Durosimi O’Stoat is Salamandra’s father in at least some senses of the word. But not all of them. He is obsessed with magic, and power and the quest for more of those things. No bargain is too dangerous, no spell too twisted, no pact unthinkable.
Sometimes I impress myself,
Although I am not easily impressed
My standards are high.
(Art by Dr Abbey, small poem by Nimue)
What did spoonwalkers do before there were spoons on the island? Their bodies are soft, their tentacles might otherwise be used for dragging their delicate flesh over the cold, hard, unforgiving ground… Clearly this is no way to live. Although, it is easy to imagine that their mournful faces are somehow the consequence of generations of soft bodies dragged mercilessly over the island’s harsh terrain.
Before the spoons, there were sticks. Of course the island has a lot of sticks, so you might wonder why a creature would give up such a plentiful supply of stilts in favour of scavenging for spoons. But spoons tend to be of a size with each other. The spoonwalkers cannot break sticks to get the right length, and finding a really well matched set of sticks, like in weight and length, is no easy task. And then, those perfect sticks will not last. The island is a damp place. Water will inevitably get into the wood and the wood will rot and when you are running for your life, a suddenly breaking stick can be the death of you. Spoons do not break, and many a spoonwalker has escaped being eaten by a glass heroin for just this reason.
There is also the shiny factor. You will never see a spoonwalker with dirty spoons – at least you won’t unless it is at that moment fleeing through mud from something that means it harm. Spoonwalkers lovingly polish their spoons, using leaves to clear away dirt, licking the spoons and rubbing them to make them shine. There isn’t much on the island that naturally shines with the lustre of polished cutlery. It appears that the spoonwalkers have fallen in love with shiny metal.
And so, if you wake at night and hear a soft ‘zee-boo, zee-boo’ sound from within the darkness of your home, it is likely the sound of a spoonwalker who has stolen one of your socks and is huffing gently to itself as it polishes the spoons you will never see again.
(This was written for a rather exciting thing Gregg from Dark Box is doing – a Hopeless Maine project that has drawn in other Hopeless family members… watch this space…)
I am the ghost of the girl you killed
Over and over when you silenced me
Every time you deprived me of peace
Told me to be nice, say nothing of anything
That is not nice even as it happened to me.
I am the ghost of the girl not allowed
To cry in the night, in pain, in fear.
Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about.
I am the ghost of the woman you killed
Over and over, when you denied me
The right to be myself, to have my feelings
When you shut down my thoughts,
Ignored my needs, turned my pain
And my despair into irrelevant nothing.
Locked me in the house for my own good
Then in the attic since I could not be trusted
To act in my own best interests.
Saying only you knew what was right for me
Only you could say what was good and proper.
You said nothing is more tragically romantic
Than the untimely death of a beautiful
Young woman. And how you smiled
When you said that to me.
I am the ghost of the woman you killed
And I have all the time in the world
For my revenge.
(Art by Dr Abbey, poem inspired by the art, and a bit of a snarl at Edgar Allen Poe, who really did say something to the effect that the death of a beautiful young woman was the only real subject for literature)
Those of you who have read Volume 3 – Victims – will know there’s a silly bit where Owen and Salamandra are going to a party. Salamandra has always been good at illusions and likes messing about with appearances, so she dresses them up. I was vague with the script, suggesting that Owen’s might be more silly and less flattering. Tom decided to give Salamandra a distinctly Japanese look.
This caught Dr Abbey’s imagination, and below is his take on Sal in her party gear.
Of course it raised questions – not least being why Salamandra chooses to look this way at this moment.
There are outside the story reasons – that this is an aesthetic Tom likes, and that he has always wanted to appeal to a Japanese audience is most of it. Manga has been a big influence on Mr Brown and there’s a desire to offer something back. Also, this is how Tom does things – he draws whatever arrives in his head and then someone else (usually, but not always me) has to work out how that makes any kind of sense.
So, why is Salamandra inclined to look this way? Has she seen an image like this in a book? Was there a dream, or a scrying experience? Is there a slightly disturbing doll of her mother’s somewhere, wearing just this attire?
I don’t know. Maybe you do. If you are the person who knows how this story goes, please do get in touch and tell us!
Jed Grimes runs the Hopeless Maine hardware store. However, sourcing on Hopeless is a bit haphazard. People who make stuff tend to want to sell or trade it themselves. Mostly what Jed sells is stuff he has scavenged, and he’s a really good scavenger. He also plays the long game. When a ship flounders off the Hopeless coast, most people are out there looking for exciting things they can use or eat straight away. Jed takes home bits of wood, and nails.
He’s really into nails.
Jed is also the sort of person to take a length of heavy ship’s rope and pick it apart for usable threads. He’s almost as much into string as he is nails.
If you’ve read Hopeless Maine: Victims, you’ll already know a few other things about Jed. His life is complicated, but, no spoilers for the people who haven’t got that far.
This week we bring you another Dr Abbey art.
There is an extra story to tell with this one, and on this occasion it is more about the materials than the image. That textured paper was my grandmother’s. I inherited her art equipment, and had quite a stash of paper and oil pastels that were hers. It’s been good putting the paper to use, and I’ve wondered repeatedly what she would make of this process. Hopeless is very different from the kind of art she used to do.
I’m fairly sure that some of the colouring materials used in this were from Dr Abbey’s family as well, and that it is a meeting of people in a rather magical way.
The above image comes from The Gathering. The young man on the right is a very young James Weaselgrease (to use my son’s steampunk performance name). He is the child in this story who Salamandra rescues and to whom she gives her bear.
James Weaselgrease and the bear
She gave me this small toy bear
Torn, battered, restored with care
Softness in my open arms
Best of magic, best of charms.
Old toy bear to ward off fear
Wonky face and sewn up ear
Damaged but not yet destroyed
Comforting, my spirits buoyed
Courage with a messy face
Saved, repaired and full of grace
Saw who I could choose to be
Found the hope to uplift me.
Nights are long and dark and grim
Demons tear us limb from limb
Days are cold and grim and grey
Much to steal your life away.
Even in the darkness, light
Find the means to live and fight
Fill this time with something good
Do the best, the most we could.
In each tiny action seek
Kindest ways, protect the weak
Every chance there is for joy
All your wits and strength deploy
She gave me this bear to hold
Ease my fear and make me bold
Do for others what I can
And this is how my work began.
Image at the top by Tom Brown, poem by Nimue, bear by Dr Abbey.
One of the main characters in the first half of The Gathering is never named. She’s deliberately a manga satire, she’s the big eyed, be-ribboned innocent, but she’s also something else entirely, and nasty with it. In the script, she’s The Poor Little Me – a reference to the Eliza Carthy song that inspired her. Where that was too clunky, I’ve also called her Ribbons, but she doesn’t really have a name, she’s not that sort of girl.
Ribbons
I will be your friend, your best friend
I bet I’m the first pretty girl who
Ever wanted to be friends with you. I bet
Even the unpopular girls mostly do not want
To be friends with you. You’re so alone.
You are so odd, so awkward, so unlovely
It is as well I am so good and kind.
I’m very generous, everyone says so.
And now I take pity on poor you.
Poor little you, unloved, unwanted. Here I am
For you, here to be yours and in return
You’ll be so glad to do what I want
So happy with anything to make me smile.
Poor you, not much to smile about, is there?
But I can put up with you, I’m so kind
And you will be my best friend, my most
Loyal, devoted, trusting, obedient friend
So grateful because you know you don’t deserve
A friend as pretty and lovely as me.
I will be kind to you and you will say
How kind I am, how nice, how sweet
You will say I am the best, the very best.
I will be patient with your mistakes and failures
You are so slow, and clumsy, and sad.
Poor you. Poor little you. So hard, being you
Never happy, are you? Poor you. So sad.
So hard for me, being around you all the time
So tiring, with never enough joy to feed on
Never enough life in your marrow for me.
But I try, I do my best, it’s so hard
Being your friend, you are so useless
So weak.
Poor me.
Poor little me.
Art by Dr Abbey,
I had a lot of conversations with Dr Abbey about child Salamandra as he started getting to know the deeper lives of the characters on our fictional island. It’s always interesting bringing someone new into the inner life of the books, seeing what is obvious to them, and what I need to talk about, and what new things are discovered in that process.
“How old is she in this book?” he asked. I had to admit that I couldn’t tell him. Her age is vague, reliably, for reasons.
It’s always difficult to know what to say when there are things in a story that are important, and you want people to notice them, but you also don’t want to spell them out. How old is Salamandra? Is she a physically small child? A precocious child? A magical child? What kind of child is she? If you’ve read New England Gothic, you’ll know that many of the monsters on and around the island are probably her mother’s children. What does that make Sal? What was really going on with her when she was thrown into the sea in The Blind Fisherman?
Who is she? What is she? These are questions at the heart of the story. I can encourage you to think about it, but that’s about as far as I’m ready to go.
In this image by Dr Abbey, we see child Salamandra as she starts to add wrappings to her regular attire. The strips of cloth have prayers, charms and spells written onto them and they are a form of protective magic that she builds up over the years until she has an entire dress of it. She is a grumpy child, and with good reason.
A very long time ago, I read a quote from Toni Morrison to the effect that often the most important part of a story is how we shape holes for other people to put things into. It’s an idea I’ve spent a lot of time with. The holes are where we write ourselves in, bring our own stories and experiences to fill in the gaps. The holes are where the collaboration happens between author and reader. Hopeless Maine is the project in which I have given most thought to the gaps. It’s also the only project I’ve done where a lot of people have responded by wanting to bring their own creativity to those spaces. It’s a truly exciting process.
Who is child Salamandra? She’s the awkward, unacceptable one. She’s the child who refused to be tamed. She is your lost inner child. She is the magic your child self wanted. She is the resilience to survive bullying and to overcome setback. She is herself despite where she came from, she is not simply a product of her parents. She is childhood rage and frustration, and a child’s keen sense of justice and fair play. She might rescue you. She might glower at you. She might set fire to your kitchen chair. If she whispers to you, listen carefully – she may have secrets to share, or demands to make.
Child Sal to the Dark Tower Came is the name of the first Hopeless Maine story I ever wrote for Tom. It happened long before I started working on the graphic novels. There are now three versions of the art for this story and they appear in order below – Tom’s first illustration for my short story, the version in The Gathering and Dr Abbey’s version. The words are new, and mine.
The title comes from a vague memory of reading Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. I don’t really remember the poem, except that it was miserable. The dark tower of this story is really a lighthouse, a light tower once it gets going. It’s an important image in terms of the history of the project. It also feels relevant now, because it comes in the story at a moment of profound loss and despair for Salamandra. It’s about having nothing you can really do, and yet still doing something.
Child Sal to the dark tower came
With windblown hair and eyes aflame
The sea and sky call out her name
And life will never be the same.
Child Sal in boots too loose by far
Led by her ancestral star
None would dare her entrance bar
Deserted tower, door ajar
Child Sal in loneliness comes in
To empty rooms devoid of kin
And hopes a new life to begin
A home to make, a future win
Child Sal to the dark tower came
And here in secret hoped to reign
Until her heart comes home again
Across the sea, to Hopeless, Maine.