A peek at The Fall of the City of Bells
As announced last week, The Fall of the City of Bells is out now. I wanted to tell a bit more behind the scenes stuff and give a glimpse of the poetry of the story.
About eleven years ago, I jotted down on a notecard the idea of a magic of bells. It wasn't much more than what's on the back cover of the book now: "For every bell a person, for every bell a purpose, for every bell a power." A month or so later, I used the idea for a writing exercise that turned into a not-fully-satisfying flash fiction story (some of that story is now folded into the novella's prologue). Over the next years, I returned to the idea now and then but never came up with anything substantial.
Then about 6 years ago, trapped in the house with disease all around, I considered the idea of a novel in verse. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do or why precisely, but I started playing around with combining that curiosity with the bell magic idea. I didn't want a singsong-y rhythm or any archaic language, but used a free-form approach to tell the story.
The magic of Kloakweyst is cast
in iron and bronze
silver and tin;
each bell a spell to summon power
as the magic peals outward
rippling from the city towers
from spire and steeple.
Vibrations wrap around the city,
sonic walls of protection.
Reverberations become shields,
sound become safety.
I didn't get far with it. I wrote three poems, introducing the idea of a city of bells and the arrival of a stranger whose mere presence silenced the bells. Then I set it aside.
Last year I took those poems back out, as well as a short story I'd written about a charm-binder in the city of bells, and started a completely different set of poems, following the travels of that charm-binder after her city had fallen. This time I kept going, following her story across two timelines--before and after the fall.
And that is the story I present to you now. It begins with the charm-binder, cautiously warning about letting others know her identity. Here is the opening poem in its entirety:
Pariahs of a Music-Burdened Past
Silence your bells, you who wander; pretend
you have no part in the powers that ruled,
in the empire that once controlled this broken land.
Silence your stories, you who remember; the decades
are too short and local memories too long to allow
the people to connect you to their former overseers.
Soften your accent; thank the bells that your city
was always a mixture of many tongues, that
this land and its people spoke much the same.
Walk quiet in this ruined world, for your safety,
but do not walk fully silent. Silence is the enemy,
opposing it more vital than mere survival.
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