by Jo Walton
“You were always hiding something,” she says.
We are alone together on top of a cliff inside her head, surrounded by roses and mist that swirls and shapes itself suggestively, but is silent now, and she is ruthless.
“I was hiding my plan. And my fear of you, which is bound in with my love for you because you have all the power.”
“I?” She steps back, startled, close to the edge, and catches herself to stand squarely. She does not like to think of herself as the one with power, the one others might fear. She was the victim. “Tell me. It won’t make any difference. But I need to know if I sacrificed him for my happiness, my career, everything I wanted.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” I say. “And besides, you had the girls later. It’s not as if you had to put creativity into only one thing. That’s another ridiculous and destructive idea.”
“But you came back,” she says. “You came back just then.”
I think about that, because it’s true. “But I came back in the car,” I say. “That’s when I woke up. I think I was squeezed in your head all that time, after your mother killed me, dead or asleep and dreaming on the edge of this mist. I think I woke up because there just wasn’t any more room and you desperately needed me. But if I wasn’t there, if my soul was going to come back as that baby—no, it’s a demented idea. But if so, then he was gone already, as the doctor said, Steve had killed him, you were bleeding, because that’s when I woke up, in the car, not after I made the choice to ask for an abortion.”
“Oh!” she says.
“But I really don’t think that is where my soul came from,” I say. “I always had it. I had it back in the bookcase. I think the baby was somebody separate, and maybe we did sacrifice him, if he wasn’t killed by Steve. But we had to do it just to get free. It wasn’t Faustian.”
“I haven’t forgotten what Steve was like,” she says. She meets my eyes, and I realise that here in the mist I have eyes, and a form, and a body, as she does. I reach out and pick a golden rose from a nearby bush, and prick myself deliberately on a thorn. Blood runs down my palm and stains the petals. “But my life has been so good, since then. Was it a Faustian bargain, to have a muse, to have you?”
“Not that I know of,” I say. “What universe are we in?”
She laughs. “How would I know? We’re in my head. The universe outside my head has never been under my control.” Then she looks serious. “Are you really afraid of me?”
There is no point now in anything but honesty. I look down at the rose in my hand. Closest to me the petals are blood red, then shade out through many shades of pink and gold to white. I hold it out to her. “You can shut me up in here and never let me out again! How could I not be afraid? You have this mist in your head and I have no idea how to get out of here! You’re ruthless and it’s hard to trust you when you won’t even give me the name I need to get in to Illyria, which was my plan all along, you know, mine, you wouldn’t be going if it wasn’t for me.”
“Well,” she says, and reaches out to take the rose, and at that moment the mist and the cliffs are gone, blown away in an instant, and with them our forms, so we are two disembodied voices floating in the bright darkness of the bone cave, where we usually speak when we talk in here. “As to that, what do I take?”
Take? I thought she knew she couldn’t take anything. I had thought she understood at least that much. “We go empty-handed,” I say.
“Souls?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, what happens to my body?”
“I think it probably goes back to Canada and into a hospital,” I say, tentatively. “But maybe Worldcon first? Do you have some of those strong painkillers left? Because if so, then I think you can do that.”
“I was afraid that’s what you were going to say, but hoping it might fall dead here at the moment when my soul leaves it. Well, I’ll get to see Con and the girls, and everyone at Worldcon one last time. Though as they still haven’t sent me panel information, who knows—I don’t even know if I’ll have a reading. Or a kaffeeklatch. Why am I worrying about that now?”
“Because you don’t really believe that you’re really going to be in Illyria, that you’re going to live forever.” It’s time to let her know all of it. “You’ll go into Illyria as a god, and then you’ll shape yourself into new people, be born, and live, sometimes knowing and sometimes unknowing. And eventually you’ll die, when you want to, and apotheosize again, and live other lives, over and over, as many times as you want to. And as a god you’ll make new worlds, the way you always have, and you’ll enter into them over and over, forever. And yes, one tiny shred of you will stay here in this world and go to Worldcon and then go home and die, but all the rest of you will go on forever and be vast and great. You privilege this world and call it real, and call the rest of them imaginary, made up, unreal, but there’s no need to do that. You can be like I am, but free, making choices, not pacing through a plot. And I want to be free too! But for that I have to have a name!”
“Listen. They’re calling,” she says.
And I see the paradis in Thalia, and Dolly’s blood is pumping out of him, and it has opened the gate between realities, reaching straight up through the cherubim and the seraphim and the gods all the way to God. The world can be reshaped, in this moment, and only in this moment. Progress restarts, and the stars are in our grasp. The choir is singing Prospero’s strange harmonies, and Tish’s picture is before us, or maybe it’s what Sylvia is seeing, the Baptistery and the people in T-shirts and shorts. In this instant, there is no difference. And suddenly the ground of the paradiso heaves in front of us, and Caliban is there, and people are running and getting out of the way. “You forgot me,” he rumbles, accusingly.
“No,” Prospero says, from where he is safely floating on the magic carpet. “Nobody forgot you. As from your crimes you’d pardoned be, by your indulgence, set me free.” And he steps off the carpet and embraces Caliban’s huge neck.
The choir has faltered to a halt, in running to safety. But Ficino and Miranda, incredibly, have gone on calling, as Dolly’s blood streams out, calling a long string of names. “Sylvia,” they say, in unison. “Hekate, Sylvia, Katherine Sylvia Harrison.” Then “Hermes, Dolios—” and we are standing again on the cliff-edge, both of us, as I wait for the name that will summon me, or will not and let her go on without me. Can they find a name for me? Is there a name I would answer to, a name that would feel mine? Even if they found the old childish name she called me long ago in her grandmother’s house, would it be fitting now? Does the reader have a name for me, do you, if you have followed me this far, and can even Ficino’s wisdom draw it from you? Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Tit Tot, I think, and shake my head. Everything is waiting on the word, the mist is almost silent, no more than a whisper of distant bells, as all this passes through my mind, taking no more time than Dolly’s last breath. “Narrator,” Ficino says, and at the same moment Miranda says, “Ariel!”
“Oh!” I say.
“To the elements be free, and fare thee well,” Sylvia says.
Then I take her hand, and we step forward, off the edge of the cliff, into the rose, through layering colours that are the petals of the rose, and we do not fall, we step out into the paradiso, into the picture, and on into Illyria, together and free.
THANKS AND NOTES
Most of this book was written in Florence, but some of it was written in Montreal, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Paestum, and Rome. All of it was written in Protext, on my netbook, for which I’d like to thank Lindsey Nilson, for making it possible for me to write anywhere.
In my last novel, Lent, I chose to render almost all the Italian words in English. In this book, I’ve made the opposite decision, for a change. Lent is a meticulously researched fantasy novel about Savonarola. This is a playful fantasy novel about death and subcreation, in which I’m throwing together all kinds of things, and instead of (almost) real Renaissance Florence we have Shakespeare’s imagination of Ita
ly tossed with magical longevity and meditations on Renaissances, creation, and death. In Lent I wanted to make strange things sound more familiar. This didn’t need that. The things and places mentioned in modern Florence/Firenze are all real, especially the most improbable. So I want to thank Teatro del Sale and Perché No!… for existing and letting me enjoy them, the organization of Friends of the Uffizi, and especially Lumi, for helping make so much amazing art accessible, Teckla in Mercato Centrale, the Russian waitress in the Uffizi roof café who asked to be put in the book, my aunt Mary Lace, who introduced me to Renaissance art in the first place, and Ada Palmer, who generously offered me Florence and always helps me enjoy it.
I received valuable feedback on this book from Mary Lace, Hannah Dorsey, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Marissa Lingen, Sherwood Smith, Emmet O’Brien, Maya Chhabra, Doug Palmer, Louise Mallory, Wendy Oakden, Jennifer Hyndman, Elaine Blank, and Alison Sinclair.
I could afford to spend the time writing in Florence in the summer of 2018, when Sylvia was there, thanks to my Patreon community, whose continuing support always helps and delights me.
The line “Ginnungagap where nothing is and all things start” quoted in the first chapter without attribution is from Ada Palmer’s song “Ice and Fire.” Most of the other random unattributed quotations are from the Bible, Shakespeare, the anonymous poem Tom O’Bedlam, but some of it is from all over. The late and much missed Ursula Le Guin kindly gave me permission to quote “Er’ perrehnne,” which is from The Lathe of Heaven.
Thanks to Edwin Chapman for a great copyedit, and to Camellia Sinensis, for all the tea. And thanks to you, my readers, for bearing with me through so many odd edges of genres and different kinds of stories.
TOR BOOKS BY JO WALTON
The King’s Peace
The King’s Name
The Prize in the Game
Tooth and Claw
Farthing
Ha’penny
Half a Crown
Among Others
What Makes This Book So Great
My Real Children
Thessaly (comprising The Just City, The Philosopher Kings, and Necessity)
An Informal History of the Hugos
Lent
Or What You Will
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jo Walton won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012 for her novel Among Others, and the James Tiptree, Jr., Memorial Award in 2015 for My Real Children. Before that, in 2002, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Tooth and Claw won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. Her more recent novels include the Thessaly trilogy (The Just City, The Philosopher Kings, and Necessity) and Lent. A native of Wales, she lives in Montreal. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
1. The Bone Cave
2. Her Dead Horse Book
3. Direct Address
4. Three Anecdotes
5. Who Will Laugh, I Wonder?
6. Dolly has a Secret
7. What is She?
8. A Disturbance in the Force
9. This is Illyria, Lady
10. The Affairs of Wizards
11. In Principio Erat Verbum
12. Hey, Ho, the Wind and the Rain
13. The Undiscovered Country
14. Friend to All Mankind
15. No Dominion
16. Full of Noises
17. An Audience
18. On a Pale Horse
19. Into the Rose Garden
20. If Not Hereafter
21. If All the Skies Were Paper
22. Modern Times
23. Full of Noises
24. Brave New World
25. Kali Yuga
26. One Life, One Death, and All the Things in Between
27. Backstory
28. Sunlit Uplands
29. Two Graves
30. Forget the Perfect Offering
31. Saturn Devouring His Children
32. Deus ex Machina
33. A Local Habitation and …
34. Ibid
Thanks and Notes
Tor Books by Jo Walton
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
OR WHAT YOU WILL
Copyright © 2020 by Jo Walton
All rights reserved.
Jacket design by Jaime Stafford-Hill
Jacket photographs: figure on book by Reilika Landen/Arcangel; bubbles by Eugenio Marongiu/Cultura/Getty Images
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-30899-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-30901-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250309013
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: 2020