Beneath Ceaseless Skies #331, June 3, 2021
“The Woods Echo Back” by Tania Fordwalker
“Worth the Whistling” by Adriana C. Grigore
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
Two stories of young people living near forests appear in this issue.
The main character in “The Woods Echo Back” by Tania Fordwalker is a boy whose mother has recently died. He lives on the edge of the woods with his father, a trapper. The father captures a dragon-like creature, the body of which is worth a fortune. While he is away for months, selling parts of the beast for money, the boy raises one of the animal’s babies as a pet. When he returns, a final confrontation involving all three leads to a change in the boy’s life.
The story benefits from a realistic historical setting, the Black Forest during the Sixteenth Century. This makes the fantastic content believable. The plot turns on a technological innovation of the time, an interesting and unusual aspect for a tale of fantasy.
In “Worth the Whistling” by Adriana C. Grigore, villagers kill those considered to be undesirable, but the punishment doesn’t end with death. The bodies of the victims are buried in a wooded area that brings them back as ghosts, condemned to suffer in the afterlife. From a man she thinks of as her grandfather, the protagonist learns the magical art of writing on the bones of the deceased, which allows them to escape their torment. When a young man comes to her, begging her to release the spirit of his executed mother long before it is safe to do so, she undertakes a dangerous journey into the forest and has an unexpected encounter that alters her future.
This somber tale creates a haunting mood, but leaves many important questions unanswered. It is not clear why the villagers punish the condemned so severely, when their only crime seems to be living differently than others. The relationship between the protagonist and the man she calls her grandfather is unexplained. For that matter, why she is with the older man at all is mysterious. A single line stating that he found her as an infant does not go far enough in clearing this up.
Victoria Silverwolf is having a busy night.