"A Mask of Flesh"
Sitting alone in the green heat of the forest, far from the road and any observing eyes, Neniza began to craft her mask of flesh.
I have a bit of a personal crusade to open the fantasy field up to a broader range of
cultures, but I've long been aware that there are hurdles in the way of that. One of the
ways around those hurdles involves poking readers' minds a little bit further open with short
stories, until there's enough space for you to cram a novel in.
Which is an abstract way of saying: Mesoamerican fantasy may go down better in small doses, at least to begin with.
So here's the first dose. The setting is based on some research I did a few years ago into Mesoamerican folklore; no one in it is precisely human. They're all roughly human-shaped, but there are different races/species locked into a rigid caste system modeled on pre-Columbian Mayan and Aztec society. This means I'm tossing around words like quetzalcoatl and ocelotlaca. Don't say I didn't warn you.
"A Mask of Flesh" can be found in Mike Allen's lovely anthology Clockwork Phoenix. That's the first volume of an ongoing series; my story "Once a Goddess" is in its successor. To whet your curiosity, here's the table of contents:
- Catherynne M. Valente, "The City of Blind Delight"
- David Sandner, "Old Foss is the Name of His Cat"
- John Grant, "All the Little Gods We Are"
- Cat Rambo, "The Dew Drop Coffee Lounge"
- Leah Bobet, "Bell, Book, and Candle"
- Michael J. DeLuca, "The Tarrying Messenger"
- Laird Barron, "The Occultation"
- Ekaterina Sedia, "There is a Monster Under Helen's Bed"
- Cat Sparks, "Palisade"
- Tanith Lee, "The Woman"
- Marie Brennan, "A Mask of Flesh"
- Jennifer Crow, "Seven Scenes from Harrai's Sacred Mountain"
- Vandana Singh, "Oblivion: A Journey"
- John C. Wright, "Choosers of the Slain"
- C.S. MacCath, "Akhila, Divided"
- Joanna Galbraith, "The Moon-Keeper's Friend"
- Deborah Biancotti, "The Tailor of Time"
- Erin Hoffman, "Root and Vein"
I'm pleased to say "A Mask of Flesh," along with eight other stories from this anthology, received an Honorable Mention in Gardner Dozois' twenty-sixth Year's Best Science Fiction.