THE BEST OF TALEBONES
edited by Patrick Swenson
FAIRWOOD PRESS
Bonney Lake, WA
THE BEST OF TALEBONES
A Fairwood Press Book
November 2010
Copyright © 2010 in the names of the contributors
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Fairwood Press
21528 104th Street Court East
Bonney Lake, WA 98391
www.fairwoodpress.com
Cover & Book Design by
Patrick Swenson
ISBN13: 978-1-933846-24-8
eISBN: 978-1-61824-903-6
First Fairwood Press Edition: November 2010
Printed in the United States of America
Electronic version by Baen Books
http://www.baen.com
For
Ken Rand & Jack Cady:
Fine writers and fine human beings
who graced my magazine and my life
Copyrights and Publication History
“Foreword” © 2010 by Patrick Swenson; All the following stories first appeared in Talebones, year of the copyright. “The Yard God” © 2001 by James Van Pelt; “The Winds of Brennan Marcher” © 1995 by Barb Hendee; “Ten Sigmas” © 2004 by Paul Melko; “Cats, Dogs, and Other Creatures” © 2001 by Steve Rasnic Tem; “Still Life with Boobs” © 2005 by Anne Harris; “The Girl with the Pre-Raphaelite Hair” © 1999 by Carrie Vaughn; “Swoop” © 2009 by Patricia Russo; “Two” © 2007 by Jack Skillingstead; “Snow on Snow” © 1995 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; “Night Shift” © 2004 by Louise Marley; “The Next Best Thing” © 1998 by Ray Vukcevich; “23 Skidoo” © 1997 by Patrick O’Leary; “Hail, Conductor” © 2006 by Charles Coleman Finlay; “The Parable of Satan’s Adversary” © 2003 by Jack Cady; “The Acid Test” © 2004 by Kay Kenyon; “The Dandelion Clock” © 2006 by Stephen Couch; “Comachrome” © 2002 by Alan DeNiro; “Robbie” © 1998 by James C. Glass; “Song of Mother Jungle” © 1997 by Ken Rand; “Jack in the Box” © 1995 by Mike Brotherton; “Spiders” © 1996 by Bruce Taylor; “Love of the True God” © 1998 by Uncle River; “Tall Spirits, Blocking the Night” © 2002 by Jay Lake; “From Sunset to the White Sea” © 2003 by William Mingin; “Landlocked” © 2000 by Barth Anderson; “Seepage” © 1999 by Catherine Macleod; “Zothique mi Amor” © 1999 by Mark Rich; “Sugar ‘n’ Spice” © 2001 by Devon Monk; “Wolf Song” © 2007 by William F. Nolan; “Safe, Child, Safe” © 2009 by Aliette de Bodard; “Your Life, Fifteen Minutes from Now” © 2000 by Nick Mamatas; “The Forever Sleep” © 2003 by Jennifer Rachel Baumer; “Roofs and Forgiveness in the Early Dawn” © 2002 by James Sallis; “Nothing But Fear” © 1997 by Eric Del Carlo; “Caucasus” © 1996 by Tom Piccirilli; “Bluebeard by the Sea” © 2004 by Sandra McDonald; “The Dog Prince” © 2004 by Sarah Prineas; “Three Chords and the Truth” © 2009 by John A. Pitts; “Death Comes but Twice” © 2007 by Mary Robinette Kowal; “The Twa Corbies” © 2005 by Marie Brennan; “God of Exile” © 1998 by Terry McGarry; “Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk” © 2001 by Ken Scholes.
FOREWORD
PATRICK SWENSON
Seventeen years ago I started Talebones magazine with big dreams and a tiny budget. Even while the magazine was churning along, I often pulled out old issues and looked at the covers, at the stories and poems inside, at the artwork and columns, and it was like pulling out old high school yearbooks at a ten-year reunion. I’m a twenty-five year veteran high school teacher, and have seen my fair share of yearbooks, even though I missed my own high school’s thirty year reunion not too long ago. With these Talebones copies, nostalgia reigned. Nostalgia is a good enough reason for me to put out this volume now. It’s a selfish reason, but there you go. Perhaps you’ll enjoy my selfishness.
In the introduction to Barb Hendee’s story “The Winds of Brennan Marcher,” I explain how Talebones owes much to the magazine Figment that she and her husband J.C. published. I sat in on slush reading sessions and even helped pick out a few winners. I decided early on that I kind of digged that whole scene, so I vowed that if I saved enough money to purchase a new computer, received a raise at work, and found myself a little more time, I’d start my own magazine. I never did have enough extra time, but two out of three was close enough, and when Figment closed up (due only to the busy lives of the editors, who were grad students at that point), I made my plans to take the small press speculative fiction market by storm.
The magazine took shape. It wasn’t a storm, exactly, but a strong wind that swirled around, grew to respectable size, rattled a few window panes, and left its mark, I believe, after a fourteen year run.
Along for the ride for a good majority of it was Honna Swenson. We married after the magazine started, and a half dozen years later our son Orion was born. Sometimes life takes an unexpected turn, and in 2007, Honna and I parted ways. But before all that, near the closing months of 1994, we moved wholeheartedly into this small press adventure, spending a lot of time trying to figure out the magazine’s niche, size, frequency of publication, and — well, what should we should call the thing? If you don’t know the story about how the name came about, it happened when my old roommate bought a mountain bike for his girlfriend, but also had to buy a more comfortable bicycle seat separately. Honna and I saw the name of the company that manufactured the seat — Tailbones — and the lights clicked on upstairs pretty quickly. The name, after a subtle but creative twist, was set. As far as fiction was concerned, it was pretty simple: we wanted literate but entertaining stories. We liked to think of the stories as skeletons that the writers had fleshed out with their unique tales.
“Fiction on the Dark Edge,” the magazine’s original subtitle, caused more than a little confusion. Talebones was typecast early on as a horror magazine, something I suppose we brought about ourselves by using that old bone font, as well as including darker stories during those first few years. Writers somehow got the idea that we wanted hardcore blood and guts horror (or something similarly vicious), even though for more than half of the magazine’s run we were buying a good mix of SF, fantasy and dark fantasy, and virtually no horror. Were we “edgy?” I don’t know. We published a lot of fiction that blurred the boundaries, perhaps. I think we were ahead of the “slipstream” craze, but we did feel we were a market where writers could place some of those stories that defied classification. We didn’t shy away from taking risks from time to time.
We premiered our “zero issue” in the summer of 1995 at the Portland Westercon to decent oohs and ahhs, and the first full issue came out that fall. I believe its modest first run was something like 100 copies, the interior pages right out of the laser printer, the black and white cardstock cover folded by hand and stapled with a long-reach stapler. The magazine started quarterly and didn’t miss an issue for the first six years of its life. When I started Fairwood Press in 2000 to publish books, the frequency switched to three times a year. When Orion was born in 2002, Talebones moved to a twice-a-year schedule and stayed right there until its closing in 2009.
We had a system, and it worked. We both read the slush, and we both had to agree on a story before we put it on the hold pile. We’d make our tough decisions and come up with the stories for the issue we were reading for, which was always just one ahead of the issue we were putting together. We never bought stories for more than one issue ahead, never stockpiled stories to be published years later. We didn’t hold onto anything fo
r more than a week if we weren’t seriously considering it. (Later, that particular policy had to give way to all matter of life interruptions and increased submissions, and response times naturally had to go up.) The system continued to work right up to the very end, except that for the last five issues I was on my own. This did not, by the way, have anything to do with the magazine folding. It could have continued for quite some time with the resources I had, but I felt the time was right to gain back some time, mainly for my own writing, and for my son Orion. A few months after making the decision to close up shop, Orion was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, so the choice seemed somewhat fortuitous.
I’m not sure when the cries of “When will we see a Best of Talebones anthology?” started, but the magazine garnered nice reviews early on and gained some respect in the small press community. Some stories grabbed the attention of awards committees and Best of the Year anthologies. Writers who published their very first stories in its pages started selling more and more. Some launched novel careers. The names and the fabulous stories started adding up. I’m now a little sorry I didn’t do this anthology sooner, because coming up with the table of contents for it was not easy in the slightest. I didn’t even start thinking about it until the early part of this year. How was I going to pick from a list of nearly 300 stories from the magazine’s thirty-nine issues?
I had to dream big. That’s why this book has forty-two stories in it! Perhaps I should have gone for twenty or twenty-five, with the idea of doing a “Volume Two” later. I may still do that, since a number of wonderful writers published more than enough “Best of” quality stories to fill up another good-sized volume, though not as hefty as this one. Who knows? I’ve never given up on the idea of Talebones morphing into something different down the road, such as a yearly anthology, or perhaps an e-publication. Then, maybe, I’d have some stories to add to the mix. Time well tell, as in all things.
Early on, I decided I wanted to pay tribute to the fabulous artists who made Talebones a wonderful, visual experience, so I included thumbnail graphics of the covers from the issues each of the stories appeared in for the print version. Because not every artist did a cover, I want to say a special thank you to all the artists who worked with Talebones, as well as all the writers and all the columnists. Reproducing all the covers for this electronic edition was too difficult, so apologies to my artists.
Some of the story blurbs have been slightly edited for this edition, but I decided to keep the author bios as they were in the print edition.
During the magazine’s run, we always began the stories with opening blurbs to allow the authors and myself space to share something about the concepts. I’ve included a little introduction for each story here as well, although. I mainly talk about the writers and the artists, because along the way, many of them became very good friends and many of them became colleagues in this crazy fiction business. I’ve also passed along some interesting historical nuggets related to particular issues, too, that I hope you enjoy.
At my “Goodbye Talebones/Birthday Party” in December of 2009, I had a cake decorated to say “The Bones Will Never Die.” And here’s the Bones, because you, dear readers, like a strong wind fanning hot coals, keep bringing the fire back to life. I hope you enjoy your look back at this reunion. This selfish yearbook. I have a goal to get as many writers who are in it to sign my own copy as is humanly possible. Until then, I’ll sign off on my own foreword here.
Thanks for the good times — it was fun.
Have a nice summer.
Stay cool, and don’t ever change.
I needed help from James to decide which story to include here. (He had more stories appear than any other writer, with ten.) We narrowed it down to two. Not only did “The Yard God” become the obvious choice, it seemed to me a great story to start the anthology. I’ve come to know James quite well over the years, and have published three of his collections (A fourth is on the way) and his first novel. There aren’t too many other short story writers like him who can write with such lyricism and inventiveness. This story appeared in issue #22. Adrian Bourne did the cover, the only orange-colored cover out of the thirty-nine issues.
THE YARD GOD
JAMES VAN PELT
A week after her twenty-second birthday, Demi sat exactly in the middle of the yard between the oak-tree carpenter ants and the elm-tree blacks, trying to make peace. The war had raged since May’s first warm days thawed the soil, and just like last summer centered on the area beneath the sycamore, where the tent caterpillars dropped to the ground and made easy prey. The afternoon sun cast long shadows so her silhouette reached nearly to the chain link fence between her and the street. She pulled at her skirt again to cover her knees. If Mom looked out the kitchen window and saw her sitting cross-legged on the lawn, she’d be sure to yell at her. Not that it was likely Mom would look out. Since January she’d spent more and more time on the couch, surrounded with hot water bottles and warming blankets and medicines.
Even with the ants warring, Demi was happy. One time, when Mom was in a good mood, she’d held Demi on her lap and said, “Life is full of happy-sads. You’re my happy-sad.” But Demi didn’t understand what she meant. You’re either one or the other, Demi had thought.
Demi closed her eyes to feel the ants’ minuscule lives better. It took a lot of relaxed concentration. She sensed them like tiny red spots in the hundred-yard radius of her awareness, the nest to her left, a loosely tangled ball of thread burrowing into the oak’s dead roots, filled with scurrying ants, and the other nests under the elm, reaching nearly a yard deep, with passages more complicated than any human building, even more confusing than the community college’s hallways where Demi attended remedial night classes for adults. She was taking Introduction to Reading for the third time.
In the lawn between the two colonies, ant trails wended their ways between the blades. She watched the ants moving to and fro, some foraging, some carrying food, and some battling over a tent caterpillar that wasn’t quite dead yet. Demi bit her lip. There was plenty of food for both populations. No need for them to kill each other. But another one died, and then another, their tiny lights winking out in her mind. The only place they didn’t fight was at the gift rock on the garden’s edge where trails from both tribes intersected. Here they piled seeds, wisps of grass, and once, by Herculean effort, a shiny dime. Demi collected the tiny offerings every day and broadcast her thanks.
She sent soothing signals to them, directed them toward dead beetles, spilled garbage in the alley. “There’s feasts awaiting!” she broadcasted, and some turned aside from the combat, but others ignored her. Demi sighed. She put her hands behind her and arched back to let the setting sun bake her face. When she sat very still and quieted her mind, she sensed the entire yard, all the vibrant lives scurrying, burrowing, flying, lying in wait around her, from the sluggish pink haze of earthworms like fat yarn in the dirt, to her favorite, the bright yellow nimbus that was the barn owl in the oak.
Behind closed eyes, she saw Ethan’s bilious green aura long before he spoke. As he entered her field of vision, she ordered the wasps off who’d been resting on her shoulders. He moved slowly along the fence and stopped. Maybe he was looking the other way, she hoped, but she straightened anyway, wrapped her arms around her chest and tried to stay small. If I don’t make a noise, maybe he won’t know I’m here, she thought, but she could feel him staring at her. Had her skirt moved above her knee again?
The miniature life lights winked out, leaving the red-tinted blackness of light through her closed eyelids.
“Hey, little darling. What ‘cha doing, sitting in the sunshine like a flower?” His voice reminded her of the squishy sound in the kitchen drain.
She opened her eyes. His arms draped over the fence. He was all smiles and oily hair. Wide-set swampy-brown eyes. Untrimmed, ragged fingernails with burger grease under them. They’d been in school together until the third grade when they started holding her back. Now he lived by hims
elf in what had been his parent’s house, two doors down. Twice in the last month she’d caught him peeping in her window. Stiffly, she stood, turned away and marched toward the house.
“Don’t go, Demi,” he whined. She centered her gaze on the back door’s peeled paint, tried not to hear him, but it was like he’d put his mouth to her ear. “Just ’cuz you’re retarded don’t mean we can’t have a special time. I’d be better company than your dead-end mom.”
The door slammed behind her. Faintly she heard his last shot, “You won’t be twenty-two forever!”
She checked the stove while trying to figure out what Ethan meant. Nothing there. She took a package of dried noodles from the cabinet, poured water into a pot and set it on the stove.
Her mom coughed in the next room. “Demi! Where’ve you been? I’ve needed to pee for a half hour.”
“Coming,” Demi said. The dark living room smelled of old blankets and too much breathing. Mom sucked on a lozenge, her thin lips pursed, the skin on her face stretched so thin that she almost seemed like a skull already. Demi pulled the covering from Mom’s thin legs, then put an arm behind her to lift her up.
“Be gentle,” Mom gasped.
“Sorry.” Demi lifted her, a feathery weight with no substance. Demi remembered a moment from years ago when Mom towered over her, her hand open and coming down. The hard slap. “You’re stupid!” Mom had shouted. Demi couldn’t recall what Mom had been so mad about. Maybe Demi had spilled the sugar or not picked up her toys. In those days, Mom had been a bulky, ominous presence in Demi’s world. “I’ll try to be better,” Demi had said. Mom hit her again. Later that time, or maybe some other–they got mixed up in Demi’s mind–she had sat in the middle of her bed trying to figure out how to make Mom happy. “I’m a bad baby,” Demi had thought, and she wept, thinking about how much she loved her mom.
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