Paperjack

By Charles de Lint

Set in Newford and featuring musician Geordie Riddell, this novella about a homeless man called Paperjack is classic de Lint—a poignant, mysterious tale about love, loss and learning how to move on. A finalist for the World Fantasy Award, Paperjack is a standalone story, but picks up some of the threads of a previous tale called "Timeskip."

First published in a limited edition of 137 copies by Cheap Street Press, 1991; also appears in Dreams Underfoot.

I can never recapture the feeling of first arriving in Newford and meeting the people and seeing the sights as a newcomer. However, part of the beauty of Newford is the sense that it has always been there, that de Lint is a reporter who occasionally files stories from a reality stranger and more beautiful than ours. De Lint also manages to keep each new Newford story fresh and captivating because he is so generous and loving in his depiction of the characters. Yes, there are a group of core characters whose stories recur most often, but a city like Newford has so many intriguing people in it, so many diverse stories to tell, so much pain and triumph to chronicle.
— Challenging Destiny

Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better.
— Alice Hoffman

Charles de Lint writes like a magician. He draws out the strange inside our own world, weaving stories that feel more real than we are when we read them. He is, simply put, the best.
— Holly Black

De Lint is probably the finest contemporary author of fantasy
– Booklist, American Library Association
Unlike most fantasy writers who deal with battles between ultimate good and evil, de Lint concentrates on smaller, very personal conflicts. Perhaps this is what makes him accessible to the non-fantasy audience as well as the hard-core fans. Perhaps it’s just damned fine writing.
– Quill & Quire
De Lint’s evocative images, both ordinary and fantastic, jolt the imagination.
– Publishers Weekly
It is hard to imagine urban fantasy done with greater skill
– Booklist, American Library Association

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles de Lint
• Release date: Feb 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9780920623480

Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, and The Onion Girl, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende.

Book preview

Paperjack

by

Charles de Lint

Copyright © 1991 by Charles de Lint

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for MaryAnn

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

—Derek Bok

Churches aren't havens of spiritual enlightenment; they enclose the spirit. The way Jilly explains it, organizing Mystery tends to undermine its essence. I'm not so sure I agree, but then I don't really know enough about it. When it comes to things that can't be logically explained, I take a step back and leave them to Jilly or my brother Christy—they thrive on that kind of thing. If I had to describe myself as belonging to any church or mystical order, it'd be one devoted to secular humanism. My concerns are for real people and the here and now; the possible existence of God, faeries, or some metaphysical Otherworld just doesn't fit into my worldview.

Except…

You knew there'd be an except, didn't you, or else why would I be writing this down?

It's not like I don't have anything to say. I'm all for creative expression, but my medium's music. I'm not an artist like Jilly, or a writer like Christy. But the kinds of things that have been happening to me can't really be expressed in a fiddle tune—no, that's not entirely true. I can express them, but the medium is such that I can't be assured that, when I'm playing, listeners hear what I mean them to hear.

That's how it works with instrumental music, and it's probably why the best of it is so enduring: The listener takes away whatever he or she wants from it. Say the composer was trying to tell us about the aftermath of some great battle. When we hear it, the music might speak to us of a parent we've lost, a friend's struggle with some debilitating disease, a doe standing at the edge of a forest at twilight, or any of a thousand other unrelated things.

Realistic art, like Jilly does—or at least it's realistically rendered; her subject matter's right out of some urban update of those Andrew Lang colour-coded fairy tale books that most of us read when we were kids—and the collections of urban legends and stories that my brother writes, don't have that same leeway. What goes down on the canvas or on paper, no matter how skillfully drawn or written, doesn't allow for much in the way of an alternate interpretation.

So that's why I'm writing this down: to lay it all out in black and white where maybe I can understand it myself.

Every afternoon for the past week, after busking up by the William Street Mall for the lunchtime crowds, I've packed up my fiddle case and headed across town to come here to St. Paul's Cathedral. Once I get here, I sit on the steps about halfway up, take out this notebook, and try to write. The trouble is, I haven't been able to figure out where to start.

I like it out here on the steps. I've played inside the cathedral just once, for a friend's wedding. The wedding was okay, but I remember coming in on my own to test the acoustics an hour or so before the rehearsal; ever since then I've been a little unsure about how Jilly views this