{"id":5601,"date":"2022-09-15T22:23:14","date_gmt":"2022-09-15T22:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5601"},"modified":"2022-09-27T12:18:56","modified_gmt":"2022-09-27T12:18:56","slug":"unseelie-brothers-ltd-by-fran-wilde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5601","title":{"rendered":"Unseelie Brothers, Ltd. by Fran Wilde"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.<\/em><\/strong> by Fran Wilde (Uncanny<\/em>, May\/Jun 2021)1<\/sup> begins with Mrs Vanessa Saunders and her F\u00eate Noire Charity Ball co-chairs receiving a photo message informing them that Unseelie Brothers Ltd., a shop that makes bespoke ball gowns, are back in town.
Saunders quickly returns home to tell her daughter Rie (Merielle), and her niece Sera (from whose point of view the rest of the story is told) to go and find the shop. When the pair eventually locate the premises of Unseelie Brothers Ltd. (it does not give out its address or phone number), the story starts falling into standard \u201cmagic shop\u201d territory, i.e. it is closed when they find it but opens when Saunders arrives and writes a message on a glove and puts it through the letterbox.
When the door opens, Sera hears \u201cthe rustle of wings\u201d and sees a face that she thinks might be her lost mother (we learn along the way that Sera\u2019s mother vanished years before, and that she, along with Mrs Saunders, wore Unseelie Brothers\u2019 dresses when they were young):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

from <\/em>The Social Season, plate 76. The Butterfly Gown, worn by a Serena (n\u00e9e) _____ (unknown) Sebastian to the Spring Charity Gala of 1998. She attended with her sister Vanessa (n\u00e9e) ______ (unknown) Saunders, and soon after married one of the event\u2019s busboys. Saunders herself married the scion of the Saunders soap fortune. The event was notable in that several young women and men were discovered the following morning, on the roof, wearing bacchanalian-styled greenery and nothing more, by hotel staff at The Pierre. Photo by Mrs. Vanessa Saunders. Designers: Dora Unseelie and Beau Unseelie, Sr.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The central part of the story then sees: (a) Rie fitted for a dress, (b) Sera given a pearl necklace and a job offer from Dora, one of the Unseelie employees, and (c) Sera (a student dressmaker) design a \u201cCrown of Thorns\u201d dress for the company, which they subsequently make and sell to Rie instead of the one she had originally chosen during her fitting. During all this there are various magical occurrences (at one point Sera loses track of time, and emerges to find days have passed and the shop has moved location).
The last part of the story (which somewhat lost me) sees Sera discover that (spoiler) her mother is trapped in the dress that Unseelie Brothers made for her, and which Mrs Saunders still has in her wardrobe. However, when Sera (at Dora\u2019s suggestion) unseams the dress to release her mother, only butterflies emerge. Then Sera discovers that that her mother and aunt were both Unseelie shop workers who managed to escape their employer.
Sera later (a) rewrites the contract given to her by Unseelie Brothers to give her and the other workers an ever-increasing share of the business, (b) alters Rie\u2019s Crown of Thorns dress to remove any risk that it will hurt her (the dresses usually bring good fortune, but not always), (c) publishes the emergency number for the shop and, as a consequence, sells many dresses (which, we learn, no longer cause problems). Finally, Beau (the owner\/manager) finds he cannot move the shop.
I found this story engaging enough for the most of its length, but the ending, which seems to tack on a magical realist\/empowerment ending onto a more-or-less conventional magic shop story, makes it falls apart.
* (Mediocre). 8,600 words.

1. This was runner up in the novelette category of the 2022 Hugo Awards, and was fourth in the Locus Poll.

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Unseelie Brothers, Ltd. by Fran Wilde (Uncanny, May\/Jun 2021)1 begins with Mrs Vanessa Saunders and her F\u00eate Noire Charity Ball co-chairs receiving a photo message informing them that Unseelie Brothers Ltd., a shop that makes bespoke ball gowns, are back in town.Saunders quickly returns home to tell her daughter Rie (Merielle), and her niece Sera […]<\/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":[154],"tags":[21,50,155,1307,1306,7,367],"class_list":["post-5601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fran-wilde","tag-21","tag-50","tag-fran-wilde","tag-magic-dresses","tag-magic-shop","tag-novelette","tag-uncanny"],"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\/5601","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=5601"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5703,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5601\/revisions\/5703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}