Bandit Fiction Presents... Issue Four - New Writers

Bandit Fiction Presents...

Issue Four

Writers in Education New and Emerging Writers Winter 2018

All rights to the works included in this issue belong to the artist or author they have been credited to.

First published in Great Britain in 2018 All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the credited author.

The Team Managing Director: Greg Forrester Editor-in-Chief: Jane Currie Engagement Manager: Cara De Sausmarez Social Media Coordinator: Emily Crosby www.banditfiction.co.uk

This is a free sample edition.

If you’d like to read the entire issue, and we certainly hope you do, this issue can be purchased from: https://payhip.com/banditfiction

Sonoma

by Jessica O. Neill

It was always the same. A thick fog conceived above the neardistant Pacific rolled inland overnight and lingered low till the sun rose high enough to contest it.

Sometimes it was so thick, so low, it seeped through open windows into kitchens, bedrooms, attics, enveloping bread and slumber and dusty half-remembered things in a milky weightless soup. But that was only sometimes.

This morning, like most mornings, the fog concerned itself solely with air, shrouding flight and treetops and telegraph wires in a still and silent secrecy. The birds - so wholly built for motion were perturbed by this stillness. So Sonoma moved with extra care when she entered the aviary at dawn.

There were three fledglings in her charge so far this season: two swallows and a northern goshawk. But it was only June and she’d be on call at the county wildlife centre till September. During that time she might foster any number of birds for any number of reasons, though cruel and curious boys and men were the typical causes of abandoned nests.

It was unusual to house a raptor with insectivores. Once mature, one becomes food for the other. And some of that tension was already alive in an intangible isness suffusing the aviary’s atmosphere. For now, though, they were all one brood, entirely dependent on Sonoma’s expertise.

She fed the goshawk first, with pinches of chuck steak she minced herself. Then the swallows had their mealworms and crickets. She watched them guzzle a few moments, then headed back to the cabin to make coffee and fix breakfast for Good Girl, who was stretched out on the floor like roadkill, snoring softly.

Noticing with a sigh her twitching paws and increasingly greying fur, Sonoma got down on the floor where the sleeping dog lay, pulled her in close and inhaled. Good Girl started, shocked

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from her busy sleep into the calmness of waking, then grunted in recognition and pounded the floor with her tail. They lay in that wordless affinity a while. Then Sonoma got up and walked to the kitchen, and Good Girl watched her go.

They lived in a one-storey wood-panelled cabin in a clearing in the Occitati woods, a space at once minimal and cluttered.

The green oak walls were unadorned - no paintings or photos or discernable signs of a past. And there were few accumulated things, a scarcity of treasures. But the kitchen sink was always full of dishes, the counters always dappled with breadcrumbs and other morsels.

Sonoma shook some beans into the grinder and gazed through the window while the machine did its work. As the smell of ground coffee uplifted the room, she wondered - as she often did - if the known world remained behind the lasting fog. Or if night had somehow claimed the nearby one-street town of Occitati, snaffled its surrounding sequoias and oaks. Good Girl came to join her and gazed through the window, too, breathing and being, thinking none of these things.

Because the coffee filled the close air of the cabin so fully, Sonoma didn’t notice as soon as she might have that it masked an underlying acridity of woodsmoke. Once her nose caught the whiff her other senses enlivened, and she saw that the texture of fog had changed, grown darker and more dense in a reversal of its usual way. The forest was on fire.

She’d heard no evacuation warnings. And the woods of the wider county were vast. So it was possible that the blaze would never reach them, as was the case last summer when the clamour of fire trucks jolted all of Occitati out of sleep into smoke, but no fire; life in the town resumed long before the state stopped burning.

Back then she’d just freed a pair of kestrels, so there were no birds in her care. Today, though, she felt a plummeting sickness as she considered the babies in her aviary. She was disturbed by the thought of misfortune befalling them before they had a chance to fly. It was a knotted, churning complexity of spirit that had something to do with her dreams.

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Each night, Sonoma sailed through a soaring blue of simpler times as though she slept on the wing like a swift. And every morning, when she found herself returned to the ways of the grounded, she had the sense she was leaving the real world behind, shunning some personal truth so that waking became a kind of daily death she’d come to accept as her life.

The fledglings weren’t due to be released for another few days. And though she was loath to force them prematurely into sky, the smoke told her evacuation was likely. Which meant the fire service would rush her, insist she left the birds behind. She could never do that. The chicks must fly today.

Knowing Sonoma as she did, Good Girl sensed all this and ambled stiffly to the pickup truck to sniff the air and wait. Sonoma went to the bedroom to get the blackout boxes from her travelling trunk.

The boxes - which she’d made with wood from the forest and lined with cuts of a silk dress her mother gave her in yet another misjudgment of character - were easily the most luxurious things she owned.

She headed down to the aviary with one under each arm, packed up the birds according to their genus, then walked to the truck and stacked the boxes in the cool dark safety of the passenger footwell. Then she helped Good Girl (who could no longer jump in from the ground) to her seat.

The cabin was built at the back of Occitati so she hit the road without seeing anyone, a fact that filled her with relief. It wasn’t that she felt animosity towards her fellow humans, she didn’t feel animosity towards anything. It was more like an internal absence, a missing part in the place where others sought kinship.

Her communities were unvoiced and arcane, for she knew something of the syntax of trees and the haunting, ancient songs of mountains. And these mysteries, silent to the unschooled ear, made sense to her in a way that people never had.

Sonoma drove north towards the clifftops of the Black River State Park, where the guilds of many birds thrived. As she neared

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the mouth of the river, a pod of pelicans flew in stately formation above the graphite-blue water, lending the scene a prehistoric look.

The road up to the clifftops was dizzying. Miles and miles of audacious engineering that had her looking down at vultures. Her hands gripped the wheel and her innards grew taut as the boxed birds fell quiet, intuiting the heightened altitude to which they belonged.

She pulled into a shaded spot not far from the cliffs, climbed down from the truck and stretched. Out here the fog had cleared completely; the sky was a silent bellow of blue above the wild and glistening Pacific. And the air was alive with raptors keening, the staccato chatter of more sociable birds.

Sonoma walked round to Good Girl and helped her down, then grabbed the boxes and walked towards the cliffs, trusting herself to know the right spot when it came, which it did before long. Good Girl felt a rightness too and lay in the sun, glad of a rest.

Sonoma put the boxes on the ground, removed each lid, then sat next to her friend.

The birds hadn’t seen big sky since they were ousted from their nests as new chicks; at first, they were overwhelmed by its size. But the wind soon fired their quiddity as they ventured from their silken wombs.

The swallows flew first, cheeping to each other and zipping through the air like the mad-winged insects they must now learn to catch. Then the quick and keen-eyed goshawk took flight, calling and claiming his broad new domain.

Up on the clifftop, where the sounds of the crashing ocean mingled with a sibilance of breeze through sun-dried grasses, Sonoma and Good Girl watched them go till they faded into pure, block colour.

They sat in that quiet communion a while then walked back to the truck towards a day yet to happen.

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The Yellow Caps by

Talia Maggs-Rapport

Spring onions cascade around me as an elderly woman dumps her shopping bags, overflowing with fruits and vegetables, onto my feet. The public bus is heaving with passengers as we drive towards Laoshan, the mountainous national park just outside of Qingdao. My flatmates and I have decided to see it for ourselves, setting off early in the hope of avoiding the midday heat. Having deciphered travel websites that are largely in Mandarin, it seems that the most reliable transport to Laoshan is the bus, but as my toes begin to ache I can’t help but wonder if a taxi would have been more comfortable. Luckily, the woman reclaims her rogue vegetables and hobbles off a few stops later, and my personal space is renewed.

After about an hour, the bus deposits us on the side of a road marked ‘Laoshan’. Green and imposing, the mountain looms ahead of us as we follow signs for the visitor’s centre. Walking up the long, open drive, we’re surprised to see a race set-up, complete with banners, a podium, and a finish line. A plethora of stands cover the ground, offering water, food, and massages for weary runners. I can’t even imagine undertaking a mountain race at the hottest time of the year, but as there are no runners at the finish line, the event is clearly ongoing. Joking about whether we should join in, we stride through the doors of the centre.

The airy hall bustles with various tour groups who stand together under bright flags waved by trip leaders, dressed in matching yellow caps. The young woman in the ticket booth eyes us with confusion as we attempt to ask which passes we need, but even here, at a tourist destination, no one seems to speak English, so we point to an option on the Mandarin information board and hope for the best. Tickets in hand, we emerge back into the bright sunlight, where a row of identical buses are waiting to take sightseers into the national park. Our bus pulls out of the visitor’s

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complex and winds along a narrow ocean road, with picturesque sea views. The scenic journey takes a terrifying turn as a similar bus hurtles past in the opposite direction, down a road that was only ever designed to fit one wide vehicle, but, minus a few skipped heartbeats, we continue unscathed. A short drive later, we come to a stop at the base of the mountain. Locating our position using large map at the side of the path we realise there’s a direct route to the summit from here and decide to climb it.

Turning away from the map, we walk through an ornate archway heralding the entrance of the national park. To our left stands a Chinese temple, ringed with terracotta walls. Inside, a vast statue of Laozi, the founder of Taoism, with flowing robes and one finger pointed, looks sternly down upon the visitors milling through the temple’s gardens. To our right, unexpectedly, is a KFC. Although the designers have made a half-hearted attempt to disguise the fast food joint by decorating it like a Chinese pagoda, the restaurant is certainly discordant with the historical temple, although it does appear to be attracting just as large a crowd.

Passing the throngs of people queueing up for a burger, we find a paved path that curves to the right of the temple’s walls and start walking. The slope is gentle, and we pass the yellow-capped tour group as we walk upwards. After a peaceful twenty minutes, we reach the top of the path, and see the elusive runners at last. They’re congregated alongside a main road, gathered around more pit stops for water and food. Most are decked out professionally, with water bottles hanging off their backpacks, and wide-brimmed hats to avoid the burning sun. A steady stream of runners is crossing the road and climbing a flight of steps that appear to be heading up the mountain. We realise they must be heading for the same peak, so we follow them towards the stairs.

Immediately, the steps that lead up this section of Laoshan are much steeper than the tilted path we took up from the temple.

The crowds of tourists have also considerably thinned, and it’s just us and the runners, who breeze by occasionally, using sleek poles for grip as they climb step after step. The spindly trees that line the mountain path are occasionally tied with pink bands, a

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reassurance to the runners, and now us, that they’re following the right route. Whilst our calves are beginning to burn, and our faces redden, we’re rewarded with uninterrupted views that stretch all the way down to the coast. Now we’re the ones gazing down on the statue of Laozi, reduced to a toy-sized figurine below us. The effigy shimmers mystically in the rays of heat that drift around the mountain. Climbing higher and higher, I wipe a sticky trail of sweat from my face and envy the runners their athletic outfits.

Swinging above our heads, the wires of a cable car lurch occasionally as egg-like cars bob along them, glinting in the sunshine. I realise that might have been a smarter route up the mountain, as we’re rapidly draining our limited supply of water.

The flow of runners passing us has slimmed down to only the most elite athletes, rippling with muscle as they strain to climb each step. We share a sympathetic look of exhaustion with them as we stop for a precarious rest break on the side of the mountain, anxiously attempting to empty the last few drops from our water bottles. After an eternity of climbing, we finally sight the summit, and haul ourselves up the last few steps to collapse alongside a group of even wearier runners at the top. Noticing our dishevelled state, a few offer us spare bottles of water, which we gratefully accept.

Looking around, I suddenly realise there are no other tourists in sight. Runners are beginning to pick themselves up from the dusty ground, smiling and laughing as they applaud their climb. “Where are the other sightseers?”. I ask in bewilderment, as I observe the ongoing celebrations around me. A glint of colour far below us catches our eye, and we look down from the summit of the mountain to see a much lower peak buzzing with small figures in yellow baseball caps. The realisation dawns that whilst we may have successfully climbed Laoshan, we’ve climbed the steepest peak, especially opened for this endurance race, instead of the one for tourists. Still, as we catch our breath and gaze over the picturesque views from the summit, we realise that perhaps it was worth the climb after all.

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This is a free sample edition.

If you’d like to read the entire issue, and we certainly hope you do, this issue can be purchased from: https://payhip.com/banditfiction