Hello everyone! I’ve got something I’d be grateful for some feedback on. This is the piece that I got into the FC 2015 Conbook, however I’m looking for some feedback on it so I can move forward and further improve, rather than just leave the piece without scrutiny. I don’t have any specific questions in mind, so just go with what you feel.
Thanks!
The Herald
His grave lies in the back pages of the broadsheets, buried beside petty thievery, failed arson, and a case of mistaken identity. The truth of his death rots there, among the catacombs of print, because the editor knew nothing of the clandestine arts that claimed him, and the coroner tasked to unravel those skeins cared not for another death. There are too many in London; far too many to keep track of! So the mystery was straightforward; the demise of a middle class vulpine whose cliché taste for mischief ended with a fatal foray in opium.
Louis Stevenson therefore, is a cautionary tale. Better minds decided his death to be as it merely seemed, because the deeper truth reveals a darker secret. Despite all our progress, our works of civilisation are effigies, and we are still animals - no amount of the finest silk, soft against the fur, will remove the course bristles of our pelts. As I stand in the street, waiting, that truth is easy to see. From the cries carried as thick as smoke from the chimney pots, it is clear there is no mantra of politeness that can sheathe the daggers in our smiles, for nature has furnished us all with fangs wholly unsuited for sharp words. Brutality, barbarity – our lives are bestial, so we dream of better things. In this city, death plays out to our base nature, always in sweet silence behind the furore of life, and Louis’ death was to me a storm that rushed through my soul, stripping me naked of all but the hide nature clothed me with. Like the pull of the tide, I have receded back onto my deepest path and stand here on the street corner, copy of The Herald in hand, wrapping my claws against Louis’ papier-mâché tombstone with a grin and gleam of amber eyes, waiting for the next emissary, of which Louis was the first.
I felt I owed it to him, picturing his neat copper fur lying soiled in the stinking grey silt of Gravesend, underneath the rotten wharfs. I tell myself his death will not be in vain.
My ears twitch, pulled taut like a puppet’s strings by the clatter of horseshoes on the paving stones, dragging me from my thoughts. The scratching of the crossing-sweeper - some half feral whose breed I could not decipher – is a constant itch, and the laugh of the foxes striding by in top-hats and smooth suits grains my taut nerves, just next to the grunts of the sweating, glistening muscles of a gang of shire-horses, sodden as they laboured – doing what? The devil I know.
And the smell – the city is a charnel house of scent, a temple of progress burning in offering the corrupt incense of over a million different people. With deft hands, I pinch out a bit of snuff between my claw, and inhale deeply, returning to the print. At his death, the message he gave was to stand here and read The Herald. He died for that, and it feels woefully indulgent to stand reading of him, blocking out all the activity in favour of the printed word. Yet the papers at least preserve the signs I have to make sense of; his death is a key to something greater. I know because I was there at that moment.
The Den was a mere notch of grime above the rest of its ilk. The deep crimson paint did not peel from the rotten walls, and the dim light was for ambience, not from squalor. Still it was a cramped, warped, warren of a building, squeezed onto the wharf so one could quickly acquire a breath of sweet oblivion after stumbling back from being lost at sea. The scent of opium hung in clouds beneath the aged rafters, and lingered on those poor souls’ sighs like the ghost of a forgotten age as they dreamed for better things. Run by a coven of Linsang from the Orient, they supplied the luxuries of home to their kind primarily, though with some persuasion, to the denizens of the city. Moralists love to see such places as sinkholes of depravity, but in reality the substance of real scandal is the people, not the place, and Louis has chosen to meet me there.
I ducked under a low wooden beam, murmuring an excuse as I struck eyes with a shrewd face, wrinkling his short snout in suspicion. The Linsang flicked its ears, and pointed to a door further back, behind a loose array of reclining beds centred around several chipped mahogany tables bearing oriental lamps that pierced the mist like lighthouses. They sent a soft glow about the place, the flame never flickering, a radiant mark to guide back the dreamers lost at sea, whose moans faded into a murmur as soft as the ripple of waves. The Linsang said nothing, watching with a pair of hazel eyes, sharp as a hawk. I trod lightly along the isles of the sleepers, some only betraying life by the slow, shallow rise and fall of their chests, where upon their lips lay the half-eaten petals of the lotus. I passed dark faces that seemed more lost shades of Hades than my fellows, while their moans for words lapped softly from their tongues like the waters of the Styx. I drifted past some shadows; otters, a wildcat, a horse, a fennec. They all were the same in the dark, only the subtle spice of their scents betraying them. They were beyond the creak of floorboards under my foot or the tap of claws; to them they are on the deck of a ship swaying on a swell, each sigh of contented breath powering the sails, guiding the ship into the twilight realm of dreams. They were away, with all the means they could escape.
Beyond the door a corridor opened up, where the Linsang in Japanese style had raised wooden screens to separate each function room. With a silent step, I stalked through these halls, recognising the shift in clientele. Perfume and scent mingled here into a deep mist, as if we had all ascended beyond our natural form. I inhaled not the proud aroma of imperious stag, nor that of haughty wolves, but jasmine and even frankincense – each a breath of royalty. I could smell their scents as their shadowed spectres sipped perfumed tea from delicate egg-sized cups, their amber eyes fixed on nothing as they drifted listlessly about, enjoying the sensory delights open only to the decadent connoisseur. Unlike others, some feverously scratched away with hand-cut quills, the sound stabbing the ears as they rapturously penned their new literature, lavishing all their ecstasies into prose. With a soft swish, a screen rolled to the side, and a Linsang bowed out, flexing his banded tail. I caught a glimpse of his amber eyes, plotting eyes, but there seemed something questioning in the way he coiled that striped tail about, full of hidden meaning. The signs summoned another of his kin from behind me, emerging as if from the very air with an open hand.
Reaching into my breast pocket, I gave the Linsang with cropped black hair a card; a dais embodied with eldritch runes cursed in the mockeries of fate, encircled in thick waves of astral mist that cradle the unknown beings of myth. It was a tarot card; The Wheel of Fortune to specify. The Linsang’s emerald eyes narrowed with scorn, raising an eyebrow in turn with a lip. He handed the card back, pointed swiftly to a door on the left, and padded down the wooden floors noiselessly until his ghost-like form melted through the gloom back into the realm of Hades, leaving me to stand alone before the doors to Tartarus.
It slid to the side easily – the adamantine gates were always to open to a mortal’s touch. A great cloud of smoke poured out, frolicking upon the air. It was not the scent of opium, but sweet incense burning from sticks half-immersed in water purified with jasmine blossom. And there, before a magnificent statue of the Buddha, Louis stood, his earthy scent rolling off him. He was familiar to me, but also forgotten, like a half-glimpsed dream. His appearance confirmed that suspicion, he had green eyes, but the same brazen red to his fur; and the devious smile that I’d shown only to myself, when gloating of my achievements to the mirror. He could have made it in politics, even held a seat like me.
“Of course you would come,” he uttered, turning slowly as he savoured his performance. The crimson veils that hung either side complimented his copper fur; and against them the white streaks of his muzzle flashed with every word, striking like the sword. He poked the tip of his tongue between his teeth, the pink flesh glistening in the light against the brown point of his muzzle. But the rest of his form was obscured in the mist of incense, attempting to hide his animalism with clothes of scent and smoke. “You cannot help but be drawn,” he spoke, his voice rolling through the twilit room, and the candles flickered at the sound of his words. “You know what I hold,” he smiled, his teeth glittering like pearls.
Out of the darkness a card fluttered like a clipped bird from his silhouetted hand, curved cruelly with barbed claws that rent the air. Another tarot card; The Hierophant. He fancied he held forbidden knowledge, or knew how to operate The Wheel of Fortune, and control my destiny – a delightfully crass metaphor. One difference between us; I was bred for better tastes.
“I know,” he laughed, and held his head high, as if to howl with joy. It was quaint, to see a fox like him play the part of a wolf. He boasted, waving a piece of paper in his hand. It was as if at that sight, the walls collapsed, the mist cleared and we both stood atop a great peak. Up until now, no other words struck clear, but that parley slip was like the cold of the winter’s first frost – the sign that everyone paid attention to.
“You signed your warrant, you know.” He talked as thirsty men drink, yapping on and on, pink tongue lapping away at the delightful taste of words. He believed I would rise to his challenge. He thought he held power. I would have smiled, but I knew better. “An innocent would not come here,” he continued, “The scent of opium would linger on his fur for days,” he leant closer, enough to see the hazel flecks in his eyes. I remembered my mother, she had those. “Not when your seat would sway the election.” His mock smile froze, his lips grew cold of mockery. “I read your speech – an impassioned plea. Do you think they’ll forgive you though?”
“Nevermind, think of this scandal,” he sighed, closing his eyes, dreaming like one of the washed up Romantic poets as he waved the slip in his hand. He opened his eyes, now narrowed into slits. I glimpsed something wolfish in him. “But that’s going to happen anyway. I have the proof.”
“I’d hope so,” I whispered, making sure those haughty ears of his leant forward, bowing to hear to my words. How his body betrayed his naivety, to see the uninitiated attempt the rites of power. I stared into his eyes, reading deeply every single flare they betrayed of him. Eyes are the windows to the soul. The Greeks said that, and despite age they were not wrong. For in his eyes, Louis was just another unfortunate, trying to force his way into the halls of power. He could not do the things needed to get there, or the deeds required to hold on once there. In that moment, the atmosphere turned against him, and with a deep breath my mane bristled like the wolf, while the shadows lent me a pelt grey as their kin.
“You are my half-brother,” Louis spoke.
“It is not hard to scent the difference,” I replied.
“My mother had an affair on the continent,” he continued.
“Easy to deduce from the former.”
“She bore me nine months later,” he recovered.
“As the laws of nature dictate,” I snapped. “Come, what is your proof.”
“I don’t hold it here,” he smiled. “It is safe, only where I know. The one you called father – was impotent. Our mother bore twins.”
As soon as he announced his sentence, I carried it out. Short, sharp crack, a whiff of sulphur among the incense, and there he lay, his blood deepening his fur’s red lustre. It was a poetic mixture of senses – a whiff of jasmine, combined with fire, the smoke. I wished to bottle that air, and store it as perfume. It was ecstasy.
“But-” he gurgled, his eyes weakening, blurring like a tearful child. He seemed too small, the vigour of life retreated from him, bringing him back to birth – his second birth awaited.
“You disappoint,” I said, turning my head to the side. “I thought you would bring a real intrigue,” I crooned into his ear, whispering it as a priest might do to the dying. “Illegitimacy is so… common,” I finished, looking at him. “I assume for this entire spectacle, you are a fan of those crass murder mysteries that fly off the shelves. You even have latest three volume work on your bedside table.” I grabbed the ruff of his neck, propping his head, so that under my thumb, I felt his pulse weaken. “But really, you were a fool. You see this?” I pulled the slip from his hand, the claws snagging pitifully on the rough paper. His dying eyes widened in recognition. He spluttered, but the drowning man cannot speak now. “But don’t you see? It was a game, a ruse, a facade. Who gave you this knowledge, and the means, the money, to challenge me? Go now, little pawn, speed off to Hades, and take your slumber,” I intoned, feeling nothing but hate roar through my ears. He had tried to ruin me, so I ruined him. We are after all only animals. I thought I would see the same hate in him. He just laid there, trying to fight death, as if this were a mistake. He cried delicate little beads of tears. But I did not smell fear. His face, muzzle and all, wrinkled up into tight lines. Neither did his jaw tighten in hate.
He said one word.
“Brother.”
His eyes trailed down like tears from my eyes, before resting upon his broken heart.
It was hard to tell when he precisely died; it just seemed to stir in him, as smoothly as one wakes from a restful slumber.
It was then as if the noxious air of the room overcame me. I heard the hurried walk of the Lingsang behind the door. Wordlessly, they grabbed him by a limb and conveyed him out. I tried to shout otherwise, show some real fangs, but strong arms held me back. For all my previous posturing, if I were a real wolf, I could have broken free. Only at their bidding was I released. They took payment of several notes, enough for two gold coins, and allowed me passage out of the underworld.
Louis Stevenson should have been laid to rest in the family crypt under a solitary oak high in the Yorkshire Moors, where his body would dissolve into the earth and nourish the family tree for another generation. Instead he lies nameless, preserved only in tatty pages, the significance of his death lost to contested election results. He could have overturned them with his parley slip. He had all the information needed to prove it. Yet he chose to meet me. I was so adamant that he hated me; even my memory of his words seemed warped. I don’t know how, but Louis gave a greater gift. He bore a message, not from a master, but to one he served. In my pocket, he had placed a single sheet of delicate paper, white as snow, without me noticing. In elegant writing, lay the letters D.H.R. and the faintest trace of the owner’s scent. He is the one who seeks to ruin me, and now I see him, a great grey wolf, his mane tailored neatly upon his smooth black suit. He’s walking up the street, leisurely, without a care in the world, oblivious to the spectres of death hovering around us both. In the charnel house of scent, in a city so full of smells, Louis had done all to make him known to me.
I pause for the moment. I’ve read of Louis over and over. I reflect upon the memory and I walk towards the door of darkness that D.H.R. has slipped behind. I demand summons with the ornate lion’s head. The door opens and a border collie bows to usher me inside.
In the street, the Shire horse roars, having broken his thumb, while the crossing-sweeper is crying some garbled stream of apologies. Some will never know.
