FABULA is our first issue dedicated to fiction and works of imagination. In an introduction to the book, lead editor Nick Hunt wrote: ‘In a world convulsed by crisis, when old certainties are collapsing and narratives are falling apart, it is to stories that we look to bear witness to the state we are in. Unlike essays, non-fiction and facts, fiction does not approach the fears and hopes of our times directly but obliquely, moving us in unexpected ways and changing our hearts as much as our thinking brains’.

Containing 30 short stories from writers around the world, original illustrations and audio versions, the last print copies of FABULA are on offer during this month. To introduce the book we republish its afterword and a dark folk story by Luke Winter, set in Northumberland in an uncertain future, about a mysterious battle between butterflies and ‘organic’ drones.

What do the birds say?

‘There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre’, writes Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five. ‘Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.

‘And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?”’

Perhaps there is nothing intelligent to say about 2020. To say ‘Poo-tee-weet?’ in a world that feels as fictional and as fantastical as Vonnegut’s novel – which ranges through space and time from the 1945 firebombing of Dresden to the alien planet Tralfamadore – is not to deny, or to mock, the seriousness of the crises we’re in. It is not to give up on reality, or to invite despair. But during the long, strange months of lockdown, when skies cleared of vapour trails and motorways became eerily silent, what many people commented on was the sound of birdsong. Once the omnipresent roar of human activity was suppressed, the quiet, insistent language of birds bubbled back into people’s consciousness. That reminder of the living world, still present underneath — and despite — everything that is burying it, increasingly seems to make more sense than the clamour of human noise: the frenzied rationalisations of political commentators who feel the ground shifting under their feet; the demagogic bellowing of populist leaders everywhere; the polarising narratives of social media. A fleeting moment of quietness — like the silence after a massacre — allowed us, briefly, to hear something else. Birdsong tells its own story.

Poo-tee-weet.

Luke Winter

Flux

BLUSTERING THROUGH THE WORLD of dark, massed wings scissored the silence apart. The moon’s light spilled from behind a cloud, illuminating the chopping of a hundred-thousand butterflies as they blew high over the sea.

In the Four Arms in Northumberland, Generous Pete, two feet deep in a miracle of compassion, is buying a round for Michael the flat-earther.

Steve, behind the bar, so far would have heard Flat Michael elucidate his peculiar take on his ideas enough times to count sheep to sleep, had he been counting. But Steve had not been counting. Hegave a half smile as he passed Flat Michael on Pete’s pity pint.

The bubbles in the lager fizzed, their hands wrapped round the pints, the night wrapped round the pub, and the butterflies approached.

Some said it had been the storm gusts disrupting the migration patterns. Others rehashed old superstitions. Michael stuck to the facts, they had been clear enough. Steve turned up the television that hung over the corner of the bar. ‘Said local landlord J. Superhans.’

‘That’s time gentlemen.’ Steve shouted, and pressed a button next to the glass washer marked ‘close’. A taxidermied squirrel span on a small podium between the spirits bottles. LED lights giddied around the podium’s base.

Flat Michael wanted a bell for last orders, which only made Steve more fond of the corpse. The face of the squirrel appeared from behind its broad, erect tail as the podium rotated.

‘An absinthe and a bucks fizz.’

‘Fuck off. Bar’s closed Michael.’

‘You’ve barely called it. H’way man.’ Michael’s weather reddened

face pointed up at him.

Up from his stool, Pete ferreted baccy into a skin. He unhooked his coat from below the bar and hoisted it back round himself. He laboured with the buttons until each slotted home, lipped his pony-tail into his hood, and his hood over his head. The coat sagged down until Pete was only a bristly chin, eight fingers and one rolled up fag.

He raised his hand to Steve and Flat Michael in benediction, turned and pulled at the door to the Four Arms. It opened like a greyhound’s cage, and through it gusted shapes of clustered, blustering black.

The door ajar, tenebrous shapes billowing from its open edge, Pete turned. He had his shoulder to the door, then his back to it. With a great punt he got it shut again.

Dancing, fizzling shadows now filled the pub. Glitches of light would appear; an eye of Michael, the top of a beer tap, a button off a jukebox.

‘Flutterflies’ mumbled Michael. He swiped his hands through the air in front of him, walking blindly towards where he knew the hatch to the bar lay. There was a brief cry, a fall, then Michael was fumbling backwards, smearing the air with his hands. ‘You think I was born yesterday Flat Michael?’ Shouted Steve from the floor in front of the drinks fridges.

With nothing else to do, Pete lit his fag. A shield of blue smoke began to press outward around him. Pete sucked harder. The orange cherry glowed. The baccy cracked and spat, and blue smoke plumed from Pete’s lips. The smoke grew around him, and no butterfly broached it.

‘Fags lads, roll yourselves fags,’ shouted Pete.

Flat Michael stumbled towards the sound of Pete’s voice, taking himself out over a chair. Sucking the fag between his lips, Pete used two hands to flurry tobacco into papers. Michael’s yelps grew nearer. The din of wings of butterflies did not eclipse the sound of a clipper lighter being flicked, and Steve cursing purple somewhere amongst it.

Pete licked a second roll-up shut and began puffing. Michael huffed into Pete’s shield, continuing to paw at the air in front of him, swapping butterflies for dense smoke. Pete passed Flat Michael the fag and began rolling a third.

Steve pushed against the seething wings, hands in front of his eyes and mouth. As he broached the blue bubble of smoke, he was passed a lit cigarette by Pete, who now dangled a fag from either end of his mouth like a carcinogenic vampire.

The surfaces of the Four Arms had dissolved. Everything was woozy with movement. Wings beat smoke and smoke tangled wings. The three men stood.

‘What’s this? I reckon we turn the heating off, seal the windows, leave them to it,’ coughed Michael.

‘You’ve to ring the council. They send pest control’ said Pete.

A butterfly chopped into the smoke towards him. Pete held out a finger. It landed and clung to it, as if it had found a branch amid a flood. The butterfly was little bigger than a fifty pence piece.

‘Don’t think the council’s much use at this hour,’ said Steve.

‘How long will they be outside?’

‘Dawn,’ said Pete, and blew a jet of blue smoke at the butterfly on his finger. It flopped off, and lolloped on sloppy wings away from the smoke.

‘We’re as well pulling the curtains over us and kipping here.

Outside’ll be mental. You won’t be able to get up main street. Your farm’s a million miles away in this Michael. I heard about it happening in Wiltshire and Stroud. Not here like.’

‘Has one of yous got a GPS Mag on yez?’ asked Steve.

‘I’ve not bothered with them.’

‘Aye I’m not daft.’

‘They reckon it’s them sending nature doolally,’ said Steve.

‘Whey of course it is. My pigeons when I raced them, you get to know them like yeh kids. You cannit just say all homing pigeons are the same. If you take one part of their DNA and plug it into some other creature, that’s not going to work,’ said Pete.

‘Aye, but they think of nature as a machine. They reckon we’re built from modules, and they can swap modules arounds like parts in motor,’ said Michael.

‘Whey is that working how they’d hoped?’ Pete passed round more rollups.

‘It’s not them that’s caused this they’re saying. They’re saying its bats again. But organic drones appear, and then these mad swarms start happening.’

‘They’re saying the birds have had their migration routes thrown off.’

‘Not just birds, where’s these butterflies from? I’ve never seen one like these here,’ said Flat Michael.

‘Aye man but they said that with 5G that it was sending the cats nuts. But that calmed down,’ said Pete.

‘It’s them Organic Delivery Drones. I’m not one for conspiracy theories but,’ Steve sucked at his fag.

‘GPS Mags fucking with migration patterns?’

‘Something is.’ Michael was squinting, either from disgust or asphyxiation.

‘They learn off each other. What one member of a species learns, the easier it becomes for the rest of them to pick up. Morphic resonance. They’ve done scientific studies. Rupert Sheldrake. Look it up,’ said Michael.

‘Well I wouldn’t be surprised if these butterflies are the late tail following someone’s drone delivery.’

‘Are they stupid?’

‘Drones were just robots eh? Before these mutant pigeons.’

‘Seagulls.’

‘Aye, whey, DNA from both. Strength of a seagull, direction of a homing pigeon,’ said Pete.

‘And no eyes,’ chimed Michael.

‘Have you heard about eagles eating them? I seen a video. People are scared the eagles might start genetic mutations and that now.’

Steve ignored Michael’s horror.

‘They didn’t change the name. You notice that? Drones they still call them.’

‘Whey Huel fed eyeless mutants doesn’t roll off the tongue,’ said Pete.

‘Aye it was the GPS Mags they marketed. How cheap and easy it was. Take your Mag out the case, press the button, and drones will drop off your order. Fossil fuel free. No mention of mutants.’

‘Mental.’

‘Someone in the village will have gotten one.’

‘H’way Steve. Crack out the Sambuca,’ said Michael.

Around the Four Arms, under the light of the moon, the blizzard of butterflies thickened. The deluge shimmered along decreasing stars.

In a research depot, at the roosts, a homing pigeon pondered with its head on a slant. A drone screeched. Despite its well-winged travels, this homing pigeon could not understand its neighbour’s tongue. The pigeon had heard the Glasgow patter of the Clydeside racers. It knew the Geordie gabble of the Tyne. It had heard the Scouse smur, the Cork craic, the Basque brogue, the Morroccan fizzle. But the drones spoke like no other bird. The drone screeched again, flurried its wings into roosting flaps, shat, and settled down. A mechanical tube whined, and the shit was sucked away.

From the bowels of the depot, from racks of rows, similar screeches rebounded as other drones settled in to be shut down. The lights in block 12C went out.

In fulfilment unit 12D, twenty-two thousand drones were about to be woken with LED light and a feed injection. Outside the sound-proofed hanger, you would hear a high-pitched boil as the programme booted them up. At any one time, one hundred thousand drones were operational. By year two of the phased deployment, a million active units were planned. If the researchers could find a way to mitigate the lice.

Fossil Free Delivery
Faster. More Accurate. Planet Friendly.
Zero Carbon. Maximum speed.
Nozama Corp

In a country lane of hawthorn hedges adjacent to the town of Wirral, Robin Stew nicked a bolt into his crossbow. He stared up to the drone’s feathered belly, and squinted. Even if it knew he was there, and Robin had been careful to ensure that no one knew anything of this escapade, the drone would not blink. No fight or flight reactions had been selected for their DNA. No sex organs. They’d edited the eyes out from their mutants too. The sockets remained in the skeletal system, but the face had a smooth slope of feathers, interrupted only by the beak.

The specimen upon which Robin’s crossbow was trained was one of the newer units. Its plumage hue had been dialled down from the twitter-cyan of the betas, to this naval-grey. Hawks had taken too many of the first birds. £85k each they cost Nozama Corp. Three times what Robin had been paid per year as a delivery driver. The crossbow cost £200. Robin’s kill count was seventy-six. It was about to go up one. His was the second highest count within the Merseyside

Avenger cell. With the gentlest squeeze he hugged the trigger towards his chest.

Above the Four Arms in Northumberland, a drone mobbed by butterflies made little progress. The butterflies pushed towards the point it inhabited, suffocating its space. A mass of wings squashed there, pushing against the bodies above them. The whole tangled mass, a flapping mess, falling towards the earth.

‘Activists protesting Nozama Corp’s use of
genetically modified delivery drones have
stormed a depot in Staffordshire. Protestors
claim that Nozama Corp’s creation and
treatment of the creatures is unethical. They
allege working conditions for the creatures
to equate to animal cruelty. Nozama Corp
denies the allegations and maintains that its
drones are not sentient. Four people have
been arrested.’

The drone’s ribcage shone like teeth. The cavity that had once been its chest was lined with butterflies. Cocoons dangled from its intercostal muscles. Laying beneath the carcass, amongst the grass, the surface of a GPS Mag reflected the leaden dawn, smooth but for the etching of Nozama Corp’s logo.

As morning broached the Four Arms, Pete’s snaffled snores returned Michael from his dreams. Rectangles of amber light hung across the wall. Paintings of hunting parties, caked in dust were fringed by roosting butterflies.

Michael turned onto his side. The curtain that covered him rustled and cracked. His left arm speared from under the covers and clutched an uncorked bottle of Sambuca. He tilted the bottle to his mouth. Liquid burst from the bottle’s neck, swamping his lips, and ran thick and sticky over his chin.

You can listen to an audio version of this story here

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Luke Winter likes to help stories happen. He has made his living as a writer since 2014 by busking stories-on-demand on a typewriter on the street across Europe and the US. How lives in Scotland and runs a small press at prancepress. This is the first time he has been published by Dark Mountain and that makes him very happy.

UPDATE: a limited number of these hardback collections were originally for sale but are now sold out. There are PDF versions available however which you can find in our online shop.