"An Unkindness" and The Time-Traveling Popcorn Ball

I've finished the second novella in A Sinister Quartet--Jessica Wick's "An Unkindness." It's fabulous in a completely different way from "The Twice-Drowned Saint," and isn't that what's great about a good anthology? This is a good anthology.

Ravenna is the younger sister of Aliver, the heir to their peninsular kingdom, which has a bloody past and still has things like bride tasks to win a hand in marriage, but also has tourists and lawyers--a sort of early twentieth century, maybe? Aliver has always been a sterling brother, affectionate and lively, who would love to have the family motto changed to "Never satisfied, always curious." The actual family motto is "Loyalty is true," and both mottos come into play when Ravenna realizes her brother has changed--much like Kay in Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. He's slipping away to a fairy realm underneath a garden fountain. Well. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a brother palely loitering in fairy realms is in need of a rescue, or he may find himself paying a teind to hell.

Fortunately, Ravenna is up to the task. She is a wonderful combination of indomitable and self-deprecating, able to affect the manners of her station but often quailing within--a delight, as here, when she describes lurking:

The last thing I wanted to do was dance, especially in case the owl-woman saw and asked how my oath had been concluded so quickly, and so I lurked. I am quite good at lurking at balls. The key is to be in constant motion, always on the periphery. I found a refreshment table and lurked there, but touched none of the food. I found a table with a game of cards and lurked there until the players made noises as if I should join them. The cards they used looked nothing like any deck I have ever seen. I lurked beside a little silver bear who I mistook for a statue at first, until she asked me for the name of a color.

And the fairies and fairy realm is wonderful. About a third of its denizens are creatures out of Remedios Varo's paintings, beings with animal or plant heads. As for the human-seeming ones...

another third went about with their eyes closed, as if blind or sleepwalking. The final third seemed to be human, but human in a tugging sort of way. They weren’t necessarily beautiful, but they were difficult not to look at.

... And they are cruel and decadent, as often fairies are.

Ravenna's quick wits as she goes up against this story's fairy queen are a joy to read, but there's another, more understated strength in that story, and that has to do with why Aliver has put himself in this situation and what it means that Ravenna sees things through to the end. If you've ever dealt with the depression of a loved one, or ever been the one suffering from depression, with your family hovering around, that element of the story will speak to you.

Denizen of Jessica Wick's fairyland, as portrayed by Remedios Varo




That's one-half of the sinister quartet! Hoping to finish the other two tales before the collection goes live, next Tuesday. If you're interested, you can preorder here.

I also want to call your attention to Aster Glenn Gray's The Time-Traveling Popcorn Ball, which went live yesterday--unfairly overshadowed by our on-fire country's news shit show. It's a wonderful story, unique and satisfying. It all begins when a popcorn ball appears on the stand where Piper's dad keeps his treasured baseball. One minute the popcorn ball is there.... next minute it's gone. But then when Piper and her big sister Angela step are walking to the store, there's the popcorn ball again. Angela gives it a kick...

It wasn’t a very good kick. She caught it at a bad angle, mushing in one side and only kicking it forward a few feet.

But – and I saw this specifically – there was a little rose quartz pebble lying on the busted up sidewalk. The popcorn ball rolled over it, and it picked the pebble right up.

“Angela!” I yelled. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” she asked. And then I remembered she hadn’t seen the popcorn ball in Dad’s room at all. She didn’t know that it already had the pebble on it then – before it picked up the pebble now. And the popcorn ball was gone again.

The popcorn ball leads to a friendship with a girl from the past, and time hijinks ensue, but it's Aster Glenn Gray, so in addition to time adventures, you also get really great exploration of interpersonal relations.

Link to that one is here--both Kindle edition and paperback. It's fun reading as an adult, but would also be great to share with a middle-grade-aged reader.