Hi, Satuawany ,

For short stories, you usually get a processed review from me, something I compile after a day or two of thinking. This time, though, I want to give you my rawest reactions first. Because... well, you’ll see.


Pulling at her thread, she set a stitch in the side of a canvas finger and studied the tiny gathers of fabric that mimicked a human knuckle.
I’d like to imagine Eiolon as you sewing, but it sounds a lot like a god at work, creating the first human. I think I’m prepared for the interconnectedness of your stories, but I know it’s an illusion. One can never be prepared. Will Eiolon be one of the multiverse gods? An isten? An angel?

One day the magic that held her prisoner on the island might fail
Just look at that: one sentence, and I know exactly what’s going on. Is she making a companion for herself? Wilson the Volleyball?

That seemed even more of a waste than her decades of incarceration.
I wonder what crime she is here for.

She had started the project hoping for some help with the upkeep of the cottage, shed, and garden.
A tool, then. But people get attached to their Roombas, so I’m excited to see it come alive.

In the breast, she left a hollow, the seam above it undone.
Oh oh! Does she need to put something in it to animate it? A note, a word, a message? It reminds me of Seventy-Two Letters by Ted Chiang.

From one clay jar, she took a crystal the size of a human heart.
A stone, of course. We love stones. A crystal has an additional magical layer.

It looked like any other quartz crystal, except a second crystal was outlined inside it.
Will there be duality in homunculus? Multiple personalities?

It was inquisitive, bright, and gave off the sense of a genuine desire to have the experience of powering Eiolon’s creation.
Something’s clumsy about this sentence in the sea of effortless prose, something unnecessarily complicated. I can’t put my finger on it. It feels like the voice suddenly changed.

Carefully, the mage laid it in the cradle in the homunculus’s chest
So Eiolon is a mage. Is it the same mages that are isten, or is this another order of beings? Or am I connecting the wrong stories?
Is this her only crime, being a mage, or did she maged something inappropriate in the past?

padded it with more sea grass,
All natural and organic stuffing! (what else would you get on an island, polyester?)

Eiolon grasped its hand, smiling in welcome.
Can it talk? Oh, it would be so cool if it couldn’t. I mean, it would be much more difficult to write dialogues, and a good challenge can always lead to something wonderful.

Eiolon spelled the homunculus’s canvas to shed water and dirt
It only took me four readings of the sentence to see “spelled” as “cast a spell” instead of “write letters”.
I was prepared for the magic, I swear, but this waterproofing feels a little bit like cheating. If she can do that, why not lift the boat or pull out the weeds with magic?

The threaded line of its mouth moved not a stitch
It doesn’t talk! Yay!

She called the homunculus Ael.
What a lovely name!

Ael pointed again, more emphatically.
Oh yes, you’re giving me exactly what I wanted.

When I brought my mother back to life
Ah, resurrecting the dead. Exactly the mageing that gets you in trouble with the mage authorities.

that act sapped most of my magic from me.
She had enough left for waterproofing, though.

I had taken her away from something good, I know.
Ah ah! One of my absolute favourite moments in Buffy is when she’s brought back to life, and she’s terrified and acts all feral, and everyone just assumes she was in hell. And they go all “oh, it’s a good thing we rescued you”, and she lets them, and then she confides in Spike—an enemy, basically—that she was actually in heaven. For her, coming back to this earth felt like going to hell. This remains one of my favourite coming back from the dead stories. I love that your story reminded me of that episode.

This other people—isten.
Ah, so she’s a different kind of mage, then. The angel story with the mages-that-should-be-isten got me confused.

The crystal within Ael’s chest sensed the world around it through magic.
Wouldn’t then Ael feel the barrier before it “saw” the other islands?

The homunculus nodded
Oh no! This sentence is missing the full stop at the end! Quick! Fix it before anyone sees it.

The magic has built back up within me since then
Not enough to lift the boat out of the water, but enough for waterproofing. Got it!

I have enough for maybe one more great act, but I have no idea what it should be.
Ah, so this is how the story will end, with a great act that drains the last of her magic, lifting the barrier. Will it be something for Ael? Make it more real, make it human? Is this the story about motherhood, about continuation in your children? I sense heartbreak.

Mother took her own life when they told her what they meant to do with me.
And Eiolon’s efforts have been in vain, and her imprisonment for nothing. That heartbreaking is closer than I thought.

she did not believe it asked to have hair, now.
I kind of wanted it to, though. Someone non-human longing to be like everybody else is, as you know, a trope I really like.

”Choose a color,” she said, smiling.
Choosing a haircut is such an easy choice to start with, isn’t it? Will it want a voice next? Or maybe sex?

The homunculus always seemed uncomfortable when the mage did anything for it
Ah, there is so much self-awareness in Ael, and I love how subtly it’s portrayed.

much the same color as Eiolon’s hair.
Ael is at the stage where the parent is god, and everything about that god is perfect. I wonder if Ael will grow up to get disillusioned, and then see Eiolon as just Eiolon.

as if it were her grown child.
A few months old isn’t very much “grown”.

Her only regret was that she could not give Ael a voice.
Oh, a pity. Not even with all her magic? Well, people manage without a voice all the time. Even blind mute and deaf people end up being famous authors.

It touched its own throat and lips only once, and never did so again after Eiolon, her eyes watery, said she knew no way to gift Ael with speech.
Still heartbreaking.

”I think you would like to see it.”
Will that be her big magic act—setting Ael free to explore the world?
Ah, the dynamic between them makes me think this might be something we never got to witness happening between Nora and Certainty.

which is why it was able to keep me in even at my most powerful.
When was that, exactly? If resurrecting her mother took most of her magic away, she ended up behind the barrier not in her most powerful state. Just before making Ael, then?

then put two more stones to either side of her body.
What is happening with all those stones?

I have to ready my gift for you.
Oh, she’s preparing for a ritual. I’m on the edge of my seat. What is it going to be? A human body? Ael will have some trouble blending in as a canvas person.

At the end of the spell, Eiolon sat up as a young, healthy woman.
Not what I expected. Did she just use her magic on herself, or was it the stones’ doing, and she still has some more magic left? I assume this is temporary, a setting to do better mageing?

My mother tried to act happy that I had brought her back
It feels (slightly) like a repetition of what we already know. I wonder if you could make the reference, you know, seamless?

when Eiolon reached in and removed the crystal that imbued it with life.
Oh no, what happened to Ael? Can it live without the crystal? Is it sagged and lifeless?

inviting Ael’s spirit into her body.
Ah, so Eiolon is giving Ael a body. Her own body. Wow! Clever! Heartbreaking! Wonderful!

Ael’s spirit finally understood the mage’s intent and, anguished, tried to return to the crystal
Humble, as always.

”If you do not stay, this body will be dead anyway.”
A forced gift. Ael will have to live with that guilt now. I wonder if we ever see her (can we stop calling Ael “it” now?) again in another story?

Before Eiolon departed the flesh that had been her home, leaving it to the only child she had ever known, she heard her own voice whispering a tearful thank you.
Is it weird to want a different closing sentence? I don’t know, for the story so strong, I expected it to be… less standard.


All right. Here we go: I loved it. Absolutely loved it!

It gave a promise of the theme early on, and it delivered on that promise in the most satisfying way. It was especially satisfying that my guesses were often right, but guessing wasn’t too easy, too obvious for the story to feel like it was lagging behind. It left enough space to wonder, to doubt, to worry. The exact execution of the final gift was the perfect surprising-but-inevitable! And the dose of heartbreak was exactly right for my liking. Not too in-your-face, a little subdued. Real. That realness is the most precious thing in fiction, isn’t it?

One real worry of mine is that that ghost in the crystal, an outline of the second crystal inside it, didn’t really have a solid influence on the story. Did I miss its meaning? Was it supposed to be a soul in the crystal? Something else?

There are probably connections I hadn’t noticed, but the story felt rather independent. If you never mentioned isten, people wouldn’t suspect there is anything non-common-fantasy in it.

If there are other stories with Ael, I want them. Not that this particular story needs a continuation. But if this is an origin story for a character in another novel, you must show it to me. Please? I want to see who Ael is now, what that guilt did to her, what happened to her humility, her curiosity. I wonder what she did with her canvas body? I imagine setting fire to it, burying it in flames instead of Eiolon’s body. But she wouldn’t set fire to the entire cottage (it’s made of stone and wouldn’t burn easily), for there are precious notes about the stones, knowledge she wouldn’t want to be lost. Will she take it with her? She won’t have magic, but she could use what little magic the stones could lend her, perhaps? Oh, I’m not kidding—give me that novel. Write it, if it doesn’t exist (okay, I’m kidding about that one. Write whatever feels right, whenever you have an urge to do it). Even if Ael never inhabits another story, I loved imagining a future for her. In it, she gets all kinds of adventure, and she remembers her Mother, her god creator, and the special bond between them.

Cheers,
J.B.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .