Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

He lay there still, the broken boy; but his face was not so tormented as it had been. It seemed even that he might dream of gentle things, for his eyes no longer twitched beneath their lids, and the soft full curve of his mouth now turned slightly upward. I stood a moment, then looked to the east where the sky now was yellow. I waited until the first brilliant blade of sunlight sliced across the Cathedral’s tallest tower. I stooped and brushed the tangled hair from my brother’s brow, and kissed him upon the forehead.

“Wake, Raphael,” I whispered. His eyes twitched and opened to stare at me, a gray flash of alarm that faded as quickly as the stars.

“Wh—” he started, but I touched his mouth with my finger.

“We are waking now,” I said, and stood.

Behind me Jane started to say something, fell silent. I felt Miss Scarlet’s hand slip into mine.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “Or doesn’t it matter now?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Well, yes; I suppose it probably does.”

I brushed the hair from my eyes. I took Miss Scarlet into my arms and with Jane behind me climbed the ladder until we stood above the pit, gazing down from Saint-. Alaban’s Hill.

The sun had risen above the horizon, and I could see the entire City of Trees laid out before me, trees and ruined buildings and four fair Houses upon a hill. Far far beyond these I made out the faint sparkling cusp of the river.

“Well,” I said, tightening my grip upon Miss Scarlet’s hand. I looked at her and then at Jane. “I guess we’d better go.”

They nodded. Together we walked down Saint-Alaban’s Hill.

Equindi uscimmo a riveder le stele.

—And thence we came forth, to see again the stars.

My concern in Winterlong is the relationship between consciousness and reality, and in particular the way in which an artistic medium may be used to explore the interstices between the objective, waking world and those other, more richly textured and deeply shadowed realms that most of us visit only fleetingly. Winterlong explores these regions through the peculiar sensibility of Wendy Wanders. In Aestival Tide, an independent companion novel, I take a different route: we move outward from the disfigured City to the broader stage of a transmogrified oceanscape, conducted (or kidnapped) by a narrative consciousness that is even more out-of-the-ordinary than Wendy’s.

Wendy, Miss Scarlet, Jane Alopex all appear in Aestival Tide. But the primary narrative is that of Jenny-the-fox, neophyte in an arcane cult whose members live in the ruins of an ancient weather-tracking station in the coastal town of Occis. Jenny is caught up in the ongoing intrigue between the Ascendant hegemony and the Balkhash Commonwealth. She is also increasingly obsessed with what she believes is her crucial role in bringing about the necessary destruction of Occis itself. Aestival Tide, the annual celebration of the summer solstice, brings hundreds of carnival-goers to the former ocean resort—among them Wendy and Scarlet and Jane. There’s a kidnapping, a geneslave insurrection involving the reluctant Miss Scarlet, messianic obsessions and the looming threat of a killer hurricane that has been predicted for over three hundred years. As in Winterlong, I’m using subtexts drawn from Near Eastern mythologies, along with the more familiar elements of the Demeter/Persephone myth, the story of the Magdalene, and even the Biblical tale of Lot’s wife. And I hope that the different narrative structure, alternating between third-person and yet another first-person narrator (a la Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet) will give even more depth and texture to my continuing exploration of the coming of the Magdalene.

Elizabeth Hand (b. 1957) is the award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy titles such as Winterlong , Waking the Moon , Black Light , and Glimmering , as well as the thrillers Generation Loss and Available Dark . She is commonly regarded as one of the most poetic writers working in speculative fiction and horror today.

Hand was born in San Diego and grew up in Yonkers and Pound Ridge, New York. During the height of the Cold War, she was exposed to constant air raid drills and firehouse sirens, giving her early practice in thinking about the apocalypse. She attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where she received a BS in cultural anthropology.

Hand’s first love was writing, but many Broadway actors lived in her hometown of Pound Ridge, and by high school she was consumed with the theater. She wrote and acted in a number of plays in school and with a local troupe, The Hamlet Players. After college, writing stories became her primary interest, and the work of Angela Carter cemented that interest. Hand realized that she wanted to create new myths and retell old ones, using a heightened prose style.

Hand’s first break came in 1988 with the publication of Winterlong . In this novel, Hand explores the City of Trees, a post-apocalyptic Washington, DC. The story focuses on a psychically enhanced woman who can read dreams and her journey through the strange city with her courtesan twin brother. The book’s success led to two sequels: Aestival Tide and Icarus Descending . All three novels were nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.

Beginning with the James Tiptree, Jr. Award–winning Waking the Moon , Hand wrote a succession of books involving themes of apocalypse, ancient deities, and mysticism. Waking the Moon centers on the Benandanti, an ancient secret society in modern-day Washington, DC. that also appeared in Black Light , a New York Times Notable Book.

In 1998, Hand released her short story collection Last Summer at Mars Hill . The title story won the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award. Most recently, she has published two crime novels focusing on punk rock photographer Cass Neary—the Shirley Jackson Award–winning Generation Loss (2007) and Available Dark (2012).

When Hand isn’t writing stories of decadence and deities, she divides her time between the coast of Maine and London, with her partner, UK critic John Clute. She is a regular contributor to numerous publications, including the Washington Post and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction .

Hand is the oldest of five siblings in a very close-knit family. This photo shows them in 1967, on one of their camping trips to Maine and Canada. All five kids, then under the age of ten, shared a canvas tent with their parents. From left to right: Brian, Patrick, Elizabeth, Kathleen, and baby Barbara. “Maine imprinted on me during this time, which is why I've lived there for the last twenty-five years,” Hand says.

Hand in her driveway with her beloved family dog Cindy shortly before leaving for college in Washington, DC. “Note the skirt, made from a pair of massively embroidered jeans; my favorite red velvet beret, which my mother gave me for Christmas and which disappeared under dark circumstances a few years later; my Mom’s suede jacket (I added the denim cuffs); and needlework belt with my initials on it, made by my grandmother Hand. You can’t see them, but I was also wearing my lace-up Frye boots.”