Possible Spoilers?
As I contemplate a sequel to In Light’s Shadow, I find myself thinking about Torin, also known as the Golden Boy. Gavin first meets Torin as an eleven-year-old boy at the beach, but Torin is only present in the country of dreams for a major part of In Light’s Shadow, until the conclusion, when they meet again as forty-year-old men. Yes, as my editor, Ellen McQueen pointed out, Torin is also a metaphor for Gavin himself and the life Gavin is forced to live in the Columbian Empire. Gavin has to hide; Torin lives in hiding. Gavin falls in love, but that love is hidden. Torin loves Gavin, but he and his love is hidden away in the ghetto, and is only expressed in the dream country. Gavin seeks love; Torin is the beloved. Gavin must live a life of constraints; Torin is constrained behind ghetto walls.
Even so, Torin is a main character, as he is one of Gavin’s primary love interests. Torin does have a life outside of Gavin, but not much is revealed about his life. As the book is about Gavin’s life, his childhood, growing up, coming-of-age, and about his growth into taking action, this made sense to me. But in any sequel, Torin is no longer locked away. I want to know him better.
This interview takes place shortly after the events of Storm Night.
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W: Torin, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. I wanted to get to know you better, especially as I am thinking seriously about a sequel to In Light’s Shadow. Let’s start with what I know: You’ve lived almost your entire life in the St. Augustine Central Ghetto in Raleigh, Northern Carolina, the oldest fey ghetto in the city and in the province. You are a Fire, and you and Gavin, an Earth, are married. You and Gavin are the surviving members of your tetrad. All your parents are dead. You’re a teacher?
T: All of that is correct. Readers don’t know I teach children in the ghetto school. I teach them magic—how to find their magical selves, This got edited out, as I recall.
W: Tell me your whole name.
T: My full lineage name is a bit complicated and we really only use the full name for such formal occasions as a wedding. The shortened version is Torin leanabh Ailsa Lòchran.
Now that we’re married, Gavin and I are going to take Golden as our last name. So, that
makes us Gavin and Torin Golden. Ailsa was my birth mother. She and Torian, and Teine and Aldryl, were my parents. I’m the only surviving child of their tetrad. I had a brother and two sisters. All of them were killed in a purification. I survived because I wasn’t at home when the Northern Carolina Imperial Guardsmen came. I was visiting two of my grandmothers, Ailsa’s parents. We heard the screaming and they took me down into the tunnels. I was the youngest child. The killings were random. The soldiers went to every other living place—apartment, room, barracks. I was very young; I barely remember them now. Lòchran means torch, by the way. It’s my clan name. Leanabh means child.
W: I’m so sorry about your parents.
T: I wish I could remember them. I think of my grandmothers as my parents. They raised me. They’re still alive. Most of the other grandparents were killed in the purification. Two died on the wall just recently when the Guard and the police attacked. I think my grandmothers will come to live near Gavin and me.
W: I’m so, so, sorry. I only knew two of my grandparents, one on each side. All right, I know this may seem silly, but let’s try this. Describe yourself in ten words or phrases. Try not to think about it, just go.
T: Loyal, patient, sometimes too patient, slow to anger, loving and lovable, scared (pauses to think) … uh, maybe, funny, Fire, free, alive. And, yes, us, happy, together.
W: How did you manage living in a ghetto so long, only coming out a few times?
G: Except for that trip to the beach when I was eleven, and one more later to the mountains, I had very little to compare my life to. That was how it was inside barbed-wire covered walls. Visiting Gavin in the country of dreams helped me more than I think he knows. I lived for our time together there. I ran, like Gavin does. Now we run together. I threw myself into my teaching. I was active in the Resistance. I endured, I guess. I stayed as busy as I could. I read every day. There was a tiny library in the ghetto. I read everything in it. I learned more magic, especially fire magic. I studied under older Fires. It will help us, Gavin and me, with what’s coming.
W: You weren’t in touch with Gavin during the Sophia years, when he didn’t come to your dream country, When he first met Jason and Raoul, he came less, at first. How did you get through those years?
T: It was hard. I was so lonely sometimes, I ached. I grieved for Jason and Raoul. I was magically with Gavin when Jason died. That was a difficult gift. But, I was never alone. I couldn’t be; not in a ghetto—not truly alone, never seeing anyone. Sometimes I was with other lonely people, people like me bereft of the ones they loved. Sex is more casual for fairies than for your kind of humans. It’s not love by itself, not for me, anyway. Sex is a balm on a wound.
W: Were you tempted to move on? Did you get mad at him?
T: I did get mad at him, more than once. But, leave him, move on? I couldn’t.
W: What do you mean, my kind of humans?
T: Iron humans.
W: Iron humans, that makes sense. What’s next for you and Gavin, now that you’re married, now that the Empire has fallen. Will you go look for Raoul?
T: The walls of the ghetto will be torn down, all but one part left as a memorial to those who died inside. Maybe a museum with the other buildings? I don’t know. Most of us will be leaving. Right now, Gavin and I are staying in our sanctuary room. We’re getting used to being together as a couple in the waking world. That has its ups and downs, to say the least (laughs).
W: Raoul?
T: I feel him. Now Gavin can, too. Raoul’s alive. We feel him best in the dream country and that’s where he is, in a dream, a long, long, dream. He sleeps somewhere north of Raleigh. Yes, we will go look for him, but not quite yet. The rebalancing is going to take a long time and some of the wild magic that has been released, will need to settle. I am going to learn how to fly.
W: Fly? Seriously cool. What about the other lost ones? Sophia and Grey. Gavin’s brothers. His mother and Dr. Deerman?
T: (sighs). I don’t know. I hope some of them will come looking for us. We might go see Sophia and Grey. Dr. Deerman hasn’t lived anywhere near Cherokee since he was a boy, so I don’t think he’s there. Gavin thinks she and Dr. Deerman are together. I hope so.
W: Do you think he will ever be able to forgive her?
T: I don’t know that either, but I hope he can, for his sake, if not hers. I want him to, he needs to. He’s carrying so much guilt and blame, and anger. He’s better, but it’s hard. I love him, he knows that, and he knows I’m there for him every step of the way, but he’s going to have to find his own way to live on the other side of that anger.
W: When you do go searching for Raoul, and you find him, what then?
T: We’ll bring him home. He’s our Air; he’s part of us, we’re part of him. We know it will be hard. He was taken away in 1980. The world he knew is gone. He didn’t go through Storm Night. He’s still twenty years old, and we’re forty-year-old men. That’s a lot.
W: When you leave the ghetto, where will y’all go?
T: Neither of us want to go to his old apartment, except to see if there’s anything there he might want to keep, like Grey’s pictures. We’re talking. Carrie wants us to come to Cooper Road. I think we will. Staying here, no, not an option. I do want to say this: I love him, I love him so much. He loves me. We’re going to be all right.
W: Thank you.
Gavin Booker, a school librarian, leads an orderly, normal life. Work, jogging, friends from work, his son every other weekend. Gavin is also a secret. He is a hybrid, or part-fairy, and in the Columbian Empire, hybrids are under an automatic death sentence. Magic is illegal. So is loving another man, another capital crime. Fairies are locked away in ghettoes, magical beasts, such as gryphons, unicorns, and pegasi are kept in zoos.
Also in zoos: werewolves and other wers, centaurs, and Cheshire cats. The others, the tree and water spirits, the talking beasts, fauns, and the rest, are in hiding. This is the world in which Gavin grew up. He survived, thanks to his mother. He can never forget he is different: ministers preach against people like him constantly; hating the other is a part of every school’s curriculum.
But now, things are changing fast, and apparently, for the worst. Earthquakes, volcanoes, killer storms. The medicine Gavin takes to suppress his body’s glowing, isn’t working. The spells cast by his doctor, a witch, are losing their power. If anyone finds out what Gavin is, he is dead. Under threat, the Empire always goes after its marginalized people. Can Gavin survive the common catastrophe? Will he ever recover from losing the boys he loved? Can he find the fairy man who has haunted his dreams all is life before it is too late? Can his scarred heart ever heal?
Warnings: Suicide (off-stage), suicidal thoughts and suicide attempt, and self-harm
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A pair of golden gryphons, also with clipped wings, and as unhappy looking as the pegasi, were in the next cage.
“There are supposed to be two silver gryphons, too,” Gavin said, after he read the sign. “I guess they are hiding in that cave in the back. Maybe the female is sitting on her eggs, or nursing her cubs.”
Latisha just nodded and tightened her grip on his hand. God only knows what her parents told her before this field trip.
The werewolf was next, sitting hunched over a rock in its forest habitat. It was an eastern red werewolf, with intensely blue human-like eyes. Listed on the sign in front of the cage were instructions for identifying werewolves in human form, and ways to protect oneself from such monsters. Canis lupus malum, evil wolf.
The werewolf seemed even sadder than the rest of the Bestiary’s denizens. It hadn’t looked up, no matter how loud the kids ahead of Gavin and Latisha had been, or how many faces they had made. But it did look up just as Gavin got to the cage and stared at him with those very bright blue eyes. Human eyes. Homo sapiens lupus. Gavin froze.
“Mr. Booker?”
He didn’t answer Latisha at first. Instead, Gavin watched as the werewolf, shaking its big shaggy head, came slowly over to the corner of the cage where they stood. Its eyes were focused intently on Gavin. It jumped on its hind legs, its big paws only separated from Gavin’s face by the glass.
“Help me, please, fairy, help me. They won’t me let change. They make me take drugs,” it said in a rough voice. “I need to change. Get me out of here.”
“I’m not a fairy. Shut up,” Gavin snapped back.
“Mr. Booker? Look, the silver ones came out,” Latisha said. She was staring at the gryphon cage. She turned when the werewolf asked again for the fairy to get him out. “Mr. Booker? What’s it talking about? What fairy?” Latisha asked, looking back and forth between the silver gryphons and the werewolf. The silver gryphons ran back in their cave.
“Not a fairy? Look at your hands, fairy,” the werewolf hissed.
Gavin dropped Latisha’s hand and looked at his own. The tips of all his fingers glowed, a faint, faint yellow glow, as if he had dipped them in fluorescent paint. He quickly slid them into his pockets.
I took the pills this morning. This shouldn’t be happening. Suppress, suppress, suppress.
“I’m not a fucking fairy,” he yelled at the werewolf who only growled and snarled in return. He looked quickly around the Bestiary. Was there anybody who’d hear him yelling? What was he thinking? Thank God nobody but Latisha was anywhere near Gavin and the werewolf.
Latisha stared at Gavin and the werewolf. “You aren’t supposed to say that word; it’s not nice. Mama told me so. What fairy is it talking about?”
Gavin took a deep breath. Seeing the fear in the little girl’s face, he spoke slowly, in as even and as calm a tone as he could muster. “I don’t know what fairy it’s talking about. There’s just you and me and we’re certainly not fairies.” The glowing had stopped, he felt it. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I got upset—that thing upset me. Your mother is absolutely right; you shouldn’t say that.”
“Fairies are bad, too,” Latisha said. He could guess what she was thinking. Latisha was remembering what she had been taught in school, the same things he had been taught in kindergarten and first grade, in Sunday school, and all the way through high school and college. Never mind the ads on TV and that radio that played over and over. The government made sure the lesson got through, that it was repeated over and over so no one could ever miss it. Even the youngest knew what the warning signs were, what to look out for. And what to do if they saw glowing people.
For your country and your Emperor, for God, for your family and friends, and because Jesus loves you: call the police. Just hit the big blue star on the nearest Automatic Reporting Machine and start talking. If you don’t know how to use the phone or the ARM, or neither is nearby, find the nearest normal adult and tell them. Normal people, good people, do not glow.
“Fairy, please. Help me.”
Gavin ignored the werewolf. “It’s not supposed to talk to us. Let’s go find Mr. Phillips and the rest of the class.”
Latisha nodded and reached for his hand. They walked away quickly, not looking back.
The werewolf yelled. “Fairy, help me, please!” Then it howled. They walked faster, Latisha looking over her shoulder.
Rochelle is the author of a book of academic criticism, Communities of the Heart: the Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin, published by Liverpool University Press in 2001. Other articles and book reviews on science fiction and fantasy have appeared in various journals, including Extrapolation, Foundation, North Carolina Literary Review, and the SFRA Review.
Rochelle is also the author of four novels: The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings (2007), and The Called (2010), all published by Golden Gryphon Press, and The Werewolf and His Boy, published by Samhain Publishing in September 2016. The Werewolf and His Boy was re-released by JMS Books in August 2020. His first story collection, The Wicked Stepbrother and Other Stories, was published by JMS Books in September 2020. His second collection, To Bring Him Home and Other Tales, was published in September 2021, by JMS Books. A stand-alone story, “Seagulls,” was released by JMS Books in September 2021.
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