Don't go in there!

If you're creeping yourself out, you're probably doing something right.

Inspirations: The Perilous Gard

Let's go back in time to the year... what was it, 1992? I was a fourth-grader in Mrs. Van Aken's FOCUS 3-- a combined fourth-and-fifth-grade class for the... academically-inclined. I loved every minute of it.

Mrs. Van Aken was an awesome teacher. The most memorable parts of that year were the theme lessons-- multi-discipline mini-curricula, each focusing on a different time period. My favorite, of course, was the medieval theme. We read Adam of the Road, The Door in the Wall and The Trumpeter of Krakow. We broke into teams, chose medieval names, and played a "simulation" game where we started off as serfs and had to work our way up to "lady" or "lord." I still remember marking off little squares of my graph-paper "garden" with beds of carrots or potatoes, which we had to "sell" for the best price we could get for them in order to move up. At the end, of the lesson, Mrs. Van Aken "knighted" us--  sword-taps to the shoulders, "in the name of God, St. George and St. Michael," and all the rest. It was the coolest learning experience ever.

There were other things to like about that year. There was a class play about the Amazon Rainforest. There was a long-term writing project in which we made our own bound storybooks. (I still have mine, a series of adventures about a pair of sisters who fight pollution. If you are lucky, I might share it with you some day.)

Anyway. The most tangible remnants of my time in Mrs. Van Aken's class are the books I got from the Hot Box.

As I mentioned, Mrs. V was a bibliophile-- and her reward system proved it. If you amassed a certain number of brownie points-- and oh, did I amass the brownie points-- you were given a choice of rewards. The one I always chose was to select a brand-new paperback book from a cardboard box Mrs. Van Aken called the Hot Box. (As I'm sitting here, the thought occurs to me that it might have been my third-grade teacher who did this... but I've always remembered it as Mrs. V, and anyway I'd rather write about her.)

There was good stuff in this box. They were all "young reader" titles of various levels-- many of them prize-winning. Some were more excellent than others, of course--The Fair-Weather Friends was pretty entertaining, but it couldn't come close to the haunting weirdness of The Snow Spider. (Holy crap, that's a trilogy? I can't believe I never knew that! Must... read... sequels... now...) Jacob Have I Loved was a good one that I didn't appreciate at the time; Lyddie was another.

My favorite Hot Box book of all time, however, was Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard.

The Perilous Gard-- for the many, many people who've never heard of it-- is about a teenaged noblewoman named Katherine Sutton. She and her younger sister Alicia are ladies-in-waiting to then-Princess Elizabeth Tudor, who is kept in a cold, drafty castle with insufficient supplies of coal and blankets (in hopes of killing her off? I do not know my history on this point.) Alicia, who is none too bright, writes a critical letter to Queen Mary about the situation, and Kate is blamed. Branded a troublemaker, she is banished to the remote estate of Sir Geoffrey Heron, a man the Queen says she "can trust."

When she gets there, she finds the place alive with hints of the strange, and even the supernatural. The Perilous Gard, as Sir Geoffrey's house is called, is a grim and shadowed place, much like Sir Geoffrey himself. Villagers are terrified of a woman in green who haunts the local woods. Most strangely, a man living alone in a leper's hut proves to be Sir Geoffrey's own younger brother, Christopher Heron-- who says he lives there by choice.

One night, sticking her nose where it probably doesn't belong, Kate witnesses an ominous meeting between Christopher and a strange man, who offers him the chance to atone for past mistakes. She is caught spying, and-- to keep her from talking-- kidnapped. When the drugs wear off, she is far underground, in the halls of the "fairy folk." With other "human" women brought there for the purpose, she is put to work as a cleaning woman-- though she resists the drugs that keep them from living in constant terror of the crushing stone above them. Her bravery catches the eye of the Lady, the queen of the people beneath the hill, and she begins to be taught some of her captors' ways.

At the same time, she is befriending Christopher Heron, who has been locked away to prepare for his death. In the end... well, the ending of the story is based on SPOILER. That ballad and others are woven throughout the whole novel, giving it a nice medieval feel despite its Renaissance setting.

--Vague and continuing spoilers below.--

What has always kind of stuck with me about this story is that the heroine is effectively given the chance to become one of her captors-- to "turn herself into a fairy woman," in the words of one of the characters. At the climax, she has to take drastic and immediate action to turn herself off that path. However, in stories like this-- and it's an old convention-- I've always kind of rooted for the heroine to give in and become the enemy--because you know what? The enemy is cool.

In The Perilous Gard, the Fairy Folk are depicted as cold and heartless people-- but they are also beautiful, graceful, dignified and clever. There's a lot about them that I found enviable-- especially since I first read the book during the most awkward phase of my whole childhood. At the time, I was too tall, too scruffy, slightly bucktoothed and completely unsure of what to do with myself in social situations. (I have since grown into my teeth.) I would have killed to become one of the Fairy Folk. I always wondered what would have happened if Kate had given in and gone with them.

(I probably wasn't at the point to appreciate this properly at the time, but I think Pope was actually trying to make Kate particularly sympathetic to kids like me. Book-Kate, too, is tall and awkward (and ugly as "a stone wall," to boot.) Though highly intelligent, she has no idea what to say to people, and has trouble making friends. It's quite conceivable that such a character might have wished for beauty and grace as desperately as I did. Viewed that way, her choice to remain herself is even more impressive.)

Regardless of the intended message, this book had a deep and lasting effect on my psyche. I read it many, many times (and it would still be on my shelf at home if my sister hadn't kidnapped it). Other stories affect me the same way. In 2003 I watched Peter Pan, and was riveted by the scene where Captain Hook tempts Wendy to join his crew. I badly wanted her to give in, and even though I knew it would never happen, I was disappointed when she rejected his offer.

I think that my love for "fallen" fantasy heroines stems from the fact that fairy-tale heroines in general are so insipid. I read a lot of fairy tales when I was little-- the Andrew Lang Fairy Books, especially-- and was always disappointed by the girls. Fairy-tale men are expected to be clever and resourceful, spirited and tough-- even underhanded when they have to be. The women, on the other hand, are expected to be beautiful, patient and obedient-- not much good if you're looking for a role model you can relate to.

Anyway. I've listed The Perilous Gard as an inspiration for A SUNLESS COUNTRY for a number of reasons. The underground setting is an obvious one, of course. Pope does a great job with it. She makes a big deal of the characters' reaction to "the weight"-- the constant awareness of the millions of tons of earth and stone over their heads. I might give the book a reread just for that, because I don't think I'm dealing with that enough in my current draft. There's also the "hidden court," which I haven't gotten into yet but will start to play with soon. The most important connection, though, is probably the chance for the heroine to become one of the enemy.

The "goblins" of my story-- which are actually a multicultural, multiracial amalgam of all intelligent things that go bump in the night-- share the vampiric tendency of turning people into themselves. It's not a deliberate action, like a vampire's bite. It's just that if you stay around them long long enough, you start to think and act them-- and pretty soon there's no difference between you. I've been wanting a long time to see what would happen if a heroine gave in to the temptation to "fall"-- and so, in this book, we might get to find out.

Inspirations: "Kubla Khan"

I decided to write about some of the inspirations behind my current novel project, A Sunless Country. It's hard to trace what goes into a book, but some things do come to mind when I'm telling people about the story. Arguably the most important, in terms of world-building and overall feel, is S. T. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."

The first time I specifically remember reading this poem was in 12th grade, in Mrs. Umstead's AP English Literature class. This class, which covered a startling range of subjects, was also my first exposure to Beowulf and Chaucer.

Here is the poem:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

It's long, and not all of it hit me with equal strength. The full first stanza, however, got into my head like nothing else. I think I've remembered it word-for-word since the first time I read it. It actually reminds me a bit of "How doth the little crocodile" from Alice in Wonderland--

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

Same odd rhythm and word order-- like a children's nursery rhyme, only... not.

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree." I didn't know for sure who Kubla Khan was, though by that time I'd done a paper on Genghis Khan for a history class and thought they were somehow related. I definitely didn't know where Xanadu was-- I thought the poet had made it up.

(I learned later that the word was an Anglicization of "Shàngdū," an ancient city in China. Reading the Wikipedia article now, it's pretty clear that Coleridge must have read Marco Polo's account of the city-- read it; it's interesting!-- and been inspired to convert some of it to rhyme. Less amazing than coming up with it wholecloth-- it's more like a piece of historical fanfiction.

But it's still a cool poem.)

Having no idea what Coleridge was talking about seems to have added a lot of mystery to the whole reading experience. (Imagine that.)

"Caverns measureless to man" is another phrase that caught my attention. Imagine a place where you could take a few steps past the threshold and be lost forever. I'm trying to get a bit of that into my novel, but it's hard to match the evocative power of that one simple phrase.

The "sunless sea" we're going to leave alone for right now, because the idea creeps me out. I'm terrified of oceans, in a vague and general way-- didn't know that, did you? When I go near the sea, I can't help but think of how easy it would be to swim out a little bit too far and be lost forever. (There it is again.) Being carried off beyond human reach or memory is the ultimate nightmare, for me. Add the "sunless" part and those two words are a vision of hell.

I tend to forget about the second stanza, and most of the third. There is one phrase that sticks out there, though: "woman wailing for her demon lover."

Remember, I was in high school when I read this poem. (I think. I may have read it once before then, too.) The words demon lover (as the YA shelves at the bookstore would suggest) are like blood-flavored candy to the teenage reader's soul. (I'm generalizing here... probably.) It's part of why the Twilight books, and vampires in general, are so popular. A beautiful, powerful, dangerous immortal creature who has chosen me as his one and only? Sign me up!

Of course, that idea only really works in fantasy (see Twilight), and even then it doesn't always work out in the end (see Dracula).

(My friend Brittany reminded me of a relevant comic strip tonight.)

The dark, brooding lover is usually best left to the realm of fiction (and powerfully scrutinized when he appears). I plan to write a short story, at some point, about a character who runs afoul of a person like that. When I do write it, I will post it here.

The last three lines that have always stuck in my mind are:

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid...

Just those three lines. The sudden change in rhythm caught my attention, and then the Abyssinian maid seemed so wise and knowing. At the same time, this section bothers me. It really doesn't fit well with the first four stanzas. If these lines:

I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there...

were rewritten, the final stanza could stand alone. I am not a Coleridge scholar-- or a poet-- and there may be some structure at work here I'm not aware of. I suspect, though, that the last stanza was actually the beginning of a different poem, and Coleridge stuck them together because he didn't know what else to do with them. (That would make "Kubla Khan" the poetic equivalent of a pair conjoined twins.)

(I had no idea at the time where Abyssinia was (though I'd read about Abyssinian cats), but it seemed nice and exotic so I didn't question it. In retrospect it does seem strange to skip from a description of a Chinese "pleasure-dome" to an Ethiopian girl playing a dulcimer. I guess that's Orientalism for you.)

So there you have my none-to-coherent impression of a poem I found captivating in twelfth grade. I don't really have a driving point to close with here, but I hope I can capture some of the magic of this poem in the novel I'm working on this year.