Sister Emily's Lightship (32 page)

Don Gallo is an academic who has done a number of YA anthologies and he asked me for something for one of them, called
Visions.
I struggled for months and no story came. That summer I was teaching at the Centrum writer's conference in Port Townsend, Washington. (We were housed at Fort Worden State Park, which was used as the setting for Richard Gere's
An Officer and a Gentleman.)
Suddenly the story came pouring out. I had to put it aside to give lectures and to critique student work, of course, but otherwise I ate and slept and dreamt this story till it was done.

The story was reprinted in
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.

The town in this story is my town, Hatfield, Massachusetts. And while I don't know anyone like the killer in this story, there is the Stillpoint Massage Center, as well as the barn-turned-into-a-house. Also, I actually witnessed the genuflecting scene at the end, where the birders “worship” the Great Gray owl with my son, Jason Stemple. (Sorry, Jason, for killing you off in this tale.) However, what really started the story was a request from Ann Devereaux Jordan, who was at work on an anthology,
Fires of the Past,
stories about hometowns.

One of the three new stories for this collection, “Under the Hill” began as an idea for a Marty Greenberg book,
Mob Magic,
which I never managed to finish in time. (Though my daughter, Heidi E. Y. Stemple, has a story in the anthology.) It took two years for me to figure out where this story was going. I call it Damon Runyon meets the elves.

So Neil Gaiman asked me to contribute to a
Sandman
anthology and I wrote this story, which is based on a powerful folk tale that can be found in variants from Scandinavia to the Middle East. He accepted the story and sent the contract, which said that all rights to the story would belong to Marvel Comics till the heat death of the universe, as they held the copyright on the
Sandman
characters in their iron fists.

I pointed out to Neil that Death as a lady was not an idea original to the
Sandman
mythos, citing numerous folk stories: a Peter Beagle story, “Come, Lady Death,” and my own story, “The Boy Who Sang for Death,” all of which vastly predated the Marvel comic. Poor Neil, he agreed with me, but could not fight that particular fight. So I told Neil to tell Marvel where to put their contract.

Of course, I was much more polite than that. I am
always
polite. Then I yanked the story, which gave me the perfect thing to submit to another anthology,
Black Swan, White Raven,
when the opportunity presented itself.

There were two wars raging in the book world when I wrote this particular piece. One was the Salman Rushdie battle in which an Iranian mullah put a fatwah (a sentence of death) on author Rushdie because he had published a novel thought to be blasphemous. The other were the ongoing Creationist stories, where the No-Nothings—who believe God created Heaven and Earth in exactly seven days exactly so many years ago—were trying (and in some cases succeeding) to remove science books about the Big Bang Theory and dinosaurs, etc., from school libraries. This was my only
Pulphouse
story. They folded soon after.

Editor Terri Windling was working on a dynamite anthology,
The Armless Maiden,
a book yoking child abuse and fairy tales. She was already going to reprint a story of mine and a new poem (“The Face in the Cloth” and “The Mirror Speaks”) when this story came tumbling out of me. It's based on a Brothers Grimm Cinderella variant, one in the incest strand, and while I wanted this to have a happy ending, the story insisted otherwise. When I read it before publication at the Centrum writer's conference, a woman came up to me and begged for a copy of the story to give to her daughter, a survivor of childhood incest. Of course I immediately Xeroxed it for her. I only hope that in some small way it gave her daughter a voice.

This is one of three pieces I've done on the Daedalus/Icarus myth. The other two are
Wings,
a picture book with illustrations by Dennis Nolan, and a short poem published in
Parabola Magazine:

I also won something called the “Daedalus Award” in 1986, for a body of fantasy short fiction. I have never heard again from the group that issued the award.

Surprising? Not really, if you know me. I have a somewhat raucous sense of humor, though I rarely write that stuff down. Still, when a friend told me about an anthology called
Dick for a Day,
a feminist volume, I decided to chance this fairy tale redaction of “Dick Whittington and His Cat.” The one time I read it out loud was at a party in Chicago thrown by my dear friends, professors Dede Weil and Gary Wolfe. Author Joe Haldeman laughed so hard, he fell off the piano bench. I got a standing O (sorry about that) from novelist Philip José Farmer.

Become a Warrior

Marty Greenberg asked me to submit something to a volume of warrior stories, which was lucky since I'd already started this one. It took a couple of twists I wasn't ready for and which I am quite fond of. Especially that last line.

The story was reprinted in
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.

Author Susan Shwartz and I were at some convention or other discussing short fiction, and I came up with the idea of modern stories from the Arabian Nights tradition. But I was so mired in other projects, I told her, “You do it!” She did, sold it to Avon as
Arabesques
(great title!), and bought this story from me. I call it my homage to my husband because it's about a sexy middle-aged man.

This is the third new story for this book, all three of which were written in Scotland. But this is the only one with any Scottish flavor. Our Scottish house is only a few miles from Crail, where half the story is set, and a few more miles from Edinburgh, where the story ends. Our best friends in St. Andrews are the Morrisons, so I borrowed their name.

I'd started the story years earlier hoping to send it to a ghost story anthology. But—as happens rather often to me—idea and plot didn't come together until much later. When it finally worked, I was able to finish the tale in under a week.

I like romance as much as the next person. But sometimes good marriages are compromises. As this story shows.

This story won the 1998 Nebula for short fiction and has already been widely reprinted.

One cannot live in my part of the Connecticut Valley, twenty minutes from Amherst, and be unaware of Emily Dickinson. Her presence and her poetry are everywhere. The very robins sing her name. (“The Robin's my criterion for tune,” she wrote.)

Years ago I was reading some of her poetry, which was set down in a gorgeous book about her life, with paintings by the precise and particularizing Nancy Ekholm Burkert. At that very moment, reading the poem about “a band of stars” which ends the story, I got the idea for Emily and her meeting with an alien. (I always called the story idea “Emily meets the Martians,” but the Red Planet sort of went by the wayside. Literally, as you shall soon see.)

The idea sat around, about one and a half pages worth of typescript, for nearly ten years. I knew it was a good idea, but I never quite got around to it, though I used a lot of Emily's poetry in other ways—in speeches, in articles, and in some fiction as well.

And then we bought a house in Scotland. Named Wayside.

Nice segue!

In Scotland I found I was writing a lot about America. And Americans. About alienation, if not aliens. Suddenly I began working on the story of Emily D and her Martian/alien visitor for real.

This sudden immersion in the story was complicated by the fact that the holdings at St. Andrews University did not include a whole lot of Emily D scholarship. In fact, the latest critical biography they had was over twenty years old! I had the housesitter ship my own books over to me. (The most expensive way to do research!) I was especially interested in the feminist critics, as well as the new research about Emily's long battle with eye problems. I was tickled to discover that she called herself “Uncle Emily” to her nephew Ned. Polly Longsworth, an old friend of mine and a Dickinson biographer of note, had been the first to discover Emily's complicity in her brother Austin's long affair with neighbor Mable Loomis Todd, but more work had been done since Polly's groundbreaking book and I wanted to read it all! So I read—and wrote—and read some more.

And then editors Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden came for a visit, on their way to a convention.

I thrust the draft of the story at Patrick. For two days he said not a word. It was agonizing. I do not normally force my attentions on unwilling m/e/n editors. At last it was close to the end of their visit and Patrick had just come down the stairs into the living room.

I squeaked, “What do you think of my story, Patrick?” He gave me a stricken look and raced back up the stairs.

What did that mean? Had I embarrassed him? Had I given mortal offense? Was my career at an end? I hadn't a clue.

Seconds later, Patrick raced back down, thrust the manuscript at me, and said, “I want it for my anthology,
Starlight.
But it needs revision in three places.”

The three places were so slight—a word in one place, a phrase in another, and the deletion of my afterwords/historical explanation. I just nodded and gratefully handed over my ten-year-gestated child to its new pa.

P.S. Patrick bounced my next story—sent by mail for
Starlight 2.
Then he bought a story I handed him for
Starlight 3,
when the Nielsen Haydens visited Scotland once again. Is there a lesson to be learned here?

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HE TRAVELER AND THE
Tale,” copyright © 1995, first published in
Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears,
edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, Avon Books.

“Snow in Summer,” copyright © 2000, first published in
Black Heart, Ivory Bones,
edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, Avon Books.

“Speaking to the Wind,” copyright © 2000, first published herewith.

“The Thirteenth Fey,” copyright © 1985, first published in
Faery,
edited by Terri Windling, Ace Books.

“Granny Rumple,” copyright © 1994, first published in
Black Thorn, White Rose,
edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, William Morrow & Co.

“Blood Sister,” copyright © 1994, first published in
Am I Blue?,
edited by Marian Dane Bauer, HarperCollins.

“Journey into the Dark,” copyright © 1995, first published in
The Book of Kings,
edited by Richard Gilliam and Martin Greenberg, Roc/Penguin.

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Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.

“The Uncorking of Uncle Finn,” copyright © 1986, first published in
Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.

“Dusty Loves,” copyright © 1988, first published in
Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.

“The Gift of the Magicians, with Apologies to You Know Who,” copyright © 1992, first published in
Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.

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Sisters of the Night,
edited by Barbara Hambly and Martin Greenberg, Warner/Aspect.

“The Singer and the Song,” copyright © 1996, first published as liner notes for
Omayio,
CD by Robin Adnan Anders.

“Salvage,” copyright © 1984, first published in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

“Lost Girls,” copyright © 1997, first published in
Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast,
Harcourt Brace.

“Belle Bloody Merciless Dame,” copyright © 1997, first published in
Elf Magic,
edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Daw Books.

“Words of Power,” copyright © 1987, first published in
Visions,
edited by Donald R. Gallo, Delacorte Press.

“Great Gray,” copyright © 1991, first published in
Fires of the Past,
edited by Anne Devereaux Jordan, St. Martin's Press.

“Under the Hill,” copyright © 2000, first published herewith.

“Godmother Death,” copyright © 1997, first published in
Black Swan, White Raven,
edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, Avon Books.

“Creationism: An Illustrated Lecture in Two Parts,” copyright © 1990, first published in
Pulphouse.

“Allerleirauh,” copyright © 1995, first published in
The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors,
edited by Terri Windling, Tor.

“Sun/Flight,” copyright © 1982, first published in
Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.

“Dick W. and His Pussy; or, Tess and her Adequate Dick,” copyright © 1997, first published in
Dick for a Day,
edited by Fiona Giles, Villard Books.

“Become a Warrior,” copyright © 1998, first published in
Warrior Princesses,
edited by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough and Martin Greenberg, Daw Books.

“Memoirs of a Bottle Djinn,” copyright © 1988, first published in
Arabesques,
edited by Susan Shwartz, Avon.

“A Ghost of an Affair,” copyright © 2000, first publication herewith.

“Sister Emily's Lightship,” copyright © 1996, first published in
Starlight 1,
edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Tor.