All the Fabulous Beasts Read online

  ALL THE

  FABULOUS

  BEASTS

  Priya Sharma

  Praise for Priya Sharma

  “Priya Sharma has been writing and publishing short stories for over a decade, and I’m delighted that she’s finally receiving the recognition her work deserves. She’s extremely skillful in creating characters with whom we can empathize—no matter their deeds—leading her readers down roads of beauty and horror. I especially love her award-winning novelette ‘Fabulous Beasts,’ a perfect piece of storytelling.”

  —Ellen Datlow, Best Horror of the Year series

  “The only fault I find with Priya Sharma’s work is that there’s not more of it! Her stories range in theme and even style, but each is beautifully written. This debut collection is well worth having.”

  —Paula Guran, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror series

  “Priya Sharma is a consummate storyteller. She writes from the heart, with passion, warmth and authority. Her stories, focusing largely on familial relationships and traditions, brim not only with ideas but with humanity, and her characters are so vividly and exquisitely wrought that they seem to live and breathe beyond the confines of the page. Like Stephen King and Alice Munro, she has the ability to convey so much in prose that is concise, elegant and unfussy, and as a result her stories offer you the best of both worlds: they are both instantly accessible and exhilaratingly profound.”

  —Mark Morris, Author of The Obsidian Heart Trilogy / Editor of New Fears

  “Priya Sharma explores liminality and otherness with skill and verve in her engaging and haunting stories.”

  —Alison Moore, Author of the Man Booker-shortlisted The Lighthouse

  All the Fabulous Beasts © 2018 by Priya Sharma

  Cover artwork (trade) © 2018 C7 Shiina

  Cover artwork (hardcover) and title page artwork © 2018 Jeffrey Alan Love

  Interior design, layout, and typesetting by Courtney Kelly

  Interior illustration sourced from http://www.openclipart.org; public domain.

  Proofreader: Carolyn Macdonell-Kelly

  Publication History

  “Small Town Stories” and “A Son of the Sea” are original to this collection.

  “The Crow Palace” originally appeared in Black Feathers, Ellen Datlow, ed., 2017.

  “Rag and Bone” originally appeared in Tor.com, 2013.

  “The Anatomist’s Mnemonic” originally appeared in Black Static #32, 2013.

  “Egg” originally appeared in Once Upon a Time, Paula Guran ed., 2013.

  “The Sunflower Seed Man” originally appeared in Black Static #37, 2013.

  “The Ballad of Boomtown” originally appeared in Black Static #28, 2012.

  “The Show” originally appeared in Box of Delights, John Kenny ed., 2011.

  “Pearls” originally appeared in Bourbon Penn #4, 2012

  “The Absent Shade” originally appeared in Black Static #44, 2015.

  “Fish Skins” originally appeared in Albedo One #42, 2012.

  “The Rising Tide” originally appeared in Terror Tales of Wales, Paul Finch, ed., 2014.

  “The Englishman” originally appeared in Libbon #3, 2006.

  “The Nature of Bees” originally appeared in Albedo One #38, 2010.

  “Fabulous Beasts” originally appeared in Tor.com, 2015.

  First Edition

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Undertow Publications Pickering, ON Canada

  [email protected]

  undertowbooks.com

  For Mark, who whistles.

  For everything.

  Contents

  The Crow Palace

  Rag and Bone

  The Anatomist’s Mnemonic

  Egg

  The Sunflower Seed Man

  The Ballad of Boomtown

  The Show

  Pearls

  The Absent Shade

  Small Town Stories

  Fish Skins

  The Rising Tide

  The Englishman

  The Nature of Bees

  A Son of the Sea

  Fabulous Beasts

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Crow Palace

  Birds are tricksters. Being small necessitates all kinds of wiles to survive but Corvidae, in all their glory as the raven, rook, jay, magpie, jackdaw, and crow have greater ambitions than that.

  They have a plan.

  *

  I used to go into the garden with Dad and Pippa every morning, rain or shine, even on school days.

  We lived in a house called The Beeches. Its three-acre garden had been parcelled off and flogged to developers before I was born, so it became one of a cluster of houses on an unadopted cul de sac.

  Mature rhododendrons that flowered purple and red in spring lined the drive. The house was sheltered from prying eyes by tall hedges and the eponymous beech trees. Dad refused to cut them back despite neighbours’ pleas for more light and less leaf fall in the autumn. Dense foliage is perfect for nesting, he’d say.

  Our garden was an avian haven. Elsa, who lived opposite, would bring over hanging feeders full of fat balls and teach us about the blue tits and cheeky sparrows who hung from them as they gorged. Stone nymphs held up bowls that Dad kept filled. Starlings splashed about in them. When they took flight they shed drops of water that shone like discarded diamonds. The green and gold on their wings caught the sun.

  Pippa and I played while Dad dug over his vegetable patch at the weekends. The bloody chested robin followed him, seeking the soft bodied and spineless in the freshly turned earth.

  Dad had built a bird table, of all things, to celebrate our birth. It was a complex construction with different tiers. Our job was to lay out daily offerings of nuts and meal worms. At eight I could reach its lower levels but Pippa, my twin, needed a footstool and for Dad to hold her steady so that she didn’t fall.

  Elsa taught me to recognise our visitors and all their peculiarities and folklore. Sometimes there were jackdaws, rooks, and ravens but it was monopolised by crows, which is why I dubbed it the crow palace. Though not the largest of the Corvidae, they were strong and stout. I watched them see off interlopers, such as squirrels, who hoped to dine.

  After leaving our offerings we’d withdraw to the sun room to watch them gather.

  “Birdies,” Pippa would say and clap.

  The patio doors bore the brunt of her excitement; fogged breath and palm prints. Snot, if she had a cold. She touched my arm when she wanted to get my attention, which came out as a clumsy thump.

  “I can see.”

  Hearing my tone, Pippa inched away, looking chastised.

  Dad closed in on the other side with a forced, jovial, “You’re quiet, what’s up?”

  It was always the same. How are you feeling? What can I get you? Are you hungry? Did you have a bad dream last night?

  “I’m fine.” Not a child’s answer. I sounded uptight. I didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to say, Go away. Your anxiety’s stifling me.

  I put my forehead against the glass. In the far corner of the garden was the pond, which Dad had covered with safety mesh, unfortunately too late to stop Mum drowning herself in it. That’s where I found her, a jay perched on her back. It looked like it had pushed her in. That day the crow palace had been covered with carrion crows; bruisers whose shiny eyes were full of plots.

  *

  I sit in a traffic queue, radio on, but all I hear is Elsa’s voice.

  “Julie, it’s Elsa. From Fenby.”

  As if I could forget the woman who brought u
s birthday presents, collected us from school, and who told me about bras, periods, and contraception (albeit in the sketchiest terms) when Dad was too squeamish for the task.

  “Julie, you need to come home. I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just come out with it. Your dad’s dead.” She paused. “He collapsed in the garden this morning. I’ll stay with Pippa until you get here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You will come, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Ten years and they jerk me back with one phone call.

  The journey takes an hour longer than I expected. Oh, England, my sceptred and congested isle. I’m not sure if I’m glad of the delay or it’s making my dread worse.

  The lane is in dire need of resurfacing so I have to slow down to navigate the potholes. I turn into the drive. It’s lined by overgrown bushes. I stop out of view of the house and walk the rest of the way. I’m not ready for Pip and Elsa yet.

  The Beeches should be handsome. It’s crying out for love. Someone should chip off the salmon-pink stucco and take it back to its original red brick. The garden wraps around it on three sides, widest at the rear. I head there first.

  The crow palace is the altar of the childhood rituals that bound us. It looks like Dad’s lavished more love on it than the house. New levels have been added and parts of it replaced.

  I stoop to pick something up from the ground. I frown as I turn it over and read the label. It’s an empty syringe wrapper. Evidence of the paramedics’ labours. The grass, which needs mowing, is trampled down. I think I can see where Dad lay.

  A crow lands on the palace at my eye level. It struts back and forth with a long, confident stride as it inspects me. Its back is all the colours of the night. It raises its head and opens its beak wide.

  Caw caw caw.

  It’s only then that the patio doors open and Elsa runs out, arms outstretched.

  Job done, the crow takes flight.

  *

  Elsa fusses and clucks over me, fetching sweet tea, “For shock.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “They think it was a heart attack. The coroner’s officer wants to speak to you. I’ve left the number by the phone.”

  “How can they be sure? Don’t they need to do a post-mortem?”

  “They think it’s likely. He’s had two in the last three years.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “He wouldn’t let me phone you.” I don’t know if I’m annoyed that she didn’t call or relieved that she doesn’t say Perhaps, if you’d bothered to call him he might have told you himself. “Your dad was a terrible patient. They told him he should have an operation to clear his arteries but he refused.”

  Elsa opens one of the kitchen cupboards. “Look.”

  I take out some of the boxes, shake them, read the leaflets. There’s twelve months of medication here. Dad never took any of it. Aspirin, statins, nitrates, ace-inhibitors. Wonder drugs to unblock his stodgy arteries and keep his blood flowing through them.

  I slam the door shut, making Elsa jump. It’s the gesture of a petulant teenager. I can’t help it. Dad’s self-neglect is a good excuse to be angry at him for dying.

  “We used to have terrible rows over it. I think it was his way of punishing himself.” Elsa doesn’t need to say guilt over your mother. She looks washed out. Her pale eyes, once arresting, look aged. “I don’t think Pippa understands. Don’t be hurt. She’ll come out when she’s ready.”

  Pippa had looked at me as I put my bag down in the hall and said, “Julieee,” prolonging the last syllable as she always did when she was excited. Then she slid from the room, leaving me alone with Elsa.

  Elsa’s the one who doesn’t understand, despite how long she’s known Pippa.

  Pip’s cerebral palsy has damaged the parts of her brain that controls her speech. It’s impaired her balance and muscle tone. It’s robbed her of parts of her intellect but she’s attuned to the world in other ways.

  She understands what I feel. She’s waiting for me to be ready, not the other way around.

  Perhaps it’s a twin thing.

  Pippa stopped speaking for several years when she was a child. It was when she realised that she didn’t sound like other children. That she couldn’t find and shape the words as I did. Her development wasn’t as arrested as everyone supposed. Dad, Elsa and her teachers all underestimated her.

  I could’ve tried to help her. I could have acted as an interpreter as I’ve always understood her but I didn’t. Instead, I watched her struggle.

  *

  And here she is, as if I’ve called out to her.

  Pippa’s small and twisted, muscle spasticity contorting her left side. That she’s grey at the temples shocks me, despite the fact mine’s the same but covered with dye. She’s wearing leggings and a colourful sweatshirt; the sort of clothes Dad always bought for her. That she’s unchanged yet older causes a pang in my chest, which I resent.

  Pip looks at the world obliquely, as if scared to face it straight on. She stands in the doorway, weighing me up and then smiles, her pleasure at seeing me plain on her narrow face.

  That’s what makes me cry. For her. For myself. I’ve abandoned her again and again. As soon as I could walk, I walked away from her. As we grew older, my greatest unkindness towards her was my coldness. As a teenager, I never wanted to be seen with her. After our twenty-third birthday, I never came back.

  “Julieee.”

  I put my arms around her. I’ve not asked Elsa if Pip was with Dad when he collapsed, if she sat beside him, if she saw the paramedics at work.

  The onslaught of my tears and sudden embrace frighten her and I’m the one who feels abandoned when Pip pulls away.

  *

  Ten years since my last visit to The Beeches. Ten years since Dad and I argued. I drove home after spending the weekend here for our birthday. Elsa had made a cake, a sugary creation piled up with candles that was more suitable for children.

  Dad rang me when I got back to my flat in London.

  “I’m disappointed, Julie.”

  “What?” I wasn’t used to him speaking to me like that.

  “You come down once in a blue moon and spend the whole time on the phone.”

  “I have to work.” I was setting up my own recruitment agency. I was angry at Dad for not understanding that. I was angry that he thought I owed him an explanation. “I’m still getting things off the ground.”

  “Yes, I know your work’s more important than we are.”

  “It’s how I make a living. You sound like you want me to fail.”

  “Don’t be preposterous. All I’m saying is that it would be nice for you to be here when you’re actually here.”

  “I drove all the way to be there. It’s my birthday too.”

  “You act like coming home is a chore. Pippa’s your sister. You have a responsibility towards her.”

  “Yes, I’m her sister, not her mother. Aren’t I allowed a life of my own? I thought you’d be happier that you’ve only got one dependent now.”

  “Don’t talk about Pip like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re angry at her. It’s not her fault that your mother killed herself.”

  “No? Whose was it then? Yours?”

  Those were my final words to him. I don’t know why I said them now.

  *

  The following morning’s a quiet relief. I wake long before Pippa. The house is familiar. The cups are where they’ve always lived. The spoons in the same drawer, the coffee kept in a red enamel canister as it always had been when I lived here. It’s like returning to another country after years away. Even though I recognise its geography, customs, and language, I’ll never again be intrinsic to its rhythms.

  My mobile rings.

  “Ju, it’s me.” Christopher.

  “Hi.”

  I’m never sure what to call him. Boyfriend sounds childish, partner business-like and lover illicit.

&nbs
p; “The new Moroccan place has opened. I wondered if you fancied coming with me tonight.”

  Not: Shall we go? There’s him and me with all the freedom between us that I need.

  “I can’t. Take Cassie.” There’s no jealousy in that remark. Over the two years I’ve been seeing Chris, seeing other people too has worked well for us. It’s precisely why I picked a man with form. A player won’t want to cage me but Chris keeps coming back to me, just when I expect him to drift off with someone new.

  “I stopped seeing her months ago. I told you.”

  I don’t care. It makes no difference to me.

  “My dad’s dead,” I say, just to try and change the subject.

  “Oh God, Julie I’m so sorry. I’d just presumed he was already dead from the way you talked about him. What happened?”

  “Heart attack.”

  “Where are you? I’ll come and help.”

  “No need.”

  “I want to.”

  “And I don’t want you to,”

  “I’m not trying to crowd you, but may I call you? Just to see if you’re okay.”

  “Sure. Of course.” He can call. I may not answer.

  I hang up.

  “Julie.”

  Pippa sidles up to me. We’re both still in our pyjamas. It’s an effort but I manage a smile for her.

  “Do you want breakfast, Pippa? Cereal?”

  I’m not sure what she eats now. It used to be raspberry jam spread thickly on toast. She tugs on my sleeve and pulls me up.

  A trio of swallows hang from her bedroom ceiling. It was sent one Christmas, like all my presents to her for the last ten years, chosen for being flat packed and easy to post. Pippa reaches up and sets the birds in motion as she passes.

  It’s the bedroom of a child. No, it’s the bedroom of an innocent. It needs repainting. The realisation makes me wonder what I feel. Our future’s a knife.

  “Look,” Pippa beams.

  Her childhood collection has grown to dominate the room. It’s housed in plastic craft drawers that are stacked on shelves to a height that Pippa can reach. Her models are lined up above the drawers, on higher shelves.

  She used to make them in plasticine. They were crude lumps at first. Now she’s graduated to clay. They must fire them at the day centre. Her years of practice are in the suggestive details. A square tail. The shape of the head with a pinched beak.