The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013

by Angela Slatter

Then in the third year of my studies, before we were released as qualified women of the world, there was Amy.

  We were both so coy and bashful that I am sure no one knew that our friendship had turned to romance—even we were slow to admit that to ourselves. But we both loved poetry, and read it to each other in the spare hours, blushing all the while.

  She read me one that she had cut from the newspaper, of a raven-haired princess in a magical land of many-coloured grass, and was surprised that it made my hands shake.

  “Why, I thought of you when I read it,” said Amy, so startled at my reaction that she forgot to blush. “Because of the title, see? And your hair is so lovely and dark.”

  The poem was “Victory,” by I.M. Midas. It was the first of many. I should have known that nothing would quiet her pen. She would never release me from the burden of that single, fleeting kiss.

  I could never kiss Amy. I did not fear society’s condemnation so much as a woman in my position should, perhaps. My fear was wilder, that again I might ignite that dreadful power that had sparked between myself and Miss Ida May Midas.

  My love for Amy was so much more than what I had felt so briefly for Ida May. Surely our kisses would set whole forests aflame. It could not be risked, and I could never tell her why.

  * * *

  The years passed. My friendship with Amy turned into a long and heartfelt correspondence as we taught in different schools, in different towns. Her letters soon became more friendly than passionate, and eventually I learned that she had chosen a conventional path, accepting the hand of an earnest young gentleman called Edward. I had never expected otherwise. She was too pretty to be a spinster.

  Meanwhile, I.M. Midas grew in reputation, her dark and threatening mode of poetry capturing the imagination of the time. She moved to Boston and then New York, taking up with a bohemian set that only added to her literary stature.

  One poem, about the ill omen of a raven, was published in over twenty newspapers across the country and for one brief season made Miss Midas a household name.

  I found myself in that poem, as I always did. The raven croaked its chilly message to a woman who searched for victory in dusty old books, who craved a career as a historian (something I myself had ceased to yearn for years before now). A woman who desired to be forgiven by her lover.

  Nevermore indeed.

  After that, I.M. Midas was often referred to as “the Raven,” even in my small circles. There were a few poets and book enthusiasts in my little town, and we met sometimes to read to each other while taking tea. Mr Oswald, who ran the library and the post office, took a particular delight in the words of “Mr Midas”, and would regularly clip poems out of the newspapers to share with us.

  “Ah, listen to this one, Miss Grayson,” he said one afternoon as our little group sat in my schoolroom with cups of tea and slices of fruit cake. “You will appreciate it, I think.”

  It was not a poem, but a very short story, about poet dying for lack of beauty, and the lost love who had broken his heart.

  “Why is Mr Midas always so sad?” complained Lucille Woodvine who was an excellent seamstress and quite pretty, but not especially bright.

  I closed my eyes, and listened to the end of the story. The poet died, and only then was allowed to return to the land of many-coloured grass he had visited once in his youth, the single time in his life that he had ever been happy.

  I would not crack. I would not. This was no more seductive than the letters or the feathers. Ida May had found another way to torture me for the choices of my past, and I would not go to her.

  * * *

  As Christmas approached, our little reading group received word of a new literary journal, The Stylus, edited by none other than I.M. Midas. I rejoiced in this news for I truly believed (I wanted to believe) that if Ida May received the acclaim due to her for her best and most powerful work, she might finally let go of the idea that our never-was love was such a great tragedy in her life.

  I did not have to subscribe to the periodical, because Mr Oswald had already done so, and was delighted to go over the contents with the group. I did examine the crisp pages with great curiosity, I must admit.

  There was a poem by Midas herself, and many other pieces she had chosen from favourite writers and friends—some were beautiful, some banal, and all quite wretchedly bleak.

  Ida’s poem was about me. Of course it was. The poems are always about me. This one for once made no playful pun about my name, not even a discreet letter ‘v’ placed somewhere noticeable, and yet it contained all of the elements I knew to recognise. The woman, this woman whom the poet loved, had a “classic” face, “queenly” stature, bright eyes, a musical voice, a pallid brow and curly dark hair.

  Even when she did not name me, the Raven was still writing about her mythical Victoria, a woman she had constructed upon a few dim memories.

  It was the article published at the back which made me tremble. It was a biography of I.M. Midas, poet-editor of the Stylus. A short piece, certainly, but one that was utterly false and scurrilous. No longer was Miss Midas merely writing under a name that implied she was male. Now she had actually allowed a piece to be written which stated her male identity as a fact. Ignatious Melville Midas had a Harvard degree, parents, enjoyed shooting and fishing, all artifice. A wife, by God, “his” helpmeet and muse, the raven-haired Mrs Victoria Midas.

  Ida May had claimed me after all, woven me into her imaginary history of a celebrated male poet with a devoted wife.

  As I consumed this news, smoke began to pour from the pages of The Stylus, and the journal burst into flames. Mr Oswald shouted, and Miss Woodvine screamed, and there was a great to-do with water and blankets.

  I was not burnt, which they all claimed was a miracle. But I was indeed broken.

  The very next day, I bought a train ticket to New York.

  * * *

  “Mr and Mrs Midas” lived in a tall, narrow house in tree-lined avenue of a wealthy district. I had bought another copy of The Stylus at the train station, so as to neatly copy the address on to a slip of paper I could keep in my pocketbook, though I was careful not to read anything else of the journal lest I cause further inflagration.

  I stood upon their steps for a very long time before I gathered my courage enough to march up and ring their bell.

  A maid answered, a shy girl in a crisp uniform with a cap pulled down upon her face. She bobbed and ma’amed and led me to a drawing room so full of books that I had no doubt I was in the right place.

  “I should like to see,” I said, and hesitated on the words, for no, I was not yet ready for the confrontation with Ida May. “The lady of the house. Mrs Midas.”

  The maid stared at me, quite startled, and I was equally startled to see her face. She had such bright eyes, and a brow that could only be described as pallid. It was like looking into the mirror I had owned ten years ago. She could have been me. “Yes, Mrs Midas,” she said quickly, and fled.

  What was I to make of that? For as I waited, I had a creeping suspicion that she had not been agreeing with me readily that she would fetch her mistress, but instead she had addressed me as her mistress.

  No, that could not be.

  A housekeeper came next, a stout and comforting woman, though again I had that quiet shock of recognition. She looked so like my aunt, or perhaps myself once I reached the age of my aunt.

  “Mrs Midas, welcome home,” she said in a voice that was certainly not my own, though I struggled at first to recognise it. “May I bring tea? Or would you prefer sherry at this hour? Mr Midas was sorry not to meet you at the station, but he will be along for supper directly.”

  “I am not,” I said, and there was something wrong with my voice, too. It was deeper, more sardonic, and yet dreadfully familiar. “I am . . . ” But what could I say? I was Victoria Grayson, unmarried, a schoolteacher, a lover of women? Mrs Midas was a Victoria too. “I am afraid . . . ”

  That, at least, was the truth.

 
The door rang, and the maid answered it again. I heard her speaking to the master of the house in the hallway, and he answering her, both in that same voice, the one I heard in the mouth of the housekeeper and of myself.

  “Hello, darling,” said Ida May, as she entered the drawing room. I had half expected her to be dressed as a man, all frock coat and tails, but she was dressed as she always had when I knew her, in a respectable brown linen dress and jacket.

  “Where are we?” I demanded. Her voice spilled out of me, that rich sound. I was not myself any more. My clothes had changed, and my corset was tighter. I could feel myself stretching to fill her vision of me. She thought I was taller, more slender, and thus I became. “What is this house?”

  Ida May Midas smiled at me with that angular face of hers, and took my hand. Gently, she led me to the window and drew back the curtains. The trees that lined the avenue outside were glowing gold with a sunlight that came from nowhere. As my hand shuddered in hers, I saw threads of bright and many-coloured grass spring up in the middle of the street.

  “It’s not a house,” she said serenely, her fingers encircling my wrist like a trap, sprung. “It’s a poem.”

  Almost Beautiful

  Angela Rega

  There are whispers of what happens when a mortal man copulates with a woman of scales and I serve as evidence to their tale. I tell my sea witch mother not to worry about my grim marriage prospects. I tell her all men are as shallow as the marshy lagoons that surround our island and can never know love unless it begins with physical beauty.

  My mortal cousin, Isabella, is as beautiful as sunrise against a Venetian grey sky and unlike me, betrothed to be married. She preens herself like a vain caged bird, puffing her chest out and singing songs for anyone who’ll listen. And I know that some women, too, are just as shallow.

  The only thing Isabella didn’t compete with me for was my wish to join my father’s guild and become a glassmaker. She had laughed so much she hiccupped when I told her my wishes.

  “Women don’t make looking-glass! They use it to admire their reflections.”

  Then she laughed and didn’t offer me an apology. I knew her meaning was to rub salt into my wound.

  I was named Quasibella, ‘Almost Beautiful’ by my father, Giacomo, for my hare lip and fish tail. It begins from the back of my right thigh, separating into an appendage behind my knee and growing more obtrusive when I’m wet, nervous or angry.

  “Let her be apprenticed to glass.” My mother, who understood my urgency, had begged my father. She knew my prospects of marriage were not good; a skill would provide me with an income.

  My father flatly refused.

  Since time immemorial, many mermaids and sea witches of varying degrees of fin and scale have lived in our Venetian Lagoons. Brides of the Doges, they collect the rings tossed by the Magistrates in the water symbolising the marriage of the city to the sea. So vain some are, my own mother’s mother traded her to my father, Giacomo, for a small Murano looking glass mirror.

  Murano became renowned for its glass and mirrors and both have been in demand by mermaid and mortal women ever since. Still, my father wouldn’t let me learn the skill of making them.

  “I want to make a mirror that will show the beauty of heart of a woman,” I’d said to my father.

  “The only beauty a man and a mirror appreciate is physical beauty,” he’d answered.

  Marriageable age was passing me by, as was my patience. And what should a part mermaid daughter do when her father disagreed? Should she skulk or scream? Cry like a child and take to her bed?

  I did what most scaled women do when they need time to think. I took a bath.

  I didn’t need to heat the water nor perfume it with lavender like so many noble ladies would; I am a cold-blooded creature, after all. Instead I hauled the water straight from the lagoons itself and sat in it. Cold like holy stone. The smell of brine and salt, the taste of old fish bones, was comfort for me.

  “Don’t spend too long in the bath!” my mother called out from behind the door.

  “Father stops me from becoming a glassmaker because I’m a part mortal woman and you want to stop me from my bathing because I’m part mermaid!”

  The doorknob turned as my mother tried to enter but I had bolted the door from the inside. “Quasibella, don’t play with sea magic,” she warned. “Long baths are no good for you.”

  I submerged my head, wishing I had gills like my full blooded sea witch mother. I had always done my best thinking underwater.

  A masked messenger in a gondola came that night, and beat at our door with his oar. I lit a candle stub and followed my mother and father down to the antechamber that opened directly onto the water. The gondola had night lanterns made from delicate fishbone and the messenger wore a cloak of sea grass. He had a letter addressed to my father in black squid ink, sealed with emerald wax that shimmered with mermaid scale. It was unmistakably the seal of the Underwater Senate.

  My father took the letter, fumbling as he opened it, his fingers stiff in the cold night air. “It’s from your kingdom,” he whispered to my mother.

  “The seal . . . ” my mother gazed at the letter and snatched it out of my father’s hands, “it’s an older version of the seal.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at me.

  I shrugged and avoided her gaze. But I knew what influence my mother’s Underwater Kingdom had. The annual ceremonial marriage of the city to the sea meant that many mermaids were the rightful heirs to the maze of lagoons surrounding Venice and our island, Murano.

  Father ushered us inside to read aloud the letter’s contents:

  Dear Sir,

  The glassmaker guild’s secrets leak like the chapel walls that let in the lagoons when it rains. Spies have come to Murano in the guise of merchants and have stolen our glass and mirror making recipes (only for them to be replicated in Holland, Spain and England).

  What beauty is there in our glass if others can easily mimic it? For Murano to be unparalleled in glass and mirror making, the guild should forever keep its secrets. From this day forth, no glassmaker shall leave the island.

  The Guild must recruit only the best apprentices. No strangers shall come to the island without special permits. Secrets shall be kept and more shall be contrived. No more ordinary glass or ordinary mirrors can be produced.

  Let that be the task of the poor imitators. He who produces extraordinary glass shall be richly rewarded.

  His Excellency, Turri, De Fiume Freddo

  Doge of the Underwater Senate.

  “What other glass inventions can there be?” My father had paced the floor of our foyer. “Already I make crystalline glass, and looking glass mirrors. Your uncle makes cobalt glass and lattimo.”

  “Apprentice me to glass! I will create a mirror to show the true beauty of a woman’s heart, not her face!”

  “Only men are apprenticed to glass. And cover that tail!” he snapped.

  I lifted my skirt to hide my half-formed tail and limped outside, slamming the door behind me in protest. The lagoon was filled with an ebony emptiness that night; ribbons of silver lapped at the bridge nearest our door. I took off my shoes to feel the water on my feet and thought of the home that belonged to my mother, but not to me. I’d wiggled my scaled toes, letting the water seep between them.

  When I looked down into the water, I saw my hare-lipped reflection gazing back at me.

  “Even the spirits of the water can only show what brings me shame!” I cried and my tears fell into the water. Their salty brine mixed with the Murano waters and I heard a call that came from deep below. It had been a long time since I’d heard the voices of my underwater family but perhaps the letter had brought them to the surface.

  Drink me . . .

  I couldn’t waste any time. So many years since I’d heard the voices of my mother’s home . . .

  Drink me . . .

  I knelt and cupped my hands, cradling the water to drink then coughing at the water’s bitterness and foul ta
ste. There was no time to hesitate. I’d heard the voices of the spirits of water reflection. I was destined for a life of spinsterhood without skill or art. My father would never let me learn how to make glass and my looks would never allow me to know love and marry someone who would look after me.

  But I was more sea witch than woman; I knew the secrets of the spirits that live in the reflections on water.

  So I captured one for myself to marry.

  I hauled myself up the narrow stairs and to my room, the nausea making me shiver and ache. “Mother?” I whispered and knocked at her door. My mother had lain awake knowing that I had left in anger. She came to the door and grabbed my shoulders to keep my shaking body steady.

  “I’ve drunk a spirit of reflection. There isn’t much time to perform the magic.”

  Mother helped me to my room and poured some cold water from my bathing jug into a shallow tub.

  “Hurry,” I whispered as she took off my outer dress.

  Mother undressed me and laid me in the shallow bath of cold water.

  My stomach churned and cramped. My mother went to my fruit basket and found the garlic, unpeeling it with her fingers. Then she rubbed the pungent cloves up and down my naked spine, uttering the spell to draw him forth from my body. Her old language rolled easily off her tongue.

  I heaved. To bring forth a water spirit is a painful process; I’d seen it done before, by my own mother conjuring up lovers for the nuns in the same canals that expelled their sewerage. I gagged as emerald-green bile trickled down my chin, but I didn’t stop. A chance for love, a livelihood, was worth a little suffering.

  Finally, there was a gurgling sound as I regurgitated a sausage-shaped sac of glutinous jelly; first a toenail cut through the grey membrane and then the shape of a fist protruded. Mother wiped the green fluid from my face in satisfaction. I’d birthed a spirit of reflection! For me to marry!

  “You see!” Mother exclaimed. She washed him clean with damp cloths until his eyes were shiny and his lips were wet for me to kiss. I uncurled his arms and legs from around his body and rubbed the same garlic cloves on his naked spine to lengthen his body. “I have brought forth a man to love me,” I said.