This Living Hand

Authors are often asked, “Where do you get all your ideas?” In this historical fantasy set within the world of her Onyx Court series (think historical England, but with faeries), Marie Brennan offers one answer about the source and price of inspiration.
~ Julian Yap, February 13, 2022.

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This Living Hand

Ravenscourt, Hammersmith: April 1827

The tree was right where the old poet said it would be.

     Getting there caused Fanny Brawne more than a little trouble. She did not mind the three-mile walk from Hyde Park to the Ravenscourt estate, even though her clothing was heavy and she was not so stout a walker as some she had known, but getting to Hyde Park in the first place had been a more difficult matter. Her mother did not understand why she desired to go, when she showed no interest in riding along the Ladies’ Mile, nor owned a horse to ride upon. In the end, she’d had to give her mother the truth—a fragment thereof, at least.

     I wish to visit a location that was important to John, Fanny had said. And her mother, tearing up, agreed to let her go.

     So her journey was a coach from Hampstead into the great bustle and clamor of London, then walking, then another coach to Hyde Park, then three miles’ walk more as the sun faded behind clouds in the west. Her mother would be worried that she wasn’t home yet, but Fanny had left a note with her younger sister, promising her return on the morrow.

     She hoped she would be able to keep that promise.