In 2010, I was looking forward to the
publication of my debut novel, Wolfborn. It was going to be out on time to be
launched at the World SF Convention, Aussiecon 4 – and then it wasn’t. I asked my publishers at
Random House if they would please, please send me something I could take to
promote the book and they came through beautifully – posters, bookmarks, sample
chapters. I got myself into a signing session and had to flirt with the people
in the long queue at the next table. “Free sample? Bookmark?” to get them to
wander over while they were waiting for the graphic artist next to me to sign
their books. There was a lady at a nearby table, signing like anything – Mary
Victoria, who writes this wonderful series set in a giant tree. That’s how we
met. When Mythic Resonance came out, although Mary didn’t have a story in it, I
thought the theme of a World Tree fitted in perfectly. I’ll let Mary tell you
all about it. I’ve just discovered she did some of the animation for Lord of
The Rings - wow! A lady of many talents and I’m proud to welcome her to my web
site.
The
World Tree
I feel like a fraud. When Sue asked me if I’d like to contribute a guest post
about the origins of my World Tree in the context of the ‘Mythic Resonance’
release, I knew what I ought to write. What I ought to write, I thought to
myself as I sat down at my computer, is a passably intelligent piece about
where this idea of a world set in a tree may have come from. I should cite my
debt to Norse myth (Yggdrasil, the original world tree, cradling Midguard in
its branches,) to Kabbalistic metaphysics (the universe-containing Tree of
Life,) and not least to the Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki, who once put
a city in a tree and made it fly, to my great delight. All these sources and
many more played their part in forming the idea for the Chronicles of the Tree.
If I were a proper thinker and not a total fraud, I would have written that
article, made it highly informative and entertaining and included footnotes.
Alas, I’m not a proper thinker. Or at least, my thinking refuses to come when
called, or else comes in silly disguises, doing cartwheels. I was indeed
influenced, consciously and subconsciously, by myth, metaphysics and beautiful
Japanese animation while writing the Chronicles of the Tree. But I didn’t
remember Yggdrasil and say to myself, “hey, that would make a great fantasy
setting.” That would be far too logical. I don’t think story ideas come about
that way – stories are fickle, promiscuous things. They like to borrow, beg and
steal from multiple sources. When you try and make them explain themselves and
their antecedents, they refuse to meet your eye. They sidle off, mumbling
something about poetic license. They don’t like to be pinned down.
The truth is, stories, and worlds, often come in the telling. No matter how
much meticulous world-building you do in advance, some tales grow organically.
Setting influences story, which in turn influences setting. The two are
inseparable. Sometimes, the two are one.
If I had been able to ask my World Tree, back at the start of the writing
process, why this story had to happen in a giant tree the size of a mountain
range rather than, say, a Medieval-style city state, the conversation would
have gone something like this.
AUTHOR: Dear fantasy world, why
are you the way you are? Why aren’t you something else?
TREE: I think I’m quite old enough to be what I am without the likes of you
questioning my motives.
AUTHOR: I’m not questioning your motives. No one is. We just want to know, ‘Why
a Tree.’ Couldn’t you be a mountain? You behave a little like a mountain.
TREE: Well, I’m old…
AUTHOR: (Interrupting) What does
that have to do with it? You sound like that poem about Father William. ‘You
are old, Father William – ’
TREE: (offended) All right, I won’t tell you. I won’t say anything at all; I
don’t see why I should, if you’re going to be so rude.
AUTHOR: I’m sorry. I’m sorry: I was being an idiot, the author getting in the
way of her idea. Please go on.
TREE: (after a long pause to show
how deeply offended she is) As I was saying, I’m old. Centuries – no, millennia
old. I’m so old that I’ve grown into a sprawling, continent-sized mass. My
trunk is a cliff-face hundreds of miles in circumference. My boughs are gigantic,
like mountain ridges. Some of them can support human cities. Except that
sometimes, they can’t. I’m so old that I’m growing infirm. My branches are
hollow in places. There’s rot, and other problems besides. I’m not immortal:
one whole side of me has dried up and died. There’s no more sap flowing there.
Do you begin to see how that influences a story?
AUTHOR: Go on.
TREE: My physical condition
affects my inhabitants, of course. Everything is made of wood or animal
products. Everything depends on me. If I die, those living off my sap and skin
will slowly die off too. Add climate change to the mix and you have an
ecological disaster in the making. Those living on the dried up east side
already have it tough, and it’s getting tougher every day. Perhaps it’s partly
their own fault – perhaps it isn’t. But there are haves and have-nots in this
world. There are the colonizers and the colonized.
AUTHOR: (retrieving a pen and
paper for notes) Now I begin to see. Go on.
TREE: My nature also influences
the human cultures that have flourished, and in some cases died out in my
branches. People become conditioned by living over a void, high up in the
clouds. They develop things like flying hot air balloons pretty quickly. They
don’t trust empty space. Some go so far as to outlaw exploration: they become
hidebound, or rather bark-bound. They live in rigid theocracies. They’ll
destroy anyone who thinks differently. For them, it feels like a matter of
survival.
(No answer from the author, who is
now scribbling notes furiously.)
TREE: (softly) But there’s
one more thing. You already noticed it, perhaps half-consciously. I’m a woman.
I’m worshipped as a feminine deity by these priests. But they’ve forgotten the
truth behind all that glib nonsense they keep repeating. God is a tree, and
also a woman. God grows, flourishes and eventually dies. Find out the truth
behind those symbols. Does your story begin to make sense to you now? Do you
see why it had to be a Tree?
AUTHOR: (abject now) I do see.
Yes, that makes sense. Perfect sense. Thank you.
TREE: Any time. Now go be a good little
author and write.
Mary Victoria was born in 1973 in
Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Despite this she managed to live most of her life
in other places, including Cyprus, Canada, Sierra Leone, France and the UK. She
studied art and film and worked as an animator before turning to full time
writing. She now lives in Wellington, New Zealand with her husband and
daughter.
If you’d like to read more about the
Chronicles of The Tree and what Mary is doing right now, her web site is here.
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