Wisdom's Kiss (93 page)
Authors: Catherine Gilbert Murdock
>Globe d'Or
in French means "Sphere of Gold" and is pronounced, ridiculously, "globe door," which means the audio version of
Wisdom's Kiss
will make no sense at all. But the term still sounds very posh and antiquated, and I picture an enormous shimmering hot-air balloon festooned with scarlet cord and cobalt swags even if this isn't detailed in the book.
Wisdom's Kiss
was inspired in part from a dream I had about a circus troupe performing inside a hot-air balloon. Sometimes inspiration comes fully formed, and sometimes it requires a lot of birthing. This one needed a NICU. I loved the plunging, soaring imagery and early on realized that the balloon could also be used for escape, but beyond this I was stumped. Simply from the point of view of logistics, how did the performers get inside? And where, during said performance, did the observers sit? And what happened once everyone finished plunging? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It took me far too long to figure out the performers could be, you know,
outside
the balloon, but not long at all to realize that the Elemental Spells might be of singular advantage when
operating this thing
. (I recently read Richard Holmes's
Age of Wonder,
which is about the first men to fly hot-air balloons, and couldn't help but note that those poor souls really needed Elemental Fire and Elemental Wind.)
The Sultan's Throne, an awkward offspring of the magic + engineering conundrum, arrived much later to
Wisdom's Kiss.
(I speak elsewhere on
magical conundrums
>
.) The basket of a real hot-air balloon, if you can picture it, hangs far below the balloon proper, at the nadir of that reverse-teardrop shape. The Globe d'Or, however, is a sphere that the magician/sorcerer/witch operates by placing their hands against the orb's skin and heating the interior air with Elemental Fire, then driving the Globe d'Or forward via Elemental Air.
The problem, you see, is how the magician actually connects with the Globe d'Or. If they stand in the basket, this would mean the basket could hang no more than five or six feet below this enormous sphere, which would be very uncomfortable for the other passengers and also look really stupid. (If you're offended by my pairing of the singular "magician" with the plural "they," read my
commentary
on feminine nouns.) I suppose the magician could stand on top of the balloon, but that would look stupid too, not to mention that it would thwart the dialogue. The magician optimally needs to be close enough to touch the golden skin and converse with passengers, but also—as the balloon's nominal engine—ride astern of the basket proper in order to power it forward.
Thus the Sultan's Throne, which is very hard to describe and also very hard to draw and very, very hard to build out of paperclips and cheese wax (I tried). The main basket of the Globe d'Or is boat shaped, with a prow and a wide aft seat—think tasseled silk pillows, a lot of gilt, maybe a figurehead. Mounted to the stern of this basket is a lightweight framework, rather akin to the sulkies used in harness racing, that culminates in a lightweight stool upon which the magician sits. From this locus the magician, employing ropes and pulleys, raises the throne up to the Globe d'Or or lowers it for a view forward. (Doubtless this viewing could have been accomplished magically, but I had more important things to figure out. Next time.) The term "Sultan's Throne" is a bit of a red herring; were it called a Magician's Throne or—more apropos to a sultan—Magus or Djinni Throne, our suspicions would be immediately aroused. Also Sultan's Throne sounds
très
debonair.
Given that the sultan presented the Globe d'Or without instructions (he couldn't have, given magic's verboten status within Lax), the Circus Primus staff jerry-rigged a solution involving a
brazier
, that is a big brass pan filled with hot coals, attached below the Globe d'Or to heat and lift it. Again, not the easiest detail to explain, particularly since the brazier exists only to be replaced by Dizzy's secret magic. I am once again in Felis's debt: in
blithely dismissing
Dizzy's talent, he inadvertently explains how she for decades performed sorcery before crowds of thousands without notice or censure.
See also the
Gazetteer,
"
Ahmb
"
More Author Commentary>
>
>Without a doubt, "
Cuthbert of Montagne
" is my favorite entry of
Wisdom's Kiss.
In a perfect world I would have used it as the jacket-flap copy (thus alienating pretty much every potential reader ... Hmm. Maybe it's perfecter this way). But I love the details:
Silviculture
?
Mycology
? "Cuthbert it"? Sublime! Plus the fabricated mushroom genus Cuthbertii allows me to flaunt my wee but enthusiastic knowledge of taxonomy—the "ii" suffix I discovered while researching condor nomenclature for a screenplay that was otherwise a complete steaming waste of ink. Everything you learn, people, goes in the pot, and you never know when you'll pull it back out...
Take dessert ices. When I was in grad school investigating American foodways, I read a ton of cookbooks from the late 1800s, and they all specified that formal dinners should have ices—what we'd call sorbet—as a palate cleanser. Needless to say, I myself have never served ices except in what we call cocktails, nor do I ever intend to do so. Nonetheless, it was a great thrill to put this otherwise ridiculously useless tidbit of knowledge to work here, and moreover to embellish it with the ghastliness of mushroom flavoring.
The discussion within "Cuthbert of Montagne" on royal succession and queens regnant is so nuanced and complicated that I needed to create a
separate entry
on it. I find the subject fascinating. You probably won't, but feel free to use the entry as a soporific. ("Soporific" = the Latin
sopor,
"sleep," +
-ific,
"producing.")
On the other hand, you may very much enjoy the recipe for
Cuthbert en croûte
, which is absolutely scrumptious if you like mushrooms or know someone else who does. It makes a fantastic vegetarian Thanksgiving entrée. I'm not vegetarian but I'd serve this with pride and not even miss the turkey.
More Author Commentary>
>When people these days talk about style, they're usually referring to appearance: Uncle Eddie's great style; a church in the English Gothic style. But the word "style"—derived from the Latin
stilus,
a writing instrument—originally meant one's descriptor or title; in other words, how one was written about. "Mary styles herself a doctor" means not only that Mary dresses in a white coat and makes up diagnoses, but also that she prefaces her name with the written title "Dr." This is to what Ben is referring when she asks Roger about the terms of his style—she's asking how he, once married, intends to be addressed. As Dizzy notes, "Duke and Princess of Farina" is rather belittling to Roger; it must be even more irritating to Wilhelmina.
While Americans don't much dwell on this kind of style, even we egalitarians know enough to sometimes pay attention. It's important how you introduce a president or a bishop or a judge, how you speak to them, how you correspond. When stopped for speeding, you'd be wise to address the policeman as "Officer" instead of, say, "Four Eyes."