Onirismes #01, page 1
Onirismes
#01
Littératures de l'Imaginaire
Speculative & Fantastic literature
Editorial
The editorial of the first issue of a new publication is usually the opportunity to remind the readers of its goals and stakes. I could thus inflict upon you a variety of long sentences calling for your implication, support or even worship.
But Onirismes, being a webzine dedicated to publishing fiction and poetry, is also intended for a public of inquisitive and involved people, not easily trapped by dogma. I will thus refrain from overzealous preaching. All of the essential information regarding our initiative is available on our home page.
I'd like to devote these lines to some issues I feel are important to dicuss here. If Onirismes is bilingual, available in different formats (web, ebook, audio) and free, it's because our action only has meaning if it reaches as many people as possible. More than anything, we loathe the artificial boundaries that limit the spreading of new voices. Our team is multilingual, multicultural, and international, and we'd like Onirismes to reflect that.
The main constraint we face in this approach is the amount of work needed to publish, in this case, three stories: several hundred submissions to read, three to select and edit, three translations to produce, three interviews (and their translations), six podcasts... and one website to publish them all and on the web bind them.
Our ressources being rather scarce, we rely on a flexible and "when it's done" publication process, rather than a mechanical and tightly scheduled one.
Our non-commercial status has its merits (no need for immediate profitability, nor to publish a given number of stories each month, sometimes at the expense of quality), but the matter of funding still is central to the future of Onirismes. Entirely composed of volunteers, Onirismes has made the choice of paying its authors, and will continue to do so as long as it exists.
It means that though we don't need much funds, we do need some to keep this project alive and, who knows, expand it. A small and unobtrusive Paypal button is placed in the left top corner of each page, and will let you show your support to this adventure.
Starting from a three euros (or equivalent) donation, your Onirismes account will become a "supporter" account 1, shown as such on our forums, something which will let you stand straight and proud of having made an committed choice. Some more advantages may be associated with these accounts in the future...
I'd like to conclude this editorial by mentioning the issue of poetry, strangely absent from this first issue. Fantastic poetry is a selective genre, particularly in French, and we'd like to take time to select and showcase pieces that accurately reflect its soul. While we work on producing our own take on it, we invite English speakers (only, for lack of a French-speaking alternative...) to discover some modern fragments from our friends at Goblin Fruit, Stone Telling or the Endicott Studio.
The only thing left for me to do is to wish you a pleasant reading of this first issue, and to remind you to drop by our forums, if you wish to react to any of the pieces published or communicate with the team, with each other...
1this is done manually, please mention your account name in the PayPal comment field when donating.
Julien Martlet
Editorial
L'édito du premier numéro d'une nouvelle publication est généralement l'occasion d'en rappeler les buts et les enjeux. Je pourrais ainsi vous asséner de grandes phrases fédératrices appelant à l'implication, au soutien, voire à l'adoration.
Mais Onirismes, parce qu'il s'agit d'un webzine publiant de la fiction et de la poésie, est destiné à un public de gens curieux, impliqués et peu sensibles aux dogmes. J'éviterai donc de prêcher avec (trop de) zèle. Toutes les informations importantes concernant notre démarche sont disponibles en page d'accueil.
J'aimerais surtout consacrer ces lignes à quelques points qu'il me semble important d'évoquer avec vous. Si Onirismes est bilingue, multi-support et gratuit, c'est que notre action n'a de sens que si elle est découverte par le plus grand nombre. Plus que tout, nous abhorrons les frontières artificielles qui assourdissent les voix nouvelles, et limitent leur propagation. Notre équipe est polyglotte, multiculturelle et internationale, et nous souhaitons qu'Onirismes en soit le reflet.
La principale contrainte de cette démarche est la quantité de travail demandé pour publier, ici, trois nouvelles : plusieurs centaines de textes à lire, trois textes à sélectionner et à éditer, trois traductions à réaliser, trois interviews (et leur traduction), six podcasts... et un site web pour les diffuser tous, et sur la toile les lier.
Nos moyens humains étant plutôt limités, peu adaptés à une publication régulière et mécanique, nous privilégierons une approche libre et souple.
Si notre statut non-commercial a ses avantages (pas de contrainte de rentabilité immédiate, pas d'obligation de publier un quota de textes à intervalle régulier), la question du financemement impactera tout de même directement l'avenir d'Onirismes. Composé de bénévoles, Onirismes a pourtant fait le choix de rémunérer ses auteurs, et continuera à le faire quoi qu'il en coûte.
Cela signifie un besoin de fonds modeste mais réel, indispensable pour que le projet continue et, qui sait, se développe. Un (discret) bouton Paypal est présent en haut à gauche de chaque page, et vous permettra de témoigner votre soutien à cette aventure.
À partir d'une donation de trois euros, votre compte d'accès à Onirismes deviendra un compte "soutien" 1, identifié en tant que tel sur nos forums, ce qui vous permettra de vous tenir la tête droite et fière, conscient d'avoir effectué un choix militant. D'autres avantages pourraient également s'y trouver associés dans le futur...
J'aimerais terminer en évoquant la question de la poésie, curieusement absente de ce premier numéro. La poésie fantastique est un genre on ne peut plus confidentiel, particulièrement en français, et nous souhaitons prendre notre temps pour proposer des textes qui font honneur au genre. En attendant de découvrir notre vision personnelle de celui-ci, nous invitons les anglophones (uniquement, faute d'alternative francophone qui nous corresponde...) à en découvrir quelques fragments modernes chez nos amis de Goblin Fruit, Stone Telling ou encore l'Endicott Studio.
Il ne me reste qu'à vous souhaiter une agréable lecture de ce premier numéro, et à vous signaler l'existence de nos forums, si vous souhaitez réagir à nos publications ou communiquer avec l'équipe, entre vous...
1opération effectuée manuellement, merci d'indiquer l'identifiant de votre compte dans le commentaire accompagnant votre donation.
Julien Martlet
The Prophet's Daughters, by Michael J. DeLuca
Herophile, Prophet of Sybaris, stopped breathing. There was no noise, no cough, no rattle. Her breath had been so soft its absence hardly made a difference.
At first the two girls who'd sat for so many hours on the floor before the altar of Hera's temple, watching Herophile's wax-pale lips in the tallow-lit dimness, barely stirred. But the younger daughter knew it instantly: little Io, so gangly and prim in her bone-colored clothes, with her blonde hair held in a bun by the stem of a damask rose. Mother was dead. From Io came only the narrowest intake of breath, an attempt to hold on to what little her mother had lost. The stylus with which she had worked at her lessons she lay down across the soft clay, but it left no mark. The marble face of Hera's statue showed more emotion.
Moments passed, and Melia leapt to her feet with a wail: the elder daughter, her long hair unkempt like a Maenad's, her lovely eyes shadowed with red crescent moons. She tore her red clothes with fingers like claws, flinging shreds at the walls, at the Gods, at her sister. Her flushed breasts laid bare, her fine dress in tatters, she turned her fury on her hair, ripping it out in great black clumps. At last she flung her body across her dead mother's form.
Io sighed. She lifted a hand to offer comfort, but in the air it hovered, then fell to her side. Traditional mourning: was that all her sister, a prophet's daughter, could muster?
She rose, took three noiseless steps, and pushed aside the velvet curtain. Outside the temple, framed by rows of caryatid columns wearing her mother's once-youthful features, two stars shone above the cliff's brink, one pale red, the other white. Wind from the sea for which Io was named rushed in through the crack, brushed her thin legs, made her draw her cloak tighter. She called for the priest, then let the drapes fall closed. The candle-flames righted and burned on untouched by death's brush, save for the wax that cascaded in beads down their sides, like Melia's hot tears turned to milk.
Io moved around the altar where their mother lay and sat beside her sister on the floor. "We'll be all right," she said.
"In Hades we will," said Melia, face buried in her arms, voice bitter as hopflower. "Mother is dead. We owe her everything we are, everything we have. How will we live? Who will protect us? Will the people of Sybaris go on paying tribute to Herophile's two spoiled daughters? The gods know I can't take her place as prophet—I don't have the gift. I should have loved her more. I should have listened. I should have taken a suitor. There were so many, and I scorned them all. I scorned her. Now we shall be powerless. We shall be theirs to take as they will."
"Hush," whispered Io. "He is here."
The priest Crosus touched each sister on the shoulder—the younger quiet and serene, the elder torn and sobbing.
"Help us," said Melia, clutching his arm. "You know the people hated our mother. Protect us from their scorn."
"Of course," said Crosus. "I will do all in my power."
He said the rites. He sacrificed on Herophile's behalf: a calf to Hera, bread to Ceres, his own blood to Mercury, cherries to Proserpina. He laid silver pieces on her eyes. He would not meet Io's gaze.
He set on the floor between the prophet's daughters a plate of mutton, a jar of cheap wine. "Eat," he said. "You must keep up your strength through the vigil, or we may have three to mourn instead of one." He bowed his head and hurried from the temple.
Io caught the drapes before they closed.
Outside, Crosus sagged against a column, cradling the palm he'd cut in sacrifice. Above, a flock of night-birds faltered as it crossed the two bright stars. The flock turned upon itself; one bird plummeted into the sea. The priest shuddered. He whispered a prayer.
"Hera...if this sign shows our future...if one is to fall...let it not be me."
Io and Melia waited for dawn. They gazed not on the altar, not on the one who'd brought them here, but on each other.
"I don't understand you," said Melia. "She is dead. You can't say you're too young. You've seen death before in the city, in the forest. Mother showed us death. She made sure we knew. Now you just sit there as if it means nothing. You won't see her in the mornings, Io. She won't come in and open the drapes and wake you with kisses. You won't drink juice of pomegranate with her while she looks for portents in your dreams."
Already the fresh meat grew cold, drawing tiny flies to drown in the juices. "Don't be stupid. She's been sick. She hasn't done those things in years." Io poured the wine, but did not drink it. She pushed it across the slab towards her sister. "Yes, Mother taught us death. She took us out on the stones when the tide was low and showed us crabs decaying in the pools. She showed us the birds smashing snails against the cliffs. She showed us maggots. But you didn't learn death, did you, sister? If you had, you wouldn't act this way. You were busy learning beauty: art and song and lies. You didn't understand the lesson."
"Shut up! Shut up!" Melia whispered, clutching at Mother's stiff right hand. "Don't you see? She is gone! Cry, medusa! Why won't you cry?"
"I don't think you knew her, Melia. You know she saw this coming long ago. Did you ever see her fear it?" Io took Mother's left hand and squeezed it until veins showed.
Melia tried to tear her sister's hand away. They fought, but Io's grip, thin though she was, would not be broken. Melia gasped. She dashed the wine in Io's face. "You hated her. You must have hated her. How else could you act so cold?"
Io closed her eyes so tight that wrinkles rose where age had not yet walked. Wine trickled over her skin in the path of tears, staining red the cloth that covered her still-shallow breast. For an instant, she looked like her mother.
Then she shook her head. "I won't cry," she said. "You think I don't feel emotion? I am afraid. I know what the people of the city will say. I know that they feared Mother's power. They'd have starved her to death if they could. If we let them, they'll do it to us. But this is why she taught us all those things, Melia, those things you never learned: to show us that life is a cycle, that carrion nurtures the sublime. This is what she made us for.
"I love you, Melia," Io said. "I loved Mother. But I knew she would die. I mean to live without her."
Melia's fingers trembled in her dead mother's grasp. Her breast heaved, and her tears that wouldn't stop falling splashed into the puddle of wine and poisoned it with salt.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
A moment later she was in her sister's arms.
"We'll be all right," soothed Io, holding her close. She smoothed Melia's hair. "She has shown us a sign. I know what to do...I just need to know who."
Outside the temple, Lysis, death's white-headed funeral taskmaster, leaned on a staff, directing his servants as they piled high a pyre of olive wood and reeds. Below on the hillside, a procession approached, burdened with gifts—incense lamps, casks of milk, grain, rich silks and oils, captured snakes and newborn calves. The line stretched all the way to Sybaris under the sharp white sun.
Crosus sat beside the pyre in the temple's shadow, a lyre in his lap. Strains of one of Sappho's songs slipped south across the Ionian Sea—a song of love, but Crosus did not sing the words.
Melia and Io stood side by side, still dressed from the night's vigil: Melia's breasts bare, face drawn and haggard, hair shifting wild and torn like a Gorgon's; Io's dress stained, her thin form sagging, weak from lack of sleep. Io held Melia's hand in both of hers.
Atop the pyre, draped in richest purple cloth adorned with amaranth and rose, lay the corpse of Herophile, Prophet of Sybaris. The hollow cheeks were filled with wax, the eyes sunk deep beneath the riverkeeper's toll. At its feet lay the dagger of beaten copper the prophet had used for sacrifice.
The mourners approached; they laid their gifts down gingerly, as if at too heavy a touch Herophile might wake, those fleshless lips might yet snap out some wretched fate, some condemnation. When no unearthly threat was heard, they stepped away, assembling in a silent crowd to await absolution.
Melia had not ceased to cry. Each young man in line, as he passed, shot her a look or a leer. The weakness of her grief made them bold: warriors, usurers, merchants and senator's sons. Not one wasted a glance on skinny, awkward Io. Her rough cowl hung low over her eyes. She let her gaze seem to fix on the ground—but missed nothing.
Lysis worked his tongue as his servants toiled, a far-carrying whisper more fit for a chorus than a funeral. "Do you wonder, my brothers in service of death, what powers the prophet takes with her on her voyage down the Acheron? We all do, I suspect: all of us from Sybaris who felt the lash of her tongue. She told many bleak fates. We all wonder which she is waiting yet to fulfill—or else I suspect so many wouldn't have come to bestow such gifts!" He cackled.
Melia's fingernails dug into Io's palm; Io gripped her sister tighter. No one said a word to silence him. The priest only played his lyre.
"Now let me think," death's taskmaster rambled, helping a mourner to hoist up the corpse of a heavy black calf, "What do the ancients teach on the subject of power after death?
"Sheshet, astronomer priestess of Egypt, achieved deathly might through preservation. She took her own life by drowning, at the age of twenty-nine. Her cult preserved her flesh and organs whole in vats of lotus honey. It is said she left plans for her own resurrection, and any man who walks within miles of her tomb dies of fever before the next moonrise."
Lysis cut the twine that wrapped a bundle of torches. One of the servants ran to the temple to fetch forth a brand from the sacred flame. "Then again, our own Pythagoras studied in Egypt, and he tells us no soul ever ends—when we burn the body, the will and the power merely flow from flesh into fire and wait to take a different form."
He winked as if he were sharing a secret, though all the world could hear. "But what is my own belief, I who have served you as long as Herophile, I who have bathed in the ash of her prophecies' human fuel for forty years, I who am so close to Pluton's ear? I believe the wealthy fisherman of Acheron does not yield up his catch so easily. Where is Eurydice? Where Atyminius? Could even great Achilles' shade come forth from Tartarus to halt Aeneas' quest? Herophile is gone, my friends. From Pluton's halls, even legends don't return."
A held-in breath collectively escaped a city's mouth. Whispers echoed down the ranks, all the way to the edges of the cliffs and the poets' busts that marked the gates of Sybaris. A boy who stood before the pyre snatched back a copper soldier he had given up to flame.
The burning brand was passed across the pyre. Lysis held it to a torch. He shrugged. "In Herophile's case, I think we can agree that's just as well."
Melia snarled. She lunged free of Io's grasp and flew at Lysis, screaming. "Don't you dare, Lysis Sewer-Rat, Lysis Carrion-Crow. Don't you dare speak that way of my mother—not while her body lies unburned!"
Io faltered. She stumbled without her sister's support, but made no sound. Her stained robe rode up to her knee, exposing a narrow ankle and calf, the skin in its pale youth like the stretched and withered skin of one dead.
