Bewere the Night

Introduction

After editing Running with the Pack, I was a tad apprehensive about taking on another shape-shifter anthology. Sure, it’s more than just werewolves, I reasoned, but how many variations on a theme can there be? The metaphor was, to me, obvious: violence and wildness, the human’s animal nature hidden by a thin civilized veneer … a theme as old as storytelling.

As it turned out, I should never have worried. The imaginations and inventiveness of the contributors amazed and delighted me. Their stories were richly diverse, both in terms of were-creatures and the themes they represented. Were-hummingbirds and were-socialists, failing families and immigrant resilience, stories set in the present, past, and future, a variety of cultures and influences, from China to Mexico to Hollywood. The protagonists of these stories are just as diverse: from children to old astronauts to mountain climbers to actors, all have singular stories and unique perspectives on their human and animal natures.

As for my assumption about the meaning of shape-shifter stories, my concept was wonderfully broadened: these stories are not always (or even mostly) about humankind’s inner animal nature. They are often about longing and wistfulness, the desire to be something we are not, to regain some aspect of ourselves that we’ve lost without ever actually possessing it, the yearning for something we cannot quite remember.

Some of the stories are recognizable as traditional tales of werewolves or animal wives; some take on the now-familiar tropes of urban fantasy. Others are singular: were-jellyfish; an entire city infested with a strange malaise; lycanthropes in an STD clinic … I could never have imagined!

The stories were chosen for their individual beauty and for their many differences of viewpoint, for their novel flights of imagination, or for their radical twists of the familiar tropes.

I invite you to enjoy these stories, one by one, to give each the room to breathe and unfold and to show you what’s inside. Some are funny and some are scary, but all are beguiling. Each of them will delight you with its love of language and of storytelling. They offer unique perspectives on shape-shifters and were-creatures, and I only hope that your notions of these strange beings will be challenged and expanded as much as mine were while editing this collection.

And most of all, beware: these stories might transform you!

Ekaterina Sedia

December 2010

Grenada/New Jersey