the sorcerer's apprentice

“Here I sit, forming men in my own image, a race to be like me, to suffer, to weep, to delight and to rejoice, and to defy you, as I do.”— Goethe, Prometheus.

Introducing Avalon (The City in the Sky) and Viridian (The City on the Ground), the two main cities in my WIP, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

The cloisters or the college is the primary location the story takes place in (within the cloud city, of course). It contains both the city's alchemical library, laboratories, lecture halls, and housing for the city's most esteemed scholars.

The cloud city (placeholder name) floats in the sky between 2500 and 4000 meters above sea level, spanning both a páramo and a High-Andean rainforest ecosystem. The city's central and most significant island contains its largest public park, its primary commercial district, a high-end restaurant district, and the governmental sector (the Council Hall, Palace of Justice, etc.). Surrounding islands contain commercial travel & trade airship ports, the financial district, luxury and working-class neighbourhoods, and the university district.

The hummingbird is a sacred animal for many pre-Columbian cultures, fulfilling various mythological roles, from divine messenger to ferocious warrior. Even today, it's still considered good luck to encounter a hummingbird's nest in some parts of Latin America (including the region where I live!) This hummingbird-dragon hybrid was created for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a social fantasy (with gothic vibes) exploring the interplay between colonialism, capitalism, and environmental catastrophe through the relationship between a cruel sorcerer and his cunning protogé.

I've been thinking a lot about names lately, specifically how my characters' names fit (or don't fit) into my world-building. The Sorcerer's Apprentice is, at its core, a story about two diametrically opposed cities, the prosperous (as of yet, unnamed 😅) Cloud City and its impoverished mirror image, the (also unnamed) City in the Shadows. One of the ways I want to distinguish the city-states is by having them speak different languages. However, since I'm not interested in creating my own languages, I need to assign two real-life languages to either city (without insulting anyone too much, lol). Although the Cloud City is architecturally reminiscent of old-world Spain, I've been toying with the idea of using English for the Cloud City and Spanish for the City in the Shadows. I think this fits the North-South divide as we currently experience it and draws a nice parallel between the Spanish Empire (with its history of colonisation, genocide, all that) and its current English-speaking peers. 🚨 I've renamed my protagonists to reflect this new linguistic division. 🚨 Henceforth, Valeriano reverts to his original English name, Rupert. Altaluna, on the other hand, is taking the name I had previously given her sister: Catalina, a name of Greek origin, often used in Spanish-speaking countries, meaning 'pure'. To add insult to injury, however, Rupert and others in the Cloud City will reflexively translate Catalina to Catherine, a micro-colonisation that expresses the novel's larger themes.

1. Catalina's coma (and Altaluna's very reasonable suspicion that Valeriano was either directly involved or, at the very least, failed to protect Catalina from whatever caused it) makes Altaluna dislike Valeriano too much, too quickly. There can be no (non-sexual) seduction for Altaluna (and, by extension, for the reader) if they hate him from the moment they lay eyes on him. To get around this bump in the plot, I've tried to simultaneously (A) ramp up the counter-suspicion that someone else was involved in the events leading up to Catalina's coma and (B) build the impression that Valeriano is far too upset by the whole affair to be the guilty party. That said, if (A) he is guilty, throwing (somewhat obvious) red herrings around only to backtrack later in the story seems like a surefire way to irritate an intelligent reader. If, on the other hand, (B) he isn't guilty, then the whole affair seems anticlimactic (you're telling me the spooky man in the spooky mansion who's done terrible things in the past and who has a semi-dead girl lying in a room somewhere isn't the monster we know him to be?)
2. No seduction, no fair. Catalina's coma makes Valeriano the unmistakable villain of the story. As a result, he loses what makes him an interesting character; his ambiguity. You can never be entirely sure which version of him you're getting or which, of all of these, is the real thing. Deflating that flattens the character. For the story to have any of the weight I want it to have, Altaluna (and the reader) must be kept on their toes, guessing. Valeriano can't, therefore, be a Henry VIII (as portrayed in Firebrand, 2021), a despot who inspires only fear in those closest to him; he has to be a Logan Roy (from the TV series Succession), a tantalising halfway point between a doting father and a tyrant. There must always be a "will he or won't he" or a "does he really mean that" question in Altaluna and the readers' minds, and a comatose victim lying in the next room ruins any chances of that.
3. Catalina's coma sets up the expectation that the story is a thriller and that the plot revolves around uncovering the who's behind the mystery of what happened to Catalina before they can presumably do it to Altaluna. And that's just... not what I want to write. Especially because it comes with the obligatory "comatose victim wakes up at an opportune moment to reveal vital information" scene, and I hate it.

1. I'm essentially deleting the best way I've come up with (so far) to show Altaluna as a complex black sheep. By having Catalina receive the invitation before Altaluna, I was able to write scenes that portrayed Altaluna as the less desirable sister and explore her less-than-pretty response to that identity. The question now is: how do I maintain the moral and emotional complexity of this previous iteration of her character while still having the new version be the only sister to take up the internship? That is: while having the latest version effectively crowned 'the chosen one' by the narrative?
2. I need to find a new way to reveal that Valeriano is dangerous. Altaluna has to arrive at Valeriano's mansion with a healthy dose of caution in her veins. She has to know that she can't take his good-will for granted BUT her knowledge of Valeriano's cruelty has to be second-hand. This is the only way to conserve that ambiguity that makes him such a compelling character to write. I may have to find a way to subtly info-dump the family history... Also, perhaps, Altaluna can see someone leaving as she walks in? A previous hopeful who's had their hopes dashed?
3. I need to reconfigure Altaluna's family group so that he still has leverage over her. Previously, Altaluna's comatose sister gave Altaluna a reason to behave and an independent reason to want to discover the philosopher's stone. If I remove her comatose sister, then I need to come up with another reason Altaluna toes the line (it's not so hard to give her a reason to want to discover the philosopher's stone; she's power-hungry like everyone else).

There is a scene in the movie Firebrand (2023) where Henry VIII (played by an unrecognisable Jude Law) invites his wife, Catherine Parr (played by Alicia Vikander), to eat an untested and, therefore, potentially poisoned morsel of food. The ordeal is, of course, less about the food than it is about Catherine's obedience. Eat, and she proves she's his loyal subject. Refuse, and she all but declares her intention to lead a religious insurrection against him. Since only one option offers a possibility of survival, she bites the bullet. After a few tense seconds, Henry VIII leans in to inquire if the food is edible. A playground bully, eagerly awaiting the chance to revel in the terror he's inflicted. However, in a masterful display of self-composure, Catherine dabs her lips and informs him that, since he's asking, the food could do with a little more salt. Her response is so unexpected that the King actually erupts with laughter, and the tension in the scene is immediately defused.

So, I know this wasn't a huge hit with audiences (for whatever reasons) but I enjoyed the film (and am now enjoying the book) as research for Valeriano and Altaluna's relationship. Although theirs obviously does not contain the sexual aspects of Henry VIII and Catherine Parr's liaison, it does include some other elements highlighted in the film; Valeriano mirrors Henry VIII's deadly paranoia (as displayed in the movie), his reputation for elevating and then discarding anyone who strikes his fancy (for Henry VIII it's his wives, for Valeriano his entourage and family members), his tendency towards violent and emotionally abusive fits of rage, and his need to always be the centre of attention. Altaluna mirrors Catherine in a great many ways, too: like Catherine, she's painfully aware of the fate that has befallen those who have come before her; like Catherine, she initially gains favour because she's intelligent and charming; it's these two things that help her avoid the brunt of his paranoia and deflect any missives meant to turn him against her; until, of course, these tactics begin to fail for Altaluna, as they did for Catherine; until, of, course, Catherine and Altaluna end up in a head to head confrontation with the man who controls their lives; until its kill or be killed. Additionally, the court environment depicted in the film is reminiscent of what I'm trying to write around Altaluna and Valeriano's conflict; scheming nobles, power-hungry underlings, an atmosphere of fear, gossip, and apprehension. I'm taking notes!

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