The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden

The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden is a 2006 novel by Catherynne Valente. It won the 2006 James Tiptree, Jr. Award, with Half Life by Shelley Jackson. It's a series of nested or frame tales, stories nested within stories, such as the Pancatantra, 1001 Nights or My Name is Red; part of the genre of political literature called "mirror for princes" which set out to teach methods of good government to the ruling class, in a framework of fast-moving labyrinth of entertaining fables and tales. Valente's masterwork is notable for its interweaving of Persian, Hindu, Northern European, and other myths, fairy tales, and literary traditions.

The stories of In the Night Garden and The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice are set in an alternate, mythical, or fantastic Persia, India, and Europe.

Plot Summary

Here is a summary of the events of In the Night Garden.

WARNING: it is full of spoilers. But it is very useful especially while you're re-reading it or reading the second volume.

A girl with a dark birthmark around her eyes, outcast and wild in the Palace Garden, tells a series of interconnected and nested stories to a boy who lives in the Palace. The boy and the girl become closer friends over the many nights of storytelling. The boy's sister Dinarzad catches him sneaking out and punishes him for it.

The Book of the Steppe

In the Book of the Steppe, the girl tells the story of the Prince Leander and the Goose-girl Aerie, his half-sister, who he accidentally kills. Aerie is the goose-daughter of Knife the Witch, also called Helia, a woman from the steppes descended from women whose destinies were twined with the fallen Stars and with the evil Wizard Omir, who is also the Boy who Found Death.

After Leander kills Aerie, Knife the Witch tells him her stories. Knife was captured by Leander’s father King Ismail’s soldiers, and jailed along with her grandmother Bent-Bow, by the Wizard Omir.

In jail, Grandmother Bent-bow tells young Knife of what her teacher Thurayya taught her of the origin of the universe. The night sky is a huge black Mare. Her blood is the light that made the Stars. The Stars walked in the world shedding their light which is also blood, which is magic.

Knife continues telling how she met the Mare and the Fox, the Wolf-Star Liulfr, and saw the Seven Sisters or Manikarnika asleep in their cave. The Wolf tells further stories of the Stars.

Leander tells Knife the Witch the story of how his father the King killed his mother Helia.

Knife tells Leander of the birth of her daughter Aerie in jail, and how she was changed into a wild goose. She sets Leander the quest to obtain the skin of the Leucrotta from the Dismal Marshes, to wrap Aerie’s body in it and bring her to life.

On his quest, Leander meets the bartender Eyvind, who was once a polar bear from the Kingdom of Bears, who went into exile on a quest to avenge the death of the Snake-star, so that he can marry his love the She-Bear, and meets the Marsh King or Heron-Star and his friend the Beast, the Leucrotta. The Heron-Star tells a story of Laakea the Harpoon-Star. The Harpoon-Star had tried to capture a Firebird as a gift for his sister the Snake-Star — which we later see has perturbed the ecosystem of the Firebirds and torch-trees or Ixora. The Snake-Star’s death overwhelms Laakea with grief. The bear is turned to a man until the sea turns to gold. In the Marsh, the Leucrotta gives its skin to Leander. Long ago, Knife the Witch rescued the Leucrotta from a Duke’s Son, who she captures and sends to kill King Ismail.. Together, the witch and the Leucrotta rescue a princess imprisoned in a tower by the Wizard Omir. The princess is Magadin the Beast-Maiden, her body metamorphosed into the shapes of many animals, Magadin’s stepmother was Iolanthe, who is the mother of King Ismail. Magadin signs on as sail-mender to a great ship. Knife the Witch further tells Leander of her encounter with the Wizard Omir. Omir had worked as Wizard for King Indrajit from a far land. Indrajit’s 144 warriors, the Varaahasind or Teeth of the Boar, capture Zmeya the Snake-Star. Indrajit and Zmeya have 14 sons and daughters. Eventually he kills Zmeya; he and his warriors eat her and go crazy; Omir watchs as they die and as the Harpoon-Star comes to take his sister’s body away. Omir is freed from his iron collar by the death of King Indrajit.

Meanwhile, Leander wraps his sister Aerie in the Leucrotta skin and Knife the Witch’s heart’s blood brings her to life again in human form. Aerie tells of her friend the Firebird, his story of the snake-sisters and his mate and the pumpkin-tree girl and how the Wizard Omir met Death. Aerie and Leander go to kill the King. Aerie stabs Omir, who tells her he gave the captive Firebird to a man from teh city of Ajanabh. Leander’s father, the King Ismail, tells the story of how he killed his father the Baron, Iolanthe’s husband, and went on a quest to get the head of the wizard Omir so that he could marry his mother. At the court of the Centaurs, the King of the Centaurs tells a story of how he earned the Kingship by entering into a bargain with the Wizard Omir, enslaving him again. Omir becomes Ismail's wizard and slave, putting on the iron collar again.

King Ismail is killed by Aerie and Leander. Leander becomes King.

The boy begs the girl for more stories, and the book ends.

The Book of the Sea

(A tale of ships and saints, of maidens and beasts and a dreaming city.)

The Sultan tells Dinarzad not to bother about the girl with the dark mark around her eyes; she is angry. The boy sneaks out and finds the girl, after a week of her absence.

Snow, a pale girl, is from the city of Ajanabh. The city begins to die, and Snow leaves with her parents for the glacial North and the city of Muireann. When her parents die, he hair turns grey. The net-weaver Sigrid takes her in and tells her stories. Sigrid is from the far north, where she left her family to travel with three dog-headed monks to Al-a Nur, the City of Twelve Towers, the Dreaming City, or City of Light (which is vaguely Chinese). In their story they tell of Ragnhild who was made pope in Shadukiam, a cit to the east; she is the false Papess, Ragnhild the Black. Al-a-Nur elects Cveti, from the Hermaphrodite’s Tower, to the Papacy; s he became Ghyfran II. One of the dog-headed monks tell the story of another apostate Papess in teh city of Shadukiam (that filthy banking metropolis with its Rose Dome...). They were sent to kill this new Black Papess, who turns out to be the old Ragnhild anew. There is a history and political situation between the Caliphate and Al-a-Nur. A necromancer boy from Shadukiam - Marsili - brings her back to life. The necromancer tells of being born a dwarf, and how he was bought by the Man Dressed int he Moon (who I think is Idyll, the ferryman) one of the Yi. Sigrid joins the Tower of St. Sigrid, where the doorkeeper tells her the story of St. Sigrid. St. Sigrid was born in Ajanabh, and had three breasts. She was taken by pirates who turn out ot all be monsters or hybrids or otherwise unusual on the ship Maidenhead, Tomomo the fox-woman as captain. Tomomo tells of her childhood. She was sold by her mother to the witch Majo, and meets Rakko, King of the Otters. He sends the fox to steal a Star, but first tells the story of the Loon Queen, the two headed boy who was the Twin Star Itto and who fell to earth and built a ship from remarkable glossy red wood; when others steal all the wood he plants a broken plank deep in a forest. They take the dying boy-star to the top of a mountain.

Meanwhile, Sigrid the doorkeeper at the tower of St. Sigrid feeds the young net-weaver. She tells of how Tomomo the fox-girl helps the Star Itto to die. Eventually, she discovers the tree that grew from the broken plank, and it gives her a ship.

The boy fights with Dinarzad. He tells her a little bit of the story of the ship-tree. Dinarzad punishes him by putting him to work in the smithy and the stables. The boy discovers he is the heir to the Sultan.

On the pirate ship, Sigrid the netweaver meets Eshkol, a satyr, and meets Oluwakim, King of the Arimaspian Oculos, who all have one artificial eye. The Arimaspians hunt the Griffin, to steal its gold for their Kingly Ocular. Oluwakim tells the story of how he met a Monopod. The Monopod Chayim was born in the Shadukiam. His wife Tova was taken by a Yi necromancer. He met the Anchorite who has no mouth, and who is clothed in a dress woven of her own hair; she is chained to a wall. In her belly the Anchorite has a mouth full of teeth. She mentinos the Hsien (who I think are the Yi.) the Anchorite tells the Monopod that to kill a Yi and keep it in the underworld, you must pierce its eye with the golden talon of a Griffon. NOtice that the Monopod swears by “Jin” which is the name of the Griffin. The Griffin tells of his siblings killed by Arimaspians. His mother took his egg in her class to Shadukiam, where a young girl named Giota helped them by swallowing the egg of his sibling Quri. Giota is the Anchorite. The Griffin Jin and Chayim fly to the city to see Giota. The Arimaspian resolves to hunt down Quri the White Griffin in the center of the Boiling Sea.

Sigrid and Snow have a drink at a tavern where Eyvind is the barkeeper. Eyvind listens to her tales.

Sigrid tells Snow more from her voyage. The satyr Eshcol tells of her childhood as part of the Yew family in the Forest. She buys a skin which belongs to Shroud, a Selkie, from Ghassan the skin-peddler. They marry for seven years, until she gives him his skin back and goes off to join the ship Maidenhead. The ship reaches the Boiling Sea. Sigrid tries to save the Griffin Quri. Quri tells the story of her birth, life, and her brother’s death, including the Anchorite’s tale. Giota tells of her childhood on the steppes. She was born as a triplet when the Snake-Star and the Harpoon-Star align, the Sorella, with eyes, ears, and mouth in their bellies; Pangiota, Legiota, and Magiota. There is a prophecy of future daughters who will have to wrest it from the cave. “A man has been born whose great-great-grandson will murder the Snake-Star.” The two sisters with eyes and ears go with the Snake-Star to be her handmaids. (They appear in the Book of the Steppes in Laakea’s Tale, as the maimed serpents in the desert.) They give their eyes and ears to Pangiota. Jin dies and the Yi eat him. On the island made of gold in the Boiling Sea, Oluwakim kills Quri and is killed by his own daughter, Oluwafunmike. The three newborn griffins are the new Sorella, and suckle at St. Sigrid’s three breasts.

Sigrid the Doorkeeper then mentions to Sigrid the netweavers the other Miracles of St. Sigrid: The Miracle of the Beard, the Miracle of the Waterless Sea, and the Miracle of the Sacking of Amberabad. The Maidenhead was lost at sea, swallowed by the Echeneis. The netweaver became Saint Sigrid of the Ways. She hears from Bags (the dog-headed monk) the story of Yashna and Ragnhild’s duel. Ragnhild (the second Black Papess of the Caliphate and of Shadukiam) comes with Centaurs to attack Al-a-Nur. They play a game of Lo Shen, the game of Al-a-Nur. Yashna wins. Ragnhild comes to the tower of St. Sigrid and is accepted by Sigrid of the Ways. Sigrid sets out to find the lost ship Maidenhead.

Two men come into the tavern with Grog, a Magyr, a sort of mer-creature, in a tub, bringing coin from the Arimaspian Oculos. The Magyr tells her tale, of how she met Magadin the Beast-woman. Magadin tells the story of how the Leucrotta left her in Mureainn, where she was beaten and abused until the beast that were part of her killed the crew of a ship and became its captain - the ship The Witch’s Kiss. Grog signed on. They see the Leviathan. Magadin harpoons it, and it vomits gold. Snow demands that the Magyr take her to the place. Sigrid and Eyvind go as well. Sigrid confesses to Eyvind that she was Ulla, the bear he loved and that loved him. She spoke with Laakea the Harpoon Star, who tels her how to change into a woman. She finds the skin-peddler Umayma, Ghassan’s girl who was a crow and who tricked a milkmaid. The ship is swallowed by the sea-monster. They find St. Sigrid who tells of her time as Captain of the Maidenhead. Her first mate Khaloud was a Djinn. They go to a tiny shack to take the satchel of gold from an old crone who is Ghassan. Crows hatch from the barnacles of the ship.

Editions

• Bantam Spectra: 2006 (ISBN 0553384031) 482 pp. Illustrations by Michael Kaluta.