Shimmer has shared a story new story by Cat Hellisen, author of When the Sea is Rising Red, House of Sand and Secrets and Beastkeeper.
Hellisen is one of South Africa’s top fantasy exports. Her short stories have appeared in Apex, F & SF, Something Wicked, and Tor.com. Beastkeeper – described as a fairy tale for the loveless – was one of our books to look out for in 2015.
Hellisen will be at the 2015 Open Book Festival in Cape Town in September. Don’t miss YA Masterclass: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and YA, with Hellisen, Zimkhitha Mlanzeli and Sally Partridge.
Hellisen will also be signing books at Exclusive Books Cavendish Square in Cape Town on Saturday, 29 August.
Read the story, titled “Serein”:
IT’S ALWAYS about the ones who disappear
I’ve imagined it endlessly: what Claire must have thought as she packed her bag. How leaving is easy, even if you lie and say oh god it’s hard it’s hard it’s hard. Make a clean break, leave everything, let loose your claim to possession: this is my house, this is my bed, these are my albums not shelved alphabetically because I tried and never could keep the world orderly, this is my little library built out of gifts and second-hand forgotten paperbacks.
This is my sheet ripe with me, this is my mirror, this is my reflection.
I close my sister’s room. I don’t know what she was thinking when she left.
I can pretend, for a while, that I felt her fear of life, her hurt. She said, always, it will be better under water. She would stay in the shower, drain the cylinder cold.
She took my mum’s car when she left, though I suppose she gave it back. The police found it parked under a flyover near the airport, like she’d driven up onto the verge and got out and walked on bleeding feet over broken glass to a pair of wings, to freedom. Other people in my town whispered that of course we’d love to think she got on a plane. There’s no record of her from there. She took her passport, but didn’t buy a ticket.
I married three years after Claire disappeared. And here’s the thing. I have these pictures I hate to look at because no matter how much I smile in them, or how much money Mum and Dad pulled together to help me have the best wedding—the best wedding for their only daughter, their only child—no one can ignore that the photos are ruined. There are empty spaces where my sister should be, strange gaps where elbows don’t meet, where heads can’t, where shadows fall in the wrong direction. There are water stains that bubble like a strange mold between the layers of film.
Book details
- Beastkeeper by Cat Hellisen
EAN: 9780805099805
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- House of Sand and Secrets by Cat Hellisen
EAN: 9780991128426
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- When the Sea is Rising Red by Cat Hellisen
EAN: 9780374364755
Find this book with BOOK Finder!