The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic 2 Read online

  Yann didn’t respond. The only sound was the cracking of the wood in the fire and the wind outside.

  ‘And then I got the letter about the house, and I came here … and it was like magic. Like it was meant to be.’ She looked round, half expecting him to be asleep, he was so quiet, but she was surprised to find him watching her intently. Studying her.

  He set his bowl down gently on the floor. ‘Like it was meant to be,’ he said, and even though he smiled, he sounded sad. He tapped a finger on the arm of the chair. ‘I should go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t think how late it was when I came. I should have thought: I don’t want to keep you from this.’ He nodded towards the loom. ‘It matters to you so much.’

  ‘I didn’t realise it. But yes. Yes, it does.’

  ‘So finish it.’ And before she could say another word, he had already swept his hat back onto his head and had thrown his coat back around his shoulders. ‘Finish it, because it matters.’

  As he let himself out, a gust of wind rushed through the open door and caught Sarah’s hair, blowing it up and around her face and snuffing out the lighted candle on the windowsill.

  *

  The storm blew all night and through most of the next day, keeping her in the house. She worked, but even then, she knew her heart wasn’t really in it. Threads snagged and tangled, and her feet slipped off the treadles and broke her rhythm. She washed the bowls they’d drunk from, turning his over and over in her hands in the water, and she must have knocked it somehow, because as she dried it on the cloth she realised it was cracked in a dozen places. It was lucky it hadn’t leaked all over him. Maybe it had, and he was just too polite to say.

  By the afternoon the storm had blown itself out and the world outside was quiet, still and fresh-washed by the rain. There wasn’t a soul around. Everyone, just like her, was hiding from the weather. She pulled on her boots and her coat and wrapped her arms around herself and stepped down onto the wet street, climbing the hill to the back of town. But instead of turning right, along the little row of cottages that marked the very edge of the town, she turned left and followed the other road towards the graveyard. It wasn’t somewhere she’d been intending to visit, admittedly, but she couldn’t quite get the memory of that afternoon with Yann and the stolen cider out of her head, and she knew herself well enough to realise that until she went, that wasn’t going to change. And until she could get it out of her head, she wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.

  The wrought iron gates had rusted over the years and they creaked as she swung one of them open. The paths were equal parts gravel and puddle, and she picked her way along between the graves. There were more than she remembered. Of course there were, given how much time had passed, and now the headstones rubbed shoulders with one another, some piled with gravel, some heaped with artificial flowers. She could almost hear the sound of her own running footsteps, crunching on the path years ago … could almost hear herself laughing as she raced after Yann. It didn’t take her long to find the grave they’d sat on, the name almost worn away by time. There was no sign of the bottle: of course there wasn’t. She hadn’t expected to find it – it was probably cleared away within a day of them leaving it there. And yet. Seeing the one Yann had kept, it had given her an idea, to come to the graveyard to look for it. She’d imagined his face when she gave it to him.

  Ah, well. Perhaps that wasn’t meant to be.

  With a smile, she doubled back towards the gate. The clouds were gathering again: maybe the storm hadn’t quite finished with the town. As she pulled the gate closed behind her, a loose piece of gravel bounced up and caught in the hinge, jamming it. Sarah felt the first of the raindrops land on the back of her neck as she bent to pick it out, and shivered.

  She saw it as she straightened up again, right at the edge of the row of plots.

  A narrow stone, fresher than most of the others. The edges of the letters still sharp, the name so clear.

  Roparz ‘Yann’ Cariou.

  Two dates were chiselled below it. The first, she knew all too well. It was almost exactly the same as her own birthday, with only a year’s difference. The second was December 31st of the year before.

  *

  She wasn’t surprised to see the little 2CV van parked outside the house, nor to see the figure in the long coat and broad hat standing on the doorstep.

  ‘You know who I am now, perhaps?’ he asked, just as he had the night before. But this time, his voice was solemn.

  ‘I know who you are now,’ she said with a nod, and stepped past him to unlock the door. ‘You’d better come in.’

  He followed her inside, but this time, he did not take off his coat and he kept his hat on. It cast a shadow over his face, making him look haggard and pale.

  ‘New Year’s Eve,’ she said.

  Beneath the brim of his hat, he nodded. ‘You remember the story, yes? The last to die in the parish, every year.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘A year. A year as oberour ar maro. I collect, I deliver. One year. And then … who knows?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I fell. Nothing more. I slipped, I fell.’ He pointed to the stain at the bottom of the stairs. ‘It was New Year’s Eve, after all, and I was alone. No-one knew until it was already too late.’

  ‘This is your house. I asked why you didn’t live here’.’

  ‘I did live here. I left it to you. You received the letter from my lawyer, no?’

  ‘I didn’t recognise the name … you were always Yann.’

  ‘If you were called Roparz, wouldn’t you change it?’ There was the faintest glimmer of a smile in the shadows beneath the hat.

  ‘So … you died.’

  ‘Everyone does. It’s not such a rare thing, Sarah.’

  ‘And me? What about me?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘But you always said … the Ankou…’

  ‘The Ankou comes for the souls of the dead. The first night we talked, I was here for your friend, Bernez. It was his time,’ he added softly, seeing the look on her face. ‘When it’s time, it’s time. My time, your time. It’s never ours to begin with. It’s borrowed. And all things borrowed must be returned.’

  ‘I’m not dead.’

  ‘You’re not, it’s true.’ He shrugged.

  ‘So why are you here?’ She found herself edging behind the loom, wanting to put something between them. Yann wasn’t Yann any more. He seemed taller, thinner; he took up both more and less space than he should, and the room felt cold.

  ‘Family. You, Sarah, are family.’ He held a hand out towards her, and like his face, it was paler and thinner; the fingers longer than any hand she’d ever seen, with knuckles that looked like stones. ‘What else does the Ankou do? Remember, Sarah. I need you to remember.’

  She held onto the frame of the loom. There was a splinter pressing into her palm but she didn’t dare let go, didn’t dare move. She remembered the graveyard, the sunset, the summer. She remembered the taste of apples, the cool of Yann’s shadow as he spread his arms wide while he talked.

  ‘They say if you see him, you die within the year.’

  ‘Family, Sarah. Because you are family, I came to warn you.’ He drew himself up, taller again than anyone could possibly be, and he pulled his hat down from his head. Long, white hair tumbled down his back from beneath it, and behind her she heard every piece of crockery in the kitchen shatter. The shards tinkled as they fell from the shelves to the floor, breaking into little more than dust on the hard stone. The Ankou’s coat swirled around him and the deep pockets which had held a bottle were full of bones. They clattered as he stepped towards her. She moved further around the loom. ‘You have a year.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then … the Ankou comes.’

  ‘Will it be you?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘My year is almost up. The next Ankou may not be so kind. He will not warn you.’

&n
bsp; ‘What about you?’

  ‘A year I serve. A year I collect and deliver. After that, who knows?’ He was repeating himself. He didn’t know what came next. He didn’t seem to care, either, standing calmly in the house that had been his – the house where he had died – holding his hat in his hands.

  ‘A year. It was always all that separated us, yes?’ He waited for her to answer. She didn’t: she had nothing to say. So he shrugged and he lifted his hat back onto his head, and the long white hair curled itself tightly beneath the brim. ‘Finish your work, Sarah. It matters.’

  ‘Why does it matter if I’ve only got a year left?’

  ‘Because it matters to you.’

  ‘And I’m going to die.’

  ‘Everyone dies, Sarah. Everyone. Only this…’ he waved at the fabric on her loom; the weaving begun years before and almost finished, spanning her whole life. ‘Only this has a chance. This remains.’

  ‘It’s just cloth.’

  ‘Just cloth.’ He waved a hand over it and as she watched, the warp and the weft unwound themselves and floated apart, then spun back together faster and faster. ‘Just cloth,’ he said again, running his finger down the length of the fabric. With a flick of his wrist, he had rewoven her work into a shroud. ‘More than “just cloth”,’ he said pointedly, and flicked his wrist again. The fabric was the same as it had always been.

  The door swung open, letting the darkness of the gathering storm inside. He stopped in the doorway, his back to her. She stepped out from behind the wooden frame, unable to stay there any longer.

  ‘Finish it, Sarah. Finish it and be ready. He’ll come. And after that, maybe I’ll see you again. Who knows?’ He turned to look back at her one more time – and this time, the face under the hat was unmistakably Yann’s, as young and friendly as it had been that summer. ‘Diouz a reoh, e kavoh,’ he said, and the door closed behind him.

  Outside, she heard the engine of the 2CV start up, but right before it did she could have sworn she had heard the sound of horses’ hooves shuffling on the cobbles of the square.

  And as the sound of the old van faded into the night, Sarah took a deep breath and turned to face her loom.

  Contributors’ Notes

  Sarah Ash has been a Francophile for as long as she can remember (and not just for the food, honest!) and loves collecting local stories and legends whenever she is in France. ‘La Vouivre’ grew out of a tranquil holiday spent exploring the Jura a few years ago ‘...it’s a fascinating area.’ Best known for her fantasy series The Tears of Artamon, Sarah is currently at work on the sequel to her latest novel The Flood Dragon’s Sacrifice which was inspired by the myths and legends of Japan.

  sarah-ash.com

  Carl Barker lives and works in the Scottish Borders, far from the menacing gaze of roguish urban legends. Having said that, he’s planning on heading back to Dulwich again, to check out the latest additions to this year’s Street Art Festival. He thinks it’s probably best to leave his copy of Lovecraft at home though: ‘Don’t want to go starting a barney!’

  holeinthepage.co.uk / @holeinthepage

  James Brogden is a part-time Australian who grew up in Tasmania and now lives with his wife and two daughters in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, where he teaches English. His first published short story, ‘The Pigeon Bride’, won a competition in The Big Issue to find a ‘modern midlands fable’, and since then his urban fantasy fiction has appeared in various anthologies such as the British Fantasy Society’s Dark Horizons, Anachron Press’ Urban Occult, Fringeworks’ Weird Trails, and the Alchemy Press’ Ancient Wonders and Urban Mythic. He was a winner of Den Of Geek’s first talent showcase with his story ‘The Phantom Limb’. In 2012 his first novel, the Birmingham-based The Narrows, was published by Snowbooks. His latest novel, Tourmaline was released in 2013, and he is currently working on a sequel.

  jamesbrogden.blogspot.co.uk / @skippybe

  Andrew Coulthard first saw the light of day on the wind-lashed, eastern coasts of Northumbria. He subsequently spent much of his childhood and youth in the craggy shadows of the Scottish Highland Boundary Fault. For the past twenty-four years, however, he has been living in the, occasionally, icy realms north of the land of the Geat’s. His day-job involves coaching business professionals, teaching college courses, and a spot of translation now and then for good measure. When not writing he enjoys spending time with his family, exploring heroic landscapes and surfeits of good food and drink – sometimes all at once.

  K T Davies was born in the wilds of Yorkshire. She has earned her life-time membership of Club Nerd due to the vast amount of gaming she does (LRP, tabletop and the computerised variety) as well as a fondness for practicing medieval martial arts. She has fallen down the highest mountain in Taiwan, been taught to wrestle by ‘Crybaby’ Jim Breaks and has been stabbed in a knife fight, but not all at the same time.

  kdavies.net / @KTScribbles

  Pauline E. Dungate lives in Birmingham and is the author a number of short stories that have appeared in places such as The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders and The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes 2. She is a prolific reviewer (under the name of Pauline Morgan) and has been on the juries for the Arthur C Clarke Award, the BFS awards and the Rubery Book Award. She also writes poetry and has been short-listed for the Birmingham Poet Laureateship three times. In her spare time she may be found in the garden, or travelling to exotic places like Papua New Guinea or Armenia in search of butterflies to photograph. On these trips she takes her husband with her.

  Chico Kidd’s ghost stories have been published in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. Her first novel, The Printer's Devil, was reprinted in 2012. Subsequently she has been busy with the Da Silva sequence of tales. Demon Weather, the first such novel, was published in 2012 and the second, The Werewolf of Lisbon, is due out. She is the author of numerous chapbooks and two story collections, Summoning Knells and (in collaboration with Rick Kennett) No. 472 Cheyne Walk. Chico was born in Nottingham, and now lives, writes and paints in west London.

  chicokidd.wordpress.com

  Tanith Lee was born in 1947. She learnt to read at age eight and started to write by age nine. Around age 20 she had three children’s books published and by 26 she broke into professional ‘writerism’ thanks to DAW books in the USA. Tanith has since published about 90 novels and collections and almost 330 short stories. She has won many awards; at age 62 she was made a Grand Master of Horror and at 66 she received the Life Achievement Award. Tanith is married to writer/artist John Kaiine. They live with cats near the sea.

  tanith-lee.com

  Edward Miller is the pseudonym of Les Edwards, a multi-award winning British artist known for creating pictures with immediate eye-catching impact. He has worked for major UK and US publishers over a 40-year career. His work is seen on books, magazines, advertising, gaming, CD covers and movie posters. He works in oil but paints in acrylics as Edward Miller.

  lesedwards.com

  Christine Morgan works the overnight shift in a psychiatric facility, which plays havoc with her sleep schedule but allows her a lot of writing time. A lifelong reader, she also reviews, beta-reads, occasionally edits and dabbles in self-publishing. Her other interests include gaming, history, superheroes, crafts, cheesy disaster movies and training to be a crazy cat lady.

  christine-morgan.org

  Lou Morgan’s first novel, Blood and Feathers, was published by Solaris Books in 2012 and the follow-up, Blood and Feathers: Rebellion, in 2013. Her first YA novel, Sleepless, will be published by Stripes Books as part of the Red Eye horror series in late 2014. She has been nominated for three British Fantasy Awards (Best Newcomer, and twice for Best Fantasy Novel) and her short stories have appeared in anthologies from Solaris, PS Publishing and Jurassic.

  loummorgan.wordpress.com / @LouMorgan

  Marion Pitman, a Londoner exiled to Reading, has no car, no television, and no cats. She sells second-hand books online since her shop burned down, and has three unpublish
ed novels. She has had short fiction and poetry published in many magazines and anthologies, most recently Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes 2, and Rustblind & Silverbright; and poetry in Sein und Werden and Unspoken Water. Her hobbies include watching cricket, folk music, and theological argument. She is indebted for the idea for this story to the late great Paul Jennings, humorist and philosopher, and discoverer of the Loss Force.

  Adrian Tchaikovsky is the author of the acclaimed Shadows of the Apt fantasy series, from the first volume, Empire In Black and Gold in 2008 to the final book, Seal of the Worm, in 2014, with a new series and a standalone science fiction novel, Portia’s Children, scheduled for 2015. He has been nominated for the David Gemmell Legend Award and a British Fantasy Award. In civilian life he is a lawyer, gamer and amateur entomologist.

  shadowsoftheapt.com / @aptshadow

  The Editors

  Jenny Barber is the co-editor of the Alchemy Press of Ancient Wonders, the Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic and the soon to be published Wicked Women from Fox Spirit Books. Her fiction has been published in various small presses including Fox Spirit Books and Elektrik Milk Bath Press. When not doing any of that, she’s a minion of all trades for the family business and can usually be found wrangling spreadsheets and walking around rented houses talking to herself.