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    Daddy's Caliban
    Daddy's Caliban
    Daddy's Caliban
    Ebook41 pages39 minutes

    Daddy's Caliban

    By Jay Lake

    ()

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    About this ebook

    What happens when the armies of Elfland lay down their swords and get jobs at the mill? "Daddy's Caliban" is a post-industrial fantasy about the price of peace, coming of age, and what it truly means to live among the promises of your history.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJay Lake
    Release dateMay 15, 2010
    ISBN9781452487861
    Daddy's Caliban
    Author

    Jay Lake

    Jay Lake was a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an award-winning editor, a popular raconteur and toastmaster, and an excellent teacher at the many writers' workshops he attended. His novels included Tor's publications Mainspring, Escapement, and Pinion, and the trilogy of novels in his Green cycle - Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura. Lake was nominated multiple times for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 2004, the year after his first professional stories were published. In 2008 Jay Lake was diagnosed with colon cancer, and in the years after he became known outside the sf genre as a powerful and brutally honest blogger about the progression of his disease. Jay Lake died on June 1, 2014.

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      Book preview

      Daddy's Caliban - Jay Lake

      Daddy’s Caliban

      by Jay Lake

      Smashwords Edition by Jay Lake

      Copyright © 2004, 2010 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

      Cover photograph copyright © 2008, 2010 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

      Originally published as part of Jay Lake’s collection American Sorrows; 2004, Wheatland Press, Wilsonville, OR. This ebook text varies slightly from the original edition.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Daddy’s Caliban

      by Jay Lake

      Mommy always told me and Cameron not to go looking for ways to reach the Old Tower. There’s ghosts and worse over there, Henry, she’d say. You boys got to go wandering, fine, you’re boys. But our people stay on this side of the river. Better yet, stick to the park.

      The park was safe but dorky. When we were seven, that was okay.

      This side of the river was home, Mabton and everything that was ordinary. When we were ten, that was okay.

      Summer we both turned thirteen, well, there was nowhere else to go but across the water and up the hill. Mama must have known that — all us Puca boys got the wander in us, as Daddy says, but she just wagged her finger and warned us off, then packed sandwiches and said to stay out until dark.

      ‡

      Daddy worked in one of the mills north of town, where the river drops through a series of falls and they could put in big waterwheels a hundred years ago. It was all steam engines and belts now, but that was where the buildings still were. He was a shift supervisor at Caliban Products, which meant he hassled the other kids’ moms and dads about being late or taking too long in the can.

      Mommy don’t work. Daddy said she couldn’t work down at Caliban, against the rules, and he wouldn’t let her work for the competition, so she stayed home and ground peanut butter to sell at the farmer’s market on Sundays and knit scarves longer than Daddy’s pickup truck for church sales. She spent her free time hollering at me for tracking mud in the house and such like.

      Cameron wasn’t exactly my brother, really. He was Mommy’s sister’s kid, her twin that run off before I can remember, but nobody would ever say who his father was or even talk about him really was so I figured maybe it was Daddy. Me and Cameron looked a lot like twins ourselves.

      Cameron lived in a little room in our basement, and never sat down to dinner with us, though Mommy left food out for him. She always shushed me when I talked about him around other people. He wasn’t allowed to go to school

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