Royal Meat
Philippa Bowe & Karen Walker
Issue Two - December 2024
Original Art: Mad about Swans by Anne Anthony
We hear this daily from our keepers: the swans are not us and we are not them.
There is a swan pit here. We, the cannibals of St. Anthony Among The Mad, must circle it daily 8a.m. to 10a.m. and 4p.m. to 5p.m., breathing deeply the Lincolnshire air before our treatments. Circling, we point to the cygnets peeping in the pit. We cry. Our keepers roll their eyes and groan, "Stop. They are not you."
Kitty is the sweetest of us. So young and bonny-faced. When Kitty smiles the darkest corners of the vaulted ceilings are lit. Eyes blue as cornflowers in meadows we hazily remember. And how calm is Kitty. No tearer of hair, she, no screamer at swans. So calm her tall and upright father, face as stern as his daughter’s is sweet, once invited her into the parlour of their motherless-wifeless home to commend her behaviour, to tell her how happy he was to put away his chastising leather belt. Two hours later the remaining parts of him left the parlour wrapped in bloody linen carried by weeping servants. Kitty had met his laughable commendation with a wolf-sharp saw
and carefully sliced her father into pieces once his throat neatly slit. Then Kitty feasted on him. She lapped his blood till her lips stained darkest burgundy.
We save mince pies and Kitty her tapioca pudding to throw to the swans, but how they thrash and fight for our desserts. They churn the water in the pit into terrible waves and bash each other with their graceful necks. "Stop feeding them," our keepers scream. "Any injury will affect the meat."
Edward Junior, the noblest son among us, disagrees. Edward Senior thrashed like the swans do, but it did not affect his meat. On a last Father's Day, at lunch in a restaurant’s darkest booth, Senior had moaned how very lonely he was. "Lonely like you, now that your wife has fled. Let us move in together, Son!" Junior chewed the idea and swallowed. "I will share my secrets with the ladies," the old man then promised. How he had won Junior's late great mother with lavender roses, coq au vin and crème brûlée, and, when the time came, ended their romance with a pinch of powder from a tiny vial. He opened the menu. "Son, what is your fancy?" Edward Junior tells us it was Edward Senior, with pomme frites and gravy. We believe him.
At St. Anthony Among The Mad, memories are hungriest on Sundays when we sit at supper in the Great Hall. Platters of roast swan are set before us. We rock in our chairs and tear at our hair. We curse and confess over and over.
Neta and Neto are twins, the most eager of us inmates. We do not know why their names are so very strange. Their identical faces are the plainest we have ever seen. They finish each other’s sentences. "Oh, you should have met our dear Papa!’ trills Neta. "He was the grandest man you could ever hope to meet," sighs Neto. "Handsome as a prince—hair black as a raven’s wing—eyes full of wisdom and kindness—admired by all, loved by all—always the perfect word to cheer and console, young and old alike—he loved us so much, so much—though we were dull to his shine." They fall silent then start up again together, two voices as one. "The sages of the East tell us what we take into the temple of our body nourishes us, lends us its sacred virtues. We listened to their words, we heard. We baked Papa tenderly and long. We anointed him with fragrant herbs and warming spices. We dined on him for many nights. Tell us, can you see his light shine, look in our eyes, look at our skin, glowing, look, look!" When Neta and Neto reach this point of excitation, when they start to drool and clack their teeth, our keepers take them away. The rest of us agree sadly we cannot see the light of their marvellous Papa, no matter how hard we try.
"Eat!" our keepers command at Sunday suppers. The meat is not awful, wonderful fathers, although we believe the texture and the taste—one says tough and unyielding, another thinks bitter and oily, two find it tender and so sweet—is not unlike them. Do not complain, we are told. ‘You dine like the kings and queens of old.’
About
Phillipa Bowe & Karen Walker
Philippa Bowe is a flash fiction writer, poet and translator. Her work has been published online and in print, including by Ghost City Press, NFFR, Reflex Fiction, Bath Flash Fiction and Spark2Flame. She is writing an ekphrastic flash novella, lives on a southern French hill and has become addicted to big vistas. And trees.
Karen Walker writes short in a low basement in Ontario, Canada. Her most recent work is in or forthcoming in New Flash Fiction Review, Exist Otherwise, Misery Tourism, Does it Have Pockets? and EGG+FROG.