Tag: Portal Fantasy

Lovers on a Bridge by Alexandra Seidel

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Lovers on a Bridge by Alexandra Seidel (Past Tense, 2020) opens with Gretchen looking at a painting (Woman at the Window by Caspar David Friedrich) which is displayed in a place she does not recognise. Then, as she tries to work out where she is, there is the sound of footsteps in the darkness that surrounds her. She flees, and later comes upon another painting (Rembrandt’s Philosopher in Meditation), and sees a man sitting on a bench in front of it. He tells her that she is no longer in the Louvre. Shortly afterwards, he adds:

“I’m The Curator, by the way. It is very nice to meet you.”
“Gretchen,” Gretchen says.
“Oh. That reminds me of the fairy tale, the one with Hansel and Gretel, lost and alone, and a witch, no less alone, but a good quantity more hungry.” The Curator smiles warmly at Gretchen. He indeed sits there as if it were a sunny Sunday afternoon in Central Park, not pitch black night in a strange room with a painting that shouldn’t give off light but does anyway.
“Ah . . . ”
“Heh. In case you worry I might eat you, don’t. After all, you walked into The Gallery because you could, and that makes you a guest.”
Gretchen’s hands roll themselves tight. “Out of curiosity, can guests leave whenever they want to?”
The Curator’s face drops, not in an angry way. He looks almost like a beaten dog, and Gretchen, for some silly reason, finds herself feeling sorry for him. “They can. Whenever they so desire.”

The rest of the story sees the pair wandering around this strange place looking at other works (The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh; Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet; The Luncheon on the Grass by Edouard Manet; Witches at their Incantations by Salvator Rosa; The Lovers by Sandro Botticelli; Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian; The Ambassadors by Hans Hohlbein the Younger, etc.), all of which give the impression they may be portals to other places. During the tour Gretchen becomes attracted to the curator, but also starts having flashback images and fears she may be dead.
Finally (spoiler), the man reveals to her (a) that the Gallery (a supernatural entity, I presume) must have a curator who is not an artist, and that person cannot leave until they recruit a replacement, and (b) that she is his. The Curator baulks when it comes time to leave her though, and his exit closes. The story ends with an artist painting the now-lovers and joint curators standing at the apex of a bridge.
This is an okay piece but a slow moving one, and I’m glad it didn’t go for the obvious switched persons ending. That said, its multiple painting and mythology references will probably be of more interest to fine arts graduates than they were to me (I could only visualise one, the van Gogh).
** (Average). 4,900 words.

Skeleton Song by Seanan McGuire

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Skeleton Song by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com, 26th October 2022) is one of her “Wayward Children” series (Every Heart a Doorway, etc.)1 and opens with sunset on Mariposa, with the abuelas singing the summoning song that reanimates the dead skeletons of this world:

In the palace, in the curtained bower reserved for the Princess, a scattering of bones dusted with diamond and amber began to stir, tempted into motion by the song rising from below. On the other side of the room, a terrible creature raised its head and watched.
It was strange and fleshy, shaped as a skeleton was shaped, but with a covering of fat and skin stretched across it, concealing it from proper view. It hid most of its body under rags it called “clothing,” which had grown tattered and worn, developing holes where none had been before. Some among the palace staff had hoped, for a time, that the same might happen to the terrible creature’s “skin,” leaving proper, honest bone to shine through. It had not. When the creature broke its skin, as happened from time to time, it bled and wept and hurt, and took to the pile of rags it had claimed as a “bed.”
They would never have allowed it to remain in the palace were it not for one strange truth: hideous as the creature was, impossible as it seemed, the Princess loved it.

We learn that the fleshy creature is Christopher, a human who arrived in this world of living skeletons via a portal. The Princess saw that this new arrival was ill and drew all the sickness into a bone, later extracting it from Christopher’s body. Christopher now uses the bone as a flute.
The rest of the story sees the Princess paint her bones (a skeleton’s equivalent of dressing, I guess) before they go to see her parents in the depths of the catacombs (Christopher loves the Princess and does not want to go back to his world, so she says he must meet her parents). When the pair eventually arrive at the bottom of the catacombs, they learn from the Princess’s father that he also came to Mariposa as a human—but he kept his fleshly memories by having his mother plunge a gilded bone into his heart on their wedding night and then cut away his flesh (this resolves a memory problem mentioned by Christopher during an earlier discussion with the Princess about him becoming a skeleton).
The story concludes with the couple returning to the surface. The Princess wants “to sleep in the flowers” with him one last time (her bones are inanimate during the daytime) and then, when she rises that sunset, they will follow the ritual outlined by her father. When the Princess wakes that evening, however (spoiler), she finds that Christopher has had second thoughts and vanished.
This isn’t badly done (there are some nice touches, e.g. the journey down into the catacombs) but the idea of a man falling in love with a skeleton requires a little too much suspension of disbelief. I suspect this story will appeal more to those already invested in the series and who are interested in interstitial material.
** (Average). 5,000 words. Story link.

1. “The Wayward Children” series at ISFDB.

The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr by George R. R. Martin

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr by George R. R. Martin (Fantastic, May 1976) opens with Sharra passing through a world gate. She has injuries from her fight with the gate’s guardian, and washes her wounds before falling asleep in a sheltered spot in the wood. Then Sharra regains consciousness to find that she is being lifted into the arms of a man. She is too weak to struggle, and he takes her to a nearby castle that was not there before.
When Sharra next wakes up she finds out that her saviour is called Laren Dorr, and the rest of the story sees them spend a month together at the castle (she agrees to stay and rest if he will show her where the next gate is). During this time, they talk and travel, and eventually become lovers.
From their conversations we learn the backstories of both characters: Sharra is making her way through various world gates as she searches for her lover, Kaydar, but the Seven don’t want her to succeed and have instructed the guardians of the gates to prevent her from passing; Dorr lost a battle with the Seven an age ago, was banished here, and has spent many years alone. Some of the information about Dorr is revealed through the songs that he sings for Sharra while playing an exotic sixteen-string instrument:

He touched it again, and the music rose and died, lost notes without a tune. And he brushed the light-bars and the very air shimmered and changed color.
He began to sing.
I am the lord of loneliness,
Empty my domain . . .
. . . the first words ran, sung low and sweet in Laren’s mellow far-off fog voice. The rest of the song—Sharra clutched at it, heard each word and tried to remember, but lost them all. They brushed her, touched her, then melted away, back into the fog, here and gone again so swift that she could not remember quite what they had been. With the words, the music; wistful and melancholy and full of secrets, pulling at her, crying, whispering promises of a thousand tales untold. All around the room the candles flamed up brighter, and globes of light grew and danced and flowed together until the air was full of color.
Words, music, light; Laren Dorr put them all together, and wove for her a vision.
She saw him then as he saw himself in his dreams; a king, strong and tall and still proud, with hair as black as hers and eyes that snapped. He was dressed all in shimmering white, pants that clung tight and a shirt that ballooned at the sleeves, and a great cloak that moved and curled in the wind like a sheet of solid snow.
Around his brow he wore a crown of flashing silver, and a slim, straight sword flashed just as bright at his side. This Laren, this younger Laren, this dream vision, moved without melancholy, moved in a world of sweet ivory minarets and languid blue canals. And the world moved around him, friends and lovers and one special woman whom Laren drew with words and lights of fire, and there was an infinity of easy days and laughter. Then, sudden, abrupt; darkness, he was here.  pp. 50-51

At the end of the month Shaara tells Dorr it is time for her to leave, and he takes her to the gate which, to Shaara’s surprise, is in third tower of the castle. On their arrival (spoiler), she is surprised to discover that there is no guardian present—at which point Dorr reveals himself and pushes her through the gate.
I thought this was a very good piece the first time I read it, but this time around I thought it was somewhat overwritten and a little slow-moving (see the passage above). That said, the part where Dorr pushes her through the gate rather than detain her is a neat twist (I think my subconscious was expecting him to be the guardian but I did not anticipate his actions) and, overall, it is a decent mood piece.
*** (Good). 7,250 words. Story link.

L’Enfant Terrible by Mark H. Huston

Posted on by Paul Fraser

L’Enfant Terrible by Mark H. Huston (F&SF, May-June 2022)1 begins by describing the plight of a creature who finds light painful and who isn’t used to time flowing in a linear fashion. After some more description about her attempts to orientate herself in this strange world, she is caught while hunting for rats in the area around her den:

Around her came entanglement. The light still assaulted her; the entanglement remained. She struggled. This was not like the hold of the Old Ones, or the gentle arms of the nest, these were tiny, strong entanglements, they smelled like the traps from yesterday/tomorrow.
Cage.
She remembered the word cage. How did she know that word? She was scooped up, she reached out to touch a mind and failed. She felt the cage confine her. Bite! Tear. But the cage was too strong. It smelled like the cage should smell, and she despaired.
The light went out, and the pain stopped.
Time made its way to tomorrow.  p. 189

She is questioned by a wizard, the master of the apprentice who claims to have caught her at the docks, and, after a brief interrogation, the wizard leaves through a portal to seek expert advice on what kind of creature she is (the claws suggest a sea creature but she has vestigial wings as well). After the wizard leaves the apprentice speaks to her and we learn, after he takes down a book from the shelves to show her a portal spell, that he was responsible for her arrival in this world. Then, as he approaches her cage to show her the book (spoiler), she uses a hooked claw to catch him by the nose. She discovers she can easily control his mind, and forces him to recast the spell. Eventually, after several failed attempts, he manages to open a huge portal that slices through the wizard’s rooms:

She looked through the portal and saw an Old One, floating nearby. She called to it, and she could see it responding. It came to the portal. Since her world was gray and featureless, there was nothing to reference the size of the Old One. It grew and grew and then grew more, still not making it to the opening. When it finally arrived, it dwarfed the circular portal. A tentacle reached, but hesitated. Instead, its body moved closer, and it placed its eye to the opening. She knew that from the Old One’s perspective, this looked like a tiny circle of light and strange vibrations suddenly appearing in its world. The Old One attended her request, responded to her call, and peered into the opening like a human looking into a telescope.
She was so happy that she briefly loosened her grip on the human, and of course he began to scream as his fear rose, unrestrained by her power.
“It’s a monster, it is huge! By the Gods and Goddess, I swear I will never perform a forbidden spell again!”
The eye of the Old One moved as it peered into the room. It shifted to the screaming boy, the books and bookcases, the table with the cage, and finally to her. “CTHYLLA!” Its voice shattered everything in the room. Glass bottles burst, their contents spilling out, bits of strange creatures and foul smelling fluids tumbling to the floor. The windows shattered, wood splintered, and the Earth itself shook. The human cried out, louder and louder.  pp. 196-7

At this point the wizard returns and launches a spell at the Old One that appears to use all his energies. Blinded, the creature retreats, and Cthylla then attempts to control the exhausted wizard. But, as she grapples with him, the apprentice kicks her back through the portal.
The story concludes with Cthylla talking to the gigantic Old Ones about what she has found, and how tasty the flesh and thoughts of the creatures on the other side of the (now closed) portal are. Then, as the story cuts to the wizard berating his apprentice and summoning a killing spell, a portal opens and an Old One looks in. . . .
This is a well told story, and I particularly liked the way that it goes from an intriguing, small-scale beginning to a titanic end (and one suggestive of a vastness that lies beyond the immediate world portrayed in the story).
***+ (Good to Very Good). 5,300 words.

1. This appears to be the first story that Huston has published outside Eric Flint’s 1632 alternate world franchise since he first staring writing in 2006. See ISFDB for further details.