One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries
Read One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries Online
Authors: Marianne de Pierres Tehani Wessely
One Small Step
an anthology of discoveries
Edited by Tehani Wessely
One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries
First published in Australia in 2013
by FableCroft Publishing
http://fablecroft.com.au
This anthology © 2013 FableCroft Publishing
Cover design
by Amanda Rainey
Design and layout
by Tehani Wessely
Typeset
in Sabon MT Pro and Footlight MT Light
Introduction ©2013 Marianne de Pierres
Always Greener ©2013 Michelle Marquardt
By Blood and Incantation ©2013 Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter
Indigo Gold ©2013 Deborah Biancotti
Firefly Epilogue ©2013 Jodi Cleghorn
Daughters of Battendown ©2013 Cat Sparks
Baby Steps ©2013 Barbara Robson
Number 73 Glad Avenue ©2013 Suzanne J. Willis
Shadows ©2013 Kate Gordon
Original ©2013 Penelope Love
The Ships of Culwinna ©2013 Thoraiya Dyer
Cold White Daughter ©2013 Tansy Rayner Roberts
The Ways of the Wyrding Women
©2013
Rowena Cory Daniells
Winter’s Heart ©2013 Faith Mudge
Sand and Seawater ©2013 Joanne Anderton & Rabia Gale
Ella and the Flame ©2013 Kathleen Jennings
Morning Star ©2013 D.K. Mok
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your preferred e-tailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry (ebk)
Title:
One small step : an anthology of discoveries /
Tehani Wessely (ed.) ; Thoraiya Dyer ... [et al]
ISBN:
9780987400000 (pbk.)
9780987400017 (ebook)
Subjects:
Short stories, Australian.
Science fiction, Australian.
Fantasy fiction, Australian.
Horror stories.
Dewey Number:
A823.01
The editor gratefully acknowledges the generous assistance given by Marianne de Pierres, Elizabeth Disney, Dirk Flinthart, Amanda Rainey, and the amazing authors — I never cease to be impressed by the depth of talent and professionalism among our Australian authors.
As always, Tehani would like to thank her ever-enduring husband and children for their patience and support, and for keeping her away from the computer when she should be.
Contents
Foreword — Marianne de Pierres
Always Greener by Michelle Marquardt
By Blood and Incantation by Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter
Indigo Gold by Deborah Biancotti
Firefly Epilogue by Jodi Cleghorn
Daughters of Battendown by Cat Sparks
Number 73 Glad Avenue by Suzanne J. Willis
The Ships of Culwinna by Thoraiya Dyer
Cold White Daughter by Tansy Rayner Roberts
The Ways of the Wyrding Women by Rowena Cory Daniells
Sand and Seawater by Joanne Anderton & Rabia Gale
Ella and the Flame by Kathleen Jennings
Also on Kindle from FableCroft Publishing…
Not so long ago, I attended a seminar on the topic of “Australian Victorian Female Crime Writers”. I was struck by how many there had been, but more importantly, how I had never heard of them. History can be very selective in what it chooses to publicise.
When invited by Tehani Wessely from Fablecroft Publishing to write this foreword, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to help ensure that the current generation of Australian female genre writers don’t suffer the same anonymity as their Victorian crime-writing sisters.
Within these covers is a collection of thought-provoking, entertaining and engrossing stories by a crop of talented writers who have earned the right, not only to be read, but to be remembered.
They have treated the concept of
One Small Step
imaginatively; between these pages you will find a gamut of speculative genres, from traditional fantasy, horror and science fiction to contemporary slipstream, and the telling of one small step towards either self-determination or self-realisation.
Reading this collection is like partaking in a strange intense dream that at the same time wonders if it might be real.
Mostly though, you cannot absorb
One Small Step
and be left unmoved. These are stories that provoke emotion; tales of prejudice, affliction, resurrection, survival and new beginnings. Each one so different from the last and yet all connected by characters with conviction.
Enjoy the feast between the covers, and then I urge you to talk to others about it. For it is only in our conversations and stories that we live on. It is in them that our legacy is transferred. It is in them that we make sense of the past, present and future. It is in them that the insights of our notable women storytellers will be recalled.
February 2013
by Michelle Marquardt
“
T
hey’re ugly,” I said, squinting at the aliens over the interweaving mesh of Grass. “Why did they have to put them here?”
Mark looked at me sideways. It was cramped on our side-by-side squashing boards and we were standing hip against hip, the dense wall of Grass around us. I could feel the calculation in his gaze. He wanted to argue with me, but was unwilling to risk another bout of shouting that would end in tears. I didn’t think that would happen today, but my grief was an unpredictable thing and he was right to be wary of it.
In the end he just shrugged, reached out with a gloved hand and pushed aside more blades to get a better view. “I don’t think the Council had anywhere else they could put them. The Grass makes a better prison than anything we’ve got in town, and who’d want them there anyway? The truce finishes in four days. One of their ships will come and get them before then. Better that happens out here with nobody about.”
Nobody except us. I stared at the two figures as they moved slowly over the expanse of open rocky ground. Their three short fat legs inched their massive bodies along, while their varied arms balanced the building material above their tiny swiveling heads. They were pulling apart the last skeletal remains of the hut that had once stood at the highest point of the field, though there was no sign of what they’d done with any of the pieces.
“
They’re stupid too,” I said. “That hut was the only shelter they had. What if we get early snow?”
Mark didn’t point out that the few remaining uprights of the old hut would have provided little protection anyway. “Maybe they don’t care about snow. Maybe engineers are designed to be weather-proof. It’d make sense.”
“
Maybe they’ll just freeze.” I waited for a twinge of satisfaction at the thought, but it didn’t come. “I don’t know why I came here,” I said. “I hate them.”
But I didn’t really hate these sad slow creatures, despite all my intentions. They were builders and fixers, or so we had been told. A harmless variation of a species we still knew almost nothing about. They were trapped and alone and had probably been born to be slaves. These weren’t the ones that had killed my dad. They hadn’t flown the ships that had dropped in their thousands from the sky.
“
I think they’re starving,” said Mark. “They’ve been stuck in that field for weeks.”
My gaze followed the busy figures as they moved over the rocky terrain. “They don’t look it.”
“
How would we know? I’ve brought them something to eat.”
So that was what was in the lumpy rucksack on his back. “How do you know what aliens eat?”
He looked vaguely embarrassed. “I don’t. I just brought stuff. I guess they can take what they want.”
Stuff? What could his family possibly spare?
He opened the bag and we both stared inside. Some vegetable peelings, probably stolen out of the compost, an old shirt that was so cut up and tattered it couldn’t even be used as rags, some bits of an old tyre. The plastic leg of a chair.
“
You’re going to give them that?”
He shrugged. “Better than nothing.”
I didn’t have an answer for that. “Alright,” I said. “I want to see them.” I wasn’t sure where the words had come from, but as I said them I suddenly knew that I had to do it. “I want to see them up close.”
I knew he wouldn’t argue, because of what had happened to my dad, and I knew it was unfair of me to take advantage of it. But lately I had stopped caring about fair, as though the weight of everything else had forced me to shed things, with consideration for other people the first to go.
Wordlessly he handed me the sack.
Part of me wanted to go up to where the Grass stopped and the bare rock began, to let them see that it was me who was bringing them these things. Another part wanted to stay back, within the razor sharp safety of the Grass.
In the end it was the vegetable peelings that made my decision for me; I had no way of throwing them any distance. So I walked to the edge, laying my squashing boards carefully before me to press the Grass down and provide safe passage. I felt exposed and a little foolish and I realised, when I was almost there, when the big lumbering shapes had stopped their progress and swiveled their tiny heads towards me, that in the Grass it was impossible to turn and run.
The two giants remained still as I reached the open ground and, still standing on my board, emptied the contents of my sack onto the stone. My offering seemed pitifully small as it scattered. When I looked up the aliens were heading straight for me.
The need to run was so sudden that I almost stepped off my board into the waiting blades, but a lifetime of careful movement stopped my raised foot at the last moment, made me step slowly back along the board I was on and onto the one that was lined up directly behind it. My gaze remained fixed on the hulking figures moving towards me. My throat tightened and my heartbeat pushed against my eardrums.
I lifted the board I’d just vacated and the Grass began to slowly rise, a curtain of safety before me.
The aliens had covered two thirds of the ground between us, moving faster than I’d ever seen them, their stumpy legs motoring along in coordinated swinging movements, rolling their bodies along, their tentacles and appendages clamped down to their sides, as though it would somehow make their ungainly bodies more aerodynamic.
I stopped my retreat three boardlengths out from the edge, twice again what I thought their longest tentacle could reach, and feeling a sudden light headed courage, turned to watch what they would do.
It wasn’t me they were after, it was the things on the ground. They slowed as they approached, little heads craning forward, arms waving excitedly over my offering, as though they were frightened to touch. I saw for the first time that they had four eyes, two in the center and one on either side of their heads. I’d expected them to be like the pictures I’d seen of insect eyes, many faceted and cold, but these were big and soft and brown, like horses’ eyes. They blinked every now and then, one at a time.