Sarah Monette - Somewhere Beneath Those Waves

Somewhere Beneath
Those Waves

Sarah Monette

Copyright 2011 by Sarah Monette.

Introduction 2011 by Elizabeth Bear.

Cover art by Elena Dudina.

Cover design by Telegraphy Harness.

Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

ISBN: 978-1-60701-332-7 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-60701-305-1 (trade paperback)

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For Elise, who carries the Moon.

by Elizabeth Bear

I am hardly without bias where Sarah Monette is concerned.

She is my co-author on (so far) three novels, a number of short stories, and the occasional bit of tomfoolery. She is my confidante in matters personal and my co-traveler in matters professional. She is my writing partner: a person I turn to for critiques, perspectives, and that all-important voice that tells me Im being impenetrable again.

But most importantly, she is my friend, and one of the best friends Ive had in my life.

Honesty compels me to acknowledge that friendship, even when I am not here to celebrate it. What I am here to celebrate, rather, is her workor, as I find myself thinking of it, her early work. Because as I write this Sarah is brilliant, and imaginative, and not yet fortyand surely she has many more stories to tell.

I could tell you that her prose is lapidarybut you hold this book in your hands. In a moment, you will see that yourself. I could tell you that her ideas are fantastical and chilling, but... the same applies. I could tell you that she has studied the craft of horror and fantastic fiction from the pens of masters and mistresses of the genre. But you can see the results for yourself.

So instead, I will talk briefly about a few of the stories, and what they mean to me.

This collection opens with my favorite of Sarahs stories to date, Draco campestris , which is named for a necklace created by Elise Mattheson and which inspired me to write a dragon story in response, to which Sarah penned another, and so on. (I believe its currently my turn.)

I may be too in love with this story to speak sensibly about itits non-traditional structure, the way its themes emerge from the narrative like the patterns of a fugue. I find myself speaking in musical metaphors a lot when discussing Sarahs work, possibly because the words so clearly evoke melodies to me. If Draco campestris is a melody, then, it is a grating and discordant one, full of the cries of strange birds and the rasp of scale on stone.

This is a story of details, told in details, and it must be reconstructed as the taxonomist reconstructs legendary creatures from their bones.

And what we learn from those dry bones of narrative is that this is also a love story. A great and tragic love story about two awkward, inarticulate people, the sort that inspires operas and ballads and tear-jerking stage productions for generations to come.

Only Sarah would build a love story that way, like a paleontologist assembling a fossil skeletonhalf by guesswork and half by a profound understanding of how the living animal might have worked, had to have worked. If youre reading it for the first time, I envy you.

Under the Bean Sidhes Pillow is a love story too, an even more unlikely one. It is a story of how immigrants bring their stories with them, and how stories need to be told. Its brief, a page or two, and it echoes with perfect loneliness and perfect devotionfrom the point of view of a banshee who has started to be a bit affected by the stresses of her job.

Not all love is the romantic sort. Theres the love that washes the dead, as well.

The Watcher in the Corners is a ghost story, and its sort of a running joke between Sarah and me that I do not like ghost stories, do not understand them, have very little sympathy for their aims. But The Watcher in the Corners isnt just any ghost story. Its a story about brave young woman in a bad, real world where men, bad and good, had the power to treat their families as possessionsa world that is still very real, for some of us.

What Im getting at is that Sarahs stories are oftenusuallythe stories of awkward outsiders, people who in some way do not fit the expectations of their societies. They are people who are too strong, too introverted, too queer, too transgendered, too haunted, too political, too feral. Her heroes and heroines are aliens in their own worlds, bemused and lonely, and still trying to find connection to other peoplesome way, some how.

So, what you hold in your hands is the first non-themed collection of the short fiction of one Sarah Monette, poet of the awkward and the uncertain, exalter of the outcast, the outr, and the downright weird. There is nothing else quite like it. And no matter how strange and alienated you may feel, there is room in her world for you.

i.

The Museum owns eighty-nine specimens of the genus Draco . It is unlikely that there will be any additions to the collection, for the adit to that array of Arcs has become increasingly unstable in the last two centuries. For that same reason, very little work has been done with the specimens since the last of the great dragon hunters willed his collection to the Museum one hundred thirty-two years ago. They were once a prized exhibit, but since the great taxonomic scandal under the previous Director, they have been an embarrassment rather than a glory. There is a cavernous hall in the sublevels of the Museum where the dragons stand shrouded in layers of yellowing plastic, unvisited, unwept, unremembered.

Their great eye-sockets are full of darkness deeper than shadows.

ii.

The Lady Archangel was no longer in favor with the Empress.

That much was certain, and the Museum buzzed and rustled with the rumors that strove to create the story around that fact. The visitors chattered of it while the tour guides looked remote and superior and squirreled away every tidbit to be shared later over tea. The curators speculated, in slow, disjointed conversations; the visiting scholars asked nervously if there was any danger of an uprising, for the Lady Archangel was popular, and the papers reported unrest in those parts of the Centre where her charity had been most needed and most freely given.

No, said the curators, the tour guides, even the custodians. There had been no uprising in the Centre since the short and bloody reign of the long-ago Emperor Carolus, and there would not be one now. But when the scholars inquired as to the probable fate of the lady herself, they were met with grim headshakes and the sad, gentle advice to concentrate on their research. Whether it was sin or treason the Lady Archangel stood accused of, if she could not prove her innocence, she would be beheaded at the culmination of Aquarius. Such was the penalty for falling when one climbed as high as the Lady Archangel had climbed, and though the Empress was just, she was not merciful. She could not be, and hope to maintain her rule.

It was not for mere poetry that her throne was called the Seat of Dragons.

iii.

The Director has a dream. So she says, and no one in the Museum would dare to say otherwise, no matter how much they may doubt her ability to dream. Everyone knows she does not sleep.

Perhaps it is only a metaphorical dream, but even so, her shining coils are restless with it, her great yellow eyes (which only blink when she remembers that they ought to) hypnotizing. There are rumors that they were the eyes of a basilisk, and somehow that seems more likely than the idea that the Director can dream. Her metal claws score gouges in the vat-grown teak of her desk, and when she leaves her office, the tithe-children come creeping to sand and polish, as they have been doing for years, so that no unwary visitor may catch a splinter in the soft pads of his or her fingers.