: Carly Holmes
: Figurehead
: Parthian Books
: 9781914595066
: 1
: CHF 6.40
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 296
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
'(An) impressive first collection ... skilfully orchestrated' - Publishers Weekly 'starred' review 'This truly is quality literature of our modern times' - The British Fantasy Society 'To read Carly Holmes is to be enchanted. Luscious, flowing prose that is never afraid to peer into the wild' - Angela Readman Beneath her soft skin covering, my mother was once made of twigs and branches. Sometimes in the autumn I swear there was a gleam of berry in her eye, a sloe-shine peep between the thorny tangle of her lashes. In this debut collection of stories Carly Holmes peers into every corner of the strange fiction genre: from rural gothic through to traditional ghost stories and the uncanny. Mothers turn into trees when the sun goes down; Russian Dolls mourn their missing sisters in rotting houses; men offer sacrifices to the monsters who embody their inner wildness; and murderous demons protect young girls' virginity. Ranging from flash fiction to novelette, these stories are in turn chilling, playful, and melancholy. The bonds of family and of community, both in their fracturing and their healing states, the uneasy relationship between living in the present and yearning for the past, are themes that thread their way through Figurehead. Every tale is rich with landscapes haunted by loss and longing.

Carly Holmes lives and writes on the banks of the river Teifi in west Wales. Her debut novel, The Scrapbook, was shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award, and her prize-winning short prose has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Ambit, The Ghastling, Shadows& Tall Trees Volume 8, Uncertainties and Black Static. Her latest novel, Crow Face, Doll Face, was published in 2023.

MISS LUNA

I got the job because of the cheeky sparkle in my eye and the way I could project my voice so even the people at the very back of a queue could hear my words, clear and immediate as a sheet of paper torn in half right beside their ear. The sparkle I achieved by wiping a clove of garlic across my eyelids, just enough to make my peepers smart and gleam; the vocal projec­tion came from being the youngest of ten children in a family where crying and whining didn’t get you fed.

Despite these attributes I was almost overlooked, so I was told afterwards, because of my slight frame and complete lack of facial hair. I could have been mistaken for a boy ten years younger than my twenty-five years. Rolled into my blanket by the camp­fire that first night, still dressed in the cape and stiff boots that had made a circus barker of me, still glowing from the Ring Master’s praise for the crowds I’d drawn to the Freak Show tent at a penny a person, I tried to chuckle when the muscled, whisk­ered trapeze twins jeered at my creamy jaw. They rasped matches across their thickened cheeks and lit cigarettes, grinning above the flaming sticks before flicking them casually away.

You should go and see Miss Luna, one of them said, jerking his head towards a tiny wagon resting beside the tiger cage.See if she’ll gift you some of her trimmings. She’s got more than enough to share.

The laughter rolled over and past me, gathering speed until it reached the boundaries of the field and forced its way through the hedges. The sound slammed caravan windows closed and flattened the ears of the dusty lions who paced and spat every waking moment of their sorry lives. But I hadn’t been raised the youngest, weakest child of ten without learning the value of shrugging off insults as if they didn’t sting. I matched their laughter with my own, hurling it higher and further than theirs could ever travel. The campfire keeled over and the Ring Master, sealed behind plush walls half a mile away, groaned and jerked in his sleep.

In the sudden smoky darkness we all settled into silence and the moon slipped her blanket of cloud and raced us to dawn.

Miss Luna was bathing in the river with the elephants the first time I saw her. Her beard, more black than brown, spilled from her lips in a torrent and ended at her navel in a delicate froth. Almost a ringlet, that pointed tip that twisted around her belly button; almost girlish. I wanted to plunge my fists into it and wind it around my palms, feel it slide over and between my fingers as I parted it to reach the hidden breasts.

She turned and saw me, took in my open mouth and riveted stare. I couldn’t read her expression behind the veil of hair, but she flinched a shoulder up to her chin and waded away, offering only her back and buttocks to my gaze. I would have called out, begged her to turn around, but then one of the elephants trum­peted mud-wallowing ecstasy and grasped her around the waist with its trunk, s