Middle Woman
Encyclopedia
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...
. It appears in his short story collections Cardography
Cardography
Cardography is a short story collection by Orson Scott Card. It contains five stories and an introduction by David Hartwell. All five of these stories were later published in Maps in a Mirror- Story list :The short stories in this book are:...
and Maps in a Mirror
Maps in a Mirror
Maps in a Mirror is a collection of short stories by Orson Scott Card. Like Card's novels, most of the stories have a science fiction or fantasy theme...
. Card originally published this in an anthology he was editing called Dragons of Darkness
Dragons of Darkness
Dragons of Darkness is an anthology edited by Orson Scott Card. It contains fifteen stories, two of which were written by Card himself. The two stories by Card are "Middle Woman" and "A Plague of Butterflies"...
under the name Byron Walley.
Plot summary
"Middle Woman" is the story of woman who at first seems very average. She is neither rich nor poor but somewhere in the middle. She is the middle child in her family and lives between her two sisters who live thirty leaguesLeague (unit)
A league is a unit of length . It was long common in Europe and Latin America, but it is no longer an official unit in any nation. The league originally referred to the distance a person or a horse could walk in an hour...
to the north and to south of her. One day while traveling to see one of her sisters she meets a dragon
Dragon
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
on the road. He tells her that he will either eat her or grant her three wishes. She decides to take the three wishes and then wishes that her husband’s farm will produce enough food to support her family forever. The dragon flies to her house and eats her family so that no matter how much food the farm produces it will always be enough. Realizing that the dragon only wants to trick her, the woman wishes that everything in the world would go back to the way it was before she left her house that morning. Instantly she is back in her home and decides not to go see her sister so that she will not meet the dragon again. Although she is now safe, it occurs to the woman that she still has one wish. However, she wisely decides not to use it. Instead she saves it for a day when she needs it. When she is old and about to die the dragon comes to her and tells her that if she doesn’t use the wish before she dies that he will die as well. The woman wishes that the dragon and everyone he meets will be happy and dies in flames.
Byron Walley
Byron Walley is one of Orson Scott Card's pseudonymPseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s. Card chose to publish "Middle Woman" under the name Byron Walley because his short story "A Plague of Butterflies
A Plague of Butterflies
"A Plague of Butterflies" is a short story by Orson Scott Card. It appears in his short story collection Maps in a Mirror. Card originally published this in an anthology he was editing called Dragons of Darkness. His short story "Middle Woman" appeared in the same book under the pseudonym Byron...
" was also appearing in the book Dragons of Darkness
Dragons of Darkness
Dragons of Darkness is an anthology edited by Orson Scott Card. It contains fifteen stories, two of which were written by Card himself. The two stories by Card are "Middle Woman" and "A Plague of Butterflies"...
under his real name.
Audio
In addition to the text versions of the story, "Middle Woman" is also available as an audio download in the March 2006 issue of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine ShowIntergalactic Medicine Show
InterGalactic Medicine Show is an American online fantasy and science fiction magazine. It was founded by multiple award-winning author Orson Scott Card. An anthology also called Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show was published by Tor in August, 2008, featuring selected stories from...
. The story was read by Mary Robinette Kowal and recorded at Willamette Radio Workshop.