"lest our passage be forgotten"

[sergebroom]

Realms of Fantasy ‘s June 2008 issue has, among other things, a tale by Tanith Lee about the perils of making bargains with sorcerers who were given their power. There is also Kate Riedel’s The Summer of Lucy about a dog who comes into the life of a 1920s family worried about the drought that won’t end. Both stories are wonderful, but my favorite is Bradley P. Beaulieu’s Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten.

Yasuo is a smokeman. People hire him to extract select memories out of them so that, when they die, those memories, combined with fireworks, will make their Passage bright and festive, helping ensure their livelihood on the other side.

Another memory played itself out as if the entire crowd shared a single mind. Shikujo was meeting his wife for the first time. How nervous he was; how giddy. Another firework flashed, and the memory of his first-born child came. Again and again the fireworks sparked memories of a man who was certainly walking with his head held high into the Lands of the Dead.

Yasuo is proud of his craft, but he is very lonely. He loves Harune, a widow who has hired him to find in her son some memories – any memories – of her husband, who died suddenly and without the proper Passage.

Another client of his is Fuyoko, mother of the local daimyo. Most of her memories would be inappropriate for her own Passage, tainted as they are by the presence in them of her late husband, who had been a very abusive man. And her very few truly happy memories are not without their own problems.

Recommended.

Comments

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

I've got so much extraneous material floating around in my bean that I'd love to hire Yasuo to get rid of some of it. Why do I need to remember that the California license plate on our 1959 Oldsmobile was TAN 169?

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Alas, Yasuo does not take those memories away. That means you'd still be stuck with knowing your Oldsmobile's license plate for the rest of your natural life. Besides, that beats the alternative, especially in its extreme form.