I finished the final round of revisions on Hylozoic this week, and my editor, David Hartwell, approved them.

As it happens, the novel has an alien character named Lovva, who takes on the shape of a small harp. Earlier this year, the harpist Cheryl Ann Fulton lent me a small harp for inspiration while I was writing about Lovva. Today I took the harp back to Cheryl in Berkeley.

Here’s a passage from Hylozoic where Lovva transforms herself into a harp, watched by my hero Jayjay, in the attic of Hieronymus Bosch’s house.

The shapeshifting alien pressed her arms together and stretched them out to make the crosspiece. Her belly flattened; her head retreated into her neck. Her legs swung up and fused to make a fluted front column. Her toes connected with her fingers.

Buds formed along the median of her chest and belly, sending luminous tendrils up to the crosspiece, forming the strings. Her green skin glittered and turned gold. And now the painting on the soundbox began taking shape. Jayjay got in on this, guiding the harp as she transformed her skin into layers of oil paint.

When she was done, two pale lovers stood nude in a meadow that seethed with black lizards and tiny birds. Beside them was a pale blue demon fingering a tiny, gold harp that was shaped just like Lovva. The lizards wore little hats, flying fish drifted in the sky, the trunks of the trees had ears, and hints of moisture glistened on the lovers’ thighs.

“See the little harp the demon in the picture holds?” said Bosch, bending close to Lovva’s sound board. “The little harp should bear a painting that’s a copy of my painting on this big harp.”

“Only think the changes,” chimed the harp. “And Ill make my skin into the proper colors.”

Soon Lovva’s soundbox bore an image of a demon with a harp, but now the demon’s harp bore an image of a smaller demon with a harp, and this tiny harp bore a yet-smaller picture of a hellish harpist, and so on—iterating down to levels that the naked eye could barely see. By way of capping the series, Bosch set a tiny triangle of ivory white at the vanishing point. The eye of God.

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