Otherworldly Maine

by Noreen Doyle

  “Hey . . . ” Morgan called, and heard his brother’s distant, responsive hey.

  He struggled to raise his knees within a particularly dense tangle of limbs and vines, lifted his head, and saw the enormous tanned leg, its foot jammed into the ground, raising the forest floor around it, the top of the leg, approximately where the thigh must begin, hidden within the dense cover above.

  He thought to turn and struggle his way out of there, but instead pushed forward, unable to turn away from this living bit of his grandfather’s creation story. He felt silly when he got there—from a few feet away it was obviously bark, not skin, just the biggest tree he’d ever seen, personally. He got right up on it, and could not help reaching out, and touch, and found it to be as rough and textured as he’d expected, and yet meant, somehow, for his hand. He was weak from the search, and the bark seemed to move under his skin, and in the soft sigh of wood breath, he heard, “You tell your own story. You make it up as you go along.”

  He tilted his head to hear better. “This is my story—what is yours?” And looking off the edge of the tree, saw that a face had appeared there, just around the edge: dark and smooth and untroubled, with little character reflecting the simple wear and tear of living. It was a baby’s face, if that baby were six feet tall and in his twenties.

  It disappeared, and Morgan scrambled around the perimeter of the tree, and saw the naked skin flashing through slits in the dense foliage, moving impossibly fast.

  They made their way out and reported the disappearance, but when they led the parks people back to where they thought they had last seen their grandfather, there was no sign of the dense stand of trees, and nothing like the massive tree Morgan had encountered. Growth like that, they were told, did not exist here.

  They were in a great deal of trouble, and both did jail time, and both were scared, but thought they deserved it. Gary’s dad hired the lawyer, who told them they didn’t need to go to jail. No one thought they’d done away with him. They’d just been reckless, and lost him. But they refused to speak in court of the experience, and that angered the judge. They had their story, they said, but it was a family tale they didn’t want to share.

  “His name was Joseph,” Morgan told the judge. “I called him the old Indian because that’s what my mother called him. But his name was Joseph, and he was Passamaquoddy.”

  “He was our grandfather,” was all Gary would say.

  Three weeks after their grandfather’s disappearance, some hikers found a young Indian man, naked, up on the Knife Edge. He spoke mostly gibberish, grunts, and a few Passamaquoddy words, and apparently unable to hunt, had been surviving on berries and carrion. When asked where he’d come from, he pointed to the trees below, and repeated “Nikuwoss! Nikuwoss!” A local man translated it as “My mother! My mother!” The papers ran articles on feral children over the next several weeks, but as so often happens, news of this nameless Indian gradually faded away.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  KAREN JORDAN ALLEN grew up in Indiana and earned a master’s degree from Yale Divinity School, but she has now spent half her life in Maine and expects never to live anywhere else. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Asimov’s Science Fiction, Maine Times, Bates: The Alumni Magazine, A Nightmare’s Dozen, The First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age, and Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing. When not writing, she moonlights as a pianist and Spanish teacher.

  LEE ALLRED’s stories have appeared in publications ranging from Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine to DC Comics, but he is perhaps best known for his Civil War stories, such as “East of Appomattox” (Alternate Generals III) and “For the Strength of the Hills” (Writers of the Future Volume 13). The latter was a finalist for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. He served three tours of duty in Iraq and recalls that upon return from his first tour, his plane touched down in Portland where he was greeted warmly by a large group of Mainers.

  JACK L. CHALKER (1944–2005) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, where he taught history for more than 10 years. Among his several awards is the New England Science Fiction Society’s E. E. Smith Memorial Award. Best known for his novel Midnight at the Well of Souls and its sequels, he published more than 60 novels in addition to numerous works of short fiction and nonfiction. He founded the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, Mirage Press, and among his avocations was an abiding interest in ferryboats.

  NOREEN DOYLE has lived most of her life in Maine. Publications featuring her fiction and nonfiction include Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits, Dig, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition. With Harry Turtledove she edited the World Fantasy Award-nominated The First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age. She earned a B.A. from the University of Maine (anthropology and art) and M.A.s from Texas A&M (nautical archaeology) and the University of Liverpool (Egyptology).

  Author or editor of more than 80 books, GARDNER DOZOIS edited Asimov’s Science Fiction for 20 years and has been compiling The Year’s Best Science Fiction collections since 1984. During that time he has won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor 15 times. His short fiction has also earned two Nebula Awards. His most recent novel, co-written with George R. R. Martin and Daniel Abraham, is Hunter’s Run. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, he now lives in Philadelphia.

  TOM EASTON holds a doctorate in theoretical biology from the University of Chicago and teaches at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine. His recent nonfiction books include Classic Editions Sources: Environmental Studies, Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Science, Technology, and Society, and Off the Main Sequence: Science Fiction and the Non-Mass Market. His latest novels are Firefight and The Great Flying Saucer Conspiracy. He has been writing the book review column for the SF magazine Analog since 1979.

  GREGORY FEELEY is the author of The Oxygen Barons, Arabian Wine, and many novellas, stories, and articles. His fiction, which has earned Nebula Award and Philip K. Dick Award nominations, can be found in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Interzone, and many other magazines and anthologies, including several best-of-the-year volumes. He lives three small states away from Maine, which he visits whenever he can for its bookstores and hiking trails.

  ELIZABETH HAND is the multiple-award-winning author of numerous novels, including the psychological thriller Generation Loss and the contemporary fantasies Illyria, Mortal Love, and three short fiction collections. She is a longtime contributor of book reviews and essays to many publications, including Down East magazine, the Washington Post Book World, and Salon. She moved to Maine in 1988, where she lives in Lincolnville Center with her two teenage children and her partner, UK critic John Clute. “Echo” won a Nebula Award in 2007.

  Now an editor with 30 years in journalism, DANIEL HATCH has been a reporter for, among other newspapers, The New York Times. He is also a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard. Today he lives in Springfield, Massachusetts, though his ancestors moved to what later became Maine. He has resided in Lisbon Falls and spent time every summer on Tripp Lake in West Poland, where he has had occasion to go after that largemouth bass hiding in the reeds and the shallow water.

  JEFF HECHT is a free-lance science and technology writer whose articles can be found in such periodicals as Omni, Earth, Cosmos, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Interzone, Nature, and other magazines and anthologies. His books include Beam: the Race to Make the Laser, City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics, and Understanding Fiber Optics. He earned his B.S. electronic engineering from the California Institute of Technology and vacations regularly in Maine.

  LUCY SUITOR HOLT was born in Knox, Maine, and earned a degree from Rivier College in Nashua, New Hampshire. Now living in New Hampshire, she has served as a board member of The Monadnock Writers’ Group. She produced Occasional Shadows, an audio CD of her short stories, and her
short fiction can also be found in Whispers from the Shattered Forum and the online Moxie Magazine.

  EDWARD KENT (1802–1877) served twice as Maine’s governor, 1838–1830 and 1841–1842. During his first term in office, the bloodless Aroostook War broke out and resulted in fixing the disputed boundary between Maine and Canada. Fort Kent was named in his honor. Not generally known as a fiction writer, Kent contributed “A Vision of Bangor in the Twentieth Century” to the so-called “Bangor Book,” published in 1848 as Voices from the Kenduskeag to raise funds for a girls’ orphanage.

  One of the most important writers in America today, Maine native STEPHEN KING has published more than 50 novels, most recently Duma Key. His body of work earned the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation in 2003. He is an active philanthropist, providing scholarships for local students and supporting charities in Maine and beyond. Most of the year he lives in Bangor with his wife, writer Tabitha King.

  JOHN P. O’GRADY was born in New Jersey, but escaped to the University of Maine to study forestry, believing this was a chance to dwell in deep groves and sequestered places. His environmentalist sensibilities were not encouraged in Nutting Hall, so he went on to pursue graduate studies in literature. He now works full-time as an astrologer in San Francisco. He has authored two books, Pilgrims to the Wild and Grave Goods: Essays of a Peculiar Nature, and co-edited an anthology, Literature & the Environment.

  Born in New York to literary parents, EDGAR PANGBORN (1909–1976) made his literary debut pseudonymously, with a mystery novel in 1930 and short stories for the pulp detective and mystery magazines. In the early 1950s he began to write mysteries and science fiction under his own name. His work helped to firmly establish a new “humanist” school of science fiction. The post-apocalyptic Davy remains the most famous of his novels. In 2003 he was recognized with the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award. He spent 1939–1942 farming in rural Maine.

  JESSICA REISMAN grew up on the east coast of the U.S., was a teenager on the west coast, and now lives in Austin, Texas. She learned to swim in Maine lakes as a child, went to college, raked blueberries, and learned to be a film projectionist there, among other things. She is a writer, reader, and movie aficionado. Her fiction can be found in magazines and anthologies, including Cross Plains Universe, edited by Scott Cupp and Joe R. Lansdale, and Sci Fiction. Her first novel, The Z Radiant, was published in 2004.

  MELANIE TEM is a novelist and playwright. The Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute awarded her an associateship for 2001–2002. Her novel Prodigal won a Bram Stoker Award, as did The Man on the Ceiling (written with her husband, writer and editor Steve Rasnic Tem), which also went on to win International Horror Guide and World Fantasy awards. Among her 14 collaborative and solo novels are Blood Moon, Wilding, Revenant, and Daughters. Also a social worker, she lives in Denver with her husband.

  Author of more than 300 published short stories, STEVE RASNIC TEM is a Denver-based writer whose fiction has been honored with the Bram Stoker Award, British Fantasy Award, International Horror Guild Award, and World Fantasy Award. His stories can be found in such annual anthologies as Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Best New Horror, magazines including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and two collections, City Fishing and The Far Side of the Lake. His co-wrote his novel The Man on the Ceiling with his wife, Melanie Tem.

  SCOTT THOMAS was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts. To escape urban sprawl, he moved to Maine in 2003 and settled Down East. He is the author of five short story collections, including Westermead, Over the Darkening Fields, and Midnight in New England. He co-authored the collection Punktown: Shades of Grey with his brother Jeffrey Thomas. His fiction has appeared also in the anthologies The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Crypto-Critters Volumes 1 and 2 and Leviathan Three.

  Born in Concord, Massachusetts, American writer and philosopher HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862) is best known for Walden; or Life in the Woods, an account of his two-year stay at Walden Pond where he sought, in relative but not complete isolation, to examine human society. Walden and “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” inspired later political and social activists from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Mahatma Ghandi. He made three trips to Maine, of which he wrote in the collected essays The Maine Woods.

  TOM TOLNAY founded Birch Brook Press and is managing editor of the literary magazine Pulpsmith. His fiction has appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, Woman’s Day, Maine Guide, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and other magazines. His short story “The Ghost of F. Scott Fitzgerald,” winner of Literal Latte Short Story Award, has been produced as a short film screened at the Toronto International and Hollywood film festivals. His most recent novel is This is the Forest Primeval, set in western Maine.

  MARK TWAIN is the pen name of Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), one of the most important American writers. Born in Florida, Missouri, Clemens worked first as a printer, then as a Mississippi riverboat pilot. During the Civil War he became a reporter, and soon after his fiction followed, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, He visited Maine on his lecture tours and summered at York Harbor in 1902.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Alternate Anxieties,” © 2007 by Karen Jordan Allen; first appeared in Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss; reprinted by permission of the author.

  “And Dream Such Dreams,” © 2008 by Lee Allred; printed by permission of the author.

  “The Autumn of Sorrows,” © 2008 by Scott Thomas; printed by permission of the author.

  “Awskonomuk,” © 2008 by Gregory Feeley; printed by permission of the author.

  “Bass Fishing with the Enemy,” © 2008 by Daniel Hatch; printed by permission of the author.

  “The Bung-Hole Caper,” © 1982 by Tom Easton; first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; reprinted by permission of the author.

  “By the Lake,” © 2002 by Jeff Hecht; first appeared in Analog; reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Chapter of the Hawk of Gold,” © 1997, 2008 by Noreen Doyle; first appeared in Realms of Fantasy; revised and reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The County,” © 2008 by Melanie Tem; printed by permission of the author.

  “Creation Story,” © 2008 by Steve Rasnic Tem; printed by permission of the author.

  “Dance Band on the Titanic,” © 1978 by Jack L. Chalker; first appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; reprinted by permission of Eva Whitley.

  “Dreams of Virginia Dare,” © 2001 by John P. O’Grady; first appeared in Grave Goods: Essays of a Peculiar Nature by John P. O’Grady; reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Echo,” © 2005 by Elizabeth Hand; first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Flash Point,” © 1974 by Gardner Dozois; first appeared in Orbit 13, edited by Damon Knight; reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.

  “The Hermit Genius of Marshville,” © 1998 by Tom Tolnay; first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Ktaadn” (excerpts) by Henry David Thoreau; first appeared in The Union Magazine (1848).

  “Longtooth,” © 1970 by Edgar Pangborn; first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; reprinted by permission of Peter S. Beagle.

  “The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton” by Mark Twain; first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (1878).

  “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” © 1984 by Stephen King; first appeared in Redbook; reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Trophy Seekins,” © 2008 by Lucy Suitor Holt; printed by permission of the author.

  “A Vision of Bangor, in the Twentieth Century” by Edward Kent; first appeared anonymously in Voices from the Kenduskeag, edited anonymously by Jane Sophia Appleton and Cornel
ia Crosby Barrett (David Bugbee, 1848). Minor typographic errors have been corrected and, for a modern readership, additional paragraph divisions have been introduced in this reprinting.

  “When the Ice Goes Out,” © 2008 by Jessica Reisman; printed by permission of the author.

  NOREEN DOYLE writes fiction and articles for adults and children. She holds degrees in Anthropology and Art, Nautical Archeology, and Egyptology. Her fiction has appeared in Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008 Edition, The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunits and in Realms of Fantasy. She co-edited, with Harry Turtledove, First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age, a book that was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. She resides in Gardiner, Maine.