Permeable Borders
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Fairwood PressOriginally appeared in F&SF
With "Key Signature", this makes a lovely pair of musical bookend stories about music. In this, a wandering magician steps into a grange hall to join a musical group with his fiddle and reads their thought-stream through the music. But when they finish, the narrator hears another faint song and follows it. It is the ghost of a girl who's singing the song of the title. One of the ladies of the group, Alma, helps him reach the girl. When the lady was a child herself, she met the ghost's fleshly self inside a building marked with a green man. They'd tried to feed but only unintentionally killed her. The narrator calls out this ghost, part of his "family," who is her actual family, and helps to transition her.
No comments:
Post a Comment