Silk and Sharp Edges

By Pete Alex Harris

Fifteen short stories of fantasy, gentle horror, humour, weird SF. A murder investigated by a ghost researcher, a troublesome goat, an infinite garden, a lighthouse lashed by a magical storm, and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pete Alex Harris
• Release date: Sep 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005945862

Pete Alex Harris

Geographically, I've lived in Scotland for most of my life, and I've lived in books for nearly as long. I think being a writer is the first job I remember wanting to do. Economically, that has always been very unlikely, and I've made a living as various kinds of computer programmer and software engineer.I write mostly for fun; let nobody pretend that writing isn't about the most fun you can have for about the least physical danger (in a free country anyway). It would also be cool to be a volcanologist, I suppose, but the odds aren't as good.

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Silk and Sharp Edges

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Pete Alex Harris

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Text and illustrations copyright © 2020 Pete Alex Harris

Cover art copyright © 2020 Jenna Shiels

Typeset with LyX and LaTeX

Converted to ebook formats with Calibre.

To everyone who encouraged me

… however unwisely.

Table of Contents

Bright Carver

Yet Here We Are

Under Sheil Croft

Pure

Ever Green

Forecast

Respite

After the Event

Roots and Bones

Gingerbread

Journal

Whickerton’s Dictionary

The Folly

Old Maria

Silk and Sharp Edges

Acknowledgements

About me

Bright Carver

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This broken scrap, this splintered, imperfect chunk of pine log would do. Simone knew it would do, but did not yet know what for.

She held it up in front of her face and turned it about. She could hardly lift it now, but in a few days she’d have whittled away most of its bulk, and leave something elegant she could raise with one hand. She would begin removing just as soon as she saw what must remain.

It was her first time entering the great contest. She had spent years in study, the rough skin of her fingers a lacework of tiny scars and splinters. Her hands smelt of smoke and sweat and greasy, cheap food, and always the sap and resin of her life’s work. She couldn’t read books, but she could read wood. Usually.

This time it was a struggle to find the core of the piece; the overlap between what was inside the wood and inside her. Perhaps she was trying to make it do too much, matter too much, when for her first attempt at the contest she should maybe make something simple, like a curled fox or a comical goose.

She wouldn’t win anyway.

Simone carried the log out of her father’s hut, out from the looming shadow of the castle walls, carried it away some distance to see it in sunlight. Forget the contest. Let the piece be its own thing. She set it down on its widest end and walked around it. Then she upturned it, balanced it on the other end with care and sat cross-legged, her hands hanging loose over her knees, staring into it.

Yes.

Back at the hut, she sawed and chiseled away most of the cracked front side of the log, shaped a base at the narrower end, thinned out the middle, left the wide end with two curved lobes, like arms or wings. A figure, standing, arms stretched out, raised forward around the curve of the woodgrain, slightly above shoulder height. Enough material below to support them while detail was added, to be cut away later or perhaps become long sleeves hanging.

And there she stopped, unable to see the figure’s face. The pose of the figure was incomplete in her imagination without knowing how the head would sit, where it was looking, whether it was smiling or scowling. For days she sat with it between her household chores, while other carvers shaved and sanded and engraved their pieces. Her father eventually noticed.

You need to get to work on that, if you want to enter it. I won’t have my child bring an unfinished carving to show the lords. For shame. Trim it, shape it, get some paint on it. Nobody expects it to be a winner, but if people know you started and couldn’t finish, they’ll not respect you, girl. They’ll not respect me.

I’ll finish. There’s time. I just don’t see it yet. I don’t know what it’s trying to say.

You are a worry, Simone. Don’t put so much of yourself into it. There’s only disappointment in that.

I know.

He’d said so many times before. He’d made winning carvings, three times, and none of them had been his personal favourites. He’d seen his best work passed over without remark and thrown in the fire. It was just the way the contest worked.

But when Simone got back to work on her carving, even without feeling any particular inspiration, she did put herself into it. The head that took shape was her head, her face. Except unlike her, hunched and frowning in concentration, the figure’s head was raised, chin up, eyes open, confident and serene.

The rest followed. A flowing dress with long sleeves, hands relaxed, palms inward, one leg with the knee slighly forward; in motion. Imperfections in the wood made the dress ragged. Simone followed the raggedness where it wanted to go, shredding the hem in tatters. This wasn’t a proud lady in finery, nor a poor artisan’s daughter like herself. It was something of both. It felt new.

It’s beautiful, said her mother, doubtfully, glancing at the back wall of the hut. That glance of her mother’s carried a lot of weight, the weight of the stone castle wall that seemed to press her down even by thinking of it. The glance meant: but they won’t like it.

I’m nearly happy with it, said Simone, trying to reassure and encourage her mother, although rightly it should have been the other way round, and I know it won’t be chosen. There was little chance of that anyway, so don’t worry for me. I want only to do a good job of it, for my first contest. It’s not quite finished, but I don’t know what it needs. Or what I need it to be. Some last touch.

Her father looked up from his own work.

It won’t win, but that’s not my worry. The lords for the most part don’t care about the carvings. They throw most of them in the fire, and throw the rest in a cupboard they never look in, for all I know. We may please them or bore them, and it’s all one. But we mustn’t anger them.

I’m not trying to anger anyone.

You’re not trying to please them, either.

"At least I’m not trying to bore them."

Rather that. This carving doesn’t flatter them. It’s ragged and proud. They don’t want to see pride in anyone else, and they don’t want to be reminded of how ragged their own is. You’ve done good work. But it will go to waste. They’ll scorn it.

Let them.

Wastefulness and scorn were soaked into the traditions of the castle and dried in like an indelible stain. The contest may have once been about the lords’ taste and the craftsmen’s aspiration to better themselves, but that was dried up too. Now it was a yearly ritual, written down in a book. Carvings were displayed, three must be chosen, the rest must be burned. Which three hardly mattered. Sometimes Simone wondered what would happen if one year only two carvings were presented. Would the lord pick up some other third object to make the required total of winners, a wooden spoon from the festive table, or anything, and never even notice?

Then she wondered what they would burn if no losing carvings remained. That’s what convinced her the tradition had to be continued. Tradition was safe, her mother always said. But then she’d glance at the wall, not saying out loud what it was that tradition kept them safe from.

Her father wasn’t done with her.

At least get some paint on it. Some bright ochre for the dress, green for the eyes?

I like the colours of the wood. Cream, orange, pink.

That’s not our way. It looks all wrong. Like you’re spiting me for all I’ve taught you.

It’s not about you. It’s mine. Shall I varnish it, then? Or beeswax it to a nice shine? That’ll help it burn, won’t it? It’s not going to win, and that’s nearly all you’ve ever taught me: I can’t win. We don’t get to really win anything.

Of all the nonsense. I never did tell you such a thing!

You showed me!

She snatched her carving up and ran out into the dark, past the lights of cooking fires and candles, down the zig-zagging dirt path of the carvers’ village and away from the castle, to where she’d first stared at the log that had been hiding her inspiration.

It was too dark out here to look at anything but the sky. Smoky brown light above the castle walls, which she turned away from to gaze at the stars, pure sparks of white and pink fire that were never snuffed out.

She came back much later, took some dry leftovers for her supper, and sat up by the warm ashes of the fire, feeding it shavings of wood as she worked, brief flares of light to see by. She adorned the figure’s dress and sleeves with ambiguous curves: feathers or flames. She shaved the wood so thin that the light glowed through it. Out to the ends of the sleeves, she used the orange-red of the wood to heighten the flame effect. She cut away more of the dress, made the definition of the legs stronger, the calf muscles tensed and ready to leap.

She couldn’t make something that would win on merit, because no idea of merit was written down in the rituals. She wouldn’t make something that could win by seeking approval, or flattering. She damn well wouldn’t ever make a comical goose.

Whatever she made would burn, so she made a piece of herself that would own the fire.

Yet Here We Are

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My dearest Florence, you of all people know how much I have longed to find useful employment in mankind’s greatest project: the advancement of humanity through scientific discovery. In fact, knowing what a perfect nuisance I must have made of myself in going on about it these last two years, I would hesitate to bore you further, excepting that I have good news.

My application to research at one of Cambridge’s prestigious colleges has been accepted, and I go there tomorrow to begin as soon as I can. Give my kindest regards to your father, and if you can put me in a better light with him than I managed for myself when we last saw each other, you know how grateful I will be. I feel that this, at last, is the beginning of the most fortunate of times for both of us.

Yours always, Malcolm.

My dearest Florence, I have some unexpected news. My research is not to be carried out at the Quaestor Institute in Cambridge, but I am to travel to Budapest where I will study under a notable professor of natural philosophy, one Doktor Szilard. I am unclear as to why, but the telegram was clear that I should go at once to Budapest, and generous funds have been wired to London for my expenses.

I worry that this foreign secondment might create some weeks of delay before I may see you again, but my selection for this prestigious position so soon after being accepted can only bode well for my future advancement.

Yours, as soon as I may be, Malcolm.

Florence dearest, I hardly know what to tell you. Events are moving more rapidly than I expected, and part of the reason for this is I would not have expected them to move in