The Jo Fletcher Books Anthology
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Jo Fletcher Books
an imprint of
Quercus Editions Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
A Bane Returns © Frank P. Ryan 2016
A Special Taste © Markus Heitz 2003
Translation of A Special Taste © Sorcha McDonagh 2016
All Aboard © Christopher Golden 2007
An Imaginary Friend © Sue Tingey 2016
Discordances © Stephanie Saulter 2016
Frontsman © David Towsey 2016
Hebe’s Ocean © Naomi Foyle 2016
Karle’s Hunt © Snorri Kristjansson 2016
Mountain Radio © Tom Fletcher 2012
Saving Face © Aidan Harte 2016
The Curious Affair of the Deodand © Lisa Tuttle 2011
The Discord of Being © Alison Littlewood 2012
The Girl who went to the Rich Neighbourhood © Rachel Pollack 1984
The King’s Poet © John Matthews 2001
Three Gwenhwyfars © Caitlín Matthews 1995
Cover art © Howell Illustration 2016
The moral right of the authors listed above to be
Identified as the authors of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78429 790 9
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, organizations, places and events are
either the product of the author’s imagination
or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or
locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by CC Book Production
Bibliography
All Aboard, first published in the Stoker Award winning anthology Five Strokes to Midnight, edited by Hank Schwaeble and Gary A. Braunbeck, published by Haunted Pelican Press, 2007
Mountain Radio, first published in Weird Fiction Review #3, published by Centipede Press, 2012
The Curious Affair of the Deodand, first published in Down These Strange Streets edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, published by Ace Books, 2011
The Discord of Being, first published in Where Are We Going? edited by Allen Ashley, published by Eibonvale Press, 2012
The Girl who went to the Rich Neighbourhood, first published in Beyond Lands of Never, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, published by Unwin, 1984
The King’s Poet, first published in The Song of Taliesin, published by Quest Books, USA, 2001. This story has been slightly revised for this edition.
Three Gwenhwyfars, first published in Within the Hollow Hills edited by John Matthews, published by Floris Books, 1995
Title
Edited by Nicola Budd and Sam Bradbury
Contents
Introduction • Nicola Budd
On Continuation • Sam Bradbury
A Bane Returns • Frank P. Ryan
A Special Taste • by Markus Heitz
All Aboard • by Christopher Golden
An Imaginary Friend • by Sue Tingey
Discordances • by Stephanie Saulter
Frontsman • David Towsey
Hebe’s Ocean • Naomi Foyle
Karle’s Hunt • Snorri Kristjansson
Mountain Radio • by Tom Fletcher
Saving Face • Aidan Harte
The Curious Affair of the Deodand • by Lisa Tuttle
The Discord of Being • Alison Littlewood
The Girl Who Went to the Rich Neighbourhood • by Rachel Pollack
The King’s Poet • John Matthews
The Three Gwenhwyfars • by Caitlín Matthews
Introduction • Nicola Budd
Introduction
Nicola Budd
Almost two years ago now, JFB decided it was time to bring you a free ebook featuring all of our fantastic authors. Why? We wanted to make sure that everyone had the chance to experience some of the newest and freshest fantasy, SF and horror writing around (and hopefully you’ll want to check out some of the authors’ full-length novels afterward; trust me, they’re well worth it).
Having had this idea, we immediately wrote to each of our authors to find out if they had any stories they would like to donate to the project, entirely voluntarily – some stories have been in print before, and some are originals written specifically for this ebook. To our delight, we had a fantastic response: stories from JFB authors all over the globe, from Barbados and North America to Ireland, the UK and Europe, and I set about editing and collating them into one large document.
Unfortunately I left JFB before the project could be completed, but with the help of my successor, Sam, this project is finally off the ground. I do want to note something that is particularly important: each author has donated their time, their work and their skills to this project, they’ve been involved in the editing process, just as they would have been writing a full-length novel, and I hugely appreciate their positive response. They all deserve a massive thank-you.
So, without further ado, I’m going to hand you over to Sam, who saw this ebook through . . .
Nicola Budd
London 2016
On Continuation • Sam Bradbury
On Continuation
Sam Bradbury
Starting a new job can be an odd process. Everything is new; you spend the first few months either full of excitement for the new experiences you’ll have and the new opportunities that are coming your way, or terrified about those same new responsibilities and the new opportunities to do something wrong. But at the same time, nothing is new. Even if you aren’t directly replacing someone, you will usually be taking on at least parts of someone else’s previous role and can often be thrown into the deep end of someone else’s work-life.
I was lucky. Nicola had been at Jo Fletcher Books for four years and so she knew the ins and outs of the role like the back of her hand. She also stayed on for two weeks after I started to show me the ropes, which meant that taking over from her was a walk in the park compared to other jobs I’ve started.
So this anthology is dedicated to her. I may have helped it cross the finishing line, but it would never have been started if it wasn’t for Nicola, and it certainly wouldn’t have been completed to such a high standard if she hadn’t done the groundwork, both in terms of planning and in training me to Jo’s exacting specifications.
This ebook might not look or read exactly as it would have if Nicola had finished it, but I hope it is just as enjoyable: after all, it’s still the same stories and the same fantastic JFB authors, with the same amazing talent and the same generous natures.
Sam Bradbury
Nicola’s old desk, London 2016
A Bane Returns • Frank P. Ryan
A Bane Returns
Frank P. Ryan
As the first shadows of evening deepened over a surviving clump of wild woods, a fox scented its prey. Its nostrils twitched, amber eyes alert and glowing amidst a jumble of lichen-encrusted stones. In the cruel dance of hunter and the hunted, a field mouse scurried through brambles and bindweed, while rain pattered against the stones in a staccato rhythm.
These stones were ancient ruins: hammered, but in too rough a way to indicate a iron mason’s chisel. They were what you might find at the centre of a small stone circle, if the standing stones had long since fallen, or been taken, and the central mound and surrounding ditch were all but obliterated.
For four-thousand years or so the sacred ground around these particular ruins had endured its neglect. Now, the air crackled with a blue-green electrical charge. It was as if the sudden lunge of the fox, the heart-stopping squeal of the mouse, and the dripping blood were capable of evoking deeper memories of what had been commemorated here; the lingering echoes of a long-ago battle, warfare savage and devoid of quarter, ending in banishment . . . entombment . . .
Just a few droplets of blood over a stone! The fox could not know that the stone on which he caught the field mouse was a pentagonal capstone over a minuscule sepulchre, any more than it might be expected to recognise the stone as jet, known for its ability to store a curse. The pentagon bore the carved image of a skull-like mask with empty eyes – a ward etched into the jet by a bronze-bladed dagger. The fox was startled, and reared back as the capstone fractured with a sharp crack. And now – the seal broken and the ward lifted by the offering of blood – a vaporous exhalation, no more substantial than smoke, rose out of the crack and gusted and whirled about the mossy stones.
For several minutes its existence was a mere confusion of rage – all that had nurtured it during its age-old imprisonment. The emergent being had no eyes to see with; it had no physical senses at all. What flesh it had previously gathered about itself was long rotted away, clawed back by the unstoppable cycles of nature. Yet it retained an elemental awareness; enough to suggest that a living creature was nearby. The fox was entranced by the strangeness of the swirling cloud of greyish vapour sending out tentacles of mist in various directions, as if probing the rain-soaked world about it. The tentacles came close enough to be sniffed at by twitching black nostrils and then to be swiped at by a resentful paw.
Even as it assumed a more solid form, it sniffed through borrowed moist black nostrils. It accustomed itself to the scent of dirt and nature, to the pattern of the rain on living flesh, to the taste, on a lolling tongue, of alien chemicals that polluted the air it now breathed. A thunderous bedlam in the near distance afflicted its hearing, a noise so offensive to its new-found hearing that it suggested a very different world from that which it had been forced to abandon long ago.
Having assimilated this new host form, the fox-being began to move, clumsily at first, but adapting to the surety of sensitive paws. Darkness was rapidly falling; still, it kept close to the shadows. It slipped through an even darker tunnel in a tree-lined hedge to confront the source of the bedlam. A continuous stream of chariots charged by at extraordinary speed over a broad series of smooth blue-grey glistening tracks. Horseless chariots, with piercing eyes of blinding light and billowing stinking exhalations in their wake. Instinct bade it crouch low in the tall grass of the verge, eyes wide with alarm, nostrils twitching with the rank chemical smell. The shock of the spectacle caused the fox-being to retreat, its belly to the ground. Such a violence of speed, faster than any horse could possibly achieve, even the mightiest in full battle charge. And yet . . . It paused, now all the way back within the enclosing hedge. Now it had time to observe more closely, within each chariot were beings that looked cursedly human.
It crouched low in the verge, trembling and twitching, and all the while it continued to observe, welcoming the turn of evening into night.
One of the chariots came to a stop a short distance ahead, with two crimson eyes directed backwards, burning unblinkingly in the squalling rain. Consumed with curiosity, the fox-being slid through the grass to discover a human male outlined in a harshly bright light through the open door of the chariot. It peered up into the human’s face; a long face whose eyes were shrouded by rings of horn in which crystals were fixed. The human was consuming something: crumbs remained on its lips and fell over its lap, where fragments that smelled of meat lay discarded in a crumpled sheet of brilliant silver. Long-fingered hands now patted pockets within its covered thighs, discovering an oblong box from which it extricated a small white cylinder. Taking the cylinder to its mouth, it ignited the end with a flame and then inhaled the smoke. Slinking closer, adopting the host creature’s instinctive patterns of behaviour, the fox-being entered the outer halo of yellow light, to gaze aslant up into the smoke-shrouded face, its eyes alert.
The face of the human was periodically reddened by the glow of the cylinder, which it retained with marvellous balance within its lips. Only when the cylinder was consumed was it withdrawn from the mouth, to be discarded, in a fiery arc, into the surrounding dark. The fox padded closer, entering the oblong of bright illumination falling through the open door. It peered up at the bemused human within the chariot, at the discoloured tablets of its teeth, among which tiny tendrils of smoke still eddied.
‘Hello there!’
The fox blinked, whiskers twitching.
‘What you up to? Come for a little nibble?’
An arm was reaching out, those long, brown-stained fingers offering a fragment of the meaty food. They dropped it, with a gentle flick, so the morsel landed at the fox’s feet.
The fox sniffed at the food. It edged still closer, its head uplifted, every muscle trembling, ears erect.
The human reached down to brush the fur between its ears. The amber eyes of the fox gazed up into the blue of the human’s, watching for the change. They widened in concert with those of its new host in the moment the agony registered. The scream was lost in the thunder of the passing chariots.
Assuaging its appetite, it took longer to assimilate the human male, absorbing new knowledge, new memories. There was wonder to be gathered in this strange new world, with its extraordinary changes from the old – this world of machines! New opportunities were already presenting themselves. Another chariot had halted close by, a larger chariot that was a lurid orange in colour. In the looking glass above its human head, the being that was now part fox and part human watched as another human emerged, approaching the open door.
It was pleased to confirm that this host was a female. Her hair was tinctured an impossible shade of purple and bunched at the back of her head – like a closed fist – with a purple band. The foxy part of its being inhaled the curious mixture of odours that exuded from her presence – the hint of flowers mixed with the sweat of labour.
It spoke with the voice of the consumed man: ‘What you up to? Come for a little nibble?’
Her smile turned to a frown as she gazed in through the open door. ‘What’s the trouble?’
The man-face smiled.
It was close enough now to witness its reflection in her eyes. It saw its own pallid face, white as candle wax, and the circles within it that were its eyes. It spun the head through half a circle, to witness the woman’s head jerk in a frightened movement, as she stared at the fox’s face, with its amber eyes aglow with anticipation. A s
ingle long-fingered hand reached out . . .
The female screamed even before the shock of contact was made.
There was no rush to ecstasy this time. It savoured the pain of a much slower, inescapably messy consummation, the frenzy of terror that embroiled the mind. In time a third face was added to those of the fox and the man, the new face caught in what was now a never-ending scream. The compound oozed out of the chariot in a fluid amoeboid motion, discarding the coverings of male and female, which lay crumpled in the dirt.
Within its head a voice was calling. The response of the emergent being was still weak as a mewling new-born, lost in a world of incomprehensible change.
Some lingering instinct caused it to spit into the palm of a protruding hand and then wipe it, unconsciously, on the nearby bare flesh of an ample hip.
The composite being of fox, man and woman, gazed up into the night sky through three separate pairs of eyes, seeing not stars but the reflected lights of a great encampment. From the collective minds of its human hosts it had extracted a name: London. It perceived within the corrupting glow a telling conflagration of lines of force, converging onto a single focus . . .
The Sword is calling.
I heed! I come . . .
Frank P. Ryan is a multiple-bestselling author in the UK and US. His other fiction includes the thrillers Goodbye Baby Blue and Tiger Tiger. His books have been translated into over ten different languages. Born in Ireland, he now lives in England. His YA fantasy series The Three Powers, which includes the titles The Snowmelt River, The Tower of Bones, The Sword of Feimhin and The Return of the Arinn, is published by Jo Fletcher Books
A Special Taste • by Markus Heitz
A Special Taste
by Markus Heitz
Translated by Sorcha McDonagh
‘Could this be something for us?’ He took the magazine from the top of the pile and threw it across the breakfast table at her. ‘I’ve marked the place.’