Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

world he so embraces.
    In these final moments, Tavil thinks of his sister, Pria, left behind on the surface. He pictures her face framed by the stars as he’d last seen her before climbing down the ladder into the Underneath. What a life she must have led, constantly wrenched by the needs of the human body: for food, for shelter, for the constant touch of others. No time for her soul, any moments of quiet contemplation necessarilyrare.
    His life would have unfolded similarly had they never seen the geyser of air pouring from the ground and found the shallow hollow where a man from the Underneath flailed about around an old ventilation shaft. Had Tavil never decided to take the unexpected opportunity to see the world of the Machine for himself.
    What a waste his life would have been had he stayed aboveground.
    Tavil sitsin the chair in the middle of his room. The motor in its base ceased working yesterday and so he hasn’t moved since. Though the lights have cut out, Tavil still turns the pages of the Book, feeling the thinness of the paper with his fingers. He does not need to see to know what is written on them; he memorized his favorite passages ages ago.
    When the Machine stops, there is nothing. The wallscease their vibration, the constant hum finally stills. Tavil mumbles lines from the Book to himself, clinging to the comfort of his eternal adoration of this marvelous Machine.
    Otherwise the world would be too silent.

 
    A UTHOR’S N OTE ………………………………………
    When I first read “The Machine Stops” I thought of it as a fairly straightforward postapocalyptic story: the Earth’s surface becomes uninhabitable, which forces mankind underground to live in cities where every aspect of existence is controlled by the Machine. However, the more I reread the story and considered it, the more I came to see it as a work of genius.

    Not only is it a thought-provoking meditation on the role of technology in our lives, it is also a graceful portrayal of faith and how easy it is to become so focused on worship of a
thing
—on a representation of the belief—that one can lose sight of belief itself. In the story, E. M. Forster leads his characters toward a very deliberate conclusion in which they ultimately understand, and accept,their fallacy. This is what I wanted to explore in my own story.
    There is a moment in “The Machine Stops” when one of the characters makes his way to the surface through an old ventilation shaft and later recalls: “I thought I saw something dark move across the bottom of the dell, and vanish into the shaft.” This is where my story begins: What if that dark shape were a man from the surface, andwhat would happen to him if he became trapped in the Machine?

The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924). The Irish writer Lord Dunsany wrote over sixty books, including short story collections, mysteries, plays, essays, an autobiography, and several novels, of which, unquestionably,
The King of Elfland’s Daughter
is his best. Evocative and wildly inventive, his prose has influenced many writers, including H. P. Lovecraft and Jack Vance. I know when I began readingthis novel, I was forever and completely enthralled by Dunsany’s language. For years afterward, every bit of writing I put my hand to was not-so-very-subtly influenced by his lyricism.
    Here the reader finds Alveric, the prince of the Vale of Earl, who is sent by his father, the king, into Elfland so that when he returns it will be with some bit of magic that will enrich the lives of the mundanepeople who live within the fields we know. The witch, Zironderel, gifts the prince with a magic sword made from lightning bolts gathered from under cabbages in her garden, on the high land where the thunder rolls. In due course, after winning through adventure after adventure, he does return with the Elf King’s daughter, Lirazel, and soon everyone in his kingdom will know the coming of too muchmagic into their