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    The Nivashi and Other Stories
    The Nivashi and Other Stories
    The Nivashi and Other Stories
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    The Nivashi and Other Stories

    By Linda Talbot

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    About this ebook

    Is what we see real? Or mere illusion? In The Nivashi and Other Stories - thirteen tales, mostly about transformation - the mundane moves rapidly off the radar.The Nivashi features the ghosts of gipsies clashing with the remnants of humanity after an earthly catastrophe. But the people are hopefully destined for a life free of aggression and greed and integrated with nature. The Aloe tells of a sexually voracious woman; her alienation and closeness to the southern plant. The Confession - more a tale of unfortunate human habit than transformation - recalls the fanaticism of Franco's Spain and A Solace for the Single Man abounds with ironic humour. Varying changes to unsettle assertions are rife in the remaining tales. What delusion lies beneath the sea off the Maltese shore? Is it magic, or a man's imagination working overtime in The Encounter? And what fantasy might a father obsessed with a sick child, succumb to in the night in Gwindennith? And, after reading Woman from the Water, beware of entertaining anyone met wandering on the beach.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLinda Talbot
    Release dateMar 4, 2019
    ISBN9780463089798
    The Nivashi and Other Stories
    Author

    Linda Talbot

    Linda Talbot has written fantasy for children and adults and for many years reviewed art, theatre and books in London. She now lives in Crete. She published "Fantasy Book of Food"; rhymes, stories and recipes for children and "Five Rides by a River" - about Suffolk, seen from a bicycle! She contributed a chapter to a book about Conroy Maddox, the British surrealist and features on art to "Topos" the German landscape magazine. She published short stories with the British Fantasy Society as well as stories and poetry in other magazines. And she launched "Wordweavers", an online supplement of poetry and fiction, published in conjunction with The Cretan International Community.

    Read more from Linda Talbot

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      Book preview

      The Nivashi and Other Stories - Linda Talbot

      The Nivashi

      And Other Stories

      by Linda Talbot

      ~~~<><><><>~~~

      Illustrations by Linda Talbot

      ~~~<><><><>~~~

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright Linda Talbot 2019

      ~~~<><><><>~~~

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes.

      Thank you for downloading this free eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ~~~<><><><>~~~

      If you enjoyed this book, please return to smashwords.com and scroll down to discover other works by this author. A review would be much appreciated. Thank you for your support.

      Contact blog: http://lindajtalbot.wordpress.com, where you will find a list and summary of all the works by this author, together with extracts. You are also very welcome to subscribe or add a comment.

      ~~~<><><><>~~~

      Table of Contents

      The Nivashi – Intro and story

      The Aloe

      The Confession

      The City

      Shadow

      The Encounter

      An Eye for an Eye

      A Solace for the Single Man

      The Water Horse

      The Silkie

      Gwindennith

      The Changeling

      Woman from the Water

      Author’s thanks, contact information and note

      THE NIVASHI

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      Introduction

      This story tells of the Nivashi, a ghostly race of gipsies who have despaired of humanity and magically integrated with the elements. Earth has uncannily changed: buildings remain, people have vanished. But the gipsies have selected a few survivors from each country through which they have passed, hoping to magically draw them back to nature, where consumerism and an obsession with money no longer matter. And a prophetic prism is found by one of the survivors. Other people have in fact been rendered invisible within white webs woven by the Nivashi and the strange offspring of the survivors contribute to the eventual reconciliation of man and the natural world he had abused.

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      Ileana looks from the high ground at the encampment below. The travellers are parked in a defensive circle, their horses grouped wearily within.

      The caravans are every colour, created from various contraptions; crashed cars, reassembled and linked into long homes, scarred buses with seats removed and some built like early wagons from discarded wood. Paint, collected in deserted towns en route, is applied in swirls and depicts distorted images of a lost life.

      Are there other travellers? wonders Ileana. Is every town abandoned; homes and shops with evidence of occupation, yet devoid of people?

      She looks at the mottled rocks of the hot hills thrusting from ground scattered with a tough red growth like fire dried by a searing sun.

      She strives to recall the land before the change. Dimly she glimpses the moment of darkness and is then reliving those days when briefly, the sun was obliterated:

      A long, hard wind blows as though to wipe the world clean. Then silence settles like a shroud. The fields and the cloud-pocked sky vanish. She halts on the village track and seems to draw the wind protectively around her. As the darkness lifts and the wind dies, she sees the glimmering grey plain that has replaced her cottage and the fields.

      She wanders, as in a dream where one moves yet gains no ground. The town she enters is hushed, car doors left open, in shops, goods half wrapped, in houses, meals partly eaten. But there is no power. The national grid has closed down and the living have been spirited away.

      Then Ileana sees the group of survivors, milling in bewilderment on the edge of town.

      What happened? Where is everyone? she asks.

      A gaunt grey man says, Everyone's gone. We've searched the town. They must have left in the dark. I'm Mark by the way. Meet - sorry I don't know your names.

      He indicates the others.

      Maria. A sallow and unruly woman steps forward.

      Carl. He is fair, still in shock, his blue eyes in retreat.

      Jon. A dark young man, sullen and dishevelled.

      Pila. A fair woman of indeterminate age; shrewd, mouth pursed, irony in her pale blue eyes.

      I'm Ileana.

      They stand assessing each other, unable to grasp why they have been spared, then gazing helplessly across the faceless plain to a horizon floating as though dislodged and flecked with green and gold.

      Eventually they retrace their steps to the town. The desolation hangs like a tangible weight. They gather provisions from the supermarket and find a large house on the outskirts. Jon breaks the lock and they go inside. It is deserted.

      But in the kitchen plates are stacked ready for washing, a child's pedal car appears to have forcefully struck the wall and a current newspaper reporting disasters that pale before what has happened, lies open on the table.

      Ileana begins washing plates, then bends to unpack the food. As she straightens, she feels a restraining arm at her elbow. She spins round. No one. She moves to the plate rack and as she lifts her hand to take one down, hot breath strikes the back of her neck.

      Maria cries out from the living room. Ileana runs in to confront the woman, who stands, rigid, staring at the window. Look!

      They look at the heavy blue brocade draping the panes.

      Can't you see him? Maria is hysterical. Carl helps her to a chair. There's no one there, he says.

      He's gone - but where? Maria scans the room in disbelief. He was hunched, covered in a kind of white web. His eyes.... She can say no more.

      The others exchange glances. The traumatic day is taking its toll.

      Ileana does not mention her experience as they move into the kitchen and, without enthusiasm, begin to open the boxes and cans.

      Pila chokes on the tinned meat she has placed on a piece of bread. She feels cold fingers probing her throat, preventing her from swallowing. She rises with a gasp, knocking the plate of food to the floor where it shatters No one else touches theirs.

      Let's leave, says Jon suddenly.

      The group looks at him in unspoken agreement. The house now seems to release a profound sigh and as the survivors' eyes are involuntarily drawn to the walls, they begin slowly to pulsate. And over them, like a ghostly gossamer, spreads a fine white web.

      The exodus from the house is swift. Looking back, Ileana sees it leaning, almost imperceptibly, in on itself, then slowly dissolve into the green gold air.

      She has collected the remaining food and says, Let's take two cars. The others look doubtful but Mark tries the door of one. Oddly it is unlocked and with Ileana and Maria, he climbs in.

      Carl opens the door of another with equal ease and the others get in. It is as though they are intended to take the cars and leave town.

      They drive onto the great grey plain, over the wiry red growth towards the restless curve of flecked sky.

      What time is it? asks Mark. Ileana and Maria consult their watches. Both have unaccountably stopped.

      The eerie light does not change. The chaotic roads lacing the country have vanished. Only intermittent and deserted towns remain.

      Simultaneously the cars are about to run out of petrol. They are just entering a town. Identity is difficult. But it has a sixteenth century centre with the customary expansion of buildings through subsequent time. Cars stand abandoned in the streets. But there are no petrol stations. Finally the two cars run out of petrol and come to a halt on the outskirts of the town.

      For centuries the gipsies had been persecuted. They had dispersed and gathered to them aspects of the lands where they had lived. But they had been moved on, until, as cities grew and the countryside diminished, they sought refuge - and vengeance - in magic.

      The smelters, snake charmers, horse dealers and acrobats, changed shape. They reverted to the camouflage of rock and water, tree and corn.

      They might have been glimpsed, like the fairies that flew through man's imagination in the past, crouched in corners, balanced in high branches, walking at noon, when no shadow falls, along

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