Can you talk a bit about how this story took shape and what inspirations fed into it?

I had the honor to live near three of my closest elders as they were dying, my grandmother, and my great-aunt and great-uncle who were basically my grandparents on their side of the family. I wrote “Until the Cure” while they were still with us, while I could still spend a lot of time with them. We were fortunate that all three of them were themselves until the very end, but I know not everyone is nearly that fortunate.

For all that fantasy is associated with preindustrial idioms, the focus on everyone’s exhaustion, the fight against entropy, and the question of elder care struck me as extremely contemporary. Why do you think this kind of juxtaposition can be so effective?

See, one of the reasons I wanted to do this is that I think all of those issues are eternal. People in the past were freakin’ exhausted! They loved their families as we do. They wanted everyone to be warm and fed and clothed but also cared for and entertained, engaged, challenged to do good in the world. They fought entropy every day, and their elders were very much with them. My grandmother’s grandfather lived with her family when she was young. She was one of thirteen kids, so her parents were definitely juggling childcare, and eldercare, and trying to make ends meet during the Great Depression and the Second World War. So I think it resonates with contemporary readers because it’s a perpetual question. I hope so, anyway.

What led you to choose the word “golem” to describe the protagonist’s synthetic assistant?

The combination of clay and spirit said golem to me. Most of the other alternatives for created beings were less clearly fantasy, more likely to tip over into a sense of futurism, and I wanted it clear that this is a fantasy. Golems are also traditionally very strongly associated with protection, and that fit.

I find something sobering in the idea that even in a world of magic, there are still neurodegenerative diseases, almost like a natural “memento mori” in opposition to all the power we think we have. How important do you think it is to use stories to reinforce the message of difficult problems that resist easy solutions?

I think very important. I think that the easier the solution to a difficult problem, the less believable it is. I also think that it’s very hard to convincingly write a world where the reader believes that magic has solved neurodegenerative disease. It’s a lot more likely that the reader will—subconsciously, but still!—assume that people with neurodegenerative diseases are not important, not worthy of story, unless we put them in stories. And I think that it’s important to show someone who is using brilliance—whether it’s magical, technical, or some other kind—to be caring. To care for others. Mehi, this story’s protagonist, is an incredibly gifted magician, but she doesn’t want to conquer the world. It wouldn’t occur to her to conquer the world. What kind of psychopath wants to conquer the world? (Yeah, yeah. We all know.) This is not even a story about Mehi triumphing over old age, or over this particular disease. This is a story about how you put your heart and your time into important things like caring for others. This is a story about how you keep trying.

That’s what we’ve got. It’s all we’ve ever had. It’s nothing like enough, and it’s also the best thing.

Sometimes it’s nice to read stories where there is a clear dragon who needs slaying, who is easily identifiable (you can tell that one’s the dragon because of the wings and the fire-breathing!) and slayable (see the weak point in the scales?) and gets slain (well done, Sir Whatsit!). I like them too. But if we tell ourselves too many of that shape of story, we start to believe that hard problems are a thing we get through once and that’s all that’s needed. If we can just slay this one particular crisis, we will be effectively done. And that’s not true. We’re going to have to muster our resources for the next crisis, and the next. What we can do is keep caring for each other first, with whatever we have, and plan for the long haul.

Is there anything you’re working on that you’d like to talk about? What can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I just had a novella come out, and now there’s going to be another one! A Dubious Clamor is a fantasy novella out now from Horned Lark Press, and That Fatal Discontent is a science fiction novella coming summer of 2027 from Union Square Books. After that . . . we’ll just have to see!