* * * *
At first the miller's daughter thought it would be fairly yucko, having to deal with His Ugliness, but she soon adapts. When he comes to her bed, she spreads her legs and thinks about necklaces made of real jewels, not beads. Thus, aside from her dealings with His Porcine Highness, being queen turns out to be a blast—getting to dress up, and spend money, and order people around, no more scrubbing and cooking and messy flour for her! Relief from hard manual labor is ample compensation for being married to the king, for the miller's daughter is no dreamer; she had never thought to find love. Least of all in wedlock, but not in any other way, either.
So it startles her to the heart of her heart, indeed it startles and astonishes her to discover such a heart within herself, when, most unexpectedly and all in a moment, she falls in love. Deeply. Irrevocably. Completely. Under the most unexpected circumstances, when she has just gone through the most harrowing pain she has ever known.
When the midwife places the baby in her arms.
When she lays her face against the soft spot atop the baby's downy head.
One breath of that primal infant essence, and the queen is no longer the miller's daughter or the king's wife either; she is woman, and she is mother. She is weak and invincible and happier than a butterfly yet fiercer than a wolf, for she will defend this tiny person, this newfound love, with her life, against anything that threatens—
And then she remembers.
What she promised.
Oh. No.
No. Never. No matter what.
But—surely it won't come to that; surely the freaky little man didn't mean it, really. Or he has forgotten. She hasn't seen or heard of him for a couple of years.
Still, alarm bells of hell ring through her, agitation that will not cease for any soothing, so relentless that, within a day, she breaks down and asks to speak with His Royal Ego, her husband.
* * * *
For the simple reason that the king gives not a rat's sphincter about the fate of the baby, one can tell that the newborn is a girl. One can assume this even though the child's gender is undocumented.
When his wife begs him for guards because someone is likely to take the baby, he laughs at her and asks who would want such a bawling parcel of stink. She does not know that he knows about the little man, and it costs her all the courage she never knew she had to tell him that she did not herself spin straw into gold. Will he kill her now? No; he laughs again, this time in quite an ugly way, because it has been necessary for her to admit that the little man spent three nights with her, and that she promised him her firstborn. He asks her what the gold-spinner wants with the baby. She whimpers that she does not know. Again she pleads with him to safeguard the child. “Why should I?” he demands, shouting with cancerous laughter. “It might not even be mine!” He says this not because he thinks it true, but simply because he can. He says it to press his advantage, to consummate his power over her, to complete her despair.
Triumphant, exit the king.
* * * *
When the little man opens the locked door to the queen's chamber and goes in, he is unprepared for the emotional maelstrom that greets him, for he had assessed the miller's daughter as the most pragmatic of peasants. Yet there she sits in the great canopied bed, hugging the infant to her velvet-robed bosom and weeping as he has never seen her weep before. And offering him all the riches she has, necklaces of emerald and ruby and diamond, rings of sapphire and gold, if he will only let her keep the child.
"But I care nothing for necklaces and rings,” he says.
"You did before!"
"Only because the narrative demands a sequence of three."
"Let me give you my third child, then!” Fierce, desperate, this time she does not weep in a messy mucus-prone manner; today, hers are the tragic, crystalline tears of a true queen.
"But you promised me this baby,” he insists, knowing that he is in the right, although her tears pierce his heart.
"Please!” She knows, also, that a queen must keep her promises. “Is there no power that can persuade you otherwise?"
"No power can prevent me except one: if you should guess my name."
His own compassionate honesty drags this truth out of him, for it is a very serious matter, the naming of names; as he is something more than a normal Tom, Dick, or Jane, anyone who knows his true name would possess power to command him. This is how wizards control genies and demons, by the naming of names.
The queen realizes what a chance he has offered her. “Grant me, then, three days—” It must, of course, be three days. “—to discover your name, I beg of you."
He can't believe what a doughnut he is being. Yet, “Very well,” he replies, turning away.
"A hint! At least give me a hint!” The queen cries as the baby starts to whimper at her breast. “Is yours a short name or a long one?"
"Outlandish and multisyllabic. I will be back tomorrow to see how you are doing.” And off he goes, knowing himself to be a soft-hearted fool, and knowing just as well that she nevertheless considers him an imp of evil, and that he will be so depicted in human retellings of his story for the next millennium or two.
* * * *
Along with love and womanhood, the baby has taught the queen the awesome power and significance of names, for she must name the child, and feels all the responsibility of the nomenclature not yet accomplished.
But far greater is the weight of divining the name that will save her baby—for so she perceives the matter; she cannot imagine what the bizarre little man could want with her child other than to eat it, perhaps, or sacrifice it in some fiendish rite, or starve it into a bony monster like himself, or whatever it is that fairies do with the babies they steal from cradles.
All day, hugging her child, she sets herself to thinking of names. That night she lies awake nursing the infant and trying to remember all the outlandish, multisyllabic names she has ever heard in her life. In the morning she summons the court scribe to begin a database—she herself can neither read nor write—and she sends out messengers to bring her more names, and more. But in the darkest hollow of her heart she knows that so many possible names are far beyond her ken; even a computer naming all the names of the deity would take a few minutes before the stars would begin to blink out.
* * * *
When the little man whispers the name of the door and walks in, the queen is ready for him. She tries first some fairytale-type names she made up during the night. “Is your name Goldenhands? Is it Goldfingers? Goldspinner? Treasurewright?
"No, no, no, and no.” Marveling anew at his own idiocy, the little man gives her another hint. “Your majesty, my name makes no sense."
"Moon Unit? Dweezil? Madonna? Rosencrantz, Guildenstern?"
"No, no, no, no, no."
And so it goes all that day and the next. Kasper, Melchior, Balthazar, Schwarzenegger, Engelbert, Humperdinck, ad infinitum and ad nauseum; wearisome to the max for all concerned, especially the little man. He nearly decides not to show up for the third day, but he grits his pointed teeth and reports to the queen's chamber.
And he senses at once that, overnight, something has immensely changed. That royal woman, with babe in arms, welcomes him with dry eyes that emanate a strange gleam. “Rumplebedsheets,” she greets him.
Oh, no. He begins to feel alarmed. “My dear little miller's daughter—"
"It's Rumple something. Rumple-for-skin?"
"No.” Then he repeats, shocked, “No!"
"Rumplestockings? Wait! Rumple—Rumple-shins-skin?"
"You are still trying to make sense out of me.” When nothing makes sense. He feels his own eyes as sharp as knives begin to drip the clear blood that is tears, for he knows what she has done, like generations of mothers before her, for the sake of her child.
"Rumple-stilts-skin!” she cries.
He feels weak, he feels her power over him, he has to sit down. “Almost,” he admits. “Not quite. You're spelling it wrong."
"Spelling? I know nothing of spelling! But I know your name is Rumpelstiltskin!"
"In the original German,” he hedges, “it is Rumpelstilzchen.” And in the French Grigrigredinmenufretin, in the Swedish Bulleribasius, the Finnish Tittelintuure and the Italian Praseidimio, and there are many more, in Estonian, Czechoslovakian, Hebrew, Japanese and so on, for like any self-respecting supernatural being, our oddling has many names, of which the miller's daughter knows only one.
"Rumpelstiltskin,” she repeats in vast and bitter triumph, for it is just as the little man says in the story; the devil has told her. She has made a pact with the devil, bargaining away her soul to save her child, trading it for the knowledge of Rumpelstiltskin's name. So she belongs to the Prince of Darkness now. But her baby does not. Her baby, body and soul, belongs to no one but her.
Rumpelstiltskin has been defeated. But he does not, as the devil and the tale expect, stamp off in a suicidal rage. There is no longer any need for him to rip himself in half, as it has been proven that he is not an evil being.
He sighs in great, everlasting sadness and makes a strange request. “I would like to give the little one a name."
"What?” The mother is startled, for she had thought his interest in her baby was culinary. “How come?” For the first time she really looks at the little man. “What did you want with my child?"
Such is his weary sorrow that he does not even try to explain. Yet, now that she has shaken hands with Lucifer, she sees the light.
"Oh, for crying out loud,” she whispers, “you wanted the exact same thing that I have."
Unspeaking, he stares back at her with spindle-sharp eyes.
"You get out of here,” she orders. Recent events have made her a fitting mate for the king; they will be two of a kind from now on.
Her command lifts him to his feet, but before he departs he asks again, “Allow me to gift the little girl with a name."
And in her shameless greed the mother agrees to let him bless with the power of a faerie name the child he cannot possess.
He touches the babe's rose-petal cheek and names her, “Softasilkskin."
Then he goes away with his head hanging, his woodcock nose directed toward the ground, and is never heard from again.
But Softasilkskin, despite her deplorable parents and to the devil's disappointment, grows up to be the good and beautiful Princess Silkskin, meets a Handsome Prince and Lives Happily Ever After, even though everybody else in the story is royally screwed.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Books To Look For by Charles de Lint
The Sword-Edged Blonde, by Alex Bledsoe, Nightshade, 2007, $24.95.
Eddie LaCrosse is a private eye of sorts. I don't mean he's treading Repairman Jack territory, living on the outside of present-day society, helping people out for remuneration; instead of F. Paul Wilson, think Glen Cook's “Garrett Files” series which are basically PI novels set in a fantasy secondary world.
But just because it's been done before doesn't mean it can't be done again. Look at how many mystery series there have been, and that are still ongoing. The trick to doing a hardboiled story well (beyond good characterization, plot, etc., etc.) is to have a strong, individual voice for your point-of-view character. We'll have seen a hundred variations on the plot before. What we want is that fresh view of the world from the character's viewpoint, and a voice we want to keep listening to.
Alex Bledsoe does both with Eddie LaCrosse, and once you get past the novelty of a hardboiled fantasy novel, you'll forget that it's a novelty because there's meat on the bones of the story to be found here.
The book opens with LaCrosse being followed while starting a new case. When he finally manages to confront the man dogging his trail, the stranger turns out to be bringing him a message from the past, along with all the baggage that might entail. There was a reason LaCrosse left his homeland of Arentia all those years ago and never returned. Only one thing could bring him back, and the person who sent the stranger with this message is that one thing.
Naturally, things get messy, and eventually, LaCrosse has to confront his past, whether he wants to or not.
I liked this book for a lot of reasons—some of which I've already mentioned above. LaCrosse is an interesting character with good PI traits: he's smart, a little bit of a wiseacre, stubborn, and has a code of ethics that he follows. I also like that this is mostly a gritty, on-the-streets sort of a book, even when scenes are set in a palace. And Bledsoe keeps his magics to a minimum. There's enough here to make the book a fantasy beyond its setting, but not so much that it's all smoke and fireworks.
In other words, it's real people with real problems that they have to solve the old-fashioned way. The magics are tools—like a modern PI's use of the Internet, say—not solutions.
Nightshade Books is an indie publisher, and I tend to think of them for story collections and risky books, but this novel is in a more commercial vein (like I would expect from the larger paperback houses) and I wonder if it marks a new direction for this publisher.
* * * *
Blood Bound, by Patricia Briggs, Ace Fantasy, 2007, $7.99.
"Alpha and Omega” by Patricia Briggs, in On the Prowl, Berkley, 2007, $7.99.
I really liked Briggs's earlier book Moon Called. In this new one, her continuing character Mercedes “Mercy” Thompson says, “Sometimes I wish I was an average citizen...."
I'm glad she's not.
Instead, she's a confident, smart, shapeshifting coyote mechanic, who hangs out with werewolves, vampires, and other inhuman beings.
In the past decade or so there's been a virtual tsunami of books with vampire, werewolf and/or witch protagonists. They usually have a bit of a romantic slant (some edging into the erotic) and the protagonists are invariably solving crimes of some sort while coming to grips with being a vampire/werewolf/witch/inhuman, or dealing with a boyfriend or love interest that is so afflicted.
When I put it like that, I might sound a little condescending, but I don't mean to be. Because, like anything else, if it's done well, it'll keep our interest no matter what sub-genre, or even sub-sub-genre it happens to fall into.
And Briggs does it well.
Truth is, sometimes she seems to forget that she's writing fiction with a romantic slant, because she's so caught up in Story—and that's the way it should be. Everything should come from the characters and their stories. If there's romance to complicate their lives, that can work just as well as a twisty plot turn, so long as we care about the characters, and stay caught up in how it will turn out.
In Blood Bound, Mercy gives a helping hand to a vampire friend named Stefan, but what starts out as her simply coming along to observe Stefan's passing along a warning to a visiting vampire soon spirals out of control, endangering Mercy and everyone around her.
Everybody who writes about supernatural creatures these days comes up with their own take on them—some variation to the accepted, traditional lore—and Briggs is no different. I love the politics of her supernatural beings, the pack mentality and pecking order of the werewolves, the ebb and flow of détente between the more powerful groups. Also, in her world, some of these beings have “come out” to the world at large, allowing her room to explore the social ramifications of the human world suddenly realizing that there are others among them.
And speaking of voices—as I was above in the Bledsoe review—Mercy's is that perfect likable, charismatic viewpoint to draw us into her world.
On the Prowl is a collection of four novellas with no editor cited. I tried to read them all, but Briggs's “Alpha and Omega” is the only one that I finished. It features a bit player from the Mercy books, Charles Cornick—the son of the Marrok, which in Briggs's world is the werewolf boss of bosses—and a new werewolf named Anna. Charles is in town to investigate some discrepancies with how the local werewolf pack leaders are operating.
It's not a long story—only some seventy pages—but does a great job of capturing and keeping our intere
st while going a little deeper into pack mentality and exploring the wolfish concept of mating for life. And it also serves as our introduction to characters that will play out on a larger canvas in one of Briggs's upcoming books.
You might also like the other three novellas—the ones I can't comment on, because I didn't get very far into any of them—but for my money, the Briggs story is worth the price of admission all on its own.
* * * *
Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, Dark Horse Books/Edgeworks Abbey, 2007, $19.95.
Shatterday, by Harlan Ellison, Tachyon, 2007, $14.95.
I hate to say this, because I write stories for a living, but what makes or breaks a comic book or graphic novel is the art, not the story. Sure, you need a story (and characters and all the other good writerly bits and pieces), but if you just wanted that, you wouldn't need to read a comic. There are prose books to fill the bill quite nicely.
One of my favorite things you can do with a comic, that you can't do in other two-dimensional narrative media, is tell two stories at the same time—one in the pictures, and one in the captions. Or you can just utilize that trick with two scenes unwinding at the same time in a longer piece, which can make for a nice punch in that part of the story. But I digress.
We were talking about art.
Now, what makes the artwork in a comic a dangerous enterprise is that art is so subjective. What one reader thinks is wonderful, another might hate, and vice versa. But more importantly to the medium, good art doesn't necessarily make for a good comic—just think of all the wonderful underground comics with their bad proportions and scratchy inking.
With good art, each panel might be fabulous on its own, but if it doesn't have a narrative flow, it's not working as a comic. It's just an illustrated story with a lot more illustrations than stories usually have.
This collection of comic book renditions of Ellison stories has a mix of all of the above, and a few that didn't appeal to me on any count. Yes, we have Neal Adams, Rags Morales, and Rafael Navarro, and a curiously fascinating piece by Gene Colan—that has his original pencils fronting the same page, only the second version is inked and colored—but a lot of the others just didn't work for me.
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