Matryoshka

A novella.

The third in NewCon Press' 'Strange Tales' series: four standalone novellas that step outside the norm.

Lost in Venice in the aftermath of the war, Cherenkov just wants to put his head down somewhere and sleep, but her copper hair snares his eye. Beguiled, he allows himself to be led through a quirky little shop and so to Eborius, a baroque land lost in time, where her family rule in ornate splendour, where his revolver is a marvel and his motives are questioned. Confusions and wonder continue apace as Cherenkov embarks on a pilgrimage in a small sailing boat across Sargasso seas, in search of the Old Man, who dwells on an island where time follows its own rules.

When Cherenkov returns to the wider world the confusions only multiply: decades have passed, money is carried within plastic cards and information comes from a screen. Realising he will never feel at home here, he determines to find a way back to Eborius, to seek out the Old Man – last of his kind and the only being alive who may hold the answers Cherenkov craves.