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    Our Lady of the Harbour
    Our Lady of the Harbour
    Our Lady of the Harbour
    Ebook98 pages55 minutes

    Our Lady of the Harbour

    By Charles de Lint

    ()

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    About this ebook

    She’d been underlake when the sound of his voice drew her up from the cold and the dark, up into the moonlight, bobbing in the white-capped waves; listening, swallowing that golden sound of strings and voice, and he so handsome and all alone on the shore. 

    This modern take on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid reveals the aching beauty and peril of falling in love. A finalist for the 1992 World Fantasy Award, this novella was originally published as a limited edition chapbook by Axolotl Press (1991), and later appeared in de Lint’s acclaimed first Newford collection, Dreams Underfoot (1993).

    Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better.

    —Alice Hoffman

    Charles de Lint writes like a magician. He draws out the strange inside our own world, weaving stories that feel more real than we are when we read them. He is, simply put, the best.
    — Holly Black

    In a culture that privileges detachment and irony Charles de Lint dares to write with passion and conviction, insisting that truth, compassion, and the creation of beauty in the world are things that matter. He's not on a soapbox, he's not didactic, he's just telling stories—but those stories are searing.

    —Terri Windling

    A man who makes the world a better place than he found it.

    —Jane Yolen

    De Lint’s evocative images, both ordinary and fantastic, jolt the imagination.

    —Publishers Weekly

    What makes de Lint's particular brand of fantasy so catchy is his attention to the ordinary. Like great writers of magic realism, he writes about people in the world we know, encountering magic as a part of that world. Fairy tales come true, and their magic affects realistic characters full of particular lusts and fears.

    —Booklist, American Library Association 

    To read de Lint is to fall under the spell of a master storyteller, to be reminded of the greatness of life, of the beauty and majesty lurking in shadows and empty doorways.

    —Quill and Quire

    De Lint's elegant prose and effective storytelling continue to transform the mundane into the magical at every turn.

    —Library Journal

    Charles de Lint's greatest strength...is his obvious love for his characters, and empathy for people generally. ...he is showing us people living up to their potential, rather than down to it. And that is what makes de Lint's books rewarding.

    —Locus Magazine

    Every story, every book I've read by Charles de Lint has touched me in some way—his words make me care very deeply for his characters and their surroundings.

    —Rambles Magazine

    Charles de Lint is one of those rare authors whose work is envied by writers and book editors as much as by his fans…if you don’t find something in the plot to keep you turning pages ravenously (and I’m sure you will), then the colourful characters…will charm you thoroughly.

    —The SF Site

    Charles de Lint has won the World Fantasy, Aurora and Sunburst awards, among many others.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTriskell Press
    Release dateJun 24, 2017
    ISBN9780920623800
    Our Lady of the Harbour
    Author

    Charles de Lint

    Charles de Lint and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, and The Onion Girl, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende.

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      Book preview

      Our Lady of the Harbour - Charles de Lint

      Our Lady of the Harbour

      Our Lady of the Harbour

      Charles de Lint

      Triskell Press

      TRISKELL PRESS

      P.O.

      Box

      9480

      Ottawa

      ,

      ON

      Canada

      K1G

      3V2

      www.triskellpress.com

      Our Lady of the Harbour

      First published by Axolotl Press, 1991. This Triskell Press edition published

      in

      2017

      .

      Copyright © 1991 Charles

      de

      Lint

      Cover art by Gaston Hoffmann (1883-1926);

      Sirène

      ,

      1926

      Cover design by MaryAnn Harris.

      eISBN 978-0-920623-

      80

      -

      0

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

      Contents

      Dedication

      Our Lady of the Harbour

      Mailing list

      About the Author

      Other Books by Charles de Lint

      for MaryAnn

      Our Lady of the Harbour

      People don’t behave the way they should;

      they behave the way

      they

      do

      .

      —Jim Beaubien & Karen Caesar

      She sat on her rock, looking out over the lake, her back to the city that reared up behind her in a bewildering array of towers and lights. A half-mile of water separated her island from Newford, but on a night such as this, with the moon high and the water still as glass, the city might as well have been on the other side of the planet.

      Tonight an essence of Marchen prevailed in the darkened groves and on the moonlit lawns of the island.

      For uncounted years before Diederick van Yoors first settled the area in the early part of the nineteenth century, the native Kickaha called the island Myeengun. By the turn of the century, it had become the playground of Newford’s wealthy, its bright facade first beginning to lose its luster with the Great Depression when wealthy landowners could no longer keep up their summer homes; by the end of the Second World War, it was an eyesore. It wasn’t turned into a park until the late 1950s. Today most people knew it only by the anglicized translation of its Kickaha name: Wolf Island.

      Matt Casey always thought of it as her island.

      The cast bronze statue he regarded had originally stood in the garden of an expatriate Danish businessman’s summer home, a faithful reproduction of the well-known figure that haunted the waterfront of the Dane’s native Copenhagen. When the city expropriated the man’s land for the park, he was generous enough to donate the statue, and so she sat now on the island, as she had for fifty years, looking out over the lake, motionless, always looking, the moonlight gleaming on her bronze features and

      slender

      form

      .

      The sharp blast of a warning horn signaling the last ferry back to the city cut through the night’s contemplative mood. Matt turned to look to the far side of the island where the ferry was docked. As he watched, the lights on the park’s winding paths winked out, followed by those in the island’s restaurant and the other buildings near the dock. The horn gave one last blast. Five minutes later, the ferry lurched away from the dock and began its final journey of the day back to Newford’s harbour.

      Now, except for a pair of security guards who, Matt knew, would spend the night watching TV and sleeping in the park’s offices above the souvenir store, he had the island to himself. He turned back to look at the statue. It was still silent, still motionless, still watching the unfathomable waters of

      the

      lake

      .

      He’d been here one afternoon and watched a bag lady feeding gulls with bits of bread that she probably should have kept for herself. The gulls here were all overfed. When the bread was all gone, she’d walked up to the statue.

      Our Lady of the Harbour, she’d said. "

      Bless

      me

      ."

      Then she’d made the sign of the cross, as though she was a Catholic stepping forward into the nave of her church. From one of her bulging shopping bags, she took out a small plastic flower and laid it on the stone by the statue’s feet, then turned and

      walked

      away

      .

      The flower was long gone, plucked by one of the cleaning crews, no doubt, but the memory remained.

      Matt moved closer to the statue, so close that he could have laid his palm against the cool metal of her flesh.

      Lady, he began, but he couldn’t

      go

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