The Caretakers by David Nickle
My rating: 4/5 cats
in a telegram stop would just mean punctuation
okay, i’m not sure i understand this one any better than y’all, but i’ll give it a shot. before we dive in, i just wanna say that i think sometimes it can be fun to not “get” everything that’s going on in a book, and for me there’s a difference between things that are totally over my head and things that are deliciously ambiguous, and in this case, i think you can enjoy the atmosphere and the gentle dread of the story without knowing exactly what’s going on, but more importantly, without feeling dumb about it, because the story is deliberately enigmatic, with its meaningful glances and subtext and its “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to exposition:
“Why are we—”
“You know why.” Andrea fell emphatically on the sofa and scowled at Bill.
so, come with me if you wanna do a deep reading of this. or go read the story for yourself if you don’t. or go make yourself a sandwich if you’re hungry.
View Spoiler »so, near as i can figure, miss erish is some kind of ancient deity, probably some kind of water elemental/demigoddess/river incarnation – i’m just guessing on terminology. obviously she’s not quite human; her skin squeaks when she touches it, it gleamed in the low light, like carved mahogany: sanded, stained, and nearly as hard, and there’s something inherently powerful within her, apart from those superficial physical details:
Miss Erish looked down at the light. It seemed to grow brighter as she did so—as though the sensor had noted some competing glow, and automatically tuned the illumination higher.
amy calls her a vampire, but “vampire” is figurative; it’s just the nearest taxonomical approximation of what she is that amy can comprehend, and the references to “deeper movements” and “celestial spheres” and “balance” point to something even more arcane and elemental than a vampire. miss erish seems to need to feed, not on blood, but on attention, affection, love.
it stands to reason that deities are immortal and viable only as long as someone believes in and worships them, and miss erish’s MO towards procuring devotees is to approach her subjects when they are children, particularly children whose home lives are traumatic: so awful that Evelyn could barely recall it except in the abstract, or, as evelyn imagines amy’s past, when she lay awake in a cold bed, with emptiness gnawing like a rat in her belly… in a home where the only notion of escape was intertwined with death, where hope was death because that was how poverty was for a child…
miss erish selects the most at-risk, the most powerless as her caretakers; those living in poverty, lacking opportunities, lonely and in need of a benefactor. and miss erish provides – money for school, for lodgings, for a chance at a better life, in exchange for devotion. drop-everything-and-come-to-where-i-am-devotion. answer-the-phone-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-listen-to-me-ramble devotion. gods are generally jealous creatures, they’ll make their subjects jump through hoops, the cost of their “gifts” usually outweighs the benefits, and debt must be repaid.
“Amy,” said Evelyn, sternly, “where do you suppose you would be now, if not for Miss Erish’s generosity? Amy?”
“Yes?”
“Miss Erish likes to talk. Sometimes she calls in the evening.”
“And when she calls—we come, right? No matter what?”
“That’s the deal, Amy.”
miss erish requires absolute fidelity, in the “you shall have no other gods before me” tradition. and when that fidelity is threatened by love of another; even by a human love for another devotee or a child, and whether the threat is real or just suspected, her power weakens. sacrifice has always been a component of worship, but there are also rewards for honoring the commitment.
“You were here earliest,” she said. “While the others were sleeping, you were awake and about.” She set the tablet on its back, so it lit the curtains, the ceiling. “Of all of them, even Mr. Allen… you arrived first.”
even a momentary distraction from her is frowned upon, on the occasions when her caretakers have been assembled: Miss Erish didn’t care for calls, in or out, during a meeting: it disrupted the foci as she put it. It was a dilution, which i postulate refers to a dilution of attention, which seems to be supported by miss erish’s petulant complaints to evelyn towards the end:
“I am alone”
and
“You took too long”
that miss erish doesn’t want her subjects distracted by outside love or attention is made clear a number of times, like when evelyn prevents leslie’s amorous advances:
His hand moved to the nape of Evelyn’s neck and slid down the flesh of her back…
Evelyn took Leslie’s hand, lifted it away, and Leslie sighed.
She let her fingers intertwine with his and drew him back down the hall in the direction of the bar.
“Not today?” asked Leslie, and Evelyn said, “Not now,” and as they emerged into the bar, Leslie agreed: “Especially not now.”
“especially not now,” meaning when miss erish is already displeased that the group was unable to anticipate her needs after the rather passive-aggressive rescheduling of their meeting*. she enjoys unsettling them, leaving them off-balance as a test of devotion. typical immortal boredom resulting in overly-complicated tests of conviction. although rarely do they involve dry-erase boards.
also in keeping with the typical demands of ancient deities, she requires demonstrative gratitude, and isn’t too aloof to fish for it:
“I was rereading that note just this morning,” said Miss Erish, “as I waited. I had been looking forward to seeing Miss Wilson, you see. She had seemed grateful for all I have done for her.”
“We’re all grateful,” said Bill, and both Leslie and Evelyn nodded and agreed until Miss Erish appeared satisfied.
she even has her own origin story; her self-control and willpower over her own bodily needs allowing her to transcend mortality and become … whatever she is.
Evelyn felt herself smile. Miss Erish first told Evelyn that story on her eleventh birthday, and brought it up from time to time, quite often. It was, as Miss Erish herself described it, foundational.
and the ending is an accumulation of all of this – of what happens when her power is threatened. out of her caretakers, one is dead, one is escaped, and the one who has gone after amy is potentially compromised, causing miss erish to panic:
“What do you think about Miss Retson? She pursued little Miss Wilson very swiftly. As though she were very worried…very worried. Might she… Might it be love? No. That cannot be. I shall send her a message. Instruct her—” Miss Erish’s fingers clacked furiously against the glass of her tablet. “Oh damn, damn.”
and for all evelyn’s assertions – telling miss erish what she needs to hear, even though miss erish can see right through her:
“I love you. I am your friend.” But she didn’t, and she wasn’t, not at that moment. Miss Erish shook her head slowly.
it’s just not enough; evelyn needs the rest of them to restore the balance. whatever comfort evelyn can offer her goddess in the form of lip service and physical contact, it’s insufficient, and they remain somehow growing colder themselves, in one another’s embrace. « Hide Spoiler
but let me know what YOOUUUU think it’s all about.
*View Spoiler »which is something i still have a question about. are the five of them the only people there for miss erish’s meeting? because amy is told she was the first to arrive, but we are also told Unbeknownst to her or any of the others, the meeting had commenced at that moment, in its new room and on its new schedule, absent nearly all of them. does “nearly all of them” just mean that miss erish was the only one present, or are there more people who made it to the conference room with its half-erased pictographs who got to see them unerased? are the “eight chairs” significant? am i overthinking a tor short? « Hide Spoiler
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2016/01/20/the-car…
i love you, she texted. She didn’t send that one right away. She wanted to add something to it: i do this for you, maybe. i cannot stop it was probably more to the point, or we all must pay our debts.
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DAVID NICKLE HAS A TOR SHORT!!??
guess i know what i’m doing tomorrow.
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