Aurealis “The Great Tree Migration” by Sam Cecins
“The Beasties” by Dorothy-Jane Daniels
“Tucking My Feathers in Your Brittle Heart” by Sophia-Maria Nicolopoulos
Reviewed by Eric Kimminau
Aurealis is “Australia’s longest running SF/fantasy magazine” and I have enjoyed several past issues. I am looking forward to another breath of clean fresh fun through new and imaginative stories.
“The Great Tree Migration” by Sam Cecins focuses on Amber, a teenage girl relocating with her father, Wallace, to a remote cattle station following his engagement to Eileen. This is a change that deeply disrupts Amber’s life and causes resentment. Their journey is immediately punctuated by the sudden, inexplicable emergence of a global phenomenon: The Great Tree Migration, where trees uproot and begin walking in search of more hospitable environments. This extraordinary event serves as a bizarre backdrop to Amber’s emotional turbulence and her struggle to accept her new stepmother and rural life, a conflict exacerbated by the discovery of her late mother’s (grandmother’s) ring on Eileen’s hand. The story explores themes of adaptation, acceptance, and the fracturing of the natural world. A breaking point is reached when Amber attempts to run away, only to crash her car into a moving thicket of trees and is heroically rescued by Eileen. This intense, shared trauma and Eileen’s subsequent act of returning Amber’s mother’s ring, giving Amber agency over the symbol of her grief, is a turning point between Amber and Eileen as they witness the coordinated, and now somewhat predictable, movement of the trees. “Also, I just think walking trees are kind of cool.”
“The Beasties” by Dorothy-Jane Daniels follows Shanee, who lives in a coastal community reshaped by a rising sea where mysterious, self-assembling entities known as “beasties,” composed of random ocean debris and junk, have recently begun to appear. When Shanee’s skiff breaks down, one of these beasties, ignoring her presence, inexplicably repairs a broken touchpad, initiating Shanee’s firm belief in their conscious, benevolent nature. She keeps this miraculous event secret from her partner, Dana, who firmly dismisses the beasties as mere inanimate piles of collected waste. Shanee continues her interactions with the beasties, perceiving them as playful and intelligent. The conflict escalates when Shanee finds a fire actively consuming one of the beasties, forcing her to intervene without success. After this tragedy, she dedicates herself to rebuilding what she believes is the core of the destroyed entity. The narrative concludes with a moment of fragile hope as Shanee’s efforts appear to stir a small, new beastie to life, allowing her to hope she can warn them to stay away and remain safe. However, Shanee’s tenacious faith in the beasties, even after witnessing their destruction and defying Dana’s common-sense warnings, stretches the reader’s credulity. Her sustained naivety and simplified understanding of the “beasties” resulted in a loss of connection and ultimately affected this reader’s engagement with her character arc.
“Tucking My Feathers in Your Brittle Heart” by Sophia-Maria Nicolopoulos is a story in a fragmented narrative exploring the raw grief of Rhea as she confronts the death of her husband, Pavlos, who chose a unique form of mercy killing offered by the company HYPNOS INC. Pavlos, a researcher and pioneer of the “HYPNOS experience,” opted to spend his final days in a simulated reality of his own choosing, flying with a prehistoric bird, the Pelagornis, which is set to terminate on a date significant to their life together. The two parallel narratives, Rhea’s painful journey to the sterile hospital room and her frantic inner monologue on vulnerability and commitment, versus Pavlos’s serene, escapist fantasy where he struggles to block out the memory of her, reveal the profound disconnect in their final separation. Rhea ultimately signs the necessary termination papers, reluctantly fulfilling his last wish for a dignified, painless end through technological fantasy, though she struggles to accept his decision to exclude her from his final moments. The narrative concludes with their final thoughts mirroring each other: Rhea expressing her love and promise to reunite in a place of shared memory (Icaria), and Pavlos sending a final, ethereal message of love and presence, assuring her he will remain in the “little things” she often overlooks.
The “Story behind the story” truly made me think. If you could recapture and relive your most loved childhood memory in your final moments at the cost of losing the ability to spend it with those you love most, would you do it. I don’t think I could, but I re-read this entire story after understanding and I enjoyed it that much more.
I continue to enjoy Aurealis every opportunity I have to read it. I found three stories featuring fantastic elements: “The Great Tree Migration” uses walking trees as a backdrop for a teen’s forced acceptance of her new stepmother, leading to a reconciliation after a shared crisis. “The Beasties” explores a character’s unwavering, almost naive faith in sentient junk creatures and “Tucking My Feathers in Your Brittle Heart” utilizes a virtual reality mercy-killing service, prompting a deep reflection on a spouse’s final choice between reliving a treasured memory or spending their last moments with a loved one. Aurealis has again proven to be a compelling and thought-provoking journey.
Eric Kimminau is a BBS geek turned IT professional seeking the next Great Adventure. Let’s Go!