Dinosaurs and Darkness

The above 1901 painting by one CRK, Charles R. Knight, is featured with the work of another CRK, Caitlin R. Kiernan, in the newest Sirenia Digest. It contains the last third of Caitlin's new story, Living a Boy's Adventure Tale. It features some nods to old adventure stories but has a more realistically untidy ending. Like the way most things in life end, it just stops.

Like the earlier portions, and much of Caitlin's fiction nowadays, it's composed of isolated, separate narrative pieces that give a sense of scope and sometimes, surprisingly, provide momentum. But my favourite part is the last fragment, taking place in a prehistoric forest. There are some wonderfully ominous descriptions of the place and the impending fate at hand.

Lately I've also been reading H. Rider Haggard's Cleopatra, a book that has a lot less to do with Cleopatra than I was expecting. She's actually much more prominent in the first part of the book even though she doesn't make an appearance but is only talked about. That at least makes her seem important, and she functions as a threatening figure in everyone's mind. But when the novel's protagonist, Harmachis, gets himself installed as her high priest, if turns into a silly harem drama, with Cleopatra and her handmaiden vying for Harmachis affection. The book is much better before that.

When Harmachis meets the goddess Isis, some of the description is Lovecraftian in its sense of scope and dread.

Soon the lights began to pale in the rolling sea of air. Great shadows shot across it, lines of darkness pierced it and rushed together on its breast, till at length I only was a shape of flame set like a star on the bosom of immeasurable night. Bursts of awful music gathered from far away. Miles and Miles away I heard them, thrilling faintly through the gloom. On they came, nearer and more near, louder and more loud, till they swept past above, below, around me, swept on rushing pinions, terrifying and enchanting me. They floated by, ever growing fainter, till they died in space. Then others came, and no two were akin. Some rattled as ten thousand sistra shaken all to tune. Some rang from the brazen throats of unnumbered clarions. Some pealed with a loud, sweet chant of voices that were more than human; and some rolled along in the slow thunder of a million drums. They passed: their notes were lost in dying echoes; and the awful silence once more pressed in upon me and overcame me.

...

Twitter Sonnet #1614

The Arctic sneaker carried cold to woods.
Escaped beyond the hedge, the clippers fight.
To tread a road of rice, request the goods.
A waxy shell can clutch nutrition tight.
The tiny 'stache was sharp as cactus spines.
Interrogated fish could only stare.
The passing seal would bark at jagged lines.
A party chose instead to suck the pear.
An answer waits across from faded locks.
Effective arrows bide the time of moons.
Enforcing sales recall the part of stocks.
The animation grants to bugs a boon.
Above the stones a sudden fight erupts.
They're old as hell but hold the tiny pups.