Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Kaleidotrope, and Fiyah

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 4/6/23
Kaleidotrope 4/23
Fiyah Spring ’23

Beneath Ceaseless Skies keeps on the themes of family, crisis, and healing with its first issue of April, especially in Martin Cahill’s “An Inheritance of Scars”. The story unfolds in a world where trauma, from heartbreak to loss to family strife, are expressed as glowing scars. Temi is a young man raised by a single father who has struggled with the role, but who has also accepted help from others in raising his son. As an important and mysterious trial nears, Temi fears what failure might mean, but Cahill twists expectations in a careful and tender look at generational trauma, healing, and the thorny idea of personal responsibility. It’s an introspec­tive and intimate story, eschewing the “epic” stakes often associated with adventure fantasy but providing a tense and satisfying experience all the same.

Early April also saw the release of a new Kalei­dotrope. In it, Carlie St. George reminds readers why she’s one of the best at interrogating horror tropes in “Give Us the Swords”, which follows a string of slasher-style murders hounding a group of college friends. The narrator of the piece is on the fringes of the tragedy, involved in some profound ways but caught on the border of being repulsed by what’s happened and un­derstanding how these deaths might echo with a kind of justice. St. George keeps the focus on him and his growing understanding of what is happening and why while also just telling a bloody good tale of violation and revenge. Horror fans definitely won’t want to miss it, and readers in general can appreciate the way the story plays with perspective, culpability, and power even if severed heads and gory ret­ribution aren’t their cup of tea. M.H. Ayinde draws together pride, family, and magic in “The Invoker and Her Quartet”, which finds sisters Iyanu and Moji gathered to see if one of them will inherit the title and power of Invoker from their recently killed mother. Everyone expects it to be Iyanu chosen, but following a mistake at a vital moment, the honor passes to Moji instead – and a wedge gets between the sisters in a way that nothing had previously. Ayinde shows the messy emotions of Iyanu, who cannot seem to accept what has happened, who blames her sister almost as much as she blames herself. Pride and grief become a toxic combination, and there’s a deeply human look at how family can fall apart, and how they can sometimes also find their way back together.

The worldbuilding is lush and sweeping, and the complex relationships make for a riveting read. Moving to poetry, “I’m Basically Helen of Troy” by Annika Barranti Klein is a funny and conversational piece that hides its edge under a casual tone. The narrator is “basically” like Helen, but the similarities stretch to more than metaphor, lingering on the sight of a thousand ships and the weight of a bloody conflict fought over what might be an almost trivial attraction. Klein does careful and clever work letting the enormity of the tragedy surrounding Helen hover like the sword of Damocles, touching those who live underneath it and giving readers a taste of just how pear-shaped things can go from a seemingly fleeting flirtation.

Fiyah’s latest issue comes weighted with works that look at exhaustion, isolation, and death. In Eboni J. Dunbar’s “Spell for Grief and Long­ing”, Anissa has lost the man she loved in a city ripe with violence in a world devastated by climate and social collapse. Her husband’s boss, though, an enigmatic figure known as the Colt, has a job for her that might insulate her from the dangers all around her – that is, if she can raise the dead. But it’s not only a taboo – it’s a viola­tion of the souls of the dead. Pulled between her need for protection, her desire to see her hus­band again, and her knowledge that he’d never want to be raised that way, Anissa must find an­other option, even if it means trying something completely new. Dunbar imagines a grim world where safety is a dream most people are chas­ing, and are willing to risk almost anything to achieve. In the poetry, “Abecedarian for Light and Change” by Omodero David Oghenekaro is steeped in religious language, a prayer for the world to be remade and a resolution to take part in that remaking despite a deep desire for peace and joy. The narrator knows that those things cannot be possible with the world as it is – and so asks for the power to rise, to transform and to be able to transform the world into a place where such change and peace is possible for everyone. Oghenekaro powerfully draws the stakes of the prayer, and the possibility of a world remade.

Recommended Stories:
“The Invoker and Her Quartet”, M. H. Ayinde (Kaleidotrope 4/23)
“Spell for Grief and Longing”, Eboni J. Dunbar (Fiyah 4/23)

This review and more like it in the June 2023 issue of Locus.

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