Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 43

By Kelly Link

Four score and three issues ago this zine did not exist. Two score and three issues ago LCRW popped into being just like the big bang — but with less burning hot plasma and fewer planets forming. The formation included a twice-yearly space for fiction, poetry, and later, when the spinning slowed enough not to spill everything, a cooking column from Nicole Kimberling.

Contributor Bios for LCRW 43:

Alisa Alering lives in Indiana where she reports on innovations in science and technology. Her rather unscientific fiction has appeared in Podcastle, Clockwork Phoenix IV, and Flash Fiction Online, among others and has been recognized by the Italo Calvino Prize. She is currently at work on a novel about two sisters prepping for the apocalypse in 1980s Appalachia.

Leah Bobet is a novelist, editor, and critic whose novels have won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, and Aurora Awards, been selected for the Ontario Library Association’s Best Bets program, and shortlisted for the Cybils and the Andre Norton Award. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple Year’s Best anthologies and been transformed into choral work, and is taught in high school and university classrooms in Canada, Australia, and the US. She is guest poetry editor for Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice‘s 2021 issue. She lives in Toronto, where she makes jam, builds civic engagement spaces, and plants both tomatoes and trees. Visit her at leahbobet.com.

Erica Clashe lives in Minneapolis with her cat, Ommie. She’s a professional gay auntie. This is her first published work. Find her at ericaclashe.com.

Gillian Daniels writes, works, and haunts the streets of the Boston area in Massachusetts. She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and left shortly after attending the 2011 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop. Since then, her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among more than twenty-five other publications. She serves as custodian to one (1) ginger cat who likes to chew the corners of her books when she doesn’t feed him breakfast right away.

Kathleen Jennings is a writer and illustrator based in Brisbane, Australia. Her Australian Gothic debut Flyaway (Tor.com) and her poetry debut Travelogues: Vignettes from Trains in Motion (Brain Jar Press) were published in 2020. She has won two Ditmars for her short stories and been shortlisted for the Eugie Foster Memorial Awards. As an illustrator (this story began as a series of pictures exhibited at Light Grey Art Lab, Minneapolis), she has been shortlisted four times for the World Fantasy Awards, as well as once for the Hugos and the Locus Awards, and has won several Ditmars.

Jim Marino’s stories are published or forthcoming in Apex Magazine and the Alaska Quarterly Review, and his short humor has appeared on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He makes his living teaching Shakespeare.

Zack Moss is a writer of weird fiction with an MFA from Western Washington University. His stories have appeared in Alimentum: the Literature of Food, The Crambo, and Zymbol, among a few others.

Quinn Ramsay is a graduate of the University of Glasgow. His prose and poetry have been published in Paragraphiti, From Glasgow to Saturn, Santa Clara Review, The Magnolia Review, and Gemini, among others. He has been a recipient of the Amy M. Young Award in Creative Writing, and a co-editor and designer for Williwaw: an Anthology of the Marvellous.

Jessy Randall’s poems, stories, and other things have ap

• Language: English
• Publisher: Small Beer Press
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781618731968

Book preview

LCRW43.jpg

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #42

Made by

Gavin J. Grant

& Kelly Link.

Proofreader: Franchesca Viaud

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 43, June 2021. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731968.

LCRW is (usually) published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · [e-mail] · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $24/4 issues (see page 48 of the paper edition for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c.

Contents © 2021 the authors. All rights reserved.

Cover illustration Black-and-White Monkey © 2021 by Catherine Byun (catherinebyun.com). Thank you authors, artists, and readers.

Celebrating: Elwin Cotman’s collection Dance on Saturday being a Philip K. Dick Award finalist. Looking forward to: our forthcoming 20th anniversary edition(!) of Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen with a new cover and interior illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook.

Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above.

The Night Farmers’ Museum

Alisa Alering

Evolution of Cultivation Practices

Night was initially gathered and consumed by prehistoric peoples in the Primeä River region from self-propagating strands of wild shadow. Cultivation began when men, or more likely women, deliberately dropped shadow grains on the soil near their homesteads, erected awnings to keep out the daylight, and manipulated the growing season by singing the first songs of darkness.

[Audio recording] Night farmers in eastern Tuviu Kreps sing a traditional planting song. Recorded by the Combined Beliefs Project. Tape no. 5192.85/007

As recently as fifty years ago, isolated communities in the Bisv basin still used ancient practices to farm small plots of subsistence night. As the villagers had little contact with outsiders, the lyrics sung in this recording may have remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years, representing the closest approximation to the original songs.

What is the name of this darkness?

It is night. Night.

Who plants the night?

We do.

The seed uncurls

The shadow unfurls

The night is gray

But it will be black.

—Translation by P. Marchentaral

Pests & Diseases of Night

In the earliest period of cultivation, the night crop often failed, resulting in extreme shortages. Over time, agricultural methods became more sophisticated. Better tools, more complex songs, and larger fields resulted in greater yields.

[Object] Page from the Juyo Manuscript. Recovered from the Seven Clouds Abbey excavation, Crow Mountain region.

Believed to have been compiled and illustrated by the monk and poet, Bror Magga, in the pre-Auric period, this agricultural manual lays out some of the first recorded principles for the cultivation of night. A remarkably accurate drawing of one of night’s primary insect pests, the red-legged shredder beetle (note the long pincers that rend night’s delicate strands) occupies the top half of the page. Below, a recipe is given for a poison tea: a mixture of sulfurous oil, wood ash, and silica to be used as a prophylactic spray. It was believed that the reflected light would be harmful to organisms that feed on night. A note in the margin suggests that the preparation is also effective against night maggots.

[Object] Matumelu snare replica. Hazel wood, iron, reed fiber, matumelu hair.

One of the most severe threats to night cultivation does not actually feed upon night. A large carnivore, the matumelu makes its home in clay mounds on the borders of night enclosures. It rampages through the fields in pursuit of its prey, the plump and quick-footed qui, crushing night under the weight of its large hooves. Its protruding tusks and the thrashing of its barbed tail inflict additional damage, particularly on emergent night.

A shape-shifter, the matumelu may also take the form of a small winged rodent, allowing it to suddenly shrink and slip through its hunters’ hands at the moment of capture. Early night farmers developed primitive snares such as the one shown here to protect their crops. Three hairs from the matumelu’s mane are woven into the noose which, when tightened around the matumelu’s neck, prevents the captured beast from transforming in order to escape.

Myth & Folklore

[Object] Bright Mother Holds the Knife, gouache on paper, attributed to Kofé of Lac. Second Auric Dynasty. Donated by the Qazirat Family Foundation.

According to legend, the first woman, One-Jo, found a secret and swallowed it. But it was a bad secret, and it festered inside of One-Jo, slowly poisoning her. Bright Mother ordered One-Jo to appear before her and tell the secret so that she could be purified and saved. One-Jo came, but standing in the shining perfection of Bright Mother’s presence, One-Jo could not speak. The poison inside her was dammed up and soon she would die. So Bright Mother cut a piece of night from the dark side of her eye and draped it over One-Jo’s back so she could confess her secret deeds under the cover of night.

[Video] Villagers beating night with a mallet on the eve of the Bitter Winds Festival.

Peasants living in areas with low night productivity often mixed obscurity with night. Later, smog, introduced in the Thousand Furnaces Era, also became a popular staple, where it supplemented a low night yield. However, even the poor cooked pure boiled night and pounded night cake (gabingka) for important festivals. People thought that the essence of night was purified by pounding, and gabingka was believed to contain the spirit of night. Gabingka was often formed in the shape of a triangle, to represent the wound in Bright Mother’s eye.

Try this: Make your own gabingka!

Step 1: Soak night in a covered basin

Step 2: Using a mallet, night fork, or the palm of your hand, knead night until it forms a sticky mass.

Step 3: Press night into triangles, squares, or circles, dust with toasted night seed, and decorate.

Trade

[Drawing] A Haa merchant longship, with the traditional blind-folded figure at the bow. Note the thirty-six night storage canisters hung from the rail at regular intervals, secured by ropes with the customary dreamer’s knot.

As agricultural methods improved, the existence of preserved night meant that a ship could now carry a stable supply of night sufficient to sustain two full shifts of rowers, allowing captains to travel farther afield in search of both adventure and profit. In the First Auric Dynasty, the enterprising Haa merchants of Pototla brought exotic forms of night to the towns along the Pototl coast, where partaking of imported night became a fashion among the region’s elite.

[Object] Silver alloy night spoon with matumelu tusk inlay and applied gold foil, unknown maker, early Second Auric Dynasty.

Long-handled night spoons such as this one first appeared late in the First Auric Dynasty, and their popularity spread throughout the Second. The pear-shaped bowl is typical of later designs. The gold inscription along the handle is a dedication to Dew Eyes, the youngest of Bright Mother’s eight daughters. Associated with fertility, a cult in her name thrived in the centuries after the Stick and Bone Wars. Spoons such as this were confined to the homes of the wealthy, where they would have accompanied an equally decorative box in which the latest variety of imported night was stored under lock and key, likely in the owner’s bedchamber.

The Year of the Beetle

[Photo] A memorial erected in Mahasina Park depicts a ragged woman clutching a child to her chest, shielding its head with a blanket. Photo: Mahasina Cultural Association

The first occurrence of a shredder beetle superswarm appeared over Sindrung, on the island nation of Mahasit early in the propagation season. Eyewitnesses reported that the beetles ate everything in sight: the night in the fields, the shade under trees, the shadows of passing clouds. Even the traditional gloom which surrounds the house of the neighborhood witch was devoured by their dreadful voracity. The resulting famine was worsened by an outbreak of coronal fever. An estimated 135,000 Mahasinas died, and many more fled their homeland for neighboring lands, often overwhelming native populations.

Night Goes to War

[Object] Revised model Persuader flintlock musket, manufactured by the Qazirat Company.

When the Twilight Empress died without an heir, ending the Fourth Auric Dynasty, her brothers mustered armies and attacked one other. The War of Fraternal Succession was nicknamed The Night War. Poorly supplied soldiers on both sides of the conflict were forced to live off the land, digging night from the fields as they ravaged the countryside. An enterprising quartermaster discovered that certain varieties of moldy night, boiled in a camp pot with chalk and urine, could be hardened into projectiles. Rammed into muskets and fired, these night sours were not lethal or even particularly injurious, but the polluted night released from a concentrated fusillade weakened and disoriented opponents. The practice was swiftly adopted by the opposing forces, and within six weeks, no night remained for ordinary use. The war ceased once the night supply had been exhausted.

Urban Growth & The Thousand

Furnaces Era

[Photo] Hozhollen Sub City, an industrialized area of Kassinda, photographed at the beginning of the Thousand Furnaces Era. The old town can be seen beyond the chimneys, and some remaining agricultural land appears in the foreground. Courtesy Kassinda Civil Archives

For the last two hundred years, the rise in per capita consumption of night has been closely associated with industrialization, increased personal income, and urban growth. The around-the-clock shift work required to keep the furnaces burning, the monotony of mechanized work, and stress of increasingly crowded living conditions, meant a continuing demand for affordable night. In the decades that followed, it became ever more difficult for rural night farmers to supply enough night for urban populations that continued to swell.

[Object] Hand-written prescription for night.

The patient is directed to "mix powdered night with strong barley tea and three to five drops of fox liver oil and place in a mungi-thungi (steam infuser). Bring to the boil, then inhale the steam until the lungs are full; repeat six times." This was a popular prescription to treat insomnolence and mental wasting in the Thousand Furnaces and Post-Rust eras.

A disastrous civil war that raged over much of the Affiliated Commonwealth, followed by a sustained period of political unrest, led to increased demand for night as a means to repair the region’s shattered psyche. The August Institute of Surgeons officially recognized night as therapeutic in the third year of the Post-Rust Era. A devastating fire among the warehouses at the Martyrs Bay dockyards only eighteen months later put additional pressure on the already strained supply chain. Within five years, prescriptions for medicinal night had tripled in volume. The price of one gram of domestic night rose from 10 laufgan’e to 2 lau, effectively putting it out of reach for all but the wealthiest citizens.

Kha Myo Cave Clearances

[Photo] Mouth of the River Kha, Kha Yai Daw. Photo: Inland Travelers League

Night has always been abundant in the low-lying regions of Kha Yai Daw. The nearby Kha Myo caves were believed to be the source. In the early years of the New Golden Era, Governor Orr Masike signed an Order of Expropriation, assigning the caves and surrounding area to the exclusive control of the Honourable Night Development Company for a period of 330 years, resulting in the expulsion of the Lok-Myo people who called the caves home.

[Photo] Graffiti defaces the boarded-up exterior of an abandoned Kha Myo Cave. Photo: Children of Darkness

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the caves did not contain true night, but only darkness. Thirty years after multiple explorations found no usable night, the Honourable Night Company abandoned further exploitation but declined to return the caves to the Lok-Myo people, asserting their right to the entire term of the 330-year lease. Abandoned and derelict, the caves became sites of graffiti, banditry, and lawlessness.

Industrialization & The Case

Against Night

[Object] Colorful cartoon characters decorate a package of Ideal brand granulated night in a re-sealable pouch.

Since the New Golden Era, the development of the frozen night industry, combined with surging demand for snack and convenience night, has contributed to the expansion of industrially processed night products. By the beginning of modern times, 65 percent of night consumed was dehydrated, canned, or frozen.

[Object] Pamphlet, The Case Against Night, 13 pages.

Nearly sixty years ago, Fekete-Fekete Bogg, a junior accounting clerk, self-published a manifesto calling for the eradication of night. Seized upon by the media, his fiery condemnation led to a nationwide Anti-Shadow Campaign. Supporters claimed that night contributed to a myriad of society’s ills. Night, Bogg wrote, encourages crime, conspiracy, wizardry, and unwholesome trysts. Reliance upon night corrupts our youth, putting a strain on their eyes and their nervous systems. The modern, forward-looking world no longer