{"id":1351,"date":"2021-06-09T12:30:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T12:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1351"},"modified":"2021-07-08T08:32:57","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T08:32:57","slug":"the-piper-by-karen-joy-fowler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1351","title":{"rendered":"The Piper by Karen Joy Fowler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Piper<\/em><\/strong> by Karen Joy Fowler (F&SF<\/em>, January-February 2021) opens with the narrator recounting a childhood memory of the day that the king and queen came through his village; the narrator\u2019s sister was given a disk with the king\u2019s symbol, a red dragon, on one side.
The story then moves to the current day, where we get some brief information about the village and the narrator\u2019s marriage plans before learning that the king has gone to war. The army subsequently passes through town, and the narrator and his friend Henry are recruited.
The pair endure a long, hard march to the sea and at one point the company shelter in a cave. When the narrator goes to relieve himself he finds a passage that takes him back to the surface. He sleeps there and, when he wakes the next day, he sees the skeleton of a dragon (\u201cthe king\u2019s dragon\u201d) embedded in a nearby rock face. The commander sees it as a sign.
When they finally arrive at the coast (spoiler) the narrator decides to desert and go back to his village. En route, he wonders what he\u2019ll tell his family and neighbours on his return:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would have to explain to the village why I was back and everyone else gone, and it couldn\u2019t be a story that made me a coward, a deserter, and a man who didn\u2019t love his king. I wasn\u2019t yet sure how this story would go, but I wasn\u2019t really worried about that. I had twelve whole days to work it out and I could already see its bones.  p. 256<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I can understand why a departing editor (who is off to write his own tales) might use this as the final piece in their last ever issue, but the arc of this story seems pointless: young man goes to war, changes mind, goes home. Littering it with dragon images doesn\u2019t much improve that.
* (Mediocre). 3,000 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Piper by Karen Joy Fowler (F&SF, January-February 2021) opens with the narrator recounting a childhood memory of the day that the king and queen came through his village; the narrator\u2019s sister was given a disk with the king\u2019s symbol, a red dragon, on one side.The story then moves to the current day, where we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[336],"tags":[21,50,25,337,12],"class_list":["post-1351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-karen-joy-fowler","tag-21","tag-50","tag-fsf","tag-karen-joy-fowler","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1351"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1453,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions\/1453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}