The Dragons of Babel

Acknowledgments

As always, I owe thanks to more people than I have space or memory to acknowledge. However. I am particularly grateful to David Axler for assistance with folklore, Susanna Clarke for allowing me to borrow Fäerie Minor, Nick Gevers for the tokoloshe and the Jeyes Fluid, Vlatko Juric Kokic for help with Croatian mythology, Greer Gilman for chimneysweepers and for vetting suspect passages, Boris Dolingo for introducing me to stone flowers, Ellen Kushner for the unwitting loan of Richard St Vier, and Tom Purdom for sage musical advice. The tourist brochure citation at the beginning of chapter 7 is an almost direct quote from The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison. The excerpt attributed to the entirely fictional Motsognirsaga is taken from the Völuspa, a part of the Elder Edda. Will's horse charm is a compilation of Anglo-Saxon rune poems. Other poetry and songs quoted or paraphrased herein include "Scythe Song" by Andrew Lang; "When the King Enjoys His Own Again," a Cavalier ballad; "From the South," a traditional Chippewa war song; the Book of Revelations; and. inevitably, Mother Goose. Finally, special thanks are due to the M. C. Porter Endowment for the Arts for inspiring those aspects of Alcyone that I find particularly admirable.