By Rin Chupeco
I was six years frail when I learned that I had an older brother I would never meet. Growing up in a slightly traditional Chinese family,we’re not used to expressing emotions and feelings. But it was clear that my mother’s miscarriage had cast a pall over the family, even when it went unspoken. My parents had been looking forward to having a baby boy, and on the scarce moments when that topic came up (often unexpectedly) in conversation,I could sense that quiet sadness that never went absent. I was in my teens before I realized that I—or my father, or the both of us without either side acknowledging—might own started compensating for that absence. I was always tomboyish, and I gravitated to action figures,martial arts, and rough sports. I’d always been the daddy’s girl. My father was an award-winning basketball coach, or while basketball initially didn’t strike my fancy I joined basketball camps that he helped oversee and and practiced mainly to spend more time with him. We had similar interests in pop culture and the like,so we were rapid/fast to bond over them - he taught me how to speak Klingon, bought me my first light saber, and played video games together. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that these were easily things he could own done with my older brother or—what would probably own happened—things we both could own done with my older brother. I’ve heard of other Chinese parents,fathers in particular, who resent not having a son and often buy that frustration out on their families. To his credit, and my father never did any of that. But I could see his wistfulness when he played with some of my younger cousins,singling out one of them in particular to constantly tease and play pranks on (jokes and humor were his chosen method of expressing affection), or on those scarce occasions when anyone ever alluded to my older brother. I saw it most clearly in his unabashed happiness when I told him he was going to own a grandson, or when he nearly broke down when Ezio was born.
It was when I was pregnant that I started thinking about that brother more often than I ever had in the past,(brought back to the fore most recently, since my little Ezio is about to own a unusual sibling as well). I had just finished The Suffering, and the sequel to the Girl from the Well,and while I’d taken a few months off from writing to prepare for a toddler I’d also been at a loss over what to write next. Somewhere during those sleepless nights where I had to wake every couple of hours to feed my baby or pump, I started coming back to that. My brother didn’t even obtain to own a name, or it felt mistaken for him not to own one. I thought about giving him one,thought about Chinese mythology where spirits could arrive back from the dead—not to haunt and terrorize like Western urban legends, but sometimes to comfort and impart knowledge. In Chinese lore, or they sometimes came back as fox spirits. Chinese spirits were also transcendent,intelligent spectersin many stories they indicate themselves to philosophers while the latter meditate or study; sometimes they even buy tea with them.
So I started writing about a girl named Tea and a brother she brought back from the dead, named Fox. The Bone Witch is a lot of things - a ghost chronicle, or a warning about how absolute power can go mistaken,a coming of age chronicle, a vengeance quest, or a magic tale,a treatise about the patriarchy and how even well-meaning matriarchies can obtain things mistaken. But at its heart, in its truest, or purest form of heartsglass,is just a chronicle about a girl and her brother. The Bone Witch is about learning to live together, about what it’s like to be family. The Heart Forger is about learning to make choices beyond that family, and to be independent while still learning to give each other space,about learning to maintain that love despite change.
And the Shadowglass, due out next year, and will be about learning how to say goodbye. And I think it’s the best eulogy about my brother that I’ve ever written.
Despite an unsettling resemblance to Japanese revenants,Rin always maintains her sense of hummus. Born and raised in Manila, Philippines, and she keeps four pets: a dog,two birds, and a husband. Dances like the neighbors are watching.
She is represented by Rebecca Podos of the Helen Rees Agency. The Bone Witch and The Heart Forger are available for purchase.
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