by Jane Yolen
It turned out, the only thing missing was a story about Robin Hood’s birth. That rarely features in any of the Robin Hood canon, so it gave me a lot of room to simply go for it. And that’s the true story about why I wrote “Our Lady of the Greenwood.”
Green Man
Go, Green Man,
with your leafy incantations,
your mask showing your intentions,
your feet dancing the patterns
of the world’s heart.
Go, Green Man,
reminding us we are all green,
root and rootling,
our skin but a fragile shield
against the cold.
Go, Green Man,
burn in winter, rise again
in the curls of spring,
masked and unmasked,
birth and rebirth—you do it all,
even as you walk the maze.
The Confession of Brother Blaise
I wrote several stories about Merlin, Arthur, the whole Camelot scene, and after publishing some of them in magazines such as Fantasy & Science Fiction, and anthologies, I realized that I had the start of a book. As most of them featured Merlin, I called it Merlin’s Booke. (Some of my friends insisted on calling it Merlin’s Bookie, as if Merlin’s job was as a tout at major races.)
But I didn’t have enough stories for an entire book, so I sat down to write what was missing. When I reread Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth, one of the earliest tellings of Merlin’s beginnings, one part of it was about a priest named Father Blaise, who was the priest of the nunnery where Merlin’s mother gave birth. And that’s how this story began.
Merlin: A Haiku
An imp at his birth,
Tattooed with the devil’s marks,
Always turning towards the Light.
Wonder Land
I had already sold my old friend Susan Shwartz a long (for me) story for her first Sisters in Fantasy anthology, and there she was back again wanting a story for Sisters in Fantasy 2. I wasn’t sure I had another one in me, for I was working on a novel and didn’t want to stop. But Susan is good at Jewish guilt. I relented and told her I would do one, then promptly forgot. She got back to me when the due date was really tight. And as I was working on a fairy tale novel and was in the mode, I thought about “Little Red Riding Hood” as told by Charles Perrault in his groundbreaking book of French fairy tales.
LRRH was a tale I’d lectured about at Smith College and elsewhere. It’s a short, strange story that has three major variants: One where Red gets eaten along with Grandma, end of story! One where the woodcutter kills the wolf. And one really strange variant where the woodsman knocks the wolf out and cuts open its belly for a bizarre C-section, birthing both Little Red and her grandmother. Then the three of them sew the wolf back up with stones in his belly and haul him outside. When he wakes up, he is dreadfully thirsty and heads to the river. There, overbalanced by the stones, he falls in and drowns. No blood on Little Red’s hands.
But mostly what fascinated me was the kind of knowingness that surrounds the girl in the French version of the story. I don’t think she’s fooled for a moment by the wolf in the nightgown. The story at its heart is about seduction, only who is the seducer?
I believe that’s where my take on “Wonder Land” comes from, out of the Charles Perrault tradition of courtly French stories for young women as warning into our own modern times.
As to the poem below, another courtly French tradition was that of the Compère Le Loup, Grandfather Wolf—an older (elderly?) courtier chosen to both instruct the young woman in his charge and keep her safe about sexual matters until she has made a fine marriage. Yea, I believe that, don’t you? What big and yellowed teeth that old wolf has.
Compère Le Loup
Consider him no stranger, no danger,
but godfather to the child in the red cape.
Instruction is his duty, his joy.
He has long been a best friend
of the duke whose seed sowed this child.
Why then should he not God father her,
that seedless, sexless connection
that has been prized throughout the West.
He and her Père agree—she is to remain
a prize, fit for a prince, a pawn
in the game of kingdom come.
Not for her the gropings with the gardener
by the lilies, dog boy in the kennels,
woodcutter under a bending oak.
Le Loup has his instructions.
Follow the girl. Keep her safe.
And oh he does his duty, using his big eyes,
big shoulders, big ears, big teeth.
All of him.
Evian Steel
One of the first stories I put in Merlin’s Booke was a novella that appeared first in Robin McKinley’s anthology Imaginary Lands, called “Evian Steel.” I’d begun the story right before my husband and I were at conferences in England and we had a week in-between the two conventions. So in that week, we went on a two-day trip through the English fen country. We got to walk on the ancient boards that created paths there, saw the place called the Isle of Glass, smelled the smells, felt the wind, breathed in the essence of that still, small, strange, perfect world. Then we went up to the Scottish Highlands, where we fell in love with the entire country, eventually—a few years later—buying a house there.
I’d always envisioned “Evian Steel” as the middle part of a novel. The first part would be about the two main women who began the sword-making women’s community, the second would be when Guinevere gets there, the third when she marries Arthur and is the one who actually brings the sword Excalibur to him as part of her bride price. I wanted the three linked novellas to be part of a trilogy of Arthurian stories including Merlin’s Booke, which was published. I had Guinevere’s Booke and Arthur’s Booke in mind, and then I hoped to have the entire novel brought out on its own. But that never happened. Doesn’t mean it can’t still. . . .
A Different Kind of Bone: A Compressed Sonnet
Where is it written that a girl
Cannot go on a major quest;
Is it her cheek the sheen of pearl,
Or that she has to bind her breasts?
Cut her hair, lower her voice,
Ride astride a heavy steed?
Really, isn’t her own choice,
Her vocation, passion, need?
I see her enter the magic woods,
The trees a-tremble at her advance.
You would stop her if you could,
Before she raises her sword, her lance.
The bones she leaves inside the hedge,
Are light, and fine. Gives you your edge.
Sister Emily’s Lightship
I live twenty minutes from the Emily Dickinson Homestead in Amherst.
My husband was a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
I’ve been a huge fan of Emily Dickinson’s poetry for as long as I can remember. And I’ve lived for over fifty years in the Connecticut River Valley near The Homestead (now a museum). Yet I didn’t go to visit that house and her brother’s house next door until about fifteen years ago.
Now I am a constant visitor. I have published three children’s picture books about her (My Uncle Emily, The Emily Sonnets, and the upcoming Emily Writes). I read every new biography about her that comes out. I reference her poems in almost every speech I give. You might say I am obsessed, and I’ve written many poems about her, though this short story is the only one I’ve committed to.
I thought of this story as “Emily Dickinson Meets a Martian” while I was writing it, but I think the story is really about inspiration, how poetry can make souls meet across a universe. It also makes as much sense as any other explanation about why she became so reclusive in her later years. Though I only thought that after the story was published.
It almost wasn’t.
I had the first several pages done, promised ahead of time to editor Pa
trick Neilsen Hayden for an anthology he was doing. But I got royally stuck after setting down Emily’s lines: I dwell in Possibility—A fairer House than Prose. And the deadline for the story was well and truly passed.
At that point, my husband and I were in Scotland for the summer. I had my daughter send on five Emily biographies to me at enormous expense because St Andrews University (five blocks from my house) and the local bookstores had none. Patrick and his wife Theresa were coming for a visit, and the books beat them to our door by mere days. I was frantic, often a good way to get a story moving again.
I finished it in a white heat a couple of hours before the visitors arrived, printed it out, and put it on the bedside table in their room.
We went on great trips through the Highlands, into Edinburgh for the day, through Sir Walter Scott’s bizarrely wonderful house, and for the whole trip nothing was said about the story. I figured Patrick hated the story and didn’t want to say so as he was a guest, and so was being quiet.
After breakfast on the day they were to leave, I said plaintively (something I never do!), “Did you get a chance to read the story?”
He looked at me, deer in the headlights. I thought it the end of what was—till then—a great editor/author friendship. He turned without word and ran back up the stairs. He came down with the manuscript in hand, thrust it at me, said, “I’m taking it for Starlight. It needs editing in three places,” then ran back upstairs to finish his packing.
The anthology won a World Fantasy Award. The story won the Nebula. Patrick and Theresa and I are still dear friends. And Emily—well, she got to ride around the universe with a Martian (or some kind of alien). So I guess everything worked out just fine.
Emily D and Bird Play St. Pete’s
It is eternal dusk on the stage
But her white dress illumines.
Holding one of several fascicles,
those small hand-sewn packets
of torn paper on which she’s scribbled,
Uncle Emily—as she calls herself
in these performances—steps up,
grabs the microphone with her left hand,
and commences to speak.
The room is electric. Behind her, Bird
spit-casts a run on the sax. A paradiddle
soft as a drum lullaby accompanies them.
Emily does not read the words exactly as written,
but improvises each poem. Syllables
flutter out, pop percussively, invent
and reinvent themselves; they take flight
while Bird decorates, illustrates,
illuminates each line.
Emily is volcanic; the lava of each poem
touches all corners of the room
till her eyes roll back and she falls
onto the wooden floor in an ecstasy
of poetics and seizure. One angel arranges
her dress so that her ankles don’t show.
Another puts a harp tuning fork
between Emily’s teeth and tongue.
But otherwise they let her lie.
God knows, they know, the difference
between epilepsy and being seized
by the sacred, though it’s a secret
they have yet to share.
About the Author
Jane Yolen has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century. In 2018, her 365th and 366th books will come out. Her books include children’s fiction, poetry, short stories, graphic novels, nonfiction, fantasy, and science fiction. Her adult books include poetry, short-story collections and anthologies, novels, novellas, and books about writing. Her best-known books are Owl Moon, the How Do Dinosaurs series, The Devil’s Arithmetic, Briar Rose, Sister Emily’s Lightship and Other Stories, and Sister Light. Sister Dark. Among her many honors are the Caldecott and Christopher medals, two Nebulas, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic awards, the Golden Kite Award, the Jewish Book Award, the World Fantasy Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award, and the Science Fiction Poetry Grand Master Award. Yolen is also a teacher of writing and a book reviewer. Six colleges and universities have given her honorary doctorates. She lives in Western Massachusetts and St. Andrews, Scotland.
Extended Copyright
“Andersen’s Witch” copyright © 2012 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, edited by Jonathan Strahan (Random House: New York).
“Lost Girls” copyright © 1997 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast (Harcourt Brace: San Diego).
“Tough Alice” © 1997 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast (Harcourt Brace: San Diego).
“Blown Away” copyright © 2013 by Jane Yolen. First published in Oz Reimagined, edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen (47North: Seattle).
“A Knot of Toads” copyright © 2005 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction, edited by Andrew J. Wilson and Neil Williamson (Crescent: Scotland).
“The Quiet Monk” copyright © 1988 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, March 1988.
“The Bird” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“Belle Bloody Merciless Dame” copyright © 1997 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Elf Magic, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (DAW Books: New York).
“The Jewel in the Toad Queen’s Crown” copyright © 2013 by Jane Yolen. First appeared on Tor.com, February 28, 2013. Also appeared in Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Tor Books: New York).
“The Gift of the Magicians, with Apologies to You Know Who” copyright © 1992 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, September 1992.
“Rabbit Hole” copyright © 1997 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Wild Woman, edited by Melissa Mia Hall (Carroll & Graf: New York).
“Our Lady of the Greenwood” copyright © 2000 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Sherwood, edited by Jane Yolen (Philomel Books: New York).
“The Confession of Brother Blaise” copyright © 1986 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Merlin’s Booke (Ace Books: New York).
“Wonder Land” copyright © 1996 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Sisters in Fantasy 2, edited by Susan Schwartz and Martin H. Greenberg (Roc Books: New York).
“Evian Steel” copyright © 1985 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Imaginary Lands, edited by Robin McKinley (Ace Books: New York).
“Sister Emily’s Lightship” copyright © 1996 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Starlight 1, edited by Patrick Neilsen Hayden (Tor Books: New York).
“Note on a Dried Cod” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“From: Five Meditations On Us” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“Managing Your Flamingo” copyright © 2016 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Wonderland: Alice in Poetry, edited by Michaela Morgan (Pan Macmillan: London).
“Dorothy Before Oz” copyright © 2015 by Jane Yolen. First appeared in Mythic Delirium, Issue 2.1, July-September 2015.
“I Am the Apple” copyright © 2012 by Jane Yolen. First appeared as part of “Objectifying Faerie,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2012.
“Oak Casket” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“Donna Plays Fiddle at Her Mother’s Wake” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“Maiden v. Unicorn” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“Mission” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“Beauty and the Beast: An Anniversary” copyright © 1989 First published in The Faerie Flag (Orchard Books, London).
“Dorothy and Alice Take Tea” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appeared on a Marianna Lines Shoreline greeting card (Stoneland Designs: Fife, Scotland).
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nbsp; “Green Man” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“Merlin: A Haiku” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“Compère Le Loup” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“A Different Kind of Bone: A Compressed Sonnet” copyright © 2017 by Jane Yolen. First appearance.
“Emily D and Bird Play St. Pete’s” copyright © 2015 by Jane Yolen. First appeared on Mass Poetry.org.