Twelve Days of Christmas—Dark Tidings is a Substack special holiday event. Each day beginning Friday the 13th, we’ll count down to Christmas Eve with a dark tale featuring one of the gifts from the classic carol. A guide to all the stories can be found here.
When I was a boy, Mum had a glass swan on her dresser. On golden afternoons, when the sun’s rays would channel through the body of the swan, I’d run my hands over the blue and white lights that streaked the walls of her bedroom, and I’d imagine the light to be water from the Thames, and that I was the Royal Swanmaster, checking on the Queen’s birds.
I still play in the light of glass swans, even at thirty-five. I own five of them, all antiques, nearly identical to Mum’s swan in Heath. My brother Sam thinks it’s strange that I collect them. He’s never said so, not directly, but I can hear it in his voice when he telephones.
Occasionally, when the shades to my flat are open, a column of light turns my sitti…
