"The Thousand-and-Third Tale of Scheherazade" is a short story by Caitlin R. Kiernan set in the milieu of the ghouls of Providence. It first appeared in the January 2009 issue of Sirenia Digest (#38), and was later reprinted in Kiernan's collection Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart (Subterranean Press, 2012).
The story is set in "the terrible old house on Federal Hill," a place used by the changelings, humans kidnapped as infants and raised to serve as servants of the ghouls:
For more than two centuries now, this place has served as a refuge for the Children of the Cuckoo, those stolen as infants and raised up in the warrens below College Hill to labor and officiate for the Hounds of Cain, to walk abroad in the day-lit world where the ghouls dare not venture.
It introduces a third class besides the ghouls and changelings: humans kidnapped as adults and treated as slaves by ghoul and changeling alike--described as "the men and women kept downstairs, inside the filthy cages built into the sub-basement of the old house."
The story describes the relationship between a changeling, a female assassin, and a male slave who "was a scholar, once." The unnamed changeling somewhat resembles Soldier, from Daughter of Hounds, but at one point she mentions a character named Pentecost; if that is Scarborough Pentecost, from Low Red Moon, then this story takes place before Soldier is born.
The story also mentions the Bailiff, a character who plays a prominent part in Daughter of Hounds and appears in several other Kiernan stories. The changeling is getting ready to do a job for him in Warwick, a Rhode Island town to the south of Providence.
Like Scheherazade,[1] the slave attempts to hold the changeling's interest by telling a story that ends with a cliffhanger--in this case, a story about a girl Ijbeyneh who is fostered by a ghul woman. (The story appears in the book Folk-Lore of the Holy Land.[2])
Publication History[]
The story also appears in Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales (Centipede Press, 2018).
References[]
- ↑ Wikipedia, "Scheherazade".
- ↑ Folk-Lore of the Holy Land, "Nursery Tales," by J. E. Hanauer.