Beneath Ceaseless Skies #403, March 21, 2024

“On Slate and Skin” by Jonathan Olfert

“The Dust Eater” by Adam Breckenridge

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

Two tales of star-crossed lovers appear in this issue.

The protagonist of “On Slate and Skin” by Jonathan Olfert serves as a guard on a caravan of gigantic camels. Before the story begins, he burnt a scroll of evil magic. As a result, he is cursed with the compulsion to write the words of the scroll, knowing that he will eventually have to carve them into the body of his wife. In order to avoid hurting her, he runs off to join the caravan.

She shows up much later, now a sorceress intent on acquiring the knowledge of the scroll. Their meeting leads to argument, violence, and an ambiguous conclusion.

The premise of the scroll forcing the man who destroyed it to write its words is an interesting one. Less effective are the huge camels, which provide for dramatic battle scenes but seem a bit ludicrous. I was confused by the fact that the man never reveals the full extent of his curse to the woman, but she seems fully aware of it. This may be subtlety on the part of the author, as is the unresolved question as to whether the woman seeks the words of the scroll in order to obtain power for herself or to release her husband from the curse.

The narrator of “The Dust Eater” by Adam Breckenridge is the reincarnation of a poet who was condemned to be erased from history long ago for an unidentified crime involving love. The narrator recreates the poet’s forgotten, forbidden works. She also falls in love with a man who, as a result of an act of violence committed against him, is considered to be a nonentity. Their illicit affair results in a miracle as well as a cruel fate for both.

I have been deliberately vague about the details of the plot, as the story contains many surprises to intrigue the reader. One unusual theme that occurs throughout the text is the idea that something can be defined by what it does not contain. (There are brief excerpts from the imaginary works of the forgotten poet that fit this theme. Because these are partial quotes from an ancient female poet writing about love, these are likely to remind the reader of the works of Sappho.)

One way in which this occurs is by making words, such as the names of gods, the name of the poet, and even the phrase I love you sacred by listing the letters of the alphabet that do not occur in them. (The poet’s name was Offas, and the narrator makes this divine by turning her name into BCDEGHIJKLMNPQRTUVWXYZ, for example.) This is a unique technique, but is likely to seem gimmicky.

Victoria Silverwolf went to four used bookstores in one day recently.