The Midnight Circus, стр. 48
Thepoem below was written back in 2012, but this is its first publication.
Deer,Dances
Theday, the night I was a deer,
little leaves and shoots tempted me,
acorns in their hard jackets,
andthe wild white clover.
River became my only drink,
runningover twenty-one stones.
I did not mind getting wet.
Doemy woman, sang to me,
andthe little spotted fawn, my family,
cheered as I danced by,
thewhite flag of my tail
semaphoring my joy at speaking,
atdancing with my little brothers.
Allthe while, my hooves
struck turquoise from the rock,
leaving a jeweledtrail.
Youwatched me run until the dawn,
sweat glistening on my hide,
themoon resting in my antlers.
I shall return to you soon,
butnot so soon I have left
the flint of my soul behind.
RequiemAntarctica (with Robert J. Harris)
Ihad an idea. My novels usually start with an idea, my short storieswith a first line. The idea for this story was simple butfascinating—that polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott, bitten by avampire when still in England, and finding himself now one of thathorrid crew, takes on the task of leading a crew of explorers to thePole in the hopes to cool his hot vampiric blood. When crewman Oates,upon whom he had been feeding after his own blood supplies and assortedbirds and other creatures ran out, said, “I am just going outside andmay be some time” (this is a true part of Scott’s well-documentedadventure), Scott knew his own time was up and he hoped no one wouldever find his own body, a double sacrifice.
Okay—Ihad the idea, but that was all except for several bad tries at abeginning and no real plot to speak of. Iwas in Scotland having dinner with my friends Debby and Bob Harris,and spilled the vampiric beans. (We three are all published writers anddinner conversations often are about things we are writing.) Bob—withwhom I’d written several published short stories and eight publishednovels—said in his almost unparsable Dundonian accent that he was ahuge Falcon Scott fanatic and had many rare books about the man. Bob isalso a plot genius. “Let’s write it together,” I said. We did, andsold it very quickly to Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in2000. Frankly, I always thought it should be longer—novella length. Butwe never got around to writing that.
Thepoem first came out in the anthology The Mammoth Book of VampireStories by Women in 2001, edited by the indefatigableanthologist Stephen Jones, and then as lyrics for a song by the group FolkUnderground.
Vampyr
Westalk the dark,
Live in the flood.
Wetake the madness
In the blood.
Amoment’s prick,
A minute’s pain
And then we live
To love again.
Drinkthe night.
Ruethe day.
Wehear the beat
Beneath the breast.
We sip the wine
That fills the chest.
Amoment’s prick,
A minute’s pain,
Our living is not
Just in vein.
Drinkthe night,
Rue the day.
Wedo not shrink
Fromblood’s dark feast.
We take the man,
Weleave the beast.
Amoment’s prick,
A minute’s pain,
We live to love
Tolive again.
Drinkthe night,
Rue the day.
NightWolves
Yes,I was one of those kids—who hear and see and smell things at night. Hadnightmares. And middle child, son Adam, took after me. As an adult, hesolved it by becoming super-dark in his own writing. Fighting firewith fire. In my adulthood, I stopped worrying about bears and wolvesand started worrying about burglars and jewel thieves. (I don’t havethose kinds of jewels!) And then I got an alarm system. As I live in asmall town, the police are very quick to get to me, as the station isonly half a block away from my house. I found out how fast theyresponded when I pushed a button on a necklace I found in my bedsidetable. I hadn’t remembered it was an alarm, the kind for old ladies whomay fall in the middle of the night. Before I could figure out how toshut it off, there was a policeman at my door! Nightwolves wasfirst published in an anthology called The Haunted House in1995.
Thepoem was first published in a small magazine called SilverBlade in 2013.
BadDreams
Theycome like reivers
onhardy nightmare nags,
crossing the borders
between waking and sleep.
Early winter is best,
whennights are long.
I fear them greatly,
forthey steal away my rest.
Last night you came to me
in your steel bonnet,
death’shead staring straight out.
I knew you by your blue eyes,
those eyesthat had followed me
for sleepless nights six years ago
whenyou died, your hand in mine.
I live in a Peel Tower now,
heartfortified against assault.
Love may try to smoke me out
but I willoutwait and outwit you,
waking to a better morning.
TheHouse of Seven Angels
Ido not remember writing this story, or where I found out about allthose angels. (I am 80, and the story was published in a collectionof mine called Here There Be Angels, 1996, more thantwenty years ago.) But several things I do know about the story: it isset in the same town as my grandfather Samson, grandmother Manya, andtheir eight children had lived. My father had been seven years old whenthey came to America, escaping the next pogrom.
Thepoem’s first publication is in this book.
Anticipation
Waterdrop
onthe lip of a spout.
Troutlifting itself
after a fly.
Villellasuspended
in mid-leap.
Thenight before
Chanukah.
Everythingdepends
onthe gravity of angels
and that long fall into day.
GreatGray
Somuch about this story is true: the setting, the crazy lady, theirruption of Great Gray owls in Hatfield, the little town I havelived in for the past 50 years. My husband, a passionate birder, taughtus all to bird. Our youngest son, Jason, at the time this story is set,was ten years old, rode his bike all around town showing itinerantbirders whereto the find the owls. Also, I came upon a bizarre group of people whoseemed to be worshiping in a small swampy grove near the outskirts oftown, kneeling down one after another as if in prayer. They turned outto be kneeling at the foot of the tree where a Great Gray eyed them ina puzzled manner, as they