THE BIRD COUNTRY: AND OTHER STORIES Thesis Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kristin Michelle Ferebee, B.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2014 Thesis Committee: Erin McGraw, Advisor Dr. Merrill Kaplan Copyright by Kristin Michelle Ferebee 2014 Abstract This collection of short fiction explores themes of alienation, desire, the numinous, and death, drawing on and reinterpreting mythological and historical sources in order to pursue an ultimately supernatural meaning. ii Acknowledgements This collection would not have been possible without the often-inexplicable support of a great many people, including: Erin McGraw, Lee Martin, Lee K. Abbott, Dr. Merrill Kaplan, and all those at The Ohio State University; Ben Goldberg, Cindy Abramson, Jinah Haytko; Allie Polatin-Chimples and Alice Sverdlik; Zach Condon, Perrin Cloutier, Jason Poranski, Paul Collins, Nick Petree, Jon Natchez, Kelly Pratt, Tracy Brooks, Heather Trost, and Jeremy Barnes; Kristianna Smith, Jane Abernethy, Alexandra Klasinski, Samantha Hinds- García; Heather McLeod and TJ Griffin (& kids); all those at the Fleming household; for better or for worse, my family; Scott Snyder, Nelly Reifler, Matthew Zapruder, Jeffrey McDaniel, and Peter Orner; Chris Garces; Beth Wodzinski, E. Catherine Tobler, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Steve Berman, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, Liz Gorinsky, everyone at Strange Horizons and Prime Books; Pilf and Jane (for their unrelenting encouragement during these last steps). iii Vita 2002 The Hockaday School 2009 B.A. Liberal Arts, Sarah Lawrence College 2011-2 University Fellow, The Ohio State University 2012 to present Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: English iv Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements.........................................................................................iii Vita..................................................................................................................iv TOM, THOM....................................................................................................1 SEVEN SPELLS TO SEVER THE HEART..................................................37 ZUGUNRUHE................................................................................................56 THE TWELVE GIFTS...................................................................................84 WELLSPRING.............................................................................................156 RAVAT’S GHOST.......................................................................................176 THE HOUSE OF REJOICING.....................................................................219 THE BLAKE VARIATION..........................................................................244 THE BIRD COUNTRY.................................................................................267 THE EARTH AND EVERYTHING UNDER..............................................287 v TOM, THOM As a boy, Tom dreams of wolves. He lives by the woods. His father is dead. His mother takes in washing from the little town of Leynmouth. To make ends meet, she says. In the mornings she washes, and she listens to the wireless. The radio reports the North Sea forecast. News comes on after, when the washing has been hung. White sheets shape themselves into great sail-cloths. They rage over the grey grass and the thistles. Beyond is the forest they wish to escape to. A smell of pine and spruce and moss, a bent-backed line of silver-barked saplings, and the lurking threat of further trees beyond. Tom wonders why the sheets want to get there so badly. He marvels that the clothes pegs can hold them so long. He runs through their coiling, fretful curtains. The sinuous caves they form are broad. His mother calls, “Don’t dirty up the washing!” He hears the wireless, through the window, toll the hour with bell-song. He lies in the grass, squinting pleasantly upwards. Sometimes an airplane goes past, its metal body abuzz. He counts those times especially lucky. His mother says, “Thank God the war is done,” when she sees the same sight, and looks very weary. Tom ponders the aeroplane. It passes over their own black wood as though the place were a small spot of darkness, something you could clean from the landscape if you scrubbed. But: no, Tom 1 knows already, the woods are not like this. They are not small or large. Their size is other. On Saturdays he walks with his mother to town. He is entrusted with the washing money and the ration book. He shows their coupons for milk, eggs, and sugar. The shopkeeper tears them out of the book. “Young Tom,” he says. “Wouldst like a summer apple?” He puts a small red apple in Tom’s fist. It is soft, and it tastes of tea with honey. The shopkeeper says, “I trust you’re staying out of the woods.” “He’s a very good boy,” Tom’s mother replies. Tom hides behind her skirts. The truth is that he is afraid of the forest. He dreams of wolves filling it. Fast, silver wolves, loping and silent. They slope between the evergreens and birch. They pant into air grown sweet with frost. They go in packs. Their eyes are gold. Their backs are brindled. “There are no wolves in the wood,” Tom’s mother tells him, when he complains about these dreams. “And where have you seen a wolf, you silly boy?” He knows wolves, of course, from fables. From fairy stories. They are always dragging huntsmen down, or hiding in girls’ and boys’ beds, ravenous at all times and deceitful, thinking of nothing but how to eat men. The wolves in his dreams are not like these wolves. They are indifferent to him. He stands in the wood and they whisper past, their paws churning up the snow-scrim. He tells his 2 mother, but she does not perceive the terror that this inspires in him; she draws him close and wraps him in blankets and says, “There’s no wolves in all of England.” Tom wonders why his mother would tell him a lie. He turns his face towards the blanket. He can hear the wolves, he thinks, out in the forest. They huff their white breath. They let their tongues loll. They turn their bright eyes from him. *** It is well into late grey November. They are trudging up the hillside at the edge of the lane. Tom’s shoes slip and scatter on the patches of ice. Night is coming on quick and sullen. For no reason at all, Tom feels afraid. “Hurry up!” his mother says, too sharply. Her face is pale. Her nerves are frayed. Winter is hard. The shop-man says, “No credit.” Tom has not grown much since his last birthday. He is seven years old now, little and shy. “Keeps himself to himself,” is what the neighbours say. Up ahead, the outline of their cottage looms. “You run ahead and set the fire. Put the kettle on,” his mother says. Tom is quick to nod, compliant. He picks up his heels in a light fast pace. His lungs burn; the frost seems to fill them. He heads for the wood-stack at the base of the house, in back, close to the forest, where the verge holds sway. Come 3 spring, woody vines will stray from that forest, and with clippers Tom’s mother will cut them away. Now all is shrouded in ice and shadow. Twilight’s damp brush tars the air blue-grey. Tom reaches towards the firewood. He feels a rush of superstition. He clutches a log hurriedly. He does not want to look around, towards the forest. He is afraid of what may be crouched there, breathing. He freezes. His knees fold. He hears a crackle. He hears feet on frost: crisp, steady, moving. He sees a shadow cross the wall. A smoke-thin shadow, wavering. It comes very close. He feels its breath. He smells the smell of its breathing: a raw smell of spruce needles, cedar, and snowdrifts; of dry leaves in rot, and of carrion meat. Something touches his shoulder. He shudders. A black feather whiskers down past him, curls in the air, and lands at his feet. Whatever it is that stands behind him sighs: a long slow drawn-out sound of grief. Then it is gone. It steals back to the forest. Tom listens until he can no longer hear the cold little-bone-like crunch of its feet. He stands in the darkness for a long time. His heart pounds and his hands are trembling. After a while he knits up his courage. He hurls himself towards the cottage door, not stopping to see what—if anything—scuttles after. He clutches the firewood wildly, so that later he will dig a splinter from his finger. When he reaches the door, he runs inside. There are great retching gasps to his breathing. 4 His mother is storing the shopping on the shelves. The kettle is humming in clouds of white steam. But when Tom’s mother turns and sees him, her face goes colourless as cream; she drops the apple that she’s holding. Her hands fly to her mouth. She says, with horror in her voice, “Tom?” Tom feels tears slide down his cheeks. He can’t understand his mother’s reaction. Nor can he bring himself to speak of the wintry creature out by the wood-stack. He hasn’t the words to try and describe it; not half of the words he would need. His mother says, “But if you are my Tom, my own Tom—” she comes close and her hands roam his cheekbones, his ruffled fair hair, the rough fabric of his sleeves—“and oh, my darling, you’re cold as death—but if you are my Tom, then who’s that boy in your bedroom? Who is he?” She runs to the bedroom: a sharp sudden motion. Tom trails behind, uncomprehending. There, in the little bed by the woodstove, the bed with the blankets below which Tom sleeps, another boy is sitting cross-legged. He has the same pale hair as Tom, the same round shape to his features. His eyes are cornflower blue, like Tom’s. But a restless energy hangs about him: like a wolf about to spring, or like a storm building over the land, steeped in electricity.