Cold Magic (62 page)

As I do research for every novel, I always learn many cool and amazing things because human ingenuity and creativity seems boundless (fortunately for us all, since the human capacity for cruelty and selfishness is also vast). Topics I investigated during the course of writing this novel include Celtic Iron Age Europe, the Roman Empire, the Mali Empire, the Phoenicians, the Quaternary Ice Age, airships, and social, transportation and economic structures of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe. No one of these strikes me as “most interesting,” but because I have limited space and the reader has limited time, I’ll talk here about Mali.

Mali is a country in West Africa, sometimes described as “one of the poorest in the world.” Yet historically, Mali birthed three successive rich and powerful empires before the arrival of Europeans and colonialism. One of the emperors of the Mali Empire, Mansa Muso, began a pilgrimage to Mecca in the year 1324 CE, accompanied by a huge retinue. During his trip, he gave away as alms so much gold that his largesse caused regional Middle Eastern gold prices to drop precipitously for several years after. That strikes me as quite a contrast to being called “one of the poorest countries on earth.” It made me wonder why things are so different now when they weren’t that way before (beyond the usual fluctuations of empires and history). In short, the economics of today’s world don’t benefit a country like Mali. If you’re interested in such issues, you might try reading
Dust from our Eyes: An unblinkered look at Africa
by Canadian journalist Joan Baxter who lived and worked on the continent for over twenty years. Also I encourage interested readers to check out the writings of Malian writers such as Amadou Hampâté Ba and Aminata Traoré.

Here are a few things I learned to admire and love about Mali, although this list barely scratches the surface: Mali is well known for its fabulous music, with musicians such as Ali Farka Touré, Habib Koité & Bamada, Baba Salah, Toumani Diabaté, Djénéba Seck, Assan Kida, and the great singer Salif Keita. (One of my favorite albums is Habib Koité’s
Afriki
.) The tradition of music, and that of the great epic historical narratives, is very old, and griots (or djeliw) are foundational to the transmission and stability of this history. Mali also has a fantastic textile tradition, ranging from embroidery (done by men), mud cloth (bogolanfini), bazin (cotton damask dyed and tie-dyed and embroidered and starched and beaten and folded flat so that it is almost “crisp”—that is, it makes noise, like rustling, when you wear it), weaving, and more. Mali is a multiethnic society, people from many different groups living together within a tradition of harmony, and leavened by a really great sense of humor and joking. In Mali, family, and the connections you have to other people, is at the heart of everything.

Aminata Traoré once said, “Another Africa is possible.” To which I would add, speaking as a Westerner who knew little about Mali and West Africa before I began work on this novel, Another Africa is there, one people in the West are rarely shown: it’s the ordinary, everyday “Africa” in which people go about their lives within a rich cultural tradition just like people do everywhere. Malians know all about that place. It’s where they live.

How many of the political and place names in this book are real, like the Romans, and how many are made up?

Most of the names are real, either familiar names, like the Romans, or names used in earlier historical times, like Massilia for Marseilles, or once-inhabited places that are now abandoned, like Numantia. Insofar as possible I did not use names derived from any Germanic-language-family-groups, although since I am writing in English, my ability to manage this was, obviously, constrained. As this is a fantasy novel, I have taken a number of liberties with the landscape, and of course in a world of cold magic, many things will not be the same as they are on our own Earth. I did a lot of research, but I also made up stuff. You can find more information on how I world build and the research I do, as well as discussions about the craft and process of writing, at www.kateelliott.com.

When you refer to the Celts and the Mande, who are you talking about?

In a novel, it is difficult to bring across the full complexity of any given town, much less a region or cultural group or multiethnic society. That’s especially true since many readers are not familiar, say, with the history of Celtic Iron Age Europe or the diversity of cultures in West Africa. I wasn’t, either; I had to do a lot of research for this book.

The Celts were people who probably spoke related languages in Europe before the Roman Empire; the Celtic people were not all the same, and there were many tribes or local populations with different names and different gods. Later, they were conquered by, absorbed into, intermarried with, or pushed to the margins of Europe by an influx of other population and language groups. That’s why we still have Irish and Welsh, for instance, which are modern descendants of older Celtic languages. But mostly in the novel I just say “Celts” and “Celtic” even though it’s not really accurate to suggest that the word is anything except a catchall term for a very diverse group of peoples.

The same is true of Mande. Mande is a catchall term for people who speak Mandan descended languages and who live in various places across West Africa (not all people who live in West Africa are Mande speakers). There are also some similar cultural traditions (like that of the djeliw, or griots) across the Mande-speaking groups, although these groups are not at all the same. The Mali Empire was a Mande empire, as in the old phrase “What built up the Mande? War! What broke down the Mande? War!”

So, basically, I am using Celtic and Mande as simplified terms for what in the real world are far more complex and diverse cultural and regional histories and traditions.

I think one treads a fine line as a writer. To deal with historical cultures, I strove for as much accuracy as possible, although I was always aware I was writing a fantasy world. At the same time, I worked to show respect for the deep cultural traditions of all the cultures mentioned in the book. However, I also accepted that there is simply too much for one person to know, especially when dealing with multiple cultural strands, and that there would be nuances I simply fail to grasp. I tried to draw my novel out of historical cultures; that is, I tried to speculate on what the Cold Magic world would look like if things had worked out differently in a “past” of an alternate and very magical Earth, so I am not trying to portray cultures as they are today in our world. Still, I always felt it was important for me to be aware of the limitations of interpreting other times, other places, and other cultures. I think, on the whole, I wanted to approach this novel with humility and respect, and I hope in that sense that I succeeded.

If every character in the book entered a flower-arranging contest, who would win and why?

Andevai. Not because he has any special interest or aptitude for flower arranging, but because he can’t stand to do anything but the absolute best he can do. Also, he could cheat by using illusion, but he wouldn’t. Knowing he could cheat would make him work even harder to win by legitimate means. Also, I’m not sure how many of the other characters would have the patience to see the contest through. Cat certainly wouldn’t. But she might dredge up some interesting anecdotes about traditional meanings of different flowers—roses represent passion, lavender gives healing—from her father’s journals. Bee, of course, would rather draw the flowers than arrange them.

Did your children really help you write this book?

If you mean, did they write the sentences and revise them and so on? No. I wrote the entire book myself, although they read scenes and drafts multiple times and made many suggestions, and I often consulted them when I got stuck on some plot point. And it was their world to begin with, so any time I needed to think through some aspect of the world or the background (for example, if I had to answer the question “what exactly
CAN
the cold mages do?”), then I would usually talk things through with my children, because they had interesting ideas, are good at the back-and-forth of discussion, and, anyway, it was really fun. So, yes, this world is a collaboration between us, and it’s been an awesomely cool experience so far. I mean, you raise your kids to be useful, right?