More shapeshifters and demons et. al. by Lynn Flewelling
Things That Go “Bump” in the Mind by Lynn Flewelling
One of the beauties of being a fantasy writer is that I can give form to any weird idea that crosses my brain and make it work in the context of the story. Things like ghosts, demons, and shape changers arise from our deepest fears and darkness. Giving them form in literature can provide a catharsis for both author and reader. Or maybe they are just really fun to work with. A bit of both, I guess.
Bad things that start with D: Dra’gorgos, Dyrmagnos, and Dead Brothers.
Dra’gorgos: In Luck in the Shadows I wanted a really nasty demonic sort of monster to stalk and haunt my hero, Seregil, who at that point in the story is losing his mind due to some very bad necromantic juju. There are times when all I have to do is tap into my own fears and the ideas just flow. It had to be big and black and above all, spooky. What’s spooky? Things that don’t move right. When first seen, the dra’gorgos is capering in a field, and only Seregil can see it, another spooky thing, since it isolates him. So here’s this tall black-swathed shape with no face and even though he can’t see its body, or if it even has one, Seregil can tell that it has wrongly proportioned limbs that move in ways that suggest the joints aren’t what they ought to be, either. The whole impact is one of wrongness. It taunts him, disappearing and reappearing, always a little closer, until it finally pops up right behind him and his companion, who still can’t see or feel it, even though it’s actually touching him. Again, there is that aspect of isolation that jacks up the horror of the situation.
Later, a minor cutpurse character in Stalking Darkness encounters a dra’gorgos on a roof. It is standing above him on the peak of the roof and it slowly bends forward from the knees which are bending backwards. This allows it an almost serpentine quality, and that sense of something so physically wrong that it can’t be anything but evil.
We also see a necromancer using the same demonic creature to animate a corpse, which shambles off in proper zombie fashion. In Stalking Darkness, an unseen dra’gorgos scares the chitlins out of several characters, with only it’s baying to tell us what it is.
.
Dyrmagnos: A dyrmagnos is a litch-like creature, with leathery skin and sunken eyes and a burning evil animating it. Think Jim Henson’s Crypt Keeper. It’s actually an end-stage necromancer, someone who has been eaten up by the bad juju they’ve practiced, leaving them powerfully undead. When I had the idea suitably nasty in my mind, I made it (formerly) female and turned her loose on my young hero, Alec, in a scene that borders on a rape. Thirteen years later I wonder “Where did that come from?” This one taps into our back brain fear of dead bodies. Years ago I was walking on a beach in Iceland and came across the remains of a dead sheep. I shied away from it not only because it stank, but also with a nameless, superstitious aversion to seeing this decomposing form of something that used to be alive. And its skull was looking at me funny. Don’t laugh. It was. A less-unbalanced friend who observed all this laughed at me, wondering why people always assume that if a dead thing comes back to life, it’s going to be evil. But it’s that sense of wrongness, again. The dead should stay dead, especially if they look gross. Therefore, the dyrmagnos encompasses all those factors: should be dead, is evil, looks gross. And she’s powerful. We later learn that you can’t kill a Dyrmagnos, you can only chop them up and scatter the pieces, which otherwise will come together and reassemble. A set of hands still twitches in a museum case. We hear about a dyrmagnos head locked in a heavy box and thrown, still living, into the sea where it lives on in the depths. Gross. I have a few of these dyrmagnolettes creeping around the edges of the story, and one bit who inflicts some serious damage on another beloved character. Their bite is every bit as bad as their bark.
Dead Brother: “Brother” is a character in The Bone Doll’s Twin, the first book of the Tamír Triad. This guy was a blast to write; I love a good ghost story and this was my first chance to write one.
Brother is more demon than ghost, a seething mass of hatred who preys indiscriminately at innocent and guilty alike. When he and his twin sister are born, he is sacrificed to give the girl male form (see below), and his bones sewn into a doll, which is carried by their mad mother. She ends up as a ghost, too, and not a happy one-but that’s a different part of the story.
The witch who is brought in to do the transformation warns that the child to be killed cannot be allowed to take that first breath that draws the soul into the body or its spirit will become a ‘demon’. Guess what. He does, of course, and serious hauntings ensue. Brother cannot be banished and he cannot be appeased. He is a warped mirror of his sister, a constant reminder of what she is not. He is visceral: he hates, he speaks, he even feels pain, and cries tears of blood. He can kill, too reaching into the chest of a man with an icy hand and squeezing the life from his heart. Sure, the victim is a pedophile bad guy, but it’s still pretty scary (insert evil authorial laugh here) and it’s clear that this is not going to be his last victim.
Like a dra’gorgos, Brother embodies the fear of what cannot be controlled, and what can sneak up on you invisibly, or observe you unaware. He is that which goes bump in the night, and shows up when he’s least wanted. Just to add to the uncertainty, he does occasionally do something helpful, but even then there’s a meanness wrapped up with the good.
Shape Shifting for Fun and Prophets:
Rorschach Shape shifting: Under the category of “seemed like fun,” I created a spell in Luck in the Shadows by which kindly old wizard Nysander magically elicits one’s animal totem by turning the person into it. Seregil, a world weary, irreverent, and frequently dangerous character (when not being bothered by dra’gorgos-dra’gorgi?) rather unexpectedly transforms into an otter, which speaks of the lost innocence that still lingers at his core, his humor and innate playfulness, and ability to see the lighter side of things. His companion Alec, a backwoods hunter’s son when first we meet him, becomes a noble stag. This comes into full play when another wizard performs the spell on an unwilling Alec in order to save him from Something Very Bad. Alec spends the night in stag form, his own mind overcome by the stag nature, so that we see the world through his animal senses. The scene when he transforms back, going in mid leap from the powerful stag to a naked, exhausted, traumatized youth on the windswept ledges in enemy territory, is one of my favorites.
Gender Blending: Thanks to a prophecy that a woman must rule the country of Skala, the title character Tobin/Tamír of the Tamír Triad is shape shifted from girl to boy moments after her birth (to save her from being killed by a throne-usurping uncle), and then, after 13 years of believing that she really is a boy, being forced to shape shift back in Hidden Warrior. I was working with the idea of sexual identity, among other things. What does it mean to be male or female? What are the limitations, the expectations, the societal pressures, and what happens when all that you’ve learned is pulled out from under you? There is, of course, a core identity that remains constant for the character, which is one of the points of the trilogy, but the transition is not a smooth one, and not willingly made.
In one of my favorite scenes, a very young “Tobin” is given a toy sword as a gift, when what he really wants is one of the beautiful rag dolls his crazy mother turns out by the dozens. Alone in his bed, he cuddles the sword. This actually came from a study I read, in which small children were given cross gender toys. The boys ripped the arms off the plastic babies and used them for guns. The girls wrapped hammers in blankets and used them for dolls. I tried something similar with my sons when they were very young, with identical results. Tobin may be a boy on the outside, but the girl remains deeply submerged, and she comes out in rare and telling moments like this one. Ultimately, she is a blend of the two genders, embodying the best of both.
“A child of no woman.” In the third Nightrunner book, Traitor’s Moon, our young hero, Alec, who is now in a stable gay relationship but secretly longing for family, is given a prophecy that he will father “a child of no woman.” I think the witches from “Macbeth” must have been whispering in the back of my mind that day, but I took it in a different direction. This ‘child’ appears in the fourth Nightrunner book, Shadows Return. Not a child, but a homunculus created from Alec’s blood and other bodily secretions. It is childlike, bone pale, and seemingly harmless. Pity quickly overcomes Alec’s revulsion and he enters into a father-son relationship with it. This becomes increasingly difficult as its true nature and powers are revealed over the course of this book and the sequel coming in September ’09, The White Road. The reactions of those around them clue the reader in to the fact that this homunculus may be more monster than child, but its form continually pulls at the heartstrings, as is intended.
I’m not sure how I could have explored these themes as well in mainstream literature. In fantasy, these tropes and archetypes can manifest in true corporeal form-even ghosts-rather than merely psychological constructs, and yet they are that, as well. As a writer, I find that very freeing.
Nightunner series
LUCK IN THE SHADOWS
STALKING DARKNESS
TRAITOR'S MOON
SHADOWS RETURN
THE WHITE ROAD, forthcoming from Bantam Spectra
Tamir trilogy
THE BONE-DOLL'S TWIN
THE HIDDEN WARRIOR
THE ORACLE'S QUEEN
One of the beauties of being a fantasy writer is that I can give form to any weird idea that crosses my brain and make it work in the context of the story. Things like ghosts, demons, and shape changers arise from our deepest fears and darkness. Giving them form in literature can provide a catharsis for both author and reader. Or maybe they are just really fun to work with. A bit of both, I guess.
Bad things that start with D: Dra’gorgos, Dyrmagnos, and Dead Brothers.
Dra’gorgos: In Luck in the Shadows I wanted a really nasty demonic sort of monster to stalk and haunt my hero, Seregil, who at that point in the story is losing his mind due to some very bad necromantic juju. There are times when all I have to do is tap into my own fears and the ideas just flow. It had to be big and black and above all, spooky. What’s spooky? Things that don’t move right. When first seen, the dra’gorgos is capering in a field, and only Seregil can see it, another spooky thing, since it isolates him. So here’s this tall black-swathed shape with no face and even though he can’t see its body, or if it even has one, Seregil can tell that it has wrongly proportioned limbs that move in ways that suggest the joints aren’t what they ought to be, either. The whole impact is one of wrongness. It taunts him, disappearing and reappearing, always a little closer, until it finally pops up right behind him and his companion, who still can’t see or feel it, even though it’s actually touching him. Again, there is that aspect of isolation that jacks up the horror of the situation.
Later, a minor cutpurse character in Stalking Darkness encounters a dra’gorgos on a roof. It is standing above him on the peak of the roof and it slowly bends forward from the knees which are bending backwards. This allows it an almost serpentine quality, and that sense of something so physically wrong that it can’t be anything but evil.
We also see a necromancer using the same demonic creature to animate a corpse, which shambles off in proper zombie fashion. In Stalking Darkness, an unseen dra’gorgos scares the chitlins out of several characters, with only it’s baying to tell us what it is.
.
Dyrmagnos: A dyrmagnos is a litch-like creature, with leathery skin and sunken eyes and a burning evil animating it. Think Jim Henson’s Crypt Keeper. It’s actually an end-stage necromancer, someone who has been eaten up by the bad juju they’ve practiced, leaving them powerfully undead. When I had the idea suitably nasty in my mind, I made it (formerly) female and turned her loose on my young hero, Alec, in a scene that borders on a rape. Thirteen years later I wonder “Where did that come from?” This one taps into our back brain fear of dead bodies. Years ago I was walking on a beach in Iceland and came across the remains of a dead sheep. I shied away from it not only because it stank, but also with a nameless, superstitious aversion to seeing this decomposing form of something that used to be alive. And its skull was looking at me funny. Don’t laugh. It was. A less-unbalanced friend who observed all this laughed at me, wondering why people always assume that if a dead thing comes back to life, it’s going to be evil. But it’s that sense of wrongness, again. The dead should stay dead, especially if they look gross. Therefore, the dyrmagnos encompasses all those factors: should be dead, is evil, looks gross. And she’s powerful. We later learn that you can’t kill a Dyrmagnos, you can only chop them up and scatter the pieces, which otherwise will come together and reassemble. A set of hands still twitches in a museum case. We hear about a dyrmagnos head locked in a heavy box and thrown, still living, into the sea where it lives on in the depths. Gross. I have a few of these dyrmagnolettes creeping around the edges of the story, and one bit who inflicts some serious damage on another beloved character. Their bite is every bit as bad as their bark.
Dead Brother: “Brother” is a character in The Bone Doll’s Twin, the first book of the Tamír Triad. This guy was a blast to write; I love a good ghost story and this was my first chance to write one.
Brother is more demon than ghost, a seething mass of hatred who preys indiscriminately at innocent and guilty alike. When he and his twin sister are born, he is sacrificed to give the girl male form (see below), and his bones sewn into a doll, which is carried by their mad mother. She ends up as a ghost, too, and not a happy one-but that’s a different part of the story.
The witch who is brought in to do the transformation warns that the child to be killed cannot be allowed to take that first breath that draws the soul into the body or its spirit will become a ‘demon’. Guess what. He does, of course, and serious hauntings ensue. Brother cannot be banished and he cannot be appeased. He is a warped mirror of his sister, a constant reminder of what she is not. He is visceral: he hates, he speaks, he even feels pain, and cries tears of blood. He can kill, too reaching into the chest of a man with an icy hand and squeezing the life from his heart. Sure, the victim is a pedophile bad guy, but it’s still pretty scary (insert evil authorial laugh here) and it’s clear that this is not going to be his last victim.
Like a dra’gorgos, Brother embodies the fear of what cannot be controlled, and what can sneak up on you invisibly, or observe you unaware. He is that which goes bump in the night, and shows up when he’s least wanted. Just to add to the uncertainty, he does occasionally do something helpful, but even then there’s a meanness wrapped up with the good.
Shape Shifting for Fun and Prophets:
Rorschach Shape shifting: Under the category of “seemed like fun,” I created a spell in Luck in the Shadows by which kindly old wizard Nysander magically elicits one’s animal totem by turning the person into it. Seregil, a world weary, irreverent, and frequently dangerous character (when not being bothered by dra’gorgos-dra’gorgi?) rather unexpectedly transforms into an otter, which speaks of the lost innocence that still lingers at his core, his humor and innate playfulness, and ability to see the lighter side of things. His companion Alec, a backwoods hunter’s son when first we meet him, becomes a noble stag. This comes into full play when another wizard performs the spell on an unwilling Alec in order to save him from Something Very Bad. Alec spends the night in stag form, his own mind overcome by the stag nature, so that we see the world through his animal senses. The scene when he transforms back, going in mid leap from the powerful stag to a naked, exhausted, traumatized youth on the windswept ledges in enemy territory, is one of my favorites.
Gender Blending: Thanks to a prophecy that a woman must rule the country of Skala, the title character Tobin/Tamír of the Tamír Triad is shape shifted from girl to boy moments after her birth (to save her from being killed by a throne-usurping uncle), and then, after 13 years of believing that she really is a boy, being forced to shape shift back in Hidden Warrior. I was working with the idea of sexual identity, among other things. What does it mean to be male or female? What are the limitations, the expectations, the societal pressures, and what happens when all that you’ve learned is pulled out from under you? There is, of course, a core identity that remains constant for the character, which is one of the points of the trilogy, but the transition is not a smooth one, and not willingly made.
In one of my favorite scenes, a very young “Tobin” is given a toy sword as a gift, when what he really wants is one of the beautiful rag dolls his crazy mother turns out by the dozens. Alone in his bed, he cuddles the sword. This actually came from a study I read, in which small children were given cross gender toys. The boys ripped the arms off the plastic babies and used them for guns. The girls wrapped hammers in blankets and used them for dolls. I tried something similar with my sons when they were very young, with identical results. Tobin may be a boy on the outside, but the girl remains deeply submerged, and she comes out in rare and telling moments like this one. Ultimately, she is a blend of the two genders, embodying the best of both.
“A child of no woman.” In the third Nightrunner book, Traitor’s Moon, our young hero, Alec, who is now in a stable gay relationship but secretly longing for family, is given a prophecy that he will father “a child of no woman.” I think the witches from “Macbeth” must have been whispering in the back of my mind that day, but I took it in a different direction. This ‘child’ appears in the fourth Nightrunner book, Shadows Return. Not a child, but a homunculus created from Alec’s blood and other bodily secretions. It is childlike, bone pale, and seemingly harmless. Pity quickly overcomes Alec’s revulsion and he enters into a father-son relationship with it. This becomes increasingly difficult as its true nature and powers are revealed over the course of this book and the sequel coming in September ’09, The White Road. The reactions of those around them clue the reader in to the fact that this homunculus may be more monster than child, but its form continually pulls at the heartstrings, as is intended.
I’m not sure how I could have explored these themes as well in mainstream literature. In fantasy, these tropes and archetypes can manifest in true corporeal form-even ghosts-rather than merely psychological constructs, and yet they are that, as well. As a writer, I find that very freeing.
Nightunner series
LUCK IN THE SHADOWS
STALKING DARKNESS
TRAITOR'S MOON
SHADOWS RETURN
THE WHITE ROAD, forthcoming from Bantam Spectra
Tamir trilogy
THE BONE-DOLL'S TWIN
THE HIDDEN WARRIOR
THE ORACLE'S QUEEN