Beneath A Thousand Skies

Summary:

Outcast Marguerite spends her nights fishing in violent waters and her days hiding from the judgment of her backwater island community. The painful monotony is broken with the arrival of the Butcher of Galiness, a captured vampire general sentenced to a season of labor and penance in the hometown of each person who died at her hand.

Shared work is better than working alone, even with a monster, especially with an attractive monster. But Marguerite learns the vampire has her own reasons for accepting her punishment. Aiding her could give Marguerite back the freedom she’s lost and a path to the revenge she desires. But the Butcher’s trust is harder won than the rest of her, what she seeks may no longer exist, and if their dalliance is caught they’ll both burn.

‘She’s on the shore, the silver at her neck and wrists glinting with each flash of lightning on the gathered clouds. The storm seems to part around her, the air itself not daring to stir her. She is more element than woman, and perhaps that’s what makes her a monster.’

Eerily beautiful and achingly intimate.

I picked up The Butcher’s Lot on a whim on the basis of ‘A folkloric sapphic gothic’ in the description, and what I got was one of those stories that sinks its claws in a little deeper with every word. Baumer vividly brings this world, painted in greys and silver to life, to the point where the chill and bleakness felt real, and it made the warmth of these two women coming together all the more potent.

The worldbuilding was exceedingly well done, without ever intruding on the fact that this was their story. This world, and society, built on expectations and penance, and a very traditional sense of gender; lived and breathed with each fishing trip, each detail about old traditions and new, about day-to-day life. Perhaps because I read it on a dreich Scottish day, it felt like the kind of setting that you could step out your door and find yourself in; and it balanced being very evident and present, with being the canvas for the story being told. And with enough little details, and tendrils of story and history leading out beyond the limits of the story, to give that feeling that we were just seeing one corner of the world, one thread of a much bigger story without taking away from this one and I would love to see more of what lay behind those borders.

“I’ve told you my story.” I keep my chin raised. There’s power in a telling. “Now tell me what you’re looking for.”

At the heart of The Butcher’s Lot is an incredibly intimate story, not just of desire or love, but of two drowning souls finding their own forgiveness in a world demanding penance from them. Otherworldly in some ways, especially with The Butcher’s nature, and Marguerite’s desire to become like her; the heart of their journey was in the quiet, real moments. On the boat, in the quiet moments in caves, that night in Marguerite’s house. In some ways it felt like watching a waltz painted in words, as they found each other’s rhythm; and while in some ways The Butcher was always the lead, it never really felt like that. In a world that took and took and took from both of them in different ways, for different reasons, but with their roots in the same beliefs and sources, the give and take, of names and secrets and truths was beautifully done. Baumer captured the tentative dance of two people with no reason to trust, to hope, to believe and brought them together, in a quiet, raw way.

I do feel like this was a story begging to have more page space to grow in some ways, from The Butcher’s hunt to the future they both wanted, to a certain Priest that has penance of his own to make, it was like a blooming plant beginning for more space to grow. Yet, at the same time, the limits of the novella meant that this story pulled you into each breath and moment, because there was nothing more that the immediacy of them and their relationship. I also adored the ending, with Baumer capturing the feeling of potential that comes in that moment between the end of one thing and the beginning of the other, a hope that is both beautiful in the light of what they have both endured, but monstrous in its own way.

I would gladly read more of these two characters, and more of this world. This novella was a fantastic read, and very fitting for a cold, autumn night with Halloween looming.