Fae Visions of the Mediterranean: An Anthology of Horrors and Wonders of the Sea

Fae Visions of the Mediterranean

An Anthology of Horrors and Wonders of the Sea

edited by Valeria Vitale & Djibril al-Ayad

Futurefire.net Publishing

Note: this e-book includes passages in Arabic, Cyrillic, Polytonic Greek, and Latin with Croatian, Maltese and Slovenian special characters, encoded in Unicode which should work on all platforms. If these do not display correctly in your e-reader, please upgrade your software or report the problem to the manufacturer. If all else fails, feel free to write to the publisher (editor@futurefire.net) to request a PDF version of the e-book.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface, Valeria Vitale

Madonna Mermaid, Christine Lucas

Regretful in the City of Promises (poem), Kelda Crich

The Miracle Town, Mattia Ravasi

The Dance of the Hippacotora, Claude Lalumière (trans. Arrate Hidalgo)

Salt in Our Veins, Dawn Vogel

On Encountering Unicorns (extract), Marco Polo

The Wisps of Tabarka, Hella Grichi

Għanja Bla Flus / A Free Song (poem), Maria Grech Ganado

The Minotaur in Pamplona, Rhys Hughes

The City of Brass (extract), Anonymous

The Heart of the Flame (poem), Mari Ness

Ya duerme el mutado, Álvaro Mielgo Gallego

Bilaadi, S. Chakraborty

Mimikrija / Mimicry, Urša Vidic

Michaelis and the Dew Shades, Louise Herring-Jones

Изгубеното злато / The Lost Gold, Kalina Aïch

Liquid Pleasure (poem), Jenny Blackford

The Return of Melusine, Angela Rega

Kod Kose i Sata / The Scythe and the Hourglass, Vladimira Becić (trans. Dunja Ševerdija)

The Strangest Sort of Siren, Lyndsay E. Gilbert

Il-Passjoni Ta’ San Ġorġ / The Passion of St George (poem), Maria Grech Ganado

Mare Nostrum, Simon Kearns

Buzzing Affy (Sappho’s Hymn to Aphrodite), Adam Lowe

Xandra’s Brine, Claude Lalumière

Contributors

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank everybody who helped to make this anthology possible, including all the backers of the TFF-X fundraiser (which contributed to increasing the pay rate for Fae Visions authors and poets), those who helped us spread the word about the call for stories to authors outside the Anglophone world, people who helped us translate the call for stories into other Mediterranean languages, and especially Alejandro Giacometti, Rhys Hughes, Elisa Nury, Ahmed Saaa, Lawrence Schimel, Alasdair Stuart, Athanasia Varveri, Hafed Walda and Nick Wood.

Thank you all so much!

Preface

Valeria Vitale

The Mediterranean is a liquid road connecting places and people. Ships, words and stories travel on its waves. Sometimes fantastic creatures, hidden in the hold.

The cities on the Mediterranean belong to the sea more than to their individual countries. They look alike, members of a single large, bizarre family. They don’t resemble each other because they’re the same—globalised copies of an identical, unidentifiable place. On the contrary, each of them is made of pieces and traces of all the others, uniquely re-arranged. We Mediterraneans don’t feel like strangers in other Mediterranean cities.

We call it Mare Nostrum. Our sea. Not because we own it, but because it’s a part of us. We seldom feel alone if we can look upon our sea.

The Mediterranean speaks many languages; some of them we don’t recognise anymore. They are ancient, but never really dead. They survive as memories and echoes.

Mediterranean people too speak many languages. We don’t study them at school. We pick up one word here and one there, our ear looking for similarities, for sounds we have heard already, but we don’t always remember where. Our languages and dialects are disharmonic blends of Latin, Slavic, Arabic, Greek, Turkish. We mix alphabets and phonetics, so it’s impossible to tell anymore which word came first. But it doesn’t matter.

Our sea has always been there. On its bed sleep old ships and sunken cities. We have always travelled those roads; we have always had brothers and sisters on the other shore. The Mediterranean is larger than the idea that foreigners have of it. Besides Italy, Greece, France, Spain, Egypt and the Maghreb, it also includes the Balkans, Turkey, Palestine, Syria, and smaller islands like Cyprus and Malta. Our eyes have strange, undefined colours.

We became a stereotype: the sea, the antiquities, the food. Come and visit us: here it’s always fair weather. We sell a sugary icon of ourselves to the tourists, along with cheap replicas of the Pyramids and the Coliseum. But what you won’t find on those posters with blue skies and clear waters is that the Mediterranean is also a place of hard work. Of sweating and cursing. Containers arrive from all the world, piled in our ports as rusty castles and fortresses. People of the Mediterranean also probably won’t say that we’re killing our sea. With waste, oil, plastic. It cannot breathe. We are all accomplices with our indifference and we are ashamed. Or should be.

Travel agencies will tell you how gorgeous it is to relax on a beach in Croatia. How much you deserve a break on the coasts of a beautiful Greek island. They won’t mention the relics that the tides bring to the shore of little, heroic Lampedusa. You won’t hear about the dead bodies of the refugees of too many wars, the Mediterranean swallowing their last hopes. It’s not good for tourism.

With this speculative fiction anthology the editors wanted to celebrate all of it, to celebrate the Mediterranean in its complexity and all its contradictions. The languages and the alphabets, the past and the present, the beauty and the tragedy, the idyll and the storm, the wonders and the horrors.

We have collected twenty-four pieces of fiction and poetry, new and old, and some things that are in between, because we don’t really believe in boundaries. We gathered Mediterranean stories with a horror twist and horror stories with a Mediterranean flavour. We have brought you, still dripping and briny, caring sea monsters, brave mermaids, merciless ghosts and bizarre creatures in nine different languages and many different styles.

We want to seduce the reader with a carnival of foreign words. No one will understand all of them. I certainly don’t. But, you see, that is not the point. It is fascinating to try. To explore and discover, languages as well as cities. What if you find a word you didn’t know before, and fall in love with it?

Fae Visions brings together stories of diversity and inclusiveness, because the editors like to think of the Mediterranean as a place where exchange and curiosity have always been the rule. This anthology wants to scratch and subvert the stereotype, and show what is behind cruise advertisements. It wants to tell of the charm as well as the ugliness of the life of the people (and creatures) that live by the Mediterranean. We want readers to weep with us, to get angry like us, to fight alongside us. We invite them to see beyond what they think they already know. But this anthology never intended to strip away all the magic. And we couldn’t, even if we tried. We know the Mediterranean shores are full of wonders and our very winds can whisper spells.

But don’t listen to the people that write about the gentle Mediterranean sun and the delicious food after just having spent a few holidays there. Instead, listen to the voices of those who belong to those cities, myths, routes. The sun is not gentle, is often violent. And the smell can be disgusting. Listen to them, anyway. They’ll take you through the narrow streets of the old cities. They’ll tell you their stories. They are probably not what you’d expected, but we hope you’ll like them even more because of that. And, at the end, they’ll take you to the port just to contemplate the sea. Our sea.

Madonna Mermaid

Christine Lucas

Samothrace, Aegean Sea, 961 AD

Her servants think their old, blind mistress is also hard of hearing, and rarely hold their tongues in her presence. Irene does not correct them. The incessant gossip of simple, uneducated peasants is one of the few remaining pleasures of her cloistered life. But not today; today they keep their voices low, muttering and sniffling and whispering.

She tilts her head sideways. Her right eye is lost but, sometimes, she can see lights and shapes through her left. Shadows of things that are, ghosts of things that were, or dreams of what will soon come to pass. But today she sees only anger and grief and despair.

Irene shifts in her seat, struggles to make out the servants’ words. What are they complaining about now? Her son, the Magistrate of Samothrace, had a visitor from Constantinople earlier this morning. What did the Emperor demand this time, that caused such unrest among her servants?

Soon she tires, her seat of fine cedar wood under the ancient olive tree too hard on her aged hips. She hits the cobblestones of the front yard with her walking stick and calls her maid.

Merope! Where did you go? I need to go back inside! Now!

I’m here, my lady. Rushed footsteps to her side, and strong arms help her stand. More sniffling.

And what’s wrong with you? asks Irene, annoyance seeping in her voice.

My grandson… They have commandeered his ship and conscripted him for the fight against the Saracen pirates of Crete.

Ah. So that’s what the emperor’s emissary wants. More supplies. More men. More ships. She squeezes Merope’s arm. Take me inside.

Of course, my lady. Come. Lament lingers in Merope’s voice as she guides Irene over the doorstep.

Irene follows, wishing she could take her harsh words back. One more regret in a long line of all the little things she could have said or done differently. The ailment of old age, this pains her more than her aching joints and useless eyes. As they walk down the hall, they hear men’s voices. Irene walks closer, and her maid’s grip on her forearm tightens.

My lady… Hesitation stretches Merope’s voice.

Oh, hush! Let me listen.

All the everyday noises of the household become as loud as the church’s bell in Irene’s ears. Merope’s rapid breathing beside her, the cat stalking mice in the kitchen, the creaking of the wooden planks of the floor echo inside her head. She stops and listens to the men, barely daring to breathe.

…the locals have suffered enough, Captain, says Theodorus. Surely, our neighbors in Thasos and Lemnos can provide you with more supplies?

I will visit them in due time, says the captain, his voice cold. But your boats fare better in strong winds. We need small, versatile vessels to deliver messages and supplies to the ships and the land forces. The Cretan Sea has claimed too many lives already.

And you’ll need men to sail them, I’m sure, says Father Isidorus. But, Captain, all the villages are in deep mourning. On my way here I saw only black-clad women and broken old men. He lowers his voice. Unrest is brewing. The people mutter curses under their breath. I beseech you, seek boats and men elsewhere.

The captain scoffs. Because some toothless hags mutter heathen curses? Certainly not! Fingers tap a wooden surface. Do the mutterings of illiterate women scare you, Father?

Irene’s fists clench. Not all women of Samothrace are illiterate.

Of course not! Offence edges the priest’s voice.

"One omen is best—fight for your country. The captain’s voice quivers with pride. But I would never expect simple village women to understand that."

Irene grins. So the captain is an educated man. But not a smart man.

"Do not quote Homer to me, Captain. I do not love my country any less than you. Theodorus sighs. Heed not our women’s words. Their simple minds can only grasp the little things of their households. But still, it’s true that our resources run low. Perhaps, Captain…"

Irene turns away, her pulse racing. I’ve heard enough, she whispers, and starts toward her room, practically dragging Merope behind her. Her feet do not need a guide; they never did.

The time of pretences is over.

In her small room, her fingers trace the covers of her old books—old friends she misses so very much. A handful of treasures she acquired one by one from vendors and monks of Athos on their way to the Holy Lands who had traded them for food and passage. Of all the things she lost when her eyes turned cloudy—her son’s face, the blue stretch of the Aegean Sea, the sunlight through the branches of the sacred olive tree—Irene misses books most. Homer, Sappho, Pindarus, Aristophanes: their words flash clear in her mind, and she clings to those memories with all the strength of her old bones. Once this gets lost too, she’ll be truly blind.

Her heart clenches. The ancient words—their legacy—have survived through time. Once she’s gone, how will the people of Samothrace remember her? Just another cranky crone, blind and senile, who lived her youth in her wealthy household and her old age yelling