We are ready to wrap up our 110th Lite Reads selection, These Deathless Bones by Cassandra Khaw. There were questions as food for thought on social media as people had the chance to read it and think about it. I will be sharing my own thoughts here. Thank you for your patience with the delays that turned this into a two week selection. Spoilers ahead for those who have not read the story yet. Note: this story comes with many content warnings (including graphic depictions of animal cruelty, violence against girls, self harm, malicious words directed at a child, and body horror), which means our discussion may veer into those areas as well.
These Deathless Bones by Cassandra Khaw is a short horror story that was published by Tor.com in 2017. The story is set in a fairy tale style fantasy world, and we open with a woman known only as the Witch Bride, the main character and narrator, acting the evil stepmother with the eleven year old prince. At first it seems as though she’s being the evil stepmother for its own sake, and she is aware that she’s leaning into a trope as the young prince acts babyish and petulant with her. The story shifts between her present interactions with the prince and her past interactions with him, and it quickly becomes clear that she isn’t the evil witch she originally makes herself out to be. She recalls her marriage to the boy’s father, she thinks of how he only wanted her to love his son, something she simply can’t do, but it shifts to the present where we witness the boy harming himself to add to malicious tales he intends to tell his father, claiming that he will have her burned as a witch. Each of the flashbacks becomes progressively darker and more disturbing, revealing that the young prince has been abusing and killing animals, and eventually that he did something horrific to a young girl that led to her death. The Witch Bride uses her magic to remove the young prince’s bones from his flesh, and the bones of his victims (mainly animals, but more victims than the Witch Bride knew of) begin to fill him back up as she flees from the guards, ending on her narrow escape.
The subversion of tropes is part of what had me enjoying These Deathless Bones so much. The Witch Bride seems to be the perfect depiction of an evil stepmother, and I think what makes the subversion of that trope stand out so strongly is the fact that she’s acutely aware of this from the beginning of the story and is prepared to lean into it. She doesn’t try to convince you that she’s actually good or that there’s been some misunderstanding, and she fully reveals her malice towards the boy before she offers up any explanation. Even as she reveals to the reader that the boy is pure evil and has earned that malice tenfold, it isn’t offered as an excuse, rather as an explanation. She is justified in her actions, and justifies them to the reader although she is prepared to appear evil to everyone else in her world as long as she does the right thing and stops this hate-filled child. The boy himself might be a hero in another fairy tale, but here we see the ways he abuses his privilege and the ways he abuses those weaker than himself, subverting the image of a babyish young boy we are presented with in the beginning. I think it also makes a powerful statement about those in our society we’re willing to see as innocent and offer protection to (boys) and those we’re more inclined to see as villains, even if they’re acting justly (women).
I have to admit it, pretty much everything in These Deathless Bones was exactly to my taste. Using a fairy tale setting and cast of characters to shape a dark horror story is something I enjoy in general and especially in short fiction (and that could probably provide a description to other stories we’ve read as part of Lite Reads as a result, although I do think this take is wholly unique). I’m fascinated by stories that use fantasy elements to create a horror story, and I’m especially fond of this when those fantasy elements stem from fairy tales. Fairy tales are stories we remember as wholesome staples of our childhoods, although many of them veer into exceptionally dark territory, and it’s interesting to see authors take those fond childhood memories and spin them into something frightening. Taking the elements of those stories that might have been frightening to a child (like an evil stepmother) and turning them into something adult readers can sympathise with is great, but the story’s strength also lies in how it turns the things we would normally see as safe into something terrifying (like a child with a proclivity for sadism). The story also manages to go back to the roots of the truly disturbing comeuppances that a villain might face in the way the prince is stripped of his bones and filled with the bones of his victims.
While I do love the fairy tale horror style and the subversion of tropes in These Deathless Bones, I also found myself rather smitten with the writing style used. The writing is so evocative, with imagery that painted pictures in my head and descriptions that put words to concepts in ways I hadn’t been able to describe before. When she describes the prince’s apology “as though that one word is a confessional to be stuffed full with his sins” it struck very true and it gave me a distinct image of how his apology looked on his face and sounded coming from his mouth. When she’s seething at the boy and says “I hiss, savoring the sibilance” I could hear the drawn out S’s. Khaw’s style suits this fairy tale horror story to perfection, offering vivid imagery that’s easy to picture, even when the tale becomes grim enough that you no longer wish to be picturing it. Recoiling in both horror and terror at what is unfolding on the page is half of the fun in reading horror fiction for me, so this is just what I would want.
Overall, These Deathless Bones by Cassandra Khaw is something of an ideal for short horror fiction for my personal tastes, and I enjoyed it very much. It already has me looking forward to reading more from the author, likely starting with their upcoming novella Nothing But Blackened Teeth.
I hope everyone who participated by reading the story and following along on social media has enjoyed themselves. If you have more thoughts to add, you can leave a comment here, or join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Instagram. You can also join in on the discussion at Litsy by following @elizabethlk and the #litereads hashtag. The next selection will be available shortly, Sunday, March 14.
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