wishes and promises

[sergebroom]

February 2009’s issue of Realms of Fantasy was enjoyable, as usual, with Stephen D. Winick’s Folkroots column about riddles, and James Van Pelt’s story The Radio Magician, about the power of wishes and about a young boy who suffers from polio in the days when radio ruled and Hitler had started invading the rest of Europe. I especially enjoyed Richard Parks’s The River of Three Crossings, another story of Japan’s Heian Dynasty about Lord Yamada, psychic investigator for the Emperor, and his aide Kenji, a very lapsed monk. In this tale, bandit Tadeshi was finally caught and killed, but he won’t move on until certain promises have been fulfilled, and Yamada’s solution rests in Momiji, Tadeshi’s young daughter, who has been abandoned by the world to fend for herself.

Momiji’s eyes widened, and she ran back to kneel in front of her father. By tradition, the dead could not pass over the River of Three Crossings before seven days from the time of death and were not considered truly and finaly dead until then. Tadeshi’s seven days were long past. Behind him, the bamboo grove began to shimmer and ripple, like a reflection in water. When the image cleared there was no bamboo at all, only a vast emptiness crossed by a river of black water. Beyond that was a jagged mountain peak with no snow, no trees.

Mount Fear.

I wish someone would publish a collection of Lord Yamada’s tales.