Wow, I had this post all planned out in my mind, and then at the very last moment, Tor.com came along with not one BUT TWO circus stories. I don’t know if y’all know this about me, but I hold the controversial opinion that Circus Shoes is the second-best of Noel Streatfeild’s Shoes books, yes, BETTER THAN SKATING SHOES. (This opinion is mainly controversial insofar as very few people know that Circus Shoes even exists.) I read Circus Shoes when I was nine years old, and I’ve been chasing that circus high ever since.
(A complaint: If anybody has written an Avengers AU where they’re all circus performers, I have yet to read it. WYD, internet?)
The first of these circus stories is Mimi Mondal’s “His Footsteps, through Darkness and Light” (7500 words, Tor.com), which follows a circus boy called Binu’da who has been allowed into the confidence of Shehzad Marid, a lamp jinni who conjures magnificent illusions for the Majestic Oriental Circus. When their circus gets hired to perform at the wedding of a raja’s daughter, Binu’da finds himself caught between conflicting loyalties.
“His Footsteps, through Darkness and Light” considers what it means to be free, what it means to be bound to someone else’s service, and how to live ethically under any of those conditions. Shehzad Marid chose Binu’da to be the master of the lamp, and they have a close relationship in spite of the complexity of their situation. At the raja’s daughter’s wedding, Binu’da is approached a devadasi, one of the dancers for the temple, who seeks to find another life that does not bind her to the service of a raja and a god. Though Binu’da is free enough to offer her that life, he is not free enough to escape the consequences of his choice, or hers; and the choice he makes in the end leaves him with a life that will have much in common with that Savithri (the devadasi) and Shehzad Marid. It’s an interesting take on freedom and bondage within the context of love and choice.
Any new fiction from JY Yang is cause for celebration, so you can imagine my joy when they have elected to write about a girl running away from the circus to join real life. “Circus Girl, the Hunter, and Mirror Boy” (9100 words, Tor.com) follows a woman named Lynette who once performed in a circus. After an attack by a fellow performer that left her near death, she acquired a silent companion she called Mirror Boy, who looked back at her from mirrors and supported her when times were hard. As she got older, Mirror Boy appeared less and less often, and finally disappeared altogether; but now, when Lynette is in her twenties, he’s back, with a warning that Lynette is in danger.
Oh my GOSH the worldbuilding in this story! Yang is a dab hand at creating lived-in characters very quickly, and I particularly loved Chrissa, the witch Lynette goes to consult when she realizes that her situation requires more expertise than she possesses. Lynette refers to Chrissa’s home as “one of the pockets of weird I’d curated” in her new, circus-free life, which I absolutely love. This story’s matter-of-fact approach to supernatural creatures reminded me a little of Robin McKinley’s best book, Sunshine, such that I am deeply hopeful Yang will write more stories about Chrissa and her clients in this curious, dreamy city. The resolution to Lynette and Mirror Boy’s problem is tidy in an emotionally messy way, which I’m coming to find is a specialty of Yang’s. This story was absolutely terrific, and left me wanting more more more.
I missed a lot of the recent Discourse about hopepunk, and still do not feel very sure that I know what hopepunk is exactly, but I have to imagine that it sometimes looks like Jamie Wahl’s “Eater of Worlds” (4800 words, Clarkesworld). It’s about a very small ship, or missile, called Kali, who is falling or flying very quickly towards a planet, and trying to sort out what she’s come there to do. When she discovers that what she was sent there to do might be to destroy everything, she has to sort out within her own mind what kind of a creature she was made to be, and what kind of a creature she wants to be. This story has my favorite closing sentences that I’ve read in a while. Yr girl teared up reading them.
Reprints in Clarkesworld in January included Marissa Lingen’s “Left to Take the Lead” (11500 words), originally from Analog. It’s about an indentured servant in a future, more miserable version of Earth, trying to make her way in the world after a series of misfortunes split her family apart. Holly has been waiting to hear from her uncles, who have been doing everything they can to bring the family back together: their home, and Holly, and her two beloved younger siblings, Hans and Cora, whose well-being motivates every decision Holly makes. (Surprise, I loved a siblings story.) This story is evidently part of a series of Oort Cloud Stories, which may explain the robustness of the worldbuilding and the very very lived-in feeling that I got from Holly’s present on earth and her memories of Oort. At its heart, this is a story about waiting to be saved, and deciding when you will be the one doing the saving. So. You know. Topical.
What short fiction have you read this past month, friends? What did I miss that I should circle back to?