Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4 Read online

  What has been found in Hanwell?

  Oh, not much really. Hope, sometimes. Problems, mainly. A Saxon grave years ago that was written about in a couple of inches of column space in the Gazette, the decapitated body of a wallaby (twice), someone’s keys hanging off a clematis by the viaduct with ‘Connolly’ etched into the fob, a single peach coloured vintage heeled shoe wedged into a pergola, a postcard from Brunel’s structural engineer to his younger gay lover who never did make it into the history books, a photograph album of Hanwell and its environs from the war in a battered briefcase bought at a boot sale along with two chipped champagne flutes from a former Hanwell Carnival Queen to fundraise for her boob job, a trumpet belonging to a famous musician, a baby hedgehog rescued by a little girl moments before her dad lit the bonfire down the bottom of a garden on Half Acre Road (they kept him; they called him Cecil). A wedding ring. A knife the week after a murder that had nothing to do with the murder itself but had in fact been used to stab someone years before, in a case that remained unsolved. Etc. Etc. Etc.

  Best place to fall in love in Hanwell?

  Pass.*

  Best place to find oneself in Hanwell?

  Outside of it. But then, all the dangerous wastelands are those hidden within. Yeah, I remember Copley. Married a boy from there, once. He made me a ring out of plasticine. And somewhere etched on this heart is a postcode just like those White Flats boys’. It’s no different to their biro scrawls, no more g and no less plain. And whenever I walk past the Hanwell Library on my way to the centre of the world so I can spin myself out of its orbit for a while, I can feel a scan brush through me like a lighthouse beam. Going somewhere? I pull my West Ealing coat tighter around me, look up at the sky opening out into the city, by the Viaduct where daffodils spring up like an army marching over the hill towards the hospital into the beyond, and I hear a faint beep.

  *Actually on second thought, try your luck at the canal. If you don’t go missing, you might just find love. Run fast. Run widdershins.

  KATIE KNOLL

  Red

  Antlered does of the genus Capreolus usually bear small, poorly developed, irregular “freak” antlers which remain for the most part permanently in velvet without being shed.

  —George Wislocki, “Journal of Mammalogy”

  Before, we were blue. Bluer than robins’ eggs, bluer than the tiny veins in our wrists and some of our eyes. Even our skin was blue: palms, fingernails, elbows and knees. Our mothers weren’t as skilled before, and the dye from our clothes stuck to us. Then the dye ran out, and our skin over time unstained, and only our clothes were blue. Then the blue cloth and yarn and thread ran out too, after years, and our mothers carded, spun and pulled and wove, making cloth without color, until it all was ready. Today, our mothers make us a new color. Today, we become red.

  The cart comes in early morning, when the sky is purple. It backs into the field our mothers share and opens like a mouth, and all the red comes out. Many of us have only heard stories of the dye mound, seen it in our dreams: the powder, finer than sand, red as the spices our fathers use to cook meat. A red hill, tall as our houses. Our fathers help our mothers haul the vats outside, fill and heat them. Soon the field is full of smell and steam. Our mothers bring the carts of undyed cloth and thread and yarn, roll back their sleeves, tie up their hair, set to work. They dip the fabric and churn the vats with heavy paddles.

  We sit where they tell us to in the grass, away from the dye and the pots, watching their heads frizz in the pink steam, their arms turn red up to the elbows. We itch to help, do what our mothers do, but for now we must only watch. Wait a little longer. Red will be our color, our mothers have promised us. Red is what we’ll learn with, everything they know.

  When we grow impatient, we walk circles around the dye mound. We lead the blind boy around and around to show him its size. Red as a berry, we whisper when he asks. Red as blood, as poppies, red as a cardinal’s feathers. Ours.

  *

  Our mothers have gods’ hands, our fathers say. They make yarn and fabric in wonderful color. They knit shawls and scarves and hats in intricate whorls, weave blankets fine as water, stitch veils and coats and gowns. Our fathers serve our mothers. They hunt and build and cook and teach so our mothers can sew, stitch, make amazing things. Our brothers learn what our fathers do, and we watch our mothers, wait to learn too.

  We have options, they tell us. We can be as we wish. Some of us want to be sharp as needles, mean as a cooking burn. Some of us want to be wind-strong or rough like the hands of our fathers. Some of us want to be quick, gracious, beautiful. Some of us want to hunt, or build. Some of us want nothing we know, something else entirely. We do not want to be like our mothers, because we already are, we have always been like them: fingers nimble, eyes sharp, voices strong to sing through the long stitching nights.

  You can be anything, now that the red has come, our fathers tell us in our beds. A knitter. A weaver. A quilter. A seamstress or a nurse.

  A nurse? we say, and our fathers pull back our sleeves, tug our socks, part our hair: old scars, thin as thread, the long-forgotten wounds our mothers stitched so finely shut.

  *

  Today, we learn the words of our mothers: vinegar, mordant, tannin, vat, bloodroot, indigo. The wind blows grains of dye powder like fine pink sand on the air. Before long, it gets at us. Under our fingernails, red. When we blow our noses, red. When we spit like the boys do, red. The ones of us old enough to help our mothers already are stained for real, our palms when we hold them up red as flags, and the rest of us are jealous. We rub the dye powder in our hands, clap and scream, happy, when the dust explodes. We work and play, and when the sky is too dark to work, we celebrate.

  While we learned, our fathers took our brothers to the woods, brought back some rabbits and squirrels, cooked stew. It’s meager, but we don’t care. We down the steaming bowls like animals, without spoons, hoot and caw when our brothers tell us the stories of how they killed. They are proud, loud, strong as men in their stories. They point their fingers like guns at us, puff out their cheeks in the firing sound when they kill us in pretend.

  One of us, who has always wanted only to be beautiful, is late. She comes to dinner with her smile all gory. She wanted lips red as rose petals, like the princesses in stories. She rubbed the dye into her lips but stained her teeth, too, bright red. She terrifies the littler children, but the rest of us like it.

  After dinner, we sneak to the powder mound. We take our own handfuls of dye, contemplate its grit, its possible taste, but our fathers find us first. They knock the dust out of our hands, sweep them clean.

  Not to eat, they say. Poison.

  Then we watch the girl differently, her shining mouth, her lips, teeth, tongue—all red. That night, when the moon is fat and yellow, she becomes the first to change her skin.

  *

  We know the deer is her because its teeth are red, because it is in the bed where before she was sleeping. She is huge now, bristly fur, tawny, sloe-eyed. Her antlers are small and fuzzed, but knock into the wall when she turns her head. She fills the room with heat and animal stink.

  At first, we are afraid. Some of us want to find our fathers, bring our brothers.

  Wait, one of us says. We can be anything, remember?

  We hear our fathers sing in our heads, A weaver or a seamstress or a nurse!

  The deer rocks its head, scraping its antlers into the wall. It sounds to some of us like nothing, bone on plaster. It sounds to some of us like Yes.

  We take her to the blind boy, who loves her. We know the stories our fathers tell us, boys turned to frogs and back with a kiss, girls killed but brought back to life with only lips touching.

  She’s become a deer, we explain, and he says, Oh.

  Change her back. Kiss her hooves, we say, and he does. We wait for her to shed her skin. Nothing happens.

  Kiss her neck, we say. Her knees. Kiss her nose. Her ears. Kiss her red teeth.

  We guide his fing
ers to where we want his lips, and he kisses the deer over and over. He falls asleep with his lips on her antlers, his arm across her great neck.

  In the morning, she is herself again, and her legs are slicked with blood. We cry when we see it, and take her to her father, who laughs, blushes, calls her moon-girl. He explains in a clumsy way, because our mothers are already in the yard, pulling and dipping and dyeing cloth with no time for us, and then we’re all blushing, shoving her, calling her moon-girl too. When he’s gone, we ask her how it feels, the blood’s press down, the deer inside her.

  Of the blood, she feels heavy, she says, and full. Either she doesn’t remember becoming the deer, or she won’t say.

  *

  We wait until our mothers’ backs are turned, until they are all looping skeins of yarn dyed red onto the drying line at the edge of the field. Then we make the blind boy scoop fistfuls of dye powder and hold it out to us. We eat it from his hands, one and then another, and lick his fingers clean.

  The dust makes us choke. Some of us cough puffs of pink like a dragon’s breath. It tastes like boiled eggs, some of us say. Rust, others. We drink water until our spit runs clear. Our teeth and tongues shine red with what we’ve done, though our fathers, gone to hunt, don’t see, and our mothers have eyes only for the cloth. We should, too. To learn is all we’ve longed for, what we’ve been raised all our lives to want. But what is cloth, compared to fur? Dye compared to blood? When our mothers aren’t looking, we flash each other gory smiles like secrets. Eating the dye will work, we believe. It has to. We can think of nothing else that makes the deer girl different, except the blood between her legs. For that, our mothers said this morning, we can only wait.

  At dark, we take blankets and pillows to the fields and camp. We want space for when we become deer. When we pull our underwear down to pee, we check ourselves for blood, but nothing. Still, we suck our teeth and wait for the change to come.

  The blind boy asks what stars look like, and ravens, and so we draw things for him with our fingernails gently in the skin of his arms. He has promised to keep our secret, to listen, keep us close, to remind us in the morning if we don’t remember that we were deer.

  When the moon has risen, we are all the same except the first girl, who is a deer again. The felt of her antlers is soft. It gathers the darkness, makes her beautiful. We want to cry and lash at her.

  Why didn’t it work? we wail, and rub our red teeth. We crave her specialness. Her size and stink.

  The deer has no answers. She walks circles in the field around our blankets, her thick hooves trampling the delicate yellow wildflowers. When we are calm, she lets first the blind boy ride her, and then each of us, our cheeks pressed against the heat and bristling fuzz of her neck, lulling us to doze until dawn comes and she is herself again.

  *

  Our fathers and brothers come home with little things: a couple of rabbits, a squirrel. No birds, they say. No fish. No big game. No elk, no bear, no deer.

  This won’t last us long, our mothers say. They rub their red elbows as though they itch. There are streaks of red on their brows where they wipe at the sweat.

  We tried, our fathers say. The woods were quiet and still.

  We sew and we sew, our mothers say. Look at our ruined hands. Look at our tired eyes. Look what we make, day in and out. Then they snap whatever’s in their hands—a shawl, or a mitten, a cape or a dress. It cracks the air over our little commune, meaning everything—us, our brothers, our beautiful clothes.

  Is it not our eyes on the children? our fathers say, or something like this, each time when their work is not enough. Is it not our stories in their ears?

  We ask only food, our mothers say. They turn their backs. Pull at the weave of whatever’s in their hands so there is work to be redone. We ask only shelter. We ask only time.

  We feel sad for our fathers, but our mothers’ anger has always been good, at least for us. After they fight, they call all us girls to them and sit us in a ring in the grass.

  It’s time, our mothers say, and in our minds we are decked in red, red gowns like bloody water, red gloves soft as a doe’s cheek, red underwear of lace fine as a butterfly’s wing. We bounce, waiting, eager. We are ready. Happy to go hungry, to be red. Instead, they give us each scrap cloth and thread.

  Cross-stitch, they say. Little exes.

  We don’t understand, but we do as they ask, until our eyes and backs ache, until our fingers cramp and bleed red from pricking.

  We want to make crowns, we say. We throw the scraps into the grass, cross our arms. Ribbons, capes. Where is everything fine? Where is the red?

  They press the rough cloth into our hands again, the ugly thread.

  Learn, our mothers say, and watch until we work again. Exes in rows, exes in columns, exes until they’re tight and narrow, exes until each one looks the same as the next. We stitch, and watch the woods grow dark, looking for deer. We search inside ourselves for antlers, some furred thing growing.

  Learn, our mothers chant, soft as a song. We think they mean, Do not disappoint us.

  *

  Tonight, the girl is the deer again. We have all eaten the dye powder, stained our teeth, begged the place between our legs for blood, but nothing. Only her body ripples and blows larger. Only her head grows antlers. She is restless. Her eyes are flatter brown, more animal than they have been. They seek the woods no matter where we turn her.

  She wants to go away, someone says, grown bitter with her sameness. Let her.

  We pull the deer’s head, grasp at her forelegs to keep her with us. It makes her kick and buck. When she rears, her hoof grazes one of us, a girl with one blue eye and one brown. The force knocks the girl down, leaves a bright red cut on her cheek. She turns mean when she sees the blood, slaps the deer hard in the mouth. Then its eyes when it looks at us are pure wild. The deer runs into the wood where as girls we are not allowed to go, her tail a streak of white in the dark.

  You shouldn’t have done that, we tell the girl with different-colored eyes. We chase the deer, leave her to cup her cheek and bleed.

  Half the night we call the deer’s name at the edge of the woods, saying, Come back! and We won’t hurt you! but we see nothing, hear nothing, and by morning, she has not returned, as girl or deer.

  That day, only our mothers work. We are all too sad and fearful. We walk the edge of the woods, listen as our fathers and brothers make packs and head out. They search all day, and find her, at dusk, at the bottom of a ravine with her arm broken. She is in her girl shape but with a rack of stunted, fuzzed antlers still sprouting from her head, looking twisted and wrong. She says nothing, not to them, her father or brother or mother, not to any of us as they bring her back to the settlement, set her to rest in her mother’s bed, her arm wrapped and set up on pillows. We visit her, each of us, and stroke her antlers, and kiss her hair, and say, We’re sorry. We mean, Sorry for you. We mean, Sorry it wasn’t us. This wouldn’t have happened to us.

  *

  Tonight, our fathers want us in our own beds, where they and our brothers can watch over us, keep us from whatever magic took the antlered girl.

  Our parents only care about shared blood—the lack of it—when bad things happen. We are none of us sisters, true family. This is good, our parents say. We are all family, and not.

  We sleep most nights piled on the floor of one family’s living room, or in the soft green of the fields, or in our own private universes, the dark of our single beds in our parents’ homes. When we sleep in our own beds, like this night, our fathers tell us bedtime stories of our mothers: They started as a sewing circle, when they were only wives. They were sad, and at the time, they whispered this, only to each other. They were bored. Lonely. Desperate for change. The sewing gave them focus. A purpose. A beautiful thing to hold in their hands. Silent, shining, theirs. For a little while, it was enough. But one wife did a dark thing, and died, and so the others sewed faster, vigorously. They gathered under starlight, under lamplight, in the
little loops and streets of their little towns, and made amazing things. They sewed themselves into happiness, into life, out of their dull world and into the woods, where their husbands built them houses, sheds to store their sewing, boxes for needles, looms big as bulls, where the seasons gave them color-rich flowers and fruit and they learned to dye. When they were ready, they sewed us into their bellies and they stitched themselves up when we came.

  Your blood is mordant dye, our fathers recite, cupping our cheeks, leaning down for a kiss. We finish with them: Our hair fine thread. Our mothers, our makers.

  *

  We are heating the vats, dumping sacks of mordant, fine as powdered sugar, into the steam.

  To make our colors flash like lightning, our mothers explain. To make it stick on the cloth and not to you. But careful, they say. They see our lips, our pink teeth. Don’t eat it.