Staff Spotlight: Meredith MacEachern

Interview

What do you write?

I always liked urban and real­is­tic fantasy, and I’ve dabbled in post-apoc­a­lyp­tic, too. In recent years, though, I’ve become enmeshed in magical realism, which I think is my favorite genre to work in—looking back I see its influ­ence in a lot of my older work. Regard­less of genre, I find my writing is always reflec­tive of real life, though. I’ve written to express frus­tra­tion or con­fu­sion since I was little, so all my stories tend to have a social or polit­i­cal slant to them, or oth­er­wise respond to the world.

Is there an author or artist who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

That’s a dif­fi­cult one. I think all my favorite sto­ry­tellers have influ­enced me in dif­fer­ent ways. K. Sello Duiker and Timothy Findlay started my love affair with magical realism, Agatha Christie and Laurie Halse Ander­son have had a huge influ­ence on my lan­guage and char­ac­ter building…but in a lot of ways, I think oral sto­ry­telling had the biggest impact. I was told a lot of stories growing up, and that mode of cre­ation and all the dif­fer­ent people who taught it to me have had a lasting influ­ence. Myth, tra­di­tion, and memory have always been an impor­tant part of my writing because of that.

Why did you choose Stonecoast?

When I was apply­ing to grad school, I told one of my favorite pro­fes­sors, who was writing rec­om­men­da­tions for me, about all the places I was apply­ing to. He lis­tened very closely and told me to choose one where I would have a com­mu­ni­ty and not just com­peti­tors. I knew some alumni from Stonecoast, and a lot of what they talked about was the diver­si­ty and support they got from the program. I’ve never really thrived in an envi­ron­ment where every­one was always trying to be the best or tearing each other down.

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

Dancing to “I Will Survive” at the 2016 Summer grad­u­a­tion is def­i­nite­ly up there. But I think the open mic that same res­i­den­cy tops the list. I was reading some­thing I had written as a flash warm-up during Breena Clarke’s work­shop that was very per­son­al and kind of painful, but that I was proud of. I’m very stage-shy, but every­one was so supportive—one of the won­der­ful friends I had made stood in the back of the room so I had someone to main­tain eye contact with to keep from burst­ing into tears. When I was done, it felt so cathar­tic, and I was glad I had done it.

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

I mean, I guess all writers want to be pub­lished or oth­er­wise have all their hard work and sto­ry­telling ability rec­og­nized, and so do I. But I’m also really inter­est­ed in lan­guage. A lot of the lan­guages I grew up around aren’t con­sid­ered ‘vital’ in the inter­na­tion­al sphere, and I’d like to be able to help pre­serve them and assert their impor­tance. The same goes for oral storytelling—I think it’s usually ignored as a mode of art and expres­sion, and that blocks people off from millennia’s worth of his­to­ries, stories, and ideas that are still impor­tant and relevant.

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?

Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. I first read it back in middle school, and it was the first book that assured me that a round, awkward, des­ig­nat­ed-side­kick-type girl could be the hero. If my writing could help even one reader the way that book helped me, I’d die happy.

---

Featured Work

Whatever Gods May Be

This is an excerpt from my current novel-length project, What­ev­er Gods May Be, a magical realist story set at the fic­tion­al Evan­ge­line Uni­ver­si­ty in rural Nova Scotia. In this section, the five pro­tag­o­nists are inves­ti­gat­ing the death of a class­mate, Carrie Prosper, who had her heart torn out and was found in the nearby bay. They are ven­tur­ing into the local dikes, where strange beings are known to lurk.

The dikes of Red­mount were a low, moorish space. Harsh winds off the bay and the tread of what­ev­er crea­tures lived there flat­tened out the long grass. The path that hugged at the bay formed its outer border, and in the dis­tance the forest prick­led skyward, always seen through per­pet­u­al mist or shadow. Every­one knew that on the other side of those trees was the Corn­wal­lis River and the highway fleeing towards Halifax, its dis­tance from Red­mount counted in the increas­ing number of Tim Hortons and the newness of the gas sta­tions. But no one had ever been to the forest. Its mythic quality was great enough that even the oldest denizens of the town counted it as the­o­ret­i­cal at best, and it had no name. It was not marked in Violet’s atlas. She had checked, twice.

Ava slowed her run first, the air raw down her throat. The ground seemed endless here; the trees that rose like a spine in the dis­tance never got closer. This was the by-law ter­ri­to­ry, the silent space between Red­mount and the rest of the world. Felic­i­ty felt the land quake under her. It wasn’t laugh­ter now.

Finally, they all stopped. The five stu­dents stood togeth­er watch­ing the trees in the pos­tures of expec­tant deer, waiting for the startle, the snap. The dark­ness streaked the grass upwards so that shadows loomed over the low ground. Ava strained her ears for the sound of water, but with the bay at their backs there was nothing but the wind and the indis­tinct grip­ings of the earth.

It was Jonah who saw the page first. He clapped his hand over his own mouth to stop up his cry and jabbed a finger at the ground where a leaflet of paper shone. It was so pale, like a sand dollar, that in the dark it hurt to look at, and no one was sure why they hadn’t noticed it before. Kit, the last to stop their wild run, had very nearly trodden on it, and now he scooped it up. He read delib­er­ate­ly, with a little crease between his eyes, since he had left his glasses at home:

“’—I will quit the neigh­bor­hood of man and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil pas­sions will have fled, for I shall meet with sym­pa­thy—‘ It’s from an old book. Someone’s been reading out here.”

The others gath­ered to read over his shoul­der, except for Ava, who began walking in little circles with her arms folded over her chest so she could scratch at the back of her left hand. Felic­i­ty had already iden­ti­fied the book and the context; Jonah was reading the notes scrib­bled in the margin. Violet noticed that there was a dis­col­oration on the page, damp­ness in the shape of a flower. The impres­sion of petals spread like a star over the word quit, and she pointed it out.

“It must be one of Carolina’s,” Jonah said, “she presses flowers.”

“What do you mean?”

They paused, briefly, to explain to Kit the weekly process of deliv­er­ing books to the edge of the dikes where they van­ished, and he seemed doubt­ful. “Who reads them?”

Felic­i­ty made to reply and then stopped herself short, before admit­ting, grudg­ing­ly, that she didn’t know—not that she hadn’t tried to find out. She had been Vice Pres­i­dent of the lit­er­a­ture society, and TA’d for Dr. Curnow and Dr. D’Angelo at various points, but the faculty was always cheer­ful­ly closed-lipped on the subject. Car­oli­na was the most sphin­x­like of all. Felic­i­ty had even glanced over her desk while sorting sched­ules out once, but the admin­is­tra­tor wrote in a glyph­like shorthand.

But Kit thought of it the other way round. “Why can’t whoever-it-is just go to the library themselves?”

No one had an answer for that. They stood frown­ing at the blazing paper while Ava stalked about, scowl­ing, as though she was trying to main­tain a trench around them to keep the dark­ness back. In the dark her lashes seemed to leak down over her eyes in thick black lines.

Sud­den­ly, in the dis­tance, the stars over the trees were blotted out. For a moment, Ava thought of the moun­tains across the river, where the hook of Cape Split jutted into view. But this geog­ra­phy was new, a steep-sided back arched up against the sky. With sudden clarity, Ava could see the knobs of its spine caught in the moon­light. She tugged word­less­ly on the closest person’s sleeve and heard Violet’s breath­ing catch and resume.

“Guys,” Violet whis­pered, and slowly they all turned and watched as the bulk shifted itself. Besides its ema­ci­at­ed spine there were few details in the dark, but it moved clum­si­ly, lop­sided as though it was drag­ging all its own weight behind it. In the dikes, dis­tance was dif­fi­cult to judge, but it seemed to be far off, and getting closer. There was the sound of the earth under it, the bone-on-bone grind­ing of a clenched jaw, and of paper crin­kling, as Kit closed his fist around the page he was holding.

“It will move slowly,” said a voice over his shoul­der, “but it will get here even­tu­al­ly. You should not have laughed so loudly.”

Kit spun, an ath­let­ic move­ment thrown off by his long limbs and the coun­ter­weight of the clenched fist, so that he went crash­ing into Jonah’s knees and they both ended up on the damp grass. All of Violet’s muscles seized, pinning up her spine, and Felic­i­ty yelled and ducked away at the same time so that the noise trailed back and up behind her and the crea­ture in the dis­tance lurched like a car on black ice. Ava simply put her hands over her head in antic­i­pa­tion of a blow, and watched from under her spilling hair.

All this hap­pened in the space of a moment, and when they had all seen the source of the voice, it appeared at first as though a new tree had sprout­ed in the middle of the moor­land. The man—for he was clearly shaped like a man now that they were looking at him—was even taller than Lucy, eight feet perhaps, but built like a wax figure, and solid even in motion.

“What are you doing here?” the crea­ture asked. Then he repeat­ed, some­what tru­cu­lent­ly, “You should not have laughed so loudly. We ought to have been left alone.”

The five hearts that had gone leaping at the voice began to calm. They agreed, in deer­like whis­pers, that they shouldn’t have been laugh­ing, and apol­o­gized, but none of them moved. Jonah, from his angle, with his leg pinned uncom­fort­ably under Kit, peered up at the crea­ture. He was wearing what looked like a very worn Evan­ge­line hoodie and sweat­pants from the campus store. Though both were in the largest size sold, they left his ankles and wrists and part of his stomach uncov­ered. The skin there gleamed sickly in the dark. It was thin and yellow, and the blood whis­pered beneath it.

“Who are you?” Felic­i­ty asked.

Jonah’s eyes trav­eled up, past his stomach, strange­ly vul­ner­a­ble under the hem of the sweat­shirt, and the pow­er­ful chest and shoul­ders, to the face, hidden in the hood drawn tight over his skull. Slip­pery black hair escaped in hanks. There was a flash of large white teeth like tomb­stones in the dark.

The crea­ture said, “I am Klaus-of-the-Dikes.” His voice was well-oiled, and the words primed as though on a whet­stone. There was a note of defen­sive pride there that made Jonah fight a smile and Violet think of her three little nephews when they wrapped towels around their shoul­ders and pre­tend­ed to fly. “You’re stu­dents,” the crea­ture added.

Kit finally stood and brushed himself off, allow­ing Jonah to scram­ble to his feet. With the sur­prise wearing down and their hearts slowing to a more rea­son­able rate, the five of them clus­tered around the stranger. His hands were large enough to wrap all the way around their skulls, and the muscles that moved beneath his skin were bloated with blunt strength, the sort that came from manual labor, but he drew back as though fright­ened. One of those enor­mous hands came upwards to shield his exposed stomach.

Felic­i­ty reached out and pulled the pro­tec­tive hand towards her and shook it, once, firmly, and the teeth showed again. The creature’s mouth appeared to have dropped open. The others laughed, softer, in the high notes approach­ing hysteria.

“Is this yours?” Kit offered him the page they had picked up; the crea­ture glanced at it briefly and scowled.

“I did not want to finish reading it,” said Klaus-of-the-Dikes.

“It’s a library book,” Felic­i­ty said, indig­nant, “you can’t just tear it up.”

In order to prop­er­ly meet the tall girl’s eyes, Klaus-of-the-Dikes had to lower himself to the ground and sit, cross-legged, which pulled the cuffs of the Evan­ge­line sweat­pants up over his ankles. The bones of his ankles, they saw, jutted out sharply, like those of a teenag­er or a young horse not yet grown into his own joints.

But even then, he curved down like a comma into her face, and Felic­i­ty drew back a little. Up close, she could see his mouth was black, his fea­tures blub­bery and lop­sided. He blinked at her with the slip­pery-cold eyes of a fish, and at her reac­tion there was an approx­i­ma­tion of a smile.

“But I have torn it up,” he said. They could hear the creak­ing of his neck and jaw muscles working, restrained.

“What’s Car­oli­na going to pick up when she comes back?” This was Jonah. He had taken the page from Kit and smoothed it out over his thigh. The shadow of the flower was still there—one of the wild white roses, he thought, by the size and the shape of the petals, which grew freely in the unkempt parts of Red­mount and amongst the stub­born blue­ber­ry copses. One of the English pro­fes­sors must have had a clutch of them, as they could often be found cut into vases on Carolina’s desk, or on the book­shelves in the Cheha­lais offices and lounges. Staring at the bloom­ing sil­hou­ette, smudged by damp and mis­han­dling, Klaus-of-the-Dikes’ dark mouth pressed into itself as though he was trying to eat his own teeth, and again there was the sullen duck of the head and the hunch of the shoul­ders that pulled his too-small clothes tightly around him. He wouldn’t meet their eyes.

They all looked at each other. Ava was still half turned towards the shift­ing hill in the dis­tance, making its inex­orable progress towards them, but had relaxed slight­ly. She said, “I have a copy I don’t need. We can replace the book.”

“Yeah,” Jonah agreed, “but—“

Klaus-of-the-Dikes raised his head. He looked sus­pi­cious as he cast his look between all of them, with his head thrust forward and his jaw working. “But?”

“Do you know any­thing about what hap­pened to Carrie Prosper?”

For a moment, he seemed con­fused, and it lent his fea­tures the same vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as his bare stomach and awkward ankle-bones; they were less threat­en­ing for it, the eyes with a little bit of white around them, the waxen skin folded in where he frowned, so he looked more human. “Who is Carrie Prosper?”

“The girl who had her heart torn out,” said Ava, “in the bay. Early fall.”

His face cleared. “Round? With braids?”

They nodded. Klaus-of-the-Dikes scowled again. “It was not me. I only saw her. From a distance—she was walking from the red place.” He had to point to explain, across the dikes’ expans­es to the faint red glow of the Timmy’s sign. “She stopped on the board­walk. I did not watch her after that. You must under­stand.” Sud­den­ly, he spoke with urgency. “I had no inter­est in her at all. I had no reason to watch her or to go near her, or to do her any kind of harm.”

They all fol­lowed his finger and his words from Tim’s to the board­walk and the bay. Violet began, with a restau­rant crayon from her pocket, to draw out the path on one of the atlas pages. Then, before any of them could say any­thing, Klaus-of-the-Dikes turned again, this time flag­ging out the moving shape in the dark. By now it was close enough so that the tops of the trees behind it looked like spines growing from its back. They could hear some­thing low and com­plain­ing, a noise like rust and water, coming towards them on the sea wind. There was a smell with it—the breath of some­thing rotting and wet and ter­ri­bly old.

“You should go,” Klaus-of-the-Dikes advised. They stared at where the monster was, over­whelmed by the smell and the noise. “It does not want you here.”

“Would it know?” Ava asked. She seemed to be the only one unaf­fect­ed by the smell, her ner­vous­ness shed like hide on a hot day, and she stared owlish­ly into the dark. “Would it have seen her?”

Klaus-of-the-Dikes con­sid­ered this with a philo­soph­i­cal tilt of his head. “Perhaps. But he would not tell you. Not now. You were too loud.”

“What if we came back another time? Quietly?”

The slip­pery eyes turned towards her, lit faintly by the rising moon and the spilled stars, seed-like, growing brighter in the sky. “Do you see it—the way it walks? Look now, it is turning towards us. It is almost here. You see its shape?”

They did, but it was Kit who real­ized what he was looking for. The monster’s lop­sided move­ments were caused not by an extra weight on one side, but by a light­ness on the other. Its left shoul­der, which shrugged with each move­ment it made to pull itself along, ended abrupt­ly, a ragged angle on the body.

“It’s got an arm missing,” he exclaimed, and in his dis­cov­ery his voice was very loud. The monster, closer, closer, gave a hor­ri­ble cry and the earth shook and Felic­i­ty felt it in her teeth.

They didn’t need Klaus-of-the-Dikes to tell them to flee this time; they raced back across the moor­land to the path and the board­walk with the silent terror all prey crea­tures learn, and they didn’t stop until they reached Main Street, and ducked around a corner in front of one of the used book­stores. The noise returned; stu­dents flowed around them. The dikes were sud­den­ly far away and decep­tive­ly still from here, but the smell lin­gered on their clothes, the raw breath of the monster.

Kit doubled over once they had stopped, half gasping a stream of intri­cate sacres— “Criss de calice de tabar­nack d’osti de sacra­ment—!” while Jonah sat heavily on a nearby bench. Violet clutched the atlas to her chest.

Ava con­tin­ued to stare out at where they had been; besides a buck­ling upwards of the ground that was nor­mal­ly flat, there was no indi­ca­tion of the chase, and the inter­mit­tent hill was a common sight to the res­i­dents of Red­mount. Felic­i­ty was looking, too, but her eyes were farther away, or doubled back into her own head.

“So how do we get it a new arm?” she said. “Without being eaten alive.”

Ava was con­sid­er­ing the same ques­tion while she walked home. Hon­ey­bri­ar House was halfway up the hill between Cheha­lais and the Tower, so it was shel­tered from the worst of the winds that shrieked through the valley in winter, but the north-facing windows were still afford­ed a view of the bay. It was a small dor­mi­to­ry, horse­shoe-shaped, and all girls. The piping was exposed, the house was drafty, and its res­i­dents, unabashed, tended to move about wrapped in trail­ing blan­kets and towels. Every­thing whis­pered, and it always smelled faintly of apples.

Ava had lived in Hon­ey­bri­ar for all four years at Evan­ge­line, which was longer than she had lived any­where else on earth. Someone told her once—perhaps a grand­fa­ther, or a wan­der­ing mis­sion­ary of some denom­i­na­tion, she couldn’t remem­ber—all the best stories end with a home­com­ing. Walking through the doors of Hon­ey­bri­ar every evening after class felt like both, and now espe­cial­ly, still shaking from the chase and the set­tling chill in her bones.

Hon­ey­bri­ar was paneled in dark wood and scratched-up cream paint, and the fur­ni­ture was muted greens and blues and every­thing was well-worn and well-loved, cared for by the grey-braided cus­to­di­an who worked her method­i­cal way around the horse­shoe each day. She was fin­ish­ing her daily round when Ava entered. Tucking the com­mu­nal mop and bucket back into the corner in prepa­ra­tion for uni­ver­si­ty evenings, she smiled at Ava when the girl came in.

The foyer con­nect­ed the two wings of the build­ing, and to reach the east wing Ava had to pass by the main lounge’s double doors. Inside, Hon­ey­bri­ar girls were gath­ered in thick­ets on the sofas and seated on the wide sills of the house’s front windows. Several girls at a time could fill one arm­chair; a few had shoved the hard-backed couches togeth­er and piled it with quilts and home­spun or woven blan­kets. Occa­sion­al­ly a hand would emerge, blue in the light of a dozen laptop screens, to retrieve a coffee mug or a nail polish bottle or a morsel from various takeout trays. A pop song was playing from some­where, and Ava was drawn reluc­tant­ly in by the famil­iar scene. She paused outside the glass double-doors, looking in and feeling some­thing in her turning over, warm as hiber­na­tion, like the feeling of waking up on winter morning with nowhere she had to go.

As she lin­gered, a few girls on an arm­chair inside saw her and waved her in. There were two on the chair itself, and one tangled amongst their legs on the floor in front of it, one perched on the arm and one sprawled across the back with her spine arched and her foot swing­ing. All of them had note­books or laptops open. Their faces were alight with solem­ni­ty, and Ava felt as though she were approach­ing a council. She fought the urge to smile maniacally.

“We’re plan­ning a memo­r­i­al,” Fatumo said from the seat, “for Carrie Prosper.”

“Oh?” said Ava. She wasn’t sur­prised. Carrie Prosper had lived in Cope House, but Hon­ey­bri­ar had always main­tained a fierce pro­tec­tive stance towards the women of the campus. “When?”

“Soon. On the steps of the old hall, prob­a­bly. Henry Christ­mas from Admis­sions said he would help offi­ci­ate it. He’s from Bear River, too, you know.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

Desiree, strung up across the back of the chair, lifted her head to look at Ava. It seemed a very uncom­fort­able posi­tion, “The moun­ties have dropped it already. Did you know that?”

That Ava had not known. She remem­bered, dully, the image of the cop cars peeling away from the bay, and the moun­ties slouch­ing across the streets. They had looked aggriev­ed then, but she was as unsur­prised at their apathy now as she was at Honeybriar’s reproach. She felt, as a film that clung like oil to the laptop screens and coffee cups, a low humming anger. Her own was in shades of grey.

Telling them good­night, and that she would be at the memo­r­i­al, and that she would tell every­one she knew, Ava made her way up to the third of Honeybriar’s four floors, to her single room in the corner facing the student union build­ing. On her way, girls called greet­ings through their open doors; a third year passed her, humming, wrapped in a towel; and an RA was adjust­ing a poster on one of the res­i­dent cork­boards, adver­tis­ing free and con­fi­den­tial STD testing at the campus clinic. She saw the expres­sion on Ava’s face and didn’t bother her.

Ava’s room was larger than most of the other singles; one of her schol­ar­ships covered room and board and she unabashed­ly took advan­tage of that. Her desk was clut­tered, and her bed was draped in a cheap, flow­ered Target com­forter and an eider­down blanket. There were two wardrobes: they were too big to fit out the door, so when the double room had been turned into a single, whoever had done it had left them both there. Ava kept one filled with clothes and the other with tea.

For a moment, Ava paused before the window. Her room faced the main path through the campus and down the hill. It looked out on the bru­tal­ist angles of the student union build­ing and, just beyond, the steeply sloping Cooper Avenue and its student apart­ments. The SUB was still all lit up; the con­ve­nience store inside would only just be seeing the study-night rush. On the path below, two Hon­ey­bri­ar girls, music stu­dents, stepped out from the build­ing and hurried back towards the dorm with thin plastic bags of trail mix and potato chips. Again, there was the warm feeling in Ava’s breast­bone, cupped like a small animal.

She often got the same feeling at the begin­ning of each year, after the summer, upon her return to the uni­ver­si­ty. Down this path, during ori­en­ta­tion in August and the first glo­ri­ous still-summer days before classes began in earnest, new and return­ing stu­dents would ramble long into the night, loud and drunk on the new begin­nings and the cheap tequila at the local dive. They delight­ed in the way the air cooled enough after dark to chill the sweat from them, and so they went along steam­ing and shouting.

Once the year had settled in, they would still go by, well into the winter, some­times wearing just as much cloth­ing, but they would hurry and not be as loud. By then Ava would be keeping her windows closed against the chill. But in the summer, for those first few days, she would lie awake in bed and listen to the drunken stu­dents. Those nights she loved them so much, just for being part of the one solid piece of earth she could return to, that she thought she would glow like a whale-oil lamp.

She sat heavily down in the swivel chair and stared at the accu­mu­la­tion of syl­labus­es, text­books, and hand­outs that were spread out across her desk. Dr. Curnow had assigned the first few chap­ters of The Road, Dr. D’Angelo a one-act play called How They Bled for Spain—she had doodled running horses and sickles and camera lenses in the margins of the rubric.

Outside, the night was quiet. Her window was still open, but there were no drunken ram­blings down the hill. Red­mount seemed very fragile sud­den­ly, a dusting of powder over a deeply-lined face. At its fringes, the bay was full and whis­per­ing, hush. It dug its fin­ger­nails into the banks at the edge of town and Ava could hear them grating there. The sound remind­ed her of qamu­ti­ik over sea ice, but harsher, without the sled’s flex­i­bil­i­ty or fish-skin runners. She won­dered if Carrie had heard the same sound before she died.

The grey anger in Ava’s belly flared like amber­gris catch­ing fire. She spun the chair—once, twice, three times—and settled in facing her desk. Brush­ing aside the assign­ments, she opened up the lid of her com­put­er, clicked the group chat, and began to type.

---