Changer's Daughter

JANE LINDSKOLD

Obsidian Tiger Books

Changer’s Daughter

Copyright © 1999 by Jane Lindskold.

First published as
Legends Walking
by Avon Books, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portion thereof, in any form.

Cover design by Pati Nagle.

Obsidian Tiger Books, Albuquerque, New Mexico

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

As ever, for Jim

C
hanger’s Daughter
—which was first published under the title
Legends Walking
—was the first time I set out to write a sequel to an earlier novel, in this case, my award-winning novel
Changer
. It’s difficult to talk about a sequel without providing spoilers for the first novel, but I’m going to give it a try.

The first challenge I faced was that
Changer
had been written without any anticipation of a sequel. This meant that, unlike series where the novels are really parts of one story, I needed to come up with a story that would fit in without violating the action of the earlier novel.

Frankly, I’ve always hated those sequels that undo the progress made in the first book. I think you know what I mean: Novel One ends with the hero and heroine happily married. In Novel Two they’ve broken up or are arguing or whatever. Or Novel One ends up with the enemy defeated, but in Novel Two we find that there was a boss, and the boss is even worse, and now our hero has to go after the boss.

That doesn’t mean that when writing a sequel it’s not necessary to take into account questions that might remain from the first novel. Whatever happened to that character who showed promise by the end of Novel One? Did the defeat of the opposition really end the troubles they’d instigated?

Once I’d asked myself those questions about
Changer
, I asked myself an even more important one. Did I want this sequel to focus on characters and situations already introduced or did I want to focus on completely new elements? The answer was that I wanted to do both. Shahrazad, the coyote pup, had really surprised me in
Changer
. I wanted to see what she’d do next. Then there were the internal politics of the athanor. The compromises made at the conclusion of
Changer
were fraught with further complications.

Yet I’ve always loved books that take me over the horizon, to new places and new situations. I didn’t want this sequel to become nothing more than an exercise in myopic gazing into the athanor crystal. Where could I explore?

West Africa immediately sprang to mind. I was introduced to the complex cultures of West Africa many years ago when I was a newly minted PhD at Fordham University. There I was asked to tutor a very talented West African philosophy and theology student named Emmanuel Eze. The person who approached me on Emmanuel’s behalf explained the problem as follows: “He’s brilliant, multi-lingual, and incredibly flexible. However, his writing is all over the place. One paragraph will be perfectly clear, then the next will make no sense at all. We’re not asking you simply to teach him grammar, but to figure out the source of the problem.”

I liked Emmanuel right off and found him easy to talk to. I think the feeling was mutual. After reading several of his papers, I said, “These are excellent, but you have a real problem with tense.” Emmanuel replied with something close to desperation, “Tense! Tense! Dr. Lindskold, what is tense?”

I blinked. This was clearly more than a request for a definition of a grammatical term. Eventually, we worked out that, although Emmanuel had memorized case endings for numerous languages, he’d never understood the concept of dividing time up into neat little blocks. For him, past, present, and future were not separate elements, but rather elements of a continuous present. Suffice to say that in figuring out a way that Emmanuel could reshape his thinking to enable him to use tenses correctly, I learned a lot about the cultures that had shaped my student.

As a thank you, Emmanuel gave me a copy of Wole Soyinka’s epic poem
Idanre
. From there I went on to read other West African writers. I found therein a fascinating blend of tribal cultures and Christian imports, the modern and the traditional thriving side by side.

This came back to me when I considered the sequel to
Changer
. I decided that West Africa, later narrowed to Nigeria, would be a perfect place to set a portion of the novel. It was a land where, to this day, gods and mortals walk side by side. My athanor would find themselves right at home.

Another incentive for setting part of the novel in Nigeria was that I had always craved mythic fantasy that went beyond a handful of cultures—and with these cultures usually presented in isolation from the rest of the world. At best, the mythic elements of two cultures might war against each other.
Changer
had made clear the athanor were an international community.
Changer’s Daughter
would give me a chance to show a new facet.

Using Nigeria as a setting did present a challenge. I had never been to Nigeria, nor was it likely I would be going there before the novel was written. Book research could only take me so far. I’d find myself puzzled by little things. For example, I kept encountering references to a dish called “moi-moi.” Moi-moi was almost always described as “succulent.” I read the ingredients and discovered that moi-moi was made primary from chickpeas. How could that be succulent? Well, I found a cookbook with a recipe for moi-moi and made it. Guess what? It is succulent!

And so it went... I had a wonderful time involving myself in cultures where time is seen differently, where personal names shift according to who is addressing whom. And through this window, I also found the means to introduce a type of athanor that is—even within the athanor community, where the members know how most myths have their roots in reality—considered by many a myth.

From the start, this evolving novel was
Changer’s Daughter
to me, and not only because one of the plot lines dealt with Shahrazad the coyote. Like most of my titles,
Changer’s Daughter
is meant to mean one thing to the reader at the start of the book and something else at the end.
Changer’s Daughter
was the book I turned in to Avon and the book my editor and I discussed.

Then the word came down that some anonymous higher-up at Avon Books didn’t like the title. I’ve never known why. A declaration was issued to find another title. After creating and consulting over massive lists, the title we settled on was
Legends Walking
. It was okay (although I’ve always had to resist a desire to refer to it as
Legends Hopping
,
Legends Skipping
,
Legends Bouncing
, and so forth). Now, however, with this reissue I’m giving the novel back its original name.

Finally, as a bonus, I’m including “Witches’-Broom, Apple Soon,” the only athanor short story I’ve written to this point. Originally published in the anthology
Faerie Tales
, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis, it’s a story about Shahrazad the coyote, Demetrios the Faun, and, well, witches’-brooms and a woman who hunts them.

Whether you’re revisiting the novel or venturing into the story for the first time, I hope you have fun. I certainly have...

Anger and forgiveness

Two bright arrows

shot

Piercing a heart

1

The more you love your children the more care you should take to neglect them occasionally. The web of affection can be drawn too tight.

—D. Sutten

L
ife has its own scent. Contrary to common belief, there is nothing light or floral about it. Rather, it is akin to the yeasty scent of rising dough or the earthy richness of freshly turned soil.

Catching this scent one morning upon the wind blowing from the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico, the Changer knows that the change he has been considering is upon him. Without further hesitation, he barks.

His sharp-voiced summons is answered by the emergence of his daughter from beneath the gnarled juniper where she has been drowsing. Twigs and dried juniper foliage cling to her fur. She yawns and shakes, emitting a jaw-creaking whine.

When she is alert, Changer begins walking, setting his course downhill, out of this patch of autumn sunshine, ultimately out of the mountains. His daughter follows him without question, partly from trust, partly because she lacks the vocabulary to ask anything as simple as “Where are we going, Dad?”