Samhain greetings...
A poem by Annie Finch, panel and book signing at the Louisiana Book Festival this weekend, and a spooky deleted scene from The Book of Gothel
Hello, everyone!
Tonight is the new moon, and the end of October is almost here, so I thought I would share a bit of seasonal inspiration and news.
Samhain Greetings
Autumn is my favorite time of year, when the days grow shorter and leaves are falling. I always associate Samhain with a thinning of the veil between this world and the next, with ancestors, with darkness. Every year around this time, I reread this poem by Annie Finch about what can happen when you peel back that veil. If you missed it when I shared it on Instagram, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:
Samhain
In the season leaves should love,
since it gives them leave to move
through the wind, towards the ground
they were watching while they hung,
legend says there is a seam
stitching darkness like a name.
Now when dying grasses veil
earth from the sky in one last pale
wave, as autumn dies to bring
winter back, and then the spring,
we who die ourselves can peel
back another kind of veil
that hangs among us like thick smoke.
Tonight at last I feel it shake.
I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor.
I move my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my own mind across another,
I am with my mother’s mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting
self, I find her, and she brings
arms that carry answers for me,
intimate, a waiting bounty.
“Carry me.” She leaves this trail
through a shudder of the veil,
and leaves, like amber where she stays,
a gift for her perpetual gaze.
—Annie Finch, from Eve (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1997)
That ending always leaves me breathless. It’s one of my favorite poems ever.
Louisiana Book Festival
Recently I was invited to make an appearance at the Louisiana Book Festival in my hometown, Baton Rouge. I’ll only be in town briefly, but I would love to see you if you happen to be in the area for the event!
I’ll be on the panel “Enchanted Worlds: Reimagined Fairytales and Everyday Magic” moderated by Fatima Shaik from 11-11:45 am with fellow Redhook author Alex Jennings, discussing our debuts, The Book of Gothel and The Ballad of Perilous Graves.
I’ll also be signing books at the Cavalier House tent from 12-12:45 pm! Learn more about where specifically to find these events at the festival here.
Deleted Scene from The Book of Gothel
In the spirit of the season, I thought it would be fun share a deleted scene from The Book of Gothel that’s set in the days leading up to Halloween. Yes, Halloween, the modern holiday. Once upon a time, in early drafts, the story of Dr. Gertrude Eisenberg—the academic from the prologue and epilogue—was threaded throughout the book.
The modern sections were about Gert’s struggle to decide what the manuscript meant and the story of how and where the manuscript got published, but ultimately I decided to center the drama around Haelewise and keep the modern part of the book shorter and more hopeful.
Think of this scene not as bonus content for The Book of Gothel, but a spooky peek into my writing process, exploring what might happen if an academic tried to publish a manuscript like this… and experimented with what she learned from its contents.
The scene takes place at Gert’s house. It’s a couple years after Gert was given the manuscript. She’s finished translating it, but the manuscript has been rejected by peer reviewers. When Gert doesn’t show up to give a workshop at the public library, her friend Phyllis is concerned enough to drive by her house and do a welfare check.
Phyllis parks the car, gets out. She hurries up the drenched walkway, gripping the railing, doing her damnedest not to slip on the steps leading up to the porch. Gert’s three-story Victorian Queen Anne towers over her like some kind of urban gingerbread house, all red paint and stone, the apex of each of its two third-floor lookout windows slick with rain. Phyllis makes her way to the front porch. Usually, it’s decorated with gourds and gothic lanterns this time of year. But this year, nothing.
The prospect that Gert hasn’t concerned herself with celebrating her favorite season makes Phyllis uneasy. She pulls the knocker back and lets it fall. The wind catches the fabric of her palazzo pants, rippling their geometric pattern, sending a chill up her legs. She straightens her scarf. A minute passes. Two. She knocks again.
Phyllis fumbles in her purse for her keys. There they are, jangling, metal, beneath her sunglasses case. She pulls them out, locates the spare key Gert gave her the last time her friend went to Germany so she could feed Gert’s cats.
The door creaks open. “Gert?” she calls out. Her voice echoes up the stairs.
The front room is still except for the dust motes drifting in the twilight and the faint clanking of pipes below the floor. Last year Gert hung an autumn wreath in the hallway, but the only signs of seasonal activity are the disorganized bushels of herbs drying above the apothecary cabinet. At least Gert hasn’t abandoned that.
In the center of the dining room table, a large wrought-iron birdcage stands empty, its door open. What the hell kind of decoration is this?
“Gert!” she calls out again. “I left a message. You missed your workshop. I let myself in!”
The only response is the clanking of pipes.
Then she hears a bang like the slamming of a closet door, but muffled, as if it’s coming from upstairs. Phyllis hurries to the stairwell, followed by Jacob, Gert’s sociopathic black cat, who plops down from where he was sleeping on the windowsill to pad upstairs after her. His brother, Wilhelm, mewls mournfully and jumps down to hide under the divan.
At the second floor landing, Phyllis can tell a window is open on the top floor from the draft on the staircase. She hears the sound again, like a door slamming shut, only louder than before and followed by the creak of a hinge.
Her boots echo against the hardwood floor.
On the third floor, Gert’s study is a wreck. Both windows are open. The wind is swinging the shutters this way and that. One of them claps shut in its frame, then swings back open, creaking eerily. The windowsills glisten with rain. There are papers everywhere, strewn about all over the floor, whirling around in sudden gusts.
As Phyllis watches, the wind catches an open book on the desk and turns a few of its pages. She freezes in place, goosebumps prickling her arm. The wind changes direction. The pages of the book fall flat. It’s a bound photocopy of the original Middle High German manuscript Gert was studying, which her friend would never show her.
It was just the wind, she thinks. Get a hold of yourself.
It would be a crime if the wind carried away Gert’s work. Phyllis hurries to close the windows. Where is she? Did she go for a walk?
The keyboard of Gert’s computer has been knocked over. Her desk is a mess. The English ivy she keeps on its edge has fallen off, its soil spilled all over the floor. Among the dirt she sees the bird-woman figurine Gert brought back from Germany. Phyllis kneels down to pick it up, turning it over in her hand. Her stomach fluttering at the sight of those wide set eyes, those three-fingered hands, that beak. Gert showed it to her the day she came home, but wouldn’t explain what it was or where she got it.
Her first thoughts are of superglue, of brooms and dustpans, the greenhouse on the other side of town that sells ceramic pots. She can’t stand to see Gert’s office so untidy, her work so disorganized.
It’s not until she stands back up that she sees Gert, lying on the chaise longue on the other side of the desk in silk pajamas, her eyes closed.
“Oh, for goodness sake,” she says. “Gert, wake up, you scared me.”
Her friend does not stir on the chaise longue.
“Gert?” she says again, her heart beginning to pound in her ribcage. Who could sleep in this noise, this storm? She isn’t even wearing a robe. “For the love of God, wake up!”
Phyllis hurries to the chaise longue, overwhelmed by the queasy feeling in her stomach, as she grips Gert’s shoulder to try to shake her awake. One of Gert’s hands slides to the floor, the silver leaf-pendant bracelet that Phyllis gave her around her wrist. The bracelet jingles as it hits the floor, a cheerful sound completely at odds with the stillness of the room. Phyllis looks closer at Gert’s face, the way her cheek is pressed to the pillow. Her heart beats faster as she reaches out to touch Gert’s hand.
It’s cold. Her chest is still.
Gert’s brown hair falls to the pillow, flowing from her scalp in waves. Her spectacles hang around her neck. She looks beautiful, peaceful, almost as if she were sleeping, in her best pajamas.
Jacob the cat pads up and hisses.
“Not now,” Phyllis mutters, her voice trembling as she tries to brush him aside with her boot.
A sob rises in her throat. She tries hard to swallow it.
The cat hisses and glares at her, then rakes his claw through her pants.
“You little shit!” she shrieks, stepping out of his reach.
She looks at Gert, her throat constricting. Forgets to breathe, remembers, blinks. The sob escapes, bursting out of her throat in tiny uncontrollable gasps. She catches her breath and gazes with new eyes at the room. Why is everything in such disarray? Why are the windows open?
Phyllis picks up the phone, dials 911, describes her emergency. She eyes the pages on the floor. Hanging up the phone, she picks one up. It’s a photocopied page from the translated manuscript. She picks up another page. This one is part of Gert’s preface to her translation. She skims a passage Gert struck through and revised in red pen.
A tapping sound draws her gaze to the window. There’s a raven perched on the exterior windowsill, looking in. The light glints off the top of its jet black head-feathers. Its eyes are beady, intelligent.
She thinks of the birdcage downstairs and opens the window, backing carefully away from the sill. The air outside is wet and crisp.
The raven hops through the window, cocks its head, and meets her eyes. They glitter, an eerie amber. Then it hops back onto the sill and flies away.
That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoy the chill!
Mary
Love your newsletter, Mary!