Beneath Ceaseless Skies #405, April 18th, 2024
“Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka” by Christine Hanolsy
“A Reflection of Sun” by Liana Richmond
Reviewed by Geoff Houghton
Beneath Ceaseless Skies #405 opens with a very Russian love story: “Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka” by Christine Hanolsy.
The first person narrator is a water spirit, the remaining essence of a murdered young woman bound to the stretch of river where she was brutally drowned. She meets a young mortal girl on her riverbank and they gradually but inexorably fall in love.
Their idyllic love affair is brought to an abrupt end when the young mortal’s parents contract a highly advantageous arranged marriage to a neighbouring Boyar (a high level Russian aristocrat) and she is sent off to his lands to marry him. Our protagonist enlists the aid of many animal and spirit friends and pays a high price to buy the assistance of a powerful witch (Baba Yaga) in order to pursue her lost love to the Boyar’s land.
During her work as a Russian Language scholar, the author has clearly absorbed the essence of the Slavic Folk Tales of rural Mother Russia and this story is very much in that dour Russian style where “happy ever after” endings are by no means guaranteed. However, she is also a romantic at heart. Read this yourself to discover which alternative will win out in the end.
The second piece in this issue is “A Reflection of Sun” by Liana Richmond. The story opens in a rural land where a sentient water-spirit tends his river with little interaction with the unsuspecting and oblivious humans who live upon his riverbanks until he drags a drowned woman from his waters. His initial concern is that her untimely demise has disturbed the natural order and equilibrium of his river and he is only marginally engaged emotionally by her gruesome murder. He calls upon the elemental rulers of earth, air and fire to right that wrong and one of those great powers finally responds with a miracle, but by then his feelings towards her have changed in a not altogether healthy manner.
In this thought-provoking piece, the author explores the concept that aid and assistance can too easily metamorphose into a presumption of power or even ownership over the one rescued.
Geoff Houghton lives in a leafy village in rural England. He is a retired Healthcare Professional with a love of SF and a jackdaw-like appetite for gibbets of medical, scientific and historical knowledge.