(Image by John Jude Palencar, used under Creative Commons License. Image copyright John Jude Palencar)

Kristine Kathyrn Rusch has become for me a name synonymous with good story telling. While the quality of any author’s work various from creation to creation I have yet to be disappointed with Rusch’s offerings and “Purity Test” is no exception. This short story, that feels as if it is nestled in the same woods in which a beauty slept and a girl with long hair was held captive, is the first fairy tale I’ve read from the author. It reminds me strongly of the work of Angela Carter in the The Bloody Chamber collection. “Purity Test” is woven from a tapestry of familiar stories, shot through with a thread of ever-darkening suspense that makes for a satisfying read. A rewarding story that satisfies while leaving the reader wanting more.

If you’ve not yet done so, follow this link over to the Lightspeed magazine website and give “Purity Test” a read. Then join us below for a discussion of the story.

“Purity Test” is familiar in that it uses standard fairy tales settings and characters, making it at once familiar. I consider that a strength. Unlike science fiction in which technological advancement and scientific discovery age the work, fantasy, particularly fairy tales, have a timeless quality. Some would argue that this is a weakness. For those who insist that everything be new, fairy tales have a “been there, done that” quality that they cannot abide. I believe, however, that this familiarity is one of many strengths of the fairy tale. These story structures and ideas have stood the test of time because they communicate powerful truths to audiences using characters, props and settings that children grow up with. After some exposure to this type of story, readers can pick up a fairy tale and get right into the meat of the story. World-building exists on some level, but a strength is that our imaginations can quickly build and inhabit these worlds because of that familiarity.

Contemporary authors often take that familiarity and twist or subvert older fairy tale concepts to better fit the time period in which they live and I certainly think Rusch does that to some degree, creating a story in which the female protagonist exists in a patriarchal society typical of fairy tales and yet moving her from the stock role she is expected to inhabit to that of a woman who takes her own fate in hand, setting a new course for her life.

The men don’t fare well in Rusch’s tale. Not a one proves worthy of any heroic appellation. The one person who may be expected to be a support for the protagonist, Micheline, is her brother and he proves to be too self-involved and easily led to do so. Obviously we all read what we will into stories and so this statement is simply my experience, but I don’t feel any particular malice towards men in the fact that the men in the story all prove to be flawed to the point of being irredeemable, at least in the story we are given. I believe it simply works for the story for it to be this way.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch does a marvelous job of creating a truly evil setting in the crumbled tower that is given to the magician Sutton when he arrives in their family. We barely see Sutton and he does fit an old-style villain mode where he is actively in pursuit of some evil goal, wringing his hands in evil glee and laughing maniacally over some helpless victim. Instead he operates in the background, with the descriptions involving him and his work cropping up now and again with horrifying effect. Sutton’s is truly a tower of horrors. Several time Rusch writes of the screams and other sounds emanating from the tower and additional descriptions hint at the evils that are being wrought there without going into graphic description. This is very effective at getting the reader’s imagination fired up and lends an air of horror to the story fueled by the reader that I believe would be less effective if Rusch had went into more detail.

Micheline’s father, unlike some of the standard fairy tale fathers who are kind but a bit daft in their choices after their wife dies, is a man who becomes more distant, less trusting, and more obsessed as time passes. This begins even before his wife dies with the suspicions he harbors about her faithfulness. One of the things I see in this story is the idea of the wife as a possession, rather than a partner. There is a strong emphasis on virginity being the most important thing for the father in finding a spouse for his son as well as Micheline being a virgin for the man her father marries her off to. For ages sexual purity has been held up as a virtue to which women should hold and yet has not often been emphasized as equally important when it comes to males. I see that as apparent in this story as well. Sutton and Micheline’s father use the unicorn to determine a woman’s sexual purity and yet there is no mention of this expectation being held for the man that the woman is being forced to marry. Being a Christian I certainly don’t have any problem with the idea of promoting the saving of oneself for marriage, and yet I cannot help but cringe at the hypocrisy in the idea that men need not be held to that same standard. Which takes me back to the idea of woman as possession.

As I type this it is Easter Sunday, a time not only for chocolate eggs left by a large and highly efficient rabbit (like Santa he gets a lot done in one night) but also one that reflects on Christian tradition. This being the case I cannot help but compare this very standard fantasy/fairy tale view of woman as possession against the statement in Genesis where God created Eve to be a partner for Adam, one taken from his side to denote equality. Without getting deep into Biblical issues and the patriarchal society that then arose including the wrong attitudes men developed towards woman, I do find it interesting to compare the two ideas. I believe that contemporary society is striving to find ways to return to that idea of marriage being a partnership between two equals vs. a lord and master taking to himself a wife to serve his needs. We still have a long way to go. In this story the women are not seen as worthy if another man has ‘possessed’ them sexually. They are tainted and worthless, a fact made more tragic by the idea that they are seen as of little worth in the first place other than the creation of heirs and the bonds the marriages will create with the neighboring rulers of Micheline’s father.

My father would not longer be a small lord, but a great leader, a warrior-chieftan who might one day unite the other lords, and take on the name of King.

It is by sheer coincidence that I started reading EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey a few days ago, a book that advocates a leadership style that includes a strong team philosophy and the idea of serving others being a vital part of leadership. Contrasting this with Micheline’s description of her father is interesting, especially as this desire for power at any price is a staple of fairy tales. In that one sentence we get the idea that her father is not willing to earn the lordship that he so desires but instead is looking for a short cut, and in this story that short cut comes at least in part in the person of the magician Sutton. With Sutton’s help he can not only fuel his obsession with sexual purity but can use that to marry off his son and daughter securing more fealty that he will later use to attempt to take the rule of the land by force.

As we see in the story, Micheline’s fate takes a tragic turn in that she is introduced to a man she begins to fall in love with and believes is different from her father and brother. Instead he turns out to be equally obsessed with this idea of purity and believes Micheline to have lost her virginity because of the reaction of the unicorn turning away from her.

I didn’t want them to hurt you. I thought if they let you go, you would be safe. I didn’t realize until too late you belonged to them.

The unicorn acted the way he did to save her. It is established earlier on in the story that Micheline is indeed a virgin when the unicorn approaches her in hiding in the tower when her brother’s potential wife Opal is being “tested”. I glossed over the above quote the first time and now reading more into it I am wondering what else might be going on in that tower. Is Micheline’s father the one planning to impregnate the son’s virgin wife, putting his own direct heir in line and thus cutting out any of his former wife’s bloodline which he so obviously despises? Am I reading too much into “belonged to them”, seeing it as a sentence that means he would not rape his daughter but perhaps had been doing things to others? I don’t know, but I would be interested in your thoughts.

Rusch structures the story with alternating sections that show Micheline’s current state, being on the run in the forest, with events that led up to this. I enjoy that kind of story structure. It sets up immediate tension which then builds as we see what events caused the protagonist to be on the run as well as wondering if she will escape.

I am exhausted. This forest seems to run forever…the ground is rugged. I move slower now; my feet so sore that I limp even though I try not to. I can no longer run.

When you run, as I have done often over this past year, you inevitably find yourself looking at running in films and books differently. I remember the first time I realized that I was actually fit enough that if I needed to run away from someone for any reason that I could actually make a good go of it. I think of that when I read stories like this. I can certainly identify with Micheline’s physical exhaustion, but of course cannot identify with her mental/emotional exhaustion. I haven’t run for my very life; I don’t particularly want to. However this passage and similar passages in stories are a much more tangible experience for me now. It is particularly effective to see how Micheline’s thought processes work when she is on the run as she alternately believes she hears sounds of her pursuit and is terrified by it and feels that she is perhaps not being pursued and has conflicted emotions about that.

The idea that they would not come hurts more than the idea that they’re chasing me. It merely confirms that I have no value.

I don’t know about you but I was happy to see that it was the unicorn that caught up with her. This being was obviously being held captive as well and I like the idea of the two attempting to escape together.

I mentioned in the opening that the story leaves you wanting more. Whether you liked this story or not may depend largely on whether or not you are happy with the ending, one in which Micheline and the unicorn are on the path to freedom but one in which we are unsure if they arrive safely. I personally liked the story very much as I felt it dealt effectively with a number of ideas while leaving me satisfied with events as they are left. This is true in large part because I tend to naturally trend towards believing the best will happen when stories are left open like this. The image I chose by artist John Jude Palencar to pair with this story reflects my optimism. Micheline tells the unicorn that her mother’s people are from the sea and that is their destination. I like to believe they arrived.

If you want to know more about the author’s thoughts about “Purity Test”, please check out her author spotlight here. I hope you took the time to read this week’s story and will share your thoughts below. As always these are my interpretations of and reactions to the story. I don’t not tout them as being the right interpretations nor am I concerned if you agree or disagree with me. Any discussions are most welcome.
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Next week we dip back into science fiction with a discussion of Helena Bell’s Nebula-nominated short story “Robot”. It is a story I’ve been itching to write more about since reading and briefly reviewing it for SF Signal. The story is a short one and can be found here.

In reviewing it I wrote:

Bell’s story is constructed as a conversation in which the reader sees only one side, that of an older woman as she instructs the alien robot purchased to process the diseased flesh of her feet and legs. Or perhaps it is not a “conversation” at all but instead a running commentary that may be occurring aloud or simply within the mind of the protagonist. The story is brilliantly conceived and executed in that it conveys a sense of the passage of time, reveals much about the protagonist’s past and present, paints a picture for the reader of what the world looks like in the future that Helena Bell has created and offers layers of meaning all while maintaining this deceptively simple structure. The horrifying nature of the procedure this woman is undergoing is ever present while her litany of instructions as to how this being must act shows a wide range of emotions that she is undergoing, the stages of grief on display as well as evidence of the first signs of dementia. The one-sided structure of the story lends an air of suspicion that makes the reader question what is real and what is imagination with Bell leaving bread crumbs to lead one down either path.

I do hope you’ll read it this week and join me next Sunday to talk about it. Have a great week everyone!