The Doomsday Book of Fairy Tales

by Emily Brewes

“Let’s get a motor on, bud. We’ve got a fair stretch of ground to cover.”

  Doggo leapt to his feet, tongue lolling, and trotted after me, close at my heel.

  CALL ME MUAD’DIB

  THE WEATHER HAD CHANGED over thirty-five years. Winter still came, and it was harsher than ever, but it only lasted a month or two. Either side of it, what used to be spring and autumn, were seasons of powerful winds and torrential rains. Rivers and lakes filled up, turning brown hillsides green overnight. Then when the rains dried up, the winds tore away the dead and dying leaves, twigs and trees, blowing seeds far and wide.

  But summer was the worst season of all. Hot doesn’t fully encompass what it was like, nor does dry. Winter was cold, sure, but there was nearly always another blanket, a spare sweater, a log on the fire. Not to mention that water was plentiful, albeit frozen. Summertime was like the whole area got teleported to a desert.

  Strange new succulent species unfurled from the roots of trees that went dormant for the dry season. They rolled their dusty green spear-shaped arms skyward, like reaching tentacles. When droughts reached their worst stages, we’d milk those alien plants for their stored water.

  Everything became uncomfortable and gritty. There wasn’t a drop of water to waste on washing ourselves or clothing — not that we wore much more than personal modesty dictated. Six months of the year was eaten up by this torment, where food was scarce and there was only so much clothing to be taken off.

  Olivia was used to the weather. But then she’d been at this longer than I had. I’d grown old, I reminded myself, and set in my ways. She had no hang-ups about things which were necessary for survival. It wasn’t that I wanted to be a prude. By the same token, I wasn’t that keen on seeing my sister in the altogether, no matter how practical it was. As a concession, she made a cover-up she’d wear in my presence.

  My first summer outside was a slap in the face. I’d faced the relatively mild autumn, followed by a frigid but survivable winter. Even the stormy spring had a certain thrilling charm to it — like a moody mate who stomps through the house, then weeps before gently embracing you. The transition seemed to happen overnight, too. We went to bed in springtime and woke up on Arrakis, the desert planet. I told Olivia I half expected giant armoured worms to break through the surface of the earth.

  “What are you talking about?” She squinted at me, machete poised midchop into a cactus stem.

  I ducked my head, abashed. “You were never much of a reader.”

  She shrugged. “Didn’t see much point. And it’s not like we could afford to keep books just for reading.”

  Fair point.

  We got ourselves into a rhythm of waking early to drink and gather food, then sleeping through the hottest part of the day, waking again shortly before sunset, then sleeping through the night. We moved as little as possible and conserved everything. Water was sipped. Food wasn’t chewed and swallowed; it was gently and slowly mumbled until it disappeared.

  While dozing, I found myself thinking of the year-round cool of the Underground. The tunnels gently breathing. Moisture sweating from walls of concrete, steel, or rammed earth. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was better than the hellscape. As I mused, my thoughts would return to the lift-chamber hospice. Intrusively, the smell of that place would suddenly well in my nostrils as though I’d been physically transported there. Sometimes, I could even hear the crunch of a sheet of milky plastic as I turned my head to cough.

  Doggo was conspicuously absent from these daydreams.

  Toward the tail end of the season, what used to be September-ish, when the heat was merely intolerable, we’d start a garden. We’d hack down a patch of land over a series of sweaty and exhausting mornings. The dry grasses were packed into pucks and treated with animal fat and tree resin for fire starters. Then we’d turn over the soil by cutting a series of thin trenches and collapsing the sides down into them. It wouldn’t do to expose too much moisture to the air — the topsoil would dry up and blow away. To help prevent this, we’d spray the earth down with a mixture of aged urine and compost tea. We did this several times over a course of days until the soil was nearly black.

  Finally, one evening, we’d plant the patch. Olivia had seeds, dried and sorted from previous seasons. Under her direction, we’d divide up the patch and sow according to need. Corn amid beans so they could grow together, the vines climbing up the stalks. Large leafy things went around the roots to shade out weeds and keep in moisture. We’d put some seeds lower down with other seeds on top, phasing growth through the short season. Then we’d set snares around the perimeter of the patch. The urine we’d used for fertilizer kept most pests away, but the braver ones would do for winter meat. Rabbit jerky makes a decent stew.

  BUT THAT FIRST SUMMER morning stole my breath away. It was aggressively hot, and the change of weather had been so immediate that I was utterly unprepared. Before nightfall, I’d suffered heatstroke. Twice.

  “You need to sit down before you kill yourself,” advised Olivia. Being too delirious to speak, I could only nod in agreement. My clothes were soaked through with sweat, though my body had reached a point where sweating was no longer an option. Instead, I quaked with fevered chills, my teeth chattering like a novelty toy. Olivia had to peel away the layers of sodden fabric, hanging them up as they came free. When they were dry, they were almost solidly stiff with salt. With my skin exposed, she wiped me down with a mixture of water and vinegar. Then she let me sip at an infusion of wintergreen that cooled my parched insides.

  When my mind wandered back to sense from its time away, I vowed, “One of these days, I’m gonna take care of you.”

  “Shut up and keep still” was her reply.

  I tried to sit up but was instantly overcome by an intense spinning sensation the moment my head lifted. After fighting back an accompanying wave of nausea, I went on. “No, I mean it. I’m the eldest. I should be the one who knows stuff, who guides you through the world.”

  She helped me into a more upright position by wedging her rucksack under my shoulders, then gave me another cup of tea to sip at. With barely a breath between, she said, “Shut up. And stay still.”

  YEAR AFTER YEAR, summer continued to sneak up on me. I’d fall into the trap of being lulled by spring’s syncopated rhythms. Then one day, I’d get slapped awake by ghostly hand made of white-hot bricks, its shape roughly described by a shimmer in the air.

  In the run-up to the tipping point, there had been talk of sending people to Mars. The idea was that once we ruined our first planet, we could just move to the next one over and start ruining it. The notion, like all notions intended to solve our many problems, sparked endless debate. And so the result was no action at all. No result but sore feelings and bruised egos.

  With summers as they’d become, we might as well have colonized Mercury. I’d read that because it was so much closer to the sun, its surface was hot enough to melt aluminum. There were summer days here on Earth when I thought how lovely it would’ve been to hop over to Mercury to cool off. Dip my toes in some molten aluminum.

  I told this theory to Olivia one drowsy afternoon at the farmhouse.

  “There’s no point being bitter toward those people now,” she said. “They’re probably all dead, or will be soon.” Leave it to Olivia to sum things up succinctly.

  She was right. This was the world we had ended up with. There was less of a chance to make a new start on another planet than there had been. It was up to us to keep on or to die trying.

  Still, I could’ve done without the fucking heat.

  Another Crack at King Nutkin

  The king of the squirrels pined for want of company. No wife warmed his bed, nor did any children scamper and play throughout the palace. Day on day, he sighed in his throne room until his advisers became quite vexed.

  “If we do not find a friend for the king, he’s sure to waste away for want of companionship.”

  King Nutkin agreed and begged his court to search the kingdom high and low.


  “Whomsoever becomes my friend shall find himself in possession of hereditary title, the land it provides, and all ensuing gifts therein. Even if he stays but a day, I would know the blessing of companionship before I die.”

  Thereupon all the court set about casting the word far and wide: a friend for the king was a duke for life and all his lineage. Many lined up outside the castle gate. Few were seen. Fewer still had any hope of being gifted the king’s favour.

  Things continued in this vein for some time, until finally every creature in the kingdom had been to Nutkin’s court. Save one. Here it was: a great shambling beast covered in dirty hair that hung limply from long limbs. This horror came knocking at the king’s door, yet knew nothing about His Majesty’s search nor of the royal decree. It came only seeking succour from its suffering.

  “Please,” it begged of the guards. “I want only some food and a night’s lodging, for I am utterly alone in the world.”

  “No doubt, cur,” said the first guard. “I dread even to look upon you.”

  “And I to smell you,” chimed the second.

  Their laughter only subsided when they noticed the creature’s tears falling upon the polished gate stones. It was pitiable enough that they summoned a page to fetch the grand vizier.

  In the tradition of grand viziers everywhere, this one was long and lean and scheming. He was a stoat with his whiskers waxed into a drooping mustache, and he wore long robes of woven thistledown. Approaching the beast at the gate, the vizier raised his nose heavenward, spying ’round its side with one tar-drop eye.

  “What have we here?” purred the stoat. “Some derelict with hand outstretched, I wager.”

  The first guard ducked his head. “Begging your pardon, Your Grace. This … errr … creature said it’s alone in the wide world and wants only some food and some company.”

  By this, the vizier took it that the beast had come to fulfill the king’s decree. The vizier saw his chance to usurp Nutkin and succeed his throne with his own line. Surely the very sight of this creature would drive the king to madness, if it did not kill him outright. In an instant, the vizier was all smiles. He reached out to the beast one delicately clawed hand, saying, “We are honoured that you have come, friend. We were despairing that the king should never find a friend in this wide world. I suspect you are just the one to salve his loneliness and save the realm.”

  The beast was far too retiring to correct such a splendid courtier, so it simply took the hand it was offered and followed in silence.

  I SPENT THREE DAYS in deadlock with this tale before I gave up. Olivia had gone out. The old farmhouse creaked around me like I was a hermit crab carrying a garbage can.

  Who am I even telling these to? I demanded of myself. Why bother wasting my breath? What little I have left.

  “What happens next, Food Bringer?”

  At least that time, I had the presence of mind to be shocked that a dog was talking to me, even if it was only because he was dead.

  BRIEF REFLECTION

  I THOUGHT I FELT old years ago, but I feel agedness gnawing through me more and more. When I picture myself, I no longer see that long-lost twenty-year-old face looking out from an elder body. I don’t see any recognizable face at all. All I see is a shrinking, shriveled self, sitting up or splayed out in front of me. Growing tired of the passing years. The place where a face would be is too shadowed to discern features. Indistinct. Empty.

  A dark hole staring out of a broken mirror.

  POST-APOCALYPTIC DRINKING GAME

  OLIVIA AND I WERE lying down in the shade under the stairs. The day was brutally hot, even for summer. Doing anything more than we were would’ve resulted in being forced to the ground by an invisible hand made of scalding noonday concrete. We were taking turns sipping water from a long leaf of spineless cactus.

  “I’ve been thinking about my kids,” said Olivia, out of nowhere. She’d mentioned them before but infrequently. Two had made it through childhood. Only one to adolescence. The lone survivor had gone east with her dad to find the ocean.

  “She could have her own kids by now, if they found anyone out that way.” Olivia drew out a pause, sipping some cactus. “If they survived at all.”

  “Why didn’t you go with them?”

  “I had to stay here and find you,” she joked.

  I went to laugh but didn’t. Instead I felt my stomach bottom out, my skin go clammy. My forehead broke with fevered sweat and my chest rattled, weighted by the iron chains of disease. In my ears, I heard the close crinkle of thick plastic sheeting. This terrible reverie was broken by Olivia nudging me. She proffered the cactus leaf, which I took with gratitude.

  Then she continued, “Seriously, though, I didn’t want to go just in case you came back. I knew chances were slim, but I couldn’t leave. Just in case.”

  She reached for the cactus, so I handed it back. “I find it hard to believe that you like me more than your own kid,” I confessed.

  “And I find it hard to believe you survived so long on your own. When you’re not bellyaching about something, you’re falling down sick or injured. Frankly, you’re a mess.” Another sip was followed by a short laugh. “It’s possible this cactus juice is fermented,” she said. “I’m feeling a bit light-headed.”

  Getting up on an elbow, I felt the merest wooze of tipsiness. Shifting near enough to get a whiff off the leaf, it was unmistakably boozy. “Whew! As the older sibling, I feel it necessary to confiscate this contraband.” I reached across to take the leaf.

  In response, Olivia gave my shoulder a half-hearted shove. “Piss off and find your own,” she insisted.

  “C’mon, it’s no fun drinking alone. I know from many, many years’ experience. Just heartache followed by hangover. At least if you drink with somebody, you’ve got someone to suffer with the morning after. Give it here!”

  When she finally passed me the leaf again, I caught its pungency. Must’ve been too tired, or too thirsty, to notice it at first. It smelled herbal, slightly peppery. The taste was sharp and sour on the tongue and burned pleasantly down the throat. “I think you’re right. We should get more when the sun goes down. We’ll get shitfaced tonight.”

  Olivia didn’t reply, not even when I passed the leaf back to her. I settled back, accepting the dense quiet, and started to fall into a doze.

  “I think I’m gonna go try to find them.” She said it so softly that I nearly didn’t hear her at all. The wild fermented hooch humming in my ears probably didn’t help. I realized it could be the kind that makes you go blind — only time would tell. Having gone some time since last being drunk, the stuff was hitting me fast and hard. I wrangled the leaf back from Olivia before it sank in that she’d said anything.

  “Hm? What’s that?”

  She sat up. Her back was straight. Backlit from the world beyond the stairs, she made a silhouette of determination. “I said I’m gonna go find them. Go east. See if they made it.”

  “What, right now?” I asked, snorting at my own cleverness and squeezing the last of the cactus juice down my gullet.

  “Fuck sake, Jesse,” she said, tearing the leaf from my hands and throwing it away. “I’m serious.”

  “That’s no reason to be wasteful,” I chided.

  “I already tried, once. I was on my way. But something distracted me and I had to turn back home.”

  Before I could coax a reply from my addled brain, Olivia’d gotten up and out from our shelter. The heat was still insane, but it always bothered her less than it did me. She’d grown used to it after a couple of decades. Through the haze of my decent buzz, I found what I’d wanted to ask.

  “Distracted?”

  Nailed it.

  Olivia was in the kitchen now, banging pots around. Looking for something, I guessed. “I had everything with me. A route plotted out. Maybe not the most efficient, but it followed roads. Mostly flat land, near old settlements for resources …”

  The rattling and rummaging stopped. A ringing so
und of metal against metal lingered in the air, like the peal of a stainless steel bell.

  “So what went wrong?” I asked, clueless as ever.

  There was a deafening bang, and for one hideous heartbeat, I convinced myself it was a gun shot. Then Olivia’s face appeared out of the blinding brightness beyond the stairs. “I found you. This old, pathetic fart blitzed on skunky liquor, more than half starved. And I recognized you from the start. You look just like him. Except you’re skinny like her. You needed caring for. I couldn’t just leave you, but I …”

  Something clicked, the way it sometimes does when you’re drunk, letting me say what she didn’t want to. “Couldn’t take me with you.” Even though I said it myself, it sounded cold.

  Olivia shook her head. When her hair had been longer, it had more colour. Shorn for summer, it was almost completely white. She looked as old as I felt, despite being nine years younger. The world had moved on, but it hadn’t gotten less cruel.

  “I can’t,” she said in a raspy whisper. “I can’t take you with me.”

  The reality of that statement was sobering. My mind, ever helpful, went entirely blank. I nearly heard a cold wind whistling between my ears. “Oh” was all I could think to say.

  My sister sat beside me so she could cradle my head in her lap. Suddenly, she wasn’t an annoying little sister but somebody’s mother. She stroked my hair and crooned a wordless melody. When her song ended, I felt a tear run down my cheek. It wasn’t mine.

  “Hey, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,” I lied. The thought of her leaving me here alone terrified me more than I could put into words. But even I wasn’t selfish enough to say such a thing out loud.

  Olivia wiped her eyes. “If it was that easy to not worry about you, I’d already be gone. And it’s not like I haven’t tried. Every time I was ready to leave, you went and got sick. Or hurt. I was starting to think you were doing it on purpose.”