Shortest Day Longest Night E-Book

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 165

Beschreibung

Featuring work from Abby Beckel, Bob Beagrie, Cherry Potts, David Mathews, David McVey, Frances Gapper, Neil Brosnan, Pauline Walker, Sarah Evans, Sarah James and Wendy Gill with themes as various as friendships betrayed, birth, atheism, searching space, strangers in the night… and genres from fantasy and science fiction to poetry and realism

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Shortest Day Stories

A Ten-Point Temporal Sample of a Hundred-Thousand Unanswerable Questions

Sarah Evans

Without Index

CB Droege

In the Gloaming

David Mathews

Hunt and Pray

Katy Darby

The Cutty Wren

David Steward

The Groundhog Day Suicides

Jamie Der Wahls

Happy Hour

Lee Nash

Mercury

Pippa Gladhill

Deliver Me

Rosalind Stopps

Darkest Night

Polly Hall

The Ornery Orrery

Roger W. Hecht

Cut Short

Sarah James

The End of Everything

Liam Hogan

Brother and Sister

Tom McKay

In the Blind

Katy Darby

Shortest Day Poems

Bite

A.J. Akoto

Daylight Saving Time

Lisa Kelly

Grey Sky

Frank Rubino

On Reflection

Jill Sharp

Short Day: Solstice

Joan Leotta

The Blind Elephants of Io

Karen Bovenmyer

New Kinds of Weather

Karina Lutz

Watching Your Hair Grow Back in December

Marlee Cox

Star: Light

Pat Tompkins

Wonderwork

Pat Tompkins

in diminuendo

Scott-Patrick Mitchell

Proserpine

Steph Thompson

When I Asked If It Could Be Tomorrow

Laura Page

Shortest Day at the Beach

Tim Cremin

This Place

Tim Cremin

First Light

Ness Owen

On Winter Days in Northern Norway

Megan E. Freeman

Winter Solstice, 2016

Mario Duarte

Shortest Day Lyrics

The Turning of the Year

Alison Craig

Light a Candle

Juliet Desailly

Mock Posh and Tatters

Moira Quinn

Longest Night Poems

At the Hotelde la Lune

Sarah James

Spooning

Abigail Beckel

How We Know the Cold Is Coming, or October

Abigail Beckel

Vigil

Abigail Beckel

Dunking For a New Sun

Bob Beagrie

Longest Night Stories

A Little Favour

Wendy Gill

Mouse

David Mathews

Doubting Thomas

David McVey

What He Doesn’t Know

Frances Gapper

Dancing to Silence

Neil Brosnan

The Midwinter Wife

Cherry Potts

Life Between Lives

Sarah Evans

Left of Earth, Right of Venus

Pauline Walker

A Ten-Point Temporal Sample of a Hundred-Thousand Unanswerable Questions

Sarah Evans

07:00

I wake to questions: Who am I? What was I just dreaming?

Is that really the time? How can it be day when it’s still so frigging dark? What would happen if I failed to get up?

I summon willpower and lurch into the shrivellingly cold air, asking myself – yet again – why don’t I set the heating to come on earlier?

The cold is just diversion though, isn’t it, from deeper issues: Why am I alone? Why didn’t you return my call? Then again, why should you?

None of which helps with the pressing decisions of the moment: Shower first or breakfast? Muesli or pop-tart? Cranberry juice or black coffee? Radio 4 or Magic FM? Try ringing you again, or not?

08:00

Does the wind have to be so bloody cold? How come the traffic lights never work in my favour? That guy honking his horn, can’t he just give me a break? The stained reds and oranges of sunrise are beautiful, so why do they depress me?

What possible excuse does the barrier have for rejecting my ticket? Rear lights and an empty platform: why are these so desolating? Couldn’t the train have been late this once when it would actually have been helpful? I could use the time to ring you, only what would I say that I haven’t already said a hundred, a thousand times?

I’ve waited longer than anyone else, so how the hell do I end up standing? Why can’t they put on longer trains? How come other people’s coffee smells so enticing? When we finally emerge from the blackness of this tunnel, will you finally have texted me back?

09:00

Why do I wish I was anywhere but here? What is my task for the day? Which of those ringing lines should I pick up? Am I better getting stuck in, then grabbing coffee later, or the other way and how is it that after all these months I don’t have an answer to that?

Did I ever even have a chance?

10:00

Why am I making all these calls and not the one I want?

Hello, is that Ms Winterton? Could I have a few moments of your time? Would it be alright if I run through a few questions?

The woman’s expletives ring in my ear and how is it people feel it’s OK to be so eff-ing rude when I’m only doing my eff-ing job?

What is it that you are doing right now?

11:00

Are you branding loyal? How would you rate the quality? And who gives a shit?

Is Market Research Interviewer the world’s most boring job? What does that say about me? Is this why you left?

What is your household income? Would you recommend to a friend? What improvements would you like to see?

How can I persuade you to change your mind? Please, please tell me: who should I become?

Are you interested in learning more about your sleep? Is your bedroom dark? Do you currently share your bed?

Is there someone else and if so what does she have that I don’t? Would sending another text seem less desperate than another unanswered call? How can I persuade you to reply?

12:00

Is it too early for lunch? Why do I buy overpriced sandwiches and then not enjoy them? My screensaver loops through the company mission, vision, objectives, and why does that crap drain me of all motivation? My personal goal is just to get through each day, but shouldn’t I be more ambitious? Why do they never fix the flickering strip-light above my desk? How did mayonnaise end up smeared over my keyboard? Why do they add so much garlic? That time you said my breath stank from last night’s curry, do you know how truly regretful I am?

13:00

How long do you spend every day on social media? How many Facebook friends do you have? On Twitter does the number you follow outnumber your followers or vice-versa?

Would my supervisor notice if I checked social media for the hundred-thousandth time? Why did you stop following me?

Do people answer surveys honestly? If I made the answers up, would anyone detect it? That thing you said which made my heart sing, did I misunderstand, or did you only mean it at the time, or not mean it at all? Why did I believe the good things, but not the bad?

14:00

How can the shortest day spent here feel so endless, while the longest day spent with you passed in minutes? I yearn to fast-forward through the hours, but aren’t I just wishing my life away?

What do you use your computer for? How many hours do you spend on the internet? What are the three most common topics amongst your friends?

I think of you constantly and how is it that I’m managing to function while memory eats me alive?

15:00

How important is each of these statements to you? What would you say are your two favourite ice-cream flavours? How do you feel about low-fat products?

How is it that I feel so much and you so little? How can two people have such a fundamentally different view of the same relationship? You told me that you still care, so how come you still left?

16:00

The windows fill with the glow of sun-sink colour and it’s one hour to go and why do I look forward to returning home, when the flat is full of nothing but your absence?

Hello, is that Mr Lewis? Mrs Sharp? Mr Maclean?

Am I wasting my life and who cares, given it all comes to nothing in the end?

Why? How come?

Why does all of it, every damned thing, mean so little and yet matter so much?

Please answer my calls.

Please help me understand.

Hello? Hello? Are you there?

Without Index

CB Droege

‘We must find the answer,’ the scholar said to the linguist, ‘or this could be humanity’s last day.’

‘I know the stakes,’ the linguist replied, ‘and you just made me lose my place.’

They sat in silence for a time among the towers of books and scrolls and clay tablets and bundles of loose parchment tied up with twine, on all sides, so that the walls could barely be seen – they were surrounded by the wisdom of the ancients. Only the two of them could hope to decipher it all.

‘This is hopeless,’ the linguist said, ‘there is nothing here that will save us.’

‘Humanity survived this event once before,’ the scholar said, holding a finger to her place in a crumbling scroll, ‘surely someone wrote of how it was done.’

With renewed vigour, they continued their search.

Morning light began to pour in through the high, cobweb-dimmed windows of the room. The linguist sneezed, and dust which was once a roll of parchment scattered across the room in a rolling cloud.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I hope that wasn’t the one we needed.’

‘The world shall not be undone by a sneeze,’ the scholar said, barely looking up. ‘Keep reading.’

The dust settled, and quiet descended again as they continued their work. The morning light moved across the wall as scrolls were re-rolled and set aside, as tablets were stacked in face-down piles in corners.

‘I think I’ve found it,’ the linguist said, knocking over a stack of bound and illuminated sheaves in his rush to consult.

‘This is not it,’ the scholar replied, ‘but perhaps we are close.’

A bright light shone redly through the high windows of the room, burning away the cobwebs from the window and bringing the smell of burnt dust into the close quarters. Both looked up. For a moment they were blinded.

‘The time has come sooner than we thought it would,’ the lingusit said, face in hands. ‘Perhaps we were not the right ones for the job.’

‘We were the only ones,’ the scholar said, and humanity’s shortest day came to a close, and its longest night began.

In the Gloaming

David Mathews

A woman in a cottage doorway, cosy in an old fur against the cold, needle, threads and linen in her hands, a kitchen dark behind her.

‘Will you do me one of your eagles?’ the letter from the south had said, ‘by Christmas?’ They are impatient folk in Edinburgh.

The last one, Lucia had decided. No more till the days grow lighter.

Look at a golden eagle in the life, and it is the eye that grabs you, an eye intelligent and alien. Lucia holds her work close. Four black stitches make the pupil, seven of yellow the iris. One more stitch, white, will make the eye seem to catch the light, a single stitch to render the exact degree of wildness. Where to place it? One thread too far left, and the bird would be tame. A thread too far the other side and the bird would come across as altogether deranged.

The stitch goes in. How is it?

Lucia’s eyes sting, and need to rest on something green and distant, but winter and her failing sight leach the colour from the houses and fields round about. All the same, she relaxes, her thoughts going to a picture postcard from her grandparents’ village – uncle Renzo’s panetteria, fixed by Kodak in the same glorious monochrome she sees now. Blindness is a sod; it creeps up on you in many ways.

‘Good morning, Lucia. You’re well wrapped up I see. Is that your eagle you have in your hand?’ Willie always has a word for Lucia.

‘I just sew the eye. He look bad-tempered.’

Willie peers at Lucia’s work, sucks his teeth, nods. ‘That’s your eagle for you. Will you get him done the day?’

‘Only if the light improve, Willie. Where the sun when I need it?’

The old man laughs, and waves his hat to Lucia and to the midday clouds, urging them to part.

One Hogmanay Willie kissed her, a solemn kiss, a nice enough kiss, but he did not excite her.

So many uses for a mouth. Kissing, biting, sucking, licking, wooing and loving, giving voice to anger, joy, grief and terror. Lucia puts two fingers to her lips. One finger is calloused from the needle, hard like the scar on her Angus’s lip that surprised her the first time, and was still there at the last. Oh...

The beak of an eagle is not like a man’s mouth. When the postie brings a letter from Lucia’s sister, he touches the soft threads that depict the hooked and terrible instrument. ‘You would not wish to be a rabbit in the open, or a wee lamb with that thing about, would you,’ says Andrew. ‘That beak’s a nightmare.’ He shivers as he makes to leave. ‘Keep warm, Lucia.’

She finds it hard to stitch inside the cottage. Outdoors is better for her eyes than her brightest lamps, but today is tough. Sunrise was before nine, but you could barely tell, the light having been slow to make its way earthwards through dark clouds – and not much quicker since, despite Willie’s exhortation.

‘The sun comes via Glasgow,’ they say hereabouts.

Embroidery mimics feathers so well that, as she works on a half stretched wing, Lucia feels the bird’s strength. Even so, how can such feathers bear an eagle, heavy as a new-born baby, higher and higher until it is just a dot? The world is full of wonders.

On she goes with the wing. After that she will be done.

Lucia hears Jessie singing on her way home from school.

‘Jessie, patatina, can you give Nonna a help?’ She has a bribe. ‘Yesterday I have make struffoli.’

The girl sorts threads too similar in tone for Lucia to tell apart, and leaves with a bag of the balls of sweet dough to share with her sisters. Lucia is ‘Nonna’ to half the village children.

When Angus Ross left the navy and returned to his native northeast with his slip of a girl from Italy, he and she were celebrities. They seduced their neighbours into a love of pasta, some highly un-Scottish types of bread, garlic, olives, wine, grappa and the siesta. Their noisy lovemaking at all hours scandalised the street – deliciously.

Forty years on, there are a few folk who snub Lucia, punishing her for dead Angus’s diligence in the matter of collecting rents and debts when times were hard. They envy her artistic skill with venom. ‘The macaroni witch’ they call her.

To most of the village, however, she is a treasure, an exotic, still so very Italian in her speech and tastes.

‘That’s your eagle for you.’ Willie had said of the stern bird. Over the years, Angus’s eye had become an eagle’s, distrustful of the tenants, and treating even his wife as inclined to deceit. Only once in a while would his eyes soften and twinkle rather than pierce her. Lucia blesses Angus’s memory for those moments of fun, when she would tease him for his foibles, and he would praise her wisdom, and kiss her.

Forgiveness for Angus’s later years came after he turned his eye on himself, and after his eye, his gun.

The glow from neighbouring houses mocks the little daylight that remains. Lucia is defeated, the wing feathers she knows as coverts still to be finished. She shuts her eyes to ease their ache, unsure what she regrets most, the dullness of the day or its brevity.

She returns to the kitchen, and sits in the dark, the better to chat to her lost Angus, share their bright days in Naples and Capri, taste his mouth, and watch, always watch his eagle eye.

Hunt and Pray

Katy Darby

A lot of people these days say they don’t believe in gods. It seems to be a modern fad, whenever we are now (twentieth century, twenty-first? I lose track) to dismiss the old deities in favour of the new. Allah and Osiris and Kali have been around a lot longer than internet and self-help and L. Ron Hubbard, but perhaps that’s why some worshippers become bored and stop praying, then stop believing altogether. Even though us old-timers are good at godding, a deity can’t go on without believers and so yes, some of us are dead now. Where do dead gods go, you wonder? Do gods have an afterlife? I wonder too, but I sure as Hades don’t want to find out.

There used to be seven of us up here at the frozen top of the world, where the days and nights are seasons long. It got a little crowded sometimes, with disputes over territory and jurisdiction, but basically we all rubbed along for millennia. In the good times we were praised and in the bad times, prayed to: that’s how it works being a god, there’s really no downside. Except when people stop believing in you altogether, or abandon you for a new deity. Except when you disappear.

I was talking to an oilman in a bar in Qaanaaq once and he said he was surprised the Inuit had seven gods of the hunt. I said, I’m surprised your language has only one word for snow. There’s hunting in the sea and hunting on land, I told him, like I was spelling it out for a kid; there’s hunting alone and hunting as a tribe. There’s net-fishing and spear-fishing and whale and caribou and shark hunting, what, you want one god for all that? Would you use the same weapon to hunt a caribou and a whale?

I guess not, he said, but I could tell he was more into pussyhunting than any other kind. He was lucky he didn’t try it on with my sisters Arnapkapfaaluk or Senga: both would have killed him without a second thought. It wouldn’t have looked like a divine execution, of course, just a heart attack, but we huntresses take no prisoners. What would be the point?

The others always said I was a soft touch, the weak one: not just goddess of the hunt, but medicine and fertility too. (That’s why I flirt with out-of-towners when the chance arises). My whole family looked down on me, back then; especially Tekkeitsertok. Well, who’s master of caribou now, Tek? Nobody, that’s who, because animals can’t pray and nobody else believes in you any more.

Poor Tek. He never listened. Neither did the others. People will always want children, need medicine, I would protest mildly as they lorded it over me, Nerrivik, Nujalik, Arnakuagsak and the rest. They scoffed, they laughed. People will always need the hunt! they said. What, one day humans will stop eating fish, catching seal? You’re crazy, Pinga! Get over yourself.

They didn’t listen, and now they’re gone, swallowed by McDonalds and Pot Noodles and microwave Kraft dinners. I’m the one who guides dead souls to the afterlife (on top of everything else) so if anyone should know where the others went, it’s me; but I don’t. They just weren’t there one day. We didn’t exactly meet up regularly: like most families, we have some conflict issues, but somehow I’d always thought they’d be around. Despite knowing, remembering, what happened to Isis and Cotytto and Bast, Su Ka and Quetzalcoatl and all the others.

Who? Exactly.

Nerrivik and me are the only ones left now, and only because she’s still the patron goddess of fishermen, whether Inuit, Canadian or whatever. They may not know they’re praying to her when they hit a swell or hunker through a storm, teeth gritted, lashed by salt-ice; but they do. She’s old, though, and tired: she sees the long night approaching but doesn’t want to fight it.