'Cleo' and 'Chosen' - the young Cleopatra novels by Lucy Coats

 

Full disclosure here. Lucy Coats is a friend of mine. This basically means that a couple of years ago she told me she was writing a YA novel about Cleopatra’s childhood and coming-of-age, set in a magical version of Ancient Egypt where the gods really exist, and first of all I fell over with jealousy-tinged admiration at the the sheer brilliance of the idea, and afterwards I got to read some of the drafts, which were also brilliant. The first book, ‘Cleo’, came out last year and the second, ‘Chosen’ has just been published by Orchard. I love them both - and what luscious covers!

Though everyone has heard of Cleopatra the Queen, her childhood remains a mystery. As Lucy says:

 

Nobody knows much about Cleopatra’s path to the Pharoah’s throne, beyond the bare minimum of speculative dates, and even those are disputed. Who her mother was, when exactly she was born, what she really looked like are all mysteries. Her early life is a big fat hole in history, which I have jumped into with both feet and tried to fill. 

 

Such lack of solid information may be infuriating to the historian but for a writer it’s a gift beyond dreams, and the stuff of dreams is exactly what Lucy has woven into these two splendid historical fantasies.  In ‘Cleo’ we first meet the child Cleopatra in a crowded palace room, fighting back tears at her mother’s deathbed. But this Cleopatra can see the gods themselves.

My mother opened her pale, bluish lips slightly and sighed. Only I could see the misty golden ka soul form that rose upwards from her body – a perfect mirror image of her mortal self. Only I could see the door opening in the air, the tall jackal-headed figure stepping from his reed boat and slipping into the mortal world.  Only I could see his immortal hand stretching out to draw my mother’s soul through and sail off with her to the underworld realm.  She held out her own hand to him and didn’t even look back once.

Threatened with murder by her two half-sisters, Cleo escapes from Alexandria with her best friend and slave-girl Charm, finds sanctuary in a far-off temple of Isis and becomes a priestess. There she learns her beloved goddess has plans for her. It’s up to Cleo to return to Alexandria, find a map locating the ancient shrine of the goddess, wipe out the treachery of those who betrayed her, and rescue Egypt from the evil god Am-Heh. Luckily Cleo has allies. Not only Charm, but the handsome young Khai, whose dark eyes stir many a heartbeat as Cleo grows into a warm-hearted, susceptible teenager.  But not just any teen. Cleo may be as flirtatious and funny as Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicholson, but she’s also a princess of Egypt, brave and ambitious, proud of her status and descent, royal to her fingertips.  Lucy Coats never forgets the future fame of this young girl.  Throughout both books we find little hints of Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ – Cleo’s maid Charm, for example, must be that very Charmian who ‘loves long life better than figs’ but who (we know) one day will follow her mistress into death.  The friendship between the two girls is as just as much if not more important than Cleo’s romantic interests – and it will be lifelong. 

In ‘Chosen’ (which if anything is an even better book than the first), Cleo as ‘the Chosen One of Isis’ journeys through the deserts of North Africa to the oracle at Siwah, and thence to Rome to bring back her exiled father, sweep Berenice from the throne and destroy the evil Am-Heh. And she meets a young Roman soldier called Marcus Antonius on the way…

What I love about Lucy’s version of Egypt is how rich, colourful and intense it is, full of sounds, scents and warm breezes. In a passage from ‘Cleo’, our sensual girl enjoys a massage after a temple dance:

 The smell of rose-and-cinnamon oil filled the warm air, and the thin coverlet lay heavy on my naked hips and legs, almost too hot for this summer day. Through my half-closed eyes I could see the black silhouettes of swallows, dipping and darting against the harsh blue of the the early Akhet sky, hunting for airborne bugs over the Nile…

In ‘Chosen’, in more warlike mood, Cleo and her comrades approach an oasis after a long and grimy desert march:

We rode up out of the black sand in the heat of the afternoon and arrived at the oasis the desert tribes called Shore of the Sea. …The camels started to run as they smelt the fresh water …  The green was intoxicating to my eyes, and the smell of it almost an assault on my nostrils. I slid down from Lashes as she dipped her muzzle in the water, snorting, shaking her lips and blowing great clouds of bubbles as she slurped and sucked. 

 

Total immersion in the past!  You can sense how much fun the author is having, and it’s infectious. Quite simply, I enjoyed both books enormously. The two titles are suitable for older children, perhaps from thirteen up. Lucy doesn’t flinch from the dark side – there’s a fair bit of physical violence; you’ve got to be able to cope with some characters being eaten by crocodiles, for example – as well as a non-explicit, off-stage rape which is handled seriously but sensitively.  However great the danger though, we can be sure Cleo and her friends will win through, with the supernatural power of Isis at their back and, leading from the front, Cleo herself, crackling with energy, life, and determination to fulfill her destiny as one of the most famous Queens who ever lived.  

"CLEO" and "CHOSEN" by Lucy Coats are published by Orchard Books. You can find out more about Lucy and her books at her website, http://www.lucycoats.com/

Magical Classics: 'The Last of the Dragons' by A. de Quincey

Lucy Coats and the mysterious A. de Quincey's vegetarian dragon:

In Book IX of the History of Animals, Aristotle states:

"When the draco has eaten much fruit, it seeks the juice of the bitter lettuce."

Fruit? Lettuce? Dragons? Some mistake, surely, O Venerable Greek Philosopher? Well no. Not if you're A. de Quincey, author of the favourite fantasy of my childhood - The Last of the Dragons.

Perhaps you may never have thought of a dragon as a vegetarian sort of creature. Perhaps you have always seen it as a creature of blood and gore, rending sacrificed virgin princesses from limb to limb and crunching armoured knights like lobsters.  I suppose I thought like that too until I met De Quincey's Ajax.

This is how de Quincey describes him:

"He was as handsome a creature as ever lived, what with his soft and satiny dark-green skin...and the row of gold-tipped spines that ran down his back.... On his head were two pairs of horns, one shorter and the other longer, like a snail's; but they were for adornment and not for fighting or anything of that sort. His teeth were beautifully regular, and neither too large nor too small. He had a most engaging smile."

In addition to all this handsomeness, Ajax can blow double smoke rings, tell a great story, draw, play the concertina (with extra twiddles because of his six fingers and two thumbs), sniff out treasure and fly "as fast as a Spitfire". He is also, as mentioned above, a vegetarian, liking grass, leaves, fruit, nuts and, most especially, mushrooms and truffles. However, he has a problem. Ajax is the last of his kind - and he's dead bored of his own company, so decides to find a job with "the next most intelligent creatures to Dragons" - ie us humans, with varying results. 

The tale which follows is as entrancing to me now as it was when I was eight. I've just read it again for about the fiftieth time in order to try and work out what it is about this particular fantasy which has drawn me in and held me for all those decades. Is it the grumpy and ghastly Fairy Frowniface, with her wand "made for magical purposes by King Solomon himself'? Is it the mean, green-eyed slinking stinker of a cat, Mrs Maul? Is it the polite would-be dragon-slayer, Prince George of Hesperia, with his insouciant air of bravery, and rat-generalling skills? Is it villainous, black-bearded Baron Terrible and his rough and tumble henchmen, who repent after being turned into an embarrassed frog and a squiggle of tadpoles?  Or is it Ajax himself - the dragon from Venus whose King is the legendary Phoenix? 

It's all of these and more. While De Quincey's authorial voice has a delightfully old-fashioned tone akin to E. Nesbit and E. Goudge, it's also surprisingly modern in attitude - I think there are few books from that period (1947) which are so respectful of Islamic traditions, or even mention them. But apart from the great storytelling and characterisation, the thing I like best is the rich and uniquely satisfying descriptive prose, which then and now satisfies my inner reader's desire to know what things look like, where they come from, and how they got there.

Who A.de Quincey was is a mystery.  He (or she) only wrote one other book - The Little Half-Giant - which I have just managed to track down a copy of on AbeBooks. The Last of the Dragons was illustrated by Brian Robb, who lectured at the Chelsea College of Art, (inspiring a generation of fantastic illustrators such as Quentin Blake), and later took over from Edward Ardizzone as head of illustration at the Royal College of Art. Blake says of him: "Robb's work had a humane, wry, almost teasing character that makes me wish he had set his hand to more children's books than he did" and I would agree with that. The slightly fuzzy but endearing black-and-white illustrations are a big part of the book's charm for me.  But of this particular de Quincey's life and times I can find no trace, despite it being a literary name of some renown in a sphere other than children's books. If anyone knows more about A. de Quincey, I'd love to hear from you. We fans of Ajax are few and far between, but devoted to the last. If only Hamish Hamilton would bring him back into print....

 

Lucy Coats is reads, writes and blogs magic, myth and fantasy – as you might expect from someone who remarks: ‘I was born in a shrubbery nearly half a century ago and have been looking for fairies in the trees ever since.’ She has written over 25 titles for children, including her Greek Beasts and Heroes series, published by Orion, Hootcat Hill, a fantasy for older children, and her new picturebook, Bear's Best Friend has recently featured on CBeebies Bedtime Stories. Lucy's website is http://www.lucycoats.com/
and she currently blogs at http://lucycoats.tumblr.com/

Talking of trolls

I'm taking the weekend off from Steel Thistles, as today you will find me talking about trolls to my friend Lucy Coats, over at Scribble City Central, her wonderful blog devoted to all things mythic. She's currently compiling a fascinating alphabet of mythical creatures, with help from many great fantasy writers: and we've reached the T's. Click on Scribble City, and I'll see you there!

Picture credit: The Changeling, by John Bauer, 1913

Baba Yaga - Wild Witch of the Writing Forest

by Lucy Coats
 

Baba Yaga by mythic artist Rima Staines

The Bear Moon is risen, and here comes the Baba Yaga in her iron mortar, rowing and sweeping, rowing and sweeping, till all that is left behind her is cloud wrack and the crushed black velvet of a midnight sky.

That’s how my own Baba Yaga story will start—the one I plan to write some winter when the snow starts to fall.

I can no longer remember where my fascination with Baba Yaga began. It may have been Arthur Ransome and Old Peter’s Russian Tales who introduced me to her, but I think not. Having a set of Russian cousins probably meant that somewhere, somehow, I was first told of her via whispered under-bedclothes tales of the witch with iron teeth, who lived in a house with chicken legs behind a bonefence of bright-lit human skulls. What a fabulous story! I was immediately hooked for life.

For me, she is the ultimate über-witch; the one all other fairytales imitate and fail to surpass. She has, variously, black iron teeth, a skeleton-leg, a sharp, beaky nose with excellent smelling skills, poor eyesight, no talent whatsoever for fine cooking, warts (and what is a witch without warts?), wheezy breath à la Darth Vader and a temperament which swings in a moment from mildly benevolent to seriously inimical. Her mode of travel is to climb into a large iron mortar, and row herself about the sky with a pestle, sweeping out her tracks with a silver birch besom as she goes—so much cooler than a mere broomstick in my opinion.

(Here she is coming through the forest in a painting by Ivan Bilibin.)

Baba Yaga was not always a fairytale figure for children, I think. Her roots go right back to that most ancient of world mythological figures, the triple-aspected Great Goddess in her function as Crone. Some folklorists deny this, but for me it makes perfect sense. Having studied shamanism and matriarchal religions for many years, I see in Baba Yaga all the key elements which make up the dark side of the goddess-as-wisewoman as well as weaving links between her and the Moirae/Parcae, the Morrigan, and the Norns. I think it is telling that Baba Yaga is never the star in her own stories, but always appears in a major supporting rôle, a sort of dea ex machina whose actions or advice determine the future course of the hero or heroine’s life. To brave young men who know how to enter her dancing chicken-leg hut she usually (but not always) shows her more benevolent side, giving advice and shelter; but to equally brave young women she is invariably less kind, making them do many impossible tasks before she will help them.

The Baba Yaga fairytale-myth is endlessly changing (I am reliably informed that she has about 26 different names), depending on which area the story comes from—and there are many many versions of it, some of which feature Baba Yaga only in passing. Baba is an Indo-European word meaning, loosely, old woman, but it can also be linked to demons and weather conditions (in Poland, when there is rain and sun together, the children chant: ‘Rain is falling, sun is shining, Baba Yaga’s butter’s churning’). Yaga may come from an old Slavonic stem meaning evil, sickness or nightmare. I also find it fascinating when fairytale-myth and reality collide—it is entirely possible that the idea of Baba Yaga’s hut on chicken legs came from the Finnish nomadic-hunter tradition of cutting down two trees close together to a height of about ten feet, and building a hut on top to prevent access to food and stores by wild animals. The exposed roots of the dead trees would have looked like chicken feet.

Vassilisa arrives at Baba Yaga's hut - by Ivan Bilibin

The best-known Baba Yaga tale (and my own favourite) involves Vassilisa the Fair, and is a type of Cinderella story crossed with the classic maiden-on-a-quest fairytale. Re-reading it for this piece together with Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ classic psycho-commentary from Women Who Run With The Wolves reminded me what a revelation this kind of delving into the deeper meanings of fairytale was to me when I first came across it. As a child I knew the tale as an exciting adventure with all the elements I liked—a bit of sadness, a brave heroine (I always preferred heroines), baddies at home, a scary witch and a quest against all odds with a satisfyingly bloody ending. To discover, when I was older, that it is a story about the importance of listening to one’s intuition, about facing the dark side of one’s character, about growing up into a woman’s power, made me look anew at all fairytales and reinforced their importance for me, not just as fireside tales, but as key signposts for life itself.

In the case of Vassilisa, well, who would not wish to have a little doll in the pocket to take advice from? For me, intuition (the doll), is a big part of my writing armoury. The ‘doll place’ is where I go when I get stuck. “Sleep now, all will be well,” says the doll, when Baba Yaga gives Vassilisa the impossible task of sorting a million poppy seeds from a pile of dirt. Sometimes, when I get bogged down in a story, that’s just what it feels like—impossible to go on, impossible to sort out. But, as I have written elsewhere, I find that handing over to the intuition doll and going to sleep while she does the hard work is a marvellous solver of story problems.

Then there’s the wicked stepmother and sisters. They are the voices in my head—the ones that tell me I’m useless and not good enough; that I can’t do it, and I never will; that I should just give up now because really, who am I to dare...? For me, they are the true demons, not Baba Yaga at all. She’s the one who teaches hard but important lessons and gives the essential gift of the fire of confidence. She may make me work damned hard for it, and challenge me at every turn—but if I can use my brain, if I can listen to the doll, if I can complete Baba Yaga’s tasks, carry her reward of a fiery skull through the dark forest and burn up the sneering demons, then I will have a story to tell at the end of it all—and what a hell of a story it will be!

Lucy Coats has written over 25 titles for children, the latest of which are the 12 books of her Greek Beasts and Heroes series, published by Orion.  She blogs on myth, folklore and all aspects of writing at Scribble City Central.

Besides the Greek Beasts, Lucy is the author of the splendidly titled ‘Hootcat Hill’, a vigorous fantasy for older children, set in an ever-so-slightly different version of modern Britain where children learn ‘Frankish’ at school instead of French, and look forward to university at Oxenfoord rather than Oxford. Here, in a little village called Wyrmesbury, young Linnet Perry discovers her true identity as the Maiden, one of the seven Guardians whose duty it is to quell the waking of the dreadful worldwyrm.

West of the Moon tour (6)

I thought it might be helpful to add a list of the places 'West of the Moon' has already been on tour - do click the links if you haven't seen them.

RECLUSIVE MUSE (in which I talk about the Nis, the little house spirit who befriends Peer)
SCRIBBLE CITY CENTRAL (in which Lucy Coats reviews the book and I answer her Burning Question)
MOSTLY BOOKS (in which I am interviewed)
MR RIPLEY'S ENCHANTED BOOKS (in which I talk about the creation of fantasy worlds) 


Now for the exciting part!  Head over to Scribble City Central  once again and find out how to win one of four copies  of 'West of the Moon' - and the competition is international, so everyone gets a chance!

And if you can't wait, and happen to own a Kindle, you can download the book here - or you can order it from any good bookshop or from Amazon.

Fairytale Reflections (7) Lucy Coats

My friend Lucy Coats is very tuned in to magic, myth and fantasy – as you might expect from someone who remarks: ‘I was born in a shrubbery nearly half a century ago and have been looking for fairies in the trees ever since.’ She has written over 25 titles for children, the latest of which are the 12 books of her Greek Beasts and Heroes series, published throughout this year by Orion. And it’s partly to Lucy I owe this idea of the ‘Fairytale Reflections’ – inspired by the fascinating ‘Mythic Fridays’ series of interviews on her blog Scribble City Central.

Lucy is, in fact, very very cool. It has to be cool to have your own stone circle, right? Well, Lucy has one. She mentions it on her website quite casually, almost in passing – as though, well, doesn't everyone have one?  She built it herself: seven upright stones surrounding an inner circle of seven trees which are, naturally, the Seven Sacred Trees of Britain. (I’m rather ashamed to say I can't guess all of them. Oak and Ash and Thorn, for sure, but the others...?  Alder?  Willow?  Elm?)

Besides the Greek Beasts, Lucy is the author of the splendidly titled ‘Hootcat Hill’, a vigorous and charming fantasy for older children, set in an ever-so-slightly different version of modern Britain where children learn ‘Frankish’ at school instead of French, and look forward to university at Oxenfoord rather than Oxford. Here, in a little village called Wyrmesbury, young Linnet Perry discovers her true identity as the Maiden, one of the seven Guardians whose duty it is to quell the waking of the dreadful worldwyrm. The Guardians are figures from deep folklore, cleverly reimagined in modern guise, such as 'Wayland Smith' now working as a garage mechanic and panel-beater, or ‘Fay Morgan’ who owns the ‘chymists’ shop on the High Street. Here, they arrive together at Hootcat Hill:


The roar of a powerful motorbike at the foot of the hill drowned out the hooting for a moment and then fell silent. Two figures, one very large, the other considerably shorter and rather plump, came up Hootcat Hill towards the trees. Each made a quick twisting sign as they reached the mist that surrounded the Owlstones…


Fay Morgan wore a green cloak, and she carried a silver cauldron under one arm. Wayland Smith was dressed in bright red bike leathers, embroidered with silver sledgehammers.

The book is written with wit and a light touch. Linnet’s father Merrilin brews experimental beers like the ‘Monster Brew’ which provides the adventurous drinker with (temporary) additions such as horns, fangs, or a forked tail. I’m off to the pub tonight myself, to my brother’s folk music session, and I feel quite sure that ‘Monster Brew’ would go down very well at The Greyhound.

And of course, it’s very nearly Halloween. Not a fact either Lucy or I had noticed, and we didn’t plan it this way, so I can only put it down to the influence of that stone circle that her post this week just happens to be about one of most fearsome witches in faery lore...

BABA YAGA—Wild Witch of the Writing Forest 

The Bear Moon is risen, and here comes the Baba Yaga in her iron mortar, rowing and sweeping, rowing and sweeping, till all that is left behind her is cloud wrack and the crushed black velvet of a midnight sky. That’s how my own Baba Yaga story will start—the one I plan to write this winter when the snow starts to fall.

I can no longer remember where my fascination with Baba Yaga began. It may have been Arthur Ransome and Old Peter’s Russian Tales who introduced me to her, but I think not.  Having a set of Russian cousins probably meant that somewhere, somehow, I was first told of her via whispered under-bedclothes tales of the witch with iron teeth, who lived in a house with chicken legs behind a bonefence of bright-lit human skulls.  What a fabulous story!  I was immediately hooked for life.  

For me, she is the ultimate über-witch; the one all other fairytales imitate and fail to surpass. She has, variously, black iron teeth, a skeleton-leg, a sharp, beaky nose with excellent smelling skills, poor eyesight, no talent whatsoever for fine cooking, warts (and what is a witch without warts?), wheezy breath à la Darth Vader and a temperament which swings in a moment from mildly benevolent to seriously inimical. Her mode of travel is to climb into a large iron mortar, and row herself about the sky with a pestle, sweeping out her tracks with a silver birch besom as she goes—so much cooler than a mere broomstick in my opinion.  (Here she is coming through the forest in a painting by Ivan Bilibin)

Baba Yaga was not always a fairytale figure for children, I think.  Her roots go right back to that most ancient of world mythological figures, the triple-aspected Great Goddess in her function as Crone.  Some folklorists deny this, but for me it makes perfect sense.  Having studied shamanism and matriarchal religions for many years, I see in Baba Yaga all the key elements which make up the dark side of the goddess-as-wisewoman as well as weaving links between her and the Moirae/Parcae, the Morrigan, and the Norns.  I think it is telling that Baba Yaga is never the star in her own stories, but always appears in a major supporting rôle, a sort of dea ex machina whose actions or advice determine the future course of the hero or heroine’s life.  To brave young men who know how to enter her dancing chicken-leg hut she usually (but not always) shows her more benevolent side, giving advice and shelter; but to equally brave young women she is invariably less kind, making them do many impossible tasks before she will help them. 

The Baba Yaga fairytale-myth is endlessly changing (I am reliably informed that she has about 26 different names), depending on which area the story comes from—and there are many many versions of it, some of which feature Baba Yaga only in passing. Baba is an Indo-European word meaning, loosely, old woman, but it can also be linked to demons and weather conditions (in Poland, when there is rain and sun together, the children chant: ‘Rain is falling, sun is shining, Baba Yaga’s butter’s churning’). Yaga may come from an old Slavonic stem meaning evil, sickness or nightmare.  I also find it fascinating when fairytale-myth and reality collide—it is entirely possible that the idea of Baba Yaga’s hut on chicken legs came from the Finnish nomadic-hunter tradition of cutting down two trees close together to a height of about ten feet, and building a hut on top to prevent access to food and stores by wild animals.  The exposed roots of the dead trees would have looked like chicken feet. 

The best-known Baba Yaga tale (and my own favourite) involves Vassilisa the Fair, and is a type of Cinderella story crossed with the classic maiden-on-a-quest fairytale. Re-reading it for this piece together with Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ classic psycho-commentary from Women Who Run With The Wolves reminded me what a revelation this kind of delving into the deeper meanings of fairytale was to me when I first came across it.  As a child I knew the tale as an exciting adventure with all the elements I liked—a bit of sadness, a brave heroine (I always preferred heroines), baddies at home, a scary witch and a quest against all odds with a satisfyingly bloody ending.  To discover, when I was older, that it is a story about the importance of listening to one’s intuition, about facing the dark side of one’s character, about growing up into a woman’s power, made me look anew at all fairytales and reinforced their importance for me, not just as fireside tales, but as key signposts for life itself. 

In the case of Vassilisa, well, who would not wish to have a little doll in the pocket to take advice from?  For me, intuition (the doll), is a big part of my writing armoury.  The ‘doll place’ is where I go when I get stuck.  “Sleep now, all will be well,” says the doll, when Baba Yaga gives Vassilisa the impossible task of sorting a million poppy seeds from a pile of dirt.  Sometimes, when I get bogged down in a story, that’s just what it feels like—impossible to go on, impossible to sort out.  But, as I have written elsewhere, I find that handing over to the intuition doll and going to sleep while she does the hard work is a marvellous solver of story problems.

Then there’s the wicked stepmother and sisters.  They are the voices in my head—the ones that tell me I’m useless and not good enough; that I can’t do it, and I never will; that I should just give up now because really, who am I to dare...?  For me, they are the true demons, not Baba Yaga at all.  She’s the one who teaches hard but important lessons and gives the essential gift of the fire of confidence.  She may make me work damned hard for it, and challenge me at every turn—but if I can use my brain, if I can listen to the doll, if I can complete Baba Yaga’s tasks, carry her reward of a fiery skull through the dark forest and burn up the sneering demons, then I will have a story to tell at the end of it all—and what a hell of a story it will be!  

Mythic Friday at Scribble City Central

You can find me this morning over at Lucy Coats' blog, Scribble City Central.  Like me, Lucy is a British children's fantasy author who is passionate about legends and folklore, and she has had the great idea of interviewing a series of fantasy authors about their favourite myths.  I can thoroughly recommend Lucy's middle grade fantasy 'Hootcat Hill' (Orion 2009) and she's just bringing out a great series for younger children, "Greek Beasts and Heroes".  I'm honoured to have been asked to take part in the 'Mythic Fridays' interviews - as you will see if you check them out, since some of the other participating authors include names such as Alison Croggan, Michele Paver and Adele Geras.  It was fascinating to answer Lucy's questions - I hope you'll enjoy both my answers and her very exciting and vibrant blog!