These Twisted Roots

By Oslo Writers' League

Each piece is as unique in its interpretation of these themes as the autumn leaves that carpet forest floors, or the snowflakes that spread over Oslo like a cloak in the winter. From personal essays and poetry to short stories and speculative fiction, we will not tell you to which theme each piece belongs, but will rather let you wander through our collective wilderness and turn over the rocks, seek the hidden tunnels and passages, and journey where you will.

Oslo Writers' League contributors are: Tone Belsvik, Audrey Camp, Sari Cunningham, Aleksander Dash, Anthony Durham, E.R. Enoksen, Margrete Vik Gagama, Derek Goodreid, A.R. Hankin, Zoë Harris, Karen Havelin, Ariana Hendrix, Veronika Jensen, Srividya Karthik, M.J. Kobernus, Maddia Lama Sjåtil, Dušan Lovre, Chelsea Ranger, Leeanne Stoddart, Bree Switzer, Tania Vikki, L.D. Wenzel, and Gavin William Wright. Front cover photograph by Rune Hammerstad, internal illustrations by Evelinn Enoksen. All profits from the sale of this book go to Redd Barna (Save the Children).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grimbold Books
• Release date: Nov 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781909845954

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These

Twisted

Roots

GrimboldG.tifOWL_logo_print.tif

An Oslo Writers’ League anthology

Edited by Zoë Harris

These Twisted Roots: An Oslo Writers’ League Anthology

Copyright © 2015 Grimbold Books

The authors of these works assert their moral right to be identified as the joint authors of this book.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Megalith © 2015 Margrete Vik Gagama

Pasha © 2015 Gavin William Wright

Invisibility © 2015 Audrey Camp

Letters from Norway © 2015 Ariana Hendrix

The Pastor’s Daughter © 2015 Leeanne Stoddart

Skylark © 2015 E.R. Enoksen

Time to Go Rafting © 2015 Tone Belsvik

Dress Up © 2015 Tania Vikki

Imago © 2015 M.J. Kobernus

Untitled © 2015 Karen Havelin

In a Little Auk Colony © 2015 Sari Cunningham

Escape © 2015 Zoë Harris

My Semicolon © 2015 Chelsea Ranger

Seeing is Believing © 2015 L.D. Wenzel

Fade © 2015 Maddie Lama Sjåtil

Everything is All Right © 2015 Dušan Lovre

The Beaten Path © 2015 Aleksander Dash

Incubator © 2015 A.R. Hankin

Underground © 2015 Bree Switzer

A Good Yarn © 2015 Derek Goodreid

Talks Along the Path © 2015 Anthony Durham

In the City / In the Wilderness © 2015 Veronika Jensen

Balina © 2015 Srividya Karthik

ISBN 978-1-909845-87-9 (Paperback)

Cover art by Rune Hammerstad (front) and Matteo David Johnson (back)

Illustrations by Evelinn Enoksen

Typesetting by Book Polishers

Cover design by Ken Dawson

Grimbold Books

4 Woodhall Drive

Banbury

Oxfordshire

OX16 9TY

United Kingdom

www.grimboldbooks.com

All profits from the sale of this book will go to Redd Barna (Save the Children) to aid children and families affected by ongoing conflict in Syria.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Megalith

Pasha

Invisibility

Letters from Norway

Skylark

Time to Go Rafting

Dress Up

Imago

Untitled

In a Little Auk Colony

Escape

My Semicolon

Seeing is Believing

Fade

Everything is All Right

The Beaten Path

Incubator

Underground

A Good Yarn

Talks Along the Path

In the City

In the Wilderness

Balina

About the Authors

About the Artists

Acknowledgements

Our sincerest thanks to everyone who has donated time, work, money and more to make this book possible:

Evelinn Enoksen for reading every piece and creating gorgeous illustrations inspired by each one.

Rune Hammerstad and Matteo David Johnson for contributing their stunning photographs for the cover.

Ken Dawson who designed the book cover layout.

Sari Cunningham, Mike Kobernus and Bree Switzer for proofreading.

AB Trepleie AS for funding our launch.

Everyone at Deichmanske Biblioteket for providing us with a much needed home, hosting our launch, and supporting us as we grow and develop.

The members of OWL, who continue to hone their craft, inspire one another, and take their readers on surprising and moving journeys.

Everyone who has contributed to this book has done so at no cost to the project, making it possible to donate 100% of sales profits to Redd Barna.

Thank you.

Introduction

Zoë Harris

Director, OWL

If you have traveled outside of Norway’s cities, you will know that this country is home to some of the most spectacular wilderness on Earth: the train from Oslo to Bergen through Flåm is arguably the most beautiful rail journey in the world; polar bears and Arctic foxes prowl the permafrost of Svalbard; the dizzying heights of Preikestolen make even the strongest stomach clench. But you needn’t travel far outside any town or city before you find a smaller, more humble wilderness, and it is from this that the Norwegian people draw their strength and energy.

Then, humming below the city of Oslo, runs the t-bane—the Oslo Metro—its shining new carriages bustling people from one end of the city to the other, popping in and out of tunnels like earthworms seeking fodder. Though Oslo may not be a towering metropolis, there is life under its streets at all times of the day and night. Journeys are begun and ended; children are herded on and off the trains, their reflective vests glaring under fluorescent lights; passionate kisses are exchanged in dark corners of subway platforms; money exchanges hands, sometimes in return for illicit substances. Oslo, like any city, has her secrets.

In this third anthology from the Oslo Writers’ League, we have drawn on the themes of Wild and Underground to bring you some of the most diverse writing in both style and genre that we have gathered together to date; each piece is as unique in its interpretation of these themes as the autumn leaves that carpet forest floors, or the snowflakes that spread over Oslo like a cloak in the winter. From personal essays and poetry to short stories and speculative fiction, we will not reveal to which theme each piece belongs, but will rather let you wander through our collective wilderness and turn over the rocks, seek the hidden tunnels and passages, and journey where you will.

The Oslo Writers’ League, formed in 2012 with a beginning membership of five, has now grown to over two hundred and fifty and has been generously granted a home base at Deichmanske Hovedbiblioteket in central Oslo. In 2015, our members were deeply moved by the plight of the millions of refugees fleeing Syria in search of peace. As travelers, immigrants, expatriates and global citizens ourselves, we were in strong agreement that the profits from this year’s anthology be directed to helping these people, especially children travelling alone. As such, we have made contact with Redd Barna (Save the Children) who had this to say about our partnership:

For some, travel is not a choice or a pleasure. This year, more people than ever are on the move away from war, conflict and other crises. Underground and wild: perhaps these words can also be used to describe the current situation of the millions of people forced to leave their homes in the search of hope and a safe future.

This anthology will help to create a better future for children on the move. The Oslo Writers’ League will contribute the profits from the sales to Save the Children, who work to make sure that refugee children survive, that they can continue learning and that they are protected—in Syria, in Syria’s neigbouring countries, on their way through Europe, and here in Norway. The money you contribute by purchasing this anthology will, for example, help to create child-friendly spaces in asylum centers, and will help ensure that children fleeing alone receive the care they need.

The Oslo Writers’ League continues to support writers of all skill and experience levels, of all forms, and of all backgrounds, by offering community, critique, education and friendship.

We hope you will enjoy These Twisted Roots, and encourage you to explore with us the darkness, warmth, and mystery of the underground places that lie beneath our feet; close your eyes for a moment, take a deep breath, then let your imagination loose, to run free and wild through ours.

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Megalith

Margrete Vik Gagama

Fiction

Oh, the stories I could tell, for I have seen so much. I have stood here, gazing into the world. I have stood here, tall. I have seen everything. I have seen it all.

I have let my eyes touch that everlasting horizon and felt how vast the sea stretches. The horizon put the world into a frame. It is sometimes a sharp line defining the void, in which I can only imagine everything ending. Yet, sometimes it is a thousand shades of color; I can’t tell where it all begins and where everything must end. I look into the horizon and see into my very own soul; that’s what I say.

I have followed the eagle, soaring on the high sky in search of fish. He can be something of a loner, that one. But I have seen him catch the fish and carry it away. It makes me think he just might have someone. Would he not eat it, if he was hungry? I saw him fly away, fighting a strong side wind. It makes me ponder. There are places he needs to be. I stay and watch.

I watched the dolphins play in the waves. I saw a pod of dolphins swimming together, moving as one body. I tried to imagine how it would be to have a brother, to have a friend. Could I have felt his movement before my own? I would have closed my eyes and wept in longing. Yet I stood. I watched the dolphins play and swim away.

I have watched the ocean. For a thousand years has he flooded and ebbed. The ocean is one of a kind. I have seen him every day, but he has so many faces. He is like me, but not. He has a million creatures living in him; I am but one.

All was still on the day of the Big Change. The vast sea lay quiet and did not crash into the shore. He caressed her, smoothly feeling the lines of the rock, gently washing the ankles of Mother Shore. I was intruding. I was once again the stranger, not grasping the romance I witnessed. And I felt like looking away, but I could not move. I was cut from stone and stood still.

My base felt the vibration. Underground, the movement shimmied around my buried edge and crawled up my moored parts. I felt a gust of air, flowing now to places earlier covered by the warm embracing dirt.

I felt the earth shiver. Fear hit me, like I had been sprayed with ice cold water. The shivering grew to shaking. I was, for the first time, moving, almost dancing. It was exhilarating, like I was filled with music and needed to move. The world was wild and every law I knew had been broken. Not even the skies stood—for that horizon, now it, too, danced.

Whoa! Look at me go! I cried out, for the first time sounding my voice. I never thought much of it before. To whom would I have spoken my mind? But this time modesty was replaced by wonder.

But as it had started, so it stopped. I was once again still. So I looked and found everything changed. I wondered, how could this be?

The Big Change had come. The wobbling dance had been fun, but now I would prefer the world changed back as it once was, please. The horizon tilted at a silly-looking angle that put everything askew. And what was worse, a piece of the world had simply disappeared. I tried to look, but I stood still and my new frame was again frozen.

It could not be undone. Instead of missing the western cliff that I knew so well, I let my gaze focus on the bright new east.

There was new land. The grass continued towards a gentle slope. There was another beach down there. And in the far side of my vision, standing almost behind me, was a massive dark-gray stone face. I suddenly warmed as if heated by seven summers. And so I spoke for the second time, in awe.

Are you real? Please tell me, are you . . . like me?

Yes. He spoke with such a gentle voice, yet strong. A voice of earth, salt and basalt it was. Like warm summer rain, his words tickled me. I was not alone.

Were you there, all the time?

I was here. I have stood.

But why have you never spoken out? I felt bewildered, like being hit by rain and sun at the same time.

He watched me, and I met his eye. The question hung between us before he spoke.

Who, me? No . . . I always felt you were the brave one. You are frontline. You would take on the world. You guard me and shelter me. You are my shield. I have always watched you, you know. Me call on you? No, I would never have dared. But I always hoped you would notice me, somehow.

Now I have, though, I answered. I see you.

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Pasha

Gavin William Wright

Fiction

Cottage Grove was a peculiar little street. The name suggested a quaint rural scene, the reality was darkness nestling in the fume and bustle of London’s East End. Beneath the thick stench of coal fires and steam trains, it pulled perpendicular from the Mile End Road; trams clattered noisily at one end and at the other rose the stiff symmetry of Trinity Church, behind which boomed the Great Eastern Railway.

Lining the street were stubby, semi-detached villas, neat and cuboid and set back from the pavement behind small drab gardens, dark under the heaving bushes and fatuously proud evergreen trees, guarding, keeping winter vigilance, exhausted by the unhelpful bare sleepers, the fat deciduous trees, cold and dormant until spring.

Light glowed dimly in bubbles along the pavements, catching in the glass and puddles. Everything was dark grey. The cruel branches that clouded over the pavements cast shadows, veiny within the streetlight monotone. The rain that drizzled slow and soft became a fine mist that seemed to cling, pale and nebulous around the crooked twigs; and within this wet haze Trinity Church sat bloated and dark, seemingly abandoned.

Pasha was a skinny woman, not through nutritional neglect, just naturally so, her metabolism providing her with slender limbs and a light frame. She had, in addition to such godly beneficence, spent her childhood, youth and what she had thus far commenced of her maturity, training and ultimately working as a dancer—her muscles had grown long and firm, yet had none of the bulbousness of strength and performance. She was, in respect of her dancing and her anatomy, an athlete.

Pasha’s given name was Patrikija. Her parents were Russian immigrants; after the First World War her merchant father had slipped unnoticed, intellectual and charming, into decent lower-middle class London society. Naturally the childish tongues of the East End, and for that matter most mature tongues, could come nowhere near the correct pronunciation of the jumbled mess of clumsily anglicised letters and, rather than adopting the natural, native Patricia, she stumbled into the rather boyish Pasha. With her boyish frame, her glistening Northern European eyes and her exotic name, she was destined to stand out; she did so in such a way that gradually she disappeared into herself.

Under her father’s heavy, black, business-like umbrella, Pasha’s mousy aspect and her cervine form was overwhelmed and, looking like a waxcap mushroom in mourning, she was oddly distinct. She stood as tight in to the high iron railings of the church as the umbrella would allow, her legs locked and parallel, her dancer’s posture taut under the pull of the sail of fabric above her, tugged by the gusts that blew down Morgan Street. She wore boots that rose high, just above the ankle and elevated her on slight, elegant heels; out of this footwear the slim, tightly wound calves, the insignificant knuckle of her knees, and the continuation of her long legs disappeared under the wide skirt of her A-line coat. Her legs were covered in dark stockings, damp from the rain and just caught in the shadow that grew over her shoulders, cresciated by the wide thick blackness of the umbrella. She wore black gloves and a black woollen hat, and the length of her rarely loosened hair was pulled forward over her collarbones in two, flat auburn slabs.

Being kept waiting was the last thing she needed. Beyond the cold and damp, beyond the impatience of anticipation, the idleness, lingering, gave her far too much time to think about Ralph, her fiancé. She was not waiting for her fiancé.

*

Jack was late. He had not planned to be, and at the time of leaving his rooms he was actually running ahead of schedule, pre-empting potential failure and catastrophe, not wishing to upset her or to waste any of their precious time together. It was an odd place she had picked to rendezvous; there were more convenient ‘out of the way’ spots. The Great Eastern had been held up at a signal at Bethnal Green East Junction, eating up most of the extra time he had allowed, but not yet damaging his schedule. Unfortunately, he had fashioned a mistake of his own: he had spotted his destination in his rather bedraggled copy of Bartholomew’s before leaving and committed the single route from Coborn Road Station to memory.

Because of the mechanics of railway control, there was now little room for error and, in his distraction, the clear fluttering desire rushing through him, somehow the entire cartographic image had momentarily reversed on him and he set off the wrong way, taking Antill Road; such a simple mistake but it took him into a state of tardiness. To compound this, his poor judgement in response—anxiety whipped up by this careless and stupid failing—thwarted his capacity for sensible adjustment and so, instead of considering where the mistake had been made, he concocted a belief that his error had been that he must have gotten off at the wrong station. The result was an increasingly saturated walk back to Coborn Road and a devastating discovery that it was, in fact, the correct station.

Peculiar still, Cottage Grove remained shrouded in misty rain, dim light and spiky explosions of bare branches and twigs. In front of the fearsome church, the immaculate silhouette of Pasha stood black and neat and tidy. Under her umbrella, under the rattle of the rain, percussive against the membrane, she remained in her stately cat-neat position, clutching herself for warmth and to support the tired muscles supporting the now achingly heavy silk.

Jack was hot and soaked and breathless; his hair—he had forgotten his hat—dripped down his forehead; she was divine, standing there like a miraculous doll. Not even the dissatisfaction of his stupid delay, nor the self-conscious embarrassment about his own appearance, could destroy the joy of seeing the prettiness of her face. Yet there was no smile upon it, and the unsmiling face no longer seemed to be his; he was no longer entitled to consume her loveliness. Somehow her beauty was now beyond him and returned to her fiancé.

It was all horribly uncomfortable now. Togetherness was new for them; no more than a first kiss separated them from where they now stood and the spark of flirtation when they had been introduced. Pasha had taken a position as choreographer at the theatre where Jack’s brother was producing a show. One day, popping in to take his sibling for lunch, Jack was sent to the auditorium by the stage manager and became captivated, seeing from the wings this outstanding woman moving with uncanny confidence and directing with such bright, amiable joy. All of which was nothing compared to the revelation, the way she looked at him. So illuminated the smile, so keen and direct the eyes that sang to him, their electric Northern European succulence, declaring in an instant that she was of him, that they shared possession. Between them, unknown and uncanny, something immediate was stitched.

Each time it had been the same, each time more forceful and true, her brightness open and possessed only by him. What he gave back, he knew not, but being with her was as if he were made of pure joy—everything was nothing beyond the fine light movement of her limbs and the wonderful, the delicious inclusion of her eyes and smile—it was all his. And he returned it, and he hoped that it fell upon her as hers fell upon him.

And then came that most horrid evening—opening night and the annihilating confirmation he had feared. The diamond, loose and garish on her pure, perfect finger, was symbolic in so many ways; to him it represented only failure. Worse even than this, Jack found that he genuinely liked her fiancé; he was a brilliant man and as a couple they did seem ideal. He was even pleased for them, oddly comfortable with the idea of them being a couple. Yet even that night she shone at him, scorched deep within him and somehow dragged out his hidden confession: his declaration of instant unquestionable attraction towards