"Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake"
"Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake"
Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake
“Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake” represents a remarkable achievement in contemporary speculative fiction, earning recognition at the 2019 World Fantasy Awards for Best Short Fiction. The work stands out for its ability to blend mythic resonance with intimate human drama, creating a narrative that operates simultaneously as folklore and character study. The story’s central conceit—a series of bargains struck with a mysterious serpent—allows the author to explore themes of desire, consequence, and the price of getting what we wish for, all wrapped in prose that feels both timeless and urgently contemporary.
What makes this story particularly worthy of award recognition is its formal sophistication. The “ten deals” structure provides a generous canvas for exploring variations on a theme, each bargain revealing something new about human nature and the nature of the supernatural. The indigo snake itself becomes something more than a simple trickster figure—it’s a mirror that reflects back what each character truly wants, forcing them to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves. This psychological depth, combined with the story’s elegant architecture and vivid sensory language, demonstrates why it resonated so strongly with the World Fantasy Awards voting body.
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