By Kevin Dilmore

It’s all Kansas’ fault.

I certainly mean the state, which I regard as my own native land despite that my birth and first five years of life took place in upstate New York. I also mean the band, a favorite of mine for nearly 40 years whose music accompanied the majority of my writing process on this story. And I also mean the residents, from the native tribes to the homesteaders, who struggled against nature and, yes, each other in their quests to live off of the land and make a home on the prairie with only their determination and faith and work ethic to fuel them.

Mix those inspirations liberally with the weirdness drifting through my own mind, and that is the formula for my contribution to Native Lands, “The Initially Unsettling But Ultimately Triumphant Return of Afterbirth Boy.”

Spoiler alert: Don’t read the story title until after you have read the story.

When I received the very gracious invitation to propose a story for the Native Lands anthology, I immediately knew that I wanted to write a tale that felt like home. Growing up in a town of 6,000 in central Kansas and then spending 15 additional years in a similarly sized Kansas town while reporting for a twice-weekly newspaper, I many times had the sense that the problems of big-city America did not apply to our lives here. As I read Divine Tales, I was struck with a similar impression. Sure, the Gods would work wonders or horrors in the lives of people on the coasts. But how would things shake out around here? What challenges might a small town face in light of these arrivals? Who would step up for the little guys?

Turns out, at least in my mind, it was a little guy. I imagined Mitchell Finehorse as a kid not necessarily like me but certainly like someone I would have hung out with in my high-school days. As for his chosen company in the story, well, those guys came by way of Pawnee legend. Specifically, I was inspired by a tale known in some accounts as “Good Boy and Long Tooth Boy” and in others as “Handsome Boy and Afterbirth Boy.”

Well, I know a winning title when I see one.

I had a great time writing what I intended as a fun romp of a story, and my sincere hope is that you will enjoy your visit to my native land.

ReDeus: Native Lands will be available in print and digital editions starting this Friday.

So the gods have returned to Earth. Cool concept. Now what?

I was invited to contribute to the first two anthologies of ReDeus tales, but my schedule wouldn’t permit it. Asked again to participate in the third volume, and finally having a window of opportunity, I jumped at the chance. I loved the idea of the various pantheons of gods coming back to their ancestral lands and seeking adherents.

When I cast about for my story, I initially struck on the notion of exploring what it would mean to be an atheist in a world populated by actual deities. Interesting idea, right? Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t the only one who thought so: the redoubtable Dave Galanter had already tackled such a story in his “Tricks of the Trade,” which appeared in the first ReDeus collection, Divine Tales. So it was back to the drawing board.

In searching for another tale to tell, I asked myself what it would actually be like living in a world where the gods had made themselves manifest. Would most people interact with them, or would they simply see them on television and read about them on the Internet? The latter seemed more likely to me, but it also made me question what people would think about the gods and how that would make them behave in their everyday lives. Certainly the majority of human beings today are religious, but they generally worship an unseen, unheard god. Would it make a difference if they got to see and hear divine beings, even if from afar.

I imagined that if the gods descended on Earth, it would leave the bulk of the population—if not the totality of it—in awe. I’d heard the term “god-fearing” bandied about throughout my life, but I’d never quite made the connection between that term and the concept of a loving god. It seemed to me, though, that if deities suddenly appeared among us, fear might actually be a reasonable response. But the notion of being afraid of a god still felt awkward to me. How can you genuinely worship a being that frightens you? That feels too close to intimidation, which is pretty much a bad reason to do anything.

I thus discovered the rudiments of my story. I would show the return to Earth of a powerful god—in this case, the Native American trickster and spider-god, Iktomi—and explore the impact of his interaction with one particular citizen. I would also posit how the appearance of a deity could change the day-to-day life of the populace. Beyond all of that, I thought, lay the essence of my narrative: why do we worship, and should we?

What enfolded in the writing was a tale of murder. While readers will discover who killed who and why, it is the other questions that arise that prove the greater mystery. But then that’s precisely one of the powerful things about the storytelling milieu of ReDeus that Robert Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, and Paul Kupperberg have posited.

ReDeus: Native Lands will be available in print and digital editions in August.