TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 110, July 2019

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: July 2019

SCIENCE FICTION

The Null Space Conundrum
Violet Allen

The Mysteries
Karen Lord

Miles and Miles and Miles
Andrew Penn Romine

The Moon Is Not a Battlefield
Indrapramit Das

FANTASY

Song Beneath the City
Micah Dean Hicks

Sand Castles
Adam-Troy Castro

Mother Carey’s Table
J. Anderson Coats

Ahura Yazda, the Great Extraordinary
Senaa Ahmad

EXCERPTS

Magic For Liars
Sarah Gailey

NONFICTION

Book Reviews: July 2019
Chris Kluwe

Media Review: July 2019
Carrie Vaughn

Interview: Evan Winter
Christian A. Coleman

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Violet Allen

Adam-Troy Castro

Andrew Penn Romine

Senaa Ahmad

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

Support Us on Patreon or Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2019 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Sam Schechter

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial: July 2019

John Joseph Adams | 384 words

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 110th issue!

This month’s cover features artwork from Sam Schechter, illustrating a brand-new science fiction story by Violet Allen (“The Null Space Conundrum”). This story is a wild adventure that’s just as colorful as its artwork! Also, if you’re the type of person who ever wondered what happened to the golf balls Alan Shepard smacked around on the moon, our new story from Andrew Penn Romine (“Miles and Miles and Miles”) might hold an answer. We also have SF reprints by Karen Lord (“The Mysteries”) and Indrapramit Das (“The Moon Is Not A Battlefield”).

Our first original fantasy story this month, “Ahura Yazda, The Great Extraordinary” by Senaa Ahmad, gives us to some fantastical creatures . . . trying to make a quiet life in Canada’s farm country. We also have some salty new fiction from Adam-Troy Castro (“Sand Castles”), as well as fantasy reprints by J. Anderson Coats (“Mother Carey’s Table”) and Micah Dean Hicks (“Song Beneath the City”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns.

For our ebook readers, we also have and an excerpt from Sarah Gailey’s new novel, Magic for Liars.

Announcement Regarding Lightspeed’s Novella Reprint Program

When we first started Lightspeed, we focused on short fiction of 5,000 words or less, but we knew there was a lot of great material being written that was outside our parameters. That’s one of the reasons why we started reprinting novellas in our ebook editions back in January 2012. But over the years, we’ve found ourselves sharing longer and longer original works in the short fiction section of the magazine—while our original guidelines encouraged stories under 5,000 and grudgingly allowed stories up to 7,500, we now look at stories up to 10,000 words long, and truth be told we fairly regularly make exceptions to that and publish stories that are even longer. With our short fiction department publishing all this amazing longer fiction (both originals and reprints), our novella reprint section has begun to feel a little redundant—so we’ve decided to eliminate it in favor of focusing even more tightly on the short fiction we all love so dearly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a science fiction and fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of more than thirty anthologies, including Wastelands and The Living Dead. Recent books include Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Press Start to Play, Loosed Upon the World, and The Apocalypse Triptych. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been a finalist twelve times) and an eight-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare, and is a producer for WIRED’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. He also served as a judge for the 2015 National Book Award. Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and @johnjosephadams.

The Null Space Conundrum

Violet Allen | 7881 words

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” screams Aria. Her voice goes up raspily at the end of the exclamation, giving her the affect of a mewling cat, and she is embarrassed by the profound uncoolness of such a tone. She slams her fists on the Versa’s console to compensate, to physically demonstrate the depth and seriousness of her anger, causing the subtelar ship to rock violently in the warpwake.

Don’t judge her; Aria Astra is usually a very cool person. She likes good food and knows a bunch about film and uses lots of swears and has great fashions. Right now she is wearing a romper made of star-material and a matching neckerchief and a beret that doesn’t match but in a cool way. Also, she was in a band once. It was a pretty decent band, actually, like kind of a hipster funk-pop thing. They had, like, three really good songs, and they would’ve had more good songs, but they broke up because Aria accidentally died and then got resurrected by aliens and turned into a cosmic cyborg who has to save the universe all the time or whatever. Technically, Aria was kicked out of the band before dying and being resurrected by aliens and turned into a cosmic cyborg, but Aria preferred the former timetable, as she was fairly certain that she would’ve been kicked back in had circumstances allowed. They had just been pissy because she couldn’t quote-unquote “play more than four guitar chords” and would’ve changed their tune if given the time.

So yeah, Aria is super cool, and it is unlike her to scream and shout, because that is very uncool. Sadly, we are often unlike ourselves, and we all must struggle against the uncool shadow within, the dork inside, the petty, pedantic vulgarian who lurks in all our hearts, singing old, cthonic songs of “Actually” and “I Told You So.”

“Don’t do that! You’ll break the ship, clown!” says Kantikle.

Kantikle is also being a dork, but Aria has no reason to believe he was ever even a little bit cool. He is a living song sung by every person in the universe at once in the future, sent back in time to convince Aeon Who Judges All Things to spare the universe from the Cataclysm of Judgment, but as cool as that sounds on paper, in practice he’s just a guy, and a pretty whatever guy at that. Aria is kind of into his look (sexy glowing rainbow man), but besides that, he’s really the worst.

“We have a system. I pick a song, you pick a song. You can’t switch songs before my song is over, jackhole.”

“That song was bad. You have bad taste.”

“You have bad taste!”

“Kantikle is music itself. I understand it in a way your meat body could never imagine.”

Aria sighs and turns a knob on the console, restarting her song, a chill Italo disco number from a planet of frog people whose culture was based entirely on 1980s Earth. “I’ll kick you out of here, dude. I can get home and get ice cream or something. I don’t even care about this dumb mission.”

“Of course you don’t recognize the sanctity of our mission,” says Kantikle. “You’re an evil meat clown from a barbarous past. I am not surprised in the least.”

“Evil? Don’t be a baby. At worst, I’m neutral. A charming rogue.”

“You wield the Sister Ray, an evil weapon designed to rearrange the fabric of the universe, to turn stars into ash, to bend matter to your will.”

“Whatever. I’m not evil. Like, I have an evil clone of me, and she uses a weapon that makes people find peace and understanding or something when she stabs them. She’s still evil. Evil weapons, good weapons, it’s all what you do with them.”

“You work for the Star Supremacy, who are remembered as imperialist barbarians, one of the most evil organizations of this era.”

“We all work for evil organizations. Capitalism, right?”

“What?”

“That would play super well on my home planet. It’s a good joke.”

“Is it, clown? You keep saying the things you say are funny, and I don’t believe it’s true. I have not laughed once. Ironic, isn’t it? The clown who does not make anyone laugh.”

Aria is about to say something very smart and cool and cutting, but an alarm starts to blare, and various lights on the console begin to flash ominously.

“Bogey!” says Aria.

A streak of red light shoots past the Versa, and Aria engages the engines.

“Is it the Aeon?” asks Kantikle.

“Don’t think so,” says Aria. “It’s about the right size, but most of the readings are pretty normal. Probably just a pod or a starbeetle or something.”

“No, it is the Aeon!” shouts Kantikle. “I can feel it! Destiny burns in my chest! After it! I’m engaging the hook!”

Kantikle pushes some buttons on the console, and a field of crackling energy wraps itself around the ship. Aria sighs and chases after the light. The little ship bends and crumples into strange tessellations from the rapid increase in speed, and Aria feels the meat part of her stomach going funny.

“Warning,” says the Versa’s computer. “Quantum destabilization imminent.”

“It’s about to jump. Get us in range now, clown!” shouts Kantikle.

“Stop talking! I can’t think if you’re talking!”

Steering at warp is very difficult, on account of human brains not really being able to think at faster-than-light speeds. Aria’s computer brain can do it, but relying on it while also processing meat language can get really headachey. This plus the queasiness is highly unpleasant, as Aria decides, as she has decided for each of the last thirty days, that this is the worst day of her life.

“This is it!” Kantikle yells, as the object is just about to hit the warp horizon. “Now!”

He presses a button, and the object disappears, only to reappear in the ship’s holding bay a moment later.

“Is it the Aeon? Did we do it? Is it time for Kantikle’s destiny to unfurl?” He stands and looks into the middle distance. “Is this what it is to be a hero? Yes, I can feel it. We finally did it, Aria. We faced many trials, but we did it. You are loathsome to me in many ways, but I admit, you have a noble soul inside. Your name will live forever, Aria Asterisk. Finally, Kantikle will do what he was born to do, usher in an era of peace and justice that will last unto eternity. It is time!”

Aria taps the viewscreen a few times and frowns. “I think it’s a mail-pod? Do they have those in the future? It’s how we send mail. Like letters and packages. Mail. You know, mail, right. Can you feel that? Is your heart burning with mail?”

“I hate you, clown. I hate you as much as Uvognig the Traitor hated Addfle the Wizened Fire.” He pauses. “See, that is a funny joke. On my world, everyone would laugh uproariously at that reference. You do not understand my bold flavors.”

Aria sighs, long and hard. “This is hell. You are hell. Everything is hell.”

• • • •

When Aria first started doing future/space stuff, she was informed very directly that it was dangerous for corporeal beings to stay in warp longer than a few hours at a time.

“Your brain will turn into jelly,” said her trainer, who was a giant floating eyeball. “And you’ll probably piss yourself.”

Wanting neither to urinate involuntarily nor have her brain rendered into mush by quantum decoherence, Aria has, until present, studiously avoided remaining in warp for more time than is absolutely necessary. This has suited her well, as warp makes her feel nauseated, and she has always been bad at being sick, usually reverting into a giant baby at the slightest hint of physiologic distress. Plus, she dislikes traveling by spaceship anyway, preferring instead to travel inside cool cosmic aliens or timecubes or whatever. So much more interesting and usually easier on the tummy. Before this mission, her record for time spent in warp was just over five hours. It had been an ordeal, and her brain deffo felt gooey afterward (and not in a fun drugs way), but it had probably been for the good of the universe or something, so it was cool.

Her new record is, currently, six weeks and counting.

The Versa is designed for this, staying in warp for long periods of time, so her brain has not gone to jelly, and she has not urinated outside the appropriate facilities, but still, this sucks. This tiny ship sucks. Spending all day sitting around, scanning passing ships to see if they might be a cosmic god-thing sucks. And most, most, most of all, Kantikle fucking sucks a lot. She cannot remember why they had initially started arguing or what the initial argument had been about (something about music maybe?) but they argued all day, every day now, over anything and everything. He is probably the worst person Aria has ever met, and Aria has met some real assholes, both in terms of omnicidal mega-supervillains and, like, shitty dudes she was forced to hang out with because they were dating her friends. Kantikle is the worst of all. Like, .00001 out of ten, F minus minus, the uncoolest of them all. And she has to spend all day with him, waiting for Aeon Who Judges All Things to cross the warp so that Kantikle can go inside Aeon’s mind and teach him that this universe has cool stuff and good people. It’s her job to protect him at all costs. They eat together, sleep together, and spend all day listening to music and arguing. It’s like having a song in your head for weeks and weeks, but also, it can talk to you and self-aggrandize and make fun of your great fashion choices.

It sucks. Way worse than having a jelly brain or piss trousers.

• • • •

“Can you please stop making that noise?” asks Aria, as she lay in her very small, very uncomfortable cot at the rear of the cabin. Neither she nor Kantikle technically require sleep, but both have a fondness for it as an elective. Anything is better than staring into the void all the time.

“You know I can’t,” he says, laying in his own cot. “I’m literally made of sound.”

“You keep saying that, but I feel like you could if you really tried.”

“What of your own sonic excretions? Kantikle can hear everything. Can you silence the noise of your inside meats moving fluids and gases around? Can you silence the squelching of your cells dividing?”

“Maybe. I’ve never tried. Let me try. Okay, I tried. Now you try.”

“You didn’t try.”

“I did! I guess I just couldn’t do it. But you’re still obligated to try. ”

“Okay, fine. There. I tried. Oops, didn’t work. Happy?”

“You tried to silence the song of your people? You said that babies are born singing your song, that the laughter of children is incorporated into its melodies, that all the sounds of love and joy in the universe are featured in the music of you. You tried to stop all that? That’s pretty fucked up, dude.”

“You are a curse, clown.”

“Oh my God, stop calling me that.”

“Perhaps you should not dress in such a comical fashion?”

“My fashions are avant-garde, and you’re a child.”

Kantikle sits up suddenly. “Do you hear something?”

“I’m not doing this with you again.”

“No, I thought I heard footsteps. But they appear to have faded.”

“It was probably my inside meats. Goodnight.”

Aria closes her eyes, but they snap back open immediately as a loud explosion echoes through the ship. Before Aria or Kantikle can react, the Versa begins to shake and groan, and there are a lot of flashing lights and beeping computers and scary space noises. Small holes begin to open along the seams of the ship, and Aria sees strange, many-angled shapes emerging from them.

“Fuck!” she shouts, jumping up and out.

“The holding bay!” shouts an angry Kantikle, rushing to the cockpit antical.

“Fuck,” repeats Aria, all out of luck as the hallway is blocked with debris. “Do you feel those weird vibes. A trembling inside? Something weird’s happening to me. ”

The Versa goes spinning, the inner atmosphere thinning, ship beginning to fall apart. The antigrav stalls, and Aria falls, and Kantikle sprawling, imparts, “We now decohere!” Then he screams out with fear, “The Versa has broken to crumbs!”

Aria rolls her eyes at the one she despised and says, “Why are you talking so dumb?”

“We lamp the light-road left without a light-leaper.”

The music man manages, matter muddling deeper

The star-witch’s phrasing: “Form is forfeit to feeling?

Idea and Material no longer congealing?”

“Desperate for design, some solace of structure

Our atoms make meaning in meter while ruptur

ing

and the star-lite stream hangs around kantikle

and aria

and they they reach out in the void (as they

are unmade) and untouch unfingers

and unhold, unhanded one another

and aria

sighs

and wonders where things go

when they are nothing

• • • •

The Null Space Conundrum

A Play in Zero Acts

By ARIA ASTRA and Kantikle

Cast of Characters

Aria Astra: A cyborg in her late 20s who dresses like the villain of a cartoon targeted at three-year-old children.

Kantikle: A living song with an ego the size of Milesglorio the Megasun.

Nulla the Merciful: Who? What’s happening? This is weird.

SETTING: We’re wandering somewhere, possibly nowhere.

It’s like a castle, but every time you try to look.

It disappears right in front of you.

Like trying to pin down a memory.

Where are we?

AT RISE: Time is doing some real weird stuff.

Like, mega-weird.

Like, it moves when you pay attention to it.

But then if you don’t, it stops.

Like the fable of Gormand and the Sloog.

Oh my God, we know exactly what we mean.

We seem to be some kind of gestalt being,

trapped in immaterial timeliness.

It’s gross.

No, we’re gross.

No, we’re gross.

KANTIKLE

I think I figured out how to specify myself.

ARIA

How? Oh cool, I did it!

(looks around, sees nothing)

This is very conceptual, and I don’t like it.

KANTIKLE

How did this happen? Why’d the ship blow up like that?

ARIA

I think it was a bomb?

KANTIKLE

A bomb?

ARIA

Remember that mail-pod?

KANTIKLE

Yes.

ARIA

Did you actually check if it was full of mail?

KANTIKLE

No.

ARIA

Did you eject it?

KANTIKLE

I feel like those things would be your responsibility. You’re supposed to protect me.

ARIA

Well, I did a bad job, okay? I thought it was funny, and I was going to use it to make fun of you later. They struck at my only weakness: extreme pettiness. But how did they know?

KANTIKLE

You’ve killed us! You’ve killed us, and you’ve destined our universe to a billion years of darkness!

ARIA

I am genuinely sorry. I apologize. But if we’re going to throw blame around, I will remind you that you were the one who was so sure that that pod was Aeon. I knew it wasn’t, but you were being a total dip about it.

(ARIA is absolutely the worst. None are more hateful than she. If only Kantikle, the greatest and most beloved of all universal heroes, had undertaken this mission alone, this disaster never would’ve happened)

Hey, don’t do that!

KANTIKLE

Kantikle shall do as Kantikle shall do.

(smiles like the biggest dipshit in the world, worse even than Aspera)

Ugh, fine. Fine. No taking advantage of our . . . condition for insults. Who’s Aspera?

ARIA

My evil clone. I told you. You’re like her but worse.

KANTIKLE

If she’s the opposite of you, then she’s probably great.

ARIA

Whatever. So what do we do now?

KANTIKLE

I think we just remain here for eternity as timeless, immaterial beings. Forever.

ARIA

Is that it?

KANTIKLE

How does nothing become something? It’s impossible.

ARIA

There’s got to be a way.

KANTIKLE

No, this is it. Even the end of time will not end our suffering. We are alone here forever.

NULLA

Welcome beings!

(Holy fuck! What the shit is this? Did you see that? We need to get away! How do we run? Do we have legs? We obviously don’t have legs. We’re such an idiot. We’ll just shoot it with the Sister Ray. We can’t! What part of us being nothing do we not understand? We can’t just shoot our problems away.)

Calm yourselves. I am a friend to you.

ARIA and KANTIKLE

You’re here, but you’re not us. We thought everything here was us.

NULLA

I am Nulla the Merciful. I contain all who have been lost to this place, all the little traces of something in this place of nothingness. You too will join me in time, when you have forgotten who you are. You are nothing, true, but there is still a bit of something to you, a tiny ember of something that will burn a little while longer.

ARIA

That sucks.

KANTIKLE

Yes, that sounds very bad.

NULLA

I was once like you. I was like you unto infinity. But now I know the peace of nothingness compared with the violence of being. You will learn nothing soon enough! Let us rejoice! As long as you are something, we have something to celebrate. Then there will be nothing to celebrate, and we will celebrate nothing. Our time is short, perhaps a few million years, but I promise it will go by in an instant.

ARIA

Because there’s no time. We get it. Nothing and something. Cool. Please stop.

KANTIKLE

Yeah, it’s not as clever as you think it is.

ARIA

Like, hey, I’m made of nothing, so nothing can hurt me! I eat nothing, so we have a feast of nothing. Are you sure this isn’t just a universe that runs on stupid puns and chiasmus instead of physics?

KANTIKLE

Clown, please. Do not be rude to our host, who speaks nothing because something made nowhere sometimes no one, and thus nothing nowhere is sometimes not something nor somewhere nothing forever something nothing.

ARIA

(laughs and points at NULLA)

That’s what you sound like! Got ’em!

(We high five.)

NULLA

Okay. Point taken. Rude, but point taken. Commence the revelry!

(We party for a couple of weeks or so. Like just now, that was a week. Whoa. It’s pretty cool. It turns out not drinking and not dancing is almost as fun as drinking and dancing when you’re in a place that operates on dumb chiasmus logic. Also, roasting Nulla is very easy and fun, and we are starting to get along. All we needed was someone (or as NULLA insists, no one) else to channel our assholishness towards. It turns out we have a ton in common, and being a single entity really does help one extend empathy. But then, at some point, ARIA notices KANTIKLE sitting specified in a corner of nowhere, sadly, not not partying.)

ARIA

Hey, what’s your deal?

KANTIKLE

This is fun.

ARIA

And?

KANTIKLE

I’m not supposed to have fun. I’m supposed to execute my mission.

ARIA

You can still do it. We’re just chilling for a while. I get, like, no vacation days. We can bust out of here when we want.

KANTIKLE

I’m not supposed to “chill.” I’m supposed to keep the universe safe. I’m supposed to save everyone.

ARIA

You can still chill. They aren’t mutually exclusive.

KANTIKLE

I know. That’s the problem. I think I like this “chilling” more than I ever thought I would. It’s nice. But I have to focus on my mission. I have to. Don’t you have something you care about? Something to live for and die for?

ARIA

Not really. I kind of just do whatever. I save the universe ’cause it’s something to do, and because the Star Supremacy keep my robot parts working. I don’t have much investment in it. It kind of bums me out, but I try not to think about it. Like I said, I’m neutral.

KANTIKLE

But you have fun, at least.

ARIA

Fun can get a little old. It’d be cool if I had something to really care about. But whatever.

KANTIKLE

Do you really think we will escape this place? How?

ARIA

I dunno. I usually improvise these things.

KANTIKLE

I fear we are lost. This is it. I have failed my mission.

ARIA

Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Something’ll come along.

KANTIKLE

I was born for this mission. It’s all that I’ve ever known. What am I without it?

ARIA

Don’t say that. You’re kind of a cool dude. You have pretty good taste in music, even though you don’t appreciate disco, which is the best music, and you have like a good look. We’ve never done anything actually cool together, but I feel like when we get out of this, we should go do something cool.

KANTIKLE

Ha. Face it, Aria. I’m a song without a listener. Just vibrations in the air. Or less. Without my mission.

NULLA

I’m nothing.

ARIA

Uh, what?

NULLA

That took far less time than I expected. I thought a few million years at least. But I guess some people don’t have a very strong sense of themselves.

(ARIA looks for KANTIKLE, but she sees nothing)

Don’t worry, you’ll join him soon enough. I find that singles don’t make it very long. We define ourselves by our opposites. Without someone, you’re no one.

ARIA

Ugh, shut up! Kantikle? You’re still in there, right? Come back.

NULLA

It’s no use. He is nothing now.

ARIA

For real, Kantikle. Get back here!

NULLA

Forget it. Your boyfriend is gone now.

ARIA

He was not my boyfriend.

NULLA

Yes, exactly. Your not-boyfriend.

ARIA

You’re really the worst, you know that?

NULLA

Yes, and I am the best. Nulla is all things and no things, the beginning and the end! Everything you experience here is me! I only allow your little somethingness the illusion of control!

ARIA

What?

NULLA

It was not like me to say that. But Nulla is the most beautiful, the most elegant, the most wondrous creation of all universes! When I have absorbed you and your Sister Ray, I will have the power to extend myself past the limits of this place, into the real, where I will consume all things!

(pauses awkwardly)

I really did not mean to say that.

ARIA

(laughs)

That’s probably Kantikle. I knew he was still there. He’s like that. Like kind of an asshole.

NULLA

It matters not! Soon, you will be part of me, and Nulla will again know the peace of nothingness!

ARIA

Yeah, but you know. Also, thanks for letting me know that the Sister Ray is here. I was concerned ’cause I died and turned into nothing, but I guess it turned into nothing too. Just one sec.

(ARIA finds and brandishes Sister Ray; also, Nulla sucks, right? Like, I didn’t buy her whole act, but even still, I just thought it was hungry, not like a weird universe vore thing.)

But that’s cool. Let’s see how nothing you really are.

(ARIA shoots NULLA with the Sister Ray still set to pizza. Nulla screams a bunch

And

every

thing

starts

going

all

weird.

“Stop!”

Nope.

“Mercy!”

Let Kantikle go.

And lend us a little matter so we can go home.

I bet you have extra.

“Curse you, Aria Astra!”

• • • •

Aria and Kantikle find themselves back in reality aboard a fully repaired Versa. They immediately embrace one another, appreciating the sensation of being once again. They spend several moments like this, so close, smiling and laughing, and luxuriating in the real.

“When will I learn that all of my problems can be solved by shooting them with my magic space laser?” asks Aria. “It really should be my first thing every time.”

“We did it!” shouts Kantikle. “I can’t believe we did it!”

“We?” asks Aria. “I feel like I did that. I shot it. Like a bunch.”

“You wouldn’t have known to if it hadn’t absorbed some of my bold flavors.”

“Ha. I guess your flavors are pretty bold.”

“Your flavors are also not terrible.”

“Are we gonna make out? I feel like that’s what’s happening now. I’m just saying. I’m into it.”

“Yes. Let it commence!”

The making out commences. It is pretty good, lots of tongue, and it lasts for a bit. There’s some sex in there, too. Awesome, right? What an afternoon, A double plus, ten out of ten. After finishing up, Aria takes a long shower and puts on a comfy dress made of undulating space worms, and Kantikle prepares some energon cubes or whatever it is he eats in the kitchen area. It’s real chill.

“Hey,” says Kantikle, when he and Aria have taken their places back in the cockpit again. “I was kind of thinking. Doesn’t this seem kind of easy?”

“How so?” asks Aria.

“I feel like how we defeated Nulla didn’t really make sense.”

“Lots of things don’t make sense. I have a very colorful life.”

“And how’d it send us back here? Like, why does it have that power?”

Aria shrugs. “I mean, it could have that power. I didn’t really understand what was happening most of the time it was happening.”

“I guess you’re right. It was kind of for the best, if you think about it. The mission is going to go a lot better now. I feel like I finally get you now.”

“Peace and understanding?”

“Yeah. Exactly!”

Aria lets out a deep, agonized sigh. “No. Ugh! Fuck me.”

“Again?”

“No, dummy. God. You’re lucky you’re pretty.”

She unholsters the Sister Ray and holds it to her temple.

“What are you doing?”

“I fucking hate this part,” she says, and pulls the trigger.

• • • •

Aria wakes up in the holding bay of the Versa, tied up back to back with Kantikle. A sword sticks out of her chest. It is covered in purple stuff, which is basically her blood, but the edge glows like the summer sun, and Aria finds its warmth oddly comforting, as though she and this blade were old friends catching up after a long time.

“What the fuck?” he howls. “There’s a sword in me!”

“There’s a sword in us. And yeah, this is not great.”

“What is happening?”

“That whole thing we just did all mega pretendo. Sorry. Don’t freak out. The Paradise Eye doesn’t hurt as long as you stay calm. It’s an inner peace thing. Just take a deep breath.”

“The what?”

“It’s my clone. Aria Aspera, wielder of the Paradise Eye and supreme cosmic jackhole. She must’ve got us when we were asleep.”

A small, glowing orb sits on a metal folding chair next to the pair. It buzzes loudly, and a crackly voice emerges. It’s basically Aria’s voice, but with a bit of an aristocratic affect. Like kind of a phony mid-Atlantic thing. You know, like how people talked in old movies? Like that. “Hello friends. How is your day going?”

“Fuck you, Aspera,” says Aria.

“I’m sure you definitely said something rude to me, Astra, but I can’t hear you if you don’t touch the orb, and you won’t be able to touch the orb. I’m quite sure you’ll find the nega-bonds quite unbreakable.”

“Who is that?” asks Kantikle.

“I told you, my evil clone. I’m not super clear on the origin. She might be an alternate universe version of me who got split into good and bad halves, and then the bad half killed the good half and came to this universe to fuck with me, but she may have actually been fucking with me when she told me that. Wheels within wheels, you know? It sucks, and her dumb sword makes you hallucinate and learn life lessons and stuff. It also sucks. A lot about this situation sucks,” says Aria.

Aspera cackles. “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know, Astra? But I’m afraid my motivations will remain secret for now. But please, keep begging.”

“I didn’t ask, dork.”

Aspera clicks her tongue. “Astra, Astra, Astra. Do you really think I’d forgive you so easily? I’m glad you admit that I am the superior Aria, but it’s humiliating for both of us for you to grovel so. It’s truly unbecoming.”

“Okay, so she’s definitely doing this on purpose. She’s the worst.”

“I don’t know,” says Kantikle. “I think it’s kind of funny.”

“Let’s just get out of here.”

Aria tries to struggle against the bands of glowing light holding her to Kantikle, but they do not budge. Worse, as she wriggles and stretches, she can suddenly remember all the bad things that have ever happened to her, very clearly and without prompting. All the petty betrayals, the trespasses, the cruel circumstances forced upon, and she remembers them all at once, and she can do nothing to stop the flood of despair, and she realizes that trying at all is futile, that life is pointless, and that she should just give up. She sighs and relaxes, no longer trying to escape. This is her life now, tied to Kantikle, waiting to die. Kantikle stops moving, too. Bummer. The nega-bands must’ve got him. What an unchill day. Whatever. Who cares?

“Oh fine, if you’re going to be that way, I’ll give you a little taste. I’ve tracked Aeon the Judge with this nice ship of yours, and me and him are going to have a nice talk about just how bad this universe can be.”

“Aeon,” murmurs Kantikle.

“Who cares?” asks Aria.

“You’re right. It doesn’t matter.”

“Nothing matters.”

“No,” says Kantike. “That’s not right.”

“Right and wrong, just words,” says Aria.

“No. We have to fight. We have to.”

“There’s nothing we have to do. We have absolute freedom, but freedom is a curse. The only option is to lie down and accept the only inevitability, death,” says Aria,

“No!” shouts Kantikle. “I have a mission! I have to save everyone! I will save everyone.”

Kantikle starts to get loud. His inner music, usually light and gentle like a heartbeat, begins to roar, and he material body begins to vibrate and strobe violently.

“I’ve almost got it!” he sings. “Just a little more!”

And Aria thinks it is pretty stupid, but Kantikle is kind of a cool guy, and it seems like ensuring the existence of the universe is really important to him or whatever, so she guesses she can help him for like a minute. Just to be nice. Flexing her muscles and engaging her cyborg strength, she pushes against the bonds. And just like that, they break, shattering into glittering shards that hang in the air. It’s pretty cool.

Aria takes a deep breath as her brain goes back to normal, and Kantikle pulls the Paradise Eye out of their chests.

“We did it!” she says.

“I feel like I did it, mostly,” sings Kantikle, still kind of vibrate-y.

“You loosened the lid, but I was the one who opened the jar,” Aria says.

“There is no time for me to explain why I am definitely the one who should get the credit for that. The Aeon is close. I can feel him. It is time. Destiny burns in my chest.”

Aria nods and picks up the Paradise Eye from the floor. “Cool,” she says.

“Yeah. Cool.”

“What’s wrong? You sound weird. Are you still sad from the sadness bondage?”

“No. I just. I’m not sure I’m ready. I want to do this, but . . . right now? I was just starting to enjoy myself.”

“I’m sure we could figure something out.”

“No. This is it. It’s time for me to fulfill my destiny. This my time.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Before Kantikle can answer, the orb on the chair begins to buzz again, more violently than before. Aspera’s laugh echoes through the room as cracks begin to appear on the orb’s surface. It swells larger and larger with each passing moment, until it breaks open, revealing a large blue beetle with two heads and flaming wings emerging from a glittering carapace. It continues growing until its head reaches the ceiling, at which point it glares at Aria and Kantikleand roars.

“Oh,” says Aria, brandishing the Paradise Eye. “That’s where starbeetles come from. Weird space eggs. It makes sense. You just never really think about these kinds of things until you see it, you know? Today really blows.”

• • • •

Aria stumbles into the cockpit covered in bruises and cuts and lots of really cool battle damage on her clothes. Aspera is waiting at the cockpit. She is dressed very boringly, in a black tank top and shorts. Why even bother getting out of bed if that’s what you’re going to put on? Terrible, just terrible. Also, the ship has just exited warp and entered regular space, and Aeon, a very large, many-angled being who makes your soul hurt when you look at him, floats in front of the ship, which is probably also bad.

“Hey Aspera!” shouts Aria. Her right arm hangs limply, covered in purple stuff and with a bunch of bones and wires and stuff protruding out of the skin, but she points the Paradise Eye at Aspera with her left arm in a really cool way regardless. “I solved your nega-band puzzle! It turns out I just needed to believe in myself. I mean, sort of. That’s basically what happened.”

Aspera looks back from the controls and sighs dramatically and makes a real show of rolling her eyes in disgust. “I know, genius. It doesn’t matter.” She aims the Sister Ray at Aria. “No funny stuff. I’m almost done.”

Aria slowly lowers the Paradise Eye. “Fuck you. I should’ve known that you were going to get involved in this thing.”

Aspera nods. “Yeah, you really should’ve. Like, for real. It makes me kinda sad. Am I as dumb as you? Do we have the same dumbness within us? It makes me wonder.”

“Ha ha.”

“But seriously, you’re such a weirdo, Astra. What was that null space thing supposed to be? You’re like the weirdest version of us I have ever met.”

“You saw that?”

“Yeah, that’s how it works. It’s like half the fun. I thought I was going to get a nice film about you two learning to be friends, not some bizarre conceptual fantasy. I got bored halfway through and started writing my own scenario, a sort Astra/Kantikle fanfic. So in mine, instead of that null space nonsense, you two and the ship get trapped inside a sun, and you’re okay, but the ship is very hot, and you can’t figure out a way to get out, and the heat is so, so bad you can’t even think. And so you’re fighting a bunch, both because of the heat and because you’re both baby-brain losers who don’t know how to deal with sexual tension, and so you end up stripping off your clothes, and then you’re eating a lot of popsicles, and then it’s so hot you have to have angry fire sex and then you like each other afterwards.”

“I actually like that a lot. If you write it down, please send it to me. But seriously, fuck you, Aspera.”

“I love you, too, sweetie.”

Aria smirks. “One thing, though. I think you’re more of a sword person than a gun person. I wonder if you can aim that thing as well as you can describe erotic scenarios.”

Aria raises her sword and rushes toward Aspera. She makes it about two steps before Aspera shoots her in the shoulder, knocking her right to the ground and opening a big purple wound.

“Oh my God, are you kidding?” asks Aspera. “I’m like ten feet away from you.”

The Paradise Eye clatters to the ground, and Aria groans in agony. “Damn it!”

“Really, this is just pathetic, Astra. You can’t even kill a starbeetle without hurting yourself, and now this? I’m starting to feel bad for you.”

Aria looks up at Aspera and shakes her head, sadly. “You’re right.”

“What?”

“I can’t do this. I can’t beat you. Just please, don’t hurt Kantikle.”

“What?”

“You’re too powerful. You’re stronger than me, smarter than me, better than me.”

Aspera stands up, looks around the ship, an expression of pure bafflement on her face. “What is this?”

“You can do whatever you want to me, but spare Kantikle.”

“This is a trick. It has to be!”

“You know what it is to be lonely, what it feels like to care about nothing. All Astras understand that.”

Aria grabs the Paradise Eye and begins to slowly, painfully crawl to Aspera. Aspera points the Sister Ray at Aria. At Aspera’s feet, Aria remains on her knees, eyes downcast, and holds the Paradise Eye by the tip of the blade, offering Aspera the hilt.

“Take it,” says Aria. “Just save Kantikle. What do I have to say? I know you, Aspera. You did this because you just like to watch things burn. I’m like that, too. Nothing really matters, if you think about it. I understand. But Kantikle is . . . different. Save him, please. I’ll do anything, say anything. You’re very funny and beautiful and you’ll probably rule the universe one day if that’s your thing. Even your fashions are better than mine. ”

Aspera smiles as she wraps the fingers around the Paradise Eye’s hilt. “Thanks. By the way, I know what the Paradise Eye feels like. It’s my weapon! Did you really think you could trick me into thinking I was in it?”

Astra shrugs. “Not really, nah.”

Astra pushes her hand forward, the blade of the Paradise slicing through the meat and bone, and knocking the hilt out of Aspera’s hand and into her stomach. With her other hand, Aria wrestles away the Sister Ray as she pushes Aspera to the ground. It is like the most anime-ass shit ever, and it is so fucking awesome, oh my God.

“Fuck you,” says Aspera, dropping her bullshit fake accent as Aria holds the Sister Ray to her head.

“You were right,” says Aria. “I am really super dumb, huh?”

Aspera sneers and rolls her eyes. “You struck my only weakness: extreme pettiness.”

Aria shakes her head. “No. Your true weakness is that Evil can never truly understand Neutral.”

“So what now?” asks Aspera.

Aria points to the viewing screen, on which Kantikle is flying out to Aeon on the starbeetle.

“Well, my friend Kantikle, who is just my friend, is about to do his whole thing over there. For real, you thought I couldn’t kill a starbeetle? Come on. The hard part is getting them to chill out and be cool.”

Kantikle leaps off the starbeetle and floats in front of the Aeon. His humanoid form begins to blur into pure light and sound as the Aeon itself begins to pulsate in time with Kantikle’s cosmic rhythms.

Aria continues. “I think he might die from it? No one’s totally explained the rules to me, but I feel like he’s going to die or, like, exist only as a song inside an ancient god’s head after this. It’s kinda sad. But we are just friends. I mean, I guess we’re ‘hanging out.’ You know? Just a casual thing. I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it. I don’t think it counts if it happens in a shared hallucination.”

“Okay, shut up. I don’t care.”

Suddenly, both Aeon and Kantikle explode in a bright flash of white light. Spacetime itself roars and shudders, and the Versa is sent flying in the opposite direction. Unwilling to let Aspera go, Aria allows the ship to tumble through space for a while until its internal systems right it. Looking out the viewscreen now, all she can see is blackness in all directions.

“I guess he’s dead?” says Aria, after a long silence. “That’s sort of a bummer. You wanna go watch a movie or something after this? I mean, you’re done being an asshole, right? Like, you failed, so now you can just be cool?”

Aspera shrugs. “Whatever. Just don’t talk to me about your feelings. I really, really don’t care.”

Aria lets Aspera go as her healing matrix engages. She hops on the controls and plots a course. Aspera sits next to her in the cockpit, pouting and sighing and generally being a sore loser. Aria tries to engage her in conversation a couple times, but Aspera is not having it. Aria decides to lean into and do the most annoying thing she can think of: whistling Kantikle’s song, the melody that used to come out of him when they were trying to sleep. At first, it is a simple recollection, but the whistling becomes more complex with time. Soon, she is whistling better than she has ever whistled before, and soon, better still, beyond the point of pure whistling. She whistles harmonies, percussion, and then voices. It becomes ever more complex and intricate until it crosses the boundary between conceptual and material, and in a flash, Kantikle appears, standing in the cockpit.

“Kantikle has returned!!” he shouts.

“Great, this guy,” says Aspera.

Aria leaps to her feet and wraps her arms around Kantikle. “You’re alive! How?”

“You thought I was dead? Is that why you just left without waiting for me?” asks Kantikle.

“Well, yeah. Like, I thought you were like giving Aeon your message of hope, but you’re the message, so you wouldn’t exist anymore. I thought that’s why you were so weird about pulling the trigger at the end there.”

“No. That was more of an existential crisis.”

“Oh. So you were just floating in space there? Waiting?”

“Yes. But it’s fine. It wasn’t your fault. We did it, Aria. Together.”

They do some kissing.

“Ugh, awful,” says Aspera.

“What’s she doing here?” asks Kantikle.

“We were gonna hang out. But you can hang with us. It’ll be fun,” says Aria.

“What are you talking about? She’s evil.”

Aria shrugs. “Uh, I know I should probably care about that, but I really just don’t. That’s neutral, I guess.”

“She tried to kill us!” shouts Kantikle.

“I did no such thing,” says Aspera. “I captured you. I probably would’ve let you go, completely unkilled.”

“You wanted to convince the judge of the universe that everything is bad!”

“I mean, everything is bad,” says Aspera.

“She has a point. Most things are bad,” says Aria.

“You’re the worst. You’re the absolute worst!” says Kantikle.

“No, you’re the worst!” says Aria.

“You’re both the worst,” says Aspera.

“No one asked you, Aspera. Look dude, do you want to go to the movies and make out or what?” asks Aria.

“I do,” says Kantikle. “I just have a lot of feelings about this situation.”

“Just chill,” says Aria. “I know an awesome place. All the movies you could ever watch.”

And Kantikle sits on the floor next to Aria as the Versa flies into the black, and Aria reaches down, and their fingers touch each other lightly as nothing turns into something.

• • • •

Aria Astra May or May Not Return In: Journey to the Center of the Omegaplex!!

©2019 by Violet Allen. | Art © 2019 by Sam Schechter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Violet Allen is a writer based in Chicago, Illinois. Her work has appeared in Lightspeed, Liminal Stories, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against, A People’s Future of the United States, and elsewhere. She is currently working very hard every day on her debut novel and definitely has more than ten pages written, is not lying to her agent about having more than ten pages written and does not spend most of her time listening to podcasts, and everything is totally cool, I promise. She can be reached on Twitter at @blipstress.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Mysteries

Karen Lord | 994 words

“Light, dust, and water are the alchemy of the universe.”

Ritual words murmured softly by myriad voices, powerful as a roar, effortless as a whisper.

“I will consent to be made and unmade.”

An initiate must never walk in. Many elders raise the cocooned body high upon their hands and process into the open space, to lasers alight in a pin-and-string arrangement of bright green on dark velvet.

“To burn to ash and dissolve in dew.”

The elders guide the still, surrendered form up and into the core of the lattice of light.

“I am but dust and ashes; for me the world was created.”

They step back one by one, they walk away—

“Birthed in water.”

—withdrawing their hands, their support, with a longing, lingering slowness—

“Kindled in air.”

—leaving the initiate to float in a cradle-cage of light.

“Perfected in the void.”

The last elder stays a moment, one palm outward in farewell or blessing, then turns to retreat with the rest. A profound hush mutes the chamber; not a cough, not a shuffle. The ceiling slides quietly open, and all eyes are lifted up to contemplate the dim starlight and sharp lines surrounding the initiate. Here is a blazing ladder of shifting steps and handholds for the shrouded, silent messenger within to ascend and descend, to rise and return. The motion is slight, leisurely, and rhythmic, and continues for over an hour.

All the while, the people watch.

These observers are trained in attentiveness. They have all demonstrated their submission to weightlessness and their embrace of light. They too were once novices swaddled in zero-sensory cloth and frozen in micro-gravity. They are space pilots, this is their religion, and this ceremony is a kind of fast, a forsaking of things needful to life and living—sight, sound, the feel of skin pressing against the rest of creation, and the firm push of stable ground—and yet for every initiate there is a nourishment in the spareness and a comfort in the unseen light.

Each pilot in the gathering remembers their time, and marks time with their newest member; each mind muses on a single phrase. “Perfected in the void.”

It begins, as she knew it would, with an itching in her skin, and when that phase passes successfully, without twitch or scratch, it progresses to an itching in her brain. They are all watching me. She knows this. She knew this would be the case. What if I flounder and they all witness it? What if? She knew they would be there. Breathe, and recall: Perfected in the void.

Inhale, exhale, relax.

But why? Why did I choose this? So many pilots die. So many of us will disappear, as we test our theories and technologies in the vastness of space. I could burn to ash. I could dissolve into oblivion. Breathe. She has already chosen. That is why she is here, seeking the void. Perfected in the void.

Blissful drifting. Then the next distraction comes creeping from behind and leaps fully formed to the front of her head before she realizes she is thinking. This foolish ritual. What is the point? Will it help us die peacefully when our ships crack open or our suits malfunction? Will it help us fall gracefully into the long starvation of an undetectable orbit, or the brief, hellish flash and flare of the shooting star? Breathe. Will we die without screaming? Breathe, breathe. Will I— Breathe. Perfection is in the void. Perfected in the void.

Lines of light glimmer behind her closed eyelids, under the several folds of insulating cloth. They come and go, elusive, uncertain. At times she distrusts them as mere hallucinations. Other times, she includes them in the ebb and flow of her breath, feeling, sensing that somehow they are the threads, the warp and weft of the universe. She could gasp, or sigh, and bend those lines with her breath, make them draw reality with tiny tugs, and change the lie of the landscape, or tilt stability to find a new definition of ground.

She has forgotten words, but she no longer needs them.

The light is within her now, unquestionably present, gloriously sentient. She consults with it, pushes against it, yields before it. Here is the silencing of the superfluous and the focus on the needful. She has found her true senses in the quieting of the old perception pathways. She is caught up in the flex and curve, the bloom and contraction of spacetime. And there is no death in it, only the cycle of light, dust, and water; fire, ash, and extinguishing; sun, earth, and rain.

Rain. It begins to rain.

She can feel the drizzle on her bare skin. The time is over. They have pulled away the shroud. The hands of the elders are anointing her with cool, moist, mica-rich clay. She allows her skin to feel the prickle of the drying unction as the elders speak more words over her, more soothing ritual turned to stark truth.

“We are earth.”

“We reveal the light in the void.”

“We are ocean.”

“We reveal the light in the void.”

“We are fragments.”

“We reveal the wholeness in the void.”

She opens her eyes into starlit night and looks down at herself.

Every part of her body is sparkling. Her feet have come to rest scant millimeters above a shallow puddle. A net of light wraps around her like a royal cape. She looks out into the crowd, unashamed, clad in only light and dirt and water.

The congregation breathes out in approval, soft as a sigh, resonant as thunder. This is as they remember it; this is the old become new. Another pilot is inaugurated into the mysteries, and the tradition continues, strong. They chant the concluding canticle together.

“We are but dust and ashes.

For us, the universe was created.

We reveal the unseen light in the black perfection of void.”

©2018 by Karen Lord. Originally published in Particulates, edited by Nalo Hopkinson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Barbadian author, editor and research consultant Karen Lord is known for her debut novel Redemption in Indigo, which won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and the 2012 Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Best Debut), and was longlisted for the 2011 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her second novel The Best of All Possible Worlds won the 2009 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2013 RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel, and was a finalist for the 2014 Locus Awards. Its sequel, The Galaxy Game, was published in January 2015. She is the editor of the 2016 anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.

Miles and Miles and Miles

Andrew Penn Romine | 4127 words

Noah Stubbs eyes the large white pill pinched between his thumb and forefinger, remembering the first time he hit golf balls on the moon with Gord.

• • • •

“I wonder,” Gord says to him as Noah lines up on the tee, “just how far these suckers’ll really go?”

THWACK!

Noah swings. The little ball hurtles into the Lunar day, a pinprick of speeding light bright against the velvet sky. Long after the ball becomes invisible to the naked eye, his suit’s visor tracks its trajectory until it drops towards the ground.

They parked the hopper at the top of the Virgo Escarpment, well away from the commercial routes, to practice their drives. Gord leans against one of the jump-struts of the sturdy hopper, watching the ball sail out of sight. His laughter crackles through the comms.

“‘Miles and miles and miles,’” Gord replies.

“Huh? Suit’s visor says 2022 meters,” Noah says.

“No, I mean Alan Shepard,” Gord explains. “He was the first person to tee up on the Moon. They found some of the balls when they dug the foundations of Tranquility City. ‘Miles and miles and miles.’ That’s what he told Mission Control when they asked him how far he hit that first ball.”

“Ah,” Noah shrugs. He’s miles and miles away, himself. He’s only out here because Gord insisted.

Gord hops forward, his own club in hand. Absently, Noah spikes another plastic tee into the powdery dust for his co-pilot and places a ball on top. He hesitates before rising.

“Arkady’s gonna comm any minute, wondering where we are, Gord,” Noah warns. They co-own their hopper outright, but Gregor Arkady, the owner of MoonGo, still calls the shots.

“Screw that prick. It’s our lunch break.”

Noah doesn’t respond, still thinking about the proposition Arkady made him this morning. Gord takes his silence for grief and lays a thick-gloved hand on his shoulder. The exosuit’s haptic fibers simulate an approximation of a warm touch. Noah appreciates the sympathy, but it doesn’t help.

“We can sign out, Noah. Take the rest of the day off. Plenty of other hoppers running Lemon Crater City routes.”

“Nah,” he answers, eyes suddenly moist.

“Cancer’s not such a big deal anymore,” Gord assures him. “Mimi’s gonna be fine.”

The look on the doctor’s face yesterday as he delivered the news sure made it seem like a big deal. Mimi didn’t cry, just pressed her lips together in a hard, stoic line. His wife’s hazel eyes had shone with anger, not tears.

“The shielding, Gord. I cheaped out on the hab shielding.”

“You’ve got the same goddamn shielding everyone else’s got, my friend. Don’t blame yourself.”

Noah wants to tell Gord about the studies on cosmic ray exposure data in Type II habs, about the stuff the doctor said about mutation rates, anxiety, and memory loss. Instead he sees Mimi, shrugging off the diagnosis and heading back to her job at the hydroponic farms.

“She’s a fighter,” Noah concedes. His wife’s resilience isn’t what worries him, though. It’s their hopper’s profit margins. Mimi’s ReSource treatments are going to be expensive. Since he and Gord went independent, they’re not making as much money as they used to. Maybe he should consider the offer Arkady’s made him and make those secret runs, but he knows Gord won’t approve.

“Shepard, huh?” Noah asks, eager to change the subject back to golf.

“Yeah. Pretty neat story, yeah?” Gord says, eager to let him.

“Impossible.”

“Yeah, even with the gravity on Luna, there’s no way that—”

“No,” Noah interrupts, “I mean, it’s impossible they found those balls buried in the regolith over 200 years later.”

Gord swings. Their suits are light-years beyond what Shepard and the Apollo crew wore, and Gord’s movements are fluid as any Earthbound golf pro. His ball sails into the constant night sky.

“But they did. I’ve seen them at the museum in LC City,” Gord insists, watching the ball vanish. “Little shrunken things, baked brown in the sun. Priceless, now, I guess.”

Noah peers into the desolation of the Virgo Escarpment—as if he could see where their own balls have landed.

What would they be worth in 200 years’ time?

• • • •

Noah wakes with a start. It’s dark in his hab and there’s a chill in the air that even a hot shower can’t shake. The shampoo stings his eyes. Wrinkles crease his shaking hands. When did he get so old? Noah rinses as fast as he can and towels himself dry. His agitation grows.

There’s no coffee. Mimi usually brews a pot before she heads to the hospital for her treatments. Did she forget? There’s a meal bar waiting in the dispenser, at least. Noah eats it in three quick bites, washing it down with water straight from the tap.

He’d better hurry. Gord gripes when he’s late, and the morning orbitals will be arriving with passengers eager to catch a hopper to LC City. Plus, he wants to squeeze in one of Arkady’s side-jobs before he picks up Gord. A simple delivery, this time. His partner would gripe worse if he knew about Noah’s secret runs, but he’s almost made enough this month for Mimi’s ReSource treatments.

Noah sits on a bed too narrow for him and Mimi to share. Where the hell is she? He pulls on his work boots, eyes stinging with an angry flush of tears. He can’t say why he’s crying, precisely, but it has to do with Mimi, he’s sure.

The clock by the bed says 0300. That can’t be right. Maybe he’d better wait for Mimi to get back before he leaves for work.

He wrings his hands and hopes Gord will forgive him for being late.

• • • •

Oh God, she’s been dead for years and I’m sitting here alone in the dark in a stranger’s hab.

No, his own hab. He lives here now. Gabi rented it for him after he retired. She wanted him to live on his own as long as possible.

Didn’t she?

• • • •

On another day, Noah boards his hopper and switches on the batteries. Thruster tanks are full, but he taps the readout and frowns. Not much capacity in these tanks. Gord must have swapped the old ones out. Noah activates the autopilot and punches coordinates into the navcomp. Still enough fuel to get Virgo Escarpment. These hoppers can fly themselves if you let them.

He’s taking a risk. Noah’s suit isn’t rated for all the time he’s spending outside, burying things he hopes aren’t bodies, for Arkady in the regolith wastes. Just one more time, he tells himself. He’ll look for some of their golf balls, too, sell them to that off-worlder Thornton as moon relics. Little brown nuggets might as well be made of gold far as that rich bastard’s concerned.

ReSource isn’t working well for Mimi, but with extra cash from Thornton and Arkady, he can afford the experimental meds now.

He’s bouncing over Armstrong Crater when the comm starts buzzing. He answers, expecting a tirade from Gord. It’s Mimi. Noah’s chest aches. She’s supposed to be checked into the hospital for treatment. She looks different on the comm screen, too. Plump, healthy, face framed by ink-black curls. Mimi usually wears her hair straight.

“Thank God!” she cries.

Noah’s so confused by Mimi’s appearance, he can’t even look at her, so he studies the navcomp instead, angry again. Virgo Escarpment is twenty-five kilometers south. Hell, he overshot. The controls on this new hopper are too damn sensitive. He’ll have to get Gord to show him.

“Dad! How did you get out of the center?” the face on the screen yells. “Look, I need you to release the autopilot to me. We’ll bring you back home, okay?”

Dad? Home?

No, if he doesn’t finish this job for Arkady, there’ll be hell to pay.

“Christ, I’ve got customers waiting!” he snaps, though his reservation board is clear. At least he thinks it is. He can’t seem to find that screen. An amber light flashes in three-burst patterns on the autopilot panel. A pop-up box asks for thumbprint authorization.

He scowls at the woman on the screen. “Why aren’t you in the hospital, Mimi?”

The woman’s hand flies up to her face in shock. Tears shine in her eyes.

“Dad, this is your daughter Gabi. Mom died thirty years ago.”

• • • •

Gregor Arkady is a son of a bitch, smirking across that big fat desk of his. He insists Noah and Gord buy fuel and insurance through the office. Through him.

“Mr. Stubbs, do you know why you’re here?”

Of course he does. Arkady always presses. Upsells.

They already buy the fuel, but not the insurance. Anyway, Noah does the side jobs so Arkady still makes a fortune off him. Deliveries to shadowy figures. Disposals in the lunar regolith. Why’s he being such a prick this morning?

Noah rolls his eyes and shoots a look to Gord. Except it’s not Gord in the chair next to him, it’s Mimi. Her face is red and puffy from crying. Noah guesses it’s because she just found out about her cancer. Rage comes on like a thruster blast, and it’s all he can do not to hurl himself across the desk at the pompous bastard.

“Fuck you, Arkady,” he fumes. “Of all the days to drag me in here to sell your horseshit fuel.”

Mimi gasps, but Arkady is unphased. He sets down his datatab and folds his hands. Calm. Unlike Arkady at all, actually.

“The dementia is rather advanced,” Arkady says to Mimi, tapping his datatab. “All those years on the surface, I’m afraid.”

Noah scowls as Arkady turns back to him.

“Mr. Stubbs,” he says, almost gently, “I know it’s hard to see this right now, but your daughter’s doing the right thing. You’ll be well taken care of here. We have the best memory care center—”

“Listen, you fucker,” Noah snarls, releasing years of pent-up anger at the smug gangster. He jumps to his feet, stabbing his finger like it was a dagger in Arkady’s heart.

“We pay our goddamn fees and I made you a pretty pile this month, so f—”

A hand on his shoulder. Mimi. Now Noah reddens, ashamed at the outburst. Mimi shouldn’t have to see him like that, especially not today.

“Dad. Doctor Kavanian is trying to help us. Help you.”

Noah jerks his arm away from Mimi’s hand, confused. Dad? Kavanian? How can she be so goddamn calm? ReSource is expensive and she’s terminal without it. And without Mimi, he’s all alone. His daughter Gabi is just too busy with her kids and wife on Earth. She doesn’t have time for him anymore.

Shame ices over the last of the fight in him, and Noah slumps back into the chair.

“Just take me back to Gord. We’re expecting a full load from the Mars shuttles this afternoon. Founder’s Day. We’ll make three times the usual rates.”

Mimi gives a strangled cry.

“Gord—y-you don’t remember the accident, Dad? No, of course you don’t. He’s been gone five years.”

Noah scowls. Gone? Where? They were supposed to hit some golf balls off Virgo again tonight.

• • • •

Noah paces through his darkened hab, clutching a golf ball tightly in his fist. Careful. It’s an artifact, a “precious piece of history.” Thornton offered him thousands of luna for just one, and Noah’s got a whole drawer full.

He’ll be rich as long as Thornton doesn’t find out they’re all fake. No, not fake, exactly. He and Gord hit these balls. Not ancient, but brown and sun-baked. Plastic flakes from his hand, dusting the floor like dandruff.

• • • •

Noah met Thornton on a fare out to Temperance Crater. He’s a big shot vice-prexy of some mining Venture on Mars. Old pal of Arkady’s. Connected.

Made.

All the way out to the big mass drivers installed at Temp Crater, Thornton raved about his collection of space age antiques, especially the Soviet pennants from the first lunar explorations. Noah told him about Shepard’s golf balls—turns out a lot of astronauts teed off in those early days. Thornton knew about the balls, obsessed over adding some to his collection. Said he tried to buy the pair in the Apollo museum once, but they wouldn’t sell.

That’s when Noah got his idea.

He’d dug up some of the balls he and Gord shot off Virgo Escarpment while he was burying things for Arkady. There were dozens more lying around out there, too. Arkady had connections with a few fences who’d “confirm” their age and authenticity. Shepherd’s. Armstrong’s.

Noah puts his flaking ball back in the drawer with the others before it crumbles any further. Five of them. He found them right where his visor said they’d be and picked them out of the gray regolith. The extremes of the lunar day had completely baked out the dimples and he could hardly read the brand names on the surface. They looked identical to the ones in the museum. Would it be enough to fool Thornton, though? Arkady was sure of it.

All Noah knows is that Mimi is counting on it.

• • • •

The holocomm in the waiting room blares an old soap, the sappy music swells and penetrates Noah’s eardrums. He squirms in his chair, fresh anger rising at the noise. The padding in the chair is worn as thin as his jumpsuit bottom. Where’s his goddamn suit, anyway?

The stale perfume of cut flowers permeates the air. Mimi’s hospital seems populated by old people, most of them well north of a hundred. He catches the eye of one woman and she grins and shows him a little leg. Noah rolls his eyes and the woman laughs. Christ, they’re in a cancer ward, not some dive bar in LC City.

An orderly appears before Noah, a big man thick about the shoulders and bald as a dick. Looks less like a nurse than one of Arkady’s goons. Or Thornton’s. Oh shit. Had Thorton’s people finally figured out what happened to him?

With a tight smile, the orderly hands Noah a mug of water, followed by a small paper cup full of candy-bright pills.

For Mimi.

Noah nods to the orderly. He’ll make sure she gets them when she comes back out of treatment. He turns his attention back to the soap, but the orderly remains firmly planted in the way.

“The pills will ease your symptoms, Mr. Stubbs,” the big man insists, a scowl twitching his brow.

“Fuck off back to Arkady. He already got his cut,” Noah growls.

“Do you need help, sir?” The orderly places a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” Noah snarls. He shoots a look to Leg-lady, hoping she’ll notice the way he’s standing up to the goon. She’s forgotten him, though, and stares unfocused at the holocomm.

Noah flings the pills at the goon’s anvil face and dumps the water on the floor.

“Tell Arkady I’m done with his jobs!”

He jumps to his feet, screaming.

“I told him Thornton was the last one I’d bury!”

He throws a swing, but the goon’s got him on the floor already. Noah feels a cold panic as the man’s body presses up against him. Noah’s not a small guy, himself, but he’s powerless against the orderly. The big man holds him down with one rough hand, gathers the pills up with the other.

“You goddamn piece of shit, leave me alone!” Noah raves.

Spit flies. Pills scatter. Leg-lady screams. Other nurses scramble into the waiting room. The big orderly gives up on the pills and steps back as the newcomers lift Noah back into his chair. Their hands are softer than the big man’s.

“How’s Mimi? Did they get it all out? When can I talk to the doctor?”

Noah asks these questions again and again but the answers are all the same.

“Soon, Mr. Stubbs, soon.”

• • • •

Gord—isn’t he dead?—parks the hopper on the edge of the Virgo Escarpment and sighs.

“Wanna hit a few?” Noah asks, casual, but Gord’s having none of it. His partner reddens.

“I know about Arkady’s side jobs, Noah,” he says, sounding more resigned than angry.

Noah plays stupid, stalling for time.

“What?”

“I read the hopper’s logs, man. It’s my job. There’s lots of kilometers that aren’t officially logged. Wear on the struts I didn’t put there. I found holos and saw you picking through the regolith for our balls. I—saw what you buried in the dust, too. Christ, man. You think you’re the only one Arkady leaned on for help disposing his ‘problems’? At least I had the good sense to tell him no.”

Noah shakes his head, suddenly relieved he can be honest with Gord now.

“ReSource wasn’t working. I couldn’t afford the experimental meds, Gord. You know what our profits look like. I couldn’t afford to tell Arkady no. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“It’s a fucking betrayal, Noah!” Gord says. Sadness etches itself onto Gord’s dark face, despite the harsh words.

“I’m going to buy you out,” he says, “a generous offer, too. But we’re done as business partners. Retire, Noah. Lie low. Get clear of Arkady’s network. Mimi’s gone, rest her, and with Gabrielle married—”

“When did Gabi get married?” Noah explodes. Of course, she didn’t even fucking invite him!

Gabi thinks he doesn’t like her fiancé. Noah loves her. She’s smart, funny. Kind. A centering calm to Gabi’s wildness. He’d have given anything to be at the wedding. Why the hell had she excluded him?

Gord flinches, startled.

“You were at the wedding, Noah,” he explains in a patient tone. “Damn. But you don’t remember, do you? When’s the last time you saw Doctor Kavanian? I thought those pills were helping? Look, take Gabi with you this time.”

Gord snapped his mouth shut.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Noah waves off his apology, seeing the frayed memory of Gabi’s wedding as if through a foggy lens. He knows all that digging in the lunar dust had done a number on his brain. Suit’s not rated for so many hours outside. Should’ve gotten a better one, but he could barely keep up the hopper payments after Mimi’s treatments. Might have been even better to tell Arkady to shove it.

Cancer. Dementia. Arkady. One or the other was bound to catch up with you eventually.

• • • •

In the hopper. Full burn towards Virgo Escarpment. Noah sits at the controls, but the autopilot’s switched on. He’s alone. Gord’s in the back with the cargo, still mad about Arkady’s jobs.

Isn’t he?

Two blips flash on his scanner, other hoppers closing in at speed.

Shit! Thornton!

The big shot isn’t as stupid as Noah hoped. He’d caught on to the fake golf balls, Arkady warned him. Thornton’s back on Luna and knows about the other jobs, too.

Lie low, be careful is Arkady’s advice.

Noah checks the fuel gauge, he’s got plenty to make it to the escarpment, of course, but not a lot for extended maneuvers. The old BLOK-89 hopper is not much good for that. In a panic, he slaps his leg, feels the reassuring, hard knot of the last golf ball in his pocket. Mimi’s salvation.

His downfall.

“Gord, get strapped in, we got company!”

But Gord doesn’t come back up to the cockpit. Something bangs around in the cargo hold.

He hit his head, Noah remembers. That’s how it happened.

He twists the control yokes and sends the hopper into a deep dive towards the shallow dunes that surround the Virgo Escarpment like ripples in a pond. Toward where the golf balls lie. The hopper groans with the acceleration and the whole cockpit shudders.

Autopilot klaxons blare, ripping the yoke from his hands, attempting to set the hopper on a saner course. Dammit, he’d forgot to disable the damn thing.

The autopilot is too late, though, and one of the hopper’s leg-struts thumps against a boulder twice the size of their first dome hab, the one where he’d built the tree house for Gabi.

The displays scream. The boulder impact plucks the leg strut clear away from the fuselage. Noah tries to grab the controls back, but the hopper flips on its back, plowing upside down into the regolith.

Noah lies panting in the dark of the cabin, hanging in his chair, tasting blood. There are warning lights sparking and the faint smell of smoke. Noah wants to sleep, and behind his drooping eyes, all the lights look like blurry Yuletide decorations.

The airlock clunks and hisses, opens, revealing a box of red light. A space-suited figure looms out of the shadows. One of Thornton’s thugs, to make sure the job was done. The glare-visor dissolves, golden sheen paling to transparent glass. On the other side, Mimi is crying again.

Her voice, tinny in the suit’s speakers.

“Dad, Dad, are you okay?”

• • • •

Gord keeps insisting Mimi’s dead, but Noah knows better. Bastard Thornton kidnapped his wife. Gabi swears it’s not true. She gets so mad about it she cries herself dry. Guess she doesn’t care her Mom’s imprisoned by a Martian gangster.

Gord says a lot of strange things now, but Noah forgets most of it. It doesn’t seem important as waiting for Mimi to return from the hospital. He sits on his narrow bed, wringing his hands in the dark.

The lights come on, airlock hot, and Noah cries out, shielding his eyes.

An orderly from the hospital shuffles in with a bouquet of flowers, glaring at him. Noah’s sure he’s met him before but can’t recall his name. The big guy who’s bald as a dick.

Mimi will remember—he’ll ask her when she gets out of surgery.

“Evening, Mr. Stubbs,” the orderly says, and a prickling sensation crawls up Noah’s spine.

“You,” he sighs.

“You remember me?” the orderly asks, his eyebrows raised. It’s clearly not the response he’d expected.

“Arkady send you?”

“No,” the orderly hesitates, takes a step back like he’s expecting trouble.

“You here to give me my pills?” Noah asks. A curious relief washes over him even as the orderly’s scowl deepens.

“Yes,” the big man says, setting the flowers on the empty dresser-top. From a shirt pocket he pulls out a white, oval pill. He’s supposed to put it in a paper cup.

A cold sensation washes through Noah.

“You’re one of Thornton’s goons,” Noah says. Has to be. The polished dome gives him away.

Noah feels in his pockets. There’s a golf ball in each of them. Insurance. One for Mimi and one for Gabi. He can’t remember if he brought them from the museum or the driving range. Gord would remember. Brittle, but still hard. Still worth something. He thrusts out the golf balls to the orderly. The big man laughs.

“I said you’d have to take your medicine eventually, Mr. Stubbs.”

Noah glares at the orderly.

“All these years and you don’t remember what you did for Arkady. Makes this harder, somehow,” the orderly mutters, frowning. He fills a plastic cup with water from the carafe next to the flowers.

Noah’s damn tired of people telling him what he can’t remember. He remembers burying lots of Arkady’s mistakes. Burying what was left of Thornton in exchange for Arkady’s money. He remembers Mimi dying anyway, and Gord dead later on in that wreck. He remembers Gabi trying so damn hard to save him, same as he tried to save everyone else.

“I remember,” he tells the orderly.

Noah takes the pill from him, and he and the big man stare at each other for a long time.

• • • •

A week after they teed off that first time, Noah and Gord make an extended run to Tranquility City. With a few hours to kill before the next fare, they visit the Apollo Wing of the Lunar Heritage Museum. Gord peers into the glass case next to the reconstruction of the rover. A pair of tan spheres like the husks of chestnuts lay suspended in column of rotating aerogel.

Golf Balls (brand Illegible), thought to have been smuggled into the Apollo 12 Mission by pioneer astronaut Alan Shepherd. Ca. 1970. Gift to the museum by Anonymous Donor.

“I bet we can hit them farther than Shepard ever did,” Gord says, scratching thoughtfully at the sparse hairs growing gray on his chin.

“Miles and miles and miles,” Noah laughs. A few weeks from Mimi’s diagnosis and treatment seems more doable now, especially with Arkady’s side jobs. Noah shudders, doing his best to forget all about them.

Gord pats him on the back and he comes back to himself.

“Wanna go hit a few?” Noah asks.

©2019 by Andrew Penn Romine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Penn Romine is a writer and animator living in Seattle. When he’s not wrangling words, robots, superheroes, or dragons, he dabbles in craft cocktails and sequential art. A graduate of the Clarion West workshop, his fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Eyedolon Magazine, Paizo, By Faerie Light, Fungi, and Help Fund My Robot Army. He’s hard at work on a new novel. You can find him at www.andrewpennromine.com and on Twitter @inkgorilla.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Moon Is Not a Battlefield

Indrapramit Das | 8152 words

We’re recording.

I was born in the sky, for war. This is what we were told.

I think when people hear this, they think of ancient Earth stories. Of angels and superheroes and gods, leaving destruction between the stars. But I’m no superhero, no Kalel of America-Bygone with the flag of his dead planet flying behind him. I’m no angel Gabreel striking down Satan in the void or blowing the trumpet to end worlds. I’m no devi Durga bristling with arms and weapons, chasing down demons through the cosmos and vanquishing them, no Kali with a string of heads hanging over her breasts black as deep space, making even the other gods shake with terror at her righteous rampage.

I was born in the sky, for war. What does it mean?

• • • •

I was actually born on Earth, not far above sea level, in the Greater Kolkata Megapolis. My parents gave me away to the Government of India when I was still a small child, in exchange for enough money for them to live off frugally for a year—an unimaginable amount of wealth for two Dalit street-dwellers who scraped shit out of sewers for a living, and scavenged garbage for recycling—sewers sagging with centuries worth of shit, garbage heaps like mountains. There was another child I played with the most in our slum. The government took her as well. Of the few memories I have left of those early days on Earth, the ones of us playing are clearest, more than the ones of my parents, because they weren’t around much. But she was always there. She’d bring me hot jalebis snatched from the hands of hapless pedestrians, her hands covered in syrup, and we’d share them. We used to climb and run along the huge sea wall that holds back the rising Bay of Bengal, and spit in the churning sea. I haven’t seen the sea since, except from space—that roiling mass of water feels like a dream. So do those days, with the child who would become the soldier most often by my side. The government told our parents that they would cleanse us of our names, our untouchability, give us a chance to lead noble lives as astral defenders of the Republic of India. Of course they gave us away. I don’t blame them. Aditi never blamed hers, either. That was the name my friend was given by the Army. You’ve met her. We were told our new names before training even began. Single-names, always. Usually from the Mahabharata or Ramayana, we realized later. I don’t remember the name my parents gave me. I never asked Aditi if she remembered hers.

That, then, is when the life of asura Gita began.

I was raised by the state to be a soldier, and borne into the sky in the hands of the Republic to be its protector, before I even hit puberty.

The notion that there could be war on the Moon, or anywhere beyond Earth, was once a ridiculous dream.

So are many things, until they come to pass.

I’ve lived for thirty-six years as an infantry soldier stationed off-world. I was deployed and considered in active duty from eighteen in the Chandnipur Lunar Cantonment Area. I first arrived in Chandnipur at six, right after they took us off the streets. I grew up there. The Army raised us. Gave us a better education than we’d have ever gotten back on Earth. Right from childhood, me and my fellow asuras—Earth-bound Indian infantry soldiers were jawans, but we were always, always asuras, a mark of pride—we were told that we were stationed in Chandnipur to protect the intrasolar gateway of the Moon for the greatest country on that great blue planet in our black sky—India. India, which we could see below the clouds if we squinted during Earthrise on a surface patrol (if we were lucky, we could spot the white wrinkle of the Himalayas through telescopes). We learned the history of our home: After the United States of America and Russia, India was the third Earth nation to set foot on the Moon, and the first to settle a permanent base there. Chandnipur was open to scientists, astronauts, tourists, and corporations of all countries, to do research, develop space travel, take expensive holidays, and launch inter-system mining drones to asteroids. The generosity and benevolence of Bharat Mata, no? But we were to protect Chandnipur’s sovereignty as Indian territory at all costs, because other countries were beginning to develop their own lunar expeditions to start bases. Chandnipur, we were told, was a part of India. The only part of India not on Earth. We were to make sure it remained that way. This was our mission. Even though, we were told, the rest of the world didn’t officially recognize any land on the Moon to belong to any country, back then. Especially because of that.

Do you remember Chandnipur well?

• • • •

It was where I met you, asura Gita. Hard to forget that, even if it hadn’t been my first trip to the Moon. I was very nervous. The ride up the elevator was peaceful. Like . . . being up in the mountains, in the Himalayas, you know? Oh—I’m so sorry. Of course not. Just, the feeling of being high up—the silence of it, in a way, despite all the people in the elevator cabins. But then you start floating under the seat belts, and there are the safety instructions on how to move around the platform once you get to the top, and all you feel like doing is pissing. That’s when you feel untethered. The shuttle to the Moon from the top of the elevator wasn’t so peaceful. Every blast of the craft felt so powerful out there. The gs just raining down on you as you’re strapped in. I felt like a feather.

Like a feather. Yes. I imagine so. There are no birds in Chandnipur, but us asuras always feel like feathers. Felt. Now I feel heavy all the time, like a stone, like a—hah—a moon, crashing into its world, so possessed by gravity, though I’m only skin and bones. A feather on a moon, a stone on a planet.

You know, when our Havaldar, Chamling his name was, told me that asura Aditi and I were to greet and guide a reporter visiting the Cantonment Area, I can’t tell you how shocked we were. We were so excited. We would be on the feeds! We never got reporters up there. Well, to be honest, I wanted to show off our bravery, tell you horror stories of what happens if you wear your suit wrong outside the Cantonment Area on a walk, or get caught in warning shots from Chinese artillery klicks away, or what happens if the micro-atmosphere over Chandnipur malfunctions and becomes too thin while you’re out and about there (you burn or freeze or asphyxiate). Civilians like horror stories from soldiers. You see so many of them in the media feeds in the pods, all these war stories. I used to like seeing how different it is for soldiers on Earth, in the old wars, the recent ones. Sometimes it would get hard to watch, of course.

Anyway, asura Aditi said to me, “Gita, they aren’t coming here to be excited by a war movie. We aren’t even at war. We’re in territorial conflict. You use the word war and it’ll look like we’re boasting. We need to make them feel at home, not scare the shit out of them. We need to show them the hospitality of asuras on our own turf.”

Couldn’t disagree with that. We wanted people on Earth to see how well we do our jobs, so that we’d be welcomed with open arms when it was time for the big trip back—the promised pension, retirement, and that big old heaven in the sky where we all came from, Earth. We wanted every Indian up there to know we were protecting their piece of the Moon. Your piece of the Moon.

I thought soldiers would be frustrated having to babysit a journalist following them around. But you and asura Aditi made me feel welcome.

I felt bad for you. We met civilians in Chandnipur proper, when we got time off, in the Underground Markets, the bars. But you were my first fresh one, Earth-fresh. Like the imported fish in the Markets. Earth-creatures, you know, always delicate, expensive, mouth open gawping, big eyes. Out of water, they say.

Did I look “expensive”? I was just wearing the standard issue jumpsuits they give visitors.

Arre, you know what I mean. In the Markets, we soldiers couldn’t buy Earth-fish or Earth-lamb or any Earth-meat, when they showed up every six months. We only ever tasted the printed stuff. Little packets; in the stalls, they heat up the synthi for you in the machine. Nothing but salt and heat and protein. Imported Earth-meat was too expensive. Same for Earth-people, expensive. Fish out of water. Earth meant paradise. You came from heaven. No offense.

None taken. You and asura Aditi were very good to me. That’s what I remember.

After Aditi reminded me that you were going to show every Indian on their feeds our lives, we were afraid of looking bad. You looked scared, at first. Did we scare you?

I wouldn’t say scared. Intimidated. You know, everything you were saying earlier, about gods and superheroes from the old Earth stories. The stuff they let you watch and read in the pods. That’s what I saw, when you welcomed us in full regalia, out on the surface, in your combat suits, at the parade. You gleamed like gods. Like devis, asuras, like your namesakes. Those weapon limbs, when they came out of the backs of your suit during the demonstration, they looked like the arms of the goddesses in the epics, or the wings of angels, reflecting the sunlight coming over the horizon—the light was so white, after Earth, not shifted yellow by atmosphere. It was blinding, looking at you all. I couldn’t imagine having to face that, as a soldier, as your enemy. Having to face you. I couldn’t imagine having to patrol for hours, and fight, in those suits—just my civilian surface suit was so hot inside, so claustrophobic. I was shaking in there, watching you all.

Do you remember, the Governor of Chandnipur Lunar Area came out to greet you, and shake the hands of all the COs. A surface parade like that, on airless ground, that never happened—it was all for you and the rest of the reporters, for the show back on Earth. We had never before even seen the Governor in real life, let alone in a surface suit. The rumours came back that he was trembling and sweating when he shook their hands—that he couldn’t even pronounce the words to thank them for their service. So you weren’t alone, at least.

Then when we went inside the Cantonment Area, and we were allowed to take off our helmets right out in the open—I waited for you and Aditi to do it first. I didn’t believe I wouldn’t die, that my face wouldn’t freeze. We were on that rover, such a bumpy ride, but open air like those vehicles in the earliest pictures of people on the Moon—just bigger. We went through the Cantonment airlock gate, past the big yellow sign that reads “Chandnipur, Gateway to the Stars,” and when we emerged from the other side, Aditi told me to look up and see for myself, the different sky. From deep black to that deep, dusky blue, it was amazing, like crossing over into another world. The sunlight still felt different, blue-white instead of yellow, filtered by the nanobot haze, shimmering in that lunar dawn coming in over the hilly rim of Daedalus crater. The sun felt tingly, raw, like it burned even though the temperature was cool. The Earth was half in shadow—it looked fake, a rendered backdrop in a veeyar sim. And sometimes the micro-atmosphere would move just right and the bots would be visible for a few seconds in a wave across that low sky, the famous flocks of lunar fireflies. The rover went down the suddenly smooth lunarcrete road, down the main road of the Cantonment—

New Delhi Avenue.

Yes, New Delhi Avenue, with the rows of wireframed flags extended high, all the state colours of India, the lines and lines of white barracks with those tiny windows on both sides. I wanted to stay in those, but they put us civilians underground, in a hotel. They didn’t want us complaining about conditions. As we went down New Delhi Avenue and turned into the barracks for the tour, you and Aditi took off your helmets and breathed deep. Your faces were covered in black warpaint. Greasepaint. Full regalia, yes? You both looked like Kali, with or without the necklace of heads. Aditi helped me with the helmet, and I felt lunar air for the first time. The dry, cool air of Chandnipur. And you said, “Welcome to chota duniya. You can take off the helmet.” Chota duniya, the little world. Those Kali faces, running with sweat, the tattoos of your wetware. You wore a small beard, back then, and a crew-cut. Asura Aditi had a ponytail, I was surprised that was allowed.

You looked like warriors, in those blinding suits of armour.

Warriors. I don’t anymore, do I. What do I look like now?

I see you have longer hair. You shaved off your beard.

Avoiding the question, clever. Did you know that jawan means “young man”? But we were asuras. We were proud of our hair, not because we were young men. We, the women and the hijras, the not-men, told the asuras who were men, why do you get to keep beards and moustaches and we don’t? Some of them had those twirly moustaches like the asuras in the myths. So the boys said to us: We won’t stop you. Show us your beards! From then it was a competition. Aditi could hardly grow a beard on her pretty face, so she gave up when it was just fuzz. I didn’t. I was so proud when I first sprouted that hair on my chin, when I was a teenager. After I grew it out, Aditi called it a rat-tail. I never could grow the twirly moustaches. But I’m a decommissioned asura now, so I’ve shaved off the beard.

What do you think you look like now?

Like a beggar living in a slum stuck to the side of the space elevator that took me up to the sky so long ago, and brought me down again not so long ago.

Some of my neighbours don’t see asuras as women or men. I’m fine with that. They ask me: Do you still bleed? Did you menstruate on the Moon? They say menstruation is tied to the Moon, so asuras must bleed all the time up there, or never at all down here. They think we used all that blood to paint ourselves red because we are warriors. To scare our enemies. I like that idea. Some of them don’t believe it when I say that I bleed the same as any Earthling with a cunt. The young ones believe me, because they help me out, bring me rags, pads when they can find them, from down there in the city—can’t afford the meds to stop bleeding altogether. Those young ones are a blessing. I can’t exactly hitch a ride on top of the elevator up and down every day in my condition.

People in the slum all know you’re an asura?

I ask again: What do I look like now?

A veteran. You have the scars. From the wetware that plugged you into the suits. The lines used to be black, raised—on your face, neck. Now they’re pale, flat.

The mark of the decommissioned asura—everyone knows who you are. The government plucks out your wires. Like you’re a broken machine. They don’t want you selling the wetware on the black market. They’re a part of the suits we wore, just a part we wore all the time inside us—and the suits are property of the Indian Army, Lunar Command.

I told you why the suits are so shiny, didn’t I, all those years ago? Hyper-reflective surfaces so we didn’t fry up in them like the printed meat in their heating packets when the sun comes up. The suits made us easy to spot on a lunar battlefield. It’s why we always tried to stay in shadow, use infrared to spot enemies. When we went on recon, surveillance missions, we’d use lighter stealth suits, non-metal, non-reflective, dark gray like the surface. We could only do that if we coordinated our movements to land during night-time.

When I met you and asura Aditi then, you’d been in a few battles already. With Chinese and Russian troops. Small skirmishes.

All battles on the Moon are small skirmishes. You can’t afford anything bigger. Even the horizon is smaller, closer. But yes, our section had seen combat a few times. But even that was mostly waiting, and scoping with infrared along the shadows of craters. When there was fighting, it was between long, long stretches of walking and sitting. But it was never boring. Nothing can be boring when you’ve got a portioned ration of air to breathe, and no sound to warn you of a surprise attack. Each second is measured out and marked in your mind. Each step is a success. When you do a lunar surface patrol outside Chandnipur, outside regulated atmosphere or Indian territory, as many times as we did, you do get used to it. But never, ever bored. If anything, it becomes hypnotic—you do everything you need to do without even thinking, in that silence between breathing and the words of your fellow soldiers.

You couldn’t talk too much about what combat was like on the Moon, on that visit.

They told us not to. Havaldar Chamling told us that order came all the way down from the Lieutenant General of Lunar Command. It was all considered classified information, even training maneuvers. It was pretty silent when you were in Chandnipur. I’m sure the Russians and the Chinese had news of that press visit. They could have decided to put on a display of might, stage some shock and awe attacks, missile strikes, troop movements to draw us out of the Cantonment Area.

I won’t lie—I was both relieved and disappointed. I’ve seen war, as a field reporter. Just not on the Moon. I wanted to see firsthand what the asuras were experiencing.

It would have been difficult. Lunar combat is not like Earth combat, though I don’t know much about Earth combat other than theory and history. I probably know less than you do, ultimately, because I’ve never experienced it. But I’ve read things, watched things about wars on Earth. Learned things, of course, in our lessons. It’s different on the Moon. Harder to accommodate an extra person when each battle is like a game of chess. No extra pieces allowed on the board. Every person needs their own air. No one can speak out of turn and clutter up comms. The visibility of each person needs to be accounted for, since it’s so high.

The most frightening thing about lunar combat is that you often can’t tell when it’s happening until it’s too late. On the battlefields beyond Chandnipur, out on the magma seas, combat is silent. You can’t hear anything but your own footsteps, the thoom-thoom-thoom of your suit’s metal boots crunching dust, or the sounds of your own weapons through your suit, the rattle-kick of ballistics, the near-silent hum of lasers vibrating in the metal of the shell keeping you alive. You’ll see the flash of a mine or grenade going off a few feet away but you won’t hear it. You won’t hear anything coming down from above unless you look up—be it ballistic missiles or a meteorite hurtling down after centuries flying through outer space. You’ll feel the shockwave knock you back, but you won’t hear it. If you’re lucky, of course.

Laser weapons are invisible out there, and that’s what’s we mostly used. There’s no warning at all. No muzzle-flash, no noise. One minute you’re sitting there thinking you’re on the right side of the rocks giving you cover, and the next moment you see a glowing hole melting into the suit of the soldier next to you, like those time-lapse videos of something rotting. It takes less than a second if the soldier on the other side of the beam is aiming properly. Less than a second and there’s the flash and pop, blood and gas and superheated metal venting into the thin air like an aerosol spray, the scream like static in the mics. Aditi was a sniper, she could’ve told you how lethal the long-range lasers were. I carried a semi-auto, laser or ballistic; those lasers were as deadly, just lower range and zero warm-up. When we were in battles closer to settlements, we’d switch to the ballistic weaponry, because the buildings and bases are mostly better protected from that kind of damage, bulletproof. There was kind of a silent agreement between all sides to keep from heavily damaging the actual bases. Those ballistic fights were almost a relief—our suits could withstand projectile damage better, and you could see the tracers coming from kilometers away, even if you couldn’t hear them. Like fire on oil, across the jet sky. Bullets aren’t that slow either, especially here on the Moon, but somehow it felt better to see it, like you could dodge the fire, especially if we were issued jet packs, though we rarely used them because of how difficult they were to control. Aditi was better at using hers.

She saved my life once.

I mean, she did that many times, we both did for each other, just by doing what we needed to do on a battlefield. But she directly saved my life once, like an Earth movie hero. Rocket-propelled grenade on a quiet battlefield. Right from up above and behind us. I didn’t even see it. I just felt asura Aditi shove me straight off the ground from behind and blast us off into the air with her jetpack, propelling us both twenty feet above the surface in a second. We twirled in mid-air, and for a little moment, it felt like we were free of the Moon, hovering there between it and the blazing blue Earth, dancing together. As we sailed back down and braced our legs for landing without suit damage, Aditi never let me go, kept our path back down steady. Only then did I see the cloud of lunar dust and debris hanging where we’d been seconds earlier, the aftermath of an explosion I hadn’t heard or seen, the streaks of light as the rest of the fireteam returned ballistic fire, spreading out in leaps with short bursts from their jetpacks. No one died in that encounter. I don’t even remember whose troops we were fighting in that encounter, which lunar army. I just remember that I didn’t die because of Aditi.

Mostly, we never saw the enemy close up. They were always just flecks of light on the horizon, or through our infrared overlay. Always ghosts, reflecting back the light of sun and Earth, like the Moon itself. It made it easier to kill them, if I’m being honest. They already seemed dead. When you’re beyond Chandnipur, out on the mara under that merciless black sky with the Earth gleaming in the distance, the only colour you can see anywhere, it felt like we were already dead too. Like we were all just ghosts playing out the old wars of humanity, ghosts of soldiers who died far, far down on the ground. But then we’d return to the city, to the warm bustle of the Underground Markets on our days off, to our chota duniya, and the Earth would seem like heaven again, not a world left behind but one to be attained, one to earn, the unattainable paradise rather than a distant history of life that we’d only lived through media pods and lessons.

And now, here you are. On Earth.

Here I am. Paradise attained. I have died and gone to heaven.

It’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Why we’re talking.

You could say that. Thank you for coming, again. You didn’t have any trouble coming up the elevator shaft, did you? I know it’s rough clinging to the top of the elevator.

I’ve been on rougher rides. There are plenty of touts down in the elevator base station who are more than willing to give someone with a few rupees a lending hand up the spindle. So. You were saying. About coming back to Earth. It must have been surprising, the news that you were coming back, last year.

FTL changed everything. That was, what, nine years ago?

At first it brought us to the edge of full-on lunar war, like never before, because the Moon became the greatest of all jewels in the night sky. It could become our first FTL port. Everyone wanted a stake in that. Every national territory on the Moon closed off its borders while the Earth governments negotiated. We were closed off in our bunkers, looking at the stars through the small windows, eating nothing but thin parathas from emergency flour rations. We made them on our personal heating coils with synthi butter—no food was coming through because of embargo, mess halls in the main barracks were empty. We lived on those parathas and caffeine infusion. Our stomachs were like balloons, full of air.

Things escalated like never before, in that time. I remember a direct Chinese attack on Chandnipur’s outer defences, where we were stationed. One bunker window was taken out by laser. I saw a man stuck to the molten hole in the pane because of depressurization, wriggling like a dying insect. Asura Jatayu, a quiet, skinny soldier with a drinking problem. People always said he filled his suit’s drinking water pods with diluted moonshine from the Underground Markets, and sucked it down during patrols. I don’t know if that’s true, but people didn’t trust him because of it, even though he never really did anything to fuck things up. He was stone cold sober that day. I know, because I was with him. Aditi, me, and two other asuras ripped him off the broken window, activated the emergency shutter before we lost too much pressure. But he’d already hemorrhaged severely through the laser wound, which had blown blood out of him and into the thin air of the Moon. He was dead. The Chinese had already retreated by the time we recovered. It was a direct response to our own overtures before the embargo. We had destroyed some nanobot anchors of theirs in disputed territory, which had been laid down to expand the micro-atmosphere of Yueliang Lunar Area.

That same tech that keeps air over Chandnipur and other lunar territories, enables the micro-atmospheres, is what makes FTL work—the q-nanobots. On our final patrols across the mara, we saw some of the new FTL shipyards in the distance. The ships—half-built, they looked like the Earth ruins from historical pictures, of palaces and cities. We felt like we were looking at artifacts of a civilization from the future. They sparked like a far-off battle, bots building them tirelessly. They will sail out to outer space, wearing quenbots around them like cloaks. Like the superheroes! The quenbot cloud folds the space around the ship like a blanket, make a bubble that shoots through the universe. I don’t really understand. Is it like a soda bubble or a blanket? We had no idea our time on the Moon was almost over on those patrols, looking at the early shipyards.

After one of the patrols near the shipyards, asura Aditi turned to me and said, “We’ll be on one of those ships one day, sailing to other parts of the galaxy. They’ll need us to defend Mother India when she sets her dainty feet on new worlds. Maybe we’ll be able to see Jupiter and Saturn and Neptune zoom by like cricket balls, the Milky Way spinning far behind us like a chakra.”

“I don’t think that’s quite how FTL works,” I told her, but obviously she knew that. She looked at me, low dawn sunlight on her visor so I couldn’t see her face. Even though this patrol was during a temporary ceasefire, she had painted her face like she so loved to, so all you could see anyway were the whites of her eyes and her teeth. Kali Ma through and through, just like you said. “Just imagine, maybe we’ll end up on a world where we can breathe everywhere. Where there are forests and running water and deserts like Earth. Like in the old Bollywood movies, where the heroes and the heroines run around trees and splash in water like foolish children with those huge mountains behind them covered in ice.”

“Arre, you can get all that on Earth. It’s where those movies come from! Why would you want to go further away from Earth? You don’t want to return home?”

“That’s a nice idea, Gita,” she said. “But the longer we’re here, and the more news and movies and feeds I see of Earth, I get the idea it’s not really waiting for us.”

That made me angry, though I didn’t show it. “We’ve waited all our lives to go back, and now you want to toss off to another world?” I asked, as if we had a choice in the matter. The two of us, since we were children in the juvenile barracks, had talked about moving to a little house in the Himalayas once we went back, somewhere in Sikkim or northern Bengal (we learned all the states as children, and saw their flags along New Delhi Avenue) where it’s not as crowded as the rest of Earth still, and we could see those famously huge mountains that dwarfed the Moon’s arid hills.

She said, “Hai Ram, I’m just dreaming like we always have. My dear, what you’re not getting is that we have seen Earth on the feeds since we came to the Moon. From expectation, there is only disappointment.”

So I told her, “When you talk about other worlds out there, you realize those are expectations too. You’re forgetting we’re soldiers. We go to Earth, it means our battle is over. We go to another world, you think they’d let us frolic like Bollywood stars in alien streams? Just you and me, Gita and Aditi, with the rest of our division doing backup dancing?” I couldn’t stay angry when I thought of this, though I still felt a bit hurt that she was suggesting she didn’t want to go back to Earth with me, like the sisters in arms we were.

“True enough,” she said. “Such a literalist. If our mission is ever to play Bollywood on an exoplanet, you can play the man hero with your lovely rat-tail beard. Anyway, for now all we have is this gray rock where all the ice is underneath us instead of prettily on the mountains. Not Earth or any other tarty rival to it. This is home, Gita beta, don’t forget it.”

How right she was.

• • • •

Then came peacetime.

We saw the protests on Earth feeds. People marching through the vast cities, more people than we’d ever see in a lifetime in Chandnipur, with signs and chants. No more military presence on the Moon. The Moon is not an army base. Bring back our soldiers. The Moon is not a battlefield.

But it was, that’s the thing. We had seen our fellow asuras die on it.

With the creation of the Terran Union of Spacefaring Nations (T.U.S.N.) in anticipation of human expansion to extrasolar space, India finally gave up its sovereignty over Chandnipur, which became just one settlement in amalgamated T.U.S.N. Lunar territory. There were walled-off Nuclear Seclusion Zones up there on Earth still hot from the last World War, and somehow they’d figured out how to stop war on the Moon. With the signing of the International Lunar Peace Treaty, every nation that had held its own patch of the Moon for a century of settlement on the satellite agreed to lay down their arms under Earth, Sol, the gods, the goddesses, and the God. The Moon was going to be free of military presence for the first time in decades.

When us asuras were first told officially of the decommissioning of Lunar Command in Chandnipur, we celebrated. We’d made it—we were going to Earth, earlier than we’d ever thought, long before retirement age. Even our COs got shitfaced in the mess halls. There were huge tubs of biryani, with hot chunks of printed lamb and gobs of synthi dalda. We ate so much, I thought we’d explode. Even Aditi, who’d been dreaming about other worlds, couldn’t hold back her happiness. She asked me, “What’s the first thing you’re going to do on Earth?” her face covered in grease, making me think of her as a child with another name, grubby cheeks covered in syrup from stolen jalebis.

“I’m going to catch a train to a riverside beach or a sea wall, and watch the movement of water on a planet. Water, flowing and thrashing for kilometers and kilometers, stretching all the way to the horizon. I’m going to fall asleep to it. Then I’m going to go to all the restaurants, and eat all the real foods that the fake food in the Underground Markets is based on.”

“Don’t spend all your money in one day, okay? We need to save up for that house in the Himalayas.”

“You’re going to go straight to the mountains, aren’t you,” I said with a smile.

“Nah. I’ll wait for you, first, beta. What do you think.”

“Good girl.”

After that meal, a handful of us went out with our suits for an unscheduled patrol for the first time—I guess you’d call it a moonwalk, at that point. We saluted the Earth together, on a lunar surface where we had no threat of being silently attacked from all sides. The century-long Lunar Cold War was over—it had cooled, frozen, bubbled, boiled at times, but now it had evaporated. We were all to go to our paradise in the black sky, as we’d wished every day on our dreary chota duniya.

We didn’t stop to think what it all really meant for us asuras, of course. Because as Aditi had told me—the Moon was our home, the only one we’d ever known, really. It is a strange thing to live your life in a place that was never meant for human habitation. You grow to loathe such a life—the gritty dust in everything from your food to your teeth to your weapons, despite extensive air filters, the bitter aerosol meds to get rid of infections and nosebleeds from it. Spending half of your days exercising and drinking carefully rationed water so your body doesn’t shrivel up in sub-Earth grav or dry out to a husk in the dry, scrubbed air of controlled atmospheres. The deadening beauty of gray horizons with not a hint of water or life or vegetation in sight except for the sharp lines and lights of human settlement, which we compared so unfavorably to the dazzling technicolour of images and video feeds from Earth, the richness of its life and variety. The constant, relentless company of the same people you grow to love with such ferocity that you hate them as well, because there is no one else for company but the occasional civilian who has the courage to talk to a soldier in Chandnipur’s streets, tunnels, and canteens.

• • • •

Now the Moon is truly a gateway to the stars. It is pregnant with the vessels that will take humanity to them, with shipyards and ports rising up under the limbs of robots. I look up at our chota duniya, and its face is crusted in lights, a crown given to her by her lover. Like a goddess, it’ll birth humanity’s new children. We were born in the sky, for war, but we weren’t in truth. We were asuras. Now they will be devas, devis. They will truly be like gods, with FTL. In Chandnipur, they told us that we must put our faith in Bhagavan, in all the gods and goddesses of the pantheon. We were given a visiting room, where we sat in the veeyar pods and talked directly to their avatars, animated by the machines. That was the only veeyar we were allowed—no sims of Earth or anything like that, maybe because they didn’t want us to get too distracted from our lives on the Moon. So we talked to the avatars, dutifully, in those pods with their smell of incense. Every week, we asked them to keep us alive on chota duniya, this place where humanity should not be and yet is.

And now, we might take other worlds, large and small.

Does that frighten you?

I . . . don’t know. You told us all those years ago, and you tell me now, that we asuras looked like gods and superheroes when you saw us. In our suits, which would nearly crush a human with their weight if anyone wore them on Earth, let alone walked or fought in them. And now, imagine the humans who will go out there into the star-lit darkness. The big ships won’t be ready for a long time. But the small ones—they already want volunteers to take one-way test trips to exoplanets. I don’t doubt some of those volunteers will come from the streets, like us asuras. They need people who don’t have anything on Earth, so they can leave it behind and spend their lives in the sky. They will travel faster than light itself. Impossible made possible. Even the asuras of the Lunar Command were impossible once.

The Moon was a lifeless place. Nothing but rock and mineral and water. And we still found a way to bring war to it. We still found a way to fight there. Now, when the new humans set foot on other worlds, what if there is life there? What if there is god-given life that has learned to tell stories, make art, fight and love? Will we bring an Earth Army to that life, whatever form it takes? Will we send out this new humanity to discover and share, or will we take people like me and Aditi, born in the streets with nothing, and give them a suit of armour and a ship that sails across the cosmos faster than the light of stars, and send them out to conquer? In the myths, asuras can be both benevolent or evil. Like gods or demons. If we have the chariots of the gods at our disposal, what use is there for gods? What if the next soldiers who go forth into space become demons with the power of gods? What if envy strikes their hearts, and they take fertile worlds from other life forms by force? What if we bring war to a peaceful cosmos? At least we asuras only killed other humans.

One could argue that you didn’t just fight on the Moon. You brought life there, for the first time. You, we, humans—we loved there, as well. We still do. There are still humans there.

Love.

I’ve never heard anyone tell me they love me, nor told anyone I love them. People on Earth, if you trust the stories, say it all the time. We asuras didn’t really know what the word meant, in the end.

But. I did love, didn’t I? I loved my fellow soldiers. I would have given my life for them. That must be what it means.

I loved Aditi.

That is the first time I’ve ever said that. I loved Aditi, my sister in arms. I wonder what she would have been, if she had stayed on Earth, never been adopted by the Indian government and given to the Army. A dancer? A Bollywood star? They don’t like women with muscles like her, do they? She was bloody graceful with a jet-pack, I’ll tell you that much. And then, when I actually stop to think, I realize, that she would have been a beggar, or a sweeper, or a sewer-scraper if the Army hadn’t given us to the sky. Like me. Now I live among beggars, garbage-pickers, and sweepers, and sewer-scrapers, in this slum clinging to what they call the pillar to heaven. To heaven, can you believe that? Just like we called Earth heaven up there. These people here, they take care of me. In them I see a shared destiny.

What is that?

To remind us that we are not the gods. This is why I pray still to the gods, or the one God, whatever is out there beyond the heliosphere. I pray that the humans who will sail past light and into the rest of the universe find grace out there, find a way to bring us closer to godliness. To worlds where we might start anew, and have no need for soldiers to fight, only warriors to defend against dangers that they themselves are not the harbingers of. To worlds where our cities have no slums filled with people whose backs are bent with the bravery required to hold up the rest of humanity.

Can I ask something? How . . . how did asura Aditi die?

Hm. Asura Aditi of the 8th Lunar Division—Chandnipur, Indian Armed Forces, survived thirty-four years of life and active combat duty as a soldier on the Moon, to be decommissioned and allowed to return to planet Earth. And then she died right here in New Delhi Megapolis walking to the market. We asuras aren’t used to this gravity, to these crowds. One shove from a passing impatient pedestrian is all it takes. She fell down on the street, shattered her Moon-brittled hip because, when we came here to paradise, we found that treatment and physio for our weakened bodies takes money that our government does not provide. We get a pension, but it’s not much—we have to choose food and rent, or treatment. There is no cure. We might have been bred for war in the sky, but we were not bred for life on Earth. Why do you think there are so few volunteers for the asura program? They must depend on the children of those who have nothing.

Aditi fell to Earth from the Moon, and broke. She didn’t have money for a fancy private hospital. She died of an infection in a government hospital.

She never did see the Himalayas. Nor have I.

I’m sorry.

I live here, in the slums around Akash Mahal Space Elevator-Shaft, because of Aditi. It’s dangerous, living along the spindle. But it’s cheaper than the subsidized rent of the Veterans Arcologies. And I like the danger. I was a soldier, after all. I like living by the stairway to the sky, where I once lived. I like being high up here, where the wind blows like it never did on the Moon’s gray deserts, where the birds I never saw now fly past me every morning and warm my heart with their cries. I like the sound of the nanotube ecosystem all around us, digesting all our shit and piss and garbage, turning it into the light in my one bulb, the heat in my one stove coil, the water from my pipes, piggybacking on the charge from the solar panels that power my little feed-terminal. The way the walls pulse, absorbing sound and kinetic energy, when the elevator passes back and forth, the rumble of Space Elevator Garuda-3 through the spindle all the way to the top of the atmosphere. I don’t like the constant smell of human waste. I don’t like wondering when the police will decide to cast off the blinders and destroy this entire slum because it’s illegal. I don’t like going with a half-empty stomach all the time, living off the kindness of the little ones here who go up and down all the time and get my flour and rice. But I’m used to such things—Chandnipur was not a place of plenty either. I like the way everyone takes care of each other here. We have to, or the entire slum will collapse like a rotten vine slipping off a tree-trunk. We depend on each other for survival. It reminds me of my past life.

And I save the money from my pension, little by little, by living frugally. To one day buy a basic black market exoskeleton to assist me, and get basic treatment, physio, to learn how to walk and move like a human on Earth.

Can . . . I help, in any way?

You have helped, by listening. Maybe you can help others listen as well, as you’ve said.

Maybe they’ll heed the words of a veteran forced to live in a slum. If they send soldiers to the edge of the galaxy, I can only hope that they will give those soldiers a choice this time.

I beg the ones who prepare our great chariots: If you must take our soldiers with you, take them—their courage, their resilience, their loyalty will serve you well on a new frontier. But do not to take war to new worlds.

War belongs here on Earth. I should know. I’ve fought it on the Moon, and it didn’t make her happy. In her cold anger, she turned our bodies to glass. Our chota duniya was not meant to carry life, but we thrust it into her anyway. Let us not make that mistake again. Let us not violate the more welcoming worlds we may find, seeing their beauty as acquiescence.

With FTL, there will be no end to humanity’s journey. If we keep going far enough, perhaps we will find the gods themselves waiting behind the veil of the universe. And if we do not come in peace by then, I fear we will not survive the encounter.

• • • •

I clamber down the side of the column of the space elevator, winding down through the biohomes of the slum towards one of the tunnels where I can reach the internal shaft and wait for the elevator on the way down. Once it’s close to the surface of the planet, it slows down a lot—that’s when people jump on to hitch a ride up or down. We’re only about 1,000 feet up, so it’s not too long a ride down, but the wait for it could be much longer. The insides of the shaft are always lined with slum-dwellers and elevator station hawkers, rigged with gas masks and cling clothes, hanging on to the nanocable chords and sinews of the great spindle. I might just catch a ride on the back of one of the gliders who offer their solar wings to travelers looking for a quick trip back to the ground. Bit more terrifying, but technically less dangerous, if their back harness and propulsion works.

The eight-year-old boy guiding me down through the steep slum, along the pipes and vines of the NGO-funded nano-ecosystem, occasionally looks up at me with a gap-toothed smile. “I want to be an asura like Gita,” he says. “I want to go to the stars.”

“Aren’t you afraid of not being able to walk properly when you come back to Earth?”

“Who said I want to come back to Earth?”

I smile, and look up, past the fluttering prayer flags of drying clothes, the pulsing wall of the slum, at the dizzying stairway to heaven, an infinite line receding into the blue. At the edge of the spindle, I see asura Gita poised between the air and her home, leaning precariously out to wave goodbye to me. Her hair ripples out against the sky, a smudge of black. A pale, late evening moon hovers full and pale above her head, twinkling with lights.

I wave back, overcome with vertigo. She seems about to fall, but she doesn’t. She is caught between the Earth and the sky in that moment, forever.

©2017 by Indrapramit Das. Originally published in Infinity Wars, edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Indrapramit Das (aka Indra Das) is a writer and editor from Kolkata, India. He is a Lambda Literary Award-winner for his debut novel The Devourers (Penguin India / Del Rey), and has been a finalist for the Crawford, Tiptree and Shirley Jackson Awards. His short fiction has appeared in publications including Tor.com, Clarkesworld and Asimov’s, and has been widely anthologized. He is an Octavia E. Butler Scholar and a grateful graduate of Clarion West 2012. He has lived in India, the United States, and Canada, where he completed his MFA at the University of British Columbia.

Song Beneath the City

Micah Dean Hicks | 2410 words

For decades, the four plumbers had answered the call of old widows who’d dropped jewelry down their drains. Sometimes, the plumbers unscrewed the U-shaped trap under the sink, knocked out its splat of tobacco-colored crud, and fished out a golden ring. But other times, there was no reclaiming the lost diamonds and gold. They tumbled blind through the maze of pipes below the city, never to see the sun again.

Whenever the plumbers left a house, the widows would ask, “Do you hear it too? The singing that comes rattling up from the pipes?”

The question made them uncomfortable. They knew pipes, their rust and fittings, their wet metal smell and black oozings. But in all their years, they had never heard a pipe sing, only gurgle or wetly retch.

The plumbers kept an index of everything that had been lost down the drain: coins, diamonds, earrings, rings by the hundreds, bullets promised for enemies, the occasional tooth. By the plumbers’ tally, millions of dollars had made their way through the pipes, slowly tumbling down through the earth to the lowest reaches of the city. They planned for years, looking at maps of the city sewer system, touring its waste treatment systems, making secret forays into subterranean construction sites. The city had been burned down and rebuilt in layers, and centuries of pipe were linked together beneath. Who could say how deep the water fell? They decided to find out.

The plumbers attired themselves like astronauts. They wore headlamps, breathing masks, rubber boots and gloves. They brought compasses, Chinese dictionaries, football pads. One of the plumbers, not knowing how long they would be gone, brought a winter coat.

“It will be like another planet,” one said. “There will be dangers. Curtains of black mold that colonize the lungs. Pockets of burning gas. Fields of shit writhing with rats. Snotty orbs of fungus. To fall will be to die.”

“And what of the creatures?” said another. “The blind scum gators? The drain snakes? The metal-mouthed centipedes?”

“And the people,” said another. “Every sad, angry, abandoned person, carried down here by the rain while no one noticed.”

“We can’t even imagine what it will be,” said the fourth and youngest plumber. “It will defy our every expectation.”

They followed the subway rails, snapped open a locked tunnel with bolt cutters, and ventured into the dark. The sounds of the city—honking and shouting, laugh of water tumbling from faucets, roar of thousands of flushing toilets—faded until they could hear only their alternating heartbeats. They listened to their four hearts, and their hearts said, want, want, want, hope.

The older three chuckled at the fourth’s naive, hopeful heart.

Beneath an ancient and abandoned wastewater treatment plant, they found huge sewage tunnels that ran through the city like bones. The plumbers broke open a rusty access door and climbed inside, the black water flowing hot and thick around their legs. The smell made them choke, and the darkness here was thicker than any they had ever seen. They dropped into it, following the tunnels down, down, down, to the very bottom where every heavy thing came to rest.

The pipe opened into a natural cavern. There was light here, and their eyes stung. Not the murky yellow of city lights, or the sharp blade of office lights, but sunlight, warm and red as blood. How it got there, under miles of earth and pipe and water, the plumbers did not know, but they imagined it too had tumbled down the drains in small golden pieces, until it piled here.

Out of the light and dense black soil, trees grew, pressing against the high roof of the cavern and curling along its rounded celling. Leaves and flowers fell into a clear pool in the middle of the cave. The plumbers heard a low, sad singing echoing over the water. This was the song the widows had told them about, and the plumbers realized it had always been with them, faint under the ringing of their hammers and the scrape of their pliers.

In the pool, four mermaids with silver scales swam and sang. They were laden with gold and silver. Had rings on every finger, bracelets up their arms, their ears pierced sixteen times. Their long, black hair was heavy, plaited with diamonds and gold. The plumbers’ four hearts pounded, want, want, want, hope.

“How did you get here?” one of the plumbers asked.

“There was once a channel that flowed under the city from the sea,” a mermaid said. “We swam here looking for treasure when we were young. But the people above drilled and poured concrete, and the tunnel closed behind us.”

“Can you take us back to the sea?” one of the mermaids asked. “We miss the open water.”

“Of course,” said one of the plumbers, promising too quickly and smiling at the others. “Of course we will.”

Each of the men hoisted a gold-heavy mermaid from the water, careful not to bruise her tail, and carried her out of the cavern.

“I told you,” the youngest plumber said. “It defied our every expectation.”

“We expected treasure,” said one of the others, “and treasure is what we found.”

As they climbed through the earth, the noises of the city became louder. Honking cars, crying children, the lip-tripping speed of advertisements, and the patter of lie upon lie falling.

“That doesn’t sound like the ocean,” said one of the mermaids, her hair rattling with gold.

“It’s very close,” said one of the plumbers. “I can almost hear it.”

They carried the mermaids into the gray city above. There was no water here, only dry brick and concrete, heat rising from the asphalt. The plumbers each took a mermaid back to his apartment, ten stories above the ground, and put her in his bathtub.

“Where are my sisters? Where is the sea?”

The plumbers brought them telephones to call their sisters and cans of chopped tuna. They opened their windows so the mermaids could see the city far below, and then the plumbers sat down on their toilets to stare at the mermaids’ naked, captive beauty.

“When will we go to the ocean?” asked each of the mermaids, every day, as days turned into weeks.

“Tomorrow. If the weather is good,” said each of the plumbers, every day, as months turned into years.

• • • •

The plumbers sold the mermaids’ jewelry, quitting their jobs and shutting themselves away in their bathrooms. They were mesmerized by silver scales, seaweed-dark hair, luminescent yellow eyes like lamps burning under the water. The three older plumbers climbed into the bath and sat behind the mermaids, plaiting their hair and massaging their slick skin with rough, hairy hands. The mermaids’ long tails hung out of the tub, their fins growing brittle in the air. The plumbers kissed their necks and ran their hands over their scales, and the mermaids sang their sad song.

When three of the mermaids gave birth to daughters—babies with slim legs, webbed fingers and toes, the same dark hair and glowing eyes—the plumbers asked, “Do you love me yet?”

The mermaids answered, “If I said yes, would you let me go?”

The youngest plumber did not touch the mermaid he had brought home. Rarely did he speak with her. He would go into the bathroom to pee, and turning to her, he would ask, “Do you need anything?”

“Let me and my sisters go,” she would say.

The young plumber explained that he was trying, but the older plumbers didn’t want to give the mermaids up, no matter what he said. “What can I do?” he asked.

“Go away,” she told him. “That would be the very least.”

For years, he cleaned himself with a washcloth at the kitchen sink. At night, he lay in his bed and listened to the mermaid, on the phone with her sisters all night, singing in the small bathroom, her voice rising in one long sob.

• • • •

There was a storm. Rain and ocean surge covered the streets with water, and the radio told people to stay inside. The old widows called the plumbers, complaining that water was backing up into their sinks, filling their basements, flooding their lawns. The plumbers said, “We’re out of the business. Call someone else.”

The four mermaids hauled themselves up to the small window and watched the city fill with water until asphalt vanished and the buildings rose like spars of island or reef. The mermaids wept and called one another. “Can you see it?” they asked. “The sea has come.”

Their daughters peered down at the water through their mothers’ thick hair. It was like the sky had come down to meet the earth, everything open and wide. They felt their mothers’ longing for space.

“If you jumped, you would die,” the three older plumbers said, their arms like chains around the mermaids’ waists.

In his apartment, the youngest plumber could see that the mermaid was preparing to jump, to throw her body down ten stories into a few inches of water. She would die and become only a memory, like the sea in her mind.

“It isn’t deep enough,” he told her. “Not yet.”

She looked at him for a long time, and the plumber felt small and ugly under her eyes. Finally, she said, “There is something you can do for me.”

The plumber took the elevator down, fought the wind and water in the parking lot to get to his truck, and found a rusted pipe wrench and hammer. He drove through the flooded streets in his tall truck, breaking fire hydrants open one by one all the way from the ocean to the apartment building. The hydrants opened their red mouths and spewed free the city’s water.

The four mermaids watched the water rising and whispered to each other on their phones. Their children ran over the bathroom tile, slender and quick as fish, begging to go play in the storm.

“No one is going outside,” the plumbers said. “Without you, what would we be? Only plumbers.”

When the fourth plumber came back up, the mermaid said into the phone receiver, “Now.”

They turned to the plumbers, opened their arms, and said, “I’m afraid.”

The four plumbers rushed into their arms, their slippery soft skin, the damp hair lying over their shoulders. The youngest plumber cried into his mermaid’s hair, telling her that he was sorry. Their hearts throbbed, want, want, want, hope.

The four mermaids flicked their muscular tails and flung themselves from their windows, carrying the plumbers with them. They fell through the open sky, spreading their arms and straightening their spines like they hadn’t in years. This was what swimming in the sea felt like. The water rushed up to meet them, and they turned their faces to it.

The eight of them crashed into the water, the plumbers clinging to the mermaids. Three of the plumbers pulled the mermaids’ hair and climbed their shoulders, fighting to get up for air. The mermaids rolled in the water, pressing the plumbers’ hairy faces to the wet road, holding them beneath the water until they were filled with it.

The mermaids’ daughters dropped down from the sky, knifing through the water with their tiny bodies and grinning at the lightning flashing across their faces. The current swept them down the street, and they linked hands so that they wouldn’t lose one another.

The youngest plumber fell with his mermaid and went limp with sorrow. She held him close under the water, looking at him with her lantern eyes and bringing him just to the edge of drowning. His heart sent its message through the water, and she heard it for the first time. Angry and sad at all the years he’d taken from her, the mermaid shoved him away. With dolphin leaps, she flew down the street to join her sisters, rushing into the arms of the ocean.

The youngest plumber was swept against a tree, the wind battering him. He shouted through the storm for the mermaid to come back, but she was gone, and his voice was small against rain and wind. Looking for her silver tail, her river of hair, he saw instead the mermaids’ daughters clasping their webbed hands struggling in the current. Before he could reach them, the girls were swept into a storm drain, vanishing through the pipes and falling toward the bottom of the city.

The last plumber turned away from the chortling thunder. He let the current push him into the sewers with every other lost thing. He went deep into the dark, pushing through mud and shit and rats, calling out for the lost girls. But the city was big, the pipes roared loud, and he didn’t know any of their names.

• • • •

For years, a group of old widows had listened to singing echo up through their pipes. They held phone receivers to their sink drains, asking each other, “Do you hear it?” And when the widows dialed up their hearing aids, they could.

They’d called plumbers, hoping to understand, but the plumbers told them that there was no song beneath the city. Unable to stand the mystery any longer, they raided their closets for flashlight and batteries, worn hiking boots, their dead husbands’ walking canes. They put on their strongest prescription eyeglasses and went into the sewers, blushing at No Trespassing signs and pressing forward.

After a long time, they reached the bottom of the city. Here, they found a grove of trees in a sunlit cavern. It was fall, and the trees had turned a bloody orange, their leaves covering a deep pool. In the pool, three young girls swam and splashed, kicking their finned legs. On the bank, a bearded and filth-covered man slept near them.

“Is it you?” a widow said. “Singing the sad song that echoes through our pipes?”

The girls shook their heads. “Sorry. We don’t sing. But the plumber does. Every night, the same sad song.”

The widows nodded and sat on the grass. “That’s too bad. We had hoped it was our husbands’ ghosts, singing their love for us.”

They watched the sunlight in the cavern dim. The girls grew quiet, and the plumber stirred, rising on the bank and blinking his rheumy eyes. The widows turned up their hearing aids and listened, waiting to have their hearts broken again.

©2018 by Micah Dean Hicks. Originally published in The Adroit Journal. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Micah Dean Hicks is a Calvino Prize-winning author whose writing has appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The New York Times, Lightspeed, and Kenyon Review, among others. His story collection Electricity and Other Dreams is available from New American Press. Hicks teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida. His new novel Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones is available from John Joseph Adams Books.

Sand Castles

Adam-Troy Castro | 8268 words

They met day-drinking.

It was cold and wet, not quite raining but threatening to, in the way that storms do even when they don’t then intend on getting on with it; and though they each might have spent the day in a bar anyway, this one lent itself to being spent indoors and the atmosphere just kind of lent itself to drinking.

It was late morning when they began, the first customers in a small-town corner joint that still smelled of the night before. They were at opposite ends of the bar and what with one thing or another they struck up a conversation. It just became easier to sit together, even though neither one of them had begun the day looking for someone to spend time with. They were both well-versed in the drinker’s skill of maintaining the right buzz by neither drinking too much or too little, and it didn’t matter to either one of them that the other was less than perfect company for any other occasion, or that they both smoked too much.

His name was Loren. Hers was Lauren. This struck them as disproportionately hilarious and they pointed it out to everybody who came in and sat anywhere near them. It turned out that they’d both been married and divorced, that they both had grown kids they didn’t speak with much, and that they’d both lived in town all their lives, except for her two years as a failed college student and his as a fuckup soldier. Their failure to ever meet up with each other before also struck them as disproportionately hilarious, enough that they drank to it, and this too went on for a while until he said,

“I like you.”

She said, “You’re okay.”

“That the best compliment you can give?”

“It’s a perfectly fine compliment. You’re a funny guy.”

“Ha. That’s the way I like to be remembered. A funny guy. Like I’m spinning at high speeds and tossing out witticisms like shrapnel.” He shook his head. “But there’s a bit of an insult hidden behind that compliment, isn’t there?”

“Far as I’m concerned, it just means you’re a funny guy.”

“You ever see that old movie, Goodfellas?”

“I don’t give a shit about movies.”

“Bunch of Mafia guys, carousing in a bar. One calls another a funny guy and for a minute there it looks like he’s gonna take serious offense. You wonder if someone’s gonna get shot or something.”

“All I know is I never heard of it. I just meant you’re a funny guy.”

He said, “I’ll take it, I guess.”

“Imagine my relief.”

Then he said, “Hey, you ever see the castle?”

“What castle?”

“You know. The one everyone’s been talking about. Out by the water.”

She made a foggy connection. That thing. She remembered people talking about it, some last night in this very room. “Been thinking of a taking a look. Too many things to do.”

He said, “It looks like rain. Phil, don’t you think it looks like rain?”

The establishment’s windows were too tinted to allow easy transparency, delegating all serious assessments of the weather to that category of patron willing to go outside and look up, but Phil the day bartender had long since learned that with a certain other category of patron, reflexive agreement was the easiest route to peace. “Yeah, been that way.”

Loren said, “We wait too long, rain’s gonna frickin’ destroy the thing.”

Lauren said, “So?”

“So what is it? Three blocks to the beach? We should take a look while we have a chance.”

She examined her drink, which was one quick swallow from extinction. Of course, that failed to consider the drink she could have next, which some part of her already mourned. And then, the automatic thought came, one after that, and this was a delightful prospect, but part of her remembered those old days when alcohol had been the route to spontaneity, the lubrication that had made her unpredictable, instead of the presence who could be counted on to still be perched on the same stool, two or three hours from now. An unscheduled trip to go see a castle struck her as a fine tribute to her vanished whimsicality. “Yeah, sure.”

They left the bar and started heading toward the shore. It was a waterfront town that always smelled of sea breezes, one that always lived by the weather that came rolling in from the water; one that, upon turning cold, really turned cold, which is why the air now wore on their bones like a coat that had been soaked in brine before being donned wet. To the extent that either Loren or Lauren ever noted changes in the weather, they had both noted that the weather had held this way for almost ten days, without ever congealing into rainfall; but yes, Phil had been right. Sure. It did sure as hell look like rain.

They made it to the place where the road dead-ended in a wooden barrier, just before a strip of tall grass separating the inhabited streets from the beach. A few moments spent on the narrow sandy path that cut between pavement and sand, they reached the beach, where gray water lapped against the shore, depositing seaweed and other debris.

Here, on the beach, sat an immense sand castle.

It had been sculpted over the course of three frenzied days by a team of artists who had seen fit to become world-class competitors at that delightful but largely irrelevant skill, who had come to the beach at the tail end of warm weather to create an ephemeral masterwork. Crowds had gathered to watch the construction in delight. There had been newspaper stories, TV news segments, the inevitable YouTube videos, all in service of this local sensation that would melt into a shapeless ruin at the first substantial rain. Almost everybody who lived within walking and driving distance, who had any sense of whimsy or wonder at all, had already come to see it, just to record the site within their own gray matter; then the weather had changed, and the crowds had thinned, abandoning it to its inevitable destruction by the elements.

It was immense, by the standard of such things. It was surrounded by a four-foot wall, sculpted to simulate brickwork. A narrow walkway under a low arch—still intact—simulated the drawbridge over a moat. There was a sign on a stick there, reading, PLEASE KEEP OUT! SCULPTURE IS FRAGILE! Inside, after a courtyard, stood the castle, ten feet high, an intricate structure with towers and ramparts and windows. A portico gate, guarded by two sand-figures standing at either side, was down, barred entrance to the inner structure, but there was enough black space visible through the gaps that it was easy to imagine that the extraordinary level of detail continued inside, complete with throne room, royal quarters, and the inevitable scheming of courtiers. The entrance itself was like an arched mouse-hole, just large enough that if the portico ever lifted, it was also possible to imagine entering the interior on hands and knees.

Lauren hadn’t given any thought to what her reaction to this place would be—mild amusement, maybe—but was unprepared for what it actually was: sadness. This castle may have been a whimsical folly, but it was also a monument to somebody’s enthusiasm, to the joy they had taken in the effort to produce something that, however short-lived, nevertheless gave pleasure to those who beheld it. She could not help but contrast it to her own daily existence, the alimony that supported her, the part-time job that picked up the slack (and that she was about to lose), the grown children who had lives of their own and who had sworn off letting her into them. This was a place where somebody had shared a form of joy, and it struck her as an affront to her own existence, which had become an exercise in numbing herself. The thought put her in significant danger of getting sloppy.

Loren said, “I’m telling you, somebody needed to get a life.”

She realized that he’d brought them here hoping that they would both then laugh at it, and coupled with her last thoughts this made her apathetic acceptance of the man turn into a form of virulent dislike. “Why?”

“I mean, it’s impressive and everything, but it’s still a stupid waste of effort that’s going to melt away after the next storm. Look, I didn’t mean anything by it. Want a shot?”

“You carrying?”

He produced a flask with a hearty ta-daa, she joined him in a drink, and the two of them drank to the kingdom of sand. It was the kind of drink that left her feeling thirstier, as so many of them were these days. Sating that thirst was a project far more ephemeral than this project of sand could ever be.

Then he said, “Let’s head back.”

The inevitable rest of the day stretched out before her before a weather-beaten old melody, one heard too many times to still perceive as music.

“I think I’ll stay a while.”

“Are you kidding? It’s pretty and everything, but I’ve pretty much sucked all the possible enjoyment out of it.”

She said, “I haven’t.”

His eyebrows furrowed, the way those of a certain subspecies of man do when confronted with something beyond comprehension. It was the precursor to affront, and affront could be the precursor to anything from calling her a bitch and storming off, to erupting into violence. Maybe he’d thought she’d follow him home for a quickie. Maybe he’d choose as secondary option raping and murdering her right now. While those brows remained furrowed, both outcomes seemed equally likely.

She said, “Go back to the bar, if you want. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes.”

“What are you going to do in the sand for twenty minutes?”

“I just want to, you know, take this in a little longer.”

That look of affront again. “Why?”

“Look. I just want to be alone for a bit.”

Again, it could have gone either way, and again, she spent that heartbeat waiting to see how he would fall. Then he rolled his eyes, mumbled something to the effect that she could do what she wanted, and left her there. She watched him go, this man with the name like hers, watched him return to the strip of grass separated the beach from the city streets, his gait just a little unsteady, as hers must be, and in that moment it occurred to her that she knew exactly what his life had been, and what it would be, down to the day his cooling body was found on some bare urine-soaked mattress. He had seven years, she knew. Only seven. It was a ridiculous and wholly uncharacteristic moment of clairvoyance, and chances were that it wasn’t even close to accurate; hell, if she’d ever been able to tell the future, she likely wouldn’t have gotten married, had kids, or allowed herself to be bought her first drink. She would have bought more lottery tickets but wasted less of her money on wrong numbers. It was just a momentary whimsy. But for the moment she had faith in it. Seven years.

She figured she had less, and she didn’t care all that much. It had been a while since her own life had been any goddamned fun. Some days, oblivion was the only satisfaction worth having.

Sighing, she turned her attention back to the portcullis, specifically those dark spaces behind the grillwork, and specifically to those black spaces between the vertical and horizontal bars, spaces so black that to her eyes they certified deeper chambers beyond. She squinted to make the best use of the available light and made out a miniature vestibule, ending in a set of double doors an arm’s-length away. Even there, where none of the people on the beach could see, the attention to detail was extraordinary. The two sand figures standing guard at both sides of the door were both at attention, but there were tiny differences between them, testimony that they were individuals and not duplicates. She could make out the hinges on either side of the door, even some of the wood grain on the door itself. A thin line of light visible beneath the double doors seemed to shift, testifying to some motion on the other side, and she did not question what kind of creature must have been moving in the chamber beyond: a mouse, a sand crab, even a little knight-errant. She only knew that there had to be one, and just like that, it struck her that she needed to identify it.

She inserted her fingers through the gaps in the grille, and made fists, crumbling that gate into the sand it was made of. An unobstructed view of the double doors, flooded with relative light, provided her with the intelligence that they and the guards at either side were every bit as detailed as they had seemed to be when that view was filtered; even more so. She could make out individual planks in those double doors, now, and yes, from the shifting light under those doors, something was indeed moving behind them, little thin patches of darkness that duplicated the way such light is interrupted whenever it is eclipsed by the passing steps of people. Had she not been a little drunk, and a little sloppy about being drunk, she might have noted the mystery but backed off, thinking that the last thing she wanted to do was interfere with something that was none of her business; but she was drunk and she did not want to return to the bar or (part of her realized) to anything else that awaited her in the direction of her everyday life. And so she squeezed herself into the opening head first, her shoulders scraping the walls and the top of her head scraping the arched ceiling as she pulled herself forward, into the darkness.

The armored guards, who had been standing at attention, spears at the ready, now recoiled. They retreated as far as they could against the end of the vestibule, and why not? From their point of view, the monster before them was a giant, a thing born of magic and animated by worse things, with long clawed fingers digging deep gouges in the stone floor as she dragged herself further down the passage and toward everything they were pledged to protect. Lesser men might have had their minds shattered at the very sight of her. But theirs was not a world of the true middle ages, not if the fanciful extent of the sculpture around them could be believed; theirs was a world where orcs and dragons must surely exist, if only at a remove that required a quest to find them. And so, they did what brave guards in their position would have had to do. They overcame their terror and charged, jabbing their spears into Lauren’s knuckles. For their sake, it was just unfortunate that the relative solidity of their fantasy weapons, and her flesh, held. Their spears not only failed to penetrate her skin, but also disintegrated into their component grains at the very attempt, leaving the two brave guards even more terrified, even more awestruck as she ignored their resistance and, with another energetic heave, pulled herself closer to those double doors.

They swung inward, and a horde of little sand-warriors rushed out, screaming the way warriors do, shouting words in some language Lauren didn’t know that were clearly orders to die in defense of the king. They swarmed her arms and swarmed her chest and jabbed their little sand-spears into her, or more properly at her, as none penetrated. Some went for her face and this was a problem, their substance getting into her mouth or, more problematic, her eyes, but she flailed her arms and broke legions of the little bastards into their component fragments, until the vestibule she’d invaded was inches-deep in them: a sea of what would have been their viscera, had they possessed viscera and not tightly-packed sand. A few who escaped her reach saw no valor in continuing to fight a behemoth who could not be hurt, and fled back through the double doors, into the chambers beyond, presumably to help the last stand there. Nobody barred those doors, likely because they saw no point. Lauren coughed out a cloud of grit, rammed her clawing fingertips into the tile of the vaster room beyond, and pulled herself onward, breaking through the double doors and collapsing the adjacent walls as she burst through into what turned out to be the magnificent space beyond.

It was the throne room, so vast even at its scale that there was more than enough space for her. It was larger than it physically could have been, given the total dimensions of the sand castle as it existed on the beach; large enough to function as a perfectly respectable living room, on her own scale. The space that in her own life would have had a couple of couches, a low coffee table festooned with aging magazines and junk mail, and the other clutter of her everyday life, was for the little sand-people a cavernous, awe-inspiring cathedral, complete with vaulted ceiling and discrete shafts of light stabbing through the gloom via skylights in the sculpted ceiling. Any petitioner from outside the castle would have been astounded by the vast emptiness before him, the distance between those double doors and the throne, which occupied an elevated stage on the other side of the hall; a space meant to intimidate, to terrify ambassadors from lesser kingdoms and to remind any subject that the seated figure surrounded by warriors was their lord and the lord of all he surveyed. Rising to a crouch once she was fully inside the hall, a short scramble away from the inner powers of the kingdom, Lauren didn’t press her advantage. Instead she sat, cross-legged, the sand cold but dry beneath her, and faced that stage.

There were about fifty of them, she supposed, some in armor, some in finery, all gathered close to the king, a bearded figure wearing a crown that the sculptors had adorned with jewels, or at least sand-flecks of different and brighter colors. From a distance they evoked rubies and emeralds set in shining gold, and they gave weight to the little visage of the man beneath, whose precise expression was too small and too far away to read in much detail, but was likely grim. Lauren was fairly impressed that he was not ordering his guards to whisk him away to some place of safety, but instead remained where he sat, waiting to see what the situation required.

“I guess to you I’m like some kind of big scary giant, huh?”

Her words rumbled and echoed. They reverberated off the high ceiling, bounced off the elaborate tapestries, no doubt carried past this throne room and through the corridors of power behind the throne, to the hidden passages where servants hurried past one another on their various errands, to the barracks of the king’s soldiers, to the lesser quarters of the peasants and slaves. However far this place extended—and at the moment she had the impression that it went far beyond anything she could see, to many, many layers of creation she could not even guess at—there could be no place beyond the reach of her voice. Her terrible, thundering voice.

There was no way to tell whether the sand-people understood her or simply interpreted her voice as the roars of an invader who had, for the moment, stopped advancing. Certainly, some of the more cowardly figures at the end of the hall recoiled in their own, individual way; some ducked out through a passage behind the throne, one or two fell to their knees, and a young woman wearing a Renaissance-Faire conical hat with a long strip of some diaphanous material dangling from its tip drew closer to the figure on the throne, seeking strength and perhaps protection from his presence, as if there were really anything he could have done to shield him from any wrath Lauren might have been in any danger of venting. But for now, they waited.

“Yeah, that’s me,” she said. “A big scary monster.” A deep breath, and she continued, “I kind of shut down everything I ever had, you know? My marriage wasn’t such hot shit, but I contributed. My kids are wastes of oxygen who don’t call me anymore, but I made them that way. I got a bad back and a shitty liver and I knocked down every connection I ever had the way those guys in the Godzilla suits knocked down buildings. It helped that pretty much everybody I ever dealt with was a prick or a bitch of one kind or another, but I don’t fool myself: I contributed. I’m just not stupid enough to think I can do something about it, at this stage. So, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be your monster. I dunno. Maybe I’ll be some good at that.”

This caused some furtive murmuring among the courtiers of sand.

Lauren licked her lips. She had never carried a flask because it had been years since she’d allowed herself to be any fair distance from her next drink, but right now, with sand in her hair and in her throat and the air around her so stale and so warm compared to the relative chill of the beach, she would have liked a snort, something to bolster her until she decided what to do next.

Then something happened on the king’s side of the hall. Two of the armored guards left the stage, carrying a struggling young woman between them. She was not the princess in the conical hat, but some kitchen maid or something like that, based on the apron she wore. Her size again made it impossible to make out any facial expression, but her wild thrashing testified to outright panic, and her tiny head kept forming a dimple where her mouth would have been, in exactly the shape screams would have made. With little effort at all they dragged her to the center of the hall, the midway point between the throne and Lauren herself, and there they forced her to her knees, before one drew a sword and slit her open from neck to navel. Sand-bowels spilled out upon the sand-tile, and the two soldiers bowed before backing off and returning to the royals on their elevated stage.

“What the hell was that?”

She crawled toward the pathetic little corpse and probed it with her fingertip. It naturally collapsed into its component grains at first touch, neither as wet nor as steaming with the processes of life that it had seemed to be until that moment. It had been one hell of a pantomime, one astonishing puppet-show about a young woman being offered up as sacrifice by her craven king, but that was all it had been. It was just part of the same trick, magic or whatever else you wanted to call it, that moved them all, once sculpted; not life, but something that imitated life.

Lauren spread the sand the little figure had been in a circle, patting it down hard until it became part of the same simulated stone floor it lay on, and then she faced the huddled figures by the throne, and she found herself hating them as much as she’d hated anything on this poor, dying Earth.

“Yeah, well, I don’t accept your goddamned offering, what do you think of that?”

The only response to that was a sudden, painful jab in her calf.

“Ow, what the f—”

Another jab, not at the same spot but right next to it, doubled her agony. She recoiled and reached for the source of the pain and felt a fresh strike, this time on her palm, which in an instant felt on fire. She glanced down and saw blood pulsing from a slice in her palm, before the source of her pain struck yet again, this time providing her with a clear look at the weaponry used against her.

Two sand-warriors held a shard of broken glass.

It had to have been some piece of broken bottle, maybe some ancient coke bottle, maybe some more recent vessel for booze, shattered and abandoned on either the beach or that forlorn strip of grass between the beach and the civilized streets beyond; the kind of thing that lay in wait for some hapless beach-comber, walking the sand in bare feet. Every beach that has ever known the tread of a human foot has also harbored such hidden hazards, and years after the overall migration to plastic bottles still did, some no doubt buried far beneath the sand, some just waiting for the right foot to land in the wrong way.

To these sand-people, watching as the impervious leviathan cried out in agony at its touch, it had to be the equivalent of one of those fantasy swords from the movies Lauren had sometimes been too apathetic to turn off, the only thing capable of saving their little kingdom at this hour of its greatest need.

Even as she watched, the two warriors bearing the shard too heavy or too solid for just one of them gathered their courage and charged her leg again, the bloody edge of their weapon foremost.

She didn’t carefully formulate a defense. She just lashed out. She brought her fist down, screeching as the glass cut deep into the side of her hand, but mashing the two bearers flat. The two of them exploded in a cloud of sand. One was reduced into a mound, only recognizable as the remains of a sand figure because of the one twitching leg that somehow remained intact; the other was only crushed from the waist down and was left staring at the debris his lower half had become, his mouth contorting in a silent scream. Her own scream matched his because she’d managed this victory only at further cost to her hand, and with absolute fury that she pulled the shard from her fist and threw it to one side, imbedding it in a sandy tapestry too high up the wall for the little people to reach.

“Even here,” she said.

She was not thinking clearly enough to put her complaint into complete sentences, but if pressed she might have said that in a world that had done all it could to wound her, even this one showed its willingness to draw blood.

She wanted to charge the throne and all the little people gathered around it, and to pound them into the nothingness they had come from, but her hand and her leg throbbed and the last thing she needed was to get the wounds dirtier, more filled with the stuff of these creatures of silicate. Instead she’d just leave. But none of this crawling across the dirt to get through a narrow tunnel, not anymore; not when everything in sight crumbled at her slightest touch. Not when these little bastards weren’t even real.

She’d just tear the walls down, like Samson.

She rose to almost her full height, having to stoop only a little bit beneath that arched ceiling, and it really was satisfying the way the little things cowered and cringed at the sight, at the way she scraped a ceiling so high above their heads that they must have seen it as a tribute to their little kingdom’s majesty, and because it seemed the thing to do, she roared, actually roared, putting her full throat into it, taking pleasure in how terrible she was, how wonderful it was to be in a world she could break instead of the one that had broken her. She drew back her fist and drove her whole arm through that arch of sand, hitting open air, before pulling armfuls of the sculpted roof back down into the chamber. To little things their size, it must have been like seeing the end of their world, this destruction of the keep where their king had ruled above all. To Lauren, it was like breaking out of a cage, admitting the air and the light, opening up this space so much like a grave to a sky that, even if gray with clouds, was still bright enough to imply the presence of a sun. The sand began to pile around her ankles, the walls far too crumbly to climb, but as she began pulling them down, obliterating the tapestries, returning the false castle to its origins of sand; the destruction she made gave her fresh earth to stand on, and this she climbed, pulling herself out, no longer interested in the false terror of the false creatures of the false court below.

She pulled herself back in open air, where legions of archers arrayed on the towers and ramparts loosed their shafts. Little needles of sand struck her shoulders and chest, like all the rest of their weapons except for that shard of glass disintegrating on impact, barely making an impression. Still, she roared at them, a kraken taking pleasure in their puny defiance, toppling one of the intact towers with one mighty blow. Its collapse brought down one of the walkways, dropping dozens of the bastards into the ruin below. She pressed her knee against the growing sandpile supporting her escape and pulled herself upward, until she knelt atop the mostly shattered castle, bloody and irritated and taking a breather while the remaining defenders—and really, there seemed no end to them—fired more volleys of useless arrows, no more dangerous to someone of her scale and solidity than grit carried by errant breeze.

Still, she couldn’t afford to stay here and continue battling them, even if they had no more shards in their armory; the last thing she wanted was for anybody from town to happen by and see her destroying this grand castle, in what they would have to interpret as a drunken rampage. Her reputation was not great, but that was something she’d never live down. She might even be prosecuted.

And so, she slid down a collapsing wall back to the courtyard that separated the outer wall from the castle proper, riding an avalanche of sand as it engulfed little panicking sand-people attempting and failing to flee this horrible cataclysm. When she reached the bottom, rising on wobbly legs and blinking from the sand that was now in her hair, in her clothes, and caked on her eyelashes, a few of the sand-people still remained between her and the wall, trapped by the very architecture that she could imagine them once trusting to provide safety; and a few of them had drawn swords and stood before a mob of trembling commoners and the even smaller figures of children, brandishing the weapons they must have now surely known would not slow her down even by the duration of a heartbeat.

Lauren considered obliterating them and those they were giving their all to protect, but the prospect made her tired and weepy.

“I’m sorry. It’s just, you know. Par for the course. I wreck everything.”

She sniffed, turned her back, brushed the debris from hair that by now must have resembled a rat’s nest, slapped the clouds of sand from her upper clothing, and headed back toward the gap in the fortress wall.

She had no plans except to get home somehow, to strip off these clothes, to shower until she felt clean again, and to go on with her life.

She stopped when she saw what lay in wait for her.

She had come from a beach where the sand looked the way sands do, on beaches traversed by human beings: rippled by winds and by the impact of human steps. Beyond that there had been the ocean in one direction, that grass barrier and her town in another. There had been buildings, the sounds of traffic, a sign to the effect that no lifeguard was on duty off-season and that all bathers entered the water at their own risk. Here and there, litter. She specifically remembered an abandoned, filthy pool noodle tipped with flecks of salt, a broken beach lounge, and at the high-tide mark beyond which the sand was a gentle slope worn smooth by recent waves, the usual demarcation line of deposited seaweed.

None of this was what she saw now.

No, in place of the world she had seen with her male namesake Loren was a sandy kingdom stretching from here to the horizon. She saw a tiny sand village, of sand thatched huts and a little sand windmill, by a stream fed by distant, snow-capped sand-mountains. She saw another sand-fortress, the same scale as this one, occupying the nearest of a series of sandy hills just before a sand-forest. She saw a sky no longer slate-gray but dirt-brown, hiding a sun she was grateful not to see, because it now seemed likely that it would be the same color, and this would have been the blow to shatter what composure still remained, now that she was beginning to understand the kind of place where she now found herself, the kind of fate to which she’d condemned herself.

It was from this vantage point that she heard the distant rumble.

It was the first sound, except for the little puffs of dissolving sand, that she’d heard anybody make in this place. It was rhythmic in its way, too chaotic to resolve into anything as organized as a single identifiable beat.

Then a ragged black line emerged over that nearest hilltop.

Someone, either allied kingdoms or distant outposts of this one, had dispatched cavalry to take on the rampaging monster. They swallowed up the landscape with the speed of their charge, chittering and squealing as they came, and there were more of them than she could bring herself to believe.

There weren’t thousands.

That would have been crazy, not that anything about this wasn’t crazy.

The hundreds that were coming would be enough, given what they rode.

It took them less time to close the distance than she ever would have expected, given that they had so far to ride; or maybe it just looked far, given the differences in scale between the world she knew and this one where Lauren found herself. They brandished pikes and swords and axes of harmless sand, that could not possibly harm her, but they brought with them something far more dangerous. Just as the little people in this castle had appropriated a shard of glass for their most powerful weapon, so had these distant allies brought along something else that could reasonably be encountered on the beach or on the strip of grass separating it from the town beyond; or even, were they motivated to travel farther in search of resources, in that town itself.

They rode rats, and the sand formed clouds in their wake.

The first wave leaped at her, scratching and clawing at her legs, racing up her body to get at the more vulnerable places higher up. Lauren screamed and kicked, sending some of the little bastards flying, crushing others beneath her heel, but their legs were many and their claws were sharp and they were too many to outfight. She seized one that had reached her thigh—crushing its rider even she as grasped the squirmy thing’s neck—and flung it as far as she could, but there were more leaping at her, ever more, and if she stayed here it would be no time at all before they flayed her to the bone. The shattered sand fortress blocked the way behind her, but there was nothing but open space in front of her, and she leaped over the bulk of the army, hitting the sand hard and running as fast as her ravaged legs could carry her. Even as she ran, the rats who had already grabbed hold still sought to bring her down, and she shrieked like a woman in flames as she gave some of her attention to punching them, ripping them free, kicking them where they fell, stumbling, scrambling back to her feet and running still more, the sound of thundering pursuit never far behind.

She ran a straight line for as long as she could stand it. She did not go out of her way to trample any sand-people she encountered along the way, but neither did she make any special effort to avoid their villages, their isolated farmhouses, or the occasional wandering individual who she came across while putting whatever distance she could between herself and the pursuing cavalry of sand and rats. She tore what would have been a bloody swath through the realm, had it only been a realm of flesh and bone; instead, the only blood upon the sand was hers, from a dozen places where glass or teeth had ripped holes in her. It was wholesale destruction, if nothing else, and it left a path of ruin that, if these people had stories, or songs, or histories that they passed from one generation to the next, would be remembered by their descendants as one of their most epic legends, the time the riders drove off the giant thing who had come to lay waste to everything that existed.

Lauren was not a long-distance runner—was, indeed, soon winded from too many years of drink and indolence and smoking—and it was not long before her flight became a gasping lurch. Even then, there were still pursuers behind her, their numbers reinforced by riders from other villages and castles encountered on the way. They didn’t press the assault, seeing no reason in throwing good lives after bad, but they did stay close, the rats chittering and the riders brandishing fresh shards of broken glass, to keep her going. Aware that if she fell to her knees, her pursuers would seize the opportunity to finish her off, she kept going, and going, toward those mountains.

She stumbled into what she perceived as a shallow ditch and which by the scale of these sand-people was probably a respectable valley, finding herself thigh-deep deep in flowing water. This was deep enough for her passage to overturn a crowded three-story riverboat traveling downstream that was unlucky enough to be within range of the tsunami caused by her passage. She had no idea how anything made by the people of this civilization managed to survive water at all, and was at this point too intent on her own problems to reflect that this was the very nature of technology, the creation of things that could survive environments the people could not. She did see a couple of dozen little sand-people lined up along the ship’s railing recoiling as she thrashed closer, and the way the water she’d churned up inundated the deck, literally washing them away where they stood. The ship rocked in the turbulence, then capsized. Hundreds tumbled into the water, some of them popping to the surface just long enough for their mouths to contort into silent screams, before they vanished in little puffs of cloudy water. Forced into retreat as she’d been, she could not deny taking a certain savage pleasure in still being able to cause mass death and destruction on their scale, a satisfaction she continued to feel as she rose out of the water to find a busy little riverfront town with markets and inns and even one structure she would have bet money was a brothel, all of which she ripped gouges from before pressing on, toward those mountains. She had no choice. The sand-people could not swim, but their cavalry could, and there they were, crossing the water in a glistening brown carpet, unbothered by the current.

Still she ran, or more accurately stumbled, weeping and wondering why she even bothered. The mountains grew nearer. She was maybe what in her world would have been the equivalent of a long city block away when she made up her mind that they were not more sand-sculptures, but clusters of boulder, rising a couple of hundred feet above the sand. For Lauren, they were steep hills. For the sand-people, they must have been what she’d first called them, mountains. But they were stone. They were solid. They would support her. She would not drive herself to exhaustion, fighting earth that shifted beneath her every step, that sent her sliding one foot back for every two she advanced. She would be able to climb, put distance between herself and that army, maybe even find a place where they would not go, where she could stop and think about long-term survival.

And once she got to the base of the rocks, this is what she did, gasping and collapsing and weeping and pulling herself upward and finding the strength to continue even as her wounded legs left stains to mark her passage. About twenty paces up, she stumbled, landed on her knee, felt a fresh eruption of agony, and howled. It was a shriek she would have claimed louder than anything that had ever come out of her mouth, but this would have been a lie; before her marriage broke up, she and her piece of crap husband had screamed at one another in exactly that tone of voice, with exactly the same level of rage and despair. But this was the loudest scream she’d ever uttered without any words, the closest she’d ever come to an animalistic roar. That roar said, come any closer and I’ll kill you!

When she finally calmed enough, she looked down to the base of the mountain and saw the army that had driven her here, cheering.

She could not hear their cheers. Their little mouths still made no sound her ears could hear. But the body language was unmistakable. There they were, in their hundreds, being joined by others from allied castles, who had sought the glory of the fight. They waved their little sand swords and their little sand axes and their little sand pikes, and they cried their defiance of the unstoppable monster they had forced to flee. A few were even mooning her. They didn’t follow her up into the heights, though there was no reason to suppose they couldn’t. Those rats would have carried them. But she was away from their lands now, a spent threat no longer worth worrying about. They would not bother themselves with bloodying her any further, not when there were celebrations to be had.

She considered descending into their midst and taking as many with her as she could.

But she was self-destructive, not suicidal.

And so she did the only thing she could.

She went back to climbing.

• • • •

This is what she found. This is how she lived.

Near the peak she found a little alcove where one fallen stone had come to rest beside another. It was a respectable cave, out of the sun and—since it turned out that the temperatures around here could be very cold at night—out of the elements as well. It was just big enough to provide shelter, and though she tried a number of other places, on the other side of the rocks—though she ventured far enough into the desert on the other side to confirm that there were no creatures of sand there—it ended up being the most congenial place for her to live, if this was where she had to live. It was, and so she did. She found another shallow stream not far away, where there were fish; along its banks a few scraggly bushes with berries that fermented easier than she dared to believe, a few things like sticks and stones she could use to make tools.

Although at least part of every day had to be spent keeping herself watered and fed. Unless she had to, she never ventured to the inhabited side of her little mountain. She sometimes spent hours on what she came to call the safe side of the mountain. But when the sun grew low in the dun sky, she returned to her little cave, nibbled on fish and berries and moss and the occasional wandering rat, comforted herself with what intoxication she could manage from the juice of those berries, and contemplated a sky filled with unfamiliar constellations.

For a while she used the edge of a flat stone to mark a nearby wall with hash-marks to commemorate the passage of time, but she kept that up for only a few months before abandoning the project as pointless. By then it was clear that her clothing would be rotting off her. She abandoned it willingly. Her wounds became scars. Her hair grew long and matted. She gained callouses on the soles of her feet and on the palms of her hands. She stopped walking upright and surrendered to the gait that scrambling up and down these rocks rewarded, using all fours. Eventually it became easier to practice the same on her daily trips down to the water. She fell out of the habit of talking, but sometimes, when the berries produced a batch finer than average, sang. At such times, though she had no way of knowing this, the wind carried the sound down from her mountain home, and across the land repairing itself from her rampage, and in this way told those who lived there that the behemoth of legend still lived, up there in the cursed rocks where no one ever went. And in this way, she lived, and in this way she would eventually die, and though she wailed sometimes, it must be said that the life suited her, and that at times she was, if not precisely happy, then at least content.

This is what she found. This is how she lived, and it should be no surprise that this is how she died.

And if this seems to you that her existence had come to nothing, this is something else you should know.

From time to time, down in the realm where the men and women of sand built their homes and fought their wars and pursued the politics of their kind, there once in a while rose those not satisfied with the way things were, those who thought that the fates had greater destinies in mind for them.

Men and women, they would turn their eyes toward the mountains the wise warned against, the place that marked the end of the civilized world. They would remember the stories of the creature who had appeared out of nowhere and wreaked great destruction before being driven back to that place, where it was assumed it belonged, the place that still emanated strange sounds only the leviathan could have made. It would occur to these restless ones that the monster was a sight worth seeing, a quest worth pursuing; a thing worth slaying, for the menace it had once been, and the one it might become again. And so, defying the advice of their families, of their learned, of all those who made lists of the stupid ways the restless before them had gotten themselves killed, they would arm themselves with the finest weaponry they could scavenge, clad themselves in the most impenetrable armor they could find, and they would aim themselves at those mountains, intent on the cave where the monster was said to rest.

Some would stumble on their way up, come to their senses, and return home, saying that they’d searched and searched but could not find any trace of the monster, anywhere.

Others would get as far as their first sight of her, and would either go mad at the very scale of the beast or, again, come to their senses, and head back down. A few would secrete themselves near the place where she laid her head and wait until they saw her sleeping, at which point a number of those would receive the epiphany that as strange as she was, she was at heart just a living thing like any other. It would occur to them that to remove the last of her from the world would be a sin, and then they too would retreat, returning to their world with similar assurances that they had done everything they could but that the beast remained elusive, and might in fact not even exist.

And sometimes, there were the bravest of the brave, those for whom the battle was everything, the ones who bided their time at her cave’s mouth, waited for their moment, and then drew their swords or—if they were equipped—their shards of glass, intent on accomplishing what entire legions before them had not. There were, over the years, many of these, all well-meaning. They were heroes and they were fools, two words that often mean the same thing.

Of them, we must report that the little alcove where the monster slept began its life as her home a hard stone surface, no more congenial a bed than concrete would have been, and that over the years it acquired a new and much more comfortable layer, deep enough to render that place as restful a home as the beast could ever want.

©2019 by Adam-Troy Castro.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam-Troy Castro made his first non-fiction sale to Spy magazine in 1987. His twenty-six books to date include four Spider-Man novels, three novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and six middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of young Gustav Gloom. Adam’s darker short fiction for grownups is highlighted by his most recent collection Her Husband’s Hands And Other Stories. Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). His latest release was the audio collection And Other Stories (Skyboat Media), which features thirteen hours of his fiction, including the new stories “The Hour In Between” and “Big Stupe and the Buried Big Glowing Booger.” Adam lives in Florida with his wife Judi and a trio of revolutionary cats.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Mother Carey’s Table

J. Anderson Coats | 5387 words

1710
British North America

My father says he’s saved my life nine times. Once at my birth, once when we fled master and overseer through rows of struggling tobacco beneath a sky choked with stars, and the other seven paid out over all our years before the masts of ten different ships.

The oldest two I must take at his word, as I have no memory of either. The first of the seven was the time Pop shut me below when I thought to skip up the rigging to the topmost yard of the Barbry Allen in a near gale off Barbados, the decks awash and the sea yawning up before us. Six years into life and already I was full of the piss and vinegar he taught me to walk with. The kind he said would serve me well no matter what the tide.

“Boys are all piss and vinegar,” he would say as he scraped his grimy razor over my scalp till I was bald as an egg. “It’s what keeps them alive, pet. On the sea or off.”

Mostly I think I’ve saved my own life. I knew enough to listen to Pop from the first moment we stepped on shipboard and learn the ropes from anyone with something to teach. When we came upon the Golden Vanity a few months ago, the bosun handed me the ledger without so much as a look toward Pop, and I signed the articles on my own for the first time.

I grinned at Pop hard enough to blind the sun. He smiled back, but when he thought I wasn’t looking he shook his head, slow and sad.

Pop still thinks we chose poorly, joining the Vanity’s crew. “It’s a brig, pet. Moves slow, like an ox in molasses. We’ll never catch anything faster than a merchantman. We’ll never be able to outrun anything faster either.”

I’ve given up trying to convince Pop that sloops and schooners might be quick but they can’t bring as many guns to bear. Besides, the Vanity’s old man has an eye for ships loaded down with plunder and swears the wind tells him things. And if you’re bold enough to ask what things, he’ll merely wink and say, “Things about things, lad.”

Which is no answer at all, but when you’re the captain and your name is Half-Hanged Henry, it’s an answer you can give a bold sailor who’s a little too curvy amidships to be an actual boy.

We’re flying a Union Jack we stole from our last prize and lying in wait for the next behind a barrier island off the coast of Carolina. I’ll be on watch in another turn of the glass, but for now I’m up on the mainmast yard, my bare legs swinging, the salt-wind curling through my jacket and over my windburned face.

A flurry of seabirds circle the topgallant yard, then dip and glide down to the waterline. But when they gather just above the spray, I flinch hard and grip the mast.

Mother Carey’s chickens.

They’re not proper chickens, not the kind you’d eat. They’re little seabirds, black at the wing with a white stripe across their tails. There are four, and they dance eerily over the surface of the water without ever landing.

I wonder if I knew them. They were once men, and I’ve seen my share of floating corpses since I was a cabin boy. These birds are the souls of drowned sailors who’ve escaped the wife of Davy Jones and returned to warn seamen of storms. Even crews like us who use captured flags to lure prizes close.

I shinny up the mainmast till I reach the topmost yard and can go no higher without becoming a bird myself. The sky is clear and gray. Not blue, but no angry clouds mount. The air doesn’t smell like a storm, and the wind promises naught but a good chase once the prey comes in sight.

“Ha! Almost got that one!”

Hanging over the rail near the bowsprit are Johnny and Black Tom. They signed the articles in Port Royal, no older than me and full of showy false swagger that lasted a single turn of the glass. Pop took pity on them and now they’re our messmates, two sons closer to the big family he always wanted.

Black Tom flings a stone and it misses one of Mother Carey’s chickens by a handswidth.

I’m down the mainmast in a trice and I haul those two coves collar and scruff away from the rail. They go stumbling and fall into fighting stance before seeing it’s me. Then they straighten and eye me warily.

“What gives, Joe?” Black Tom has squinty pig-eyes and a constant white-boy sunburn. Johnny’s the one who’s blacker than me and Pop put together, with ritual scars like Pop remembers on his granddad.

“Don’t you make Mother Carey angry, harming those birds.” I stab a finger at the feathery shadows tiptoeing across the water below. “Or else she’ll call up a storm so she can serve our drowned guts to Davy Jones for tea.”

“You really believe that old yarn?” Johnny asks. “Them’s just birds. Souls go to heaven or they go to hell.”

Eight bells rings, four sets of two peals, short and pert.

These lads must stop. Killing even one of the little harbingers could bring us all to a bad end, and Pop’s grown attached to both Johnny and Black Tom, orphans like him, like he’s terrified I’ll end up. I want to smile at them, to use honey instead of vinegar, but Pop says nothing makes me look less like a boy than when I smile.

“I do.” I say it over my shoulder as I head toward the mainmast. “And you’ll do best to believe it too, ’cause if you let them, they’ll save your life.”

Still no sign of a storm. And we’ve been watching every bearing.

Just after three bells, we weigh anchor. The old man’s got wind of a massive treasure ship limping her way up the coast of Spanish Florida, blown off course and separated from her warship escort.

Prizes don’t get any more tempting than that, and Johnny and Black Tom lead the whooping and speculating.

I’m trimming the staysail when the old man strolls past.

“Joe, you’ll be in the boarding party, got that?”

“Ah . . . beg pardon, sir, but I’m a topman.”

Pop puts down a bucket and edges closer. I hate that I’m glad for it, but I am.

The old man squints at me. “A big strong lad like you? How old are you, Joe?”

I frown, reckoning, and Pop hisses, “Sixteen.”

“Sixteen, sir.”

“And you’ve never boarded a prize?”

“No, sir. I was a runner and a surgeon’s boy when I was little, then a powder monkey and now a topman.”

The old man scoffs cheerfully. “Nah, you’re wasted up in the rigging, moving sails. See Davis after your watch. He’ll give you a blade.”

“But I . . .”

I can splice a line and take a sounding and play a passable hornpipe. I can fight like a bag of wet cats, but I know I can’t kill. Just the thought turns my stomach.

But boys my age are well scarred like Johnny, like Black Tom. Boys of any age are full of piss and vinegar, and they’d be spoiling for a chance like this.

“What is it, sailor?” The old man isn’t smiling anymore.

I signed the articles. I took the ledger from the bosun and balanced it on my left forearm while inking a big shaky J beneath all the other names and marks. I could have handed it over to Pop, let him make a mark for us both and taken my half share like always.

My father puts a hand on my shoulder. His voice is quiet but steady when he says, “Nothing, sir. Right, Joe?”

“Yes, sir,” I mutter, and it’s to both of them, to the old man and Pop too.

The bosun sends me aloft and I’m glad for it, but now I see Mother Carey’s chickens everywhere and I shouldn’t be seeing any when there are still no storms off any bearing. All I can do is wonder what the little souls are trying to warn us of, since birds of this kind never just appear.

When eight bells ring out once more and I’m off watch, I head down to my rack below, snug among the guns. The canvas is still warm from when Pop slept in it earlier, and there’s a little packet of rock-hard ship’s bread waiting for me wrapped in his kerchief.

Pop hasn’t given me his rations since I was nine and laid up sick and sweating with cowpox.

The Golden Vanity runs on bells a lot tighter than most other ships Pop and I have sailed with, but Pop says the old man was in the Royal Navy before he turned pirate, and bells are what he knows.

Pop says it in that voice he uses when he’s hopeful for something but doesn’t want to be. He’s hopeful for one thing, mostly—to crew a vessel that takes a prize big enough that he can retire on an able seaman’s share.

Whenever he talks about it, I smile and nod like I’m eager to put on shoes and petticoats and sip tea in a drawing room, but I already know there’s no way I can follow him. I stopped being a girl that day on the Charleston dock when Pop signed the articles that first time, when he put his hand on my newly shaved head and told the old man of the Veracruz his son would make a fine cabin boy. Pop had no way to keep me unless I spit and swaggered and pissed through the curved metal funnel he made for me out of an old drinking cup.

So even if we do hit a once-in-a-lifetime treasure ship—maybe like the one we’re sneaking toward now—even if Pop does land enough silver and gold to buy that little farm or the tall Boston townhouse he’s always on about, now that I’m old enough to sign articles for myself, I have no desire at all to leave the sea.

But I can’t tell Pop that. Not after everything he’s done to keep me, starting with swinging me on his back that night he fled his future and mine—days beneath the sun and years beneath the lash.

I must have drifted to sleep, for I’m jolted almost out of my rack by an insistent thudding that sets the bulkheads trembling.

Black Tom’s at the head of the gun deck, pale beneath his sunburn, and he bangs on the bulkhead with a stick of kindling to the same wild clang as the ship’s bell.

They’re beating us to quarters.

We’ve come upon our prize.

I’m awake in an instant, and I’m clearing hammocks and sea chests from the guns before I remember the old man wants to see me out on deck, blade in hand and ready to board and subdue the enemy ship. I shouldn’t like how the dagger Davis gave me feels in my hand—sturdy, heavy, menacing—but I do.

As I step out on deck, Pop nods me near. He’s breathing in sharp little bursts as he grips his blade. Pop’s been in boarding parties before, but I’ve never seen this look about him.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Pop was afraid.

“That’s not a treasure ship,” Pop says in a low voice. “She’s riding too high. Look at the waterline.”

I step to the rail and peer out. And pull in a sharp breath of my own. If the ship were loaded down with treasure, the deck would be only a fathom or so above the waves. Instead all the gunports are clear.

Two whole rows of them.

“She’s a warship, isn’t she?” I whisper.

Pop nods.

“And we’re trapped against the coastline, aren’t we?”

This time Pop doesn’t reply because questions I know the answers to I shouldn’t have to ask.

All she’s got to do is come broadside to us and fire. Two volleys and we’re sunk.

We’ve hauled down the Union Jack, since England and Spain are still at war the last anyone’s heard, but flying no flag at all will draw every captain’s eye.

His grapeshot as well.

The bosun’s whistle cuts the clamor, and we fall silent as the old man swings onto the quarterdeck and waves his arms for attention.

“She’s Spanish, all right,” the old man says, “but there’s not a single coin aboard her. We’ll never be able to outrun her, and we’re all dead men if we try to fight.”

A rumble moves through the crew. Unease and discontent and more than a little raw terror. The wind has led Half-Hanged Henry astray.

Pop steps closer so our shoulders are touching. Signing pirate articles means you’re always with a crew that’ll overwhelm an enemy, and any captain worth a damn never starts a fight he can’t easily win.

But that vessel is a forty-gun frigate, and there’s no way we’re sailing past without being sunk or boarded.

Pop and me and Johnny and others like us—we’re done for either way. Half-Hanged Henry and his lawless lot treat us like sailors so long as we act like it, and every seaman brown or white is the same to Davy Jones. But if we’re caught, we’re part of the plunder and hauled in chains to the auction block. We won’t get a show trial or even hang on the harborside gallows like the white pirates.

I can’t speak for Pop or Johnny or the others, but I’d rather be a guest at some underwater table with Davy and his missus. There’s no way I could crouch between rows of tobacco now that I’ve felt the foredeck swaying beneath my feet, tasted salt on my lips, and run before the wind in a little sloop under a sky blue enough to make me forget every storm I ever sailed through.

Mother Carey’s chickens usually warn of a storm she’s busy stirring. At least a storm would take both us and the Spanish warship down to the bottom, where Mother Carey herself would dice up our flesh onto dishes made of shells and use our bones to comb her long green hair.

“We cannot fight her.” The old man is pacing, toying with the spyglass. “If we cripple her, we might be able to run past.”

“Her mainsails are dropping!” shouts Black Tom from the rigging. “She’s coming about!”

The old man snaps the spyglass closed. “Can any man among you swim?”

Pop fidgets with his blade, and at his other elbow Johnny looks utterly greensick.

“C’mon, lads, speak up! There must be one of you who can sink that ship sneakylike, with auger and drill.”

No one says anything. Like as not because none of them can swim.

But I can.

There’s only so much a child can do in squalid ports with ten grogshops per man and not a church in sight. While Pop drank his ghosts to whispers, I whiled away long afternoons in quiet inlets, splashing and collecting shells—and paddling about the shallows and deeps till I could swim like a fish, even in a wind-whipped ocean current.

“There’ll be silver in it for you,” the old man says with an edge of terror I’ve never yet heard from any man who’s turned pirate. “My gold watch too.” He rakes a look over us, shouts, “My daughter’s hand in marriage! What the devil will it take?”

My father has saved my life nine times. He wanted no part of the Vanity, and I was the one who finally wore him down.

“I’ll do it.” I step before the old man. “I’ll sink that frigate if you’ll trade your shares for mine when we find and take the treasure galleon.”

Pop stiffens. That treasure ship is still out there, and a captain’s haul is always seven shares. Seven, when a single share from a prize like that would grant Pop’s hopes thrice over.

The old man shuts his mouth. Narrows his eyes. Looks to the warship. Then he says, “It’s yours, Joe. It’s yours if you sink that ship.”

Everything feels oddly quiet but for the creak of wood and the rattlesnap of damp canvas. I can hear every last one of my father’s indrawn breaths somewhere behind me.

The first mate takes off his belt and Johnny holds out a leather sheath, wide-eyed and solemn. I thread the sheath through the belt and cinch it tight under my jacket. When the bosun hands me an auger, I brandish it like a pistol with more piss and vinegar than I feel before tying it into the sheath.

Johnny laughs nervously, then paws my shoulder in an awkward sort of half-hug.

“Back to your labor,” the old man calls. “If they see us crowded at the rail, they’ll know something’s amiss.”

With both auger and dagger about my waist, I feel a full stone heavier. I can swim well, but I’ve never tried it weighted. I climb up to the rail and peer over. The water below is not a sparkling sky-blue lagoon where little waves lapped around my baby feet, where I dipped and surged with naught on my back but my smallclothes. It’s green-black and choppy, and at the bottom are the bones of sailors who did not have a care for its will.

The wind is sharp from the starboard beam. It won’t be a turn of the glass before we’re pushed close enough to the frigate to force a reckoning.

Pop is drawn tight like a mainstay line. He badly wants to say something but he’s not going to. I’m not even sure what there is to say.

I can’t take my offer back. And I can’t let us be taken.

I face the water. I slip out of my jacket and dive in.

The water is bonechill-cold and the shock of it hits me like a cudgel. I kick my feet and force myself upward and forward, but my shirt and trousers splay out like a jellyfish, clinging and dragging and slowing every limb I thrash.

So I choke and gasp and struggle, fighting out of my clothes. I break the surface and the cold hits me again, rakes over my stubbly head, but I suck in a mighty breath and tread water long enough to steady myself.

Cold. Oh, Father Neptune but it is cold in nothing but smallclothes and the linen I keep wrapped about my chest.

Black Tom’s in the rigging. The old man has the spyglass. One of them’s bound to notice.

I’ll reap that whirlwind once I’m back on board. For now, I’ve got a ship to sink.

I tighten the mate’s belt and make sure I still have both auger and dagger, then I slice my arms through the water in a nice steady rhythm. I start to feel warmer. Every twenty strokes I look up and mark the warship just to be sure I’m on course.

At first it feels like I’ll never get there.

Then she’s within a stone’s throw.

Then I’m right beneath her.

I tread water once I reach the warship, fighting to catch my breath. It’s been a while since I’ve swum this much, and my arms are weak and melty, my eyes burning from the salt. The ship is moving only with the tide, and I unfasten the auger from my waist and feel along till I find a spongy, worm-eaten patch below the waterline.

There’s no way to auger without a grip to hold me steady, and there’s nothing to grip but barnacles. They cake the whole shipbottom like drifted sand, and each is a tiny razor.

I’m too tired to hesitate. I grab a clump of barnacles, and they slice me open clean and thoughtless. And those cuts burn. They burn and burn and I whimper, not an ounce of piss and vinegar left to fight it.

But my right hand is free, and I set to work with the auger. I crank it round and round, round and round. It’s all I do. It’s all I think about.

Before long I’ve bored half a dozen holes clear through the hull. The barnacles have already done the job halfway, quietly eating the wood till it all but ripples beneath my palms. Already I can hear the slurpsuck of water punching through my holes and the panicky shouts of men inside, the clomp and clatter as they flee, the futile clang of the ship’s bell ringing the general alarm.

My arms throb and my whole left hand is numb from scores of tiny half-moon cuts across my fingers. When I fumble the auger against the hull to start a new hole, it wheels out of my hand and drops like an anchor down and down and gone.

I watch it disappear. The job is only half done. All I have left is my dagger.

I force my stiff fingers around another clump of barnacles. New cuts crosshatch the old ones. I pull the dagger from my belt and stab at the pulpy wood like a murderer.

A raw, violent hole appears beneath my blade. Then two, then many.

The warship is taking on water. The shift in pitch is sobering. I’m killing these men. They can swim no better than the lads on the Vanity.

I’ve lost count of the holes I’ve put in, but I’m spent. The warship’s list is bad enough that she’s in no position to fight us or give chase. And if she goes down, I want to be nowhere near.

I’ve earned my prize. Pop’s prize. And half the rum ration of every man on the Vanity whose life I saved sinking this Spanish tub.

I cram my dagger into its sheath, push off the side of the listing warship—the barnacles open up my toes like meat—and thrash through the waves toward home. Each stroke takes all my effort, and halfway there I start to crawl-paddle and sputter out seawater hard enough to set my vitals throbbing.

I won’t make it if I think how bad I hurt.

So I think how to explain to Half-Hanged Henry that I don’t want his daughter’s hand in marriage.

I think of the first time I made it all the way up to the topgallant yard on the Sally Dearest, how I felt light enough to spread my arms and take wing like a bird.

And I think of Pop, who only ever wanted a place of his own and a houseful of babies.

My blind, splashing hands clatter against something hard and wet and splintery. The Golden Vanity. I grab and scrabble for a barnacle handhold, but Captain Royal Navy actually careens them off proper on occasion, and I must weakly tread water.

Up on the foredeck I see faces of the crew peering over, tiny ovals of color against a flat gray sky and sprawls of dingy canvas and a tangle of rigging.

I dredge an arm out of the water in salute. Any moment now a rope will fall over the side. Somewhere in me is the strength to hold that rope, and I will find it.

One by one, the faces at the rail disappear.

Only the old man is left.

“She’s sunk!” I shout. “I sank her. Pull me up!”

The old man doesn’t reply. He doesn’t throw a rope either. He merely shakes his head.

Over my shoulder, the Spanish warship is tilting like driftwood and the whole quarterdeck is in chaos as men push and fight for dry ground. Seeing her on her way down reminds me how hot and weak my arms are, how much of a struggle it is to keep my head above the waves.

“Captain!” I howl, but it’s a mistake because I choke on a sudden harsh mouthful of water.

“Can’t do it, Joe,” he says, and disappears from the rail.

I’m gasping with every flailed stroke and kick, but I manage to free my dagger from its sheath. I punch it out of the water and shout, “I know well how to sink a ship, Cap! If this is how you’ll serve me, I’ll take you to the bottom with me. We’ll all be on Mother Carey’s table together!”

And that’s when Pop appears at the rail, fighting the first mate and the bosun, who have him by either arm. There’s a length of ratline in his hand and he almost gets it over the gunwale before they haul him away, out of sight.

He’ll go to the bottom too.

I open my hand and let the dagger fall, down and down, to Davy Jones.

Pop is roaring like a madman and cursing every Goddamn one of them and shouting at me to stay strong, his last little baby, the only one he could save.

I flail one final stroke and go under.

I’m colder than I’ve ever been, but nothing hurts anymore—not my arms, not my feet, not my eyes, not my guts.

Above me is a dull shadow set against shades of rippling, glinting motion. It’s the size of my thumb, oval but pointed at both ends.

Like the bottom of a ship.

I’m standing before a table on the quarterdeck of an ancient, rotted merchantman. Her mast is a ragged stump and stray chain shot is lodged in the gunwales. At the head of the table is a woman whose face is hidden by shadow and wavered by the movement of the currents around us.

“Jocasta,” she says, and all at once I know who she is. I know it even though I have only a whisper of a memory of her. This is the voice that would lilt through fire-warmed, comfortable darkness when I was small enough to be tucked into a willow basket. Then would come her gentle hand, rubbing my back, smoothing hair from my eyes, pushing away the dim of the room and the grit of the floor and the gnaw in my belly.

I have to swallow twice before I can answer, and it’s no more than a whisper. “Mama.”

“That’s right.” She swims one long graceful arm at an empty chair before a bare, waiting dinner plate. “Come, sit down. I’ve been expecting you. Supper’s ready.”

Pop would never say much about Mama. One day she was there before the fire in our cabin, the next she wasn’t. He’s always saying I was too little to remember her anyway, but he’s wrong.

I remember her voice. I remember her warmth. I remember crying quietly because she hadn’t taken me with her, wherever she went.

And here she is before me.

She leans to set a dish on the table, nudging several others to make room. The table is overflowing with platters, all covered with domed abalone shells.

I reach for the chair and pull it out. It glides through the water like my arm, like my backside as I start to sit down.

Then she smiles at me.

Her teeth are all pointy like a cat’s.

I freeze, my rump hovering above the seat. “Y-you’re not my mother.”

“Mama. Or Madre. Or Mater. All of you with salt for blood are mine.” She slides her lips over her teeth, her voice all Mama once more. “Come now, Jocasta. Sit down. I’ve missed you.”

Out of the darkness, out of everything cold and miserable would come that voice. And somehow things would grow lighter, starting with her and ending with me.

She’s back at her work, carving meat and dicing seaweed and piling everything onto platters made of shells all lined up along the table. This table on the deck of a dead ship.

“Sit.” Her voice goes sharp and she aims her knife at me.

The same knife I buried to the hilt in weak, barnacled patches of a Spanish warship, sending her and her crew to the bottom of the sea.

To Mother Carey’s table.

I flip over one of the shells covering a platter. It’s heaped with severed fingers and slabs of flesh and the odd swimming length of bowel.

I struggle backward, but it’s a maddening swish of water and my arms churn, trying to push away, trying to get clear. Mother Carey grins with her pointy cat-teeth as she lifts a goggle-eyed, limp-swaying Spanish sailor from his seat and cleaves his arm from his torso while he burbles Mamita.

“You will sit,” Mother Carey says as she slits the sailor from neck to navel, “and you will stay. It would be a pity if you didn’t enjoy the fine feast you’ve provided me.”

Spanish sailors with empty, slack faces are taking seats one after the other in chairs that hold them fast as Mother Carey prepares a feast of the dead for herself and Davy Jones.

“You wouldn’t leave me, would you? Sit down, Jocasta. Sit down and be with your mother.”

Mama’s voice keeps coming out of Mother Carey’s mouth as she stands at the head of her table and pulls helpless Spaniards out of chairs much like the vacant one before me. As she cleaves the poor bastards bone from bone and piles their guts on abalone dishes.

I learned to stop asking about Mama. Pop said it was easier that way. That we love people when they’re here, but when they go, they’re gone.

Pop. Who never once thought to leave me behind, whatever the cost.

I don’t sit down. I kick my feet. I start to rise.

Water moves around me and over me and through me, through my hair and my skin, and flutters the scraps of linen that still cling to me. I wing out my arms and glide.

I am growing lighter.

The wind changes shades. The sunlight changes color.

Most of us huddle up close in the sand. But five of us, we feel it. We know what to do.

I become light. I catch the updraft, sway over the waves. The nests on the dunes are distant but safe for now. Out we go, and out.

A storm builds to the north. A storm my mother is stirring, for she and her man grow hungry once more.

Sails beyond the barrier island, rigged for pursuit. When the sky is this color we are drawn to ships, to those who are as we once were.

I angle my wings, slide along the ship’s waterline, pluck up some tiny-shelled creatures to crunch. Dabble my toes against the water, then glide up on a wick of wind.

I am up and into the rigging, toward a brown man with graying hair who sits all alone on the foremast yard, swinging his legs while the wind catches his jacket.

Soon they will go. Capstan chanty, anchor up, ship in sight, beat to quarters. He will be among them. He will grip his blade, swing over harsh water. He is still waiting for his prize. He waits for her even as he curses her.

Around the edge of the sail. Up, and toward him.

The water sings and beckons. The wind wants to nudge me toward the dunes and my nest, and soon enough I will return there, but right now I need to be on this yard with this man. I need to see him.

I need him to look north so he’ll stay on this side of the water and not below, where my mother would put his bones on her table.

He holds out a hand and I cannot help but take wing. Too sudden for the shell of me, too much, even though the soul of me would curl up in his pocket, feel the warm beat of his heart one last time.

I make a pass through the rigging, then sweep down to the waterline. I arc over the quarterdeck, where dark clouds are beginning to mount.

I hover there until he sees.

©2016 by J. Anderson Coats. Originally published in A Tyranny of Petticoats, edited by Jessica Spotswood. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. Anderson Coats has received two Junior Library Guild awards and earned starred reviews from Kirkus, School Library Journal, the Horn Book Review, and Shelf Awareness. The Wicked and the Just was one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Teen Books of 2012 and won the 2013 Washington State Book Award for Young Adults. Her newest book is R is for Rebel, a middle-grade novel about coercion and resistance in a reform school in a fictional occupied country. She is also the author of The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming, a middle-grade novel set in Washington Territory in the 1860s that won the 2018 Washington State Book Award for Middle Grade. The Green Children of Woolpit, a historically-inspired middle-grade fantasy, is forthcoming in fall 2019. Spindle and Dagger, set in twelfth-century Wales, is forthcoming in spring 2020.

Ahura Yazda, the Great Extraordinary

Senaa Ahmad | 5014 words

The sunshine brings him to his knees. Every day he thinks, I am here, I am here, in this house that we raised above ourselves, with this woman who chose me. The girls are safe. The creatures are fed. The windowsill is pearled with dew. The spiders are friendly. We have made a life for ourselves, away from the world. We live in a church of infinite light.

In these hours, he is left soft-footed and silent, walking the hallways in the farmhouse that he built with his wife Roksha. In their bedroom, she is nosedived into her pillow, and in the other one, his daughters’ silk hair feathers around them like the crowns of little saintesses, and outside, his rust-pocked Chevy gathers morning glitter in the driveway. It is all so short. For this, it is all the dearer.

At daybreak, whatever wildness in him is briefly exhumed. He is as far away as he will ever be from himself, Ahura Yazda, the Great Extraordinary, Persia’s trickster, who once stood atop Mount Damavand for twelve days and twelve nights and caught stars like diamonds in his unhinged jaw to win the gratitude of the most beautiful woman in the world. He is a man looking at a man’s ghost, wondering where it came from, and why it hasn’t left yet.

It’s a glorious feeling, but it doesn’t last long. It never does. This time, all it takes is opening the front door.

When he steps outside, the chilly grass is slimed with blood and muscle. Not a body, but the gummy insides of everything inside a body. It forms a death trail, past the aspen skeletons knotted in mortal prayer, like sutures threaded in wine-colored viscera. All along the way to the barn.

Something, someone has slaughtered an innocent soul all over his front yard, and he knows in the kick of his gut that the shadhavar is night-roaming again.

• • • •

They came to the country in crates. Exotic pets, he wrote on the manifest. Five creatures. One for each ocean of the world, each point on a star, each prayer of the day. But this comes later. In the frantic moment, there was no rhyme to it. They were the five he saved. The five who were there.

If you bring us with you, we’ll do anything.

He said, It’s not much of a life for you.

They said, If it’s a life enough for you, maybe it’s enough for us.

When he sealed them up, he said, I can only try. Saying without saying: You have to help yourselves, too.

• • • •

It’s dusky with smoke and slippery with wet straw in the barn where his creatures live. The spidery banners still flutter feebly against the wall as he stalks past, their leaves browned of color but the cursive crawl still legible. See the zagh! Half the face of a hawk, half the face of a beautiful woman!

There was a time when the farm was open to outsiders, two dollars apiece to see the flaming djinni horse, the karkadann goring the life out of a sapling, looking for all the world like a bloodlusting rhino. The enormous simorgh, sinuous snake of a bird, her mystical feathers fanned. Roksha painted the signs, hunched in the grass with a spool of paper. Shadhavar the carnivorous unicorn! They used to call it Ahura Yazda’s Ark, back when he had a sense of humor about this type of thing. He’s not entirely certain if he’s lost his sense of humor or just misplaced it, if this country has taken it away from him. These bleary days, he feels like he is always travelling through mirrors, getting closer and farther away, older and younger all the time. Maybe misty mornings will do that to an old man.

Only the zagh is awake, hunched in the rafters like a barn owl, her bristled wings edged saffron in dawn. She turns the human side of her face towards him and swoops down.

“I thought you’d never notice,” she says. “It’s been hours.”

“You know, you could have woken me,” Ahura Yazda growls.

“Old man,” the zagh says, “it’s not my fault you’re losing your touch.”

She’s in the air before he can utter the words. Don’t call me old man, old bird. They’ve danced this dance before. In motion she becomes herself, the whip of her wings, the cut of her eyes. She does not smolder, she blisters. She turns her half-human half-griffon face upwards to the light as if to say, Here I am, what else do you possibly think I could be. Like a hawk of the Old World. She could slice a man in two, although she hasn’t done that sort of thing since they crossed the world. The zagh is his oldest, dearest girl.

The shadhavar looks like he’s been there all night, immobile and equine, sketched in midnight oil. Sunk to his knees in sleep, his horn scoring the ground before him in imprecise hieroglyphs. Only his muzzle glimmers, drops of blood stringing miniscule rubies across his sooty coat.

“What was it this time?” Ahura Yazda asks.

The shadhavar’s nostrils flare but he doesn’t move. “A dog,” he mutters.

“If they throw me in a dungeon, it’s going to be your fault.”

“They don’t have dungeons in this country, old man,” the shadhavar says edgily. “And I didn’t know it was happening.” He shuffles to his feet. Somewhere above, the zagh chuckles. She would never hide her enjoyment of this. “I only woke up when it was already dead.”

“You know what a smarter man would say? Next time, it will be a baby. Then what?”

The shadhavar says, “It’s in my bones and my brain. It’s who I am. I can’t fix it, I’m sorry.” He touches his nose against Ahura Yazda’s vast forearm. “You knew that from the very start.” And Ahura Yazda, the Great Extraordinary, the oldest trickster still alive, bows against the sullen form of the shadhavar and thinks: I should have brought you somewhere brined in blood. With wild dogs and tame deer. I should have taken you on another great adventure.

• • • •

Zaynab is perched on the front step, skinny arms tucked around wobbly knees, waiting for him. Were little girls this fragile when he was a boy? He could put her in his pocket if he wasn’t afraid of crushing her. She was eleven this last winter. Anam will be seven. His own two colts.

“You said I could help you,” she says, already well on her way to wheedling mode.

He sits down beside her in the sod. “Darling,” he says. “Not today.”

“But that’s what you said last week.”

“Really not today.”

“You’re going to say that for the rest of my life,” she says with the desperation of someone much older.

He says gently, “This time it’s different.”

“Papa,” she says. “If I’m going to take over the farm, I need to know.”

It takes impossible effort not to laugh. She’s serious as a dead man.

“You’re going to take over the farm, huh?” He nudges her with his elbow. Her knees buckle treacherously, but she doesn’t blink. “Maybe not while your old man is still kicking, right?”

“I have to start now,” she says. “I have to know everything. I have to know now.”

He looks down at her.

“You promised,” she mutters, compromising between a mumble and a whine.

“All good things come to those who wait,” he says.

“Yesterday you said, live every day like it’s your last,” she reminds him.

“Well, consistency was never my strong suit.” He smiles. “Only wisdom.”

She says, “Please?”

• • • •

It was Roksha who saw it the first time. She said, Ahura Yazda. Look.

This was back in the beginning. When they first touched down to Ontario soil, when the manna seeds were still entombed in the dirt in a shallow grave. The house was still an A-frame spectre ribbed wooden and gaunt and the yard dense with old, craggy pines which, when he cracked them open, sounded like titans yawning. The citron yellow sap gummed his nails for days. Roksha’s fleshy hands grew fossilized riverbeds and stony highways. At night they yanked splinters from each other’s cracked palms, the ones they hadn’t found or noticed in the hours before.

The earth in this parcel of land squirmed with worms and strange insects. A place to put things in the ground, and see what they became. A tiny acreage for this part of the world, scarcely ten acres, but theirs. She said, This will be worth it.

Do you regret it? he asked the creatures.

No, they said. Never.

Then she woke him up one night. Ahura Yazda. Look.

They slept in a tent under the vast shadow of their unfinished home. Through the slats he saw the wide brushstrokes of branches, the broad-toothed fence, the teaspoonful of starlight spilling across the open land—and the animal, crawling through the underbrush like a lit thistle, its eyes flickering silver.

It’s a porcupine, he said. Go back to sleep.

I know what it is. Listen.

Over the whispering grass, the shiftless trees, the clucking dying fire, across the distance of the yard, he heard the porcupine’s teeth clattering, an insistent tapping like a kid’s knuckles drumming on a windowpane. Its body bristled, stiff-spiked, dipped white in the faint light. Its snout was garnet red with blood.

The night fell impossibly still. The porcupine went rigid. It lowered its head and horked up something wet and furiously scarlet. Something fleshy.

Oh my god, Roksha said.

Now he could see that one of their creatures was awake, its eyes silver-bright and haunted, motionless. In the night the shadhavar was a narwhal, ghost-black, the blade of his horn dimmed in the dark.

The porcupine, writhing now in the grass, inching farther away from them every moment, sputtered blood and sticky strands of its pink insides. Guts, Ahura Yazda thought. He is spitting out his own guts.

This is not normal, Roksha whispered.

Not anymore, she meant. Not for this part of the world.

He stood up. What he meant to do, he had no idea. It was always like this.

Hey! he shouted.

The porcupine turned to look at him. Ahura Yazda froze. It was looking right at him. Eye to eye. Dribbling blood and tendrils of glistening intestinal meat.

Ahura Yazda? it gurgled, in the shadhavar’s voice.

And then it shuddered in the dirt and stopped moving. The shadhavar closed his eyes. Roksha exhaled.

When Ahura Yazda shook the shadhavar awake, he was groggy and uncertain.

What in the world just happened? Ahura Yazda demanded. What was that?

What was what?

That. He jabbed his finger at the porcupine, a prone hump in the grass. What was that.

The shadhavar sat up with a start. His eyes went wide. Every wisp of hair on end.

He said, Oh no. Oh no.

He said, I thought I was dreaming. I swear to you.

• • • •

Every year they grow the mystical crop in the fields. Manna, he calls it. Although in full harvest, it’s wheat-gold, sheaves thick as straw, pale green buds. The silky-stiffness of damask to a touch. Used to be, the creatures would help them. Except the djinni horse, who could flame a field with the accidental brush-by. A couple of years ago he dug into his bank account—probably the oldest trickster still alive, and he has a bank account now—to buy used farm machinery.

Zaynab wants to learn how to drive the tractor.

“Why don’t we start with just watching,” Ahura Yazda says.

When she scowls and grumbles nonsense words at the ground, he says, “Maybe you want to drive in the truck with your mother.”

The manna gets sent to scientists back in the city. Twice a year they come with electrical equipment that crackles and bleats, yellow notepads, silver-wire spectacles, analogue cameras, and trays of sparkling beakers, and they squat in the fields, scooping dirt with their fingernails, jotting notes with fervor. Their intensity makes him itchy, always.

The sod is still icy, unyielding from the winter, the grass still blunted and gray. This is the time of year when it’s all a waiting game, before the last frost, before everything changes again. He looks at her and his spine aches. Don’t grow up, not yet. If he could trap her in this moment beneath a water glass, looking like a gravely ponderous vizier at eleven whole years of living, he does not know if he could find the strength to do it. If only he could take himself back through time to the very start, before they leave the old country. Would he be brave enough to do it all again?

“You’re being weird,” Zaynab says, side-eying him with suspicion.

“You’re a mind reader now?”

“You look weird.”

“Never judge a book by its cover,” he says with a smile.

“You’re pretty weird on the inside, too,” she says.

• • • •

It’s one of those nights where fog billows in organza clouds across the grass and the moon is smeared and adrift in the hazy sea above, and the air is damp and dreamy with the promise of rain, doom, and gloom. It’s glorious.

The instant he enters the barn, he can smell their sour adolescent boy odors, the liquor pickling their breaths, the sweat hot on their necks, and now and again their nervous smothered laughter floats toward him. When he bellows, “Who’s there?” they all take off in a flock, hooting and hollering. He grabs a fistful of polyester and drags the last one back. The boy squirms and cries out. He must have only a few years on Zaynab but already she has an older face than him.

“I just wanted to see,” he yelps, thrashing uselessly.

It happens all the time. Teenage boys, courage by way of their parents’ cabinet of spirits, a burning curiosity about the strange farm on 110 Road. The creatures watch benignly. He has an inkling in this moment that they might miss the days they were on display.

“Calm down,” Ahura Yazda says. The boy slumps. Only then does he let go.

“Next time,” he says, “don’t be an idiot. Just come to the front door like a civilized person.”

The boy shrivels under his gaze.

“You want to get split in two by the karkadann? That’s what you want?” Ahura Yazda demands.

“I just wanted to see,” he mumbles. This one, like his daughters, is bony, brittle, with chipped shins and arms like bent dandelion stalks, a mop of dark hair pluming above his pallid forehead. Hollows under his eyes, in his clavicle. He’s white. Of course. Will his daughters only meet white boys in this country? Clumsy morons like this one? Does it matter? Or what, does he truly want them to meet Persian tricksters who drag them to the ends of the Earth?

“Fine,” he says. “What’s your name?”

“Callum,” the boy says.

“You really think I’d hurt him, old man?” the karkadann calls from nearby, sounding wounded. The boy whips around.

“Come on,” Ahura Yazda calls back. “I’m trying to make an impression, don’t ruin it.”

The surprise of young people always makes him giddy. Those looks of wonder. When the boy sees the djinni horse wreathed in fire, his face gives way. This is how it should be. The lovely zagh perches on the boy’s emaciated shoulder. The vast simorgh preens. It would astound the kings they knew, the corsairs they befriended, to see her this way. She is resplendent in her own pride. Only the shadhavar refuses to see him. “Not now,” he says.

When the boy’s gone, Ahura Yazda returns.

“I have to tell you something,” the shadhavar says. “You’re not going to like it.”

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Nothing.” The shadhavar shuffles in his place. “That’s the thing. I don’t think I can stay here anymore.”

Ahura Yazda stares at him.

“You’ve been very good to me, I know,” the shadhavar says gruffly. “I will always be grateful.”

“You can’t go,” Ahura Yazda says. “Where will you go?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s part of the adventure.”

From nearby, the zagh says, “He’s made up his mind.”

“Did you know?” Ahura Yazda turns to her. “All of you?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” the shadhavar says. “I have to see the world for myself again.”

“And what? You’ll just leave, it’s that easy?”

“I can’t stay here forever,” the shadhavar says. “One week. That’s all I need.”

“A week, a month, it doesn’t matter. I can keep you busy.” He’s fumbling. “It’s a different world out there now. You don’t know.”

The shadhavar leans forward and butts Ahura Yazda’s shoulder with his forehead. Such a gentle motion, his horn is a whorled line pressed against Ahura Yazda’s face.

“Ahura Yazda,” he says. “You are the kindest man I know.”

• • • •

When it starts to rain, Ahura Yazda goes looking for lightning.

The mist dissipates. The ground disintegrates into mud. He could run barefoot for years and never get tired. He sheds his sodden shoes and flings them into a sumac bush, whooping to think if his wife could see him now, how she might gawk. The sky is bloodless, blurred blue and black like a healing bruise. He is soaked in seconds. Wet to the bone and back again. He grins like a maniac. The first flicker of light frissons the sky, and he’s off, off in pursuit.

In the rain, he is not a man divided. This downpour punishes uncertainty. It is only him and the lash of the water on his face, the bristle of righteous fury in the sky. Here, there is room for nothing else.

If he has to die, let it be like this, on a night without stars, delivered from the world by the heavens themselves, in a blaze of electricity, in thunder and blood, with a storm pounding at his ears. Certain of himself as he’ll ever be. Let this be the way. A trickster’s goodbye. His girls are old enough to remember him, his wife is strong enough without him, the manna will go for years, the shadhavar is still here, his mind is still aglow, the sleet in his beard has not yet turned to snow. Everything is on the perfect precipice. Lightning splits the sky. He howls at the universe and when it howls back, everything is made of spectacular blue flame.

He finds the tallest, oldest, wickedest tree and he stands underneath it with his arms outspread and his jaw stung raw from smiling. He thinks, Come and get me.

• • • •

There are chicken feathers plastered in the grass in the morning, slick, rain-spattered. Gobs of wobbling, grapefruit-pink flesh. The wan corpse of a muddy rooster drowning in the yard, looking like a burst fruit. Picked clean from the inside. He scrapes it out of the grass while Roksha and the girls still sleep. He hasn’t told them yet. Not yet. If he tells them, there is no backing away.

The shadhavar is waiting for him by the pickup truck, speckled with rain and slurred soil. His eyes are shadows. He says, “I didn’t know it would happen again. I swear to you.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

“In my dreams, I don’t know that I’m inside of them,” he admits. “I’m walking on a road I don’t remember. I see a stranger’s sky. I never realize that I’m looking at the same old places I always see. I’m sorry, I can leave tonight.”

“We’ll find a way to fix it,” Ahura Yazda says, suddenly angry.

“If I could stop it, I don’t even know that I would,” the shadhavar says. “Would you change the way you were?”

“Haven’t you noticed?” Ahura Yazda says. “I already did.”

The shadhavar smiles his laziest smile. “But that’s not true, of course.”

When Ahura Yazda dumps the rooster’s body in the ground, the zagh drops down beside him. “Maybe it’s good that he’s going,” she murmurs.

• • • •

“Let me ride the djinni horse,” Zaynab says.

He wants to say, No.

He wants to say, I can’t lose you, too.

But today, the fight is gone from him. He says, “Okay.”

In the open pasture behind the barn, the manna fields, stripped and bare-earthed, lie before them in wet black stripes. The djinni horse leaves singed grass and gray ash in his wake. The horse says to Zaynab, “When you were a baby, I used to take you up in the arms of your pop. Do you remember?”

Zaynab looks at Ahura Yazda. “Really?”

“Your mom knew,” he says. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

When she climbs the djinni horse, his fire dims. Something primal clenches Ahura Yazda, to see his daughter atop a mountain of flame. She’s still a child, but what was he doing when he was eleven?

He calls to the horse and to the girl, “Don’t do anything stupid.” Zaynab leans forward, fists full of molten mane, her face aglow. She’s his girl, all the way through. More than anything, it’s this that terrifies him.

When they reach the end of the pasture, the djinni horse steps into the sky. It’s as if Zaynab, too, is turning into smoke. As small as she is, there is something about her on the blazing horse in their slow ascent that makes her fearsome. They torch the sky in flame, spitting sparks and cinders in their wake. She howls with joy, haloed in fire that doesn’t touch her, her face shining an unbearable light.

This is where it all starts, he thinks. This is where it ends. I am old, old enough, old as a man like me should ever get.

• • • •

After the dishes are rinsed and Roksha takes over the kitchen table with her paints, he stops by the barn with the girls in hand. The creatures are raising a din fit to skin the hairs off the dead. They are tipsy with glee or arrack, it’s a toss-up. Even the dyspeptic karkadann has emerged from his stall, flinging wrathful glares at anyone near enough to catch them, which is his rendition of affable. In the center of it all stands the djinni horse, his coat burning a banked evening glower, and the shadhavar, dark as the last night on Earth.

Anam, who is still antsy around them, squeezes the pulp out of his fingers. Zaynab already has her head buried in the djinni horse’s side, her small face bearded in tendrils of flame. Overhead the zagh flits like a vast moth through the watery light.

He sits Anam on an upturned wire crate. “I’ll be back,” he says and she nods, eyes enormous. Even then he hangs at the fringes of the group, looking in. The simorgh waddles over, a dragon of a bird, almost as big as he is, her citrine tail floating gently behind her.

“I guess you won’t see this again,” she says.

“I suppose not,” he says.

She looks at him with her yellow eyes. “Dearest boy. If you don’t want to get your heart broken, don’t go playing with heart-breakers.”

“It’s funny,” he says. “I always figured I was the heart-breaker.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” She laughs. “You were always the mark.”

The karkadann charges through the creatures with a joyful roar, scattering them. Ahura Yazda’s hairs go white in the moment it takes Zaynab to spring onto the djinni horse, out of the way of the karkadann’s goring horn. They laugh and stamp their feet in approval. She’s pink with pleasure.

“You should know,” the simorgh says. “The rest of us, we’re going with him.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. He can’t say anything for a moment. “When were you going to tell me?”

“I’m doing it now, aren’t I?” Gently, she says, “This is not the end, boyo.”

Zaynab slides off of the djinni horse, her eyes shining. She is bonded to the horse forever, he knows this already. She would ride into the end of the world with him.

“I know.”

“They won’t be around forever either,” she says.

“I know that too.” His voice is hoarse.

“When they grow up, we could come back for you.” She turns to him. “You could pluck one of my feathers and live forever. It could be the next great adventure.”

He bows his head. Zaynab bolts towards him, her hair a flurry of dark knots. He could watch her grow old. He could nurse her until the very end.

“I can’t,” he says. “I wouldn’t know how.”

• • • •

He tells Roksha that night. Maybe he thinks they will concoct a plan, he and her, or maybe he knows better. She says, “It’s not wrong for them to want something new, Ahura Yazda. You’d begrudge them what we chose ourselves?”

She touches his face. In her, he sees himself, the way that time has snuck up on both of them. She has always been the one to adjust. He has always been the one to get dragged by his heels, fighting and floundering, into the here and now of it.

“You know, I always thought the night-roaming was a one-time situation,” she says. “The anxiety of being in an unfamiliar place and an unfamiliar time.”

“They’re still strangers here,” he says. “Aren’t we?”

She says, “If it’s still happening, they should leave sooner. What if he slips up before the end of the week, and it’s Zaynab? Or Anam?”

He is quiet. “It never occurred to me.”

“No,” she says. She does not sigh, but it seems implicit. “It never does.”

“Just one more day, maybe two,” he says. Wheedling, like Zaynab. “That’s it. And then they can go wherever they want.”

• • • •

Ahura Yazda stirs in the night when the house is abed, fretful, restless, feeling like one of those vengeful phantoms that haunt old grounds like these. The floor creaks beneath him. “Don’t stay up too late,” Roksha mumbles into the pillow, her cheek mottled with peeling paint. He kisses her head.

He can smell the rain when he steps outside. The air is pregnant with its promise. Clouds shift and boil up above. Not yet. Not yet.

He sees the boy in the moonlight, skulking over the fence. Sometimes they dare each other, as if wresting a fistful of feathers from the simorgh will be as easy as the spotty courage that runs through their young veins. He wants to say to them, Just wait until you see her in the wild. Just try it then.

This boy is clumsy and familiar. He skitters when pebbles rattle underfoot, his skinny arms flapping nervously. That unruly mop, he saw it only days ago. Callum, that’s what he said his name was.

“Hey!” He doesn’t want to give him the dignity. “Boy!”

The boy jerks his head up, looking stunned. His eyes are brimming with silver. A trickle of blood drips down his mouth.

Ahura Yazda goes stiff.

“Shadhavar,” he says. “Wake up.”

The boy looks blankly at him. With the shadhavar’s voice he says, “Is this a dream?”

“A very bad one,” Ahura Yazda says. “Wake up.”

“I can see through his eyes,” the shadhavar says. “I’m doing it again. It’s happening.”

The boy coughs and doubles over, spraying blood on the ground.

“You’re hurting him,” Ahura Yazda says. “You’re going to kill him.”

The boy stands and wipes his mouth. His silver eyes are hooded with sorrow. “Did you ever think it would turn out like this?”

“Never,” Ahura Yazda says. “Isn’t that a good joke?”

Ahura Yazda says, “Wake up.”

The boy slumps into the grass. Ahura Yazda dives down beside him, wrestling his shoulders, praying to a merciful god, an almighty god, to anything that moves beyond the stratosphere, that the boy will open his eyes, that the boy will live.

And when he coughs and spits blood and opens his eyes full of tears and trembling, Ahura Yazda carries him home, so the gratitude inside of him won’t split him in two.

• • • •

He drags Roksha out of bed that drizzly morning, the windows blurred with rain, the trees gurgling, their branches bent double. He sits her down beside the girls, who brush their hair out of their eyes and look at him. The three of them look at him, waiting.

“It should be you, not me,” Roksha says.

So he tells the girls that the creatures are leaving. He tells them with dry eyes and a clear voice, but they look at him anyway as if he is about to come apart. Zaynab says, “When?” quietly. Anam doesn’t say a word, her eyes as big as planets. If they start to cry, he will start to cry, but they are stronger than he knows.

Roksha takes his one hand and Zaynab takes the other, and they bow their heads so that they do not have to speak, so that they do not have to look at each other. The simorgh was right. They will break his heart before he breaks theirs. They are already breaking it, these wonderful fragile beings.

• • • •

When he steps outside, it is cold and bleary with rain, and the wild feeling inside of him has not yet left. In moments, he is drenched, numb to the bottom. The rain elbows away his grief. There is no space in this temporary hurricane for anything but joy.

He thinks, I have everything in the world.

He thinks, I have lived every version of every life I have ever wanted.

He thinks, The creatures are fed and safe in the barn, but only for now. The girls are young, but not forever.

Everything hangs in beautiful balance, for just this moment. Just this moment. So soon to be gone.

He thinks, Come and get me.

And off he goes, looking for lightning.

©2019 by Senaa Ahmad.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Senaa Ahmad lives in Toronto, where she fails to improve her Arabic and tries not to kill all the house plants. Her short fiction also appears in Strange Horizons and Augur Magazine, and is forthcoming from Nightmare and Uncanny Magazine. A Clarion 2018 alum, she has received the generous support of the Octavia Butler Scholarship, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council. You can find her, sort of, at senaa-ahmad.com.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

EXCERPT: Magic For Liars (Tor Books)

Sarah Gailey | 3293 words

Sharp, mainstream fantasy meets compelling thrills of investigative noir in Magic for Liars, a fantasy debut by rising star Sarah Gailey.

Ivy Gamble was born without magic and never wanted it.

Ivy Gamble is perfectly happy with her life—or at least, she’s perfectly fine.

She doesn’t in any way wish she was like Tabitha, her estranged, gifted twin sister.

Ivy Gamble is a liar.

When a gruesome murder is discovered at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, where her estranged twin sister teaches Theoretical Magic, reluctant detective Ivy Gamble is pulled into the world of untold power and dangerous secrets. She will have to find a murderer and reclaim her sister―without losing herself.

Coming June 4, 2019 from Tor Books.

Bad things just happen sometimes. That’s what I’ve always told myself, and it’s what I told myself then: I could have bled out right there in the stairs leading down to my office, and not a soul would have known why it happened because there was no “why.” No use dwelling on it: it would have been the end of me, sudden and senseless. I clenched my jaw and pushed away the thought of how long it would have taken before someone found me—before someone wondered what had happened to me. I pushed away the question of who would have noticed I was gone.

I didn’t have time for an existential crisis. It didn’t have to be a big deal. People get mugged all the time. I wasn’t special just because it was my morning to lose some cash. I didn’t have time to be freaked out about it. I had shit to do.

I just wanted to go to work.

I made my way down the remainder of the steps toward the door that hid in the shadowy alcove at the bottom of the stairs. I nudged a Gatorade bottle with my toe. The man had been sleeping in my doorway. He couldn’t have seen it by the dim light of the streetlamps at night, but my name was written across the solid metal of the door in flaking black letters:

Ivy Gamble, Private Investigator

Meetings by Appointment Only

I hadn’t gotten the words touched up since I’d first rented the place. I always figured I’d let them fall away until nothing was left but a shadow of the letters. I didn’t think I needed to be easy to find—if someone didn’t know where my office was, that meant they weren’t a client yet. Besides, walk-ins weren’t exactly my bread and butter then. The deadbolt locked automatically when the reinforced steel swung shut. That door was made to withstand even the most determined of visitors.

I didn’t run my fingers across the letters. If I’d known what would change before the next time I walked down those stairs, though? Well, I wouldn’t have run my fingers across the letters then, either. I probably wouldn’t have given them a second glance. I’ve never been good at recognizing what moments are important. What things I should hang on to while I’ve got them.

I stood on my toes to tap at the lightbulb that hung above the door with a still-shaking hand. The filaments rattled. Dead. On nights when that bulb was lit, nobody slept outside the door, which meant that nobody got surprised coming down the stairs in the morning.

I bit my lip and tapped at the lightbulb again. I took a deep breath, tried to find something in me to focus on. Imagine you’re a candle, and your wick is made of glass. I gave the bulb a hard stare. I tapped it one more time.

It flickered to life. My heart skipped a beat—but then the bulb died again with a sound like a fly smacking into a set of venetian blinds and went dead, a trace of smoke graying the inside of the glass.

I shook my head, angry at myself for hoping. It hadn’t been worth a shot. I thought I had outgrown kid stuff like that. Stupid. I stooped to pick up the little knife from where it lay just in front of the door, squinting at what looked like blood on the blade.

“Shit,” I said for the fourth time in as many minutes. As I opened the heavy steel door, a white arc of pain lanced through my shoulder. I looked down, letting the door swing shut behind me. There was a fresh vent in my sleeve. Blood was welling up under it fast—he must have had the knife in his hand when he caught himself on me. I pulled off my ruined jacket, dropping it—and the bloodstained knife—on the empty desk in the waiting area of the office. It fell with a heavy thump, and I remembered my phone in the pocket, the call I was already late for. Sure enough, there were already two pissy texts from the client. I dialed his number with one hand, leaving streaks of stairway grime on the screen, then clamped the phone between my ear and my good shoulder as I headed for the bathroom.

I listened to the ringing on the other end of the line and turned on the hot water tap as far as it would go, attempting to scald the god-knows-what off my palms, trying not to think about the water bill. Or any of the other bills. The cheap pink liquid soap I stocked in the office wasn’t doing anything to cut the shit on my hands, which was somehow slippery and sticky at the same time. My shoulder bled freely as I lathered again and again.

“Sorry I’m late, Glen,” I said when he picked up. My voice probably shook with leftover adrenaline, probably betrayed how much my shoulder was starting to hurt. Fortunately, Glen wasn’t the kind of person who would give a shit whether or not I was okay. He immediately started railing about his brother, who he was sure was stealing from their aunt and who I had found was, in fact, just visiting her on the regular like a good nephew. I put Glen on speaker so he could rant while I peeled off my shirt with wet hands, wincing at the burning in my shoulder. I stood there in my camisole, wadded up the shirt and pressed it to the wound. The bleeding was slow but the pain was a steady strobe.

“I hope you don’t think I’m going to pay for this shit,” Glen was saying, and I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds. I allowed myself just a few heartbeats of bitterness at how unfair it was, that I had to deal with Glen and look for my long-neglected first-aid kit at the same time. I was going to take just a moment of self-pity before going into my patient I’ve provided you a service and you were well aware of my fee schedule routine—but then I heard the unmistakable sound of the front door to my office opening.

I froze for a gut-clenched second before hanging up on Glen. I let my blood-soaked shirt drop to the floor, shoved my phone into my bra so it wouldn’t vibrate against the sink when he called back. I heard the office door close, and a fresh flood of adrenaline burned through me.

Someone was in the office with me.

No one had an appointment. No one should have been able to get inside at all. That door locked automatically when it closed, and I knew it had closed. I knew it, I had heard it click shut behind me. This wouldn’t be the first break-in attempt, but it was the first time someone had tried it while I was in the office. I pressed my ear to the door, carefully gripped the knob without letting it rattle in my fingers. The lock on the door was busted, but at least I could try to hold it shut if they decided to look around.

“I’m here to see Ms. Gamble.” A woman’s voice, clear and steady. What the fuck? I could hear her footsteps as she walked across the little waiting area. I winced, remembering my jacket and the bloodstained knife on the abandoned admin desk. She murmured something that sounded like “Oh dear.” My phone buzzed against my armpit, but Glen and his yelling would just have to wait.

“Once you’ve finished treating your wound, you can come out of the bathroom, Ms. Gamble. I don’t care that you’re in your camisole. We have business to discuss.”

I straightened so fast that something in my back gave a pop. My head throbbed. I stared at the white-painted wood of the door as I realized who was waiting for me out there. This was not good.

This was not good at all.

The shitty waiting-room couch creaked. She was serious—she was going to wait for me. I rushed through cleaning up the slice in my shoulder, wadding up wet paper towels and scrubbing blood off my arm, half ignoring and half savoring how much it hurt. The bandage I hastily taped over the wound soaked through with blood within a few seconds. I would say I considered getting stitches, but it’d be a lie. I’d let my arm fall off before setting foot inside a fucking hospital.

I checked myself in the mirror—not a welcome sight. I pulled my phone out of my bra, ran a hand through my hair. There was only so much I could do to make myself look less like a wreck, and I kept the once-over as brief possible. I like mirrors about as much as I like hospitals.

I opened the door and strode out with much more confidence than a person who has just been caught hiding in a bathroom should have been able to muster. I’ve always been good at faking that much, at least. The short, dark-haired woman standing in the front office regarded me coolly.

“Good morning, Ms. Gamble.”

“You can call me Ivy, Miss . . . ?” The woman’s handshake was firm, but not crushing. It was the handshake of a woman who felt no need to prove herself.

“Marion Torres,” she replied. The woman peered at my face, then nodded, having seen there whatever it was she was searching for. I could guess what it was. It was a face I couldn’t seem to get away from. Shit.

“Ms. Torres,” I replied in my most authoritative, this-is-my-house voice. “Would you like to step into my office?” I led Torres to the narrow door just beyond the empty admin desk, flipping the light on as I entered. I opened a top drawer of my desk, sweeping a stack of photographs into it—fresh shots of a client’s wife and her tennis instructor making choices together. Nothing anyone should see, especially not as a first impression. Although, I thought, if this woman was who I thought she was, I didn’t want to impress her anyway.

Torres sat straight-backed in the client chair. It was a battered green armchair with a low back, chosen to make clients feel comfortable but not in charge. I remember being proud of myself for the strategy I put into picking that chair. That was a big thing I solved, the question of what kind of chair I should make desperate people sit in before they asked for my help.

Light streamed into the office through a narrow, wire-reinforced casement window behind my desk. The sunlight caught the threads of silver in Torres’s pin-straight black bob. I felt the sliver of camaraderie that I always experienced in the presence of other salt-and-pepper women, but it evaporated fast enough. Torres stared intently at the fine motes of dust that danced in the sunlight. As I watched, the dust motes shifted to form a face that was an awful lot like mine.

I swallowed around rising irritation. I would not yell at this woman.

“You don’t look exactly like her,” Torres said. “I thought you would. The face is the same, but—”

“We’re not that kind of twins,” I replied. I crossed behind my desk and pulled the shutters over the window closed, rendering the dust motes—and the familiar face—invisible. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Torres said. “She’s one of our best teachers, you know.”

I settled into my swivel chair, folding my hands on top of my desk blotter. All business. “So you’re from the academy.”

Torres smiled, a warm, toothy grin that immediately made me feel welcome. Damn, she’s good, I thought—making me feel welcome in my own office. I pushed the comfort away and held it at arm’s length. No thanks, not interested.

“I am indeed,” she said. “I’m the headmaster at Osthorne Academy.”

“Not headmistress?” I asked before I could stop myself. I cringed internally as Torres’s smile cooled by a few degrees.

“Yes. Please do not attempt to be cute about my title. There are more interesting things to be done with words. We spend most of our students’ freshman year teaching them that words have power, and we don’t waste that power if we can help it.”

I felt a familiar principal’s-office twist in my stomach, and had to remind myself again that this was my office. “Understood.”

We sat in silence for a moment; Torres seemed content to wait for me to ask why she was there. I couldn’t think of a good way to ask without being rude, and this woman didn’t strike me as someone who would brook poor manners. Distant shouts sounded from outside—friendly but loud, almost certainly kids skipping school to smoke weed behind the warehouses. They’d sit with their backs against the cement walls, scraping out the insides of cheap cigars and leaving behind piles of tobacco and Tootsie Pop wrappers.

Torres cleared her throat. I decided to accept defeat.

“What can I do for you, Ms. Torres?”

Torres reached into her handbag and pulled out a photograph. It was a staff photo, taken in front of a mottled blue backdrop; the kind of photo I might have seen in the front few pages of my own high school yearbook. A twenty-five-cent word sprang unbidden into my mind: “noctilucent.” The word described the glow of a cat’s eyes at night, but it also seemed right for the woman in the photograph. She was a moonbeam turned flesh, pale with white-blond hair and wide-set light green eyes. Beautiful was not an appropriate word; she looked otherworldly. She looked impossible.

“That,” Torres said after allowing me to stare for an embarrassingly long time, “is Sylvia Capley. She taught health and wellness at Osthorne. Five months ago, she was murdered in the library. I need you to find out who killed her.”

Direct. More direct than I was prepared for. I blinked down at the photo. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” The words came automatically. “But isn’t this a matter for the police? You—um. Mages. Don’t you have police?”

Torres pursed her lips, looking up at the shuttered window. “We do. But they—hm.” She hesitated.

I didn’t push her for more. I knew from experience that it was far more effective to let a client sit with the silence—to let them decide for themselves to fill it. I’ve always been good at letting silence put down roots.

“I don’t agree with their findings,” Torres finally finished. “I’d like a second opinion.”

“My opinion?” I said, flashing Torres the skepticals. “I don’t do murder investigations.” I said it as if it were a choice, rather than a simple fact of the law and my poor marketing. I was sure that there were some people out there who were still hiring PIs to solve murders, but none of them had ever come knocking at my basement door. I wanted her to think it was a choice, though.

“You come highly recommended,” Torres replied, dry as kindling. “And you know about us. You’ve got the right eye, to see the things that the investigators missed because they were too busy looking for obvious answers to see this for what it was. This was murder.”

“And what are the obvious answers?”

Torres pulled a business card from the space between naught and nothing. I bit back annoyance again. She wasn’t doing it to antagonize me. Probably. She handed me the card, and, to my credit, I only hesitated for a couple of seconds before letting the paper touch my skin. A breathtakingly high number was written on the back in a headmaster’s irreproachable penmanship. “That’s the amount of retainer I’m willing to pay. Up front, in cash.”

It’s not that there was a catch in her voice, not exactly. But I could hear her keeping herself steady. I kept my eyes on her business card, counting zeroes. “Why are you so invested in this? If the magic-cops said it wasn’t murder—”

“It was murder,” she interrupted, her voice clapping the conversation shut like a jewelry box I wasn’t supposed to reach for. I looked up at her, startled, and she pursed her lips before continuing in a calmer tone. “Sylvia was a dear friend of mine. I knew her well, and I am certain that she didn’t die the way they say she did. Courier a contract to the address on the front of the card if you’re willing to take the job. I’d like to see you in my office on Friday morning.”

And before I could ask anything else—before I could come up with the next question or the sly rebuttal or the little joke that would keep her there, talking, explaining everything, telling me what the “obvious answers” were supposed to be—Marion Torres had vanished. I sat heavily in my chair, staring at the place where she had been, trying to swallow the old anger. It was just like these people to drop a line like that and then poof. If they would only stay vanished, my life would be a hell of a lot simpler.

I reread the number Torres had written down. I ran my thumb over the grooves her pen had left in the thick paper. I listened to my cell phone vibrating—Glen calling again to yell at me. I breathed deep, tasting the dust in the air. The dust that Torres had rearranged into the shape of my sister’s face. It was the first time I’d seen that face in years. It was a face I hadn’t thought I’d ever see again.

I pressed one corner of the business card into the meat of my palm, deciding whether or not to take the case. I stared at the way the paper dented my skin, and I pretended that I had a choice.

Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Gailey. Excerpted from Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey. Published by permission of the author and Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hugo and Campbell finalist Sarah Gailey came onto the scene in 2015 and has since become one of the sharpest, funniest voices in pop culture online. They are a regular contributor for multiple websites, including Tor.com. Their nonfiction has appeared in Mashable and The Boston Globe, and their fiction has been published internationally. They are the author of River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow. They live in Los Angeles, California.

Book Reviews: July 2019

Chris Kluwe | 1685 words

Greetings, friends, it’s time to cram another fresh installment of book reviews into your salivating eyeholes. Now, I must confess, this month I only have two reviews for you, but both of them are beyond excellent, and while I wouldn’t consider them light beach reading in the way a Koontz or Patterson thriller-by-numbers is, if you make time to read them (read both, read both!) I think you’ll be more than satisfied with the time spent.

For those of you who’ve been following the previous four review columns I’ve written, you might have noticed by now that I like to identify a central theme each of the books being reviewed ties into, and this month’s theme is “family.” Sometimes it’s the family you’re born with, sometimes it’s the family you choose, sometimes it’s the family you can’t escape, but at the end of the day, we’re all part of a family.

The thing is, what that word “family” means to someone can be very complicated. For one person, it might mean warm nights inside watching the snow fall past the windows while Grandma bakes cookies. For another, it might mean angry voices arguing over where the money’s being spent. For some, it means the absence of those who were once there; for others, the addition of those unexpected. It’s the people who are there when you least expected them to be, and the people who let you down when everything matters most, the diamonds and daggers that pierce our hearts in a multitude of ways that can only ever be personal.

Family is a messy, beautiful, dangerous, delicate thing, and no two families are ever the same, and I think that’s what I liked most about these two books. They’re about family, about the triumphs, the tears, the tiny interactions that change us every day whether we realize it or not, and what we do in response to it all. Sure, there are floating alien spacebeasts and godlike superpeople on the pages, and the books might be listed under science fiction, but I’ve always felt the best SFF not only transports us to another world, it then makes us realize that world was a part of our own the entire time.

On to the reviews!

Claiming T-Mo
Eugen Bacon
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9781946154132
Meerkat Press, August 13 2019, 266 pages

For our first review, I’d like to draw your attention to Claiming T-Mo, by Eugen Bacon, because it is one of those books that I suspect will stay with me for quite a while. The book revolves around the titular character, T-Mo, but is told through the perspectives of three generations of women, all of whom are tied to T-Mo in some way, and while T-Mo is the name on the front, the story itself is very much the story of Salem, Silhouette, and Myra, and how the singularity they orbit influences their lives.

From the very start, Bacon’s writing reminded me a lot of China Miéville’s, a luxurious tapestry of words that can seem intimidating until you let yourself fall into their cadence and structure, almost like high-diving into a thesaurus. Heady concepts are quickly illustrated and then left to linger in your imagination, a sort of literary shorthand that doesn’t draw your attention to how many light-years a teleporting meta-human can travel at once, but rather to how the alien creature plucked from the shores of Betelgeuse might smell as it’s prepared in the kitchen for dinner. Is it digestible? Of course it’s digestible, because the important thing isn’t the nitty-gritty of gastrointestinal relations, it’s the nitty-gritty of personal relations. It’s about what such an act reveals about the relationship between two people, and how the tapestry of their lives might be woven through such acts (and their sudden absence).

The structure of Claiming T-Mo unfolds in spurts and fits, jumping from past to future, from one perspective to another, but never in a way that feels confusing. Instead, it recalls the oral tradition of ancient storytelling, where the act of describing one part of the tale necessitates a tangent explaining another, disparate puzzle pieces sliding together into one cohesive whole, rich with backstory and necessary motivations. I never felt like any of the chapters left me adrift or were there simply for the sake of wordcount—each is short, anywhere from one to five pages, but packed with motivation and meaning for the ever-evolving family.

I would be remiss if I also didn’t point out that a major subtext in Claiming T-Mo is loss, whether it be the loss of a father, the loss of a child, or the loss of innocence itself. Bacon, however, does not craft loss as an ending, but rather as a stage in one’s existence, something to be acknowledged and absorbed, dealt with as best as possible (which sometimes is not very well at all), but always a catalyst for change. It’s this underlying current running through the book that I think is what pushes it from good to excellent, as many of the situations the characters have to deal with are very clearly drawn from real world experiences many people find themselves subjected to, and Bacon handles them with grace and aplomb.

Overall, Claiming T-Mo is a book packed with so much love, fear, pain, and hope, that it invites multiple re-readings, and is good enough to justify the time spent doing so.

Read if: You like seeing words that don’t get used very often; you’re okay with non-perfect families trying to get by; your family issues include teleporting demi-gods.

Escaping Exodus
Nicky Drayden
Trade Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9780062867735
Harper Voyager, October 2019, 336 pages

The second book I have for you is Escaping Exodus, and it’s by an author I’ve reviewed before, Nicky Drayden (you can find my review of Temper in the Oct. 2018 issue of Lightspeed). I am pleased to say that Drayden continues to excel and improve as a writer, and throughout the entirety of reading Escaping Exodus I was struck once again by her ability to create fantastic settings that feel as real as stepping onto the street outside.

Escaping Exodus is the story of Seske Kaleigh, daughter of the clan matriarch, who wants to and expects to lead her people, but hasn’t taken her studies as seriously as she should have, instead choosing to spend time with her best friend, a member of one of the lower classes, much to her mother’s dismay. Now, when I write that previous sentence like that, you might think, “Well what makes this book so special? I’ve heard the ‘wastrel prince/ess has to learn about life the hard way’ plot before.”

Ahh, but what if I told you that the world Seske and her people live in is inside a living beast as big as a moon, floating through space amidst a herd of other beasts, and that they simultaneously harvest the beast to keep themselves alive while trying to prolong the beast’s life for as long as possible? And that Seske was supposed to be an only child, yet has a sister her mother clearly favors for the throne? Add to that a social system ripe for disruption, terrifying secrets about what the life of luxury Seske enjoys is actually built on, and forbidden loves around seemingly every corner, and I think you’ll agree that Escaping Exodus is a potent brew indeed.

One of the things I greatly enjoyed about Escaping Exodus was how Seske’s relationship with her family, and who she considers her family, morphs and changes throughout the book in very believable ways. Seske isn’t perfect, and she makes plenty of mistakes, but she perseveres through them as best she can, gradually shifting from a headstrong brat to a leader worth following. I also really enjoyed the undercurrent of environmentalism running through the book, because while the beast may be an entirely alien locale to live, it’s still one that requires sustainable practices to prevent outright destruction of itself and all those on board—a lesson we would do well to heed.

If there’s any complaint I had, it’s the same one I had with Temper—I wish Drayden would spend a bit more time on certain parts of the story, as I felt some stuff got glossed over a little too quickly (particularly as the book approaches the third act), but that’s a personal quibble and in no way did it mar my enjoyment of the book. It’s more of a problem of wanting the buffet to be bigger when it’s already a fourteen course meal, because I guarantee you, Escaping Exodus has more interesting ideas than many trilogies I’ve read.

Overall, Escaping Exodus is another fine entry from a clearly talented writer, and I hope you’ll take the time to give it a read.

Read if: You ever wondered what it would be like if the Millennium Falcon decided to live inside that asteroid worm; Afrofuturism is your jam; you think killing your home might be a bad idea.

• • • •

Well, that’ll do it for me for this month, and thanks everyone for tuning in. Enjoy your summer!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Kluwe grew up in Southern California among a colony of wild chinchillas and didn’t learn how to communicate outside of barking and howling until he was fourteen years old. He has played football in the NFL, once wrestled a bear for a pot of gold, and lies occasionally. He is also the eternal disappointment of his mother, who just can’t understand why he hasn’t cured cancer yet. Do you know why these bio things are in third person? I have no idea. Please tell me if you figure it out.

Media Review: July 2019

Carrie Vaughn | 1565 words

Tolkien and the Stories Behind the Stories

Tolkien
Directed by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford
Fox Searchlight Pictures and Chernin Entertainment
May 10, 2019

Biopics of writers often seem to reach for a one-to-one relationship between the writers’ lives and their most famous works. In these things, the cliché question of “Where do you get your ideas?” must have a fixed and concrete answer. “I make them up. Out of my head,” Neil Gaiman’s famous answer, never seems to satisfy audiences.

Stretched to the breaking point, we get Shakespeare in Love (which granted isn’t a biopic but is still very concerned with the question of “where do you get your ideas”), where Will picks up specific lines of dialog on the streets around him. The irony is that if Shakespeare’s work sounds so fresh and revolutionary compared to his contemporaries, it may be because he really was listening to the way people talk, especially common people, and writing it down, which no one had really done before. Sometimes those connections exist.

So what does one do with fantasy writers, who are writing about magic and dragons and the ends of worlds? How do you make that connection between their lives and what shows up in their books? In Tolkien, we have one possible answer: World War I. There’s more to it than that, of course. Almost too much for one film to cover. Tolkien has three different story threads, I think, hung on the frame of Ronald’s early difficult life—he was orphaned at a young age, with few resources to help him along, and then just when he gets things figured out, he goes to war.

First is the story of his schoolboy fellowship, the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, the vow they make to change the world with their art, and how the vow is tragically undermined by the First World War. Two of the four TCBS members are killed. Tolkien is the only survivor able to carry out that vow, and we are meant to understand that he does so spectacularly. He bears the weight of an entire generation of budding artists and scholars destroyed by the war. It’s a familiar story, the last idyllic generation of English schoolboys and its destruction. Tolkien comes out of this experience with a unique voice.

There’s a whole genre of stories of English schoolboys and Oxford and the idealized scholarly life—the camaraderie, the coming of age, the pure intellectualism. Tolkien’s story seems ready-made for this milieu. (Would you believe I was right in the middle of reading Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night, which is all about Oxford in the thirties but from the women’s side, when I saw this? I love serendipitous pairings.) I mistrust stories that paint this world in such an idealized light. It’s the filter of nostalgia that makes them so appealing. I think there’s this idea that many of us American middle-class geeks have that we all would have been so much smarter if we’d been forced to learn Latin while we were in single-digit ages. This is a bad assumption. Entire contexts and subtexts get ignored. Never forget that the Mirror Universe version of this story is Lord of the Flies. Tolkien gives us the shiny version.

Second is the story of language. I admit this was my favorite part and what I’d have liked to see/hear more of. There are recitations of Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon, German, discussions of language and what it means, the whole philosophy behind Tolkien’s invented languages and the idea that he wrote the novels so his languages would have someplace to live. This was the part of the story that felt fresh and insightful. But then, I’m the kind of person who goes to YouTube to listen to Beowulf and reconstructions of ancient Sumerian.

And the third story, the romance between Ronald and Edith. These stories need their romances or they’d have no women in them at all, right? Sometimes I’d almost rather have no women at all then have them presented only as muses, mothers, and obstacles. (Tolkien’s mother Mabel homeschooled him and his brother before her early death and seems to have been a huge influence on him, which the film touches on briefly. She must have been brilliant. I want a movie about her.) Many will disagree with me and see, as the film wants us to, Ronald and Edith’s story as that of Beren and Lúthien, exactly as we are meant to see the Somme as Mordor. Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins are lovely and the story is heartfelt. I may be alone in wishing we had more of Hoult reciting Middle English instead of the rote romance. Perhaps a bit of Gawain and the Green Knight? Never mind, it’s probably just me.

And on that note, this film will not be all things to all people. If you’re looking to get a glimpse of the famous Inklings, to be a fly on the wall of the Eagle and Child, you’ll be disappointed. Most of the story alternates between the trenches of the Somme and Tolkien’s formative years as a student in Birmingham and Oxford. Young Tolkien is enthralled by old myths and epic stories, languages, and the worlds contained in them, and those myths seem to take on life in the horrors of the battlefield. Boy Tolkien’s prospects seem limited, even given his obvious genius, and are complicated when he falls in love with the equally poor Edith. Chance meetings and fast friendships with equally starry-eyed boys propel him on his way to Oxford, romance, and the war. In the end, he takes the dreams of all his friends on himself.

This is the kind of film where you rush to Wikipedia after to look up the biographies for the truth. Answer: The film takes liberties, particularly with Ronald and Edith. For example, they married before he left for France, while the film gives us a heartbreaking parting right after they declare their love for one another. (Reportedly, Tolkien’s family will have nothing to do with the film and did not authorize it.) This is clearly story, not biography. So what about the story?

It’s missing some things. Ronald’s younger brother Hilary vanishes through most of the movie and pops up again right at the end without a word. Two boys, orphaned young—there must have been more to their relationship than that.

We’re also missing a scene with the last of the TCBS boys after the war. So much is made of their fellowship, of Ronald’s reliance on the fellowship of the scholars around him. Only he and Christopher Wiseman, a musician and composer, survive the war, and the film could have made much of the different ways they moved on, the damage it did to their ideals, and so forth. Instead, Christopher is only mentioned again in a throwaway line of dialog and a bit in the end titles that says he and Ronald remained friends but that it was never the same. The film really should have shown us that. In one of my favorite scenes toward the end, Ronald meets his dead friend Geoffrey Smith’s mother at the tea shop where they used to gather and dream, in order to convince her to publish Smith’s poetry posthumously. (Which she did. Tolkien wrote the forward to the book.) I get the sense here that Ronald has successfully survived and processed his wartime experience by taking up the TCBS quest to produce and promote as much art as he can. Christopher is less than an afterthought here, and I think it’s the film’s biggest misstep. Especially given that Christopher Tolkien is named for him, as we’re told in the end titles.

I am thinking of the ways this film could not exist, and would not need to, without Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films from nearly twenty years ago. (Yes, that long. Take a moment to catch your breath.) This film draws a great deal on their imagery and framing, as well as the haunting soundtrack with dreamlike vocal interludes (it’s a nice soundtrack, I think). During the scenes where Lt. Tolkien and his faithful private Sam are stumbling through the trenches of the Somme, Ronald wracked with a fever that causes fantastical visions and Sam constantly urging him to rest, we are meant to think of the two Hobbits in Mordor. When Tolkien sits at his desk, dips his pen in an inkwell, and neatly calligraphs the famous first line of The Hobbit on a wide cream page, we are meant to think of Bilbo. When the four school friends are drinking and causing trouble, is it not very much like Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin? Kids who grew up with the Lord of the Rings movies are adults now and buying their own movie tickets and perhaps know very little about the man who wrote those stories except for his name: Tolkien. This movie is for them, I think.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carrie Vaughn’s latest novels include the post-apocalyptic murder mystery, Bannerless, winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, and its sequel, The Wild Dead. She wrote the New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, along with several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, and upwards of 80 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at carrievaughn.com.

Interview: Evan Winter

Christian A. Coleman | 2223 words

Born in England to South American parents, Evan Winter was raised in Africa near the historical territory of his Xhosa ancestors. Evan has always loved fantasy novels, but when his son was born, he realized that there weren’t many epic fantasy novels featuring characters who looked like him. So, before he ran out of time, he started writing them. You can find him online at evanwinter.com, and on Twitter at EvanWinter.

The Rage of Dragons is the first book in your epic fantasy saga about Tau, a country swordsman who trains as a warrior for his people, the Omehi, who are caught up in an eternal, unwinnable war. And there are dragons! How did the premise come together for you?

The premise for The Rage of Dragons came together over a year of thinking about my life, my family, my history, and my love for fantasy. I consider the story to be in conversation with the genre I grew up with while also exploring my feelings around concepts of power, society, and the systems we use to keep those things in place and functioning. But the reason my thinking actually turned to writing, when it so often doesn’t, was because of my son. I wanted him to have this story because, when I was growing up, it didn’t exist. I wanted him to have an epic that regarded the world from a vantage point closer to his identity and his humanity.

I love the fact that you’ve written this for your son so he can see himself in this kind of story. What’s his take on it . . . or is he old enough to read it yet?

My son is seven years old and, right now, he’s on chapter six of the final Harry Potter book. He read and finished Philosopher’s Stone in grade one and he’s on track to complete the series, by himself, before he’s out of grade two. I’m immensely proud of him. He’s so much smarter, braver, kinder, and better than me in every way, and sometimes that scares me because I worry about how the world will treat him. So, yes, he does want to read The Rage of Dragons. He is, without doubt, technically capable of doing it, but . . . I’ve asked him to wait until he’s older.

I can see why. You describe your book as Game of Thrones meets Gladiator on Arrakis. That could be heavy stuff for his age. Were these works, including Frank Herbert’s Dune, major influences on the book?

All three works have influenced the book, but Rage was not written with them in mind. Instead, I wrote the story I would have wanted to read and then tried to reverse engineer its components to see how I could best explain it to potential readers in just one sentence.

On your website, you mention Robert Jordan as a favorite author of yours. What are some of your favorite books of his and how have they informed your writing?

The first half of the Wheel of Time defined reading for me for many years and, while waiting for some of the sequels, I dove into the Fallon series, his historical fiction written as Reagan O’Neal. His worlds were so full and real. I would read his work and be transported. For me, that was the real magic in the Wheel of Time.

When did you know that you wanted to write fantasy?

I can remember saying I wanted to be a writer in grade three in Zambia. I was in Mr. Cook’s class, and he’d asked everyone about the jobs they might want to do when older. There were some police officers, firefighters, and doctors, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to write stories.

You’ve done storytelling with visual media as a director and cinematographer. What aspects of your experience in this field made an impact on your storytelling in prose?

I think, most importantly, my experiences in film taught me to value shot listing. Time is extremely expensive on set, and I figured out (a little too slowly) that I made the best use of my time and achieved the best results when I made meticulous plans and clearly knew my intent. So, my outlines for book one and two are each around twenty percent the length of the final books. If I write a 700-page novel, I have a 140-page outline that describes, in detail, every single story beat. I do this so that I can go over and over and over the outline to feel where it breaks down for me and where it soars. I won’t know if it’ll work for anyone else until they have the final book in their hands, but there’s never really a way to know that anyhow. So, doing these detailed “shot lists” eases my worries about the story-making. It makes first drafts flow without me getting blocked, and the planning allows me to freely discover new directions that I can then consider within the context of the whole.

Let’s get into some of the worldbuilding in your novel. At the beginning, I mentioned there were dragons, which are black-scaled. There’s also a demon-populated underworld, called Isihogo, where Tau learns to send himself to continue his training. How did you come up with these details of the world he lives in?

I see stories like puzzles. I know the picture I want to finish with and then I have to create the pieces that build to that picture. So, each element becomes a piece, developed out of the overarching need to create a coherent finale. The type of magic, its costs, the people, the castes, everything comes from my desperate efforts to properly put into place the pieces that will form the end image that’s in my head.

Is your worldbuilding based on any research you had to do for the book, and if so, what did you have to research?

I had to do some research into Africa, but I’ll freely admit that the research I did was minor. It was about getting small details right so the environment feels realistic versus complex big ideas about the actual history and development of Africa as a continent. I did it this way intentionally. I wanted the world of the story to feel like my memories of growing up in Zambia feel. Xidda, Osonte, and the world itself (Uhmlaba) are a direct translation of a child’s experience of the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of equatorial/southern Africa.

What I find fascinating about your main character’s people, the Omehi, is that they’re a matriarchal society that worships a goddess, yet it seems as though their sense of divine chosen-ness keeps them engaged in a forever war with another people whose land they’ve occupied for millennia. Their sense of divine chosen-ness also seems to stoke their continuing the cycle of violence.

I would say that, from my perspective, you are exactly right in the way you read this.

As someone who’s been raised in a culture centered on war and combat, Tau is part of that cycle of violence, too. How much of Tau’s motivation of revenge and his obsessive impulse to train to the point of endangering himself are a product or a reflection of the Omehi’s sense of divine chosenness? It seems to me to verge on borderline blind faith.

It’s a great question, and I find that Tau’s behavior and path are a reaction to the world around him and the culture in which he finds himself. I believe his journey is, in many ways, a rare but inevitable one. The story is a zoom-in on a specific time, place, and person; not because that person is the chosen one, but because the longer a world like his exists, the more inevitable a “Tau” becomes. So, having come across the “rare but inevitable,” I’m interested in examining it, exploring it, and watching it play out in one of a million possible conclusions.

By the way, the combat and training scenes are intense. I mean, Tau, his sword brothers, and everyone else who has skin in the game show no mercy—and they can’t, because the stakes are so high. Do you have a martial arts background? Because these scenes feel like they’re written from firsthand experience. And what was your approach to choreographing these scenes?

I’ve trained on and off in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for almost two decades and I think that I conceive of these scenes and their effects in terms of the way I view physicality, violence, and the aspect that willpower plays in one’s ability to both enact and resist violence. There’s always something so desperate and immediate in being martial and there often comes a strange point where you’re exhausted, being beaten, and there’s nothing left in you but the will to win. I’m fascinated by that moment and the things that follow from it.

Now, this book was originally self-published. Tell us a little about what your self-publishing experience was like.

When I was writing and thinking about the future for the series, it was always going to start out self-published. I didn’t query agents and I didn’t email publishers. I didn’t want to run a gauntlet of gatekeepers, and this was because I’d worked for almost two decades in creative fields where I was servicing someone else’s vision. With The Rage of Dragons, I wanted (just once) to create something exactly as I saw it, with the hopes that there would be a few other people in the reading world who might enjoy it, too. I can’t help but think that self-publishing is important in the way it allows for that.

With that said, my current experience with traditional publishing, albeit limited, has been incredible. The team at Orbit feels like fantasy fans every bit as much as they are peerless professionals. They’ve made me feel at home and they’ve shown me that they’re here to help me tell the story I want to tell. I’ll always be glad that I got my start self-publishing and I wouldn’t change that for the world. I’m also very glad that I’m now with Orbit and my editor there. They can help me become a better writer, get this story to a much larger audience than I could on my own, and open doors that, unfortunately, still tend to remain closed to self-publishers. In the end, given the winding road I’ve taken to get here, the main thing I feel is fortunate.

When you self-published The Rage of Dragons, did you have a four-book series in mind before Orbit picked it up?

Yep! I’m a heavy outliner and, long before book one was finished, the series was planned in four parts.

So when can we expect the sequel to come out?

Orbit plans to publish book two in summer 2020, and I know it seems like I have to say this, but I truly think that book two builds on book one and is better. I’m glad that I feel that way. It’d be hard to think the work had gotten worse. However, I can still step back far enough to know and accept that the real test will be if readers feel that way, too.

Are there any other writing projects you can tell us about?

I have the very faintest concept in mind for the next story I want to tell, but it stays firmly in the background as every day feels, joyfully, consumed by thoughts and ideas around how to bring out the absolute best in the current series.

Is there anything else you’d like your readers to know about The Rage of Dragons?

Yeah, I’m deeply grateful to all the readers who gave this book a chance when it was self-published. I’m very thankful for all the efforts that everyone at Orbit and Hachette have put into helping me tell the best story I can. I’m also swept away by the writing community, daily. Authors I’ve respected and whose work I’ve loved for years have reached out to me, blurbed the book, and offered wonderful advice. Reviewers and bloggers have been kind, gracious, and energetic in both their praise and write-ups. It’s been a wild journey so far, and getting to do this interview with you, for Lightspeed, just makes it all the more epic. Thank you!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Christian A. Coleman is a 2013 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. He lives and writes in the Boston area. He tweets at @coleman_II.

Author Spotlight: Violet Allen

Sandra Odell | 662 words

“The Null Space Conundrum” is a mind trip and a half! I loved the voice, the change in perspectives and presentation, and the very quiet end after an incredibly loud beginning. What inspired this tale of space opera stream-of-consciousness bizarro fiction?

I don’t remember where the idea originally came from. I knew I wanted to do another Aria story, so I was kicking around a bunch of high-concept ideas, and at some point, I came up with this. I knew I wanted to do something with sort of a goofy, romantic vibe, and it just kinda blossomed.

You use dialogue to an incredible effect, carrying both character and plot in a manner that puts the reader right in the middle of every exchange. Even the narrative voice is given over to that rapid-fire style of communication, as if we are being told a story rather than reading it. Was this narrative form intentional? Did you know how you wanted to structure the story in the first draft or did you play with the form?

The voice comes pretty naturally to me. It’s kind of how I actually talk/think, but exaggerated in this goofy, silly way. It took me a while to sort of figure out what I wanted to do with it structurally, but once I got there, it pretty much just flowed. I have much more trouble coming up with plot machinations and stuff than the more formal aspects, really.

Many readers may identify with the cultural references of the story, including Aspera’s “a sort of Astra/Kantikle fanfic.” This opens up an entirely new part of the story meta, adding the question of who, exactly, owns a story to the tensions that already exists. Do you indulge in fanfic and shipping? Do you feel there is value in readers expanding on a writer’s works?

I was big, big into fanfic and stuff when I was a teenager, but I fell off years ago. I’ll occasionally dip a toe and check out old faves, but I’m not really part of that scene. Still, the language of shipping and fandom is part of the lexicon, at least among me and my friends, so dropping a little reference doesn’t feel like a big deal to me. I have complicated feelings about fanfic in general, in that I think it is great tool, particularly for people who aren’t represented in mainstream media, to appropriate and contextualize mass culture in interesting and vital ways (plus it’s a fun, fulfilling thing to participate in in a world often lacking in pleasures), but I also sort of worry about how fanfic can function as free advertising for massive media conglomerates. I’m mostly for it, but my nature as a person is to find the holes in things.

This isn’t the first time readers have seen Aria Astra, but it is the first time Aria has experienced something greater than friendship (that wasn’t the concept of love via alien mind control). Are the Aria stories a continuation of the character arc or do you see each story as a stand-alone work?

I don’t really know. So far I’ve written them when I feel like, without thinking too much about it. I have sprinkled in some stuff in the two stories so far that could set up a bigger, deeper exploration of the character and the world, but I don’t know if I’ll ever pull that trigger. We’ll see.

Every writer needs a moment when they step away from the keyboard to recharge. How do you take care of yourself so you can continue to tell great stories?

I have my hobbies: making music, a little visual art, this and that. I’ve gotten into skincare lately, which is pretty relaxing.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

Author Spotlight: Adam-Troy Castro

Laurel Amberdine | 487 words

I love how this story conveys the perspective of the sand guards, battling this impervious giant. It’s such a great twist. Was that your original idea or was it something else?

I trampled my share of sand castles back in childhood (always ones I had constructed myself, and never any as large and elaborate as the one described in the story), and I have therefore lived well over half a century with the fantasy-construct of just how the denizens of such an easily crumbled castle would defend it against a creature out of nightmare like myself. It may be the single longest period of gestation of any idea in my entire writing career, but who knows? At age 100, I might write the story of where Daddy disappears to when he plays peek-a-boo.

It’s great that you were able to fashion a happy ending both for this sad, failed, drunk, who becomes a relatively contented remote monster in this strange world, and also for the sand people, who have a mythic-scale being to inspire heroes and scary tales. Did you always know this was the ending or did it take a while to get there?

Inherent in the story of a woman who others see as a monster out of legend is giving her the life such a monster traditionally leads.

We are the fortunate recipients of many of your short stories here at Lightspeed. Do you have a quota you try to write to, like X many stories (or words) a month, or just put down ideas as you get them? How does that work for you?

I have a word quota, best described as, “If I get 1000 words down, I did not fail today.” I try to get substantially more done, and when zooming along on a project that’s going well, I manage two or three or four times that much. In practice, this does not mean I produce the equivalent amount in publishable fiction, as a substantial number of stories trail off and must be abandoned, and some, inevitably, don’t find anybody who loves them. (Though I just recently sold an AMAZING story I deeply believed in that had gone unsold for, I shit you not, twenty-five years.)

Ideas are easy, is the thing. I have more than I can possibly use. Stories are hard.

. . . Twenty-five years. Dang. Anything new you’d like to tell our readers about?

As I am still waiting for That Thriller to find a home, alas, nothing on the book-length front. But I repeat my plug for my audio collection overseen by that Lightspeed favorite, Stefan Rudnicki: And Other Stories (Skyboat Media), where, among many other things, you will find a story original to that collection, “Big Stupe and the Buried Big Glowing Booger.”

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in San Francisco where she works for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: Andrew Penn Romine

Gordon B. White | 1249 words

Unlike the story itself, which uses a nonlinear structure we’ll get to soon, let’s start at the beginning. What you can tell us about the spark of inspiration behind this story? Which of the images or scenes came to you first, and how did you build it out?

I’ve had this image in my head for a long time—two old friends, moon colonists and blue-collar workers, whacking golf balls off a lunar escarpment and jawing about the first time anyone (Alan Shepard, Apollo Astronaut) ever teed off on the moon. I’m not particularly a golf fan, but the image was so compelling I was determined to build a story around it.

The second inspiration was decidedly less fun—the heart-wrenching experience of watching my mother-in-law slowly decline with dementia over a period of about fifteen years. To help process my grief, I wanted to write a story around dementia, and I spent a few years researching and considering ideas. I had a flash one day, where I realized Noah hitting golf balls with Gord was one of his last good memories, and the story grew from there.

The events in the story are entirely fictional, of course, and my mother-in-law and Noah are nothing alike (she never tried to swindle gangsters, at least not to my knowledge!), but there’s a commonality to their struggles that I hope speaks to everyone who has been affected by the disease.

A colonized Moon is a fascinating setting. Here you use actual historical events (Alan Shepard) and science (the Moon’s exposure to radiation) as a basis, but populate it with a wonderful collection of blue-collar workers, gangsters, and billionaires. How did you decide to set the story on the Moon? Did you find that choosing that setting influenced the shape the rest of the story took?

Thanks! I’m certainly not the first writer to be fascinated by the idea of the Moon as humanity’s first “second home,” so I took a lot of inspiration from those who have come before.

Because that initial image of the two golfers was so strong, there was never any question that the story would have to take place on the Moon, so I started to imagine who these characters were and what they might be doing out there. Taking their lunch break, it turns out! Nothing’s more human than killing time.

I did a lot of research on golf ball dynamics in lunar gravity, golf ball materials under lunar conditions, and possible side effects from staying out on the Moon’s surface for too long, and all of those things suggested story cues, too.

Most of all, the Moon to me as a setting evokes strong feelings of isolation, even desolation. With a colony, you’d probably have a lot of people living in habs and tunnels underground to escape the radiation. How isolating that would be, to rarely see the sky? To live in a series of constricted corridors. We’d adapt, no doubt, but this physical isolation mirrors the interior isolation of Noah’s dementia. He’s trapped in a warren of memory and grief that he can’t escape.

While the events of your story are nonlinear, it still builds up to a moving climax. Despite the time shifts and memory slips, it feels like it follows the tried and true narrative arc of tension and release for the reader. What influenced your choice to tell a chronologically nonlinear story? Were there particular difficulties it presented or possibilities it offered?

I’m a fairly linear writer, so my process definitely influenced how I began to write Noah’s story.

Because the story is about someone suffering from dementia, there was an opportunity to play Noah’s memories against his muddled present. Attempting to capture that raw, unfiltered interiority was what drew me to his story in the first place.

Dementia patients often retain their long-term memories and can remember their early lives with amazing amounts of detail. Those memories can still become confused with the present. Stories about parents mistaking their kids for a deceased spouse are heartbreakingly common, for example. Until her dementia rendered her speechless, my mother-in-law would regale us with intricate stories about growing up in the Depression, but she often seemed confused about who I was.

The hardest part of structuring “Miles and Miles and Miles,” was ensuring the reader follows Noah as he skips through time and memory while living his physical present. Noah’s sort of the ultimate unreliable narrator—he’s not fully in control of how he tells his own story. I think—I hope—I managed to balance Noah’s raw and confused experiences with the linear narrative of his long unraveling.

This story and its structure seems to tease out the relationship between cause-and-effect, on the one hand, and the meaning we ascribe to events, on the other. At the end, although Noah perceives that the orderly is there to punish him for cheating Thornton, Noah’s final words suggest that he instead accepts what he thinks is death as a fitting atonement for all of his faults—failing Mimi, betraying Gord, selling out to Arkady, hurting Gabi. Rather than mere submission, by imbuing this event with his own meaning, Noah manages to wrest back control even though he can’t change the outcome. How do you see the interplay between causal relationships and ascribed meaning in this story?

A question I kept returning to while writing this story was “Does Noah deserve his fate?” Fiction, unlike real life, often demands that a character experience consequences for their actions—even if those consequences are metaphorical or merely revelatory—in order for the reader to feel satisfied at the end of the story.

Did Noah earn his fate through his failures and betrayals? Maybe, but there’s a lot of ambiguity in the nature of his deeds because he’s incapable of remembering exactly how it all went down. Dementia is such a cruel affliction, and I definitely wanted to maintain sympathy for Noah even as I suggest he might not have made ethical decisions earlier in his life. No matter what actually happened, Noah seeks redemption, some kind of peace, at the end. Don’t we all?

For a last bit of linearity, what’s coming up next for you? To cast linearity aside, however, where can readers that enjoyed this piece find more of your previous work?

I have a lot of plates spinning right now! I’m working on the final act of a trilogy of space-opera-horror novellas titled The Mosquito Fleet for Broken Eye Books. Part one, “The Stars How Different, From Night to Night,” is currently available through their Eyedolon Magazine Patreon. Part two is coming sometime this summer. In the meantime, I’m working on a different space opera project that’s a little bit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a smidge of Les Misérables, and a dash of Star Wars. It’s the most ambitious project I’ve tackled to date, so stay tuned on that one!

Besides my previous story for Lightspeed, “The Parting Glass,” I’ve published over a dozen stories in various other publications and anthologies. You can find links on my website, andrewpennromine.com.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Gordon B. White has lived in North Carolina, New York, and the Pacific Northwest. He is a 2017 graduate of the Clarion West Writing Workshop, and his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as Daily Science Fiction, A Breath from the Sky: Unusual Stories of Possession, Nightscript Vol. 2, and the Bram Stoker Award® winning anthology Borderlands 6. Gordon is also an Assistant Editor with Kraken Press and conducts reviews and interviews for various outlets. You can find him online at gordonbwhite.com or on Twitter at @GordonBWhite.

Author Spotlight: Senaa Ahmad

Arley Sorg | 640 words

For me, this story is about change. Its inevitability, its variety, and the ways in which we wrestle with it or come to terms with it. It seems like Ahura Yazda would rather die before things start to change too much. Does this ring true for you? Is this important in a lot of your fiction?

Oh, I love that reading. When I was thinking about the story, Ahura Yazda was always defined by this bone-deep sense of restlessness, and the way it yanked against a newer but equally urgent desire for the quiet life. It’s a bit like the scorpion and the frog story, if the scorpion decided to buy a house and have a few nice scorpion kids. And I think when you’re walking a tightrope between two conflicting desires, maybe everything feels precarious, especially change.

I wrote this story almost four years ago, along with a bundle of others, and they all almost certainly steal a few themes from each other. Including an anxiety about change, which I’m told I have, sometimes, maybe.

How did this story come about; how did it start and how did it develop?

I came pretty close to digging this story a shallow grave and never looking back. I always started with the creatures in the barn and a trickster character, and it always went downhill from there. There’s a few half-hearted drafts with Zaynab as an older woman, haunted by her dad, but it only clicked into place when I started writing his story. Ahura Yazda’s version of events had a sense of immediacy that I’d been looking for in all the other drafts.

This is probably a good time to tell you that Ahura Yazda is drawn from trickster heroes in Urdu and Persian epics, especially Zal and Rostam from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, and Amir Hamza from Muhammad Husain Jah’s Tilism-e-Hoshruba.

I’m not sure but I feel like there may be some deliberate choices in terms of the creatures, as well as some symbolism. How did you decide what creatures to use?

I was obsessed with the idea of jinn as a kid. They hang out with fortune tellers! They live in a parallel universe! Even though the character of the djinni horse is pretty strictly non-canonical. The simorgh features prominently in Zal and Rostam’s stories, so she was a no-brainer. Beyond those two, I tried to incorporate creatures who could be quickly sketched out, so the story could keep moving.

I love that there is this dash of the immigrant experience in here, a hint at the complexity of it: “Will his daughters only meet white boys in this country? Clumsy morons like this one? Does it matter? Or what, does he truly want them to meet Persian tricksters who drag them to the ends of the earth?” There’s also this underlying thing, even present in the creatures, this . . . feeling out of place, or not-quite-settled/home. Do these speak to your own experiences, are they drawn from your own sense of otherness?

Asking a child of immigrants about the immigrant experience is a loaded question! I’ll say that this story was written at a time when I was interested in the out-of-body experiences that people have in their own bodies every day.

I think sometimes, when people leave home behind, they make promises about what they’ll preserve and how they’ll pass on that inheritance to their kids, their grandkids. I wanted Ahura Yazda to have made those kinds of promises to himself. And as his kids start to grow, I wanted him to ask, Can I really keep these promises? Is that really going to happen?

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Arley Sorg grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado. He studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and usually writes in local coffee shops. A 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate, he is an assistant editor at Locus Magazine. He’s soldering together a novel, has thrown a few short stories into orbit, and hopes to launch more.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 210 words

Coming up in August, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Dominica Phetteplace (“Robot Country”) and Kendra Fortmeyer (“No Matter”), along with SF reprints by Sam J. Miller (“Calved”) and Carlos Hernandez (“The Macrobe Conservation Project”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Scott Sigler (“The Final Blow”) and Cassandra Khaw (“A Leash of Foxes, Their Stories Like Barter”), and fantasy reprints by Kai Ashante Wilson (“«Légendaire.»”) and Brenda Peynado (“The Rock Eaters”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. If you’re reading our ebook edition, we will also have an exclusive book excerpt.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.

• • • •

Looking ahead beyond next month, we’ve got a veritable plethora of stories forthcoming. We’ve got work from the following authors coming up over the next couple of issues: Brooke Bolander, E. Lily Yu, Adam-Troy Castro, Isabel Yap, Yoon Ha Lee, Rajan Khanna, and Melissa Marr.

So be sure to keep an eye out for all that imaginative goodness in the months to come. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Lightspeed.

Thanks for reading!

Stay Connected

The Editors

Here are a few URLs you might want to check out or keep handy if you’d like to stay apprised of everything new and notable happening with Lightspeed:

Website

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

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Newsletter

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/newsletter

RSS Feed

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Podcast Feed

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Twitter

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Subscribe

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Subscriptions and Ebooks

The Editors

Subscriptions: If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Lightspeed more than 100 stories (about 700,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction). The cost is just $35.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! For more information, including about third-party subscription options, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe.

Ebooks & Bundles: We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors ($3.99 each), and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Lightspeed ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! We currently have a number of ebook bundles available: Year One (issues 1-12), Year Two (issues 13-24), Year Three (issues 25-36), the Mega Bundle (issues 1-36), and the Supermassive Bundle (issues 1-48). Buying a bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. So if you need to catch up on Lightspeed, that’s a great way to do so. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store for more information.

• • • •

All caught up on Lightspeed? Good news! We also have lots of ebooks available from our sister-publications:

Nightmare Ebooks, Bundles, & Subscriptions: Like Lightspeed, our sister-magazine Nightmare (nightmare-magazine.com) also has ebooks, bundles, and subscriptions available as well. For instance, you can get the complete first year (12 issues) of Nightmare for just $24.99; that’s savings of $11 off buying the issues individually. Or, if you’d like to subscribe, a 12-month subscription to Nightmare includes 48 stories (about 240,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction), and will cost you just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price).

Fantasy Magazine Ebooks & Bundles: We also have ebook back issues—and ebook back issue bundles—of Lightspeed’s (now dormant) sister-magazine, Fantasy. To check those out, just visit fantasy-magazine.com/store. You can buy each Fantasy bundle for $24.99, or you can buy the complete run of Fantasy Magazine— all 57 issues—for just $114.99 (that’s $10 off buying all the bundles individually, and more than $55 off the cover price!).

Support Us on Patreon or Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

The Editors

If you’re reading this, then there’s a good chance you’re a regular reader of Lightspeed and/or Nightmare. We already offer ebook subscriptions as a way of supporting the magazines, but we wanted to add an additional option to allow folks to support us, thus we’ve launched a Drip (d.rip/john-joseph-adams) and a Patreon (patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams).

TL;DR Version

If you enjoy Lightspeed and Nightmare and my anthologies, our Patreon and Drip pages are a way for you to help support those endeavors by chipping in a buck or more on a recurring basis. Your support will help us bring bigger and better (and more) projects into the world.

Why Patreon and Drip?

There are no big companies supporting or funding the magazines, so the magazines really rely on reader support. Though we offer the magazines online for free, we’re able to fund them by selling ebook subscriptions or website advertising.

While we have a dedicated ebook subscriber base, the vast majority of our readers consume the magazine online for free. If just 10% of our website readers pledged just $1 a month, the magazines would be doing fantastically well. So we thought it might be useful to have an option like Drip and Patreon for readers who maybe haven’t considered supporting the magazine, or who maybe haven’t because they don’t have any desire to receive the ebook editions—or who would be glad to pay $1 a month, but not $3 (the cost of a monthly subscriber issue of Lightspeed).

Though Lightspeed and Nightmare are separate entities, we decided to create a single “publisher” Drip and Patreon account because it seemed like it would be more efficient to manage just one page on each platform. Plus, since I sometimes independently publish works using indie-publishing tools (as described above), we thought it would be good to have a single place where folks could come to show their support for such projects.

Basically, we wanted to create a crowdfunding page where, if you enjoy my work as an editor, and you want to contribute a little something to help make it easier for us to produce more cool projects, then our Drip or Patreon are the place to do that.

What Do I Get Out of Being a Backer or Patron?

Well, you get the satisfaction of helping to usher the creation of cool new short fiction projects into the world! Plus, the more support we get, the better we can make the magazines and compensate our authors and staff. By becoming a supporter via Patreon or Drip, you help fund our growth and continued publication of two award-winning magazines. Of course, if you’re already one of our ebook subscribers (thank you!), you are already supporting us. This is for those who prefer to read the issues each month on our free websites, or wish to support our efforts more generally.

By becoming a supporter, you are also bestowed a title, such as Dragonrider, or Space Wizard, or Savior of the World and/or Universe, thus making you instantly the envy of all your friends.

Thank You!

If you’ve read this far, thanks so much. We hope you’ll consider becoming a backer on Patreon or Drip. Those URLs again are d.rip/john-joseph-adams and patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams.

Thanks in advance for your time. We look forward to hopefully being able to make the magazines—and my other publishing endeavors—even better with the support of people like you.

About the Lightspeed Team

The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams

Managing/Associate Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects

Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland

Reprint Editor

Rich Horton

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

John Joseph Adams

Assistant Editor

Laurel Amberdine

Editorial Assistant

Jude Griffin

Reviewers

Arley Sorg

LaShawn Wanak

Chris Kluwe

Carrie Vaughn

Christopher East

Violet Allen

Copy Editor

Dana Watson

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Devin Marcus

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading Lightspeed (and/or Nightmare), you might also enjoy these works edited by John Joseph Adams:

ANTHOLOGIES

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey)

Armored

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (with Karen Joy Fowler)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 (with Charles Yu)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 (with N.K. Jemisin)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 (with Carmen Maria Machado) [Forthcoming Oct. 2019]

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Cosmic Powers

Dead Man’s Hand

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: Ignorance is Strength (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming 2020]

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: Burn the Ashes (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming 2020]

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: Or Else the Light (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming 2020]

Epic: Legends of Fantasy

Federations

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects

Lightspeed: Year One

The Living Dead

The Living Dead 2

Loosed Upon the World

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination

Operation Arcana

Other Worlds Than These

Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen)

A People’s Future of the United States (with Victor LaValle)

Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Seeds of Change

Under the Moons of Mars

Wastelands

Wastelands 2

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse [June 2019]

The Way of the Wizard

What the #@&% is That? (with Douglas Cohen)

NOVELS and COLLECTIONS

Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey

Shift by Hugh Howey

Dust by Hugh Howey

Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn

Sand by Hugh Howey

Retrograde by Peter Cawdron

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer

The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty

The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn

The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks

The Chaos Function by Jack Skillingstead

Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker

Gather the Fortunes by Bryan L. Camp

Reentry by Peter Cawdron

Half Way Home by Hugh Howey

The Unfinished Land by Greg Bear

Creatures of Charm and Hunger by Molly Tanzer

A Dark Queen Rises by Ashok K. Banker

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

The Chosen One by Veronica Roth

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.