Short Story Corner | Let Maps To Others by K. J. Parker

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the lead story in the Summer 2012 issue of Subterranean Press Magazine. "To Be Read Upon Your Waking" was a real treat, and it's great to see Robert Jackson Bennett on the receiving end of such recognition, but for my money - not, I should stress, that I spent any - "Let Maps To Others" by K. J. Parker is a hair's breadth better than Bennett's very fine fairytale.

It begins, as ever with the work of this wildly witty writer, brilliantly:

There is such a place. And I have been there.

They all say that, don’t they? They say; I met someone once who spent five years there, disguised as a holy man. Or; the village headman told me his people go there all the time, to trade timber and flour for spices. Or; the priest showed me things that had come from there—a statuette, a small, curiously-fashioned box, a pair of shoes, a book I couldn’t read. Or; from the top of the mountain we looked out across the valley and there it was, on the other side of the river, you could just make out the sun glinting off the spires of the temples. Or; I was taken there, I saw the Great Gate and the Forbidden Palace, I sat and drank goat-butter tea with the Grand Master, who was seven feet tall and had his eyes, nose and mouth set in the middle of his chest.

You hear them, read them. The first, second, third time, you believe. The fourth time, you want to believe. The fifth time, you notice a disturbing pattern beginning to emerge—how they were always so close they could hear the voices of the children and smell the woodsmoke, but for this reason or that reason they couldn’t go the last two hundred yards and had to turn back (but it was there, it is there, it’s real, it really exists). The sixth time breaks your heart. By the seventh time, you’re a scholar, investigating a myth.

I am a scholar. I have spent my entire life investigating what I now firmly believe to be a myth. But there is such a place. And I have been there.

This sumptuously circular excerpt is evidence enough, I think, of why I believe K. J. Parker to be amongst genre fiction's foremost talents.

And at long last, it appears I'm no longer alone (or as near as dammit) in that assertion, because of late the blogosphere has been abuzz with talk of Parker's new novel, Sharps. Which I need not add makes me very happy - this breakthrough has been an age in the making - alas, my happiness has been blunted somewhat by the sad fact that I'm going to have to stop referring to the rising pseudonymous star as fantasy's most under-appreciated author.

But hey, all's well that ends well!

In any event, like the mind behind Mr. Shivers' discomfiting contribution to the latest edition of Subterranean Press Magazine, "Let Maps To Others" is also on the long side, at 25,000 words — and the stories are thematically similar to boot.

Both, in a sense, are about discovery; both revolve around the systematic investigation of the unknown, indeed the unknowable. In "To Be Read Upon Your Waking," Bennett's protagonist becomes obsessed by a ruin in the woods which ultimately opens a door into time. Meanwhile, in "Let Maps To Others," Parker's single-minded scholar has spent his entire adult life extrapolating a map of the legendary island of Essecuivo from the only surviving sources. In this pursuit, he is bitterly at odds with another addict.

I should explain about Carchedonius. He’s a fine scholar. He’s painstaking, insightful, clear-headed, occasionally brilliant, always worth listening to. His work on the manuscript tradition of Thraso’s Dialogues was what started me on the road to my finest hour, the deciphering of the Sunao Codex. Between us, we know everything there is to know about Aeneas, and Essecuivo. All in all, it’s a shame we hate each other the way we do.

But that can’t be helped, any more than you can get an injunction to stop the winter. The stupid thing is, neither of us can account for it. I’ve never done him any real harm, though not for want of trying, and all his wild schemes to encompass my downfall have failed or backfired on him. Apparently he has some kind of grudge based on some relative of his losing a lot of money when the Company went under. If that’s really the case, he must’ve nursed it like a shepherd’s wife with an orphan lamb. I think I hate him so much because he hates me, though I’m not sure I didn’t hate him first. In any case, it’s been going on since we were both seventeen-year-old freshmen. I guess it’s an interest for both of us; cheaper than collecting pre-Mannerist miniatures, slightly more exciting than watching the donkey-cart races.

So, when Carchedonius finds proof that his rival's assertions were correct, thus definitively disproving his own competing theory, he does what any arch-enemy would: he destroys the evidence, but only after showing it to our man, who - thus spurned - takes his nemesis' deception to the next level, forging a version of the very document that Carchedonius can only disprove by confessing to his own terrible transgression.

This lie, then, this rivalry, becomes the cornerstone of a long and torturous trip to Essecuivo which of course spirals out of hand, costing the lives of many hundred men. And where, one wonders, lays the blame?

"Let Maps To Others" is a sly, sinuous narrative with - if I'm not mistaken - loose ties to The Company, K. J. Parker's first standalone fantasy, and at 25,000 words, it strikes an ideal balance between the prolonged obfuscation that can come to frustrate in Parker's long-form fiction and the necessarily abbreviated scope of his or her short stories.

(I'm currently inclined towards the latter answer, incidentally.)

It's characteristically twisty and oh so deliciously tricky... yet somehow, at the same time, fairly straightforward. Parker's talent for condensing complex narratives - or else confusing simple ones in such a way as to make them seem more involved than they are - is on superb form in "Let Maps To Others," and I'd recommend it to all and sundry, whatever their exposure to K. J. Parker in the past.

I don't know if "Let Maps To Others" reaches quite the same heights as the lately acclaimed "A Small Price To Pay For Birdsong" - which you may read more about here - but Parker's new novella is a stunner, still. It's that rare story that leaves you feeling smarter for having read it, and it's currently available online for the princely sum of nothing.

Well, what are you waiting for? :)

Short Story Corner | To Be Read Upon Your Waking by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Summer 2012 issue of Subterranean Press Magazine (hallowed be its name) has a new novella by that rising star of speculative fiction Robert Jackson Bennett, author of The Troupe, The Company Man and firm TSS favourite Mr. Shivers. I devoured it in a single sitting the other day, and the story, though faintly familiar - very much the way with modern fairy tales, I'm finding - the story has had me thinking ever since.

"To Be Read Upon Your Waking" is an epistolary affair centered around the correspondence between one lover to another in the late 1940s — which is to say after the fact of World War II, but still very much in the shadow of that terrible time. James, our narrator, has abandoned his ailing life partner Laurence in London, the better to invest what remains of his savings in "a tangible, genuine part of God's green earth. [...] A piece of countryside, of wilderness, a secluded cabin to call our own," namely Anperde Abbey, in France.

Or else what's left of it, because as beautiful as perhaps it once was, the abbey has fallen to rot and ruin. James, then, has his work cut out for him restoring the property, thus his letters to his sickly lover are part apology, and part account of this torturous process. Evidently Laurence does write the occasional reply, but we never see these in "To Be Read Upon Your Waking." Initially, this seems an odd decision - giving us only one half of a continuing conversation to go on - but come the conclusion it's long since a solid call, because as the narrative progresses, and Bennett reveals exactly what otherworldly wonders he has up his sleeve, his rationale becomes abundantly apparent.

As to the plot's particulars, well... I wouldn't want to give the game away, especially when it's so much fun to figure out. Instead, read into this quote what you will:

"The tradespeople I bought my equipment from did seem quite interested to hear where I lived. When I told them I'd bought the old marquis's house, they asked very keenly if I'd had any callers. I wasn't sure what they meant — sales people, I asked, or visitors from the town? We bumbled over it a bit (wish my French was better) but I believe they said there were children whose families live in the forest (like gypsies or travelers, I suppose) who play tricks on nearby residents. Except no one really lives nearby anymore, so that would just leave me. I told them I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of them, and asked 'em why the police didn’t just go in and send all the bastards packing. That just confused them.

"I think they said children. Either way, I have seen no one in the forest.

"That's not the most interesting thing, though, darling — I was examining what I think might have been the inset for the dais when I found a hollow or gap in the floor behind it. It is not an unintentional hole, I am sure of it. It is a door. It goes somewhere. Perhaps a crypt? Not sure. It is filled up with hard, frozen mud, and I have a bad time of it, but sometimes I put my ear to the stone floors, tap on them, and hear something hollow. Maybe I am imagining things."

By which point, I was too!

At 20,000 words, there's room for Bennett to let his narrative and characters breathe — amongst them the marquis, a particularly memorable madman who may be able to answer some of the strange questions James raises. The setting, too, is terrific: in rural France, as magical as it is mysterious, one senses anything can happen, and at Anperde Abbey - beautiful, foreboding and all but lost to the forest - it does.

"To Be Read Upon Your Waking" is a sublime slow-burn of a story, about impossible shadows cast in the darkest part of the woods, as well as more standard suspects such as love, loss and life after death. Bennett only rarely writes short fiction - and at just shy of 20,000 words, this novella hardly fits the description - but I dearly wish he would take the time more often. Mileage may vary, but truth be told, I enjoyed "To Be Read Upon Your Waking" more than I did The Troupe, and you might, too.

Remember: you can, and you assuredly should, read it here for free.

Short Fiction Corner | "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" by K. J. Parker

I marked a lot of firsts last year. More, I think, than can be considered entirely par for the course for a guy in his mid-20s, when short of making a baby or finally getting that blasted book published there's nothing much you can see, or do, or achieve, that in one form or another you haven't already. Yet with TSS, and the expectation that I'd have something at least faintly interesting to say to you all each day - and every day - I found myself reading more widely in 2010; giving the time of day to books and authors I'm afraid to say I'd very likely have ignored before.

Perhaps I would have ended up reading K. J. Parker one day anyway... who can say? As was, one fateful day last Summer, I cosied up with The Folding Knife in large part because its cover bore such a striking image, enjoyed its intent and intelligence a great deal - and have I looked back since? Not for a cotton-pickin' second, no.

In fact in January there I read, reviewed and rather adored The Hammer, the latest standalone novel from the pseudonymous sort, and wished upon finishing it I could somehow find the time to read it all over again, or reach back into Parker's extensive back-catalogue for one of the good old oldies of his and/or hers I'm told I've missed. A few bad eggs in a row, reading-wise - it simply wouldn't do to tell you which just yet - only served to underscore that siren song.

So I added The Company to my tower of books To Be Read, trying not to stress overly much about the entirely unreasonable sense of guilt I felt in so doing, and lo and behold, as if specifically to set my half-maddened mind at ease, along came "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong."

You can read it here - indeed I would urge you to - as part of the stonking Winter edition of Subterranean Magazine, which I count myself quite, quite proud to have subscribed to, way back when it came on paper and cost actual money (especially, I would add, in light of the Atlantic). Also featured in this issue is fiction from genre stalwarts and rising greats such as Larry Niven, Mike Resnick, Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, Robert Silverberg, and another of my own favourite authors, the one, the only... Caitlin R. Kiernan.

Come on, now: you know you want to.
And as well you should.

Anyway, what with the circumstances I've explained, "A Small Price for Birdsong" was the first of the short stories I gravitated towards, and what a story, truly. I hadn't read short-form K. J. Parker before - come to that I don't know that he or (sigh) she has even written a great deal - and though I was worried such a smaller-scale narrative as in "A Small Price for Birdsong" might perhaps be unable to match up against the unimaginable cunning and the whacking great emotional impact of Parker's novels proper, it quickly came clear that whatever fears I might have harboured were for naught. This is K. J. Parker on fine form indeed, doing for music what s/he has done in the past for money... and justice; industry... and engineering.


Let me explain.


Our protagonist: a professor of the aural arts, more tolerated for his tenure at a certain academy than admired for his talent - much to his own infinite misery. Our antagonist: an esteemed student of the selfsame professor who seems frustratingly brilliant at everything he sets his sights on. This time, however, Subtilus has set his sights on murder, and when he's caught, and sentenced to death himself, he passes on his final, unfinished symphony to the professor, who must decide whether to sell it as is, or embellish a final few notes and publish it as his own.


Of course the professor's conundrum is rather complicated when Subtilus somehow escapes the noose, and returns to his master bearing an offer which, if agreed, will change the interlocking courses of both their lives.


"A Small Price for Birdsong" is a stunningly good show - a characteristically light yet more often than can be considered occasionally profound exploration of the notion of ownership, of truth as an objective fact shifting and twisting through layer upon layer of perception and subjectivity. As the student surpasses the master, and the master the student, and the weight of the world shifts to balances out the scales, Parker wrings from two typically ambiguous characters deeply at odds with one another a remarkable and natural morality play the equal of any of his or her more expansive narratives... that I've read.


I understand some readers find K. J. Parker's fiction a little cold, a little distant, and though "A Small Price for Birdsong" is perhaps a less judiciously wicked tale than we're used to from this very distinctive storyteller, if you haven't found warmth anywhere in The Folding Knife or The Hammer or The Engineer Trilogy, likely you'll struggle reading this short story too. However, for all those who've yet to experience the insidious delights of K. J. Parker - who might mayhap have wondered whether the novel-length narrative was the best place to test the waters, as it were - there can be no better place to start than here.


###


PS: I see Jared from Pornokitsch quite beat me to the punch as regards recommending "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong," the cock. (Speaking of which, I'm still waiting!) But certainly as far as this story goes we agree on a great many levels, and I'd urge you to pop on over there to see what he has to say about the fabbiest K. J. Parker freebie ever.


If the pair of us shouting from the blogtops what an incredible short story "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" is doesn't move you to read the goshdarned thing, I don't know what will.


Seriously, go on now. It's still free, and it's still superb...