Bluegrass Symphony Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Lisa L. Hannett

  Copyright Information

  Collection Beginning Carousel

  Down The Hollow

  Them Little Shinin' Things

  Fur And Feathers

  From The Teeth Of Strange Children

  The Wager And The Hourglass

  The Short Go: A Future In Eight Seconds

  To Snuff A Flame

  Depot To Depot

  Commonplace Sacrifices

  Wires Uncrossed

  Forever Miss Tapekwa County

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Praise for

  Lisa L. Hannett

  “Lisa L. Hannett’s collections plays like a country music album composed in the darker places of imagination, the little corners that you don’t want to look in as you tap-tap your foot to the catchy beat. Coolly beautiful, then coldly brutal, this is one of the most unnerving debuts in years.”

  —Robert Shearman, author of Tiny Deaths

  “Here at the beginning of her career, Hannett shows a stylistic flair and depth of story rare in even established writers. Her fiction in this collection is smart, confident, and in her own voice.”

  —Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy

  “Hannett’s work has the uncanny ability to get under your skin. . . . Her use of language can make even the most horrifying scenes beautiful, so that you can. you won’t, turn away. That’s a rare talent.”

  —Ann VanderMeer

  “Take a scruff of minotaur hair and a handful of mermaid scales, mix them with mothdust and the bloody feathers of a murdered oracle, and you might get a taste of the strange and dream-soaked magic that Lisa Hannett conjures with this remarkable debut collection. Bluegrass Symphony introduces a rare and original voice whose stories linger, dark and luscious and bold as tarnished brass, long after you have finished reading them.”

  —Kirstyn McDermott, author of Perfections

  “Lisa Hannett weaves words the way the Norns weave fates, elegantly, seamlessly and with just a little bit of cruelty. Her stories are astonishing in their scope, so strange and yet familiar. Her ability to insert the unlikely and the terrifying into the everyday with such a convincing touch that you have no problem believing in Swan Girls, Minotaur rodeos, soul cigars and twig-wives, is simply stunning.”

  —Angela Slatter, author of Sourdough and Other Stories

  “Australian author Hannett’s first collection shows off her fondness for lush imagery, unsettling concepts, indirect prose, and multilayered plots. The stories push boundaries and experiment with style, form, and meaning, rarely straightforward and often hovering between fantasy and horror . . . this is a collection for fans of weirdness, wonder, and oft-disturbing twists.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “As an act of literary worldbuilding, [Lament for the Afterlife] is a triumph, evoking the unclassifiable oddness of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic and Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X trilogy.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An excellent example of speculative fiction-as-mirror, Lament for the Afterlife causes readers to challenge comfort and question the status quo.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  First Edition

  Bluegrass Symphony © 2011, 2019 by Lisa L. Hannett

  Cover art © 2019 by Vince Haig

  Interior & Cover design © 2019 by Jared Shapiro

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed in Canada by

  Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited

  195 Allstate Parkway

  Markham, Ontario L3R 4T8

  Phone: (905) 477-9700

  e-mail: [email protected]

  Distributed in the U.S. by

  Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

  34 Thirteenth Avenue, NE, Suite 101

  Minneapolis, MN 55413

  Phone: (612) 746-2600

  e-mail: [email protected]

  POD Hardcover: 978-1-77148-527-2

  eBook: 978-1-77148-466-4

  Originally published as a trade paperback in 2011 by Ticonderoga Publications.

  CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS

  Peterborough, Canada

  www.chizinepub.com

  [email protected]

  Copyedited and proofread by Leigh Teetzel

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

  Carousel

  The moths delight in the iron tang soaking the front of the silent girl’s dress. Their proboscides suck at calico fabric flowers; no longer all blue, some have bloomed red across the grey cotton field. The nectar from these new blossoms engorges their bodies, fills them with power and confidence. It makes them stronger than birds and their beaks just as sharp. Nothing but time can stop them.

  They work quickly.

  While swarms of larvae nibble at the thin material covering the girl’s twisted chest, which is rising and falling unsteadily, the adults crawl over her face, licking salt water from her eyes. Not so much to drink now as there was this morning. Everything in her, around her, is drying in the shed’s close quarters. They redouble their efforts, hairy legs skimming dirty blonde hair, sun-darkened skin, and beige cardigan at a blurring pace. Scales of brown, black, taupe chitin fall from their wings as they fly, as they land, leaving her coated in iridescent dust.

  The light in her eyes is fading. They must catch it before it goes out.

  Too shocked to feel fear, the girl doesn’t enjoy but doesn’t quite mind the sensation of tiny feet brushing her forehead and eyelids, the bridge of her freckled nose. Their touch is as gentle as Isaac’s; he who’d always stopped pushing whenever she asked, no matter how worked up he’d got from their sweaty-palmed fumblings. With Isaac, hardness didn’t have to mean pain. Ever since his troupe came to town, he’d been convincing her, kiss by kiss, that this was God’s truth. Last night, she’d finally let him prove it.

  Her breath comes short and fast now, as it did then. Air rushes in across cracked lips then gets too heavy to push back out. Consciousness keeps afloat on lilting gasps and thoughts of Isaac’s embrace. She tries to cry out for him, but only manages to exhale, launching a dozen moths from her ribcage. She can’t feel what they’re doing down there, can’t lift her head to look. The hum and flutter of wings encourages her slowing heart to keep up if it can.

  It can’t.

  The fall was too great, the angle unfortunate. Bodies are meant to sit on carousel horses, not topple from them head-first. She blinks, but the rest of her remains still, lying on the sawdust-covered floor of her Pa’s shed, arms and legs akimbo. She wishes she could pull down her skirt, so Pa won’t find her with her knickers showing. So he won’t see the cherry blood Isaac left there.

  Where you been, Cassie? Pa’s voice had snapped out of the darkness; it lashed a welt of guilt across her soul, froze her creeping footfalls halfway across the back porch. The moon had set and the sun was only a suggestion of pink on the horizon, but as Pa had butted his cigarette and moved out of the shadows, Cassie could see his face whiten with fury. It went deep red as she blundered through her cover story. Spit punctuated his hollered accusations.

 
Sneaking around with them carnie boys, wasn’t you? Lifting your skirts for a spin on the Ferris wheel, for a lick of pulled taffy, for a chance to win a dime? His grip had been unbreakable as he dragged her by the arm, pulled her a hundred metres or so along fields gone fallow behind their weatherboard farmhouse. She’d dug her heels in the dry soil, scuffing her best boots and grazing her bare knees.

  It ain’t true, she’d cried. It ain’t. She did her best not to look at the carnival lights, glowing like salvation in the distance. She’d kept her eyes down, tried to persuade with body language as much as speech. Pa knew better than to listen to her mouth or believe her penitent figure; he’d trusted lies like hers once too often.

  Pa had hauled Cassie to the shed. Inside, he’d towed her back and forth, ten steps in and twenty across, clearing away any equipment she might use to escape. Hammers, circular saws, drill bits, chisels, nails—everything sharp was removed and tossed onto the brittle grass. When he’d finished, only the outlines of tools remained, gaps in the thick dust coating workbenches, shelves, and three-legged stools. New afterimages of work he had long since abandoned.

  You ain’t coming out ’til you fess up, he’d said, shoving her to the floor.

  All Cassie had to hand was a rubber-headed mallet. It was too blunt to do any real damage but its heft was reassuring. It was the perfect weight for throwing. Gripping its worn handle, she could still picture how it used to look in her Pa’s calloused hands, gently tapping a chisel groove into patterns he’d pencilled on blocks of yellow poplar or Appalachian pine, raising curls of spicy-scented wood in its wake. When she was little, she’d loved nothing more than watching her Ma and Pa making carousel horses.

  As a team, they were unmatched; demand for their creations kept food on the table even when the harvest was poor. Unlike the straight-legged ponies other artisans made, Pa could carve horses in all sorts of poses—prancing, leaping, tossing wavy manes, stamping with delicate hooves. His beasts were always smiling, always long-toothed, always defiant. Their eyes were just like Ma’s, full of mischief and mystery.

  In Cassie’s memories, sunshine poured down through the shed’s four windows; one on each wall and set high enough to prevent curious eyes from seeing their designs prematurely. Happy rays had flooded the space with promises of endless prosperity. Ma liked to sit where the beams were brightest; she would use more colours than Cassie could imagine, painting the horses after Pa had sanded them smooth. She’d adorned their bridles with orange flowers, dappled their vibrant hides with blue and white constellations, striped the posts upon which they hung the black and purple of crushed berries. Her palette had been endless, but the way Cassie remembered it, everything her Ma painted had been burnished gold.

  The mallet made a satisfying thunk when Cassie hurled it at the closing door. The sound of a padlock being rattled into place on the other side taunted her, cackled that she was no match for her Pa.

  Should’ve known you’d turn out just like her, he’d said. Whores, the both of you.

  Cassie had pressed herself against the door, her mouth twisted, her teeth bared. I ain’t never gonna talk to you again, you hear? Her neck muscles strained around the truth in her words. Never.

  You’ll be begging for me by nightfall. Pa’s footsteps had crunched across the grass as he retreated mumbling, Mark my words.

  Everything in the shed had faded. Even dawn couldn’t break the gloom: everywhere she looked, the room had turned dishwater grey. She had to get out.

  Cassie’s cussing added a streak of colour that workshop hadn’t seen in half a decade. If Pa’d noticed her yowling, he showed no sign. She took a breath, paused; heard crows cawing in the fields, cicadas buzzing a late summer rhythm, the creak of the weathervane spinning, spinning. Screeching was useless. Next closest farm was the Petersens’, nine acres south; no chance they’d hear her from there. And Isaac was miles away, bunked down after a night’s loving, sleeping through the hours ’til he’d see his girl again. Cassie’s stomach had turned somersaults while she imagined the look on his face if she didn’t meet him by the carnival gates at dusk.

  She had started to cry then, sniffles that soon exploded into ugly sobs; howled louder and harder than she had after Ma had walked out, leaving her alone with Pa. Leaving her, without a word.

  The moths had kept still as they watched the girl cry. Day and night, they coated the shed’s peaked ceiling—millers and road-side skippers, cloudy and sooty wings, sulphurs, duns and hoary-backs—all the cousins, big and small, lined the windowsills, the rafters, the carcasses of rotting carousel steeds. They’d shared a fondness for perching on Pa’s tools, until he’d removed them that morning; next best were the desiccated carnations Ma had dotted around the place long before she’d left them all behind. A constant susurrus pervaded the room, the noise of wings and legs and antennae shifting, of tiny mouths snacking, of gradual disintegration. Thousands of compound eyes looked down, or up, or across at Cassie. All these glittering black orbs had reflected the same thing.

  It would be hard to care for this one.

  They’d felt sorry for her, even after her tears had slowed. She’d been in the shed for hours and Pa hadn’t returned. They’d spent the morning darting around stiff-bristled paint brushes, splinters of wood, sheets of sandpaper—whatever Cassie had found to fling when a fit of temper seized her. Now the smaller cousins were frightened into flight whenever she raised an arm, so the bigger ones joined forces, used their wings to camouflage moveable objects until their guest settled down.

  It didn’t take long. The late night and the morning’s excitement conspired to drain her energy: soon Cassie had slumped to the floor, her brown eyes unfocused. The room was too hot; its air pressed upon her, heavier than a feather blanket. She was asleep before the sun had reached its zenith, and only woke in time to see it sliding down day’s slippery backside. Echoes of calliope music faded as she shook her head, clearing it of feverish dreams.

  The bigger cousins heard her talking under her breath then, reprimanding herself for wasting so much time. Night would fall any minute as far as Cassie could tell, leaving Isaac waiting. The moths had known better, but didn’t bother interrupting her. Instead, they’d settled on sun-warmed surfaces to watch her fuss. Their antennae had twitched contentedly.

  How quickly she’d worked! Quickly, quickly: life is short. The moths could respect her urgency. Seven carousel horses, in various stages of completion, cluttered the shed; they’d waited five long years to be put to use. Cassie wended around them, hopped over piles of lathe-turned posts, ducked under a bridge of two-by-fours her Pa’d once intended for a merry-go-round’s canopy. Her frame was slight, but determination had infused her with strength: she’d dragged the largest of the herd—a stallion almost twice her height, with a refined head and forelegs rearing on roughly hewn hindquarters—leaving long scrape marks in the sawdust-covered floor. Breathing hard, she’d manoeuvred the unsteady thing over to the lowest window, climbed carefully up to see how great a stretch it would be to get out.

  Little windowsill cousins had grazed her fingertips as Cassie reached. She’d squealed, recoiled, crouched down to avoid the flurry of moths she’d disturbed. The movement set her makeshift ladder rocking with an awful creak. Knees and arms shaking, she’d straightened up when the moths alighted once more; stretched her hand up and over them, and pushed at the dirty pane of glass with all the force she could muster. A smeared handprint was the only evidence of her efforts. The window refused to budge.

  Cassie’d hopped off the horse, loosing chunks of worm-eaten timber as she did so, and hunted around for the rubber mallet. Earlier, a cluster of moths had congregated on the tool, burying it beneath their plump bodies while the girl still had a mind for throwing things. After a few minutes’ searching, upsetting chairs and shifting stacks of dried wood, she’d spied the metallic handle glinting out of a pile of rags. Shooing the moths, she’d snatched the tool and retur
ned to scale the stallion’s rickety back. Her footing was unsure, the soles of her boots slippery on the curved wood—but her jaw was set.

  With two deft taps, she’d smashed the bottom pane of glass. A cool breeze rushed in through the hole, tickling the sweaty curls on the back of Cassie’s neck, carrying with it the sound of approaching boot steps. Gingerly clasping the window ledge, she’d shifted her weight, twisted her head to look at the shed door to see if Pa was coming in. Such a practiced, simple gesture. And yet so disastrous.

  The horse shuddered, then emitted an ear-splitting crack. Its unfinished legs, riddled with rot, tipped precariously to the right. Cassie’s arms flailed, her feet sought purchase, found none. She scrabbled at the windowsill as the horse’s base snapped and slid from beneath her. Her left hand was sliced to the bone on shards of glass; she’d pulled back as though burnt, spraying a fine arc of blood across her dress as she toppled. Momentum had sent her earthwards—but Pa’s spindle lathe, hulking on the floor behind her, obstructed her fall.

  Families of big cousins had scattered like leaves when Cassie’s head made contact with the lathe. A great chunk of her scalp gouged on the corner of the instrument’s table; when she hit the floor, her body had looked wrong. Awkward. Broken. Within seconds, a red halo seeped around her head. The pain was intense, but brief.

  You’ll pay if you wrecked anything, her Pa shouted, thumping the shed wall for emphasis. Even if it takes the rest of your life.

  Cassie had kept silent, as Pa’d expected, but not as she had intended. She lay dazed, eyes both seeing and not seeing the hordes of moths circling above her prostrate form. The top of her head throbbed, but everything below her nose was numb. Shock had kept fear at bay; her mind couldn’t compute what had happened. All she knew was that everything in the shed was moving—the horses swam in her vision, the lathe above her bent and swayed like a see-saw, and every flat surface was alive with wings. Everything moved except her.