Beneath Ceaseless Skies #398, January 11, 2024

“Willow Wood” by Linda Niehoff

“Home Bread” by R. E. Dukalsky

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

Two stories in which people use the magic contained in ordinary objects to connect with those they have lost appear in this issue.

The narrator of “Willow Wood” by Linda Niehoff witnesses a young man play a tune on a fiddle that calls back the dead. The outcome of this brief tale is clear from the start. The story is most notable for its lyrical, evocative style rather than its plot.

“Home Bread” by R. E. Dukalsky takes place in a fantasy world where those who die without eating a piece of homemade bread at the moment of death are doomed to an afterlife of famine. The protagonist has a special relationship with the spirit of bread. Relatives of a ghost condemned to wander in the land of famine persuade her to enter that dangerous realm in order to end his suffering and send him to an afterlife of feasting. Complicating matters is the fact that the dead man was a bitter, much disliked person, likely to be hostile to his rescuer.

The premise is unique, and the story is full of mouthwatering descriptions of food. (Part of the ritual needed to set the dead man free involves all his relatives and associates preparing an elaborate meal for him.) As with the previous story, there is little suspense, and the work is better appreciated for its writing rather than its plot.

Victoria Silverwolf drove through snow today.