PC380: Spirit Forms Of The Sea

[Ocicat]

PodCastle 380: Spirit Forms Of The Sea

by Bogi Takács

read by Setsu Uzume

First published in Sword and Mythos.

Réka steps forward from between two tents. She looks dazed and one of her braids is partly undone; the guard must’ve found her asleep.

She frowns at the stranger and her eyes narrow even further in the morning sunlight.

He smiles at her the way he would smile at one of his younger sisters, or even one of his own children. My stomach turns. Then he lets loose his spirit form and it ascends to the sky, a majestic white horse not matching his pedestrian self.

Rated R.

Bogi Takács is a neutrally gendered Hungarian Jewish person who’s recently moved to the US. Eir fiction and poetry have been published in venues like Clarkesworld, Apex and Strange Horizons, where e also won last year’s Readers’ Poll in Poetry category with an animated poem, You Are Here / Was: Blue Line to Memorial Park. Eir website is at www.prezzey.net and you can follow em on Twitter as @bogiperson, where e also tweets SFF short story and poem recommendations by diverse authors on a semi-regular basis.

Setsu Uzume spent her formative years in and out of dojos. She also trained in a monastery in rural China, studying Daoism and swordplay. She is a member of Codex and SFWA. While she has dabbled in many arts, only writing and martial arts seem to have stuck. You can find her on the web at katanapen.wordpress.com, and on Twitter @KatanaPen.

Listen to this week’s PodCastle!

[SpareInch]

I just loved this. I wish I had the words to say properly how much. Only I can't spell Cthulhu without at least 3 attempts.

I liked the strong, confident female characters, I liked the way a traditional fantasy quest story took such a dark turn, and I always like deceptively small or frail characters who turn out to be stronger and more dangerous than they look.

[Fenrix]

I really liked the whole collection this one was first printed in. I am really excited a reprint found a home at PodCastle. The ebook is $4 and worth every penny: http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blog/books/swordmythos/

Queued it up, and am looking forward to listening to this one. Thanks for bringing us awesome stories!

[ElectricPaladin]

Weirdly, I liked this one a lot better before I realized that her spirit totem was Cthulhu. The idea that Cthulhu is any part of any human pantheon just doesn't jive with me. Cthulhu is an outsider - that's what makes it so terrifying. Humans who are stupid enough to seek it out get what they deserve. Cthulhu doesn't represent something primordial that is a part of nature - Cthulhu is the primordial chaos that comes before even nature.

But hey, that's just my interpretation, and when you take out the Cthulhu, I loved everything else about the story, so I probably shouldn't complain too hard.

[FeloniusMonk]

Maybe I wasn't listening closely enough but wasn't it mentioned that the spirit had a beak?
Either way I didn't get Cthulu from this story... Mi-go maybe? Or one of Shub-Niggurath's dark young? Shub-Niggurath makes more sense to me as it is often associated with gathering human worshipers to corrupt and conquer rather than just devouring the entirety of reality.

Read to much Mythos? Me? Noo idea what you're talking about...

[bounceswoosh]

Weirdly, I liked this one a lot better before I realized that her spirit totem was Cthulhu. The idea that Cthulhu is any part of any human pantheon just doesn't jive with me. Cthulhu is an outsider - that's what makes it so terrifying. Humans who are stupid enough to seek it out get what they deserve. Cthulhu doesn't represent something primordial that is a part of nature - Cthulhu is the primordial chaos that comes before even nature.

But hey, that's just my interpretation, and when you take out the Cthulhu, I loved everything else about the story, so I probably shouldn't complain too hard.

I also didn't love that part, more because I only like hilarious Lovecraft riffs, not any serious references. But it did take me out of the story - I immediately thought of the Drabblecast Lovecraft month, and then started thinking maybe it hadn't run there because they didn't want listeners anticipating where Cthulu came in ....

[Windup]

After a slow and confusing start, this one worked for me.

I agree with Graeme, though. I don't think that aligning with any of the Elder Gods is going to end well for this particular group of humans.

[TrishEM]

I love this one -- the mythic concept, the central character, the sudden turn into a mythos I wasn't expecting. It stands very well on its own, but I could also see it being the prologue for a dark future epic.

[Unblinking]

Interesting--I didn't figure it out it was Cthulhu until the wings unfurled.  I know the wings had been mentioned before a couple times, but for some reason I hadn't connected octopus head with wings until its reveal near the end.  I do tend to agree that Cthulhu as a spirit form doesn't make a ton of sense in that, sure, maybe you can summon it, but maybe instead of killing a handful of your enemies it will kill everyone on your continent including you.  For that reason I like the story better without the Cthulhu connection--I think it stands well enough on its own without that connection (even though that connection was no doubt necessary for it to be published in the antho it was published in).

I liked the characters, interesting magic system, good action.

[Devoted135]

Interesting concept, and I appreciated that it was explored through female characters who were warriors (or not) in their own right. I did keep imagining the spirit forms as their Patronus though, not sure if that's a bug or a feature. It was also cool to have a story in this setting rather than the typical America/England/Western Europe.

I'm going to pretend it wasn't Cthulu, because that makes me happier.

[darlinggj]

Octopodes have beaks. Cthulhu had insane/"degenerate" human worshippers from the get-go (en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu; see also en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Over_Innsmouth) - there's no accounting for taste.