Hey, if all the merchants can extend their Black Friday events, why can’t I?

Today I want to look at three short works by Tanith Lee.

First is “Black as Ink”. This one is from Red as Blood, a collection of fairy tale based dark fantasy stories.  The time when the story opens isn’t clear, but from internal details I would guess it takes place somewhere in Europe before WWI. There’s a fifteen year gap between the beginning and the end, which seems to be in the 1920s. There’s mention of a war that sounds like WWI.

A young man, recently graduated from college, is spending the summer with his mother and uncle at a chateau the family used to own. It’s come back into their possession, and he’s getting the full memory lane treatment from his mother and uncle. The chateau sits on a lake which has some islands at the far end. All of this was once property of the family, but they’ve only recovered ownership of the chateau. The islands are now private property, and houses have been built on them.

One night the man is walking along the edge of the lake when he sees a young woman swimming naked in the lake and accompanied by swans. She swims away towards one of the islands without noticing him.

He sneaks over to see her. She tells him her uncle is away.  Her behavior is really strange, and soon she dismisses him. The next day her uncle comes over and threatens the young man if he ever comes near the island again. Of course he does, and it doesn’t end well for him.

I won’t go into the rest of the story, which takes place years later. There is an implication that either the girl or the man claiming to be her uncle (he’s not) or both is a swan, either black or white.  There are both in the story.

In spite of some ambiguity in the ending (maybe because I didn’t recognize the story it was based on), I rather liked this one.

I can’t say the same about “Black and White Sky” (Tanith Lee A-Z).  Other than a brief scene involving illicit sex, this story was dull. Magpies suddenly begin soaring upwards into the sky. They do this about every 45 seconds on average. The birds appear to come from out of the ground. They rise up and hang in the sky, suspended there. This only happens over England, Wales, and Scotland. The rest of the world, including the remaining British Isles, are unaffected.

And finally, we come to “Black as a Rose”. (Night’s Sorceries) Yes, the title of the collection is misspelled on the cover of the current edition.

This story is about a young woman, Jalasil, who is the daughter of a sorceress. Her mother died years ago, and she lives with only three elderly servants in a house above an oasis in the middle of a desert.

One day a group of men from a religious order stop at the oasis. The servants take them some food, and Jalasil slips down and listens to the conversation. The leader of the men is a guy named Zhoreb.

It’s infatuation at first sight.  For jalasil. Zhoreb has no idea she’s there.

The caravan stays over at the oasis. Jalasil slips down the next day while the servants are sleeping and observes some of the men bathing, among them Zhoreb. Now it’s more than infatuation at first sight.

Jalasil invites Zhoreb up to the house the following day. Things don’t go well, and the y part on bad terms.

To find out what happens, you’ll have to read the story yourself. All I’ll say is that it is tragic and depressing, and I loved it. It appealed to my romantic side.

I’ve only read a few of Tanith Lee’s works, but for the most part, I’ve enjoyed them.  I’m going to read more.