to hear herself shouting across her mistress. Madam looked even more stunned, but there was no time to decide who they were to each other now. “None of that matters. By nightfall, you will have your life, or you will have nothing. Now come.”

They each picked up one of the children, who clung to them, confused and scared. In a rustle of skirts, they ran across to Isabelle’s room. She snatched her bag from beside the door and dashed on down the stairs, madam following her. Out the front door and around to the coach house, where she had hitched up the horses ready to fetch the tutor, minutes before her world fell apart. Isabelle scoured the hillside below, but there was no sign of the mob.

Not yet.

As they bundled the children into the coach, Henri ran out of the house, a cleaver in one hand.

“What are you doing, idiot girl?” he shouted.

Isabelle helped madam into the coach, closed the door, and went to the front. Two years ago, she hadn’t even known how to drive a coach. How the world turned.

“I said what are you doing? Look at me!”

Henri grabbed Isabelle’s shoulder, and a shudder of fear ran through her. The riding crop. The guillotine. The cleaver in his hand. The brute moment from which she must always flinch. This had been her life for as long as she remembered.

The world turned. Isabelle spun around. It was the first punch she had ever thrown, and it caught Henri by surprise. He staggered and the cleaver slid from his hand.

“You… you…”

Isabelle climbed into the coachman’s seat and took the reins.

Something glinted down the hillside, perhaps just light catching the river, perhaps the tip of a bayonet, gleaming like the guillotine blade.

“She doesn’t deserve this.” Henri pointed at madam. “She’s a vicious parasite, as bad as him.”

“Perhaps. But I’m not.”

Isabelle flicked the reins, the horses whinnied, and the carriage rolled away.

***

If you enjoyed this story and would like to read more like it then you might want to sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll get a free ebook and a flash story straight to your inbox every Friday.

***

What if someone had conquered the Vikings, someone claiming to be their gods?

What if King Arthur’s knights met a very different metal-clad warrior?

What if you were ordered to execute a statue, and hanging just didn’t seem to work?

These short stories explore different aspects of history, some of them grounded in reality, some alternative takes on the past as we know it. Stories of daring and defiance; of love and of loss; of noble lords and exasperated peasants.

From a Foreign Shore is available now in all ebook formats.

Winter’s Shroud – a fantasy short story

The snow fell so hard and fast that it obliterated the landscape, leaving an expanse as pale and featureless as a funeral shroud. I pulled my cloak tight, but it wasn’t enough. Warmth and feeling leeched from my flesh. Disoriented, I stared through the falling flakes, seeking any path home.

There was only the white.

Grief spread like ice across my heart. Not just grief for myself, but for what my family would feel at losing me. Grief for their grief, and for the struggles that would follow. Then rushing after it, like an avalanche down a mountainside, came crushing isolation. I was going to die alone.

Adrift in the endless white, my mind slipped numbly from the present. A memory stirred: my first childish experience of grief. A white fox had come limping down the mountain, her fur ragged and her leg broken. I had tried to nurse her back to life, despite my parents’ disapproval, but my love and care came too late. In the end, all that mattered was the comfort of my embrace, warmth and softness as she faded into stillness, and my tears when it was over.

I cried again now. For her. For me. For my family.

Tears hit the snow and froze to gleaming points. They became eyes staring up at me, the centre of a face formed from the white. My fox emerged with slow, uncertain movements, her fur still ragged.

She nudged me with her nose, then limped away through the merciless snow. I couldn’t watch, unwilling to lose her again. She yipped, the child-like sound demanding my attention, and she nodded with her head, pointing purposefully into the pale void.

“I can’t,” I whispered. “Too cold.”

She came back, took a corner of my cloak between her teeth, and tugged.

“What’s the point?” I whispered. “I can’t even feel my feet.”

She tugged again and growled, forcing me to follow. I put one foot in front of the other, dragging my legs through the thigh-deep snow. Step by step, I made a path, and with each step, feeling returned to my toes, warmth filling my body and soul.

I didn’t see the rise until I was on it, white ground parting from the white sky. Houses appeared, their shapes indistinct but familiar. Was that my village, or was it someplace else, standing perfect and forever amid winter’s shroud?

The fox stopped her limping tread. Her shining eyes became tears again, and she melted away.

“Thank you.”

I ran my hand over the place where her fur had been. The cold had left me, and the grief with it. This time, I hadn’t lost her. She had found me. She had brought me home.

***

This story was first published in the British Fantasy Society Monthly Bulletin, December 2021. I like it so much, I thought I’d share it here as well. If you’re based in the UK and you want to get more involved with fantasy fandom, or just to meet more like-minded writers and fans, then I totally recommend signing up to the BFS. They do a great job of providing a home for Britain’s fantasy community.

***

Silver and Gold, a novella about friendship, magic, is out now.

Exit Interview From Facility 32 – a science fiction short story

I: Commencing interview with revival two-seventy-four, Francis McKenzie. Computer, attach time and location tags.

C: Tags confirmed.

I: Thank you. Now, how are you feeling, Francis?

F: A little blurry, if I’m honest. Less achy than usual. Everything seems… Are those my hands?

I: Yes, Francis.

F: Huh. They seem smoother, younger…

I: What’s the last thing you remember, Francis?

F: …

I: Take your time. Don’t try to chase the memories, let them come to you.

F: I was… I was dying, wasn’t I?

I: That’s right, Francis.

F: You’re not like I imagined at Sunday school.

I: [chuckle] No, Francis, I’m not an angel. My name is Irena. I’m here to conduct your cryonic exit interview.

F: My… Oh yes, I had a contract, didn’t I? Those Russian doctors turned up after I was taken to the hospital. They talked about cryoprotectants and vitrification and needing to act fast. Then they put me in an ambulance, hooked me up to a drip, the world got warm and dark and… It worked, didn’t it? Ha! It really worked!

I: Yes, Francis.

F: It’s Mr McKenzie.

I: If you want. Now, there’s going to be a lot to adjust to, so why don’t you ask me a few questions, and I’ll do my best to ground you here.

F: How long has it been?

I: Eight hundred and eleven years.

F: Eight hundred and… Are they dead?

I: Who?

F: Hatchett. Trovsky. All those goons who were out to get me.

I: President Hatchett? Yes, she’s been dead a long time. And going by your records, I assume that you mean FBI Director Trovsky. He’s dead as well.

F: Dead dead, or did they get frozen? I wouldn’t put it past them, copying my ideas just so they could come back and keep persecuting me.

I: Neither of them was cryonically preserved.

F: Ha! I beat them. I beat them all. Unless, wait… Did they leave instructions? Have you bastards got cops waiting outside the door?

I: No, Francis. No one’s going to incarcerate you.

F: Mr McKenzie. I told you once already.

I: I’m sorry, Mr McKenzie.

F: No one calls me Francis without my permission.

I: What else would you like to know, Mr McKenzie?

F: My investments, are they intact, or did they find some loophole to rob me? They’ve been after me since I made my first billion, envious little weasels, trying to take what I earned.

I: Your investments are intact.

F: And eight hundred years, they must have grown immensely, right? Am I still the richest man in the world?

I: You now own the largest accounting in US dollars ever seen on Earth.

F: Yes!

I: But no one uses them any more.

F: What?

I: The accumulation of wealth in the hands of cryonically frozen millionaires made the old financial system unviable. We abandoned that financial model some time ago.

F: You took it from me.

I: You still have it, Mr McKenzie, all the money you want. It’s a fun novelty. You should enjoy it.

F: A fun… Why you little… I’m Francis goddam McKenzie! Whatever currency you’re using now, I’ll go out there and make a billion again. Ten years from now, people will be dancing to my tune.

I: [chuckle] You know, you’re going to make a fascinating subject for someone’s dissertation. A window into ancient financial systems and the antiquated values underpinning them. I’m almost jealous of whoever gets to write it.

F: Ancient? Antiquated? I’m king of the markets, girl, one of the original entrepreneurs. I’m not going to be interviewed by some spotty trainee. I’ll hit the lecture circuit, get a book contract, do my own podcast with all the top sponsors. Then I’ll take that money and turn it into what I do best, making more money.

I: I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr McKenzie, but that’s not going to achieve what you want. Your era was fascinating, of course, but misguided at best and harmful at worst. Only real enthusiasts study the neo-dark ages.

F: I’ve got the golden touch. I’ll teach them to make their own fortunes. People love that shit.

I: That’s just not how modern society works.

F: You, you’re out to get me too. You all are, tearing down what I had, building your bullshit socialist state.

I: Not socialism, Mr McKenzie. Just not your capitalism. And honestly, no one’s out to get you. Almost no one has heard of you.

F: …

I: Do you need some time to yourself, Mr McKenzie?

F: No one’s heard of me?

I: Don’t think of it as losing out. Think of it as a fresh start, untainted by your old reputation. From what I can see, it was quite unsavoury.

F: Untainted by…

I: We can talk more about the past later. For now, let’s focus on the future. Do you like working with plants, building perhaps, or making music? We can find work for anyone who wants it. Maybe you’d rather travel for a while, do some reading, get used to the world. It can seem very strange after so long.

F: No one.

I: Mr McKenzie?

F: I’m… [sob]

I: There there, Francis. It’s going to be all right… [pause] This is a sedative, to calm you down. We can talk again once you’ve had a nice rest.

F: [snoring]

I: Computer, call the refreezing team. This one isn’t ready for the modern world.

***

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***

Lies We Will Tell Ourselves

A spin doctor forced to deal with aliens who loathe lies.

A squad of soldiers torn apart by the fiction in their midst.

A hunting submarine with its dead captain strapped to the prow, the crew promising that one day they’ll revive him.

We all tell lies to get through the day, some of them to ourselves, some to other people. Now read the extraordinary lies of the future in these nine short science fiction stories.

Lies We Will Tell Ourselves is available now from all major ebook stores.

Monkey Pirate Party – a steampunk short story

Albert Rochford, pale as the ghost of a ghost and tired as a toddler at bedtime, looked up from his desk as a man walked into the offices of the Overhead Cable Tramway Company. The man was dressed in a grey suit with a grey bowler hat and carried a briefcase in a leather so pale that it was almost grey.

“I am John Smith,” the man said. “City auditor number two seven three. The mayor’s office sent me. I hear that you have a problem with monkeys.”

Albert groaned and pressed his face into his hands. “You’ve heard.”

“How could we not? The tramway has ground to a stop. No one can get to work. What is going on, Mr Rochford?”

Albert’s seat scraped back across the floorboards. He pushed himself to his feet and trudged to the window. Smith joined him, back so straight it would have made a ruler jealous.

The rail yard stretched out below them, hundreds of square yards of workshops and sheds, with engines and passenger panniers sitting out between them. To one side, smoke billowed from the generator house. Overhead cables stretched out in every direction across the city, like the work of an over-excited spider.

“We got the monkeys back when the trams ran on steam,” Albert said. “Smart little buggers, right handy on the cables. We trained them to keep the tracks clear, fix wires, free up carriages that got stuck, that sort of thing. They were quicker and more confident than our staff when it came to working on the cables, and we could pay them in fruit. The city’s full of fruit. Folks grow it on their balconies, in their back yards, in rooftop gardens. There’s all them orchards out past the old walls. Do you know how easy it is to pay someone in fruit around here?”

“I am an official auditor, Mr Rochford. I am familiar with the city’s economy.”

“Right. Yes. Well, see, turns out the monkeys got to understand it too. They realised they could get to them rooftop gardens from the cable ways and take fruit for themselves. Some of them stopped working for us, formed their own little tribes out on the cables. The others were still working, and we didn’t want no fuss, so we compensated the owners for the lost fruit and that were that.”

“Monkey tribes have been living wild above the city all this time?” Smith raised an eyebrow.

“Aye, but that weren’t a big problem. Not until the piracy started.”

“Piracy?” The whole side of Smith’s face twitched.

“Turns out the monkeys had worked out how to operate the engines. They stole a couple from the yard, started using them to attack other carriages and steal off the passengers. Then they used the money to buy more fruit.”

“Of course.” Smith’s mouth curled in an expression that Albert couldn’t read, but that made him very nervous. “And you didn’t call in the authorities against these piratical monkeys?”

“We sent some of our own lads to get them. Only, the thing is, there’s a reason we was using monkeys for maintenance. They really know how to move on them cables, and our lads couldn’t handle a fight out there. We didn’t want to bother the mayor…”

“Bother him?”

“Aye. So we paid the monkeys off.”

“Let me get this straight. A tribe of wild monkeys attacked your passenger cars, and you rewarded them with more of what they wanted?”

“Ah, but it was a holding measure, see. We knew we were getting them new dynamo-electric cars. They go faster and they’re not what the monkeys are used to. We thought we could run those hairy, banana-eating buggers off the tracks.”

“I take it from your tone of voice that this did not occur?”

Albert slumped, his head pressed against the window.

“They stole the electric engines right out of the yard. Now they’re racing each other along the cables, hooting and howling and throwing peach pits at anyone who gets near. Do you know how hard a monkey can fling a peach pit, Mr Smith? Those buggers are deadly.”

“Let me see if I understand this. The city’s primary transport network has been hijacked by pirate monkeys who are now riding the rails, holding racing parties and feasting on the finest fruit this city has to offer?”

“Aye, that’s about right.”

Smith opened the window, reached out, and tested the tension in the nearest cable. He set his bowler hat down neatly next to his briefcase, took off his tie, and started unlacing his shoes.

“Are you going out there to get them?” Albert asked, wide-eyed. “Are you some sort of secret assassin who’s going to clear the rails for us?”

“No, Mr Rochford,” Smith said, climbing barefoot through the window. “I am an auditor, a clerk, a counter of beans. I have spent my whole life in that dry, sensible world of numbers and ledgers.” He took hold of the cable, then swung his legs up. “Today, I want to be part of a monkey pirate racing party.”

Grinning like a man who had never believed in rainbows but now saw the pot of gold gleaming at one’s end, Smith scrambled away.

***

Some days, you’ve just got to write the weird thing to get it out of your system.

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***

Dirk Dynamo is used to adventure. He’s chased villainous masterminds across the mountains of Europe, stalked gangsters through the streets of Chicago, and faced the terrible battlefields of the Civil War. But now he’s on a mission that will really shake his world.

For centuries, the Great Library of Alexandria was thought lost. Now a set of clues has been discovered that could lead to its hiding place. With the learned adventurers of the Epiphany Club, Dirk sets out to gather the clues, track down the Library, and reveal its secrets to the world.

Roaming from the jungles of West Africa to the sewers beneath London, The Epiphany Club is a modern pulp adventure, a story of action, adventure, and romance set against the dark underbelly of the Victorian age.

Available in all good ebook stores and as a print edition via Amazon.

Never Sleep Under the Apple Trees – a fantasy short story

A farmhouse in an orchard — Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I don’t even remember when I first heard those words, though they were probably from my mother. She would remind us every day when I was a child, tiring herself out watching for me while I tired myself out running around the fields and orchards.

“Never sleep under the apple trees,” she said sternly. “The fairies will take you away.”

Her voice was the same as when she talked about the bandits in the hills or the local lord’s son, and children follow their parents’ fears, so I took the advice very seriously. I barely even sat under those trees, and watched their branches warily as we gathered the fruit at harvest time.

“Never sleep under the apple trees,” my friends and I would say to each other as we tripped over the cusp of adulthood, when the leaves always seemed to spread wide and the days to turn sleepy, while the nights were full of excitement, embarrassment, and discovery. We barely believed in the fair folk any more, but the words had become a code, signalling to be careful in case you got caught. We lay down with each other under forest oaks, in fields of tall grass, and on the backs of isolated haystacks, because what else were young people to do, but we never lay down under the apple trees.

“Never sleep under the apple trees.” Those words were imbued with such seriousness once my first child was on the way. Part of it was the caution a community flung around an expectant mother, when life was precious and birth could also bring death. It was understood that I should take no risks, and one of those risks was that fairies would switch my baby for a changeling while she was in the womb. I didn’t mind the advice. Carrying the weight of an extra person, it was good to have an excuse to stay way from hard orchard work.

Then I was a mother, bestowing the same wisdom on my own children. I’d never seen a fairy, but I’d seen how vulnerable young animals could be, and I was determined to keep my own young safe. I kept them away from sharp objects, long falls, deep water, and of course from sleeping under apple trees. I had never seen a fairy, but I had never seen anyone drown, and I wasn’t going to risk either.

The first time my own grandchildren told me never to sleep under the apple trees, I almost cried with joy. They were growing up so smart and so fast, becoming little people like the one I had been, like the ones their parents had been. I had grown and nurtured a family, just like I had grown my fruit trees, replacing the ones that fell, grafting saplings to ensure a good fruit. Mine was a loving pride.

By then, the meaning of the words had shifted again. “Never sleep under the apple trees,” my family reminded me, but what they really meant was that I shouldn’t wander too far, or doze off in out of the way places. My body wasn’t as supple as it had been, or as sturdy. I couldn’t always stand up on my own, and if I got stuck under some distant tree, with cold wind or a rain storm coming in, then I might catch the cold that carried me away. My family weren’t ready to say goodbye yet, nor was I, so I was careful, protecting my life both from the fairies and from myself.

But idle minds think strange thoughts. No longer strong enough for farm labour, I was left sitting by the back door, watching the orchard. I started to wonder why we feared the fairies, why it would be so bad to be taken by them. I’d had a good life, but not an adventurous one. I wondered what might have been.

And so, tonight, when my bladder woke me as it often does, I didn’t go back from the outhouse to my bed. Instead, I came out here and laid my head down beneath an apple tree. I’m so glad I did, because I never realised how beautiful you all were, how wonderful it would be to see you hovering in the starlight, ready to take me away.

I doubt I’ll have long in your land. Life has worn my body down, and I don’t have many years left wherever I go, but I am looking forward to seeing a world beyond this one, full of wonders like you. Perhaps I should have slept under the apple trees years ago, but then I wouldn’t have raised my family or tended this land, and there’s a magic to that too. So I suppose that the advice still stands.

Never sleep under the apple trees… at least not until your life’s work is done.

***

Silver and Gold, a novella about friendship, magic, is out now.

A Matter of Life – a historical short story

Stepan had survived. His street had survived. The bombs had stopped falling, the guns were a distant echo, the Germans had been driven back from Leningrad. There was food to be had again, not as much as before the war, but enough. Hitler’s thugs had come for Stepan and his city, but while the city wore its scars in shattered streets and empty apartments, he remained untouched.

He stepped out of his house and walked straight-backed toward the factory, as he had done throughout the siege, unflinching in the face of hunger and the mechanical screams of war. Eight hundred and seventy-two days, marked off in tiny chalk marks on his apartment wall. Today, he hadn’t had to open the drawer holding the chalk.

Like Stepan, his street had survived the siege untouched, but the moment he stepped past its end, he saw buildings scarred by bombs and shells, others entirely gone, gaps in streets like missing teeth in a boxer’s bloodied grin. He hurried past those buildings. Life was normal again, and he wouldn’t let the ruins steal that from him.

He paused at a junction, letting a convoy of tanks and bread trucks pass. The junction had been bombed early in the siege, its rubble only cleared away now to provide a way through. Something white peered at him out of that rubble. A human thigh bone.

Stepan frowned. No one needed to see a thing like that, especially now that the siege was over. Someone should take it to the graveyard for burial. But no one else was going near the bone, and Stepan needed to get to the factory. He had made it to work every day of the siege, he certainly wasn’t going to be late now. Perhaps he could hide the bone, so that stray dogs wouldn’t find it, and take it to the graveyard later.

He picked the bone up. It was rougher than he had expected, its surface repeatedly scarred by a blade. This person hadn’t just been killed, they had been butchered. Stepan had heard of such things, of course. There was even a rumour around the factory that Pavel, who had stopped turning up on day three hundred and five, had been arrested for corpse-eating. But none of it was real. It was the stuff of whispered conversations and fever dreams.

Trembling as if he himself had a fever, Stepan flung the bone away across the rubble. Someone else could find it and take it to the graveyard. The siege was over, he had survived, he wouldn’t face its filth any more.

The convoy was gone. He walked across the street, feeling the weight of the rubble and its hidden bones behind him every step. He moved faster, rushing along a street that was less scarred, one where he could look down and not see the past glaring at him from shattered windows and fallen roofs.

There were more bones in the gutter. He looked away before he could see what they were, human or animal, blank or bearing butchers’ scars. Then his boot hit a broken flagstone. He tripped, stumbled, sprawled in the gutter, bones inches from his face. He rolled over and scrambled back across the pavement until his back pressed against a wall. He closed his eyes tight shut and sat taking deep breaths, trying to slow his racing heart. It was over. He was alive. The city was safe.

He pressed his hands against his belly. His thumbs brushed his ribs. Once, he had been round, so round that his sister had called him a ball. Now he could feel his rib bones through his skin, just like he felt the hunger, a gnawing pain for eight hundred and seventy-two days.

He had to get up and go to the factory. He had held himself together all through the siege, while others had broken down, become criminals or cannibals, wept or screamed or retreated into silence. If he could stand strong through that, there was no excuse for breaking now, when it was over, when the guns were silent and the food was coming, when he didn’t need to watch in case some desperate soul tried to steal his ration card.

A hand settled on his shoulder. He forced himself to open his eyes, focused on the old lady looking down at him instead of the broken buildings beyond her.

“It’s over,” he croaked, willing the words to be true. But they weren’t. Not for him, and not for the city. The bombs had stopped falling, but their echoes remained.

Stepan stopped trying to take deep breaths. He stopped trying to stay calm. He stopped fighting back the images of pale bones and broken windows. After eight hundred and seventy-three days, he finally let himself cry.

***

Today’s story was written to go with a new comic I’ve got out this week. Survive Leningrad! from Commando Comics is about a military doctor trying to save lives during one of the most brutal sieges in history, and about the shotgun-wielding granny who helps him out. You can find it in newsagents, through Comixology, and as part of a bundle of comics through the DC Thomson store. If you enjoy war stories with an unusual focus then this one’s for you.

If you enjoyed this story and would like to read more like it then you might want to sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll get a free ebook and a flash story straight to your inbox every Friday.

***

What if someone had conquered the Vikings, someone claiming to be their gods?

What if King Arthur’s knights met a very different metal-clad warrior?

What if you were ordered to execute a statue, and hanging just didn’t seem to work?

From a Foreign Shore is available now in all ebook formats.