Sword and Sonnet, page 1
Sword and Sonnet © 2018 Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, E. Catherine Tobler
Words in an Unfinished Poem © 2018 A.C. Wise, A Subtle Fire Beneath the Skin © 2018 Hayley Stone, As for Peace, Call it Murder © 2018 C.S.E. Cooney, She Calls Down the Future in the Footprints Left Behind © 2018 Setsu Uzumé, Candied Sweets, Cornbread, and Black-eyed Peas © 2018 Malon Edwards, El Cantar de la Reina Bruja © 2018 Victoria Sandbrook, The Other Foot © 2018 Margo Lanagan, Eight-Step Kōan © 2018 Anya Ow, The Firefly Beast © 2018 Tony Pi, Her Poems are Inked in Fears and Blood © 2018 Kira Lees, The Words of Our Enemies, The Words Of Our Hearts © 2018 A. Merc Rustad, Labyrinth, Sanctuary © 2018 A.E. Prevost, Heartwood, Sapwood, Spring © 2018 Suzanne J. Willis, The Bone Poet and God © 2018 Matt Dovey, And The Ghosts Sang With Her: A Tale of The Lyrist © 2018 Spencer Ellsworth, Dulce et Decorum © 2018 S.L. Huang, The Fiddler at the Heart of the World © 2018 Samantha Henderson, She Searches for God in the Storm Within © 2018 Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, A Voice in Many Different Forms © 2018 Osahon Ize-Iyamu, Recite Her the Names of Pain © 2018 Cassandra Khaw, Siren © 2018 Alex Acks, This Lexicon of Bone and Feathers © 2018 Carlie St. George, Dark Clouds & Silver Linings © 2018 Ingrid Garcia
Cover Illustration by Vlada Monakhova
Cover Design by Holly Heisey
First Published in July 2018 by Ate Bit Bear
v 1.0
Contents
Introduction
Words in an Unfinished Poem by A.C. Wise
A Subtle Fire Beneath the Skin by Hayley Stone
As For Peace, Call It Murder by C. S. E. Cooney
She Calls Down the Future in the Footprints Left Behind by Setsu Uzumé
Candied Sweets, Cornbread, and Black-eyed Peas by Malon Edwards
El Cantar de la Reina Bruja by Victoria Sandbrook
The Other Foot by Margo Lanagan
Eight-Step Kōan by Anya Ow
The Firefly Beast by Tony Pi
Her Poems Are Inked in Fears and Blood by Kira Lees
The Words of Our Enemies, The Words Of Our Hearts by A. Merc Rustad
Labyrinth, Sanctuary by A.E. Prevost
Heartwood, Sapwood, Spring by Suzanne J. Willis
The Bone Poet and God by Matt Dovey
And The Ghosts Sang With Her: A Tale of The Lyrist by Spencer Ellsworth
Dulce et Decorum by S. L. Huang
The Fiddler at the Heart of the World by Samantha Henderson
She Searches for God in the Storm Within by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
A Voice in Many Different Forms by Osahon Ize-Iyamu
Recite Her the Names of Pain by Cassandra Khaw
Siren by Alex Acks
This Lexicon of Bone and Feathers by Carlie St. George
Dark Clouds & Silver Linings by Ingrid Garcia
About the Editors
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
Sword and Sonnet contains twenty-three fantasy and science fiction stories featuring women or non-binary battle poets. Throughout history, poems have been used as weapons in powerful and creative ways. Sappho writing in exile. Federico García Lorca and the Spanish Civil War. Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. Pablo Neruda. Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise. The pioneers of hip hop. All the people in history whose pen was their sword, especially those from marginalized genders whose work has been lost or forgotten.
Before poet Christina Rossetti was old enough to write she had composed her first verse: “Cecilia never went to school without her gladiator.” Emma Lazarus’ New Colossus adorns the Statue of Liberty and is best known for the phrase “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” Less commonly referenced are words from the same poem: “A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning.” Our hope is that this anthology gathers part of that spirit.
One of the reasons poets are so often associated with revolution is that they help define how a country sees itself. Australian Dorothea Cackler’s My Country (“I love a sunburnt country/A land of sweeping plains,/Of ragged mountain ranges,/Of droughts and flooding rains.”) José Martí’s revolutionary writings were quoted by both pro and anti-Castro Cubans. C. S. E. Cooney’s story in this collection is inspired by the events of Chile’s military coup.
Poets have critiqued each other, as well as society. Roman poet Horace wrote Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. Almost 2000 years later, British World War One soldier Wilfred Owen wrote an anti-war poem in response, a scathing critique of Horace’s “old lie.” S.L. Huang’s Sword and Sonnet story references the title and ruminates on what it means to wield a weapon.
Emily Wilson became the first woman to translate Homer’s Odyssey into English and commented that “female translators often stand at a critical distance when approaching authors who are not only male, but also deeply embedded in a canon that has for many centuries been imagined as belonging to men...Earlier translators are not as uncomfortable with the text as I am and I like that I’m uncomfortable.” Cassandra Khaw’s Sword and Sonnet story plays with the idea of modern sirens inspired by Wilson’s translation. Alex Acks’ future siren story includes a spaceship-devouring poet.
In his book Venice Incognito, James H. Johnson details the complaints of 18th century Venetian poet Carlo Gozzi, who bemoaned that modern women were emboldened by French philosophies, “filling their heads with ‘fashions, frivolous inventions, rivalries in games, amusements, loves, coquetries, and all sorts of nonsense.’ They have bolted from their houses, he continued, ‘storming like Bacchantes, screaming out Liberty! Liberty!’ while neglecting their children, servants, and household duties.” Even in the 21st century, many men are intimidated by the idea of educated and free women. Suzanne J. Willis’ story looks at a city where women’s words are suppressed.
Kira Lees’ story is set in Heian-era Japan and includes an assassin who feeds off the words of poets. Heian-era writer Sei Shōnagon was renowned for intimidating the men of court with her knowledge of poetry. Shōnagon was the author of The Pillow Book, one of the classics of Japanese literature. In her introduction to The Pillow Book, Meredith McKinney says:
“Anyone who hoped to be admired and accepted had to be deeply knowledgeable about the poetic canon, particularly the poems contained in the classic poetry collections such as Kokinshu, and able to weave apposite allusions to them into her or his own occasional poetry. Wittily nuanced messages, generally containing a poem, flew constantly between members of the court and sometimes beyond; these in turn required a suitable extempore poem in response, written in an elegant hand on paper carefully chosen for appropriateness of color and quality, in every aspect of which one’s sensibility and character would be displayed for intense scrutiny.
Although such exchanges of poetry were common throughout the court, by long tradition it was the romantic relationship that quintessentially embodied the essence of poetic exchange. A man could fall in love with a woman on the evidence of little more than her poems; a woman could decide to sever relations with a man if he demonstrated poetic obtuseness, as Sei Shōnagon several times describes herself doing in The Pillow Book...[She] was a masterful practitioner of the art of witty repartee and poetic exchange...and The Pillow Book abounds in tales of various hapless gentleman’s defeat at her hands. She evidently had an astonishingly quick mind, and could cap any allusion that came her way.”
Aidan once received a rejection for a story featuring a battle poet with the comment that “unsympathetic protagonists were a difficult sell” and mentioned this to S. L. Huang who remarked that she would love to read a story about a badass battle poet. The story later sold to PodCastle, but Aidan had the idea for an anthology of battle poet stories. Elise and Rachael joined the project and we invited a number of authors to contribute. After running a successful crowdfunding campaign, we held an open submission period. We were thrilled with the range of stories we received and hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as we did.
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- Aidan, Rachael and Elise
WORDS IN AN UNFINISHED POEM
A.C. Wise
Rust-colored dirt blown in under the door coats the saloon’s floor. The gunslinger occupies a corner where the amber light slanting through the tinted glass doesn’t quite reach. When the door swings open, the gunslinger is the only one who doesn’t raise their head. Spurs jingle on the man’s boots as he crunches through the grit covering the planks. He wears a hat slouched low, greasy strands of gray-brown hair the shade of an owl’s wing trailing beneath it. A belt slung around his hips holds a six shooter.
The gunslinger watches him move. There’s a scrape to his step, even though he strives to keep his stance wide. The way he holds himself guards against some pain, but more than that there’s something broken in him, like the jagged edge of bone against bone, but nothing so clean that it can be splinted.
As he approaches the gunslinger’s table, there’s a moment when the man turns his head as though he’ll spit.
But instead he mumbles “Buy you a round?” his words scratching. Nothing so elegant as gin or bourbon; corn mash rough, matched by the crimson threading his eyes.
A half empty bottle already sits at the gunslinger’s elbow, no glass in sight. The man fumbles his search for more words, and the barest ghost of a smile touches the gunslinger’s lips.
The gunslinger watches as the man suppresses the urge to spit again, a visible thing, before he drops a clinking pouch onto the table between them. The gunslinger doesn’t move—no tilt of head or hand. The man’s shoulders rise, his posture a spooked cat’s, bristling against something wrong.
The gunslinger is used to such. The man doesn’t like them, but few people do on first meeting. This man is unsettled by what he can see—the subtle gold of their eyes, the angle of their hat, tipped low as his own. And he is unsettled more by what he cannot see, but feels—an aura akin to ghosts clinging to the gunslinger. If the gunslinger were to move, the man, whose name is Emmett Tremaine, would hear the faint chime of secret metal sewn within their clothing. He wouldn’t like that either. But the hurt in him runs deep enough to make him swallow his pride and take the seat across from the gunslinger.
“I hear you can kill a man with a single word,” Emmett says.
There’s a click in Emmett’s throat, a sound of fear. He licks his lips, glancing to the bottle at the gunslinger’s elbow. The gunslinger nudges it forward. Unasked, the bartender materializes with a glass then silently returns to the bar.
“Not only men,” the gunslinger says. Emmett flinches, spilling whiskey as the mouth of the bottle skips across the rim of the glass. “And not just a word.”
The gunslinger reaches into their pocket. Emmett’s chair jumps back until he sees the movement hasn’t resulted in a drawn gun. The gunslinger sets a single bullet casing in the center of the table.
All the hair on Emmett’s arms, the back of his neck, and even his thighs, stands on end. There’s a word etched onto the casing, the lettering scarce thicker than a spider’s web. Before he can read the word, the gunslinger covers the shell with their hand, disappears it into their pocket, and smiles. It is the most unsettling expression Emmett has ever seen.
“I’m writing a poem,” the gunslinger says. An explanation that sounds like a warning, a confession, and tastes of sorrow. To Emmett, it means nothing.
He shakes himself then reaches into his own pocket, hand trembling as he sets a daguerreotype on the table. It shows a seated man, a woman standing behind him with her hand on his shoulder. Her hair is braided into a crown around her head; her lips and eyes unsmiling. The man’s chin and cheeks are clean-shaven, but he sports a mustache, and his hair is carefully parted and oiled. He looks nothing like the man sitting opposite the gunslinger, yet he is one and the same.
“She—” Emmett’s voice breaks. He touches the photograph with one finger, nail rimed with dirt. The slouch of his hat almost hides his tears.
Emmett stands, a jerky motion. He yanks at the belt around his waist, nearly tears his trousers as he tugs them down. The tail of his shirt hides all but the end of the scar, still angry red where it streaks across Emmett’s thigh. The gunslinger can guess where the scar begins. An inch to the left, and Emmett would have been unmanned in more than just spirit.
“I need her dead.” Emmett speaks with his head turned, fumbling his trousers back into place, his humiliation complete. Not just want, but need. The gunslinger sees it, raw and ugly as Emmett’s scar as he sits again and meets the gunslinger’s eyes.
“Where?” the gunslinger asks.
“Foster’s Creek.” Emmett’s shoulders hitch.
The gunslinger looks at Emmett a moment longer, their head tipped subtly as though listening to a sound only they can hear. Then the bag of coins is no longer on the table, and the gunslinger is on their feet. It is done.
The gunslinger’s soft leather boots make no sound as they cross the room to place coins on the bar. The daguerreotype is no longer on the table either, but the bottle of whiskey remains. Emmett takes a slug as he watches the gunslinger walk to the door. There’s a soft chime, the ringing of metal against metal. It is the sound of a thousand bullet casings sewn together beneath the gunslinger’s clothes, the words carved on each forming an unfinished poem. Emmett upends the bottle, leaking whiskey into the stubble on his chin. When the bottle is empty, he slams it back onto the table, wondering what in name of hell and all its demons he has done.
Emily Tremaine, born Emily Wilks, and going by another name entirely now—Caroline Pitkin—lives in a narrow house at the end of a row of houses. The house isn’t hers; she rents a room, taking in mending and washing for coin. Wind chimes made from flattened scraps of tin clatter as the gunslinger approaches. There’s a side yard where freshly-washed shirts flap in the breeze and the shoots of something green struggle to grow. A handwritten sign in Emily’s window advertises her services—one rate for mending, another for washing, both reasonable.
“Come in,” Emily calls when the gunslinger knocks.
The gunslinger opens the door onto a room running straight back to the rear of the house. At the far end, there’s a bed, in the mid-ground, a table with two chairs, and near where the gunslinger stands, a small pot-bellied stove. Emily looks up from running a hot iron over a pair of trousers, startling at the sight of the gunslinger as if expecting someone else. Her grip tightens on the iron’s handle. The gunslinger shows open palms, arms held away from their body.
Strands of hair escape the loose braid trailing down Emily’s back. Some of them are gray. Lines of care gather around her eyes. She is thicker at the waist than the girl in Emmett’s photograph, but the gunslinger does not mistake her.
With exaggerated slowness, so she can track the movement, the gunslinger opens the satchel hung at their side and pulls out three shirts.
“Washing, mending, or both?” Emily relaxes a fraction, but the wariness doesn’t disappear.
And at the same time, she lifts her chin—a touch of defiance armoring over the fear in her hazel eyes. Afraid or no, Emily Wilks won’t be running anymore.
“Both.”
The gunslinger lets Emily come to them and take the shirts from their hand. She shakes them out, and her eyebrow goes up at the holes marked in powder burns, bordered by the tell-tale ghosts of scrubbed-out blood stains.
“Sure you wouldn’t rather I burn them?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I was joking.” Emily sets the shirts aside, assessing the gunslinger as if she’s trying to read all the roads they’ve traveled to get to here and guess at the secrets beneath their skin.
“Get shot at a lot, do you?” The corner of Emily’s mouth quirks upward.
“From time to time.” The gunslinger allows themself a smile.
Despite being indoors, they haven’t removed their hat, but they tip their head up enough for the light to catch their eyes. If there’s a hiss of inhaled breath at their color, Emily hides it well. She retrieves a scrap of paper and a stub of pencil.
“Want me to write you a receipt?”
“No need, ma’am.”
For just a moment, the bones of Emily’s spine stiffen, like an animal scenting something dangerous on the breeze. She smoothes her expression as she sets the paper down, moving back toward the iron.
“You can pick the shirts up at the end of the week, or I can have them delivered.”
“The end of the week is fine, ma’am, and thank you.”
The gunslinger almost asks whether they can call on her again. It works, sometimes. Some folks are hungry enough in their fear that the gunslinger saying how they’re new in town and wanting a friendly face gets a smile, an invitation to dine. Sometimes they suggest a game of cards, or a drink. But every line of Emily’s body speaks guardedness, so the gunslinger merely touches the brim of their hat and takes themself to the saloon down the way without a further word.
A sign hung from the eaves advertises rooms to rent and hot baths. The gunslinger pays two weeks up front, along with coin for a bottle of whiskey, a hot supper, and for a tub and water to be brought to their room. The bartender looks askance at the last until the gunslinger lays enough coins on the bar to shut the bartender’s mouth and send him scurrying.
