Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: The Waterfall

[patrick_morris_miller]

"The Waterfall"

First publication in Jem magazine, February 1958, under the name "Morgan Ives"

First book publication in 1976 bound with The Planet Savers, 1976 Ace printing

Read from DAW omnibus To Save a World (DAW Collectors #1312), published 2004

Time period: unstated, but possibly around the time of The Forbidden Tower

A young Comyn woman finds her laran and discovers the joys of both sex and engineering her lovers' deaths.

Fifteen year old Sybil-Mhari Aillard has laran within her, laran which a leronis has told her could be strong. Which the leronis cannot identify, but her instincts tell her not to allow to be trained. A laran which she wants.

And now another want grows within her, a hunger for something. She doesn't know what for, but she knows it's not love, not of the sort her waiting-women whisper and giggle over. Not something so commonplace.

In a quiet courtyard of Comyn Castle, overlooking a waterfall far below, a hapless Guardsman comes upon Sybil-Mhari and mistakes her for a servant. He attempts something between seduction and rape, then to his horror Sybil-Mhari reveals herself. He first begs her forgiveness, then tries to charm her...

...and Sybil-Mhari's laran surges within her. Now she is the seductress, and it is so easy to take what she wants from him. But she finds that sex is not what will feed the hunger within her.

So she calls out for more Guardsmen. When they arrive she begs them save her honor and throw her lover over the balcony, to the waterfall below.

And she's found what it is she truly hungers for.

---

(Deviating from my usual format as this is a very short work.)

Jem was a men's magazine founded in an attempt to compete with Playboy. Limiting its photographic work to toplessness, it folded in 1968. I had never heard of it.

That's right, the first [1] Darkover publication was in a magazine intended to be read while held in one hand.

Already we have many of the key elements of Darkover: the Comyn nobility and its Castle, the Hasturs, laran and leroni and Keepers. Also we have squicky treatment of sexuality, which would not appear in books published as SFF for some time to come [2]. "The Waterfall"'s market would have allowed Bradley to let her id off its leash well before Ace or DAW.

One of the guardsmen is named Reuel; Bradley was a Tolkien fan from early, introducing Aragorn to Regis Hastur in her 1950s fanfic "A Meeting in the Hyades". (Darkover had a long gestation, and many early novels were retrieved from her trunk and polished for print.)

The Forbidden Tower refers to the gossip about "Sybil-Mhari - you have heard that she takes lovers from Guardsmen or even grooms". Either these are the same character, or you should think carefully before naming your daughter Sybil-Mhari.

I don't think there's a lot more to say about this story. Apparently Bradley didn't either at the time she wrote "A Darkover Retrospective", because she never mentions it there. If you're curious enough about "The Waterfall" to track down and see for yourself, almost every English language publication of The Planet Savers (including To Save a World) has included it. Your favorite used bookstore is likely to be able to help you.

[1] 1957's Falcons of Narabedla is sometimes claimed to be a Darkover novel. Bradley explicitly denies that in "A Darkover Retrospective", and the name 'Darkover' does not even appear in the currently available ebook. It is possible that the ebook was edited to bleach Darkover out, but I do not believe the Literary Works Trust has deliberately modified its reprints from the dead tree originals.

[2] Unless I'm missing something by skipping The Sword of Aldones and the first edition of The Bloody Sun! I welcome correction in the comments if I am talking through my hat.