Bitter Irony

How Many Miles to Babylon? in Chinese

2012-02-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

Clever members of Yeeyan are translating "How Many Miles to Babylon?" into Chinese. Cool!

Lightspeed and io9

2012-01-04T07:51:00.000-08:00

Topping the list of things that are totally awesome this morning, "How Many Miles to Babylon?" appears in io9. Every month, io9 will publish a story from Lightspeed's current issue; you'll be able to find those stories on io9 here.

Also, "Lessons from a Clockwork Queen" is included in the Lightspeed ebook sampler, which is pretty cool.

New Year at Lightspeed

2012-01-01T10:15:00.001-08:00

My story "How Many Miles to Babylon?" appears in this week's issue of Lightspeed (along with an author spotlight).

As you're probably aware, Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazine have now merged into one super-fantastic magazine, which means Lightspeed publishes two stories this week. And the other one in this issue is "Blue Lace Agate" by the indescribably awesome Sarah Monette. Pardon me while I fangirl in the corner.

*fangirls*

Hope your New Year is a safe and happy one.

Roses in December

2011-12-01T10:11:00.000-08:00

The Winter 2011 issue of Mirror Dance came out this morning. We have some lovely retold fairy tales, surprising takes on folklore, entirely original pieces, and an insightful interview with Mike Phillips. I'm particularly pleased with the poetry in this issue, so be sure you check it out!

My pseudo-Jamesian secondary-world ghost story "The Gardens of Landler Abbey" appears in today's issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the very queer "Portrait of a Courtesan" appears in Crossed Genre's final issue. As a bibliographic note, "Landler Abbey" is my most recently finished story, having been drafted, edited, and submitted this September. Make of that what you will.

In other news, please think positive thoughts for my mother and aunt, who lost their beloved mother (my wonderful and elegant grandmother) on Saturday.

Of Flying Time

2011-11-13T10:42:00.000-08:00

This is something in the character of a memo-to-self, so please excuse my self-indulgence.

I thought no longer of kind mellow evening hours of rest, and scents of flowers and woods on evening air; and of how someone on a farm a mile or two off would be saying ‘How clear Betton bell sounds tonight after the rain!’; but instead images came to me of dusty beams and creeping spiders and savage owls up in the tower, and forgotten graves and their ugly contents below, and of flying Time and all it had taken out of my life.

From M. R. James, "A Neighbor's Landmark." So far as I can recall, this is the only time one of James's characters experiences anything like a tragic past. And, okay, a brief sentence in one short story hardly counts as a past, but no where else does a Jamesian protagonist's encounter with the supernatural make him think about anything in his life. Graves and spiders and rot and dust, yes, but not all that Time takes--friendship, companions, lovers. This passage starts out being too cliche to be effectively terrifying, but then that last phrase--"of flying Time and all that it had taken out of my life"--that's Terror with a capital T.

Well done, Mr. James. Well done indeed.

Lessons from a Clockwork Queen

2011-09-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

I know it looks like it, but honest to goodness, I don't live under a rock. I'm just really slow on announcing things sometimes.

Lessons from a Clockwork Queen appears in Fantasy Magazine this week (which, by now, is almost last week). There's also an Author Spotlight where I talk about clockworks, lessons, and trolls.

In other news, I'm revamping the guidelines for both Mirror Dance and Lacuna. No major changes, but I'll be making my fiction philosophy a bit more explicit (so when I say "this isn't quite what I'm looking for" in a rejection letter, the author doesn't scream in frustration). Stay tuned.

Where's all these stories come from?

2011-09-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

A number of my older (read: prehistoric) stories are vanishing from their graves on the internet, so I'm archiving them on this blog. Mostly, this is so I have a solid page to link to on my bibliography page. If it please you to browse, gentle sirs and dames, be my guests, though I have to warn you that some of them are embarassingly bad.

Anyway, that's why there's all these new posts. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

Thirst

2011-09-03T18:16:00.001-07:00

First published in Vast Horizons, January 2010.

* * *

…there would be a great want of water, and many hot suns, which would dry up the fields of maize, from which would follow a great famine; and from the famine, thefts; and from the thefts, slaves, and the selling of those who stole. And from this would follow discords, and wars between themselves…

-Diego de Landa, Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan

“Grandfater?”

The old man crouched on a slab of stone, his face hidden behind mats of dusty gray hair. He was one of the kuch, the vultures, who lived in the houses and temples left vacant by the Thirst. Imix had never expected to see one in Ik’Muluk.

“Grandfather,” she repeated, kneeling on the bare rock beside him. Six months ago, when she left Ik’Muluk to search for water, a house had stood in that very spot. There was nothing now: even the soil burned away in the relentless drought. “What happened here?”

He stared at her for a moment, eyes sunken and dark-rimmed with thirst. Then, to her surprise, he laughed.

“Imix Ak’bal!” he cackled, pointing a skeletal finger from Imix the ruins of the palace over her shoulder. “The Queen has returned to her people at last! Tell me, Ak’bal, where is the water you promised us?”

Imix quickly grabbed the small water-skin from her pack and shoved it at him. He snatched it but continued to eye her, as if afraid she might take it back. When she didn’t, he pulled the stopper out with his teeth and squeezed the skin’s contents down his throat.

“Where are all the others?” Imix asked when he’d finished.

“Gone. Taken by raiders.” He laughed again, the sound cracking in the back of his throat. “As if the fools weren’t short on water before they began wasting it on slaves.”

Imix’s heart froze in her chest. “What raiders, Grandfather? Where did they come from?”

“Sak Aktun, of course.” The kuch sucked the last of the water from the skin and tossed it aside. “Those filthy dogs took all our water, all our food, everyone young enough to work. They burned our houses, the imbeciles, too stupid to see what would happen. ” He gestured at the naked limestone at their feet, at the massive trunk of a fallen ceiba tree behind him, its roots turned to ash beneath the surface. “It’s only the old they left behind, the old and the sick. I can’t say where the rest have gone now.”

Hatred made Imix’s already parched tongue feel choked with dust. She stared at the ruin that had been the city of Ik’Muluk, at the bare stone platforms and bruise-black rings of cinder where houses once stood. The trees where women had left their children while they sang to them from the fields; the hollows that filled with water in the rainy season, where grandmothers went to wash their families’ clothing; the ancient palace room where Imix had married Lamat Balam, those three long summers ago—all burned, all crushed into rubble. Imix thought of her husband laboring for those wasteful brutes in Sak Aktun, and the air seemed too thin for her lungs.

“I have to go after them,” she said, more to herself than to the old man, but he nodded anyway.

“That’s the spirit,” he murmured, half-drunk on the unaccustomed water.

Imix was ashamed to see that she still had enough in her to waste on tears.

* * *

Imix had lived her life—all twenty-five years of it—within seven days’ walk of Sak Aktun, but the plce was still a ghost in her mind, misted over by memories of her troubled life with Chikchan Eb. To think of one was to think of the other; in that vague, shadowy city to the north, everyone wore the face of her sister.

She thought of Chikchan now, as she followed the rough remains of the road to Sak Aktun. What happened to her, the fragile young woman Imix banished from Ik’Muluk those seven years ago? Her sister’s presence had been growing in her mind since the beginning of the Thirst; she remembered Chikchan’s frailness, her constant need for water.

And she remembered Sak Aktun.

Filthy dogs, the old man had called them, worse than vultures. Few stories came to Ik’Muluk, but some did, telling of bloody raids and strange sounds heard in the night. Sak Aktun thrived while Ik’Muluk, her prey, sickened and died. Imix could not trust them, could never submit to them. Chikchan Eb demanded she do both.

She drank the last of her water at sundown on her fifth day of travel. Like the water she shared with the kuch man—the only water she could find in six months of searching—it had been dusty and thick, the last dregs of Lake Uchbenbaak. Now, even the lake was gone.

What had Chikchan Eb done, when the water she took into exile finally ran out? How far had she traveled? Imix found herself watching the gray-brown path beneath her feet, afraid to look to either side, as if her sister’s ghost might be waiting for her in the death-dry forest.

On the sixth day, the road wound past empty maize fields, their shallow irrigation trenches choked with dried stalks and gray ash. The few plants that managed to grow in the weak season had been lost to locusts or kuch. Not for the first time, Imix wondered how many of her people had survived the Thirst, only to die by hunger or Sak Aktun’s slavers.

She did not want to think of the living; the dead were safer. She thought of Chikchan Eb.

On the seventh day, she saw a footprint.

She didn’t understand, at first, why something so small should make her tremble. It was a sign of men nearby, yes, but that came as no surprise; she had know she was within a day’s walk of Sak Aktun. A small leaf lay trapped in the dirt, and in the scorching midday sun, it glistened wetly.

Wetly.

Like a hunter following the trail of his prey, Imix began to crawl.

The dirt beneath her hands was soft and cool, but in some places, where the soil had washed away, she felt the brittle dryness of limestone. The vegetation around her became thick and scraggly, growing low and tight against the ground. She lessened her pace and felt carefully in front of her before moving ahead.

There. Behind a wall of thick tapir-leaves, the forest floor suddenly dropped off. Imix inched forward until she was staring down a night-black pit, with sides of glistening white lime. Directly beneath her hands, a rough ladder of cedro logs ran down into the darkness.

Not a pit, she realized. A well.

Moving carefully, so as not to make any sound that might echo through the cave, she swung herself over the edge and began climbing down the ladder. The rungs became smoother the lower she went, moistened by a fine mist of water. It was all she could do not to put her lips to them and drink.

As the greenish light from the forest above her began to fade, another light took its place; cool, wavering white, splashing color along the walls like Ix Chel’s rainbows. She clung tightly to the ladder and glanced around, and found herself staring at an intricate web of passages—some obviously carved, others natural—all leading into the shaft of the well. They spilled light like water, reflecting off their clear white walls. The sight was so beautiful, she could not help but gasp.

From the floor below her, someone squeaked in surprise.

Imix lost her grip on the ladder and tumbled the last few feet, landing heavily in a pool of water deep enough to lap at my waist. “Who’s there?” she sputtered.

But before her companion could answer, she began to drink.

When Chikchan Eb was sick, there had been days when she could hardly move from thirst, and if someone placed a bowl of water in front of her, she took it in like a drowning woman gasping for air. Imix was like that now, bending down to place her lips to the surface and lapping it up with her tongue, opening her mouth wide to feel the wetness rush in. She had tasted mango so ripe it melted in her mouth, she had eaten berries dipped in honey at her wedding feast, but none of them could compare to the sweetness of the water in the well of Sak Aktun.

At last, when her throat and tongue felt smooth again and her lips seemed thickened with moisture, she looked up to see the face of her companion.

The woman was clearly a slave. While her skin and hair glistened from the damp, both were rough and plainly unused to washing. Deep lines darkened the skin around her eyes; though she could not be much older than Imix, her hair was streaked with gray.

“Who are—” the stranger began, the cut herself off with a gasp. “Imix? Imix Ak’bal?”

“Yes,” Imix said, because she could think of nothing else. “How…how do you know me?”

“Oh, Imix!” The clay pot she had been holding fell to the ground with a soft splash. “It’s me, Ben Kaban. Don’t you remember, I used to live in the Palace at Ik’Muluk, back before…”

Imix didn’t know if it was something in her face that made Ben Kaban stop, or if she stopped because there was nothing more to say. Imix had known her—well enough, perhaps, to be called her friend. Had the past six months changed her so much?

What have they done to me?

As Imix looked at her reflection in the dark water, Ben Kaban continued haltingly. “They came right after you left—the raiders, I mean. Sak Aktun. Lamat was furious. He tried to bribe them, to give them the little food we could spare, but they came back two days later and…well, you can see for yourself. How did you know to look here?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You were looking for us, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Imix said again, unable to look away from the ghastly image in the water before her. Her hair and face were both as gray as dust, and her eyes…her eyes were like the eyes of the dead. She knew without thinking that she could easily pass for a slave in the streets of Sak Aktun.

“What are you doing here, Ben Kaban?”

“Fetching water,” she whispered. “For my mistress. She’s…not kind, exactly, but not as cruel as the others. She won’t let her sons touch me.”

“Where does your mistress live?”

“In the Serpent House on the east side of the city.”

Imix knelt down, refilled Ben Kaban’s fallen pot, and hefted it onto her own shoulders. “Let me take your place.” Ben Kaban started to protest, but Imix silenced her with a glance—something she had not been able to do before the Thirst. She wondered what other changes misfortune had wrought in her. “I need to free my people, Ben. And I need to see Lamat.”

“That shouldn’t be hard. He’s in the Queen’s household, not too far from my mistress,” she said, though she still looked doubtful. “But Imix, where will I go?”

“Stay here,” Imix said. Pieces of the plan fell together in her head like stones fitting into a mosaic. “Only slaves are sent for water, yes? Good. We can build a shelter nearby. When I free the others, this is where I’ll send them.”

“Yes,” Ben Kaban said, more certainly this time. “Yes! But you—you’ll be all right, Imix?”

“I have to be,” she said. With no further discourse, Imix leaned over and placed a soft kiss on Ben’s cheek. Then, carefully balancing the water-pot on her shoulder, she started up the ladder.

And so she came to Sak Aktun.

* * *

In his mother’s arms, Chinwol began to cry.

“Hush,” Hun Sayab whispered, casting fearful glance in Imix’s direction. “Hush, my little one.”

Imix set her lips in a scowl; it was not her the woman had to fear. Though Imix was certain the majority of Sak Aktun’s warriors had gone with their Queen to raid the village of Tsabanda in the west, three months of escape had taught her caution, and every sound sent a painful shiver down her spine.

The trail was not long from Sak Aktun to the well, and from there to the small cluster of shelters Ben Kaban had built for the escaping slaves, but it seemed to grow longer every time Imix traveled it. Withered, wasting tree-trunks provided little shelter, and a thousand dry branches lay scattered across the ground, snapping at every misstep. It was only a matter of time, she knew, before their captors in Sak Aktun discovered her endeavor and took her to their Queen for justice.

It was not a prospect she relished.

“Imix.” Xaman Ik, Hun Sayab’s husband, laid a firm hand on her shoulder. Slavery had separated him from his wife for the last two months of her pregnancy, and it seemed he was doing everything in his power now to make up for it—even confronting his Queen. You’re not his Queen anymore, part of Imix reminded herself. She silenced it with a scowl. “You know she is doing her best.”

She knew, and yet, the knowledge wasn’t good enough. Long months of drought and fear had left her bitter. Inevitably, she thought of Chikchan Eb.

With every escape, with every beating she received from her new mistress, with every precious drink of water she managed to steal, she thought of her sister and her high hopes for Sak Aktun. Had Chikchan ever made it there? Looking down at the mottled purple bruises on her arms, Imix hoped not.

And then there was the Queen. Imix had seen her three or four times over the past few months; every time, Lamat was with her. Imix’s heart twisted to see the way she looked at him, with those cruel, hard eyes. It did not help to know that very look had once crossed Imix’s own face.

Lamat and Chikchan Eb, her husband and her sister, the greatest victims of her pride. Every night, they haunted her dreams, their two faces blurring into one; and though Imix never dreamt of still water, she saw my reflection everywhere. Some nights, she was a kuch woman in Ik’Muluk. Some nights, she was the Queen of Sak Aktun.

A sharp wail interrupted her thoughts. She turn to see Hun Sayab leaning against a tree, offering her breast to Chinwol, who waved his little fists and refused to suck.

“You have nothing to give him,” Imix whispered. Hun Sayab looked at her helplessly, shaking her head.

Imix sighed and glanced at the shadowy form of Sak Aktun in the clearing behind her; all was dark. They were not being followed. “Here,” she said, handing her torch to Xaman Ik and crouching low to the ground. “Some of these plants still hold water. Give him a leaf to chew on.”

Hun Sayab lowered herself beside Imix, Chinwol clutched in one arm, and began riffling through the dry sticks and withered seed-stalks on the ground. At last she found something, a blackish stem with a branching leaf at the top, spreading out like a nine-fingered hand.

“No!” Imix cried, far too loudly. Hun Sayab dropped the leaf with a little yelp. “Bitter manioc,” Imix explained, dropping her voice to a whisper. The forest around them had gone eerily quiet, as though even the wind held its breath. “It turns poisonous during drought years.”

“Oh!” Hun Sayab leapt to her feet, all thoughts of leaf-gathering abandoned. Chinwol, at least, had fallen silent, probably frightened by Imix’s shout.

“Will he stay quiet now?” Imix meant to keep her voice gentle, but fear gave it an edge. “I’m afraid I may have given us away—”

“ You did.”

Imix twirled in the direction of the voice, pulling her small knife from its place at her hip, when something hard and cold struck her in the back of the head. She fell heavily to the forest floor. Another rock smashed onto her fingers, breaking her grip on the blade. Somewhere in the darkness behind me, she heard Hun Sayab scream.

“Don’t hurt her!” Xaman Ik shouted. Imix tried to turn her neck to see what was happening, but strong hands clasped around her shoulders, pressing her into the ground. A cut had opened along the back of her neck, stinging with dry forest dust.

A loud cracking sound echoed through the night, and she heard Hun Sayab moan like an injured dog. Chinwol raised his shrill voice in a scream, which ending abruptly in another sickening crack. Imix pressed her face into the dust and sobbed.

“So,” someone murmured, the same someone who had spoken before. The voice was low and steady, and despite the words, the tone held no cruelty. “Imix Ak’bal. I never thought to see you in Sak Aktun.” The speaker laughed, a soft, strangely moist sound. “I certainly never thought to find you helping slaves escape.”

Imix tried again to face the speaker, but her captor struck her hard across the face. The blow aggravated the wound on the back of her head. “Please,” she moaned, flinging her hands up. “No more.”

He struck her again.

“You were too proud to beg for water, Imix,” the voice continued. It had moved around to her other shoulder. Imix noticed, with growing terror, that she could no longer hear Xaman Ik’s labored breathing. “Before I am through with you, we will see if you are too proud to beg for death.”

“How do you know my name?”

Her captor hesitated for a moment, and Imix winced, preparing for the blow. It didn’t come. The rough hands suddenly vanished from her shoulders, and she opened my eyes to see a hard, beautiful face just inches from her own. The Queen’s red lips glistened wetly as she spoke, and if her cruel brown eyes were dry, Imix knew it was not from thirst.

“ Imix,” Chikchan Eb whispered, “have you forgotten your sister so quickly?”

If her captors struck me again, or if the pain and fear finally caught up with her, Imix did not know. She only knew that Chikchan Eb’s voice was the last thing she heard as the world vanished behind a wall of blackness.

* * *

She woke in pain.

From the nauseous, overpowering burn in her side, she knew a rib had been broken—probably more than one. Her lips, already cracked and swollen from thirst, felt bruised and tender beneath her tongue. To take her mind from her tortured body, she reached out into the darkness in search of some clue as to where she was being kept. Her fingers encountered a shell of rough plaster curving all around her body, as if the room had been molded around her.

Not a room, she realized. A cistern.

“Hello?” It felt as though a thousand obsidian knives were digging into her lungs, but the panic building in her chest hurt more. “Is anyone there?”

About a handsbreadth above her head, the ceiling vanished suddenly in a circle of brownish light. A young man peered in with a scowl.

“Good, you’re awake,” he said. “My orders are to bring you to the Queen.”

He leaned over to grab her wrists, but Imix pulled away. “Please,” she whispered, “I think…my ribs…they need to be bound…”

“Shut up.”

“But I think—”

The sound of his blow echoed in the tiny chamber. Choking back a sob, Imix felt something hot and sticky dripping down her chin. Her nose throbbed fiercely.

“Here,” the guard said, stuffing a rough cloth into her hand. “Clean that up.”

She dabbed at the blood, which was disconcertingly bright, and pulled herself up out of the cistern. They were standing in the corner of a narrow courtyard, with its dusty floor slanting down towards them to better channel rain water. One of the four sides opened up to the white and ashen landscape of Sak Aktun. To Imix’s surprise, the sun hung low in the sky. Very early, or very late; she couldn’t guess which.

The guard grabbed her wrists—less roughly then before, as if he meant to compensate for striking her—and dragged her into the nearest outbuilding. The corridor was crowded with men and women, all as smooth and slippery-looking as a nest of bloated water bugs. Imix winced away from them and kept her eyes on the floor.

When at last they stopped walking, the guard aimed a blow at the backs of her knees, knocking her down into a kneeling position. The floor here was cleaner than the others, smooth and white and bare of all dust and ash—and for that reason, Imix knew whose room they were in.

“Your breath still troubles you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Chikchan Eb said. Imix heard the slap of her sandals against the stone as she walked closer and pressed one hand beneath her chin, raising Imix’s face to hers. “Yes, it does.” She turned to the guard. “You are dismissed. See to it that I am not disturbed.”

When the sound of his footsteps died away, she turned again to Imix. “You know, sister,” she said, then stopped. A smile played across her lips—wet lips, bright lips, red against the paleness of her face, like my blood on the guard’s rag. Imix was still holding the cloth, she realized belatedly, and let it drop from her fist.

“You know, sister, I never thought I’d see you again.”

There was no sentimentality in it, no emotion, no regret. Imix cleared her throat. “I never thought I’d see you again, either. When you left, I was afraid…I thought maybe…”

“You thought I’d died. You thought you’d kill me.” A flicker of pain, there, but it passed quickly. “For the longest time, I thought so, too.”

She turned her back on Imix and walked to the other side of the room, where a low dais stretched the length of the wall. A low throne, carved and painted to look like a mother jaguar and her cub, stood in the middle of the platform.

Kneeling beside it, one arm tied to a rope around the queen jaguar’s neck, was Imix’s husband Lamat Balam.

“Oh!” Her breath caught painfully in her chest.

He looked up at her, his dark eyes wide and unreadable. For a moment, he said nothing. Was it fear—or anger? Perhaps he blamed her for what happened at Ik’Muluk. Perhaps…

But the moment passed, and a soft smile crossed his face. Not a pleasant smile; I mix would know that for a lie. But a gentle one, a smile meant to comfort. “Imix,” he whispered. The sound of his voice was as blessed and welcome as a long rain.

Chikchan Eb slapped her hand against her thigh, jolting Imix back into reality. With a thrill of terror, Imix noticed the shard of black obsidian in her hand.

“Sister,” she said quickly. “You were young then, you didn’t understand what you were asking! Your words were treason! You must know that. I had to send you away.”

Chikchan Eb took a step closer to Imix. Her dark eyebrows arched sharply across her forehead, giving her a mad, unfocused expression.

“A Queen must do things,” Imix said, “terrible things, cruel things—things she doesn’t wish to do, sometimes.”

“I know,” Chikchan said. “And sometimes, she does cruel things she wants to do very much.”

With one flick of her wrist, the blade was at Imix’s throat. But it didn’t stay there; Chikchan watched as Imix held her breath, struggling to keep her neck motionless, then moved her hand up along Imix’s jaw, dragging the obsidian up over her cheek and across the bridge of her nose. It toyed along her hairline, moving in to circle the dark and tender skin around her eyelids. Though my entire her body shook with fear, Imix forced myself not to blink.

For a few seconds, fear was all she felt. Then the pain came, sharp and stinging, flowing along the blade’s path like water filling a dry river bed. Imix felt the flesh parting and the blood dripping down from the wounds. Lamat’s cry of horror sounded as though it came from very far away.

“Chikchan,” she whispered, barely daring to move her lips. It was the first time she had said the name aloud in over seven years. “What do you want?”

The blade had moved back into her hairline, brushing along the ridge of her ear. “I want your pain,” Chikchan said. The blade nicked into Imix’s earlobe—not sharp enough to sever it, but deep enough to make her cry out. “I want you to suffer as you made me suffer.”

“You already did.”

Chikchan Eb arched her eyebrows again and held her hand still.

“You took away my city, my people, my husband—” Imix gestured tightly to Lamat—“Everything that I held dear. You took away my freedom! What does a little pain matter to me now?”

“Oh?” Chikchan Eb took a step back. “Is that really how you feel? There is nothing more I can do to you?”

“Nothing.”

Smiling once again, Chikchan Eb turned to Lamat.

“No!” Imix cried. “You can’t!”

Chikchan glanced back over her shoulder. “Yes, I can,” she said. “I am Queen here, and you—both of you—belong to me!”

And she laid the blade against his throat.

Imix leapt to her feet, drawing on strength she didn’t know she had, and flung herself across the room. Her hands were around Chikchan’s neck before she could begin to cut. It was easier than Imix expected to pull the blade from her hands and drive it into her own throat; so easy to take it and sever the ropes around Lamat’s wrists; so easy to take him by the hand and run out of the chamber, ducking through the nest of bloated nobles.

But it was hard, so hard, to hear Chikchan crying as her life drained out of her:

“Imix! Imix, my sister!”

* * *

They couldn’t keep running: Imix had known it even as she left Chikchan Eb’s chamber. Her chest ached from the broken ribs, and she was becoming dizzy from loss of blood. It was only a matter of time before the guards of Sak Aktun discovered them.

She had pushed forward as far as she could take them, drawing the pursuit away from the cenote and Ben Kaban’s camp. They lay now in a hollow in the middle of the forest, where the leaves were still faintly green and the earth was still soft. Even the sky seemed…darker, somehow, as if a wall of clouds were gathering overhead. But that, Imix knew, was just a trick of her eyes.

Lamat’s head rested on her knee. His eyes were closed, but his irregular breathing told her he was still very much awake, very much afraid. Imix stroked his hair with both hands and hummed a lullaby under her breath. It was no use telling him they would be all right; already, she could hear the faint sounds of their pursuit.

“Love?” she whispered.

He sighed softly in answer.

“Would you like to go to sleep now?”

He smiled and turned his head to kiss her hand. “Of course,” he murmured. Then, more clearly, “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Imix said, and leaned down to kiss his forehead.

“Then yes, I’d like to go to sleep.”

Imix reached over his body and plucked one of the few leaves that was still lush and moist. It spread out in her palm, opening like a nine-fingered hand.

“Chew on this,” she said. “It will help you rest.”

While her husband sucked the poison from the bitter manioc, Imix picked another leaf for herself and began to chew.

Her hands started shaking even before she took the second leaf. By the third, she could no longer hold her head up. She lay down on the ground beside Lamat, who had already fallen unconscious, his breathing slow and faint. “My love,” she murmured. “My love, my love, my love.”

The leaves around her rattled and shook, and she heard angry voices moving closer. It didn’t matter. She turned her face just enough to let her press her lips against Lamat’s cheek, and then she could move no more. Her eyes closed heavily. As she stopped fighting for breath and let her body fend for itself, she felt something soft brushing against the wound on her cheek. Soft and cool, and impossibly wet.

Then the last of her was gone, vanished into the darkness.

There was nothing left but the rain.

Footsteps

2011-09-03T18:10:00.001-07:00

First published in A Fly in Amber, January 2008.

* * *

Beryl’s footsteps are very heavy. The whole floor shakes as she moves around, and doors rattle in their frames. I often wonder that she doesn’t notice these things, but then again, her eyes are not blind like mine.

She stands still behind me now. I know because the floorboards stop creaking and the air fills with her metallic scent. She thinks that I won’t be able to find her if she doesn’t move, but she is wrong.

“Girl!” She barks like an angry dog. “Where is my training sword?”

This is a favorite game of hers--to hide her things when I am finished cleaning them, and then to make me hunt for them.

“I left it on the desk in your room, lady.”

“Well, it isn’t there now. You’d better bring it back, girl, unless you want Mother to hear that you’ve been stealing again.”

I grit my teeth. The sound is grating to my ears, but I know Beryl can’t hear it. “I’ll look for it when I’m finished with the tablecloth.”

The cloth is a soft weight across my knees. It is slightly damp and still smells fresh from the thyme-and-lavender soap. I run my fingers along the smooth linen, searching for any irregularity. When I find one, I carefully sew it up with short, even stitches.

"Never mind the cloth, I have lessons with Master Lanthan in an hour. I need my sword by then."

Heavy footsteps, and then Beryl is gone. I set the tablecloth down on the floor with a sigh. There’s no telling where she might have put the sword this time. I could ask help searching from Niobi, our old cook, but her eyes are hardly better than mine.

I stand and make my way to the sewing room door with careful steps--it would delight Beryl to no end to leave obstacles in the way for me to trip over, and I wouldn’t be able to hear her dragging it over the sound of her own stomping. Sure enough, the hem of my skirt catches on something. I reach down with one hand and feel the warm coarseness of my wicker sewing basket. I carry it back to my chair and finally make my way out of the room and into the servants’ hallway.

Beryl’s room is three doors away from this one, mostly because this room is directly above the kitchen. I run my hand along the uneven plaster wall and count the doorways until I reach one of heavy ironwood. Because of Beryl’s childhood passion for slamming doors, her mother had this one made specially. It is hard to open, though years of hauling wood and water have made my arms strong.

The door pulls back. I take a deep breath and go in: I hate the smell of this room. It is all sweat and metal and oily soaps. But it is here that Beryl often hides things, for she is a girl with little imagination. I search the obvious places first: the desk, the bed, the top of Beryl’s clothing chest. All are clear. I start riffling through the drawers of her wardrobe, shifting through layers of mixed silk, velvet and leather until my thumb comes across something sharp and hard. Quickly, I pull my injured right hand out of the drawer to keep from getting blood on the expensive fabrics. With my left, I grope along the cold blade until my fingers brush the fine gems and metal work of the sword hilt.

I am so focused on my task, I don’t hear the footsteps until they are directly behind me.

“You’re bleeding,” Beryl says, her voice thin with distaste. For such a vicious girl, she cannot stand the sight of blood.

“Yes,” I say. “I know. Now take your sword and get ready for your lesson, or you’ll be late.”

The hilt is roughly yanked from my fingers. “I don’t take orders from you, girl,” Beryl snaps. “And before I leave--make sure you refold the clothes.”

“Yes,” I begin, just as her mother screeches from downstairs.

“Girl! Isn’t that tablecloth done yet?”

* * *

When I finish folding Beryl’s clothing as neatly as possible with only on hand, I return to the sewing room, only to find that my needle has been unthreaded. Rage makes my hands unsteady, for of all Beryl’s tricks, this is the hardest to remedy. I have learned to do much without vision, but I still cannot thread a needle on my own.

At the beginning of each week, Niobi threads a whole line for me to use. I open my sewing box and feel the tiny needle ends for one with a bit of thread still attached, but all are empty, either used up or undone by Beryl’s malice.

“Girl!” Mistress shrieks like metal on slate. I slam the sewing box shut in frustration and lean out the door.

Scuff, scuff, scuff-a, Mistress’s slippers whisper on the floorboards. The sound comes from my right. I turn to face it, and immediately my mouth is filled with a musky taste. It’s patchouli, Mistress’s favorite perfume. I hate it almost as much as Beryl’s room.

“Vanad isn’t able to take Beryl to her lessons today,” Mistress chirps. “You will have to go with her instead.”

“Why can’t Beryl go on her own?”

“What? At this hour? If you stand on our front steps, you wouldn’t be able to see across the street for all the people! However would she find her way?”

“I wouldn’t be able to see across the street anyway,” I say quietly. “And I’m perfectly capable of finding my way around the city.”

Mistress inhales sharply. Sometimes I think she forgets my blindness.

“Go to her, now,” she says, with what passes for a commanding note in her shriek-owl voice.

I want to protest, but I feel a rush of cool air on my face as she turns her back to me and slips back down the hall.

With a sigh, I feel my way towards the staircase. It is right next to the sewing room. Though I have traveled up or down it every day for years, I am still uneasy about the narrow, uneven steps. There is no railing. I stretch my arms out and, pressing my hands against the walls on either side of me, slowly inch forward and down.

I have never bothered to count the steps before, but I know there are more than twelve. It seems to take forever for me to reach the bottom.

At last, I feel the cold stone of the kitchen floor beneath my feet. Beryl is down here, I can hear her stomping around.

“Your mother says I am to take you to lessons,” I say, facing the noise.

Beryl snorts in response. I open the kitchen door: it leads out into an alleyway. Outside, the air is still. An echo of loud voices and rushing bodies reaches my ears from the street beyond. I pause at the door for a moment, trying to remember which direction Master Lanthan’s school is in before I reach the busy roads.

Beryl’s footsteps sound behind me, and I feel her hot presence at my elbow. “Come on,” she says, clenching my wrist.

I allow her to drag me down the alley and into the street, where we take a right. A horrible combination of smells fills the air, musky scents like Mistress’s and heavy metallic scents like Beryl’s. We walk by a dye merchant’s stall, and the sour smell is so strong I hold my breath.

Beryl tightens her grip and pulls me in another direction. I hope Mistress was wrong and that Beryl really does know where we’re going, because I don’t think I will be able to find my way home by myself. We walk past a group of young men: their laughter, low and musical, follows us down the street. I feel Beryl stiffen beside me and wonder just what they’re laughing about.

Suddenly, Beryl stops. I cannot feel the sun on the top of my head, so we must be standing beneath a roof of some sort. Door hinges creak somewhere near us.

“What do you want?” a woman calls. Her voice is throaty but not unpleasant.

“I’m here for Master Lanthan,” Beryl says.

A door opens. I can suddenly hear the clash of metal on metal and a firm male voice calling out directions.

Beryl steps inside, pulling me along after her. The air within is cool and faintly rose-scented. I hold my hand out in front of me, and my fingers brush against a column of icy marble. I reach higher, and feel something dry and round winding around the pillar: a rose vine. My fingers close around a globe of soft petals, but Beryl drags me away before I can investigate farther.

“Stay here,” she commands, shoving me against a wall. I slowly sink to my knees as she walks away. The floor feels hard and cold through the thin fabric of my dress.

The metallic echos grow louder as Beryl draws her sword and joins in. I can pick her hits out of all the others: like her footsteps, they are heavy and without rhythm. She is strong, but does not have the grace to be a truly talented fighter.

As the hour flows by, I find myself caught up in the ringing music of the weapons lesson. Master Lanthan’s voice is firm and clear, like the sound the swords make when they strike each other. I hear the door open several times as more students join the class. Each time, the sudden smell of the air from the street makes me grateful that I’m not running errands for Mistress today.

The sound stops suddenly as the class pauses to rest. All is silent for a few moments, and then I hear the sound of liquid pouring. A chorus of light clinking follows as glasses of water are passed around.

A group of girls gathers near me, speaking in low whispers. One of them bursts out in jarring laughter. It is easy enough to guess the object of their derision. I press myself farther back against the wall, wishing I could vanish into the stone.

Beryl is coming near. Something has made her angry: I can hear it in her breathing. Short, shallow snorts, like a wild animal about to charge.

The girls stop speaking. One steps forward, the light tap of her sandaled toe on the floor echoing through the hall.

“Well, if it isn’t Lady Beryl,” she says. Her voice is taunt with scorn. “Have you picked a fight with someone already today, or am I to be the first?”

“You aren’t worth my time, Magne,” Beryl returns.

“Oh?” Magne’s friends chuckle half-heartedly. There is a tight cord of danger rippling through the air, and I wondered what Magne is playing at. “What about Rheni? She was worth your time, wasn’t she?”

“She earned every blow,” Beryl snapped. “And you will too, if you don’t be careful.”

“What are you going to do, stomp me into the ground?”

The girls laugh again, this time with Magne at the head. Her laugh is like a clear hawk’s call. I can’t help it--I join in.

The sound is barely out of my throat when I feel Beryl’s crushing grip on my shoulder.
“You think they’re funny, do you?” she growls in my ear. “Do you find them amusing? At least they can fight for themselves.” She drags me to my feet. I try to shrink away, but her clutch is powerful.

“Are you ready to fight me?”

I try to protest. The other girls gather around us, blocking my escape routes. Someone presses the hilt of a sword into my hand and closes my fingers around it.

“Come on, girl!” Beryl laughs. Something swings by close to my head. I duck down as the others back away.

This time Beryl stabs. Her blade bounces off the floor beside me. I wonder if she is missing on purpose, or if anger weakens her aim. I crawl back on my hands and knees, listening hard for the sound of Beryl’s following footsteps.

“Stand up, you fool!” someone shouts. I am too scared and confused to tell if it’s Beryl. I swing my sword in an arc high above my head, and a shiver runs down my arm as it connects with metal. From Beryl’s grunt of pain, I know it is her armor and not her sword.

I leap to my feet and swing again in her direction. This time, my blow is blocked. I feel a cool rush of air as her blade swishes downwards at my stomach. I jump back. Her heavy footsteps move to my left. I follow them with my sword, stabbing out just ahead of her. Her armor rings out as it collides with the blade.

And then suddenly I am gasping for breath on the floor. My side burns, my lungs burn, and a horrible grinding noise fills my ears. The flat of Beryl’s blade comes down on me again, driving all air from my chest. I want to scream, to shout at her to stop it, but I can’t speak. I can’t move. I can only lie here and wait for the next blow, and this time I know it won’t be the flat edge...

I am standing. I don’t know how I got to my feet: I only know that I am standing and clutching my sword high above my head, ready to strike. My sides are unprotected, but I can hear Beryl’s harsh breathing, I can feel the presence of her sword far below me, and I know she will not attack, not before I‘ve had my chance to strike. I hear gasps of surprise behind me, Magne’s clear voice louder than the rest.

I hurl my sword down with all the strength in my body, thinking of all the hidden swords, the unthreaded needles, the bruises I’ve received at Beryl’s hands. It connects solidly, ringingly. Beryl moans in pain. I hear the clatter of her sword falling to the floor.

And then the room is silent.

I drop my sword down beside Beryl’s. My arms are trembling, but not with pain. I feel the press of bodies around me, but no one speaks. Even Beryl’s ugly sobs are muted.

The silence stretches on. Finally, it is broken by one curt word in Magne’s sharp tone.

“Girl.” The sound comes from directly in front of me. I resist the urge to reach out and feel exactly how close we are standing to each other. “Girl, where in the world did you learn to fight like that?”

A chorus of voices join in. “Yes, impressive!” “No one’s defeated Beryl for months.” “Are you sure she’s blind?” I try to face all the speakers at once, but it is impossible. I can only listen to their voices, listen to the sounds of praise and--could it be admiration?

“And you say she’s a servant?” The male voice is full of indignation. “She could be trained as a warrior! Girl, what would you say to attending lessons here with your mistress?”

I stammer out a reply, hardly knowing what words passed my own lips. The noise dies down, but someone hands the sword back to me and a guiding arm is wrapped around my shoulders.

As the group of delighted fighting students leads me to join in their lessons, I can hear Beryl’s heavy footsteps tramping out the door and into the dusty street beyond.

The Countess

2011-09-03T18:05:00.000-07:00

First published in Long Story Short, July 2007.

* * *

It is growing late, but the Countess is still awake. She paces the length of her study with funeral march rhythm, each step sending a low tremor though the floorboards. I stand at her door with one hand poised to knock and the other balancing a stack of papers that demand Odette’s attention. As long as we are both awake, I reason, we may as well work on something. It is better to be busy together than to be left alone with our thoughts.

But I doubt the Countess would agree. That is why I have been standing in this hallway for nearly a quarter hour, ready to knock but not knocking, thinking about work but not working, listening to Odette’s rhythmic pacing: back and forth, back and forth, like a pendulum marking the last hours of a condemned man’s life.

The footsteps stop for a moment, replaced by another, softer sound. Not sobbing--the Countess would never be reduced to something so vulgar. Heavy sighs, then, that rack the walls the same way her pacing shook the floors. Whatever it is, the sound chills me.

Eager to put an end to it, my hand raises and lowers the door knocker of its own accord.

At the sound, all other noises stop. The sighing from behind the door, the creaking of the walls, even the winter wind is muted as it rattles the window glass.

“Odette?”

The only answer is low and unintelligible.

“Countess Odette?” I hope my voice sounds stronger to her than it does to me. “Are you within?”

Of course she is within. It was a stupid question to ask, and when she opens the door, the look on her face seems to tell me so.

All her life, people have told Odette that she is beautiful, but she isn’t. Though she is powerful, her face does not have the sculpted perfection of a powerful woman. Though she is young, her eyes lack youthful glow. She is a slender ghost of a girl: neither short nor tall, but somewhere in between: with white skin like paper from which each mark has been erased, leaving only pale shadows to show that it was ever written on in the first place. Her eyes are a fogged, stagnant green, her hair brown and limp like fallen twigs. A tight corset forces a woman’s figure out of her stubborn girlish body.

“Odette,” I say again, bowing from the waist. “I heard you walking.”

She says nothing, only returns my bow and steps back from the doorway. I take this as permission to enter, closing the door behind me and laying the pile of letters on the desk.

“What do you have for me now?” she asks softly, leaning back against the wall.

“A few things for you to read,” I answer. “Letters, mostly, and a few reports for the King. They need only your signature.”

For some reason, the Countess seems to find this funny. She laughs loudly, gracelessly, then claps her hands once and stares into my face. “No death sentences tonight, are there?” she says.

I bite my lip in silence. So that is what keeps her awake tonight: I do not wonder, for it haunts my dreams as well.

Odette takes a few steps away from the wall and laughs again. Now I realize that there is no humor in the sound, only helpless rage. “You are going to the execution tomorrow morning, aren’t you? Of course you are,” she says, not waiting for an answer. “You and the rest of these idiots I surround myself with. Tell me, do they know it was you who gave me his death sentence to sign?”

“They do.”

She stands at the desk beside me now. Her eyes are wide, her thin lips trembling--an expression more of longing than anger. I wonder if she looked at Evond that way.

“Do they all hate him as much as you do?”

“Yes,” I say, but it is a lie. No one hates him, not even me, and I am the one who has sentenced him to death.

When he first came here over a year ago, Evond was a tall young man of seventeen, with the smooth white skin of a gentleman and the unruly black hair of a peasant, and clear brown eyes that gleamed with cold intelligence. His voice was soft but tilted, as though her was always on the verge of saying something clever. When he preformed the lordly courtesy of kissing Odette’s hand, the face of every lady in the hall went taunt with jealousy.

“Yes,” I say again, forcing myself not to imagine the disdainful stare of those eyes. “We hate anyone who would impose on your hospitality, while seeking only to spy on you and betray you to your enemies--”

“Hypocrites,” she spat. “There isn’t a single one of you who wouldn’t do the same thing, given half the chance. Is that why you hate him? Because he is exactly what you would turn into, if you had the courage?”

“Odette,” I say quietly, soothingly. She can‘t be thinking these things: I came here tonight to insure that she wouldn‘t. “What’s done is done,” I say, pulling a sheet of paper off the pile. “Come, here is a letter from Lord Lyel. Why don’t you read--”

“I don’t want to hear about Lord Lyel!” The Countess swings her fist at the stack of papers, sending them flying across the room like a spread of snow. “You’re the only one who seems to know anything about Evond. Damn it, say something!”

“He was spying on you, Odette!” I cry, catching her hand in mine as she reaches for another collection of letters. “He was going to kill you! Please, just calm down and listen to me for a moment. No one blames you for how you felt about him. Gods, we understand it perfectly! He was young, handsome, a clever speaker...everything any woman of taste could want. But it was too good, Odette! No one is that perfect.”

“He was,” she says, pulling her hand from mine. “He is! He hasn’t died yet, so why are we speaking of him like he has?”

“He may as well have.” A horrible image is forming in my mind, of the scaffold newly erected in the town square, and the macabre scene that will unfold there tomorrow at dawn. I shake my head to clear it and gently lay a hand on Odette’s shoulder. “Just listen to me for a moment,” I say. “Just listen to reason.”

“No!” The Countess’s cold fifteen-year-old face, still clinging to the last traces of childhood, is livid white. “You think you understand everything, but you don’t. You don’t know anything!”

“What don’t I know?”

“You don’t know what I feel like, for one.” She presses a clenched fist to her chest. “You can’t know how safe I felt when I was with him, how together--you have no idea how lonely I am without him, do you? How unbearably alone I feel, how hollow. That’s why I was willing to let him live, don’t you see?” Her voice is full of pleading, but her eyes are not. “I’d rather die by his hand than live another day without him.”

“Odette--”

“No!” She holds up her hands in front of her like a shield, willing me to stop. “I am not going to ‘listen to reason’. I don’t want to understand! It may be my signature on his death sentence, but you’re the one who’s killed him. Damn it!” She pounds her fists into the wall on her way to the door. “Damn it, I loved him! I love him!”

The door slams shut behind her, and the manor is silent.

A few minutes later, she emerges from the door beneath her study window, stumbling out into the night. Snow falls down around her head to join the thick blanket already smothering the garden paths.

As she walks, the Countess leaves a deep trail of footprints in the whiteness. I wonder if the falling snow will swallow them up by morning.

Majesty

2011-09-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

First published in Long Story Short, March 2008.

* * *

I woke up this morning as if from a dream--or a nightmare. Cloud-filtered sunlight fell in a pale ray across my bed, where the fine linen sheets clung to me like spidersilk wrapped around a fly, damp with cold sweat. I sat up and tried to shove them aside with an impatient gesture, but the room seemed to spin around me, and I had to lay down for a moment before trying again.

I still lay here now, almost an hour later. My tongue tastes dry in my mouth, my face is flushed and hot. I image how it will feel to splash it with cool water from the wash basin. It is tormenting to think that the bowl is so close, only a few footsteps away...

But it is more tormenting still to be trapped in bed and not remember why. My coat of arms, painted on the ceiling above my bed, seems to taunt me. What have I done during these past days of madness? It is the same question I always ask myself when I wake up like this, and I have been asking it far too often these past few years. These strange, unpredictable bouts of anger, paranoia, insane fervor become more frequent as I grow older.

What kind of King cannot rule his own mind? What manner of Queen is unable to command her own thoughts?

I sit up again and take a small silver dressing mirror from the tray beside my bed. My reflection is pale and blurry, as though I were looking at myself through a fog. White face with a fevered flush across the cheeks, cracked lips lined in deep-blue, and red, watery eyes with no spark to them. Good. The unnatural clarity of madness is gone.

The knowledge makes my stiff limbs a little less resistant to moving. I drag myself out of bed and to the wash basin, where I carefully scrub a more natural color into my face. I don’t bother calling a servant to help me dress. The royal robes are heavy, but as I wrap their weight around my shoulders, I feel my body strengthen to support it. If only my mind could do the same!

I am not hungry, but I force myself to break my fast with a loaf of white bread. It is bland and dry: I savor every bite. Once fully awakened, dressed and fed, I am a different person. Your Most Wise and Excellent Majesty, I think, bowing to my reflection.

Why, then, does the last word come out as Madness?

I turn to the window. Clouds are gathering in the west, no longer red-tinged by the light of dawn. They are like a white palace, towering insanely over the vast gray sea. That is where the true majesty lies, not in this sad and broken excuse for a monarch.

Someone is rapping at my door. How long has that been going on? How long have I been staring out this window at the clouds and the churning sea below them? “Come in,” I stammer, afraid of what may come through my door, not quite forgetting that whoever is on the other side may be just as afraid of me.

But it is only Pyramon. He, too, looks worn and tired, like a mother kept awake for many nights with a sick child. I feel a pang of guilt at this. Pyramon is as good an advisor as ever a King or Queen could ask for, but sometimes I feel I ask too much of him.

“Well, your majesty?” he asks before even entering the room. The unfinished question hangs heavy in the air between us, like a mass of storm clouds.

“I think so,” I say, sinking into the chair behind my desk. My disjointed memories of these last few weeks are slowly returning to me, and I know that I have become unjustly angry with Pyramon more than once. The knowledge brings a hot flush of shame to my face, but my throat closes around any words of apology.

If Pyramon notices, he is too good a diplomat to show it. “Then I suppose it’s time to give you these,” he says, without missing a beat of our intricate dance. A pile of papers appears before me as he pulls them from a locked drawer in my desk, along with the royal seal and a stick of wax.

“All the difficult cases of the last month,” he says as I scan the top page. “The ones requiring your better judgment. I separated them from the others, as you requested.”

“How were my verdicts on the others?” I ask. It comes as no surprise to me that I fear the answer.

“Completely unimpaired,” Pyramon assures me. He leans against my desk with a sort of casual dignity I could never wish to emulate. “I inspected every one of them myself.”

“And they contain nothing to suggest my...illness?”

He frowns, as if considering the aptness of the word. “Your secret is as safe as ever, your majesty.”

With a small sigh of relief, I turn my full attention to the papers before me. These are the so-called difficult cases--uprisings in the provinces, inheritance battles, marriages to be blessed or annulled, appeals, pardons and other such issues, all of which make my skin crawl to think of the consequences of an irrational verdict. I know my father, similarly afflicted with these moments of madness, would never postpone judgment on a case, no matter what his mental state: I often wonder how he managed. And then, I wonder how my children will manage when I am gone.

“Perhaps I should just dissolve the monarchy,” I mutter under my breath.

Pyramon has been staring out the window at the same clouds that captured my attention earlier. Now he turns to me with a startled look. “Your majesty?”

“What would you say if I turned this country into a Republic?”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “I’d say you were out of your mind, your majesty.”

“Ah, well,” I say with a weak smile. “That’s the point, isn’t it? That a thousand madmen could rule better than one.”

Pyramon clears his throat. It is the signal that passes between us when he feels I am nearing the dangerous boundary.

“I’m sorry,” I sigh, turning once again to the letters. “I’m not serious, Pyramon. It’s just so damn hard sometimes. I’m either sick or waiting to be sick, watching the pendulum swing closer and closer until I can feel it brushing against my skin, and then...” I push my hair back out of my eyes and sigh again. “Where does it all end?”

Pyramon is spared the ordeal of having to answer by a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

The door opens barely a crack, and Chera scuttles into the room like a spider creeping along the wall. The voluminous robes of Court Wizard seem to take up more space than the tiny woman inside them.

“I brought the oil, your majesty,” she says in her raspy little whisper. The words are barely out of her mouth before I grab the glass vial from her skeletal hands. The oil has the foul smell of fish and it tastes hot and slick, but I drink it all in one greedy mouthful. Chera and her fellow wizards swear it will help me manage my thoughts, and that vague promise alone would be enough to make me do anything. Anything to feel like I’m somehow in control of my fate.

The oil leaves its taste in my mouth, thick and choking. I hand the vial back to Chera, who snatches it up in her claws and disappears from the room just as quickly as she came. Pyramon watches her leave with raised eyebrows.

“Does it do any good?” he asks, his eyes still on the door. “Does any of it do any good?”

I shake my head. Who knows? No one can say what tomorrow will bring, not even me. Especially not me.

“Well,” Pyramon says with a shrug. “I’ll just leave you to those for now, shall I?”

Poor man. I know how it feels to want to return power to the one who rightfully owns it. I know how wearying it is to act in a part you weren’t cast for. I nod, and he walks to the door. He is about to leave when his hand pauses on the knob, and he turns back to me.

“Your majesty,” he says haltingly. “I...well...I’m glad to know you’re well again.”

I give him another weak smile. “Is that all?”

“No. I was wondering...how long do you think it will be, before we have to go through this all again?”

The paper feels smooth beneath my fingers, smooth, warm and flowing, like sand slipping through an hourglass. I shrug and raise it to the light from the window. “I don’t know,” I say, choking on the words, sickened by the taste of helplessness.

The door closes with a soft click. Outside, the mass of clouds, the beautiful, majestic, insane palace in the western sky, looks whiter and clearer than ever. I allow my gaze to linger there for a moment before returning to my work.

The letter before me begins, “To Your Most Wise and Excellent Majesty...”

A Choice of Treason

2011-09-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

First published in Rose & Thorn, January 2008.

* * *

My lady Damascena's study feels much colder now than I remember it.

This is not only because the fire in the hearth has been allowed to die, though it has--something that never would have been permitted back before Halion's death. It is late summer, and such things normally would not matter. But the carefully hand-painted wallpaper begins to peel just a little at the corners, and the thinnest layer of dust accumulates on the bookshelves. Disorder, I imagine, draws heat away from the body.

Damascena must be thinking so too, for she shivers and tugs her sleeves down over her bare forearms. Like her study, she has changed since her son's execution. Her once lovely face is now a harsh landscape of angles and shadow. When she speaks, her voice comes as a dry whisper.

"Do you have a plan?"

"Not yet," I say, shifting on my chair to avoid the press of carved walnut against my back. "I need more time. An oath like mine is hard to go back on."

If Damascena were not a Baron and in full possession of the grace that title implies, she may have snorted. Instead, she arches an eyebrow at my words, realizing, perhaps, that she cannot deny their truth. She was at Queen Almea's Naming sixteen years ago: she heard me swear my life to the service and protection of the royal family. She knows better than anyone just how hard a position I have trapped myself in.

“That oath died with the man you swore it to,” she says. “Or did you forget that when you helped my son poison Astrum and Sola? Their daughter is the last obstacle—“

“I swore no oath to you, my lady. Was I released with Halion’s death?” My hand moves to toy with the clasp on my cloak, a nervous habit. “It seems I owe nothing to either side.”

“Then you face a choice of treasons. Will you stand with us, or fall with them?” She looks for a moment as though she will slap my hand away from the clasp. Then, with a sigh, she sinks into the chair behind her desk and begins arranging the brocaded folds of her overdress. “As I was saying, Almea Latarya is the last obstacle to our side: when she is dead, the line will almost certainly be unable to decide on an heir. Power will belong to the people once again.”

"Yes, but I'm not so sure that's what I want anymore," I say. "Things have been simpler since the Republic dissolved. Ever since the rebellion—“

"What?" Damascena’s voice is like a twig snapping: she half-rises out of her chair, eyes contorting hideously. "Will you invalidate the sacrifices of so many, now that it's your turn to do something distasteful?"

"Killing the woman I've sworn to protect is not merely distasteful, my lady."

"Killing that selfish little brat is hardly murder. Do not forget, it is her fault Halion is dead."

"Maybe if Halion had the sense not to be caught with his hand halfway between the King's cup and a vial of poison, he needn't have died." It is cruel of me to say such things to a grieving mother, but I cannot help it.

Damascena's mouth twists as she tries to think of a retort. Her reddened eyes move about the room, finally fixing on an empty patch of wall above my head.

"Do you know what used to be there?"

I shake my head, though in truth, I can remember every detail of this office as it was so many months ago, the night we plotted the King and Queen's assassination.

"It used to be Halion's portrait." Something like a wistful smile crosses Damascena’s lips. "He was such a handsome young man, you remember?"

"Yes," I say, "I do."

The Baron's smile turns to a snarl. "I don't. I can't remember anything of what he looked like. That's why I took the portrait down. You've never lost a child, have you? Then you can't know what it's like to see his face every morning, see all the features perfectly captured in paint, and then to realize just how fast they're fading from your own memory."

"You know I am sorry for your loss, my lady. But you cannot take Almea's life out of revenge for your son's death."

"Yes," she says softly. "I can."

Damascena stands and crossed the room to a large standing chest. She unlocks the top drawer with a key from her belt and pulls out something long and wrapped in velvet. From the way she carries it, I know it must be heavy.

"This is Halion's sword," she says, laying the bundle down on her desk. "I want you to take it. I have asked the People’s Army to gather in the square before the Latarya Palace at dawn tomorrow. Will you lead them?"

I look down at the cloth-wrapped blade. It reminds me of a body covered in its burial shroud. "If I say yes, will you demand I kill Almea?"

"I thought that obvious."

"But surely she would be of more use to you--"

"The only useful Queen," Damascena says with great certainty, "Is a dead one."

What will she do if I refuse? Can she find someone else to shoulder the task? Would she do it herself? At least I can give Almea a clean death, I reflect with a shudder. I pull the cloth away from the sword and wrap my hand around the hilt. A traitor's sword. It fits my hand perfectly.

"It will be as it must be," I say.

Damascena's smile has all the softness of a thorn. It is a horrible thing to see on the face of a woman who has just lost her son. "It will be," she snarls. "May the Peace of the Goddess go with you."

I bow and follow her to the door, Halion's sword a dead weight in my hand.

"Perhaps," I say. "But I sincerely doubt it will."

* * *

It is not yet dawn, but the night sky in late summer has a way of making you forget the darkness. All around me, the city of Viano is alive with the sound of water lapping against stone and the smell of first harvests being shipped out from the harbor. The golden dome of the Great Temple rises out of the canal-fog, ethereal and indistinct. I alone feel substantial, like a living mourner in a graveyard full of ghosts.

I stand on the eastern steps of the Latarya Palace. To either side of me, rows of stone lions stare inwards with cold ruby eyes. They have been silent witness to much, as have I. Together, we watched Astrum and Sola recite the marriage vows on these very steps. We all listened as I swore my oath to serve the Latarya family until death. Three months ago, we heard Damascena’s anguished screams as Halion's life ended in the square below.

Now, they alone will bear witness to my final act of treason.

There are only sixteen steps from the square to the palace door. Just sixteen steps. Only sixteen years since I knelt here and took the vow I am so soon to break. By the Goddess, it feels so much longer than that.

I climb the stairs, Halion's sword pounding against my side with every step, and open the doors at the top. They are not heavy, though they look like they should be, and they are never locked.

The palace is dark inside, but I know my way around. There are few guards: they have all sided with the rebels. Almea is only safe because she is hidden, but like the lions, I have seen all there is to see of this place.

I find the closest staircase and begin climbing. Though it is pitch-black, I know every detail of the paintings along these walls. It is the Latarya family line, from the first King in the days of the Republic down to the last. I feel their eyes following me, accusing. As I pass Astrum and Sola, the sword in my hand becomes so heavy I fear I will drop it.

But I don't.

For the first time in months, I allow myself to wonder just what my foolish pact with Halion has started. I should have known better than to listen to him, the youngest son of wealthy but decadent Barons, but he could be so persuasive when he tried. The picture he had painted, of a world where no man need bow to another or suffer for no more than an accident of birth, had been so beautiful.

His methods were not.

Queen Sola, my patron and friend, died in my arms. While my assassination had been quieter than Halion's, it was far more bloody. I wasn't brave enough--or coward enough--to use poison. The look in Sola's eyes as my dagger pierced her heart is one I can never forget. She had been so beautiful in life, but in death... I would rather face Damascena’s most vicious snarl a thousand times over than the look of betrayal on Sola’s face.

At last, I reach the end of the stairs. A hallway opens off to my left, leading to Almea's old chambers. I know she isn't there tonight. Farther on down the corridor, another lion statue lurks in the shadows: I hid in the alcove behind it while Halion was arrested. If no one has searched it since then, my dagger is there still, stained with Sola’s blood.

The peasants say that men who die with unfinished business are doomed to haunt the living as ghosts. Perhaps they are right, and it is Halion’s ghost that urges me on, when with every step my heart grows heavier.

I clutch the sword with one hand and twist my cloak clasp with the other. Another staircase now, this one blank-walled and drafty. I wonder if it's too late to turn back. But no, already the wind has a taste of morning to it: if I don't kill Almea now, someone else will. And I know Damascena would not rest until my blood is spilled as well.

That does not make it any easier. Nothing will. Yes, Almea is young, and naive, and selfish. Yes, she is unworthy of the throne--but if it hadn't been for us, she would never need to be. If we have a fool for a queen, it is only because we gave her the crown.

So does she really deserve to die? Is death truly the price we must pay for inability to act the part Fate has cast us in? If so, no one is more deserving of execution than I.

Two guards stand near the end of the passageway, still as statues. They bow at the sight of Halion’s sword and step off to either side. As I pass, the one on my left presses a key into my hand.

A pair of stone lions crouch in the alcove beside me, but I know this palace well. When the sound of the guards’ footsteps has faded away, I slip into the narrow space behind the statues and fit the key into a lock.
I push on the door with my fingertips, and it swings open.

The room beyond is black. I grope along the wall beside the door until I find a candle and bit of flint. Lighting a candle single-handed is no easy task, but I manage.

Queen Almea is curled up on a sleeping couch with her back to me, motionless but for the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders. I feel a rush of relief, quickly followed by guilt. How can I strike her down from behind?

How can I strike her down anyway? My whole body begins to shake. Almea, with her clear young face, her night-black hair, the scent of roses clinging to the air around her--she may as well be her mother.

My mind floods with memories I cannot fight. I stand there, tormented, struggling to stay afloat. All I can see is Sola's face as it was the moment before she died, the moment she looked up at her murderer and knew it was me. I hear her dying, and beneath the screams I can hear her daughter's quiet breathing.

And then I hear another mother screaming for her child. I hear Damascena's ragged sobs as the treason charges are read in the square. I feel her struggling to break my grip as I drag her away from the scaffold. I see her standing beside me on the palace stairs, mourning without tears, her eyes as cold and red as the lions' around us.

I raise Halion's sword.

One downward thrust. Just one, and this will all be over. Damascena will have her revenge, the people will have their rule, and no one can ask anything more of me. This is all I have to give.

I turn the point towards my heart.

But no, I must make preparations first. I must explain things to Almea. Sighing, I toss the sword to the floor at my feet and gently wake my Queen.

* * *

The bed is soft, but I refuse to let myself sit down. If I begin to rest, even for a few moments, I know I shall fall asleep, and I need to stay awake. Only for a few moments longer, I must stay awake.

Almea is gone. My hand moves to my neck, to the place where my cloak clasp was less than an hour ago. But the clasp is gone: Almea needed the disguise more than I. What have I to hide from anymore?

Though my arm trembles slightly, it is from pain and not fear. The gash on my wrist has stopped bleeding, and I know my blood has dried on Halion's sword. When Damascena finds it on her doorstep tomorrow, she will not question whether it is mine or Almea's. She, who has questioned so much, will not question that.

I what Almea will do after she delivers my message. She will leave Viano, of course, but where is there for her to go? What will she do, now that she has lost the only home she has ever known?

I shouldn't think about it. I shouldn't think about anything. Dawn is nearly here: there is a small window beside the bed, and it faces east. East, towards the sunrise: east, towards the square. The army is gathering. Sunlight glints off their drawn swords, staining them with red.

I watch. Watch the sun rise over the golden dome and the ragged palace skyline, watch the army gather and mill about. I watch a shadow dip between two buildings in the distance, and though it is a long way off, I imagine I can see the detail of my cloak clasp.

I close my eyes, and smell the air of a late summer's dawn.

I wait.

Subtle Poisons

2011-09-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

First published in Quantum Kiss, November 2008.

* * *

In my dream, it is raining. Rain sweeps through the ruins of the Aktun, pools over broken paving stones, runs in sheets down skeletal roofs.

A woman kneels in the water. Her hair drips in a black curtain around her face; cold digs into her skin like icy fingers. She bends over something in her cupped hands, sheltering it with her body. Every rigid muscle says this thing, this precious treasure must not get wet.

I am a poisoner, and I know that what she holds is poison.

I stand over her, and the drops pelting me are like heavy, ice-cold pebbles. Between the two of us, we can keep it from the rain. I cannot protect it from her tears.

* * *

“No rain tonight,” Sacnite said, her sand-colored eyes reflecting the clear blue of the sky. They were wide and heavy-lidded, with a slow way of moving that should have made her look dull. It didn’t.

“Were you expecting it?” I asked. My left hand tangled through her oil-black hair as it blanketed the lap of my gown; my right floated on the surface of the courtyard pool beside me. The water felt slimy beneath its film of dust. “Or do you have plans that you don’t want interrupted?”

She lifted my hand out of the water, tracing the wizard’s brand on its back with an almost prayerful look. Despite her sharp natural bent, she’d never accepted training in magic; the scars webbing her hands came from other, less mentionable duties. “Plans,” she said. “Ones that wouldn’t take kindly to the rain. Though I’m surprised at you, darling. You should at least have a guess at what I’m up to; you’re Balme’s poisoner.”

“You’re his genius. He hasn’t told me anything since you came here.”

Sacnite laughed and turned her head to kiss my thigh. “Do you blame him? You’re sleeping with his wife.”

I winced at the lightness in her voice—it had taken me months to admit that I was in love with her, even to myself. Still, she could afford to be flippant. If we were caught, she wouldn’t be the one burned for treason.

As if she sensed my thoughts, Sacnite reached up and lay a comforting hand against my cheek. “You’re also his executioner,” she said. “Are you worried about being asked to kill yourself?”

“Stop it.” I brushed her hand away. “I know we’ve been here too long when you start turning vulgar.”

“I started being vulgar about three hours ago.”

The huskiness in her voice had nothing to do with desire. She was teasing me, mimicking the accent of the Aktun, the slum where we had both been born and raised. My magical bent had brought me to the Chumuk when I was fifteen; Sacnite’s cleverness and subtle, dusky beauty made her Ajaw Balme’s wife at twenty. Our origin was one of few things—aside from a calculating nature and a penchant for female lovers—that we had in common.

“Ixės?”

I started and nearly leapt to my feet, much to Sacnite’s amusement. It was only Muwen, her lady’s maid, and an accomplice to both of us in this affair. “What is it, lovely?” Sacnite asked, her voice a satisfied drawl.

“Ajaw Balme is asking to see you. Both of you.”

“Does this have something to do with your ‘plans,’ sweetheart?” I asked, catching the raise of Sacnite’s elegant eyebrows.

“Most likely. Muwen, take Ximara first. It wouldn’t do to let Balme know she’s been visiting my courtyard.”

Though her face remained composed, I saw the slightest twitch in Muwen’s coral-colored lips. Not for the first time, I wondered how often the courtyard provided a setting for Sacnite and Balme’s romantic exploits…and pushed the thought aside with a shudder.

“Come on, Ix Poisoner,” Muwen said, helping me to my feet.

I paused as she lead me through the Serpent Gate. In the courtyard behind us, Sacnite smiled to herself and lifted a handful of water from the pool. It ran through her fingers, beading in the reddish dust like drops of blood.

* * *

“So what is Sacnite planning to do?”

I shrugged and leaned against a cool limestone pillar. We were meeting in the Hall of Feathers, a dark, six-sided chamber deep in the bowels of the Chumuk. Balme claimed it was the oldest part of the palace, but I had my doubts. Not that the Hall was old—even without the crumbling ceiling and moss-stained walls, the intricate architecture alone made it several centuries out of date. But I doubted it had been built as part of the Chumuk.

“I don’t know,” I said, turned my attention back to Muwen. “Sacnite never tells me her plans.”

“And yet you trust her with your life.”

The bitterness in her usually fluid voice caught me off guard. I wondered who it was meant to condemn—me, or Sacnite. “I trust you with my life, too,” I said. Muwen shrugged, her face shadowed. I narrowed my eyes. “You forget your place.”

The first time I met Sacnite, it had been in this hall. I smiled in spite of myself, looking up at the Jaguar Throne where she’d stood, remembering the play of torchlight across her honey-golden skin. It was an effect we had never managed, in her sun-drenched courtyard, to mimic satisfactorily.

It was strange to see the hall so empty, to be the only one bowing as Balme entered, Sacnite on his arm. I felt the warmth of my hair falling around my shoulders, a gnawing reminder that I hadn’t asked Muwen to replait it. Ah, well. It wouldn’t be the first time I had met privately with Ajaw Balme, Sacnite’s touch still palpable on my body.

“Ix Poisoner.” Balme’s low voice echoed in the dimness. When Muwen used the greeting, it was only to tease; I hadn’t yet determined how many of Balme’s mannerisms were mockery.

“Present as commanded,” I said. That was mockery. I heard Muwen choke back a laugh.

“I’m glad to see Muwen found you. My wife…” He paused to place a kiss on Sacnite’s palm, as if I needed reminding of who his wife was. “Sacnite thinks she knows how to win the Bone Crown from Ajaw Sasil, and I need to know if her plan is feasible.”

I raised my eyebrows at Sacnite, but either she ignored me purposely or it was too dark for her to notice. For the past seven years of my life, I’d been little more than a tool in Balme’s hands as he steadily climbed to the top ranks of the Chumuk. The Bone Crown would lift him out of the Chumuk and the world of wizard’s squabbling entirely. It would also make Sacnite a Queen.

I wondered what the sentence would be for adultery with a Queen, and pushed the thought aside with a wince. “I can only help you if her plan involves poison.”

“It does,” Sacnite said. It was her court voice, high and sharp. “A rather large amount.”

Balme shrugged. “Enough to poison every cistern in the Chumuk.”

At least that explained her interest in rain. “It wouldn’t be too difficult,” I said. “If the drought continues, there’ll be so little water left that I could taint each cistern with a sprig of poison manioc. Muwen and I could accomplish it in one night.”

Muwen stiffened beside me, but I ignored it. She couldn’t have expected to sit in on a conference with Balme and not be drawn into his scheming.

“But the obvious problem, Ajaw, would be finding water for ourselves.”

“I don’t plan on turning the cisterns lethal, Ximara. Use only enough poison that your victims will sicken, and you can eliminate the worst of them however you see fit.”

His tone, every bit as flippant as Sacnite’s, was enough to make me consider slipping manioc in his next drink. “And if I’d rather not sicken, Ajaw?”

“Don’t drink the water.” He smiled again, showing a row of teeth as straight as paving stones, and kissed Sacnite on the cheek. The expression of pride on his face, like a parrot-trainer whose prize bird had learned to sing on command, made my gut feel like boiling oil. “Are you free tomorrow, Ix Poisoner?”

“At your command.”

“Good. I want you to go down to the manioc fields—gather what you need.” His hand moved to stroke Sacnite’s hair. “I have asked my wife to meet you there. Clean air would be good for her health.”

If he cared about Sacnite’s health, Balme wouldn’t have kept her like snake in a too-small jar. But before I could wonder what he was playing at, I saw the glimmer in those sand colored eyes, and began to wonder what she was playing at.

It was a much greater danger.

* * *

I left for the manioc fields early the next morning, when even the Aktun still slept and only the most rustic farmers were at work. I enjoyed the freedom outside the Chumuk, the escape from wizard’s brands and jade-and-obsidian hair beads and the overwhelming smell of musk. In place of my usual fine linen gown, I wore a slack cotton tunic trimmed with ribbon. Even my hair was loose, smelling of sun rather than oil and amber.

I found the northern edge of the field, the dry stretch of land that ostensibly belonged to the Chumuk. One of the farmers looked up as I passed.

“Good morning, sister!” he called.

“Good morning,” I said. His eyes widened, and I realized, stupidly, how my voice must sound to him. Like all the wizards trained at the Chumuk, I’d controlled my speech so rigidly and for so long that I couldn’t have mimicked the deep, rumbling accent of the Aktun if I’d tried. For the first time, I wondered if even Sacnite could have returned to her childhood tongue with enough ease to fool the manioc farmers.

As I knelt on the cracked earth and began to pluck the fingered manioc leaves, I continued to watch the farmers move through their fields. Their efficient movements and plain, unexpressive faces reminded me intensely of Muwen. Though their coloring was the same as Sacnite’s—smooth and golden, rather than the rich, chocolate duskiness of Muwen’s skin—their thin lips and hard eyes were nothing like my lover’s.

And yet, I thought as I shook dust from my basket, it would be wrong to call Muwen plain. Her face, like everything else about her, was efficient—each feature just as large as it needed to be, a delicate balance between bone and flesh. I guessed her to be around nineteen years old, still young enough to be pretty without needing to work at it.

“What are you thinking about, darling?”

Sacnite’s voice. I looked up to see her standing in the vacant stalks of manioc, skin gleaming in the sunlight, and wondered why I was thinking about Muwen in the first place.

“You should wear your hair loose more often,” I said. She laughed and brushed its silken weight back behind her shoulders.

“You should be thinking about how to finish off those Chumuk bastards once they’ve succumbed to manioc.” A sudden chill ran down my back as she knelt behind me, blocking the sun. “Balme says the magic wouldn’t be a challenge for you, lovely, but I’m not so certain.”

When it came to magic, her raw strength far exceeded mine. We both knew it. If she had received training as a child, Balme would almost certainly be dismissing me as redundant. But she hadn’t, and he wasn’t, and I knew it rankled her like a poisoned wound.

I felt her arms twine around me, and the warmth of her breath in my hair. “Come on, darling. You have enough leaves to murder every wizard from here to Uxmalé.” She stood and tugged me gently to my feet.

“Where are we going?”

She took my hand and pulled me down the rows of manioc leaves, towards the arching emerald roof of the forest. “I was going to talk politics with you, actually, but I find myself distracted.” Once we were far enough in that no one could see us from the manioc fields, she found a clearing filled with leaves and soft grass and knelt, pulling me down after her. “Besides, you’ve never had a head for intrigue.”

That’s not true, I thought as she tugged me towards a pile of leaves and pushed me down on my back. Her long-fingered hands made quick work of my tunic’s laces. I did have a head for intrigue—once.

Sacnite knelt over me, sliding out of her own robe like a snake shedding its skin. Her lips and tongue were hot against my body, tracing a line down my throat and across my breasts, leaving a cochineal-stained path like the mark of a knife against my smooth flesh. Her own chest and back were mottled with scars. It was the reason, she told me once, that she only dueled with obsidian blades.

Obsidian doesn’t scar, she’d said, raising my own branded fingers to a deep gash along her shoulder. I reached for it now, opening cuts on her back with my nails. I knew it hurt her, just as she’d known her words would hurt me.

“I used to be his poisoner,” I whispered, hardly knowing I said it, as her firm weight pressed down on my stomach.

“You used to be his genius, until I came.” A fleeting kiss; her mouth was bitter as manioc. “Come on, darling. Leave the thinking to those who can.”

Her hands spiraled downward, tracing patterns across my thighs.

“At your command,” I gasped, and did.

* * *

“He wants us to do it tonight,” Muwen said. Her lips formed each word like a mason’s chisel, slow and precise. I wondered how, just the day before, I could have thought her plain.

“Good,” I said. “I’m ready.”

We sat on the steps of the bathing pool in the Courtyard of the Moon. The water, shallow and warm as metal, lapped around our legs with each passing breeze.

Muwen ran a comb through her hair, making it smooth and manageable before she braided it with amber beads. “I’m not,” she said. “And I’m sick of doing things I’m not ready to do."

“Such as?”

“Such as hiding your affair from Ajaw Balme.” Nothing changed in her face; it didn’t need to. All the poison was in her voice. “If it’s discovered, I could be burned right along with you, Ixė. It isn’t worth it.”

I frowned and slipped down further into the pool. I wanted, so badly that I could taste it, to tell Muwen she was wrong, that it was worth it; but I couldn’t. Not yet.

“As soon as this is over, I’m leaving for Uxmalė,” she continued. “I was wondering…I thought you might like to go with me.”

“What?” I turned to her so fast, I sprayed water up around us. “Why would I?”

Muwen’s skin was too dark to show a blush. “I don’t know. I just thought that maybe you had better things to do than burn on the steps of the Tėmple.”

“No one’s discovered our affair so far,” I said, fighting to keep my voice low. “What makes you think they’ll discover it now?”

“You’re not stupid, Ximara, no matter what Ix Sacnite says. I’m not talking about your affair.”

“Then I think I am that stupid, because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Muwen made a show of checking for eavesdroppers. It was the first inefficient thing I had ever seen her do, and it chilled me like a downpour of cold rain. “Ix Sacnite plans on assassinating Ajaw Balme the moment he takes the Bone Crown.”

“No.” I gaped idiotically. Not only would such an act be heresy; it would also be damnably stupid. “She couldn’t expect to get away with it.”

“She does, but I don’t. If I stay here any longer, the best I can hope for is that someone kills Sacnite before she gets us all executed.” She tossed her comb aside in disgust. “And unless you want to be the hand behind those executions, you should think about leaving, too.”

I covered my mouth with both hands, afraid of speaking, afraid of what I might hear myself say. The water suddenly seemed a thousand times colder. I was reminded, vividly, of the rain in my dream.

I had been the woman, I realized. The poison was mine.

But what had I intended to do with it?

“I can’t leave,” I said, surprised at the sound of my voice. I didn’t remember taking my hands from my mouth. “I couldn’t live without Sacnite. I love her.”

Muwen shook her head, her dark eyes creased at the corners. “She doesn’t love you, Ixė.”

I scowled and pulled myself up out of the pool. A pile of fresh linen towels lay at the foot of a pillar; I wrapped one around my shoulders and used another to dab at my hair. “Once again,” I said, “you forget your place.”

“But I know yours; in Sacnite’s bed.” Muwen leapt to her feet, coming over to take me by the shoulders. To my surprise, tears rimmed her eyes. Her voice cracked as she spoke. “Tell me, Ximara, when did Balme’s genius become a whore?”

I stepped back as if she had slapped me. Not because of her words; I knew she didn’t mean them, knew the anger was only a mask for what she was truly feeling. I stepped back from the intensity of her gaze, from the way her grip on my shoulders was almost—would become, if I allowed it to—a caress.

“How long, Muwen?”

“How long have I loved you?” She covered her face with her hands and turned away from me. “Does it matter? You don’t care.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“No; you didn’t.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Sacnite would have. And if that isn’t reason enough for you to leave her, nothing I can say will change your mind.”

I wanted to apologize, to be gentle, but I had lost the right to the moment I flinched from her touch. I pulled my gown on with shaking hands and left her alone in the courtyard.

* * *

“You’re not going tonight.”

“What?”

“Our plan was betrayed. Ajaw Sasil saw you in the manioc fields, Ximara.” Sacnite shifted her grip on my shoulders, pressing me harder against the corridor wall. Anger etched lines across her face like a new web of scars. “He told Balme I have until tonight to get out of the Chumuk, and I am not leaving alone.”

She made as if to drag me down the hall, but I stood firm. “Sacnite.”

The look she gave me was nearly a snarl.

“Do they know my name?”

“Fool. Of course they don’t.” She dug her nails into my wrist. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“If I’m not in danger, there’s no reason for me to leave with you.” I twisted out of her grip, running a thread of magic through the motion. She leapt back with a cry of pain, staring at her burned fingers. “I know what you planned for Balme, Sacnite. Why should I expect you to treat me any better?”

“Because, sweetheart, you’re useless.” Her own magic engulfed me, heavy and dry like a cloud of sand. I tried to fight it, but it dragged me to her, clouding my senses until my mind didn’t know why I was fighting her in the first place. “I have no reason to kill you. Now come back to my rooms, darling; I have arrangements to make.”

Sacnite’s magic tightened like chains around my wrists, forcing me to follow her through the halls of the Chumuk. It wasn’t a trained working, but the brutal strength of her natural bent took direction from her anger. I tried every spell I knew to break the effects of another’s magic; nothing worked.

“You can’t fight me,” Sacnite said, “because you don’t want to fight me.” We were at the door of her chambers; she opened it with a push from her fingertips.

As we stepped into her rooms, the magic seemed to fall away. I could still feel it, a pulsing like the echo of my heartbeat, but it wasn’t brutal or angry any longer. I couldn’t imagine why I had been frightened by it, much less why I had been fighting Sacnite.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked, glancing around the room. There was very little we could manage to take with us.

She turned to me, surprise etched in the raise of her eyebrows. She no longer looked angry; she seemed exhausted, like a slab of forest limestone broken by the roots of some gigantic tree.

“Sweetheart,” she sighed, wrapping her arms around my neck. I returned the embrace. “Come on. We’ve a few hours left. Let’s have one last time in the courtyard.”

She lead me through the Serpent Gate, to the low shelter in the middle of her garden. The thatch roof covered a mound of cushions and soft rugs. She pushed me down, knelt beside me, and began to loosen the beads from my hair.

“I’m going to miss this,” she whispered, her breath hot against my cheek. I rolled the delicate fabric of her bodice down around her waist and kissed the scars on her golden skin, starting at her collarbone, moving up along and her neck and biting gently, teasing with my lips and teeth.

She laughed throatily; I could feel it through my caress. She took my shoulders and pushed me flat against the cushions. The few beads still remaining in my hair jingled as they rolled down and along the pavement. Sacnite kissed my cheek and whispered harshly in my ear.

“Who told you about Balme, darling?”

“Wha—what?”

“Try for a moment to think about something more important than yourself.” She pulled away, disgust imprinted in the narrowing of her eyes. “Who told you what I planned for Balme, slut?”

Something cracked like a whip through my chest, and the veil fell away from Sacnite’s magic. I could feel her spell like a shard of glass in my mind, numbing my reason, telling me I wanted nothing but Sacnite’s touch, nothing but to make her happy. “You—”

“Be quiet for a moment.” She raised her hand to my throat in a touch that was almost a caress—until I felt a sharp prick, the touch of an obsidian blade. “You have two choices, Ix Ximara. You can tell me who’s been betraying my confidence, so I can kill the fool and the two of us can vanish back into the Aktun. Or you can die.” She raised her eyebrows, a mockery of her elegant expression. “To be honest, I don’t have a preference.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I tried to keep the tears out of my voice and failed.

“I’m ambitious, darling. Like every damn wizard in this place. Like you used to be, before my pretty eyes turned you into a blundering idiot.”

Maybe I was, I thought. Maybe I used to be every bit as grasping and false as you are. But I never would have hurt the woman I loved—or the woman who loved me.

Muwen.

“Where’s Muwen?” I hissed, barely moving my mouth for fear of the knife at my throat. “What did you do to her, Sacnite?”

“Muwen? Nothing. Simply said I wanted some time alone with you.” She pressed one finger along my cheek, digging the nail deep into my skin. “And you know what? She seemed almost upset. Almost…jealous.” That was mockery in her voice, not concern. Sacnite couldn’t imagine I would ever betray her—and she was right.

Almost.

I screamed.

Sacnite brought her knife down, hard, but I’d already slipped a hand up by the blade, and I managed to take the force of the blow across my palm. Blood spurted, making her grip on the handle slippery and uncertain. One swipe of my magic sent the knife flying across the courtyard.

“Bitch!” Sacnite slapped me across the face. I screamed again, focusing all the power into making that sound heard across the Chumuk.

Someone would come. Someone had to come.

I rolled out from beneath Sacnite’s body, pressing on my injured palm with the fingers of my other hand to slow the bleeding. The cut throbbed strangely, and I wondered if the blade had been poisoned.

A blow from behind stuck me down as I crawled toward the pool. I turned, but Sacnite hadn’t moved from her place beneath the canopy. The blow came from her magic.

“Help!” I cried again, covering my head with my arms, as if a mere physical shield would protect me. Sacnite’s next strike felt like obsidian shards driving into every inch of my skin.

“What’s happening here?”

Balme’s low voice, as welcome as rain in a drought. Sacnite’s magic vanished, leaving a cold emptiness in its wake. I pulled myself up into a crouch and turned to see Sacnite standing in the shelter, arms folded serenely across her bare chest. She had hidden the knife; my blood was the only trace of our fight, dark and sticky against her skin.

“Husband,” she said. “Ix Ximara attempted to seduce me. I acted in self defense.”

Balme gave a characteristic shrug, a light lifting of his cloaked shoulders, and turned to me. “Is this true?”

He couldn’t believe it. Not with the way Sacnite stood, her exposed body a challenge rather than a weakness. Not with the firm harshness in her voice. She didn’t look, or sound, like a woman who had just been attacked.

But if she had come to me willingly…

“Ajaw,” I said, “I know the laws. I know a married woman cannot be executed for committing adultery—”

“This isn’t a matter of adultery,” he interrupted. “Sleeping with the wife of your lord is treason, Ixė.”

“I know. But so is poisoning the wells of the Chumuk.”

For the first time in my life, I saw Ajaw Balme’s face go dark with anger. “Your attempts at cleverness grow tiresome.”

“And her attempts at power don’t?” I stood and pointed to Sacnite, dripping blood from my hand onto the paving stones. At least the gushing had slowed. I told myself to be grateful for small favors. “She was willing to kill you, Ajaw.”

“Which is why she will be returning to the gutter where I found her.” He stepped closer, blocking my view of Sacnite’s face, and took my chin in one hand. “But I won’t let you execute her, Ximara.”

“Am I expected to execute myself?”

Behind me, someone gasped. I turned to see Muwen standing in the Serpent Gate, both hands clutching the stone pillars as though they were the only things keeping her up. “No,” she said, her flat voice at odds with her expression. “Ximara, you don’t have to take the blame for this.”

“What do you mean?”

She ignored my question and kept her eyes on Ajaw Balme. “When Ximara asked me to, I introduced her to Ix Sacnite, knowing full well your wife’s…inclinations. I would have been surprised if she hadn’t attempted to seduce your poisoner, Ajaw. It’s clear she only married you out of a gutter rat’s ambitions.”

Muwen was trying to anger Balme, I realized. Every trace of Sacnite’s sweet-speaking lady’s maid was gone. “You can hardly blame Ximara for falling to your wife’s obvious—though poisonous—charm. If you need someone to punish for this whole squalid affair…” She shrugged, emphasizing the submissive spread of her arms.

“No!” I would not allow Muwen’s love for me to become her undoing. “Ajaw, please. It is my transgression, and I will pay for it.”

“With your death?”

“If that is your command.”

He released my jaw, flinging me towards the gate where Muwen stood. “It is.”

“Use manioc.” I hardly recognized Sacnite’s voice; it held all the bitter harshness of the Aktun, and more besides. “We certainly have enough.”

I bowed to her, putting into the motion all the mockery I couldn’t fit in my voice. “At your command, Ixė.”

Muwen clutched at my arm as I walked past her, but I shrugged her off. The manioc leaves sat in a basket at the foot of Sacnite’s bed. I grabbed a handful, stuffed them into the pouch at my waist, and left the shadows of the Chumuk.

Outside, the sky became a deep, sickly gray. As I followed the path to the Aktun, it began to rain.

* * *

So this was what my dream had been trying to tell me.

I steered away from the inhabited parts of the Aktun, the teahouses and brothels and gambling houses. Drought and disease had left more than half of it uninhabited, and it wasn’t hard to find an empty courtyard where I wouldn’t be interrupted.

I knelt on the broken paving stones, shivering as the water soaked into my skirt. I took the poison from its pouch and held it cupped in my hands, close to my chest where it was protected from the rain. The virtue of manioc poison goes into any water it touches, leaving the leaf worthless. Like the woman from my dream, I could not let it become wet.

You don’t have to do this. The voice in my head sounded curiously like Muwen’s. I imagined her, the look on her smooth, stone-like face as she tried to convince me. Neither Balme nor Sacnite would have any way of knowing if I survived, and as for my own honor…well, I had precious little of that left.

But I also had precious little left to live for.

Muwen was right; Sacnite didn’t love me, and she probably never had. I would find no help in that direction. My only skills came from my training at the Chumuk, and I knew poisoning and court wizardry would be useless in the Aktun. The only work open to me in the slum would be prostitution—to become a whore, as Sacnite had been, and hope a man or woman with influence would find me and want me for more than my body. It was a bleak, hopeless future, and I knew I couldn’t face it.

“Ximara!”

Water splashed up around me as someone ran across the courtyard. I clutched the manioc tighter and turned in the direction of the sound.

It was Muwen.

“Put it down, Ximara,” she said, kneeling down beside me. Her body sheltered my hands, so I could ease my grip on the poison. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Can you offer me an alternative?” I winced from the sound of my voice; it was just like Sacnite’s.

“A thousand alternatives.”

Tears I was too weak to hold back began to mingle with the rain on my cheeks. “Give me one.”

“At your command.” She dried my face with the back of her hand, brushing carefully at the scratches Sacnite’s nails had left. “Rain.”

“Rain?” I snorted.

“Yes. Instead of killing yourself, you could stay here in the rain. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? And it makes your hair look like obsidian, glossy and iridescent.”

“What are you, a poet now?” No matter how hard I tried, the words didn’t sound cruel. Muwen smiled, catching the hint of teasing laughter in my voice.

“And there’s more. Water-lilies, for example. You told me once that there were men who could make poison from water-lily bulbs, but you never learned how.”

I remembered telling her that story, as we sat at the edge of the pool in the Courtyard of the Moon. “Muwen…”

“And there’s this.”

Gently, as though trying to touch a butterfly’s wings without startling it, she took my face in both hands and leaned over to kiss me.

Her hold on me was loose, her kiss unhurried, allowing me to pull away if I wished. I didn’t wish to. Her mouth moved deliberately, but with no trace of Sacnite’s forcefulness. I reached out to pull her closer, tasting the rain on her lips, twining my fingers in her wet hair.

Water rushed over my palm. The motion reopened the cut on my hand, and a dark mix of blood and rainwater soaked into the manioc leaves. Lost in Muwen’s caress, I barely noticed when the poison dropped from my hand.

By the time I ended our kiss, the rain had lessened to a soft mist clouding the world around us, tinged honey-gold along the eastern horizon. Muwen took my hands and raised them to her lips, kissing the tip of each finger. “Come to Uxmalé with me, Ximara.”

“What will we do there?”

“I have no idea.” She smiled, her lips wavering as though she struggled to hold back laugher. “I hear it’s a wizard city. You and I could make a living selling poison—or antidotes. Those would be in even higher demand. Or we could start a school, teaching children how to use their magical bent before they lose everything but their ambitions. Whatever you want to do, Ximara, I’ll do it. Just come with me.”

“Is that your command?”

“No,” she said. “Only a wish.”

I pressed my hands to hers, then rose and glanced around the ruins. There, the pink-tinged path beyond the northern arch—it would lead us to Uxmalé.

“I’ll come,” I said. She smiled and kissed me again.

Hand in hand, we set off into the rain.

The Minotaur's Wife

2011-09-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

First published in Semaphore, December 2010.

* * *

I think it is fair to say that when you saw me for the first time, small and thin for my age and unimposing in a poppy-colored wedding gown, you thought you knew precisely what you were getting. You knew my brother—knew him too well, the rumors said—and at seventeen, I was much like Sphairos to look at, too pale, too skinny, my dark hair dry and thin. But you thought I had my brother's thoughts as well, spidery and tangled and poppy-colored, and in that, my husband, you were quite wrong.

I, too, thought I knew you on that pale blue morning thirty years ago. You were no beauty, your skin as brown as a dock-slave's, your nose long and narrow, your hair slicked out of the way with sickly-sweet oil. You were younger than I had expected—twenty-six, twenty-eight at the most—but cruel for all that, biting Sphairos's lip when he gave you the greeting kiss, looking me over with your wide brown eyes and saying, with no trace of desire or satisfaction, "It will do." I accepted your cruelty; girls who marry to settle their brothers' debts can hardly expect angels. But I had hoped, with a girl-woman's vanity, that I could also claim your desire.

When the ceremony was over, we walked briskly down the temple steps to your waiting carriage, its black door stamped with a golden bull's head. You held the door open as I dragged myself gracelessly into the purple plush interior, then followed with an odd wariness, as though I were some strange dog crouched in your path.

"Are you fully aware," you asked, "of the reason I asked Sphairos for your hand?"

There it was, I thought: the consummate business-man, the poppy-baron of Sarangay. I smiled my sweetest smile. "Because you clearly have no desire for the rest of me," I said.

It was the only time you ever struck me; a soft touch on my cheek with the tips of your fingers. I returned it with my open palm, hard enough to make you wince.

You pulled something from your waistcoat pocket. I tensed, half-expected a dagger or a tiny pistol, but it was only a scrap of newspaper.

Priam, poppy-baron of Marathon, hung at Antigone Springs prison, I read. There was a picture of a well-built man in a blindfold, his hands bound behind his back. "That could be me in a month or two," you said. "A bachelor opium dealer on his way to the gallows. But my solicitor found a most convenient law on the last congress's books; a man cannot be executed if he has one or more dependents." You dipped your head at me, neither a bow nor a nod, but something of both. "That would be you, Naxos."

"Your dependent," I said. Disappointment made my tongue dry, my lips heavy. "Your ticket out of a noose. How disagreeable."

"I thought you might find it flattering."

I could not tell, then or in all the long years that followed, if you were making a joke.

* * *

I would be lying, my husband, if I said those first hours as man and wife were anything but a disappointment. Your house was fine and large but half-unfinished, your gardens exquisite but only a thin mask for the poppy fields inside. Your library covered three stories but was nothing but plays and old poetry, no trace of history or architecture or law, not even a volume of botany. Stories were your vice, you told me later; your money went to tracking down more volumes and commissioning new ones before anything else, even furnishing your home.

The biggest disappointment, of course, was our wedding night. I knew from the beginning that you did not desire me; I have never told you how much I desired you. Even knowing, knowing you as I do, I imagine the feel of your red lips under mine, imagine biting them, imagine catching your whimpers in my open mouth. I imagine your hair against a white pillow, imagine seeing my reflection in your brown eyes made soft by need. These are fruitless imaginings in a woman who will be ancient before she sees you again. I should not need to tell you how they were for a girl of seventeen.

I did not come wholly unprepared to your bed. My elder sisters had helped me weave a gown of black lace and silk, and Sphairos gave me a bottle of amber scent to wear on my wrists. You must admit, my husband, that I was beautiful when I came to the door of your bedchamber and knocked a sweet tattoo on your door.

"What?" you demanded, flinging it open. You were nude to the waist, your dark skin gleaming in the candlelight, your hair, free of the oil that had slicked it back, tumbling around your shoulders in soft waves. You were no beauty, but you were the Minotaur, the poppy-baron of Sarangay, and I would give as much to taste the hollow of your neck as my brother would give for his next draw of opium.

But I saw the shock on your face, the flicker of disgust you were not quick enough to hide, and over your bare shoulder I saw Stephanos, the manservant, reclining on your bed, and despite the damp heat of the corridor I shivered in my black lace gown.

"Ah," you said, your eyes bright with mockery. "There's more where he came from, my lady. Help yourself."

And you slammed the door in my face.

* * *

Do not think I dwell needlessly on these disappointments, my husband. They were far from my mind these last fifteen years, lost in the smell of wallpaper paste, the soft scuffle of furniture legs on new carpet, the color of sunlight in a poppy's petal. In spite of who I am, in spite of who you are, I have learned to be happy.

But in those first years, caged in an empty stone house between the poppy beds and the sea, I thought ceaselessly of my own misfortune. You were hardly to blame for these thoughts, locked away in the mountain cells—little better than caves—at Antigone Springs. It is not as though I expected you to write me love letters, or to have made plans for my entertainment while you were in prison. But it would be wrong to absolve you utterly of my unhappiness while I lived—orphaned, friendless, virgin—beneath your roof.

You were arrested nine days after our wedding. It came as a surprise to me, but I suppose you had been expecting it all along—the dirty uniforms and rifle barrels, the cold eyes, the huge hands, the pain in the side of your head when the gun knocked you to the floor. I screamed and clawed at them, bridal instinct rushing to your defense when personal affection would not. They pushed me onto the floor beside you. One of them spat on me and stepped on my fingers on his way out the door.

I served my purpose; you were not hung, though from what I have learned since of Antigone Springs—the experiments, the beatings, the rapes—I doubt you were grateful during the fifteen years of your sentence. I should not have pitied you, for you were undoubtedly guilty of every crime they charge you with, and more besides. But I did pity you. Even then.

* * *

Selene was the first one to come after your arrest. I do not know if she was so stupid that she did not hear of it, or so addicted that she did not care. The servants told me she was waiting in the conservatory, one of the few rooms you had bothered to furnish, with its heavy dripping trees and cushion-mounded divans and pools of sparkling golden fish. Selene looked like one of those fish, liver-yellowed and glittering with jewels.

"Who are you?" she demanded, looking me over as you had—appraisingly.

I offered her my hand. "I am the Minotaur's wife," I said.

(Would you believe, during those first years, I had no other name for you? Even in my fantasies, when I whispered into my pillow and imagined you moaning my name.)

"Your husband has some things for me," she said. She did not take my hand.

It was this insolence that made me decide to give her not the truth—that you were in prison, and that I knew less than nothing of your business arrangements—but exactly what she was looking for.

When I was a young girl, I kept a sort of journal in a blank book my eldest sister had bound for me, and I hid the journal in a locked drawer of our grandfather's desk. Sphairos taught me to hollow the margins of a book to hide the drawer's key. The trick, which you had not learned, is to put the book somewhere inconspicuous; for example, on the shelves of a library. Not on top of the desk which the key opens.

Your lack of guile in this regard made if very simple for me to find your records book, to find Selene's name and see that she had purchased a fifth of your crop for seven hundred drachmae. I noted the sum, returned the book and key to their hiding places, and rejoined Selene in the conservatory.

"I will send the servants with the poppy tears as soon as the flowers are ready," I said, "and not before I receive payment. My husband's records show that you still owe us fourteen hundred drachmae."

"Fourteen hundred drachmae!" she shrieked. "You'd be lucky to get half that, with most of your clients too scared to leave the shadows."

"Indeed, lack of customers drives me to raise the price for the ones we retain. We must keep the farming worth our while." I folded my arms across my chest. "Of course, you may buy the poppy elsewhere, but I fear getting in touch with Priam of Marathon is not as easy as it used to be."

Her colored deepened a horrid wash of red and yellow fighting on her cheeks. "Bitch," she spat. I smiled my sweetest smile. And in the end, she paid.

* * *

It is not easy, being the Minotaur. Your clients are by definition desperate men, and desperate men do foolish things. The law fears and hates you, and your solicitors must be both well-paid and bound to you with blood. And there is the poppy itself, threatened by heat and drought and lack of sunlight. They ask you how you sleep at night, those virtuously superior moralists, but they could not in a thousand years imagine the exhaustion in your bones at the end of the day, the quick and poppy-scented kiss that welcomes you out of consciousness.

I told you that I spent those years in disappointment and loneliness. That is true, but it does not mean I was entirely unhappy. I became good at being the Minotaur, and so I came to enjoy it, to embrace the secrets and the bargaining and the creamy pages of your records book, to find satisfaction in orange petals and tiny black seeds. It was not what I had dreamed of when I was a child scribbling in my sister's book, but for better or worse, it was my life.

And then you came back, fifteen years and three months after I watched you led out the door in chains. Your hair was streaked with gray, your long nose faintly crooked, your brown eyes webbed 'round with thin lines. There were other scars, too, that I did not see but that Stephanos told me about in horrified whispers. But you were still strong, still proud, still the Minotaur.

You came up behind me as I worked at the desk in your study, writing letters to the railroad barons around Lake Argos. You lay a hand on the paper in front of me, stopping my pen. "Boats are cheaper," you said. "I knew a woman some years back in Ptolemy; she might still have a fleet. Let me find you her address."

You never thanked me for the work I did those fifteen years, nor confessed your surprise that I had done it. I am glad. Gratitude would have felt too much like a dismissal, a relief of a temporary duty, and my work did not feel temporary. I had not chosen to marry you, but I had chosen to become the Minotaur, and to do it well.

When I had folded and waxed the letter to the woman in Ptolemy, as I pressed my wedding ring into it to form the seal, you leaned across the desk and kissed me briefly on the wrist. "Naxos," you said, not the needy whimper I had imagined at seventeen, but the whisper of a man on trial naming his co-conspirators. I shivered.

"Tell me your name," I said, lifting my ring from the wax. A bull's head stared back at me.

"Asterion," you said. You looked as if you were about to say something more, but I shocked you into silence with a smile. And we settled down to work.

I suppose, in a way, this is a love letter.

* * *

I am sorry, now, that in all the years I ran our business I never bought a book for your library. It is not that I thought only of my own comfort, for you came home to a house every bit as empty and sterile as the one you left. Every drachma I made I invested—in farms, in trains, in a painter whose work I was inordinately fond of—or hid in the hollow slats beneath my bed. But when I finally saw you happy, and knew that happiness had come through me, the feeling was as heady and addictive as opium, and I wished that I had even more to give you.

As soon as you were able, we began to finish the house. Some of the rooms were sheerest whimsy—the parlor full of clocks, the spare bedroom with roots painted on the ceiling and branches across the floor, the tea room with a mirror for a table. But there was also the salon that we converted into our new study, twice as large and with a magnificent view of the poppy fields—now hidden from the rest of the world by a labyrinth of hedges—and the music room where I installed a pianoforte as soon as I learned that you played. I remember the first song you preformed for me, your voice lifted shyly on the folk tune's chorus.

But contentment cannot last, not in a line of work as dangerous as ours.

The letter came fifteen years to the day after you told me your name and let me kiss you. I had not seen the seal before—an ouroboros in green wax—but the moment you saw it you began to tremble.

"No," you said. "No, I will not go there again. I will drink hemlock first."

It was, of course, an order for the arrest of the Minotaur.

* * *

I did not lie, my husband, the day they came for you. I said the drink would calm you, and that is something syrup of poppy does very, very well.

When you were asleep, I hid our records in the slats beneath my bed and sent the servants to bring bushels of poppy to the kitchen hearth. We burned what we could, and sank the rest into the ocean past the Sarangay reef. When that was done, I went back to the house and changed into a black gown and black gloves and sat in the parlor to wait.

The clocks chimed five, then six, then seven in the evening. At quarter to eight, they finally came.

"We have a warrant for the arrest of the Minotaur," the tallest one said, his eyes wet and bovine. For the first time in my life, I thought how stupid it really was, their fear to use your name. As if Asterion were someone else, someone more dangerous.

"I am the Minotaur," I said, and I did not have to counterfeit disdain for them, or fear for what was coming. "Please, my husband is sickly from his years in prison. He hardly stirs from his bed. Please, do not take me from him."

They looked at each other, these dirty-faced men on our doorstep, and they looked at me. I bit my lip, hoping your solicitor's long-ago advice would hold true.

"Well, Mistress Minotaur," the tallest one said, "I suppose you'll be coming back to him. Fifteen years ain't so long, is it?"

I closed my eyes and held out my hands to be chained.

* * *

But fifteen years is long, Asterion. In fifteen years I learned to be the Minotaur. In fifteen years I learned to care for you. What will I learn in the next fifteen years, walled up in this place you would rather die than return to, far from our home between the flowers and the sea?

I will learn patience. I will learn to bear disappointment. And I will write to you, because your vice is stories and stories are all I have to give to you. Because I want you to see yourself, if only for a moment, the way I have learned to see you.

You called yourself the Minotaur because in the stories, the Minotaur is a monster, unworthy and incapable of love. But you love your work, and you love me. For better or worse, I love you, and I am counting down each heartbeat until the day I see you again.

Your wife,
Naxos

The Father of the Riverborn

2011-09-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

First published in Port Iris, September 2010.

* * *

“It’s a simple question, doctor.” I looked up over the rim of my reading glasses, setting Dr. Isaac’s letter of introduction aside. It was signed by Alexandre Roche, a talented woman I had worked with years ago in the west. So far as I knew, she was still stationed there, which made Sigmund Isaac and his patient all the more intriguing. “You insist on referring to the unfortunate individual as ‘they,’ but unless I am wrong in saying ‘individual,’ there must be only one and it must be either ‘he’ or ‘she.’ Which is it?”

Isaac had the annoying habit of rubbing his index finger along the brim of his hat, making a sharp squeaking sound that echoed through my study. “It isn’t so simple, Dr. Vivian. They—I mean, the patient—the patient is one of those indigenous people Roche so elegantly named the Riverborn.”

“Surely the Riverborn are allocated between the same two genders we do, doctor.”

“No, actually.” And by crowned and sacred Liberty, the man was actually blushing. “You see, Dr. Vivian, the Riverborn forbid women from becoming chief—Father, I believe, is the word they use—during times of war . So if an exceptionally talented leader should emerge in war-time, capable but burdened with the female sex…she becomes a man.” He made a gesture that was probably unconscious, sweeping from my bodice and bustled skirt to his unfortunately tailored uniform. “The change is not physical, but it is nevertheless real. The patient absolutely refuses to be called a woman.”

“Strange,” I said agreeably. The Riverborn must have had ideas about male and female that encompassed more than physical differences . But what else could there be? It tied, I supposed, with that odd idea about women and war. “Still, we will honor her wishes. After the Separation I had several class criminals insist on being called ‘count’ and ‘marquise’ and whatnot, and it would have taken too much trouble to make them answer to ‘citizen.’ I even had a citizen-elector who preferred to be called ‘girl’ because it reminded her of her youth in the slums. Unusual, but harmless.”

“Ah-hem.” Isaac’s pink face turned even pinker. “Not so harmless, as it turns out. That’s why Roche sent him—her. To be cured.”

“To be persuaded that she is, in fact, a woman?”

“Yes.”

An answer that raised many more questions. I took up Roche’s letter again, felt the crisp, pressed folds and the smooth trenches left by her pen. Alex, Alex, what are you thinking? “Why in Liberty’s name,” I asked aloud, “would she want that? What can it possibly matter that some Riverborn woman thinks she’s a man?”

Isaac’s cheeks plumped with a deep breath. “Roche says that if you’re truly her friend, you won’t ask, just do.”

Don’t ask, just do. Orders like that sounded dangerously close to class crime. Before the Separation, a private doctor might be expected to dance to the military’s tune, but now, Roche and I were equals—legally, at least. She and Isaac had no right to make demands of me, or to expect me to obey their orders unquestioningly. And it was utterly unlike Roche to keep secrets.

“If that’s so,” I said, “she’s changed since I knew her.”

“She has,” Isaac said. He sighed and took out the gun.

* * *

The nurses had given the Father of the Riverborn our best apartment, a chain of rooms in the Intractables’ wing that had all the exterior entrances bricked in and could only be accessed by a guarded staircase. As for the experience of squeezing up a spiral stair in a bustled skirt with a gun at one’s back…the less said, the better.

The rooms themselves were exceedingly comfortable, done all in purple plush and black and silver velvet, with broad silver-barred windows and mirrors of polished copper. The silk sheets were sewn onto the mattress, and the goose-down quilts were too dense to be twisted into a noose. Let critics of Shore House say what they would, I had thought of everything to keep my patients safe. Even the sea outside was nothing but a rush and rumbling on the pale pebble beach, and not the violent waves that lashed the cliffs within a mile in either direction .

I was considered a good judge of character, and I guessed from the moment I saw her that the patient would be needing all of my precautions. She was not violent—nothing obvious, anyway, and I thought the chains on her thin wrists were quite excessive—but despite the dullness in her fine features, there was a horrible determination in her eyes. This, I thought, was a woman who was not afraid of hurting herself.

“What have you done to her?” I asked over my shoulder. Isaac was standing directly behind me—whether to improve his leverage with the gun or simply to hide from the patient, I didn’t know.

“Nothing,” he snapped. “It’s her pride that’s hurt, nothing more.”

“That can be a serious injury. Working with Alexandre Roche should have taught you that.” I winced as the gun’s mouth bit into the soft skin at the base of my skull. “What do you expect me to do, you imbecile, cure her at gunpoint?”

“I expect you to examine her,” he said through gritted teeth. “When I am satisfied that you understand the situation, I will leave you to cure her—however long that takes.”

The patient was kneeling rigidly on the couch, and I went over to sit on the floor at her feet. It was something I had learned in dealing with class criminals: always give the helpless ones the power position. Slowly, so she could see what I was going to do before I did it, I brushed her coarse black hair back behind her shoulders. She was wearing military clothes similar to Isaac’s: a man’s button-up shirt, overlarge in the waist and shoulders and thin enough to show her heavy brown nipples, plain trousers, lacking the clay beads the Riverborn normally sewed onto their clothing,and high black boots that had clearly been worn for miles.

“Are these your clothes?” I asked.

It took a moment for the eastern words to reach her but, as I had hoped, she knew our language passably well. For all the fighting in the west, trade still had its place. “No,” she said. “That man took my clothes.”

I turned to Isaac. “Care to explain that before I forcibly remove your manhood?”

“Her clothes were somewhat…indecent.” He made a vague cupping gesture over his chest. “Men’s clothes, you understand.”

I shook my head in disgust, turning back to the patient. There was little else worth examining. Her skin was a healthy mahogany beneath the dirt, her eyes were clear, her teeth were white and mostly whole, though something had recently taken a jagged chip out of her left canine. If I looked for it, there was something vaguely masculine about her heavy brow, flat cheekbones and squarish jaw; a certain broadness to her waist and shoulders, combined with lean hips and light breasts, would have made her look mannish even if she wore female clothing. But the thin, long-nailed hands, nearly lost in her oversized sleeves, could only belong to a woman.

“I’ve seen enough,” I said, twisting to my feet. Isaac raised his gun with a speed that could only be reflexive, and I wondered what he had really been doing out west when the Father of the Riverborn was captured. “You can promise Alexandre Roche that I will cure the patient as quickly as I can.”

Isaac inclined his head. “You have our thanks, Dr. Vivian.”

I eyed his gun pointedly. “I wish I knew what for.”

* * *

“What is your name?” the patient asked as soon as I closed the trapdoor. She must have been waiting for me all day, immobile on the purple couch.

A week had passed since our first meeting. The nurses said she had remained calm once her bonds were removed, suggesting the bonds were hardly necessary in the first place. She walked once through the full apartment like a cat discovering a new cage, then settled into a vague routine of sleeping or staring insensate out the barred window. She ate so little that the nurses feared she was trying to starve herself; but she drank all the water they brought her, and I knew she was smart enough that if she truly wanted to die, she would start by attempting dehydration.

So my hopes were raised when I pushed the pot of hot water to her and she drank it immediately, not bothering to add the tea.

“My name is Aramis Vivian,” I said, pronouncing the name slowly so she could follow.

“Aramis Vivian,” she repeated. “Is that a man-name or a woman-name?”

“Man-name?” I raised my eyebrows.

The patient made a sharp cutting gesture. “A name for men. One that men use.”

“I suppose so. There are certainly men named Aramis.”

“And you?”

“I’m a woman named Aramis. It’s a…a woman-name, too.”

As Shore House’s founder and head doctor, I was no stranger to odd conversations. I had once spent an entire afternoon with a patient speculating on what the world would be like if plants grew by moonlight rather than sun. But the patient’s concern was totally alien to me—what made a name solely a man’s or a woman’s? Did Riverborn men use names that women couldn’t use, and vice versa?

“What’s your name?” I asked quickly, staunching the flow of confusion I saw starting in her eyes.

She said a long word I couldn’t follow. “It means Father Eagle,” she said.

“Is that a man-name or a woman-name?”

“A man-name,” she said, and her rigid spine added, of course. “I am a man.”

“And before you became a man? What was your…your woman-name?”

Clearly, I had done something rude. She pursed her lips and actually leaned away from me, as if my foolishness was contagious. “Firestarter,” she said at last, nostrils flaring in exasperation. I was vividly reminded of a parent explaining some elementary point of etiquette to a child. “There was a woman called Firestarter.”

“Firestarter,” I said, laying a hand on her shoulder. She stared at me blankly. “Father Eagle, do you know you are a woman?”

“You are a woman,” she said. “I am a man.”

“How do you know?”

When she didn’t answer, I took her gently by the wrist and led her to one of the apartment’s copper mirrors. “Look,” I said. “I am a woman. I have a small waist. You have a small waist.” I moved my hands lightly from my stomach to hers. “I have breasts. You have breasts.” I lowered my lace collar to show the pale swell of flesh beneath, then reached out and undid the first button on her shirt. She undid the rest indifferently, and stood with her chest bare like a man by the sea. “Your body is a woman’s body,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.” She shrugged.

“So doesn’t that make you a woman?”

The patient shook her head. “No. I am a man.”

Check and mate, Vivian. Well, hopefully not mate—this with Isaac’s gun in mind. I tried again. “So what makes me a woman?”

“Are you a woman?”

I resisted the urge to again bare my breasts. “Yes.”

“Then you can have children.” She paused, then pointed to my abdomen as if she wasn’t sure she had used the right words.

“Yes,” I said, “I can have children. But so can you.”

She looked genuinely horrified. “No, I cannot.”

It certainly wasn’t worth what it would take to prove otherwise. “All right,” I said. “Women can have children. But what if I was barren? Would I still be a woman?”

“Yes…” She was thinking hard. Looking for other differences between men and women, I supposed, though I could hardly assist her. “Women surrender,” she said at last.

I took a seat on the nearest couch. “Women what?”

“Surrender. To men.”

Now what in the name of crowned and sacred Liberty did that mean? But her next words had given a hint, no matter how uncomfortable to contemplate. “You mean…sexually?”

She seemed uncertain. Perhaps that had not been what she meant, after all. But after a moment, she nodded. “Yes. Women go with men.”

I thought of Alex Roche and the extravagant times she had spent with certain ladies out west. “Sometimes,” I said. “But some women go with other women. Who do you go with?” I asked on sudden inspiration. “If you are a man, do you go with women?”

For the second time, the patient stared down at me with gut-horror on her face. “I have not gone…since I became a man,” she said.

“But when you were Firestarter, you preferred men?”

She nodded.

“And now? Do you prefer women?”

She nodded, but she had gone physically pale. Not like Roche, then. It left me utterly perplexed. If her body was a woman’s, and her tastes were—as far as her people were concerned—a woman’s, what made her insist that she was a man?

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees and my chin on my folded hands. “Father Eagle,” I said, “what’s wrong with being a woman?”

She tossed her head, spraying her hair over her shoulders and jutting her bare chest forward. “Women surrender,” she said, nothing more.

* * *

“I see.” Othniel Paris, one of the many lovely but rather irreverent nurses at Shore House, closed his book with a resounding clap. He had thrown off his waistcoat at the end of his shift and now lay across three chairs in the corner of the staff dining room, his shirt open enough to show the string of pearls at his throat. I wondered privately how he could afford them—then again, he had always been deservedly vain. “To the Riverborn, men are dominant over women. If the patient were to become a woman again, she would have to take on a subservient role among her people. It’s not surprising that she’s resistant.”

“That’s one of the more repulsive ideas I’ve heard this week,” I said, and chewed my lip. I wished I had paid more attention to the Riverborn culture during my time out west. By all rights, the system Paris had just described—an entire group of people held subservient to another, for no more reason than a quirk of biology—should be impossible to sustain. It was the very essence of class crime.

But it also made a sickening amount of sense. Dr. Isaac had said that war leaders among the Riverborn were exclusively male. If women were expected to be naturally subservient, a woman like Father Eagle would have to become male before others would take orders from her. And perhaps that was why Father Eagle had been so disturbed by my own commanding tone.

“Assuming the Riverborn truly believe that,” I said, “where in Liberty’s name would they get such an idea?”

Paris stared at the ceiling, lips pressed in a thin line. He rarely kept silent if he had something to say, and I wondered what thoughts he was so uneager to share. “If it came to physically enforcing one’s commands,” he said at last, “men would have the advantage.”

“True,” I said. Paris, far from the largest man at Shore House, could effectively restrain any female patient who turned violent—with the possible exception of the abnormally strong Father Eagle. I, on the other hand, owed at least one broken bone and several odd scars to a bad experience years ago in the Mens’ Intractables’ Wing. “But how sustainable is brute force, unless your society is built around arm-wrestling?”

Paris smiled faintly, but something else was clearly on his mind. “ ‘Women surrender to men,’ she said? That’s a strange way to phrase it. Why not ‘women follow orders,’ if that’s what she meant?”

“You don’t think she’s talking about arm-wrestling,” I said.

And by Liberty, he had started to blush. “If she bothered to mention both genders, it seems to me…I think there’s a sexual element involved.”

“Women are sexually submissive? As a matter of course?” Now that was the most repulsive idea I’d heard in weeks. I was no prude; what happened in a bedroom was the business of the people involved, and while sexual subservience was hardly to my taste, a woman had every right to choose it of her own will. Demanding it as a natural aspect of womanhood was something else entirely. “My dear Paris, I think I’m going to vomit.”

“I didn’t say I liked it that way!” he protested several moments too late.

I began laughing and couldn’t stop. “I don’t think I’m…interested in…your…sexual preferences,” I gasped out. He pulled a face like a prudish grandmother, and that brought on another round of painful, lung-wringing laughter.

“If the renowned Dr. Aramis Vivian is finished giggling like a schoolchild,” he said, dripping false pomposity, “I’d like to make a suggestion.”

“If it has anything to do with a woman’s sexual role, I think I can live without it.”

He rubbed at his cheeks as if he could rub away his blush. “Actually, it does have something to do with it. Do you mind?” I sobered myself up as best I could. “If Father Eagle is afraid that being a woman means being submissive—sexually or otherwise—we need to show her that that isn’t true.”

“That’s like trying to show someone that the sky is blue when she keeps insisting that it’s purple.” I massaged my back, loosening the cramps that my too-hearty laughter had begun. “I’m familiar with psychoses, Paris. They’re impossible to reason someone out of. And this sexual-role nonsense sounds like a culture-wide psychosis.”

“Trust me, doctor. Take the patient to the theatre tomorrow night. And take me with you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Mr. Paris, I do believe I know a proposition when I hear one.”

“Dr. Vivian.” He fluttered his eyelashes mockingly. “I do hope you plan on surrendering to me on this one.”

* * *

It was the first time I had ever taken a treatment suggestion from one of the nurses, and if the night ended as badly as it had begun, it was going to be the last. Paris had arranged seats for three in the third story gallery—not only did we have no hope of seeing the stage, we would be glaringly visible to everyone in the theatre. And there remained the sticky fact that we were not, strictly speaking, allowed to take the patient out of Shore House. If Dr. Isaac saw us—and the nurses at Shore House were sure he was still in town, keeping an eye on me—a reputation for irresponsibility would be the least of my concerns.

“Relax, doctor. Have a cigarette.” Paris took a silver case from his coat pocket and picked out three gilt-tipped cigarettes, keeping one for himself and handing the other two to me and the patient.

She looked at it with naked confusion.

“Here.” Paris leaned over my lap and lifted the cigarette to her lips. She managed to catch it between her teeth. I handed Paris a match, and he struck it on the back of my chair and set the cigarette alight.

If anything, the patient looked even more confused.

“You smoke it,” I said, lighting my own with a match from my pocket—a match I most pointedly did not strike on the furniture.

“I know that,” she said. “But he started the fire.”

Paris jabbed me in the ribs. I waved my fingers at him placatingly. “Yes,” I said, “he started the fire. What about it?”

“Fire is a woman-thing,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. Of course it was. Firestarter was a woman-name, after all. “So men shouldn’t start fires?”

She shrugged.

“Wouldn’t you like to start fires? Wouldn’t it be convenient?”

“It’s a woman-thing,” she repeated.

“So wouldn’t it be good to be a woman?”

She gave me a pursed-lipped look again, as if being near to anyone as stupid as I was might give her an upset stomach. I sighed aroundmy cigarette. It had been worth a try.

As the lights dimmed and the overture began to play, I felt Paris leave his chair beside me and walk around behind the patient’s. He whispered something in her ear, and she laughed mutedly. I leaned into listen, but he had already finished speaking and started back to his chair.

“What did you say to her?” I hissed.

“That you are a woman, and I am a man.”

I raised my eyebrows, but most of the expression must have been lost in the darkness. Anything I could have said was swallowed in a choke of surprise as Paris slipped out of his chair and, kneeling on the floor at my feet, lay his head in my lap.

“Crowned and sacred Liberty! Other people can see you, Paris.”

“So? What’s one more doctor sleeping with one more nurse?”

“I am not sleeping with you,” I snapped.

By this point we had managed to draw plenty of attention, not only from the patient but from the citizen-count and –countess in the box across from ours, and the two young men next door had stopped necking long enough to peek in at us. Father Eagle had stared at the latter quite rudely when we came in, and I had again mentioned women who preferred women and men who preferred men. But if this was a concept the Riverborn shared, it was not one that appealed to Father Eagle. I hoped the gentlemen were enjoying their opportunity to stare back.

“I know that,” Paris hissed, “but the patient doesn’t. For Equality’s sake act like you’re enjoying this.”

“Enjoying what?”

He turned his face so that his hot breath fell directly against the inside of my thigh. Part of my brain said I should be enjoying the intimate attentions of a young and handsome man; the rest of it protested against the uncomfortable sensations, and the unwelcome attention of the theatre-going masses. “I’m surrendering to you, woman. Play along for the sake of the patient.”

A prude cannot succeed long as a sanitarium doctor; I had certainly dealt with my fair share of sexual deviance. And then there were those weeks with Alex Roche and her lady-friends. But exhibitionism was not only not to my taste, it was far beneath my dignity. I took a fistful of Paris’s dark curls and dragged him out of my lap.

“You don’t have to be quite so forceful,” he hissed, wincing.

The moment could not get any more ridiculous—Paris kneeling with a rather slavish look on his handsome face—me, the dignified, iron-haired head of Shore House, tangling my fingers in the hair of a much younger and much better-looking man, whom I hardly knew—and the poor patient staring on in confusion. Confusion with a hint of a smile.

“Damn.” I jumped up, taking Paris by the arm, and dragged him out into the corridor behind our seats. The young men next door let out a rousing chorus of catcalls and several unlikely suggestions, but the opening strains of the overture were loud enough to drown them out.

“You damnable idiot,” I said, pinning Paris to the curtained wall with both hands. “How long have you known her?”

“Known who?”

“Who do you think?” I pointed to the balcony behind us. “Is this the first time you’ve met the Father of the Riverborn?”

“Of course,” Paris said, and by crowned and sacred Liberty, he seemed genuinely hurt. “What exactly are you accusing me of?”

“Look at her,” I snapped. “She’s absolutely in love with you.”

And at that opportune moment, the usher approached and asked if we would please take our lover’s spat elsewhere, as we were outperforming the theatre’s lead tragedian.

* * *

Dr. Sigmund Isaac beat us back to Shore House.

“I understand you enjoyed the first act, Aramis,” he said, reclining behind my office desk. “But did your patient really need to serve as the audience for that disgusting performance?”

“That ‘disgusting performance’ was part of my patient’s treatment. Othniel Paris seemed to think it would help if she reformulated her ideas of, ah, sexual roles.” Mustering my remaining scraps of dignity, I polished my reading glasses on my skirt and set them on my nose. “And my name is Dr. Vivian.”

“I will call you ‘doctor’ when you start behaving like one. Why is your patient not cured yet?”

“I beg your pardon, Sigmund. I didn’t realize I was working on a deadline.”

He scowled, toying with the pens and ink sticks on my desk. “What have you discovered?”

I told him what I had learned from Father Eagle—about the concepts of man-things and woman-things, the patient’s indifference to her own body, the uncomfortable intertwinement of womanhood and surrender that Paris had so crudely tried to correct. After a moment’s hesitation, I added my suspicions about her feelings for Paris.

“Use that,” Dr. Isaac said, tapping his hand open-palmed against his knee. “Sacred Liberty, woman, do I need to teach you everything? I should think your course is obvious. Offer her Othniel Paris if she will formally acknowledge her own gender. It would be worth it, I promise you.”

“Even you can’t be so stupid as to think a patient can be bribed out of her delusions,” I said disdainfully. His vocabulary regarding Othniel, proprietary in the extreme, was also bordering on class crime, but I thought it would be in my best interest not to mention that; Dr. Isaac seemed to be a dangerously pompous man, one who would be less bothered by committing class crime than by being accused of it. It wouldn’t do to offend his honor, scanty as it was. I leaned over the desk, wielding my height as well as I could. “With all due respect, my unlearned colleague, if you knew how to cure the Father of the Riverborn, you would never have brought her to me. Now, would you please get the hell out of my sanitarium?”

Dr. Isaac stood slowly, slappedme across the face, and strode out of the room before my vision cleared and I could properly break his nose.

* * *

If I could draw a map of my situation, it would look something like a road bridging two vast wildernesses, lacking legend or border or compass rose. I had no idea why the patient insisted so ardently that she was a man, whether it was a simple matter of choosing dominance over submission, as Paris thought, or if there was something more—and I did not know why any of it mattered to Sigmund Isaac and Alexandre Roche. I tried to remember what I had heard about the west and the Riverborn in recent years, but drew a blank. It was all lost beneath the Separation and class criminals and the Atrocities trials.

A week after the disaster at thetheatre, Paris and I joined the Father of the Riverborn for breakfast. I learned rather immediately that it was something Paris and the patient had already taken to sharing, and in a fumbling attempt to hold off awkwardness, I blurted the question that had been foremost in my mind.

“Father Eagle, do you know why Dr. Isaac and Alexandre Roche want you to become a woman?”

The patient raised an apple to her nose, sniffed it, and took a huge crackling bite. “You know,” she said.

“No, I don’t. And while I can’t speak for Isaac, I know Alex Roche never worried about making a point. There’s something more going on here than two kindly disinterested strangers trying to correct a deluded Riverborn.” I flipped my braid over my shoulder. “At the very least, kindly disinterested strangers don’t use guns.”

The patient had no hope of following my rapid monologue. She turned to Paris, her confusion plain and her expression frankly adoring.

“Dr. Vivian doesn’t know,” Paris said. “Why?”

“Because women surrender.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said icily, “but what in the name of crowned and sacred Liberty does that mean?”

She turned to Paris, and Paris’s eyebrows shot up suddenly, his mouth opening in a perfect O. “Peace,” he said quite flatly.

The Father of the Riverborn nodded, and he continued in a rush. “If war is a man-thing, peace must be a woman-thing. It is a woman’s place to make peace—to surrender.”

“Roche and Isaac want to end the war in the west,” I said. “Of course! Those damnable bastards—instead of working out a treaty, they want an unconditional surrender. Is that it, Father Eagle? They want you to become a woman so that you can make peace?”

She nodded emphatically, her lips pressed thin. She may not have understood all my words, but she knew the concepts.

“Sacred Equality,” Paris swore, “it’s even worse than that. You remember what they did to the generals who surrendered after the Separation, Dr. Vivian.”

“They hung them,” I said.

“You see?” said theFather. “They want to make me a woman so they can kill me, and take the land from the Riverborn. They want me to surrender.”

“Wonderful,” I said, and stabbed a link of sausage, pretending it was Alexandre Roche.

* * *

East-bound trains were easy to come by; trains heading west were considerably rarer. It took me three days to find one from the station near Shore House, and it was another three days by rail through the vast emerald forests and pristine country of the Riverborn until I reached Colton, the microscopic speck of civilization where I was to meet Alex Roche. Othniel Paris promised to look after the Father of the Riverborn while I was away. I could only hope they were enjoying each other’s company more than I was enjoying my own.

The expression on the patient’s face when I met her had given me the idea, and Isaac’s accusation—I will call you ‘doctor’ when you start behaving like one—put it on the road to fruition. What I was about to do was unforgivable. I spent most of the journey rehearsing what I was going to say, and finally came to the conclusion that there was no nice way to say it.

I tried to calm myself by picturing the ocean, the boom-swish-roll of the waves, but that made me think of drowning, and brought my mind back to the thing it was trying to escape.

I was surprised at how little Roche had changed over the years. Her tight muscles, smooth face, even her bright orange braids were untouched my time. But then again, out here in Colton, she had not had to face the Separation and the rush of tragedy that followed. No, all she had to worry about was killing the Riverborn.

I greeted her solemnly in the street, then took her by the arm towards the tamer forest at the edge of town.

“A private conversation?” she teased, kissing me on the cheek.

“In a way,” I said. “I’m here to blackmail you out of murder.”

* * *

Six years before the Separation, Alexandre Roche tried to drown herself. It would have been a hideous scandal, had it become known, but her family hushed the thing up, and Alex came to Shore House for treatment.

“There’s no shame in battling monsters,” I had said, but she wouldn’t listen. So far as she was concerned, the day society learned about her attempted suicide was the day her life ended. There was a reason Roche hated secrets—they gave too much power to other people.

She listened to my proposition in silence, her cheeks slowly reddening. When I finished, she shook her head and clenched both hands into fists. “I didn’t think you had it in you, Aramis.”

“And I didn’t think you had it in you to be a murderer. I’m sorry we were both wrong.”

She shook her head again. “If you are truly my friend—”

“I was, Alex. Not anymore.” I folded my arms, absently flicking the chain of my pocket watch. I knew the sound annoyed her. “Which is it going to be—freedom for the Father of the Riverborn, or a scandal twelve years overdue?”

She smiled pensively. “Among the Riverborn, blackmail is considered a woman’s crime. Murder is a man’s.”

“We’re two women, Roche, and we’re capable of both. Which is it going to be?”

“All right, Aramis,” she said, raising her hands sardonically . “I surrender.”

* * *

“I figured you would be displeased,” I said, lifting Roche’s statement from Dr. Isaac’s hands before he could tear it into its component particles. “You should know that Father Eagle is perfectly willing to discuss the terms of the treaty. If that arrangement proves unsatisfactory, he has allowed for myself and Paris to speak to the Senate on his behalf. I’m sure you’ll understand if we’re eager to have this matter resolved as quickly as possible. He is a little tired of being a man.”

Dr. Isaac scowled, pointedly not looking at the other end of the study, where Othniel and Father Eagle sat hand-in-hand on the sofa. “You’re mad if you think it’s going to work—any of it. The treaty or that—” He waved a hand at Paris and Father Eagle—“That travesty of an engagement.”

“Then I assure you, Sigmund, I am most resoundingly mad, and most fortunate that I already live in the best sanitarium in the nation. Now, can you find your way to the door, or does Paris need to show you out?”

He slunk off like a kicked dog. As I crossed the room towards the sofa, Othniel made to stand and offer me his place, but I gestured for him to stay seated and took my own spot on the floor at their feet.

“I think this calls for cigarettes,” I said. “Paris?”

He rummaged for his silver case and passed it to Father Eagle, who solicitously removed two of the gilt tubes and place one in my hand. “You’re a good woman, Dr. Vivian,” he said.

I bowed my head. “You’re a good man. And I’m certain Othniel will be a wonderful wife for you.”

Paris aimed a playful kick wide of my hip. The Father of the Riverborn laughed, struck a match, and bent to light our three cigarettes from the same steady flame.

The Mammoth Book of Steampunk

2011-06-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

Super exciting news, everybody! "The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois" will be reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Steampunk. Check out the link for the full TOC and cover art. It's gorgeous!

Dead Languages

2011-06-27T10:28:00.001-07:00

"The Curator Speaks in the Department of Dead Languages," a long poem with a long title, appears in Strange Horizons this week. Read and enjoy!

Now is the Winter of our Discontent...

2011-06-01T09:16:00.000-07:00

...made summer by the shiny summer issues of many magazines!

Mirror Dance's Summer 2011 issue is online. As always, the summer issue has a theme: Kunstkammern, stories of secrets and curiosities. We have lots of delightfully odd tales, so head on over and check them out!

My poem "Song Before a Quest" appeared in Issue 13 of Cabinet de Fees yesterday, and "The Conqueror of Mars, to his Beloved" is in Ideomancer today.

Also, I have received two very shiny acceptances to two very shiny publications in the last week, but I'll wait until all the contracts are in hand before I announce any more details.

That's...new.

2011-05-13T20:20:00.001-07:00

There's a review of "The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois" over at Tangent Online. Apparently my name is Meg Arkenberg. That's interesting. :-)

British Fantasy Awards

2011-04-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

Any readers who are eligible to vote for the British Fantasy Awards might be interested in knowing that All the King's Monsters and First Born are on the ballot for best short story of 2010.

Magazine Updates

2011-03-01T07:16:00.000-08:00

1. Mirror Dance's Spring 2011 issue is now online. "Online" being a relative term, since I misplaced one author's poem and now I can't find my review of Walter Rhein's excellent The Bone Sword in my files. This is incredibly embarassing and will be corrected before the end of the day.

2. Lacuna is closed to submissions until June 1 so that I can clear out the backlog. My attempt at replying within a week with a rejection or a hold notice seems to have failed utterly. We'll see if I can come up with a more managable system before June.

If you have any questions about the status of your story, feel free to ask, though the answer will almost certainly be "I'm still considering it for the October 2011 issue." When I read through a batch of submissions, I'll make an announcement on the Lacuna submissions page, saying "All stories submitted before [Date] have now been responded to," and if your story was submitted in that date range and you haven't received a response, you'll know you're good to panic.

Until then, keep calm and carry on.

Grief, m'sieur, is a carousel.

2011-02-28T09:04:00.000-08:00

"The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois" appears in Fantasy today. Also, there is a spotlight.

Happy reading!

Playthings of the Gods

2011-02-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday marked the release of Drollerie Press's Playthings of the Gods, an anthology of Greek myths retold for a YA audience. My story, "Naxos," retells the story of Ariadne, Theseus and Dionysus on the island of Naxos--in Wisconsin, with an all-female cast. Check it out!

Haiku!

2011-02-06T07:26:00.000-08:00

Just a quick brag-post to announce that my haiku for Cycle 7, Week 19 at DailyHaiku were selected for the editors' choice award.

Works in Progress

2011-01-27T10:53:00.000-08:00

First things first: "The Copperroof War" appears as a reprint in the current (and, sadly, last) issue of Labyrinth Inhabitant. Go check it out!

Second things second: It's that time of [insert time cycle here], where I look at my list of stories that I ought to finish one of these days, and instead of thinking about ways to finish them, I do a first line meme. I meant to refresh my list at the beginning of the year, but life (read: classes) got in the way. So here's what I ought to be writing, in no particular order.

"The Improbable Library of Asmodeus Foster"
Rosamund Solomon found the body in a footnote on page 217.

Weirdly, I see that the exact page with the body-containing footnote has changed from 216 to 217 and back to 216 (and now back to 217) in various drafts of this story. That's not important. What is important is that the murderer's identity has also changed in each draft, and I'm not really satisfied with any of them. So, back to the sketch pad or whatever.

"The Basilisk and Sophia Kadare"
If, as Sophia Kadare claims, all poems are serpants, the sonnet sequence of Pasiphae Isaac is a basilisk.

Sophia Kadare is a literary critic attempting an interpretation of the famously lethal sonnet sequence of Pasiphae Isaac.

"The Ninety-Nine Houses of Irene Dobrokost"
No first line yet. Hebene Yacob attempts to steal a house from Irene Dobrokost, who owns every abandoned building in the city. Also, ghouls.

"All in a Hot and Copper Sky"
I have written her a thousand letters.

Dolores remembers her lover, Socorro Mariner, the Queen of Mars. The first line keeps changing, as does the format. Is this a diary, or a reminiscence, or an interview, or a letter? And how did everyone get to Mars in the first place?

"The Small Rain Down Can Rain"
"We think there might be some interest," Stephen said, "in a posthumous collection."

Laura travels through time, gathering poems for her sister Daphne's final collection. Someone is following her. Who are they, and what do they want with Daphne? I'm not quite sure.

"There was no King in Israel"
The girl called Requiem follows Levi to the edge of camp.

Post-apocalyptic retelling of the last chapters of Judges. The current draft is missing quite a bit of backstory, but I like what I've got. Now who'd be interested in publishing this...?

"Babel," "Danae," "Actaeon"
Some nights, when I grow weary of lying awake and listening to the incomprehensible murmuring of the world, I leave the city sleeping in its whithered gardens and go to the ruins of the Tower.
He likes the Owl best.
Over the burbling of the expresso machine behind the bakery counter, he hears the dogs.

Three retellings, one Biblical, two from Ovid. One magic realism, one fantasy, one--Lovecraftian? I have first drafts of all of them, and like what I see. Now, who'd be interested in publishing these...?

"The Dead Women of Bajos Court," "The Women of Arcadio Leon," "The Riverland"
Four dead women live in four gray houses at the end of Bajos Court.
My body is a map of places Arcadio Leon has loved.
Sixty-four miles past the Junction, the land becomes a red and vibrant place.

A Bluebeard story, a haunted(?) film strip, and man-eating lions. I've made no significant progress on these three stories since November.

"The Unbinding of Artemis Kale," "The Gardens of Revenant Road," "The Memory of Philippa Lune"
Lady Saraband burst into the tent. "Artemis is pregnant."
After the war, a woman calling herself Gethsemane Armand came into Moses Johnson's cafe and asked about the place at the end of Revenant Road.
They bought the house on Pall Street because it was where Anabeth Bellcross had died.

A murdered escape artist, a war criminal on the run, and a historian who can remember everything except her own life--and happens to be the prime witness in a murder trail. All of these are in the final brush-up and submit stage. Yay!

"Frankincense and Myrrh" [working title]
Balthazar was dead.

Vashti, Melchior's wife, tells us about the final years of the Three Kings. I love the magi, but the current draft of this story is rediculously cheesy. I also need a title.

"Cafe Macondo"
The scanner bipped, an ascending four-note scale of disapproval. "Sorry, ma'am," I said. "This coffee isn't in our system. It's from an alternate dimension."

Interdimensional coffee and the line between wishes and reality. Based on true events. Ready(?) to be typed up and submitted.

"The Reconstitution of [Museum Name]"
At precisely 4:00, Winter closed her pocketwatch and drew her pistol in one fluid motion.

Winter and her followers kidnap an entire museum to reclaim the artifacts that were stolen from her people. Action! Adventure! Archaeology! Missing corpses! Also, clockwork docents.

"Hunger Lake"
The morning they buried our father, Bel found wolf tracks in the ice over Hunger Lake.

A dying woman returns to her childhood home. When a stranger becomes trapped there in a snowstorm, Madeline must confront the truth about her sister's death. I've got to get this one finished and submitted before February. Wish me luck!

"The Butterfly Garden of Eliott Stone" alt, "Eliott Stone, Queen of the Butterflies"
No first line yet. Or rather, too many first lines (and scenes) to narrow down. The Queen's new summer home forces Eliott to leave the house where she has lived since she was fifteen. Little do the villagers know, the fate of the kingdom of butterflies is at stake. Okay, this one's seriously weird.

Preditors and Editors

2011-01-24T08:58:00.000-08:00

My story "Father of the Riverborn," from Port Iris's third issue, is nominated for best sf short.

I also have stories in two nominated anthologies, All About Eve (Lead Us Not Into Temptation) and the Best of Everyday Fiction Two (Carpathia).

And as always, you can write me, Lacuna and Mirror Dance in for whatever category seems appropriate. :-)

The Summer King

2010-12-30T09:30:00.000-08:00

The Summer King is now live at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Hooray for my longest published story! Not the longest I've written, alas, as there were...incidents...when I was a sophomore in high school. They are still available online. You are warned.

Anyway...How this story came about. In January 2009, I'm sitting on the chair in front of the TV and I see an advertisement for the oh-my-god-that-can't-be-but-it-really-is-a-modern-reimagining-of-King-David-squee! TV show Kings. Now, the show didn't quite live up to my expectations, but it had some lovely moments, and that is all completely beside the point, because the show hadn't even begun in January 2009. All I knew about it was the title and the huge orange banner with a butterfly on it.

And I was thinking about how simply epic that title was. I jotted it down in my little idea-notebook: The ______ King. After all, I thought, who doesn't like kings?

Two answers in quick succession. 1) The French, circa 1789. 2) The Americans, circa anytime. But, because I was in American History Class (R) that semester, the specific Americans I thought of were...ward bosses.

WTF? I know. See, I had misunderstood bosses a little bit. Okay, a lot of bit. I was picturing Robin Hood instead of Boss Tweed's machinery. So the whole gig sounded pretty cool--ruling the city from the streets up. As opposed to a king, ruling from the palace down. Throw in a National Convention--I've mentioned my obsession with French Revolutionary politics, yes?--and there's the political situation of "The Summer King."

I don't know where "summer" came from, incidentally. It was January. I was probably just longing for green grass and strawberries.

So now I had a title and a political situation. My main character, Boss Livy, showed up quite unexpectedly from American Literature Class (R), where I was reading (okay, suffering through) the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now, I'm not Twain's biggest fan, but I like what he does with voice. (This shouldn't be a surprise--my favorite book series is Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths, where Mildmay 'speaks' in gorgeous vernacular.) And I guess it rubbed off, because all of a sudden, I was hearing something like a female Huck Finn with better grammar and a lot more profanity. (The profanity is probably courtesy of Monette's Mildmay, who did more than any other character to increase my comfort with swearing in fiction.)

So now I had a title and a political situation and a viewpoint character. And I just started writing. And writing. And writing. I had no idea where this thing was going to end.

Where it did end, finally, was with me in a bathrobe at the foot of my bed, frantically scribbling through the climax and the closing paragraph, while my impeccably dressed significant other waited for me to put on my gosh-dang dress so we could go out to eat already.

The writer's life is one of unparalleled grace and elegance.

That Happy Nervous Feeling

2010-12-14T11:44:00.001-08:00

My fantasy novelette "The Summer King" will be published in the December 30th issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, y'all. This is very-happy making because I love this story and I love this webzine, but it's also a little nerve-wracking because I want other people to love this story as much as I do. We'll see how that goes. :-)

Expect a long rambling-ish post on the 30th as I tell you all about this story's conception. Here's a hint: it involves Huckleberry Finn. And the unfortunately short-lived TV show Kings. And a pretty dire misreading of a page from an American history textbook. And my facination with the French Revolution...

What? Already?

2010-11-30T08:34:00.001-08:00

As far as I'm concerned, November is now over. The December issue of Mirror Dance is up and lovely and brimming with poetry and flash fiction. Go check it out!

As predicted, I utterly failed NaNoWriMo. I finished two stories--"The Gallery of Vespasian Marat" and "Lessons from a Clockwork Queen"--neither of which were on my need-to-complete list, and which combined total less than 10,000 words. If I'm allowed to count drafts of class assignments, I wrote approximately 35,000 words this month. Which isn't bad for me, so I'm not completely disheartened.

And I got two seperate ideas for two seperate novels, one of which I hope to get somewhere on over winter break.

The Gales of November

2010-11-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

I'm in a slightly foul mood as I type this, having spent the last four hours trying to catch up on Lacuna slush and failing miserably. I'm very frustrated with the tendency of some authors to use nationalities or--God forbid--"race" as a shorthand for characterization. Russians are Russians, some stories seem to say; surely you know everything you could possibly want to know about Nikolai when I refer to him as "the Russian"? And let's not get started on the bull I see white authors pulling with Native and African American characters. Guys, guys, I thought we'd figured this out by now: stereotypes are harmful. They are evil. They are not literary.

So, yeah. Bit put out about that. And then there's this weird thing going on this submissions period with simultaneous submissions. Now, I may not be the sharpest banana in the rain forest, but when I send a rejection letter at 5:00 Monday afternoon, and you send me a reply at 7:00 Monday evening to say, "Oh, too bad you didn't like the story, it was just accepted by [insert magazine title here]," I know damn well you sent me a simultaneous submission. It's even worse if I sent you an acceptance at 5:00 on Monday. So, simultaneous submissions; don't do them.

Oh, and if you do need to withdraw your story from consideration because you submitted it simultaneously? Don't send the same withdrawal notice to me and twenty-three other editors. You know how I feel when I see twenty-four e-mail addresses on the sendee line? Not pleased, sir. Not pleased at all.

The smell of progress and burnt canvas...

2010-11-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

Time for a NaNoWriMo update!

Days: 5

Words: 3,000, give or take a hundred

Stories completed: 1

Words to go: a lot

Epiphawhatnow?

2010-10-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

I just experienced two epiphanies in rapid succession.

1. Concerns objects petits a in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," and thus could not possibly be of interest to anyone but myself.

2. Relates to stories #3, #10, and #17 on Monday's list, which have all jumped on me at once and insisted they were siblings, or at least college room-mates.

If these stories are doing what they think they're doing, I now have not one but two projects that are either a) highly episodic novels or b) collections of interconnected short stories that c) share a common setting that happens to be a city whose name starts with the letter A. One, which I've been working on since writing this a year and a half ago, is called Argentorat, while today's fresh creation calls itself Andvarsuveld. Considering that I've already confused such dissimilar WIPs as "Juggernaut" and Jaquemart, I see great confusion for myself and my beta readers on the horizon.

Yes, 2. also could not possibly be of interest to anyone but myself. Bet you wish I'd spent a post rambling about Earth Mothers and the imaginary order now, don't you?

November drives a hard bargain...

2010-10-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again: National Novel Writing Month. Last year, I failed miserably in my goal to write 50,000 words of short fiction, and I look forward to failing miserably again this year. But for tradition's sake, let's look at the long list of stories who want so desperately to be written.

1. The Dead Women of Bajos Court
Four dead women live in four gray houses at the end of Bajos Court.

It started as a horror story and ended as a reimagining of Bluebeard with a blame-the-victim complex.

2. The Women of Arcadio Leon
My body is a map of places Arcadio Leon has loved.

Experimenting with a new framing technique. A man's neighbor gives him the accumulated detritus of the local film college, but the box includes on particularly interesting film. I got halfway through this one and realized I spent all of it introducing new characters. Several of them need to be eliminated, but I haven't decided which.

3. The Dream-Gardens of Revenant Road
After the war, a woman calling herself Theophile Saint-Armand bought the old Venusberg place past the curve on Revenant Road.

Botanical gardens, and a woman with a terrible secret. But how do the two connect? That's what I've got to figure out.

4. The Riverland
Sixty-four miles past the Junction, the land becomes a red and vibrant place.

Still magical lions, still railroads, still a woman building the former without being killed by the latter. I've located a narrator and several key plot points. Now all I need is a voice.

5. All in a Hot and Copper Sky
The boy who wants to write a book about Socorro Mariner sits on the edge of my couch, tapping a pen against his knee.

The ex-mistress of the Queen of Mars reminisces. But what does the boy who wants to write a book have to do with anything? And what were they doing on Mars in the first place? Bogged down in research purgatory.

6. The Treasures of Orfeo [Name]

No first line yet. A story about fairy gifts, and the gifts princes really need to survive.

7. There Was No King is Israel
The girl called Requiem follows Levi to the edge of camp.

A retelling of Judges 19-21 in a post-apocalyptic setting. I'm a little reluctant to put effort into it, considering how difficult it's been to find a home for its sister story "Jericho," but I love the characters.

8. How to Howl at the Moon
You are standing in the forest, waiting for the wolf to find you.

The most intensely autobiographical piece I've ever started. It's about mental illness. I won't be surprised if I never finish it, to be honest, but I feel I have to try.

9. Café Macondo
"This coffee came from another dimension's grocery store," I explained.

Finally, all those hours spent working in a grocery store pay off! Yes, it's about interdimensional coffee, and yes, it's based on personal experience.

10. 29 Florist Avenue
Above all, a queen of [city] must know how to die.

I have a first line, and a setting, and a cast list as long as my arm. The plot will show up later. I can't wait to get to work on this one!

11. The Small Rain Down Can Rain
"We think there might be some interest," Stephan said, "in a posthumous collection."

Time-travel poetry is a dangerous art. Sometimes, people die. Laura Blumenthal is left to pick up the pieces of her poet sister's final collection.

12. The Improbably Library of Asmodeus Foster
Rosamund found the body in a footnote on page 216.

A great novel pulls you in, but what if you die there? A murder mystery, that's what! Like Laura in "The Small Rain Down Can Rain," Asmodeus Foster is protecting a poet sister's legacy, though I have the feeling Ms. Foster's is significantly more sinister.

13. "Four Burning Things" and "The Oracle and the Sea"
Mama Babel sets the coffee pot on the fire, stirring it with her bayonet to keep the gritty stuff from burning. and She hates the sea. For a long time, she thought it was the only thing she hated.

Are these the same story? If not, which pieces belong to which? I have complete drafts of both of them, but they seem to be lacking something, so I thought they might go together. But how? The quest continues.

14. Danae [working title]
He likes the owl best.

It began as a retelling of Perseus's birth, but now it has a healthy dose of sibling rivalry. And clockpunk—don't forget the clockpunk. I'm getting a distinctly "All the King's Monsters" vibe from this one, but that might have something to do with all the huge clockwork animals lumbering around.

15. Krahe [working title]
He wants to see the Crowgirl.

Ravens eat carrion. Zombies are carrion. Ergo, ravens must be the perfect defense against zombies. And being the alienated girl whom the ravens befriend could become very beneficial indeed. More sibling rivalry at work, and there remains the fact that I don't write about zombies and am not entirely sure where to go from where I am.

16. The Unbinding of Artemis Kale
Forty years later, when the murder of Artemis Kale had faded to a bourdon note in the amusement park's dying fugue, people still remembered the day Persephon Wilder came to Bluefish Bay.

Escape artists, and mediums, and murder in the sideshow tents. This story suffers from being loved too much. It desperately needs editing, and I can't bring myself to cut it into pieces. I need to see if I can coerce some family members into beta reading the current draft.

17. The Moth King
The National Library of Extinct Stories takes up three blocks of Vervain Street in downtown Andvarsuveld.

If Cathrynne Valente's gorgeous prose is a drug, I wrote this story in a drug-induced haze. It's missing huge chunks (I even marked them as I wrote the current draft: [huge chunk missing here]), so my task for NaNoWriMo will be shoving those in and making sure they fit seamlessly. Oh, yeah, and making sure the story doesn’t completely suck. Beta readers, to arms!

Whew! Looks like it's going to be a full November…

(Oh, yeah. The post title? Comes from a poem I also need to finish this month. My list of poems-in-progress is much, much longer than this.)

Issue 3 of Lacuna, and Kephalopods!

2010-10-15T08:42:00.000-07:00

Issue 3 of Lacuna is now online! This is our fullest issue to date, and hopefully it's got something for everyone.

My story "Hieronymus" appears in Issue Two of Basement Stories. This one's a tough bugger to categorize; a secondary-world weird tale with a healthy dose of environmental conciousness. If, you know, your environment includes unspeakable creatures of the dark and damp...

The ballot! It has my name!

2010-10-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

This totally makes my day.

Deluge!

2010-10-05T08:32:00.001-07:00

The floodgates have opened, and Lacuna is once again accepting submissions.

I've made a few small changes to the guidelines for this reading period.

Firstly, previously unpublished stories are now being given priority over reprints, so your reprint submissions will have to be even more exceptional.

Secondly, I would like the word count of all submissions to appear in the cover letter.

Thirdly, the reponse process has changed drastically. I will try to reply to all stories and poems within a week with either a pass or a hold notice. Stories may be held for up to three months before final acceptance or rejection. Hopefully, this will keep your stories out of circulation for the shortest time necessary.

As always, questions about submissions may be e-mailed to me (markenberg[at]yahoo[dot]com) or posted as comments on this post or Lacuna's main guidelines page.

Bring on the stories!

That's not QUITE my name on the ballot...

2010-09-23T11:08:00.001-07:00

My sister's story "Invitation of the Queen" is live on Beneath Ceaseless Skies today!

No, silly, that's a master's thesis!

2010-09-03T11:20:00.001-07:00

So the part of my brain that is good at finding ideas hidden in texts went a little haywire today. It was supposed to help me find the post-apocalyptic drama hidden in the book of Judges, but instead, it formed silly ideas about tribal loyalties and moral ambiguity. None of which will be useful in the post-apocalyptic drama.

I think I was trained too well in high school. My brain wants to write essays about everything.

Now, open question; what would the psot-apocalyptic equivalent of the tribes of Israel be?

O Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness...

2010-09-01T06:11:00.000-07:00

Hooray for autumn and the plentiful publication it brings!

1. The Autumn 2010 issue of Mirror Dance is live and lovely. Check out the great fiction, poetry, and a piece or two that falls between the cracks.

2. My story "Rosewinter" appears in the current issue of Niteblade. This is a pretty old story, originally written in fall of 2008, though reworked quite a bit since then. For those of you playing along at home, "Rosewinter" uses a spiral chronology similar to the one in "The Copperroof War," and is (along with "Cesare") one of the only villanous-woman's-first-name-titled stories I ever successfully completed, though I have ten or twelve sitting around in draft form.

3. My story "The Father of the Riverborn" appears in the current issue of Port Iris. This story is much newer, and the viewpoint character also plays a role in my novel-in-progress Jaquemart. This is also the only time you will ever, ever hear me talk about gender roles in fiction: "I’m familiar with psychoses...And this sexual-role nonsense sounds like a culture-wide psychosis."

4. I also have a story appearing in the September issue of Flagship, and poems appearing in Cabinet des Fees and Illumen. More on those as they come in.

5. The proof of Crimethink arrived today with all its pieces in the proper place! I pressed the fancy little approve button, and now you can buy a print copy from the Crimethink storefront: https://www.createspace.com/3476062. Remember that all proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders.

Slush Pile Progress

2010-08-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

As of this moment, I am down to seven stories in the Lacuna slush pile and three in Mirror Dance. This is the fewest I've had since...ever, I think.

Of course, those seven Lacuna stories are fighting for one spot in the April 2011 issue, so easier =/= easy.

You win some, you misplace some...

2010-08-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

Wins: Finished edits on story. Sick family member home from the hospital (though sometimes--like, at three o'clock in the morning--this is not a good thing). Lots of work done on next Mirror Dance issue.

Misplaces: Page 19 in my proof of Crimethink. So it's back to the format stage of format, submit, order, proof. I wanted to have this done by the end of August, but that's looking a little less likely now.

Also, the coloring for the cover turned out much darker than expected. I haven't decided if this is a problem or kind of creepy-cool.

Just sittin' here, twiddling my thumbs...

2010-08-14T07:04:00.001-07:00

An update on Crimethink, for those of you who worry I've completely forgotten about it: I ordered the proof copy earlier this week, and it should be showing up any day now. From here, it's just a matter of ensuring I didn't make any silly typos, approving the proof, and telling you all where to buy it.

I actually finished a poem this week, which is more than I've finished for months. I also realized I haven't been submitting my haiku and tanka as frequently over the past year as I did before. I'll have to fix that, though I notice Modern English Tanka is marked as temporarily closed on Duotrope. Time to mosey on over and see what's up...

Track Changes option, how to I love thee?

2010-08-12T14:08:00.001-07:00

On a much happier note, I got some work done on that story I'm supposed to be editing. It took longer than I expected, because for some reason revising a scene always takes twenty times longer than writing it in the first place, but it's moving forward, which is all I can ask for right now.

I normally dislike revising because it takes up time I could be using on a new story to change a story that's already "done." The characters have moved out of my brain, the voice is hard to recapture--and the story's already been accepted, so it's not like my extra work is going to make me any extra money. But right now, when I can't make any progress on new stories, I might as well be polishing up the old ones.

I looked at a calendar this morning and nearly choked when I realized how close we are to September 1. *Gack! Autumn issue of Mirror Dance needs finishing!* Time to get cracking on that formatting, and gosh I hope I have some cover art picked out already.

Nose, meet grindstone.

The View From My Window

2010-08-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

I have never been good at _________ honestly.

Fill in that blank with whatever verb you wish. Speaking. Writing. Blogging. Especially blogging. I am by nature a private person, and that’s been reinforced by insecurity in the face of the all-knowing Internet, where your every factual error can be dissected across eight time zones in eight seconds. I have been afraid of offending people, I have been afraid of breaking some unspoken law of blogging—and so I have been vague, two-dimensional. Dishonest.

Four years ago, when I was in high school, I wrote a novelette called “For a Breath of Fresh Air.” It remains one of the most autobiographical things I have written. The opening scene takes place in the study of a mansion overlooking a mental hospital. That mansion is real, and that mental hospital is real. And as I type this, someone I love is in that mental hospital.

I have never been good at talking about mental illness honestly.

Four years ago, putting the words “manic depression” in a notebook, in a piece of fiction, was one of the bravest things I ever did. My understanding of bipolar disorder was—still is—woefully inadequate. All I knew was that it was terrifying to live with, terrifying to talk to, terrifying to watch. It is about unpredictability, about spending every hour of every day in a state of dread because you don’t know what the person you love will do next. It is about throwing yourself into your writing, your make-believe, because that is a place where you have some measure of control. It is about reading a list of panic-attack symptoms when you are sixteen and saying oh, that’s what that is.

It is about learning not to speak honestly. To say “I’m late because of a family emergency” when you mean “I’m late because I’ve been tramping through a swamp for two hours, looking for a missing person.” To say “I guess I didn’t have time to read that chapter” when you mean “I read that chapter three times, but I was thinking about the scary things someone said to me this morning and that’s all I’ve been able to remember.” To say “My life is on hold for a little bit” when you mean “Someone I love attempted suicide.”

So here I am, trying to blog honestly.

I am reading submissions to Mirror Dance and Lacuna as quickly as I can, but some days I can’t get to the computer because I am tramping through a swamp or talking to police or visiting someone in a hospital. I owe stories to several fabulous magazines, but I haven’t written anything decent since April, for the last month I haven’t put pen to paper at all. I have an unedited short story sitting on my hard drive that I can’t look at because it takes place in a mental hospital, and that’s one place I’ve seen too damn much of recently.

So there, all-knowing Internet, is what the inside of my head looks like. I have probably broken several unspoken laws of the internet. I have certainly broken several laws of good writing. I really don’t care. I have done what I set out to do in this post, and now I can get back to work. I feel good right now.

Honestly.

ETA: For those of you worried about my own well being, rest assured that I am not as angry, sad, or scared as this post probably made me seem. I am very, very frustrated, but typing this out--getting the inner monologue out of my brain and onto the page--has helped tremendously. Now, seriously, time to get back to work.

Thank you for listening.

Life - On Hold

2010-08-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

If you have a story in the Mirror Dance or Lacuna slush pile that I have not responded to yet, please don't hold your breath for a response.

Crimethink is almost ready to go to the printers, but please don't hold your breath to get a copy.

If I owe you edits/a story/a book review for your magazine, please don't hold your breath.

And please send good and happy thoughts in the direction of me and my family. We need all of them we can get.

Good Things Come in Threes

2010-07-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

1. Crimethink, while not entirely formatted, is now online.

2. My poem "What Sieglinde Serpentslayer Said to the King" is online at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

3. James Lecky's "Ancient Shades" is also online at HFQ, and I've never read a story of his that I didn't enjoy immensely.

"The Dead Women of Bajos Court"

2010-06-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

In doing research for this bizarre little story, I got lost in Seville for an hour this afternoon without leaving the comfort of my chair. The internet is a wonderful invention.

June Things!

2010-06-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

The June issue of Mirror Dance is now online, and my story "The Copperroof War" appears in the June issue of Ideomancer.

You know what would be really useful?

2010-05-15T08:27:00.001-07:00

I really need a writer's guide to alcohol.

By which I mean, a guide for writers who don't drink to the kinds of alcohol their characters would be drinking. Growing up, I only encountered wine at Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve. My parents had a single bottle of brandy in the cabinet for twenty years. I had vodka once as a kid by sneaking a sip from my grandmother's gimlet (ick). Despite the fact I was born in the homeland of Pabst and Miller, the smell of beer makes me so nauseous that I can't imagine actually putting that crap in my mouth, though I did wind up with a glass of Guinness at a restaurant when I was seventeen through a misunderstanding with the waitress. And that's pretty much my entire experience with alcohol.

This becomes a problem when I'm writing about characters who drink. I don't mean chronic drunks; it's just that sometimes my characters will crack open a bottle to celebrate something, and I have no idea what they should be drinking. What would be available in their location and approximate time period? What are the implications of different types of alcohol? I'm half-minded to walk around with a survey, asking random people on the streets: "What would you think of a woman who, after successfully overthrowing the Empereror of Ajksodjifji, cracks open a bottle of brandy as opposed to vodka?" Wikipedia is only so helpful for these types of things.

Time to see if the INTERNETS!!! can come to my rescue.

I don't know what an Eidolon is, but...

2010-05-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

This? Is awesome.

Website functioning again!

2010-04-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

My freewebs site was sorely in need of an update, and a number of the links had completely ceased to function. Everything should be in working order again. (If you do find a bad link, please let me know!)

A few of my stories and poems had become inaccessible when they were removed from the internet or when the publications they appeared in shut down. For those of you who missed "Leanansidhe" (July 2007), "A Choice of Treason" (November 2007) and "The Shadow of Nemesis" (July/August 2008) the first time around, they are available now.

Don't thank me until you've read them, though. "A Choice of Treason" in particular was a very early work.

The French, they love me...

2010-04-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

...except when they don't.

So, because I'm an egotist to the nth degree, I have a Google alert on my name. And for some reason, I'm starting to get alerts on really old blog and forum posts. Like this one: Apparently, I'm one of the worst things to happen to fantasy in 2006-2008. :-)

Aw, I feel all special now. I'm even blushing.

I cannot work under these conditions!

2010-04-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

I cannot get my brain to work.

Cannot.

There's a billion and a half story ideas floating around in there, but for the last three weeks or so I just have not been able to get them out. Normally, when I feel like this I read through old stories in an attempt to recalibrate, but somehow the sight of my own words has become incredibly wearying. I'm sure this will pass in another week or two, but until then...

Looks like it's time for a meme.

Works out of Progress

The Riverland
Sixty-four miles past the Junction, the land becomes a red and vibrant place...The Riverland means "halfway."
It's a story about trains. And magical lions. And a woman calling herself Gamaliel who is trying to run the former while not being killed by the latter. Unfortunately, the theme of cultural appropriation is proving more difficult to handle than I expected, because I come across as a anglocentric oaf even when I really, really don't want to. This is a personal failing. I'm working on it. In the meantime, this poor story languishes and searches for a first line.

The Widow's Island
You will wake to the sound of singing.
As it stands, this is a prose poem more than a short story, but I'm thinking it would work better if it was more story and less poem. The setting is inspired by the beautiful Mont St. Michel. Unfortunately, my original wordbuilding isn't working, and I'm hesitant to take it up again, knowing the long labor that lies ahead.

Saraband
No first line yet, not even the hint of one. This story was inspired by one-too-many "I fell in love with the Queen of Elfland" stories. I think it shares a setting with my novella-in-progress Jaquemart, and like Jaquemart, Saraband plays with as many fairy tale tropes as she can get her hands on. The challenge here is developing the main character.

Four Burning Things
I misread the title of someone's blog, and that's where the title came from. It has more than a little in common with "Four Lies from the Mouth of God," including forbidden love and a lot of soldiers. The big challenge with this is finding a narrative style that let me tell all the facets of the story. It hasn't been easy.

The Keeper of the Farthest Tower
I have characters. I have a setting. Now they need to start interacting.

The Oracle of the Shore
She hates the sea. For a long time, she thought it was the only thing she hated.
More forbidden love! And Oracles, which are always tasty. I have no idea why this one isn't moving along, since I know the characters and I know the plot and I know where both of the above are headed. It's like I can't tap into my own narrative voice to actually get the words on the page.

The Burning of Gethsemane Jones
Cosmic horror, alien invasion, plague, themes of alienation and empathy...I have a pretty clear idea why this one isn't taking off, as a matter of fact.

Where is my Kingdom
The quest for Aztlan, as related by Malinalxochitl. This one's getting bogged down in research purgatory.

The Second Name of Summer
Otherwise known as the Dead Languages Society. And that sums it up surprisingly well.

The Last Letter of Lazare Roland
Forgery! Murder! Revolution! And a neat forray into architecture. Also bogged down in research purgatory, though a bigger problem is that I simply have no bloody idea where to begin the story. Hence, no first line.

And of course there's the general list of novels and novellas spreading from here to Yuggoth, but I'm not even going to worry about those until one of these starts to jello. Wish me luck!

Poem in Enchanted Conversation

2010-04-11T07:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.enchantedconversation.org/2010/04/servants-tale-by-megan-arkenberg.html

I'm glad this poem found such a lovely home. And those of you readers who like Mirror Dance will almost certainly like Enchanted Conversation. :-)

Why, hello there!

2010-03-11T17:28:00.000-08:00

I wrote this story a while ago, for a contest centered on this image. The story didn't win, and I trunked it...literally. While going through some old notebooks, I rediscovered it, and decided to share it with/inflict it on you, dear reader. Enjoy.

* * *

She had to be strong.

She had to be strong when, two weeks after the wedding, he came home and told her to pack everything she could into a duffle and meet him at the launch station in an hour. They had been chosen, he said, for the Alpha 340 rehabilitation project. Random assignment? Hardly—they knew it was the young ones, the strong ones, the open ones who found themselves stuffed into the long black ships, hurtling through space toward distant galaxies whose air man had never been meant to breathe. She knew it, and she knew it didn’t matter how they had been chosen; and instead of formulating an escape, of calling friends and neighbors and looking for places to hide, she took the suitcases that had been a wedding gift from her sister and began to pack.

She left the wedding dress hanging in her closet. Her daughter would wear it on her wedding day, she promised; together, they would return for it. She never came back.

She had to be strong when he called her from the station three years later, called and said there had been a mistake in his department and he would need to take the next ship back to Earth. He said it was only business and that he would return, but they both knew better. She had heard the other voice in the background of his call, heard the high-pitched laughter and muffled squeal of pleasure as he disconnected. She knew, as his ship left a trail of black in the blue-white sky, that Earth had nothing for her anymore.

She had to be strong in the six months after he left, in the first three months after the birth of their daughter. She heard the doctor explain it, again and again—what was wrong with the air on Alpha 340, and what was wrong with the child’s lungs. She spent long nights in rocking chairs in hospitals across the continent, shifting back and forth and watching comets leave blue-white trails in the black sky.

Sometimes, she rocked the child. She sang softly of blue Earth and black ships and the white dress in a closet somewhere, trillions of miles away, that her little one would wear one day.

Sometimes, she cried.

But she had to be strong. She did not cry at the funeral, or in the face of the reporters’ questions; when she wrote letters back to Earth, damning them for what they had done to her and to her daughter, the ink did not run from tears.
S
he had to be strong when they dismissed her from the mechanics plant, when her savings dried up, when the old man at the boarding house told her to leave because they didn’t want her kind around. She didn’t know what he meant by “her” kind—whether it was grief or poverty or strength he objected to.

But she knew she had to be strong. She filled her suitcase with tools and found a place far from the city, far from liars and fools and cruel curiosity, and made her own rehabilitation project. It would not abandon her, or sicken, or hate her for her grief. It would not betray her.

It would not be weak.

And with steel and wire, wrench and rivet, she made her own strength.

Chinese!

2010-03-11T16:45:00.001-08:00

"Four Lies from the Mouth of God" is being translated into Chinese. If you'd like to check it out, the page is here.

What happens to you here is forever.

2010-03-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

I've spent several minutes trying to come up with a good introduction, but the truth is, I have no idea how to describe this. E-zine. Essay collection. Guest blog. Thoughtcrime. My latest project:

Crimethink: Politics and Speculative Fiction.

Donations to Doctors Without Borders will be greatly appreciated. So will submissions.

Is that a fever-induced hallucination, or are you just happy to see me?

2010-02-26T08:01:00.000-08:00

I'm running a temperature and breathing at about half-capacity, courtesy of a lot of stuff in my lungs that shouldn't be there. Also, fever + cold medicine = Dream Logicz!!!

Dream Logicz!!! are great for writing. Not so great for editing and submitting before anthology deadlines. Not so great for getting the spring issue of Mirror Dance properly assembled.

And I just spilled hot tea on my keyboard.

I think this is the universe trying to tell me to go back to bed.

Open Question

2010-02-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

Why has the submission volume for Lacuna increased about fifty bajillion percent over the last two days? I've gotten five submissions in the last hour, and Sunday is normally slow.

I'm not complaining; it's lovely, just inexplicable. If you have a theory, please share.

The Emphasis of Dorian Gray

2010-02-20T08:26:00.000-08:00

A few caveats. First, this post contains slight spoilers for Oliver Parker’s 2009 movie Dorian Gray and, by extension, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Read on at your own risk. (And if you haven’t read the novel, leave this blog right now and find it on Project Gutenberg. Right now.)

Second, this post is me self-indulgently musing on my viewing experience, not a review. If it was a review, I would be morally obliged to give equal time to the many, many things this movie did wonderfully—for example, the casting of Ben Barnes as our eponymous antihero. If I mentioned this, I would also have to digress on whether the important aspect of Dorian’s looks is his youth or his beauty, and if I entered that argument, I would then have to back it up with lengthy textual evidence, which would itself require context…so this is not a review.

Let the debauchery begin.

My theory: the writers locked the script in an attic and went out with the book to have a good time. When they returned, they noticed a small change in the script…

So I’m in love with The Picture of Dorian Gray. I’ve read it at least eighteen times (all the way through—I’m not sure how many times I’ve flipped it open simply to browse). I own three or four copies and have memorized the introductory matter to each. True, I have nothing on Mr. Dorian Gray himself…

For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the memory of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it. He procured from Paris no less than five large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different colors, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control. The hero, the wonderful young Parisian, in whom the romantic temperament and the scientific temperament were so strangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it. (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter XI.)

…but this shows a limitation in available shelf space rather than ardor. I own an Oscar Wilde action figure and an Oscar Wilde plush toy. On the stranger end of things, I own a picture of myself dressed as Oscar Wilde and my significant other dressed as Dorian Gray. Friends assure me this is odd.

That said, I do not allow my obsession to blind me to the limitations of form. One simply cannot make a movie of Oscar Wilde’s book; it’s too big, too dense, too full of things that don’t translate well onto the screen (Chapter XI, I’m looking at you). Dorian Gray needed to cut something. My interest is in what it added.

Let’s start with the obvious. Dorian Gray is much more explicit than its ink-and-paper predecessor. And no, I’m not referring to the sexual content—that merits a discussion of its own, and one I’m not all that interested in, to tell the truth. I mean that several conclusions the reader was left to draw in The Picture of Dorian Gray were served beautifully on a platter in the movie.

Basil’s romance with Dorian, for example. To be fair, no one was in danger of getting jailed for homosexual content in the movie *mumblemumbleanti-sodomylawsmumblebullshitmumble*, but as in all romances, subtlety has its place. Now, in my reading of the book (which is a) certainly not the only one and b) based on both the 1890 and the 1891 texts), the fact that Basil is in love with Dorian is non-negotiable.

"You don't mean to say that Basil has got any passion or any romance in him?"

"I don't know whether he has any passion, but he certainly has romance," said Lord Henry, with an amused look in his eyes. "Has he never let you know that?" (The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890, Chapter III.)

Strangely, Basil’s attraction is less obvious in the movie—probably because it is never discussed, certainly not at length as it is in the book—at the one scene towards the beginning that should make it obvious really doesn’t. Dorian is changing clothes after standing for his portrait; Basil gets a glimpse of him through the curtains; instead of betraying jaw-dropped lust (look, what you have to understand is that Ben Barnes is really really pretty) or aesthetic appreciation, Basil looks mildly confused. As in, “Why are you naked in my living room?”

Now, that can be a perfectly valid interpretation of Basil. But sometime before the movie’s halfway point, Dorian realizes that Basil is in love with him—beats me how, but I’m guessing he read the book—and uses it to manipulate Basil out of borrowing the picture. Mental whiplash, with obvious attractions, ensues.

This underplay/overplay thing happens again with Dorian’s tragic past. For those of you who missed it, it’s in Chapter III of the 1891 edition; his father was killed in a duel and his mother died of grief and his grandfather raised him and was generally an ass. The movie does away with much of this, killing off Dorian’s mother in childbirth and his father from fever, and making Dorian’s grandfather not only creepy but abusive as well. Yes, our beautiful Dorian has scars on his back (I screamed Felix! in the middle of the Sybil scene, actually.). Dorian’s tragic past goes from not present to glaringly explicit in fifteen minutes.

Not that I’m complaining about either of the above examples. As suggested by my linked reference above, M/M and abusive pasts are all right by me. But this next one rankles.

Let’s start at the end, with one of the [few] awesome lines in the movie. Awesome, because it’s what we wanted Book!Dorian to say to Book!Henry all through Chapter XIX.

I am what you made me! I lived the life that you preached but never dared practice. I am everything that you were too afraid to be.

The problem is, so far as the audience has seen, Movie!Henry indulges in exactly the same opium-induced, sex-filled madness as Dorian.

I think this could be played well. A closer comparison of Dorian and Henry could really highlight the effects of Dorian’s eternal youth, which would presumably mean different consequences for Henry and Dorian. But the movie doesn’t even seem to notice this. It changes Henry from a talker to a doer—changes, in terms of the novel, Henry’s form of Art—but leaves his character otherwise unaltered. So why don’t Henry’s sins torment him the way Dorian’s do? Or why do Dorian’s torment him so much? To a large extent, the movie has let the air out of the plot.

If everything before this point hasn’t been a heap of subjective blathering, it’s becoming one now.

In addition to a strange set of vices, Movie!Henry also has a daughter. This daughter is pretty much an elaborate stand-in for Hetty Merton, the country girl Dorian heroically abstains from eloping with in Chapter XIX. No sweat; plenty of Dorian Gray adaptations add or inflate (depending on your point of view) the role of this redeeming woman.

And I cry shenanigans on all of them. Because damn it, Dorian Gray is not supposed to be redeemed.

I’m sure that doesn’t sit well with movie audiences. We come to love Dorian in spite of (or perhaps because of) what he is—and perhaps we simply can’t bear to see something pretty get broken. If so, that bears out Wilde’s point marvelously. But The Picture of Dorian Gray doesn’t give the audience what it wants—in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray is not saved.

Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could tell?... No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now. (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter XX.)

At the end of the novel, Dorian is ruined. There’s nothing good left in him—even his desire to be good is prompted by vanity, a desire that his soul not be ugly. And let’s be honest, Dorian never had a scrap of heroism in him—he’s called Prince Charming for his looks, not his actions. Dorian Gray lacks the capacity to be redeemed. If he didn’t, his picture would not be ugly.

The only reason to inflate Hetty Merton’s character is because you want her to be at least slightly effective (as Miss Wotton is in the movie). You want to show Dorian’s desire and ability to change. The problem is that none of this can be shown because none of it exists—it’s all dimensions of Dorian’s hypocrisy. Say it with me: Dorian is ruined, and redemption is impossible.

Wilde’s plot is tied up with his message and his message is tied up with the plot, like one massive daisy chain. You can’t just change part.

Uh-oh. Did I just say message?

I love the question “What is The Picture of Dorian Gray about?” because it says so much about its answerer. Some people say consequences, some say youth and beauty, some say it’s a novel about a murder (I don’t really like these people). My answer is that The Picture of Dorian Gray is about the influence of Art—specifically, about the way that Art is life.

Basil is his painting.
Sibyl is her acting.
Henry is his epigrams.
Dorian is…

Dorian is a connoisseur. Henry says that Dorian has made life his Art, which is literally true—think hard enough about the Picture as a collaboration between Dorian and Basil, and it will give you nightmares—but I think a major part of Dorian’s character is how he allows Art to become his life. Basil’s painting is his soul, Sibyl’s acting is his love, Henry’s epigrams and the yellow book are Dorian’s thoughts and actions. Dorian isn’t an artist himself—he’s an audience. When Basil speaks about the new mode of Art that Dorian suggests to him, this is what he means.

Does any of this come through in the movie? Don’t make me laugh. Sibyl’s acting has nothing to do with Dorian’s love. Whatever Dorian does to Basil’s painting, we can be sure Basil loves him for, ahem, different reasons. Henry is hardly a clever talker, and unlike anyone in the novel, he has a life—which is to say, Movie!Henry isn’t an artist at all.

So what is the movie about? What is the emphasis of Dorian Gray? Beauty? Youth? Consequences? Sin? Redemption? In all honesty, I draw a blank. This is a beautiful movie, but it reminds me

of those curious lines in some play—Hamlet, I think—how do they run?

"'Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart."

Yes: that is what it was like. (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter XIX.)

A Work out of Progress

2010-02-17T19:17:00.000-08:00

I vaguely remember writing these three hundred words or so sometime last spring, but for the life of me I can't remember what the story was about (aside from, clearly, la bête du Gévaudan). Perhaps posting the not-story here will jog my memory; if not, I hope you enjoy not coming along for the ride as much as I do.

* * *

We did not learn of it in the usual way.

On September 20, 1765, a black carriage shuddered to a halt outside my family’s house in Langogne. The final rain of summer fell in warm gossamer sheets, washing black Languedoc mud from the coach’s wheels and the shoes of its occupants. My sister Antoinette emerged, dressed outlandishly as usual with travel-stained lace and ropes of damp fox-fur at her cuffs; if it weren’t for the black ribbons and grave expressions her companions wore, I would never have known something was amiss.

“Mélisande!” Antoinette opened her arms to me as I flew down the brick steps, her white clock flowing off her shoulders like cream. The rain sheeted over her sharp cheekbones and caught, pearl-like, on her eyelashes and crisp red curls.

“Bienvenue, sister,” I said hesitantly, holding her out at arms’ length. All around us, footmen vied with the family servants to get her luggage in out of the damp. None of Antoinette’s men would meet my gaze. “Where’s Michel?”

At the sound of her husband’s name, my sister pursed her lips in a sharp, familiar gesture of despair.

That was how we learned that our protection from la bête du Gévaudan had run out.

* * *

“And what, pray tell, is so damn hard about writing a letter?”

“Père.” Antoinette frowned, her long fingers loosening the clasp of her cloak. A slow puddle spread across the parlor floor at our feet. “Do you mean to say you aren’t pleased to see me?”

“Don’t needle him,” I whispered. Antoinette’s only answer was to shove her cloak into my arms and hiss at me to hang it up.

Papa leaned back in his chair. His dark eyebrows—the only spots of color in his face—met in a straight line over his crooked nose. “You should be in Paris, Antoinette.”

“There’s nothing for me there.”

“Célestin Charbonneau is there.”

“As I said.” She folded her hands at her waist, resting her elbows on her hips. “Nothing for me.”

* * *

Apparently, that's as far as I got. Your guess is precisely as good as mine.

Nothing like IROSF...

2010-02-11T05:58:00.001-08:00

...to make my day.

Reviews of "Four Lies from the Mouth of God" and "All the King's Monsters" here. I learned with "Winterblood" a) not to take this sort of thing too seriously and b) that the reviewer and I have completely different opinions about what speculative fiction should do for the reader.

Speaking of which, a question to the readers: when did I say Julius wrote Four Lies from the Mouth of God?

That thing, the one I don't have a name for...

2010-01-30T12:32:00.000-08:00

I have finally realized the nature of my WIP. It is a documentary about an age that never was, and a man who never lived in it.

That makes it sound both more and less fantastically nerdy than it actually is.

(I have also described it as a story about Richard Wagner and Oscar Wilde getting drunk in a Viennese bar and merging personalities. Then I remembered that Wagner was a complete $*@%ing dick. I also remembered that I know absolutely nothing about opera. So Wagner = not so much.)

Who let me on the opinion train?

2010-01-29T07:58:00.000-08:00

This post called "Four Lies from the Mouth of God" "A beautifully written, truly awful story about the price women (and children) can pay for the political actions of men. Powerful reading, but I plan never to read it again."

My feelings are two.

1) Thank God someone appreciates the awfulness! I feared some things had lost their power to disgust.

2) Women paying for the actions of men? I thought this story was, if anything, about a man paying for the actions of a woman, children paying for the actions of that man, children paying for the actions of that woman, and finally the woman paying for her own actions. God save me from making a statement on gender--I am most horrendously unqualified.

Review Policy for Mirror Dance and Lacuna

2010-01-22T09:15:00.000-08:00

I've received several e-mails in the past few weeks about reviews for Lacuna and Mirror Dance. Clearly, it's high time I came up with a policy, made it public, and stuck with it.

If you would like to submit a review you have written to Mirror Dance or Lacuna, that is absolutely wonderful: please see the submission guidelines for the individual magazines. Here is my policy for review requests, i.e. publishers or authors who would like me, the editor, to review one of their novels for one of my magazines.

1.

Your book must fit the genre of the magazine in which it is being reviewed.

For Lacuna, this means historical fiction, alternate history, science fiction/fantasy/horror with a historical setting, or creative nonfiction on a historical subject.

For Mirror Dance, this means some form of fantasy or magic realism: not horror or science fiction (dark fantasy and science fantasy are acceptable).

2.

I vastly prefer a hard copy to review. Most of my computer time is spent editing the magazines or working on my own writing career; I read review copies during my commute and during down-time throughout the day.

If you absolutely must send me an electronic copy, it must be a) very short or b) very printer friendly. If for any reason this will be an issue (for example, you are requesting a review for an e-book) please e-mail me with the specifics and we can come up with a satisfactory solution.

3.

Don't be shy about sending me extra information with your review request (I'll do background research anyway, but I feel better when the information comes straight from the author/publisher). Tell me who wrote it, who published it, when it's being published, where it can be bought, how much it costs. If you have a detailed web page dedicated to it, let me know. If you have a fan club, let me know. If there's anything else about you you'd like to have included in the review, tell me up front so I can include it.

4.

If I've reviewed one of your books in the past, you are absolutely welcome to send me a review copy of your next book, add me to your newsletter list, etc. I like to know what you're up to, in a completely non-stalkerish way. However, I'll try not to review two books by the same author in two consecutive issues, so please don't be upset if you have to wait a few months.

If I've already agreed to review a copy of your novel and it doesn’t meet all the above criteria, don't worry, you're still getting your review. I will always notify you immediately if for some reason I'm unable to review your book. That said, if you send me a review request and don't receive a confirmation e-mail in a week or two, please give me a nudge, as something has gone seriously wrong.

Story for Haiti - Panthanatos

2010-01-17T12:21:00.001-08:00

In order to raise money for relief efforts in Haiti, Crossed Genres has come up with a brilliantly simple idea: have authors post free fiction online, and have readers show their appreciation by donating to any number of fine charities. Some suggestions, and a list of other participating authors, appear here.

When it comes to unpublished fiction, I unfortunately don't have any open at the moment (aside from a trunk story or two, and trust me, you do not want to read those). Please enjoy "Panthanatos," posted on my website. This story previously appeared in the 2008 anthology Ruins Metropolis.

I giggle nervously, looking to my right and to my left...

2010-01-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

"Meh" verging on "Bleh" review of "All the King's Monsters" from Free SF Reader. Judging from the two word summary, at least my plot was clear.

Fantasy Magazine - Best of 2009

2010-01-05T12:56:00.000-08:00

The Fantasy Magazine poll for best story of 2009 is open and ready. And yes, my name is on the ballot. :-)

The darling buds of January

2010-01-02T08:10:00.001-08:00

More stories appearing in January:

- "Firstborn", at the Lorelei Signal

- "Fugitive 135711400", in 10Flash

- "Four Lies from the Mouth of God", in Strange Horizons

- "Song at a Cottage Door", in the January issue of Cabinet des Fees

Stay tuned!

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T21:10:00.000-08:00

2010 (which, for me, shall commence in exactly forty-nine minutes) comes to a wonderful start with my story "All the King's Monsters" appearing in Clarkesworld. Enjoy!

More from the Seventh Sanctum....

2009-12-18T14:26:00.001-08:00

"The Clock of Cold," "The Fifth Empress of Beauty," and "The Sleeper in the Valley of Poison" are today's finds. If only I had the time to write them all!

Dwarf Stars 2009

2009-12-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

One of my haiku and my haibun (that is, my only every published haibun) are Dwarf Star Award nominees this year. I've known it for a while--it's just taken me this long to find a link for you, dear reader.

http://www.sfpoetry.com/dwarfstars09.html

Titles

2009-12-11T10:04:00.001-08:00

This is not how I choose my titles, though it could be.

The Seventh Sanctum weird name generator!

My favorites so far: The King in Silence and The Happy Cursed Earl of Magnificence.

Lacuna Review

2009-11-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

Don Schneider has posted a wonderful review of Lacuna on his website--wonderful here having the dual meanings of thorough and complimentary.

Now, to make a small journey through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole...I have an odd reaction to reviews of my work. Not so much my editing work--honestly, opinion on that seems generally favorable, which makes me giggle and blush like a schoolgirl. Either that, or my critics don't care enough to be vocal.

This, fortunately for my critically oversized ego, is not the case with my fiction. You may (but probably don't) remember my reaction to a disapproving French review of "Winterblood" back in January. Unless you know me personally, or heard the WTF went 'round the world, you don't know my reaction to the reviewer who called "Winterblood" erotica--but I'm sure you can imagine it. The point is, I react to bad reviews. I over-react. I throw tantrums and call reviewers bad names and write nasty letters. I do all of this in the privacy of my own head, of course, or I'd be getting some bad reviews from law enforcement. But I still do it, and I accept the bad reviews as criticism--valid or otherwise--from experts.

And with good reviews? I...don't. I don't dissect them on this blog (though you may be certain I know and care what Midori Snyder said about "The Fawn Prince" and what Erin M. Kinch said about "Grown from Man to Dragon" and my flash fiction in general). Actually, with the two examples above, I barely even consider them reviews, just positive comments...but if they were negative comments, you can bet I would be calling them reviews, and throwing tantrums over them. So why all this attention to the bad and not to the good? Is it because I'm so insecure that I automatically consider any praise for my work to be superficial or uninformed? Or because I'm so egotistical that I take the praise for granted?

Yes, darling, I know I'm brilliant. Tell me again how much you love my style.

Hopefully I fall somewhere between the extremes, accepting compliments graciously, as neither something to take for granted nor my one source of validation. Let's face it, writers, we do think we're brilliant. If we didn't, we wouldn't dare offer our work for publication. At the same time, we do need to know--and, yes, want to know--what we're doing right. It's an erroneous assumption I frequently make when writing rejections, that writers believe they are doing everything perfectly until informed otherwise--but it simply isn't true, and that's why good reviews (and encouraging rejections) are important.

We also need to know what we're doing wrong, and maybe that's why I obsess over bad reviews, airing them everywhere and to everyone. I want to know what I'm doing wrong, and I'm hoping someone will walk up to me and say "This, this and this are what made "Winterblood" feel like erotica," because I sure don't know what did. This brings us back to the "critics as experts" thing. I feel like people who dislike my stories know something I don't, and are refusing to share it with me.

Wow, that was whiny and immature. I'm going to blame it on the cold medicine, okay?

Out of the rabbit-hole again, none of the previous has anything to do with Schneider's review of Lacuna. That told me exactly what I want to know--what works, what needs refining, and what makes people hear Lacuna and think Paradox*. Why don't you check it out, along with the other great reviews on his site?

*Funny story. Since I changed the date of my Lacuna guidelines post to reflect the day Lacuna opened to submissions (June 1)--not the day it was created (March 3)--it appears to many people that I created Lacuna in reaction to Paradox's unfortunate demise. My real reasons were not quite so fitting, so noble, or so egotistical. (Set myself up as the next Chris Cevasco? Blasphemy!) When I created Lacuna, Paradox was alive and well, and Lacuna was no more intended to compete with Paradox than Mirror Dance was with Fantasy Magazine. I expected it to be a side effort to Mirror Dance, perhaps a second chance for stories rejected by Paradox or Solander.

That's not to say I never planned for Lacuna to be as great as I could make it. Simply that I never expected, nor intended, to draw comparisons to Paradox, and I am not in any way seeking to imitate Paradox in my selection of stories or art. I am following my own judgements; if they seem to coincide with those of the late Paradox's editors, fine and dandy, but I am not trying to be Chris Cevasco. No one (least of all Mr. Schneider above) has explicity accused me of doing so, but I can't help the feeling that underneath the many comparisons I have read in blogs and cover letters(!), there is someone wondering just what I'm playing at.

Finally, and most basically, if I was trying to recreate Paradox, I would not have the brass to offer less than half their pay rate. Just saying.

NaNoWriMo Update

2009-11-09T11:34:00.000-08:00

Stories completed: 2 ("The Kindness of Ravens" and "The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois")

Words completed: approximately 9,000

Stories to go: 9 ("The Setting Sun" and "Jaquemart" are excluded from the list, by right of being too frickin' long)

Words to go: 41,000

Likelihood of success: 0.001%

Apparently...

2009-11-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

My story Cesare appeared in Fantasy Magazine earlier this week.

Cool.

NaNoWriMo - Short Story Edition!

2009-11-06T11:29:00.000-08:00

Once again, I am attempting to write 50,000 words of short stories in the month of November. Because, at the moment, my brain will explode if I write one more productive words, I am now going to do something decidedly unproductive--a first line meme.

Here are my projects for the month:

Naxos: The Ford died with a hiccup and a puff of smoke three miles out of Naxos, Wisconsin. I looked over at Ari in the passenger seat, she looked and me, and we said oh shit pretty much simultaneously.

The Prince of Skyrats: Skyrats swarmed in the gallows-yard the day their prince was hanged, both the gray and dull-eyed birds whose wings fluttered like tattered bits of rag, and the other kind, who were also gray and dull-eyed and ragged. The guards watched them warily, from a distance. The Prince of Skyrats did not see them at all; a black silk blindfold covered his face, leaving him blind and voiceless.

The Bluebeard Room: "No," said Evangline Leighton, "I would not open that door for all the jewels in the Tower of London."

Madam Pneuma: Mrs. Barlow stabbed a needle through the fabric, heedless of the danger to the black velvet of her skirt. “I still don’t understand it,” she said, ostensibly to the room at large, though her gray eyes never moved from mine.

Embers: It was a burning day.

Sixty-Four: [None yet.]

Oxymandias: [None yet.]

Four Burning Things: Mama Babel sets the coffee pot on the fire, stirring it with her bayonet to keep the gritty stuff from burning.

The Widow's Island: You will wake to the sound of singing.

Jaquemart: There was blood on the stage.

The Setting Sun: The night before she died, I dreamed of Sephone.

The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois: [See pictures here.] The house is called Summerfall, and it stands at the end of a long white drive lined with plane trees and elm.

The Kindness of Ravens: On your first day in the desert, they will bring you food.

Wish me luck!

Arthur Machen Pumpkin

2009-10-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

My nerdhood continues to emerge.

First Issue of Lacuna Published Today!

2009-10-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Visit the first issue of Lacuna: A Journal of Historical Fiction, and don't forget to check out our first issue review contest!

The Nerdiest Pumpkin Ever?

2009-10-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

Well, yes. This was last year's Holloween pumpkin, a tribute to M. R. James:

This year's pumpkin (which may actually be a gourd) is much more elaborate and even nerdier--a tribute to Arthur Machen's "The White People." More pictures will follow.

Bring Dorian Gray to Milwaukee!

2009-09-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

View all Milwaukee events on Eventful

This is just to say...

2009-09-11T16:48:00.000-07:00

I am the new proud owner of a pocket watch.

It's a Relic: it's a ladydog to time*: I love it.

That is all.

*Using a tweezers, pull up on the serrated crown: you can then spin the dial to change the time.

Don't make me open another magazine!

2009-08-26T13:43:00.001-07:00

The last time I couldn't find a magazine in a given genre, I created one. For the sake of my sanity, save me from doing it again by helping me find a ghost story market!

When I say "ghost story," I mean it in the M. R. James sense, or the sense of Lovecraft - Cthulhu. With the closing of The Willows, is there a current market for weird fiction that isn't cosmic horror? Where would you send a story that has more in common with "Count Magnus" than "The Call of Cthulhu," or "The White People" than "The Haunter in the Dark"?

Hint Fiction Anthology

2009-08-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

Check out these guidelines for an anthology of "hint fiction"--flash fiction in twenty-five words or less.

Sounds like a challenge to me! :-)

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly

2009-07-17T10:17:00.001-07:00

I should have checked this magazine out around sixteen days ago, when the first issue came out, but reading for Mirror Dance and Lacuna has kept me busy. Fortunately, I found a small break this morning, and discovered that I actually do enjoy unapologetic Sword & Sorcery when it's done intelligently.

I particularly recommend James Lecky's story "The Black Flowers of Sevan" and Elizabeth Barrette's poem "Ansel's Army."

In a coffee shop...

2009-07-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

...where I stopped today for a cup of ice water, there were two anthologies on a shelf; one, a collection of Irish playwrights including the brilliant Oscar Wilde, and the other, The Best of Every Day Fiction including work by yours truly. This made my day, though it took me until I finished my ice water to notice Every Day Fiction because I was busy gushing over Wilde.

According to the sticker on the front, the copy of EDF includes work by local author Greta Igl. As the annoying dolls in Disney World sing, "It's a small world after all..."

July Publications

2009-07-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

Today...

...my fantasy flash fiction "The Dangers of Kafka in Cairo" appears the new flash magazine 10Flash.

...my mythic flash fiction "The Banquet of Queen Nitokris" appears in The Lorelei Signal.

...my horror poem "Flesh" appears in Fear and Trembling.

...my Sword and Sorcerery story "Batuli's Child" appears in Bards and Sages Quarterly.

Lacuna Updates

2009-06-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to send out the first acceptances and rejections for Lacuna this week; I must admit, I wasn't prepared for the high number and quality of submissions for the magazine. I could easily fill four issues just with what I've received so far this month!

On the flip side, there are a number issues I'm encountering for the first time with a historical fiction magazine. For example, several submissions have included unsavory racial or ethnic stereotypes. Not cool. There's also a strangely large number of submissions with no definite historical content. While I love seconday world fantasy (see Mirror Dance above), it doesn't belong in a historical fiction journal.

Keep those submissions coming!

Mirror Dance Summer Issue

2009-05-31T13:23:00.000-07:00

"Reflections: Villains and Antiheroes," the Summer 2009 issue of Mirror Dance, will be online tomorrow (June 1).

Lacuna: A Journal of Historical Fiction also opens to submissions tomorrow.

Paradox Closes Its Doors

2009-05-17T16:09:00.001-07:00

Paradox was one of the few print magazines I found consistantly awesome enough to subscribe to. I'm very sad to see it go.

With the closing of the Willows earlier this year, I suddenly find myself very low on historical/pseudohistorical reading material. I don't know about the rest of you, but Lacuna can't open to submissions soon enough!

Computer Crash

2009-05-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

Mirror Dance submitters: please be advised that I will be without computer access for the next few days and response times have increased accordingly.

If you have already signed the publishing agreement for your work, it is formatted for the magazine and backed up on my flash drive. If you have not signed a publishing agreement yet, assume I do not have a copy of your work on my computer or flash drive. This should not be a problem, but if the computer dry spell stretches for more than a week, it may mean that the Summer 2009 issue will go up a few days late. If this becomes the case, I will post an announcement here and on the Mirror Dance site.

I will still be checking my e-mail at the local library, so submissions and questions are welcome.

Carpathia at EDF

2009-05-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

Check it out!

Thoughtcrime Experiments

2009-04-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

Congratulations are in order for my sister, Therese Arkenberg, and the other authors and artists whose work appears in the online anthology Thoughtcrime Experiments. Check it out--it's well worth a read.

Where in the world...?

2009-04-26T18:54:00.001-07:00

For those who have been wondering where I've been the last week or so, I've been reading Sarah Monette's brilliant Corambis two or three times and haven't really been interested in anything else. :-) I hope to blog on it at some point in the future, when I am suitably articulate.

If you're wondering if you should buy it, the answer is a whooping heck yes (provided, of course, that you've read the other three books in the series. If you haven't, read them first). They are easily my favorite fantasy novels, and they may become yours, too.

Palimpsest

2009-03-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

This post is spoiler-free.

I've just finished reading Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente, and I honestly can't say just now what I think of it.

Did I enjoy it? Yes, immensely. The word "imaginative" fails to convey the richness of the city Valente has created. The utter strangeness of the creatures and events in Palimpsest makes the author's ability to make them real and concrete in the mind of the reader all the more impressive--and necessary. The four protagonists were interesting--much more so towards the end of the book than at the beginning--but nothing compared to the citizens (I hesitate to say "people") of Palimpsest themselves. The hints of a soon-to-be-revealed violent past behind the city kept me engaged when the plot lagged.

That said, I am a prose reader rather than a story reader--it's not the what that interests me, but the how. Valente has been frequently and deservedly praised for her rich prose. However, there are places where richness becomes unintelligable, or simply silly. An example from page nine:

She balanced one hand--many-ringed--on her hip and jerked her head in the manner of a fox snuffling the air for roasting things.

"Balanced," "snuffling," and "many-ringed" can all be argued, but why on earth would a fox--a wild animal--be interested in cooked meat? This kind of slip is rare, and becomes rarer as the novel progresses, but when the prose is generally so effortless, it's all the more obvious when the author is trying too hard.

So what do I think of Palimpsest? I'm glad I read it, but it won't get a rereading from me. The protagonists, interesting as they were, didn't feel real enough for me to truly invest myself emotionally in their story (I hesitate to say "struggle"), and I don't feel as though there was any deep meaning to dig for the second time through. To be fair, I am also simultaneously rereading The Fountainhead and The Picture of Dorian Gray, so my literary expectations are high. I'd certainly recommend giving Palimpsest a try--at the very least, you'll have a new way of looking at honey bees.

Oldie but Goodie

2009-03-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

"A Reader's Manifesto" appeared about eight years ago in The Atlantic, but it's a) taken me this long to discover it and b) still true. I most emphatically agree with the closing statements about blaming the reader for faults of the writer. Reading should not be about trying to translate florid and inaccurate prose into English!

New Webzine

2009-03-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

Those of you who know me probably think I've flipped my lid, and you're probably right.

Nevertheless, the lack of e-zines dedicated to historical fiction has bothered me considerably for the past several months. To remedy this situation, I've started a new, biannual e-journal of historical fiction and speculative/alternate history.

Submissions open in June. The first issue will be published on October 15.

Spread the word! Send me a story! Pray for my soul! I'll probably need all of the above by the middle of August.

Not quite what I meant by "Character Sketch"

2009-03-01T17:24:00.001-08:00

There's a reason I'm a writer, not an artist. However, I've decided to share the fruits of my other, less-developed talent with you, dear reader...

His name is Sylvain, and I promise I won't be hurt if you couldn't tell he was a "he" right away. I've yet to master the art of distinct facial features. They make those wonderful little wooden dolls for body posturing, but no one seems to have invented one for masculine faces.

Mirror Dance Anniversary Issue

2009-03-01T12:37:00.000-08:00

The Spring 2009 issue of Mirror Dance marks our one year anniversary! Come and check it out--I promise you won't be disappointed!