Cast of Characters by Lou Aronica

Author:Lou Aronica
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fiction Studio Books
Published: 2015-05-21T02:31:07+00:00

A Dream of Flight by Victoria Strauss

Victoria Strauss is the author of eight fantasy novels for adults and young adults, including The Stone Duology and Passion Blue, a YA historical fantasy coming from Marshall Cavendish in 2012. She has written hundreds of book reviews for magazines and e-zines, including SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. In 2006, she served as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards.

An active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Victoria is co-founder, with Ann Crispin, of Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group that provides information and warnings on the many scams and schemes that target writers. She maintains the popular Writer Beware website (www.writerbeware.org) and blog (www.accrispin.blogspot.com). She received the Service to SFWA Award in 2009 for her work with Writer Beware.

Learn more about Victoria at www.victoriastrauss.com.

The protagonist of this story, the master, is loosely (very loosely – I don’t make any claims to historical accuracy) based on Leonardo da Vinci. I’ve always been fascinated by Renaissance art and invention, and the idea for the story came to me as I was watching a documentary about a man who created a modern replica of Leonardo’s wings. I wondered what would have happened if Leonardo himself had built the wings. What did they mean to him? Would he actually have used them? Would he have flown, or fallen?

The story is also very personal, as I wrote it following a period of serious uncertainty and self-doubt about my writing career. The master embodies the feelings of burnout and stagnation that I was struggling with then, and his ultimate realization – that failure for an artist isn’t getting it wrong, but not trying – is something I remind myself of as often as I can.

Toward midnight, the master took advantage of the pause between an exiting troupe of acrobats and an entering quartet of madrigalists to escape the banquet. He half-feared his patron might insist he remain, but the patron simply waved dismissal, as if the master were no more than a servant. Which, in a certain sense, was true.

The master had come on foot, and headed home the same way. He kept to the shadows, his soft boots all but silent, as if he were one of the footpads his brother often reminded him he ought to fear. Yet he felt at home in the darkness, at the edges and in corners – perhaps because he too was a thief. He stole the images the night gave him, the sleeping beggars, the gangs of drunken youths, the prostitutes and their customers, the scurrying vermin and slinking cats, snatches of other people’s lives glimpsed through unshuttered casements. Like a man at a high window, he observed the world – always engaged, rarely touched, a distance deliberately cultivated over the years of his career, for he believed that an artist must not judge, but simply see.

On this night as on others, he reached his estate without incident, and unlocked the postern door beside the gates to let himself in.

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