#Little Ash

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fantasy Books Bracket: Round 2

Book summaries below:

The Masquerade Series (The Traitor Baru Cormorant, The Monster Baru Cormorant, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant) by Seth Dickinson

Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon. The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free. In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery - and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu. But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full. Fantasy, epic fantasy, secondary world, politics, series

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb

A queer immigrant fairytale about individual purpose, the fluid nature of identity, and the power of love to change and endure. Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her. Along the way the angel and demon encounter humans in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) has abandoned her to marry a man, and Malke Shulman, whose father died mysteriously on his way to America. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they’ve left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold. Fantasy, historical fiction, young adult, folklore

[skelligiri]

I wanna call this the 'Ineffable niblings' AU. Little Ash and Uriel from 'When the angels left the old country' would have so much to talk about with the ineffables! Thought I'd do a little crossover for passover, featuring an orange on a seder plate because I love the idea.

Chag Pesach Sameach!

[flameraven]

Finally getting some fanart done for When the Angels Left the Old Country. I love these two.

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Book names + authors under the cut

Balthamos/Baruch- His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Chloe Green/Shara Wheeler- I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

Jack Wolcott/Alexis Chopper- Wayward Children Series by Seanan McGuire

Uriel/Ashmedai "Little Ash"- When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb

[anonymousdandelion]

Thinking about language, and identity, and community, and Jewish history, and of course When the Angels Left the Old Country...

And how, to me, the characters' relationships to language feel reflective of their relationships, identities, and experiences in the context of Jewish history.

Sit down. Have some tea.

Per the book:

[Little Ash] had come from Babylon and the angel, perhaps, from the Garden of Eden.

Uriel (under one name or another) has presumably been around since the beginning, or at least something like it.

And the angel's first — and, for a very long time, only — language is Hebrew. The original language, the Holy Tongue, the language of Torah, the language of Creation, the language of a people in their homeland.

That is the language the angel speaks; the only language whose words comes naturally to its tongue; and for most of its existence the angel has never felt either the need or the ability to try to pick up another.

The angel used a certain vague sense of superiority to excuse to itself its failure to communicate with humans. What did anyone need to speak of, it sometimes thought, that could not be said in holy words?

In times gone by, speaking only Hebrew might well have been sufficient. And maybe, the angel is not ready for those times to be gone. (Can you blame it? Who would be ready — to accept that you are no longer at home, and your people are no longer at home, and even the language from which the whole world was built is no longer enough to get by?)

So, somehow, it manages to spend centuries as the Angel of Shtetl, a place where everything is Yiddish... all without speaking a single word in that language.

...Well, no, that's not quite true. The angel speaks exactly one, single word in Yiddish, but it does speak that one quite frequently. If a name counts as a word, anyway.

Ashel.

The only thing the angel says in Yiddish is its chevrusa's name.

(Yiddish to call its chevrusa by name; Aramaic to study Talmud with its chevrusa; English, later, to come to its chevrusa's rescue. Talk about love languages, hm?)

~ ~ ~

Which, of course, brings us to Ashel. To recap, here's what we know about about the when and where of his birth:

The demon king Ashmedai, over the course of several centuries of the Babylonian Exile, had taken two hundred and fifty bird-footed babies from their mothers’ arms...

And it was also mentioned in the quote cited at the beginning of this post that he comes from Babylon.

So... in stark contrast to Uriel, Little Ash was born into exile. He was the last of his father's sons, which means that by the time he came along they must have been far, far into those several hundred years.

(And from the fact that the "Babylonian Exile" is described here in terms of centuries, it seems clear that the term is being used in a broader sense than the relatively narrow, maximum-seventy-year era to which it usually refers.

Maybe, even when the Second Temple was built and the people had a temporary respite from dispersion, Ashmedai and his family never went back home. Maybe, for them, that first exile — which, for all the people, would not be the last — never ended at all.)

In any case, Little Ash was born in exile, and so the Jewish world as he knows it has always been one of diaspora. And not only does he have a demon's gift for languages, by the time that we meet him he has very specifically claimed Yiddish as his primary language. And he's gone much further than can be explained by simply wanting to be able to communicate:

Little Ash, for reasons known only to himself, had adopted a Yiddish accent in all languages, around the time of the false messiah.

As the Jewish world struggles to recover in the wake of the devastating blow of Shabbetai Tzvi (the false messiah), as they grappled with crushed hopes and deep turmoil and sorely damaged community... what does Little Ash do?

I'm Yiddish, he says now, Yiddish meaning Jewish. And he makes sure to say it with every word he speaks, no matter what language he's using at any given moment.

Yiddish: the language of exile, the language of home. For Little Ash, as for so many of us also born in diaspora, these concepts are intertwined and hard to separate, in a way that someone of Uriel's background would find very difficult to understand.

Even so, Uriel calls him Ashel.

~ ~ ~

...Oops, I didn't make to turn this post into a half-formed essay. Hope your tea is still warm.

But, one last thought: together, in learning and conversation alike, Little Ash and Uriel both know Aramaic. Judeo-Aramaic, to be precise.

An ancient language of the Jews... but, more specifically, somewhat like Yiddish, an ancient diaspora language of Jews. And the language of the Talmud, which among many other things served as a sort of bridge; a way of holding some amount of continuity from the era of Temple Judaism to the Rabbinic Judaism of diaspora.

They speak Aramaic, they study Aramaic, and they share Aramaic.

[enchantress-emily]

I first read When the Angels Left the Old Country last fall, but @anonymousdandelion's and @flameraven's recent enthusiastic posts made me want to read it again, and now there's art! Uriel, Little Ash, Essie, and Rose are heading off to cause some kind of trouble together.

(This also gave me a chance to illustrate a headcanon I haven't seen in fan art yet: that Uriel, who's described as having a round, soft face, is soft in the rest of its build as well.)

[theravenmuse]

The entire ineffable family piles into the Bentley for a road trip. Crowley and Azi in the front, Muriel, Uriel, and Little Ash in the back. Crowley looks over his shoulder. “Angel we CANNOT adopt anymore kids. I refuse to be seen in a minivan.”

[aroaceblackhole]

EVERYONE NEEDS to read When the Angels Left the Old Country, by Sacha Lamb. It is so fucking good, and relatively Good Omens coded. I read it a while ago, was organizing my books(finally), and re-read it. IT'S SO HALALFLDSHFDJALFHJ. The main characters are Little Ash(a demon) and Uriel(an angel), and it's so!!!! READ IT NOW PLEASE AND THANK YOU(tell me what you think if you do)

[closetcellist]

I finished a new book about angels and demons and now it’s everyone’s problem

[the-autism-on-this-gal]

is Hozier as popular with wtaltoc fans as he is with gomens fans?? bc if not I really need y’all to listen to unreal unearth

some of these lyrics… this man is gonna kill me a swear…

[skelligiri]

I thought I'd try my hand at drawing my own interpretations of Little Ash and Uriel from 'When the angels left the old country'! May use it for a little crossover picture later. Something tells me little Ash would really get along with Crowley and Uriel and Aziraphale would have a lot to talk about.

[flameraven]

He laid his head on the angel's shoulder, and dropped the gun onto the cobbles. He closed his eyes and sighed. "I thought you would have bled to death without me. Why did you have to go and take a human name, you wretched creature?" "I don't know," said Uriel. "I don't know. For the same reason you needed me to come to America with you, I think." "What reason?" said Little Ash, without opening his eyes. "Because," said Uriel. "You are the friend of my soul. I needed a name so I could stay with you. I have decided something. If you are going to get yourself into trouble, you need to bring me with you. It feels right, like a mitzvah. You don't have to protect me. I'll protect you, if you like." Little Ash was quiet for some time. He couldn't think of anything he could say that would mean as much as those three words, like a mitzvah, from the mouth of an angel. He loved his chevrusa with all of his heart: he'd known it by a hundred names, and he'd loved it always. He could not ask it to give up a name it liked having, not even to keep it safe. "All right," he said. He laced their fingers together and lifted its hand to his lips, kissing its bruised knuckles. "All right. You can be Uriel forever, and save a hundred rebbes. Be an angel or a demon or anything you like. Just don't leave me."

--- When the Angels Left the Old Country, p376

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Chester Sibley- Holly and Oak by R. Cooper

Wei Wuxian- Mo Dao Zu Shi/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Little Ash- When The Angels Left The Old Country by Sacha Lamb

Wu Xi- Lord Seventh / Qi Ye by Priest

[anonymousdandelion]

My love for When the Angels Left the Old Country has lead to the inevitable consequence: soft fanfiction. (The first in the AO3 tag for the book!)

This first foray is a 500-word ficlet, featuring nothing but fluff.

“Ashel,” Uriel murmured, though they’d been sitting in comfortable silence for a few minutes now and it had not quite realized that it was about to speak. “Ashel, do you remember the dance hall?” “The dance hall? What dance hall?” Little Ash looked at Uriel. “You mean, the one where we went spying?” “Yes,” said the angel, only it had not been thinking about the spying at all. “We never got to dance, that night.”

[shtetlcore]

Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) is a demon who lives in a shtetl and studies with his chevruta Uriel, and angel. But the times are changing, and the two of them find themselves on their way to America.

Are you sick? Better head to the feldsher. Is she a witch? Is she a doctor? Either way, she’ll have just what you need.

[enchantress-emily]

Here’s my first foray into writing fic for When the Angels Left the Old Country. Many thanks to @anonymousdandelion and the other members of the WTALTOC Discord server for encouraging me, especially to Layzer, earlymorningechoes, and Laser Wolf for beta reading to make sure I got the Jewish aspects right!

Note: this is loosely based on a dream I had where I was reading an illustrated story with the same premise. Also included are approximations of the two illustrations I remember from the dream (although the dream ones were in a different drawing style).

***

It was a fine day in New York City, so Little Ash had persuaded Uriel to come out for a walk with him.  They spent the afternoon exploring some neighborhoods they hadn’t yet visited in the year they had lived on the Lower East Side; Little Ash found several small opportunities for mischief and Uriel talked him out of most of them, so they both felt pleased with their day. 

Turning for home in the late afternoon, they walked side by side in silence for a while until Little Ash, whose eyes were always open for such things, noticed quite a number of sins creeping over one of the passersby.  “Look at that man in the checked waistcoat,” he remarked, grinning.  “So much wickedness of his own already, he hardly needs my help, but maybe I should give him a little push?”

He glanced at his chevrusa, expecting it to protest, as usual, that he should not encourage the evil impulse; but the moment he got a good look at it, all thoughts of causing trouble went out of his head.  He had assumed Uriel was silent because it was peacefully listening to the souls around them, as it often did; now he saw that its round face was as drawn and pale as a human after a grueling factory shift.  Its head drooped forward, and it stumbled and swayed as it walked. 

“What’s the matter with you?” Little Ash demanded sharply.  “Did someone hurt you?”  He didn’t like that this was something he had to worry about now, after centuries of trusting that the angel was indestructible, and he certainly wouldn’t have admitted that the extra edge in his voice was due to fear.

Uriel shook its head.  “The rebbe’s… other yahrzeit,” it managed between ragged, panting breaths.  “Today.  Trying to… hold it myself… but it’s too much, Ashel.”

In the privacy of his head, Little Ash comprehensively cursed the rebbe’s memory.  The Shulmans had honored his yahrzeit in the usual way, with a candle and the mourner’s kaddish, five weeks earlier on the day he had been murdered by Reb Fishl; Uriel had been able to provide them with the date, having learned it from the rebbe’s ghost on the ship. 

Ever since then Uriel had been fretting, both silently to itself and aloud to Little Ash, about how to acknowledge the day that the rebbe’s dybbuk had gone into the East River along with Mr. Sullivan.  It knew deep in itself that this was every bit as much a death anniversary as the date of the rebbe’s physical death, but didn’t feel it could explain this to his daughter Malke in a way that she would understand.  For once it had found no guidance in the Talmud; the rabbis of past ages had apparently never encountered such a situation.

So of course, Little Ash thought sourly, its solution was to take on itself the entire spiritual responsibility of remembering the dead that was meant to be shared among a family or community. 

He sighed and reached for Uriel’s arm, draping it across his shoulders.  “Come on, then,” he said.  “Lean on me before you fall down.  Baruch Shemo it’s not far to Hester Street.”

Uriel sagged gratefully against him.  Little Ash winced involuntarily – Uriel was noticeably taller and heavier than he was, and taking its weight on his shoulder did nothing good for his feet and hips, especially after several hours of walking - but put an arm around its waist to help support it.

“Thought an angel… could do it… alone, maybe,” Uriel mumbled.  “I could have before… if I had the right name.  But remembering… all of someone… too big for one person.  So tired…”

Little Ash made an exasperated clicking sound with his tongue.  “And you didn’t even ask me to help?  Fine, I didn’t like your rebbe much, but I was there.  Closer than you, even, at the end.” 

He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated on his memories of that day a year ago.  The dybbuk inside him, the Holy Names scorching his tongue.  The plunge into the cold river, Mr. Sullivan struggling in his grip.  Feeling the whisper of the rebbe leaving him to cling to Sullivan and be swept downriver with him as Little Ash fought his way to shore. 

He heard Uriel gasp.  “Oh,” it said, sounding relieved.  “Oh, that is so much better.”

Little Ash opened his eyes to find it gazing at him in much the same way as it had when he returned, soaked and shivering, to Sullivan’s headquarters where it sat on the steps holding its bleeding shoulder – like he was a miracle all by himself.  The sight improved Little Ash’s own mood considerably. 

Uriel gave a weary sigh and let its head fall sideways to rest against his.  “Thank you, Ashel,” it murmured.  “I’m glad you are here.”

“So where else would I be?” Little Ash said, steering it around a peddler’s cart.  “If you’re going to go around getting yourself into trouble like this, you need someone who knows about trouble to get you out of it.”

“And you do know that, you wicked creature,” Uriel said affectionately.  “Will you do the rest of the yahrzeit with me?  It’s until sunset, only.” 

Little Ash let his arm tighten around its soft waist for just a moment.  “Of course I will.  You have to ask?”

They walked on, not very quickly – Little Ash was limping by now, and Uriel was still leaning on him and stumbling slightly with exhaustion - but in the comfortable silence of people who are happy just to be near each other.  Between them, like a heavy load made lighter by being shared, they carried the memory of the old rebbe of Belz. 

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