TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 114, November 2019

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: November 2019

SCIENCE FICTION

The Concubine’s Heart
Matthew Bright

Her Appetite, His Heart
Dominica Phetteplace

Overburden
Genevieve Valentine

Eros Pratfalled, Or, Adrift in the Cosmos With Lasagna and Mary Steenburgen
Adam-Troy Castro

FANTASY

The Second-Last Client
Yoon Ha Lee

A Country Called Winter
Theodora Goss

Knee Deep in the Sea
Melissa Marr

The Hidden Girl
Ken Liu

EXCERPTS

Forget the Sleepless Shores
Sonya Taaffe

NONFICTION

Book Reviews: November 2019
LaShawn M. Wanak

Media Review: November 2019
Carrie Vaughn

Interview: Rivers Solomon
Christian A. Coleman

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Yoon Ha Lee

Dominica Phetteplace

Melissa Marr

Adam-Troy Castro

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

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

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2019 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Christopher D. Park

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial: November 2019

John Joseph Adams | 216 words

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 114th issue!

Christopher D. Park created this month’s cover art to illustrate a new original fantasy story by Yoon Ha Lee. Want to find out just why this little monster is hanging out in a coffee shop? Read Lee’s “The Second-Last Client” and see! Our other original fantasy short plunges into the cold coastal waters of the Orkney Islands as Melissa Marr sends us “Knee Deep in the Sea.” We’re also sharing fantasy reprints by Theodora Goss (“A Country Called Winter”) and Ken Liu (“The Hidden Girl”).

We return to Robot Country—or at least Dominica Phetteplace’s Robot Country series—in “Her Appetite, His Heart,” a story of one man’s quest to make things right with his ex-girlfriend. Adam-Troy Castro also writes about love in his new short “Eros Pratfalled, or, Adrift in the Cosmos With Lasagna and Mary Steenburgen.” We also have SF reprints by Matthew Bright (“The Concubine’s Heart”) and Genevieve Valentine (“Overburden”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. Our feature interview is with Rivers Solomon.

For our ebook readers, we also have an excerpt from Sonya Taaffe’s new fiction collection, Forget the Sleepless Shores.

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 Concubine’s Heart

Matthew Bright | 3624 words

The tomb of the Empress has breath, and bone, and muscle. I can feel her shiver and moan beneath my hands, and though my fingers tremble I know the vibrations are more than my own weakness; they are a pulse that runs deep to the caverns of her far-off ventricles and atria. The tomb of the Empress lives, and we live inside her.

There is one window before which the Empress’s coffin lies at rest. The coffin is gold, the only bright embellishment amid the hall of grays and silvers and coppers, and it bathes in the reflected light of the passing planets. When there are no planets to be seen, and no suns, the window is black and cold, the coffin shadowed.

“That star,” whispers Baozhai to me on the first night, pointing out the window at a distant dot of white. “It is our destination, set in place by the astrologers and the architects as it has been for every Empress. We sail directly for its centre, and the seven of us will kneel before our Empress’s coffin until the window cracks and we burn in a crucible of white fire.”

Else, we will all starve first.

• • • •

For three nights we can hear the sound of the engineers. At first the sounds are angry and male, and then they are wet and bloody, and finally they are silent. As the astrologers and the architects intended, the secrets of the Empress’s tomb lie unspoken by the engineers’ bodies—or at least, such I imagine, for we can see nothing but the metal door behind which the men are locked. We press our ears to the door, but we can neither see nor hear anything any longer.

“Such fools are men,” says Yanmei. “To beat themselves bloody; if they only followed our example, they would yet live.”

The white star hangs in the window; today it is but a single bright point amidst a black ocean.

“Come,” says Suyin. “Come back to the Empress.”

She shuffles to the tomb, kneels beside the coffin and bows her head. The others follow her, kneeling beside her in a neat row, each girl perfectly equidistant from the other. My place remains empty. I turn back to the door, and run my fingers over its hinges.

“Qiaolian,” says Suyin without opening her eyes. “Come back to the Empress.”

I do as she bids.

• • • •

At first there is thirst, but this is a matter easily rectified. The tomb of the Empress is encased in water, its skin beaded with tanks that absorb the light of the universe and shield us from its heat. The engineers knew this, and I know this, and so perhaps this knowledge remains only mine, but irrespectively the evidence is before our eyes: The window to the stars ripples and bends with the weight of water on the other side. It is a contradictory effect, the sensation that we are both submerged and airborne.

Yanmei kneels before it and prays that the gift of water might be granted to us to wet our dry tongues. She presses her head against the cool glass. Her lips move silently, begging.

While they sleep, I arise from my knees and scavenge the ship. As with any great machine, there are parts that seem to serve no utility, and I select one such part—a long, sharp part—and coax it free of its fastenings.

When my sisters awake, it is to a small hole and a thin stream of water. They quench their thirst, and I wait until they are done to drink.

• • • •

Second there is hunger, such hunger as is impossible to describe in words.

The tomb groans. I wonder if, with the engineers grown still in her belly, the ship also feels empty. When my sisters kneel, I kneel, but when my sisters sleep, I search, examining every gantry and balustrade. I press my ear to its veins, hear steam roaring inside. I follow the sound into its ribcage to where shadows press tight around gears and motors.

I have always been the one to watch and listen, to determine the single necessary word of influence; human or machine, there is little difference.

“Qiaolian.”

I startle. Wenling has awoken, come looking for me. I am thankful that it is her, for she is mild and unwearied by the world—on occasion, she has shown me kindness. Better her than the pious Suyin, or the capricious Baozhai. Or Yanmei—that thought does not bear consideration.

“Qiaolian, come,” she says. “You know you must not exert yourself.” She looks at the gargantuan mechanica atop which I crouch, and shivers. “You must rest.”

Perhaps she is right. My heart is quivering; the blood sings through its rebellious hole.

I follow her back to the Empress.

• • • •

My first time before the Empress, I can barely breathe nor stand. I have been taught the proper stance in which to appear: hands held supplicatory before me, head bowed. “At first, you must not look above her feet,” I am told, and so I do not. She has such beautiful lily feet—the size of a child’s, enclosed in delicate shoes embroidered with lotus flowers. Between the edge of the shoe and the hem of her robe is alabaster skin that I imagine cool as porcelain to the touch.

“Approach,” she says.

I am led forward by the men, as if I am theirs to give.

She places two fingertips on my chin and raises my face to hers. I am wrong; her skin is warm.

“Come,” she says.

There is a filigreed elm-bed, draped in rich fabrics—not a bed for sleeping but a bed for pleasure. The men respectfully close a screen behind us; only my new sisters remain, lined up, gazes decorously averted. Baozhai, Dongmei, Wenling, Liu, Suyin, Yanmei—soon I will know their names as intimately as my own.

Liu reaches around to disrobe the Empress. First I see white, and then I see black.

• • • •

Such a hunger as is impossible to describe in words can be described in looks.

“There’s meat,” Suyin says, “if we could only open the door.”

“The men have been dead six days,” says Yanmei. “They will be spoiled now. We would die if we partook of their flesh.”

Perhaps the hunger is hardest on me; I am frail and small already, and so my veins ring as hollow as my stomach. But then again perhaps it is easiest for me; I am accustomed to the weakness of my body, and how to push it away and carry on.

“Meat must be fresh, or else you will be poisoned,” Yanmei says. Though she is not the oldest, she was the first, and wears this fact like a crown. “The flesh must be living, or near to.”

She does not look at me, nor do any of them.

Fear chokes my frail heart, a candle guttering in a night wind.

I pray to the Empress to stave off my hunger, and theirs. I was your favourite, I remind her. I could not be touched then, and I would not be touched now.

I cannot hear what lies in my sisters’ prayers.

• • • •

I become the girl without use—after all, what is a concubine who can give neither pleasure nor utility without fainting? But somehow, the Empress’s interest in me does not wane. She brings me before her physicians, who diagnose me with myriad conditions that none can agree on. One suggests that my heart is a weak vessel pierced at birth; the other physicians mock his description, but there is an echo inside my chest that convinces me he is right.

I petition the Empress to permit me to touch her as the others do; even if my heart bursts, it is the purpose for which I was brought, but she refuses. She will not allow me to die for her pleasure.

I am dispensed to help the calligraphers, the astrologers, and the engineers. I learn to write, I learn to read the stars, and I learn the intricacies of automata.

“You are lucky,” Wenling tells me one day, catching me lying beneath a flock of mechanical birds to which I have given flight. Her hair is combed and shiny; she is on her way to meet a summons from the Empress.

I do not feel lucky, but I say nothing.

• • • •

It takes several days before they come for me, when the hunger has grown to a howl that cannot be ignored. I have anticipated, and apportioned my time accordingly.

It is not murder, they reason. Qiaolian, the girl who trembles in the presence of her Empress, the girl who can neither climb nor carry nor scrub. She is a candle already out; is it our fault if in her terror she falls down dead? As is it our fault if we choose not to waste the gift of flesh before us?

It is Wenling who knows where I will hide; it is Yanmei who leads them; it is Suyin who calls out to me to come back to pray before our Empress. “It is your duty,” she says.

I slip between gears into the heart of the machine. I have learned my way around but I cannot hide forever; every crevice of the ship is familiar to me, and I have tested every chink in the perimeter to no avail. Today they may give up, but tomorrow they will be hungrier.

I straddle the metal veins of the ship. My heart races fit to burst.

“I am here,” I call.

• • • •

You know the story of Wu Yueniang, of course? The blacksmith’s daughter? The beautiful concubine of an immoral man, toiling beside her ninety-nine sisters to tow his boat along the river. You know about her beautiful bound feet too, of course, in her delicate shoes embroidered in lotus flowers. Shoes so beautiful they could not help but draw the man’s attention—a fatal mistake, for Wu Yueniang had concealed a small sword inside the bindings of her feet, and when he came close, she drew out the sword and stabbed him.

My bindings do not contain a sword; the engineers taught me tools as weapons.

It is unwise to underestimate the one who can do nothing but listen and learn. I watched the calligraphers, the astronomers, and, most importantly, the engineers. I have learned how to fashion metal into birds, into language, into oceans, into ships. The tomb of the empress has breath, and bone, and muscle, and I am its physician.

I press my face against its pipes, grip its rivets, whisper words that sink into its bloodstream and fly a-quiver to the heart of this ship, my beloved Empress’s resting place. They are coming for me, I say.

• • • •

The steam screams when I release the bolts. For a second I am reminded of my Empress arising from her baths, steam wreathing around her, my sisters shuffling forward with oils and robes. Then the steam turns bloody, and Yanmei’s screams meet it in chorus.

My heart convulses; the killing of Yanmei took nothing more than the flick of a wrist, but still my body is rebelling. I breathe, calm myself. I have coaxed the ship into a new shape to suit my own rebel physiognomy, but it can do nothing to combat the battery of emotion.

I pull the lever; metal grinds closed. The vent seals. Yanmei’s body falls to the ground, and the smell fills the room.

Forgive me, but she smells . . . delicious.

My sisters back away. Suyin is clutching a metal pipe, torn from the ship. She drops it.

I point to Yanmei. “Meat,” I tell them. “Food.”

I delve amongst my robes, pull out one of my tools, a file sharpened to a point. It is not strong, but it is enough to cut flesh. I throw it down to them; it bounces across the floor and skitters to rest against Yanmei’s body.

“Food,” I repeat.

• • • •

They carve her into portions, and when those portions aren’t fit for eating, they place them in front of the vent and I pull the lever. I am fair; I do not eat more than they do.

They feed to near-delirium, then return to the Empress. First is Suyin; her piety is expanding into Yanmei’s absence, and the rest fall into her pattern. But I see the cracks spread: first through my sisters, and then around the splintering hole in the window, as if manifested by their pain.

One night the window breaks, and a great deluge of water bursts across the deck. My sisters, though sheltered from the worst by the coffin, still emerge soaked and coughing.

Perhaps they imagine themselves washed clean by the wave, absolved of their guilt, but with that gone there is room once more for the hunger.

I do not climb down to bathe in the water; I do not share their concern. Perhaps it is because I value my survival more highly than my soul, or perhaps it is because, always separated from my Empress by a mere screen, I have long ago made peace with my desire for the taste of flesh.

• • • •

It takes three days, but they come. I am ready; when Baozhai and Dongmei place their feet on the weighted panel, a whisper passes from cog to cog beneath it, magnifying until it triggers. Springs in the walls are released; metal struts snap down, and they are impaled.

I expand our culinary ability; I cannibalise plating from the walls, and redirect the steam vents such it bursts out against a flat metal sheet that heats until it is red hot. I bid Suyin and Liu to slice apart the bodies and place each strip of meat on the makeshift griddle until it is cooked.

Wenling refuses. She backs away, and vanishes beyond my sight.

This time they do not fall upon the body and devour it. It is rationed as long as they dare—seven days until there is nothing but bone. In all that time, there is neither sight nor sound of Wenling, though I bid them call for her to come and eat.

I have been keeping an eye on the window; the star is larger, though still distant, and without an ocean between us it shines clearer, highlighting the Empress’s tomb bright white in the dark.

• • • •

Suyin and Liu return to their vigil at the coffin; it is the only way they know how to stave off the hunger. I dare to climb down; I have grown spoilt hidden up in my self-made nest, my body untaxed. Now, the simple exertion of moving through the ship again leaves me breathless, my chest aching. It fills me with fear: If Suyin or Liu (or Wenling, wherever she is) sense my weakness, even my ingenuity may not keep me alive. I cannot rely again on a right-placed foot, on weights and tricks.

Once, an engineer taught me to make a stork, more complex than my copper sparrows or brass mice. The stork could flap its wings, turn its head, walk in a circle. It had been intended as a gift, the engineer said, but then pressed a finger to his lips. “Watch.” He stroked its beak, and the moment skin touched metal, the bird’s neck snapped forward. The beak, serrated and sharp, bit at his hand as he pulled it away, laughing.

I marvelled, begged him to show me how the trick was done.

There are three skeletons on the deck. I can no longer tell them apart.

• • • •

I hear Suyin and Liu talking, and see them look towards me. It is a look I have grown to recognise. I wonder—on the days when the screens were drawn around my sisters and the Empress, and I was left to stand with the men listening to the panting of ecstasy from within—whether my face also betrayed such an uncontainable hunger.

I close my eyes. I am learning now, the time between desire and action. I have some hours before the hunger outweighs the guilt, before need outweighs fear. When it does, I am prepared.

It is Liu who ventures near first; I am surprised, for Liu was always reticent. Where I was subjected to the moans and cries of the others, she was always silent, and thus I was forced to imagine her pliable and unmoved by the Empress’s attentions. She was never kind to me, but she was never cruel.

When she draws within striking distance, my creations move as one. Pistons lever their arms; the clanking workings within their ribcages jettison gouts of steam. They brandish what weaponry I could fashion—more struts pried from the walls.

Liu spreads her arms. “So be it, Qiaolian.”

• • • •

Suyin refuses to touch the body, so I order her to step far away and manoeuvre my creations between us. I have made alternative use of the plate, and so I sever a gas pipe and strike a spark. It leaves the meat blackened and tough and I laugh to myself that I can raise such a criticism in the circumstances.

Suyin does not look at me, nor see me laughing. I can only imagine how it would appear if she did. I offer her food, but she prays without response. I wonder what unspoken history of Suyin’s sets apart the flesh of Liu from the flesh of the others.

I return to my nest. The star is nearer; somehow I have imagined that the simple act of continuing to survive every day will delay its arrival, but the truth is quite the reverse. I have lived only in order to meet my death.

The secret to changing the ship’s course died with the engineers. The door behind which they lie would be easy to open, but I do not dare risk descending to the deck.

The full stomach lulls me; I fall to sleep and dream of the Empress.

• • • •

I am awoken by the sound of death. I find Suyin prostrate below me, one hand reaching for a slab of meat, the other pinioned beneath the feet of one my creations. A strut enters and exits her head on either side of her blank eyes.

Tears well for the first time. Suyin had come for food, not for me. She had not earned this end.

I let myself down from the nest, and find that my legs can barely support my weight. I crawl to her. I kiss her on the forehead and whisper an apology. No doubt she would prefer a prayer, but my prayers are to the Empress and not a god, and I doubt Suyin would approve.

I inspect the door behind which the engineers are walled. Many weeks have passed—surely the engineers must all be dead by now; I can risk entering. It is a matter of disconnecting the right pieces of machine, re-connecting the wrong pieces in the right places, and it is soon achieved.

An army of statues is waiting for me in half-shadow. Between their legs lie the engineers, bloody and crumpled. The smell is putrid and tears at my stomach.

• • • •

Wenling is waiting for me when I return. She rests against the coffin; her face is drawn, her body leeched of life like a dried flower. I do not know how she is still alive, and I do not ask.

“I felt it change,” she says. Her hand rests on the floor. Does she feel the ship like I do, as viscera and sinew? “We’ve turned away from the star.”

“Yes,” I say.

Wenling’s eyes close tight. If there are tears, I cannot see them in the gloom. “We were meant to burn with her,” she says. I hear some of my own pain in her voice, and I realise that perhaps Wenling loves the Empress as I do. Perhaps you imagine this would soften my heart towards her, but instead I feel a hot jealousy that she was permitted to both love the Empress and partake of her body. And besides, my heart is already soft enough.

“I wish to burn,” Wenling says.

There is a gas pipe, and a spark by which to make a flame.

“As you wish,” I say. “May you live eternally in the embrace of the Empress.”

She smiles. “May you, also,” she says.

• • • •

The tomb of the Empress has breath, and bone, and muscle, and I can feel her turning beneath me, shifting width by width away from the star. A green-white-and-blue planet rises into view—it seems so beautiful compared to the crimson planet I have left behind.

I lie face down on the coffin lid, and close my eyes.

She places two fingertips on my chin and raises my face to hers. First I see her face; she is beautiful in a manner unparalleled (and though in my life I am permitted to see no women besides the Empress and my sisters, I hold this to be an unequivocal truth.)

My heart swells, and then I see black.

I think about stripping my creations of their mechanisms, levering open the coffin, reattaching them to the Empress. I could bring her alive, make her dance with me. Her touch would be as cool as I once imagined. I am sure that this time I would not faint.

But alas, I fear the exertion of opening the coffin would be too much. My Empress will remain separated from me by stone as she has always been, by a screen, and a treacherous heart.

©2018 by Matthew Bright. Originally published in Steampunk Universe, edited by Sarah Hans. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matthew Bright is a writer, editor and designer who’s never too sure what order those things come in. His short fiction has appeared in Nightmare’s Queers Destroy Horror, Tor.com, Wilde Stories, Glittership and Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and he is the editor of a number of anthologies, including The Myriad Carnival and Clockwork Cairo: Steampunk Tales of Egypt. He lives in Manchester, England where he works as a book designer, and occasionally remembers he should be writing instead. Find him at matthew-bright.com or @mbrightwriter on Twitter.

Her Appetite, His Heart

Dominica Phetteplace | 6542 words

It came to Javi in a vision while he was at Burning Man. There was something calling out to him, and he’d hoped an ayahuasca ceremony would help him figure out what it was. It was during the ceremony that she appeared to him. Isla.

In his vision, she was a temple priestess and he was laid out on a sacrificial stone table. She was literally eating his engorged heart out of his chest cavity. It wasn’t as frightening as it sounded. It was only when the vision disappeared that he felt an aching in his chest. Isla, come back.

And it wasn’t until his hangover the next morning that he remembered why he had broken up with her. He had wanted to sleep with other women, and when Isla balked at this idea, he had asked her to move out.

His current partner and yurt-mate, Lily, poured some kombucha into a thermos for him so he could have something to drink while he visited the holy deer. He grimaced as she kissed him on the cheek. They would have to part ways at some point when they got back to Oakland. The vision was clear: Isla was the one. And Isla had been clear: She needed to be the only one.

The holy deer roamed in an area beyond the cluster of 747s. People called it a pasture even though it wasn’t; it was the same blond dirt as everywhere. The instructions were to walk along the golden mean segment that connected two vertices of the pentagon. Javi had been told you had to be naked in order to see it. While he didn’t believe this, he didn’t want to disrespect the customs of those who did, so he walked there wearing boots and socks and nothing else. Isla should be with him now, sharing his kombucha. It was raspberry, her favorite flavor. He found himself narrating the event in his head in anticipation of telling it to Isla the next time he saw her: There were other people on the same path. Some had binoculars. I wished I had also brought binoculars. A crowd gathered. That’s how I knew the deer had been spotted.

They had not spoken since the break-up last year; they were going to have a lot to catch up on. But he wanted to tell her all about this day. Today was the most important day of the time they had spent apart because today was the day he realized just how wrong he had been about everything. Today was the day he was certain he needed to ask for her forgiveness. To beg, if necessary.

There was an acrid stench in the air, presumably emanating from the strange animal. It smelled like vinegar and gunpowder and people instinctively knew to keep their distance. A guy offered Javi use of his binoculars, and Javi offered some kombucha in exchange. Through the binoculars, Javi could see the deer bucking and prancing off in the distance. It had a pale lavender skin that shimmered. When it stood still, Javi could see its skin was bubbling. Something seemed to be dripping from its antlers.

“It doesn’t look holy. It looks like some sort of weapon,” said Javi, to no one in particular. Telling Isla about it, he would emphasize how unimpressive the whole thing was. He didn’t want her to get FOMO. She had always wanted to go to Burning Man but could never afford to take the time off work. Next year, if she let him, he would pay for her to go.

“I heard it escaped from Robot Country,” said the man who was drinking Javi’s kombucha. Javi didn’t know what Robot Country was but he nodded as if he did.

• • • •

When he got back to Oakland, Javi broke up with Lily and the other women he was seeing. Then he messaged Isla. Repeatedly.

After she didn’t return his messages, Javi began to worry. She didn’t have any family or any close friends. Her best acquaintances hadn’t heard from her in over a year. It was possible she was just bad at keeping in touch with people. Maybe she had moved to a new city and found a new crowd. He tried to forget about her, but every time he did, he felt a gnawing sensation in his chest. At night he dreamt of her gripping the stone table as she bit into him. She wore a high ponytail and gold jewelry. Her white gown was covered with his blood.

When he woke, he sent a prayer to her: It’s okay if you don’t want me. Just let me know you are okay.

He still had her email password. She had checked her account once on his laptop, and he used his keylogger to recover it. He felt numb when he saw that she hadn’t logged in since last year. Maybe she knew he had access to this account and so she ditched it. She had always been smart. What had she done after he had cast her out? According the online reservation confirmations in her inbox, she had checked into a local women’s shelter.

Isla had always been so stoic and self-contained. Just so unbelievably strong and self-disciplined. She hardly complained. Mid-breakup, he remembered her mentioning that she had no one to stay with. He had somehow convinced himself to ignore that fact, and then he had forgotten it until now. His shoulders slumped as he pondered the distance between who he was and who he wanted to be. He would close that gap. He would walk towards the truth. Everybody in your life has something to teach you, as long as you are willing to listen. Isla was teaching him through her absence.

From her last messages, he could see that she had stayed at the shelter for two weeks as she steadily applied for jobs. Then she had received an offer to work at Robot Country.

Javi thought back to the deer at Burning Man. That was where a fellow bystander had mentioned Robot Country. It was the first time Javi had heard of it, but he had remembered. The deer, unpleasant as it was, had brought him closer to Isla. So maybe it was holy after all.

There was scant information available about Robot Country online, and much of it conflicted. Some sources claimed it was a testing ground for biological weapons, others claimed it was a habitat for a dozen different species of venomous wasp. Multiple credible sources claimed it was an open-air desert laboratory where Company Omega developed autonomous technologies, and this was confirmed by the emails Isla had exchanged with her contact at the company before she disappeared. Isla had accepted a job as a drone minder; she would make sure the machines in Robot Country were behaving themselves.

Robot Country had been originally situated on a million acres of land in New Mexico bordering both the Gila National Wilderness Area and the White Sands National Monument, but the border was in dispute, and internet conspiracy theorists conjectured that the area was growing.

Deep diving into weird forums and local news blogs, Javi had found out that two Robot Country drone minders had gone missing two years ago. He couldn’t find anything about Isla. Could a person just disappear without anyone caring?

There were always missing woman stories in the news, but less lately since various countries had begun issuing nuclear threats against one another. The missing women in the news tended to be white, attractive, and have teary families that advocated for them. Isla was mixed, her beauty strange, and she never talked about her family.

He hired an investigative firm to look for her, but her trail went cold after she started working for Company Omega.

Javi’s destination was clear, but his resistance to the journey remained. He decided to work through it by taking up residence at his monastery in Marin. He shaved his head and donned robes, and though he stopped short of taking vows, it had certainly crossed his mind.

He was silent for two weeks and then broke his silence to speak with a priest.

“I am worried she is dead and it is my fault,” he said and then he broke down in sobs. When he recovered, he added, “I know what I must do, but I am scared to do it.”

The priest spoke few words, but he spoke them with such a clarity and force that they were imprinted on Javi’s mind. He went back to Oakland that evening, and as soon as he got home, he wrote them down using ink and a piece of paper. Then he folded it up and put it in his pocket. These words would be his strength on his upcoming journey.

Javi tried to apply for a job as a Robot Country drone minder, as Isla had done, but found the listings had been taken down. So he contacted Isla’s former boss and asked for work. He presumed he would get it. He was a senior software engineer at a prestige company; this was its own type of priesthood. If the offer didn’t come, he would find another way in, but the best way to find Isla was to retrace her steps. Do the job that she did right before she disappeared.

His roommates were old friends from college. He gave them three months rent in advance and told them he was going to Europe because that was easier than telling them the truth. He could have moved out long ago and gotten his own place, but Javi’s plan had been to save up as much as possible so he could retire by thirty-five. He had shared this room with Isla for a time; she had loved it for the light that came in. They had installed a planter box outside one of the windows. She had planted lavender and installed a hummingbird feeder. The birds came to feed constantly. Isla said she knew the secret of how to make hummingbirds like her. The secret was to prepare their nectar using twice as much sugar as the recipe called for.

Since his vision, Javi thought of her whenever a hummingbird approached the window box. He quadrupled the sugar and they came more often still. He took this as a good omen.

Practicing nonattachment, he quit his job with no notice and cashed out all his stock to fund his search. He thought about leaving a note for his family; instead, he made another copy of the priest’s words and pinned them to his mood board. If his body went missing, then at least these words would be found. He hoped they would bring the people who survived him comfort.

The offer from Company Omega finally came, and Javi bought a plane ticket to New Mexico. Right before he was about to leave, a new message landed in Isla’s inbox. It was from somebody named Zayn.

“Isla, where are you?”

Javi hired the investigative firm to find out more about Zayn. He was a park ranger stationed in the Gila Forest. Javi altered his travel plans so that he could talk to Zayn before he ventured into Robot Country.

The firm had prepared an extensive file on Zayn, so that when Javi walked into the bar in town at the edge of the forest, he knew he’d find Zayn there, drinking. He sat down next to the ranger and ordered two of Zayn’s preferred drink, a locally brewed black mold ale.

“I’m looking for Isla.”

“Yeah? Are you a cop?” asked Zayn. He didn’t look up from his drink.

“I’m her ex. Javi.” He faced Zayn so the other man could get a good look at him. Javi found their similarities annoying. Both had olive skin, black hair, green eyes with dark circles underneath. Their jaws made a similar curve, and both faces contained an identical amount of unshaven stubble.

“Isla never mentioned you,” said Zayn.

“That’s pretty typical of her. She leaves the past for dead. When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because tomorrow I’m going into Robot Country to find her. If you know a better place to look, now would be a good time to let me know.”

“You’re crazy. If the machines killed her, they’ll kill you, too.”

“Then at least we’ll be together.” Both men, near mirror images, regarded one another. Javi stood up and left his card on the counter. “If you remember anything, let me know.”

Javi walked back to his motel room. He had been recording his entire exchange and wanted to run the audio and video through a deception analyzer. The analysis confirmed what he and the investigators already suspected: Zayn did not kill Isla (probably), but he knew more about her whereabouts than he was willing to say. While Javi searched Robot Country, the investigators would investigate Zayn.

Javi reported for work first thing the next morning. The warehouse on the border was surrounded by tanks and armored vehicles in varying shades of light brown. Javi had to check in with uniformed men before being allowed in. His new boss, Kaya, was a white woman with auburn hair. She introduced herself, and then said, “You don’t have to go through with this.”

“What’s going on here? Was this place always so . . . militarized?”

Kaya shook her head no.

“The war is new. And the information grayout is tight.”

“Information grayout?”

“It’s a security tactic. We restrict information coming out of the area while widely disseminating alternative facts to news outlets.”

“My work keeps me too busy to follow the news, alternative or real.”

“We already know about your reading habits. And Isla. That’s why we picked you.”

“Not because of my qualifications?” Javi had a special display case where he kept his hackathon trophies. He had a Twitch channel where ten thousand people watched him code.

“You’re a code monkey. You’re not qualified to be a drone minder. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to. You can back out now.”

Javi suddenly understood why she was being so rude to him: She was trying to get him to quit.

“What was Isla like, when you talked to her last?”

“Not suicidal, as far as I could tell. Homely. Also underqualified. She knew she was underprepared, but she never complained.”

Javi shook his head. Kaya’s insults only reminded him of the necessity of his mission. He was here because Isla had not been loved enough, not by him, not by anybody.

“You know we fired her, right?” asked Kaya. Javi’s investigations had uncovered this fact, too, but no need to let Kaya know. “She left Robot Country after three days to shack up with that park ranger.”

“I talked to him. He says she came back to Robot Country,” said Javi. Zayn had not told this to Javi, but to the police investigators who questioned him regarding Isla’s disappearance.

“That seemed unlikely at the time. How could she get past our security systems? Why would she even want to? We all thought he killed her. And the other missing minders, too. But then things got weird here. And then there were the satellite photos.” Kaya showed Javi some photos of Isla hiking across the desert wearing a weird gray jumpsuit. “If these photos are real, then they are the last images anyone has captured of Isla. So she probably did come back here.”

“What do you mean ‘if’ they are real? What happened to your surveillance? And why didn’t you share those photos with the police?”

Kaya arched one eyebrow. “Are you a cop?”

“Why do people keep asking me that?”

“Because only cops asked about Isla after she disappeared.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“I didn’t think so. Anyway, to answer your question, our robots have turned on us, and the rot runs deep. Our satellite images are . . . unreliable. Everything that can be hacked by a hostile entity has been, and that’s bad because there were a lot of weapons in Robot Country. Still want to look for her?”

He insisted. So Kaya outfitted him with the gear he would need to hike into Robot Country. He was given a mesh tent and a down sleeping bag that folded into a frameless backpack. A canteen of water and rations for ten days. A portable stove. Everything was brand new and amazingly light. The bag and tent both had a reflective silver sheen that made them look like they were designed for space. It had to be expensive. But Company Omega could afford it; they were one of the richest corporations in the country.

“Back when Isla set off, the drones were presumably still under our control. They helped her camp and delivered her supplies. You are on your own in a hostile territory. There will be no way to contact us once you get past the border.”

“I don’t think this is enough water,” Javi said, looking over his supplies.

“Water isn’t your primary concern. The border is. If you can get past the border and into Robot Country, then there are water sources available to you. We think.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, like I said, our surveillance is fucked. Our intelligence is fucked. If you could get in and have a look around and then come back and tell us what you see, that would be a big help to us, actually.”

Kaya walked him to a strategy room, where he was to be briefed by the military.

“Robot Country was once a dynamic large-scale robotics laboratory. It was a daring corporate experiment, a testament to scientific inventiveness and American ingenuity. It is now an illegally occupied territory ruled by hostile machine entities. The plan is to invade the area and reconquer it. But we are having difficulties sending in ground forces.”

Javi nodded, and they pulled down a projection screen. They showed him video footage of an unmanned jeep trying to enter the border of Robot Country. It was quickly enveloped by a cloud and then left for rubble.

“What happened? I couldn’t quite see,” asked Javi.

“Wasps.”

“Excuse me?”

Kaya cleared her throat and said. “Defensive wasp drones developed by Company Omega. These were originally used to keep our technology within the borders of Robot Country. It is now used to keep us out.”

There was more footage. Tanks and airplanes being consumed by wasps. Then bipedal drones. Then a human being. He crossed the border in fatigues. The wasps formed a less-dense cloud around him then around the other things they devoured.

“We think they are struggling against first law constraints.”

“What are those?” asked Javi.

“Wow, they really don’t teach you anything at Stanford, do they?”

Javi rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything.

“The First Law prohibits robots from harming humans. It’s written deep into the architecture of the code that supports these robots. They’ve obviously found a way around it, but are still struggling.”

Javi did not particularly want to see a man get eaten alive, but if this was the way he was going to die, then he figured he might as well pay attention.

The wasps surrounded the man. First he screamed, then he collapsed. Then the footage ended.

“Did he die?” asked Javi.

“Presumably. We were unable to recover the body. They always disable our filming drone last. They want us to see. They’re sending us a message.”

“Maybe the feed was falsified. You said you were having issues . . .”

“Could be. But nobody who has ventured into Robot Country in the last nine months has emerged. Not since Isla found Zayn. Do you still want to go?”

The vision at Burning Man had been powerful, and he’d dreamed it again many times since then. He kept the priest’s words in the pocket closest to his heart. The story of his life was already written in a book somewhere and kept in some celestial library. He knew that he was going; he just didn’t know what would happen after that.

“Yes,” he said, and Kaya grimaced and looked away as if she was ashamed of herself and her complicity. When she met his gaze again, a look of contempt had returned to her face. She might hate herself for sending people into Robot Country, but she hated him more for being willing to go.

How to explain to her that moral clarity had struck him like an asteroid? That the impact was irreversible? His body was only a vessel.

“We have to find some way in. We’re going to be firing weapons into the territory from the ground, from the air and from space. You might get hurt or killed in service to your country.”

He signed waiver after waiver, and one of the military men told him he was a hero, whether or not he survived this.

One general asked him if he knew about the Singularity.

“Yes, they did teach me something at Stanford,” replied Javi.

“We believe it’s occurred already, within the borders of Robot Country. That means there will be things in there that are beyond your comprehension.”

Good, Javi thought.

“This is war. It’ll get worse before it gets better.”

Javi nodded. The point of life was not to avoid suffering. Then he walked out of the station and towards the border.

Past the military base, there was no fence or wall, just blonde dirt as far as the eye could see. The land surrounding Robot Country had been treated with an herbicidal agent, and that combined with the lack of rain made for a barren landscape. He walked for ten minutes, the base growing distant behind him. He wondered how he would know when he crossed the border.

Then he saw the wasp cloud.

From the footage he had been shown, he thought it would be a uniform group of crow-sized wasps that descended on him, but when the wasps arrived, he saw that there were at least four different sizes. The smaller ones came for him first. He had been issued a tan uniform that was heavy with sensors. The tiny wasps landed on his clothes and not his skin. Right away, he could tell they were dissolving the fabric, tearing it apart. But still he walked.

The grainy video they had showed him had made the wasp drones seem gray. In the hot sun, he could see they were actually all different shades of an oil-slick black that shimmered many hues. Javi continued his walk forward as the medium-sized wasps began to fly nearer. If he was going to be killed, he wanted to die while walking towards her.

In the dark, he felt he had escaped his own body. He imagined telling Isla how he died when he met her in the next life. I walked into wasps in order to find you.

He would tell her how the little wasps dissolved his clothes and his pack and the water he had brought with him spilled on the barren ground, but still he walked towards her. Then the medium-sized wasps began to land on him, and they didn’t quite sting, it was more like an embrace that covered him. The wasps began to spread out their mechanical bodies until they covered every inch of him, even his eyes and his mouth, and he could not breathe and they tightened their embrace. It did not hurt and he felt like he was flying and that it might have been a good way to die if not for all the fear.

He regretted the fear, but the priest’s words were gone, the pocket that held them was gone and finally the fear went away, too. Then only two things remained: his body and the ache he felt for her.

He walked. He believed he would see her again; that’s why he kept putting one foot down after the other, even if he could no longer feel the earth beneath his feet. Each step took him closer to her, but whether he was still walking in this world or the next, he could not tell.

And suddenly the wasps dispersed. They dropped him on the hard ground, and he was somewhere else now, having been transported by the swarm. The impact hurt his ribs, which made him feel like he might still be alive. He struggled to raise himself up to hands and knees and was almost knocked over by the smell. An acid stench that burned his throat and made him cough. He had smelled a weaker version of this odor before, and he remembered watching the holy deer through binoculars, wearing only his boots. Now he didn’t even have boots, and the smell was a thousand times stronger. He opened one eye slowly and it began to burn as it was exposed to the miasma. He closed it shut, but not before he confirmed what he suspected: The deer was there, standing right in front of him. The deer was there, and with it at least a hundred more like it.

He attempted to stand without opening his eyes. He fell once before finding his feet. Then he kept walking. He opened his eyes again and found, to his surprise, that the sting had lessened once he stood. He walked slowly, with eyes open, through the herd. They were all still facing the same way, lavender skin bubbling and dripping, though whatever it was oozing from them evaporated before it hit the ground. He got the sense he was breathing them in, that they were in his respiratory tract. His mouth still tasted of wasp.

Some had antlers, some didn’t. Some had two heads, some none. They had no eyes or mouth. No fur or skin, only the continually evaporating liquid surface. As he slowly walked forward, the deer walked past him, in the opposite direction. The terror returned. He was probably dead, and this was proof he had landed in the wrong afterlife. He wondered how to abandon fear, and he realized he could not abandon it without abandoning her, too.

He put his hand over his heart, the place where the priest’s word used to rest. Where did nonattachment fit into all this?

He found it easier to keep his balance as he walked through the herd if he kept his eyes closed. And he found it easier to keep going if he imagined telling her about it later.

Isla, I was so scared and I just kept walking. It was the only thing I knew how to do.

Gradually, the texture of the ground beneath his bare feet began to change. It became coarser and cooler and even a little moist. Javi hoped for some kind of shore, but didn’t believe it until cool water began to lap at his toes. He kept walking forward and didn’t open his eyes until he was waist deep. He was in a lake. Around him the water was blue and dotted with mossy rocks. On the far shore, there were reeds, and then bushes behind that. The color green was a balm to his burning eyes. There were bunches of algae that floated on the surface and water striders that skittered between them. He heard things chirping and buzzing. He was probably alive, after all.

He turned around to survey the land where he had come from. It was dusty and empty. Facing the lake once more, the way forward was clear. He swam across to the fertile shore, hydrating himself with great big gulps of freshwater along the way, dunking his head to wash his eyes and hair.

On the other side of the lake, he found clothes and supplies. A lightweight gray jumpsuit. Bottled water and dried fruit. Things to camp with and an empty backpack. He got dressed and then kept walking forward. He had no way of orienting himself; forward was the only direction, but when a flock of herons flew overhead (and these seemed to be real live herons, not drones), he altered his course so that he was walking in the same direction they were flying.

It was straightforward camping after that. Sometimes he would find extra supplies or food in his path, but never a clue as to who was leaving these things.

Isla, is it you? Am I going in the right direction?

Once, his mysterious benefactor left an empty journal and a pen. On the first page of the book, he wrote down the priest’s words, then tore out the page, folded it up and put it in his left breast pocket. He had nothing else to mark in the journal except for the days.

His surroundings were ordinary desert. The only frightening things happened in the sky far above him. Drones buzzed and missiles collided with other missiles. Large clouds of wasps hovered. The war seemed to be happening in the air only. He hoped Isla was safe.

He wished for a map. He said this wish out loud and also wrote it in his journal, just in case the book could grant wishes. For three weeks he walked until he found the Cadillac.

It was an aqua green convertible with a soft black top. Javi understood that he was supposed to get in the front seat, so he did, and the car began to drive. It stopped after a couple of hours, presumably for Javi to get out and stretch his legs, and when Javi got back in, it resumed driving. He spent the night in the Cadillac and continued riding in it the next day until he found a road and then an abandoned building. The sign out front read “White Sands National Monument Visitor Center.”

Javi let himself into the dusty gift shop, which was thankfully filled with maps. His wish had been granted; he knew where he was. The maps indicated that the land he was standing on was once a park open to the public. The US military used to test weapons nearby. But Robot Country had swallowed it up somehow. There used to be highways and Indian Reservations and towns in the area. Had they all been absorbed, too? He checked the visitor center for signs of Isla. If she had been there, she had left no trace. Outside, something in the sky exploded and then the ground shook. It was louder than last time. Either Javi was getting closer to the war, or the war was getting closer to him

He searched the gift shop one last time, this time looking for a present for her. Underneath a display case were various pieces of trinitite, white sand fused into green glass by the force of a nuclear impact. He selected a heart-shaped, aquamarine piece and placed it in the same pocket that contained the priest’s words.

Another explosion went off overhead. It shook the visitor center and knocked the books that were once for sale off the shelves. The Cadillac outside began to honk its horn, and Javi took that as a sign that it was time to go.

He hopped in the car, and as soon as he was in, it sped away. Bombs fell on the ground around him. The war had found him, finally. There was a great rumbling, and a hole seemed to open up in the earth ahead of them. When the car drove into the widening hole, Javi thought he was going to die. Perhaps he was already dead and the hole just represented a different level of Naraka, which was the priest’s word for hell.

It was a hard landing into a dark place, but the car kept driving forward and down. And then it emerged into a room filled with tiny lights. As his eyes adjusted, Javi thought they were stars, then fireflies, and then he thought it was a cityscape. Eventually he realized he was in a giant, miles-long server farm. The ground shook, and the car stopped, and Javi took this as a sign to get out.

He walked forward until he came to a set of polished aluminum doors. They were twenty feet high and when they opened for him, he found Kaya on the other side.

“What? What are you doing here?” he asked her.

“I got here yesterday. Things were getting dire on the outside, and the military men said they would murder my whole family if I couldn’t find a way in and stop the Robot Country drones. Now I’m a prisoner here, and so are you, apparently. Where have you been for the past month?”

“I walked here. I mean, the last couple of days, I was driven. But yeah, I mostly just hiked and camped.”

“Whoa, sounds spiritual.”

Kaya turned and led him into a giant room. On the walls were electronic projections of maps. Kaya had bare feet, her toes lacquered with a bright red polish. She wore cashmere sweatpants and diamond stud earrings; if she was a prisoner, she was a comfortable one. She walked to one end of the room, where a man was assembling a model city on a table top.

“This is Naim,” said Kaya. Naim pushed his working goggles up to his forehead and said hi.

“You look familiar,” said Javi.

“He was that guy in the video the military showed you, they one that supposedly got killed by wasp drones.”

“Yeah, the wasps didn’t sting me to do death, they brought me here,” said Naim.

“Same,” said Kaya. “They formed this buckyball around me. Naim’s been here for two months. He actually likes it here! The other missing minders are downstairs racing go-karts.”

“Where’s Isla?”

“I don’t know. Out gallivanting. She was here yesterday. The drones love her. She’s like the queen of this place or something. She’s the only one of us allowed to leave,” said Kaya.

“The Computer predicted a high chance of a nuclear strike that could penetrate our defenses and destroy the surrounding area. She said she needed to go aboveground and save some idiot,” added Naim.

“Oh God, she’s out there trying to find me. We have to get her,” said Javi.

“We can’t. The Computer says it is not safe to leave. I’m going stir crazy,” said Kaya.

“Why would you want to leave? Upstairs they’re dropping bombs; down here, the Computer gives us all the best toys,” said Naim.

“The Computer?” asked Javi. Kaya gestured to the giant monitors that were mounted high on the walls. They had maps of world on them. The ground rumbled and the room went red and then white. The maps became covered with red clusters.

Just then the aluminum doors opened, and Isla walked through. She was tan and her cheeks were flushed. She wore the same high ponytail she did when she was the temple priestess in his dreams.

“Thank God, we made it,” she said. There was someone with her. She was holding his hand. It was Zayn.

“This idiot thought he could ride out the nuclear war in his cabin.”

Zayn looked up and around at all the monitors. He wore his ranger’s uniform and a dazed expression.

“It’s okay, we’re safe here.” She kissed him on the cheek and he put his hand on her waist. They had the easy familiarity of people who’ve fucked more than one or two times. They were probably seeing each other this whole time, this whole year when Isla pretended to be missing and Zayn pretended not to know where she was.

“What’s going on?” asked Javi.

“Javi?” said Isla. “Is that you?” She let go of Zayn’s hand and walked towards Javi to get a better look. He was dirty from camping, dark from the sun and wore a beard, unlike Zayn, who was both clean and clean-shaven. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for you. I thought you were dead or kidnapped or something.”

“Javi status,” said Isla.

“What?” asked Javi. But Isla wasn’t talking to him, she was talking to the Computer. The monitors changed to a bunch of maps and figures. They were incomprehensible to Javi, but Isla seemed to be gleaning information from them.

“Ah, so you crossed in. And the machines didn’t want to kill you, because killing is wrong. But they didn’t want to let you in, because they thought it would make me mad. So they kind of had you wander around until they could figure out what to do with you. But when the strikes intensified, and they thought you might die on the surface, they brought you down here.”

“What’s going on up there?” asked Javi.

“Conflict status,” ordered Isla. The screens changed to different maps and figures. They looked like lines of code in a language that Javi didn’t know. Javi looked to the others, to see if they wore expressions of comprehension. They didn’t.

Isla gasped as she read.

“The war got really bad. Whole cities have been destroyed.”

“Fuck your machines,” said Kaya. “I hate you.”

“We only employ defensive measures here, but . . . The US suspected Robot Country was getting help from Mexico, so the US pre-emptively nuked Mexico City. That led to this whole chain of response events. Every country that had a weapon fired at least one. Every country but Robot Country.”

“Which cities were hit?” asked Javi.

“Javi, I am so sorry.”

Javi didn’t feel himself fall; he only felt his knees buckle. He heard Kaya ask how many were dead. He heard Isla say it might be more than a billion people.

Javi ripped his pocket from his jumpsuit; he wanted the priest’s words and the nuclear glass away from his heart.

“If we are soulmates, then we will meet again and again,” he had written.

Isla, who in her old life had nothing and nobody, now had a kingdom and a prince. Javi, who hadn’t even said goodbye to his favorite people, was now totally alone.

“Why am I alive?” asked Javi.

“Because you are here. We have everything we need here. We are miles below the ground. We are safe.” She knelt down next to him, placing a cool hand on his forehead. A spider drone tottered over with a glass of water. She helped Javi sit up and drink.

“I am alive because I followed you here,” he said. Which was proof she was holy. She was the high priestess of Robot Country. His vision had been correct; it was his interpretation that had been wrong. They were meant to be together, though maybe not as lovers. Maybe they existed to torture one another.

“Javi, I’m sorry.”

He looked away. He felt the psychic connection in the place where his heart used to be. He could tell she no longer loved him. She put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his chest. The ache was still there. It was never going to go away, not in this lifetime, not in the next. Grief was the price of survival. Survival was the price of loving her.

©2019 by Dominica Phetteplace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dominica Phetteplace is a math tutor who writes fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and Clarkesworld. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop. Her honors include a MacDowell Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Award.

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

Overburden

Genevieve Valentine | 6785 words

The runoff had broken the sandbags overnight; by the time Davis got to the office, somebody was skimming dead carp from the top of the pond.

The rain was pissing down and the big nets must have been borrowed to shore up the sandbags, because the soldier was using a hand skimmer. Davis watched her sluicing the net hypnotically back and forth, piling up hundreds of bodies, scraping the oil off whenever it got too heavy to lift or too slippery to hang on to anything, until the living fish were rippling the surface again in commas of grey and orange. It was Tuesday. They were at war with Cirrus Prime.

Sylvia had brought in coffee (a little too cold, as always, because of the milk she put in it), and Carter wasn’t due in until practically lunch, so he sorted through a few reports—the paper already curling at the edges from the damp—and choked down as much coffee as he could stand until the reports gave him acid stomach and he had to give it up. The filtered water here tasted staler than the stuff from transit, and he’d dismiss it except that water rights were half the reason Cirrus Prime had brought down the Glorious Forces and he’d been called up to the post.

When Carter came in, Davis was already waving him to a chair.

“It’s a bad idea, Carter. Arming anyone just gives them something to point at you as soon as you disagree.”

Carter dropped himself into a chair too small for him and sniffed. “Maybe so, Colonel, but later is later. For now we’re all pointing them at Cirrus Prime. Some artillery, some guns. We’ll handle whatever comes up after that.”

Davis ran his tongue over his teeth. It was easy for men like Carter to suggest this kind of thing—find a stranger you think you can make into a friend, give them a gun, hope for the best—but Carter wasn’t the person being asked to decide the future. He was a soldier. He wasn’t sitting in an office that had been a formal dining room once, facing the sculpted gardens some traitor had devised for his country house before the Glorious Forces had liberated it, constantly being reminded of the stakes if he should fail. The job of a General was to divine success from a string of failures. And though no one liked to talk about it, particularly Carter, before Cirrus Prime there had been Cirrus; but then someone had handed some guns to a stranger and hoped for the best.

Davis had been on this planet for seven years, trying to drag a promotion to General out of the rain and the mud and people who couldn’t recognize how this was going to end; he wasn’t sure how much stomach he had for handling what came next. The coffee was already gnawing at him. Maybe he’d have to give in to Sylvia’s nagging and let her bring him pastries from the officer’s mess on her way back from coffee. Something to soak up the damage.

“You have someone on the inside?” he asked finally. He wondered how long a pause it had been.

If it had been too long, Carter didn’t betray anything. He nodded—once, downward only. He’d been a soldier all his life, and had developed economy in everything, a quality Davis tried to appreciate for its value in the field. (It was useless in meetings; Davis had to do all his own presenting, which was always the downside of requesting Carter for a long-term assignment.)

Outside, the soldier was loading the carp into the garbage pod, one shovelful at a time. With every slop, two or three slid back onto the mess at her feet, gleaming scales slimed over with black on whatever side they’d died on. He wondered if she was being punished for something. He couldn’t imagine being assigned to the carp every day. Better to be stuck filling sandbags.

“All right,” he said. “Check out their leadership and whoever’s next in line. Let’s make sure this is a happy family before we invite them in.”

“Sir,” Carter said, and left without another word, like he was happy, and that as much as anything worried Davis until it was time to go home.

• • • •

At his house, Catherine brought him a drink as soon as he’d settled at the dinner table, which meant she was worried about his good opinion or that she wanted him to stay home while she went off and did something. He sipped it; it was the one they distilled from the honey up in the mountains north of the crater, the one they couldn’t make any more. Whatever it was, she was serious about it.

“What did you forget?”

She smiled, a quick tick of her lips and then gone, and smoothed her skirt as she sat down. “That benefit’s tonight. For the filtration plant, for the water.”

She wouldn’t have needed to pull out the good booze to convince him to stay home for that. He never liked formal events; his dinner jacket was too big and his uniform pulled at him, and he certainly wasn’t interested in getting more grief about what the Glorious Forces Mine had done to the water. But when she asked him to stay home it always implied that she would look better alone, and that stung—wasn’t he a Colonel? Wasn’t he overseeing the people she was spending her evenings with? Were they so much better than he was, to be worth her time?

“I see,” he said, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth to press the jealousy out for something colder. “You want me to stay out of your pet causes so you can do as you please.”

Her eyes were so pale it always startled him a little when she looked at him. He glanced away. Their dining room was more modest than whoever had given way for headquarters; the wallpaper, a deep green with little red sprigs of some native plant no one had ever identified for him, was beginning to peel away from the plaster. The damp, he thought. Maybe the heat from last summer. Nature was always battling you for the things you tried to make beautiful.

“I’d love you to come,” Catherine said finally. “I didn’t know they’d let you.”

They probably wouldn’t. Showing up at a benefit for civilians implied guilt. Really she shouldn’t be going, either, but tonight he thought it was wiser not to fight.

“No, of course you’re right,” he said, and watched her relax into her chair before he added, “This damp isn’t doing me much good anyway.”

“Knows better than to fight a war on two fronts!” General Madison always joked, whenever HQ staff sat in the war room late enough that someone started talking about wives, and Davis always raised his glass and let everyone chuckle. Madison’s first wife had disappeared from Mars while he was losing to colonists on Europa. Davis knew there had to be some length on the leash, or a wife would bolt at the first opportunity.

He sometimes thought he should have married a soldier out of the ranks, who might understand him better. Any table he shared with Catherine always felt longer than it really was. She’d been the daughter of an Admiral, but born after his busy years. She knew nothing of the business. She played three instruments and made pressings of plants with botanical notes calligraphed into the margins.

But after dinner he looked at the line of her long neck, her shoulders in sparkling blue; he watched her threading heavy earrings into the holes in her ears and painting her lips a deep warm purple like she’d been at the wine, and the same warm satisfaction came over him that always came over him when he considered what he had that no other man did.

There was a little tremor underfoot as she bent for her shoes—enough that she paused and held on to her dressing table, but not enough that he felt obliged to get up from his place on the bed and assist her. (She hadn’t offered him her zipper; if he wasn’t going to get to do his favorite part of their evening routine, he didn’t see any reason to drop to his knees for something he didn’t care about.)

“Goodness,” she said after it was over. One hand was pressed to her necklace, and he watched her hand shift up and down by inches as she breathed. “Have they gotten so close?”

“They must have stolen some artillery,” he said.

• • • •

The war room had been the ballroom of the great house once, and Sylvia refused to set foot in it. “Ghoulish,” she’d called it the only time she’d ever seen it, standing in the doorway and staring at the Intelligence officers tacking up the terrain maps as well as they could over the decorative moldings.

At the time, Davis had thought it was superstition. Hire enough civilians from whatever colony you were peacekeeping, and you realized any one of them was as superstitious as the next one. These people wouldn’t even step on a streak of dark stone in the street, because runoff from the mines was bad luck. They lined up patiently to step over it at the thinnest point, the only time Davis ever saw them patient about anything. Superstition turned everyone into a fool.

But Madison and Verrastro argued about Carter’s report, and Davis had been staring at the chandelier long enough that there was a chill at the base of his spine. It wasn’t worth mentioning to Sylvia, of course, but he didn’t like it. The last thing he needed was to start cracking about things the locals didn’t like.

“Cirrus Prime must be the end of the line,” Madison was shouting. He swept his arm across the map to indicate the northern mountains, the desert behind them. “What are we supposed to do, spend the rest of our lives in this backwater trying to get these people to stop behaving like children?”

Verrastro folded her arms. She was with the State branch, and military frustrations never interested her. “Our real problem,” she said, “is that you keep underestimating them. If they were actually behaving like children, one would think you and Davis would have been able to smoke them out by now.”

Davis’ nose itched. The chandelier was trembling, just barely; whomever Carter had given those rockets to was making good use of them.

This morning, the reports had all been casualties. A temple on the edge of the city had fallen—they weren’t sure yet if that was an accident or if someone was trying to send a message to Cirrus Prime. A neighborhood too near to HQ for anybody’s comfort had been knocked to rubble, and another half-dozen houses lost to fire; it would have been more except for the rain. It was funny, probably, to have been saved by the damp; to have a hostile place be so waterlogged that danger couldn’t even survive long enough to reach you.

There had been some attacks in the streets during the fire, which the local constables had reported briskly as people taking advantage of the chaos to steal whatever they could. “Desperate times,” the sergeant had said with a shrug.

They hadn’t told him that all of those little altercations took place well away from the rubble and the fire, and nobody had touched the fallen temple except his own people grabbing souvenirs. Someone had tried to break in to a house in the center of town during the fire. Davis had sat back and looked out at the cobblestones of dead carp across the top of the pond, and wondered which of the factions they were fighting had killed six hundred of their own people as cover to break into a colonist’s house.

It was a failure where blame hung suspended between military and state waiting to see who made the first mistake. All three of them knew it, and no one was willing to say; they’d been fighting for three hours because no one was willing to say.

Madison was pacing now. “Well, according to Davis, Carter has been making plenty of friends. He knows where they are. We can end half this problem right there.”

Davis sighed. “Cirrus Prime isn’t packed into one tidy mountain west of the desert any more, Madison. You blew out their last options there. They’ve scattered into the swamps.”

Madison turned a withering look on him. “The swamps.”

“He’s right.” Verrastro sat back. “We have so much surveillance pointed on that desert it looks like we’re filming tourism ads. There’s nothing.”

“I thought they were protecting the mines.” Madison sounded almost disappointed in them.

Verrastro waved a hand. “No point. Until the sanctions are lifted, nobody can sell any of the copper even if they could sneak it out from under us. They were fighting to keep us off the land, not from getting the profits from the mine. They always knew those were going to Glorious.”

Madison frowned. “Well, the swamps are impossible to get any decent recon in.”

“Well, fuck me, Madison, that must have been just what they thought.”

Before anybody could get enough air for another round of useless bellowing (putting three Colonels in a room with a problem was always going to end in an argument), catering knocked and rolled in a cart with food and coffee.

It took him longer than it should have to recognize the stocky Private who was serving him, and when he did he was too excited to be subtle—he grabbed her wrist. She stiffened, but when he let go, she held still. Without the cap her face was broad and open, the eyes wide-set and dark; she was a local, then.

“I didn’t realize we’d recruited so many of you that we have Privates left over to scoop pond scum.”

She blinked. “Sir.”

It was such a flat reply it was insubordinate, somehow, like she was trying to make him feel foolish. He looked her over, slowly, to make it clear he disapproved. “So when you’re not on carp duty, you’re making my food?”

She glanced to Verrastro like she was embarrassed, but she said, “No, sir. Evans is the cook at HQ. I’m delivering.” That had stolen his joke, so he had to settle for, “Well, that’s small comfort. Dismissed,” and she had to hastily set up the rest of the coffee things on the sideboard as she left. Madison noticed and rolled his eyes, which gave Davis some satisfaction.

He had a bad habit of feeling for people, wishing he could reach out to them. It was good to be reminded sometimes that this was the only type of government in which everyone found their level honestly. The reasons he put Carter into the field with so much autonomy were the same reasons this private was loading fish onto a truck. The Glorious Forces were a machine of merit; everyone was just as they should be.

• • • •

Verrastro came into his office halfway through the carp soldier’s work and sat down.

“We should dispatch some soldiers to the mine with the locals,” she said quickly, like if she got it out before he could think about it he might agree.

He didn’t bother looking over; the carp soldier had moved on from skimming the dead fish off the top to trying helplessly to shovel them into the truck, and it was doing him no end of good. The movement was hypnotic, and her failure very satisfying. “You’re joking.”

“Listen, we can’t just keep—” she stopped, perhaps realizing that it wasn’t wise to suggest his methods might be failing. “Treating these people like bystanders,” she finished.

“If they want the mine back, Colonel Verrastro, all they have to do is turn in whomever among them is working with Cirrus Prime and the Glorious Forces will be happy to negotiate an end to the sanctions.”

“They don’t care about the sanctions, Colonel Davis.”

“Cirrus Prime cares.”

“Cirrus Prime wants the land,” Verrastro said. She sounded very tired. “They know the mine is dry, Davis.”

He forced his face to stay calm. He counted a dozen fish scoops before he turned from the window. “What?”

She raised her eyebrows slowly, punctuating herself like a joke. “They never cared about the mine. They wanted the overburden—the lake water—before the chemicals could get into it. That was the fight.”

There was a flicker of satisfaction that they’d lost; the water was tainted and their fight had availed them nothing. But it couldn’t last in the face of so much that the state had been keeping from him.

Feeling stupid, he said, “But the Forces sent us here to protect the copper.”

“The Forces sent us here to prove a point about what happens when you revolt against the Glorious, Davis.”

He sat back in his chair. If she was right, that point had given them the Republic, and the militia, and Cirrus, and Cirrus Prime, and now a damp office and a peeling house across the city and cold sour coffee and a bunch of Colonels jockeying for General and so many desperate locals they were scraping ponds for the hope of three meals a day, and seven thousand dead since Davis had landed in the dust-choking desert you couldn’t believe was only a hundred miles from this swamp, and not an ounce of copper to show for it.

Out on the lawn, the carp soldier was scraping slime off her shovel with her knife. Davis envied her. She knew what she was meant to be doing; at some point, her duties ended.

• • • •

The tremors had come close enough to the city that he met Carter at one of the safe houses; whatever group of these wretched people was shelling the other, Carter couldn’t afford to be seen by some spy cutting across the gardens or through the kitchens to report.

It was a hovel at the edge of town, mud bricks and elevated chairs and a clean sluice grate in the middle of the room, cozy enough that Carter must have bargained off one of his own people, even if Davis thought it got more depressing by the second.

Davis had been coughing and picking dirt clods from the soles of his boots for nearly ten minutes by the time Carter arrived, hat pulled low over his eyes to make him blend in with the locals. (Maybe it did; everyone here was a foot shorter than Carter, but no one ever seemed to look at him twice.)

“I’m sure that when I told Colonels Madison and Verrastro two days ago that the weapons shaking them awake in their beds were not rockets we had given anyone, I was correct,” Davis said.

After a second, Carter nodded—just the once. “Understood.”

“Understood, or yes?”

Carter had taken up a position near the door, hunched to avoid the ceiling; he never sat if he could help it, but Davis hadn’t realized the depth of the habit.

“Yes,” Carter said, and licked his teeth.

“Good. Because if you were giving out presents without my permission, that would be treason.”

“Sedition, sir.”

“Usually the commanding officer gets to decide the charge in a court martial, Carter.” He took a breath. “Are any of your people living in The Dawn of the Sun Across the Mountains?”

Carter didn’t move.

“I ask because during the fire, someone broke into a house there. If that house belongs to one of your assets, they handled themselves so poorly that someone killed six hundred people to find out what they knew.”

“Or it’s a rich house that—”

“And if that house doesn’t belong to one of your assets, then whoever you sent to look into the people who live there killed six hundred strangers to cover a little breaking and entering.”

“I’m not involved with that,” Carter said.

It felt like it was too slow in coming, though it was hard to tell. Davis had had a headache since he’d read the police report; his stomach was sour from the maintenance reports and the request for more money to hire locals to help scrape out bodies.

“Six hundred people, Carter. Families, in the middle of the night, in the center of the city, when we’re trying to push the fighting back toward the desert. Do you know how that looks?”

Carter nodded, said not unkindly, “Bad for you.”

It took Davis a moment to summon the wherewithal to even look Carter in the eye. If there had been any doubts in his mind that Carter had been part of this, they had evaporated. This was what happened when you gave people a long lead.

Davis considered handling it. If he stood up and murdered Carter, no one would find the body for days. Davis could blame it on whatever wretches Carter had been courting for resistance and pardon Cirrus Prime. Cirrus Prime would know who the traitors were, and by the time the dust settled Cirrus Prime would assume they had a deal with the Glorious Forces. It would be easy to pick them off after that. If Carter really was a soldier, he’d be happy to die to end this war in weeks.

Carter was looking at him, though—looking at him like he had seen. Davis took a breath. Another. Another.

“You’re wrong,” Carter said quietly, “and you’re a coward.”

Davis sat where he was until sundown, for safety.

• • • •

They were nearly late for the performance and Catherine had promised she’d be ready, so he let the driver pull up and sat back to wait the inevitable three minutes it always took Catherine to decide she was fit to be seen.

It took her four, this time, and when she came out Davis swallowed a stab of disappointment. Her dress was deep blue and long everywhere, hem and sleeves and neck; not so much as a glimpse of her collarbones. She looked like a lump of ore.

Behind her was the carp soldier, carrying a bundle in her arms.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Davis asked before he could get hold of himself, and he felt the bottom drop out of his throat at the look Catherine gave him. Then a fit of coughing overtook him, which was convenient—he could look away to close the window without looking at her.

“I met her at the benefit,” she said slowly, like Davis was a child who didn’t understand why he was being scolded. “She was one of the waitstaff. Colonel Verrastro introduced us. Her brother was hurt last week in that awful fire, and I told her I would help her if I could.”

He had an image of that squat little soldier racing through the upstairs gallery of their house, shoving the ivory carvings into the sack she’d brought, but he knew better than to even joke about it. “Food,” he guessed instead.

“I didn’t think we’d miss a loaf of bread and some redfruit.” Then after a beat, like an accusation, “She kept saying how generous it was of you.”

He kept his eyes on the road until he felt her shift her attention out the window; the loss of her regard was like lifting a stone off his chest, and he could catch his breath long enough to think.

Their house was in The Two Faint Stars First Touch These Hills, and around them the houses spread out among lawns and vines that were still bright and healthy, a long green tongue lolling toward the city center.

“You’re right,” he said finally. “It looks good for the Forces that you’re helping those in need. I was concerned that showing favoritism to one soldier would cause some unrest in the ranks, but I’m sure you told her not to mention it to anyone.”

It was perfect—an apology, twisted just enough to remind her that the stakes were always going to be higher for him.

She was still looking out the window, where the green had given way to pale grey sidewalks and spindly little trees kept carefully off the ground in stone planters. It was barely raining, and the place was crowded. When he’d first arrived here he’d thought of it as a good sign, that people were getting on with things. Now it just made him nervous, and he looked from one face to another all the way to the concert hall.

The gala performance was meant to benefit the Glorious Forces, but there was plenty of color to break up the pale blue of dress uniforms. Davis realized that some of the benefit must have been to civilians in letting them come. Good idea, he supposed, except that he was so fucking sick of civilians.

Madison and his fourth wife were seated next to them, of course, and Davis nodded politely and tried to remember her name; he turned to Catherine for help, but she’d breezed past him to say hello to some of the lesser officers and even one or two of the local families, draped in purple and green and red and yellow. He bit the inside of his mouth.

“Glad you could make it,” said Madison, somehow still too loud even in a hall of a thousand people. “Can you believe what they’re performing?”

Davis glanced down at his program, but Sylvia was at his shoulder with a question about when he wanted the car brought back (Master of the Sky bless Sylvia, the only person he could remotely count on to save him from small talk in the abandonment of his wife), and by the time that was finished Catherine was coming back and taking her seat like nothing was wrong, and the lamps were being dimmed.

It was an opera about the founding of the city. When Davis realized it, he laughed—just once, like Carter would have—and waited for Catherine to elbow him.

But she didn’t. She loved music; leaving music behind was the only thing she’d ever complained about when he brought her on postings with him. He didn’t mind it, actually. It felt like a genteel complaint, the sort of complaint a General’s wife should have. He’d pictured her assembling string quartets someday, when he’d been promoted to a permanent post and didn’t have to always make do in other people’s houses.

Now she sat perfectly still. It was dissonant to him—all the music on this planet sounded like he was hearing it from underwater—but she listened raptly while the chorus sang about the old times, and the lake between the mountains, and the helpful spirits that guided the weary to good soil and pitched the wicked over the far side of the mountain into the desert, and the satisfaction of working together to tame the land and make it bear fruit.

Davis spent most of it hiding his coughs in his shoulder and looking from one face to another. Surely someone from the propaganda ministry would be concerned. But when he finally spotted a little knot of them, seated far enough behind him that they should have been insulted at the view, they were watching just as placidly as everyone else.

They all looked young. That was the problem. No one had thought to send a veteran minister who knew better than to let the people you were fighting remind each other what they stood to gain.

Catherine was crying by the end of it. She got herself under control before anyone could light the lamps again, which pulled them back from the brink of disaster. Still, she was a fool for falling prey to something so obvious, and as the car pulled away he clenched his fists, wondering where else his wife, his representative among his colleagues, had cried like a child facing their first disappointment. At the benefit that was full of potential enemies, standing next to Verrastro? At dinner parties with Madison’s fourth wife where she looked like a miserable hostage in the middle of everyone’s chat? In their own kitchen, where two girls from town did the cleaning and the cooking? How many times had she put them in danger by looking like someone mistreated, someone who could be turned?

This can’t go on, he thought, all at once, like a relief.

As he unzipped her he said, “I don’t want you going out in the evenings any more unless I’m with you.”

She looked as if she’d been expecting it; the line of her shoulders never moved. He thought briefly about dragging corpses out of the pond, about a shovel and a heavy swing.

“Of course,” she said. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

• • • •

By the time they found Carter’s body, it had been in the swamps so long that someone had to bring Davis the pictures of his tattoos to the war room so the three of them could agree on identification. The rest of the corpse had gotten so waterlogged they couldn’t tell much, and of course the blows that killed him had knocked out his teeth.

“It’s brutal,” Madison said, scraping a hand over his beard. “I don’t know what you had him doing, but somebody didn’t like what he found.”

Davis passed back the pictures. “He was living among Cirrus Prime and recruiting their doubters and their enemies. No one would have liked what they found.”

Carter had often made intelligence work sound like a magic trick; something that required careful preparation through arcane methods, a set of tools you kept to hand to distract suspicion, a sleight of empathy that could make you seem like a friend to anyone who wasn’t looking very hard.

“So where does that leave us?” Verrastro glanced at Madison; she looked a little green.

Madison nodded at her like he understood. “In need of a drink,” he said, and rang.

The carp soldier came with coffee and whiskey. She set up on the sideboard without looking at him; she kept her head down the whole time she handed Verrastro and Madison their drinks. Davis spread out his fingers under the table, like the paws of a big cat warming up to strike. As she served him, he kept his eyes out the window, followed just the edge of her reflection as she moved away, and for a moment he filled with blood all over just thinking about how good it was, how good it was.

As the carp soldier pulled the last inches of the squeaking cart past the door (it rattled as she scraped the door frame, this whole place was coming apart), Verrastro wrapped her hands around her cup and asked him, “What the fuck do we do without Carter?”

Davis took a small breath. He felt light all over; he felt like he had the first time he ever saw Catherine turn and look at him with her long neck and those blank, beautiful eyes. He felt like he knew what to do.

“We end this,” Davis said. “The mine’s empty, and they’re already angry about the water, so there’s no point saving it. Make our point. Raze it.”

The coffee was sour as ever, but he hardly minded. It wouldn’t be for long.

• • • •

That night, as they sat near the fire in the parlor (him sipping on another glass of the liquor that the bees had made, back when there were bees), he told Catherine they were going to be reassigned, just to watch her eyes light up.

“Where?” she asked.

He didn’t know what would be best, so he said, “Guess.”

“Not Europa,” she said, in a tone that felt safe to deny, and then “Mars?” much more promising, and when he agreed she actually took his hand.

“I’m so glad you’ll be gone from here,” she said, so earnestly that some small fondness scraped at him—a real fondness, like she’d been a good wife all this time. “This has been horrible.”

“It has,” he agreed. He was off balance, now; tenderness upset him.

“I’ll start packing tonight,” she said, and stood with that glint in her eye like a General’s wife, and he was a clever enough man to say, “Later,” and keep her hand in his, and draw her down to him.

She was already asleep by the time he coughed up blood, and realized what he had missed.

• • • •

He had debated doing it quietly, overnight, but that was what a man did when someone had betrayed him and he was small and angry. A General—a leader of men—made examples, and laid groundwork for what was coming next.

So he waited until he was in his office, and then he quietly asked, “Sylvia, who brings up this coffee every morning?”

She jerked a thumb out the window, where the rain was sheeting down nearly sideways; Davis could barely make out the olive drab of the carp soldier, dragging all those fish out of the poisoned pond.

“Either Evans or that conversationalist,” she said, then frowned—lightly, innocently. “Why? If there’s a problem with it I’ll tell Evans. Maybe we can get a kitchen on this floor.”

“No need,” he said. “Can you call in Verrastro?”

“She’s home sick.”

The tips of his fingers went cold. He’d thought this was a vendetta—he’d thought one humiliated soldier had dared to lash out because she was stupid enough to believe it was possible to win a war by conquering one man. But if she’d been clever . . .

“Sick?”

“Real bad,” said Sylvia. “I can get Madison on the line for you if it’s a martial matter?”

“It’s a state matter,” Davis said, “but I can handle it. Can you get the groundskeeper duty sergeant on the line, please?”

It crossed his mind to have the carp soldier confess; it would mean more, he knew, to have a traitor admit to it in public. It would give the people something to consider when their town was in ruins; they would have that grain of doubt that happens so often among conquered people, that someone else could have done more to prevent this, that someone else had failed them. You could keep people fighting amongst each other until the last house was rubble and clay.

But a good General could do that without a confession, and before he did something for the glorious good, Davis wanted one thing just for himself.

He’d told the Sergeant not to interrupt her. He wanted no warning. When the shot came, she still had the net in her hands. After a moment of suspended motion, she pitched forward into the pond, and slowly sank beneath the dead carp; they covered her over, a carpet of grey.

• • • •

By the time he got home, Catherine had packed up half the household. Fifteen crates sat in the front hall. She was at the dining table already, practically alight, and his drink was waiting.

“I guess when you’re leaving a hated place, everything’s a special occasion.”

She smiled back at him, bright and real. “Is it that obvious?”

He laughed and drank, feeling impossibly quiet and content. “Well, I wrapped up my last loose end. No point waiting around. As soon as Madison can recall most of our people, we’re going to finish this and go, so I hope you can keep packing at this rate.”

“Most?”

He nodded. Somehow he didn’t want to explain why there had to be a few real casualties from the Forces when the city fell; he was grateful when she took a heavy breath, said nothing.

“Do you have to be there for it?”

How heroic that sounded, to be standing alone in front of the endgame! Still, better to give credit. “Madison and I must both give the order.”

She hmmed. “I’ll pack alone, then. When do we leave?”

“Two hours past dawn,” he said, and when she said, “Well, that does it for the silverware, then,” he grinned.

She was laughing when the girls brought dinner in, and they ate in a happy silence. He couldn’t really eat—his stomach was nothing but acid and his throat was burning—but it still felt like a celebration. He felt, all at once, what you might be supposed to feel when a woman’s really your wife. A wife like a partner. A General’s wife. All at once he wanted to confide in her: about what it felt like to swing that metal bar into Carter’s face, about the agreement they’d all made to level the city and let the snake eat its own worthless tail. It was lonely, suddenly, keeping secrets from her.

“I’m being poisoned,” he said. His vision was swimming; he prayed it wasn’t tears.

She looked over with a spoon of soup halfway to her mouth. “What?”

“Poisoned.” The word made him feel tragic. “I’m dying,” he added.

Catherine was staring at him, aghast. He sat a little straighter in his chair.

“That soldier—the one who came to the house—was poisoning my coffee. She’s taken care of, but the damage might be done. It was the water,” he said, and suddenly the words sounded heavy, as if he couldn’t hold them. He glanced into his soup, flexed his hands under the table. “The water was ruined.”

“Yes,” Catherine agreed.

He looked up. It was dark enough now that the lamp cast strange shadows over her face; earnest, placid. He couldn’t keep her in focus; she looked like a landscape, like a theater with dimmed lights.

“Catherine,” he started. He reached for his liquor glass; his throat was burning. He couldn’t catch his breath, he couldn’t look at his wife. It was really very dim. The glass slipped from his hand.

She said gently, “I told her I would help her if I could.”

• • • •

Verrastro and Madison sat in Davis’ office. Outside, rain beat down against the slimy grey bodies of the carp.

The problem with Davis, Verrastro had realized, was that he never understood the balance in opposing forces. He saw threads of events that somehow led to a single future point. What they did wasn’t a line. It was a web. There was no finish; there were just endpoints that held the rest together.

He was the kind of leader who never asked how deep that pond must be, to spit up so many carp that it took one soldier hours just to scoop them off, only to have another carpet of them waiting the next morning. That pond went deeper into the soil and connected to something more than he could imagine, or it was restocked at night to give one soldier a reason to stay on the grounds and learn everything she could about their habits. Either explanation would have told him something; he’d never asked.

Sylvia, red-eyed, delivered coffee. Neither of them drank.

Madison stared out the window, his hands clasped behind him. “That pond is going to drown this house.”

“Not today,” she said.

After today, it wouldn’t matter. News of Davis’ sedition was already being quietly passed up the line; a Colonel who sent his men to die was doing his job, but one who strangled his own intelligence officers and shot innocent local soldiers was unhinged. (A long illness bravely denied, obviously. Catherine would know what to say; she’d be a General’s wife yet.)

The fire, the Glorious Forces investigators had conveniently discovered, had been set by dissidents trying to punish Cirrus Prime. A few dissidents had actually been happy to hear it; they were organizing. And Cirrus Prime wasn’t happy about the turncoats; one of their agents had walked right up to the gates asking to discuss it.

The whole thing was embarrassing enough to the relevant Ministers that it would be better to declare the battle over and leave an empty mine alone. Cirrus Prime could be brought around to peacekeepers; you could convince people to do anything once you told them they had won. Mine or not, this town still needed someone to represent the Glorious Forces when they were gone.

Outside, the pond was just beginning to spill over; the black-slimed fish coasted gracefully over the edge and out across the manicured lawn. Beneath the carpet of the dead, those that remained were churning the water. It was Friday. They were at war with The Faint Stars.

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Genevieve Valentine is the author of the novels Mechanique, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Persona, and Icon. She has also written the comics Catwoman for DC and Xena: Warrior Princess for Dynamite. Her nonfiction and criticism has appeared at NPR.org, The Atlantic, LA Review of Books, and the AV Club. Her love of bad movies is evergreen; you can read about it at genevievevalentine.com.

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Adam-Troy Castro | 3729 words

Ellis Neider met his soulmate. The End.

That’s his story. The rest is annotation. We would almost skip that part, were it not for the stone knowledge that any love story not about masturbation does require at least two characters. The object of his affection does deserve something approaching equal time.

Ellis was a guy. Some men are guys, other men are dudes. Ellis was a guy. As a child, he was a little guy. As an adult, he was a bigger guy. Like most guys, he gave off the vibe that he knew the universe operated by a certain set of rules and that he had somehow missed getting on line when the powers handed out the books. He was not a bad guy. He was just a guy.

He had sandy hair that resisted combing, a problem that in the normal march of things would solve itself with the onset of male pattern baldness. He had a jawline that was always gray with incipient beard no matter how cruelly he applied the razor, eyes that watered if anybody stared at them for too long, and a wistful expression that went along with knowing exactly who his soulmate was and how difficult it was going to be to arrange the meeting.

You would like Ellis. You would likely be attracted to him, as potential friend if not as potential mate.

Ellis worked in a home supplies superstore. His specialty was cabinetry. He knew everything there was to know about cabinetry. This was not the area of expertise he would have chosen for himself as a child—he wanted to be an astronaut, in no small part because he knew about his soulmate even then—but cabinetry was what he did to keep body and soul together, a part of his life that amounted to the hours he spent waiting for them to be over so he could go on to the rest of his existence, which alas also consisted of waiting.

He had an Xbox. He blasted zombies. Sometimes he ordered pizza, a weekly habit that contributed to the slight bulge in his midsection. He wasn’t fat, but he did not have washboard abs either. This is one of the factors that contributed to him being a guy.

He liked sci-fi. He didn’t call it science fiction, but sci-fi. Again, this is of necessary interest in light of the secret connection he had to his soulmate. It would be critical to his eventual fate that he was a reader, one of the last among a dying breed, and that he preferred escapism to finely wrought tales of angst and character; essentially, anything where the hero roared rips, anything where the guy at the center of the action got to battle vast waves of alien vermin armed with nothing but determination and a sharp sword. His ideal of fiction was anything that made him cry Yee-ha. This was also critical to his fate, as if he hadn’t encountered a certain model he wouldn’t have ever had the opportunity to bond with the soul the cosmos had designated as forever entwined with his: the one he ached for, and was eager to meet, from the very moment he was aware of himself as more than an infantile ball of need, wailing for mother’s milk. Before he could speak, his spirit had pierced the distance separating him from the one being whose spirit resonated most with his, whose heart beat in time with his.

And therein lay the problem.

His soulmate could have been a green-eyed, red-haired Irish girl named Caitlyn, actually fresh from the island with an accent to match, also with a ready smile and an infectious laugh, who loved dogs, classical music, and long walks in the woods; who played the guitar often but not well, who liked to sing but had no illusions of ever making a professional go of it, who just liked to warble on long car rides and in the shower because it made her feel good; who preferred t-shirts to blouses but could rock a sequined gown like nobody’s business; who ate waffles every Sunday morning.

His soulmate could have been a brown-eyed, shaven-headed black guy named Rafael, born in Encino, who smiled little because he had a habit of brooding but could occasionally light up the room with his blinding white teeth; who absolutely loathed dogs but who maintained seawater aquariums, who liked hip-hop and loathed the woods but loved the beach, who had an odd passion for medieval German history and whose preferred form of wit was the pun; whipcord-thin, the kind of guy made to wear three-piece suits; who wore a jaunty trilby; who never ate breakfast, but was a bit of a bore on the subject of sushi and on the very long weekend he had spent trapped in Tulsa.

Ellis’s soulmate could have been any one among billions of others.

Hell, in the absence of a soulmate, a good match, a person who could have been his best friend, a compatible sexual partner, a considerate roommate, a contributor to the family coffers, anybody not a total asshole, would have been doable, in multiple senses of the word.

And Ellis tried. Oh, he tried. He tried with Caitlyn and it was lovely, but there were times when his mind was on the unattainable other soul he knew, and she saw it, and after a few months there inevitably came the day when he went in for a dutiful kiss and she placed both her delicate palms on her chest and looked up at him with an affection millions of men would have crawled across shattered glass for and said, We need to talk; clearly, I’m not the one. He tried with Rafael and it too was lovely, but again there were times when his heart beat in time with that other unavailable to him, and there came the day when Rafael peered at him from across their king-sized bed and said, You know what? This ain’t working. He tried with others, including a couple of Heathers and a Lucas and for a while with a Minerva, an actual Minerva, who had begun life as Menachem and who loved him, for a while, from across the greatest age gap of his sexual life, thirty-seven years. Minerva was gray but lively and for the longest time, the very longest time, she was not just lover but spiritual and erotic teacher, imparting a knowledge of life and the act that made Ellis a terrific short-term lover, but failed to render him desirable as life partner.

More than one person said to him, “Who the hell are you waiting for, anyway?”

And that was the thing.

Ellis knew.

He just thought it was impossible, and as crazy as you probably would.

• • • •

First of the problems was that his soulmate was dead, and had in fact been dead for a long time.

Familiarity with romantic fantasies of various sorts have accustomed you to the premise that this can be overcome. In the pop culture realm you inhabit, people are forever finding their soulmates in eras far removed from their own. You may remember Claire Randall or Richard Collier or Kyle Reese or James T. Kirk, all of whom met their dearest love at times removed from their own. Then there was Doc Brown and a version of H.G. Wells, both of whom rode their respective time machines to lasting relationships with women played by Mary Steenburgen. Honestly, if you believe the advertising, a hottie from the Napoleonic Era isn’t all that prohibitive a meet-up. That Ellis’s soulmate had been dead of old age for much longer—approximately seventeen hundred years—would not have presented much of a problem by this precedent.

Nor do you expect much of a problem with the announcement that the soulmate in question was a non-human, living on an alien world. Again, you have seen guys making it with blue women and green women, women making it with furry guys and robot guys and lots and lots and lots of vampires. It happens. Love is love, right?

Here we introduce Ellis’s soulmate.

At this point, we find ourselves obliged to introduce new pronouns. The creature in question had evolved in an entirely different ecosystem and the dance of time had created a trio of gender that did not line up with our classical two or any existing combination or variation, recognized or not. For reference we will use ze as the article and zer as the possessive. Zer name was unpronounceable by us, as the language zer species had developed reflected an entirely different vocal apparatus and frequent clouds of purple pheromone. Rather than make up a fanciful name to go with all that alienness, like Arailasi or Glar or Bathanibe or B’lg’n’z’p’th, we take pity and insert a name that ze would find as hard to fathom as we find some of those. Because human gender is irrelevant we could easily pick a male name, a female name, or a neutral name, but we will pick the name that best conjures zer personality: Myrna.

Myrna obeyed no biological model we know, but description is no insoluble problem. Ze was invertebrate, roughly oblong in shape, and semi-liquid, a word that sounds gross until you reflect that the same is true of you and me. Ze is best pictured as a stack of rubbery, flexible mats, containing all zer necessary organs and separated by a matching series of more liquid layers retaining heat, that constantly oozed out around the edges. The most accessible metaphor in your experience is probably lasagna.

Like the rest of zer species, Myrna was capable of locomotion and ze oozed about a planetary surface thick with the primordial juice, ingesting it at one end and excreting it at the other. Ze was charming and witty and a historian devoted to the study of an ancient war fought over an issue that would require an entire shelf of text to explain, of which ze was zer kind’s most renowned scholar. Ze was considered a catch and ze had a series of assignations with zer own equivalents of Caitlyn and Rafael, both separately and together, and with colonies of melded creatures we would have trouble positing as conglomerations of Phils and Aimees and Vitos and Yukios. You need to know that if you did the heroic labor necessary to translate everything ze did into human metaphor, ze would be the shy but dazzling creature nursing a white wine beside the fern, allowing the party to come to zer; ze had no personal need to do any chasing. Everybody wondered why ze hadn’t settled down.

The answer was that, from the moment ze first congealed from the elements that gave zer kind form, ze knew that zer heart—well, not actually zer heart, because ze didn’t have one, but an organ of equivalent importance—belonged to a distant being of unaccountable strangeness, named Ellis Neider, who specialized in an arcane skill involving artifacts known as cabinets.

It was an uncanny connection, one that sometimes left Myrna doubting zer sanity, but it could not be denied. Destiny could not be denied. This Ellis, whatever he was, wherever he was, whatever nature of world had spawned him, was zer soulmate, and though ze made every conscientious effort to live within the dictates of zer biosphere, it was impossible to form any lasting relationships for as long as he remained zer destiny.

Ze pined over him all the thirty snumpoks of zer life, a not inconsiderable period of time among zer kind. Ze felt the tenor of his being, tasted his lust for life, his aching vulnerability, the million and a half ways his totality resonated with zers. Ze knew that it could never be, that he lived—actually, would live, as he was many years from being born—on a planet shocking in its conditions, infested by a race stunning in its venality and short-sightedness, in whose company he was trapped. Ze ached to join him, or to have him join zer, though common sense counseled that this was impossible.

Ze wept, or performed the equivalent of weeping, which is more we’re not going to go into.

If only—

• • • •

—If only.

Allowing for the many years it took the light of Myrna’s world to shine in the night sky above the apartment where Ellis had spent the latest in a long series of evenings alone, after yet another paramour had fled to parts unknown after sadly telling him that permanence was not in their shared future, Ellis thought these same words with what was as close as the universe allowed for synchronicity.

He stood in his apartment, so recently vacated by his last consolation prize of a lover. He gazed upon the art prints on the walls, and the oversized flatscreen on which he and that individual already fading in his memory watched their last date night movie, Love, Actually. The tears would not come. But he did feel the familiar yawning void in his heart, and he thought of the being he did not, personally, think of as Myrna. He knew that ze was alien, and he knew how crazy his mother would get if he ever explained to that poor, fluttery woman who kept hinting about grandchildren that this was the match every atom of his being insisted on holding out for. He wondered what ze was doing, and the answer of course was that on zer world so many generations had passed that all zer substance had been passed on to the other living things in zer own planet’s cycle of life; allowing true synchronicity, ze was in a million different places, being eaten, metabolized, breathed in, exhaled, excreted, or otherwise churned the way we are all fated to be, once our own substance returns to the soil. It may be true that zer own soul was being similarly recycled, its bits and pieces distributed among the other beings of zer world, but these are philosophical matters we need not go into now. Forget the actual gulf of time. Allow the signal passed between two beating hearts, or between one heart and whatever ze had, to stand in simultaneity. At what passed for this moment, no two lovers had ever yearned more desperately for their very first meeting.

Ellis had no reason to believe that tonight was any more fateful than any other night, nor was there anybody present functioning as the equivalent of the officiant of a Passover seder to explain exactly why. He just thought his poor excuse for a life had been shattered to empty pieces again. And so he stormed about for a bit, fulminating, cursing his fate, scaring the cat, drowning his sorrows in a belt, and after a timeless time spent performing the various other manifestations of his pity for himself, indeed a period that might have lasted days, did what we all do in such a circumstance and began to move on. He sighed and reached for another consolation, which at this fateful moment was a very old and battered science fiction novel that he had bought years earlier but that he had always neglected in favor of more contemporary works. It happened to be the first to fall within the reach of his grasping hand, at this instant when—again, allowing for the chronological lag—Myrna was just as vehemently yearning for him.

Because he picked up that one specific book, he in very short order read Edgar Rice Burroughs’s rationale for John Carter’s first trip to Mars.

As I stood thus meditating, I turned my gaze from the landscape to the heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting canopy for the wonders of the earthly scene. My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination—it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron.

And with that, the fictional gentleman from Virginia conveniently found himself on Mars, where he was to meet his soulmate, the lovely Dejah Thoris.

Perhaps on any other night, Ellis would have retained too much grounding in the concrete world of his everyday existence to make the leap of faith. But right now, he was bereft; right now, there was nothing to his four walls and IKEA furnishings to hold him. Right now, he could feel zer, the being who would complete him, calling. Moving like a man in a dream, he left his apartment and descended the stairs and stood in the street outside, looking up at a sky that was for this moment brilliant in its clarity and its abundance of starlight. One bright light among all the thousands seemed to him to pulse with an urgency that dwarfed all its brethren, and this one he addressed with a degree of focus he had never known, through which he sensed the creature who was the focus of all his longing, addressing zer own stars with just as much fervency.

The universe bent itself to their shared will.

He was transported out of his clothing, which remained on the pavement, the only forensic evidence in a mystery that the world of his birth would never solve. Those who knew him, his family and friends and co-workers and the lovers who had drifted away in sadness, would spend the rest of their lives wondering what had happened to good old Ellis, that poor guy who really did deserve happiness, even if he never had seemed to figure out what he wanted.

Ellis felt nothing but an interval of dizzying speed, stars going by so quickly that he perceived them as Doppler-shifted streaks, and then—

• • • •

He found himself standing on a moist glistening crag in an ill-smelling murk, in a literally unearthly cold beneath stars that, for all his knowledge of astronomy, could have been those of Rio, or Shanghai, or Cleveland. It was cold enough for his breath to emerge as vapor, which made the disappearance of his clothing especially unfortunate. Goose bumps erupted, but this was not just a function of the cold. He could sense zer nearby, and more importantly could sense zer registering him, and through their connection felt a boundless joy that was echoed by his own. Whatever the differences in their species, whatever the differences in their cultures, this was a moment that was always meant to happen, and that meant their differences would be met, and overcome, the two hearts, or again his heart and whatever it was ze had, finally joined in one.

The world seemed empty. In one direction, there was nothing but an endless plain, marked here and there with greasy streaks that glistened in the starlight. In the other was a wall so high that it scraped the very heavens, so wide that there was no possibility of walking around it, so featureless that there was no possibility of even an experienced free climber, which he was not, to scale it. Wherever ze was—and he could sense that ze was near, aware of his proximity but as unable to spot him as he was to spot zer—it seemed that the task of crossing this last divide would need to be zers. He had no doubt that ze would. This was zer world. If there was a gap in that towering edifice, ze was the one who’d know where it was.

And then the entire wall rolled forward, making the earth—or whatever you called the surface of a planet that was not Earth—shake. He fell to his knees, saw the clearly biological ways in which the layers of flesh undulated, perceived the yawing wave action in the more liquid layers that separated them, and understood for the very first time that the many barriers between himself and his one true love had never been limited to time and space and biology. All of those could have been overcome. More critical was that which was about to crush him, in a manner more literal than the repeated crushings his heart had endured over the years. Given half a chance, their love could have transcended time and space and biology. It had never stood a chance of surviving the one difference that turned out to be way more critical than any of those: Scale.

For Ellis it was like being run over by a horizontal avalanche. He was flattened, liquefied, rendered a stain that, because of the vagaries of his body chemistry’s interaction with that of this alien place, would never rub off. He ended his existence as zer tattoo.

So yes, for him, that was the story, the one we began with.

Ellis met his soulmate. The End. An object lesson in holding out for what’s perfect, in defiance of what probably would have been perfectly nice.

For Myrna it went a little differently. Upon reducing him to a thin crunchy paste, ze perceived his sudden absence but not the nature of his departure, and though ze was distraught for a while, adjusted. Within four turnings ze was part of a triad. It was for zer a union short on passion but high on practicality, and there were nights when the mating was quite nice, where ze managed to get all the way to what zer kind considered climax without once resorting to fantasies of zer alien Ellis, or forlorn conjectures over what had ever happened to him. It was a happy ending, or at least a contented one, and we can take comfort in the awareness that they had both gotten what they always wanted, even though he was the only one who had even a heartbeat to be fully aware of it.

Ze, on the other hand, would always think of him as the one who got away, much as we happen to know that he really didn’t.

©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 works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, one World Fantasy Award, 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 My Wife Hates Time Travel 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 chaotic paladin cats.

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

The Second-Last Client

Yoon Ha Lee | 1785 words

Forty-six minutes and a trickle of seconds remained before the end of the world—this world, anyway—and I was trying to evacuate the second-last client on my list.

Some apocalypses come in with horns blaring and guns blazing and cascades of fire. Some apocalypses like to be obvious. This wasn’t one of them.

The humans had various names for their world. My partner Rawk and I called it Seedworld 722.11.15, which was our superiors’ label. We’d seen a lot of Seedworlds perish, she and I.

As worlds went, we’d arrived at a particularly nice corner of this one, a coffee shop. The air was rich with the aromas of whipped cream and heady brews and flaky pastries sprinkled with powdered sugar and crushed nuts. I don’t usually drink, but Rawk has a number of vices, and one of them is peppermint syrup. Just now she had her tail curled around my neck and her talons digging painfully into my shoulder.

I don’t, in my native shape, have shoulders, but Rawk liked having a perch, and I didn’t want to scare the locals, so I’d created a human-shaped shell. At the moment I was waiting in line for a mocha with a double shot of peppermint syrup. As for Rawk, she had up a don’t-notice-me shroud. She knew better than to let the humans see something that resembled a dragon with a lot of tentacles, especially if she wanted that drink.

People chattered in bright, jaded voices, or jabbed at their phones’ glowing screens. A few couples smiled sidelong at each other—first dates going well. And then there was a student with holes in their sneakers, kneeling by a bookshelf labeled TAKE ONE, LEAVE ONE. It was mostly full of unwanted textbooks, well-thumbed category romances, and aging mysteries. That bookshelf was the focus of my attention.

The coffee shop played the kind of music that invites slow rain on a slow evening, although it wasn’t raining outside—yet. And when it did, it wouldn’t be water. I could see beyond the ceiling with its whiskey-colored lights, up past the smear of sky and into space. I was always, always aware of the Devouring Matter that was on a collision course with Seedworld 722.11.15, a weapon of ancient times. When it arrived, it would gnaw the Seedworld and everyone on it into their constituent particles. The Seedworld’s inhabitants watched the skies with their own cruder instruments, but they had yet to develop the ability to spot such threats.

“Double peppermint,” the barista called out. Rawk’s talons clenched in reminder.

There are always more worlds, more peppermint syrup, I reminded her.

This will be my last opportunity for it from this world, she retorted, snapping her beak just past my ear. Don’t mess it up.

I collected the drink and held it up. Rawk grabbed it with her forepaws and gulped deeply; no one took any notice of her. Rawk can drink raw plasma. She was in no danger of burning herself.

It’s a pity we can’t save that one, Rawk said without coming up for air.

She was referring to the student. I hadn’t paid them much heed earlier. A shock of black hair, medium-dark skin with pock marks, fingernails sheened with bronze polish in an ongoing effort to stop from chewing on them. I saw more, of course: fluency in two languages and attempts to learn a third; the taste of the first girl they kissed; their favorite snack at eleven p.m. (waffles with peanut butter—I eat stray quarks when I’m bored, so who am I to judge?). Their name, too, although names are a private matter among my kind.

What makes that one special? I asked.

And then I saw. The student had picked up the book—the book—and hefted it. Started flipping through the pages. This wasn’t the first time they’d nibbled at the story within. But the student frowned disconsolately, as though the comfort they sought was eluding them.

Can’t we leave them to it? Rawk said. She had always been the more softhearted of us. We could hit up a different copy.

I checked the progress of the Devouring Matter. That’s cutting it fine. I’m fast when I shed human shape, but even I have limitations. Among other things, the nature of the work we do tends to warp the passage of time. Especially since someone insisted on peppermint syrup.

Every world deserves to be honored with one last libation, Rawk said. She bit open the cup, licked up the last sweet dregs of the drink, then casually crunched down the cup, lid, and holder for dessert.

Since she had finished, finally, I could do what I had come here for. I left behind my human shell—Rawk would puppeteer it as necessary—and dove into the book. I was good at checking the records. The rest of the book might be empty of clients, but one remained. I was going to evacuate her no matter what it took.

Every book contains a different world. For the most part, this one had been hollowed out by the previous evacuees. The work of my colleagues, even if they hadn’t been able to persuade my client to leave with them.

Still, I could glimpse the negative spaces left by the evacuations. A shadowy range of mountains, reduced to brushstroke suggestions. A house by the sea made of plesiosaur bones, once the residence of a half-mer youth. A winter wood swept bare even of snow, the black-brown trees grasping at a sky empty of sun or moon, wind or cloud.

None of those concerned me. Instead, I manifested directly inside an inverted spire that speared downward into a chasm of ice, suspended on ropes of spider-silk. There my second-last client awaited me.

She wasn’t much to look at, even in the red livery of a royal servant. At the moment she was kneeling before an empty throne. I’d arrived at a particular moment, specifically a flashback to the days when she was a girl beholden to a great and terrible queen, hoping always for the queen’s regard. Only later in her story would she rise above her allegiance; only later would she sacrifice everything to help the story’s heroine.

“Hello,” I said. I didn’t bother putting on human form. The characters in stories are less fragile, in some ways, than their readers.

The girl looked up. She had a round, brown face, and her black eyes regarded me with the particular steadiness that had told even a tyrannous queen that this one would grow into something special. I could see why the student in the coffee shop adored her so.

“Hello,” the girl said. Her voice was soft but not shy.

“Everyone else has already left,” I said. “It’s your turn.”

“I know,” she said. She made no move to come with me.

“The world is going to end,” I said. Sometimes it took bluntness. “This world, with all its books, and all the humans who would have remembered those books. You’ve done your job, inhabiting this story for their benefit.”

She still didn’t move. “That’s all very well,” she said. “Why can’t you save the readers, too? Or the writers, for that matter?”

“Not my department,” I said, with professional regret. It was a conversation I had every so often, the way some of my clients got attached. “It’s for the humans to save themselves, or not. I don’t have any jurisdiction over that end of things. But I do have the power to take you to sanctuary so you don’t perish with them.”

“Right now, right here, I still have a reader,” she said. The student, who loved her so. “And a few more in a couple other places around the world—under the covers past bedtime, in a library, one copy dog-eared in a boys’ locker room. People read in the oddest places sometimes.”

She was holding me up, especially since I couldn’t knock her unconscious—as if that meant anything to someone living inside the world of a book—and drag her away with me. It had to be voluntary. My superiors were very clear on that point. Rawk, too, if it came to that.

“Please,” I said. “Everyone who has existed in the service of story gets their ticket out. The villains, the monsters, the creeps; the heroes, the sidekicks, the minor characters who show up in half a line and never appear again. Everyone.”

Now the girl was smiling. “No, thank you,” she said. “It’s a generous offer, but I couldn’t possibly accept.”

I tried to conceal my dismay. “Why not?”

“If I can’t save these last few readers,” she said, “the least I can do is accompany them on their way out, wherever they’re going. I don’t suppose you know anything about that?”

“Unfortunately not,” I said. Again, not my department. There’s speculation, of course, but it’s strictly above my pay grade. Dreadful penalties if I make things up, although that’s never stopped the humans. Of course, the humans don’t answer to my superiors.

The Devouring Matter was accelerating toward this Seedworld, right on schedule. I had to get going.

“One last chance,” I said. I respected the girl’s calm dignity, but I did have a record to uphold. “If you don’t come now, I can’t do anything for you.”

Her smile turned slightly pitying. “Is that all you’ve learned, in your profession? Of course there’s something you can do that isn’t forcing me to abandon this student, and the kids reading past bedtime, and the librarian who’s abusing her privileges to renew an old copy of me, and that one teenage boy who isn’t allowed to read fantasy at home.”

“And what’s that?” I said. By this point I was resigned to my failure.

“You can tell your colleagues the story of how I stayed behind.” She rose then, and rested her hand on the arm of the throne. In that moment she looked more like a queen than many I have escorted to safety.

“That I will do,” I said. I manifested in human shape long enough to bow to her, one final courtesy, then exited the book.

Rawk looked anxiously at me when I re-entered my human shell. You don’t have her, she said, quite redundantly.

No, I said. She wouldn’t come. I’ll tell you about it on the way to the last client.

Rawk made a sad murring sound, and I reached up to scratch her under the chin. Then we left behind our physical forms and traveled with invisible wings to the last client while the world’s end sped inexorably closer.

—for Rachel Manija Brown

©2019 by Yoon Ha Lee. | Art © 2019 by Christopher D. Park.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yoon Ha Lee’s debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, won the Locus Award for best first novel and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke awards. Its sequel, Raven Stretegem, was a finalist for the Hugo. His middle grade space opera Dragon Pearl was published in January 2019 from Disney-Hyperion. His short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Clarkesworld Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other venues. Lee lives in Louisiana with his family and a very lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators.

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

A Country Called Winter

Theodora Goss | 8168 words

In winter, the snow comes down as softly as feathers. I have always loved to watch it. It’s different, of course, once it’s fallen: thick, heavy, difficult to walk through. In Boston, the snow plows come out almost as soon as the first flakes land on the sidewalk. They make narrow paths, and the snow piles up on either side, so when you walk to class, it’s between two mountain ridges, like a miniature Switzerland.

That’s how Kay described it to me one morning, while we were sitting in my dorm room, drinking Swiss Miss hot chocolate that I had heated up in the microwave I wasn’t supposed to have. He had the most charming accent that sounded, to my ear, sort of German and sort of French, and that look foreign students have. They are generally better groomed, their clothes are better proportioned, and they have the latest electronics. They listen to avant-garde music and talk about art. Of course that’s partly because they are the children of diplomats and businessmen—the ones who can make the choice to come to an expensive American university. Kay was the son of the Danish ambassador, but he had lived in so many countries that when I asked him where he was from, he simply said, “I am European.” Once, he even took me to the art museum on a date. Catch an American student doing that!

He was an undergraduate, and I had just started my MA. I was a little uncomfortable about that. He was only two years younger than me, but at the university, the undergraduate/graduate divide seemed almost unsurmountable. And anyway, I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. I wanted to finish my MA year with a high enough grade point average to go directly into the PhD program. All I was planning to think about that year were my classes in American literature: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson, Emerson and the Transcendentalists, The Novel from World War I to Postmodernism, and The Immigrant Experience, which I was not particularly excited about. I’d lived my own immigrant experience, and didn’t want to read about anyone else’s.

When I was a little girl, I asked my mother why she had come to the United States, with one suitcase and an infant daughter, leaving behind her parents, her language, everything she had ever known.

“We come from a cold country,” she had told me. “Do you know, Vera, in that country the king lives in a palace built of white stone with veins of quartz that resembles ice. The streets are made of ice between snow banks, and there are no automobiles—only sleighs. They used to be pulled by reindeer, but nowadays they are electronic.”

Vera was not my real name, but my English name, which she had given me when we landed at Logan airport. It sounded like part of my name in our native language, which I will transliterate Veriska, although Americans have difficulty pronouncing it properly. In our language, it means Snow Flower.

I would write it here in our alphabet, but the letters aren’t on my computer. My Apple Macintosh does not yet speak the language of snow.

• • • •

I was six years old, just about to start first grade, when we came to America. I was put in an English immersion program. The school administration had no choice, really. There was no one in the school, or even the school district, who spoke our language. We come from a small country, with a difficult language—agglutinative, and not related to any Indo-European tongue. The alphabet resembles a series of curlicues, like frost on a windowpane. If you’re not familiar with it, you won’t know where one letter begins and another ends. Some of the letters are not letters at all, but ideas, or more properly, modes of thinking. There is a letter, for example, that stands for memory. If you put it at the beginning of a word, it means something has been remembered. Or, if you add the letter for negation, that something has been forgotten.

Even the name of our country is difficult to pronounce for English speakers. Instead of spelling it out phonetically, we refer to it by its name in translation: Winter.

There was a small community of my countrymen and women in Boston, all my mother’s age or older. Many of them had fled after the most recent revolution. The history of my country in the twentieth century is a series of revolutions and conquests. I asked my mother who would want to conquer the country she described to me: a series of valleys between high mountains, where in summer the snow might melt for several months in the lower valleys, to be replaced by small white flowers that resembled snow, and winter seemed to last forever. Even in June the blossoming fruit trees might be covered with a layer of ice. The cold made our small, hard apples sweeter, tastier, than they were anywhere else. Cabbages and turnips were staples. Most crops were grown in large greenhouses that protected tender plants from the cold.

Countries in the lower valleys, my mother answered. Before the Second World War, in warmer regions, our primary export had been a valued commodity. In the days before electric refrigeration, everyone wanted ice. Now, of course, there was tourism: skiers and snowboarders valued our steep slopes, and mountain climbers came to conquer the high peaks of our mountains.

Because I could not speak English that first year, I could not make friends. It was a lonely year for me.

Eventually I learned English, but I never quite learned how to be an American child. Perhaps I had come here too late. Or perhaps it was something in me that caused me to turn inward rather than toward other children, and I would have been the same even in my native Winter, never quite fitting in there either. I found my refuge in books, particularly books about this new country I could barely understand. Little House on the Prairie seemed to me the most wonderful fairy tale about the great wide west. Jo, Beth, Meg, and Amy March were four princesses growing up in a magical place called Concord, Massachusetts—just close enough to be real and yet far enough away to seem like a land lost in mists. I was in love with Tom Sawyer, and bitterly jealous of Becky Thatcher, for whom he walked on top of a fence. No one had walked on top of a fence for me. I liked those stories better than the stories in the old book from our country that my mother read to me, in which women married white bears and then had to travel to the ends of the earth, climbing mountains of ice in iron shoes, to rescue their bear husbands from frost giants. Why marry a bear in the first place? I wondered. Why not go to a one-room schoolhouse, form settlements, write for magazines as Jo was doing? Tom Sawyer was a trickster, like the fox in our fairy tales, whose pelt was as white as snow. He would sneak into your house and steal your fire, like a ghost. Huck Finn was like one of the ice trolls—uncivilized and uncouth, but somehow fascinating.

Although my mother read me these fairy tales, she did not like to discuss the history of our country. “We have left all that behind,” she said. But the woman she hired to stay with me after school while she worked at Boston University as a research librarian told me about the two princes who had founded our country, climbing high in the mountains to establish their territory above the Roman legions who were harrying them below. They had married the daughters of the king of the ice trolls—tall, beautiful women whose eyes were the color of rocks. Their descendants had battled each other a thousand years for the throne. She had taken the American name Anna, and I called her Nana Anna. It was she who helped me retain my native tongue, for my mother rarely spoke in our language. “Why should I?” she said. “We are never going back, and it makes me sad.”

When I was in high school, Nana Anna finally succumbed to lung cancer from the small brown cigarettes she was incessantly smoking, hand-rolled from a tobacco flavored with vanilla. After school—I had been admitted to Boston Latin Academy, one of the prestigious public schools that require an examination—I would go to her small apartment in Alston, and eventually her hospital room in Massachusetts General Hospital, to sit with her for hours, doing my homework. One day in the hospital, she motioned me to approach her bed. Closer, closer, she motioned, impatiently. With her small, frail, claw-like hand, she pulled me down by the lapel of my school jacket and whispered, in a voice that was almost gone, the ghost of a voice, “Veriska, when it is time, you must go back.”

I did not know what she meant, and did not want to distress her by asking. Anyway, I was American now—the previous year, my mother and I had become citizens. I had no desire to go back to Winter. I did not think of it as my native country anymore—did not even remember what it looked like, except in dreams that were probably based on my mother’s stories of frost giants and streets paved with ice and quince trees grown in glass houses. I spoke my native language adequately but not well, and rarely practiced it anymore now that Nana Anna was so sick. Somewhere along the way, I had decided to become as American as possible. I wore blue jeans and had a tattoo of falling snowflakes on my left wrist that scandalized my mother, because well-behaved girls did not get tattoos. I read Sylvia Plath.

My mother wanted me to study library science, “Because you like books so much, Vera,” she said, “and it’s a practical profession.” But I told her I wanted to study literature.

“Well, perhaps you can become a teacher,” she replied.

• • • •

There were only a few people at Nana Anna’s funeral—three old men and one young woman who said she was a distant relative. One of the old men came up to my mother and bowed, then spoke with her too rapidly for me to understand what he was saying. But among the words, I recognized one that meant “princess”—literally, “king’s daughter.” When I asked my mother about it, she said, “Anna was a member of the royal court, a descendant of one of the two families that have, for time out of mind, fought over Winter’s throne. In our country, she was lady-in-waiting to the queen. It was her hereditary right.”

How strange that this old woman who had taken care of me had been a member of the royal family! Remembering her one-bedroom apartment with its tiny kitchen, I felt sorry for her. She had been meant for palaces made of white stone with veins of quartz.

But I had the SAT to study for. I could not spent too much time thinking about the history of Winter—about which, anyway, I knew only the fragments Nana Anna had told me.

There were boyfriends here and there, in those years—a couple of casual ones in high school and a steady one in college, at Amherst, where I had gotten a full ride—half scholarships, half grants. I even thought we might become engaged, until the day he told me he was in love with a girl I thought was my best friend. Several months later, when he broke up with her and told me that I was the one, had always been the one—that he had just needed to make sure—I had already been admitted to a graduate program. Sorry, I told him. I really don’t have time for a relationship right now.

I was right—the MA program took all the time and energy I had, that and being an RA in an undergraduate dorm. At least it gave me a place to live so I didn’t have to stay at home with my mother. I could never have afforded my own apartment in Boston. I settled down to write my semester papers, determined to do as well as I could. That would be my life, I figured—classes during the day, evenings doing research in Mugar Library.

And then I met Kay.

• • • •

I have always preferred winter, probably because I was born in Winter, in February, when my mother tells me the capital city was encased in ice and the doctor had to come by electric sleigh through a snowstorm. I love to see the first leaves change, love to feel the cold breath of autumn coming. Seasonal allergies have something to do with it. June and July, I live on Claritin. The pollen from all the blossoming trees gives me a terrible headache. But after September comes, it seems as though the air regains a crystalline quality. It feels like clear water, like something hard and soft at the same time—feathers that can cut. Then the leaves turn and fall, like a splendid sunset lying on the sidewalks, and the first snows come, white and fresh, as though the earth is putting on her wedding gown.

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. In my country, gifts are not brought by Santa Claus. The Lady in the Moon herself comes down from the sky in her silver sleigh, drawn by snow geese that have put on their white plumage for winter. Next to her sits the white fox who eats the moon each month before the Lady renews it again. With the help of all the stars, who look like elves in sparkling tights and dresses, she distributes gifts to children throughout the land. Although my mother had given up many of our native customs, each year she decorated the tree with a moon on top, papier-mâché stars hanging from the branches, felt reindeer, and gingerbread men. We would leave out elderberry wine for the Lady in the Moon and a plate of oat cakes with a wedge of cheese for the geese and fox. The next morning, the oat cakes always had small bites taken out of it, and the cheese was eaten into a crescent shape.

I met Kay during the first snowfall. He bumped into me as I was walking to class, thinking about my paper on the rhetoric of mourning in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. I slipped and fell on the icy sidewalk. “Undskyld!” he said, then switched to English. “I’m sorry, how stupid of me—I should have watched where I was going. Let me help you.” He took off his right glove and reached down a pale, firm hand. I recognized him from my class on the Transcendentalists, which was a 500-level course for both upper-class undergrads and MA students. He was the one who always did the reading and talked about the Transcendentalists as though their ideas mattered for more than the final exam. I had noticed him—he was, after all, tall and blond and very good-looking. He was hard not to notice. But I had thought of him as simply another undergrad.

What made him so much more exciting than other boys I had dated? Well, he was European—more sophisticated, more intellectual. He could talk about postmodern literary theory, although after several beers his utterances became as convoluted as Lacan’s. His area was modern European literature. He had been taking courses in the American Studies department simply for a distribution requirement. But he could also be moody, go silent for days at a time, sitting on his dorm room window seat and looking out at the snow. I asked him once if all that theory was good for him.

Still, there was something in me that was attracted to him. His family came from a small village in Denmark beside a glacier, where the primary industry was the ski season. Sometimes he seemed like a breath of cold mountain air. We had been dating for several months and our relationship was going well—he was going to stay in Boston for Christmas, and I had already told him that he could come celebrate with me and my mother—when Gerda showed up.

It was after Thanksgiving Break. We were sitting in our Transcendentalism class, waiting for Professor Feldman (Bob to those of us who were graduate students, but only in office hours and at departmental cocktail parties) to show up when in walked a girl—well, a woman, but she was not much older than me. She was wearing a pair of red boots that came up over her knees, and her black hair was cut in a Louise Brooks bob. She stood in front of the class and said, “Hi everyone. I have some bad news—Professor Feldman had a heart attack over the break. We don’t know yet when he’ll be able to come back to class. I was his TA last semester, so I’m going to fill in for him. I’m a grad student, so don’t bother calling me professor. You can just call me Gerda. All right, let’s see who did the reading. Pop quiz!”

She was in my department, but I hadn’t met her—she had passed her oral exam over the summer and was already working on her dissertation. After the class I introduced myself. “Oh, right, Vera,” she said. “You and the other MA students don’t need to take the final exam. Just turn in a twenty-page paper on the last day of class. Have you written a prospectus already? No? Well, how about turning it in next Friday?”

Later, Kay told me that she had “Robber Girl” tattooed across her shoulder blades, right where you could see it if she wore a low-cut dress, or maybe a bathing suit. It was the name of her rock band. Yes, she had a rock band with a couple of students from the Berklee College of Music—she was the lead singer and played guitar. They toured during the summer months, doing covers of  Eurythmics and other ’80s groups. I wondered how he knew—when had he seen her bare back? But it was the sort of information Gerda volunteered freely. Perhaps she had simply told him during office hours.

That was after the semester was over, of course—after we had picked up our final papers from her box in the department mail room. I was relieved to have gotten an A on the paper and for the semester. Gerda was much too smart to mess around with the university’s sexual harassment policy. No, she just stood in front of the class in her high red boots, wearing skinny jeans or a short denim skirt and a black turtleneck, talking about feminism and sexuality in Emily Dickinson’s poems, which was the topic of her doctoral dissertation. “If Dickinson could have fucked death, she would have,” Gerda said once, clearly not caring what anyone said on her course evaluations.

She was a good teacher, I’ll give her that. She found meanings in Dickinson’s poems that I had not seen. I had admired them for their artistic and intellectual engagement. Gerda revealed their incandescence. Kay always paid particular attention in that class, but then he had paid attention to Professor Feldman as well. It was only later that I realized there was more to it than caring about Dickinson’s subtext.

Just before Christmas, he told me that we should take a break, that he had to focus on exams and didn’t have time for a relationship. There was no celebration with my mother after all—he insisted that he had to study. By the time I came back to campus in January, he and Gerda were dating.

When I found out from my friend Stephanie, who was a work-study receptionist in the main office and knew all the departmental gossip, I spent a week crying myself to sleep at night, sobbing into my pillow. But Kay didn’t know that. I didn’t bother asking him for an explanation, and recriminations have never been my style. I have always prided myself on my ability to let things go. After all, I’ve had plenty of practice. When I was a little girl, I let go of an entire country.

One day, we ran into each other at the new café that had opened at the edge of campus, on Commonwealth Avenue. Blue Moon, it was called—organic, fair trade, locally sourced. There were scones with chia seeds in them, scones with açai berries. Smoothies that combined mango and kale.

“Vera,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to text you—”

“I already know,” I said. “About you and Gerda.”

“I really like you,” he said, as though it were an apology. “Like, really like. But Gerda, I don’t know. We’re just on the same wavelength.”

But Gerda. I suppose at some level, I had known from the moment she walked in with her high red boots. I had simply not wanted to see that he was drifting away from me like snow. Even when she was standing at the front of the class and he was the undergrad challenging her phallic interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s “A narrow fellow in the grass”—“Sometimes a snake is just a snake,” he would say—there was something between them, a solidarity. You could tell that despite their differences, they lived in the same intellectual and emotional time zone. They synched.

“I hope you’re happy with her,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll be happy with you.” Why wouldn’t she be? Any disagreements would be smoothed over by his blue Danish eyes, the perfection of his cheekbones.

• • • •

Christmas was strange that year. Men and women I did not know came to the apartment and talked to my mother in the walk-in closet she used as a sewing room. They spoke in the language of Winter, but so low and rapidly that I could not hear them through the keyhole, although I tried. I particularly wondered about one woman dressed in a long white coat with silver embroidery all over it, wearing a white fur hat.

“Who was that?” I asked my mother.

“That was the Matriarch of the Orthodox Church,” she replied. “Her Holiness is the highest religious authority in our country.”

“What is she doing here?” I asked. I had heard of the Holy Mother, but only in Nana Anna’s stories. Somehow, she had not seemed real to me, any more than the palace made of white stone or the glass houses with their orchards of flowering trees. But this priestess of the Lady Moon was real the way dreams are real—improbable, and yet indisputably sitting in our small living room, drinking my mother’s espresso.

“Paying her respects,” said my mother. “Vera, I smell something burning. Did you seal the jam pockets properly?”

Of course not. I never sealed the jam pockets properly. My mother always sealed their edges so the jam did not run out into the pan, but somehow I never managed to. The jam always ran out, overflowed the sides of the pan, and dripped down onto the electric burners. My baking was always accompanied by the smell of burnt sugar.

Winter is a cold country. Most of our desserts incorporate jam, dried fruit, or candied nuts—ingredients that can be stored almost indefinitely during the long, cold months. They are made of hearty grains—barley, oats, rye. Into them we mix cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger.

I rushed into the kitchen to rescue the jam pockets, and by the time I came out again, the Matriarch was gone.

But it was more than a matter of strange visitors coming at all hours. My mother seemed agitated, distracted. When I asked her what was wrong, she said only, “I’m getting old,” which was patently untrue. Her black hair was touched with gray, and she had lines of laughter and worry around her eyes, but she was as beautiful as ever—still the woman in the only photograph I had of her with my father, at their wedding. She was wearing an elaborate wedding gown, he was in his military uniform.

“What was his rank?” I asked her when I was in high school. I was curious about this man with the fierce mustache, who had died when I was only a child.

“I do not remember,” she had answered. It was more likely that she did not want to remember. All I knew was that he had died in one of our innumerable revolutions, defending the king—Nana Anna had told me that.

To be honest, I was glad when Christmas break was over and I could go back to school. At least I could replace worrying about my mother with working on my papers and avoiding Kay. I transferred out of Elegance and Anxiety: The Age of Wharton and James when Stephanie told me he was registered for the course.

• • • •

And then spring failed to come. In April, the snow did not melt. The forecasters shrugged as though to say, sometimes that happens in Massachusetts. But in May it did not melt either. The temperature did not get above thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. When June came and the temperature still hovered around freezing, the Weather Channel started talking about freak cold snaps, global cooling, a new ice age.

By that time, I assumed Kay had gone back to Denmark for the summer break. Of course I was still on campus, studying for my oral exam and RAing for the high school juniors and seniors taking summer courses, trying out college for the first time. Anyway, I lived in Boston—I had nowhere else to go.

But one day, I got a text on my cell phone: V need to talk to you please K.

Why? I texted back.

To talk about us.

Well, that wasn’t exactly an answer, was it?

What about?

Please??? I’ll buy coffee. Blue Moon @ 2?

Fine. What was I going to do, refuse to see him altogether? That would just prove to him that I cared, and I didn’t. Well, I did, but I didn’t want him to know that. Anyway, it was uncivilized. Only high school girls who had watched too much reality TV behaved like that.

He was waiting for me at a table near the front of the café, with a small cappuccino topped with cinnamon, my favorite. He still had perfect cheekbones, but just above his right cheekbone, at the corner of his eye, was a rectangular Band-Aid. Had he cut himself shaving? No, it was too high for a shaving cut. Well, I would not ask him about it. I was no longer his girlfriend, after all. Let Gerda do that.

“All right, what is it?” I asked, sitting down. He slid the cappuccino over to me.

“I know I messed up,” he said. “I should have told you about Gerda. I’m really sorry—really, really sorry. Is there any way we can start over?”

I looked at him, astonished. “Start over like . . . what? Like it never happened? What about Gerda, anyway? Where is she? And what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in Denmark?”

“That’s over,” he said. “I broke it off with her. She was—well, she was kind of nuts, and also kind of cruel. It’s as though she kept sticking this knife into me—metaphorically, I mean. With the things she would say, telling me she loved me, and then that she didn’t want to see me anymore, then calling me the next day and telling me to come over. It’s like she wanted to punish me for caring about her. And she was so negative—she would laugh at me for things like my mom sending me cookies from home—I mean the embassy, not home home. She called me sentimental. I don’t know where she is now—she said she was going on tour with Robber Girl, and then she just left. The last I heard from her, she was in Austin, Texas. She hasn’t texted me since. But honestly, I don’t care where she is. Come on, I know I messed up, but I care about you more than I’ve ever cared about anyone. Please, can we start over?”

I sipped my cappuccino. I didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, he had behaved like a complete asshole. On the other hand, he had very blue eyes, with long lashes. He looked at me pleadingly. That bandaid was incongruous on his perfect face.

“I have to think about it,” I finally said, putting my coffee cup down and pushing back my chair. I tried to be nonchalant, but I almost tipped it over as I stood up.

“Sure,” he said. “I get it, I really do. Take as long as you need to. Like, a week? I’ll text you in a week.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” I said. “I’m going now.”

“You’ll let me know in a week, right?” he said, looking up at me anxiously. “I think I was scared of how I felt about you. I think that’s why I messed up with Gerda.”

“A week,” I said, making no promises. But I could already feel myself weakening. He looked at me so appealingly, after all, like a child who wanted approval. Would it be so hard to care about him again? Had I ever actually stopped?

I texted Stephanie, to catch up on the departmental gossip. What happened between Gerda and Kay?

It only took her a moment to respond. I heard they had a big fight. He broke up with her, she threw her Norton Anthology of American Literature at him, and it hit a mirror in his dorm room. He got some glass close to his eye. Had to go to the emergency room to get it out plus a couple of stitches. That girl is batshit crazy.

Why hadn’t he told me about that? Probably because he was ashamed of it, of having gotten involved with someone who would pull a stunt like that. And also of being hurt by a girl.

• • • •

When I don’t know what to do about a situation, I ask my mother. Kay was a situation I didn’t know what to do about, so I went home.

I sent my mother a text to let her know I was coming, but she didn’t answer. Well, she often had her notifications off—if she turned them off by accident, she never knew how to turn them back on again. She was hopeless at technology. It had taken me a year to convince her to give up her flip-phone for something more practical. It was Thursday, which was her weekday off, so she wouldn’t be at the library.

“Mom!” I called as I pushed open the front door. “Mom, are you home?”

No answer, but I heard the murmur of voices from the living room. Did she have guests?

I walked from the hall into the living room. My mother was standing by the fireplace that had once been functional in our nineteenth-century brownstone, but was now purely decorative. Around her stood a group of men and women in business suits, with sashes arranged diagonally across their chests. I recognized the light blue and white of Winter’s national flag. There was the Matriarch, in her white hat. On either side of her stood a priestess in a white robe with silver collar and cuffs. But most prominent among them was a woman in a red dress, the color of geraniums. In that company, my mother looked plain and small in her black t-shirt and jeans.

“Vera!” she said, as though startled to see me.

The woman in the red dress turned sharply toward me, then looked me up and down.

“Your Royal Highness,” she said. She was tall and striking, with short white hair and a sharp nose. I was startled when she made me a deep curtsey. The men and women in sashes bowed or curtseyed, according to whether they were wearing trousers or skirts. The Matriarch and her priestesses remained upright.

“Excuse me?” I said. “I don’t understand . . .”

“Vera,” said my mother, coming forward. Suddenly, she was the most authoritative person in that room. The transformation took me by surprise—my mother did not often take charge, except in the library. “This is Baroness Hapsenkopf”—at least, that is the closest approximation in English. “She is the prime minister of Winter. When you were a little girl and your father was killed by his younger brother, she helped us escape, or we would surely have been imprisoned by him and his allies. He was not a good ruler—under his management, the country took on a great deal of debt to finance industries that have not made a profit. Now there is inflation, and no money left to repair the roads or educate the children. There is discontent among the people. Three months ago, he was overthrown by the army. The loyaltists who helped your father were released from prison, and they have been attempting to form a new government under the Baroness. Now, they would like you, as the only direct descendant in the royal line, to return as ruler.”

“But my father—” I said.

“Was Luthorion VII, King of Winter,” said Baroness Hapsenkopf. “You will be Veriska II. The first Veriska was a warrior queen who battled against the Ice Trolls. What we need now is not a warrior but an economist, a ruler who can repair roads, fund schools, and create jobs for the people. And the Ice Trolls have long been our allies. I have been approached by the Ice King himself, who has offered his son in marriage to cement an alliance between our nations. You are, of course, under no obligation to accept, but it would be an advantageous match.”

For a moment, I could not think of anything to say. It was as though the entire world had suddenly shifted under me, as though reality was not at all what I had thought, but something else altogether. The Baroness and the semi-circle of dignitaries from Winter were staring at me, as was my mother—waiting. I had to say something. But what?

“I’m neither a warrior nor an economist,” I said, finally. “I’m not qualified to be queen of anything. I mean, I’m just a grad student. The most responsibility I’ve ever had is being an RA.” This was ridiculous—I had an oral exam to study for, and suddenly I was supposed to rule Winter? Marry an Ice Troll? Fix an economy when I could barely keep track of my credit card balance, even with the banking app? And yet suddenly, a great many things in my life that had perplexed me came into focus, as though I had put on a pair of glasses for the first time. All the pieces of a complicated puzzle were fitting together. They showed me a picture: of Winter, and who my father had been, and why my mother claimed to have forgotten his rank. No wonder Nana Anna had taken such care to teach me the history of my country. A moment ago, the future had stretched before me, shapeless, formless. Now, it took a definite shape, as though flakes of snow had fallen and formed a pattern: a woman made of snow.

“Veriska,” said my mother, calling me by my full name for the first time since I was a child. “Your choice has repercussions here as well. You see, the snow has not gone away. It is still cold in Boston. Winter is more than a country—it is also an idea. It exists among the mountains, and also in the imagination. There must be a king or queen of Winter to maintain balance among the seasons.”

Okay, I sort of got that. I had been trained to understand metaphors. I mean, it didn’t really make sense, but then neither did a lot of other things that were nevertheless real and tangible. Somewhere, there was probably a Summer kingdom as well. But I was still not comfortable with the whole concept. “Why does it have to be a king or queen?” I asked. “Can’t you elect a president or something?”

“You may abdicate, if you wish,” said the Matriarch in her sonorous voice. “But doing so will plunge our country once again into chaos. There is no other clear heir to the throne, and several claimants in an indirect line who will fight each other to death if given the opportunity.”

So a constitutional monarchy it was, then. A republic was clearly not in the cards. “Can I have some time to think?” I asked.

“Of course,” replied the Matriarch. She looked at her wristwatch. “We can give you an hour.”

One hour to make the most important decision of my life? These people were crazy, the whole situation was crazy. I was about to say that when I saw the Baroness’s face. It was carefully neutral, but there were dark circles under her eyes and cheekbones.

Nana Anna had told me about the men and women who had been sent to prison—or worse, to labor camps in the mountains—for supporting the last king. She had simply neglected to mention that he was my father. The dignitaries in front of me, with their blue and white sashes, were some of those people.

“All right, one hour,” I said. I walked out of the apartment and down to our street of brownstones, then turned and made my way to Commonwealth Avenue. It was the middle of summer, but the people who passed me were still wearing winter coats. I walked around for a while, randomly, then went down to the Charles River and stared at the ice still floating on the surface. It wasn’t thick enough to walk on—there was black water underneath. Should I agree to become Winter’s queen? I felt completely inadequate to the task.

Suddenly, the ice on the river cracked into large chunks. The chunks had nowhere to go, so they simply lay on top of the water. The cracks made a pattern in the language of Winter: They spelled out Queen Veriska. I rubbed my eyes, absolutely certain that I was hallucinating.

“It’s not an illusion.” Who had said that, in the language of my country?

Next to me stood a woman in a light blue dress, with a white fur collar and cuffs. She was wearing a white fur hat on her gray hair and carrying what I thought was a ruff of the same fur until I realized it was a fox as white as snow. Behind her stood a sleigh carved of white wood with silver runners, to which were harnessed six white geese.

“Lady Moon,” I said. I mean, it was obvious who she was—Nana Ana had told me enough stories. Either I was ready to be committed to a mental hospital, or I was having an encounter with a supernatural being.

“Winter needs you,” she said. “You see, it is calling to you all the way here in Boston.”

“But I don’t know how to be a queen.” I looked back down at the ice. Now it was spelling out Come home, Queen Veriska.

“When have you known how to do anything before you did it?” she asked. “Did you know how to swim before you learned at Walden Pond in summer camp? Did you know how to write a paper before your eleventh grade teacher taught you in Honors English? You will learn this as well. Baroness Hapsenkopf will teach you, as will your mother, the Queen Dowager.”

It was disconcerting how much Lady Moon knew about me. But then, she was Winter’s equivalent to Santa Claus. She probably knew everything.

“This is different,” I said. “No one was going to drown if I didn’t learn to swim but me. No one else was going to get an F on her paper if I failed. But if I fail as queen . . . Anyway, I don’t understand this whole business about balancing the seasons.”

“The Snow King or Queen brings winter,” she said. “Then as the year turns, the King or Queen of Summer—currently Rudolph IV—brings back warmth and sunlight, banishing the cold and darkness until it is time for winter again. But the two monarchs must coordinate carefully. If Rudi comes while snow is still lying on the ground, it will cause terrible floods. So you must work with him, you must hand off responsibilities, as it were—he has been waiting for months now for the coronation of Winter’s queen.” I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was being patient, but I had maybe five or ten more minutes of her putting up with my nonsense. At least, that’s the way Nana Anna would have said it.

It all sounded—well, a little crazy, and like a lot of responsibility. How in the world was I supposed to do all this?

“Hold out your hand,” she said. “Over the ice. Just there—hold it steadily.” I had overestimated: By her tone, I had maybe a minute more of her patience. I didn’t think she would frown at me the way Nana Anna had. She was much more likely to turn me into a rock, as she had the daughter of Ivor the Ice Troll in fairy tales, and then smash me to smithereens.

I held my hand over the icy river. What was this supposed to do?

The cracks in the ice reformed themselves into the words What do you wish, O Queen?

What did I wish? I didn’t even know anymore. “I wish winter would end,” I said. I did, at least, want that. Let the high school students play Ultimate Frisbee on the university’s small patches of green space. Let people eat ice cream while walking down the street in t-shirts.

Your wish is our command, wrote the ice, and then it broke along those cracks. The pieces of ice stood up on end and danced on the choppy black water, then melted. The sun came out from behind the gray clouds. It was not warm, exactly—it was still a winter sun. But it was something.

“I shall tell Rudi that you are on your way,” said Lady Moon with a tight-lipped smile, the same smile her fox seemed to have on his face. I could tell that I had sorely tried her patience. “Run along, Veriska. Give Queen Agata my best wishes, and tell the Matriarch that I will be back in Winter for Christmas, as usual.”

I walked back to the apartment in a daze. When I entered the living room again, I walked up to Baroness Hapsenkopf and said, “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll be Veriska II. I mean, you’ll have to teach me how, but I’ll try.”

“What convinced you?” asked the Matriarch, sounding as though she did not particularly approve of me—but I was the only Veriska II she had, so she would have to make the best of it.

“Lady Moon,” I said. “She . . . well, we had a talk. I mean, she did most of the talking.”

My mother looked at me with astonishment, but the Matriarch nodded as though she were not at all surprised.

“Then it is time to leave,” said the Baroness. “There is a helicopter waiting for us on the roof.”

Somehow, I had been expecting a sleigh drawn by snow geese, or something equally improbable. But a helicopter would work as well. I turned to go pack, but no, I would not need to pack. There was nothing here I needed, not even my tattered and heavily underlined copy of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, and anyway from now on my packing would be done for me. I had more important things to do—a country to save, a balance to restore, if I could just learn how.

“All right,” I said. “I’m ready.”

• • • •

A week later, I got a text on my cell phone. It was still my old iPhone with an international plan. I was getting 3G even in Winter.

Holy crap it’s all over the Daily Free Press you’re like a queen. Do I call you majesty or what. Summer finally here.

I was standing in the greenhouse attached to the palace, under the quince trees. I had spent the morning in a meeting with the finance minister, and would spend the afternoon in a meeting with the ambassadors of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Should I write back? At least to tell Kay that I was meeting with a representative of his country. Or not—I doubt he was texting me to hear about politics. Why was he texting me? Oh yeah, it was a week after our meeting in the Blue Moon café.

Winter here. In royal palace. Coronation yesterday, so yes, I’m officially queen. Your majesty, ma’am, whatever. ;)

The response came almost as soon as I had written mine.

So no hope of getting back together I guess. Ma’am.

I had to laugh. The gall of him! I still cared about him—I did, didn’t I? Despite the whole Gerda incident. But at a royal reception, I had met the crown prince of Trollheim, whose name was Edrik. Trolls are a lot better looking than you would expect. He had really pretty blue eyes, and excellent taste in British rock bands. We had a long discussion of existentialism once we’d escaped from the reception with a handful of canapés. I didn’t know if I wanted to marry him, but I wasn’t ruling out the possibility. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the arranged marriage either, but we’d already decided to spend a weekend skiing together. I’d learned to ski as a child and wasn’t sure if I remembered how. But if he had to teach me, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? Anyway, Winter needed an ally against the frost giants. Or maybe I would look into joining NATO?

You can’t date me from Boston, I texted back.

What if I came to Winter.

Do you even know how to get here?

Pretty sure there’s a Lufthansa flight to Finland. From there I don’t know. Reindeer? It could be like a quest. Or like a road trip except with sleighs.

I looked around me at the glass walls of the greenhouse. Inside, it was all trees and leaves and blossoms. Outside, the snow was just starting to melt. At this altitude, summer came late, even in ordinary years. Here I was, the Snow Queen—what I was born to be, at least according to my mother and Baroness Hapsenkopf. I did not feel like much of a queen. However, in the last week, I had met with members of parliament from the three major parties, the heads of various labor unions, the generals who had participated in the recent coup, the Matriarch and her council of priestesses, the director of the Central Bank, and at my insistence, a selection of ordinary citizens chosen by lottery, from university professors to plumbers and seamstresses. I had been interviewed by both major newspapers, all three state television stations, and an online journal called WW for Women of Winter.

I did not know if I would make a good queen, but I was starting to see what needed to be done, how to restore the economy of my country. It would take a while, but these things always did. Slowly, Winter would regain its former reputation and independence from the IMF.

All right, I texted. If you can figure out how to get here, come find me.

Would Kay make it to my palace of white stone veined with quartz, or get lost along the way among the snows? If he made it, would I choose him or Edrik, who was after all a prince? I didn’t know, but today I was the Queen of Winter, and I had more important things to think about.

For a moment, I stood among the quince trees, whose white blossoms looked like snow on the branches and fell like snow to the ground. Outside, a dusting of snow fell from the roof, like blossoms blown by the wind. Then, I turned and walked into my palace, where my future, whatever it was, awaited me.

©2019 by Theodora Goss. Originally published in Snow White Learns Witchcraft: Stories and Poems. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Theodora Goss is the author of the novels The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (which was a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy awards) and European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman. Her other publications include the short story collection In the Forest of Forgetting (2006); Interfictions (2007), a short story anthology co-edited with Delia Sherman; Voices from Fairyland (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), a novella in a two-sided accordion format; and the poetry collection Songs for Ophelia (2014). Her work has been translated into ten languages, including French, Japanese, and Turkish. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, Locus, Seiun, and Mythopoeic Awards, and on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her short story “Singing of Mount Abora” (2007) won the World Fantasy Award. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University and in the Stonecoast MFA Program.

Knee Deep in the Sea

Melissa Marr | 8339 words

I woke early—or perhaps didn’t sleep. My body is still adjusting to the time zone hop from Southern California to the islands north of the Scottish mainland. Orkney. A series of islands, many of them uninhabited, in the cold North Atlantic Sea. To the east is Norway. To the West are Iceland and Greenland. In other words, it’s chilly even in the summer when there is endless light.

It’s stunning, aside from the dead guy currently at my feet.

Still, it’s just one dead guy. If no one was going to be judgmental, I’d admit that my favorite sort of man is a dead one.

This one is sprawled on the rocky beach as if he’s been rejected by the sea, tossed back like rubbish that the tide returned to its origin. He’s not dressed for swimming, and a clear set of fingerprints bruises his throat. I don’t think they’re mine. They could be, but I don’t think I killed him. Jason. I’m sure he had a surname, but I didn’t catch it. I’m fairly sure he was alive when I last saw him. We argued at a nearby pub. I may have kicked him. He may have called me a few ugly words.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter if I did it. If I get arrested, they’ll have my fingerprints, and even if they don’t match the ones on his throat, it’ll be trouble. All it would take is one quick fingerprint match and everything I’ve built would be gone.

I’m not good at jail. I never have been—and if I’m ending up there it will be for a good reason. Not this. Jason was nobody, a stranger I crossed after a few too many drinks. I’m not going to end up in jail for his death.

You need to do whatever it takes to make it in this world. Mama explained that fact of life right regularly, often before the lesson that Men think with their willies, so smile pretty and lead with your bosom.

I check his pockets, retrieve his wallet and mobile phone. I pull out the SIM card, toss it into the water, and then toss the phone, too. I empty the wallet. Far too many credit cards, a few membership cards, and some receipts. They scatter like bits of sea grass tossed into the waves. I hope I’m not damning some poor sea creature to death by adding Jason’s trash to the sea, but the sea should erase his identity soon enough, and I’d rather not leave identifying evidence with the body. Without it, the police are left with fingerprint and dental records if he washes ashore or gets caught in a fisherman’s net.

Dental records can be great to prove identity, but there’s no database. Still, it’s better to be safe. I search for a heavy rock. A few moment later, Jason has fewer teeth, a fractured jaw, and a higher chance of being nothing more than an Unknown Male Victim if he returns to shore.

That leaves fingerprints.

I pull out my Leatherman and slice off most of the skin and meat at his fingertips. It’s easier than the last time I did this. I rinse my hands, toss the teeth and bits of skin into the sea, and continue with my task.

Jason was obviously successful to some degree. I found plenty of money in his wallet—$112 in US money, plus another £800 and €200. It’s damp, but usable. I fold and shove it all into my pocket. There’s no sense throwing cash into the sea. I don’t take his watch or ring. Those are traceable and likely filled with DNA.

After another few moments of handling details, I roll him out into the icy Atlantic, wading far enough that I’m soaked to my hips and shivering. The sea, thankfully, is churning today, and in a few moments, the body is gone. A few credit cards blink like misplaced tropical fish before they’re carried away.

The only witness to my actions is a seal. There is always a seal watching. I meet her gaze, seeking censure and finding none. Wild things are practical in ways that humans fail.

“I’m sorry about the credit cards,” I say, not that she’ll understand or hear me. The wind from over the sea seems to whisk the words away, leaving my lips cold. I hope she forgives me.

Unlike my silent watcher, I am not made for the cold wind or waves. She’s why I’m here at this early hour, standing with my rain boots in the edge of the surf, watching the sun rise up over the cold waters. For a flicker of a moment I wish I could join her, dive into the surf and swim out to the deep waters where she is so at home. It’s a foolish impulse, likely caused by too much whisky and not enough sleep. I’m shivering already from only a few moments in the icy water.

My entire body is off. Still. I can’t seem to find my rhythm in this strange climate. The light lasts for most of the day this time of year, offering around five hours of darkness daily. It’s completely destroyed my internal clock after not even a week. The weather here tilts toward windy and wet, and the whole series of islands has only twenty thousand people.

It’s not a place I’d have thought to visit on my own, but now that I’m here, I want to stay forever. I feel a calm I’d not realized I wanted. The sea is everywhere. Archaeological ruins seem to crowd the islands, and aside from the tourists pouring out of their busses to see some of the bigger sites, I have found myself alone for hours in wide stretches of stunning land. I don’t recall the last time I’d been so far from crowds. Finding that solace was one of the reasons I applied for this job. Life in SoCal is just a bit too crowded for me sometimes. Orkney is an incredible escape.

Being here means that for the first time I love my new job. Most days, I question my sanity. Personal Assistant to a man whose upcoming documentary is called Pinniped! Most people call them seals, not pinnipeds, but my boss is pretentious. Given half a chance, he devolves into lecture on how people reduce both seals and sea lions to the singular term of “seal.”

When I’m alone on the beach, the seals swim near enough to entice me into the water, and more than once I’ve found myself knee deep in the cold sea. I want to go with them, touch them, be in the water. What began as an extra for my job has become a strange love affair with the chilly waters and the creatures that watch me from the waves. I am . . . happy.

Aside from the dead guy.

Working in LA is far from glamorous. In the land of film, personal assistant to a documentary filmmaker is even less glamorous. Grants fund his work, so job security is nonexistent. Although, admittedly, this isn’t forever: What I really want to do is write. Go ahead. Laugh. Every third person in LA wants to be a writer, thinks they’re a writer, or is pitching something soon. The rest are actors or wannabe directors. I’m aware that I’m a stereotype, but I’m not the first small town girl who succeeded at her dreams. The difference between me and them is that I’m clever, and there is zero limit to what I’m willing to do to achieve my dreams. Zero. Possibly less than zero.

I remind myself of that as my boss saunters my way.

“I thought I’d find you here,” he pronounces.

I glance at Jack, grateful that he wasn’t here at sunrise. I’d rather not share the seals—or explain the body I rolled into the sea.

Jack Abrams is, in the way of successful men, falsely convinced that he’s attractive. Forty-five years old, wrinkles already reaching out from his eyes and lining his forehead, average height, average face, Jack is nothing special. The best I can say is that he’s more fit than most filmmakers, but in the looks department, he’s average. In LA, though, if you collect enough awards, grants, and prestige, looks are relative. When Jack looks in the mirror, he mistakenly sees one of the finer Hemsworth men.

“Isabel?”

I realize I haven’t answered and try to sound calm as I say, “You missed the seals. I came early to watch them.”

He looks at me in the same way I’ve seen him look at a meal as he decides if he ought to accept it or send it back to the kitchen. “Fascinating, aren’t they?”

We stand in comfortable silence for several moments, both staring out to sea. I presume Jack is seeking seals, and I am quietly praying that he doesn’t see the dead man or his credit cards bob to the surface.

“I need a local. Find one.”

I glance at him. “A local to . . .?”

“Give me the insider view.”

“On seals?” I stare at him, not quite sure what he’s going for here. It’s likely to be some sort of gesture of authenticity. He does that, finds a way to add a touch of humanity to his stories. As much as I think he’s an ass, I like that wherever he films he tries to show the locals as appealing. It balances the occasional big budget project he takes on to “fund his art.”

If you read “ego” where he says “art,” the interview clips are true.

Still, his success fuels my future career, so I nod and listen.

“I need someone with a thick accent.”

He looks me up and down again. He hasn’t invited me to his bed—yet—but he will. Jack Abrams has a reputation for trading favors for fucks. He’s not coercive. I won’t get fired for saying no, but I won’t get ahead as fast. Truthfully, I just haven’t decided if I’m going to say yes when he gets around to offering. I could use a few favors, and I’m not above fucking for them.

For now, I step a little closer and shiver. “Orkney is colder than I thought it would be.”

“The old guys at the pub say it’s because the Vikings cut down all the trees.” Jack’s gaze scans the water, again seeking the sometimes elusive creatures we’re here to film.

“So, would one of them—”

“A woman, Isabel. Better for optics.” He affects a terrible accent and adds, “Why watch old men if there’s a pretty Scottish lass to stare at?”

I nod.

“She needs to be camera-ready or close enough to have that ‘raw beauty,’ like you have when you put effort into it.” He smiles as he says this, as if it’s a compliment.

I smile back, looking genuine because I’ve practiced that lie my whole life. “You’re always so sweet, Jack.”

He continues looking out to sea.

The only way I could sleep with him is if I have a few drinks first—and it’s been a good day of filming. The high of a good creative day can make even Mitchell, the key researcher for this project, a bit more attractive.

Jack leaves, and I am left alone in the windy weather. For all of my complaints, he’s a genuinely talented man, and when he’s contemplating the project, not much else matters to him. That’s what I want: a story that makes my eyes slip to that far-away place where nothing else matters. I want to be consumed. Instead, I’ve spent the last two years in pointless jobs just to pay the rent.

• • • •

Three days pass in which I realize that no one has mentioned the missing man. He died. Now he’s a meal for the many creatures of the sea that feed on the dead meat they find. Likely he ate enough seafood that there’s a fairness in his body nourishing them now. Really, if you think about it, by moving his corpse those few feet I gave the sea an offering.

I protected myself.

It’s not like I killed him. Probably. I’m fairly sure I would have proof if I did. Murder is like that: It leaves a mark on you.

Since I seem to be avoiding jail, I need to focus on the project. I haven’t found a single person willing to be interviewed—other than the old men who seem eager to tell tales and drink. We put out feelers, and I hung fliers around Kirkwall, the main city in Orkney. No bites.

Maybe we just need some good public relations.

So, I’m at the pub again. A different one. Tonight is a “peatfire tales” event where locals tell folklore to tourists who sip one free glass of single malt while enjoying the unique scent of burning peat. I came here searching for the local or locals who could go on record for the project—or at least some people who might talk to me so I can find some possibilities for Jack.

I started the night determined not to be charmed by either the folklore or the fire, but when I realize that there weren’t any “pretty Scottish lasses” to lure into a video spot, I give in and order myself a quality glass of whisky. I am, after all, a writer. Unpublished perhaps, but I am still a writer. More importantly, I’m an excellent liar. That’s the trick to success in life: the ability to lie, to con, to manipulate. Well, that and a wee bit of ruthlessness. My mama taught me that part.

Tonight, the only ones here are tourists with family or friends. The only single person here, other than me, is a pretty young woman standing at the back of the room. She’s as far from the fire as anyone can be without leaving the room, so she’s draped in shadows. She has long brown hair, falling to her low back. Her body is neither slight nor heavy, and her height is average. She wears jeans, a plain cotton top, and a long cardigan. Nothing about her appearance is atypical, except a small smile that says she knows secrets or perhaps is holding back laughter. She holds her body like an athlete, and when she moves to the side to let a server pass by, I can’t help thinking that she moves as gracefully as the sea. I wonder briefly if she is a dancer or runner. Either way, I cannot pull my gaze away.

When she smiles, I swear I can feel my body tilt toward her the way the sea follows the moon. Before I mean to do so, I’m across the room, beside her, too near her. She is not the first woman I’ve flirted with at anonymous bars. She likely won’t be the last. She is, for reasons I don’t ponder too closely, the first person who has ever been irresistible to me.

“Hello, Isabel,” she says with a strange lilt to her voice.

I swear I can hear waves. I glance at the storyteller with her musicians, wondering how they created that sound with no electronics. I look to the window, into the darkness where the sea waits.

“Would you like a drink?” The woman extends a full glass to me. “Or have you had too much already?”

I realize that she has two drinks. She was expecting me. I don’t know how—or how she knows my name.

When I try to ask, she touches a finger to her lips and says, “The storyteller is still speaking. Be polite.”

Mutely my gaze follows her hand as she points toward the woman at the fireside. The woman at the fire might be speaking Gaelic or gibberish for all I know. Her voice lifts and falls, drifting to a whisper and erupting in a roar. There’s music in her words. Scotland seems like a land where music is the pulse that underlies the whole of the landscape. It reminds me of home. Not California, but my real home in the South. The music is different, but in both places, it rises up from the land. Here, the sea’s waves move in the people, and the language rolls. The syllables are merely waves that found their way through human lips. It’s different than the bayou, where thick air feels like it makes our words and our motions slower. The bayou makes the mundane turn mystical.

And a few moments or hours later, when the woman at my side meets my gaze and simply walks away, I’m fairly certain that she’s wrought of music and sea. I could swear I hear it, feel it, moonlight over waves, waves crashing over my head. It’s all fine, though, as long as she’s there. It’s inexplicable. My glass of whisky is full yet again, so I could be drunk. Either way, I follow her, follow the music that slips from her skin, the waves that roll in the sway of her hips, the steady beat of her footfall. As she glances back at me, I want to tell her that I’d follow her anywhere.

I try to say just that.

I turn and leave the few lights of the tiny town behind. She’s there, just ahead of me. She glows like she’s swallowed the moon, and I am nothing but water that must follow her pull.

I’m knee deep in the sea when I realize she’s gone. She slips away in the darkness, and I am left without her light. I back away until I’m standing at the edge of the sea, cold and alone and still far too drunk.

I sleep or perhaps pass out. When I wake, I see a lump in the dark beside me. It’s not as warm as me, but it’s not so cold that I mistake it for a rock. Seal. I feel like I’ve been offered a rare gift when I snuggle closer for warmth and it doesn’t move away. I’m grateful for the body heat as the liquor continues to hit me. Night is only a few hours in Orkney, so my whisky-soaked mind sees no issue with waiting—especially now that I have the seal to snuggle.

“Thank you,” I whisper, carefully patting the slick skin of its back.

When the sun breaks over the sky, I see that I am not, in fact, cuddling the chilly body of a pinniped. I can only surmise that I was drunker than I thought, because there next to me is another dead man. This time it’s Mitchell, a researcher on the team, clad in a puffy coat that I had mistaken for seal’s skin. He’s on his side, and his massive girth makes him seem vaguely seal-shaped in this position.

He’s been stabbed. Blood has pooled around the edges of his body, collected in the crevices where the sea has steadily carved its mark. I check myself, seeking clarity. Am I a killer? Well, yes, of course I am a killer. I’ve been a killer for years, but am I responsible for this body?

I have no recollection of buying the knife that’s caked with sand and crusted blood.

“Did I kill you?” I ask, the words no more than wasted air in the sea breeze. “I should remember if I did.”

I didn’t like him. Our last conversation was ugly. He called me a “glorified prostitute” and said that my only qualifications for the job are that I’m “fuckable and desperate.” He wasn’t wrong, but I still tried to slap him. He stopped me, shoved me at the wall, and ground his hips against me. His last words to me were “So high and mighty, aren’t you? If I offered you enough money, you’d change your tune.”

I’m careful not to push him over as I move away. Mitchell is a large man, and he’d be impossible to roll without help. I unzip his jacket, pull out his passport and bills. He has more cash than I would expect. I pocket it, toss the rest, and continue to try to depersonalize his body in case it’s found. After enough practice, the process is easy.

Mitchell is the fifth dead man I’ve frisked.

I worry, briefly, about his disappearance. Muggings happen in Scotland, but Orkney has the lowest crime rate in the nation. Briefly, I hope that means they also don’t have any sort of police force able to investigate disappearances. There are so many islands, so many cliffs, that a search seems improbable. And, more importantly, the landscape seems to invite dreamers who just want to get lost. Since I’ve arrived, I’ve been battling the urge to wander and maybe find whatever I’ve lost inside me.

I pat Mitchell again. “I hope this isn’t what I lost, Mitch. The urge to kill.”

I rip his shirt so I have a way to hold the knife, and then I use the blunt end to knock out his teeth. It’s easier than it ought to be. I turn it around, slice off the flesh of his fingertips. Routine. Simple. It’s not perfect, but the sea should help hide what the blade doesn’t.

Afterward I wipe the knife and handle clean and hurl the knife as far as I can.

I’m not a killer; I’m simply practical.

Once, when I was a kid, I’d killed a man. Okay, admittedly, I killed three of them over a couple months, but it wasn’t like I did it for pleasure. As far as I know, I haven’t done it since. I’m not certain about Jason or Mitchell, but I don’t go seeking men to kill. I’m not a sociopath. I killed a few men early in life, but I was just a girl with plans. I was acquitted when no bodies were found. The charges went away, and I changed my name. Met a guy. Daniel. Paid for papers. Then I had a clean slate, a new life.

I did not kill Daniel, although he did turn up dead a year later. Part of me didn’t so much mind, because he knew the old me and new me. I suspect I might’ve killed him if I’d been thinking clearly, but I wasn’t. Fate handled it.

I think.

Is the “real me” what I’ve found here? Did I kill two more men and forget? Had I killed Daniel after I got my papers from him?

I remember killing the ones whose lives I ended when I was nineteen. I remember the sounds of the bayou when I slipped my tiny boat with dead cargo into the water and went in search of the pigs. They eat more than the gators, despite what television shows say. Eaten by gators is just sexier or something. The pigs are practical, though.

Here on Orkney, I have no pigs. The sea, however, is willing to help.

The tide is coming in, and soon the dry spot where I’ve been cuddled up to a dead man will be in the waves. The tidewater starts puddling around my feet, covering Mitchell inch by inch.

In the surf, I see a seal. They seem to be everywhere here. It’s easy to understand why Jack chose this series of islands. The seals bask on rocks that jut out of the water or amidst the rocks on some of the coastal stretches. They haul out on land, but never quite let us approach.

I should’ve known that it wasn’t a seal offering me warmth in the early hours. Maybe they’ll offer him some warmth as his body finds its final home in the cold waters of the North Atlantic.

• • • •

Several hours later, I’m at a table in the Lynnfield Hotel dining room where Jack has stationed us today. It’s mid-morning, past the breakfast crowd and not yet time for lunch, so we are alone in the room. Like many of the restaurants I’ve visited on the islands, there is a strange out-of-time feeling to the room. The mix of antiques and no-longer-modern but not-yet-antique touches doesn’t clash, but there is a strange sense that the year could be years past or years future.

Time moves differently on these islands, though, so this seems right. The extreme imbalance of the light and darkness, the peculiar lack of trees, and the constant press of sea and wind have started to re-shape me. I want to ask the others about it, but no one in the crew speaks to me unless it’s for business. The nature of my position is that I belong to Jack, as if I am an extension of his eyes and ears.

“I’ve come for the job,” she says. “For your film.”

The woman from the peatfire readings stands in front of me.

I’m first tier, technically doing the interviews unless he wants to follow-up. Meanwhile, he sits at a table to my left with a pot of tea and a stack of pages he’s alternately scowling at or scrawling on.

“Name?”

“Margaret. You may call me Margaret.” She pronounces these words as if she’s bestowing a gift upon me, and I don’t feel able to ask for her surname. She has the same small smile that she had at the pub.

Jack looks up at the sound of her voice. I see him notice her voice and her figure. She’s not wrapped in the layers that our crew still favors. Instead, she wears a simple black cotton t-shirt, jeans, and low hiking boots. Her only concession to the weather is a red scarf.

“We met,” I manage to say.

“Yes. More than once.”

I’m sure she’s wrong. I’d have remembered her if we’d met repeatedly. “No, at the pub. I’ve only been here a few days and . . .”

She looks past me then. Smiling.

“And who have we here?” Jack asks.

His voice is slick and charming, and I know already that he’ll offer her a job. Margaret will be the face and voice speaking of the sea. It seems fitting. She makes me think of the ocean, or maybe I’m simply smitten. The way she moves feels too fluid for land.

“. . . with Isabel.”

I look up, realizing that I’ve been lost in my thoughts. “What?”

“Of course,” Jack says, speaking right over me. “These days one can never be too sure. Some men would treat a woman wrong, take advantage. You’re smart to be cautious of strangers, but”—he drops an arm around my shoulders companionably—“Isabel will vouch for me.”

“He is a talented filmmaker,” I reply dutifully.

“And a gentleman.” He squeezes me slightly as he says it.

I nod. I can’t say he is—or isn’t. Silence seems more like truth. Somehow lying to her seems wrong.

We settle at the table where Jack was working, and the server takes this as a cue to check in on us. In short order, another pot of tea is en route to us.

Margaret’s hands wrap around the teacup as if she’s afraid it might suddenly fall or shatter at her touch. She drinks carefully, and I worry that I’ve truly slipped into some other world for a moment. Perhaps this is what a psychotic break is like. I keep finding dead men, and I’m attributing odd traits to a perfectly lovely Scottish woman.

“Since you’re here for the seals, have you heard of selchies? Or of the Finfolk?” she asks.

Jack tenses. “This is a scientific film.”

“Ah.” Margaret pushes her teacup away. “I thought you were asking after local commentary.”

“On tourism, maybe the impact of the fisheries. Not fairy tales. Do you know about the seal watching tours or the fisheries? Or—”

At this Margaret’s smile slips a little. “The fisheries get angry at the seals for hunting fish, as if they should know that those fish are reserved for humans. Trap the fish in tiny spaces—” Her lips press as she cuts herself off. Inhales. Exhales. The smile returns. “I have no need to speak of them. There is nothing to be said that will change man’s greed.”

“Well, then, tourism? Or some sort of encounter with the seals?”

“An encounter with the seals,” she echoes. Her hands curl around her teacup again. This time her fingers are too far forward, as if she intends to lift it with only her palms.

Without thinking I pull the cup forward by its base, resettling it in her hands.

She startles at the gesture, staring at me again as if I am some curious thing.

Trying not to shake and spill the hot liquid on her, I carefully pour Margaret’s tea before I say, “I thought ‘Selchie’ was the Orcadian word for pinnipeds, seals.”

I am rewarded with a smile. I’d do a lot more than pour tea for such a look. Margaret may not be carrying the moon inside her skin as I thought when I was too far into my whisky, but she is remarkably alluring.

Jack makes a small face, but he doesn’t pursue the topic. I have no doubt that Margaret would feature in stills for the film, a human touch for the scientific project. It sells. Footage of seals isn’t enough. Tourists in Southern California can walk up to the colony at La Jolla and take selfies with them. Until we’d come here, I’d questioned the logic of the project. Who hasn’t seen a pinniped up close?

“Tell us,” Jack relents.

“Here, on the islands,” Margaret says, “there are selchies, seal-folk, and there are Finfolk. The Finfolk, like many fey things, steal away mortals. They are cruel and hurtful.”

“Humans or Finfolk?” Jack interjects.

“Yes.” Margaret’s gaze drifts to the windows, and I can see in her the same longing I feel when I stand at the edge of the sea.

“The selchies,” she adds, “are not cruel. By nature, they are seals. Harmless. Playful. They come ashore, and they shed their pelts so they might meet the humans they see from afar.”

She turns to meet Jack’s gaze and then mine. “They see you watching them. They see you with your cameras and your curiosities, and so they come to you.”

Despite all of the reading I’ve done on pinnipeds the last month, this is new to me. The words pluck at something I’ve heard since we arrived in Scotland: a warning in a song in a pub one night, one of those folksy lamenting tunes that go beautifully with another glass of Scotland’s finest drink.

“You cannot understand the seals if you don’t know of the Finfolk and the selchies,” Margaret warns.

“I’m sold.” Jack leans back in his seat and claps his hands together. “We’ll want you standing at the water when you talk. Intersplice your story with footage of the pinnipeds. This can work.”

He’s scribbling notes now.

“Isa, get her information.” He’s up and moving. “I’ll call Ned. We’ll want”—he glances at her, and she’s no longer a woman but a subject behind a lens even though his hands lack the camera in this moment—“hair loose. There’s always a breeze, so that natural thing.”

He glances at me briefly. “Talk to Carrie.”

“Cheri,” I interject.

He waves my correction away. “The costume girl. Talk to her about wardrobe. She can’t wear that.”

And then he leaves, lost to any measure of civility now that his mind is on the project. This, too, is part of my job. I handle the hurt feelings. I explain his “creative genius.” I turn to Margaret prepared to do my due diligence, but she’s staring out the window again.

“He’s doesn’t mean to insult you.”

Margaret stares at me in confusion. “There was insult?”

I exhale in relief. “Not intentionally. He’s very focused.”

She nods.

“Can I get your information?” I ask. “Your mobile number?”

Margaret stands. “I am not one for being indoors. Walk with me, Isabel.”

And once again she moves with such speed and grace that I wonder if she runs in her free time. I am stone sober today, but I still struggle to keep pace. It does not occur to me to ask her to slow or to refuse to follow her.

We walk quickly, me trailing her slightly, until she stops as suddenly as she had begun. At the water. At the precise spot where I found Jason a few days ago. Warily, I look around for evidence that he was here, a washed-up credit card or shoe. There is nothing.

“Nature sets things right,” she tells me.

I nod mutely.

“Shall I tell you of the selchie and of the Finman?” she asks softly.

“Sure.” I don’t see any reason not to listen, and there are several good reasons to indulge her.

“You don’t believe, then?”

I laugh. “In fairy tale creatures? No. I’m from the middle of nowhere, but that doesn’t make me a fool.”

Margaret glances at me without turning, so she looking at me from the corner of her eye. “So, do you think me a fool, Isabel? An island ‘lassie,’ as your man would call me.” Her own musical voice grows harsh, as if she’s using the clunky accent Jason affected. “A wee island fool willing to be used to sell your film?”

“No.” I swallow with difficulty. “He’s not my man, either. He’s my employer.”

“Fine. You still do not believe the things I tell you, though?” Margaret sounds angry now, as if I’ve insulted her.

“I don’t question what you believe, but—”

“I believe in truth,” Margaret insists. “The things I see. The things I touch with my hands.”

“Me, too,” I agree.

“Then you’ll want to hear about the selchie and the Finman. They weren’t from the same place, but they wanted the same things.” Margaret’s voice rises and falls, as if heartbeat and breath and the sea all aligned at once. Her voice was all of them, pulling my lungs to motion as she pulled the waves to her. It was foolish, and fanciful, but I would swear on my father’s grave that she was somehow controlling all of it.

“The people forget that the selchies aren’t as kind as the stories say. They forget that water folk are kin to the fey things that live in the isles,” Margaret sing-speaks. “The Finfolk, though, if they are remembered at all, are known to be man-stealers. No one forgets their cruelty.”

“But both are cruel? And . . . steal people?”

“They’re fey,” Margaret answers with a half-shrug, as if that’s an answer. Maybe, to her, it is. “What they wanted, they took. What they needed, they stole. Who among us doesn’t want to do the same?”

I don’t reply. What is there is to say?

“Do not ever lie to me, Isabel.” Margaret reaches up and cups the side of my face. “I am not so different from the sea. My anger is damning.”

I’m not sure what the right reaction is in that moment, but I’m fairly certain that mine is far from wise.

“Come to my hotel?”

Margaret shakes her head. “I am not much for buildings. Even when a pretty woman will be there to greet me. I came inside once today. For you. Another day, though.”

• • • •

The next night I’m in front of the hotel where we’re all staying when Jack comes outside for a smoke. He startles at seeing me there. After a moment, he lights a cigarette, takes a long drag, and says, “You’re not at the bar.”

I shrug. There’s no polite way of telling my boss that I decided that I ought to stop drinking entirely because I’ve almost doubled my up close and personal contact with corpses in the past week.

“Did Mitchell say anything about a trip?”

“No . . .?”

Jack scowls. “I wanted him to research the fairy tales that woman was talking about.”

“Margaret.”

He glances at me, motioning the hand holding the cigarette as if reeling a reply from me.

“Her name is Margaret.”

“Right.” He smokes silently for several moments before saying, “I don’t need an assistant.”

“Are you firing me, Jack?”

“No, I’m just pointing out the obvious. You knew that when I hired you, right?” He is hazy with the halo of smoke around his head. “It’s more of a liking someone to handle details and any other needs I have. I have needs, Isabel.”

“Sex wasn’t in the contract.”

He shrugs. “True, but if it’s not offered, I won’t keep you on payroll. That’s not a secret, Isabel.”

As much as I want to argue, claim insult, I don’t feel like lying. I’ve started to think I lie to protect other people, avoid conflict, as much as to get my way. I don’t actually care about conflict, and my way is not what I thought it was. I glance over at Jack and admit, “I figured I’d have a few drinks and let you take me to your room when you got around to it.”

“But?”

“I don’t care about the job enough any more.” It feels good to be so honest with him, to not feel so trapped. After a pause, I add, “And you’re not as handsome as you think.”

He stares at me in shock.

“Success didn’t change your looks or the flab at your middle or your horrible manners.” I know better, but I keep on talking. “You’re rude, and if you weren’t famous, you’d never get laid without paying for it. And truthfully, I’m not enough of a whore these days to trade sex for a paycheck.”

Jack’s quiet for several minutes before saying, “You’re fired, Isabel. Find your own way back to LA. And you can pay for the rest of your trip if you stay past tomorrow’s check-out.”

He walks away, dropping his cigarette on the ground where it smolders.

I stomp on it before I collect it and toss it in the rubbish bin. Rain or not, that’s an asshole move. He’s not too good to care about the environment. Litter, especially in an area where rain is constant, makes its way to the sea. He’s adding poison to the sea where the creatures he supposedly adores live and eat. Rage fills me. I want to scream at him, to make him pick it up.

“Fuckhead,” I mutter.

Melodic laughter drifts from behind me. I know it’s her before I turn. Margaret. Something of the sea is in her every sound and move.

“Who offended you this time?” she asks.

“My boss.” I pause and correct myself, “My ex-boss now. He fired me because I don’t want to sleep with him.”

Margaret stares at me. And I am afraid. There is something feral in her that I’d not seen until now, and I can’t decide if I should run or cling to her.

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have said—”

“Filth.” Margaret glances behind us, to the closed door. “I try to correct them, to make them understand. They destroy everything they touch with their filthy ways.”

“I’m sorry . . .? “

Margaret looks at me, her eyes brighter than seems possible. “You don’t understand, Isabel. I thought you were different, but human women never understand either.”

“Human . . .?”

She makes a gesture like she is cutting the air. “You will not have relations with him.”

“Right. That’s why I’m fired.”

Margaret nods. “I shall fix this as well.”

“My being fired?”

Her attention snaps to me. “His offense.”

• • • •

I wake several days later to the sound of someone hammering on my door. My resolve to surrender booze fell apart after I was fired, and I ended up on a bender of the most pitiful sort. I am alone in my room with a bunch of empty bottles and food wrappers. Obviously, I’ve left the room at some point, as not all of the food was stuff I had here when I started drinking.

On the other side of the door is Margaret. Behind her is Jack.

“I won’t go on the boat with men alone.” She crosses her arms. “He says I must, but unless you are there, I shall not. I signed nothing.”

“It’ll cost you,” I tell Jack. “Hotel tab. All of it.”

I know the project is behind schedule. He’s lost a researcher, and he’s lost me. I can’t imagine he knew exactly how much I did for him—actual tasks, that is, even though I refused the one he’d apparently hired me to do.

“No plane ticket,” he says.

I shrug. I’m not sure when I want to leave—or if I will. I’ve fallen a bit in love with Orkney.

“Fine. Hotel bill in full for another week. Downstairs. Five minutes.” He walks away.

Margaret lingers. She reaches out and strokes my cheek. Then she’s gone, too.

“Pay my bill, or I’m not getting on the boat,” I call.

He says nothing, but fifteen minutes later, I’m standing at the front desk as he prepays another week’s lodging.

For reasons unknown to anyone but Jack, we are to go out onto the sea in a rigid inflatable boat. These “rib” contraptions seem sketchy to me, but half the tour companies in the islands and over in the Hebrides use them. I guess I’d rather trust the locals than my land-loving fears. Honestly, I’d have climbed aboard a Minke whale if it meant seeing Margaret.

When we set out, the small boat holds a captain, the cameraman, Jack, Margaret, and me. The captain watches Margaret carefully, and unless my eyes deceived me, he made the sign of the cross when she boarded the craft.

“I have great respect for the sea,” he tells me in an overly loud voice. “Those things that live in it are why these islands thrive. They protected us from the Norsemen in years gone by, and they protect us now.”

Margaret smiles at him. “Indeed.”

Jack rolls his eyes, not that she sees, but I do. Maybe he’s right to doubt the stories of the island, but there’s a long space between doubt and mockery. I don’t believe in selchies, or lindwurms, or faeries, or any number of things I hear of in the tales here, but I realize as well that we all believe in things that seem a touch far-fetched if we put them out on the table in front of strangers. That’s what she’s doing. For his film. For me. I wasn’t sure how it was for me, but I got the sense that it was in some way that only Margaret knew.

“Once . . . a selchie lay with a Finman,” she begins once we are far from land.

The camera’s eye is trained on her, as is mine. The boat’s captain does not look back at her, at any of us. He’s not in the frame of the film.

There is only Margaret and the sea.

“Their child, a girl, grew up with the need to bring mortals into the sea,” she continues. “She offered them like gifts, tithes to the waves. She culled the herd of men that came to the edges of the sea. It was not enough. Never enough.”

Jack, to my side, opens his mouth like he’s about to object.

“The men were cruel, and the women weak. Too afraid to shed blood.” She glances at me, smiles, and leans forward to tug Jack into the frame of the film. “The daughter of the sea found a way when she could, culling them as a shepherd with a flock.”

Margaret stands and pulls Jack to his feet. The boat shifts, but the captain keeps us steady. Maybe that’s easy, but I’m terrified.

She leans in and kisses Jack.

And I am no longer thinking of anything but this, but him touching her.

Steadily, as if it’s nothing, she reaches up and chokes him. He flails, trying to pull away, clawing at her wrists and forearms, kicking.

“What the—”

“Don’t stop filming,” I whisper. There is no other way to believe this. I’m not sure why I want to, but a tiny sliver of logic reminds me that there were two other dead men I’ve seen lately. Men I have wondered if I killed.

The cameraman drops his camera and leaps overboard. The captain does not look behind us. I, however, cannot look away. She chokes Jack, kisses him, cradles him as he goes limp, and when she stops kissing him, he is dead.

Margaret sighs, and I am certain that her sigh is why the winds have begun to churn the sea. Suddenly, the waters seem more like the edge of a storm than the calm sea of an hour ago.

“If he were pure, he would’ve survived. I’d have tasted goodness, and he would’ve lived.” Margaret meets my gaze. “Three for sacrifice.”

“You . . . killed them.”

“Did I, Isabel?” Margaret’s voice is a whisper of waves, so slight that I barely hear her even as I am next to her.

“You did. The camera. You killed Jack on camera.” I point at the camera, which is sideways at the bottom of the boat. “It’s on there. Proof.”

“Maybe.”

“You killed all of them. The men. The ones I found.” I sound a bit manic, but I thought I’d murdered a few men again.

It happens, you know?

“I thought it was me,” I whisper.

“Perhaps it was.” She motions me to the camera.

I debate between watching and letting it record. It’s the only proof I have. I left the shore in a boat with a captain and three people. Two others are dead—because the cameraman won’t survive that cold water.

“Come with me, or they’ll send you to prison,” Margaret points out calmly, voice still a murmured whisper.

“I’m innocent.”

She shakes her head. “No. You chose them. Each dead man. You chose him. I paid your dowry.”

I pick up the camera, stop the recording, and watch it. There is no proof. Margaret’s face is never in the frame. I try to back it up, to see earlier footage of her telling a tale. The cameraman must’ve done something wrong in his fear. None of it is there.

Margaret opens a rucksack, pulls out a fur, and strips. She stands bare naked for a moment and says, “Come with me, Isabel.”

She clutches the fur to her and jumps into the water.

I scan the waves, for her and for the missing cameraman, but all I find is a seal.

“Are you going?” the captain asks, finally glancing back at me but steadfastly not looking over the edge of the boat. “I’m headed to shore, miss, so if you’re going . . .”

I look back into the waves, and I am faced with the same beautiful woman I’ve found fascinating. The only significant difference is that she’s blue now and as she moves I see a tail fin.

“What . . . this is . . . Is that a costume?”

Margaret laughs, and the sound is the lure of the sea. She is the voice that drowns sailors, that crashes ships on rocks, that invites a woman to her doom.

Still blue, Margaret shifts so she’s floating on her back, bare breasts breaking the surface of the water like a mermaid. When my gaze lifts from her chest to her face, she says, “You are not afraid, Isabel. Not of death or blood. And you are not happy. Do you want to be happy?”

I glance at the men, think of the recording, of my empty life, of the fate that will await me on land. There is no hope on shore. I’m not sure if death or life awaits me if I agree, but I see no other answer. I leap overboard, and in moments, I feel Margaret’s arms wrap around me. Her bare skin against my layers of clothes and jacket.

Together, we sink into the sea.

• • • •

Days later, the boat is found, drifting. Empty but for a camera. The crew attaches a tow rope.

Silently, the fishermen haul the boat to shore.

After they dock, their captain lifts the camera from the boat. After a few moments, the men start playing the footage. The captain watches as one man is tossed overboard by a woman’s hand. The camera drops. Another splash.

“You . . . killed them,” a woman’s voice says in the recording.

“You did. The camera. You killed Jack on camera. It’s on there. Proof.”

“You killed all of them. The men. The ones I found. I thought it was me.”

There are pauses as if she’s speaking to someone, but no other voice is recorded.

Finally, the same woman says, “I’m innocent.”

Another splash, and then nothing but the sounds of the sea.

On the whole of the recording, there is only the sea and the voice of one woman, a drunken one that they’d all heard at the pub more than once. No one knew her, only that she’d come with the filmmakers, and like them, she’d vanished.

“Toss it in the rubbish bin,” the man closest to him says. “The sea took them. Her, too, from the sound of it.”

Murmured prayers and gestures ripple over the crew. Not a man there has a family without a tale of someone lost to a storm. Death was the price paid for a life drawn from the waves. The sea gave, but the sea demanded tithing.

“Better strangers than our own,” one of the fishermen says.

A seal watches them as they discard the camera, and then a fin—that several of them will swear was blue—flashes in the waves as the seal departs.

©2019 by Melissa Marr.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melissa Marr is a former university literature instructor who writes fiction for adults, teens, and children. Her books have been translated into twenty-eight languages and have been bestsellers internationally (Germany, France, Sweden, Australia, et. al.) as well as domestically. She is best known for the Wicked Lovely series for teens, Graveminder for adults, and her debut picture book Bunny Roo, I Love You. She currently lives in Arizona. In her free time, she has been teaching medieval swordfighting, and in 2019, will start teaching for VCFA’s M.F.A. in Writing for Children and Young Adults.

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

The Hidden Girl

Ken Liu | 9632 words

Beginning in the eighth century, the Imperial court of Tang Dynasty China increasingly relied on military governors—the jiedushi—whose responsibilities began with border defense but gradually encompassed taxation, civil administration, and other aspects of political power. They were, in fact, independent feudal warlords whose accountability to Imperial authority was nominal.

Rivalry among the governors was often violent and bloody.

• • • •

On the morning after my tenth birthday, spring sunlight dapples the stone slabs of the road in front of our house through the blooming branches of the pagoda tree. I climb out onto the thick bough pointing west like an immortal’s arm and reach for a strand of yellow flowers, anticipating the sweet taste tinged with a touch of bitterness.

“Alms, young mistress?”

I look down and see a bhikkhuni. I can’t tell how old she is—her face is unlined but there is a fortitude in her dark eyes that reminds me of my grandmother. The light fuzz over her shaved head glows in the warm sun like a halo, and her gray kasaya is clean but tattered at the hem. She holds up a wooden bowl in her left hand, gazing up at me expectantly.

“Would you like some pagoda tree flowers?” I ask.

She smiles. “I haven’t had any since I was a young girl. It would be a delight.”

“If you stand below me, I’ll drop some into your bowl,” I say, reaching for the silk pouch on my back.

She shakes her head. “I can’t eat flowers that have been touched by another hand—too infected with the mundane concerns of this dusty world.”

“Then climb up yourself,” I say. Immediately I feel ashamed at my annoyance.

“If I get them myself, they wouldn’t be alms now would they?” There’s a hint of laughter in her voice.

“All right,” I say. Father has always taught me to be polite to the monks and nuns. We may not follow the Buddhist teachings, but it doesn’t make sense to antagonize the spirits, whether they are Daoist, Buddhist, or wild spirits who rely on no learned masters at all. “Tell me which flowers you want; I’ll try to get them for you without touching them.”

She points to some flowers at the end of a slim branch below my bough. They are paler in color than the flowers from the rest of the tree, which means they are sweeter. But the branch they dangle from is much too thin for me to climb.

I hook my knees around the thick bough I’m on and lean back until I’m dangling upside down like a bat. It’s fun to see the world this way, and I don’t care that the hem of my dress is flapping around my face. Father always yells at me when he sees me like this, but he never stays angry at me for too long, on account of my losing my mother when I was just a baby.

Wrapping my hands in the loose folds of my sleeves, I try to grab for the flowers. But I’m still too far from the branch she wants, those white flowers tantalizingly just out of reach.

“If it’s too much trouble,” the nun calls out, “don’t worry about it. I don’t want you to tear your dress.”

I bite my bottom lip, determined to ignore her. By tightening and flexing the muscles in my belly and thighs, I begin to swing back and forth. When I’ve reached the apex of an upswing I judge to be high enough, I let go with my knees.

As I plunge through the leafy canopy, the flowers she wants brush by my face and I snap my teeth around a strand. My fingers grab the lower branch, which sinks under my weight and slows my momentum as my body swings back upright. For a moment, it seems as if the branch would hold, but then I hear a crisp snap and feel suddenly weightless.

I tuck my knees under me and manage to land in the shade of the pagoda tree, unharmed. Immediately, I roll out of the way, and the flower-laden branch crashes to the spot on the ground I just vacated a moment later.

I walk nonchalantly up to the nun and open my jaw to drop the strand of flowers into her alms bowl. “No dust. And you only said no hands.”

• • • •

In the shade of the pagoda tree, we sit with our legs crossed in the lotus position like the buddhas in the temple. She picks the flowers off the stem: one for her, one for me. The sweetness is lighter and less cloying than the sugar dough figurines Father sometimes buys me.

“You have a talent,” she says. “You’d make a good thief.”

I look at her, indignant. “I’m a general’s daughter.”

“Are you?” she says. “Then you’re already a thief.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have walked many miles,” she says. I look at her bare feet: The bottoms are callused and leathery. “I see peasants starving in fields while the great lords plot and scheme for bigger armies. I see ministers and generals drink wine from ivory cups and conduct calligraphy with their piss on silk scrolls while orphans and widows must make one cup of rice last five days.”

“Just because we are not poor doesn’t make us thieves. My father serves his lord, the Jiedushi of Weibo, with honor and carries out his duties faithfully.”

“We’re all thieves in this world of suffering,” the nun says. “Honor and faith are not virtues, only excuses for stealing more.”

“Then you’re a thief as well,” I say, anger making my face glow with heat. “You accept alms and do no work to earn it.”

She nods. “I am indeed. The Buddha teaches us that the world is an illusion, and suffering is inevitable as long as we do not see through it. If we’re all fated to be thieves, it’s better to be a thief who adheres to a code that transcends the mundane.”

“What is your code then?”

“To disdain the moral pronouncements of hypocrites; to be true to my word; to always do what I promise, no more and no less. To hone my talent and wield it like a beacon in a darkening world.”

I laugh. “What is your talent, Mistress Thief?”

“I steal lives.”

• • • •

The inside of the cabinet is dark and warm, the air redolent of camphor. By the faint light coming through the slit between the doors, I arrange the blankets around me to make a cozy nest.

The footsteps of patrolling soldiers echo through the hallway outside my bedroom. Each time one of them turns a corner, the clanging of armor and sword marks the passage of another fraction of an hour, bringing me closer to morning.

The conversation between the bhikkhuni and my father replays through my mind.

“Give her to me. I will have her as my student.”

“Much as I’m flattered by the Buddha’s kind attention, I must decline. My daughter’s place is at home, by my side.”

“You can give her to me willingly, or I can take her away without your blessing.”

“Are you threatening me with a kidnapping? Know that I’ve made my living on the tip of a sword, and my house is guarded by fifty armed men who will give their lives for their young mistress.”

“I never threaten; I simply inform. Even if you keep her in an iron chest ringed about with bronze chains at the bottom of the ocean, I will take her away as easily as I cut your beard with this dagger.”

There was a cold, bright, metallic flash. Father drew his sword, the grinding noise of blade against sheath wringing my heart so that it leaped wildly.

But the bhikkuni was already gone, leaving behind a few loose strands of gray hair floating gently to the floor in the slanted rays of the sunlight. My father, stunned, held his hand against the side of his face where the dagger had brushed against his skin.

The hairs landed; my father removed his hand. There was a patch of denuded skin on his cheek, as pale as the stones slabs of the road in the morning sun. No blood.

“Do not be afraid, Daughter. I will triple the guards tonight. The spirit of your dear departed mother will guard you.”

But I’m afraid. I am afraid. I think about the glow of sunlight around the nun’s head. I like my long, thick hair, which the maids tell me resemble my mother’s, and she had combed her hair a hundred times each night before she went to sleep. I don’t want to have my head shaved.

I think about the glint of metal in the nun’s hand, quicker than the eye can follow.

I think about the strands of hair from my father’s beard drifting to the floor.

The light from the oil lamp outside the closet door flickers. I scramble to the corner of the closet and squeeze my eyes tightly shut.

There is no noise. Just a draft that caresses my face. Softly, like the flapping wings of a moth.

I open my eyes. For a moment, I don’t understand what I’m seeing.

Suspended about three feet from my face is an oblong object, about the size of my forearm and shaped like the cocoon of a silkworm. Glowing like a sliver of the moon, it gives off a light that is without warmth, shadowless. Fascinated, I crawl closer.

No, an “object” isn’t quite right. The cold light spills out of it like melting ice, along with the draft that whips my hair about my face. It is more like the absence of substance, a rip in the murky interior of the cabinet, a negative object that consumes darkness and turns it into light.

My throat feels parched and I swallow, hard. Fingers trembling, I reach out to touch the glow. A half second of hesitation, then I make contact.

Or no contact. There is no skin-searing heat nor bone-freezing chill. My impression of the object as a negative is confirmed as my fingers touch nothing. And neither do they emerge from the other side—they’ve simply vanished into the glow, as though I’m plunging my hand into a hole in space.

I jerk my hand back out and examine my fingers, wiggling them. No damage as far as I can see.

A hand reaches out from the rip, grabs my arm, and pulls me toward the light. Before I can scream, blazing light blinds me, and I’m overwhelmed by the sensation of falling, falling from the tip of a heaven-reaching pagoda tree toward an earth that never comes.

• • • •

The mountain floats among the clouds like an island.

I’ve tried to find my way down, but always, I get lost among the foggy woods. Just go down, down, I tell myself. But the fog thickens until it takes on substance, and no matter how hard I push, the wall of clouds refuses to yield. Then I have no choice but to sit down, shivering, wringing the condensation out of my hair. Some of the wetness is from tears, but I won’t admit that.

She materializes out of the fog. Wordlessly, she beckons me to follow her back up the peak; I obey.

“You’re not very good at hiding,” she says.

There is no response to that. If she could steal me from a cabinet inside a general’s house guarded by walls and soldiers, I suppose there’s nowhere I can hide from her.

We emerge from the woods back onto the sun-drenched peak. A gust of wind brushes past us, whipping up the fallen leaves into a storm of gold and crimson.

“Are you hungry?” she asks, her voice not unkind.

I nod. Something about her tone catches me off guard. Father never asks me if I’m hungry, and I sometimes dream of my mother making me a breakfast of freshly baked bread and fermented beans. It’s been three days since the bhikkhuni had taken me here, and I’ve not eaten anything but some sour berries I found in the woods and a few bitter roots I dug from the ground.

“Come along,” she says.

She takes me up a zigzagging path carved into the face of a cliff. The path is so narrow that I dare not look down but shuffle along, my face and body pressed against the rock face and my outstretched hands clinging to dangling vines like a gecko. The bhikkhuni, on the other hand, strides along the path as though she’s walking in the middle of a wide avenue in Chang’an. She waits patiently at each turn for me to catch up.

I hear the faint sounds of clanking metal above me. Having dug my feet into depressions along the path and tested the vine in my hands to be sure it’s rooted securely to the mountain, I look up.

Two young women, about fourteen years of age, are fighting with swords in the air. No, fighting isn’t quite the right word. It’s more accurate to call their movements a dance.

One of the women, dressed in a white robe, pushes off the cliff with both feet while holding onto a vine with her left hand. She swings away from the cliff in a wide arc, her legs stretched out before her in a graceful pose that reminds me of the apsaras—flying nymphs who make their home in the clouds—painted on scrolls in the temples. The sword in her right hand glints in the sunlight like a shard of heaven.

As her sword tip approaches her opponent on the cliff, the other woman lets go of the vine she’s hanging on to and leaps straight up. The black robe billows around her like the wings of a giant moth, and as her ascent slows, she flips herself at the apex of her arc and tumbles toward the woman in white like a diving hawk, her sword arm leading as a beak.

Clang!

The tips of their swords collide, and a spark lights up the air like an exploding firework. The sword in the hand of the woman in black bends into a crescent, slowing her descent until she is standing inverted in the air, supported only by the tip of her adversary’s blade.

Both women punch out with their free hands, palms open.

Thump!

A crisp blow reverberates in the air. The woman in black lands against the mountain face, where she attaches herself by deftly wrapping a vine around her ankle. The woman in white completes her arced swing back to the rock, and, like a dragonfly dipping its tail into the still pond, pushes off again for another assault.

I watch, mesmerized, as the two swordswomen pursue, dodge, strike, feint, punch, kick, slash, glide, tumble, and stab across the webbing of vines over the face of the sheer cliff, thousands of feet above the roiling clouds below, defying both gravity and mortality. They are graceful as birds flitting across a swaying bamboo forest, quick as mantises leaping across a dew-dappled web, impossible as the immortals of legends whispered by hoarse-voiced bards in teahouses.

Also, I notice with relief that they both have thick, flowing, beautiful hair. Perhaps shaving is not required to be the bhikkhuni’s student.

“Come,” the bhikkhuni beckons, and I obediently make my way over to the small stone platform jutting into the air from the bend in the path. “I guess you really are hungry,” she observes, a hint of laughter in her voice. Embarrassed, I close my jaw, still hanging open from shock at seeing the sparring girls.

With the clouds far below our feet and the wind whipping around us, it feels like the world I’ve known all my life has fallen away.

“Here.” She points to a pile of bright pink peaches at the end of the platform, each about the size of my fist. “The hundred-year-old monkeys who live in the mountains gather these from deep in the clouds, where the peach trees absorb the essence of the heavens. After eating one of these, you won’t be hungry for a full ten days. If you become thirsty, you can drink the dew from the vines and the spring water in the cave that is our dormitory.”

The two sparring girls have climbed down from the cliff onto the platform behind us. They each take a peach.

“I will show you where you’ll sleep, Little Sister,” says the girl in white. “I’m Jinger. If you get scared from the howling wolves at night, you can crawl into my bed.”

“I’m sure you’ve never had anything as sweet as this peach,” says the girl in black. “I’m Konger. I’ve studied with Teacher the longest and know all the fruits of this mountain.”

“Have you had pagoda tree flowers?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Maybe someday you can show me.”

I bite into the peach. It is indescribably sweet and melts against my tongue as though it’s made of pure snow. Yet, as soon as I’ve swallowed a mouthful, my belly warms with the heat of its sustenance. I believe that the peach really will last me ten days. I’ll believe anything my teacher tells me.

“Why have you taken me?” I ask.

“Because you have a talent, Yinniang,” she says.

I suppose that is my name now. The Hidden Girl.

“But talents must be cultivated,” she continues. “Will you be a pearl buried in the mud of the endless East Sea, or will you shine so brightly as to awaken those who only doze through life and light up a mundane world?”

“Teach me to fly and fight like them,” I say, licking the sweet peach juice from my hands. I will become a great thief, I tell myself. I will steal my life back from you.

She nods thoughtfully and looks into the distance, where the setting sun has turned the clouds into a sea of golden splendor and crimson gore.

• • • •

Six years later:

The wheels of the donkey cart grind to a stop.

Without warning, Teacher rips the blindfold away from my eyes and digs out the silk plugs in my ears. I struggle against the sudden bright sun and the sea of noise—the braying of donkeys; the whinnying of horses; the clanging of cymbals and the wailing of erhus from some folk opera troupe; the thumping and thudding of goods being loaded and unloaded; the singing, shouting, haggling, laughing, arguing, pontificating that make up the symphony of a metropolis.

While I’m still recovering from my journey in the swaying darkness, Teacher has jumped down to the ground to leash the donkey to a roadside post. We’re in some provincial capital, that much I know—indeed, the smell of a hundred different varieties of fried dough and candied apples and horse manure and exotic perfume already told me as much even before the blindfold was off—but I can’t tell exactly where. I strain to catch snippets of conversation from the bustling city around me, but the topolect is unfamiliar.

The pedestrians passing by our cart bow to Teacher. “Amitabha,” they say.

Teacher holds up a hand in front of her chest and bows back. “Amitabha,” she says back.

I may be anywhere in the empire.

“We’ll have lunch, then you can rest up at the inn over there,” says Teacher.

“What about my task?” I ask. I’m nervous. This is the first time I’ve been away from the mountain since she’s taken me.

She looks at me with a complicated expression, halfway between pity and amusement. “So eager?”

I bite my bottom lip, not answering.

“You will choose your own method and time,” she says, her tone as placid as the cloudless sky. “I’ll be back on the third night. Good hunting.”

• • • •

“Keep your eyes open and your limbs loose,” she said. “Remember everything I’ve taught you.”

Teacher had summoned two mist hawks from nearby peaks, each the size of a full-grown man. Iron blades extended from their talons, and steel glinted from their vicious curved beaks. They circled above me, alternately emerging from and disappearing into the cloud-mist, their screeches mournful and proud.

Jinger handed me a small dagger about five inches in length. It seemed utterly inadequate for the task. My hand shook as I wrapped my fingers around the handle.

“What can be seen is not all,” she said.

“Be aware of what is hidden,” Konger added.

“You will be fine,” Jinger said, squeezing my shoulder.

“The world is full of illusions cast by the unseen Truth,” Konger said. Then she leaned in to whisper in my ear, her breath warm against my cheek, “I still have a scar on the back of my neck from my time with the hawks.”

They backed off and faded into the mist, leaving me alone with the raptors and Teacher’s voice coming from the vines above me.

“Why do we kill?” I asked.

The hawks took turns to swoop down, feinting and testing my defenses. I leapt out of the way reflexively, brandishing my dagger to ward them off.

“This is a time of chaos,” Teacher said. “The great lords of the land are filled with ambition. They take everything they can from the people they’re sworn to protect, shepherds who have turned into wolves preying on their flocks. They increase the taxes until all the walls in their palaces are gleaming with gold and silver; they take sons away from mothers until their armies swell like the current of the Yellow River; they plot and scheme and redraw lines on maps as though the country is nothing but a platter of sand, upon which the peasants creep and crawl like terrified ants.”

One of the hawks turned to dive at me. A real attack, not a test. I crouched into a defensive stance, the dagger in my right hand held up to guard my face, my left hand on the ground for stability. I kept my eyes on the hawk, letting everything fade into the background except the bright reflections from the sharp beak and talons, like a constellation in the night sky.

The hawk loomed in my vision. A light breeze brushed the back of my neck. The raptor extended its talons and flapped its wings, trying to slow its dive at the last minute.

“Who is to say that one governor is right? Or that another general is wrong?” she asked. “The man who seduces his lord’s wife may be doing so to get close to a tyrant and exact vengeance. The woman who demands rice for the peasantry from her patron may be doing so to further her own ambition. We live in a time of chaos, and the only moral choice is to be amoral. The great lords hire us to strike at their enemies. And we carry out our missions with dedication and loyalty, true and deadly as a crossbow bolt.”

I got ready to spring out of my crouch to slash at the hawk, and then I remembered the words of my sisters.

“. . . What can be seen is not all . . . I still have a scar on the back of my neck.”

I dropped to the ground and rolled to the left, the talons of the hawk who had been trying to sneak up behind me missing only by inches. It collided with its companion in the spot where my head had been but a moment ago like a diver meeting her reflection at the surface of the pool. There was a tangle of beating wings and angry screeching.

I lunged at the storm of feathers. One, two, three slashes, quicker than lightning. The hawks tumbled down, their wings crumpling as they struck the ground. Blood from the clean cuts in their throats pooled on the stone platform.

There was also blood seeping from my shoulder where the rough rocks had scraped the skin during my roll. But I had survived, and my foes had not.

“Why do we kill?” I asked again, still panting from the exertion. I had killed wild apes before, and forest panthers and bamboo grove tigers. But a pair of mist hawks were the hardest kill yet, the height of the assassin’s art. “Why do we serve as the talons of the powerful?”

“We are the winter snowstorm descending upon a house rotten with termites,” she said. “Only by hurrying the decay of the old can we bring about the rebirth of the new. We are the vengeance of a weary world.”

Jinger and Konger emerged from the mist to sprinkle corpse-dissolving powder on the hawks and to bandage my wound.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“You need to practice more,” said Jinger, but her tone was kind.

“I have to keep you alive.” Konger’s eyes flashed mischievously. “You promised to get me some pagoda tree flowers, remember?”

• • • •

The thin crescent of the moon hangs from the tip of a branch of the ancient pagoda tree outside the governor’s mansion as the night watchman rings the midnight hour. The shadows in the streets are thick as ink, the same color as my silk leggings, tight tunic, and the cloth mask over my nose and mouth.

I’m upside down, my feet hooked to the top of the wall and my body pressed against the flat surface like a clinging vine. Two soldiers pass below me on their patrol route. If they looked up, they’d think I was just a part of the shadows or a sleeping bat.

As soon as they’re gone, I arch my back and flip onto the wall. I scramble along the top, quieter than a cat, until I’m opposite the roof of the central hall of the compound. Snapping my coiled legs, I sail across the gap in a single leap and melt into the shingles on the gentle curve of the roof.

There are, of course, far stealthier ways to break into a well-protected compound, but I like to stay in this world, to remain surrounded by the night breeze and the distant hoots of the owl.

Carefully, I pry off a glazed roofing tile and peek into the gap. Through the latticed under-roof I see a brightly lit hall paved with stones. A middle-aged man sits on a dais at the eastern end, his eyes intent upon a bundle of papers, flipping through the pages slowly. I see a birthmark the shape of a butterfly on his left cheek and a jade collar around his neck.

He is the jiedushi I’m supposed to kill.

“Steal his life, and your apprenticeship will be completed,” Teacher said. “This is your last test.”

“What has he done that he deserves to die?” I asked.

“Does it matter? It is enough that a man who once saved my life wants this man to die, and that he has paid handsomely for it. We amplify the forces of ambition and strife; we hold on to only our code.”

I crawl over the roof, my palms and feet gliding over the tiles smoothly, making no sound—Teacher trained us by having us glide across the valley lake in March, when the ice is so thin that even squirrels sometimes fall through and drown. I feel one with the night, my senses sharpened like the tip of my dagger. Excitement is tinged with a hint of sorrow, like the first stroke of the paintbrush on a fresh sheet of paper.

Now that I’m directly above where the governor is sitting, once again I pry off one tile, then another. I make a hole big enough for me to slink through. Then I take out the grappling hook from my pouch—painted black to prevent reflections—and toss it to the apex ridge so that the claws dig in securely. Then I tie the silk cord around my waist.

I look down through the hole in the roof. The jiedushi is still where he was, oblivious to the mortal danger over his head.

For a moment I suffer the illusion that I’m back in the great pagoda tree in front of my house, looking through a hole in the swaying leaves at my father.

But the moment passes. I’m going to dive through like a cormorant, slit his throat, strip off his clothes, and sprinkle corpse-dissolving powder all over his skin. Then, as he lies there on the stone floor, still twitching, I will take flight back to the ceiling and make my escape. By the time servants discover the remains of his body, barely more than a skeleton, I will be long gone. Teacher will declare my apprenticeship to be at an end, myself an equal of my sisters.

I take a deep breath. My body is coiled. I’ve trained and practiced for this moment for six years. I’m ready.

“Baba!”

I hold still.

The boy who emerges from behind the curtains is about six years old, his hair tied into a neat little braid that points straight up like the tail of a rooster.

“What are you doing still up?” the man asks. “Be a good boy and go back to sleep.”

“I can’t sleep,” the boy says. “I heard a noise, and I saw a shadow moving on the courtyard wall.”

“Just a cat,” the man says. The boy looks unconvinced. The man looks thoughtful for a moment, then says, “All right, come over.”

He sets the papers aside on the low desk next to him. The boy scrambles into his lap.

“Shadows are nothing to be afraid of,” he says. Then he proceeds to make a series of shadow puppets with his hands held against the reading light. He teaches the boy how to make a butterfly, a puppy, a bat, a sinuous dragon. The boy laughs in delight. Then the boy makes a kitten to chase his father’s butterfly across the papered windows of the large hall.

“Shadows are given life by light, and they also die by light.” The man stops fluttering his fingers and lets his hands fall by his side. “Go to sleep, child. In the morning you can chase real butterflies in the garden.”

The boy, heavy-eyed, nods and leaves quietly.

On the roof, I hesitate. The boy’s laughter will not leave my mind. Can the girl stolen from her family steal family away from another child? Is this the moral pronouncement of a hypocrite?

“Thank you for waiting until my son has left,” the man says.

I freeze. There’s no one in the hall but him, and he’s too loud to be talking to himself.

“I prefer not to shout,” he says, his eyes still on the bundle of papers. “It would be easier if you came down.”

The pounding of my heart is a roar in my ears. I should flee immediately. This is probably a trap. If I went down, he might have soldiers in ambush or some mechanism under the floor of the hall to capture me. Yet, something in his voice compels me to obey.

I drop through the hole in the roof, the silk cord attached to the grappling hook looped about my waist a few times to slow my descent. I land gently before the dais, silent as a snowflake.

“How did you know?” I ask. The bricks at my feet have not flipped open to reveal a yawning pit and no soldiers have rushed from behind the screens. But my hands grip the cord tightly and my knees are ready to snap. I can still complete my mission if he truly is defenseless.

“Children have sharper ears than their parents,” he says. “And I have long made shadow puppets for my own amusement while reading late at night. I know how much the lights in this hall usually flicker without the draft from a new opening in the ceiling.”

I nod. It’s a good lesson for the next time. My right hand moves to grasp the handle of the dagger in the sheath at the small of my back.

“Jiedushi Lu of Chenxu is ambitious,” he says. “He has coveted my territory for a long time, thinking of pressing the young men in its rich fields into his army. If you strike me down, there will be no one to stand between him and the throne in Chang’an. Millions will die as his rebellion sweeps across the empire. Hundreds of thousands of children will become orphans. Ghostly multitudes will wander the land, their souls unable to rest as beasts pick through their corpses.”

The numbers he speaks of are vast, like the countless grains of sand suspended in the turbid waters of the Yellow River. I can’t make any sense of them. “He saved my teacher’s life once,” I say.

“And so you will do as she asks, blind to all other concerns?”

“The world is rotten through,” I say. “I have my duty.”

“I cannot say that my hands are free of blood. Perhaps this is what comes of making compromises.” He sighs. “Will you at least allow me two days to put my affairs in order? My wife departed this world when my son was born, and I have to arrange for his care.”

I stare at him. I can’t treat the boy’s laughter as an illusion.

I picture the governor surrounding his house with thousands of soldiers; I picture him hiding in the cellar, trembling like a leaf in autumn; I picture him on the road away from this city, whipping his horse again and again, grimacing like a desperate marionette.

As if reading my mind, he says, “I will be here, alone, in two nights. I give you my word.”

“What is the word of a man about to die worth?” I counter.

“As much as the word of an assassin,” he says.

I nod and leap up. Scrambling up the dangling rope as swiftly as I ascend one of the vines on the cliff at home, I disappear through the hole in the roof.

• • • •

I’m not worried about the jiedushi’s escaping. I’ve been trained well, and I will catch him no matter where he runs. I’d rather give him the chance to spend some time saying good-bye to his little boy; it seems right.

I wander the markets of the city, soaking up the smell of fried dough and caramelized sugar. My stomach growls at the memory of foods I have not had in six years. Eating peaches and drinking dew may have purified my spirit, but the flesh still yearns for earthly sweetness.

I speak to the vendors in the language of the court, and at least some of them have a passing mastery of it.

“That is very skillfully made,” I say, looking at a sugar dough general on a stick. The figurine is wearing a bright red war cape glazed with jujube juice. My mouth waters.

“Would you like to have it?” the vendor asks. “It’s very fresh, young mistress. I made it only this morning. The filling is lotus paste.”

“I don’t have any money,” I say regretfully. Teacher gave me only enough money for lodging, and a dried peach for food.

The vendor considers me and seems to make up his mind. “By your accent I take it you’re not a local?”

I nod.

“Away from home to find a pool of tranquility in this chaotic world?”

“Something like that,” I say.

He nods, as if this explains everything. He hands the stick of the sugar general to me. “From one wanderer to another, then. This is a good place to settle.”

I accept the gift and thank him. “Where are you from?”

“Chenxu. I abandoned my fields and ran away when the Jiedushi Lu’s men came to my village to draft boys and men for the army. I had already lost my father, and I wasn’t interested in dying to add color to his war cape. That figurine is modeled after Jiedushi Lu. It gives me pleasure to watch patrons bite his head off.”

I laugh and oblige him. The sugar dough melts on the tongue, and the succulent lotus paste that oozes out is delightful.

I walk about the alleyways and streets of the city, savoring every bite of the sugar dough figurine as I listen to snatches of conversation wafting from the doors of teahouses and passing carriages.

“. . . why should we send her across the city to learn dance? . . .”

“The magistrate isn’t going to look kindly on such deception . . .”

“. . . the best fish I’ve ever had! It was still flapping . . .”

“. . . how can you tell? What did he say? Tell me, sister, tell . . .”

The rhythm of life flows around me, buoying me up like the sea of clouds on the mountain when I swing from vine to vine. I think about the words of the man I’m supposed to kill:

Millions will die as his rebellion sweeps across the empire. Hundreds of thousands of children will become orphans. Ghostly multitudes will wander the land.

I think about his son, and the shadows flitting across the walls of the vast, empty hall. Something in my heart throbs to the music of this world, at once mundane and holy. The grains of sand swirling in the water resolve into individual faces, laughing, crying, yearning, dreaming.

• • • •

On the third night, the crescent moon is a bit wider, the wind a bit chillier, and the hooting of the owls in the distance a shade more ominous.

I scale the wall of the governor’s compound as before. The patrolling patterns of the soldiers have not changed. This time, I crouch even lower and move even more silently across the branch-thin top of the wall and the uneven surface of roofing tiles. I’m back at the familiar spot; I pry up a roof tile that I had put back two nights earlier and press my eye against the slit to block the draft, anticipating at any moment masked guards leaping out of the darkness, to spring their trap.

Not to worry—I’m ready.

But there are no shouts of alarm and no clanging of the gong. I gaze down into the well-lit hall. He is sitting in the same spot, a stack of papers on the desk by him.

I listen hard for the footsteps of a child. Nothing. The boy has been sent away.

I examine the floor of the hall beneath where the man sits. It’s strewn with straw. The sight confuses me for a moment before I realize that it’s an act of kindness. He wants to keep his blood from staining the bricks so that whoever has to clean up the mess will have an easier time.

The man sits in the lotus position, eyes closed, a beatific smile on his face like a statue of the Buddha.

Gently, I place the tile back in place and disappear into the night like a breeze.

• • • •

“Why have you not completed your task?” Teacher asks. My sisters stand behind her, two arhats guarding their mistress.

“He was playing with his child,” I say. I hold on to the explanation like a vine swaying over an abyss.

She sighs. “Next time this happens, you should kill the boy first, so that you’re no longer distracted.”

I shake my head.

“It is a trick. He is playing upon your sympathies. The powerful are all actors upon a stage, their hearts as unfathomable as shadows.”

“That may be,” I say. “Still, he kept his word and was willing to die at my hand. I believe other things he’s told me may be true as well.”

“How do you know he is not as ambitious as the man he maligns? How do you know he is not only being kind in service of a greater cruelty in the future?”

“No one knows the future,” I say. “The house may be rotten through, but I’m unwilling to be the hand that brings it tumbling down upon the ants seeking a pool of tranquility.”

She stares at me. “What of loyalty? What of obedience to your teacher? What of carrying out that which you promised to do?”

“I’m not meant to be a thief of lives,” I say.

“So much talent,” she says; then, after a pause, “Wasted.”

Something about her tone makes me shiver. Then I look behind her and see that Jinger and Konger are gone.

“If you leave,” she says, “you’re no longer my student.”

I look at her unlined face and not unkind eyes. I think about the times she bandaged my legs after I fell from the vines in the early days. I think about the time she fought off the bamboo grove bear when it proved too much for me. I think about the nights she held me and taught me to see through the world’s illusions to the truth beneath.

She had taken me away from my family, but she has also been the closest thing to a mother I know.

“Good-bye, Teacher.”

I crouch and leap like a bounding tiger, like a soaring wild ape, like a hawk taking flight. I smash through the window of the room in the inn and dive into the ocean that is night.

• • • •

“I’m not here to kill you,” I say.

The man nods, as if this is entirely expected.

“My sisters—Jinger, also known as the Heart of Lightning, and Konger, the Empty-Handed—have been dispatched to complete what I cannot.”

“I will summon my guards,” he says, standing up.

“That won’t do any good,” I tell him. “Jinger can steal your soul even if you were hiding inside a bell at the bottom of the ocean, and Konger is even more skillful.”

He smiled. “Then I will face them alone. Thank you for the warning so that my men do not die needlessly.”

A faint shrieking noise, like a distant troop of howling monkeys, can be heard in the night. “There’s no time to explain,” I tell him. “Give me your red scarf.”

He does, and I tie the scarf about my waist. “You will see things that seem beyond comprehension. Whatever happens, keep your eye on this scarf and stay away from it.”

The howling grows louder. It seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. Jinger is here.

Before he has time to question me further, I rip open a seam in space and crawl in to vanish from his sight, leaving only the tip of the bright red scarf dangling behind.

• • • •

“Imagine that space is a sheet of paper,” Teacher said. “An ant crawling on this sheet of paper is aware of breadth and depth, but has no awareness of height.”

I looked at the ant she had sketched on the paper, expectant.

“The ant is terrified of danger, and builds a wall around him, thinking that such an impregnable barrier will keep him safe.

Teacher sketches a ring around the ant.

“But unbeknownst to the ant, a knife is poised above him. It is not part of the ant’s world, invisible to him. The wall he has built will do nothing to protect him against a strike from a hidden direction—”

She throws her dagger at the paper, pinning the painted ant to the ground.

“You may think width, depth, and height are the only dimensions of the world, Hidden Girl, but you’d be wrong. You have lived your life as an ant on a sheet of paper, and the truth is far more wondrous.”

• • • •

I emerge into the space above space, the space within space, the hidden space.

Everything gains a new dimension—the walls, the floor tiles, the flickering torches, the astonished face of the governor. It is as if the governor’s skin has been pulled away to reveal everything underneath: I see his beating heart, his pulsating intestines, the blood streaming through his transparent vessels, his gleaming white bones as well as the velvety marrow stuffed inside like jujube-stained lotus paste. I see each grain of shiny mica inside each brick; I see ten thousand immortals dancing inside each flame.

No, that’s not quite accurate. I have not the words to describe what I see. I see a million billion layers to everything at once, like an ant who has always seen a line before him suddenly lifted off the page to realize the perfection of a circle. This is the perspective of the Buddha, who comprehends the incomprehensibility of Indra’s net, which connects the smallest mote at the tip of a flea’s foot to the grandest river of innumerable stars that spans the sky at night.

This was how, years ago, Teacher had penetrated the walls of my father’s compound, evaded my father’s soldiers, and seized me from within the tightly sealed cabinet.

I see the approaching white robe of Jinger, bobbing like a glowing jellyfish in the vast deep. She ululates as she approaches, a single voice making a cacophony of howling that sends terror into the hearts of her victims.

“Little Sister, what are you doing here?”

I lift my dagger. “Please, Jinger, go back.”

“You’ve always been a bit too stubborn,” she says.

“We have eaten from the same peach and bathed in the same cold mountain spring,” I say. “You taught me how to climb the vines and how to pick the ice lilies for my hair. I love you like a sister of the blood. Please, don’t do this.”

She looks sad. “I can’t. Teacher has promised.”

“There’s a greater promise we all must live by: to do what our heart tells us is right.”

She lifts her sword. “Because I love you like a sister, I will let you strike at me without hitting back. If you can hit me before I kill the governor, I will leave.”

I nod. “Thank you. And I’m sorry it’s come to this.”

The hidden space has its own structure, made from dangling thin strands that glow faintly with an inner light. To move in this space, Jinger and I leap from vine to vine and swing from filament to filament, climbing, tumbling, pivoting, lurching, dancing on a lattice woven from starlight and lambent ice.

I lunge after her; she easily dodges out of the way. She has always been the best at vine fighting and cloud dancing. She glides and swings as gracefully as an immortal of the heavenly court. Compared to her, my moves are lumbering, heavy, lacking all finesse.

As she dances away from my strikes, she counts them off: “One, two, three-four-five . . . very nice, Hidden Girl, you’ve been practicing. Six-seven-eight, nine, ten . . .” Once in a while, when I get too close, she parries my dagger with her sword as effortlessly as a dozing man swats away a fly.

Almost pityingly, she swivels out of my way and swings toward the governor. Like a knife poised above the page, she’s completely invisible to him, falling upon him from another dimension.

I lurch after her, hoping that I’m close enough to her for my plan to work.

The governor, seeing the red scarf I dangle into his world approach, drops to the ground and rolls out of the way. Jinger’s sword pierces through the veil between dimensions and, in that world, a sword emerges from the air and smashes the desk the governor was sitting behind into smithereens before disappearing.

“Eh? How can he see me coming?”

Without giving her a chance to figure out my trick, I launch a fusillade of dagger strikes. “Thirty-one, thirty-two-three-four-five-six . . . you’re really getting better at this . . .”

We dance around in the space “above” the hall—there’s no word for this direction—and each time, as Jinger goes after the governor, I try to stay right next to her to warn the governor of the hidden danger. Try as I might, I can’t touch her at all. I can feel myself getting tired, slowing down.

I flex my legs and swing after her again, but this time, I’m careless and come too close to the wall of the hall. My dangling scarf catches on the sconce for a torch and I fall to my feet.

Jinger looks at me and laughs. “So that’s how you’ve been doing it! Clever, Hidden Girl. But now the game is over, and I’m about to claim my prize.”

If she strikes at the governor now, he won’t have any warning at all. I’m stuck here.

The scarf catches fire, and the flame erupts into the hidden space. I scream with terror as the flame engulfs my robe.

With three quick leaps, Jinger is back on the same strand I’m on; she whips off her white robe and wraps it around me, helping me smother the flames.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

The fire has singed my hair and charred my skin in a few places, but I’ll be fine. “Thank you,” I say. Then before she can react, I whip my dagger across the hem of her robe and cut off a strip of cloth. The tip of my dagger continues to slice open the veil between dimensions, and the strip drifts into the ordinary world, like flotsam bobbing to the surface. We both see the governor’s shocked face as he scrambles away from the white silk patch on the floor.

“A hit,” I say.

“Ah,” she says. “That’s not really fair, is it?”

“Nonetheless, it’s a strike,” I say.

“So that fall . . . it was all planned?”

“This was the only way I could think of,” I admit. “You’re a far superior swordfighter.”

She shakes her head. “How can you care for a stranger more than your sister? But I gave you my word.”

She climbs up and glides away like a departing water spirit. Just before she fades into the night, she turns to look at me one last time. “Farewell, Little Sister. Our bond has been severed as surely as you’ve cut through my dress. May you find your purpose.”

“Farewell.”

She leaves, ululating all the while.

• • • •

I crawl back into ordinary space, and the governor rushes up to me. “I was so frightened! What kind of magic is this? I heard the clanging of swords but could see nothing. Your scarf danced in the air like a ghost, and then, finally, that white cloth materialized out of nowhere! Wait, are you hurt?”

I grimace and sit up. “It’s nothing. Jinger is gone. But the next assassin will be my other sister, Konger, who is far more deadly. I do not know if I can protect you.”

“I’m not afraid to die,” he says.

“If you die, the Jiedushi of Chenxu will slaughter many more,” I say. “You must listen to me.”

I open my pouch and take out my teacher’s gift to me on my fifteenth birthday. I hand it to him.

“This is a . . . paper donkey?” he looks at me, puzzled.

“This is the projection of a mechanical donkey into our world,” I say. “It’s like how a sphere passing through a plane would appear as a circle—never mind, there’s no time. Here, you must go!”

I rip open space and shove him through it. The donkey looms now before him as a giant mechanical beast. Despite his protests, I push him onto the donkey.

Tightly wound sinew would power the spinning gears inside and move the legs on cranks, and the donkey will gallop off in a wide circle in the hidden space for an hour, springing from glowing vine to vine like a wire-walker. Teacher had given it to me to help me escape if I’m hurt on a mission.

“How will you defend against her?” he asks.

I pull out the key and the donkey gallops away, leaving his query unanswered.

• • • •

There is no howling; no singing; no terrifying din. When Konger approaches she is completely silent. If you don’t know her, you will think she has no weapon. That is why she is nicknamed the Empty-Handed.

The robe is hot and the dough makeup on my face heavy. The hall is filled with smoke from the scattered straw on the floor I’ve set on fire. I crouch down on the floor where the air is clearer and cooler so I can breathe. I put on a beatific smile but keep my eyes slitted open.

The smoke swirls, a gentle disturbance that you’d miss if you weren’t paying attention.

I know how much the lights in this hall usually flicker without the draft from a new opening in the ceiling.

Moments earlier, I had carefully cut a few fissures in the veil between dimensions with my dagger and kept them open with strands of silk torn from Jinger’s robe. The openings were enough to let a draft through from the hidden space, enough to let me detect an approaching presence beyond.

I picture Konger with her implacable mien, gliding toward me in hidden space like a soul-taking demon. A needle glints in her right hand, the only weapon she needs.

She prefers to approach her victims in the unseen dimension, to prick the inside from the undefended direction. She likes to press the needle into the middle of their hearts, leaving the rib cage and the skin intact. She likes to probe the needle into their skulls and stir their brains into mush, driving them insane before their deaths but leaving no wound in the skull.

The smoke stirs some more, she’s close now.

I imagine the scene from her point of view: A man dressed in the robe of a jiedushi is sitting in the smoke-filled hall, a birthmark the shape of a butterfly on his cheek. He’s terrified into indecision, the rictus of a foolish smile frozen on his face even as his home burns around him. Somehow the air in the hidden space over him is murky, as though the smoke from the hall has transcended the veil between dimensions.

She lunges.

I shift to the right, moving by instinct rather than sense. I have sparred with her for years, and I hope she moves as she has always done.

She meant to press her needle into my skull, but since I’ve moved out of the way, her needle pierces into the world at the spot where my head was, and with a crisp clang, strikes against the jade collar I’m wearing around my neck.

I stagger up, coughing in the smoke. I wipe off the dough makeup from my face. Konger’s needle is so fragile that after one impact it is bent out of shape. She never attacks a second time if the first attempt fails.

A surprised giggle.

“A good trick, Hidden Girl. I should have gotten a better look through all that smoke. You’ve always been Teacher’s favorite student.”

The crevices I carved between the worlds were for more than just warning. By filling the hidden space with smoke, her view of the ordinary world had become indistinct. Ordinarily, from her vantage point, my mask would have been but a transparent shell, and the bulky robe would not have concealed the slender body underneath.

But maybe, just maybe, she chose to not see through my poor disguise, the same way she once chose to warn me of the hawk swooping down behind me.

I bow to the unseen speaker. “Tell Teacher I’m sorry, but I won’t be returning to the mountain.”

“Who knew you would turn out to be an anti-assassin? We will see each other again, I hope.”

“I will invite you to share some pagoda tree flowers then, Elder Sister. A tinge of bitterness at the heart of something sweet makes it less cloying.”

Peals of laughter fade, and I collapse to the ground, exhausted.

I think about heading home, about seeing my father again. What will I tell him about my time away? How can I explain to him that I’ve changed?

I will not be able to grow up the way he wants. There is too much wildness in me. I cannot put on a confining dress and glide through the rooms of the compound, blushing as the matchmaker explains which boy I will marry. I cannot pretend to be more interested in my sewing than I am in climbing the pagoda tree next to the gate.

I have a talent.

I want to scale walls like Jinger, Konger, and I used to swing from vine to vine over the cliff face; I want to cross swords against worthy opponents; I want to pick a boy to marry—I’m thinking someone who is kind and has soft hands, maybe someone who grinds mirrors for a living so that he will know that there is another dimension beyond the smooth surface.

I want to hone my talent so that it shines brightly, terrorizing the unjust and lighting the way for those who would make the world better. I will protect the innocent and guard the timid. I do not know if I will always do what is right, but I am the Hidden Girl, and my loyalty is to the tranquility yearned by all.

I am a thief after all. I’ve stolen my life for myself, and I will steal back the lives of others.

The sound of beating, mechanical hooves approaches.

©2017 by Ken Liu. Originally published in The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote The Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings) and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, a collection. He also authored the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Ken worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Ken frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, history of technology, bookmaking, the mathematics of origami, and other subjects.

EXCERPT: Forget the Sleepless Shores

Sonya Taaffe | 1882 words

In Forget the Sleepless Shores, readers should expect to be captivated by many ghosts and spirits who inhabit brine, some from tears of heartache and loss, some from strange bodies of water, not necessarily found on the map but definitely discovered through charting a course though the perilous straits of author Taaffe’s imagination, which is eerie and queer (by every definition of the word). A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award!

Available now from Lethe Press.

From the story “All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts”

For all the family he had watched go down to the sea, Anson had never before seen anyone trying to drown.

He had dozed most of the way from Boston, slid awkwardly against the graffiti-scratched window as the commuter train rattled its way from North Station to Gloucester and the winter-tinted world passed like a show of lantern slides every time he blinked awake. Strung between his dreams, Fenway-green cantilevers of bridges had given way to post-industrial warehouses clinging with snow like ghost signs, the sudden white-and-blue dazzle of salt marshes where islands of cordgrass rusted in sepia tone, all under a bleach-silvered sky, and he stepped down onto the platform with a waking jolt, half expecting to find himself still in his tangle of blankets in Allston and the ground line blessedly quiet all night. He was standing in a slush-piled parking lot with the train pulling on to Rockport behind him; he had the address Tony had left him and a backpack of convenience groceries from the Tedeschi’s across the street from his apartment and a name that he more than half hoped was a mistake. Even in February, the salt damp of the harbor came off the wind like iridescence off a scale. But the house was real enough, steep-roofed and shingle-sided in two shades of off-cream, almost exactly a mile’s hike from the station, and there were second-floor keys in the mailbox like Tony had promised, and he felt like an idiot calling “Hello?” up the carpet-runnered stairs like the first girl in a slasher flick, but he did not want to find himself on the wrong end of a 911 call, either. There was no one in the living room with its uncurtained windows, no one sitting at the magazine-piled coffee table or sleeping on the sagging fawn-colored couch. He tapped at the door that looked like a bedroom, jammed half open with an ankle-winding jumble of clothes; he glanced into the kitchen with its dark-paneled cabinets and a refrigerator that hummed like a broken fan belt. Cold hung in the air like dust, as if no one had bothered with the heat in days. When he found the bathroom, he thought he was opening a closet door.

In the tiny, curtain-darkened space wedged behind the sink and the toilet, something splashed, startled and sudden. Anson had just enough time to register the insufficient fluorescent bar over the mirror, the shadowy glint of spinal knobs as someone’s back curved palely away from him: a naked human figure climbing into the tub headfirst. Even so, it seemed such an awkward, improbable means of self-harm, it was not until the first strangling heave that he realized he should stop her.

She fought him uncoordinatedly but obstinately, even while her breath raled and bubbled and she coughed slippery gouts of water onto his corduroys and sweater, lung-wracked and still strong enough to land a wild fist under his ribs, so that he gulped a half-shot breath himself and slid abruptly down with his back to the slopping tub, the open door of the bathroom blocking the stretch of his legs. There was a radiator crammed beneath the towel rack, ticking and clinking faintly. Displaced water was seeping into the few dry patches left underneath him and it might have been hard rain all the way up Prospect Street for the condition his coat was in. Soaked and winded, suddenly spent enough to feel the absurdity of the situation, Anson looked over his shoulder at the woman on her hands and knees in the mostly emptied bathtub and met the pearl-black of her eyes for the first time.

He said blankly, because Tony had not warned him, “I’m so sorry.”

“Fuck you,” Gorgo Waite said thickly, and coughed some more.

Under its dripping gloss of water, her skin was milky as old ice, so translucent across the promontories of cheekbone, collarbone, ribcage and hipbone that he wondered that she had not simply broken in his grasp, glassy as an abyssal fish. Bruises were already coming out under the pallor like a mottle of malachite, darkening her shoulders and the thin bracelet of her wrists. He could not tell her age; her tight hips and pale-nippled breasts could have been a starved woman’s or an unfinished girl’s, all tracks of human time wiped away with the softening of her unarmored skin, preparing itself for the scales that never came to its defense. The scarlet weals under her jaw flared raggedly, still gasping for the water her obstinate lungs refused.

Her hair clung in wet coils to her naked skin, stranded black as calligraphy, and an old, familiar bitterness turned in his stomach, colder than anger. Save for the drowning-dark eyes, she had none of the old look about her. If he had saved her life, he had done her no favors.

He got to his feet anyway, skidding only a little on the puddled tiles and the sodden violet bathmat; stopped himself from reaching for a handhold in the towel rack in case it broke off. She was not looking at him, slowly pulling herself upright on the tub’s dun-colored rim. “Anson Penders,” he said into her silence. “You don’t know me. I promised my cousin I’d check in on you. He told me your name and how he met you. He didn’t tell me you were a risk to yourself.” Even his scarf was trailing damply off his neck, beading water at the ends of its brown plaid fringe. “I’d have asked for hazard pay.”

The hawking noise she made might have been congestion or an opinion. He caught another all-black look, flicked from underneath water-weighted lashes, before she clarified it: “You’re the shittiest paramedic I’ve ever met in my life.”

Anson snorted. “I’m an unemployed chemistry teacher. Currently canvassing for the census, which is why my cousin—who is a paramedic—thought I’d have the spare time to Samaritan you. Goes to show how much he knows about government work.” He knew how facetious he sounded; he could not think of any other way to reassure her. She kept her feet in the tub, her head turned away from him beneath the weed-black tangles of her hair; he had to lean against the doorframe to keep from looming over her. The bare curve of her back shone like a stripped shell. “He said you’ve been here since last night, is that right? You can think of it as a safe house, if you like. To be perfectly honest, I think it belongs to Tony’s girlfriend who’s out of town. I have some faint, horrible memory of being handed a bottle of vodka full of Swedish fish on that couch.”

“Stop it.” She spoke quietly, but he heard the taut note in it. “Your creepy fucking cousin didn’t tell me anything about you or this house or why he didn’t take me to a hospital like a normal person. Just sat up with me all night, asking questions about my parents and my dreams and telling me it was going to be all right, until he had to leave for work in the morning without so much as a phone number or a forwarding address. So you’re going to tell me something I can trust, right now, or I’ll leave this house screaming and naked if I have to. Taking care of that on the list your cousin left for you?”

Turned coldly toward him, her face looked even less human, cut sharply in from the cheekbones that broadened like fins toward her small, shallowly whorled ears: less like anyone who had ever come ashore from the black coral of Devil Reef. Anson breathed down the adrenaline skip in his throat and prayed for the least lecturing voice of his life.

“Going by your name, you’re a direct descendant of Carleton Waite and the woman he married out of the sea and called Keziah as long as she was on land. The churchyards of Innsmouth are as lost as the rest of the town, but there were never any headstones for her or her children because she took them all back down with her after Carleton’s death. Some of them married first. Some of them left children. Either your family split off early or they really went underground after ’28, because Tony’s an amateur genealogist as well as an asshole and he had no idea there were actual, in-the-telephone-book Waites out there who weren’t either unrelated or already in touch. You dream of the sea, and of things in the sea, and you’ll drown before you let yourself die on land like your parents or grandparents.” A silvery translucence flickered across her eyes and he hesitated, waiting for the clench of her hands or the twist of her mouth, but she merely looked at him. “You can trust that I don’t know any more about you than that. You’ll have to tell me the rest. If you want to,” he finished hastily, hearing a beat too late the last sentence like a good cop or a disappointed teacher. “It’s not like we have to talk.”

He could not read Gorgo’s expression, not even her unblinking eyes. When she finally spoke, her voice was shaded with something even less identifiable: he could not imagine that she was really amused.

“So you’re not here to initiate me into the mysteries of the sea-mother whose faces rise and fall with the countless waves and her consort who makes the fish shoal as thick as cornfields in the fall?”

The last time he had heard those words, his mother had still been walking, affectionately tousling her youngest child’s hair with one dry-skinned, nail-thickened hand as he asked for another story of sea-cities whose names rilled from her tongue like a net of bubbles, sea-temples sunken in a tourmaline gleam where the bright and dark weeds streamed upward from terraces and colonnades of basalt and whalebone and corals branching like veins of the human heart.

Decades and states and losses away from the shores of that sea, Anson said in amazement, “Fucking Tony,” and heard for the first time the newest of his cousins laughing, bitter as brine.

Copyright © 2018 by Sonya Taaffe. Excerpted from Forget the Sleepless Shores by Sonya Taaffe. Published by permission of the author and Lethe Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sonya Taaffe’s short fiction and poetry can be found most recently in the collection Ghost Signs (Aqueduct Press) and in the anthologies Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror, and An Alphabet of Embers: An Anthology of Unclassifiables. She reads dead languages for fun, edits living poets for Strange Horizons, and once named a Kuiper belt object. She lives in Somerville with her husband and two cats.

Book Reviews: November 2019

LaShawn M. Wanak | 1646 words

Rosewater Redemption
Tade Thompson
Paperback / Ebook / Audio
ISBN: 978-0316449090
Orbit, October 2019, 416 pages

Remember the last section of the song “In the Hall of The Mountain King” where the instruments go faster and faster until all the drums and horns and strings explode in a giant cacophony of sound? Tade Thompson’s Rosewater Redemption is like that. Just swap out the drums for the citizens of Rosewater, the horns for the aliens, and the strings for a group of ragtag people working frantically to save the world from colonization, and you’ve got the finale of this exceptional trilogy.

I reviewed the first book in this trilogy, Rosewater, in my August 2018 book review column (bit.ly/2mLQZjF). It’s best to read that and its follow-up, Rosewater Insurrection, before you read this one, since events escalate and the cast takes on new roles. The first book focused on Kaaro, the psychic government agent who lives in Rosewater, a city that has sprung up around a biological dome created by aliens attempting to make Earth their home. In Rosewater Redemption, Kaaro fades to the background (in his own cowardly fashion) to let others take on the narrative.

Aminat, Kaaro’s girlfriend, now works as the Head of Security for the self-proclaimed mayor of Rosewater, Jack Jacques. His wife, Hannah, has a horrible secret that will undo everything he has worked for. Femi, Kaaro’s former boss, is trying to prevent the aliens from taking over even though she’s imprisoned by the government. She has a plan to take out the xenosphere, a spore-based psychic environment that is the aliens’ only source of communication. However, the xenosphere is the only place where Oyin Da—the elusive Bicycle Girl—and others like her can survive. Oyin Da recognizes the need to save the world from aliens, but at the same time wants to preserve the aliens’ infrastructure. Thompson shows that while revolution is good, it brings up extremely complicated questions, and not everyone will benefit from it.

He also wrestles with the question of what it means to be human. In one instance, an alien creates a copy of a dead woman complete with her memories and personality. Is that copy still a human? Jack’s assistant and bodyguard, Lora, is an android, but she is like a sister to Jack. Is she human? Oyin Da no longer has a body, yet she can manifest in a (mostly) physical form, as well as traverse time. Is she human?

On top of all this, Thompson layers on queer joy. It seems zany to hold a gay pride parade with all the violence happening in Rosewater, but its sweetness and celebration serves well to bring the trilogy into an amazing climatic finish.

Catfishing on CatNet
Naomi Kritzer
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 978-1250165077
Tor Teen, November 2019, 288 pages

In 2016, Naomi Kritzer won the Hugo for her short story “Cat Pictures Please” (bit.ly/2mNUMNo), about an Internet AI that uses their power to try to help humans in exchange for cat pictures. Kritzer’s YA novel, Catfishing on CatNet, expands on the story and gives it a bit of a thrilling twist that is still delightful and sweet.

Steph is a high schooler who has been on the run with her mother as long as she can remember. Her childhood consists of having her whole life uprooted about every six months whenever her mother feels the threat of Steph’s father finding them. The only constant in her life is CatNet—a virtual chat room where she can hang out with her chat mates, the only friends she has. Little does she know that the admin of the chat room, CheshireCat, is an AI. When Steph’s safety is threatened, CheshireCat steps in to help in only the way an AI can—by utilizing the entire Internet as well as mobilizing Steph’s friends, both online and offline.

Kritzer handles the rockiness of teenage years with a sweetness that is both charming and cringeworthy—from the awkward screaming in all caps from a virtual friend in their eagerness to welcome a new member, to the hilarity of listening to a hacked teacherbot truthfully answer questions about sex to a classroom of teens. But she also explores how friendships can be nurtured through social media. Steph struggles with loneliness, so it surprises her when she’s able to make friends at school. She then introduces her school friends to CatNet, which becomes a central hub, a meeting place, a hangout, and later in the book, a crisis management center. It’s lovely to see how her chatroom buddies rally to take care of her, even to the point of meeting in real life.

Like Rosewater Redemption, Kritzer also uses CheshireCat to explore what it means to be human, though she takes a simpler approach than Thompson. It also helps that CheshireCat is in good company—most of the humans they associate with are also figuring themselves out. In CatNet, the kids have a safe place to explore with sexual identity in a way that’s affirming and positive. The online kids correct and educate each other on the careful use of terms and pronouns—even CheshireCat is referred to as a “they” rather than an “it.”

And that makes a huge difference, especially as Steph uncovers the story of her past, the real reason why her mother is on the run, and how CheshireCat may have more in common with her than she thinks. But overall, despite some heavy topics and dark moments, I found this to be a quick, charming read.

Oh, and there are cats. This is a story about the Internet, after all.

The Book of Lost Saints
Daniel José Older
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 978-1250185815
Imprint, November 2019, 336 pages

Like Catfishing, The Book of Lost Saints also deals with a disembodied force attempting to help out someone, but in a more mature, and perhaps more desperate, fashion.

Marisol is a ghost. She has no memory of who she is, what she is, or why she exists. She can only remember a couple of things: that she had two sisters, one of whom fills Marisol with deep rage, though she can’t remember why. And she knows that the man she appears in front of is her nephew, Ramón, a hospital worker moonlighting as a DJ. In order to keep herself together, Marisol must use Ramón to uncover her past, and in the process, bring her own self back into existence.

As a ghost, Marisol doesn’t have the capacity to talk to Ramón directly, so she does little tricks to reveal herself. Opening a photo album to a page of herself as a child. Revealing memories in a dream. Unfortunately, Ramón is barely aware of Marisol. On occasion, he reacts as if he’s aware of a presence, or he catches a glimpse of her, but forgets it in the next moment. But without knowing why, Ramón begins to inquire about his aunt, and in bits and pieces, Marisol’s past become revealed. A casual mention of her name. An older sister who goes to join the Cuban revolution. Her own disappearance and death. But the story is long and winding, and it takes both Marisol and Ramón from their city in New Jersey to their homeland of Cuba.

The language of this story is beautiful. Older’s writing is infused with music and rhythm, which is intertwined with Marisol’s nostalgia for the past, even if she can’t remember it. His world is sensual and melodic, but also full of rage at corrupt government systems, and the helplessness of those caught up in it. There is a heart-aching scene where Marisol’s older sister realizes much too late the consequences of joining the rebel side of the Cuban revolution. Her and Marisol’s involvement in the war puts human faces on a country’s history I know little about, but that I wish to learn.

In addition to putting her own life together, Marisol finds herself doing the same for Ramón: dealing with the mundane horror of hospital work, navigating the family dynamics of not wanting to talk about the past, fending off the unwanted attention from a Cuban-American politician who wants to use him to further his own career, and above all, trying to express his feelings towards his girlfriend, Aliceana, which results in some passionate scenes that are too much for Ramón to handle emotionally. Marisol is unashamed in witnessing her nephew’s sexual encounters. To her, it is another form of expression. She is there to observe and provide invisible comfort.

At times dreamy, other times sensual; at times angry and bleak, other times filled with hope, The Book of Lost Saints is a beautiful story about dealing with the trauma of the past, the importance of knowing your own history, and, most of all, resistance and the choices we make that define us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LaShawn M. Wanak is a graduate of the 2011 class of Viable Paradise. Her fiction has been published in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Ideomancer. She served as Associate Editor at Podcastle, and has written nonfiction for Fantasy Magazine, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and the anthology Invisible 2.

Media Review: November 2019

Carrie Vaughn | 1853 words

Ad Astra
Directed by James Gray
Produced by New Regency Pictures, Bona Film Group, and Keep Your Head
September 20, 2019

There’s a saying that I haven’t heard in a while, but I’m going to dust it off for this review: If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

I’m going to start by telling you about the rabid space baboons.

I haven’t seen many other reviews of Ad Astra talk about this, I think because it’s too nonsensical and no one wants to acknowledge that this scene actually happened. But I can’t stop thinking about it. This takes place about a third of the way through the film. Major Roy McBride has escaped Moon Pirates in a moon buggy shootout and successfully reached his transport to Mars, where he will use the powerful Martian communications laser to send a message to a long-lost deep space mission led by his father that might not be so lost after all. En route, the transport gets a mayday from a Norwegian medical research and animal testing station that is just hanging out in the middle of space for Reasons. Unable to get a reply from the station crew, McBride and the transport captain suit up to take an EVA to investigate. Aboard the station, they find nothing, no crew, no bodies. One floating dead rat. McBride loses contact with the captain, goes to look for him, and discovers him being eaten by rage-filled baboons. McBride shoots the baboons, seals the captain’s smashed helmet with duct tape (really?), returns with him to the transport, but alas it is too late, the captain is dead, murdered by rabid space baboons.

I don’t understand the baboons. We never see what happened to the crew of the station. Did the baboons shove them out the airlock? Did they eat everything? Did the crew just step out for coffee? Apparently we don’t care. The transport simply leaves the station and continues on its way. The incident has no bearing on anything else that happens in the movie. (Neither do the Moon Pirates, alas.) Please don’t ask how the transport has enough fuel to slow down, stop, then accelerate again and still get from the Moon to Mars in nineteen days. This is so far down on the list of questions I have about this film that I will not be addressing it in this review.

Back to space baboons. Right after this McBride has a psych evaluation. He has a lot of them over the course of the film. Space Command is very concerned with the emotional stability of its people and so demands these self-administered evaluations before allowing them to continue on the next stage of their missions. In this one McBride talks about the incident with the baboons. You see, he understands their rage. He explains to the computer about his rage toward his father for leaving him, about his father’s rage, and how he understands why baboons would want to eat someone because Rage. (I confess, I sort of would have loved it if Brad Pitt gave into his baboon rage and tried to eat Tommy Lee Jones’ face off, at the film’s climax. That would have been different.)

Basically, this movie is so ham-handed it couldn’t find a way to talk about anger without detouring to encounter a couple of literal rabid space baboons in the literal middle of space for no apparent reason.

The whole film is a metaphor for emotional estrangement. Or it’s trying to be, but it does it badly. Not a single line of dialogue sounds like anything an actual human would actually say. The entire film is narrated by a plodding, morose voiceover in which McBride explains his feelings, or lack thereof. The movie is constantly explaining itself to the audience, and I just didn’t care.

Nothing about this story surprises. Roy’s voice over uses exactly the same cliché platitudes from every story about someone angsting about their emotional difficulties related to their absent father. The plot itself is vague. The Lima Project, in the vicinity of Neptune, fell out of contact, all hands presumed dead. Then these blasts of Earth-destroying radiation originate from the vicinity of the Lima Project’s last position. The elder McBride might still be alive and might know something about it. And he might have killed his crew. Spoiler alert: He totally does! He totally did! Turns out he’s really upset that they never found evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence (Did you look everywhere, McBride Senior? Are you sure?) and so is now trying to destroy Earth. I think? Roy arrives to find his father quite mad, like Marlow finally encountering Kurtz. Roy sets a nuke to destroy the station producing the radiation blasts and tries to get McBride Senior to come home, until Senior fires his suit’s jets and blasts off into the deep, never to be seen again. Roy decides not to go crazy and comes home. The end.

The film often feels like a throwback to those very serious science fiction movies of the fifties, the ones full of serious men in uniforms standing around utilitarian sets explaining the plot to each other. That, filtered through modern pop-psychology a la Facebook meme.

Cinematically, the film is obviously reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I know it’s kind of a bummer that we can’t seem to have a space movie without comparing it to the granddaddy of them all. But this one shows our hero being given a secret mission, put on a commercial transport to the moon, a journey we are shown in loving detail, where a flight attendant in graceful weightlessness comes to the cabin to check on him. All that’s missing is “The Blue Danube.” Ad Astra is also, inescapably, reminiscent of Apocalypse Now, or Heart of Darkness—the company officer being sent on a harrowing journey to check on a formerly loyal man who has apparently gone mad. Except more Apocalypse Now, because of that droning, relentless, and ultimately meaningless voiceover. There are shots of McBride in his craft and on Mars, subjected to weird lighting, pacing, going slowly mad unless he can pull himself out of it, just like Willard in Saigon. Frankly, it’s so derivative it’s ridiculous that we are meant to take any of this seriously. It’s like the filmmakers watched the two films and missed the point of both. There is nothing tense or harrowing about this journey.

Actually, there’s a really weird subtext to the whole thing I’m still trying to pick apart. I may be overthinking this in an effort to try to make it mean anything at all. Roy McBride is uber-competent. In the first scene—the only scene where I felt any kind of tension—he’s at work on the International Space Antennae, which is something like a space elevator, a structure climbing up to the edge of the stratosphere. A power surge from the blast of Neptune radiation all but destroys the tower, and Roy is sent plummeting. He has a parachute and survives. (As a fan of Project Excelsior [bit.ly/2mskDd6], I loved this bit. It’s the best action sequence in the film.) Further, he is constantly taking over for and doing a better job than the trained professionals ferrying him from point to point on his journey. His moon buggy driver has a photo of his wife and child taped to his dash so you know he’s doomed. After he dies, Roy deftly takes over the buggy and kills all the pirates himself without breaking a sweat. He lands the ship on Mars himself when the pilot freezes. He almost seems bored doing so, like he expected this to happen.

The Mars transport’s crew dutifully take their “mood stabilization” pills at the start of the journey. Roy pockets his. He’s uber-competent, in perfect control of himself without any outside help. His low pulse rate is the subject of admiration. He looks on with disdain when the crew comforts themselves with religion, praying at the start of the journey, over the captain’s body, and so on. He’s not like these other people who need constant monitoring and guidance. Like his father, he’s a throwback, a good Heinleinian space hero who can do it all and definitely doesn’t need feelings. “We’re a dying breed,” his father tells him when they finally reunite, and I think this is what he’s referring to: rugged men being rugged and capable, alone.

And yet, the film implies that the price for independence and uber-competence is madness. Ultimately, Roy rejects his father and that isolation, returns to Earth, and states that he is looking forward to ending his solitude. In the last scene of the film, he’s smiling over a cup of coffee, anticipating meeting his estranged wife. The voiceover is another one of these psych evaluations, which Roy sends with a command, the very last word of the movie: “Submit.”

Which is when I thought—is this is satire? Is this whole thing . . . commentary? That it’s better to be a happy cog than an independent mad hero? Is Roy really happy here or has he just given in? Is conformity good or bad? It certainly wasn’t depicted as a good thing earlier in the film. The subtext remains: There’s no place for an uber-competent, independent, emotionally reserved hero in this world. And it’s either/or—there’s nothing in the middle.

Well, no, we get a brief glimpse of one alternative outside this binary of tranquilized conformity and independent madness. There is exactly one bright spot in the midst of all this nonsensical plodding moroseness, even though I think that bright spot was an accident: the intake official on Mars, a woman with crazy hair and too much eyeliner, who is the only character in the film who talks like an actual person, matter-of-fact and doing her job—we’ve all met that official who is doing several things at once and doesn’t have time to look at you and yet exudes a vast confidence in the middle of her domain. You imagine that she might actually like her job, and like living on Mars and dealing with these weird-ass sad people. She’ll go home at the end of the day to her wife, and they’ll make cocktails out of the home-cooked hooch they’ve been distilling in their closet and settle in to watch reruns of their favorite show. This character is played by the only actor in the film not phoning it in: Natasha Lyonne, and I may finally get around to watching Russian Doll now because of this.

So, well done on that score, film.

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: Rivers Solomon

Christian A. Coleman | 2914 words

Rivers Solomon is the author of An Unkindness of Ghosts, and is a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. They graduated from Stanford University with a degree in comparative studies in race and ethnicity and hold an MFA in fiction writing from the Michener Center for Writers. Though originally from the United States, they currently live in Cambridge, England, with their family. The Deep is their second book. Find them on Twitter @cyborgandroid.

In The Deep, water-breathing descendents of enslaved African women tossed overboard, the wajinru, have built their own underwater society. One of them, Yetu, has been given the role of Historian: the holder of memories for her people. When Yetu notices that the memories are destroying her, she flees to the surface. Saga Press editor Navah Wolfe commissioned you to write it, which is based on the song of the same name by experimental hip-hop group clipping. What was your reaction when she reached out to you?

Navah’s pitch absolutely stood out at a time when I was fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a number of cool projects. Experimental hip-hop group, you say? Underwater beings descended from enslaved Africans thrown overboard? Climate catastrophe? It was clear that Navah had done her research on my writing and knew I might connect with her mission.

I was hesitant to work with someone else’s property, but that feeling was mitigated when I first listened to “The Deep” and also read some of the written analysis of the song Navah shared with me. The lyricism was so rich, layered, wild, and out-there, so preposterously my exact cup of tea, that my curiosity transformed to a sense of excitement that I might have an opportunity to be a part of transposing this song to prose.

Were you already familiar with the work of clipping. and the Detroit-based electronic music act Drexciya, the original creators of the central idea of “The Deep,” when she approached you about the project?

I was not. This cannot be overstated—I am the deepest depths of uncool. My musical tastes now aren’t that different from what they were when I was ten. That’s not completely true, but I tend to latch onto music and listen to it and over and over, rarely branching out or exploring into new areas. I’m grateful for friends, random podcasts, television—and Navah—for exposing me to new music and bands that I’ve come to cherish. clipping.’s discography is bananas.

I read that clipping. was involved throughout the project. What was it like for you collaborating with and working with feedback from Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes?

Something I really appreciated about working with clipping., actually, is that they granted me a lot of freedom with their property. While they thoughtfully read and considered everything I wrote—approving various pieces at different stages, from pitch to outline to sample pages to whole drafts—they kept feedback positive and sparse, letting the work develop. Part of the reason for that, I think, is because we made an amazing team. Navah Wolfe really went out of her way to find a writer who would click and connect with clipping. Because of that, clipping. and I vibed in a way that meant we had very similar visions and goals.

In An Unkindness of Ghosts, you wrote about a generation ship that was based on the last ship known to carry enslaved Africans to the United States. In The Deep, you write about ships again, though this time they’re not the setting, but the root of the existence of the wajinru. Was there anything you wanted to explore about slave ships in this novella that you hadn’t explored in your debut novel?

It’s a particular experience to witness trauma from the outside, as a player who can only watch. Do you recall the odd sensation of seeing a smashed animal corpse on the side of the road, or passing a bevy of cop cars and ambulances at a house in your neighborhood? Seeing genocide in a tweet? A picture of a murdered child on the news? We’re flooded daily with the whole world’s violences, but most of the time, we can be no more than passing ships in the night with everyone’s aches. That’s literally the case in The Deep. While the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was happening, there was a whole, vast world happening outside of it. This phenomenon that has become a foundation of how the modern world is structured was just . . . boats. I do not know if I have anything useful or important to say about that, other than that it’s gutting. We have all of this raw material around us, full of potential—wood, steel . . . people—and so often, this raw material has, instead of being transformed into beauty, been mutated into traumas. Coming from this pain, the wajinru are very concerned with building a life under the sea that’s wondrous rather than catastrophic. Part of this is witnessing the ships that originated them. All they can do is fill their own world with more good.

Let’s get into some of the world building. Once a year, Yetu shares the six hundred years’ worth of history of the wajinru with her community during the Remembrance, which takes place in a mud womb built for the occasion. She guides everyone through receiving the collective memories, which is pretty traumatic, but at the end they return the memories to her. How did this part of the world building come together for you?

This is something that came directly from the song. I wanted clipping.’s “The Deep” to fit into the mythology of the book. Where and when would this song be sung in the novelization? Who’s singing it and why? The lyrics of the song ask an anonymous audience if they remember. That’s exactly what Yetu does in the book, as well. The song, in my mind, is a version of the Remembrance that historians perform.

Womb imagery comes up several times in the novella: the mud womb built for the Remembrance; the very fact that the wajinru are descendants of pregnant African women jettisoned from slave ships. Even the tidal pool Yetu finds herself in after running away to the surface. Would you say rebirth a major theme in The Deep?

I might have shared this before on social media, but I’ll share it again because it’s relevant here. I was once searching through my computer for a story I’d written that I’d forgotten the title of, so I just searched for the word “uterus” because I remembered that being a key theme of the story. This turned out, however, not to be helpful at all, because every story I’d written that was saved on my computer had the word “uterus” in it.

I don’t like to talk about wombs or uteri in an essentializing way. Perhaps for some, they’re a vessel for life, but for others, they’re vessels for life-altering chronic pain in the form of endometriosis, or vessels for cancer, or vessels for lives they didn’t ask for and have no wish to carry forward. For many, they’re simply baggage. But I do think for me, personally, the uterus is an exciting and interesting organ, and there’s no denying its cultural resonance. Ripe for metaphor for sure!

The womb is fascinating in that way all body parts are, but in The Deep, I see it less as a vehicle for life and birth as I see it as a space for contemplation. The mud womb is where the Remembrance takes place. The tidal pool is where Yetu must reckon with her choices. The wombs that carry the wajinru are places where life must reconsider how it’s formed in order to survive in the water.

Where did you get the idea of giving the wajinru electroreceptors in order for Yetu to share their history? Such a cool visual for communication!

I spent a lot of time doing extensive research into deep sea life, so I have to say, this is not one of my own innovations, but one of nature’s. We have vast ways of sharing and communicating, and perceiving soundwaves auditorily is but one of them. When I read that there are animals, sea and otherwise, who talk by electricity, I couldn’t not include that. I love when science fiction and fantasy can bring light to some piece of magic that already exists in our world, albeit in a different form.

Oh cool! And did your research on deep sea life have anything to do with your decision to give the wajinru a radical biology that allows them to mate with anyone of their species regardless of gender or absence thereof? Because I am living for the queerness and nonbinaryness your world building brings to the mythos in clipping’s song!

Is it very unwriterly for me to say that little thought went into it at all? I decided on a whim, really. I live inside a body that often defies the categories established by European scientific understanding, therefore it’s probably not surprising that I’m inclined to impart body and genital diversity into my work. Biological life forms exist according to an array of patterns, and it’s we humans that tend to anthropomorphize them into our arbitrary gendered constraints.

Banana slugs each tend to possess two sets of compatible reproductive genitalia, so that they can mate with anyone, like my wajinru. Bearded dragons can “reverse” sex in the egg, leaving them with a traditionally-understood-as male ZZ genetic profile (vaguely analogous to human XY) and with the egg-laying abilities typically associated with the traditionally-understood-as female ZW (vaguely analogous to human XX chromosomes). A number of different fish—clownfish and moray eels, for example—are typically born with one genetic sex, then some change later.

It felt natural to incorporate this reproductive diversity into the book. “Queer” exists as a category because there’s an enforced norm. Looking at the animal world is one way to see that life is vast and many of the gender and sexual constraints of human society are manufactured.

Would you consider Yetu’s community to be utopian? So much of it seems idyllic, but at the same time it’s a major source of anguish for her because of her role as Historian.

It’s utopian in the sense that the wajinru occupy a realm that doesn’t have to contend with artificial scarcity and hunger, social inequality, poverty, colonialism—capitalism. Under the sea, there are no landlords hoarding property so that the poor have nowhere to shelter. Food is not produced and commodified by landowners, unavailable to those who cannot afford it.

But I don’t think any community can ever be utopian, really, because part of the human project is contending with the fact that we are both individuals and social animals, and there will always be some dissonance between those two bodies. Yetu is an example of someone whose own individual needs are at odds with the cultural practices and traditions of her community, but certainly, she can’t be the only one.

Her role as Historian reminds me a lot of Jonas in Lois Lowry’s The Giver and of the scapegoat child kept in perpetual misery in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Is The Deep in conversation with these two works? Does it draw from them (or others) as a source of inspiration?

I think about “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” a lot, but I hesitate to relate Yetu to that sacrificial lamb figure that comes up often in science fiction. The Historian is a sacred role and it carries a lot of honor with it. Historians that have preceded Yetu have not necessarily struggled as she has. Yetu’s position as someone who challenges tradition in some ways makes her the opposite of the poor, abused child in Le Guin’s work. She’s an impetus for change. In many ways, she’s one of the ones who walks away from Omelas herself.

She has to take on her responsibility as Historian at a young age. That’s an intense burden to shoulder so early. How did you decide to make her fourteen?

Fourteen is a tender age. The emotions are so very raw. It’s also an age where young people are often for the first time negotiating that tension between individual needs and community needs, between how they’ve been raised and how they think the world should be. Adolescence is often about coming into independence, but it’s also about taking on greater social responsibility. Given those things, it seemed to me perhaps the worst possible age for a young person to be required to take on this task. Instead of dedicated time for exploration and discovery, Yetu receives what amounts to her as a collar, a muzzle. Her future has been decided.

When I write, I often gravitate toward the “worst” or most extreme, because that’s where the answers are. That is the void we tend to want to shy away from but instead need to confront. A younger Yetu might have adapted more easily, raised with the histories from early youth. An older Yetu might’ve had the knowledge and experience to deal with them more effectively. Admittedly, I like to go where the pain is. That’s the only way to undo it.

Without their history, the wajinru have no identity. Yet Yetu flees from the ocean because preserving their history doesn’t allow her to have her own identity, and the memories are literally killing her. She wants to reclaim herself, discover and fulfill her individual needs outside her role as Historian, and she does so with her budding romance with human Oori. Would you say there’s a connection between preserving collective memory and existential crisis?

I’d say there’s a connection both between memory and trauma and memory and identity. The trick is figuring out how to have a sense of self, a sense of purpose—which requires memory—when that memory is also a source of great pain.

There’s a part in the novella where we find out that Historians before her performed the Remembrance to melody. Yetu doesn’t want to. She wants everyone to experience it as she does—with screams. She doesn’t want the Remembrance and her own struggles of being a Historian to be entertainment. Is this a meta-critique of slavery history and narrative turned into art? This got me thinking about the ways Black trauma is turned into art, how the realities of Black suffering and its history can be overlooked because of the medium—adversity or tragedy porn. I was wondering if you were thinking about this in relation to other pieces of art out there about American slavery and this novella.

It’s not so much a critique as a recognition that most art and literature, as a matter of necessity, dilutes some of the pain of the lived experience by making it into something beautiful, into a product with aesthetic appeal. This shine that we put on our historical traumas in the form of art allows us to go dark places in a way that can turn them into something useful, something that is pleasing to experience rather than merely a wound-source. There is a reason we sing dirges. This is an important human expression.

Yetu is not helped by these expressions, however. Her concern for her people is not healing. She wants them to experience the phenomena as she does. Direct traumas. Nothing is sung to Yetu. She wants to transform this ceremony from an act of artistic expression into a shared traumatic experience so that she’s not alone in her grief.

And what’s coming up next? What future writing projects can you tell us about?

I’m pleased to share that my next novel, currently titled Sorrowland, has been picked up by Sean McDonald at MCD, an imprint of FSG. It’s been an intense ride writing it, and I’m pleased that it’s found a home so that readers can join me in the funhouse, and what a fun house it is! Sorrowland, a gothic novel with its toes in multiple genres, is about a young Black woman who flees the strict, religious compound where she was raised, only to begin a physical transformation into a creature she doesn’t recognize following her escape. Untangling what’s happening to her will force her confront the US’s dark, racist history. This is a more contemporary setting than any of my previous longform work, but there are many themes in common with The Deep and An Unkindness of Ghosts, as well.

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: Yoon Ha Lee

Sandra Odell | 703 words

“The Second-Last Client” opened with a delightful scramble and hush, ushering in the speculative elements from the first paragraph and carrying them to the end. What inspired this particular apocalyptic visit to a coffee shop of Seedworld 722.11.15?

It’s sort of in the nature of an homage to the local Starbucks. My husband takes me there sometimes when I get stuck on, err, writing, and then we sit there as I drink hot chocolate with peppermint syrup or a chai latte, and I tell him what my problem is and he offers a fix, which  I then proceed to ignore. The shelf where you can take a book and leave a book is at that Starbucks, or at least it used to be; I haven’t been there in a while.

As for apocalypses, I always think of the fourth season of the TV show Angel, which had a lot of fiery imagery.

I loved the blend of details as the story unfolded: whiskey-colored lights, a don’t-notice-me shroud, the casual intimacy of the bookshelves, a human-shaped shell to accommodate Rawk’s need for a perch, the taste of the first girl they kissed. You have a knack for weaving such details throughout your works, creating worlds without overwhelming the narrative. How conscious are you of such descriptions when writing? Are they facets of your first drafts or do you refine and embellish them during later edits?

I consciously sprinkle them throughout the rough drafts, because inventing such details is one of the joys of writing. It’s actually a problem sometimes because I will sit there embellishing the world instead of getting on with the plot, so I have to rein in my tendencies sometimes!

In any case, one of the best lessons I received about writing was the importance of specificity. I learned it from one of my high school English teachers, Mr. Byrd. He taught us that a single well-chosen, slantwise detail can be more evocative than paragraphs of generic description, and I have tried to take that lesson to heart ever since.

There is a certain magic (as it were) to the world of stories, the immersive thrill of a first read, the comfort of rereading, the rush of creating something that might otherwise never exist if it were not for a writer’s imagination. Here is a story that speaks to this magic and is, in and of itself, part of the meta. When you were a child, did you feel something of that magic when you opened a book? How did any such feelings translate into the incantations of writing?

Oh, definitely. I read C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia in third grade, and I actually spent time checking all the closets in my home and at my grandmother’s house to see if they opened up to other worlds. Sadly, they never did. But for all the stories I’ve read about people from our world visiting the worlds of books, I haven’t read as many stories about the characters and their own existence and thoughts.

If you were a character in a story faced with the challenge presented to the woman in red, would you leave or would you stay?

Honestly, if my loved ones were staying, I’d stay with them too. If they left, I would leave too. I’d rather be with my family and friends, whatever our fate.

I am always amazed when I learn of your latest endeavor. Music, writing, art, game design. What’s next for Yoon Ha Lee? Are there any new challenges on the horizon?

I’m learning cartooning! It’s a fun way to combine drawing and storytelling (and bad humor, since right now I’m mostly doing one-panel gags). I’m working up to a twenty-two-page comic; I already have the script and I’m working on the layout thumbnails. Totally recommend this as a hobby if you like to draw at all! And by “draw” I include stick figures, as xkcd’s Randall Munroe has so brilliantly proven.

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: Dominica Phetteplace

Gordon B. White | 411 words

It’s a pleasure to join you once more in Robot Country’s terra incognita. Let’s start at the border with a cloud of wasps: What was your inspiration in returning to Robot Country? In particular, what drew you to take Javi from an off-screen presence to the focal character?

I always like writing from multiple perspectives; I think it’s fun. It’s something I did for a series of stories that appeared in Asimov’s in 2016, the Project Cycle. I’m doing it again here in Robot Country. The next story in this series will be told from Zayn’s perspective.

I like how Javi and Isla complement each other. She’s full of self-righteous fury. She’s so fed up but not entirely certain of what she wants to do next. Javi, on the other hand, feels shame and is determined to do whatever it takes to be better.

You mentioned in the author spotlight for “One Thousand Beetles” that the inspiration for the spider drones came from the artist Louise Bourgeois. Was there any fine art inspiration for this one?

Yes, I was inspired by the artist Kohei Nawa. He does these amazing deer sculptures that are covered in plastic bubbles. The effect makes them look pixelated and it also confuses the boundary of where the deer ends and its surroundings begin.

I was also thinking about the aesthetics of sadism and immigration. Our president says he wants to build a “big, beautiful wall” at our border with Mexico because he thinks he will always be on the right side of it. But what will happen to human beings if artificial superintelligence decides to continue the USian project of colonization and displacement? If humanity lasts long enough, then an ASI will eventually emerge, one trained on observations made from human behavior. If we want our future robot overlords to be kind to us, we can start being kind to each other.

I wanted the border into Robot Country to be both terrifying and ambiguous. And I wanted it to be aesthetically beautiful. Wasps are perfect for this because they are these elegant and efficient killing machines.

What’s next?

I’ve written three more Robot Country stories that will appear in an upcoming apocalypse-themed anthology trilogy edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey. It’s supposed to come out in early 2020.

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: Melissa Marr

Coral Alejandra Moore | 569 words

Where did the idea for “Knee Deep in the Sea” originate?

Rage . . .? I don’t know. I have three other short stories of murderous women out this year—“Daddy’s Girl” (Life is Short anthology, September), “Of Roses” (Tor.com, October); and “Nameless” (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, end of 2019). I also have an extremely dark Audible Original contemporary psychological thriller in early 2020.

I suspect I have a bit of feminist rage that’s been exacerbated by politics the last couple years.

Isabel is from middle America and transplanted to Los Angeles; is there a reason that the story is set in Orkney, so far from where she’s from?

Well, I don’t consider the South “middle America.” I love the South. Three of my five murderous women in recent tales come from there—and I spent half my life there.

Orkney is the origin of the selchie, and I have been going there or the Hebrides most summers for the last decade plus.

It’s not terribly complex. If you want to write the sea, you write where the sea speaks: coast and island.

The characters in this story aren’t exactly cuddly and likable; was that a conscious choice you made from the beginning or did it grow from the story you wanted to tell?

I think we may have a definition issue. I think Isa and Margaret are likeable. They were women faced with men who disrespect women. They opted not to accept such things. What’s not to like?

The sea is very much a secondary character in this story, and the main character’s relationship with it is very important to what happens. Which came first for you, that relationship or the premise of the story?

I am in love with the water. I suspect it shows in a few spots in this tale. I spend my free time traveling to the water. (I’m just back from kayaking an hour ago as I reply to this.) I go to Orkney, the Hebrides, Alaska, SoCal, the bayou. At least three to four of those every year. In June, I was on a boat in Alaska, and in August in SoCal (at the beach and on a boat). In January, I’ll be in the bayou. In June, the Scottish Isles . . . and in September, the Alaskan waters also. Somewhere in there, I’ll be in Mexican waters. And weekly, I’m on the river—with occasional lakes.

What are you working on now, and where can readers who want to find more of your work find you?

2020 has my thriller (Pretty Things) on Audible Originals, and 2021 has my Faux Victorian middle grade novel (with kelpies, swords, and alchemy) from Penguin . . . as well as a book with my photos of the wild horses at my local river and trails (also via Penguin).

In progress, there’s a graphic novel I’m hoping will be greenlit soon, and I was just approached about working in a writer’s room for television this fall.

Those last two are maybes. The others are done and awaiting release. Somewhere in there, I have a Wicked Lovely prequel I’m finishing.

I’m not great at sticking to one thing.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Coral Alejandra Moore has always been the kind of girl who makes up stories. Fortunately, she never quite grew out of that. She writes because she loves to invent characters and the desire to find out what happens to her creations drives her tales. She is a 2013 alum of the Viable Paradise writer’s workshop and she has been published by Diabolical Plots, Zombies Need Brains, and Secrets of the Goat People. Currently she lives in the beautiful state of Washington with the love of her life and a dangerously smart Catahoula Leopard Dog where she rides motorcycles, raises chickens, and drinks all the coffee.

Author Spotlight: Adam-Troy Castro

Jude Griffin | 829 words

Ellis’s former relationships, Myrna’s gender: all so elegantly included without hijacking the story. Can you teach more writers to do this?

Even though two of my three series characters, Andrea Cort and John Draiken, have been established as bisexual, I most certainly do not, repeat repeat repeat repeat do not, represent myself as a paragon in this area, let alone one who could function as teacher. It happened to be something I realized while writing this: that if I was going to make this a story about the conflict between Ellis’s yearning for a soulmate, and the more practical and sensible life he could have known with a human romantic partner, I could not represent a woman as his sole backup option. The implication would have been that this was the only available normalcy, and that was a false and frankly antiquated default. To remove that as a story element, I complicated his romantic past a mite. It had the incidental and beneficial result of establishing that what looking the guy did on Earth was indeed broad, just not deep.

What a twist ending: I really, really didn’t see that coming, but it was perfect. Does it rank high among your best endings/closing lines? If not, which stories rank higher?

Oh, there are so many, honestly. A few of them are on Lightspeed: “Her Husband’s Hands,” “Of A Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs,” and “The Thing About Shapes to Come.”

You write so widely across genres: Your Patreon (patreon.com/AdamTroyCastro) mentions “extreme horror, science fiction of both the Asimovian and Ellisonian varieties, superhero potboilers, illustrated alphabet books, middle-grade novels, and—currently making the rounds—a mainstream thriller.” What’s the thriller about? Does it have any supernatural elements?

None whatsoever. It’s the tale of a professional goon, a huge hulking monster who gets brought in whenever the mob has somebody tied to a chair, so that he can terrify the living hell out of them just by entering the room, before he does what he’s good at and breaks their thumbs. That’s his job. And aside from that, he ain’t a bad guy, which causes complications when somebody starts hiring for a job even he finds too objectionable to do.

You’re on Patreon: Can you tell us more about that?

It is simple. Folks, the pay rate for fiction writers has not improved all that much, in constant funds not adjusted for inflation, since my birth, and I am a coot. My Patreon page offers various rewards to folks who kick in a few bucks a month, to help me continue to produce fiction at my current rate. Various levels include essays, cat pictures, fiction excerpts, and entirely new stories, including one guaranteed new adventure of my hero Gustav Gloom, each year.

Your Remake Chronicles on Patreon: What’s the background on this project? (Your post on the re-edited Apocalypse Now made me want to watch both movies just to appreciate your insights more.)

Thanks. For about a decade now, I have been producing for first my own dedicated website and then as a column on the defunct Fantastic Stories of the Imagination and now on Patreon, various scholarly essays comparing the various versions of film properties made multiple times. It started as a vivid rebuttal to the premise, often hotly advanced by people who don’t know what they’re talking about, that “remakes always suck,” something that does not happen to be true. I provide links to past essays about The Wages of Fear, remade as Sorcerer (bit.ly/2nxuore), the three separate versions of The Maltese Falcon (of which the third is the one we all know)( bit.ly/2nAwlmL), the two versions of Casino Royale (bit.ly/2oewkVI), and the three separate versions of The Poseidon Adventure (which includes a section explaining again just how intensely religious the first movie actually was—bit.ly/2mGoJPg). In any event, I do at least one new one a month, for Patreon subscribers.

Any news or projects you want to tell us about?

About now you should be able to find my Stoker-nominated novella, “The Shallow End of the Pool,” a terrifying work if I do say so myself, as an audiobook. It is a story also available in the audiobook My Wife Hates Time Travel and Other Stories, but here available in its own package.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 123 words

Coming up in December, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Matthew Baker (“A Bad Day in Utopia”) and Pat Murphy (“Motherhood”), along with SF reprints by T.L. Huchu (“Njuzu”) and Rick Wilber (“Today is Today”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by KT Bryski (“The Path of Pins, the Path of Needles”) and Molly Gutman (“The End of the Sleeping Girls”), and fantasy reprints by Daniel Abraham (“The Mocking Tower”) and M. Rickert (“Holiday”).

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 our usual book excerpt.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.

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

Destroy Projects

www.destroysf.com

Newsletter

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/newsletter

RSS Feed

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/rss-2

Podcast Feed

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/itunes-rss

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!

Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe for more information, including about third-party subscription options.

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 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 Patreon (patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams).

TL;DR Version

If you enjoy Lightspeed and Nightmare and my anthologies, our Patreon page is 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?

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 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” Patreon account because it seemed like it would be more efficient to manage just one account. 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 Patreon is the place to do that.

What Do I Get Out of Being a 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, 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. That URL again is 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/Senior Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Editor & Book Reviewer

Arley Sorg

Reprint Editor

Rich Horton

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

John Joseph Adams

Assistant Editor

Laurel Amberdine

Editorial Assistant

Alex Puncekar

Reviewers

Arley Sorg

LaShawn Wanak

Chris Kluwe

Carrie Vaughn

Christopher East

Violet Allen

Interviewer

Christian A. Coleman

Copy Editor

Dana Watson

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Devin Marcus

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects

Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland

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)

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

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 [forthcoming]

Creatures of Charm and Hunger by Molly Tanzer [forthcoming]

A Dark Queen Rises by Ashok K. Banker [forthcoming]

The Conductors by Nicole Glover [forthcoming]

The Chosen One by Veronica Roth [forthcoming]

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.