• • • •

Lone Women is set in 1915 and tells the story of Adelaide Henry, who is homesteading on her own in Montana. What kind of research did you do for this book? Did you find any interesting historical tidbits that stand out in your mind?

My interest in this locale and time period was sparked by a book called Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own, edited by Dr. Sarah Carter. It’s a fascinating work of non-fiction, giving historical insight about the women who went out to states like Montana at the turn of the last century and tried to homestead on their own. The book includes excerpts from the diaries of many of these women—who were called ‘lone women’ because they came to the territories with no families. I never heard anything about them—meaning I didn’t know they existed at all. I was hooked. In the beginning I just wanted to read what I could about them and this time period, but as time went by, I realized I wanted to write about them, too.

Many readers had a taste of your horror stylings from your award-winning novel The Changeling. How was your approach to horror in Lone Women similar or different than it was in that book?

I like for my fantastical work to feel deeply grounded in the real world before I introduce the weird or impossible elements. In The Changeling I wanted New York City to feel lived in, tangible; I wanted the marriage of the two leads, Apollo and Emma, to be believable, and I wanted the trials of being new parents to be utterly grounded. And then—SMACK—here comes the strange stuff. I followed a similar pattern in Lone Women. For me, the fun is in opening up the real world and suggesting that this place we think we all know can actually contain the “impossible.” Someday it might be nice to write something that’s just pure fucking horror right from page one. I’m not there yet, but just typing that sentence did make me smile, so we’ll see.

You were recently Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention. Is there an impact that you feel from notability, awards, and the like? For example, do you feel an added pressure, or a sense of relief that your work has spoken to a lot of people, or does the notability not really have an impact on you or your writing process?

Being a Guest of Honor was an absolute blast, and an honor. That kind of thing is always welcome and feels like a nice gust of wind in the sails. As I’m guessing everyone reading this knows, the creative life is often one of isolation and self-doubt. Is this thing I’m spending years on worth a damn? That’s a question I’m always asking myself. Being recognized as a Guest of Honor, in that light, at least suggests you’re on a good path. Who doesn’t need to hear that from time to time?

A number of venues, including The New York Times, have praised your prose. Craft-wise, what is the key to great prose?

I love this question, though there is no single answer. There are great prose stylists like Graham Greene and Toni Morrison, but you’d never mistake one for the other. Ray Bradbury and Ramsey Campbell, Arundhati Roy and Ben Okri. All so different and yet, such profound stylists. So I think the key to great prose is just that the author makes language feel fresh in a way that is distinctive and personal. This might mean they’re lush and complex, or clear and direct in a way that makes moments vivid. What’s even more amazing, to me, is that language itself is so flexible, and renewable. No matter the language, anywhere in the world, people have likely been using it for a damn long time. And still someone can find a way to string those characters together and make it feel utterly new.

People often discuss some of your work as being a response to or critique of Lovecraft. Is there a similar relationship between Lone Women and westerns, or other kinds of narratives?

I think of most of my recent novels as being a more purposeful reimagining of some trope or literary system (for lack of some better term) that I find limiting. My novella, The Ballad of Black Tom, was a kind of critique of Lovecraft and the particular limitations of his ability to imagine complex lives for the non-white, non-male characters who might inhabit his tales. My previous novel, The Changeling, was a chance to reexamine various fairy tales, particularly the fairy tale that falling in love, getting married, and having a child is the path toward a “happily ever after” kind of life.

Lone Women does fall into something of that pattern, in particular the trope of the western frontier and the narrative—maintained in so much historical fiction and entertainment—that the west was white. That it was solely the domain of men and that many of the political and cultural wars we’re fighting now are somehow new. They aren’t.

What were the most challenging things about writing this book, and how did you deal with those challenges?

The book takes place in Montana in 1915, and I’ve only been to the state a handful of times. I don’t have family who lived there, though I have friends I was able to talk with, some who are newer transplants and some who have family going back generations. I tapped into those resources, their stories and lived histories, even as I dreamed up history all my own.

Also, the main cast of the story are all women, and I am not one. Some aspects of life maybe be universal—maybe—but most are not. So many factors of one’s background, one’s identity, shape how each of us experience the world. I had a few close readers—women I respect and admire—give me reads of my book, my plans for the narrative here or there; my wife was my best reader in that regard. Overall, I didn’t assume I had to create this book entirely by myself. One never does. One way or another, the world is always your co-author.

When you think about this narrative, the writing process, the story, and you look back on it all, what are you most proud of with this book, and why?

This book is probably the farthest, in so many ways, from my own lived experience. I didn’t have as much of my personal history to fall back on or mine. I’ve been so gratified by the fact that readers have simply believed in Adelaide and the other Lone Women, that their interior lives are rich and complex, that their trials are real and their triumphs are earned. I’m immensely proud of that.

Readers will have reviews and blurbs and even interviews, but what do you really want folks to know about Lone Women? What is important about this one for you?

More than anything, I want this to be a big, exciting, moving adventure. After that, I want to do what so many great writers have done with stories set in the past—to make a time people assume they know everything about become surprising and revelatory all over again.

What else are you working on now? What do you have out or coming up that readers should know about?

We’ve adapted my novel, The Changeling, for Apple TV, and we’re well into post-production. Hopefully it will be airing this fall, 2023, so keep an eye out for that. It’s got an amazing cast, and I had the chance to serve as an executive producer on the show, so I was on set for shooting the whole season. The team has put together something amazing. I can’t wait for folks to see it.

I’m so glad to be in Fantasy Magazine, with fiction this time! I’d had the idea of a bread golem, and of intertwining a modern story and a pre-Holocaust story for many years, but every time I’d try to write it, I couldn’t figure out the theme the story was about. But after a few months of pandemic, I was feeling helpless—I wasn’t a healthcare professional, I wasn’t going to be able to develop or test a vaccine, etc.—I realized that’s what the story was about: what you do when you feel helpless and all seems lost. Because the thing that helped me was doing something, frankly anything. I bought a used sewing machine and learned to sew masks. It didn’t help the main problem, which is that there was a pandemic. It didn’t help my second problem, which is that I was high-risk for major complications in a pandemic that people didn’t seem to care enough about. But it did help me feel better. And it eventually led to new options that hadn’t been open to me before, like activism via op-eds in the San Francisco Chronicle. So, into the story that went, and suddenly the narrative gears clicked together.

Your choice to contrast the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with the Second World War and the Holocaust, to me, felt simultaneously ultra-bold and extremely sensible. What led you to tie those particular times together in this story?

My whole family had to deal with the Holocaust in different ways. Most were able to flee from Eastern Europe. But my grandmother was only eight when she went into hiding with a Christian family in Poland, and the rest of her family was murdered by the Nazis. For as long as I can remember, my family has had the attitude of, “if she can survive that, you can survive this smaller thing that’s happening to you now.” So when I was feeling a lot of despair about the pandemic situation, especially as a person whose disability will very likely be made permanently worse (with very poor quality of life) if I get COVID and especially feeling scared when hospitals were talking about rationing care for disabled folks, I would always remember my grandmother’s story. I was in good shape in comparison—nobody was actively hunting me down to try to give me COVID, and I had the privilege of being able to stay home. I could figure out how to do this. So eventually, in my head, the two events became very intertwined. This story is loosely about my grandmother, who gave me great perspective (by phone, from Israel, just like in the story) early in the pandemic, and who had a family pharmacy (not a bakery) in Poland back in the day.

While this isn’t the first golem story I’ve read since 2020, it is the first that made me tear up. Do you think that there’s a particularly strong resonance among readers and writers for golem stories these days, considering everything?

I think that, for me, there’s been a huge uptick in antisemitism lately, which has made me lean into my culture and religion a bit more. I hadn’t seen a ton of Jewish speculative media prior to 2020, when I started writing this story, and I wanted to put something out there. A golem is both very Jewish, and also a thing you can directly create and act upon. I think a lot of us have been feeling helpless and gravitating towards the things that are empowering, and perhaps the combo of these two things has made a sudden golem renaissance in SFF? But also, golems are cool, so it might just be that!

This story doesn’t shy away from modern realities; contrast that to the wake of the 1918 flu, where creators were eager to never mention it. How do you think writers today should tackle the pandemic in their stories, and how has it influenced the course of your writing in particular?

SFF is a wonderful tool for escapism, but I wish more stories that could reasonably include the pandemic would do so. I worry that such a high percentage of our media (both SFF and otherwise) is pandemic-free, that it makes it harder for society to remember that we’re actually still in a pandemic. We haven’t fixed this (for example US COVID deaths in 2022 were higher than in 2021) and we still need to take mitigation steps. But folks in many countries are too eager to say that it’s over and we can throw all those mitigation steps out the window. I’d love for more media to remind folks of the reality we still live in.

For my writing in particular, I couldn’t write very much in 2020. Too much pandemic anxiety. But as I found better coping mechanisms, the writing came back and came with a greater focus on mental health and disability than before. I’ve also learned how nice it is to be able to write lying down on a couch in pajamas instead of sitting upright and wearing actual jeans at a café.

Is there anything you’re working on now that you’d like to talk about? What can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

Just a week ago I finished a middle-grade novel that has five kids with super-senses (super-taste, smell, sight, hearing, and touch) meet in detention and realize something hinky’s going on, so they must unravel the conspiracy that made them that way. And, as I wrote in my previous Fantasy Magazine essay, I’m a sucker for a good heist story, so of course the characters need to break into a secret lab to solve the mystery! Here’s hoping it finds a good home.

“There’s magic in bread,” says my bubbe. Her voice is tired, like it had to walk the whole distance from Israel to the US in order to reach my ears. “A good challah is worth more than its weight in flour, oil, and eggs.”

“Okay, but why baking, of all things? If people want to help they should stay home. Maybe volunteer to deliver food to neighbors if they’re healthy enough to do it.” If I keep my voice light enough she won’t know the fear makes my chest feel like an iron band is shrinking around it.

“There’s something to be said for doing something in a crisis. Baking is a reasonable something.” She sighs, and I can hear the weight of every one of her 102 years, studded with countless pogroms and wars. “Maybe it’s different in America. You people have never known real hardship. If you’ve always had it easy, you’ll need to learn to adjust.”

And there’s nothing to say, because how do you argue with that? If only I were as strong as she was, and able to handle horrors better.

• • • •

Ruth kept half an eye on the window, watching for a horse and cart as she kneaded the dough in a hurry, flour flying from one hand as the other pulled and rolled the sticky blob. For tonight’s order, five loaves of dark bread, five of rye, three bialys, ten knishes, and two intricate braided challahs. The young man from the Resistance with the nice green eyes, Chaim, was coming to pick them up, and they couldn’t be late.

Chaim always said there was magic in her bread, though Ruth thought it was nonsense. She certainly didn’t see any magic in her father’s bakery—just flour and eggs and salt and the ceramic bowls of yeasty starter she kept in the corner under cloth napkins. Though the yeasty goo was sort of magic, turning simple flour into sour bubbles that made the dough rise. If the loaves were just right, and the dark pumpernickel had a hollow sound when you rapped its bottom with a fist, and the challah shined with its egg wash, and the rye’s crust made a raspy sound when you went over it with your hand . . . that’s when the magic worked.

Or so Chaim claimed. Ruth was certain it was just Chaim flirting with her, getting her to drop the price by a zlota or two.

She shook her head, her hands not missing a beat. Times were hard enough in the little ghetto, and the Svatislavian Polizia were now coming every week for bribes, not twice a year like before. No more discounts for Chaim. Even if he had those nice green eyes. Even if he was part of the Resistance, which she both admired and feared. No use saving money for the Resistance, if she was taken out and shot by a nice goy polizia just doing his job, when she didn’t have the coin to keep him away. Her father, sick in his bed, wouldn’t be able to help. And then who would make bread for the Resistance?

• • • •

Jews show emotion with food. If you come visit we shower you with carbs of love: challah and pita and babka and cakes, so many cakes. Not like there’s any visitors now.

On week four of lockdown I start to get twitchy. My baseline fear gives way to jumpy anxiety. I click from tab to tab on my laptop, bouncing between dire predictions on the news and politicians blatantly ignoring the warnings on Twitter. I can’t concentrate on my work, which is already less efficient when everyone’s remote, and my boss can tell. She’s testy, and I can’t tell how much of it is my fault and how much is the pandemic.

I try to check in on people. Every day it’s a different video call, with the soft-voiced, “Hey. How you holdin’ up” that’s less of a question than a statement of collective grief.

I Amazon some chocolates to a friend who’s a doctor, who’s getting overwhelmed with the COVID patient load and is barely holding themselves together. The chocolates never arrive.

As I sit at home, too high-risk to go anywhere or do much of anything, I fret. I stew. I feel helpless and exhausted and terrified and coiled tight as a wire with borrowed anxious energy that I have no way to release.

And I remember my bubbe’s words, and try to make bread.

The plan is challah. Start traditional, why not? I put a few rolls of toilet paper in a plastic baggie and stuff it into my mailbox, then wait for a friend to show up and swap them for a small packet of yeast. This is what we’re reduced to, a barter economy with ten seconds of seeing a friendly face at a distance. He waves and then dashes off, back home to his family. Lucky bastard.

Better to do something than nothing, my bubbe said, so here goes. I film my steps as I go, to share with her later, focusing my phone camera on the little tan grains of yeast swirling in a bowl of water. I add some salt and wait for the bubbles to come, showing the yeast is alive.

The bubbles never come. Was the yeast dead all along? Or is it sugar you’re supposed to feed the yeast instead? Damn. I think it’s supposed to be sugar. I don’t have any more yeast, so I can’t try again.

I upload the video to YouTube, title it “How not to make a challah,” and send my bubbe the link so she can give advice on where I went wrong.

I feel helpless, like there’s nothing I can do. I can’t make bread and I can’t improve the situation. I can’t get my friend chocolate, and I sure can’t get enough PPE to keep them safe. I can’t get my government to take this seriously, especially while some people are now protesting local mask mandates with machine guns and a spray of germy spittle as they shriek. It feels like everyone in power has decided that my friends in the medical field, and front-line workers, and high-risk people like me are all acceptable losses.

It feels like there’s a bowling ball nestled at the bottom of my stomach at all times, heavy and twitching and juuuuuust on the precipice of an inky-black abyss where it could drop even farther. I want to scream and cry and curl up in a ball in the corner, and I know none of these will make me feel better but I imagine them wistfully anyway.

• • • •

Chaim was late. Chaim was never late. Never past sundown on a Friday late.

When the knock came on the wooden door it was a sharp ra-ta-tat, irritated and impatient. Not Chaim’s easy tapTAP tapTAP, the same rhythm as shaBAT shaLOM.

“Open up! Polizia!”

Ruth straightened her spine, grabbed a few overboiled pretzel rolls that she kept for such occasions, and fished in the little brown ceramic sugar bowl for a few zlota. “Coming!” She stuffed the coins and rolls into pockets of her floury apron.

There were two of them. One polizia had blond hair combed back under his sharp-tipped cap and a neat blond mustache, and the other had straight brown hair and held the door open with a boot to make sure that the first wintry snowflakes could make their way into the warmish shop front. Both had noses straight as the pole on their eagle-and-bear insignia, straight as the barrels of their rifles.

“We’re looking for Haym Berger,” said the blond. It took Ruth a minute to realize he meant Chaim. The chet sound was hard for the goyim. “Got a warrant for his arrest.”

“Haym?” She kept the mispronunciation. “I don’t know if I know a Haym . . . I have many customers, but can’t remember everyone’s name. What does he look like?” She tried to keep her shoulders not-quite-squared, not-quite-slumped, and to keep her voice from quavering. Show she was cooperating, not a threat, but not to be rolled over for fun. Even shivering from the cold would be a show of weakness.

As long as her dad stayed quiet in bed, she’d work this out. One way or another.

“What d’ya mean what’s he look like? He looks like you.” Brown-hair turned his head back and spat on the dirt, a few blades of withered winter grass away from his shiny black boot.

“I’ll keep an eye out for a Haym, and will let you know. Meanwhile, it’s so cold out! Would you like a pretzel roll? They’re fresh from the oven this morning.” She fished out two from her apron pocket. The bottoms were just a tiny bit soggy, but the tops looked firm and dark and inviting, the sprinkling of rough salt on top matching the sprinkling of snowflakes gathering on the polizia’s furred collars. They shouldn’t notice if they grabbed them with their fine leather gloves still on.

The blond polizia grabbed one and gnawed about half of it off.

The brunet’s eyes narrowed at the offering. “Don’t like pretzel rolls. I’ll take something else though.” He pushed his way in, rifle knocking against the edge of the wooden door.

The inside of the shop was cleaned for Shabbat already, unsold loaves and rolls and knishes and bialys sitting neatly on rolling racks. The countertop had nothing but her locked cash register and the thin green-paper boxes with Chaim’s order, tied with white string.

“What’s those?” he asked, worrying at the knot on top, his gloved hands too clumsy to get anywhere.

“Just an order for tomorrow night. I can’t bake it tomorrow beca—I just like to get an early jump on things. How about a nice bialy?” She led him to the racks and made a show of picking one out for him from the middle . . . as though she was finding him the best one. She picked one that hadn’t quite gotten the perfect shade of brown on its bottom.

He growled but accepted the onion-filled roll, taking a bite and scattering crumbs on his chest and her floor.

The two polizia shared a look which could only mean, “We came all this way and only got bread? Must be something else worth having.” The blond finished his pretzel roll and brushed the crumbs from his gloves onto her lintel.

“And your tax? Your contribution to the great Svatislavian Polizia, keeping you safe from criminals like Haym?”

“Of course.” There was no tax, not really. But it would keep her safe, even if it was from the men themselves. It would be useless to tell them she could not conduct cash transactions on Shabbat, but Judaism was firm with the caveat that allowed actions as long as it was to save a life at risk. Ruth was certainly a life at risk. She fished out the three zlota she’d put in her other apron pocket and offered them.

The brunet snatched them up. “This isn’t enough. Open the register.” He tapped his rifle as though idly, but making his point.

Ruth reached into her shirt and brought out the key, which hung there on a thin leather thong. She wished she’d kept it elsewhere, since now both polizia were staring at her chest. She stepped behind the counter, making sure her body blocked the brown ceramic sugar bowl where she kept more money. The key unlocked the cash register to show . . . nothing. The opened drawer was bare but for a paper clip and a few dulled half-grozta in a corner. “I’m sorry sirs, this is what I have. Business has been slow today, and I just paid the miller.”

Another low growl as the brunet grabbed the meager coins from the register, a glare from both, and the two polizia stalked off without saying another word.

Her father, mercifully, had stayed upstairs in their apartment during the whole exchange.

• • • •

My job gets downsized.

My landlord posts cheery signs around the building that rent is now due, or else. After two straight weeks of being stuck on hold, every day from nine to five while the office is open, I manage to apply for unemployment. Their online system is down, unable to handle the load, and the people answering the phone sound frazzled and worn thin. With the current wait times, I’ll find out if I’m approved for unemployment in two months, they tell me.

I mope at home, nothing to do. Nobody’s hiring. And meanwhile my concentration span has gotten even shorter. A two-minute clip of a WHO doctor giving an update now takes me ten minutes to get through, as I keep pausing it and bouncing elsewhere. I doomscroll Twitter through the wee hours of the night.

I’m too anxious to sleep, and too tired to focus.

A few months later, yeast is available again, and I order some online and prop up my phone to film. My dough stays runny like cake batter, and as it bakes and rises it overflows its pan. Charred globs seal themselves onto the lowest wire rack and onto the bottom of the oven.

After walking her through it over the phone, my bubbe’s able to play “How not to make a challah 2” on Youtube.

“Next time you’ll do better,” she says. “Do you feel better, though?”

“Not really,” I say as I roll onto a pile of folded laundry that I haven’t managed to drag the three feet from the bed to the dresser.

“Try again,” she says. “Just do something. Even if it doesn’t help, it’ll help.”

• • • •

Ruth’s father was never meant to be a baker. His father, Ruth’s Zayde Avigdor, was a rabbi, and it was custom that a rabbi’s first son follow suit. But young Yosef didn’t have a head for letters, much less a head for the math required in numerology. Better at working with his hands, Yosef started a bakery.

It was okay, Zayde Avigdor had told Ruth when she was young. The Torah is everything you need to know, but bread? Bread is life.

But what about at Passover? Ruth had asked. We don’t have bread then.

Zayde Avigdor had laughed his booming laugh, for it was good for Jews to argue and question. “Ravaleh,” he’d called her, his little rabbi. Not that women could be rabbis, but she’d loved the appreciative gleam in his eyes. “Ravaleh, unleavened bread is still bread. And Hashem gave our people the commandments right before He rained down bread from Heaven. Both important. If you can’t study the Torah, bread is the next best thing.”

Even though it’d been years since he’d passed, Ruth missed him every day.

Meanwhile, Yosef’s head wandered more and more, and soon he’d started forgetting things. He’d started by forgetting the Jewish curfew, and then he forgot how to make challah. Challah! Of all things! Eventually Ruth could count on one hand the number of days when he didn’t forget he had a daughter. Most days he called her Bluma, thinking she was his wife.

So Ruth tried to keep him away from the polizia as much as possible. In bed as much as possible. She soothed him and brought him books and bread and newspapers until the newspapers were too much. And then it became easiest to just say it was Shabbat, every day. They had just come back from shul, at all times. Prayer and reflection in his bedroom, at all times.

Until the day she couldn’t.

The bakery’s biggest oven was outside in the little lot behind the building, where it could vent its heat safely. Ruth stood in the oven’s circle of dead wet grass, tan against the snow that accumulated all around it, and pulled out a rack of loaves. The oven stayed on throughout the week, even through Shabbat, fuel roaring in its belly. She couldn’t hear the polizia knock on the door as she tossed the new-baked loaves into a large basket on the ground. She couldn’t hear her father thump down the stairs and let in the polizia as she took the waiting bialys-to-be and shoved them deep into the oven shelf with a floured paddle. She couldn’t hear the yelling as the men were enraged that a filthy Jew dared speak to them this way, didn’t give them the respect they felt entitled to.

She did, however, hear the gunshot. And then the second gunshot, and the third.

And without being fully conscious of what was happening, or what she was doing, she grabbed the basket of loaves and sprinted into the alley that connected the back lot and the street behind it, putting as much distance between her and the polizia as she could without caring which direction she was going.

• • • •

My first unemployment check comes in, which is a relief until I see the amount. It’s far too small to live off of, but at least it’ll slightly slow the bleeding from my bank account.

There are no jobs. Businesses are closing left and right. From the few places I hear back, I get interviews, and then get ghosted after.

My yeast-delivering friend’s whole family is sick. He tells me how all-consuming the illness is, how they’re all still exhausted for weeks after. My doctor friend has permanent bags under their eyes.

My third attempt at challah looks amazing from the outside: the plaits are an inviting dark brown on the top of their bumps, rolling into pale yellow creases where they touch each other. The inside is dense and horrible, like an undercooked, unsweetened cake. Baking it further would just burn the top.

I upload “How not to make a challah 3” and notice that the viewcounts of my previous two videos are at around 50 apiece. Who on earth wants to watch me curse at dough, I don’t know.

“I’m giving up on bread,” I tell my bubbe on the phone after she manages to watch the video. “This is a waste of time and money and materials.”

“There’s magic in bread,” she says, “but the magic is more in the doing. If you can’t do this, do something else. Doing something is always going to help, even if it doesn’t help.”

It makes no sense. But she has been slipping into bits of senility lately, so I shake off her words and forget them shortly after, diving into yet another wave of what-ifs. What if she’s senile enough to wander out without a mask and catch Covid and die? What if she gets Long Covid and doesn’t die, but is bed-bound and stuck in misery for the rest of her life? What if all my what-ifs fling me into another panic attack? The pandemic anxiety threatens to swallow me whole.

• • • •

Ruth ran until she could run no more. She stopped, realizing she was outside in the snow without a coat or a plan, and was far from the ghetto where she was supposed to stay. She looked Jewish, itself already half a crime. Dark curly hair, thick black eyebrows, and more nose than was safe in this town.

Chaim. Chaim would know what to do. He’d given her so many invitations, and she’d never taken him up on any of it. Not that he would be home, with polizia crawling everywhere looking for him. But he’d once mentioned going to a meeting in the old abandoned monastery—once a place for goyim, now giving Jews refuge.

She shivered and pulled her sweater tighter around her torso, which was already bonier than it had been a few months ago. No buffer against the cold. But she shifted the basket of loaves on her hip and trudged onwards, making sure to zigzag between streets and to mix up her snowy footprints with others’.

The monastery had been abandoned for decades. It sat on a hill near the woods, close to the Lavoska River where boats would once come and pick up the ale the monks brewed to distribute around the country. Ruth had been walking for over an hour by the time she staggered up to its worn wooden door. She could barely feel her fingers as she knocked.

With no answer, she pushed on its painted handle and was surprised it gave way, flecks of rust-red coming off on her hand. Inside was cold, but her cheeks tingled with the warmth that was the absence of icy wind. She found her way into the part of the building that had been a church. Stone floors, wooden pews, and a thick layer of dust. But way off to the side, where the church opened into the rest of the monastery, she could see footprints.

She followed them until she reached the monastery’s kitchens, where she suddenly felt a cold metal line against her throat.

“Who are you,” hissed the person holding the knife, their breath hot on her nape, “and what do you want? You have two seconds before I start cutting.”

Ruth dropped the basket in fear. “Ch-Ch-Chaim!” she stuttered, “I’m looking for Chaim! He’s a friend!”

The knife dropped and Ruth turned around. It was a girl, no older than twelve, for all that she was already tall as Ruth. She wore what looked to be an entire wardrobe at once: five drab sweaters layered on each other bulked her out, and at least three skirts. She wore her hair in a dark braid like Ruth’s.

“Chaim’s gone,” said the girl. “The polizia got him two days ago. They put him on a train to the work camps.” Her hand darted out, quick as an adder, and grabbed a loaf from the basket before Ruth could say anything. The girl wolfed it down, barely breathing between bites.

“I . . . I don’t know what to do,” said Ruth. Her voice broke and she started to shiver. Part from the cold, part from grief, part from the exhaustion of it all. Her father was dead. It was . . . too big an idea to wrap her head around. Chaim was probably dead too, or would be soon—nobody ever came back from the work camps. And she had nowhere else to go.

“Can the Resistance help me? I can bake, if they have flour and ovens. Or I can clean or . . . or do anything that’s needed. I can be useful. I have nowhere to go.” Tears finally reached her eyes as she tentatively poked at the giant wall of grief looming inside her. She shook her head, trying to clear it. There was no time for that now.

“There’ll be a boat,” said the girl, grabbing a second loaf and taking a bite. Ruth noticed her cheekbones poking out of her face, how gaunt she was, and wordlessly offered a third. “In eight days, on the river. It’s taking people across the border. Things are better for Jews in Lavroskia. You could take Chaim’s place, if you have your papers and something for bribes.” Her chewing slowed to a more normal pace as her belly filled. “You can’t stay here, though. We can’t feed you for a week. And you’ll freeze in that,” she indicated Ruth’s sweater. “Come back in eight days.”

The fishing city of Lavroskia was named for the river, or the other way around. Any city needed bakers, and the boat was the only thread for her to grasp. Going home for the interim was dangerous—she would be under heightened watch. The polizia would come again and again, for more money or worse. But there was no better option.

• • • •

My yeast-delivering friend is in the hospital with Covid complications. He was feeling better, but now has an embolism and goodness knows what else. I toss $50 that I can’t afford into his GoFundMe and quit my Netflix account to make up a bit of the difference.

My doctor friend calls and tells me they’ve lost a colleague, and I don’t know what to say to offer any comfort.

Outside, people are protesting for racial justice, chanting at the top of their lungs. Counter-protesters yell back, spittle freely flying from their unmasked faces. I feel embarrassed, staying inside. I’m too high-risk for a protest to make sense. And yet again I feel helpless and ineffectual. Doing something is all well and good, if there’s actually something you can do.

I try to bake some challah and film it again. The loaf comes out of the oven flat and dense. This is probably how you make hardtack, not bread.

The first “How not to make a challah” video has five thousand views and people are arguing King Arthur flour vs Gold Medal in the comments. Now “How not to make a challah 4” joins it on my channel.

I don’t feel like I can complain to my bubbe about it. What can I say to a woman who lived through pogroms and the Holocaust? That I’m scared and alone during a much more peaceful time? All I need to do is stay inside and wait this thing out, as long as my savings don’t give out first. (Which honestly, they might.) But nobody is actively trying to kill me. It’s not nearly as bad as she had it. So why do I feel so scared and useless?

• • • •

Back at the bakery, Ruth swept the shards of glass from the front room, cleaned up the crumbs from the stomped and stolen loaves, set the overturned racks that had once held bialys and knishes and challah back upright, and put the emptied cash register back in its place. Her father’s blood had soaked into the wooden floorboards and no amount of scrubbing would ever get them clean.

She didn’t board up the windows—with what planks of wood? And what good would it do? Better to show that this bakery had been abandoned, had no more to give. Like her.

Ruth washed her father’s body and wrapped it in a white bedsheet—the closest she could get to a tachrichim, the traditional linen shrouding garments. She took his tallit, his prayer shawl, snipped off one of the tzitzit fringes, and wrapped it around him too.

It took hours to dig a grave next to the big oven in the back, for all that the oven’s residual heat had kept the ground from fully icing through. She recited the blessings as best she could, trying not to think of how wrong this was, so wrong. It shouldn’t be her doing this by herself, but a rabbi with a minyan. It shouldn’t be her father in the ground, he who had done nothing wrong, but the polizia. It shouldn’t be her left all alone, too frightened to fight back against the injustices and instead crouching near-silent on the freshly turned earth like a shivering mouse. Where was the Resistance? For all the good they’d done, it sounded like they were mostly gone too. Out-manned, out-gunned.

“Baruch atah Adonai, Dayan Ha-Emet” she whispered, bless the Lord, the judge of truth, as she locked the door to the front of the bakery behind her, then went up the stairs to the little apartment on the second floor where she had lived in all her life. She threw a pillowcase over the mirror, tore a hole in her clothing, and prepared to sit shiva.

It was strange to sit shiva all alone. When they’d sat shiva for her mother, and again later for Zayde Avigdor, it felt like she was living with the whole town in one tiny apartment. People bustled in and out, brought food, patted her cheeks and offered handkerchiefs for her streaming nose. Her father had been there to comfort her too.

And now their home was silent. Worse than when she and her father had rattled around like two zlotas in a big empty jug. The only sound was the wind whipping through the dead tree branches outside and the windows creaking with the effort to keep it out.

The town itself wasn’t deserted, but Jews were no longer allowed to congregate. Not in shul, not in each other’s homes. Certainly not at the Jewish cemetery. Going out and asking the neighbors that were still left to come sit shiva for Yosef, or even telling them he had passed . . . well, it was lucky enough Ruth managed to get back to the bakery unseen. Going out again before she had to make the dash for the boat was just asking for trouble she couldn’t afford.

Inside she sat. She tried reading their well-thumbed copy of the Torah, but her eyes couldn’t focus. She felt too empty for grief. Too numb. Like the sadness inside her was so large that, if she were to poke it, the frail dam holding it back would burst and she would be so overwhelmed that she would die of despair. And she couldn’t afford to do that.

While it wasn’t forbidden to cook during shiva, tradition meant mourners didn’t have to, with visitors bringing food. But Ruth couldn’t starve. As she went through the motions of the most basic of mourning cooking—hard-boiled eggs, the simplest of loaves, frying the last of the stringy meat from the icebox—her shoulders relaxed with the familiar motions. She remembered Zayde Avigdor’s words during her mother’s shiva. “When all is lost, do something anyway. Even if it doesn’t help, it’ll help.”

She hadn’t understood the words then. But now they clicked into place, and she started to bake. Baking wouldn’t bring back her father or Chaim. Baking wouldn’t keep the polizia away, or keep her neighbors safe, or help her get to the boat in time. But the dry powderiness of the flour, the soft stickiness of just-risen dough . . . they felt nourishing to her fingers.

So she baked. She had plenty of flour, and food was as good for bribes as anything. Challah bread and rye loaves and pretzel rolls and bialys and knishes and poppy seed rolls and hamantaschen and proziaki and sesame bagels and rugelach and babka. Anything she could think of and had the ingredients for came marching like Resistance soldiers out of the big oven in the back.

But when she used the last tablespoon of poppy seeds to fill a hamantaschen, something inside her broke. It didn’t matter how much she baked. She couldn’t carry all of this with her. She couldn’t hide with a sack of bread larger than she was. What would she do, steal a wheelbarrow and rumble it through the cobbled streets? And baking could fill her home with bread, but it didn’t fill the hole in her heart.

Ruth collapsed to the ground, spilling both poppy seeds and the tears that had been held back for days. She was alone. Her father, gone. Chaim, gone. Zayde Avigdor and her mother, gone. Half of the Jews in the ghetto were gone, whether into the ground or to work camps she didn’t know. And her heart hurt with the loss as the grief dam burst and the sadness washed over her in wave after wave after wave and she felt she would drown.

Hours later—it must have been hours, because the candle on the bakery table had long flickered out—Ruth had cried herself out. The numbness returned, both to her heart and to her legs, which had fallen asleep. She shook them out and looked at the table filled with the triangular poppyseed cookies eaten at Purim, their dough still pale and unkissed by heat.

What was the point? To do something anyway, even if it doesn’t help?

Who was even going to eat these hamentaschen, the polizia when they next came to raid the bakery? To hell with them. Ruth resisted the urge to scream—better to not call attention to her presence—so instead she mashed up all the hamentaschen and kneaded them into a poppyseed-dotted ball. And punched it once for good measure.

Ruth stared at the wooden table, drained yet again. She unfocused her eyes and the twin poppyseed dough images crossed and moved against each other. Zayde Avigdor’s face floated into her mind. And before she knew what she was doing, she began to sculpt.

The poppyseed dough became Zayde Avigdor’s big bushy eyebrows and kippah. White proofed dough transformed into her father’s kind eyes and smile, her mother’s nose. Pumpernickel dough, dark with burned sugar, became Chaim’s hair; rye dough his abdomen. Braided challah arms and legs buckled with musculature, khachapuri palms and feet bristled with rugelach fingers and toes. Raisins for dark irises were the final touch.

The sculpting was rough—she was no artist, and dough was not the best medium for detail—but the important bits came out clearly. Her father’s eyes twinkled back at her, sharp as they’d been only a few years ago.

“Baruch atah Adonai, Dayan Ha-Emet” she murmured. Zayde Avigdor had told her of the great Rabbi ben Bezalel, who’d made a golem to protect the city of Prague. A homunculus made of earth and clay, brought to life with one of Hashem’s names—Emet. Truth.

This creation was her truth, bread and family. She sliced in אמת (emet) on the figure’s forehead—pumpernickel needed slashes before baking so it could rise and expand properly, might as well have them be meaningful. Not that it would be a golem. Golems were made of sturdy clay, not soft dough. Golems were made by rabbis, not women. And anyway, golems were a folktale, nothing more.

Then, with great difficulty (because even with the figure sliced in two along the waistline, these were the two largest loaves she’d ever made) she eased both halves into the oven out back to bake.

It was silly, in retrospect. Rugelach needed a different temperature and bake time than khachapuris, which were different than rye loaves, which were different than challah. Either some of the figure would burn or some would be underbaked, or both, even with the oven on its lowest heat.

“See that, Zayde Avigdor?” she said aloud into the cold air, unchanged by the weak warmth of the oven. “I did a thing. I did many things, and it didn’t help. Nothing is better. NOTHING!” And as the yell left her lips she knew deep in her bones that this was a mistake she could not undo. The sound reverberated into the night, touching the dusting of snowflakes still falling around her, hitting the street lamps and the rooftops and far beyond.

She headed back into the building, and as if on cue, came a rapping noise on the bakery’s front door. “Open up! Polizia!”

• • • •

My friend dies. I can’t go to the funeral because it’s close family only. I try to join in on Zoom, but it feels meaningless, like an empty gesture that helps nobody. My friend least of all.

It’s been six months of pandemic and I haven’t been able to do anything of use. My fear and helplessness have been overshadowed by a feeling of empty numbness, like that’s my body’s last possible defense mechanism.

I clean out a thick layer of fire extinguisher residue from the inside of the oven and toss a charred black loaf in the compost, then upload “How not to make challah 5.” The comments have grown, and people are in a rollicking debate over whether I’m a true disaster in the kitchen or am just a comedian making it up.

“Are you feeling any better?” asks my bubbe on the phone.

“I mean no, not really. I don’t think the baking’s helping.”

“Everything helps. Even if it doesn’t look like it’s helping. As long as you’re doing something and not just sitting on your tuchus. If all your options are terrible, at least doing something opens up new options.”

After I pay rent this next month, I’ll have $44 left to my name.

• • • •

“Come out! We won’t be so nice if we have to ask another time!”

What could the polizia possibly want? Were they back to get more baked goods to smash up or steal? To rape and kill her? Was it safer to answer the door or stay hidden? Do something, said Zayde Avigdor’s voice in her head. Ruth made her way through the bakery kitchen and into the public-facing bakery space.

The space looked abandoned, between the empty shelves and mostly-missing windows. The two police officers who’d been there before stood in the doorway, the half-smashed wooden door swinging open in front of them. The icy wind whistled into the bakery.

“How can I help you?” She struggled to keep the panic out of her voice as she reflexively smoothed out her apron. No zlotas in the pockets to give out, no rolls without going back into the kitchen to get some . . . and somehow she knew that letting the men further in was a very, very bad idea.

The blond polizia barked, “We know you have him!” He swooped forward and grabbed Ruth by the shoulders. “Where’s Haym?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” she squeaked. “I was told he’d been arrested last week!”

His fingers dug into her arms where surely there would be bruises the next day. “And then you filthy people helped him escape!” He gave her a rough shake, then spat on her cheek.

The dark-haired officer strode up to them and shoved something hard and cold and round under Ruth’s ribs—the right size to be a pistol. “You have three seconds to start talking, or we do with you what we did to your disgusting father.”

Ruth stiffened as she heard the pistol click.

“One . . . ”

“I don’t know anything! I swear! I haven’t seen Haym or Chaim or anyone in weeks! I’ve been alone in the bakery!”

“Two . . . ”

“Oh just get on with it,” said the blond polizia, and then several things happened at once.

The other polizia said “Three.” And the door between the kitchen and the bakery front burst open. And a huge figure made of rye and challah and rugelach, easily eight feet tall, shot itself into the fray and flung the dark-haired officer toward the wall. The man slammed into an empty metal rack and hit his head on a shelf, then collapsed on the floor.

“What the hell!” The other officer let go of Ruth and took out his own pistol, firing twice at the bread man.

The bullets passed right through its chest in a spray of crumbs. The figure looked down at itself, appeared unmoved by the experience, and grabbed the remaining officer by the front of his uniform. It lifted him clean up off the ground, then flung him into the opposite wall.

The pale polizia shook his head and fired from his position on the ground. This time the figure’s legs bent into a crouch while the torso stayed in place, letting the bullet whiz unobstructed through the empty space suddenly between the two. The figure—a golem, Ruth realized, the information slowly trickling into her consciousness like honey through cheesecloth—re-aligned its hips and torso and went back into one piece.

The look of horror on the polizia’s face turned to terror when the golem bent down and scooped him up, carrying the man over its shoulder like a firefighter, and deliberately stomped its way back through the door to the kitchen. Ruth stood rooted to the spot in fear and astonishment. Between the polizia’s frantic screams she heard the familiar creak of the ice box opening—then the screams quieted to a muffled squeak a moment later when the lid creaked shut.

The dark-haired man remained crumpled and unconscious, a wound on the back of his head sluggishly bleeding into the wooden floorboards. His blood was far from the stain from her father’s blood, and for some reason that felt important.

Ruth tried to snap herself back into action. Do something. Do anything! You can’t just stand here!

Shaking, she went back to see what had happened. The outside oven door was open, fire roaring merrily inside. Floury footprints and handprints originated from the oven door, then went everywhere.

The polizia-containing icebox sat door-side-down on the large wooden table. The blonde man whimpered from within as the golem stacked chairs and benches on top to weigh it down further.

She had to go. Run, right now. There’s no telling when the other polizia would wake up, sound an alarm. Or how long the golem would hold.

A golem. She’d made a golem. No time to even think about those implications. Thinking could happen later. Now was the time to act.

She ran upstairs and grabbed her papers and packed. Shoved on her thickest boots, hoisted her bag over her shoulder and went back downstairs.

The golem was standing in the kitchen. It had bound the other, unconscious polizia to two table legs with strips of canvas torn from empty bags of flour. It stood there placidly, hands behind its back as though waiting for orders. It looked at her through her father’s kind eyes and Zayde Avigdor’s laughing eyebrows.

“Um,” she said, swallowing against the dryness of her throat. “Thank you?”

The golem gave a half-bow and smiled.

“Here,” she said, and handed it some of Zayde Avigdor’s old clothes. “We’ll need to hide you.”

As she watched the golem transform into the silhouette of her zayde, Ruth felt a little bit lighter. Things were still terrible, it was true, but the old words still held. “Even if it doesn’t help, it helps,” she whispered to herself. “A new option opens up.”

Together, they made their way to the river, leaving the ghetto in Svatislavia behind forever.

• • • •

Just as I finish applying for yet another credit card, I get an email informing me that my YouTube account funds are ready, and to please link a bank account so they can be deposited. I look, and my failed challah videos have earned a million views and five hundred dollars. I hadn’t even realized I’d set the videos to advertise. It’s not enough for rent yet, but looking at the stats shows that the income and the rate at which it was coming in is increasing daily.

“See?” says my bubbe when we next talk on the phone. “I told you, bread is magic.”

“I don’t think I’ve actually managed to make bread yet. None of those outcomes looked like bread.”

“Doesn’t matter. Even if it doesn’t help, it helps. Even if it’s not bread, it’s bread. Still nourishing in a different way.” I can hear the smile in her voice, and I’m amazed at how she’s stayed so strong throughout this whole time.

I scroll through the comments again and realize . . . people are entertained. They’re seeking refuge from the chaos that is this year, and my baking mishaps are filling a need. My bread is nourishing.

I’m never going to cure this pandemic, or fix my country’s response to it. Hell, I’m never going to be a good baker. But a comedy YouTube channel? Silly as it is, it makes me feel like I’m not useless.

The next day I gather up the ingredients, and the strength from my bubbe, and start to film “How not to bake a pumpernickel 1.”

Because even if it doesn’t help, it helps.

She goes to her brother’s house first, which is both more painful and less. No one has broken in yet. Hard for would-be thieves to know, without surveillance, which houses have been emptied and which haven’t, and there’s no shortage of targets right now. A bowl of curdled batter sits on the counter, reeking of neglected dairy. Nascent Saturday morning pancakes? Fortunately the pan never made it to the burner; otherwise the house probably would have burned down long before Libby stopped by. There’s a pile of clothes by the stove, and another one on a stool at the counter. Libby retrieves her sister-in-law’s wedding ring from the pretty little dish beside the sink. She has a sister in Seattle, another of those who remain, who asked Lily to find it. After a moment, she collects her brother’s too. The rings belong together.

She lingers by the bookshelf, taking down an autographed copy of a book by her brother’s favorite author and putting it in her bag. Family pictures in the hallway: him and his wife at their wedding, in the church Libby grew up in. Both of them beaming at their baby shower, with Libby grinning down at them from behind. Plenty of other, older photos, portraits of the whole family together, but these two are the ones Libby wants.

Last of all, she stops in the second bedroom, the one that hasn’t quite completed its transition from office to nursery, and never will. Important documents are in the (unlocked) safe, and there’s no sheet on the mattress in the freshly-assembled crib.

On her way out, she sits, for a moment, on the stoop. The criteria for who was collected four days ago seem to be simple: those who believed they would one day be swept off the Earth, were. Some of those who remain accept that it was a specific sort of Heaven that did the collecting. Others assign blame elsewhere: a manifested psychosocial religious phenomenon; atheistic aliens with a sly sense of humor; an improbably deft worldwide psy-op. Whatever happened, a part of Libby had hoped that, somehow, her brother wouldn’t have gone. Not by choice. Not if it meant leaving her. She fingers the warm golden ring in her pocket, then roots around in her purse for the car keys.

At her parents’ house, the garage is open and both cars are gone, but the house itself appears intact. She half-expects her key not to work when she offers it to the lock. But it slides true with familiarity; the same door, the same doorknob, after all these years.

First she goes for her mother’s Kitchen Aid stand mixer, robin’s egg-blue with the dough hook attachment; her pretty teacups too, the ones Libby and her brother weren’t allowed to drink from until they were twelve. Past the kitchen the walls are even more laden with photos. There’s only one Libby wants, a photo of her and her brother on Christmas morning, when they couldn’t have been more than six and nine. She’s in some others—school pictures, a family vacation—but none of them as an adult.

She wishes she knew. She wishes for reports of UFOs or satellite footage of a massive gathering somewhere in the Sahara. Right now, she’d even be grateful for an “I told you so.”

There’s no point in visiting her old bedroom, which has a TV and the old living room couch in it now. In her brother’s bedroom, which in comparison is pristinely preserved, except that the old twin bed has been replaced by a full, she rescues a stuffed polar bear and the scrapbook box shoved deep into the closet. The scraps of her memories and his are mixed together there: a Bible verse competition ribbon and a basketball medal and report cards and a jumble of postcards and letters and drawings. After some consideration, she puts the lid back on and takes the whole thing downstairs, setting it next to the rest of her collection.

There’s a pile of clothing on her dad’s recliner in the living room, but that’s the only one Libby sees, even on a second circuit of the house. Maybe her mother was about to step into the shower; maybe she was at the grocery store, or out for a walk, or visiting a friend. Or maybe—and this wonderful, terrible thought stiffens Libby’s spine—maybe, she had a moment of doubt. Maybe she’s out there somewhere, wondering who’ll be waiting for her when she finally makes it home.

And maybe she’s not, and Libby will never find out either way. She loads up her car with the kitchen goods, the photos, the memories. Some things just aren’t for knowing; it’s a skill that Libby is still working on, to recognize those things when she sees them. When she’s finished, she closes the door behind her and leaves it unlocked. She decides to try I-69 on the way home, to see how many cars still linger on the roadside there.

I thought I knew you again
I thought I could tell you
what I saw one wintry night
the secret that beats its wings
against my bones
demanding recognition.

I thought I could tell you
we are not alone, maybe
it all makes sense somehow
we are meant to be here
just as they are
whoever they might be.

And that vast shadow I saw
bruising the starlit sky
black wings brushing the tips
of ragged clouds, obscuring
the moon, that shadow
is nothing to be afraid of.

Your hand touched my arm
jerked back, as if alarmed
as if I were a stranger, as if
we have not touched a thousand times,
so the moment passed and
the words within me died.

We went in and closed the blinds
closed ourselves off from the night
I did not dream of you, oh no
I have long since given up
bleeding hope and desire
on the vector of time.

I dreamed of them, shadows curving
bat-like over the CN Tower, closing
the distance between us too far
for light to travel, forcing us to live
again that small space, making us
unpredictable – almost, in love.

Thank you so much! I love second person—more than half my published short stories use it, and I think it’s a great way to deflect more autobiographical readings (which, cough, tend to fall more often on authors who are BIPOC and/or not cis men) while keeping the intimacy between reader and speaker that comes with the first person. I also use it to loosen up my writing—all my novels so far have been written in third person, so using second for short fiction provides me with a different angle of approach that can get the initial words flowing.

This story came out of a desire to write about chronic pain—particularly the discovery that medicine cannot fix all, that some things don’t heal.

I want to move out of the narrative and go to the personal and ask, what does music mean to your craft or your sense of self as an artist? Are there any memories that you associate with music that proved foundational to this story or your writing process in general?

I think music has primarily shaped my writing through the discipline I developed through it. I played violin for most of my childhood and through college—as well as piano, clarinet, and viola for a few years each—and the idea of practicing every day, as well as the question of what work needs to be done before a lesson (which often costs quite a lot per hour), heavily influences the consistency with which I sit down to write, as well as what I feel I need to have down on the page before showing my work to others for critique.

I am really interested in sitting with the line “there is no cure for being the castoff of a god.” I find it very beautiful. Can you tell us more about what was going through your mind as you were writing that sentence? Maybe a craft choice like using italics, or the inspiration behind it?

Thank you! I’m interested in the intersections between disability and religion—particularly the narratives constructed at both organizational and individual levels around what disability means in relation to the god(s) one worships, as well as how one might respond accordingly. For example, Rach responds to Xemphon’s abandonment in a very different way from what Evan expects (“It is not in your nature, to rage at the heavens when it is your own flesh that is failing you. Not . . . when you can lie so still on your bed you nearly trick yourself into thinking you’ve disappeared”). I find it fascinating that in certain personal and corporate theologies, the god(s) might be blamed for misfortune, might be raged at, while in other belief systems, even within the same nominal religious umbrella, the adherent might be told to focus on their own self-improvement and/or positive thinking, for their virtue is being tested/they are but a worm, etc . . .

I want to be playful and ask about the different ways in which music will be heard, felt, and accessed in the future. Do you think our relationship with music will change through technology, or will it maintain a tether with the core sense of human expression?

My knowledge of technology—and of AI in particular—is rudimentary at best, but I hope music can, at its heart, continue to be a place where we express what it means to be human; where one person can say to another, I see you. I hear you. You are not alone.

If there is one feeling you want the audience to take away from this story, what would you wish for it to be?

I know this is not technically an emotion, but—intensity? Like the feeling of having been on a journey and having felt a lot of things, haha.

What are you working on now, and are there any other projects we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I’m currently working on a novel—These Deathless Shores, a Malaysia-inspired, gender-bent take on the Captain Hook origin story in the vein of V. E. Schwab’s Vicious and Natalie Zina Walschots’ Hench. Hopefully more news on that soon!

You think you start to see me
In the corners of your vision
A thing whose presence you feel
Along your back
Going up your spine
You think I’m watching what you’re reading
Over your shoulder;
I am.
I love you
I’ll never leave you alone.

You hear the rapping
The tapping
Tap, tap-tap . . .
Coming closer
Rap, tap-tap . . .
You hear it in the corners of your mind
When you sleep
Tap, tap-tap . . .
Let me in
I love you
I’ll never leave you alone.

Slowly, surely,
You change
You argue more with loved ones,
Pick fights with strangers,
Act out on vendettas.
You suspect
I may not be what I say I am
But I will always tell you
I love you
I’ll never leave you alone.

You start to lose time
Minutes, hours . . .
Days . . .
You’re accused of things
You don’t ever recall doing
Why is that body there
Bent in that peculiar way
Hush my dear
This is what happens
When you let me in
I love you
And I’ll never leave you alone.

You think you need help
And start seeking out
Help from books, psychics . . .
Priests . . .
But soon you realize
That you can’t tell them
What you really want to say
Because I can always change
What comes out
Because I know best, my dear
What do they know, anyway
I love you
And I’ll never leave you alone

You want this
You know this is the best thing
That’s ever happened to you
Because deep down in your heart,
Where your unspoken words
Keep you company
Like a blanket
Where I made a space for you
To stay,
While I take control
More and more . . .
You know you love it
Because I love you
And I’ll never leave you alone

You can never go back
To your old life
Even if I abandoned you
Too many people are gone
Too many things are done
Too many things have changed . . .
I hold the reins
I let you see things from time to time
Otherwise you’re nestled
Deep within
Caught in my embrace . . .
You’re beautiful, I tell you.
I still love you as much as I ever did . . .
I still want us to be friends.
I’ll never leave you.
I love you.
I’ll never leave you alone.

Back when you were a conservatory student, you chewed a third of a melatonin tablet every night—to keep yourself from snapping awake before sunup, chest tight, your head still achy with exhaustion. Now, mornings are difficult: your eyelids weighted, sliding; thick grey wool between your temples. Your body drifting in a warm, slow sea.

Evan’s voice. “Rach?”

A groan, from deep inside you. You do not want wakefulness—do not want the heat pulsing from your knuckles, a beacon, a warning; do not want your boyfriend watching, wary, as you massage the meat of your thumb. Too late—slow electric fear coils in your stomach. Your breath draws short as you open your eyes.

“What is it?” Your performer’s voice—clipped, a little haughty, though it still creaks from sleep.

“I brought you this.” He holds out a bright orange bottle. Inside, a neat cluster of capsules, translucent blue. You squeeze your eyes shut, turn your face away.

“I don’t need them.”

A frown in his voice. “Not this again.”

“I really don’t.”

“Make a fist for me?”

Heat through your face, your breath whistling out your nostrils. Evan has been tending to you, day after day, for this entire week you’ve barely gotten out of bed. Checking to see if the god has touched you again.

But he knows, and you know. Xemphon will not restore you. Xemphon has filled you and cast you aside, and in the aftermath there will be no succor.

You clench your fingers. Weak—even you know it. Sweat prickles down your arms, and something like fury. In the afternoons you’re fine. In the afternoons you can pop open water bottles, cut your chicken breast with a fork and knife, no problem. It’s only these first slow hours of morning—and the soreness of ill use, late at night.

Evan extends his hands. “Try again?”

A knot in place of your heart, but you reach. His hands are warm, dry. Soft, save for the calluses on his fingertips from twenty years of playing guitar. You’ve always admired them—your fingers, accustomed to piano keys, would bleed before they hardened that way against wire.

Now, they lack the strength to even hold a chord.

You squeeze again, and the dull ache beneath your ribs spreads up to your throat.

Evan’s expression flickers, a soundless sigh.

“Take the meds, Rach,” he says quietly. Stands up from the bed. “They’ll help.”

“It’s not about the pain,” you snap. As you did yesterday, and the day before, and you despise yourself for this irritated-patient tone, the way it makes you feel like a child, but the unnatural warmth radiating from your fingers is driving spikes of fear through your skull. “They won’t solve the underlying issue.”

Evan leans in—presses his lips to your forehead, and then the tip of your nose.

“I know,” he murmurs: an apology, a confession. His thumb traces a circle across the back of your left hand, and then he is massaging it tendon by tendon, bone by bone, and your breath hitches and your eyes blur and you have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from breaking. “I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice cracks despite all the times you have told him it is not his fault. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He does not say: There is no cure for being the castoff of a god.

It is only when he has closed the door behind him that you press your hands to your chest and cry.

• • • •

You are a pianist. Were. Are. You don’t know. It’s hard to tell, when you still dream in grand staffs and arpeggios; when you still know every note of Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit from memory; when the nickname by which even your professors call you is derived from that singular musician who shared your handspan. And the pain is not so bad—the doctors have not cut you open, yet. You have never shot awake screaming.

But you’re terrified of what it will become.

Evan returns a few minutes later to retrieve the untouched pill bottle, and you wipe your cheeks with the back of your wrist, pretend you don’t see the reciprocal redness of his eyes. You already feel terrible that he’s the one caring for you—though it was he who suggested, on a whim, that the two of you kneel together before the shrine of the god of music; he who convinced you that the god might brush the two of you with a hint of divine artistry ahead of your respective international concerto competitions.

Or even fill you, if you were lucky: choose you as avatars for His beautiful, terrible spirit; gild your performances in immortal perfection. Make you this century’s Bach or Mozart or (true, original) Rachmaninoff.

Instead, here you are—barely able, some days, to hold a pen.

And in the end, it was you who chose to pray.

“You going to shower?” Evan pulls open your closet, neglecting to mention that he has already filled the tub; you heard the spout thundering through the wall. “I threw some of your clothes in the washer with mine.”

Your mouth opens; your protest snags in your throat. It’s not your fault, you want to say again, though you know he will not listen. Xemphon’s last vessel died a decade ago. Since then, a few of the daring souls who knelt before His shrine came away with aced auditions, record deals, unlikely sponsors in high places. But there have been no new-crowned avatars, melodies pouring from fingers or throats—nor supplicants struck down while still kneeling, burnt to ash by holy fire.

The god of music was not supposed to be dangerous, not anymore.

“Okay,” you say.

“Do you need help?” Evan proffers a hand. “I think we’re out of shampoo, but I can grab some at the—”

“It’s fine.” You lurch out of bed, halfway across the room in two steps, and then your knees buckle and a cry falls out of you like a reflex and his shoulder is beneath your arm, bracing you upright—“got it, got it.” Your legs have awakened at last—pain singing through muscle and bone where the god worked the piano pedals—and you should not be shocked at the betrayal by now, but you are every time.

In the shower, rubbing your clenched calves with lavender soap, you close your eyes.

The feeling of Him inside you: Your legs walked from shrine into midnight-empty auditorium; standing on the bright-lit stage, your lungs expanded by breaths not your own. The sweet heady power that filled your mouth as your fingers danced across the keys—Tchaikovsky’s first, and an exultant intensity you would have needed another hundred years to master.

You do not remember the god’s departure, His rejection. Seven minutes, according to Evan, who filmed you from behind the backstage curtains and wept without sound. Seven minutes, the longest He has abided in anyone he did not ultimately want—and then blood pouring out of your fingers, leaking into the cracks between keys, and your memory fails against the rest.

You want to rail against Him, when the nights are hard. Demand He account for His actions, or at least write you performance notes the way your professors did after juries. But the god of music is not a god of answers, and by the time the ambulance pulled up at the concert hall you were drowning in your own vital fluids and perhaps it is best that you do not know.

The bar of soap slips out of your hand and into the tub. It is just a sliver too thin; your thumb seizes up as you attempt to scrape it off the smooth acrylic. Heat rises in your chest again, drowning denial. You can do this. It should be so easy. But when your fingers close around it, there’s a spurt of motion, a quiet plash of toilet water.

You lay your head in your arms, wet hair dripping into your eyes, and breathe out slow.

• • • •

The dream that haunts you, night after night: that holy fire, honeyed sweetness, Tchaikovsky’s chords pulled out of you like light from the beginning of time. Your pulse drumming a new color, a sharper definition of what it means to be alive. And even when you are pressing ice packs to your knuckles, even when the fork clatters out of your hand, you cannot help but think: You would give anything to have it again.

• • • •

A Steinway upright sits in the living room, shoved against the weathered gray sofa. Despite your leave of absence, the conservatory has allowed you to stay in your dorm through the end of the semester, as your rent has already been paid; the piano is borrowed from your professor, who can no longer stand to hear you play.

All your sheet music sits in a pile on the side table, after the time you dropped the lid of the bench and smashed your middle finger. You flex your hands again, try to fist them. Swear under your breath.

It’s not getting better.

A clink of silverware, the warm smell of coffee, and you turn slightly, your legs still sore. Evan is usually out for a gig by the time you start to practice. Leaving you to mourn—though, if you’re honest with yourself, there is not much else you’ve been doing this past week.

Now, though, he raises a bagel. “Want one?”

You position your hands awkwardly to start the first Hanon exercise, wrists cocked to avoid the brunt of the pain. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Rach, all you have left is cereal—”

“Don’t,” you say, curling your fingers.

“Okay, okay, sorry.”

“No, I mean—” Your voice goes thick, unsteady. You cannot look him in the eye. “Please don’t call me that anymore.”

Evan’s spoon clinks against his coffee mug, his silence drawn. Finally he says, “It doesn’t have to mean anything you don’t want it to.”

You choke a laugh, press the heel of your hand to your temple. Once, you woke up to practice at five a.m. and did not rise from the piano bench until noon. Now you’ve barely touched the keys and you’re ready to lie back down.

Your skin still smells like lavender.

“Well,” you say, and then hesitate. “I used to be Blake.”

“Blake,” Evan repeats. Carefully, as if he is speaking a new language. “Sure. Not a problem.”

“Where are you off to today?” you ask, your voice still small.

“Second round audition.” You know he is smiling, though you still cannot bear to look at him. “One of those weird folk musicals. Rumor has it that both the writer and director have been touched by Nihaea.”

You feel a pang. The goddess of theater is as ruthless as Xemphon—and even more fickle, at times, in Her attentions.

“Good luck,” you say, meaning it, and then he waves his guitar case at you and is gone.

You warm up, slow. Hanon, scales, arpeggios, your throat pulling tighter with every ominous pop of wrist. You play the Moonlight Sonata and half-remembered snatches of concerto, rest your head embarrassingly on the pile of sheet music when a run of twelfths wrenches your thumbs into agony. But you cannot bring yourself to stop. There is a fire within you raring to escape, and if you hold it back too long—as you did in the hospital, and during your first couple days back in your room—it fills you up and breaks you on its way out of your fingers, and this morning’s irritated-patient voice will have been as a pale candle to a wildfire.

When your hands are throbbing too much to continue, you shut the fallboard over the keys, find the bagel on a plate on the counter. It is hard and plasticky against your palms, and when you bite down, you taste nothing.

• • • •

You met Evan in your first year at conservatory. Back when you were still growing into your nickname, and he into the name he had chosen for himself. No family to claim him after he cut his hair short, and so he hung around yours during holiday breaks, impressing your parents with his pitch-perfect Cantonese—and when he first kissed you in your childhood bed, you kissed him back and liked it.

The shrine was only a relic, a small marble statue tucked in an alcove off the main concert hall. All but silent, in the last ten years, and this was the best-known conservatory in the nation, and perhaps you were extraordinary in your hometown, but here you were only another name on the concert program. What was the likelihood He would have chosen you?

Thus, your senior year: you and Evan taking a walk outside the auditorium, the night before you were both due to fly out to Europe—the city around you all gleaming skyscrapers and late-night taxis and the low gurgle of the fountain in the park.

I want to try praying, he’d said, his sandaled feet peeking out pale beneath his overlarge sweatpants. Record me in case anything happens. The two of you stepped into the silent concert hall and he knelt on the cold square of marble before the statue, guitar pick cupped in his palms, and then it was your turn and golden fire licked your insides, pure divinity coursing through your veins, and you strode to the nearest piano and played and played until your hands became crimson sheaves.

Afterward, beneath hospital fluorescents: your parents hugging you gingerly goodbye. The doctors assuring them you’d be fine, that all the scans had shown up clear, that even the god-rejected could live long, productive lives—and besides, your parents could not leave the laundromat for too long, as they had your tuition to pay.

But Evan has stayed with you the whole time.

Sometimes you wonder if he is jealous, that you held Xemphon inside you. But then you think of this past week, and you are not so sure.

• • • •

The next morning, the pain is worse.

Perhaps because you heave yourself out of bed to beat Evan to the coffee machine, even as your right knee screams as if bolted through with steel. Or because you slam hip-first against the kitchen counter in the dark—you have learned, over the years, just how sensitive he is to light, the way he will wake at the faintest illumination through the crack beneath his door. Or because guilt is devouring you: for all the ways he has poured out his time and energy this week, and you haven’t done a fucking thing.

When you wrap your hand around the coffee pot, your index finger goes rigid.

You grit your teeth, breathe out through your nose. On the counter, your phone flashlight beams up a starburst, paints the microwave in haunted blues, and you can see the joints hyperextended, the rest of your fingers flexed awkwardly between plastic handle and cool glass.

Your heart hurts. The ground tilts beneath you.

You don’t actually know how to work the coffee machine.

“Ra—Blake?”

The lights flick on, and you squint against the harsh white. Evan stands in the doorway of his bedroom, hair still rumpled with sleep, and in that moment you love him with a fierceness that steals your breath—his half-lidded eyes, the imprint of his pillowcase still creased on his cheek.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

You pry your fingers off the coffee pot handle with your other hand. A bone-deep ache, as though you’ve sprained something, and fear barrels through you again—that this will be the thing that finally ends you.

“I just wanted to make coffee,” you say, but your voice is thin and far away.

“You don’t even drink it.”

“I could start.”

He looks at you. Shadows beneath his eyes—you’ve only made more trouble for him, woken him with your banging around and whispered curses, but he will not get angry, will not complain. And that’s the worst part—that all this duty and history will build up as a crust beneath his skin. That when you leave this city—and you must, soon, because you’ve lost your only good reason to stay—it will be the only trace of you left for him to remember.

Three steps and he’s holding your hand. Your grip weak, your cheeks flushing as you try to squeeze back, but the warmth of his body anchors you to the ground, and you can almost forget the pain.

Then he reaches over to the cabinet and pulls out the bottle of pills.

“No,” you say, too loud.

“Rach. Blake.” His eyes steady on your face. Clear blue capsules cradled in his hand—that will not heal you, only make you forget you are hurting. “I can’t help you if you don’t want to help yourself.”

“It’s not—help.” Your fists feel like ground beef. Pressure builds in your chest. “When they find a cure, I’ll take as many pills as they like, but I won’t just put a bandage on this while—”

“You know I take meds for depression,” he says quietly.

Your stomach twists. “Gods, that isn’t what I meant at all.”

“No, I know.”

“And yours actually change your brain chemistry. They help solve the problem—”

“Sometimes.” His fingers at your wrist now, kneading so gently you might shatter. “But if whatever’s—happening to your hands—is going to happen anyway, why not hurt a little less? Why not make use of the time you have?”

You push down on each of your knuckles: twang of tendons, low embers of hurt that will radiate back on themselves until your hands melt to god-ruined slag. “Or you might wear yourself out more quickly, if you don’t feel the damage.”

“You don’t know that.”

You swallow, your throat a ring of char. Glance at the pill bottle Evan has placed on the counter.

“They should be taken with food,” he says, helpfully.

“Maybe in a bit.” And you know he sees it in your face, that you cannot believe you and he are the same, but his watch lights up—he’s already running late—and he is not the type to prolong an argument.

And, anyway, you will be here when he returns.

• • • •

That night, he brings his guitar into the living room.

He’s just off his night gig, the smell of city rain rising off his skin, and you are not familiar with most guitars or their makers, but you’ve memorized the way he cradles his Hauser like an infant—its dark swirled panels of rosewood, his hands as sure around the instrument’s neck as yours used to be on the keys. Darkness presses up against the windows, small figures hunched beneath umbrellas and ponchos hurrying below, and all at once you ache to be among them again—breathing in the miasma of wet concrete and subway stations, wolfing down a protein bar on your way to late-night chamber practice.

Evan plucks a couple chords—warm, wavering.

“Want to sing something?”

You shift your legs carefully on the sofa. A faint fizz through your knuckles and knees, the nerves strained but not overtaxed. “What do you mean?”

“Anything you want. A pop song you like, or a musical number.” He pauses. “A hymn.”

You fold your hands into each other. “I’m not angry at Xemphon, you know.”

“You’re not?”

You shrug. It is not in your nature, to rage at the heavens when it is your own flesh that is failing you. Not in your nature to rage at all, when you can lie so still on your bed you nearly trick yourself into thinking you’ve disappeared.

“So you turn the knife on yourself instead,” Evan says.

“Fine, fine; what do you want to sing?”

He sends a link to your tablet—sheet music for a ballad you might have heard in a cafe, once—and you harmonize to his melody, the caress of his fingers against the strings. Your voice cracks and wavers, as out of use as the rest of you, but between your absolute pitch and two decades of piano lessons, you manage well enough.

“You’re not bad,” Evan says when you’ve finished, as you knew he would. He does not bring the guitar out of his room often, and even less to accompany casual jam sessions.

Heat rises again in your cheeks. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“I can’t just substitute—”

“Then what do you want?” His voice edges toward hardness, though you have known him for too long not to sense the hurt underneath. “If there’s any way I can help, just tell me.”

“I want—” You press your hands against your sternum. Veins stand out on your skin, greenish and inflamed; your palms feel like bruises. “I just—I want it back—” and then your throat closes and your eyes flood and he’s here, he’s here, rubbing your shoulders, whispering into your hair, and you can almost believe you will be all right.

• • • •

“Why are you doing this?” you ask, when you manage to speak again. The city has folded into deep night—the streets near empty, the bars down the block dimmed to a neon outline of facade. “You should be meeting new people. Hanging out at clubs.”

His head rests on your shoulder. His shirt is damp with your tears.

“Well,” he says lightly, “maybe I like splitting the rent with you.”

“Evan.”

“And you let me stay with you during the school holidays.”

“Repayment, then.”

“Yes.” But there’s an old carefulness to his voice, from the wounds his old family left behind, and when you lean your head against his, his lashes flutter like a sigh.

• • • •

You are playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto when the fire lances through your hands.

Every note a knife, your bones turned to hot coals, and you grind your fists against your knees, your breath coming low and ragged. No. No. The rest of the phrase still spirals through you, imaginary woodwinds stretched long against the piano’s tender melody, and you are not ready to end, you are not ready to lose this, you are not ready to be stripped of music while the rest of your body goes on living. You stagger toward the kitchen cabinet and find the pill bottle on the lowest shelf, fluorescent orange and white child-proof lid, and you grip and push and turn and grip and push and turn turn, godsdammit, and your palms chafe and a howl works loose in your throat and then you’re slamming the stupid thing against the counter, your rage boiling over at the unfairness of it all—that you were not enough, or too much, that Xemphon should have passed over you or scorched you to ash and either would have been better than this fucking in-between—and then your grip goes loose and the bottle arcs through the air—a slant of sunlight searing it from within like the touch of a god—

And it ricochets off the side of the Steinway.

Your stomach drops.

Shit.

You limp toward the living room. Your vision fractured glass, a rush in your ears like an approaching train, and at the sight of the pale gouge in the elegant matte finish you slide back onto the bench and bury your head in your arms and breathe and breathe and breathe.

Your professor’s own instrument. A vessel, despite Xemphon’s repudiation, that your hands might still make sing.

And you have treated it worse than common furniture.

Eventually, the pain dulls, leaves the space between your temples dazed and empty. Just a flare-up, you think with a sort of detached relief, but you know down to your marrow that this will not be the last time. As sunlight shifts infinitesimally through the windows, crowning the room in white, the thought comes to you at last: You cannot continue this way.

You cannot afford to. Even with your financial aid package, you and your parents were stretched to the limit paying for tuition and board, your meager savings from summer gigs sunk into that debt like a drop of blood in a well of ink. Evan has established a semi-regular flow of income—perhaps Xemphon blessed him after all—but you would barely be able to play at a wedding, now, or even teach.

You could go into business, as some of your older classmates have. Rely on dictation software and ergonomic office chairs in an industry that does not care as much for Xemphon’s esteem as for your ability to focus on spreadsheets for long stretches of time. But you poured all of yourself into music, held nothing back. To imagine it leached out of your life hurts nearly as much as your hands did just moments ago.

A flash of orange in your periphery: the pill bottle lying on the carpet, still tightly closed. You bend to pick it up—your right knee trembles, but does not give—and shuffle slowly back to your room.

• • • •

Hours later: a soft knock, the click of the door. Evan and his guitar case, framed in light.

“It’s only six—are you sleeping already?”

You look up. Your raw hands are propped on the comforter, your right leg turned on its side. The pills at your bedside table, glaring, accusatory.

“Just resting,” you say, but his eyes meet yours and you break. “Evan, I scratched the piano, it was getting worse and I couldn’t open the stupid cap and I let go, I accidentally let go and—”

“Slow down,” he says, setting down the guitar case. “What are you saying?”

You thrust out both fists, your skin the color of raw sausage. “I couldn’t open the bottle,” you whisper, and your entire body flushes with mortification. “I tried, and it—it hit the piano—”

“Oh.” His gaze finally catches on the bright orange canister, and he unscrews the cap easily, tips two pills into your open hand. You bite down the spasm that wracks your diaphragm: that his affection for you must manifest at this level of care. That you cannot even make him breakfast without inflicting on yourself some grievous new sprain.

“What about water?” he asks, but you’ve already downed both capsules dry. Your hands and elbows are buzzing, the long bone of your left wrist laced with electricity, and fear crashes over you in waves—that you’re only masking the inevitable, ignoring the decay. That your body will acclimate, refuse numbness, until you’re calling up doctors begging for morphine.

But, as well: Evan kneels beside you like a penitent, his eyes blown wide in the dark.

You trace your thumb along his cheekbone, the arch of softness behind his ear. “Evan.”

“Yeah?”

The soft roar of the city outside your window; the faint strains of violin you are sure you can hear, even now, from the concert hall down the street. With or without Xemphon, you want to walk those streets with him, if only for a while; you want sunlight on your face, and skyscrapers soaring over your head, and music thundering through your hands. You want to live and live until you can’t anymore—and when the time comes, to depart with grace.

You lever yourself up onto your elbow—the twinge of your spine stopping your breath for a moment, the capsules still half-lodged in your throat.

“Thank you,” you breathe, and then your crooked fingers are tangling in his hair, and his mouth softens on yours, and as the city-smell on his skin envelops you—smog and petrol and streetlights gleaming off asphalt—the god of music hovers at the edge of your vision, a watchful golden flare, and something surges beneath your skin like a melody.

AS: There are a number of Recommended Reading Lists coming out. The Locus list just came out, and we have THREE stories on the list! Our sibling mags, Nightmare and Lightspeed, have three and four stories respectively. Over at Nerds of a Feather we have THREE stories on their list! And they see us as good candidates for a Hugo in the Best Editor category, which is . . . well. It’s awesome! These lists can be great ways to find new reads. Christie, how do you find reads?

CY: I pointed those lists out to my book club and got a lot of “That’s too much to sort through!” (Ha! And that’s already been curated for them . . . ) But I did get them to pick a book off of the Locus list anyway—I just had to do the sorting-through myself.

As far as short fiction goes, apart from reading lists like these, year’s best anthologies usually have a list of the stories the editor loved but didn’t quite make the cut. It’s always interesting to see how much the lists overlap, and how much they don’t!

AS: For short fic in magazines beyond our own submissions, I have a few reviewers whose taste often lines up with my own. I sometimes start with the Locus Rec List or another respected list, pick a story with an interesting title or author, then cross check to see if some of the reviewers I like have said anything about it. I read a lot of anthologies for reviews, and so much depends on just hearing about something in the first place. Occasionally I find out about a book that looks intriguing but it’s too late to review at that point. Locus magazine can be a great tool for finding books, and just browsing through Netgalley can sometimes turn up cool finds. Also, to a degree—and more randomly—Twitter.

AS: The great thing about finding a magazine you really like is that you know there will be some fantastic new reads for you on a fairly regular basis. I don’t think most readers will like every piece in every issue of any given magazine—there are bound to be occasional entries that don’t land for you – but I do think magazines can be where some of the most interesting and powerful writing happens. It’s really wonderful to see so many people love the work we’ve published, and I’m seriously glad for the authors. Keep reading! We’ve got more on the way!

• • • •

In this issue’s short fiction, P.H. Low takes craft to the extreme in “The Will of the God of Music,” and Effie Sieberg’s “There’s Magic in Bread” connects lessons of the past to the problems of the present; in flash fiction, Mari Ness takes a hard-hitting look at current magical trends in “Enchanted Mirrors Are Making a Comeback. That’s Not Necessarily a Good Thing,” and in Aimee Ogden’s “Moments of Doubt” an absence of evidence leaves us guessing about the fate of the evidently absent; in poetry, we have “The Distance Between Us” by Rati Mehrotra and “Possession” by Tonya Liburd. Plus an interview with the author of The Changeling, The Ballad of Black Tom, and Lone Women, Victor LaValle. Enjoy!

For those trading in enchanted mirrors—or just looking for one—this probably seems like a good thing. But the increased abundance of enchanted mirrors does have a more sinister side.

Starting with:

1. Most of the enchanted mirrors out there, well, aren’t. They’re just clever imitations—many without even the faintest touch of magic.

“These days, it’s very easy to fake a talking mirror with just a little bit of computer coding and some special effects,” explains Aganippe Ogleda, who studies contemporary enchanted objects at the Morgan School in Avalon. “Even mortals can do it.” The “enchanted” mirrors are typically sold as novelty items to interested consumers who want something interesting on their walls.

That’s enough to satisfy most consumers—many of whom don’t believe in magic to begin with. But although most of these fake mirrors are only used for entertainment or marketing, they can be used for more sinister purposes as well. “We’ve had a couple of faked mirrors that were planted as part of a deliberate attempt to ruin someone’s self-esteem. And a couple of others that were used to gather confidential information that was later used against the unwary owners,” says Harley Fletcher, who investigates enchanted and enchantment-related crimes.

Fletcher says it’s a hard problem to combat, since the fake mirrors aren’t registered with any official enchantment registry, and it’s almost impossible to know which of the fakes are getting used for questionable purposes until it’s too late.

“Fortunately, most consumers are aware that these are fakes—you can only hear ‘This skincream will make you the fairest in the land—just dabble some in your left hand’ so many times before realizing that something’s up,” Fletcher adds. But although ads are usually obvious, emotionally abusive or exploitive messages might not be. “The folks that program those—they’re careful to avoid the more obvious mistakes. And they deliberately avoid using things like ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall’—which might cause too much suspicion or curiosity.”

And informing victims that the mirrors are fakes doesn’t necessarily make victims any less vulnerable. “In fact, it can make matters worse—if it’s not real magic, then there’s no harm in continuing to use it, right? But that attitude ignores the very real problem inherent in hearing these messages every day. Problem is, some people have real difficulties recognizing abuse.”

And even apart from any potential abuse or criminal activity, the presence of fakes also means that real enchanted mirrors have to compete with the programmed fakes, which can cause problems. “The fakes are usually programmed to soothe an owner’s ego,” explains Skop Speigel, a Registered Enchanted Mirror with nearly six hundred years of experience. “But my enchantment requires me to tell the truth. I can conceal it with cutesy rhymes and that sort of thing—and I often do—or follow the whole Delphi oracle example of being ambiguous, but I can’t flatter. I can’t lie. I can’t tell them that everything will be all right, or that they really are the fairest in the land. And if my clients are accustomed to flattery, that’s a huge issue.”

It’s not just a matter of ethics, either. The faked mirrors are, understandably, much cheaper. “Even the most elaborate programmed mirror only needs, well, the mirror and some computer programming. In some cases, a few folks have even repurposed old television sets and computer monitors—which can be purchased for pretty much nothing.”

That has led to the deeply ironic situation that just as enchanted mirrors are rising in demand, real enchanted mirrors have had problems finding placements because they are priced out of the market.

“And the thing is, in most cases, you can’t sell the real mirrors for less—the basic materials to create one just cost too much,” Aganippe Ogleda says. And although most of the centuries-old mirrors have already earned back their material costs, some of them have not been able to adjust to the contemporary market. “A lot of them still speak older versions of modern languages that some clients can’t understand,” Ogleda explains. “Or they have difficulties understanding contemporary technology.”

Which brings us to:

2. Enchanted mirror training hasn’t kept up with the times. “The training covers what to say to aging queens afraid of losing their beauty,” says Melite Specchio, a recent graduate of an enchanted mirror training program. “Which does have its uses. For instance, a few mirrors are now specializing in helping to advise clients on how to achieve the best possible looks on Zoom calls, a skill that more and more of us are picking up. We don’t just advise on makeup; we also show clients how just repositioning a webcam and altering the lighting can completely change their looks. And those of us with foretelling talents can even predict the potential outcomes of switching around their webcams, which has proven very popular. So in that sense, it’s very useful. But if someone comes to us needing more than makeup and lighting tips—well, the training hasn’t really kept up with that.”

“These days women in powerful positions are a lot less threatened by stepdaughters and daughters, and much more threatened by liability and financial issues,” notes Aganippe Ogleda. “And many of them also have concerns about environmental and medical things that current enchanted mirror training just isn’t equipped to handle. Not to mention that the current training programs haven’t been updated to include democracies. That is fine in some limited cases, but a Prime Minister facing an election in a few months has different concerns than a king’s second wife—and we haven’t gotten around to dealing with that. Add in a lack of training in modern science and computer technology—and, well. You can see the issues.”

3. This—and the fakes—may help explain why clients are increasingly skeptical about everything their mirrors tell them. “Princesses and queens used to believe me,” says Glace Miroir, another Registered Enchanted Mirror, who has been working in the field for four hundred years and regularly takes updated seminars and courses to try to keep her skills sharp. “I could tell them precisely who the fairest of the land was—which allowed me to also keep them advised on infrastructure issues. Now? When I try to say something like, ‘If you build too close to the shore, climate change will bring floods to your floor,’ I just get, ‘Oh, like I’m going to listen to a mirror about my construction plans.’ Even the ones who believe in climate change won’t listen to me. It’s so aggravating, I can’t tell you.”

5. And with all this, the field has become much more dangerous—even deadly—for enchanted mirrors. “Simply because of their value, not just as advisors, but as mirrors, in the old days, these mirrors were carefully cared for,” says Aganippe Ogleda. Their favored clients would go out of their way to ensure that mirror installations involved only high-quality nails, stones and mortars—and that the mirrors were surrounded by cushions and cloth to reduce any damage from a potential fall, just in case the installations failed for any reason. Most of the mirrors were also regularly polished by their owners, allowing them to note even the tiniest potential crack—fixing this before it could become a problem.

But this is, Ogleda says, no longer true. She’s seen and heard reports—which Fletcher confirms—of enchanted mirrors that have been neglected, mistreated, damaged—and in some cases, even locked into closets, storage units or other small, dark, enclosed places. “That’s difficult enough for normal people. But for enchanted mirrors—I mean, yes, they are accustomed to being stuck in a single place for years. Centuries even. And most of them receive constant information about the outside world, thanks to their enchantments. It’s still, I would say, equivalent to torture—essentially eliminating their already limited socialization.”

Beyond the maintenance and emotional issues, there’s also less concern about breaking mirrors in general. “I think the seven years of bad luck still scares some people—but others shrug it off. Either because the mirror just didn’t cost that much to begin with, or they already feel mired down in bad luck and figure seven years more won’t really change things that much,” continues Harley Fletcher. “But the end result is that everyone is a bit more careless around mirrors—which of course puts enchanted mirrors in danger.”

What exactly happens to Enchanted Mirrors after they are broken or shattered remains a closely guarded secret—one none of the Enchanted Mirrors that we reached out to were willing to discuss. But it is presumed that at best, this requires the soul in the Enchanted Mirror to jump into another mirror—assuming one is available—with potentially devastating consequences; at worst, the Enchanted Mirror dies. That may seem almost trivial given the expected lifetime of most Enchanted Mirrors—usually stretching into several centuries—but on the other hand, it means that an enchanted mirror may be losing centuries, not mere years, of life when destroyed.

But despite all the negatives, the numbers of enchanted mirrors—genuine ones—still appear to be on the increase. “The demand is still out there,” says Aganippe Ogleda. “Both from people who want to feel that they are in a real fairy tale, and from people that plan to exploit their powers. And as long as that desire, those wishes, are still out there—well. That is why enchanted mirrors are around, right? For most of us—them—it’s worth the risks.”