sustenance but was almost always eaten plain be-
cause no one could afford the ingredients to add a
tasty sauce, and when the city itself was a collection
of distinct and disparate communities. Into this
world comes a handsome young man, a traveler,
who passes through the marketplace and enters a
secluded alley, followed by a second man whose fi-
nances and motives are suspect but who hopes to
better his lot by providing his services as a guide.
The two men enter an even darker, drearier
part of the city, where even the clothes left to dry
on ropes above the streets seem to be either rags
or clothing designed for forms not quite human.
When the second man begins to falter, the trav-
eler pauses and says something that convinces
him to continue onward, and eventually they
reach a house whose single resident is an elderly
man who seems to be on the brink of death. From
him they purchase an ephemeral gift, for there is
a second presence in the house, apparently held
in a timeless limbo from which the gift of death is
absent. It is this deferred death that the traveler
has purchased. Davidson is never explicit about
the details of the transaction and leaves us to
speculate about the nature of what has just
passed among the characters, giving us the feeling
that we have been granted a glimpse into an en-
tirely different world.
The Narnia Series SeeTHE CHRONICLES OF
NARNIA.
“Narrow Valley” R. A. Lafferty(1966)
R. A. Lafferty lived most of his life in Oklahoma,
was very familiar with Native American traditions,
and even wrote a nonfantastic novel about them,
Okla Hannali(1972). One of his earliest and best
stories is this delightful tale of a Pawnee who is
granted 160 acres of land located around a valley,
with the proviso that he must pay taxes on it.
Clarence Big-Saddle does not like that idea, so he
invokes magic that makes his valley wide when he
is alone but narrow whenever an intruder enters.
He never pays any taxes, and the land, which can-
not be entered by outsiders, is eventually listed on
the books as officially unclaimed.
Enter the Ramparts, an obnoxious family who
want to homestead the property. They stake their
claim, then try to visit their new acquisition, only
to find a ditch that appears to be five feet across
but that is actually half a mile in breadth. The
Rampart children decide to explore the valley,
even though their father is clearly unsettled by the
situation. Appalled at their apparent disappear-
ance, he calls for scientists, news crews, and the
military. The scientists develop complex theories
to explain the phenomenon, while everyone else
sits around helplessly. While all of this is happen-
ing outside the valley, the children meet Clarence
Little-Saddle, whose father invoked the magic
many years in the past.
Clarence is patient at first, waiting for the
Ramparts to lose interest or their nerve, like every-
one who came before them, but instead their sto-
lidity transforms the valley, which expands to its
normal dimensions. Disgruntled, Clarence resorts
to Pawnee magic of his own, compelling the valley
to narrow again, although he fails to get the incan-
tation exactly right. The Ramparts emerge, terri-
fied, as the valley becomes narrower than ever, and
they themselves have been reduced to two dimen-
sions, although they slowly regain their usual form
after moving some distance from the area of en-
chantment. Clarence has his property back, un-
challenged, and can make plans to leave it to his
own son when he dies. Lafferty gently spoofs the
modern compulsion to explain and quantify every-
thing and suggests we might be happier if we just
enjoyed things for what they are.Nathan, Robert(1894–1985)
Robert Nathan wrote a considerable body of fic-
tion over the course of his long writing career, and
several of his novels involve fantastic or supernatu-
ral themes, although he is rarely thought of as a
genre writer. Perhaps his most famous novel is Por -
trait of Jennie(1948), in which an artist meets a
young girl in a park and draws her picture. In each
subsequent encounter she seems slightly older,
until at last he discovers that she was drowned at
some point in the past and is not physically pre-
sent. Nathan never really resolves whether she was
a ghost appearing retroactively through time or aNathan, Robert 253