Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, GigaNotoSaurus, and Fusion Fragment

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/1/23, 6/15/23
GigaNotoSaurus 6/23
Fusion Fragment 6/23

The first of Beneath Ceaseless Skies’s June is­sues features stories revolving around memory, death, and resistance, seen clearly in Kat How­ard’s moving “Eleanora of the Bones”, which finds a religious order dedicated to tending the bones of the dead in order to give their spirits time to come to terms with moving on to the next stage of their journey. When a rival order gains prominence, though, and decrees bones hold no spirits, Eleanora must choose between safety and doing what’s right by the spirits she has always looked after. The piece follows a tragedy but also explores the religious power of martyrdom in an interesting and emotional way. In the second issue of the month, the focus is more on unlikely partnerships and people who might be or be seen as villains finding reasons to reform. That plays out with a mixture of humor and romance in Margaret Ronald’s “Spinning Shadow”, in which Tarma finds that the stone fragment she’s been using as a spindle weight is actual a piece of the dark essence of a demon…or something like a demon. One who was defeated and shattered, but not killed, and who has spent a long time plotting his resur­gence. Tarma is not so easily corrupted, though, and slowly the two navigate the complex land­scape of guilt, desire, and repentance. Before that, it’s a rather charming and fun take on a defeated “dark lord” character and the woman too stubborn to be roped into his nonsense. Ronald injects a sharp wit and some wonderful worldbuilding into the story, which makes it all the more delightful!

The June GigaNotoSaurus is “Her Suffering, Pretty and Private” by Aimee Ogden, which revisits the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, but shifts the narrative away from royalty and onto the villagers who have spent a hundred years magically asleep only to wake up and find the world changed, their skills antiquated, their prospects dim. In that place, Adalène is a seamstress struggling against the moderniza­tion of her craft, trying to support herself and a young girl she takes in. Ogden complicates the classic fairy tale by eschewing themes of true love or the dangers of breaking traditions by showing a village adapting to the changed times and finding ways to survive and even thrive on their own – without the need for the royalty for whose failings they were collateral damage. Fans of fairytale retellings will definitely find a lot to like!

Fusion Fragment swings for the fences with their June issue and hits a few out of the park, starting with JL George’s apocalyptic “The Last Good Day”, which finds Dani weathering what could be the end of the world with her girlfriend, Haf. The world is being blanketed by a toxic dust that causes a fatal illness, but there are still ways of going out, of surviving. Dani finds it hard to cope with the isolation and the control that Haf demands in their relationship. George does a wonderful job of showing the parallels between the toxic dust and the toxic elements of Dani and Haf’s partnership, the way that it’s suffocating them and makes the world seem doomed. And while there’s plenty of loss and grief the story deals with, it also shows that assuming that the good days are over can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, where you forget to look forward to the next good day. It’s a beautiful story, and not the last the issue has to offer. Cynthia Zhang’s cryptid contemporary fantasy, “My Neighbor Mothman”, is a captivating and amazing look at the life and times of Mothman, who rents an apartment and has a job at a cryptid bar after the Veil between the supernatural and mundane world is lifted and humans and so-called “monsters” live side by side. For Moth­man, the change is welcome but also lonely, as he struggles with feeling he is missing out on something, made a bit worse as those around him assure him he is, and that he needs to get a romantic partner to be complete. Zhang uses quietude to excellent effect here, slowly pushing Mothman to question himself and the “conven­tional wisdom” that he’s presented with from all the well-meaning friends he has. But his path is his own, and as he discovers his own truths, the direction and nature of that path becomes clearer. It’s such a careful and relatable story with a fantastic cast, contemplative pacing, and sharp dialogue. I cannot recommend this one enough!

Recommended Stories:
“Spinning Shadow,” Margaret Ronald (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/23)
“My Neighbor Mothman,” Cynthia Zhang (Fusion Fragment 6/23)

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

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