In Quiet Voices Speak, Mother of Beasts

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Ebook editions (PDF, EPUB, and MOBI) of In Quiet Voices Speak, Mother of Beasts, by Kaya Skovdatter.

Etoangat loves Setsuko, and that love anchors her to the world. But as August blooms cold and windswept in auburns and golds across Toronto, even that love can’t prevent Etoangat’s world from coming apart. As reality unseams, what was and what might have been, past and future, collide and blur: a relationship blooms, a relationship turns toxic and cannibal; a child of that union dies, children of that union are born; cities burn, cities are home and haven; one world ends, and another begins. And in that beginning for Etoangat comes the chance of new love, and new joy. Because, for Etoangat, love never dies if you carry the dead with you.

In Quiet Voices Speak, Mother of Beasts is an experimental/Weird Fiction prose poem/short story hybrid.

CW: death of a child (off page)

2,500 words. Standalone.

Ebook editions (PDF, EPUB, and MOBI) of In Quiet Voices Speak, Mother of Beasts, by Kaya Skovdatter.

Etoangat loves Setsuko, and that love anchors her to the world. But as August blooms cold and windswept in auburns and golds across Toronto, even that love can’t prevent Etoangat’s world from coming apart. As reality unseams, what was and what might have been, past and future, collide and blur: a relationship blooms, a relationship turns toxic and cannibal; a child of that union dies, children of that union are born; cities burn, cities are home and haven; one world ends, and another begins. And in that beginning for Etoangat comes the chance of new love, and new joy. Because, for Etoangat, love never dies if you carry the dead with you.

In Quiet Voices Speak, Mother of Beasts is an experimental/Weird Fiction prose poem/short story hybrid.

CW: death of a child (off page)

2,500 words. Standalone.

Want to sample before you buy? Read on:

Etoangat closes her eyes as Setsuko kisses her. It is months before they will learn how sick Etoangat is, before they will learn what grows in her heart. An equal set of months before they will lose the child.

But now, autumn blooms new and heady around them in Queen’s Park, Toronto’s foliage shot through with auburns and golds. Windswept and carpeted in leaves that crunch underfoot. They lie together in piles of them, lost in the feel of each other in the chill. Happy in being together, in the joy of what is coming, in the having of this world, this now.

Other worlds, other shadows of what might have been averted. The future so impossibly far away, and the two of them content to just sink down forever into the crisp mulch, warm earth at their backs.

 

Before everything breaks.

 

And the world comes undone.

 

#

 

 The sun burning in Etoangat’s chest is a steady beat. Furnace-boiling as cool wind blows in off Lake Ontario to wick away the sweat coating her skin. The late-autumn sky over the open water drifts slate-hued and frigid. Winter’s wrath has come early, and the city rings with the cold settling into its bones. Yet even this a summer breeze compared to Taloyoak.

Compared to home.

Etoangat can’t feel the weight of the slow, white falls weeping down to light on her hair and shoulders. They ignite on contact and Etoangat stands furnace-dry, the stone of the Quay around her seared in a perfect circle. The trail winding back up into the labyrinth of downtown Toronto blackened with ash in remembrance of her passage.

Backlit against her, Etoangat standing silhouette-dark, the city glows amber-orange as it burns. In the flush of it, only the tender pads of her fingers are still

 

cold

 

as Setsuko cradles them in her own; as Setsuko blows on them, warms them with her frigid breath. The Winter in Setsuko’s chest a furled tongue, licking her lover cool and slick.

Their breath mingles, frosts, in the bluster blowing in from the north; Setsuko’s lips on hers, Etoangat drinks each breath; feels the weight of her as each whisper of her tongue slides down Etoangat’s throat to stroke the sun at her core. Each flick a caress ages long.

Etoangat uncurls her lover’s tongue from her throat and kisses the soft skin of Setsuko’s neck. Runs delicate fingers along the downy skin of shoulders, forearms, wrists. Interlocks fingers. Sluices her tongue along clavicle ridges. Bites softer, more tender flesh. Setsuko’s skin tastes of home, like crisp, windswept crusts of Nunavut’s black-grey tundra. Her sweat like icy water, clean and lung-searing cold.

The story continues in In Quiet Voices Speak, Mother of Beasts.

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