"Raw . . . effective in its simplicity . . . moving . . . powerful." Rae Bryant is the July 2008 recipient of the Whidbey Writers' Prize--"A History of Bloody Point, St. Christopher's Island (1626)." Read her short story, "The Peregrine and the Mermaid," in the current issue of SFW.

In addition to her historical steampunk novel, Hekate's Daughter (see excerpt below), her current nonfiction projects include an interview with the multi-talented Daniel Wallace, four time novelist, whose works include Big Fish, text turned to film, directed by Tim Burton. Daniel Wallace is a J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and he is currently writing his fifth novel that like his others explore the fine lines between reality, perception, and imagination. Stop back for the completed interview, coming soon, and read about this fabulously down to earth and diversly talented author, artist, and professor.

Rae Bryant is a short story author, poet, novelist, reviewer for The Fix, and submissions reader for Fantasy Magazine. She is a 2008 recipient of the Whidbey Writers' Prize. Her works have appeared or will soon be appearing in Weird Tales, The Willows, and Southern Fried Weirdness, among others. She lives in a little valley outside Washington D.C. with her husband, Patrick, and two children, Tyler and Madelyn. Read more about Rae at www.raebryant.com or visit her at raebryant.livejournal.com.

PROJECT ON OFFER
Hekate's Daughter (Fantasy/Historical--nymphs)
Pan's Labyrinth meets The Other Boleyn Girl in this 1876 Reconstructionist adventure through the liminal. Meshing history and fantasy in a cross-roads of steampunk and chthonic mythology, the reader will journey into Chthonos where sensual and primordial beings still lurk within our world.

Zoë Ficklestick, a precocious young lady, talks to fireflies and faces in the garden soil. When she moves to Merlewood Manor with her uncle, an eccentric archaeologist, she must navigate the pressures of growing up in a Reconstructionist border state, brutal and ever-changing.

She turns to Malic, the firefly that visits her window ledge each night. He offers her a way out, but Malic is not what he seems, and he takes her on a bloody journey into the very earth and a nymph's culture. It is a cruel and sensual place, one of complications and intrigues, and Zoë finds that it is much like her own world. She cannot escape the challenges she so desires to leave behind.

Can Zoë find the strength to become the warrior? Can she find the courage to help an ancient and cruel being? Gnomon rituals, Nekromante spies, and warrior nymphs--Zoë must brave great danger and look deeper than herself, deeper than the present. She must find her past and see into her future, and she must do it before succumbing to the fury that hunts her . . . and the fury that lurks within.

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READ AN EXCERPT FROM HEKATE"S DAUGHTER . . .
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Frederick Town, 1876

“No!” Zoë could hardly hear herself over the taunting. She turned to Mr. William's, who sat against the wall, seemingly oblivious to the boys' behavior.

A rock hit Mr. Williams hard upon the cheek. Blood swelled then ran in a thin line down over his dark brown skin. The boys laughed.

"Stumpy, stumpy, coon, coon, . . ." they called. One of the boys kicked Mr. Williams in his stump, where a foot should have been.

Mr. Williams cringed, but he didn't look at the boy. Instead, he tried to wipe the blood from his cheek, but it only smeared. He gazed a moment at the red tips of his fingers then pulled his hat down over his face.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Zoë grabbed the nearest boy by the shoulder and tried to pull him away.

The boy shrugged her off. Mr. Williams sat, head bent, trying as best he could to shield his face from the barrage of rocks. Zoë shouldered her way straight into the boy.

“Hey!” The boy bumped into his crony beside him. The rocks stopped and the rabid boys all stared at her. That was the best way to describe them, rabid, like a pack of wild dogs. These boys meant to do more than throw rocks, and now she was in their sights. Zoë bolstered what courage she had.

“I said stop it!”

The boys all grinned at her. The tallest among them stepped forward. He had bright blue eyes. They were truly the bluest eyes ever.

“I know you," Blue Eyes said. "You’re that Dr. Frankenstein’s niece! Where’s your mommy and daddy, freak?”

Zoë took a deep breath, trying to focus. “This man was doing nothing but sitting here. You’ve no right to harass him."

"Right?" Blue eyes laughed, turning to his cronies.

"You should go on your way and leave him alone.” The words moved out from between her lips with the slow certainty of water, as if it might wash away the filth standing before her, but these boys did not wash away so easily. Hatred stuck to people like tar in Frederick Town, and it passed down through generations as surely as brown hair or blue eyes. She'd seen this lot before. These boys didn't know anything else.

Blue Eyes took a step closer, staring down at her when Mr. Fandy came out of the store, holding a giant cleaver in his hand. The boys started running.

“Come on, Ike!” The crony closest to Blue Eyes pulled on his sleeve.

"This isn't over," Ike said then glared at Mr. Fandy before running off himself.

"Ike Fenton, you wait till I speak with your father! You boys are too old to be acting like this!” Mr. Fandy waved the cleaver in the air.

Too old? Zoë turned to Mr. Williams, still on the ground. What those boys were doing didn’t seem proper at any age.

After the boys were around the post office and out of view, Mr. Fandy tapped Mr. Williams on the shoulder.

Mr. Williams looked up, blood still smeared across his cheek. "It’s all right,” he said.

All right? Zoë wanted to chase that Ike Fenton down and pummel him into the ground, and yet here was Mr. Williams dismissing it.

“Sure you’re not hurt, Joe?” Mr. Fandy looked him all over.

“I’ll be fine. No sense wasting good energy over the likes of them.”

“They come back, and I’ll be wasting more than energy.” Mr. Fandy waved the cleaver for emphasis. “Listen, I’ve got some extra cuts you might like to take with you. Give me a minute, and I’ll wrap them up.”

“I’d be much obliged, Mr. Fandy. Thank you.”

Mr. Fandy smiled and gave Mr. Williams another clap on the shoulder. “Come round back in a few minutes, and I’ll have them waiting by the door.” Mr. Fandy went back inside the shop, and Mr. Williams watched him go, shaking his head ever so slightly. There seemed to be a sudden look of disappointment on his face.

Zoë stood, taking it all in, when she heard someone clear a throat behind her. She turned to see Bessie standing in the doorway. Bessie smiled, and for a moment, it almost looked like approval, as if Zoë might have done something right. Bessie turned and went back inside, too.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” Mr. Williams gave Zoë a nod.

“Except for those boys.” She glanced up the road, where Ike and his posse were now peeking around the corner of the post office. She gave them a nod and a smirk, then sat right down beside Mr. Williams, slow and with emphasis, making sure the boys were watching her the entire time. She rested her back against the wall, glaring at them.

“Know them?” Mr. Williams gave a nod to the boys.

“Not really.” Zoe looked again at Mr. Williams’ legs laid out beside her own, his filthy stump right there in the light of day for everyone to see. A crutch lay beside him, scratched and worn, with a curved piece of wood attached to the top of it. Didn’t seem decent for a man who’d lost his foot to be sitting in the dirt like that. Zoë looked at her own feet, then tucked them up underneath her dress.

“I don’t suppose you spend much time with those boys.”

“No, Mr. Williams. Those boys run in a different circle.”

"And what circle do you run in, Miss Zoë?”

Zoe couldn't answer the question. She sat trying to puzzle it out, but there didn't seem to be a circle for her. Mr. Williams started to hum a slow tune. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and ran it across his cheek.

###

"For the old man is a-waitin'
to carry you to freedom
Follow the drinking gourd . . .”

###

The blood had partially dried, and he only succeeded in wiping a small amount off. “Haven't you any circles of your own?” he said.

Zoë shook her head. "No, Mr. Williams, I haven’t any circles of my own.” She had never wanted to admit it to herself before, but it was the simplest truth. Friends had just never been part of her life, outside Bessie and Malic, of course, but what kinds of friends were they, a servant and a firefly?

“Seems we move in the same sorts of places, you and me, between the circles.” It wasn’t a hurtful statement, wasn’t meant to be mean, but somehow the words cut into her. “It’s not always the safest place to be,” he said.

“No, I guess not.”

Mr. Williams bent over, stretching out his hand and scratched at his stump. “Gets to itchin’ after while.”

If only I could scratch mine, too. Zoë imagined her own stump, a bloody piece of a heart that had been hacked away long ago. What was left of it hid deep inside her where she could never scratch it, never rub it, never find any relief at all. Her loss was something no dressing could bandage, and she imagined that she might consider giving her right foot to have her parents back. “Mr. Williams.”

"Yes?"

"I’m sorry those boys were mean to you. There’s no excuse for their behavior.”

Mr. Williams smiled. “People will be what they are, Miss Zoë. Nothing you or I can do about that.”

“I wish there was. I wish there was a way to rid the world of rabid boys."

“Rabid?" He laughed. "Yes, I s'pose that's 'bout the best way to describe them." He laughed again. "But I don't see no need to get rid of them. They could do with a little perspective, though. If they could just see their wrong, but that ain't so easy for people to see when it's inside them.”

“So how do you show them? There must be a way to show them their wrong?”

Mr. Williams held out his hand, and in it, was that same card she had seen him holding earlier. “Go on, Miss Zoë, take it.” He pushed the card into her hand. “Before you can help others open their eyes, you got to first open your own.”

Before Zoë could say a word, Mr. Williams pulled himself up and onto his crutch then hobbled down the road a bit, turning the corner of the shop.

Zoë looked at the card, turning it upright. It was mostly blank, curled and dirty at the corners and edges. There was a year written on it, 1870, and a little box for a stamp up in the corner, but nothing else. Zoë turned the card over, and she suddenly wished that she hadn't, and she gasped.

The card was a photograph of a man, hanging from a big tree. He was mostly naked except for a raggedy cloth that hung about his waist. It was dark in the center, an oblong stain that ran the entire front of the cloth where his private part was. Though the photograph was black and white, somehow, Zoë knew the dark spot was blood. The man’s face and body--bloated, cut, and bleeding--looked as though it had taken a beating from not just one, but many. Zoë couldn't find his right ear, or was it his left?

At the bottom of the card was one word. Lynching.

“Come on, it’s time to go home. What are you doing down there?” Bessie bent and grabbed Zoë’s elbow to help her up. “What’s this?” She pointed to the card.

“Mr. Williams gave it to me.”

“Give it here.” Bessie took the card before Zoë could pull it away then gazed at it a moment, swallowing hard. She looked at Zoë then at the card again. She stuck it deep inside her bag. “Better be on our way.” She took Zoë by the hand and led her toward Pudgy’s Tavern to find Reif. Apparently it was time to go home.

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Blake, William. Hekate. 1795.
Bryant, Rae. Daphnae. 2008.
Waterhouse, John William. A Hamadryad. 1895
Waterhouse, John William. Hylas and the Nymphs. 1896.
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Visit Rae Bryant's website, www.raebryant.com, for a complete list of published works or visit her at raebryant.livejournal.com.