Palimpsest Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice

  Winner of the 2008 Mythopoeic Award

  for Adult Literature for The Orphan's Tales Duology

  “A fairy-tale-lover's wildest dream come true … Cleverly

  examining and reconstructing the conventions of the fairy tale,

  especially the traditional roles of men and women, Valente has

  created a thought-provoking storytelling tour de force.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Extraordinary… no summary can do justice to the bedazzling

  intricacies on bountiful display here.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “A lovely, epical, awe-inspiring piece of work.”

  —Booklist

  “In Catherynne M. Valente's imaginary realms, stories splinter and

  reflect, causing the sweetest sensation of vertigo for the

  reader…. Flashes of wry humor balance Valente's lush imaginings It's

  the postmodern version of the never-ending story”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “A masterpiece of imagery and sensual detail while evoking

  an entire world through the medium of mythmaking.

  As with its predecessor, this Arabian Nights–like fantasy

  belongs in every library”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “For fans of smart, surrealistic fairy tales steeped in Arabian Nights

  lore and the gnarled fables of Hans Christian Andersen. The overall

  effect is intoxicating.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Abundantly imaginative, gorgeously written, and stunningly and

  intricately framed… Valente's imagination is prodigious, and she

  weaves lovely new patterns with existing mythological threads, and she

  finds gorgeous new fabric as well. And all knitted together with poetic

  prose… should be looked for on next year's award short lists.”

  —Locus

  “Valente's language is lovely, her imagery evocative, and she can

  make even the ugliest and strangest things seem briefly luminescent.

  I loved it.”

  —Fantasy & Science Fiction

  PRAISE FOR

  The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden

  Winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award

  Short-listed for the World Fantasy Award

  Named One of Kirkus Reviews Top 10 SF Books of 2006

  Selected for the 2007 New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age List

  “A work of beautifully relayed, interlinked fairy tales.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “There is an entire mythology in this book, in which the themes of

  familiar fairy tales are picked apart and rearranged into a new and

  wonderful whole…. A wonderful interpretation of what fairy tales

  ought to be. The illustrations by Michael Kaluta constitute an

  excellent supplement.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A fabulous, recursive Arabian Nights–style narrative…

  lush, hallucinogenic.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Lyrical, witchy… mixes feminist grit with pixie dust.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Valente's lyrical prose and masterful storytelling brings to life a

  fabulous world, solidifies Valente's place at the forefront of imaginative

  storytelling, and belongs in libraries of all sizes.”

  —Library Journal

  “Valente weaves an intricate, exquisite web…. While the

  obvious comparison is to One Thousand and One Nights, the spirit and

  artistry of these tales may be even closer to those of Angela Carter.

  These are fairy tales that bite and bleed.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Written with poetic imagination and tremendous skill… Valente,

  like her nameless orphan in the garden, is a captivating storyteller.”

  —Contra Costa Times

  “What Valente has accomplished in this book is far more than a

  collection of stories; she has sown the seeds of an entire mythos

  all her own. The blooms in her night garden dazzle and bewitch,

  and are wondrous fair.”

  —SFRevu.com

  “Catherynne M. Valente uses this inventive basis to weave in

  and out of tales that are part nouveau mythology and part fairy

  tale, interflowing in a river of dreams. Her use of language is often

  quite beautiful, and the basic elements with which she works are

  further enhanced by knavish twists of standard fantasy

  archetypes…. The spellbinding descriptive almost forces readers

  to continue just a few pages more, the stories can be appreciated

  equally by children and adults, and both good and evil are vividly

  defined in the mind's eye…. The overall effect is to make

  reading In the Night Garden as close to a genuinely magical experience

  as it's possible to get, and elevates the work above most other

  contemporary fantasy. One day in the not too distant future, it

  could easily come to be regarded as a literary classic. Savvy school

  librarians should add it to their lists right now. Cover to cover,

  this is an astonishing work which reinterprets and redefines

  the modern classic fairy tale.”

  —SFSite.com

  “I really, really enjoyed this book; it was a pleasure to read, from

  start to finish, and the end note of the volume… was unexpectedly

  moving.”

  —Fantasy & Science Fiction

  “Valente's prose is creative and sophisticated; her imagery is

  intricate and arresting. Any lover of well-written fantasy will find

  much to enjoy about Valente's book.”

  —Green Man Review

  “[A] jaunt into fantastic fiction that is epic in the truest sense of

  the word. The Orphan's Tales is the poet, short-fiction writer, and

  novelist maximizing her entire skill set in an offering that caters to

  the sensibilities of the fan of all forms. Catherynne M. Valente

  is a storyteller.”

  —Fantasybookspot.com

  “A fine patchwork of tales, quilted in diverse colours and textures.

  Refreshingly original in both style and form, In the Night Garden

  should delight lovers of myth and folklore.”

  —Juliet Marillier, author of the Sevenwaters trilogy

  “Catherynne Valente weaves layer upon layer of marvels in her

  debut novel. In the Night Garden is a treat for all who love puzzle

  stories and the mystical language of tale spinners.”

  — Carol Berg, author of Daughter of Ancients

  “Fabulous tale spinning in the tradition of story cycles such as

  The Arabian Nights. Lyrical, wildly imaginative and slyly

  humorous, Valente's prose possesses an irrepressible spirit.”

  —K. J. Bishop, author of The Etched City

  “Astonishing work! Valente's endless invention and

  mythic range are breathtaking. It's as if she's gone

  night-wandering, and plucked a hundred cultures out of

  the air to deliver their stories to us.”

  —Ellen Kushner, host of public radio's Sound & Spirit;

  author of Thomas the Rhymer

  Also by

  CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

  T
HE ORPHAN'S TALES

  In the Night Garden

  In the Cities of Coin and Spice

  Yume No Hon

  The Labyrinth

  The Grass-Cutting Sword

  POETRY

  ————

  Apocrypha

  Oracles

  The Descent of Inanna

  Look, how the floor of heaven

  Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

  There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st

  But in his motion like an angel sings,

  Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

  Such harmony is in immortal souls;

  But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

  Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  The Merchant of Venice

  For Dmitri,

  the map by which

  I found this place

  FRONTISPIECE:

  THE CRADLE OF BECOMING AND UNBECOMING

  ON THE CORNER OF 16TH STREET AND HIERATICA a factory sings and sighs. Look: its thin spires flash green, and spit long loops of white flame into the night. Casimira owns this place, as did her father and her grandmother and probably her most distant progenitor. It is pleasant to imagine them, curling and uncurling their proboscis-fingers against machines of stick and bone. There has always been a Casimira, except when, occasionally there is a Casimir.

  Workers carry their lunches in clamshells. They wear extraordinary uniforms: white and green scales laid one over the other, clinging obscenely to the skin, glittering in the spirelight. They wear nothing else; every wrinkle and curve is visible. They dance into the factory, their serpentine bodies writhing a shift change, undulating under the punch clock with its cheerful metronomic chime. Their eyes are piscine, third eyelid half-drawn in drowsy pleasure as they side step and gambol and spin to the rhythm of the machines.

  And what do they make in this factory? Why, the vermin of Palimpsest. There is a machine for stamping cockroaches with glistening green carapaces, their makers mark hidden cleverly under the left wing. There is a machine for shaping and pounding rats, soft gray fur stiff and shining when they are first released. There is another mold for squirrels, one for chipmunks and one for plain mice. There is a centrifuge for spiders, a lizard-pour, a delicate and ancient machine which turns out flies and mosquitoes by turn, so exquisite, so perfect that they seem to be made of nothing but copper wire, spun sugar, and light. There is a printing press for graffiti which spits out effervescent letters in scarlet, black, angry yellows, and the trademark green of Casimira. They fly from the high windows and flatten themselves against walls, trestles, train cars.

  When the shift horn sounds at the factory, the long antler-trumpet passed down to Casimira by the one uncle in her line who defied tradition and became a humble hunter, setting the whole clan to a vociferous but well-fed consternation, a wave of life wafts from the service exit: moles and beetles and starlings and bats, ants and worms and moths and mantises. Each gleaming with its last coat of sealant, each quivering with near-invisible devices which whisper into their atavistic minds that their mistress loves them, that she thinks of them always, and longs to hold them to her breast.

  In her office, Casimira closes her eyes and listens to the teeming masses as they whisper back to their mother. At the end of each day they tell her all they have learned of living.

  It is necessary work. No family has been so often formally thanked by the city as hers.

  On the other side of the street: a fortune-tellers shop. Palm fronds cross before the door. Inside are four red chairs with four lustral basins before them, filled with ink, swirling and black. Orlande lumbers in, a woman wrapped in ragged fox fur. Her head amid heaps of scarves is that of a frog, mottled green and bulbous-eyed. A licking pink tongue keeps its place in her wide mouth. Her webbed hands are full of cups: a swill of tea afloat with yellow leaves. She spills not a drop, and the tea is sweet, sweeter than anything.

  She does not see individual clients.

  Thus it is that four strangers sit in the red chairs, strip off their socks, plunge their feet into the ink-baths, and hold hands under an amphibian stare. This is the first act of anyone entering Palimpsest: Orlande will take your coats, sit you down, and make you family. She will fold you four together like Quartos. She will draw you each a card-look, for you it is the Broken Ship reversed, which signifies Perversion, a Long Journey without Enlightenment, Gout-and tie your hands together with red yarn. Wherever you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlandes salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no whore that you do not also feel beneath you, and until that ink washes from your feet-which, given that Orlande is a creature of the marsh and no stranger to mud, will be some time— you cannot breathe but that they breathe also.

  There are four of them there now. Shall we peer in? Shall we disrupt their private sacraments? Are you and I such unrepentant voyeurs? I think we must be, else why have we come so close to the door of cassia, the windows of cracked glass? Let us peer; let us disrupt. It is our nature.

  A girl with blue hair slumps slack against her chair. Her listless hand is tied to the wrist of a man with thinning blond hair. His un-kept fingernails are thoroughly stained with violet-black ink, his attention sharp, his gaze fixed on Orlande, who is for him a miracle, a revelation-for her he is another customer and she will forget him easy and quick. Another woman, too, is there. A wimple of vague dark hair hangs over her shoulders; a bee sting blooms on her cheek like a kiss. Her fingers are entwined with a young, skinny thing, a bundle of keys at his belt, his trousers gray, workmanlike. He tries to catch the woman's gaze-but he will fail. She is not for you, poor boy!

  They are so young, young and sleepy and unknowing-unknowable, if you want to know the truth. Orlandes muddy ink seeps up through the soles of their feet and the girl with blue hair yawns, a frank and unchecked gesture, like a newborn swaddled in her crèche.

  ONE

  SIC TRANSIT TOKYO

  Sei pressed her cheek against the cold glass; strips of black mountains tore by under lantern-blue clouds beyond her wide window. She knew a man was watching her—the way men on trains always watched her. The train car rocked gently from side to side, hushing its charges like a worried mother. She chewed on the ends of her dark blue hair. A stupid childhood habit, but Sei couldn't let it go. She let the wet curl fall back against her bare shoulder blades. She stroked the glass with her fingertips, shifted her hips against the white of the carriage—she was always moved to do this on the long-distance trains which crisscrossed the islands like corset stays. They were so pale and pure and unfathomably fast, like iridescent snakes hissing down to the sea. The Shinkansen was always pristine, always perfect, its aim always true.

  Sei's skin prickled as the man's eyes slid over her back. She felt their cold black weight, shifting her shoulders to bear up under it. He would be watching the small of her back now, where her silver-black shirt fell away into a mess of carefully arranged silk ropes and tin chains. He would watch her angles under the strings, the crease of her legs beneath an immodest skirt, her lips moving against the glass. The little wet fog of her breath. She could almost tell what he looked like without turning her head: good black suit, a little too small, clutching his briefcase like a talisman, probably a little gray at the temples, no rings on his hands. They all looked like that.

  Sei turned, her blue hair brushing her hipbones. Good black suit, a little too small, clutched briefcase, freckles of gray in the hair. No rings. He did not seem startled or doubled over with desire as they sometimes were. He was calm, his answering smile measured and almost sweet, like a photograph of a soldier lost in a long-ago war. Coolly, without taking his dark eyes from hers, he turned over his left palm and rested it on the creamy brown edge of his briefcase.

  His hand was covered in a
mark she first thought horrible— it snaked and snarled, black and swollen, where fortune-teller's lines ought to have been. Like a spider it sent long web-spokes out from a circle in the center, shooting towards the pads of his fingers and burrowing into the tiny webbing of skin between them. She took a step forward, balancing expertly as the car sped on, and stared. It was something like a little map, drawn there by an inartful and savage hand. She could make out minuscule lettering along the inky corridors: street names she could hardly read. There seemed even to be an arcane compass near his thumb. As she leaned in, the man shut his fist.

  “Sato Kenji,” he said, his voice neither high nor low, but cultured, clipped, quiet.

  “Amaya Sei.”

  He quirked an eyebrow briefly, slightly, in such a way that no one afterwards might be able to safely accuse him of having done it. Sei knew the look. Names are meaningless, plosives and breath, but those who liked the slope of her waist often made much of hers, which denoted purity, clarity—as though it had any more in the way of depth than others. They wondered, all of them, if she really was pure, as pure as her name announced her to be, all white banners and hymeneal grace.

  She balanced one hand—many-ringed—on her hip and jerked her head in the manner of a fox snuffling the air for roasting things. “What's wrong with your hand?”

  “Nothing.” Kenji smiled in his long-ago way again. She quirked her own eyebrow, also blue, and delicately pierced with a frosted ring. He gestured for her to sit down and, though she knew better, they sat together for a moment, her body held tense and tight, ready to run, to cry out if need be. Their thighs touched—a gesture of intimacy she had never allowed herself with another passenger.

  “I think you like trains rather too much, Sei.” The older man smelled of sandalwood and the peculiar thin scent of clean train cars.