Of Myths and Mothers

Stories Of Myths and Mothers

By Kenzie Millar, Gaynor Jones, Sascha Akhtar, Clayton Lister and Helen Nathaniel-Fulton

ISBN: 9781913211783

Folklore and futurism: these stories question everything from the guest worker economy to childbirth as the world collapses. Follow hairpin turns into the remote hillsides of North Yorkshire, where two boys take a holiday with their besom-wielding, rabbit-skinning granny. Disappear into dark caves on Philippine islands and scale sheer limestone cliffs with men who search for the world's most expensive animal product: prized nests woven from a mysterious bird's saliva, rumoured to make one live forever. Feel sand under your feet in the middle of the night as you search for love beyond limits. You will long to hold a child, even when that instinct has been erased from your body and mind. Of Myths and Mothers will make you see some of our most accepted customs in a new light and fill you with wonder, as the best stories do.

Excerpts:

From 'May We Know Them' by Gaynor Jones -

"They debate whether to send it to carry on down the river, to perhaps say a prayer over it, release it back into the water, watch it disappear from their lives. This is all communicated wordlessly in the raising of Helen's eyebrow, beneath her bluntly cut fringe. In the flush of colour in Juliana's hollow cheeks. In the air that hangs stagnant between them. They stand, ankle deep, the warm water seeping into their boots until Helen offers her hand to Juliana. They move together, carry the basket and the thing within it to the riverbank and place it on the dry earth, steady and sure. They look at it resting on the ground where the guts of the trout they caught earlier lie browning in the afternoon heat and form a heart shape above its head."

From The Last of the Nest Gatherers by Sascha Akhtar

"I knew the story. I knew all the stories; how for centuries the men in my family had sustained their families through gathering the coveted nests, selling them to the rich. The craggy, limestone cliffs, weathered into caverns and hollows of the remote archipelago of Pabellon had given my family everything. My father, grandfather and uncles traversed the aquamarine sea in engine-propelled bangkas fitted with bamboo outriggers , like they had done for generations. 

   We, my family and my village, continued the ancient ways of gathering nests, with nothing more than bamboo poles (which our village was famous for carving) and bundles of the finest bamboo rope made by my mother and women from other families. We sold these ropes to other nest-gatherers; busyadores.