Beneath Ceaseless Skies #428, March 20, 2025

“Here-and-Now-and-Then” by Jonathan Olfert

“The Wheat of Good Works” by Matt Hornsby

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

Two stories featuring protagonists who confront painful memories of their childhoods appear in this issue.

The main character in “Here-and-Now-and-Then” by Jonathan Olfert returns to the cathedral, carved from the roots of an immense tree, where he worked as a youth. He is accompanied by a sorceress. Each of the pair has a secret motive, leading to violence and destruction.

Although the two characters are working together, they have goals that are in conflict. The protagonist wants to destroy the cathedral, while the sorceress has another agenda, not fully explained. For the plot to work, the reader must assume that they revealed little to each other about their reasons for going into the cathedral, which seems unlikely.

The most interesting part of the story, reflected in the title, is the fact that the protagonist has a talisman that allows him to remember intricate details of the labyrinthine interior of the cathedral, but only at the cost of experiencing his most painful memories from youth. This results in certain parts of the text narrated in a way that mixes past and present, requiring an unusual typographic technique. This sort of thing can easily be misused, but the author handles it in a restrained way that is effective.

As an infant, the narrator of “The Wheat of Good Works” by Matt Hornsby is chosen to be sacrificed to a gigantic worm-like being. Instead, his father escapes with him. As he grows into a youth, he develops both strangely altered skin and the ability to sense living things. After his father dies, he joins a band of crusaders bringing their religion to others at sword point. They accompany him to his home village, intending to destroy the worm. Instead, the narrator learns the truth about his childhood and undergoes a final transformation.

This lengthy synopsis only hints at the complexity of a plot that contains multiple fantasy elements in a fairly short story. What happens at the end contradicts much of what I have described above, resulting in further complications. To some extent, this deliberately misleads the reader in order to have a surprising climax.

The story has intriguing moral ambiguity, with none of its characters clearly good or evil. The title may be intended to suggest this in an ironic way. Readers may find it difficult to know with whom to empathize.

Victoria Silverwolf rented a car recently.