Homecoming by Susan Palwick
My rating: 4/5 cats
well, this was unexpectedly lovely.
for a story that opens with this rant about the sea:
The sea is a crazy whore. That’s what Granny Crimson always said, in the village where I was born. Stay on land, she said, stay to shore, farm and grow and provide for your families, eh, lads. You’ll get nowt from that strumpet Ocean, na, na, she’ll take everything you have, life and riches and beauty, and leave you barren and dead, washed up broken on the rocks, a thing for the crabs to eat. She’ll do that every time, the sea will. Stay to shore, lads, and sow your seed here, on good sweet earth and in good sweet women, true sweethearts and honest wives.
which is pretty much how i feel about the moon; but i just didn’t expect something opening so ferociously would end up being such a touching story.
but it is.
it is about a young girl whose deepest, fiercest yearning is for the sea. despite her gender, despite the warnings of the village madwoman, despite her lack of training and despite never even having seen the sea—all she wants is to escape her sad, drunken father, her small life, and the limitations of her future as a woman—all husband and babies and drudgery with no possibility of adventure. she wants to live the life the sea ballads have planted in her imagination, to feel the salt spray in her face.
when she is fifteen, the opportunity presents itself—a chance to go to sea with her best friend gareth; and all she has to do is to disguise herself as a boy with the help of a little magic, and become a sailor herself.
so off they go, and it is on the sea that peg (now will) learns everything she will ever need to know about life.
she learns what the sea is all about:
The sea is not a whore, for she is free and joyous, but she is a woman. She obeys the moon, as women do, and her depths contain both treasures and horrors, and men try to bend her to their will and rarely succeed, no matter how much money they spend in the attempt. The sea does as she wishes, and anyone who would be her lover must be her partner, not her master.
but she also learns about men and love and longing and hardship and sacrifice. and death.
it’s a killer story, and makes me want to read the books i already own by susan palwick that i have not gotten around to reading yet. shame!!
and if YOU haven’t started reading all these free tor shorts, you should. join me on my project!!
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/07/ho…
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