Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

Yoon Ha Leefirst discovered H. P. Lovecraft’s writings in a collection in his high school library. “I was fascinated by the strong sense of place, particularly the creepy, inward-facing nature of the communities (human or otherwise) he described. I wasn’t so impressed by the Cthulhu mythos’ One Ones’ indifference — not even malevolence, just indifference — to beings so far beneath their notice, because I was all too used to reading astronomy books and the universe is a big place that probably doesn’t notice me. In a sense, I feel that human indifference is worse because there is a conscious choice involved. ‘Falconand-Sparrows’ takes place in what I think of as the rural Koreanish equivalent of that setting, and describes the destruction of history by an uncaring force that people have bowed to — when they don’t have to.”

Lee’s first collection, Conservation of Shadows , was published by Prime Books. His fiction has appeared in Tor.com , Clarkesworld , The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , and other venues. He lives in Louisiana with his family and has not yet been eaten by gators.

After the first shock of my mother’s death wore off, I traveled to Falcons Crossing. It was only two days’ journey by train — the Kheneiran Peninsula is not large — and I hardly noticed the small discomforts of travel.

My mother had come from a tiny village near Falcons Crossing. I had not first heard of the town from my mother, due to her reluctance to talk about her past. I’d learned of my mother’s origins from an unfinished letter I had found in her room. To my frustration, she had not addressed it to anyone by name, only a diffident honorific. I had brought it with me, tucked into my coat.

Now I looked out the window of the train. You could scarcely tell there had been a civil war in the past generation. Cranes stood like pale slivers in the rice paddies; if I had been outside, I would have heard the deafening chorus of frogs. I almost wished I could stay on the train forever. I would reach my destination in a few more hours, however.

My mother had never spoken of what had led her to have an affair with a foreign soldier. Even as a child I had only dared to ask once. Seeing her go white had convinced me never to mention it again. Yet she had kept a silver bracelet he had given her, so I always hoped that there had been some thread of affection between them. I never found out whether it was true that he had died in the unrest following the war that divided the Kheneiran Peninsula, or if he had abandoned her for some wife back in Ulo.

The bracelet was not the only gift my father had given her. Another Ulowen soldier, one of a contingent left behind to discourage a second outbreak of war, had told me that my father had secured my mother a job as a secretary at the military outpost. My mother was quick with languages, and her Ulowen cursive had precise, beautiful swells and flourishes. It wasn’t until I was older that I figured out this meant my mother, cast out by her own family, didn’t have to prostitute herself to bored Ulowen soldiers.

The other consequence of my father’s odd thoughtfulness was that my mother had ready access to paper. She often brought home flyers and memoranda that the Ulowen had no further use for. As a child, she had learned paper-folding. She taught me the mountain and valley folds, the trick of buffing a crease with my fingernail so it became crisp. She guided me in everything from simple boats to lilies whose petals could be curled gracefully with the aid of a chopstick or pencil.

While the variety of objects that can be emulated in paper is limited only by the skill and imagination of the artist, the one that fascinated me the most was the humble glider. I began with the simplest designs and later experimented with more outlandish ones with asymmetrical wings or flaps. Most of them flew drunkenly when they flew at all.

This brings us to the matter of Falcons Crossing. For many years I had thought little of it. But Kheneira’s Royal Historians — back in the days when there was a crown, anyway — had archives going back almost seven hundred years. During the civil war, some of those archives had been evacuated from the then-capital to Falcons Crossing because it was far removed from the front lines. Then the capital fell to West Kheneira, and no one ever got around to moving the archives to some more illustrious location.

The National Archives were not my specific interest, even if I had heard of them. Rather, the migrations were.

As I grew in years, I had participated in the new capital’s migrations — what we called the glider contests. My mother, bemused, had given me her encouragement.

Even today I don’t know what had led East Kheneira’s Cultural Preservation Council to choose the migrations as a designated cultural treasure. But the contests were held every year, not just in the capital, but in a number of towns. Glider artists from Falcons Crossing dominated the contests. I was not the only one to study their methods, desperate for some hint as to their mastery. It was unlikely to be in their designs, which were conventional. They used the paper provided for the contests, so that couldn’t be it either. Perhaps, as some said, it was their devotion to the art, which had a longer lineage in Falcons Crossing than elsewhere.

I had come to the town itself in hopes of finding the answer. What I expected to discover, I don’t know. But anything was better than lingering over my mother’s possessions, trying to puzzle out the mysteries that had led to her dying with no one to mourn her but a half-Kheneiran, half-Ulowen child.

It was a relief to collect my luggage and make my way to the platform. The confinement had been getting to me more than I had realized. I was only one of two people to get off, and the other hurried away without looking me in the eye, a reaction I was accustomed to.

The sky, unevenly cloaked by clouds, was darkening already. At least it didn’t smell like it would rain tonight. The train platform was hung about by low lanterns, which should have looked festive, but instead gave the place a sense of gloom imperfectly warded off. I resolved to get to a guesthouse as quickly as possible.

There was supposed to be a migration in four days. I had timed my travel accordingly. I’d expected that some sort of decoration would announce the event for out-of-towners, and indeed enormous banners had been hung about the station, but I wasn’t sure they were related to the migration. Anywhere else there would have been calligraphy. Here, the banners displayed paintings of birds, detailed down to the feather, but holes had been ripped into the fabric where the eyes should have been.

Perhaps the guesthouse keeper could tell me what was going on. From a newspaper account some years old, I had obtained directions to a guesthouse I hoped still existed. I rounded the corner from the station, luggage in tow, and was confronted by a sight the clipping had not prepared me for.

My first impression was that, by some misappropriation of angles, I had stumbled into the town square. What rose before me appeared to be a gallows tree of fantastic proportion. Streamers dangled from its limbs, stirring in the fitful wind. I had a vision of a storm of eyeless birds plunging earthward, barbed feathers, sharp beaks.

Someone bumped into me and hurried past without apologizing. This freed me from my imagination, and I saw then that the gallows tree was a shrine. I laughed ruefully at myself.

The shrine had been hammered together with blackened nails. The streamers were braided cords dyed red and black. Despite the initial shock of its appearance, it was not so different from the shrines I had seen in the past. There, people used bright ribbons to tie prayers written upon slips of paper to the branches of holy trees.