Authors Interviewing Characters – This Is Our Undoing, by Lorraine Wilson

Authors Interviewing Characters –

This Is Our Undoing, by Lorraine Wilson

This Is Our Undoing is a compelling speculative novel exploring identity, loss, family and acceptance. Is it out on the 3rd August from Luna Press. The story follows Lina, a scientist whose safe haven – a remote research station in the Rila Mountains in Bulgaria – becomes a trap when an old enemy is murdered and his teenage son’s quest for revenge endangers her and her family’s lives. It is full of the wilderness, vengeful children and dangerous secrets.

Could you condemn one child to save another? 

 In a near-future Europe fracturing under climate change and far-right politics, biologist Lina Stephenson works in the remote Rila Mountains, safely away from London State. 

 When an old enemy dies, Lina’s dangerous past resurfaces, putting her family’s lives at risk. Trapped with her vulnerable sister alongside the dead man’s family, Lina is facing pressure from all sides: her enemy’s eldest son is determined to destroy her in his search for vengeance, whilst his youngest carries a sinister secret… 

 …But the forest is hiding its own threats and as a catastrophic storm closes in, Lina realises that to save her family she too must become a monster. 

Lorraine interviews Kai, the adopted youngest son of Lina’s murdered enemy. 

I meet Kai just after sunrise in a clearing full of marsh orchids and orange geums, pale flowerheads of bistort like paint strokes and the grass heavy with dew. It’ll burn off quickly once the sun reaches us because the sky is clear and lilac-tinted, but for now the fallen tree that we come to sit on is dark and wet, the air is dark and wet. 

‘Good morning, Kai,’ I say carefully. There’s something about this boy that makes you feel you must say everything carefully. ‘Thank you for meeting me.’

Kai isn’t looking at me, he’s watching the last stars vanish from the sky. ‘That’s okay,’ he says. ‘I was here anyway.’

‘Not all night?’

He gives me a quick half-glance, his thin face full of shadows. ‘I saw a fox.’

I can’t help but smile. Him and foxes. They are the strange inadvertent heart of this story. I didn’t really plan it that way, but there we are. ‘Did you? What was it doing?’

He leans forward abruptly and picks up a broken stick, stripped back to pale, smooth wood, he swishes it like a sword through the bistort and grassheads and in that moment is so like every other child in the world that I could weep.

And then he isn’t. 

‘It was hunting. It was quiet and fierce and full of hunger.’

‘Yes, well, hopefully it caught a nice fat vole and isn’t hungry anymore,’ I say.

He looks at me fully for the first time and the fragile dawn light makes his skin more silver than white, his eyes an even paler gold. ‘What does it do when it isn’t hungry?’ he says, frowning. ‘Does it stop being fierce?’

I think I know why this question matters so much, although I’m not sure he does yet. I’m still not sure he ever knows, actually; it’s one of the questions left at the end of the story and I don’t know whether I shied away from answering it for my sake or his. I hesitate, choosing my words. At the forest edge black-caps are singing, a single wood warbler, somewhere in the sea of flowers, a quail. The meadow is utterly still, no butterflies or bees or wind. Just the dew and the birdsong and this strange, lost boy. I feel unbearably sad. 

‘I think foxes are always ready to be fierce if they need to be,’ I say eventually. ‘But I think when they are full, or in their dens, they know they are safe to relax and sleep and dream happy foxy dreams.’

His frown doesn’t change and I hold his gaze, waiting for him to decide whether to believe me or not. ‘What is a happy dream, for foxes?’ he says. The stick is forgotten in his hand. 

‘I’m not sure,’ I say, thinking fast. ‘Perhaps the memory of being curled up with its siblings, its mother; perhaps just things that make it happy. A full moon, a warm night, a-‘

‘Hunting. Killing a monster.’

I fail to hide a wince. Lina is better at this than me, I realise. It’s because she has so much practice weighing her words for danger. 

‘You don’t think killing a monster would be a happy dream,’ he says and is laughing at me now. Not openly, but it’s there in the slant of his eyes. ‘Is that because you’ve never met one?’

‘I thought I was the one interviewing you,’ I say desperately. He cants his head, curious and unimpressed. ‘You like it here, don’t you? The forest.’

A half-nod. 

‘Had you ever seen forest before?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m going to stay.’ There is a hint of a challenge in his voice. 

I don’t meet it. ‘Good for you. Do you remember your real mother?’ 

Real was a bad choice of word. He looks away, directly at the sun as it breaks free of the mountainside, spilling amber light across forest and rock and summer snow, sending shadows into sharp retreat. I am beginning to think he won’t answer, that he might even simply leave me here and disappear into the trees the way he came. But then he says quietly, wonderingly, ‘I used to dream, I don’t now.’ 

Oh, I think. Oh what have I said?

‘Now I turn into a fox.’ He lifts the stick towards the sun like a salute and I realise it isn’t a stick at all. Lina would have known immediately, and I should have guessed. He speaks to the long rib-bone rather than me. ‘Is that a dream still? It would be a good dream.’

‘It must be a dream,’ I say, wishing he would put the bone down. I hadn’t realised quite how unsettling this would be. ‘And yes, it sounds like a lovely one to have.’

‘I can taste the blood,’ he says. ‘I can smell it. It smells of fire and broken things.’

‘Oh god, Kai, I’m so sorry,’ I say without meaning to. ‘I should never have … I’m sorry.’

He lowers the bone finally and turns to look at me, his wide eyes grave and ablaze with light. ‘I’m not,’ he says. 

I don’t know what to say. The first hoverflies are rising above the grass and the long sunlight is catching spidersilk and dew so that the meadow is filigreed with silver. I remember a question I wanted to ask; I take a breath. ‘Kai?’ He tilts his head again. ‘If you didn’t have to be fierce, or fight monsters, what would you want to do?’

A deer steps into the clearing just beyond Kai’s line of sight, it lifts its head, scenting the air, stamps a hoof warily. 

‘I would still want to be a fox.’ His voice is barely more than a whisper but it is enough for the deer to turn towards us, stamp once more then turn and slip back beneath the trees. ‘I could be wild and free,’ he says, ‘I could run all day without walls, I could hunt and sleep and hide and be fierce.’ 

‘What if you never needed to be fierce again,’ I say. I am trying. I so want to give him this. 

His eyes narrow a little and then he looks away, rises to his feet. I want to reach for his hand but hold back. He would accept it from Lina but why would he do so from me? 

‘You always need to be fierce,’ he says. ‘Because there are always monsters.’

‘What if-‘

‘Goodbye,’ he says, glancing at me over one shoulder but already moving away. ‘It was nice to meet you.’

Was it? I want to ask. Don’t you hate me a little bit? But he is too far away already, a clouded yellow butterfly has risen from a sprawl of purple vetches and he is following it. The sun shimmers over him, a wind picks up and I shiver. I ought to walk him back to the station, but perhaps he is safer out here, despite what Lina told him. Safer from hurt, if not safer from harm. 

 

About Lorraine: 

Lorraine Wilson lives by the sea in Scotland writing speculative fiction that is heavily influenced by world folklore and the wilderness. After gaining a PhD in behavioural ecology, she spent many years working as a research scientist in odd corners of the world before turning to writing.

She has published short fiction and non-fiction in anthologies by Boudicca Press, Ellipsis Zine, The Mechanics’ Institute Review and Retreat West, amongst others; and magazines including Anti-Heroin Chic, Cabinet of Heed, The Forge, Geometry, Strange Horizons and Terse Journal. This Is Our Undoing is her debut novel. 

Find her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/raine_clouds or her website https://shadowsonwater.wordpress.com

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Interviews, On Writing