The Midnight Circus

2020

Contents

Introduction: Welcome to the Midnight Circus by Theodora Goss

Who Knew I Was a Writer of Dark Stories? by Jane Yolen

The Weaver of Tomorrow

The White Seal Maid

The Snatchers

Wilding

Requiem Antarctica (with Robert J. Harris)

Night Wolves

The House of Seven Angels

Great Gray

Little Red (with Adam Stemple)

Winter’s King

Inscription

Dog Boy Remembers

The Fisherman’s Wife

Become a Warrior

An Infestation of Angels

Names

Story Notes and Poems

The Weaver of Tomorrow / The Wheel Spins

The White Seal Maid / Ballad of the White Seal Maid

Snatchers / Lou Leaving Home

Wilding / Deer, Dances

Requiem Antarctica / Vampyr

Night Wolves / Bad Dreams

The House of the Seven Angels / Anticipation

Great Gray / Remembering the Great Gray

Little Red / Red at Eighty-One

Winter’s King / If Winter

Inscription / Stone Ring

Dog Boy Remembers / The Path

The Fisherman’s Wife / Undine

Become a Warrior / The Princess Turns

An Infestation of Angels / Work Days

Names / What the Oven Is Not

Afterword: From the Princess to the Queen by Alethea Kontis

About the Author

About the Contributors

Extended Copyrights

Welcome to the Midnight Circus

Theodora Goss

IN ITS THREE RINGS you will find a seal maiden and a queen of the sea, wolves that howl under the bed and wild girls who know how to fight for themselves, angels who are less than angelic, a boy who dreams of winter, a weaver of fates You may have seen some of the performers before (surely you’ve met Little Red Riding Hood?), but never quite like this. In this book, Jane Yolen weaves beauty and darkness, reality and the fantastic, imagination and the ordinary, as only she can.

I knew Jane from her stories long before I met her, so when I did finally meet her at a science fiction and fantasy convention where we were on the same panel, I was meeting that Jane Yolen. I was (don’t tell her) a little intimidated, particularly because she knows more about fairy tales and fantasy than most professors in the field. She is formidably intelligent and articulate, unafraid to challenge viewpoints that are not historically sound or backed up by solid evidence. But she is also deeply kind and supportive to other writers, as she was and has been to me.

I first read her stories in the wonderful anthologies edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow—the various fairy-tale anthologies beginning with Snow White, Blood Red, and, of course, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror volumes, which were such an important part of my teenage years. Now I teach them in classes on fairy tales and the fantastic, along with her novel Briar Rose, which has the same beauty and darkness as the tales in this Midnight Circus. It is the story of a young woman who discovers that her grandmother’s version of the Briar Rose fairy tale both hides and illuminates a dark secret. Like several of the stories in this volume, it is a tale of the Holocaust, told without any of the darkness diminished, but with the beauty of both the fantastical and of ordinary, everyday things. This is Jane’s magical elixir, with three ingredients: the transformative beauty of fairy tale, which J. R. R. Tolkien called faërie; the sadness and cruelty of human life; and the strong, solid reality of our world. However fantastical her stories, they are grounded in bread and butter and wine, the landscape of Scotland or Massachusetts, the inescapable truths of history. This is why her stories always feel real and true—and wise.

The stories in this collection remind me of a garden of dark flowers: the old rosa gallica Cardinal de Richelieu, tulip Queen of the Night, hellebores and monkshoods and snake’s head fritillaries, deep purple violets. They are darker than most of Jane’s stories, but that darkness is there in much of her work, both fiction and poetry, because her writing is grounded in history and human nature, which have a dark edge. She has been called America’s Hans Christian Andersen, and I can see why—Jane is as prolific and imaginative as the Danish writer of fairy tales. She has published so many books that you could read a new one every day for a year, and they are so different, in genre and subject matter and intended audience, that you would never feel as though she were repeating herself. She has also, by the way, won numerous awards, some of them multiple times, including the Nebula Award, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award, Golden Kite Award, Rhysling Award . . . the list goes on. However, for me, a Jane Yolen story is fundamentally different from one of Andersen’s tales in two ways. First, Jane is never sanctimonious. Her characters are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes broken, but they are always treated as people, not vehicles for a message. And second, her stories contain a strong dose of her own common sense and pragmatism. They show us how we can survive in a difficult world and teach us what to value—in that sense, they are moral without being moralistic, wise guides to our lived reality. Andersen may sentimentalize, but she never does.

I have a personal list of favorite fantasy writers whom I read over and over again, because they capture what feels to me like true magic—both the numinous magic of fairyland and the ordinary magic of human life and love and hope. It includes such writers as Peter S. Beagle, Angela Carter, Susanna Clarke, John Crowley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Hope Mirrlees, Patricia McKillip, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and T. H. White. And for a long time now, it has included Jane Yolen. She transports me to magical worlds and teaches me how to create magic myself through the ultimate spell, which is the one cast by a master storyteller. Her fiction and poems are a masterclass in craft. (Do, by the way, read the wonderful poems in the story notes. Jane is one of the rare fiction writers whose poetry is as rich and compelling as her prose.) I would recommend them to any aspiring writer, together with her wonderful book Take Joy on the pleasures and challenges of the writing life.

But you’re not thinking about that right now, are you? No, you want the stories themselves, and I don’t blame you. You want the mysterious Dog Boy, the man who worships owls, and the truth about Scott’s Arctic expedition. Here you stand at the entrance to the tent, ticket in hand. You’ve come to see a performance.

You want marvels and delights, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Welcome to the Midnight Circus. Please take your seat. The show is about to begin.

Who Knew I Was a Writer of Dark Stories?

Jane Yolen

ACTUALLY, I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW, though I’d had several darkish stories in the Year’s Best Horror Stories collection, been nominated for horror awards, was in the Horror Writers of America for fifteen seconds or so, and read Tales from the Crypt comics as a young teen, huddled in the bathroom of our house, before creeping back to my bedroom with the (borrowed) comic safely down the front of my pants. And no, my parents never knew.

But while I have written the occasional vampire or werewolf story, three Holocaust novels, and a novella about the Russian Revolution with dragons, and books with ghosts and/or golems, witches (Baba Yaga appears in three different books—a novel in verse, a picture book for young kids, and a graphic novel), gargoyles, trolls, nasty fey princes, etc., I prefer my must-read dark matters to be somewhat limited. A frisson of terror rather than massive amounts of spilt blood. No pop-up all-devouring monsters, no bedwetting scares. No vicious and unrelenting tortures of women and children. No lusting after BRAINS!

Just plain old-fashioned M. R. James and that Other James—Henry, the author of The Turn of the Screw. Or more modern: The Haunting of Hill House, which is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was a finalist for the National Book Award, so that tells you something about the quality of the writing. It is still considered one of the best literary ghost stories of the 20th century.

And in a pinch I will reread the Mother of Gothics—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The Barry Moser illustrated edition.

So once Tachyon agreed they liked the idea of Midnight Circus, I began to research my collections, magazines, and journals to see whether I had enough stories to fill the book. I started with our database and then reread stories of mine in Asimov’s and F&SF. Then I tackled the anthologies in my attic library. Must be well over a hundred such volumes, each with a story (or stories) of mine safely held within.

I made lists, annotated them. Sent what I considered my A and B stories to Tachyon to find out what volumes or magazines they already had and which stories we needed to copy here in my office. I must have started—after that early cull—with forty dark stories I still liked. Who knew?

Then I deleted any that had been in my first two Tachyon collections.

I had about twenty-five stories left to send to Tachyon. Publisher Jacob Weisman and my buddy Jim DeMaiolo wrestled with who loved which stories most. I think they disagreed on three. Small arguments ensued. No blood was spilt.

Next we talked about which stories went first, last. No fingernails were pulled. I had been an editor with my own line of books for Harcourt, had also produced or co-edited a bunch of anthologies, so I knew the drill. (Wait, no drills, no carving knives, no box cutters, no. . . .)

Finally I wrote this intro, did the backmatter about each story, and chose which poem of mine worked best with the individual story, some poems published, some new.

In the end, with only a bit of sweat, we produced the book. You are now judge and jury of it all.

There will be no executions.

Much too bloody.

Jane Yolen

The Weaver of Tomorrow

ONCE, ON THE FAR SIDE of yesterday, there lived a girl who wanted to know the future. She was not satisfied with knowing that the grass would come up each spring and that the sun would go down each night. The true knowledge she desired was each tick of tomorrow, each fall and each failure, each heartache and each pain, that would be the portion of every man. And because of this wish of hers, she was known as Vera, which is to say, True.

At first it was easy enough. She lived simply in a simple town, where little happened to change a day but a birth or a death that was always expected. And Vera awaited each event at the appointed bedside and, in this way, was always the first to know.

But as with many wishes of the heart, hers grew from a wish to a desire, from a desire to an obsession. And soon, knowing the simple futures of the simple people in that simple town was not enough for her.

I wish to know what tomorrow holds for everyone, said Vera. For every man and woman in our country. For every man and woman in our world.

It is not good, this thing you wish, said her father.

But Vera did not listen. Instead she said, I wish to know which king will fall and what the battle, which queen will die and what the cause. I want to know how many mothers will cry for babies lost and how many wives will weep for husbands slain.

And when she heard this, Vera’s mother made the sign against the Evil One, for it was said in their simple town that the future was the Devil’s dream.

But Vera only laughed and said loudly, "And for that, I want to know what the Evil One himself is doing with his tomorrow."

Since the Evil One himself could not have missed her speech, the people of the town visited the mayor and asked him to send Vera away.

The mayor took Vera and her mother and father, and they sought out the old man who lived in the mountain, who would answer one question a year. And they asked him what to do about Vera.

The old man who lived in the mountain, who ate the seeds that flowers dropped and the berries that God wrought, and who knew all about yesterdays and cared little about tomorrow, said, She must be apprenticed to the Weaver.

A weaver! said the mayor and Vera’s father and her mother all at once. They thought surely that the old man who lived in the mountain had at last gone mad.

But the old man shook his head. "Not a weaver, but the Weaver, the Weaver of Tomorrow. She weaves with a golden thread and finishes each piece with a needle so fine that each minute of the unfolding day is woven into her work. They say that once every hundred years there is need for an apprentice, and it is just that many years since one has been found."

Where does one find this Weaver? asked the mayor.

Ah, that I cannot say, said the old man who lived in the mountain, for I have answered one question already. And he went back to his cave and rolled a stone across the entrance, a stone small enough to let the animals in but large enough to keep the townspeople out.

Never mind, said Vera. I would be apprenticed to this Weaver. And not even the Devil himself can keep me from finding her.

And so saying, she left the simple town with nothing but the clothes upon her back. She wandered until the hills got no higher but the valleys got deeper. She searched from one cold moon until the next. And at last, without warning, she came upon a cave where an old woman in black stood waiting.

You took the Devil’s own time coming, said the old woman.

It was not his time at all, declared Vera.

Oh, but it was, said the old woman, as she led the girl into the cave.

And what a wondrous place the cave was. On one wall hung skeins of yarn of rainbow colors. On the other walls were tapestries of delicate design. In the center of the cave, where a single shaft of sunlight fell, was the loom of polished ebony, higher than a man and three times as broad, with a shuttle that flew like a captive blackbird through the golden threads of the warp.

For a year and a day, Vera stayed in the cave apprenticed to the Weaver. She learned which threads wove the future of kings and princes, and which of peasants and slaves. She was first to know in which kingdoms the sun would set and which kingdoms would be gone before the sun rose again. And though she was not yet allowed to weave, she watched the black loom where each minute of the day took shape, and learned how, once it had been woven, no power could change its course. Not an emperor, not a slave, not the Weaver herself. And she was taught to finish the work with a golden thread and a needle so fine that no one could tell where one day ended and the next began. And for a year she was happy.

But finally the day dawned when Vera was to start her second year with the Weaver. It began as usual. Vera rose and set the fire. Then she removed the tapestry of yesterday from the loom and brushed it outside until the golden threads mirrored the morning sun. She hung it on a silver hook that was by the entrance to the cave. Finally she returned to the loom, which waited mutely for the golden warp to be strung. And each thread that Vera pulled tight sang like the string of a harp. When she was through, Vera set the pot on the fire and woke the old woman to begin the weaving.

The old woman creaked and muttered as she stretched herself up. But Vera paid her no heed. Instead, she went to the Wall of Skeins and picked at random the colors to be woven. And each thread was a life.

Slowly, slowly, the old Weaver had cautioned when Vera first learned to choose the threads. At the end of each thread is the end of a heartbeat; the last of each color is the last of a world. But Vera could not learn to choose slowly, carefully. Instead she plucked and picked like a gay bird in the seed.

And so it was with me, said the old Weaver with a sigh. And so it was at first with me.

Now a year had passed, and the old woman kept her counsel to herself as Vera’s fingers danced through the threads. Now she went creaking and muttering to the loom and began to weave. And now Vera turned her back to the growing cloth that told the future, and took the pot from the fire to make their meal. But as soon as that was done, she would hurry back to watch the growing work, for she never wearied of watching the minutes take shape on the ebony loom.

Only this day, as her back was turned, the old woman uttered a cry. It was like a sudden sharp pain. And the silence after