Fantasy Magazine Issue 56, November 2011

Home , Harper Prism, John Joseph Adams, Lavie Tidhar, Mythopoeic Awards, Neil Clarke (editor), Not One of Us

Table of Contents

Editorial by John Joseph Adams “Seven Spells to Sever the Heart” by K.M. Ferebee (fiction) Author Spotlight: K.M. Ferebee by T. J. McIntyre (spotlight) Feature Interview: Charlaine Harris by John Joseph Adams & David Barr Kirtley (interview) “Christopher Raven” by Theodora Goss (fiction) Author Spotlight: Theodora Goss by Jennifer Konieczny (spotlight) “Shades of the Nineteenth Century” by Helen Pilinovsky (nonfiction) “Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western” by Lavie Tidhar (fiction) Author Spotlight: Lavie Tidhar by T. J. McIntyre (spotlight) “Home on the Strange” by Emma Bull (nonfiction) “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death” by Ellen Kushner (fiction) Author Spotlight: Ellen Kushner by Wendy N. Wagner (spotlight) “The Pen and the Sword” by Kat Howard (nonfiction) Coming Attractions

Welcome to issue fifty-six of Fantasy Magazine! No news to report this month, but by the time this issue comes out, I will have already won (or lost) one (or two) World Fantasy Awards; at press time, however, my fate was still unknown. So until the end of October, think of them as Schrödinger’s Awards—until one of you looks up the winners, I’m in a superposition: I’ve both won and lost the awards until you observe the results, thereby forcing the quantum waveform to collapse and my cat to huff some poisonous gas. Or something like that. Our sister-magazine Lightspeed, meanwhile, is about to release its first anthology: Lightspeed: Year One, collecting all of the fiction published in its first year (from June 2010-May 2011); it’s out this month, so order now! With that out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month: Leo Tolstoy reminded us, “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But in K. M. Ferebee’s tale “Seven Spells to Sever the Heart,” one unhappy family has magic to blame for its misery. In our feature interview this month, Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, basis of the hit HBO series True Blood, joins us to discuss wrapping up the series, her oddest fans, and whether or not vampires poop. Next up, Theodora Goss summons a spirit who changes the course of four girls’ lives in her tale “Christopher Raven.” Helen Pilinovsky investigates the role of ghosts in the popular literature of the 1800s in her article “Shades of the Nineteenth Century.” Revenge is a dish served cold, and with perhaps a dash of soy sauce, in Lavie Tidhar’s “Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western.” Emma Bull explores how the west was weird in her article “Home on the Strange.” A great swordsman and his lover cope with a surprisingly assertive fan in “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death,” by Ellen Kushner. If you’ve ever stopped reading a fencing scene to wonder just what’s going on, you’ll enjoy Kat Howard’s article “The Pen and the Sword”—it’s a great introduction to fencing and its portrayal in books and film. En garde! So that’s our issue this month. Thanks for reading!

Samuel Crewe was the son of a witch. He was, in fact, the seventh son of a witch, who had herself been one of seven daughters. In fairy tales, this sort of lineage was meant to point to great strength, good fortune, and adventures. In fact, however, it was inconvenient being the smallest child in any large, unwealthy family. To be the son of a witch was worse, setting one up for a life of mistrust, and to be the son of such a witch as Samuel’s mother was a tragic start in life. She died before he turned six: burned in Madagascar Gardens, a municipal execution, for a bit of necromancy that had turned unpleasant. Samuel remembered the garden air’s taste and texture—eau de almond blossoms and slightly oily, with a heavy sun- gloss and a dark, crisp burnt-hair scent—and the scraped- up sound of his mother screaming. It was the clearest memory that he had of his mother. He didn’t even know if she’d been light-haired or dark; she had left him with no photographs. His eldest brother, too, had been burned at the stake. Samuel was not present for that. Benjamin—his brother —had been fanciful, reckless. He had never limited himself to legal magic, but instead upstaged himself with each new show of senseless defiance: turning a double- decker bus into a vast birdcage, and its travellers into larks and kites. He had intended, so he said, to turn them back, but had later become disinterested in the matter. He used dark witchcraft to summon a demon that he called Salamanca, which, in the shape of a large housecat, haunted the wealthy neighbourhood of West South Persia for seven weeks. When it was caught at last and banished by municipal enchanters, Salamanca proved to have in its possession twenty-three marbles, each made of a very pure hard glass. These were the small happinesses it had stolen from their owners: the sharp white delight of snow’s harbinger scent, the ability to taste raspberry jam, a favourite word (“fanfare,” perhaps, or “phosphorescence”) now plucked out of the language, so that the person in question could not quite recall it. Though Salamanca was sent back to the hell-country whence it had come, the happinesses remained glass, and could not be wholly returned to their owners. More than any of his other crimes, Benjamin Crewe was burned for that. Samuel could not argue with the sentence. Nor could he argue with that of his brother Jacoby, who was sent into exile. Jacoby was no demon-summoner. He hadn’t Benjamin’s taste for flamboyance. For years, the family had not thought he had more than a hint of witchcraft to him. This was not uncommon, even in families where witching ran strongly on one or both sides of the bloodline. Magic came to him at last when he was well out of adolescence, already a young man. He was at university, reading classics. He’d always been a bit of a bookish type; he planned to be a lecturer in Latin. Then: Samuel was unclear on the exact nature of what happened. He knew only that Jacoby in some fashion summoned up, by accident, a Greco-Roman god. A girl was killed—some argued that Jacoby’d killed her, though Samuel did not believe that—and there was other damage. Queasy rumours mounted of blood-soaked clothes, appalling photographs. The court ruled Jacoby incompetent for trial, and he was promptly exiled to France. After the case, Tam—Samuel’s third-from-eldest brother—said, “Bloody incompetent, all right. Better off out of it. Not fit for witchcraft.” And that was that: not a postcard or a letter, no presents at Christmas. Samuel, twelve at the time, felt rather lonely. He had loved Jacoby. He kept a little statuette that Jacoby had left him: a Greco- Roman god of magic, a minor god with bird’s wings in place of hands. As a teenager, he slept with it on his nightstand, and sometimes, on sleepless nights, he planned to pack up his clothes, slip from the house, and flee the city. He would buy a ticket, he imagined, for a southbound train from Buried Saint Station, then at the coast he’d stow away aboard a ship for France. He liked to think of reaching Le Havre on some rainy morning— the new damp smell of France making him elated, his back turned forever on the white cliffs of England, the clump of earth that housed his family’s remnants. Then his brother Tam died, and the family sank once more into mourning. Samuel set aside his dreams of France. Tam had broken every bone in his body in a long fall; it was a particularly gruesome death. He’d been travelling in the form of a bird over the moors of Yewshire at the time, a common kind of enchantment. No one knew why the magic had misfired and he’d fallen. Perhaps a hawk or falcon had savaged him, and in his panic he’d forgotten how to stay a bird. He hadn’t been a very careful witch. Perhaps, though, people outside the family said, the Crewes were simply cursed, and that was all there was to it. Just think: There was the mother, and now these brothers, one of them exiled, two of them dead. Nor was that the end, for, two months later, Samuel’s fourth-eldest brother, Ned, killed himself with an heirloom duelling pistol. The pain in my heart has gone to my head, he wrote in the brief note they found pinned to his body. He had a twin brother, Seb, who packed up all of their shared possessions soon afterwards and emigrated. He wrote letters from America, where he eventually settled. In America, he wrote, they have no ghosts. In America, the dead stay dead. It was true that in England the dead sometimes came back. Samuel saw the ghost of Ned at the top of the staircase at least twice a week. Ned carried a black flower, but there was no blood on him. He did not speak, but sometimes he touched Samuel in passing: fondly, with affection. His touch was like a chip of ice lodged at the roof of your mouth. It made Samuel shudder. He found it unpleasant. Patchett was the name of his last remaining brother, the last who lived in England. At twenty-one years old, Patchett was plump and nervous. He did not look much like Samuel, who was thin, and who had a concentrated, serious look that disquieted people around him. Patchett taught the history of magic at a local comprehensive. He was not a witch—or not a practising one; witchcraft, he said, was not something that he did. Samuel never asked if, in fact, he could do it. The topic made Patchett terribly skittish. Besides, Samuel—by now fifteen, and disdainful —found he was not particularly interested. He did not like Patchett, did not value his opinions. He thought of Tam saying, “Not fit.” It had not been true of Jacoby, who was gentle. It was true of Patchett. The two of them lived still in the same large, empty house with their father, Owan—a small and crumpled, silent man: a recluse, not a witch. He had once been a bit of a firebrand, with his fox-coloured hair and his slim, handsome profile. A daring fellow, a journalist, a social crusader—that was what he had been. Now he rarely left the study, and Samuel trespassed upon his domain only to ask occasionally for money. He associated his father with doors shut fast, with grim pools of light on the floor of the study, dust on the shutters, someone sighing. He was a lonely boy, Samuel. His schoolmates shunned him. They knew that he was the son of a witch, and that tragedy had somehow, indefinably, deformed him. This was like having a contagious illness. It left its mark as clearly as pocks or scars, so clearly that Samuel sometimes looked for it—scanning in the mirror for this visible sign, for where stitches stamped the torn-open part of him. He did not see it. Still he imagined the eyes of others picking it out on his skin. He took to wearing a baggy coat, one of Jacoby’s belongings. The sleeves of it sagged over his wrists. It smelt like Jacoby, austere and slightly Roman, dark and musty, an aroma of cedar and mint. He practiced witchcraft in the evening hours, when school was done and the outside world ceased to exist. Alone in his bedroom, he paged through texts that had belonged to his mother. He’d learnt he was a witch at the age of fourteen, when birds began following him homewards and he found that he could speak to them— could speak to moths, as well, and mayflies, and wasps, to lantern beetles and to the spiders spinning cobwebs in the corners of his brothers’ rooms. He had not told his father. He had not known how to begin—nor how to start that conversation with pasty, irritable Patchett, who turned the wireless radio in the kitchen off whenever witches were mentioned. But, he thought later, perhaps he should not have been so hard on Patchett. Absorbed in his private magical studies, Samuel learned to turn birds into small clay men who walked about and talked for more than an hour till they began spitting feathers and turned to birds again. He learned to make a common household mirror show any reflection, even the shorelines of Oriental lakes or the glaciers of the Arctic Ocean. He learned how to breathe out ice and make fire spring from his fingers. But, preoccupied as he was with these matters, he could not see that Patchett was deeply unhappy: that a kind of melancholy, slow and seeping and listless, had taken hold of him. He knew that some nights there was nothing for dinner, nothing but half-rotted cheese and cans of lager in the fridge, and an uneasy feel to the house, as though the windows had all shattered and there was nothing to keep a storm from coming in. Some nights Samuel tiptoed round the house with a torch after his father had gone to bed, touching his hand against the panes of the windows, feeling for cracks, double-checking them. He did not realize the storm was in the house already. So then, by the time Samuel turned seventeen years old, Patchett was dead: another suicide. Nothing so dramatic as a duelling pistol. A handful of pills, meticulously calibrated. He left no note, and did not return to haunt the house in which he had so miserably lived. Samuel made the funeral arrangements. He said to the undertaker, when asked his preference, “Just don’t burn him.” They did up the body in a wooden coffin, carted it to a peaceful churchyard, and buried it. The first Crewe to be buried in consecrated ground. He would have preferred it, Samuel thought: a church funeral presided over by a vicar, perfect evidence that no one could prove he’d been a witch. Afterwards, the smell of death stayed in the house. Not a rotting smell, not the falling-apart scent of meat gone sour; this was an unearthly aroma. It reminded Samuel of old paint and leather, lemon furniture polish, rich and dense; attics left unopened and antiques in boxes. He took up the habit of chewing mints to shed the dark taste it left in his mouth. It was a witching thing, he thought; he had not smelt or tasted it before, when he had not yet learned magic. Now it was so strong that he could not go into Patchett’s bedroom, or bear to touch the books and ink pens Patchett had left unattended on the table in the kitchen. He spent a lot of time at the top of the staircase, talking to the ghost of Ned. Ned’s ghost came more frequently to the house now, or perhaps Samuel just saw more of him. Despite his silence, he was a comforting presence. (No one knew if ghosts could talk, but they never did.) Ned fingered often the black flower he wore in his buttonhole, and looked sad, and sighed: a sound like leaves in the wind. He made no more attempts to touch Samuel on the shoulder or ruffle his hair. They sat on their separate ends of the landing, Samuel hunched morosely in Jacoby’s coat, Ned dapper in the suit they’d buried him in. Samuel said, “I didn’t even know Benjamin—not really. I was too young. I suppose he was very good at witchcraft. He would have to have been. He used to pinch me when I asked him for favours. But once he filled my closet up with fireflies, so no monsters could get in. I think maybe Mother influenced him a lot. Too much. I never missed her. But you—you did.” He meant “you” generally—all of you, all of his brothers. Ned’s ghost nodded. He lifted his thin and half- transparent hand towards the sleeve of Samuel’s coat, then lowered it. “Yes. It was Jacoby’s. He left it behind. I like it, but it’s too big. I thought I would grow into it, but I never have. I don’t mind.” The sleeves drooped over his hands. “I used to write letters to him. I would have liked to send them, but he didn’t leave an address. I wish I’d known witchcraft then.” Ned blinked. “I didn’t want to have to ask you. You always seemed so sad. Besides, I didn’t even know you were a witch till after you died. Seb had to tell me. We never really talked, you and me. I was just a kid.” The ghost looked sadder. He flickered at the edges, going out of focus. Samuel had noticed that the ghost looked less like Ned as the years went on, as though time were copying him over and over again. Someday there might not be much of Ned left. Just an outline in the air where a figure had been. “I know,” Samuel said. “You think I’m a kid still. But you weren’t much older when you did what you did. What did you think then—did you think your life was over?” A black petal dripped from the flower in Ned’s jacket. Before it could touch the floor, it vanished. Ned, too, looked on the edge of disappearing. Sometimes he did this, and Samuel saw nothing of him for days on end. “I always thought that Tam did it, too. He wasn’t that clumsy. He just looked down and couldn’t handle life back on land. I’ll never know, of course, but I can still hate him for it. He hadn’t even the guts to haunt the house he left. It was after he died that I first started thinking— what the best thing to do was; you know, how to protect myself from all of it.” All of you, he almost said. Ned vanished. Samuel found himself sitting alone on the landing. He felt an incipient ache in his head. The smell of death rose from the dust on the stairs. He heard his father moving quietly in the kitchen, shuffling across the grey-green linoleum. It had been more than a week since they’d spoken. His father had come to the funeral, tossed earth on the coffin, yet now seemed not wholly aware that Patchett was dead. Certainty struck Samuel in that moment, a force that pushed him towards what he’d do next. He felt it physically, flooding his body. He remembered being twelve years old, and longing for France. This was the same, a similar feeling. Then, he had pasted above his bed a torn-out magazine picture of Provence, the sort of place where he imagined that Jacoby would live. Rosebushes brazened a wrought-iron railing. A stone Roman goddess benedicted plants. Samuel had begged Seb to show him, with witchcraft, more such pictures in their decrepit bathroom mirror, and Seb— lowering his eyelids with suppressed compassion—had: a scatter of crows over a golden wheat-field, the streaming sun in the distance, fat rivers flowing by the spine-shapes of cathedrals. “I’m going to go there,” Samuel had confidently told him. “When you’re older,” Seb had said with a laugh. Then Seb himself had slipped on board a boat and not even looked backwards, Seb who got seasick even on short holidays out to the Isle of Man. Whatever he’d been hoping for, the short letters he sent suggested it had not happened in America. He’d sounded muted. Samuel had unfixed the photograph of France from over his bed. He had it still, in a box somewhere, neatly folded. But he did not think now that he would ever go to France. You could not simply go to another country. It was not enough. This had been demonstrated. Another, more drastic kind of action was called for. Samuel had known the right spell the instant he saw it. He’d found it in one of the first magic books he’d read. The flyleaf of the book—Magellan’s Difficulties of Magic—was labelled in a loose, unfurling scribble that let him know it had been Benjamin’s. Later, when he’d dug his mother’s old books out of the attic, he found other variants in them, all centred around a similar, antiquated concept: Spell to Absolve a Magician of his Heart pains, Spell to place the Witch’s Heart into her Hand; The Putting of the Heart into the Little Finger, Seven Spells to Sever the Heart. The best of the seven spells of this last title was annotated in Benjamin’s cryptic, scrawling script; presumably he’d been the first to inherit the book from their mother. It made Samuel feel close to him. He slept for a time with the book under his pillow, but found that when he did, he dreamt that smoke crept up through the floorboards of his room. The smoke was thin, sulphurous, acrid. Samuel often woke to find the ghost of Ned sitting in his desk chair, sad-eyed and watching him. Though he’d settled on the spell so long before, he had hesitated when it came to actually executing the magic. He had little faith in his witching skills. He was self-taught, and did nothing more difficult on a daily basis than transfigure the glass of the windows to let more sun in. True, from time to time he took on harder projects—he had once bewitched a very small star, speeding towards Earth, so that it would spin northwards of its normal destination. Its new impact was in the front garden of the Crewes’ house. It left a hole no larger than Samuel’s fist, with a lump of black rock—smooth and heart-shaped— inside it. No one had known it had been Samuel who’d done the magic. No one had said for certain it was magic. Stars fell out of the sky in phenomenal numbers, so often that, seeing one, you tagged it with a wish and then let it slip to the corner of your mind. “A coincidence,” Samuel told the neighbours. They nodded warily, not entirely convinced. He levelled dirt over the ruptured garden. He kept the star’s hard rock in his pocket. He could not remember quite why he’d wanted to have it. Its warmth took weeks to diminish. So he was not unused to serious magic. But this was still more serious than anything he had attempted before. If he did it badly, he might well die. With this in mind, for years he had postponed it. He had thought he would wait until he turned eighteen, came of age. Then the death of Patchett had altered his feelings on the matter. The spell could not wait. He imagined another year—six months even—without it; it would not do. He should have done it long before Patchett died, in the lull between sorrows. Cowardice had stopped him. He’d not make that mistake again. Six weeks after the funeral, he gathered the ingredients for the spell. After school, he went to the Witches’ Market: a matter-of-fact set of stalls with silver- and-black awnings that sold herbs, and roots, and rare birds’ eggs. He was aware of himself as an odd, thin figure, in his oversized coat. He wondered sometimes how others regarded him. He had the fine, dark, delicate features that all the Crewes shared, and from time to time he would be stopped by witches who’d say, “Excuse me, are you—sorry, you looked so familiar. For a moment I thought perhaps we had met.” He kept his head down and moved very quickly, trying to avoid this. The preliminary arrangements for the spell took him some time. It was necessary to get a small steel knife from the kitchen and let it sit for seven days, crooked, on top of a mirror. Samuel kept returning from school in the afternoons to find the ghost of Ned attempting to straighten the blade of the knife. Ned’s fingers, insubstantial, passed straight through it. On the seventh day, Samuel was awakened by a chill in the house, a cold dark ambience of November. Every room was filled with the smell of death. He walked from doorway to doorway, down every hall, disturbed by the wet, black ubiquity of the scent. The spellbook had not said that this would happen. Samuel’s suspicions dwelt with the ghost of Ned, but he was not certain whether ghosts could work witchcraft. Nor did he see Ned anywhere in the house. Resolutely, once he had clearly established that no windows were open and—a moment of bleak and fearful conviction—that his father was not dead, Samuel ignored it. He went on preparing himself for the magic. It was a process that required a kind of limbering-up of the focus, a limiting of the attention. He had set aside, the night before, some rue and the sleek red peel of an apple, the former so brittle it broke at a touch, the latter waxy and slightly damp. Now he placed them in a silver bowl with the stub end of a candle and a Roman coin. The coin was irregular, tiny and rubbed. Hardship, over centuries, had left it black and mostly flattened. He struck a match and watched its flame flare up. The air filled with the sour white scent of sulphur— then, as he tossed the match into the bowl, the warm smell of wax and herbs burning. There were words to be said over the bowl. He consulted the book. Benjamin’s handwriting had attained a smeared graphite look over the years. It was slowly vanishing. Samuel tried to bring an image of Benjamin himself into his mind, and could not. He looked down at the steady flame. It yellowed and widened hungrily. It husked the apple peel bit by bit. Splinters of rue bent, curving as though in agony. Everything looks skeletal when burning, he thought. He found the idea troubling. He read the words of the spell aloud. He tried to filter his thoughts. Smoke covered up the smell of death. It was a simple spell, really; a classic, from the days of fairy tales and fables. It had used to be standard for a witch to put his heart into a tree, or a rock, or a locket, or some kind of running water. Any place that you could put a heart separately, so that it would not shudder and ache and cause you to suffer—so that it could not be suddenly pierced, so that it would not, one day, break. The habit had fallen somewhat out of fashion in the early part of this century, experiencing, at the time of the First World War, a momentary resurgence. (Samuel had learnt all this from Patchett, who, after all, had taught magical history.) Witches during the war did not put their hearts into objects. These might be lost, or even stolen: your heart in the hands of your worst enemy. Instead, a witch would put his heart into his little finger and cut it off. Thus it could be stored, remote and safe, and returned to your body after the armistice or at some other, later date. It was the best and most complete way to sever a heart, if you were willing to suffer the pain. “So why does no one do it anymore?” Samuel had asked Patchett, when the topic arose. Patchett had shrugged; as ever, he was tetchy. “Why don’t we wear top hats and frock coats? Ask me a real question, Sam.” But at last he had relented and given a real answer: “Life was harder then. You’re not talking about something little, a small spellcasting. Can you live without a heart? Of course, yes. But why would you want to, if you don’t have to? It’s not the same sort of life. It’s different.” “Like ghosts,” Samuel had said. “Like ghosts, I suppose.” Patchett had picked up his book again, readjusted his glasses, a sign that Samuel should leave him alone. Then paused. As an afterthought: “Not like ghosts,” he’d said. But life was not harder then, Samuel thought. Life was life, from that age to this. If you were lucky, you scarcely noticed your heart; unlucky, and you were crippled by it. He set the fallen star on top of his desk, and then placed next to it the Greco-Roman statuette that Jacoby had left him. The statuette had eyes like clean white sheets, empty and unclouded. “Watch this,” Samuel said aloud, almost defiant. He did not know why he said it. The smoke from the silver bowl had settled all throughout the room. Samuel put his hand flat on the desk. He picked up the knife and touched its tip to his forehead. It burned. He felt hot. A kind of fever gripped him. Only a current of cool, sad air, strange and foreign against his skin, made him turn to see that Ned was sitting cross-legged on the floorboards: not interfering, just watching him. Samuel crossed his heart with the blade of the knife. He felt it move inside his chest—an insubstantial, spiritual motion. It nauseated him. Something in the smoke caused his head to spin. He closed his eyes. For an instant he was flying over the grass-green mountains, bird-boned, a grey wisp of dust on the wind, and the wild sense of nothingness overwhelmed him. The raw air burned against his face. Oh, Tam, he thought. He let the feeling go. He released it. His heart carved a path down under his skin. He felt it settle at the tip of his finger, just under the nail, in the joint and in the flesh. It pulsed and hurt. It felt overlarge and ungainly, too heavy for the place that it was in. Samuel set the thin edge of the knife between his little finger and his palm. He drew a deep breath. He pushed the knife in. It bled a lot, which for some reason surprised him. The bone broke into splinters, like bits of ice: ugly, jagged, and uneven. The pain swept through him in a huge and desultory wave. His body revolted, and he was sick. He found it hard to breathe through the nausea. Terror gripped him: a terror rooted in the raw animal form of the body, unphilosophical, unhuman. He grabbed the end of the desk and panted. The blood kept spilling out of him. Then at last the feeling abated in sharp bursts, the wound sealing as the witchcraft kicked in. His hand ceased to bleed. The finger was severed. His fever subsided. He felt the first curious sense of heartlessness. It was cool, and dark, and restful: a cloud passing over a summer garden. It unsharpened the glare from the sun and the lamps. It dulled the sour, fruitful, burning scent of the smoke that rose from the silver bowl. Samuel looked at the items he’d set on the desk. The stone of the star was just a stone. It seemed lifeless to him now. He touched the face of the Greco-Roman god. The little statuette reminded him of something he had loved once, in childhood, something he would never see or sense again, but he could not remember quite what it was, or why it had instilled such longing in him. He heard a dry, rasping cough in the corner of the room. He turned and saw Ned—the ghost of Ned, standing and grasping his throat. He seemed as though he were trying to force something out of his chest, a sound, maybe, a word, although ghosts did not speak. No one knows if they can, Samuel thought. But they never did. Samuel picked up the small, wan severed finger. He did not feel his heart in it. It was a strange, cold, curious object. He felt no attachment to it. The fire in the silver bowl was smouldering still. Tongues of flame licked upwards at the air. Samuel saw, as though in a dream, the natural sequence of events. He held the finger in his hand a moment longer, then set it down into the crater of the fire. He watched the flesh char and turn to ashes. The bone cracked and seemed to bend in the flame, arching forwards and backwards. The thought came: This is what it’s like to burn. But as he stared into the heart of that blue incandescence, he could not feel it.

K.M. Ferebee has worked as a laundry maid, subway musician, and household assistant. (She also used to play in a Balkan rock band.) Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Not One of Us, and Shimmer. From autumn 2011, she will be studying for her MFA in Creative Writing at Ohio State University. Author Spotlight: K.M. Ferebee T. J. McIntyre

“Seven Spells to Sever the Heart” is a dark fantasy about suicide and magic. What was your inspiration?

I rarely have a clear inspiration for my stories. They just sort of come out of me. Sentence by sentence. Like drawing blood. (She said grimly!)

It just so happened that I was reading about the life story of the modern philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein around the time I read your story. I sensed a possible connection since three of his brothers committed suicide. Was this connection here on purpose, or am I just reading too much into your story?

Yes, the ghost of Ludwig Wittgenstein is constantly at my shoulder! (Though—of course—as a ghost, he never speaks to me.) He is a major, really the major, intellectual figure in my life. I’m a student of his philosophy, but I also have a keen interest in his biography and background. So I was aware, as I was writing, that I was drawing on the history you describe: the three brothers who committed suicide—though one of those deaths is, I believe, only assumed to have been a suicide—and also the rather dark and baroque narrative of the broader Wittgenstein family. That said, there isn’t any particular connection between the story and Wittgenstein; merely my non-story life bleeding into the life of the story.

Central to your story is the notion that if one is only feeling emotional pain it would be better to feel nothing at all. Do you agree with this premise? Why or why not?

I don’t believe that pain is something extrinsic to goodness. I believe there can be goodness in suffering, but that this does not mean suffering itself is good. The question is very complicated and interests me. I’m quite religious, so my private take on it tends to come from that direction. I think that part of my answer may simply be the story, and that I wrote it to express an ambivalence that I could not otherwise clearly articulate.

Magicians and witches are enduring tropes in fiction. What do you think accounts for the perpetual popularity of these types of characters? Well, they breed as tropes in every generation, don’t they? Magicians and witches have a feeling of awe and strangeness to me because I read a great deal about them when I was a child, which is the era in which that awe and strangeness seeds. I think that’s true for a lot of people. I think if I had read a great deal about railway conductors in that era of childhood, it’s very possible I would write stories about railway conductors. But I do also think that magicians and witches are particularly good ways of talking intelligibly about something that’s otherwise difficult to put our collective finger on, a connection to the source of that same awe and strangeness.

The number seven shows up everywhere as an important number—it can be found as an important signifier in folk and fairy tales, modern fiction, and even many religions. What is it about this number that you latched onto when writing this story? Why use seven?

To be honest, I almost always pick numbers purely for sound—because I happen to be writing a sentence in which I really need, say, a two-syllable number, or a number that starts with “n” or that ends in a long “e.” Very unromantic, I know!

Why use a fantasy narrative to write about real-world situations and problems? (Suicide, loss, grief, etc.)

I never write non-fantastical narratives; somehow they simply don’t happen for me. I suspect this is because I can write stories only when I am saying something I’m not otherwise capable of saying (see above, re: the problem of pain). I think that fantastical stories are rather like parables in that they contain within their very forms, their structures, some aspect of what is being explained. Because of this, they communicate certain ineffable truths in a way that factual stories can’t communicate. I’ll fall back on that word “strangeness” again, or maybe “mystery.” Fantastical stories (or parables) are often needed in order to discuss or communicate about mystery.

So, what’s next for K. M. Ferebee?

I have a couple of stories forthcoming in Not One of Us and Shimmer. I’m currently studying for my MFA in Creative Writing. I hope someday to collect all my peculiar stories in one volume, to be called, provisionally, The Bird Country. I have a blog that I update with news from time to time: http://kmferebee.wordpress.com.

T.J. McIntyre writes from a busy household in rural Alabama. His poems and short stories have been featured in numerous publications including recent appearances in Moon Milk Review, M-Brane SF, The Red Penny Papers, and Tales of the Talisman. His debut poetry collection, Isotropes: A Collection of Speculative Haibun, was released in 2010 by Philistine Press. In addition to writing poetry and short fiction, he writes a monthly column for the Apex Books Blog and regularly contributes reviews for Skull Salad Reviews. Feature Interview: Charlaine Harris John Joseph Adams & David Barr Kirtley

Charlaine Harris is the New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Vampire Mysteries series. The series features Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress who works in a bar in the fictional Northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps. Sookie Stackhouse’s world is peopled with vampires and other supernatural creatures. The series is the basis for the hit HBO television show True Blood. Harris is also the author of the Harper Connelly Mysteries series, which follows the adventures of a young woman who gains supernatural powers after being struck by lightning. Before turning her hand to urban fantasy, Harris was also the author of several straight mystery novels, including the Aurora Teagarden series, in which amateur sleuths solve old crimes, and the Lily Bard series, featuring a karate-student and cleaning lady who gets unwillingly dragged into one murder mystery after another. She has also co-edited several urban fantasy anthologies with Toni L. P. Kelner, such as Home Improvement: Undead Edition and Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. This interview first appeared in io9’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Visit io9.com/tag/geeksguide to listen to the entire interview and the rest of the show, in which the hosts discuss various geeky topics.

In your Southern Vampire Mysteries series (and in True Blood), vampires are able to come out of the shadows with the advent of synthetic blood. How did you first come up with the idea of vampires drinking synthetic blood?

My initial thought on the series was I wanted to write about a woman dating a vampire. But to make them less frightening, to give them a reason for being out, I had to develop a theory that would let them look less vicious. So they would have to have another food source. So I read some articles about synthetic blood, which never has really worked out before now—though people have made the attempt—and it seemed to me like a viable synthetic blood would be the perfect answer to my problems. Vampires would say, “Oh no, we’re not dangerous. We drink synthetic blood. We don’t want to grab you and bite you.” And people could believe that because people are gullible.

Every series has slightly different rules when it comes to how the vampires work. For your series, how did you come up with the rules, and is that something you worked out in detail to start with, or did the rules just sort of evolve naturally as the story took shape?

I started out knowing a few things. First, they wouldn’t be able to go out in daylight. In the [Bram Stoker] book, Dracula is a day-walker, but I had to have some system of checks and balances, I figured, because otherwise vampires are so powerful that there really wouldn’t be any point in humans trying to outwit them or stand up to them. There were some things I just decided not to tackle. For some reason, and I can’t quite understand why, readers are secretly fascinated with the physical output of vampires. They are always trying to think of a nice way of saying, “Do your vampires poop?” Or, “Do your vampires ejaculate?” And I’m just going, you know, vampire bathroom habits are just not interesting to me.

The Sookie Stackhouse series seems equally likely to appeal to fans of horror, mystery, and romance. Was that by design?

Absolutely. I don’t really plan my career out in any detail, which is one reason my success was so late in life, but I did hope that if I adopted a kitchen sink approach, which was something I’d always wanted to do, that it would appeal to mystery readers, romance readers, horror readers, and hopefully science fiction writers too.

You’ve said you’re reaching the end of the Sookie Stackhouse series. Do you have any thoughts about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to wrapping up a long-running series?

I have a lot of thoughts. I haven’t ever wrapped up a series that ran this long. The previous series, I don’t think they’ve exceeded seven or eight books, so this is a new experience for me. I’ve lived with Sookie for a long, long time. By the time the last book is published, which will be in 2013, and it will be the thirteenth book, I will have been with Sookie for fifteen years—almost the entire growing-up period of my daughter, actually. So that is going to be kind of a jolt not to have her here anymore living in the house with me, but at the same time I find that facing the end of the series is giving me the most tremendous shot in the arm.

Can you give examples of other series you think ended well or ended poorly, and what made them good and bad?

Well, of course, I thought the ending of Six Feet Under was brilliant. And I am one of the few people I know who thought Lost was great; I thought the ending was fantastic. For book series, I’m not completely sure that I’ve known other people who’ve wrapped up long- running series and I’ve lasted through to the last book, so all I can say is thanks to my readers who have, and I’ve always known how the series would end and that’s how it’s going to end. I know I can’t make everybody happy. That’s why I’m going to go on vacation when the last book comes out!

What did you like about the finales of Six Feet Under and Lost?

I thought the Six Feet Under finale was unexpected and poignant. Alan went to all of the characters at their moment of death, and since death was the theme of the show, that seemed weirdly appropriate, and something I would never have thought of, and I always admire that. The ending of Lost was mystical, and a lot of people thought it was cheap, but I didn’t. It felt satisfying to me. And it had sort of a Six Feet Under-ish vibe to it too, and kind of a Titanic vibe—you know, when all the Titanic people who died are waiting at the end for Rose to come? —the ending of Lost was sort of reminiscent of that too. So I guess it seems I like a lot of death at the end.

The TV show True Blood kicked off with this really interesting viral marketing campaign that made it seem as if synthetic blood was an actual product and as if vampires were really making their existence known. What did you think about that?

I think HBO has a wonderful marketing department. They seem to have hit a vein—ha, ha—with people. Their marketing was very successful, very attractive, and very exciting.

True Blood diverges significantly from your books, to the extent that you’ve said you often don’t know what’s going to happen next on the show. What have been some of the biggest surprises for you while you’ve watched it?

There’ve been many surprises, almost too many to name. I think knowing that in the book Jason sleeps around is an important fact about his character, but on the screen we actually see him doing that, and it certainly has quite a different impact. And that was a tremendous, startling moment to me and I thought “ooh.” Because Jason in the books is a stupid horn dog, and he is in the show too— he’s a little sweeter in the show than he is in the books. Jessica was a complete surprise to me, but I think a brilliant one. She’s not in the books, and I think she’s a great addition to the show. Those are the two most startling, I think. Of course, Lafayette lived, and I kind of expected that; Nelsan Ellis saved his own life by being so brilliant in the show, and in the books, of course, he wasn’t that great, or as charming as Nelsan, and he died.

You’ve said that Anne Rice is one of your favorite authors. Could you tell us about why you enjoy her writing and what sort of influence she’s had on you?

Sure. I’m not such a great fan of her witch books, but her vampire books I just loved. Interview With the Vampire, at the time it was published, was one of the most startling, innovative books on the market and it held that private place for many years. I just can’t tell you how impressed I was with the originality of her thinking. I still think that book was just a masterstroke. And I think so many of her ideas are classics. She’s had as much influence on the vampire genre as Dracula did.

Was there anything in particular she did that you wanted to emulate and anything that you wanted to do differently?

Well, I can’t write like her. There’s no point in me trying. I’ve got a different agenda than Anne Rice. So I don’t try to emulate her except, I hope, in my goal of producing the best work I can possibly produce. So there are great differences. And the background of Anne’s vampires, since they can’t and are not interested in having sex, there’s a tremendous homoerotic vibration going on in the background of all of the books, and in my books vampires can have sex and are, you know, very enthusiastic about that with whomever they feel like having it. So mine is a more overt and obvious sexuality than that in Anne’s books. The Twilight series has been a big hit in recent years, particularly among teenage girls. What’s been your take on the whole Twilight phenomenon?

I think that Stephanie Meyer hit the nerve she was trying for. Honestly, I think it was like a shot in the dark that paid off big for her. And I’m really glad for anybody that can make money in today’s market. She opened the door for a lot of people. Because of her, a lot of young people are growing up reading about vampires that might not necessarily have enjoyed the genre otherwise, and I also think her readers grow up to read my books. I’ve read her books. She says she does not read other vampire writers ever. So, you know, I don’t know her, and that’s probably all I can say about the Twilight books.

Did you grow up reading vampire stories yourself or was that something you got interested in later?

I grew up reading anything I could get my hands on. I’ve always been a voracious reader and remain so to this day. I read mysteries; I read classics; I read Dracula; I read anything and everything, and I think that was a wonderful, wonderful freedom my parents gave me. Were there any particular books that really inspired you when you were younger?

There were. And since I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, I can actually remember the names of some of them. I think Jane Eyre was the basic book for the whole romance field. If you look at the elements in Jane Eyre, they’ve been repeated over and over and over. The unconventional heroine who looks conventional on the outside; the brooding hero; the mad wife; the big block to their happiness ever after, which gets removed. And then The Three Musketeers, which is like the seminal buddy movie but written, and believe me, The Three Musketeers, the original novel, is not anything like the children’s version or the movie version. It’s a very bawdy book with a lot of very unconventional relationships in it. Those were two that were really, really important to me and I’m sure there were many others. I read a lot of Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, you know, on and on and on.

According to your website you’re a science fiction fan. Who are some of your favorite authors these days in science fiction specifically, as opposed to fantasy and horror? Connie Willis is one of my huge favorites. Julie Czerneda I think is very, very good. Mike Carey is so good. Oh my gosh, there are just so many. I just read a wonderful book called Ready Player One by Ernest Cline that I thought just blew my socks off. I was lucky enough to read it a few months ago in manuscript form and it’s really totally gratifying to see it getting big, big publicity now.

Your Harper Connelly series features a main character who develops supernatural powers after getting struck by lightning. How did you get that idea, and what sort of research did you do on the effects of being struck by lightning?

I did research lightning even though to me it’s still pretty much magic, though I’ve read the scientific explanation many times. And luckily for me, there is a group for lightning strike survivors. They were kind enough to let me listen in for a while, which I appreciated very much. It’s a select group of people who keep having physical problems for many, many years after the original incident. It was just fascinating and touching to read the difficulties they had with the medical establishment and getting treatment for these various problems they develop. Your bibliography lists a piece you wrote called “An Evening with Al Gore.” Can you tell us what that’s about?

Oh, that’s my ecological horror story. I just loved that story. It was really very different for me. It’s about some supernatural creatures who are really struck by Al Gore’s arguments in favor of recycling and turning the world around, and they carry it to a very extreme degree.

In addition to writing, you’ve also edited a number of anthologies. How did you get involved with that, and what sort of books have you worked on before?

I was approached by Marty Greenberg, God bless his memory, and Marty was interested in producing an anthology that I would edit. I didn’t feel qualified to take that on by myself, but my dear and close friend Toni Kelner is a fantastic editor, and so I told Marty—and this was several years ago—that I would be glad to undertake it if Toni could be my partner, and he readily agreed. So Toni and I are about to do our fifth anthology together, and that has been a great learning experience for me. I get to read other writers and figure out what makes their stories work or not, and then I have to be really, really tactful when I ask them to make changes, so it’s been very good for me all the way around.

Your most recent one that came out was a sort of supernatural home improvement kind of book. Where did that idea come from?

We sit down to brainstorm—we did special occasions for the first few: birthdays, the holidays, vacations, but then we thought home improvement would be fun. Everybody’s got a terrible story about home improvement. They don’t usually end as bloodily as the stories in our books. The next one’s going to be set in any kind of school or classroom, and is going to be called An Apple for the Creature.

Could you give an example or two of the stories in which home improvement goes bloodily wrong?

Oh, sure. Melissa Marr’s got a great story in there about a neighborhood watch situation where the person in charge of enforcing the neighborhood rules pushes him once too many times. And there’s a great haunting story in there, too, where a woman comes back to try to redo the apartment where she actually killed her boyfriend many decades before.

Are there any other recent or upcoming projects that you’d like to mention?

The Sookie Stackhouse Companion [just came out]. And it has been delayed once, so I’m very glad to see it finally appearing on the shelves. It was a huge coordination nightmare because so many people were involved. I wrote an original novella for it, and there’s an interview with me, an interview with Alan Ball, there’s a timeline, there’s a family tree, there’s a map, there’s a compendium of all the characters that have ever been in any Sookie novel; it was just a massive undertaking. It got to where I would almost break out in hives when I saw “companion” in the subject line of an email.

What have been some of the most interesting comments that people have posted on your message board?

“Interesting” can be interpreted so many different ways. Some people are so invested in Sookie’s relationships that they develop a violent partisanship between one suitor and another, and finally we had to just ban that discussion from the board. People get very, very vehement. One woman said “Oh, if Sookie doesn’t end up with Eric, I’m going to kill myself.” And I said, “Surely not! Surely you wouldn’t.” And there have been pretty intense arguments over other aspects of the book. I just never expected all that. Of course I guess I’m just not used to anybody paying attention to me!

I know that Laurell K. Hamilton has had problems with some of her fans. Have you had any problems like that?

Not, probably, as intense as Laurell’s, but yes, I’ve had a problem or two. I had one person who showed up at, oh, four or five of my signings in a row, and they were pretty widely separated geographically, so that was of a little concern to me. I’ve had people who seem very, very intense about whether or not Sookie would end up with Eric, very intense about that to the point where I’m a little concerned about them.

That actually does it for our questions. We don’t want to end on that note, though. Is there anything cheerful you’d like to talk about to wrap things up?

Well, let’s see. Toni and my new anthology is out; the companion is out; I have wrapped up the next Sookie, which will be out next May, it’s called Deadlocked. Then I have a short story to write for Joe Lansdale. I have one to write for our anthology. Then I’ll start Sookie Thirteen and finish it. And then I can write whatever I want to write!

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as editor of Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazine, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He was a finalist for the 2011 Hugo Award, and is currently up for two World Fantasy Awards. Forthcoming anthologies include: Lightspeed: Year One (November, Prime Books), Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom (February, Simon & Schuster), Armored (April, Baen Books), and The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (Fall, Tor Books). John is also the co-host of io9’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams. David Barr Kirtley has published fiction in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Lightspeed, Intergalactic Medicine Show, On Spec, and Cicada, and in anthologies such as New Voices in Science Fiction, Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and The Dragon Done It. Recently he’s contributed stories to several of John Joseph Adams’s anthologies, including The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, and The Way of the Wizard. He’s attended numerous writing workshops, including Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, James Gunn’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and Orson Scott Card’s Writers Bootcamp, and he holds an MFA in screenwriting and fiction from the University of Southern California. He also teaches regularly at Alpha, a Pittsburgh-area science fiction workshop for young writers, and is the other co-host of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy. He lives in New York. Christopher Raven Theodora Goss

Why had I come back to Collingswood? That was what I asked myself, standing on the path that led to the main school building, a structure built of gray stone and shadowed by oaks that had stood for a hundred years. I had ridden the cart from the train station, just as I had so many years ago at the beginning of each term. Then, I had been accompanied by a trunk almost as large as I was, filled with clothes and books. Now I carried only a small suitcase. It contained another walking suit, a dress suitable for dinner, and toiletries. I would only be here for one night. Why had I come back? Because I had been invited to give a speech. Surely that was all. “Lucy!” It was Millicent Tolliver, walking down the path toward me. “Hello, Tollie!” I called, then wondered if she would mind the schoolgirl nickname. She looked very much like the schoolgirl she had been, with an untidy blouse and, I could see when she gave me an enthusiastic hug, an ink stain on one cheek. Only the length of her skirt and the bun of hair at the back of her head, which threatened to come down at any moment, marked her as, not a schoolgirl any longer, but one of the teachers. I had wondered how many of the girls I knew would be coming back for Old Girls’ Day, but I knew Tollie would be here. Unlike the rest of us, she had remained at Collingswood. “Eleanor Prescott is here, and you won’t believe who else—Mary Davenport.” She grabbed my suitcase from me and said, “We’re upstairs, in our old room, all four of us.” “Why did they put us up there?” I followed her across the front hall and up the staircase. I remembered it echoing with boots. We used to run down it, almost late for French or geography lessons on the first floor. The school felt so empty, without the noise of girls chattering and whispering, without the smell of cabbage that used to float, like a vague miasma, through the halls. I kept expecting the old sounds, the old smells, but there was only the silence of summer vacation, and beeswax. But there, at the top of the stairs, was a familiar sight: the portrait of Lord Collingswood in his riding jacket, with a horse and hound at his side, holding a riding whip as though to show who was master. He stared down over his long nose, no doubt shocked by the sight of generations of schoolgirls running through his halls. We had inherited the tradition of calling him Old Nosey. “Oh, I asked for our old room. When I found out that all of you would be here, I asked Miss Halloway if we could share, and of course she said yes. She was the one who first put us together, remember?” How well I remembered! The four of us glaring at one another. It was our final year at Collingswood, and we were assigned to room with our mortal enemies. I hated Eleanor Prescott, with her French dresses and stuck-up ways, and despised Mary Davenport for her timidity, her tendency to start every sentence with “Well, I don’t really know, but . . . ” And I had no use for Millicent Tolliver, who was a scholarship girl like me, but enthusiastically tried to curry favor with Eleanor Prescott and her circle. Miss Halloway herself had greeted us. She was the new headmistress and was said to have advanced educational ideas. “This will be quite a treat for you, girls,” she said. “I’ve put you in the room Lady Collingswood herself slept in, a hundred years ago. It was used for storage under Miss Temple, but we have so many girls this term that we needed all the available space, and it cleaned up quite beautifully. I even found a portrait of Lady Collingswood while we were inventorying the attic and brought it down for you. You know she was the one who founded Collingswood school. I thought she might inspire you to greater academic achievements.” She looked particularly at Eleanor, who preferred outdoor games to studying and cared more about tennis than Latin. We looked at Lady Collingswood doubtfully. She had clear, pale skin and auburn ringlets cascading over her shoulders. Her eyes were grayish blue, and she wore a dress of the same color with lace at the sleeves. She was smiling at the painter and playing with a small dog in her lap. I would not have called her beautiful, exactly. Her face was too particular, too individual, for that. But she looked intelligent, and much nicer than Old Nosey out in the hall. “She was a patroness of the arts and painted and wrote poetry herself. Also an excellent gardener—the Lady Collingswood rose is named after her. I found a book on the history of Collingswood in the attic. Perhaps you would like to look at it?” We murmured politely. We had no interest in the history of Collingswood. Despite our enmity, we all knew what the others were thinking. Wasn’t it almost time for tea? Despite her advanced ideas, Miss Halloway evidently understood schoolgirls and their stomachs. “It will be in my office when you’re interested. Tea is in the dining hall in half an hour. Come down when you’ve finished unpacking. I’ll see you there, girls.” “When did you say tea was?” asked Eleanor Prescott. I stepped back, startled. I had been absorbed in memories, but this Eleanor was not the girl I had known. She was Lady Thornton-Smythe, the Terror of the Tories. She looked even more formidable than she had as a schoolgirl, tall and elegant, with elaborate loops of blond hair. I could see a feathered hat on the bed, and I recognized her dress as a model from Worth. It must have cost a small fortune. “Lucy!” she said now. “How perfectly lovely to see you.” She kissed me on both cheeks. “I give copies of The Modern Diana to everyone I know. I tell them it’s a perfectly scandalous book, all about free love and professions for women.” “Honestly, at first I was afraid to read it,” said Mary Davenport, smiling and giving me a hug. “But it really does have an important message. All about using the talents God gave us.” She was as short and plump as she had been, although her cheeks were redder from what she had called, in a letter to me, her “country life.” There were gray strands in her hair. She had married her father’s curate, who was now the Reverend Charles Beaumont, with a living near York. She had come back to visit “dear old Collingswood” while he attended an ecclesiastical conference in London. Mary had three children living, and one buried. Eleanor had no children, which she did not seem to regret. “Laws to alleviate the oppression of man—and woman—are my children,” she had written to me. And Tollie had never married. All this I knew from letters I had received over the years—not many, but we had never entirely lost touch. I suppose what we experienced that last year had bound us together. I had sent them letters about my own life, my relationship with Louis, his death from tuberculosis, my own efforts to raise little Louie, who had his father’s complaint. The Modern Diana had sold well enough that I had sent him to a sanatorium in Switzerland, but the money would not last forever. I was grateful that Collingswood had paid for my train ticket and offered me an honorarium for my speech at the Old Girls’ Dinner. Would I have come back otherwise? It was Tollie, of course, who said what the rest of us were thinking but would not say. “I’m so glad we’re all here. Now we can talk about Christopher Raven.”

Tollie dreamed of him last, but of course she was the first to say anything. “Lucy, wake up! I had the strangest dream.” I opened my eyes, then closed them again. “Go away. Can’t you see it’s still dark?” “But I dreamed of a man. Have you ever dreamed of a man? With curling black hair and a white blouse—at least, it looked like a blouse, like something a woman would wear. Or a pirate. Maybe he was a pirate? Except that he was saying something—like poetry. I was sitting on the parlor sofa, except it was so much nicer than the sofa we have now, and he bowed to me and kissed my hand!” “You’ve dreamed about him too!” said Eleanor, sitting up in bed. “Then I’m going to stop dreaming about him. I don’t want to share my dreams with Messy Millie.” “Well, I’ve been dreaming about him for a week,” I said. “So you’ve been sharing your dream with the both of us. How common is that? And what about Mary? Maybe she’s been dreaming about him as well.” Mary, who had just opened her eyes, pulled the blanket over her head. “Have you been dreaming about him too?” asked Eleanor. “Mary, answer me!” “Yes,” came the muffled answer. “For a week.” “Did he kiss your hand?” asked Tollie. Mary looked out from under the blanket. Her face was bright red. “No. We were in this room, but it had a big bed in it. And he kissed my shoulder.” “He hasn’t kissed me,” I said. “He just takes me walking around the garden, and he says things—about my hair and eyes. Poetry, like Tollie said.” “Well, he’s kissed me,” said Eleanor. “We were in the tower, looking out toward Collington, and he told me that I changed like the moon, or something like that, and he kissed me on the mouth.” That day, for the first time, we sat together in the front parlor, which was reserved for the older girls, trying to figure it out. “Maybe he’s a ghost, and we’re being haunted,” said Mary. Her father was a member of the Society for Psychical Research. “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Eleanor. “There’s no such thing as a ghost.” “Oh yes, there is,” said Tollie. “My aunt Harriet was haunted by my uncle, who had lost a leg at sea. She said the ghost went thump, thump, thump on its wooden leg, up and down the hallways at night.” “Ugh,” said Mary. “You’re making me shiver!” “But even if he is a ghost,” I said, “whose ghost is he? And why is he haunting the four of us?” “We don’t know that he is,” said Eleanor. “Maybe the other girls have had dreams as well, and they’re just not talking about it.” So we went around asking the other girls about what they had dreamed the night before. None of them had dreamed of a man with curling black hair, or brown skin that made him look like a foreigner, or black eyes that looked as though they were laughing at you, although one of them had dreamed of her brother who was in India. No, it was just us four. We made a pact. Each morning we would compare notes. We would tell each other what we had dreamed, all the details, no matter how embarrassing. And we would try to remember what the man had said, those poetic words that seemed to slip out of our heads on waking, like water.

“He told me that my eyes are like bright stars,” said Tollie. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Eleanor. “Your eyes are like eyes. He told me that my hair was like a fire burning down a forest, except he used different words. And they rhymed with something, but I don’t remember what.” “You have to try to remember,” I said. “I wish all of you had Mary’s memory.” In my notebook, I had written down what we dreamed each night, and the fragments of what we thought must be poetry:

Eleanor: tower, dark but moonlight “the cascade of your gown” something about “sweet surrender” and “sweetly die” Mary: in front of fireplace, kissed neck “like a swan’s,” “proud and fair” “luxuriance of your hair” Tollie: passed in hallway and dropped letter “hide it in your bosom, sweetheart” “the moon’s a secret lover, as am I” Lucy: kissed several times, passionately “elements of love” (but hard to hear, could be “dalliance of love”?)

By this time, we had all been kissed, and we blushed as we told each other. “It was—soft,” said Mary. “This is wrong, isn’t it? Even if it’s just a dream.” “Forceful,” said Eleanor. “I don’t think he would have stopped if I’d wanted him to. How can it be wrong if it’s only a dream?” “Is that what it’s like, when boys kiss?” asked Tollie. “No, it’s nothing like that,” said Eleanor, who had boy cousins. “That’s disgusting.” “I don’t think we’re any closer to working out who he is,” I said. “We know he’s a poet, because of what he’s saying. I mean, neck proud and fair, and all that. So, if he is a ghost, we need to find out if there were any poets who died at Collingswood.” “There’s no such thing as a ghost,” said Eleanor. “What about Miss Halloway’s book?” asked Tollie. I was sent to ask Miss Halloway for the book, as the one most likely to, as Eleanor said, “read boring stuff.” “Of course, Lucy,” she said. “I’m glad you’re interested in the history of the school. Some of the other girls, well, they’ll graduate and get married. But I think you are capable of doing something different, some sort of intellectual work. I hope you’ll think about that. There are so many opportunities for women nowadays that did not exist when I was your age.” “Yes, Miss Halloway,” I said, hoping to escape a lecture. Miss Halloway’s advanced educational theories, we had discovered, involved teaching girls the subjects boys were usually taught, and she had a tendency to lecture us about the advancement of women. I did not quite escape one, but it was not as long as I had feared. I closed the door of her office with “and you really should think about a university education, Lucy” in my ears. “And who’s going to read that?” asked Eleanor, when I had brought The History of Collingswood House, from the Crusades to the Present Day to our room. The book had been covered with dust, and now I was covered with it as well. “How many pages is it?” asked Mary. I had already looked. “Seven hundred and ninety-two. And there’s no index.” By the way they all looked at me, it was obvious who was going to read The History of Collingswood House. After all, I was the one who won the prizes in composition, who was at the top of the English class. I was only on page one hundred and fifty-seven the morning Mary woke up gasping. Although we asked and prodded, she would not tell us about her dream. “I can’t,” she said. “We were in the bedroom again. He—I just can’t.” We were sitting on Eleanor’s bed, in our nightgowns, as we did every morning for our conferences. “What was it like?” I asked. I think we all knew, even then, what had happened. Tollie and I had grown up in villages, near farms and animals. And Eleanor had heard the servants gossip. “I’m sorry. I really don’t think I can talk about it.” “Was it so frightening?” asked Tollie, leaning forward. “Not frightening. Just—I can’t, all right?” And we could get nothing else out of her. Later that day, I looked with dismay at The History of Collingswood House. I could not face another list of who had come to visit Collingswood in the Year of Our Lord blankety blank. “Look, stupid book,” I said. “Just tell me what I want to know, all right?” I closed my eyes and opened the book at random. I looked down at the pages I had opened. There it was:

In the autumn of 1817, Lord Collingswood invited the poet Christopher Raven, whom he had met in London, to Collingswood House. Lady Collingswood was taken with the handsome youth, who was supposed to look like an English Adonis, although some critics asserted that he wrote like a second-rate Shelley. The Collingswood library, which was extensive, had fallen into a state of disarray, and Lord Collingswood hoped that Raven would catalogue it. However, the two men quarreled before the work got underway, and the poet left in the middle of the night to join Shelley and Byron in Switzerland. He was overtaken by the snows, and is supposed to have perished in the Alpine passes. Lady Collingswood, who had a tender heart, particularly for poets, artists, and small dogs, was said to have been inconsolable for weeks.

I had found a poet. And he sounded like the right poet. Adonis had been Greek. He would have had curling black hair, the kind they call hyacinthine. “I think I’ve found him,” I told Eleanor, Mary, and Tollie that afternoon. “His name is Christopher Raven. He was a poet, and I think he was in love with Lady Collingswood. And maybe she was in love with him.” “Why do you think we’re dreaming about him?” asked Tollie. “If someone had dreamed about him before, we would have known about it, wouldn’t we? I mean, he would be the Collingswood ghost or something. It would have been like calling the picture Old Nosey. Everyone would have known.” “Maybe it’s because we’re in her room,” I said. “The book only says that she was taken with him, but I bet all the things he says to us are the things he said to her. I mean, seriously, none of us has a neck like a swan’s, do we? And hair like a forest fire—she had red hair. I bet no one else has slept in her room for half a century. That’s why we’re dreaming about him, when no other girls have.” “The question is, what do we do now?” asked Eleanor. “He doesn’t scare me, but that dream Mary had —yes, I know you can’t talk about it, but we all know what it was about. If we’re dreaming about him and Lady Collingswood, where is this going?”

Where indeed. I’ll give you this, Christopher Raven. I have known love since those days as a schoolgirl at Collingswood, and you loved her as passionately as any poet loves a woman. There is always some selfishness in such a love, always some inclination to turn your love into poetry. But when you walked with her down the garden paths, when you stood beside her on the tower and looked out over the countryside, when you called her the moon and said you were the tide, following her motions, you loved her as passionately as poets love, who are always thinking of the next line. We experienced it, the four of us —experienced that love when we were only schoolgirls and should have been attending to our lessons. We felt the kisses in the darkness, your hand on her shoulder, your fingers running along her collarbone. We felt you slip off her dress of grayish-blue silk and felt what we should not have, a passion we were not ready for. We changed, in those weeks. We grew languorous, as though we were always walking in a dream. We could not attend to our lessons. Eleanor gave up tennis, and she and Tollie used to sit in our room, talking in whispers about their dreams of the night before. Mary took to praying throughout the day. She told us she was convinced that the dreams were wrong, but like the rest of us, she did not want them to end. She developed dark shadows under her eyes, and sometimes she would jump for no reason, as though she had been frightened by a sound that the rest of us could not hear. And what about me? I was as dreamy as the rest, but my lethargy frightened me, and Mary’s condition was a constant source of worry. I felt as though we were all slipping away into some dream land, losing touch with the prosaic world of school. Finally, Miss Halloway spoke to me. “Lucy,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder as I leaned over a composition book, tracing the letters CR over and over with my pencil, “what is going on with you girls? Yesterday, Millicent almost fell asleep in Latin, and I’m told that Mary is starting to look, and behave, quite oddly. Is something happening that I should know about?” I should have told her then, but how could I bear to lose those kisses, the black eyes looking into mine and whispering words sweeter than I had ever heard before, calling me “goddess” and “love”? “I think we’re staying up too late talking,” I told her, and looking at me doubtfully, she left it at that. And so it might have continued, if Eleanor had not woken up one morning screaming. “Lord Collingswood killed him!” she cried. “He found them together and hit him with his cane! There was blood everywhere!” And then she began to sob into her hands. I had never imagined that Eleanor Prescott could weep, and the sight sent a shiver down my spine. The next night it was Tollie, and then me. We all dreamed the discovery, the terrifying blow to the back of the head. We all saw blood pooling on the floorboards. And then nothing—that was where the dreams ended. Only Mary was spared. Perhaps the ghost decided that she had seen enough. Certainly she could not take any more. This time we were all summoned to Miss Halloway’s office. “What in the world is going on with you girls?” she asked. “I’ve heard reports of moans in the night and screams early in the morning. And you all look as though you haven’t slept for the past week.” “Miss Halloway,” I told her, “we’re being haunted. By a ghost.” And then I told her everything. “Good Lord,” she said. “That such things should be going on right under my nose! The idea that you’re being haunted is ridiculous. There’s no such thing as a ghost, Lucy. However, the atmosphere of the room, together with what you read about Collingswood House, may have prompted these dreams. I will move you out of that room immediately.” We were moved into Miss Halloway’s own room, for observation. But the dreams did not stop. “Blood, and then nothing,” said Tollie. “I can’t see anything after he falls down. Blood on the floor, and then it’s as though everything just goes dark.” “But I can still hear something,” said Eleanor. “Like Tollie’s uncle: thump, thump, thump.” “Miss Halloway,” I said, “Lord Collingswood hit him in the front hall, and then there was this sound, as Eleanor said. I think he dragged the body down the stairs. To the cellar.” “I think it’s time to summon a brain specialist,” said Miss Halloway. We all stood looking at her, silently—Mary looked especially reproachful. “Oh, all right, girls,” she said. “The cellar it is.”

“There’s nothing down here,” said Tollie. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Eleanor. “We haven’t even checked for a priest’s hole yet. Hillingdon has one, and a secret staircase. Of course, some people don’t have such things in their houses, but I’m quite familiar with them, I assure you.” For the first time in several weeks, I would have liked to hit Eleanor Prescott, but it was obvious from the shrillness of her voice that she was both excited and afraid. And she was actually doing something useful, walking along each wall and knocking carefully, up and down, listening for anything unusual. These were the foundations of the house, which went back to Norman times. I knew that from having read The History of Collingswood House, at least to page one hundred and fifty-seven. They seemed so solid. But Eleanor said, “Can’t you see that the cellar isn’t as large as the house?” And she was right. Of course, Tollie had exaggerated in saying that there was nothing in the cellar. In addition to the usual things one finds in cellars, such as the coal box and stacks of wood, old brooms, a tin bucket, it was filled with the detritus of a girls’ school: broken chairs, a pair of crutches, boxes of sports equipment. There were skis stacked against the wall, and an astonishing number of broken tennis rackets. “There!” said Eleanor. “Can you hear it?” And we could. Against one wall stood a tall bookshelf that had no doubt once been in the library, but was now water-stained and covered with dust. On the shelves stood boxes containing what looked like onions, but labeled “tulips—early” “late” “Rembrandt,” pairs of ice skates leaning against one another, and a few books that were too damaged for use even by schoolgirls. “That’s where old Amias keeps his bulbs,” said Miss Halloway. “He says this is the perfect place to store them.” “Well, there’s a space behind it,” said Eleanor. And indeed, we had all heard the echo when she knocked. “All right, girls,” said Miss Halloway. “Let’s see what’s behind that shelf.” Mary held the lamp while the rest of us helped Miss Halloway stack the books and skates and boxes of tulip bulbs on the floor. “It’s going to be heavy,” she said. “Should I summon Amias and some of his boys?” We all shook our heads. I think we wanted to see what was behind as quickly—and as privately—as possible. “All right then,” she said. “Put your backs into it.” Once, while moving the shelf, as we were taking a momentary rest, we looked at one another—Tollie, Eleanor, and me. When I saw their white faces, I knew mine must be white as well. The lamplight jumped up and down on the walls, no doubt because Mary’s hand was trembling. But Miss Halloway looked grim and determined, and I decided then that I rather admired her, despite her boring lectures. All things considered, it would not be a terrible thing to be like Miss Halloway. When the shelf had been moved, slowly and awkwardly, back from the wall, we could see that it had covered an arched opening—through which we saw only blackness. I will give us the credit to say that we all, including Mary Davenport, stepped through the archway together. It opened into a smaller room, the other part of the cellar, which must once have held wine. There were still wine racks on the walls. There, in the circle of light cast by the lamp, was the skeleton of a man. We could still see the shreds of his white shirt, the remains of black boots that had long ago been nibbled away by rats. Around his ankle was an iron cuff, linked by a chain to an iron ring in the wall. Just out of his reach was a bowl that might once have held water. We stood silent. Then Mary, with a sigh, crumpled to the floor. Miss Halloway caught the lamp just before she fell. The rest of us stood there for what seemed like an interminable moment. Then we followed Miss Halloway, who carried Mary, up the stairs and into the autumn sunshine of the first floor, which seemed so strange to us, after the lamplight and the cellar. She put Mary on the sofa and brought her around with smelling salts, then gave us each a glass of sherry, which made Tollie cough. Finally, Miss Halloway said, “What a terrible story.” “Do you think she knew?” asked Tollie. “He must have been down there—” “Dying,” I said. “For days.” “She didn’t know,” said Eleanor. “I think we dreamed exactly what she saw. She didn’t know anything after Lord Collingswood hit him with the cane. I think she fainted, like Mary.” “She must have thought he was dead,” said Tollie. “And Lord Collingswood must have told everyone that they’d had a fight, and Raven had left for Switzerland,” I said. “But she must have been here doing all sorts of things —getting dressed and walking in the garden, and eating her dinner—while he was dying below!” said Mary. She started to gasp and sob, and Miss Halloway waved the sal volatile under her nose again. “Last summer, after I was hired as headmistress here,” she said, “I read that book Lucy thought was so dull, The History of Collingswood House. If you’d read a little farther, girls, you would have known that Lord Collingswood died in 1818, just a year later. He was said to have died of heart problems, but there was a rumor that he might have been poisoned—digitalis, which comes from foxgloves, is toxic in a high enough dose. Lady Collingswood created this school and specified that Lord Collingswood’s portrait was to be hung over the main staircase in perpetuity. I wonder, now, if that was her idea of a joke?” “What happened to her?” I asked. “She moved to France. Eventually she became a painter, not a great one but there is a picture of hers in the National Gallery. She particularly liked painting flowers.” Miss Halloway was silent for a moment. “We’ll have to give him a proper burial,” she said. “I think the dreams will stop now.” The dreams did not stop, not as long as we stayed at Collingswood. But they changed character. For the rest of that year, we dreamed that we were with him—sitting by the fire in the parlor, browsing through books in the library and reading lines of poetry to one another, walking through the garden, where the roses were blooming, including the white rose called Lady Collingswood. He still murmured lines of poetry to us, we still felt kisses on our hands, even our shoulders, but the dreams no longer had the passion, the urgency, that we should not have experienced and that changed us, permanently. When we left Collingswood, Eleanor for a London season, Mary for her father’s parish, where she would teach Sunday school, Tollie for Newnham Teachers’ College, and me for Girton, we were no longer the girls who had glared at one another on the first day of term. We were older, we knew more about the joys and pains of the world, and we were friends. The remains of Christopher Raven were buried in the garden, and a stone was placed over him with the words “Here lies the poet Christopher Raven, lover of Lady Collingswood, 1797–1817” carved on it, followed by lines of his own poetry:

Let her eyes guide me like bright stars, and bring

Me to the birthing-place of poetry. I read some of his poetry later—he had published two books, called Aurora and Other Poems and Poems for the Rights of Man. He was good, and might have become great if he had lived, although he would never have been a Shelley or a Keats. But when I remembered his kisses in the dark, the whispered words, it did not matter. I do not think it mattered to her either. She loved the man, and the poet was part of the man. At least, that is what I think now that I have learned something of love—the love one has for a poet, like my Louis.

“We changed, all of us,” I said. “Eleanor became less high and mighty, for example.” “Well!” she said, laughing. “I think I’m still both high and mighty. You should see me destroy those pipsqueak MPs on the question of votes for women! They fear my political dinners.” “And Mary became more pious,” I added. “I suppose that’s true,” said Mary. “I was frightened for a long time. I thought life might be like that, all passion and darkness. My father’s faith was reassuring— it made me feel safe. I think I became more judgmental for a while. I went to London once, while Louis was alive, and never visited you, Lucy. I’m sorry about that. But after little Charles died, I think I became more accepting of human frailty. I started to realize that God is there too, in the darkness as well as the light.” We stared at her. “When did you get philosophical?” asked Eleanor. Mary blushed, the red suffusing her cheeks until she looked like a late apple. “I’m getting older, I suppose. As we all are.” She turned to me. “And losing what you love —you must have known how Lady Collingswood felt.” “Perhaps a little,” I said. “But I don’t think Louis is going to haunt anyone. Our love was an ordinary human love. Oh, he wrote me a poem or two, but I’m no Lady Collingswood. I went to visit his wife once, in France. You would think—insane asylum and all that. But it was perfectly ordinary, kind nurses looking after her. She had no idea who I was. What Christopher Raven and Lady Collingswood had—it was passion and poetry, and it had to end in violence. Could it have ended any other way? Can you imagine them in a cottage in the country, him chopping wood for the fire, her embroidering dishtowels?” “Was he the ghost, or was she?” We looked at Tollie, startled by her question. “I mean, was he the one haunting us? Or was she the one, making us relive her experiences?” “I’ve never thought of it like that,” I said. “When I came back to Collingswood, I found something,” said Tollie. “It was summer and the school was almost empty. I came in here, and I don’t know why exactly, but I looked behind the painting of Lady Collingswood. There was something taped back there.” “What did you find?” I asked. We all leaned forward, curious schoolgirls once more. “Probably a letter of some sort,” said Eleanor. “No, not a letter,” said Tollie. “I’ll show you.” She walked over to one of the desks that we had used, so many years ago, and lifted a framed picture that had been lying on it. She held it up so we could see. Mary gasped, and Eleanor said, “That’s him. Exactly.” It was just a watercolor of the head and shoulders, but there was the curling black hair, the brown cheeks, the laughing, mischievous eyes. In the bottom right-hand corner was written, in pen, Adela Collingswood. “You can see that she loved him,” said Tollie. “If she were the ghost, she would have wanted him buried.” “But she didn’t know he was in the cellar,” I said. “Listen to me! Here I am talking about the habits of ghosts. For all we know, it was both of them together, reliving their lives through us.” “You changed too,” said Eleanor. “You’d been so focused on doing well. But after—that was when you started writing stories.” “She did inspire me in the end,” I said. “Just as Miss Halloway wanted.” “But Tollie didn’t change,” continued Eleanor. “Did you, Tollie? You’re the same old Tollie as you were back then. The Tollie who would have looked behind the painting. I would never have thought of that.” “I don’t know,” said Tollie. “I suppose I am the same. Although I think I’m getting lines on my forehead from frowning at students!” We heard a knock on the door. We had been so immersed in talking about the past that we all jumped. “Ladies, dinner in half an hour,” called Miss Halloway. “We’d better get dressed,” said Mary. “We don’t want to be late for dinner.” “Why not?” said Eleanor. “Let them wait for us. After all, we have the guest of honor. They’re not going to start the dinner without her. Is that high and mighty enough for you, Lucy?” But she was smiling as she said it. After that, the conversation turned to dresses. Eleanor lent Tollie the second-best dress she had brought, which must have cost as much as my entire wardrobe, although Tollie insisted that her gray merino was perfectly adequate. So even she looked sufficiently ladylike as we walked down the stairs, under the watchful eyes of Old Nosey, to the dining room. My speech, “The Necessity for the Rights of Women,” went well and was generally applauded, with Eleanor giving a loud “Hear, hear!” The food was better than we had eaten as schoolgirls—no cabbage! But it was strange seeing women, some of whom I remembered, some from other years, sitting around the dining room tables, their faces turned toward me. In some of them, I could see the girls they had once been, like echoes. It was a relief to be finished, to have fulfilled my duties and be free to go back up the stairs, undress, and lie down on the bed I had slept in so many years ago. “Maybe you’ll all dream of him tonight,” said Tollie. “I certainly hope not,” said Eleanor. “Once in a lifetime is enough of Christopher Raven, I think.”

The next morning, Mary left early to catch the train, and Eleanor had a meeting with the Fundraising Committee. But I had time before I needed to be at the station, so Tollie and I walked through the garden, smelling the late roses and coming at last to his grave. “Christopher Raven,” I said. “I would not have minded dreaming about him again, just for old time’s sake.” “But you didn’t?” asked Tollie. “No, of course not,” I said. “But I’ve been thinking about my next book—my publisher keeps asking whether I’m working on it, and of course I need the money. He wants another Modern Diana, but I think I’m going to write about Lady Collingswood. I think I’ll call it Adela; or Free Love. That ought to shock everyone.” “Lucy, do you think Eleanor’s right? Do you think I haven’t changed?” I looked at her carefully. “I think you’ve changed less than the three of us. Maybe it’s because you stayed at Collingswood.” “No, it’s not just that. It’s something else.” Something in her voice made me say, “Tollie, is everything all right?” “Yes, of course. It’s just that I didn’t want to tell the others. I still dream about him.” “What do you mean?” I said. “I still dream about him, every night. When I found that picture, I had it framed, and then I put it in my room, up on the third floor. And I started dreaming about him again. I thought if the three of you were here, sleeping in her room, under her picture, you would have the dreams too. But it was just me.” She paused for a moment, then knelt in front of the grave and traced the letters with her hand. “Maybe because I stayed here. I never married or had a child. I didn’t have the sort of life that you and Eleanor and Mary have. And the dreams came back. That’s what I have, a new set of students every year—and the dreams. Do you think that’s awful?” “Some of your hair’s come down in back. Let me fix it for you.” I pinned her bun up again. I looked at her, kneeling there, with both pity and understanding. After a moment of silence, I said, “No, Tollie. I don’t think that’s awful at all. I think we have to take love where we can find it. That’s what I learned with Louis.” “Thank you,” she said, standing again and feeling her hair, carefully. “I never can get it to stay up. You know, you always were my best friend.” “You could have fooled me, the way you mooned after Eleanor Prescott!” I said. But I put my arm around her and kissed her cheek. Later, as the cart bumped over the drive, I turned back to look at Collingswood House and waved to her, knowing that I might never see her again, knowing that I would probably never come back. I had a larger world to live in, a world that included grief and loss and loneliness, but also success and companionship. It included the cafés of London, and seeing my name on red leather in bookshop windows, and the Alps. I thought of Louie in Switzerland, coughing his lungs out and looking at me with the most beautiful eyes in the world, his father’s eyes. The world I lived in was more difficult, but I would not have traded it for hers. Sometimes I would think of Tollie in her world of perpetual girlhood, dreaming of Christopher Raven, of poetry and burning kisses in the dark. And sometimes I would wish for the dreams myself. But I had a life to live, a book to write. I would always remember her this way, standing in front of Collingswood House and waving to me, under the ancient oaks.

Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between realism and the fantastic are often ambiguous. Her publications include the short story collection In the Forest of Forgetting (2006); Interfictions (2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; and Voices from Fairyland (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and has won the World Fantasy and Rhysling Awards. Author Spotlight: Theodora Goss Jennifer Konieczny

Could you tell us what inspired “Christopher Raven”?

I’m really not sure. The story had been in my head for a long time, and when Nick Gevers and Jack Dann asked me to write a ghost story for their anthology, it just came together: the four girls, the love affair they dream about. I think it started with the idea of being haunted in your dreams, and then it just sort of formed in my head.

“Christopher Raven” was first published in Ghosts by Gaslight. Did you write it for the anthology? Could you tell us about the process of writing it?

Yes, I did write it for the anthology. I’d had it in my head for a long time, as I mentioned. That seems to be the only way I can write for themed anthologies: I have a preexisting idea that would work with the theme. I struggled at first, because I couldn’t find the right voice to write it in. But then I thought of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, that sort of nostalgic tone, and I wrote in that sort of voice. (At least I think so. Some people can’t hear it. But to me, it’s very “I remember Manderley.”)

Lucy’s return to her school reminded me of Harriet Vane’s return to her college in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night. Are you a fan?

Of Dorothy Sayers? Oh my, yes! An enormous fan. I’ve been in love with Lord Peter Wimsey for years, and the only reason I can deal with his marriage to Harriet is that she’s so wonderful herself. And you know, I think there is something of Gaudy Night in my story. I was thinking of exactly that sort of gathering. I set my story in a girls’ school rather than a college, but Sayers was somewhere in the back of my head.

Meanwhile, Christopher Raven’s death brought to mind Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” Do you have a favorite story by Poe?

That’s difficult, because I love Poe. “Ligeia,” “William Wilson,” “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Those are some of my favorites, partly because they’re so wonderful to teach. But I love his poetry as well, particularly the gorgeous “To Helen.” Lucy and the other girls are haunted by recurring dreams. Can you tell us about any dreams that have stayed with you over the years?

I don’t have recurring dreams. I do have recurring incidents in dreams. In my favorite dreams, I can fly.

Their dreams subsided after the mystery was solved, but the ghost’s memories still lingered. Do you believe in ghosts?

I believe the world is filled with things we don’t understand. Are some of them ghosts? One of my best friends was a confirmed skeptic until she started living in a house that was, annoyingly and inconveniently, haunted by a relative. She now believes in ghosts. And I believe her.

Your blog says you’ve recently completed your dissertation. Congratulations! Before we go, can you tell us what’s next for you?

Thank you! I’m very, very glad to have finished it. Next, I’ll be working on a poetry collection and my first novel, which I hope to be a young adult novel about girl monsters. I only have a couple of chapters finished, but I’m going to start working on it again as soon as I recover from the dissertation process. I’m impatient to begin . . .

Jennifer Konieczny hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An alumna of Villanova University, she now pursues her doctorate in medieval studies at the University of Toronto. She enjoys working with fourteenth-century Latin legal texts, slushing for Fantasy Magazine, and scanning bookshelves for new authors to read. Shades of the Nineteenth Century Helen Pilinovsky

When we talk about our dead, we talk about ourselves. At times we refer to our “ghosts” metaphorically, with deliberation: But even at their most literal summonings, they are evocations of the collective unconscious of their eras, the hints, allegations, and things left unsaid by specific cultures and generations. Stories require a common consensus to become popular and to spread: When the stories in question concern the restless dead, the possibility of an angry past haunting us, what, precisely, does that say?

The Victorian Search for the Supernatural Having broached the frontiers of so many new fields previously mysterious and presumed supranatural— evolution, germ theory, electricity—the Victorians applied themselves with similar vigor to tales of yore, the stories of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things which went bump in the night. Famously, no less venerable a figure than Arthur Conan Doyle devoted himself to seriously proving the existence of fairies, culminating in the embarrassment of the Cottingley Fairy Hoax; perhaps slightly less well-known is his devotion to Spiritualism, the Victorian practice of contacting the deceased via table-rapping, automatic writing, and spiritual ventriloquism. A fad begun by the three Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York, in 1848 when they claimed the ability to communicate with the ghost of a murdered peddler (a skeleton was subsequently found in the basement, supporting their claims), Spiritualism’s popularity demonstrated both the Victorian anxiety concerning their increasing distance from the values of the recent past, and the Victorian certainty that even Death itself could be circumvented with the right approach. Of course, one can only conjecture what sort of anxieties that raised, and what sorts of motivations were then projected onto the purportedly restless dead . . . Doyle was most famously a writer of mysteries, although he dabbled in the supernatural. He was in excellent company in that regard. Bastard love child of the genres of horror and mystery—both, themselves, descended from the venerable Gothic, and recombining incestuously—the ghost story became one of the most popular mediums (if you will pardon the expression) of story-telling in the nineteenth century. Half the time, Gothic tales fell into the lineage of the mystery genre purely because of their penchant for providing a realistic explanation for their purportedly supernatural events. The rest remained mysterious horrors and began to explore greater grotesqueries.

The Most Famous Ghost Story of its Time But the ghost story . . . ah, it is there, in works such as Henry James’ 1898 novella “The Turn of the Screw.” The tale takes its title from a frame narrative of sorts, in which a group discusses a ghost story concluded just before the reader has come onto the scene, in which a young boy witnesses an apparition before waking his mother to bear witness to its presence. The corrupted purity of the child adds a frisson to the horrifying concept of an unclean spirit haunting the premises, prompting our narrator at one remove to ask, “If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to TWO children—?” before proceeding to introduce a tale told to him by his sister’s former governess, now dead these twenty years, as written in her own hand. In her journal, the governess recounts being hired by a mesmerizing gentleman of quality to care for his orphaned niece and nephew upon his isolated estate. and describes the effects of their beauty and innocence upon her. The journal reveals her gradual awareness of the ominous, repulsive, and yet somehow seductive presence of two strange figures upon the grounds, presences who, she realizes to her dawning horror, are a lowly menial and the former governess and are inappropriately involved with one another, in contravention of all Victorian standards of propriety. The pair had some strange, undue influence on the children, which continues beyond the grave. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that these revenants appear only to our protagonist, and from her perspective, appear to appear to the children in order to further corrupt them. The paradoxical uncertainty of whether the governess is mad and the world is rational and as we know it, or whether she is sane and the world of order a twisted mockery of itself is the source of the fascination that the story has exercised, first upon the Victorians, and then upon every generation to come across it thereafter. The story’s conclusion implies a fear of corruption that is so overwhelming that it is easier to succumb to the worst possible outcome rather than suffer the inevitable process of contamination, even at the absolute cost of innocence: the turn of the screw, indeed.

The Tone of Victorian Horror In his seminal essay of 1929, “Some Remarks on Ghost Stories,” M.R. James (no relation to Henry) commented: “Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic point of view I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it, and there is much blatancy in a lot of recent stories.” It is that “reticence” for which the Victorians were so famous in so many avenues of their production, and it is that reticence which, though it may have lost traction in those other venues, keeps the genre of the ghost story firmly in that territory of ambiguity that Tsvetan Todorov called “the uncanny,” and of which he indicated “The Turn of the Screw” as its greatest example. Even today, our best ghost stories are haunted by the shade of that nineteenth- century attitude, which beckons the reader to delve more deeply even as it provokes an off-putting frisson of horror. But where the Victorian ambiguity signaled a deeply- rooted terror of the cost of hewing to their mores, as often as not, today’s stories gesture towards the inverse fear. We fear that all our deviations and explorations might simply leave us just where we started. We fear that perhaps, as Sartre put it, Hell is other people, and ghosts, with all the terrors that they provoke. James concluded by saying, “There need not be any peroration to a series of rather disjointed reflections. I will only ask the reader to believe that, though I have not hitherto mentioned it, I have read ‘The Turn of the Screw.’ ” While I, as it happens, have, the sentiment holds.

Helen Pilinovsky writes on fairy tales, feminism, and the fantastic. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University, where her topic was the birth of the genre of fantasy in the 19th century. She has guest-edited issues of The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and Extrapolation, and published on topics ranging from Victorian literature to contemporary speculative fiction and interstitiality. She is currently working on her second book. Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western Lavie Tidhar

I. Massacre at Three Blind Sisters

The strangers came under a red half-moon to Three Blind Sisters. They wore strange clothes—stiff-looking black and tan suits of foreign design, with black hats and carefully-manicured beards. On their belts they carried guns. All but their leader, who dressed casually and carried no weapons, and who had an easy smile. The boy and his sister watched the approaching men. “He is so handsome,” the boy’s sister said. They were watching the men ride past the three Blind Sisters who gave the village its name. The stone statues, ancient guardians of this small, distant place, stared at the men without seeing. Their power had weakened over generations: Now they were little more than mute stone, and no one in the village could remember ever hearing them speak. The boy felt a tingling at the tip of his fingers. He saw with his inner eye: The leader rode unarmed because his power was great. The aura of Qi around him was unmistakable. Unease made him close his fingers into a fist. The man, passing close to them, glanced casually their way: His eyes locked on the boy’s for one long, uncomfortable moment. Then his gaze shifted to the boy’s sister, and his smile flared up like a small sun.

There was a celebration that night in the centre of the village as the elders welcomed the strangers. Fires burned and the men ate bowls of chow mein and roast pork and thousand-year-old eggs and vegetables fried in oyster sauce, and they used chopsticks clumsily and complained about the heat of the spices—all but their leader, whose skin seemed to glow with an internal fire no chilli could ever match. There was a fire in his eyes, too, and it flamed brighter when he watched the boy’s sister, whose name was Jia. He had eyes for no one else. The village had been unimportant enough for long enough to make most of the villagers feel safe. When the star-stone had fallen from the sky, one clear night a generation before, a small but prosperous mining industry had formed, as the village dug for and then sold talismans of the Qi-rich stone to merchants in the wizarding trade, who in turn sold them, for a handsome profit, in distant Kunming and even farther, in Shanghai and Imperial Peking itself. The visitors—or so their leader said—were members of an expeditionary mission seeking investment opportunities in their province, which was called Yunnan. They were English, he’d said, and their queen ruled the lands beyond the borders, where once the Burmese emperors held power. The boy knew the Burmese lands were once rich in Qi. But Qi depletes with use. Magic goes away. And so, always, men must seek new sources of power. The leader gave a magic demonstration for the children, making dragons of flame appear in the sky above the village, changing smooth round pebbles from the brook into ugly toads who hopped away. He found hidden objects, read fortunes, and shaped flame. The tingling sensation at the tips of the boy’s fingers returned, worse than before. While the Englishman was making magic, his eyes remained fixed on the boy’s sister, who was not oblivious to the attention, and whose pretty face had turned as red and warm as fire. The boy had left the other children, shaping shadow to mask his passing. Though young, he knew his Qi was strong. Around his neck a talisman of star-stone, shaped into a smooth round disc, pulsed gently. He wrapped his fingers around it, letting it guide him, until he found himself, at last, standing below the three stone sisters. The Blind Sisters towered above him, gentle, windswept faces staring into nothing. He put his hand against the warm stone. He felt peaceful there, connected to these ancient artefacts. Even the fall of the star-stone did not help revive them, though it was said they still watched over the village, offering protection and guidance. Yet the tingling in his fingers grew, became a pain that spread up his arm. With a sudden cry he pulled his hand away from the stone. A red haze was rising in the distance, over the roofs of the village. The boy stared up at the statues. Something was happening to them. Their stone-shapes softened, their colour changing. They seemed to move, to sway in an invisible wind. The boy stared—in horror? Excitement? He did not know—as the blind faces turned, and stone mouths opened. For the first time in centuries, the Blind Sisters were coming alive. They screamed. The boy covered his ears, but the screams pierced through him like blades. The disc of star-stone against his chest flamed and exploded, sharp shards flying in all directions, and the boy cried out in pain. He ran away from the Sisters, towards the village. The red haze was growing, but the boy was nearly half-way back before he realised what he was seeing. The entire village was in flames. He heard shouts, panicked cries. Gunfire pierced the night, and with it came a booming laugh. A bright explosion rose above the village, a fireball that hovered for almost a full minute before swooping down. People ran screaming from it, but there was nowhere to hide, and when the fireball caught them their screams ended abruptly. The foreign men rode through the burning alleys, blocking escape. The boy saw, with numb horror, that they were gathering the young and the fit while they let the elderly die. He watched relatives perish in the flames, cousins being herded and roped together like cattle. The flames had caught easily on the bamboo and thatch of the houses. Jia! His sister. The boy began to run. Wrapping himself in shadows, he was not seen. Arriving at the clearing of packed earth in the centre of the village, he saw her. The leader of the foreign men, the Englishman, was standing in a circle of flame. His hands burned unharmed, and from his fingers fire streamed forth, engulfing the entire village. Standing beside him, as mute as stone, was the boy’s sister. Flames were in her eyes. She did not move. Crying, the boy ran forward, the shadows falling away from him. The boy raised his hands, and fires flamed. He cast them at the Englishman— Laughing, the man turned. In his hands, fire turned to frost. It shot out and steam rose into the air where the boy’s fire had been. “You think you can take me, boy? You?” the man sounded amused, not angered. “My sister!” the boy said. He felt the level of Qi rising all around him, power such as he had not known—not even dreamed of—before it came pouring through him. A toad hopped past him and he scooped it up. It became a stone again in his hand and he threw it at the foreign wizard. The man ducked, easily, but the stone exploded above him, and shards rained down upon him. When he stood up again his cheek had been cut, and blood was pouring out. The man no longer looked amused. He raised a hand and a spear of air formed between his fingers, a wind weapon the boy knew he could not stop. He stood his ground, preparing for death— “No!” His sister, one hand raised, her eyes dancing with the flames. The Englishman paused, seemed to reconsider. “Do you fear for her life?” he said, and some of the amusement trickled back into his voice. “You shouldn’t. I shall look after her, very well, when she is my wife.” He grinned then. “Who would have thought to find, in this Gods-forsaken place, a woman almost more beautiful than magic?’ “I won’t let you take her!” “Brave,” the man said, and shrugged. “And foolish.” “Please,” the boy’s sister said. Speaking came hard to her. Her lips barely moved, enslaved by flame. “Don’t hurt him. Let him go.” “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the man said—but he seemed uncertain. “Your people are well trained in mining for Qi, and will make valuable workers, but you are too young, and too headstrong to serve me. You consider yourself a magician, boy?” he did not wait for an answer. “Then I shall give you a chance. Live as a wizard —or die a as man.” And then the man’s horse was suddenly there, and in one swift motion the man was horse-borne and the boy’s sister was behind him in the saddle. The boy stood frozen. The English magician barked an order and his men began to appear. Some dragged with them the remnants of the boy’s people. Others carried chests the boy knew well— star-stone talismans, an entire winter’s work, and almost the last of the deposits. “A poor fare. But it will suffice,” the English wizard said. “We ride.” He turned the horse around. His men followed. The boy, crying with despair, reached out to hurl one last ston — The English wizard, turned, grinned, and gestured with his hand. Flames engulfed the boy. A screen of fire blocked his view. Smoke stung his eyes. “Live as a wizard!” the wizard’s voice came through the smoke, growing distant. “Or die as a man . . . ” The boy was trapped in the flames. His hand reached out for the talisman, before remembering it was no longer there. Closing his eyes, forcing himself to breathe deeply, to slow the beating of his heart, the boy tried to calm himself. Listening, the wailing of the Sisters spoke to him. And with his eyes still closed, the flames licking at his clothes, the boy began to whisper the words of a spell he hadn’t known until that very moment.

II. Gunmen and Ghosts

The man who had been the boy sat alone before the fire, which suited him. A small ring of blackened stones served to hold the fire in check. The man had placed a wok over the fire and had tossed noodles and meat inside and some wild garlic. Adding a few drops of precious soy from a small stoppered bottle, he stirred the food with a pair of wooden chopsticks. As he stirred he watched the night, and waited. Presently there came footsteps. The man listened for a moment, then relaxed. He removed the wok from the fire and served the food into two bowls. The footsteps came closer, stopped, and a voice said, “You’re a lousy cook.” “Shanghai Joe,” the man said. “You took your time.” “I had to be careful, didn’t I?’ The man didn’t reply. He made a gesture with his head and the second man came and sat down on the other side of the fire. The man examined his companion. Shanghai Joe was short, dressed in the Western fashion; an eye-patch covered his left eye, and his hair grew long at the back. He was mixed-blood, and his eyes were a disconcerting blue. He claimed to be the son of a wealthy American merchant and his Chinese wife, and to having grown up in luxury in distant, wealthy Shanghai. It was more likely, the man thought, that he had been born of the union between a prostitute and a sailor, and never knew either. It didn’t matter to him. A man made his own way in life, and Shanghai Joe—wizard, killer, outlaw—was someone he could trust. Within reason. They ate in silence, shovelling chow mein with the bowls close to their mouths. When they were done, the man stretched, leaned back, and made a cigar materialise as if by magic. He stared at the fire for a moment, then chuckled and snapped his fingers. A flame danced between his thumb and forefinger, and he brought it to the tip of his cigar and inhaled. A cloud of blue smoke escaped from his lips and into the atmosphere. “Well?” he said. “The mine lies two days’ ride away,” Shanghai Joe said. “Just as the mapmaker said. It’s heavily guarded—” “As could be expected—” the man said. “—and you can’t use magic,” Shanghai Joe said. “Oh?” the man said—but he already knew the answer. The magic goes away. Used over thousands of years, the Qi had been steadily depleted. Now only few places remained: Deep under the sea, it was said, the Qi was still rich, and Kraken yet lived, and high up in the Himalayas the Yeti still roamed, though they were growing less numerous with each passing year, and seeking out the higher altitudes as the Qi grew scarce . . . But on land, in the populous places of the world, the magic went, and where once magicians raised storms and controlled armies of the dead, those were little more than legends, now. The old wizards were ghosts . . . and the gunmen ruled the world. Even Shanghai Joe had two guns on his belt where once a magician would have gone bare-handed. Now he said, “It is the biggest deposit of Qi to be discovered in a thousand years.” “Starfall.” “Yes.” The place was called The Buddha’s Fist, though it did not appear on any maps. But the man had managed to track down an old mapmaker in Kunming. The mapmaker had once been on an ill-fated expedition to the region. The place did not appear on any maps, but the mapmaker remembered. And the man had been convincing. As convincing as his gun. The mapmaker told him what he knew of the place. A giant rock had once fallen from space onto the Earth and crashed, forming a crater. Star-stone was rich with primordial Qi . . . and this had been a very large rock, by all accounts. “The Qi is too concentrated,” Shanghai Joe said. “I have never felt such power! The miners dig it out and the artificers shape it into coins and talismans and these are taken away by soldiers. I tracked their path. They go across the border, into the wild Lao lands and into Burma. The mine never stops. The overseers are foreigners. But the workers are Chinese.” “Not being able to use magic might be a problem . . . ” the man said. “It could also be an advantage,” Shanghai Joe said. “They can’t use it against you, either.” “They have guns?’ “Of course.” “And beyond the impact area?” “Wards, spells—when you pass the three mile radius. Nothing too complex.” “They’re very confident.” Shanghai Joe shrugged. “Sure. And why shouldn’t they be?” Yunnan Province was a long way away from the Forbidden City, and the Emperor’s gaze was turned inwards. No one paid much attention to Yunnan—even now, with the British holding Burma and making advances into the Lao lands. “Any villages?” “None.” Shanghai Joe’s face turned grim. “None that aren’t burned down.” The man nodded. He turned the cigar in his mouth and blew out smoke. “We ride at dawn,” he said.

III. Payment in Blood

To make it this far the man had had to make a deal . . . and deals made by and with magicians were unbreakable. Still, he didn’t like it—what he had had to do, and what he still needed to do . . . There was always a price to pay. They rode at dawn. Far in the distance the mountains rose, and giant shapes flew so high they seemed like birds. It was said there were still dragons in the mountains; he would have liked to have seen one. They rode in silence. Shanghai Joe hummed tunes from time to time. They both carried guns. The man scanned the surrounding countryside for signs of hidden magic. He could feel the Qi level rising slowly the farther they advanced. There would be wards: spells to trap the unwary. Once, when he turned his head, the man thought he saw a plume of smoke rising far in the distance, at their back. He checked, but Shanghai Joe didn’t seem to have noticed it. They rode until the sun had set, and then a little farther. “Only a day’s ride, now,” Shanghai Joe said. The man said, “I understand.” Shanghai Joe looked embarrassed . . . but there was only so much you could ask of a friend. “You could still go back,” Shanghai Joe said. The man smiled. There was an old burn mark on his chest, and he scratched at it absentmindedly now. “I never could,” he said. “I often wished . . . ” but he left the thought unspoken. When he woke up in the morning, Shanghai Joe was gone.

The man rode alone, which suited him. He had the gun on his hip, though it felt strangely out of place. The Qi was rising here, and with it his awareness. He whispered spells and probed for the unseen defences he knew must be present. At noon he came to a village. It was as Shanghai Joe had described it. Nothing much remained but blackened foundation stones. Hanging from one tree he saw a skeleton, strung up with a rope around its neck. It had been dead a long time. As he stared he felt a tingling at the tips of his fingers. Quickly, he raised his hand, pointing at the skeleton just as it began to kick. He clicked his fingers and the skeleton crumpled into a cloud of dust that fell down gradually onto the burned ground. It had been bewitched to act as watcher, unable to find peace even in death. He did not dally in the dead village after that.

The Englishmen knew what they were doing. One of the most powerful forms of Qi still remaining was blood magic. By killing, they had erected walls of magic around The Buddha’s Fist. The man found his progress slowing as he negotiated tapestries of woven spells. Men and women had died on this land, and their ghosts remained, enslaved by the foreigners’ sorcery. They had made a payment in blood. Where he could, the man released the trapped spirits. His progress was slow. The ghosts brought his own spirit low. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t noticed the ambush until it was too late.

IV. A Fistful of Star-Stone

There were four of them, two mounted on blood-red horses, the other two standing on opposite sides, hands raised, lips moving silently. A wind howled, out of nowhere. The man’s horse reared back, almost throwing him off. From the fingertips of the standing men a wire mesh seemed to erupt, unfolding in the air above him, ready to descend— Cursing, the man’s hands became torches, bearing flame, and the net hissed and dissipated into nothing— There was so much Qi here—too much. He heard one of the standing men shout a warning. There was a crackle of electricity in the air. The ground shook. Lightning flashed. There were no clouds. The use of magic in a concentrated environment could lead to a chain reaction . . . But the mounted men had guns. They were trained on him. English soldiers, and the ones standing were their mages. The one on the left raised his hands, not in sorcery but in a universal gesture of calm; he said, “The guns are loaded with star-stone. Come without a fight and you won’t be harmed.” “I rather doubt that,” he said. He shot flames at the English mage who then, with a curse and a wave of his hand, cast them away. That crackle of electricity again, and the sky darkened—too close to the source, by now, and The Buddha’s Fist must have been closer than he thought. A chain reaction could destroy everything . . . He had been careless. The fight was short, and bloodied. They killed his horse, dropping it from under him. When he rolled away, they grabbed him, and when he fought they broke bones. He spat out a tooth and saw the shadow of a gun rising towards him—then the butt connected with his face with a sickening sound and he didn’t even have time to feel pain. Then there was blackness.

“That was foolish.” The voice spoke a cultured Mandarin, with only the hint of an accent. The man opened his eyes and found himself in a dark room. There were no windows. Candles burned in the corners. He himself was bound in solid, metal shackles— both hands and feet. The shape above him was dark—he couldn’t see a face. But the voice was familiar. “Did you really think to approach undetected? This mine belongs to Her Majesty the Queen.” The man spat blood. The voice above him chuckled. “You may have thought to pass through undetected by magic,” it said. “Which is possible. The concentration here is such that magical defences are difficult to erect. However . . . ” A hand ruffled the man’s short hair. The contact hurt. “Where magic fails a pair of eyes might suffice.” The man could have healed himself, but not here. He could feel the pulse of Qi everywhere. In the air of the room, in the aching of his bones. The Buddha’s Fist, he thought. He must be right at the source. “You are still alive,” the voice said, “because I am, I must confess, curious. Did you come here for this?” The figure knelt before him. He saw a face he could never forget—older, now, but with the same mocking grin, and flames dancing in the man’s eyes . . . the English wizard upended his hand. A handful of smooth discs fell down on the floor between them. “For star-stone? My star- stone?” “I thought it belonged to your queen,” the man said. The Englishman laughed. “She is far away,” he said. “Here, I am the only law.” “I didn’t come to rob you,” the man said. The Englishman arched an eyebrow. “Oh? Why then?” “Did you think I came alone?” the man said. “You are a fool, Englishman. You are trespassing on Imperial ground. Your presence here is an act of war.” “Yunnan,” the other man said dismissively—though he didn’t sound so sure of himself, suddenly. “Who cares about Yunnan?” “All of the Middle Kingdom is one,” the man said. “And you are like a mosquito landing on its flesh. Sooner or later the hand of the Emperor was going to reach down and scratch.” “Charming analogy,” the Englishman said. “But I don’t believe you. You come alone, where the emperor would have sent an army. And you look like no government agent I have ever seen.” “No one wants a war,” the man said. “Take your soldiers, take your loot, and go now. You have a day.” The Englishman laughed. Then he hit him. When the door closed behind the man, he leaned back against the cold stone wall. It, too, pulsed with raw energy. So much magic! And he couldn’t use it to free himself. But there was more than one kind of magic in the world.

Once, several years after leaving the burned village, the man—when he was still a boy—had found shelter from the rain in a barn on the outskirts of Kunming. There had been other itinerant travellers there and one—an old, one- eyed man—showed him magic. There had been no Qi in that place for a long time, and none that he could detect, and yet the man made doves appear out of nowhere, and pulled streamers of coloured silks out of thin air, and made coins disappear. He cut a rope clean in half and then joined it as if it had never been broken. The other men there laughed and clapped, but the boy just stared, and then said, almost accusingly: “This isn’t magic.” “No,” the older man agreed. He had a reedy, though not unpleasant, voice. “It is illusion, boy. Most magic is.” The boy he had been made a disgusted sound. “Then what good is it?” he said. “Smoke and mirrors, tricks to entertain children.” “I use no smoke, nor mirrors,” the one-eyed magician said. “And you are little more than a child yourself. You might care to show more respect to your elders.” The boy had laughed, but later that night a force of the local constabulary came and rousted them, saying that the farmer in whose barn they sheltered had complained. They were taken into the city and locked up in the jail, behind thick bars and sturdy locks. Most of the men found it more comfortable than the barn, and did not complain. But the old one-eyed magician only smiled when they locked the gate behind them. “Can you magic these locks and bars away?” he had asked. The boy admitted he could not. But when he ran his finger along the bars, he could sense the faint power running through them—Qi-reinforced metal, impervious to magical tampering. The old man had smiled again at that. Then, removing one shoe, he pulled aside a hidden compartment in the sole. He brought out a small, strangely-shaped metal wire. Rummaging through his thin hair, another curious appendage appeared. Whistling softly, the man approached the locks and set to work. The next morning, they were found missing from the jail, though no one was certain how they had escaped. “Vanished,” one of the other prisoners told the bemused jailers, “like ghosts in the night.” The jailers had put it down to magic, and gave thanks that the wizards they had unwittingly locked up had not harmed them. Life was hard enough without incurring the wrath of a wizard . . .

When the Englishman returned his face was troubled. “My watchers have spotted smoke in the distance,” he said. “Did you have anyone following you?” “Did you really think I came alone?” “I cannot risk a war . . . ” “There was a village,” the man said. The Englishman said, “What?” “There was a village. It was only a small village, far from here. A star had fallen there, centuries before, and it was relatively prosperous . . . ” “What are you talking about?” “You probably don’t even remember it,” he said. The man’s hands had been busy, before. Now, before the Englishman could react, he had slipped out of the unlocked shackles. When he rose he was holding a slim, long blade. “What the—” And then the blade was against the man’s neck. “You came there in friendship,” the man said. “And you looted the village of its two greatest treasures . . . ” “Three Blind Sisters,” the Englishman said. When he spoke, his Adam’s Apple bobbed against the blade. The man smiled grimly in the darkness. “I’ve come for my sister.” “There was a boy,” the Englishman said, slowly. “In the flames . . . you?” “Where is she?” “Would it matter if I told you I loved her?” the Englishman’s voice was low, bitter. “If the elders had let us, we would have been married there and then. But they would not have a foreigner marry the flower of the village.” “You lie badly.” “Would it matter what I said?” the Englishman asked. Then, “No, I didn’t think so.” The blade moved; it drew blood. The Englishman stood very still. “She died,” he said softly. “The fever took her, three years ago now. We were happy . . . ” “I wasn’t,” he said. Then, “Remember the flames . . . ” The blade moved. The Englishman didn’t make a sound as he dropped, softly, to the floor.

V. Red Dawn

“You did well,” the captain said. The Imperial Guard had moved in through the night. Now, with dawn peeking over the horizon, The Buddha’s Fist was fully occupied. In the dim light, the man could see the deep shafts leading into the mines, and already the grimy, dusty workers were lining up for their first shift. The soldiers kept order. The British force, lacking their leader, had been only grateful to retreat. No one wanted a war. And the emperor now held the mine. “What will happen to them?” the man asked. The captain looked surprised. “Who?” he said. “Them.” He gestured at the miners. Some may have come from his village, once. He could have been one of them now—a slave—if things had turned out differently. The captain said, “They will continue to work. The mine must remain open.” Life mining Qi was short, and hard. The man said, “And when they die?” “Others will take their place.” “I see.” With that, they escorted the man away from the mine. When they had reached the three mile Qi boundary, the man stopped his horse. They had given him a new one, though he missed the other. “You did well,” the captain said again. “The Emperor will be grateful.” Yet the emperor did nothing to stop the massacre at Three Blind Sisters, the man thought. He smiled, then, and made a cigar materialise. The sun was just beginning to rise, and dawn was painting the sky. “Got matches?” he said. But before the captain could reply he said, “Never mind,” and clicked his finger— The captain shouted, and his men, sensing something was wrong, approached at a trot, but— There was a moment of absolute silence. The man could feel the build-up of Qi, sense electricity in the air— Then the flame burst from his fingertips, pure, concentrated magic burning, and he brought his cigar to the flame and drew on it, and puffed out smoke. Then, with a careless gesture, he threw the flame away. He could not hear their shouts. The flame arced through the air, racing back to the source, growing as it travelled. He rode away then, fast. No one followed. When he turned back, a red dawn had filled the sky and the ground behind him was scorched dry. When he clicked his fingers again there was nothing but a hollow sound. He threw away the butt of the cigar and rode away.

Lavie Tidhar is the author of steampunk novels The Bookman and Camera Obscura, and the ground-breaking alternative history novel Osama. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has since lived in South Africa, the UK, Vanuatu and Laos. Other works include novellas Cloud Permutations, Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God, and linked-story collection HebrewPunk. Author Spotlight: Lavie Tidhar T. J. McIntyre

What inspired “Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western?”

It’s a combination of things I love, including Larry Niven’s underrated The Magic Goes Away stories, spaghetti Westerns and kung fu movies.

The villagers in your story mine for Qi. Is this at all related to the chi of Chinese culture? If so, why use this as part of the magic system inherent in the story?

Qi is the transliteration into English using Pinyin. Pronounced “chi.” Meaning energy or life-force. This story pays obvious, I think, homage to Larry Niven’s The Magic Goes Away stories, where the magical force is called “mana,” from the South Pacific term.

The Qi falls from the sky, indicating an otherworldly origin. What exactly is this Qi? Why utilize an otherworldly explanation? As in the Niven stories, the magic is a finite resource. One new source is naturally from space. In The Magic Goes Away, the heroes envision bringing down the moon as a new energy source.

Why do so many cultures have a fascination with the western genre? What do you think accounts for its enduring popularity?

I don’t know. One of the things that fascinated me, and the other major influence on this story, was the process of Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django, a Japanese Western “remake” of an Italian/American Spaghetti Western which was itself a remake of a Japanese western! This sort of self-feedback loop, where you take an existing concept and keep modifying it, and changing it in the process, I found that fascinating. It raises all kinds of questions of ownership. I also love Kung Fu westerns, like Jet Lee’s Once Upon A Time in China and America and the film that came shortly afterwards, Jackie Chan’s Shanghai Noon. And, as I said, I love The Magic Goes Away. So I wanted to fuse all these things together, somehow. Knowing your interest in promoting speculative fiction from various nationalities and cultures, how does “Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western” fit into this interest?

Well, I’m not sure it does. I mean, I have an interest in promoting other people’s writing, through the World SF Blog and the Apex Book of World SF anthologies (Volume Two should be out early next year). But that’s me wearing a different hat, in a way. My writing is influenced by where I live, a lot, but also by what I read and watch and so on. I thought the fun thing about this story was trying to combine these various elements.

As a writer, what does one need to do to write about other cultures in a way that does not demean or misappropriate that other culture in any way?

Well, that’s always an issue, isn’t it? In a way, of course, I’m appropriating everything. I’m borrowing this very American mode—the Western—and Niven’s magic system, and I’m setting it in a sort of Victorian-era China dealing with foreign incursions. I’m even borrowing the language, English, this story is written in. But I’m doing it within a very conscious framework of cross-cultural borrowing that is both the western, and pulp fiction, in their various reincarnations.

There seems to be a resurgence of weird westerns these days. Why do you think this might be?

I don’t know if there is, but . . . westerns are fun!

I’ve known you and been a reader of your stories and novels for a while now. What strikes me about your writing is how varied it is. You seem to hop genres and blend them together as if it is second nature. If you were forced to define yourself within current genre restrictions, what genre would you pick? If your entire oeuvre were to be placed on a bookstore shelf, which category would you choose and why?

I wouldn’t pick a genre. I can see, from a commercial perspective certainly, it helps to place yourself in one particular category, but I’d get so bored . . .

So, what’s next for Lavie Tidhar?

My novel Osama is out now, from PS Publishing in the UK, and so is my novella Jesus and the Eightfold Path, from Immersion Press in the UK. One is a retelling of the War on Terror as a pulp novel. The other is the New Testament meets Monkey! One is very serious, the other is very much tongue-in-cheek . . . next up I think is The Great Game, the third novel in the Bookman Histories, early next year from Angry Robot. There are a few other books coming out at various times, including Going to the Moon, a picture book about a kid with Tourette’s, a small graphic novella currently being serialised in Murky Depths magazine called Adolf Hitler’s “I Dream of Ants,” a guns & sorcery collection called Black Gods Kiss from PS Publishing (a companion volume to the novella Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God), the second Apex Book of World SF and, well, a few others . . .

Have I mentioned that television made me what I am today? At age eleven I started watching The Wild, Wild West, starring Robert Conrad and Ross Martin, and I’d say it was a contributing factor. I enjoyed all the episodes, of course (they have their own train car! And James West rides a swell black horse! And his fights are way cooler than the ones on Gunsmoke! And OMG those pants are tight!), but my favorites were the ones in which Dr. Miguelito Loveless, played by Michael Dunn, plotted the downfall of the U.S. government, or at least agents West and Gordon. In those episodes, I knew there would be some science-fictional threat in play: a killer automaton, a fire-breathing mechanical juggernaut, an earthquake-generating engine. After a story like that, it was hard to get worked up about the next episode of Bonanza.

The Long History of Twisted Westerns The Weird West as a subgenre probably goes back to the earliest days of the Western: to the dime novels and serial stories in weekly gazettes that turned the American west into a mythic land even before it stopped being a place you could move to, before it became the Old West. I’ll bet that in some tattered volume with a lurid engraving for cover art, Kit Carson or Buffalo Bill or another based-on-real-life fictional hero survived a haunted mine, fought a prehistoric monster, or discovered a lost city. The earliest example of Western fantasy I’ve read— and it’s a daisy, let me tell you—is Oliver La Farge’s “Spud and Cochise,” collected in 1935 in his A Pause in the Desert. Spud Flynn comes of a race of kings, as he’d tell you himself. But more importantly, he’s a true cowboy of the American west, and he’s got some mighty powers to go along with that. So when he faces off against Cochise, leader of the Chiricahua Apache, in a duel of magic to win Cochise’s help, the results are jaw- droppingly imaginative and marvelous. I’m perversely grateful to my mother’s reluctance to throw out magazines. Because of it, the 1950 issue of the Saturday Evening Post that contained Helen Eustis’s short story, “The Rider on the Pale Horse,” was lurking around the house ready for me to get hold of it by the time I learned to read. It was reprinted as a children’s book called Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman. In it, Maude Applegate, red-haired, strong-minded, and able to do a bit of witchin’, rides out to find Mr. Death on his pale stallion to beg him to spare the life of her true love, Billy-be-damn Bangtry. She catches up with him, of course—and with his granny, who, in best folktale fashion, helps her ask Death three questions. One of them is about her true love. The other two change her life.

Using Westerns to Re-Write History There’s more to Weird than the supernatural. There’s also wasn’t-true-but-could-have-been, what fantasy writers call alternate history or secret history. Dorothy M. Johnson, one of the finest writers of Westerns who ever lived (she wrote “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and “The Hanging Tree,” among others), constructed a sly bit of what-if in her short story, “I Woke Up Wicked.” In it, young Willie “Leather” Jackson finds himself inducted into the outlaw gang, The Rough String, pretty much by accident. He’s not really the outlaw type, though, and when he meets the young widow Miz Pickett among the outlaws in their hideout, Eagle’s Nest, he resolves to rescue her. The Rough String is a thinly disguised version of The Hole in the Wall Gang, led by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And Miz Pickett, who bears a remarkable resemblance to the Kid’s sweetheart Etta Place, is not at all what she seems. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but you might keep in mind that Butch and Sundance were killed in Bolivia . . . but after that, no one ever saw Etta again. The popularity of contemporary fantasy in the late 1980s and early ‘90s sparked a new interest in historical fantasy. That’s when urban fantasist Midori Snyder, a contributor to Terri Windling’s Bordertown anthologies, wrote The Flight of Michael McBride (1994, Tor Books). Michael, like so many other young men in trouble in the 19th century, leaves his Eastern home and flees to the Wild West. But his trouble is a faerie-folk vendetta, and the skill he brings with him isn’t gun handling. Along the way he meets a select handful of historical characters, including a cameo by Poker Alice, a Dakota Territory favorite of mine. It’s not only the people of the Western that are magic. The horse no one can tame is a recurring character in the traditional Western. It’s a short step from that wild horse to the unicorn, beautiful, magical, and dangerous. But that step makes a big difference in Will Shetterly’s “Taken He Cannot Be,” from the anthology Peter Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (1999, Harper Prism). In it, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday ride out to find John Ringo in the rustler-infested folds of the Chiricahua Mountains. But outlaws aren’t the only secret residents of those forested slopes, and the confrontation Holliday and Earp ride toward isn’t going to play out the way they expect.

Out of Literature and Into Film The Weird West attracts filmmakers, too. Dead Man (1995) is as freaky as you’d expect from director Jim Jarmusch; but this story of a hapless greenhorn-turned- bad-man reflects on the way history becomes myth, even as it gleefully dodges historical accuracy. 2010’s The Warrior’s Way fused Asian martial arts sorcery with cowboy iconography, and stylized Hong Kong imagery with classic Old West themes. A killer on the run hides out in an isolated desert town, until his past catches up with him. But this time, the killer is a great Chinese swordsman, and his past includes implacable wushu assassins. (I loved this movie. Can you tell?) DC Comics’ Jonah Hex got the movie treatment in 2010, too. In spite of his last name and his anchor spot in DC’s Weird Western Tales, Hex rarely dealt with anything paranormal. (The exceptions were the three Jonah Hex miniseries written by Joe Lansdale and drawn by Tim Truman. Zombies! Ghosts! Cthulu!) But in the filmed version, Hex can speak to the dead. Given his proficiency with a gun, he’ll never lack for conversation. And of course, there’s the long-awaited Cowboys and Aliens—and it was worth waiting for. My favorite Western tropes are here: the rich tyrant landowner and his no-good son; the man on the run from a past he can’t remember; the tough woman who flouts convention and makes it stick; the visionary Native leader who puts enmity aside in a common cause. Plus explosive death rays, alien abduction, cool spaceships, and a mysterious science fictional weapon! The movie is quintessentially Western and thoroughly weird, and succeeds in both genres while clearing new ground on movie marquees for interstitial filmmaking.

Merging Victorian Steampunk and Rowdy Western Antics The Weird West has come full circle since my childhood discovery of it. Steampunk is the perfect vehicle for weird Western tales, and owes a considerable debt to the inventions of Dr. Loveless. Technology pushed the development of the American west as much or more than the need to pasture cattle. Steam powered that technology. Though steampunk is often associated with British settings, it fits as neatly into the Old West as a cowboy’s head into his hat. It’s not a coincidence that the West has been portrayed as weird. The actual history makes the transition easy. How did Wyatt Earp pass through so many gunfights without even a graze? Where did Mysterious Dave Mather get his nickname, and did he really see a UFO? How did Ike Clanton die, and where, and when? The unanswered and unanswerable questions of the Old West are irresistible for a fantasy writer who loves Tim Powers-style secret histories. I’m one of those fantasy writers. I wrote Territory (and the sequel I’m working on now, Claim) because the he-said, she-said accounts of what’s been called the Earp- Clanton feud, including the gunfight in the vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral, were thick with possible what-ifs. All I had to do was line up the competing forces in the town of Tombstone—cattle vs. silver, rural vs. urban, North vs. South—and look for the string that would tie them all together. That, and explain the arm found lying in the street that was mentioned in the real-life columns of the Tombstone Epitaph. Because however weird we make the fictional West, the real thing is probably weirder still. Emma Bull is the author of Territory, a historical fantasy set in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881 (Tor Books). Other works include War for the Oaks, Bone Dance, and with Steven Brust, Freedom and Necessity. She’s a contributor to the Bordertown fantasy series, and is a writer and editor on Shadow Unit, a contemporary SF-suspense webfiction series (www.shadowunit.org). The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death Ellen Kushner

After the fight, Richard was thirsty. He decided to leave the parrots alone for now. Parrots were supposed to be unlucky for swordsmen. In this case the curse seemed to have fallen on his opponent. Curious, he had asked the wounded man, “Did you slam into me on purpose?” People did sometimes, to provoke a fight with Richard St. Vier, the master swordsman who wouldn’t take challenges from just anyone. But the wounded man only pressed his white lips together. The rest of him looked green. Some people just couldn’t take the sight of their own blood. Richard realized he’d seen him before, in a Riverside bar. He was a tough named Jim—or Tim—Something. Not much of a swordsman; the sort of man who made his way in the lawless Riverside district on bravado, and earned his living in the city doing cheapjack sword jobs for merchants aping the nobility in their hiring of swordsmen. A man with a wreath of freesias hanging precariously over one ear came stumbling up. “Oh Tim,” he said mournfully. “Oh Tim, I told you that fancy claret was too much for you.” He caught hold of the wounded man’s arm, began hauling him to his feet. As a matched set, Richard recognized them: They’d been the ritual guards in the wedding procession he’d seen passing through the market square earlier that afternoon. “Sorry,” the flower-decked drunk said to St. Vier. “Tim didn’t mean to give you trouble, you understand?” Tim groaned. “He’s not used to claret, see.” “Don’t worry about it,” Richard said charitably. No wonder Tim’s swordplay had been less than linear. Over their heads the caged parrots started squawking again. The parrot lady climbed down from the box where she’d escaped to get a better view of the fight. With St. Vier there to back her up, she shook her apron at the two ruffians to shoo them as if they were chickens escaped from the yard. The children who’d surrounded them, first to see if the quiet man was going to buy a parrot so they could see one taken down, and then to watch the fight, laughed and shrieked and made chicken noises after the disappearing toughs. But people made way for Richard St. Vier as he headed in the direction of a stall selling drinks. The parrot lady collared one of the street kids, saying, “See that? You can tell your grandchildren you saw St. Vier fight right here.” Oh, honestly, Richard thought, it hadn’t been much of a fight; more like bumping into someone on the street. He leaned on the wooden counter, trying to decide what he wanted. “Hey,” said a young voice at his elbow. “I’ll buy you a drink.” He thought it was a woman, from the voice. Women sometimes tried to pick him up after fights. But he glanced down and saw a pug-faced boy looking at him through slitted eyes, the way kids do when they’re trying to look older than they are. This one wasn’t very old. “That was real good, the way you did that,” the boy said. “I mean the quick double feint and all.” “Thank you,” the swordsman answered courteously. His mother had raised him with good manners, and some old habits cling, even in the big city. Sometimes he could almost hear her say, Just because you can kill people whenever you want to doesn’t mean you have a license to be rude to anyone. He let the boy buy them both some fancy drink made with raspberries. They drank silently, the boy peering over the rim of his cup. It was good; Richard ordered them both another. “Yeah,” the kid said. “I think you’re the best there is, you know?” “Thanks,” said the swordsman. He put some coins on the counter. “Yeah.” The kid self-consciously fingered the sword at his own side. “I fight too. I had this idea, see—if you needed a servant or something.” “I don’t,” the swordsman said. “Well, you know,” the boy went on anyway. “I could, like, make up the fire in the morning. Carry water. Cook you stuff. Maybe when you practice, I could be—if you need somebody to help you out a little—” “No,” said St. Vier. “Thank you. There are plenty of schools for you to learn in.” “Yeah, but they’re not . . . ” “I know. But that’s the way it is.” He walked away from the bar, not wanting to hear any more argument. Behind him the kid started to follow, then fell back. Across the square he met his friend Alec. “You’ve been in a fight,” Alec said. “I missed it,” he added, faintly accusing. “Someone slammed into me by the parrot cages. It was funny:” Richard smiled now at the memory. “I didn’t see him coming, and for a moment I thought it was an earthquake! Swords were out before he could apologize— if he meant to apologize. He was drunk.” “You didn’t kill him,” Alec said, as if he’d heard the story already. “Not in this part of town. That doesn’t go down too well with the Watch here.” “I hope you weren’t thinking of getting a parrot again.” Richard grinned, falling into step beside his tall friend. It was a familiar argument. “They’re so decorative, Alec. And you could teach it to talk.” “Let some bird steal all my best lines? Anyhow, they eat worms. I’m not getting up to catch worms.” “They eat bread and fruit. I asked this time.” “Too expensive.” They were passing through the nice section of the city, headed down to the wharves. On the other side of the river was the district called Riverside, where the swordsman lived with sharpsters and criminals, beyond reach of the law. It would not have been a safe place for a man like Alec, who barely knew one end of a knife from another; but the swordsman St. Vier had made it clear what would happen to anyone who touched his friend. Riverside tolerated eccentrics. The tall scholar, with his student slouch and aristocratic accent, was becoming a known quantity along with the master swordsman. “If you’re feeling like throwing your money around,” Alec persisted, “why don’t you get us a servant? You need someone to polish your boots.” “I take good care of my boots,” Richard said, stung in an area of competence. “You’re the one who needs it.” “Yes,” Alec happily agreed. “I do. Someone to go to the market for us, and keep visitors away, and start the fire in winter, and bring us breakfast in bed . . . ” “Decadent,” St. Vier said. “You can go to the market yourself. And I keep ‘visitors’ away just fine. I don’t understand why you think it would be fun to have some stranger living with us. If you wanted that sort of life, you should have—” He stopped before he could say the unforgivable. But Alec, in one of his sudden shifts of attitude, which veered liked the wind over a small pond, finished cheerfully for him, “I should have stayed on the Hill with my rich relatives. But they never kill people— not out in the open where we can all enjoy it, anyway. You’re so much more entertaining . . . ” Richard’s lips quirked downward, unsuccessfully hiding a smile. “Loved only for my sword,” he said. Alec said carefully, “If I were the sort of person who makes crude jokes, you would be very embarrassed now.” Richard, who was never embarrassed, said, “What a good thing you’re not. What do you want for dinner?” They went to Rosalie’s, where they ate stew in the cool underground tavern and talked business with their friends. It was the usual hodgepodge of fact and rumor: A new swordsman had appeared across town claiming to be a foreign champion, but someone’s cousin in service had recognized him as Lord Averil’s old valet, with fencing lessons and a dyed mustache . . . Hugo Seville had finally gotten so low as to take a job offing some noble’s wife . . . or maybe he’d only been offered it, or someone wished he had. Nobles with jobs for St. Vier sent their messages to Rosalie’s. But today there was nothing. “Just some nervous jerk looking for an heiress.” “Aren’t we all?” “Sorry, Reg, this one’s taken; run off with some swordsman.” “Anyone we know?” “Naw . . . fairy-tale swordsman—they say all girls have run off with one, when it’s really their father’s clerk.” Big Missy, who worked the mattress trade at Glinley’s, put her arm around Richard. “I could run off with a swordsman.” Seated, he came up only to her bosom, which he leaned back into, smiling across to Alec, eyebrows raised a little provocatively. Alec took the bait: “Careful,” the tall scholar told her; “he bites.” “Oh?” Missy leered becomingly at him. “Don’t you, pretty baby?” Alec tried to hide a flush of pure delight. No one had ever called him “pretty baby” before, especially not women other people paid to get into. “Of course I do,” he said with all the brittle superciliousness he was master of. “Hard.” Missy released St. Vier, advancing on his tall young friend. “Oh good . . . ,” she breathed huskily. “I like ‘em rough.” Her huge arms pointed like weather vanes into the rising wind. “Come to me lover.” The old-time crowd at Rosalie’s was ecstatic. “Missy, don’t leave me for that bag of bones!” “So long, then, Alec; let us know how it comes out!” “Try it, boy; you just might like it!” Alec looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. He held his ground, but his hauteur, already badly applied, was slipping treacherously. At the last minute, Richard took pity on him. “I saw a wedding today,” he said to the room at large. “Oh yeah,” said Lucie; “we heard you killed one of the guards. Finally made them earn their pay, huh?” “Thought you didn’t do weddings, Master St. Vier.” Sam Bonner looked around for approval of his wit. Everyone knew that St. Vier disdained guard work. “I don’t,” Richard said. “This was after. And I didn’t kill him. Tim somebody.” “No lie! Tim Porker? Half-grown mustache, big ears? Said he hurt himself falling down some stairs. Dirty liar.” “No weddings for Richard,” Alec said. He’d regained his aplomb, but was still eyeing Missy warily from across the room. “He is morally opposed to the buying and selling of heiresses.” “No, I’m not. It’s just not interesting work, being a wedding guard. It doesn’t mean anything anymore, just rich people showing they can afford swordsmen to make their procession look pretty. It’s no—” “Challenge,” Alec finished for him. “You know, we could set that to music, you say it so often, and hawk it on the street as a ballad. What a good thing for the rich that other swordsmen aren’t too proud to take their money, or we’d never see an heiress safely bedded down. What’s the reward offered for the runaway? Is there one? Or is she damaged goods already?” “There’s a reward for information. But you have to go Uptown to get it.” “I’m not above going Uptown,” said Lucie haughtily; “I’ve been there before. But I don’t know as I’d turn in a girl that’s run away for love . . . ” “Ohh,” bawled Rosalie across the tavern; “is that what you call it?” “Speaking of money,” Alec said, rattling the dicebox, “is anyone interested in a small bet on whether I can roll multiples of three three times running?” Richard got up to go. When Alec had drunk enough to become interested in mathematical odds, the evening’s entertainment was over for him. St. Vier was not a gambling man. The Riverside streets were dark, but St. Vier knew his way between the close-set houses, past the place where the broken gutter overflowed, around the potholes of pried-up cobbles, through the back alleys and home. His own lodgings were in a cul-de-sac off the main street; part of an old townhouse, a discarded veteran of grander days. Richard lived on the second story, in what had once been the music rooms. On the ground floor, Marie’s rooms were dark. He stopped before the front door; in the recessed entryway, there was a flash of white. Cautiously St. Vier drew his sword and advanced. A small woman practically flung herself onto his blade. “Oh help!” she cried shrilly. “You must help me!” “Back off,” said St. Vier. It was too dark to see much but her shape. She was wearing a heavy cloak, and something about her was very young. “What’s the matter?” “I am desperate,” she gasped. “I am in terrible danger. Only you can help me! My enemies are everywhere. You must hide me.” “You’re drunk,” said Richard, although her accent wasn’t Riverside. “Go away before you get hurt.” The woman fell back against the door. “No, please. It means my life.” “You had better go home,” Richard said. To speed her on her way, he said, “Do you need me to escort you somewhere? Or shall I hire you a torch?” “No!” It sounded more annoyed than desperate, but quickly turned back to pleading: “I dare not go home. Please listen to me. I am—a Lady of Quality. My parents want to marry me to a man I hate—an old miser with bad breath and groping hands.” “That’s too bad,” Richard said politely, amused in spite of the inconvenience. “What do you want me to do about it? Do you want him killed?” “Oh! Oh. No. Thank you. That is, I just need a place to stay. Until they stop looking for me.” Richard said, “Did you know there’s a reward out for you?” “There is?” she squeaked. “But—oh. How gratifying. How . . . like them.” “Come upstairs.” St. Vier held the door open. “Mind the third step; it’s broken. When Marie gets back, you can stay with her. She’s a, she takes in customers, but I think propriety says you’re better off with her than with me.” “But I’d rather stay with you, sir!” In the pitch-black of the stairs, Richard halted. The girl almost stumbled into him. “No,” St. Vier said. “If you’re going to start that, you’re not coming any farther.” “I didn’t—” she squeaked, and began again: “That’s not what I meant at all. Honestly.” Upstairs, he pushed open the door and lit a few candles. “Oh!” the girl gasped. “Is this—is this where you—” “I practice in this room,” he said. “The walls are wrecked. You can sit on that chaise, if you want—it’s not as rickety as it looks.” But the girl went over to the wall, touching the pockmarks where his practice sword had chipped holes in the old plaster. Her fingertips were gentle, almost reverent. It was an old room, with traces of its former grandeur clinging about the edges in the form of gilded laurel-leaf molding and occasional pieces of cherub. The person who had last seen fresh paint there had long since turned to dust. The only efforts that its present occupants had made to decorate it were an expensive tapestry hung over the fireplace, and a couple of very detailed silver candlesticks, a few leather-bound books, and an enamel vase, scattered about the room in no discernible order. “I’d offer you the bed,” said Richard, “but it would annoy Alec. Just make yourself comfortable in here.” With the pleasantly light feeling of well-earned tiredness, the swordsman drifted into the room that held his big carven bed and his chests for clothes and swords, undoing the accoutrements of his trade: unbuckling the straps of his sword belt, slipping the knife sheath out of his vest. He paced the room, laying them down, unlacing and unpeeling his clothes, and got into bed. He was just falling asleep when he heard Alec’s voice in the other room: “Richard! You’ve found us a servant after all—how enterprising of you!” “No—” he started to explain, and then thought he’d better get up to do it. The girl was hunched up at the back of the chaise longue, looking awed and defenseless, her cloak still wrapped tight around her. Alec loomed over her, his usual untoward clutter of unruly limbs. Sometimes drinking made him graceful, but not tonight. “Well,” the girl was offering hopefully, “I can cook. Make up the fire. Carry water.” Richard thought, That’s the second time I’ve heard that today. He started to say, “We couldn’t ask a Lady of Quality—” “Can you do boots?” Alec asked with interest. “No,” Richard stated firmly before she could say yes. “No servants.” “Well,” Alec asked peevishly, “then what’s she doing here? Not the obvious, I hope.” “Alec. Since when am I obvious?” “Oh, never mind.” Alec turned clumsily on his heel. “I’m going to bed. Have fun. See that there’s hot shaving water in the morning.” Richard shrugged apologetically at the girl, who was staring after them in fascination. It was a shrug meaning, Don’t pay any attention to him; but he couldn’t help wondering if there would be hot water to shave with. Meanwhile, he meant to pay attention to Alec himself.

Alec woke up unable to tell where his limbs left off and Richard’s began. He heard Richard say, “This is embarrassing. Don’t move, Alec, all right?” A third person was in the room with them, standing over the bed with a drawn sword. “How did you get in here?” Richard asked. The pug-faced boy said, “It was easy. Don’t you recognize me? My enemies are everywhere. I think I should, you know, get some kind of prize for that, don’t you? I mean, I tricked you, didn’t I?” St. Vier eased himself onto his elbows. “Which are you, an heiress disguised as a snotty brat, or a brat disguised as an heiress?” “Or,” Alec couldn’t resist adding, “a boy disguised as a girl disguised as a boy?” “It doesn’t matter,” St. Vier said. “Your grip is too tight.” “Oh—sorry.” Still keeping the sword’s point on target, the kid eased his grip. “Sorry—I’ll work on it. I knew I’d never get in like this. And girls are safe with you; everyone knows you don’t like girls.” “Oh no,” Richard protested, surprised. “I like girls very much.” “Richard,” drawled Alec, whose left leg was beginning to cramp, “you’re breaking my heart.” “But you like him better.” “Well, yes, I do.” “Jealous?” Alec snarled sweetly. “Please die and go away. I’m going to have the world’s worst hangover if I don’t get back to sleep soon.” Richard said, “I don’t teach. I can’t explain how I do what I do.” “Please,” said the boy with the sword. “Can’t you just take a look at me? Tell me if I’m any good. If you say I’m good, I’ll know.” “What if I say you’re not?” “I’m good,” the kid said stiffly. “I’ve got to be.” Richard slid out of bed, in one fluid motion regathering his limbs to himself. Alec admired that—like watching a chess expert solve a check in one simple move. Richard was naked, polished as a sculpture in the moonlight. In his hand was the sword that had been there from the start. “Defend yourself,” St. Vier said, and the boy fell back in cautious garde. “If you kill him,” said Alec, hands comfortably behind his head, “try not to make it one of the messy ones.” “I’m not—going to kill—him.” With what was, for him, atypical flashiness, Richard punctuated each word with a blow of steel on steel. At his words the boy rallied and returned the strokes. “Again,” snapped the swordsman, still attacking. There was no kindness in his voice. “We’re going to repeat the whole sequence, if you can remember it. Parry all my thrusts this time.” Sometimes the boy caught the quick-darting strokes, and sometimes his eye or his memory failed, and the blade stopped an inch from his heart, death suspended by the swordsman’s will. “New sequence,” Richard rapped out. “Learn it.” They repeated the moves. Alec thought the boy was getting better, more assured. Then the swordsman struck hard on the boy’s blade, and the sword flew out of his pupil’s hand, clanging on the floor, rolled into a corner. “I told you your grip was too tight. Go get it.” The boy retrieved his sword, and the lesson resumed. Alex began to be bored by the endless repetition. “Your arm’s getting tired,” St. Vier observed. “Don’t you practice with weights?” “Don’t have—any weights.” “Get some. No, don’t stop. In a real fight, you can’t stop.” “A real fight—wouldn’t go on this long.” “How do you know? Been in any?” “Yes. One. —Two.” “You won both,” Richard said coldly, his arm never resting, his feet never still. “Makes you think you’re a hero of the field. Pay attention.” He rapped sharply on the blade. “Keep going.” The boy countered with a fancy double riposte, changing the line of attack with the lightest pressure of his fingers. Richard St. Vier deflected the other’s point, and brought his own clean past the boy’s defenses. The boy cried out at the light kiss of steel. But the swordsman did not stop the movements of the play. “It’s a nick,” he said. “Never mind the blood.” “Oh. But—” “You wanted a lesson. Take it. All right, fine, you’re scared now. You can’t let it make a difference.” But it did make a difference. The boy’s defense turned fierce, began to take on the air of desperate attack. Richard let it. They were fighting silently now, and really fighting, although the swordsman kept himself always from doing real damage. He began to play with the boy, leaving tiny openings just long enough to see if he would take advantage of them. The boy took about half—either his eye missed the others, or his body was too slow to act on them. Whatever he did, Richard parried his attacks, and kept him on the defensive. “Now—” the swordsman said harshly—”Do you want to kill me, or just take me out?” “I—don’t know—” “For death”—Richard’s blade flew in—”straight to the heart. Always the heart.” The boy froze. His death was cold against his burning skin. Richard St. Vier dropped the point, raised it to resume the fight. The boy was sweating, panting, from fear as much as exertion. “A good touch—can be anywhere. As light as you like—or as deep.” The pug-nosed boy stood still. His nose was running. He still held his sword, while blood welled onto his skin and clothing from five different places. “You’re good,” Richard St. Vier said, “but you can be better. Now get out of here.” “Richard, he’s bleeding,” Alec said quietly. “I know he’s bleeding. People do when they fight.” “It’s night,” Alec said, “in Riverside. People are out. You said you didn’t want to kill him.” “Hand me that sheet.” Sweat was cooling on Richard’s body; he wrapped the linen around himself. “There’s brandy,” Alec said. “I’ll get it.” “I’m sorry I’m bleeding on your floor,” the boy said. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “I’m crying from shock, that’s all. Not really crying.” He did not examine his own wounds. Alec did it for him, dabbing them with brandy. “You’re remarkable,” he told the boy. “I’ve been trying to get Richard to lose his temper forever.” He handed the flask to St. Vier. “You can drink the rest.” Alec undid what the sword had left of the boy’s jacket, and began pulling out the shirt. “It’s a girl,” he said abruptly, unsuspecting midwife to unnatural birth. The girl said something rude. She’d stopped crying. “So are you,” Alec retorted. His hand darted into her breast pocket, pulled out the small book that had rested there, its soft leather cover warm and sweaty. He flipped it open, snapped it shut. “Don’t you know how to read?” the girl asked nastily. “I don’t read this kind of trash. The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death. My sister had it; they all do. It’s about some Noble girl who comes home from a ball and finds a swordsman waiting in her room for her. He doesn’t kill her; he fucks her instead. She loves it. The End.” “No—” she said, her face flushed—”You’ve got it wrong. You’re stupid. You don’t know anything about it.” “Hey,” said Alec, “you’re cute with your nose running, sweetheart—you know that?” “You’re stupid!” she said again fiercely. “Stupid bastard.” Harsh and precise, as though the words were new in her mouth. “What do you know about anything?” “I know more than you think. I may not have your exceptional skill with steel, but I know about your other tricks. I know what works for you.” “Oh,” she flared, “so it’s come down to that.” Furious, she was starting to cry again, against her will, furious about that, too. “The sword doesn’t matter to you; the book doesn’t matter—that’s all you can understand. You don’t know anything—anything at all!” “Oh, don’t I?” Alec breathed. His eyes were bright, a spot of color high on each cheek. “You think I don’t know all about it? With my sister, it was horses—both real and imaginary.” He mastered himself enough to assume his usual sneer, passionless and obnoxious. “Mares in the stable, golden stallions in the orchard. She told me their names. I used to eat the apples she picked for them, to make it seem more real. I know about it,” he said bitterly. “My sister’s magic horses were powerful; she rode them across sea and land; she loved them and gave them names. But in the end they failed her, didn’t they? In the end they took her nowhere, brought her nothing at all.” Richard sat on the edge of the bed, brandy forgotten in his hand. Alec never spoke of his family. Richard didn’t know he had a sister. He listened. “My sister was married—to a man chosen for her, a man she didn’t like, a man she was afraid of. Those goddamned horses waited for her in the orchard, waited all night for her to come to them. They would have borne her anywhere, for love of her—but she never came . . . and then it was her wedding day.” Alec lifted the book high, slammed it against the far wall. “I know all about it.” The girl was looking at Alec, not at her broken book. “And where were you?” she said. “Where were you when this forced marriage took place—waiting in the orchard with them? Oh, I know, too—You took them and you escaped.” Holding herself stiffly against her cuts, she bent over, picked up the book, smoothed it back into shape. “You don’t know. You don’t know at all. And you don’t want to. Either of you.” “Alec,” Richard said, “come to bed.” “Thank you for the lesson,” she said to the swordsman. “I’ll remember.” “It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he told her. “You’ll have to find someone else. That’s the way it is. Be careful, though.” “Thank you,” she said again. “I will be careful, now that there’s something to be careful for. You meant what you said, didn’t you?” “Yes,” Richard said. “I don’t usually get that angry. I meant it.” “Good.” She turned in the doorway, asked in the same flat, cold tone, “What’s your sister’s name?” Alec was still where he’d been when he threw the book, standing still and pale. Richard knew that his reaction, when it hit, would be violent. “I said, what’s her name?” Alec told her. “Good. I’m going to find her. I’ll give her this”—the book, now fingerprinted with dried blood—“and your love.” She stopped again, opened the book, and read: “‘I was a girl until tonight. I am a woman now.’ That’s how it ends. But you never read it, so you’ll never know what comes in between.” She smiled a steel-biting smile. “I have, and I do. I’ll be all right out there, won’t I?” “Come to bed, Alec,” Richard said again; “you’re shaking.”

Ellen Kushner’s first novel, Swordspoint, introduced readers to the city to which she has since returned in The Privilege of the Sword (Locus Award & Nebula nominee), The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman), and a handful of short stories, most recently “The Duke of Riverside” in Ellen Datlow’s Naked City. Her second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the Mythopoeic and World Fantasy Awards. Kushner has taught writing at the Clarion and Odyssey workshops, and is a co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation. In 2011 she co-edited Welcome to Bordertown with Holly Black. Kushner is also the longtime host of the public radio show Sound & Spirit. She has just finished recording the audiobook of Swordspoint for Audible. Kushner lives in New York City with author & editor Delia Sherman, and no cats whatsoever. It is all clearly explained at www.EllenKushner.com. Author Spotlight: Ellen Kushner Wendy N. Wagner

“The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death” is set in the same world as your novels Swordspoint, The Fall of Kings, and The Privilege of the Sword. How did you develop this world? What inspired you?

I was inspired by a combination of books and real life. No, really. The world and the characters started coming to me in my early twenties. I was just out of college, working in publishing and living on a seedy block in an iffy neighborhood in New York City. (Those who know NYC now will laugh uproariously when I tell you it was W. 110th Street on the Upper West Side—but believe me, my block was so bad that we regularly heard cries for help out the window. It was a different city, then; trust me.) I definitely felt like I had to have my head up and my wits about me every time I went out. And I felt like I was really cool for having the street smarts to live there. But did I wish I had a tough guy with a sword who always made sure no one messed with me? Sure, I did. Like Riverside, my neighborhood was chockablock with old apartments and brownstones, rich with fabulous architectural details that were falling to bits through neglect, and rented for next to nothing. Richard and Alec’s main room at Marie’s is my old living room, complete with flaking paint, chipped molding, rotted floorboards and a fireplace (though ours was blocked up). At the same time, I’d just started working in publishing, and read Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer for the very first time. The formality of their worlds intrigued me; I wanted to play with that, because it was very alien to me—as was the formality of business bureaucracy, even in publishing. And I was finishing Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond series then, too. Those books were a huge influence; again I got that sense of challenge, that sense of, “How did she do that?” Other influences on the Swordspoint setting include Shakespeare, Thackeray, Damon Runyon and James Thurber—but they were old friends, a big part of my mental furniture already. Finally, I really love old cities, and I’ve been in more than a few. When I was a kid, we lived outside Paris for a year, and drove all over the place. When I got older, I had my adventures with a Eurail pass, checking out old back streets before Europe was quite as cleaned-up as it all is now. The feel of the stones, the smell of the plaster, the height of the old buildings (not very!) . . . all made their way into the place I invented. The story draws its name from the book the girl carries. Alec makes the book sound like a fairly trashy romance novel. Is he right? Do you have a good idea what that book is really like and about?

I do, definitely! It’s the book we all loved in high school (or college), the one we weren’t sure we should admit to our friends we loved—until we found out they loved it, too. It’s the one with the trashy cover that turns out to be amazingly great. It’s the one you can’t really explain. We all have one; what’s yours? In The Privilege of the Sword (“TPOTS”—and yes, I pronounce it “teapots”), which takes place some fifteen years after Swordspoint and is narrated by Alec’s teenage niece (the daughter of the very sister he mentions in this story)—all the teenage girls on the Hill read it [The Swordsman Whose Name Is Not Death] obsessively. One of them defends the book to her parents: “It’s not trash. It is full of great and noble truths of the heart. And swordfights.” As in this story, some of the girls in TPOTS mediate some ugly events in their lives through The Swordsman Whose Name was Not Death; the fiction they love gives them a way to cope, even to survive. In TPOTS, I do offer up some more snatches of scenes, characters, and even a few lines of The Book (The Swordsman Whose Name was Not Death, that is!). In fact, it even gets dramatized for the stage, and all the girls go, and argue about how true to the original it is, and bitch about their favorite bits being left out (sound familiar?). So is Alec right? Well, he’s never read it . . . so he’ll never know.

Alec condemns his sister for not fleeing her arranged marriage, but he won’t do anything to help the girl, who is trying to escape the same fate. Why? (And how does she keep from punching him in the nose—he’s such a jerk!)

Well, he’s too tall for her to reach his nose—and anyway, he’s just not that important to her. He doesn’t matter to her; Richard does. Alec is my terribly flawed, beloved character. He doesn’t try to help because he’s a mess. He’s full of rage he can’t direct at anything useful. He’s very young, you know; in this story, set around the time of Swordspoint, he’s not yet twenty. Check him out some fifteen years later in TPOTS—he’s learned a lot, even if he’s still pretty nuts. (And he and his sister have a slambang bashup fight about what happened to her—which I had to write in the novel, having set it up in this little story!) In a way, this story was meant to be a commentary on Swordspoint. At the time, I was feeling uneasy about having written a book almost entirely concerned with men and the affairs of men (with a few surprising twists, sure, but still . . . ). I wanted to write a story that overtly said: “Yes, I do know that this society I have lovingly invented is hard on women; and that these particularly characters, attractive as they may be, do not very much care about that.” My best friend from college, the novelist Caroline Stevermer [http://members2.authorsguild.net/carolinestev/], once called Richard and Alec “Sunlit Villains.”

In American culture, we seem to have stereotypes about certain kinds of men who are extremely sexual, men like actors, models, even gay men. In this story, the sexual appeal and sexuality of swordsmen is played up. Were you drawing on or speaking to some of our preconceptions or stereotypes of men’s sexuality? Hah. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but, yeah, I guess so. It’s something I set up in Swordspoint that everyone thinks of swordsmen as hot guys who just fight and screw a lot. Because in the society I’ve set up, swordsmen are a combination of professional athletes (think tennis champs crossed with quarterbacks) and performers—and my dear, you know what they say about actors!

What do you think happened to the girl when she walked out of Richard and Alec’s bedroom?

I don’t know. But I worry.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about this piece?

This particular story was the very first thing I wrote about Richard and Alec after I finished Swordspoint. And it didn’t happen right away. I had this Thing about not doing a Sequel (um, this was in the days when series were sort of looked down on—or so I believed. What can I say? I was young. And ambitious. And cocky). I didn’t want to get typecast, I guess—I wanted to show my range; so the next book I wrote was Thomas the Rhymer—very different. But then . . . I just kind of missed my city, and my mad, bad, boys. And I thought, “Hmm, there are some aspects of them all that I haven’t really explored yet.” So I made a pact with myself, that as long as I could come at the material from a different angle, even a different style, each time, I was allowed to write about them. And as I said above, I wanted to deal first with the issue of feminism (or lack of it) in my city, in this story. I’ve kept my pact, too: There’s a complete list of “Riverside” stories and novels here, at the bottom of this page on my website: http://www.sff.net/people/kushnerSherman/Kushner/world.html And each of them is quite different from the others— while still, I hope, filling in the narrative of what happens to all these people and their city.

Are there any upcoming projects you’d like to mention or point out to our readers?

Yes, indeed! Because I am, in fact, this week recording the audiobook of Swordspoint! I’m working with producer/director Sue Zizza, who was also our director on “The Witches of Lublin”. It really is a dream come true: For years, I’ve been reading bits of the book aloud with great gusto to anyone who’d hold still for it. Audiences seem to like it, and often people come up to me afterwards and say, “Oh, my! Are you going to record that?” My standard answer has always been: “Oh, I’d love to—but I’m so disorganized—and lazy—but, you know, if a producer were to come up to me and say, ‘We’ve got a studio and an engineer, and here’s a microphone: Go!’ then I’d totally do it.” Be careful what you wish for. Or rather, don’t! I’m loving it a lot, and can’t believe I’m really getting the chance to do a professional recording of this caliber of the entire book.

When will the Swordspoint audiobook be out? And who’s releasing it?

Well, I’m really excited, because it will be— Hey, hold on a minute. Who are those masked guys with nunchakus coming in the window? I think I’d better —

Wendy N. Wagner spent her teens mooning over Patricia Veryan’s historical romance novels, so completely understands the girls of TPOTS. Her short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, as well as several anthologies, including The Way of the Wizard, Rigor Amortis, and the forthcoming anthology Armored. She lives with her very understanding family in Portland, Oregon, and blogs at operabuffo.blogspot.com. The Pen and the Sword Kat Howard

It was Edward Bulwer-Lytton, he of “It was a dark and stormy night” infamy and perhaps the most famous writer of bad prose in history, who coined the phrase “The pen is mightier than the sword.” For a writer, the choice isn’t necessarily one or the other. A well-deployed sword can be a useful, and perhaps even a mighty, tool for a fantasy writer. But fencing on page or stage is different from fencing on the piste. Fencing as sport has its roots directly in fencing for combat, and up until the sword fell out of use in personal combat, the training was the same for both. As sport, fencing has been part of a variety of cultures for thousands of years. The oldest known depiction of a bout is an engraving in the Temple of Madinat Habu near Luxor, and dates to around 1190 BC. The men are wearing masks, judges are keeping score, and the next engraving over is a pile of trophy penises, taken from enemy dead. The last detail, thankfully, is no longer part of the modern sport. Fictional Fencers and Fencing Fiction Writers Fencing, whether in sport or combat, has been a vibrant part of fiction for almost as long as it has existed. Works like the Mahabharata, Beowulf, and the Chanson de Roland all emphasize swordplay. The natural connection between pen and sword is solidified by the language of fencing, wherein the fencer’s repertoire of movements is called a conversation of blades, or a judge will “read the phrase” of the action before awarding a touch. Writing and fencing have overlapped more directly, as well. One of the world’s most famous writers, William Shakespeare, trained seriously at the fencing school at Blackfriars Theatre (where his work would later be performed). One of the world’s most famous duelists, Cyrano de Bergerac, wrote science fiction—the posthumously published Voyages to the Moon and Sun (1657). Modern writers who fenced include Robert Heinlein, Mervyn Peake, and Jane Yolen.

Fencing as a Sport Modern competitive fencing is designed to allow two people to hit each other with swords (always referred to as “weapons,” no matter which of the three disciplines), in generally lethal target areas, and not get hurt. Scoring is electronic, though moderated by judges trained in interpreting the conversation of blades. Only épée allows simultaneous touches. Foil and sabre have right of way, and in the case of simultaneous hits, the judge reads the phrase to determine which fencer was controlling the attack before awarding the touch. The judge also enforces the etiquette of the sport—halting the action if a fencer is disarmed (which does not score any points), or if the two fencers make physical contact—the corps-á-corps is illegal in foil and sabre. Fencers may lose a touch for turning their back on their opponent, retreating beyond the boundary of the piste (the long narrow strip of floor that serves to bound the action of a modern fencing bout), or swearing. Although on the surface fencing can seem like two people simply hitting each other with sharp sticks, it is not about trying to beat or stab the opponent. Truly great fencers must do more than defend or attack; they must find ways to control the fight. There are eight basic lines of attack in fencing, labeled prime to octave, and each comes with corresponding parries and their derivatives. While a fencer may legally come on guard in any blade position, the parry commonly taught as en garde for foil and épée is sixte—this covers the high outside line of the body, wrist supinated, and blade up and to the outside, with the point higher than the hand. (If you imagine the stereotypical “beginning of a duel” image, this is what sixte looks like.) Parries, blocks to stop attacks, may be straight line, circular, semicircular, and may be used in combination with other actions of the blade. It is not necessary to make blade contact in order to parry an attack—anything that wards off the attack works. But all blocks aren’t equal. In many cases it is desirable to use a circular parry, rather than a straight parry, so as to avoid the movement being read as a beat on the blade (an action which does not give a fencer priority of attack) rather than a parry (which changes the control of the action, and so does give a fencer priority of attack.) Choosing the right defense can put the defender in control of the spar, even while he or she is blocking.

Fencing on Film If you’ve seen fencing on film, chances are you’ve seen the choreography of the great British fencer, Bob Anderson. A successful competitor, he began his film career by coaching Errol Flynn. He went on to coach a variety of actors, including Sean Connery in Highlander. Anderson also coached and choreographed the fencing in the Star Wars movies (including appearing as Darth Vader in a particularly complex scene in The Empire Strikes Back), the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Pirates of the Caribbean films, and the iconic fencing in The Princess Bride. Anderson’s work is wonderful to watch because he has the ability to choreograph dramatically interesting fight scenes—change of pace, high line bladework and lots of blade contact, and fighting styles that fit the characters. If we look at the opening of one of Anderson’s pieces, the duel between the Man in Black and Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, we can see the similarities and differences to sport fencing. Both men are standing in the customary stance—the back foot at a ninety-degree angle, legs bent, weight evenly distributed. Inigo comes on guard in sixte, and the Man in Black in a very casual septime (blade down and to the inside, wrist supinated.) Because Inigo comes on guard first, the Man in Black’s choice of line is puzzling—it would be much more efficient to be on guard in the same line, as there would be less distance for the blade to travel to successfully parry. The position was probably chosen to showcase the Man in Black’s casual attitude when compared to Inigo’s more traditional and vigorous approach. Then the men trade identical actions—beats on each other’s blades, and a slashing motion. While possible, it would be exceedingly rare for this action to open an actual bout—it is slow, serves no purpose except showing off, and neither of them actually hits the other before pausing the action. They then go through an extended exchange of attacks and parries in sixte, with an occasional counter-sixte beat. It looks impressive, and sounds complicated, but in an actual bout would be a needless waste of time and energy. It is important to point out that many fencing scenes on film are not this easy to translate. Both actors are reasonably competent, enough so that it is possible to see what moves they are attempting. This is not always the case, and so credit should be given to the movie and actors for making the duel watchable and translatable.

Fencing on the Page Dramatic and interesting fencing in written fiction is a bit trickier to pull off, because without the actual flash and clang of the blades, “attack in sixte, parry counter- sixte, feint, riposte to quarte, remise and touch” is hardly compelling for the reader. At the same time, unless the writer is trying to describe the technical action of a bout, there’s no need to rely on this language to write a good fencing scene. Tolkien wrote a terrific description of fencing in The Lord of the Rings by focusing on the sound of the fight. This is more familiar to readers, because they have at least watched action movies, and so adds a visceral component that lends the scene dramatic tension. Kushner’s fencing scene in “The Swordsman Whose Name was Not Death” is primarily interested in the emotional effect on the characters. Any uncertainty about whether an action with a blade is possible or likely is best addressed by focusing the reader’s attention somewhere other than the blade itself. Although the properly used sword is important in fantasy fiction, in the end, the properly used pen is indispensable.

Note: The revised edition of Richard Cohen’s By the Sword was of great use in writing this article, and I highly recommend it.

Kat Howard is a former competitive fencer and current university professor. Her short fiction has previously appeared in the anthology Stories, in Weird Tales, and is forthcoming from Lightspeed. She a 2008 graduate of Clarion (UCSD). Her heroes are Buffy and Joan of Arc, and she only speaks of herself in the third person when writing bios. Coming Attractions

Coming up in December, in Fantasy, we have original fiction by bestselling author Seanan McGuire (“Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage”) and new writer Nike Sulway (“Her Lover’s Golden Hair”), plus reprints by Joe R. Lansdale (“Torn Away”) and Naomi Novik (“Vici”). All that plus our usual assortment of nonfiction and author spotlights. It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Fantasy Magazine! Thanks for reading!