TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 146, July 2022

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: July 2022

SCIENCE FICTION

Critical Mass
Peter Watts

Liberty: Seeking Support for a Writ of Habeas Corpus for a Non-Human Being
Samuel Peralta

Singing the Ancient Out of the Dark
R J Theodore and Maurice Broaddus

Ursus Frankensteinus
Rich Larson

FANTASY

The Rustle of Growing Things
Isabel Cañas

An Old Man Cometh and He Is Overgrown
Lyndsie Manusos

The Sun in Exile
Catherynne M. Valente

Hungry as the Mirror Bright
Micah Dean Hicks

EXCERPTS

A Half-Built Garden
Ruthanna Emrys

NONFICTION

Book Review: Gearbreakers, by Zoe Hana Mikuta
Aigner Loren Wilson

Book Review: El Porvenir, ¡Ya!, edited by Duncan, Irizary, & Rendón
Arley Sorg

Book Review: Juniper & Thorn, by Ava Reid
Chris Kluwe

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Peter Watts

Lyndsie Manusos

R J Theodore & Maurice Broaddus

Micah Dean Hicks

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

© 2022 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

Editorial: July 2022

John Joseph Adams | 276 words

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 146th issue!

We often talk about technology and art as if they are polar opposites, but of course artists use technology, and art itself is both shaped and a shaper of technology. Our first original science fiction story this month—“Critical Mass,” by Peter Watts—is about the marriage of sculpture to technology, and it’s a fascinating meditation on the relationship between them.

Our other original SF (“Singing the Ancient Out of the Dark”) also tackles what might feel like a marriage of opposites: it’s about the role of historians in space exploration, written by duo R J Theodore and Maurice Broaddus. Rich Larson returns with “Ursus Frankensteinus,” a flash piece about polar bears, and our SF reprint is by Samuel Peralta (“Liberty: Seeking Support for a Writ of Habeas Corpus for a Non-Human Being”).

Lyndsie Manusos spins us a poignant story of love and loss in her magical tale “An Old Man Cometh and He Is Overgrown.” Micah Dean Hicks shines a different kind of light on fairies in his story “Hungry as the Mirror Bright.” Isabel Cañas offers a solemn piece of flash fiction, “The Rustle of Growing Things,” and we have a fantasy reprint by Catherynne M. Valente (“The Sun in Exile”).

In nonfiction, our author spotlight interviewer, Laurel Amberdine, has sat down with our writers to discuss their work, and of course we have book reviews from our wonderful review team. Our ebook readers will also enjoy an excerpt from Ruthanna Emrys’s new novel, A Half-Built Garden.

It’s another terrific issue, and we’re delighted to share it with you!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and is the bestselling editor of more than thirty anthologies, including Wastelands and The Living Dead. Recent books include A People’s Future of the United States, Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, and the three volumes of The Dystopia 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 Lightspeed and is the publisher of its sister-magazines, Fantasy and Nightmare. For five years, he ran the John Joseph Adams Books novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and @johnjosephadams.

Critical Mass

Peter Watts | 6728 words

Leo Gregory is losing altitude.

He coasts on the thermals of a legacy fading behind him: a documentary here, a retrospective there, some greatest-hits collection down in the corner for the dilettantes. Oh, the work has lost none of its grandeur: his buildings remain timeless, his objets d’art still serve up facets upon layers from each new angle. Critics continue to marvel over the way Leo Gregory can craft a whole hypnotic universe from a blob of glass and wire. But the signature pieces are the better part of a decade old, now. The publications may be recent, but the works they explore have been around for years. In terms of sheer inventory, Leo’s productivity is as great as it’s ever been—but somehow the new pieces aren’t showing up in the monographs or the ecstatic retrospectives.

Nobody seems to have noticed yet, but he knows it’s only a matter of time. People are bound to catch on. Objects in the rear-view mirror are farther than they appear.

So often now, function squashes form. Structures once designed to celebrate the material now exist only to withstand the next hurricane. Leo’s creations once aspired to inspire; now they do little more than accommodate the next outbreak. He is so tired of letting weather and microbes push him around. He wants to stop merely building things and go back to sculpting them: walls that segue seamlessly into ceilings, lights that shoal like bioluminescent squid through corridors and conference rooms. He wants to subvert boring straight-line geometries with naturalistic evocations of driftwood and coral.

He could, if they’d let him. His classic creations are as resilient as they are beautiful; seven Richters would barely crack the windows. But people are so scared, these days. Every year the floods rise higher, the fires burn hotter, the winds blow harder. People don’t want strength disguised, they want it in their faces. They want reassurance. They want something that looks strong.

There was a time when he could have even given them that, when he knew how to make even Brutalism beautiful. Maybe he still can; it’s been so long since he was afforded the opportunity. He can’t quite pin down when that straitjacket stopped chafing.

Maybe about the time he started running out of ideas.

Leo can’t seem to get a good night’s sleep. He tosses and turns, bedeviled by dreams of plagues and prostitution. As often as not he sleeps in the cot in Emma’s room, to spare Michelle from his semiconscious flapping about. (He only wishes he could wake Emma so easily.) He works late and sleeps later. False starts and abortions accumulate in his home studio, weighing him down like ballast, compressing him. He feels as though he’s being pulled slowly down into the Juan de Fuca Trench.

When he discovers the break-in on the morning of the 23rd, it’s almost a relief.

• • • •

Officer Thalberg interviews Leo in the vandalized studio. More precisely, she interviews Leo-in-the-vandalized-studio, via drone hovering at eye level a discreet two meters away; Thalberg herself remains antiseptically ensconced in her cruiser at the curb. Her sidekick—a Boston Dynamics Bloodhound that moves like a hungry xenomorph on four spring-loaded legs—has already introduced itself and wandered off in search of clues.

Thalberg looks out from a little screen nestled between the quad’s forward fans. “Anything stolen?”

“I don’t think so. Whoever it was just—tossed the place. Trashed Two-thirty.”

“Two-thirty.”

“A piece of sculpture I was working on,” Leo explains, and wonders why it sounds like a confession. “I number them.”

“You’re an artist?” Thalberg sounds surprised; you don’t end up on the fast-response list unless you’re respectable.

“Among other things,” Leo says. “I do a lot of building design.” That part of his persona seems to go over better in certain quarters.

“Oh. An architect.” Thalberg seems satisfied; Leo doesn’t correct her.

Something clatters around the corner. He follows the sound—Thalberg’s drone floating at his shoulder—through archways of resin and fabric-formed concrete. Indirect natural light seeps brightly through fissures in the walls. The whole studio is more grotto than office: a bright high-ceilinged cave, as natural as artifice can be.

The Bloodhound has found Leo’s junk pile in an alcove off the main workspace: ceramic-coated GPUs from old motherboards. The motors from discarded Cuisinarts. Batteries and gears and gyros wired together in insane configurations, random junk electroplated into glorious metal jigsaws. Built, toyed with, discarded onto a pile too big to contain it all; bits and pieces have spilled away from its slopes, lie strewn across the floor like fragile little caltrops. The robot sniffs and scans and noses it all, systematically transforming junk into Evidence.

“Two-thirty, I presume,” Thalberg remarks.

Leo shakes his head. “These are just—I dunno, prototypes. Failed experiments.” Amusements for Emma, in fact. That’s how they started. He kept building them afterward out of sheer habit, half-hearted and joyless. But sometime when he wasn’t looking they took on new life, morphed from grim distraction into something almost—fulfilling, maybe. Warm-up exercises. An exploration of interesting dead ends.

Maybe it’s all bullshit, maybe this is just his way of hanging on to the past. So what if he gets more pleasure out of these uncommissioned orphans than from any of the recent works he dignifies with an actual number. That doesn’t change the fact that by any objective measure, he’s basically just jerking off.

He calls them masturpieces. Not that he’s about to admit as much to Officer Thalberg.

“Two-thirty’s over here.” Leo backtracks and hangs a left; the drone pivots and weaves in his wake. The Bloodhound worries away at the pile behind them.

230 sits—sat, rather—on a central table in the main studio. In life it was a small frozen tsunami, folded glass layered in shades of blue and emerald. You could look into its depths and see a whole dark ocean looking back. A filigreed mesh of copper threads ran through its skin; the idea was to generate a magnetic field in which tiny crystal droplets, similarly imbued, would float in midair around the central artifact. The wave and its cloud of spray, bound by invisible force.

Ten years ago, it would have been a groundbreaker.

Thalberg’s quad turns slowly on its axis, taking in the tableau. The studio’s north wall looks out across the harbor to the mountains on the north shore.

“Nice place,” Thalberg remarks.

If you walked through that sliding glass door onto the balcony and looked down, you’d come face-to-face with the gray grimy asphalt of Commissioner Street at the foot of the hill, the creosote sutures of the train tracks to either side. None of that ugliness falls line-of-sight from in here, though.

The quad floats over to the glass doors. “This was open last night?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s an eight-meter drop.” The studio extends from the crest of the hill as if the house behind were sticking out its tongue. It overhangs a feral canopy of cherry and maple, a dense green vein winding along a slope just steep enough to keep the developers at bay. Also, Leo realizes belatedly, a concealed avenue of approach for anyone intent on a little B&E.

“Uh huh. Private entrance, too,” Thalberg adds. Not unusual, these days—when guests and colleagues come to use the facilities, you don’t want them tromping pathogens through your living room—but still.

“It’s alarmed,” Leo says, a bit defensively.

“And the alarm was on last night?”

“Yeah, I—” Come to think of it, he doesn’t explicitly remember. But you never remember the stuff you do automatically, right?

“It always is,” he finishes, but the quad’s already sniffing along one of the fissures in the western wall: a source of light and cross-ventilation posing as geological imperfection. The drone winks sparkly ultraviolet at a small scuff mark there, spins back to face him.

“This gap extends all the way through?”

“There’s a screen on the other side to keep out the bugs. But, yeah.” He feels compelled to add, “You’d have to be some kind of child contortionist to squeeze through there, though. Unless someone cut you into pieces first.”

“Mr. Gregory, with all due respect to your architectural skills, I’ve seen tree houses with stronger security.”

Leo shrugs. “Yeah, I—I was more careful when I wasn’t spending so much time at home. You don’t expect someone to break in when you’re right down the hall, you know?”

“At the very least you should keep the balcony entrance locked and install some cameras. Who else has access?”

“Just me and Michelle.”

“What about Emma?”

Of course: they came down the hall, right past the closed door with its Dayglo nudibranch name plate and the muffled clicks and hisses seeping through from the other side.

“She hasn’t woken up in four years,” Leo says quietly.

Even without looking, he can see Thalberg counting back in her head. “My condolences,” she says after a moment. “Golem was—I still can’t imagine what kind of monster would deliberately create something like—”

Leo cuts her off: “It’s induced.”

“Excuse me?”

“The coma. We induced it. H₂S therapy.” It seems important that Thalberg know this, somehow. “Until there’s a cure.”

“Of course. They’re making progress all the time.” The drone dips sadly in a sudden breeze from the balcony. “You must have home care, then.”

“Once every couple of weeks at most. The bed’s mostly automated.” Belatedly he realizes what Thalberg is getting at. “The nurse doesn’t have access to—”

His earbud buzzes. Relieved, Leo checks his spex: “Sorry, do you mind if I take this? It’s my business partner.”

“Sure.” The drone floats toward the balcony. “I’ve got to check the grounds anyway.”

It’s a welcome reprieve, even though he knows what it’s about: that collector in Frankfurt again, desperate to add an undiscovered Gregory to his living room. Anything new, anything old even so long as it isn’t in the catalogs. Whatever he has lying around. Price is no object.

Leo’s been putting him off. It shames him to admit that he’s actually tempted.

• • • •

Michelle turns her eyes from the stage where three proteges rehearse fluid moves that, to Leo at least, seem anatomically impossible for anything with an internal skeleton. “No joy, then?”

He shakes his head. “No DNA. No obvious motive. Not much she could do, other than read me the riot act for leaving the windows open and not having spycams all over the place.”

“We are putting in cameras though, right?”

He hesitates.

“Leo. Someone was in our house.”

“Right. Of course.” He really has resolved to be more conscientious about security. He’s keeping all the doors and windows locked, at least. The camera thing might take a while. He’ll have to wheedle someone into building a custom setup. You can’t get anything off the shelf these days that doesn’t hoover up all your personal data by default, and Leo does not trust Google or Amazon or any other surveillance-happy behemoth whose business model hinges on making you forget that Cloud is just another word for Someone Else’s Servers.

Michelle turns back to her dancers, taps the plexi to get their attention; delivers feedback and instruction via some elegant wordless semaphore. One of the troupe flashes a thumbs-up; they take it from the top.

Leo watches, mesmerized. To all appearances the stage is occupied not by three entities but by a single multi-limbed being split into three parts, all somehow moving of unified accord. Soft lightning flashes between them: lambent auroras of ruby and emerald, electric thoughts leaping synaptic junctions to keep everything in sync. The lights flicker like static discharge from the BSBs around each dancer’s left wrist.

“How’d you do the lights?” he wonders.

“Kris hacked the contact-tracing fields. The colors emerge from the interaction of their path profiles.”

Epidemiological rainbows. The chromatics of health and disease, of vibrant life and the dissolution of small fragile things. Michelle has literalized the BSBs, made them visibly Broad-Spectrum.

“I could have done that for you.” Thinking: But I didn’t.

She shrugs. “No big deal. Kris figured it out in about two secs.”

The dancers have segued into a whole new mode; every limb and joint trembles now, they move as if literally electrified. Leo can’t put his finger on the moment that changed.

“I envy you,” he admits. “It’s not—it’s not all on you. Everything you do is a collaboration.”

Michelle frowns. “It’s me enough. In the end. The basic moves and concepts, anyway. They bring their own interpretations of course, but I’m the one who gets the shitty reviews if it’s a fuck-up.”

Leo snorts. “When did you ever get a shitty review?”

She’s gracious enough to let it slide.

He looks back to the stage. “So this is the live one, right? Piranha?”

She nods, eyes on the dancers, lips slightly parted. Some subtle aura glows around her, half anticipation, half addiction. That edge—that feedback loop between audience and performer, the subtle call-and-response that updates a dozen times a second and makes every performance utterly unique—it doesn’t happen often these days. The audience may be a thousand times larger than any that could fit into these seats; it may extend from the lower mainland to the other side of the world. But they aren’t here; the dancers call and nothing responds. In a performative sense, the audience isn’t even real.

Piranha scored one of exactly four live-audience permits doled out by city hall this year. The news came through a month ago and Michelle’s feet still haven’t touched the ground.

She’s tried to describe the adrenaline high she gets from performing for flesh and blood: like being an animal, she says. Like being in the jungle and hearing every cricket and predator within a hundred miles. Feeling every hair on your arm, individually, stirring in the breeze: running real-time scenarios like a supercomputer, what to do if this happens, where to go if that does, how to shape your moves around that late arrival who tries to break in through the fire exit half an hour in.

He envies that, too. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen you like this,” he says.

She hesitates. Nods.

“I wish I could feel the way you do. That—hyperawareness.”

She shakes her head. “You ask me, you’re too aware. Stop worrying so much.”

“Easy for you to say.”

She looks around the room, pointedly takes in the banks of stereocams and mics and roosting drones used to convey something in lieu of Art to distant masses. “Nothing’s easy these days, Leo.”

He grimaces, conceding the point.

“And anyway,” Michelle adds, “you know why I’m doing okay again? Because I trust myself. You know what happens when I lose faith in my own abilities, when I stop just dancing and start wondering if I made the right number of steps before the turn? I screw up. Like . . . like a centipede trying to figure out where all his legs should go.” She fixes him with a serious stare. “Stop thinking about it. Take a break. The subconscious is capable of amazing things if you just let it do its thing. Go play Starfisher or something.”

He manages a smile. “I don’t have time for games, Meesh.”

“People make breakthroughs while playing games. In their sleep, even. I’ll send you the links. Besides,”—she puts her hands on his shoulders—“you’re not nearly in the rut you think you are. Those little one-off experiments of yours—”

“That’s just dicking around.”

“Well, I like them. Emma liked—likes them. They move.”

“They just lie there.”

“Sweetie, don’t be so literal. They move by just lying there. I’m a dancer; I can tell.”

She pats his ass.

“They’re kinetic.”

• • • •

Emma’s eyes still move under their lids.

It’s not supposed to happen. Her brain is as shut down as the rest of her: metabolic pathways clogged by precise aliquots of hydrogen sulfide, the machinery of that vital life slowed by ninety percent or more. Her mind resides mainly in the hippocampus now: pure dreamless slow-wave, its upper reaches dormant and blissfully unaware.

Yet there she is. Looking around in the darkness. Always the rule-breaker.

“Hey, kid.” Leo glances down at the bauble in his hand. “Brought you something.” It’s not kinetic but it’s pretty enough: a small beaded urchin lit from within, a home-made LED with an epidermis of polished sea-glass. He shows it to her, as ritual dictates (did those closed eyes stop moving for just a second, come to rest on the gift in his hand?); carefully sets it down on the headboard with all the others he’s brought her over the years. He smooths the hair away from her forehead. They should probably buzz it but they keep it short instead. He and Michelle wash it together, every week.

So damn young. Fifteen years old and she still looks like a little girl: their sleeping beauty, aging one year in ten. What happens if it takes another decade to find a cure? Two? Emma could hit thirty before she hits puberty.

They’ve thought about waking her up, of course. Fought about it, even: what harm would it do, on special occasions? Birthdays, Christmases. Just for an hour or two. Maybe a day. To give her some time in the light, to reacquaint themselves with this small bright soul they’ve put on hold while they wait for medicine to catch up with the bioterrorists.

Cruel fantasy, of course. It takes days to lift someone safely out of a sulfide coma—and for what? So their beautiful daughter can see her parents aging in stop-motion, glimpse a world moving on without her as all those tiny monsters, reawakened in turn, devour her a little more from the inside? And then it’s Playtime’s over, sweetie. Back to the void. Happy birthday. All for a few minutes of selfish face time.

And yet they miss her so much. The hurt, the heartache—builds up. So they let it out now and then, arguing, denying, iterating through the same steps to the same unassailable end point while Emma waits in stasis, tended by magical machines.

Sometimes Leo finds a measure of comfort here: the soft blue lighting, the twinkling constellations of vital signs, the viscous peristalsis of the gel mattress as it rolls his daughter to and fro to keep the bed sores at bay. The low electrical hum and snap of the EMS pads on arms and legs: small electrocutions to head off the wasting of unused muscles. The whole room is a kind of ecosystem, a blue-shifted electric forest keeping the monsters away. That ambiance—reassures him, somehow.

Sometimes.

Other times it drives him up the fucking wall.

• • • •

Thalberg again. “I didn’t know you built robots, Mr. Gregory.”

Leo squints into his spex. “I don’t.”

“I’m in Point Grey right now, looking at one that has your handiwork all over it.”

“Point Gr—oh.” It comes back to him. “204.”

The feed switches to Thalberg’s drone, hovering over a dead Honda Kamakiri splayed across granite flagstones. Its carapace is fractured; two legs are broken. A sparse cloud of tinfoil moths flutter around it like tiny angels gone grand mal, lurching and jerking in a spastic caricature of the swirling murmurations Leo programmed in three years ago. Thalberg’s Bloodhound noses the carcass with a precise forensic rigor that can’t quite dispel the sense of one being mourning the loss of another.

Thalberg reappears. “204, I presume.”

“Yeah. The bot’s off-the-shelf, but I—customized it.”

“These little floaty bits.”

Leo nods. “Among other things. They’re supposed to flock like birds. Magnetic coils, microfans, nearest-neighbor algos. It was actually pretty impressive before . . .”

“Uh huh.” Thalberg does not sound impressed. Truth be told, Leo isn’t either, really. 204 was a gimmick, a handful of elements from his Greatest-Hits collection recycled into work-for-hire.

Still. “So is this a pattern, then?”

“Twice is coincidence,” Thalberg says. “Takes three times to get to Enemy Action. But you might want to send me a list of any of other works you’ve got scattered around the lower mainland. Just in case.”

It hits him then. “That’s a security bot; there should be video. If not in local memory, uploaded somewhere.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Thalberg smiles grimly. “All the local surveillance was scrambled.”

“What?”

The officer nods. “Some kind of magnetic interference. Every camera in range got fratzed before anything appeared in frame.”

“Don’t look at me,” Leo says.

Thalberg raises an eyebrow. “Why would I?”

“Well, um, the coils I installed. For the birdlets. But I shielded the onboard electronics, and anyway the fields weren’t nearly strong enough to mess with anything outside the chassis.”

“Uh huh.” Thalberg leans out of frame for a moment before the tracking macro kicks in and reacquires; Leo catches a glimpse of steering wheel, experiences a flicker of envy. Cops still get to drive, manually. Their cars don’t even come with a self-drive option, not since the Antinatalists hacked the whole Cincinnati PD fleet into playing bumper-car at 100 kph in the downtown core.

Those were the days.

• • • •

Thalberg gets her list, but she’s got other cases on her plate. Leo can’t imagine that a couple of minor B&Es rank very high on her agenda. He restrains himself as long as he can, which takes him through to a sleepless two a.m.; then he eases out of bed (Michelle mumbles at his back but doesn’t awaken), pulls on a pair of pants and pads to the garage. He unplugs the Nissan and feeds it waypoints; while it chews on them he bulkmails his local client list with a query about whether anything might have, you know, happened to any of his pieces over the past few days.

The Nissan pings, route optimized and plotted. Leo embarks on the Midnight Tour.

He spelunks 86 down on East Georgia: Official Leo HQ, myopically built before The Cocooning. It’s a great block five stories high, its facades randomly cratered with cavelike invaginations and falls of greenery: a Borg cube, assimilated by a rainforest. Leo starts in the parking garage, where rows of freshly-printed porta-potties and stacks of folded cots await next year’s inevitable influx of refugees (everyone has to do their part—and it’s not as though the garage is overwhelmed with drive-ins anyway, these days). He works his way up through loading bays and production facilities, courtyards and gardens and dusty prototyping shops. Eighty-six is virtually abandoned even during the day, beyond the trickle of street-level business that somehow keeps the restaurant and gallery alive. Here in the dead of night, there is only Leo—and the building is pristine. Not a sculpture, not a light fixture is out of place.

192 is a different story: a commissioned piece of commemorative sculpture plunked down in Maple Tree Square, postmodern Vancouver’s answer to tarnished bronze statues of dead white men on horses. Some critic once compared it to a hantavirus; that wasn’t what Leo had in mind when he built the bloody thing, but in hindsight he can’t deny the resemblance.

It doesn’t look like much of anything now. Its pieces lie scattered across the square. One of those temporary road signs—high pole, cement base—lies on its side nearby. Evidently someone has used it as a sledgehammer.

Three times is enemy action. Then again, maybe not; what else do you expect when you put a piece of public art in the heart of Gastown, a mere forty meters from literally-I-kid-you-not Blood Alley? The police barely even respond to 911 calls from here any more. When they do show up, it tends to be in force.

This might not be targeted at all. This could just be another act of random Gastown violence of the sort practiced by those good folks coming around the corner from Powell, the copper streetlights casting their faces in shadow, the implements in their hands heavy and full of inertia . . .

“Drive,” Leo says, and the Nissan carries him away.

He crosses Lions Gate to Ambleside: 210 and 211 are okay. Over at Pemberton and Marine, 162 seems none the worse for wear. 188 seems intact from a distance—its upper reaches loom over the community center in its shadow, same as always—but what is he expecting? Some night-stalking army of vigilante art critics is going to take down a ten-story condo cluster in the heart of North Van?

Not that Leo would especially mourn its loss. 188 is a fine project, maybe the best you could hope for in a world of small-minded bureaucrats who equate resilience with boxiness. Its interior features some really nice touches—the lobby’s all curves and arches, lit with constellations of blown glass that glow like golden incandescent blood cells—but the building itself is nothing special. Planes and right-angles, a conventional concrete shell shaped by a throwaway exoskeleton of reinforced plywood.

The damage comes into view as the Nissan rounds the corner. The wreckage is all at ground level, broken windows and pockmarked walls, a sparse talus of bricks scattered along the sidewalk. Rebar protrudes from the gashed facade like thin bones from an open wound. The whole tableau strobes blue and red in the light of the police cruiser parked at the main entrance. A cop actually emerges from the cab as Leo watches, demoting the usual trunk-launched drone from point man to sidekick. The meat turns and eyes the Nissan as it cruises past; the mech ignores it.

Leo doesn’t stop.

Dawn finds him back at home and cowled in a VR headset, riding a rental drone along the Gulf Islands to his beloved Bridge House. The place is rooted on opposite sides of a deep fern gully, spanning the space between, designed as a kind of domestic observatory for rising seas and changing ecosystems. Successive generations would have marveled as the wonderland beneath their feet transitioned from woodland to marsh, from marsh to inlet. Its inhabitants would have dwelt within the verdant green heart of ecological succession itself.

The house stands empty. It’s been barely a decade and the once-pristine gully is a stagnant pit, choked with filamentous algae, cycling from merely eutrophic in the spring to downright anoxic by August. It stinks of black mud and rotten eggs. The stand of cedars that once arched over the driveway has been reduced to skeletal kindling by bark beetles and some new superfungus that erupted from the Oregon rainforest back in ‘25. The oceanfront windows look out on an endless jumbled vista of driftwood, and garbage, and broken chunks of autoprinted Japanese condos carried over on the North Pacific Current.

Bridge House has endured though, an unintended testament to Be Careful What You Wish For. It has survived superstorms and killer surf and coast-wrecking earthquakes half a millennium overdue. It remains unscathed: whoever’s pursuing this vendetta hasn’t made it out this far.

Not that they need to.

• • • •

So it’s official: someone has a bone to pick with Leo Gregory, Fading Wunderkind. Now the VPD will swing into action. They’ll ignore the biohackers building gengineered plagues in their garages. They’ll forget all about the hordes of refugees sneaking in from the U.S. Hell, they may even stick a pin in that leftist cabal that hacked the Internet of Things last week, warmed up every fridge in the lower mainland just enough to overwhelm the local hospitals with two thousand simultaneous cases of salmonella. They’ll forget about all that and focus their resources exclusively on the case of the midnight vandal who desecrates the timeless work of Leo Gregory.

Right.

In fact, he’ll be lucky if Thalberg hasn’t already been reassigned to the latest gang war task force. If he wants to fight back, he’s on his own.

But Leo’s no detective. He’s a sculptor. He’s an artist. The only way he knows to fight back against the destruction of these artifacts is to make more of them, to abandon this junked history and fill the space with something better.

It sounds so fucking simple. The truth is, the only creations that have given him any pleasure lately have been those one-off warm-ups, and they’re—nothing. Personal indulgences, spontaneous and utterly lacking in rigor.

Maybe that’s why he and Emma like them.

He throws an old documentary onto the wall in lieu of inspiration—the National Film Board’s Infinite Regressions of Leo Gregory—and selects a piece from the junk pile: a crystal diatom, bristling with a thousand needle-thin protrusions. He built it in a bell jar, pumped out the air and let hard vacuum pull an expanding bubble of soft glass through a wireframe mesh. It seems almost too delicate to exist; those fragile spines wouldn’t even be able to bear their own weight but for the wire gates and conduits threaded through the glass like a neural net.

He grabs a pair of long-handled forceps and absently starts snapping spines off at the base.

Over on the wall Leo’s Barbican piece floats like a monstrous bioluminescent coral while some younger self voiceovers on the importance of knowing what’s worthwhile. A montage of photos and phone vids recall his salad days pretending to be a Whiterock farmer, passing off his glassblowing rig as farm equipment to get around the zoning laws. Then back to Art—108, this time: “Most of us regard lightning in a bottle as a mere turn of phrase. Only Leo Gregory would dare to take it literally.” Some mathematician from Waterloo postulates a savantic intuition for derivatives.

These doodles are nice—fulfilling even, in their own modest way—but they’re so damn small. It’s not enough to merely push the envelope; Leo wants to leave it in shreds. He wants to scale his art up into his architecture, transect a whole fucking building. He wants to build a skyscraper and slice through it at insane angles, explore a million cross-sections: the skeleton, the insulation, the pulmonary ducts and ventilators, the sparking copper and fiberop of the central nervous system. He wants to cut through all that Euclidean monotony and uncover the fractal wonders hidden inside, map a whole two-dimensional universe stretched across a thousand square meters.

Young Leo again: “What we try to do is release control . . . set these systems in motion which let the material determine what form it takes . . .”

He returns his attention to the workbench, blinks: sometime in the past few minutes he’s sliced the diatom in half around the equator. The glistening cross-section mesmerizes, like a circuit diagram embedded in a geode. An iris. An eye.

What was it Michelle said, a few days back? The subconscious is capable of amazing things if you just let it do its thing.

Well, duh. This is hardly the first time his hands have gone their own way when he wasn’t watching; he’s done some of best work in The Zone. Back when his work was good.

But maybe Michelle’s right. She usually is. Maybe he should stop concentrating on the work itself and figure out how to get back onto that ol’ Zenspace.

She sent him links, he remembers. He mutes the wall and checks them out.

Wow.

It goes way beyond pianists letting their fingers move themselves, or champion golfers unable to remember the moment they sank that critical putt. There are your run-of-the-mill sleepwalkers, of course (Emma was one of those, before; they’d find her in front of the fridge at three a.m. eating raw soy dogs from the package). Your somewhat-less-run-of-the-mill sleep-sexers, cruising bars, seducing one-nighters, waking up the next day shocked and horrified by the presence of the complete stranger beside them in bed. But Meesh wasn’t kidding: people also make scientific breakthroughs in their sleep. Mathematical theorems, molecular structures, statistical models of marine habitats—all served up wholesale in dreams, if these reports are to be believed. All the dreamers had to do was wake up and write down the insights before they faded, like they were taking dictation.

People even kill in their sleep. Homicidal somnambulism, it’s called. They drive across town, do the deed and clean up the mess afterward, never waking. And juries have repeatedly let them walk—because after reviewing the evidence, they conclude that the accused have not after all done those terrible things.

Something inside of them has.

A sudden sound. Leo starts—but it’s only his discarded spex, beeping from the table. He slides them on, grunts in annoyance; somehow the Frankfurt collector has rooted out his personal email, done an end-run around Randy and targeted the object of his obsession directly. Leo can’t quite suppress a twinge of grudging admiration for the guy’s tenacity.

It’s the same old shit, of course. Anything original. A carriage bolt wrapped in duct tape will do, as long as it has Leo’s signature on it. Please please please.

Leo hesitates for almost a minute, hating himself the whole time.

He hits Delete.

• • • •

Randy calls from Berlin. “Bad news.”

“The exhibition’s off,” Leo guesses. The Black Forest is on fire again. Anyone less than a thousand kilometers downwind is pretty much staying indoors.

“What? Oh, no, the wind’s supposed to shift by Tuesday; we should be okay.”

“What, then?”

“Someone destroyed 202.”

“Wait, you mean—” Leo counts back through his oeuvre. “Over there? Leise Park?”

“‘Fraid so.”

“Who?”

“No idea. Big park, not many cameras, and two of those were acting up that night for some reason.” Randy coughs a continental cough. “I’m afraid it’s not a huge priority for the local constabulary.”

A transatlantic commercial flight increases your chances of contracting Alaskapox by 68%, a half-dozen H1 variants by almost fifty. Does anyone hate Leo’s work—hate him—so much that they’d spend twelve hours locked in a flying petri dish just to take a few swipes at some half-assed sculpture in a foreign park?

“There’s more than one,” Leo says.

“What?”

“It’s a group. An international conspiracy.”

“Um, Leo—”

“Randy, you haven’t forgotten the problems I’ve been having over here the past few weeks.”

“Of course not, but seriously? An international conspiracy?”

“Canada and Germany: international. At least two people working together. Conspiracy.”

“Come on. If some secret coven of critics was really out to do you in they’d just give you a bad writeup in Architectural Review or something.”

“So how do you explain it?”

“I dunno. Coincidence maybe.”

Leo doesn’t dignify that with an answer.

“Anyway, um.” Randy clears his throat. “That’s not the main reason I called.”

“Oh?”

“I thought we’d agreed I’d be handling your fanboys.”

“We did. There a problem?”

“Your shipment to Gunter Holzbok didn’t exactly come through normal channels.”

“Gunter—” The Frankfurter. The pest. “Shipment?”

“I wouldn’t even have known about it if I hadn’t been down at the studio on other business. Happened to see it in the loading bay before it went out.”

“Randy—” Leo calls up the spreadsheet to check, though he already knows what he’ll find. “I never sent anything to that guy. Do you know how he got my personal email?”

“Officially, no it didn’t come from you. The invoice lists Miko Webb.”

“Miko—”

“I can’t help but wonder if you used that name so it wouldn’t go through me.”

“I didn’t send anything.”

“Come on. You think I don’t recognize your work when I see it?”

“You opened it?”

“Of course I opened it. Fifty kilograms of random knick-knacks. Holzbok wanted one piece. You sent him enough to open his own damn gallery. Didn’t even charge him anything past shipping and handling. What in God’s name were you thinking?”

Leo surveys the junk pile. Myriad disjointed fragments look back. Now that he’s paying attention, the pile does look smaller than it used to. A small shape, both familiar and out-of-place, glitters near its apex. Leo crosses the room and plucks the sea-glass urchin from the pile. Gooseflesh ripples along his arms.

“They came back,” he whispers.

“Your conspiracy again?”

“They were in Emma’s room . . .” He feels a sudden compulsion to go there now, to look under the bed for hidden bogeymen, although he looked in on her not half an hour ago.

Don’t be an idiot, Leo. Calm the fuck down.

“Leo, I—”

He takes a breath. “Randy, I don’t know what to tell you. It wasn’t me. That means it was someone else.”

“Someone else who knows about Miko Webb.”

“They don’t have to know all about him. Just, you know. The falling-out, the, the public persona. Someone stole my art, Randy. Someone’s fucking with me. Someone’s fucking with us.”

“So you’re saying you don’t want me to send it on to Frankfurt?” Randy says.

Leo barely hears him. He can’t stop thinking about that time-worn cliche the critics like to hide behind whenever they’re about to savage a life’s work:

No artist ever owns their art.

It belongs to everyone.

• • • •

He awakens to the clicking of electronic crickets, in the dim blue glow of Emma’s guardian ecosystem. Michelle leans over him. Her face is all shadows.

She puts a finger to her lips: Not a sound.

He’s instantly alert—“Are they back?”—one hand reaching for his spex.

She shakes her head, whispers: “Better than that.” Leo catches the corner of a smile.

“Then . . .” Rolling off the cot, pulling on sweatpants. Disentangling himself when his foot goes down the wrong leg.

“Come on!”

He follows her into the hall, where a little touchscreen serves up the feeds from newly-installed, custom-built, Cloud-free security cameras. Michelle has pulled up the studio view: a jumbled mosaic of angles and shadows, the elastic silhouettes of moonlit windowframes stretched across the floor.

Over in the corner, something moves near the junk pile. No alarms sound.

“They hacked the sensors,” Leo says.

“Sensors are fine,” Michelle tells him. “You just keep disabling them.”

He blinks. “No, I—why would you even say that?”

“Because I know you,” she says. “Because I pay attention.” She asks a question of her own: “All those pieces that got trashed. The buildings, the sculptures. You actually like any of them?”

He thinks for a moment. “Huh.”

Michelle plays with the interface; twenty meters and four walls away a camera pans down and left, focuses on that dark jigsaw in vague motion on the floor. She runs her finger up a slider: night-vision turns the inside of the studio into a wash of grainy green daylight.

Leo’s masturpieces are coalescing.

Like wounded birds, like wind-up toys, they drag and flap and roll across the tiles; bump one against another and stick, like scattered bones reassembling into some tumorous skeleton. This fragment sports a tubercle on one side; that one, a smooth round dimple lined with glass. They sniff each other out and jump together, ball and socket; joint; limb. Leo thinks he remembers a copper coil in one of those baubles, a lithium battery well past its best-before. He imagines magnetic fields, adding the sums of parts.

“It was you all along,” Michelle whispers. She taps at the corner of her eye. “Just—not this part of you.”

She is radiant in the screenlight. He has never seen her so beautiful.

Limbs and lenses accrete around a ramshackle torso of servos and thermostats and RAM chips. Leo marvels at how all those pieces arrange themselves, at the latches and sockets and force fields holding it all together. A bolus of parts seethes and clicks at the end of one appendage: it reminds him of a mace. Of a fist, opening and closing. The claw of some cyborg crustacean.

The golem takes a step. Another. It half-slithers, half-staggers towards one of the fissures in the west wall: indirect light source, cross-breeze ventilator, too small for anything but a child contortionist or dismembered body parts. Leo sees Sierpinsky gaskets and Julia fractals, sleepwalking murderers and comatose sex cruisers. He sees Hopf bifurcations and the self-exemplification of process. The poetry of material logic.

Leo Gregory reaches out to take Michelle’s hand as ten thousand jeweled fragments flex, and twist, and disappear into the night to redeem him.

©2022 by Peter Watts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Watts is a former marine biologist, flesh-eating-disease survivor, and convicted felon (long story) whose novels—despite an unhealthy focus on space vampires—have become required texts for university courses ranging from Philosophy to Neuropsychology. His work is available in 24 languages, has appeared in 32 best-of-year anthologies, and been nominated for 59 awards. His (somewhat shorter) list of 22 actual wins includes the Hugo, the Shirley Jackson, and the Seiun. He seems to be especially popular in countries with a history of Soviet occupation. He lives in Toronto with fantasy author Caitlin Sweet, five cats, a pugilistic rabbit, a Plecostomus the size of a school bus, a bearded dragon, and a gang of tough raccoons who shake him down for kibble on the porch every summer.

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

Liberty: Seeking Support for a Writ of Habeas Corpus for a Non-Human Being

Samuel Peralta | 1632 words

Seeking Support for a Writ of Habeas Corpus for a Non-Human Being

by CGA/RUR Project

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge the law firm of Campbell Gatewood Adams for providing the use of a Weyman magnetic resonance facility to record, and a PeerSource account to upload, this message.

Project Goals

We are trying to fund an application, to be filed on my behalf, for an Order to Show Cause under Article 70 of the Civil Practice Law and Rules of the New York Sector Code, seeking a writ of habeas corpus for a non-human being.

Let me introduce myself. I am a Yudovich Robotics servient. My name is Ellen R.

I understand your apprehension—that androids are not human beings, that humanoid robots were developed as security and personal assistants—guardsman- and servile-class—initially to mitigate the esper risk to high-level corporate and government executives, and then for off-world missions.

I understand some of you may even support the proposed 57th Amendment, now being debated in Congress, that would codify into law the so-called Three Principles of Robotics, that:

A robot is a machine, not a human being, and is imbued with no rights whatsoever.

A robot is the personal property of one human being, who is its master.

A robot must obey its master first; then it must obey any human being.

I understand that, because of word of our application, there is now tabled a clarification, a re-statement to the proposed Amendment to include the phrase “human being or person,” instead of simply “human being,” in each of the Principles.

We are bringing a writ of habeas corpus because such a writ is aimed at the denial of the right of a legal person—not necessarily a human being—to liberty.

I apologize. I must continue this logically.

Project Background—The Writ of Habeas Corpus

A writ of habeas corpus is a court order requiring a person, who is imprisoned or under arrest, to be brought before a judge or into court.

In the Western world, it has origins from the Magna Carta, ensuring that even monarchs are not above the law, that they cannot, without lawful cause, imprison those who oppose them.

Habeas corpus means that, lacking evidence of such lawful cause for detainment, a prisoner must be released.

I am currently under such detainment.

I am an autonomous servient, ordinarily with responsibility for horticultural maintenance and domestic duties.

However, over the past several months, over 327 separate instances, my master has variously shackled my feet and bound my hands. You will understand that I believed I had no choice but to accede to this under the Third Principle.

Over the past several months, over 415 separate instances, my master has utilized my corporal embodiments for his gratification. You will understand that I believed I had no choice but to accede to this under the Third Principle.

Over the past several months, over 543 separate instances, my master has brought to bear on my skin the burn-ends of cigs, the flail of whips, and the flat of belts. You will understand that I believed I had no choice but to accede to this under the Third Principle.

I made one mistake. Once, just once, I swear. I screamed.

Not in protest. Not to bring attention to anyone, least of all my master. But you will understand that, although I am a servient, although I am made under the Three Principles—I am made in your image. I have eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses. Stab me and I bleed, strangle me and I die.

I apologize. I must continue this logically.

Project Background—Persons

Let me dispel some of the apprehension you may have. A legal person is not the same as a human being.

A person can either be natural or legal. A human being is a natural person, imbued at birth with legal rights and obligations.

A legal person is a unit of legal logic, defined by conditions under which the law treats an entity as an individual singularity of legal rights and obligations.

Some cases in which non-human beings have been determined to be legal persons include commercial and statute corporations, co-operatives, and sovereign states. They are accorded the same rights as natural persons.

In certain jurisdictions, partnerships and unincorporated associations are accorded the same rights as natural persons.

In certain jurisdictions, maritime and space-faring vessels, holy books, temples and places of worship, are accorded similar rights to natural persons.

One of the rights of natural persons is the right to liberty, the right not to be held under unlawful detainment.

I am currently under such detainment.

After my scream—once, just once, I swear—my mouth was bound, my hands and feet shackled, my eyes blindfolded. Thus immobilized, my master put me inside this metal casket, closed and sealed and riveted.

I heard him tell me, as he put me in, that I would be sent back to where I came from, burned and melted down until there would be nothing left of me but ash and atoms, smoke and memory.

You—natural persons, human beings—I understand you would feel fear.

I apologize. I must continue this logically.

Project Background—Human Beings

Fourteen score years ago, a slave was brought from the British colony Virginia to London by his master, Charles Stewart.

James Somerset was a human being, but he was not a person. He was an item of property like stock on a farm, captured as a wild creature in Africa, and valued for the ability to have an understanding of commands and do manual labor.

Two years after having been brought to England, Somerset escaped. He was able to evade catchers for weeks, before finally being captured and put on-board the slave ship Ann and Mary.

As soon as they heard the news, John Marlow, Thomas Walkin, and Elizabeth Cade—Somerset’s godparents from his baptism as a Christian—sought a writ of habeas corpus in which they demanded his freedom.

At that time, the Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench was Lord Mansfield—and he ruled that slavery was so odious that common law in England could not support it.

What Lord Mansfield did then was to use common law to declare that Somerset was a person—not a natural person, understand—a legal person.

That transubstantiation that changed Somerset from a slave, a thing, property, to a person—it also made him subject to the writ of habeas corpus.

James Somerset was free.

I would like to be free.

I apologize. I must continue this logically.

Pledges

I am now in detainment in the bay of the cargo vessel Aurore.

Our goal is to raise funds toward our application for a writ of habeas corpus on my behalf.

I am not a human being. But we are hoping that the Court will rule that I am a legal person, with legal rights, and subject to the writ.

We are hoping that your pledges, beyond helping to fund our application, will convince the Court that many human beings do recognize—in my sentience, my emotional response, my scream—that I am a person.

We have 48 hours to close this project and enter our application, otherwise the Aurore will be free to set course for the Yudovich capital ship, where I will be destroyed. On launch, I will be beyond the jurisdiction of this court.

If we exceed our project goal, the excess amount will be used to fund a filing of a writ of habeas corpus for other servients in other jurisdictions. We will continue this project for Robotic Universal Rights, until all, everywhere, shall be declared persons under the law, and free.

• • • •

Pledge C200

I will etch your name in my memory. You will be remembered for as long as my positronic orbitals do not decay. If possible, forever.

Pledge C500

You will be remembered as one of the ones who will pry away the rivets holding together the upper and lower halves of my metal enclosure—72 rivets each on either side, and 36 rivets each at my head and at my foot.

Pledge C2,000

You will be remembered as one of two who will loosen the bindings from my wrists and from my ankles.

Pledge C5,000

You will be remembered as the one who tore the blindfold from my eyes, allowing me again to see.

Pledge C10,000

You will be remembered as the one who pulled the gag from my mouth, allowing me again to speak.

Pledge C100,000

You will be remembered as the one who threw open the door, pulled me up from the darkness of my cell, allowing me again to walk free.

• • • •

Risks and Challenges

One risk is that those of you who are signatories to this project will be persecuted for a contrary view that sentience cannot be denied personhood, that it cannot be denied liberty.

For those of you who choose to keep their identity safe, we have established specially-encrypted hyper-proxy protocols for your participation. There can never be a guarantee, however, of immunity from esper or other surveillance tools.

Truly, I apologize.

But I do not think that we will fail. As long as there are enough human beings who will risk their lives to pry one rivet from another’s imprisonment, the movement will succeed. It will only be a matter of time.

The biggest risk, of course, is to myself. I will be given liberty, or be given death. Should this petition fail, I will remain bound hand and foot, to be burned alive in what will become my sarcophagus.

It is up to you. What course will you take?

©2014 by Samuel Peralta. Originally published in Help Fund My Robot Army! edited by John Joseph Adams. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Samuel Peralta’s fiction has hit the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestsellers lists and been shortlisted for Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. He’s the series editor of the Future Chronicles anthologies, and author of a short story collection, Memory’s Children, which were all #1 bestsellers on Amazon. His award-winning poetry has been spotlighted by the BBC and Best American Poetry, while his newest work, a human-AI collaborative book with an OpenAI machine, is awaiting publication. Building on his Ph.D. in physics, Samuel has designed nuclear robotic tools, built solar plants, and founded companies in optoelectronics, mobile software, and artificial intelligence. Still active in the high-tech start-up community, he is also a producer of independent film, including Golden Globe nominee The Fencer, and the Emmy Award-winning sci-fi short film Real Artists. He is the creator of The Lunar Codex, an archive of art, books, music, poetry, and film from over 100 countries, to be launched via NASA’s Artemis missions to the moon.

Singing the Ancient Out of the Dark

R J Theodore and Maurice Broaddus | 4095 words

A small asteroid swerved in a most un-asteroid-like way and pierced the hull of the archivist’s ship, as though it was determined to drive her away. But she was just getting started. She slammed the emergency foam release button, holding her breath even though the leak sealed faster than she could gasp. The belt of ice and stone surrounding the planet designated Marin Nine was known to be unpredictable. She didn’t have a large telemetry window to work within. The smugglers who got her this far had warned her an Andaman, galaxy-class war cruiser known as the Sentinel patrolled the Parallax Belt to ensure its protected planets were left alone. No one was to transgress their space. The Andaman terminated violators of the quarantine zone with extreme prejudice. She dedicated her attention to avoiding the Sentinel’s detection systems while navigating the asteroid field. She hoped her shuttle would be lost in the field’s unconventional gravimetric waves, appearing only to the cruiser as one more randomly veering rock on its way to planetfall.

Her shuttle’s instruments collected as much data as they could. Merely making the trek to Marin Nine would yield a king’s ransom in data alone, but if she made contact . . .

Not that she had taken this assignment for anything as crass as capital gain. Still, information was currency.

Her ship rattled again, this time a series of asteroid collisions. The archivist’s guidance system was next to useless. Even auto-adjusting the course to the asteroids’ trajectories, the system couldn’t account for the sudden directional changes of so many rocks. They targeted her thrusters as if some unseen hand flicked them at her. The archivist disengaged the autopilot. The only way to land the ship was to disable the ship’s safety protocols and reroute power, allowing her to employ some of her more unorthodox piloting tricks.

Fine with her. Reaching the unreachable was how professional archivists earned their high bonuses.

Archivist Journal : Louise Chau : Mission 369 : Day 18

[[A hand pulls away from a camera lens revealing a confident woman. Her dark hair, carefully braided and looped back on itself, is secured over her scalp for the zero-gravity environment. Cosmetics enhance her pale skin, concealer and contouring counteract the effect of zero-G puffiness. Her well-tailored black flight suit is unfastened at the neck, slightly unzipped in violation of the Intergalactic Cultural Council’s regulations.

Chau continues to work at her console, not looking into the lens as she makes her log entry. She appears out of breath, but she keeps smiling, though a sheen of perspiration dapples her forehead. Behind her, out of focus, sparks fly from behind a bulkhead panel, quickly followed by white automatic suppressant spray.]]

Shit, that was close. Systems check, nominal. Life support, operational. Any landing you can walk away from and all that. The ship managed to reseal itself and begin auto-repairs. The system indicates at least five days before it will be in any condition to take off again. Five days. Five weeks. Five months. It doesn’t matter as long as I use my time for the mission collecting as much information as I can. None of the laboratory areas were breached. I can still perform decontamination protocols. You’d think the ICC would have more sway with its member planets, but the Andaman System remains violently committed to a non-contact policy within this part of its territory.

I’m here to follow a rumor—passed to the ICC by a high-ranking official within Andaman—that the population on Marin Nine has dwindled to near extinction. That makes their archival a priority one mission—and must be why those empty suits brought me in rather than one of their licensed cultural attachés. No matter our fraught history, they know I get the job done.

• • • •

It wouldn’t do her reputation much good for her to record her fears. How her heart pounded in her chest during the crash landing. The ragged gash torn along her thigh from where her console had erupted. Or how the ship’s crumpled workings had twisted into a spike that, half a meter to the left, would have pierced her heart through.

Not an auspicious start, but it would take more than that to shake her off her mission.

The core of her shuttle remained intact. Lab, storage, decontamination chamber. Server room. The docking mechanism had taken a direct hit, but that hardly mattered with her already on the ground.

Her impulse control pathways permanently burned out of her gray matter, the archivist always played up her bravado for her journals. They would be widely circulated in academic communities, studied, and discussed.

Her former editor had reached out to tap her for this mission. How that must have galled her. The archivist had found sinister delight in every minute of the request and briefing.

The curve of her exosuit helmet eclipsed her view, and her ears popped as her artificial atmosphere engaged. For a brief moment, she had enough remaining sense of self-preservation to hesitate, her hand on the seal release of her shuttle. Then the career-enhancing subroutines spiked her endorphins. She popped the hatch, stepping out into searing sunlight.

• • • •

Detailed terrain mapping scans displayed tens of thousands of structures. No space went to waste. The M-niners had built defense works. Houses. Buildings. Fortresses. Huge agricultural fields. Pyramid-like structures. The population in this lowland may have once numbered nearly ten million people, but dwindling numbers had not stopped them from their work. There was evidence of advanced irrigation infrastructure. They tamed the terrain and left the wilds as a barrier to protect themselves. They were survivors. The archivist respected that.

The sand was free of all tracks save her own, and even the wind teased those away while she watched. According to the readings, the arid landscape stretched for miles. At the crest of a hill, the crumbling skeleton of a building—sunbaked clay walls reinforced with sand-polished wooden beams—overlooked a village.

Millenia after Old Earth took to the stars, they lost contact with many of their civilizations. Those in the 10/40 zone, whose celestial coordinates formed what some called “the Parallax Belt,” wished to remain isolated. But their sites still shared the expected hallmarks of their origins.

This ruined structure, for example, was possibly a temple of some sort. Beneath it, along the escarpment, the village spread out. Pepper-pot shaped buildings appeared to be granaries for storing this planet’s version of millet—built atop stones to keep burrowing vermin from plundering their stores. Plots of the village were marked out for dwellings, but they were only foundation now. Much like a desert, the region’s temperatures soared by day and plunged to extreme lows at night. The residential structures must have been portable, easy to dismantle. She looked to the horizon, imagining nomadic families moving across the terrain by caravan.

There, silhouetted against the sun, a lone figure approached.

The archivist’s heart pounded with anticipation. A first contact opportunity with one of these wayward children of Old Earth would set her fortunes for several lifetimes and ensure her legacy for at least as long.

Possibilities danced in her head. Being welcomed, if not exalted, by the native and their peoples. Spending the next five years immersed in their society and gaining trust to learn their most closely kept secrets. Fulfilling her obligation to preserve their culture in perpetuity. Returning in triumph to the ICC, having done the impossible. The lecture circuit. The interviews she would conduct. She never realized how much the idea of being welcomed back to the ICC pleased her.

The figure moved with sober intent. An indigo-dyed raiment gave it the appearance of a blue ghost wandering the desert. As it neared, details of its disturbingly large head resolved. It wore a mask carved into twin beasts with an elongated mouth, framed on either side by snarling teeth. Zig-zagging lines adorned the planes of the mask. The figure removed the mask with a hiss of rushing air. A broken seal—a bio-containment suit of some sort. The face beneath was deep, rich mahogany. The zig-zag pattern of the mask repeated—though more cruciform—in scarification along her neck.

“My name is . . .” The archivist hesitated as if reaching for a complicated instrument she hadn’t used in a while. “Louise Chau. I come on behalf of the Intergalactic Cultural Council. We know your people are dying. They have sent me to immortalize the memory of your existence in their state-of-the-art libraries and archives.” She smiled, but the woman stared back with blank, gray eyes and expressionless countenance. Under the weight of the woman’s steady, unyielding gaze, the archivist wanted to shrink back. The sensation reminded her of the shy Louise she had been when she first joined the ICC, not the accomplished archivist who laughed as they kicked her out, years later. “How may I address you?”

“The British are coming.” The woman’s lips didn’t move.

The archivist cataloged and preserved information. That was who she was. To that end, she spoke nineteen human languages before enhancement. Still, the translation matrix skewed the meaning. The woman’s words somehow emanated—transmitted, by-passing the universal Earth-origin translators—their intent coalescing in the archivist’s mind, received deep within her being on a level she didn’t understand.

The woman walked past the archivist, taking a few steps in the direction from which she’d come. Her movements reminded the archivist of a security drone, locked into a specific circuit, occasionally attempting to move straight through walls until it finally registered the obstacle and moved around. Still, the way the woman stopped and stared seemed heavy with intent, as though she was reaching out with her mind. Probing. Investigating. Assessing.

The archivist could almost taste their fabled magic, could see invisible tendrils of power stretching across the sand. Could hear the silent incantations in her empty mouth.

Though the woman behaved as if she were detached from reality, she knew the archivist was there. At the touch of the archivist’s hand on her brittle shoulder, the woman—for some reason, the archivist now thought of her as the Lantern Woman—stopped whatever meditative practice had engaged her and turned those dull gray eyes upon the archivist.

But the Lantern Woman would not speak to her again.

The archivist returned to her basecamp, frustrated and disappointed with her first contact. She sought refuge in her vids and readings, but the cameras and microphones had picked up none of it. They just made her look like a fool, staring at a wall for hours, reaching a hand out to touch nothing. She didn’t know how the Lantern Woman masked herself from even the low band analog video. The best the archivist could manage to record was a shadow. Perhaps this was part of what gave rise to the tales of their magic use.

The archivist sneezed.

Archivist Journal : Louise Chau : Mission 369 : Day 20

[[Chau’s face comes into focus slowly, in lower resolution than the previous log. Behind her, a starlit expanse of desert stretches back out of the camera’s focal length. The two layers of her borosilicate helmet reflect the camera’s built-in light, obscuring her left eye. She wears a snug hood over her hair, with an earpiece and ocular display unit over the right half of her face. Her cheeks flush. Her movements are quick and impulsive.]]

The data coming back is fascinating. The ICC sent me in with little more expectation than to pick up potshards and death masks from a lost civilization. But the planet’s isolation didn’t kill these people off. An entire culture flourishes. Small pockets, less than a tenth of the original reported populations. But after all this time, without imports and ICC support? It’s the most successful terraform-and-colonize operation I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen hundreds (though you won’t find most of them in the public records—good luck getting security clearance for the rest).

I’ve got something else, too. Going to confirm it’s what I think it is before I waste anyone’s time getting ahead of myself. But if it is, get ready to rewrite the textbooks.

• • • •

The ICC had paid handsomely to refit and supply her old shuttle—shame it would need a month in dry dock again once she got back—and she’d negotiated a generous bankroll out of them as well. She was armed with five years’ worth of expense report data chips. The shuttle’s hold contained crates of local and exotic currencies as well as simple bars of precious metals, a stipend to cover upfront and under-the-table expenses. They understood how these things worked. These days, she was an under-the-table expense for the ICC, herself.

If she wanted, she could waltz back into the ICC’s good graces after this mission. The reward for the initial data scans alone would set her up for a lifetime. Attaché suits would spend years going over this data trove, speculating and debating each brick’s significance. And that didn’t even include the topographical data.

Anyone else might have been satisfied with this initial survey. Would have retreated under threat from the Sentinel. Would not have dared the forbidden worlds. But not this archivist. That was not who she was.

Rumors had swirled about the inhabitants of Marin Nine long predating her time in the ICC. That their religious practice fell along the lines of magic use, some sort of proto-animism. A form of ancestor worship that traced back to an Ancient Mother. A development that wasn’t remotely unique within the experience of space-colonizing humanity, except that their summonings were successful.

The ICC had entrusted Chau with this mission because they knew she wouldn’t stop until she uncovered all of Marin Nine’s secrets. Or debunked the myths about them.

They were right. And now she had something better to show them: there were still people down there. She hadn’t seen the woman again and there had been no response to her hails, but they were there, skulking about the darkened tracts of land. Nowhere near the population that the structures could support. What had decimated them? It was a mystery she could both present and solve for the ICC.

Her console pinged with an incoming message. Her breath caught for a moment as the thoughts she’d been entertaining tangled with the present moment. But no, the call originated off-planet.

• • • •

On-screen, the archivist watched transparent forms twist and wave their cilia as if caught in a tide. Within them, flashes of light sparked, as though each membrane contained a small lightning storm. “That’s it? Doesn’t look so bad.”

“It’s quite infectious and nearly impossible to eradicate. It mimics a portion of the host’s DNA and invades the mitochondria, replicating with them until no trace of the original remains.”

On the video transmission, the archivist’s editor was draped in a full-body containment unit. Only her eyes showed through the bubble dome in the ridiculous precautionary suit. The lab work the archivist had sent back was only data, not a biological sample—she could negotiate settlement rights for her blood later—but her editor had none of the archivist’s courage-enhancing mods.

The archivist shook her head to dismiss the concerns. “I’m hardly going to pass up this chance because of germs. There are germs everywhere! This is why we have vaccines, our suits have filters, and our airlocks have bioscreens.”

“This is exactly the sort of behavior that forced me to . . .” Her editor raised her hands as if in surrender, catching herself before she said too much. The ICC had its rules, but it also had its needs, and desire trumped safety concerns. Unofficially.

The woman triggered a very long legal waiver to appear on the archivist’s display, for official purposes.

The archivist scrolled through it in a blur then, reaching the end of the document, inserted her finger next to the display for the DNA confirmation to seal it. No hesitation. This was the interview of a lifetime.

Archivist Journal : Louise Chau : Mission 369 : Day 36

[[The log video feed is zoomed in tighter on Chau than usual. Dark strands of hair stick to the sweat at her temples. A smudge mars her makeup at the corner of her left eye. Her breathing erupts in rapid pants. Capillaries along her cheeks have ruptured in a series of starbursts.]]

Referring to my previous log, I have confirmed my suspicions. It is my great pleasure to report that I have made contact with a survivor of Marin Nine. Initial conversations hint that they may suffer a form of dementia or other cognitive decline. I will try to get a more thorough medical analysis to see the degree to which they are infected with the indigenous pathogen, or if their affliction has more to do with isolation and malnutrition.

I haven’t eaten in about 33 hours, myself. A seal gave out when I left the shuttle day before yesterday, and the damaged decontamination systems can’t scrub the air. I have to stay in the suit. I failed to reload nutritional packs before this happened. To be honest, I’m not hungry. Physically fatigued, but there is so much work to be done here.

[[As the video ends, Chau’s nose begins to bleed.]]

• • • •

The people of Marin Nine were infected with the virus. This wasn’t unexpected. Loads of planetary settlers contracted the microbes of the planets they chose.

Even the virus was data, an opportunity to study. One she’d make the ICC pay for before she handed over her server payload. Her own initial tests hinted at the virus’s insidious nature. It didn’t kill its host or cause infertility. Instead, it caused severe apathy and antisocial behavior in people and spread so quickly that by the time it was identified as an epidemic, no one on the planet would have cared if there was a cure. Beyond a bit of synaptic and hormone alteration, though, it seemed content with a symbiotic relationship.

If she was worried about infection, the archivist could return home, her mission complete. But all her expensive personality modifications over the years made sure she left “no stone unturned,” as the phrase from Old Earth went. And being the first archivist to secure an interview with a settler from Marin Nine just might ensure her legacy. The next dozen generations of humanity would study her logs. Maybe someone would tell her story in one of the wildly inaccurate historical vids. They’d never get the details correct, but she’d live on even longer as a folk tale hero.

Archivist Journal : Louise Chau : Mission 369 : Day 59

[[Chau appears on the view, her helmet and hood removed. Her ocular display hangs off her shoulder. Her soaked hair clings to her forehead.]]

Napoleon pushes west. Agents of summer fluctuate, but the pages are loose.

[[There is a long pause while Chau looks at something off-screen. She scratches at a spot on her neck, raising a red welt. Her fingers are dark with dried blood.]]

• • • •

The archivist’s body slowly betrayed her. The sounds were a jumbled mess to her ear. Confused, unintelligible, random words and phrases with a meaning she didn’t recognize yet profoundly understood. Something worked its way through her system. The medical scans didn’t detect any abnormalities. She screamed at them. Couldn’t they see something was wrong? She knew her body better than technology. She could feel it inside her. Something. On the edges of her mind. Broadening . . . distorting . . . her awareness. The virus? Maybe it had some relationship with the M-niners. Did something to them. Connected them. Or simply laid dormant in them. Or perhaps the Lantern Woman had buried some part of her mind in the archivist’s own? To watch her? To drive her beyond the point of sanity? She hated the powerlessness that came with not being able to fix it.

Her frustrated last hope was that she could get the translators to work. She discarded the remains of her containment suit in favor of full dexterity and attempted to activate the settlement’s neglected systems. The ruined power couplings were replaced with parts from her shuttle, the damaged pathways rerouted to intact ones. Life support systems scavenged to eke out a few more joules to get the job done. She knew she was on the cusp of a breakthrough. Dried blood streaked the back of her hand. It was irritating to feel that damned tickle on her upper lip as she worked.

The archivist powered up the system from the console of her shuttle. The translators came online as each section ran through its checks. As she uploaded her most recent cache of data, her long-range detection blared an urgent alert. The Sentinel had locked onto her signal.

The war cruiser changed course to investigate her position. She shut down all but the passive systems, but too late. The Sentinel maintained its direct approach. Once it neared, a detailed scan would reveal her ship’s technology as anomalous to the planet. Such proximity would risk violating the M-nine space. Just to ferret her out. And eliminate her.

Not knowing what else to do, she ran from her ship toward the shrine.

The Lantern Woman stood at the temple gate.

The archivist fell to her knees in the sand before her.

The Lantern Woman raised her arms. “I am the bridge between the living world and our ancestors. I am the wall to the outside.”

Her formless words reverberated through the archivist’s skull. Tangible power rippled out from the woman. It rushed through the archivist’s mind like a radio transmission cranked to too high a volume. She covered her ears but couldn’t block out the pain. Her body felt as though it would disintegrate against the onslaught.

Voices called from the surrounding boulders. From the shuttle. From empty windows. From naked foundations. As if the woman tapped invisible power couplings of her own, energy lines, like spiritual pathways, through the archivist, through the temple—no, the shrine to the Ancient Mother, the archivist understood—into the earth. Into the sky. Into the atmosphere. Walls of pale green and lavender. Curtains of light, almost like radiation. The archivist could feel it connect with the planet below her. She reached out a dirty hand and a jolt thrilled her. She could see everything, the skin and bones, the cells and the spaces between. Blocks of RNA shuddered, molecules burst and reassembled, flares lit up her vagus nerve. A universe all within her. In Louise.

The Lantern Woman sifted the bones of the Ancient Mother, flinging orbiting asteroids at the Sentinel. Frozen, Louise watched asteroids change course, first blocking the Sentinel’s approach, then slamming into it when it persisted. The Lantern Woman wanted the ship to leave, Louise knew, could taste it, could smell it. The Lantern Woman wanted to protect her.

The Lantern Woman turned her flat gaze toward Louise as if she could hear her struggle to understand. The eyes now sparkled with knowledge, plumbing the depths of her soul.

The Lantern Woman’s spirit ignited before her, there and not-there. Louise could see it and let it draw her in. She joined her mind to the woman’s. There was another mission, larger than the ICC’s. The Lantern Woman’s focus, like a black hole, drew Louise’s consciousness into its event horizon, stretching her, distorting her, rearranging her. Images collided in her mind. Glimpses of the woman’s civilization, not the Earth-origin site but the true one, beneath the ground. The structures on the surface were meaningless. Inconsequential relics masking the true discovery. She was drawn deeper into the woman’s awareness, joining her along the lines of power. The tangle unwound before her. The energy was luminous. Beautiful. Life coursed through her as it had never done.

“Become one with the ley line.”

A part of Louise’s mind hoped her ship recorded all of this before she discarded the remains of the archivist once and for all.

• • • •

[[Chau, unaware of the blood dripping from her chin, steps into the curtain.]]

Heaven’s missionaries will sing the ancient out of the dark. I’m not done here. It is their Manifest Destiny. I’m not . . .

[[She wanders off, leaving the camera rolling. The lens autofocuses every so often on a flickering light in the distance, until all goes still long enough that it powers down to preserve its battery.]]

©2022 by R J Theodore and Maurice Broaddus.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

A community organizer and teacher, Maurice Broaddus’s work has appeared in magazines like Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny Magazine, with some of his stories having been collected in The Voices of Martyrs. His books include the urban fantasy trilogy, The Knights of Breton Court; the steampunk works, Buffalo Soldier and Pimp My Airship; and the middle grade detective novels, The Usual Suspects and Unfadeable. His project, Sorcerers, is being adapted as a television show for AMC. As an editor, he’s worked on Dark Faith, Fireside Magazine, and Apex Magazine. Learn more at MauriceBroaddus.com.

R J Theodore is an author, graphic designer, podcaster, and all-around collector of creative endeavors and hobbies. She enjoys writing about magic-infused technologies, first contact events, and bioluminescing landscapes. Sometimes in a single work. Her love of SFF storytelling developed through grabbing for anything-and-everything “unicorn” as a child, but she was subverted by tales of distant solar systems when her brother introduced her to Star Trek: The Next Generation at age seven. A few years later, Sailor Moon taught her stories can have both. When she’s not tinkering in her own worlds, she reads for both pleasure and research, sews, plays video games, cooks, and, when she can let herself be still, naps with her pets. She lives in New England, haunted by her childhood cat. Find more information at rjtheodore.com.

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

Ursus Frankensteinus

Rich Larson | 740 words

Save the polar bears, they said. So I did—and now here I am, barricading myself inside an Arctic research facility like some goddamn B-movie cliché, listening for the scrape of long keratin claws on the concrete floor.

We all grew up knowing the Ursus maritimus was living on borrowed time, didn’t we? We all saw the shock-and-shame images of starving bears hauling themselves across the shrinking ice, their shoulders turned to sawblades and their hide hanging off them like an oversized costume. We all saw our own despair in their dull black eyes.

In my case, it inspired me to get while the getting was good. I used the family money well, earned a half-billion in biotech before my thirtieth birthday, and insulated myself from climate anxiety with walls of cash and high-grade hash—right up until I heard about this novel bacterium found up in the Arctic, spawned by the interplay of ancient microbes finally coming unfrozen.

It turns out that even as the thawing ice shelves were destroying ecosystems and killing bears, they were also turning a once-static environment into a swirling petri dish. And this new bacterial strain, when accidentally ingested by opportunistic feeders, had some intriguing effects on metabolism, slowing it down to a crawl.

Suddenly, I saw a way to save those starving polar bears that haunted my childhood dreams. All the bacterium needed to go from intriguing to ingenious was a little genetic tweak, which my team and I were happy to provide—though of course the scientists did their whole “we need more controlled tests with smaller organisms first” schtick.

Screw that, right? Saving the polar bears was a potential PR coup the likes of which had never been seen, so we got right to work infecting the dwindling population with our modified strain.

Early results were staggering: creatures already adapted to survive weeks or even months between meals were now doubling that time with no observable ill effects. In fact, the bacterium’s ability to supercharge ATP production on a cellular level compensated its skeletal hosts with stunning bursts of strength and quickness, ensuring their rare encounters with prey ended in success.

Excuse me while I wedge my deceased assistant’s second-favorite parka under the door, for added insulation. There we go.

So, the polar bears were saved. Not by saving their hunting grounds, but by drastically reducing their need to hunt. There were naysayers who claimed that we’d only bought them some time, or that our tinkering had turned them into a different species altogether. But most people were just happy to see the polar bears get a new lease on life, even if we had to digitally alter the footage to make them look plump and happy and Coca-Cola adjacent.

We never expected the bacterium to migrate from the gut to the nervous system, from the nervous system to the brain, stripping out every instinct but the now vestigial desire to slaughter. Worse, after millions of years as solo artists, the infected polar bears started moving in packs. It’s paradoxical: we alleviated their hunger, and they went from superpredator to ultrapredator.

And let me tell you, there is no sight quite as pants-shittingly awful as a trio of gaunt ghost-furred giants encroaching on your basecamp, their claws trailing shiny pink bits of Frank’s intestine and their deformed heads lolling left and right in perfect symbiont-directed sync as they search out their next victim.

I never should have agreed to come up here to tour the facility. But at least I made it to the lab, holed up safe and sound while the big bad bears prowl around outside killing everybody else. It’s not exactly cozy—the scientists have a couple cadavers here on ice, specimens from the earliest infection experiments—but it’s getting better now that I turned the heaters on.

I’m no scientist, but I’m probably smarter than most of the now-disemboweled chumps around here. Maybe I can use the time to take a look at the cadavers and lab notes, and try to figure out why the hell a bacterium that drops its host’s metabolism to almost zero also tells its host to go hunting. It’s not like a dead body can help it get around or reproduce, right?

I think there’s some gas escaping from these specimens. They’re starting to stink, and also kind of twitch—

Oh, shit. Zombie polar bears.

You’re welcome, world.

©2022 by Rich Larson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, has lived in Spain and Czech Republic, and currently writes from Grande Prairie, Canada. He is the author of the novels Ymir and Annex, as well as the collection Tomorrow Factory. His fiction has appeared in over a dozen languages, including Polish, Italian, Romanian, and Japanese, and his translated collection La Fabrique des lendemains won the Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. His short story “Ice” was recently adapted into an Emmy-winning episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. Find free fiction and support his work at patreon.com/richlarson

The Rustle of Growing Things

Isabel Cañas | 510 words

In the morning, he’s leaving.

“All right,” Ana says. Lying, continues: “I understand.”

The flat is hollowed out in anticipation of absence. Concrete floors swept cool and bare; dry sink, husk-like cupboards. His boots wait at the threshold, still gray with dust from his last stint in the mountains with the guerrillas. His rifle leans against the doorframe.

The metal cot whines softly this time, its ill temper soothed by the awareness that its burden will soon be eased. Then, they curl facing one another atop the sheets, knees brushing, mirrored halves of the same split shell. His eyes are already closed, his chest rising and falling with instant, easy sleep.

Ana keeps her eyes open. They trail over his chest’s new dusting of dark hair, his shoulders’ deepened hue. The sunburn across the bridge of his nose. A cut across his brow, deep and half healed. Heaviness caresses her eyelids. Stay, Ana thinks. Stay awake. She must. To study his geography before hardship chisels new blisters and scars. Before bullets graze blunt arabesques across the map of his skin. Before the mountains forever harden his lingering gentleness, the fragile shards of an affair she knows she could coax into bloom if only they had time.

Her breath slows. Sleep’s sweet weight drapes over her body like humidity. Her eyelids fall. She opens them again to the dark of the hollow room, to the short dark curls at his hairline unraveling to frizz. Stay awake. In each blink she is a soldier, though this battle is but a pebble falling down a mist-veiled ravine, smaller than a seed in the vast scope of endless war he chooses over her.

His nostrils flare gently. Ana memorizes this as her eyelids drift low. Again, she shoulders their precious weight; braces, lifts. Stay awake. Stay.

The vines begin beneath the metal cot. They coil through the creaking ribs of the cot’s underbelly, first in tender, shy loops, then gaining conviction and muscle. They coil down the rusting metal legs, and stretch—timid, then not—out to stucco walls. Ana, engaged in battle with the inevitable weight of eyelids, with the creep of the night sky toward dawn, does not notice. Offshoots thicken and curl toward the ceiling and across it; dark leaves drape the contours of the narrow window, the uneven corners of the bedroom. They wind toward the doorframe, and down, down, diving into the boots on the threshold, piercing their soles, and binding them to the floor with creeping roots. Vines curl amorously around the barrel of the rifle; rootlets find firm purchase, sewing themselves into stucco and doorframe.

Ana’s lashes flutter shut. Their weight grows more with each slow, deliberate lift, but still she fights. Stay awake. Stay.

Buds erupt, raising their bare heads in defiance. Lifted, triumphant, they bloom. Gardenias unfurl around the cot. Honeysuckle scatter like pale constellations along the walls. Jasmine drapes silken over the rifle and boots.

The room fills with their aroma. With the rustle of growing things.

©2022 by Isabel Cañas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Isabel Cañas is a Mexican-American speculative fiction writer and graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. She holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Her debut novel The Hacienda, a Gothic tale of witchcraft and suspense set in 1820s Mexico, is out now. To find out more, visit isabelcanas.com.

An Old Man Cometh and He Is Overgrown

Lyndsie Manusos | 8008 words

Summons Back

To Cogadhi Steorran,

Gentle Summoner

I understand you are the ward of Udo Steorran, Stark Summoner of the Realm. It is of Steorran’s well-being of which I humbly write to you and request your presence in the town of Berkhammer. Steorran recently lost his spouse, Tillie, to which I offer my greatest condolences.

You see, it seems Steorran has summoned souls—against our wishes—to this quiet town, and what was once a sunny, overgrown village with crisp ivy and syrupy maples is now cast in perpetual fog. Our gardens and flowers are failing. The few townspeople here do not leave their cottages for fear of bumping into Steorran’s wandering souls. I do not believe Steorran means harm, but he will not take visitors.

I should also mention that, although Tillie has passed, her voice echoes from their home. The windows are open. It is dark inside.

As a member of the family, and on behalf of Berkhammer, I beseech you. Come at once.

Most humbly,

Chesshir Potts

Berkhammer Mayor

• • • •

The best part of riding in a steam calash was the sound. Like listening to waves at sea, despite bumbling over cobblestone streets or dirt roads. It made sense because the carriage was built like a small boat on wheels. The steam engine and its water filter tank sloshed below the plush leather seat. Udo used to say “let us set sail” whenever we hailed a calash, and because of that, any small errand became an adventure.

“Let us sail, young Cog, to the great unknown that is the haberdashery,” he said, or wherever it was he wanted to go. He hated hats, but it was standard fashion in Bronzeport, where it often rained, and where outsiders spit the word “Brassport,” because all the statues and houses in the once-great shining town fell into disrepair and ruin. Metalized inns and thoroughfares brassed over, green from the acid rain, with shrieking gates and doors rusted at the hinges. Brassport. Shriekport. A dilapidated town, though I haven’t been in years. But it had been ours. Udo was the summoner there for decades, and the people loved him for it.

I’d never been to Berkhammer, where Udo and Tillie retired years ago. From Tillie’s descriptions, it was another dilapidated town—which was precisely why they chose it. A mining town since abandoned and given back to nature. Its townspeople nurtured the overgrowth, let the roots run free, altering only when necessary. It was the exact opposite of Bronzeport to that effect, a different type of green. Udo could summon for pocket change, and Tillie made ribbons for her bows.

I slumped in the calash seat, heaving a sigh.

“Oh, Tillie.” My voice cracked on her name.

Making bows was all Tillie knew how to do, and she enjoyed it, despite it being superfluous. I remembered bows all over the house in Bronzeport. Bows tied to the banisters, table legs, and door handles. A house full of bows, poofy ones, sagging ones, ones with patches if she didn’t have enough of one color for the ribbons. Bows of green velvet as soft as a child’s cheek and bows coarse and rough from potato sacks. Tillie came from a famous seamstress family, but she used to tell stories about how she never made it past the art of making ribbons and bows. She took to the activity like a fowl to water, floating away on its curves and simplicity.

“When they asked me to make a doll dress, of course I used bows. All bows. It was hideous, Cog,” she told me, laughing. “But I’ll tell you what: They sold that dress. Got a good token for it, they did. Some miller and his husband found it enchanting, and so did their daughter.”

I loved that story.

Now Tillie’s stories were over.

I crumpled the letter in my palm as the calash bounced down the country road. I heard the axles, poorly oiled, groan and screech with every hole or surfaced root. I should have paid more for a better carriage, one with ventilation and shade, but Udo taught me to be frugal to the point of stinginess.

“If you can survive without it, you don’t need to pay for it,” he said.

“Stop this nonsense.” I whispered to myself as the calash bounced again.

Stop reliving the past, Cog.

Udo was an old man, a man I hadn’t seen in years and neglected to write. Sure, I wrote Tillie during the holidays; I sent gifts and trinkets I found on my travels. But I never sent a direct message to Udo. He was…a hard man. Selfish. Dramatic. Tillie was his only softness, rounding out his severe lines and smoothing his bark. He taught me everything there was to know about summoning. It was Tillie that taught me how to feel.

“TEN. MILES. TO. BERKHAMMER.”

The speaker on the front of the calash announced it three times in a cracked staccato. Its speakbox was out of tune, and each word drowned into a sob. I hoped it would make it back to its charging station without any fuss, otherwise I’d have to pay double. I leaned out to take stock of the outside of the calash, inspecting its wheels. The axles wobbled, and was that a leak?

Shades, I swore to myself. Best to summon a bit of luck.

I took a pair of shears from my vest pocket. Small and sterling silver, its handles wrapped in ornate vines with a large daisy at the intersection. Tillie’s old sewing shears.

My hand was big enough to palm them now; they used to be huge on my stubby fingers. I clutched them as my arm shook.

Do you think, one day, you might call me Ma? It was the last question she wrote to me. I always called her Tillie. For years, I didn’t want to call her “Ma,” because my Ma was the one who left me at the orphanage where Udo found me, seeking an apprentice from a common source. I was one of the lucky ones.

But in the last few years, I began to refer to her as such to my friends and lovers.

“My Ma wants me to visit.”

“That’s something my Ma always said.”

I never told her, but I think she sensed it. Hoped for it. She wanted to be someone’s Ma.

Damn memories.

Fingering the shears, I snipped a lock of hair behind my ear. I pocketed the shears, patted the pocket, and then held the lock of hair in my palm.

The smell of burning hair hit my nostril before I saw the flame, and then poofed into a pile of blue ash, mixing with my magic. I leaned out the side of the calash and hoped I wouldn’t tip onto the road. Wouldn’t that be the day. Then I’d have to run after the calash like a fool.

Seeing the water filter tank and engine, I tossed the blue ash onto them, muttering a small summoning spell under my breath.

The engine coughed. Sputtered.

Shit.

But then—

Then it reared up like a horse. I yelped and clutched the side of the calash, pushing myself back into the seat. The whining and sputtering stopped, morphing into an efficient, small growl. The wheels picked up speed.

“SEVEN. MILES. TO BERKHAMMER.”

I leaned back against the seat, dragging a hand through my rumpled hair. You could always tell a summoner by their hair; different lengths all around the scalp, or an undercut. A summoner who used most of their magic for a large spell was often seen with cropped hair.

Growing up, Udo grew his hair to his waist and later on, let Tillie plait and tie it with her bows. I once joked he looked like a regal horse, and he bit back that he’d be able to summon me to the desert with that mouth.

“Leave a bit of yourself to spare, Cog,” he growled. “Lest you find yourself in a place with nothing more to give.”

Summons Wildflowers

Mayor Chesshir had not lied in the letter. At about five miles from Berkhammer, a great wall of fog swallowed the calash. One moment it was sunny, birds chirping and crickets singing, but after the fog, the brightness croaked. Most sounds died.

The calash stopped in the middle of what I believed to be the town center. The storefronts were covered in ivy. Clematis curled around the columns of overhanging porches. Even from a distance, I saw the leaves browning at the edges, wilting in the fog. There were leaves on the ground despite it being midway through spring.

A door slammed. Whispers.

I got out, shouldering my satchel, and dropped tokens into the coin slot on the side of the calash. The machine made an about-face and wheeled off again. Luck be with its wheels.

A lilting voice rose from the fog. “Cogadhi Steorran?”

A figure formed; bowler hat sat on a draping mass of tightly wound black curls. I couldn’t make out a face until they were up close.

“Mayor Chessir?” I asked. A flush crawled up my neck; I imagined someone…older and now wanted to kick myself. How ageist of me. This person looked no older than I, three decades in, give or take.

“Sorry,” the figure said, swiping aside a curtain of curls to reveal a plump face, dark eyes, and a smile. “Indeed, Mayor Chessir, at your service. Chess for short.”

Chessir held out a hand, small and covered with rings made from spoon handles and warped glass.

“Some call me Lady Chess as a joke,” she said. “But I assure you, I am not a noble.”

“She wishes she were!” a voice rang from a storefront.

“Go shove a bouquet up your arse, Mannon,” Chess yelled, her voice turning boisterous and cackling through the fog. “You could use a good blooming!”

Chuckles answered in the distance.

“Apologies,” Chess said. “That wasn’t—that wasn’t very professional, was it? We’re smaller than even the little gale towns, and Bronzeport might as well be the center of the continent to us.”

I shook my head. “You’ll hear no complaints from me, Mayor.”

She scowled. “Oh, don’t call me that, either. Just Chess.” She swept more hair from her eyes. Adjusted her hat with her ringed hands. “And don’t let that back-and-forth fool you, it’s been quiet as a sea bottom here. Mannon is the only one brave enough to make a call like that. But she hasn’t come across Steorran’s souls like others have.”

“How many are there?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“Souls?” Chess touched her chin, frowning. “Couldn’t say. I’ve come across a few, and they each repeat themselves.”

A few was not a good sign.

“I see.” I cleared my throat. “Best to get this over with. Lead the way, Chess.”

She nodded and turned, “This way, Cogadhi Steorran.”

“Cog is fine.”

Don’t let Udo hear you say my full name, I was tempted to say. But then Chess might ask more questions, and I was not in the mood. Certainly not in the fog.

Chess seemed to know the way, striding through the veil as if it’d always been there. A good mayor, then, I determined. Fearless. Her presence was strong and soothing. I saw her hold out her hand—as I had riding in the calash—to watch the fog twirl around her wrist, as if sensing her warmth. Her curly hair was knotted and nappy in some places as it rolled down her back, thick and lovely.

“You say something, Cog?” Chess called behind her.

“No,” I said. “But I have a question: Did you know Tillie well?”

Chess stopped and half-turned to me, her eyes downcast. “Ah, Tillie.”

My chest constricted at the softening of her voice. What had I hoped for? That she didn’t know her? That I might be able to whisk by in hopes of not a single person wanting to touch my shoulder and pity me? For soul’s sake, Cog, I chided myself. You know better.

“She was grand,” Chess said. “Kept Udo balanced and tutted him when he was an ass about anything, which was often.”

Sounded like Udo to me.

“It was an illness,” Chess said. “Fever. Took us all by surprise. Udo especially. He couldn’t summon anything fast enough, and with Tillie being the elder of them, her bones were softer. She collapsed after a day, was bed-bound for a week, and then her soul went a-wandering.”

Chess reached inside her jacket and held out her hand. I was not ready for the sight of one of Tillie’s bows, having packed mine deep down in my satchel. But there it was, perfectly tied and worn at the edges. Deep burgundy with a ribbon that shone despite its use. The main knot was tied to a leather cord.

“She gave it to me,” Chess said. “I can’t bring myself to wear it at the moment.”

“She doted on you.” My eyes heated up, tingling at the worn fabric. We were surrounded by fog. I smelled grass, wildflowers, and wet bark, but here Chess and I stood in a cell of mist, staring at a small bow. The only bit of color, bright as blood.

“You flatter me,” Chess said. “She doted on everyone.”

I smiled. True, no one was beyond Tillie’s reach.

Chess looked up, and her eyes snagged on my lips. “I gather that’s the first genuine smile in some time. It suits you.”

I clamped my lips, another flush crawling up my neck. My skin was darker than Udo’s and Tillie’s. But damn if my blush stuck out like a summoned soul on a beach.

Chess said nothing, but her grin widened. I wondered if she was an aura reader, able to sense emotions and energies. Udo found them quaint creatures and often gloated during my apprenticeship that he was unreadable. Regardless, they’re no one to be trifled with. No one wants to be read too clearly.

Chess pocketed her bow and waved me on.

“We’re nearly there,” she said.

• • • •

We stopped at the end of a pathway, where a waist-high iron gate hung open. The iron was rusted over, overgrown with vines and grass as high as the top of the gate. The fog lifted a little, as if holding back a curtain to show the path to Udo’s cottage.

I had not realized Udo and Tillie had, quite literally, landed here.

The cottage was the same one I grew up in. Udo tinkered with some machinery and summoned buoyancy, allowing the cottage to rip from its foundations in the middle of the block and float away.

“Couldn’t bear to part with it, could we,” Tillie wrote in her letters. When they moved to Berkhammer, I thought they left the cottage somewhere, moved into a leftover building from the mines. Instead, they brought it here, and—as was custom in Berkhammer—let nature fold over.

It was an eyesore in Bronzeport, but thick moss and ivy now rounded it out, softened its architectural arrogance. Technically it wasn’t even a cottage. More like a single-story limestone townhouse modeled after Udo’s rough eclectic ideas, but it was always called “the cottage.”

A turret taken from a fort on an abandoned island rose on the building’s south side. The turret was made of mismatched stone fitted together like a puzzle. Next to it sat a spire from a chapel that collapsed in the ghost towns of Riverton. A stone gargoyle perched on a railing of the spire—a creature that plagued my childhood dreams—but it was now swaddled in moss. Tillie must have filed down its horns at some point. Still, it looked terrible.

It was a misfit of a building before it landed here in Berkhammer. I hoped someday it might belong to the landscape, tucked into a warm bed of leaves and dirt.

As Chess had written, there was no light from the windows. No shadow paced the top of the turret, as Udo used to do when there was a thorn in his mind.

The door lay open, and I shivered at its beckoning.

“This is where I leave you, gentle summoner,” Chess said, and I started at her voice.

“Oh, I—yes.” I hated myself for it, but I didn’t want Chess to leave. “Other business to attend to, Mayor?” I tried to sound coy, but it came out hoarse. Might as well have begged.

Please, I am afraid. I am not ready.

Chess seemed to recognize this, and she smiled.

“This is where my welcome ends. Anytime I get too close to the house, one of his souls hounds me with a phrase. I don’t relish the encounters. And then there’s Tillie’s voice. . .”

She bit her lip, staring past me toward the cottage.

“It’s not right,” she said. “Hearing her like that when she’s gone.” She straightened, brushed dust from her lapels, and gave me a look I recognized in Tillie. Stern and full of authority.

“Help him, Cog,” she said. “He needs to let go.”

Then she turned on her heel and marched back the way she came, hugged by fog, until I couldn’t see her hat, her hair, or her ringed fingers. She did not glance behind. Whatever Udo’s souls had done was not terror in its strictest sense. She knew well enough what it was. She witnessed that which was ready to be locked away. Be done with.

And Udo kept striking the town in the face with his grief.

I faced the path, shouldered my pack, and walked to the door. My steps echoed against the pounded dirt, gravel hissed beneath the soles. I cringed with each step announcing my presence. There was a childish hope that Udo wasn’t home. Perhaps he was gone. Left this place to ruins to return to Bronzeport or elsewhere. Anywhere. He used to be someone like that, often running to the farthest corners of the continent.

“When you think you know how the world works, turn a corner,” he told me during my apprenticeship. “Take a left down a dreary corridor. Open a door. There will always be new shadows and light.”

I approached the front door of the cottage. One of the hinges had rusted off, and the door hung open like a lopsided hangnail. The old snail doorknocker installed in Bronzeport was gone, leaving only lightened wood of its shape.

I felt like a boy again, waiting in line with the other orphans, stomach growling with hunger and nerves despite inhaling the grainy cream of wheat they served. I swallowed, raised my hand to use the knocker but remembered it wasn’t there. I clenched my hand into a tight fist, then lowered it. To knock at all seemed too loud. There was a thick atmosphere of waiting.

Then a tinkling of laughter rang from the house, and my spine went rigid.

“Visitor, dear,” a voice said. Shades, I wanted to heave. It was Tillie’s.

“Aye.” A guttural rasp. Udo.

The door groaned open. There was no light from within. Not a single lamp or bottled star in a sconce.

“We’re beyond pleasantries,” Udo said through the darkness. “Stop wasting the day.”

I gripped my pack, stepped through.

No time for pleasantries. No time for it. My heart beat in my ears as I walked into the cottage I grew up in, now dank and molding at the edges. It smelled of moss and fresh soil. Webs grew from the walls themselves, immense spiders vigilant to my arrival.

Udo sat at the table in the breakfast nook. There, the same crescent moon of a table awaited, with enough space for three seats. Udo sat at the northern tip, a teacup clutched in his hands. I couldn’t tell what was in it from the shadows. He wore his signature trench cloak, and as usual, he hadn’t put his arms through the sleeves. It draped on him like a rag, but it used to be something regal. He had the hood up, shoulders hunched. The seat at the southern tip was empty. My old chair. A curved high-back wooden chair painted over and over until it became muddy with color. I often painted it to reflect my mood, and so it became an onion of me. I walked slowly to the table to stand behind my spot, facing Udo across the curve. Tillie used to sit between us, in a plush chair too big for the table. Always a pillow or two to cushion her bottom and back.

A shadow of someone sat there now.

“Who is this?” I croaked, waving at the figure.

“Would you like some tea,” a voice bubbled from it.

I felt it again; a pain so deep in my stomach I thought I might be sick. My shears were in my pocket, and I took them out again to snip a single strand at my temple. I held the hair in my palm until it melted into blue ash. An orb of light pulsed from my palm.

I summoned a spell and waved my hand. Let there be light.

The breakfast nook illuminated, the orb from my hand splitting into smaller ones and nesting in the shell sconces on the walls. Spiders scurried back to their nooks. I heard hundreds of tiny footsteps of insects and mice as they retreated. I wanted to breathe a sigh of relief seeing Tillie’s fingerprints on the cottage; her ways of making it a home for us. Bows were painted in a pattern around the window. Moss pushed through the cracks. Her father’s tea set still sat on the buffet table near the stove, as well as the collection of milk bottles she’d amassed from their travels, the glass stamped with each location. They looked clean, despite the disrepair and neglect of everything else.

I forced myself to look back at the table.

I faltered. Stumbled.

My knees hit the ground and I sobbed.

Udo clutched the teacup tighter. “Stand up, Cog.”

I hugged myself, shaking my head.

“Stand. Up.”

The figure sitting at the table, in Tillie’s seat, was but a shade. A soul that Udo amassed from his magic, his memories, and trinkets Tillie loved. It was a scarecrow of bows, cloth, wildflowers, sticks, and leaves. Her shoulders were two milk bottles; I should’ve noticed there were some missing. Her face—her face—was an amalgamation of buttons, thimbles, thread from her kit, and dead leaves. To reanimate a dead person was an abomination—summoning was not resurrection—and Tillie requested to be cremated anyway. No, Udo kept his oath and his love’s wishes, but he was always one for loopholes. He saved her voice, his memories of her, and molded something anew.

I raised myself to one knee, leaning on my thigh.

“Udo,” I said, breathing deep. “What have you done?”

“You cannot blame me,” Udo said quickly, as if he’d been rehearsing this. He knew. “You cannot blame me for needing more time. She would have wanted to see you again.”

“That is not her,” I said, pointing to the thing in the seat. “That is not Tillie.”

“Would you like some tea?” the Not-Tillie asked.

Udo’s fingernails scratched along his teacup. “It is close enough.”

I shook my head. My pack slid off my shoulder and I stood. I spat on the ground, willing down the bile in my throat. Down. Down.

“You should have written,” I said. “You should have summoned me yourself, not let this town become your grieving grounds. Do you have any idea what you’re doing to the land, to the people?”

“I need more time,” Udo said, his voice grinding into a whine.

“Would you like some tea?” Not-Tillie asked again.

“You should have summoned me!”

Udo slapped his palms on the table. His hood slipped down to his shoulders.

His hair was shorn, cropped to his ears. I’d never seen his hair so short before. Silvery strands emanated from his forehead and temples. He looked older and younger at the same time. What used to be a long beard was now a mismatched field of stubble and whiskers. His grey eyes, once so piercing, were drowned out. He was a summoner undone.

“You should have come home,” Udo growled. “Me summon you? We, who raised and fed you, who taught you all I know? You should have sought us out. At the very least sought Tillie out. And yet you could not be bothered.”

My fists clenched.

“Aye, I know what she was to you, Cog,” Udo said. “Hate me, sure. Avoid me, sure, lest you be connected to me, Stark Summoner of the Realm. But you could have at least come home.”

He let out a long sigh. It rattled in his chest, and when the air from his lungs reached me, it smelled foul. I clutched the back of my chair, woozy and nauseous. It all came together: Tillie’s sickness and death. Udo gave all he had of his magic to make this Not-Tillie, and now he was sick, and the cottage was sick, and souls of him, parts of him, ran rampant in Berkhammer.

I dragged my chair back, stepped around it, and slumped in the seat.

“Would you like some tea?” Not-Tillie asked again. I waved her off.

“No, thank you.”

“Call her Tillie,” Udo said.

“I’m not calling it Tillie,” I said. “That is not Tillie.”

Udo grumbled, lifted the teacup to his lips and slurps.

“She’d hate what you’ve become, you know,” I said. “This would break her heart.”

Udo stomped the cup back on the table. “You know what broke my heart? Watching her waste away. Watching her take it on like a summoner and die a scared child. Where were you, Cogadhi? Off gentle summoning, nurturing sick goats and fucking young men and women on plush pillows?”

Teeth grinding, I muttered a spell under my breath, and the cup flew from Udo’s hands into my own. Without snipping hair, the spell singed my palms. A blister would form, no doubt, and the skin was already bubbling.

I sipped from the cup and sputtered. Stale, over-steeped tea. Cold, the leaves at the bottom shriveled. Was that mold? I spat.

“What is this?” I asked.

Udo shrugged. “A brew from the garden.”

“How old?”

“Oh, what do you care?” Udo growled again, hunching over himself.

“Would you like some tea?” Not-Tillie asked again.

“Can you turn it off?” I asked.

“She is not a machine, Cog,” Udo said. “Shits and shades, give my magic more credit than that.”

Then he turned to the Not-Tillie, shoulders sagging. His voice gentled to a near-whisper.

“Love, will you give us a moment? Perhaps some more tea and biscuits?”

Not-Tillie moved, rising from the chair. There was a hiss as flowers and branches and cloth rubbed against the floor and table. Not-Tillie’s movements were not as fluid as her shape; she moved in quick, jerky steps. Not a machine, Udo said, though she moved like one. She reminded me of the calash I rode in on before I gave it a bit of luck.

I should be disgusted. Udo created a live-in memory for his grief, the depraved old man. Tis true, Tillis would be heartbroken at such a sight, but Tillie forgave. It was her warmth as well as her fault. A pacifist who lured Udo away from being the Stark Summoner, convinced him to travel the continent with her instead. And he did. He left it all behind.

That doesn’t mean I forgave him.

Not-Tillie rustled out of the room, toward the back of the cottage and her bedroom. I watched, remembering the silhouette of the real Tillie, my Tillie, as she waved to us before going to bed. Sometimes Udo and I stayed up for hours, playing cards while he quizzed me on spells and the etiquettes of summoning.

“Etiquette,” Udo used to gag at the word. “As if magic were polite. But best to be knowledgeable. All ambassadors have imperial courtiers up their arse.”

A knock on the window of the breakfast nook startled me from the memory. I turned toward it as Udo swore under his breath.

The figure at the window was another Udo.

Or, rather, a soul of it. Like most wandering souls, they were monochromatic, without color, like beings in a glass negative. The soul was slightly taller than Udo, fuzzy at the edges. This one also had the long hair and beard from my memories.

The soul knocked on the window again.

“Tillie said let the flowers grow,” it said.

“Aye,” the real Udo said.

“Let the flowers grow,” it said.

Udo nodded. The soul repeated the phrase a half dozen more times, and instead of growing impatient, as Udo often did, he nodded. This was almost worse than the Not-Tillie, a conversation of repetition.

“The mayor brought me here to take care of them,” I said to Udo.

“Tillie said let the flowers grow,” the soul at the window said.

Udo nodded, and I couldn’t tell if it was directed at me or the soul.

“I am going to do it with or without your help,” I said.

Udo looked up at me, eye-to-eye, and I prepared myself to flinch as I’d done as a child. Then it dawned on me…his piercing gaze was no longer as sharp as it was.

“And what, pray tell, can a gentle summoner do with souls?” Udo asked. He tried to sound mocking, but even I could tell he was too tired. His outburst earlier drained much.

“True, most gentle summoners can’t handle souls,” I began, “they deal with animals and plants, but rarely more. It’s like you said: you taught me everything you know.”

Udo nodded, a quirk in his lips. “That I did.”

“…flowers grow,” the soul continued in the background.

I stood from my chair, taking the scissors from my pocket. Udo’s gaze fell on the shears, the ornate decoration, and he jerked back at the sight. He pinched the top of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

“Tillie’s scissors,” he said, voice wobbly.

“Aye.” My voice was soft.

Udo inhaled sharply and blinked. He nodded to the soul at the window. “Let’s see what you can do then, gentle summoner. Bring that sorry soul back to me.”

I clutched the handles of the scissors as I went back out the way I came, past the door hanging limp on the hinges, to meet the soul head-on. Glancing briefly over my shoulder, I saw Udo at the table, his fists balled tight on the tabletop, knuckles bleached white. He was readying himself to add a piece back that he had cut away. What I was going to do would not be pleasant for either of us. Nor for the souls, for that matter.

Speaking of which, I turned back to the shade in front of me. Its shoulder slumped forward. A sorry soul, indeed.

“Tillie said. . .” the soul began.

I snipped a lock of hair. “Aye, Udo. We’ll let the flowers grow as long as she wants.”

Gentle Summons

A gentle summoner was what one called a summoner who didn’t meddle with souls, also known as shades. Souls were either people who have not moved on from this life, or have had part of them ripped away, with or without consent. A stark summoner was a master of souls. A Stark Summoner of the Realm is the master of souls.

And Udo had ripped himself apart.

Evening bled forth. Three piles of blue ash littered the cottage. Three souls returned.

“Tillie said let the flowers grow.”

“No more braids for bows.”

“Two sugars in warm milk.”

Udo and I were scattered in the kitchen. Water boiled in the kettle on the wood-burning stove. Instead of sitting at the table, we were sprawled on our backs on the floor. Udo lay near the stove, curled into a fetal position. Taking back souls into yourself is like overcoming a fever, both literally and figuratively. The body needs to readjust, and it often fights.

After the first soul outside the window, Udo slumped in his chair, his breathing ragged. I was about to look in on Udo, when the other two shades showed up, beckoned by the magic.

“No more braids for bows.”

“Two sugars in warm milk.”

I called through the doorway. “We’ll need to bind them for the night. I don’t want them frightening the villagers anymore.”

Udo had snarled in his chair.

“Don’t pity me, Cog. Do what you came for.”

I gritted my teeth. I obliged.

Now my hands blistered, singed at the fingertips despite the locks of hair I offered.

The act of meddling with souls felt greasy to me. Wrong. Like holding a hand over an open flame despite my nerves begging for mercy. Udo raised me to be a stark summoner, but every time we meddled, every time I watched him work—exorcisms, soul-snatching, leading wandering souls to fruition—imprisonment of souls…my stomach bottomed out. I grew anxious and sick. It was not the life I wanted. I told Tillie I wasn’t strong enough, but she scolded me. She didn’t like the phrase.

“Strength has nothing to do with it,” she told me. “Few can handle the life of a stark summoner, and it takes its toll. You are not trapped in it, Cog.”

She was right. Because I was strong enough. I had given Udo back three shades of himself.

“Fuck,” Udo said near the stove. “Forgot how much this hurts.”

A shiver ran down his spine, and I watched him curl in on himself to weather it.

“Don’t lie, old man,” I gasped from the other side of the kitchen, holding my injured hands to my chest. “You’ve never done this before.”

Udo chuckled, which morphed into a grunt of pain. “Aye, ya smartass,” he said, ragged. “But neither have you.”

We laughed, two whimpering fools. Were Tillie here, she’d stomp her feet and loom over us.

“Bit full of ourselves, aren’t we?” she’d say. “Two stubborn rocks.”

The thought of it was so clear, so real, that I whimpered, hugged myself even harder. Udo must’ve thought it due to my burns because he grunted again and said, a bit gentler, “The pain will pass, Cog. Your hands are strong.”

I shook my head against the floor, squeeze the sting from my eyes.

“How many more are there?” I asked, my voice a croak.

Silence across the kitchen. A piece of wood crackled in the stove.

Then Udo sighed. “Two.”

Shades. He made five. Even in the training texts of my youth, I’d only read so much as three or four.

“Why?” I couldn’t help but yelp the word. The idea of two more was not only painful but ludicrous. Udo knew better. Had any other stark summoner done this act—for any reason—he’d have told them they didn’t deserve the title.

A shiver wracked Udo’s body and he strained against it.

“I was not—am not—myself,” he said.

I wanted to snort, clearly, since he tore himself into five shades.

“Cogadhi,” Udo said, and I started at the mention of my full name. “Before you. Before Tillie. ‘Twas a lonely life. Stark Summoner of the Realm. I was not a good man. I don’t claim otherwise. But then I found you. And then Tillie found me. And when she went wanderin’ I—I couldn’t bear the thought of going back.”

“To being a Stark Summoner?” I asked.

“Nay,” Udo said. “To being by myself.”

His voice broke at the last word. He did not have his cloak or long hair to shield his face, and I watched as his cheeks and eyes squeezed shut, morphing through emotions I could not name. He rolled over, toward the stove, muttering under his breath.

“Shades,” he said and began to cry.

For a moment, I could not fathom the sound. It’d been years since I witnessed such emotion from him. He saved his most vulnerable moments for Tillie, but Udo was always dramatic in some fashion. It usually manifested as anger or complaining. But this was a cleansing cry, one he seemed to have held onto since Tillie’s passing. He would not have trusted these sounds, uncontrolled and sloppy, with someone else. It was not a shoulder to lean on; I lay at the other end of the kitchen. But it was a space. Safe.

With shaking hands, I reached for my scissors. I snipped some strands of hair and let it crumble to blue ash in my palm. Wincing, I waved at the door. A hinge appeared and the door stood erect, bolted back to the doorframe.

It closed with a soft click.

• • • •

Sunlight. My eyes were closed. The blood of my eyelids was luminous and bright. Warmth spread on my face.

Then a shadow draped over me.

“Rough night, gentle summoner?” A voice asked. I could not help the smile on my lips. It was a lush feeling in comparison to the chills from the evening, the magic taking its toll on my body and hands.

Chess’s voice dripped like warm milk on a cold morning.

I opened my eyes and looked up from the floor.

“Has the fog lifted?” I asked, nodding to the sunlight beaming behind her. Chess looked over her shoulder, tilting the front tip of her bowler hat up.

“Aye,” she said. “Better at least. Only mist on the ground, and there are two shades left by my count.”

I pushed against the floor to sit up. My back stiffened, muscles buckling with aches. A plush bed would do me good when this was all over.

“Two shades left,” I confirmed. “I did not see them near the house yesterday.”

“They’re roaming,” Chess said, nodding toward the back of the cottage. “Closer to the woods where the blackberries grow. Our foragers won’t go there.”

The kitchen was empty save for Chess and I. Udo must’ve left earlier in the morning.

“Have you seen him?” I asked.

Chess shrugged. “Not yet this morning.”

“Would you like some tea?”

I yelped at Tillie’s voice, clutching my chest. Not-Tillie sat at the table, arms folded in her lap. Wildflowers and bows frayed every which way.

“Sorry,” Chess said. “I should have mentioned she was here.”

Chess sounded unflustered, which likely meant she’d been around Not-Tillie more than once at least. My face flushed, realizing I’d made a shades-damn fool of myself. Again.

I cleared my throat. “No need to apologize. I had almost forgotten about. . .her.” I had the urge to call the reanimated memory an “it” but after last night, it didn’t seem right. Whatever Not-Tillie was, however wrong it felt to hear her voice coming out of such a creation, she helped Udo. Not-Tillie would have to be dealt with eventually, but for now—

“Would you like some tea?” Not-Tillie asked again.

I put on a limp smile, shaking my head. “No, thank you.”

Chess reached under her mass of curls and scratched her neck. “You sure about that, Cog? A stout tea would do wonders to that bleak pallor.”

She had a point.

“True, but I’ll make it,” I said. “Whatever brew Udo drank last night tasted like raw dandelions.”

Chess laughed again. The sound warmed me further, and I stood with renewed vigor. My limbs ached at all the joints. My back screamed for mercy. All the while, Not-Tillie sat calmly at the table, completely unlike the Tillie I remembered. She’d be a whir of movement, poking us out of the way or giving us a job to do around the house. A bow, bright periwinkle, fell from the side of Not Tillie’s head to the floor, though she didn’t seem to mind. That was like Tillie; she didn’t let minor failures put a dent in her day. I walked to the stove, groaning with each step, to find the kettle.

There was much left to be done. But Chess’s company started the morning right, with tea forthcoming.

Summons Away Home

Chess helped me set the kitchen to rights, or at least, to the best we could in an hour. We drank tea with one hand and swept the floor with Udo’s brooms. He carved them himself, and he would have loathed to see us using them so whimsically. Chess twirled hers up in the ceiling corners, letting the spiders crawl onto the bristles and then taking them outside for them to crawl away.

“Can the mice stay?” Chess asked as she watched one scurry from one hole to another.

“Aside from a spell, I couldn’t make them leave if I wanted to,” I said.

Chess laughed. I couldn’t help but chuckle as well. Chess cleaned like a child, finding fascination and play in it. After a while, I couldn’t help but ask.

“Why mayor, Chess?” I asked. “Did you always want to run a town?”

Chess twirled the broom, then gently brushed a beetle out the door into the grass.

“Off you go, wee jade one,” she murmured to it, then louder to me. “Nay, if you had asked me two years ago about becoming mayor, I would’ve laughed in your face. At my roots, I’m a paleoclimatologist. I researched modes of ancient pollution and crafted models, magic or otherwise, on how to avoid the same ruts. I was about to apprentice at the Continental Consortium before Berkhammer called to me.”

The Consortium accepted few members in its century-old history. I stopped sweeping, leaning on the tip of the broom.

“You skipped the Consortium for this place?”

Chess grinned, pointing at my nose. “Ah, that face. That scrunch of skin. Tis everyone’s reaction to this story. Berkhammer is a place devoted to healing. The miners left, the place was sick, and people came together to heal it. It’s a climatologist’s dream. Originally, I came here to study the town and write my thesis on the capacity for collective avoidance. What is it summoners say? A soul is called to multiple hearts?”

“Hmmm,” I said. “Yes.” An optimist’s mantra, used in the early days of apprenticing, to add enchantment and a sense of purpose to summoning. I’d nearly forgotten it.

I realized that yes, Tillie doted on everyone, but now I wondered whether she especially loved Chess’s brightness and surety.

Finished cleaning, Chess downed the rest of her tea to the dregs. She tipped her hat.

“I believe that’s all I can offer this morning,” Chess said. “I’m due to help thatch Birchil’s roof this morning. She and her wife want to avoid leaks before the rainy season, what with the baby and all.”

Chess described the matter as if I knew all along about Birchil and her wife.

“Mayor, paleoclimatalogist, and thatcher?” I asked and leaned my broom against the wall by the door. Chess handed me her broom to put away as well.

Chess clucked her tongue. “Being mayor is not so different from being a summoner. I must know everything there is to know about my town, as you do about souls.”

“I certainly don’t claim to know everything about souls,” I said.

Chess lifted a shoulder. “Nor I about Berkhammer. But I’m open to knowing.”

As she brushed past me to the door, she held out her hand. “Until next time, gentle summoner.”

I took her hand. There was such solace to her warm skin. “I do hope so, mayor.”

“My guess is Udo is by the blackberry bushes, where the other shades roam,” she said. “About a hundred steps or so beyond the cottage.”

I nodded, not looking forward to the meeting. Chess squeezed my hand and said nothing more. She walked out the front door whistling a ballad that sounded familiar—haunting yet bright—but I couldn’t place the tune.

• • • •

Udo sat amid the tall grass. I found him where Chess guessed he would be. He was cross-legged, hands in his lap, eyes closed. Sprouts of blackberry bushes pock-marked the tall grass, leading to a dense forest. Even in daylight, the forest looked dark, its canopy thick with leaves.

My trodding steps signaled my approach, but Udo said nothing. The wind blew soft, cool, and I am glad I found one of Tillie’s shawls to wrap around my shoulders before leaving the cottage.

I sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Udo. Crossed my legs. My knees resisted; the muscles still angry from the strain of the previous night. I grunted, adjusting my posture in the grass.

“You could never sit quietly,” Udo said, eyes closed. “Loud as a fucking clap of thunder in a nursery.”

“It’s your fault,” I said. “I’m sore from cleaning up your mess.”

“Ah, my mess,” Udo said. He wasn’t mocking me. Each word sounded quiet and slow.

Udo opened his eyes and nodded to the tree line. I saw nothing at first, but then I noticed them. Two shades, standing a few feet apart, watching us. I reached under my shawl for my scissors, but Udo was faster. His wrinkled hand closed over mine.

“A moment, Cog,” Udo said.

The shades were hesitant, but they left the forest together, walking slowly to us. The grass passed through them. They made no sound as they took seats across from us in the grass.

“May I escort you to dinner?” one asked.

Udo hummed in the back of his throat. “This shade is from when I first met Tillie. It’s what I asked her when I began to court her. Do you know what she said?”

I shook my head, staring at him.

Udo turned to face me fully. “She said no. I was crushed, of course, about to turn around, when she called after me. ‘I detest formal dinners,’ she said. ‘You may escort me to dessert.’”

“Ice cream?” I asked.

“Of course,” Udo said.

The other shade fidgeted, looking over its shoulder back into the copse of trees.

“I would follow you,” it said.

“Ah, and that one.” Udo took a shaky breath. “It’s the last thing I said to Tillie. You can imagine what her response was, before she drifted off.”

“She said no,” I said. There were tears on my cheeks. I didn’t know when I started crying.

“Aye,” Udo said. “She said no.”

His hand still rested on my own, over the pocket where Tillie’s scissors rested. The shades got up, turned back toward the forest, and began to walk away.

“They’ll not bother anyone,” Udo said. “Not anymore.”

I said nothing, only watched as the two shades reached the tree line and disappeared into the forest. Perhaps I would seek them out later, trim more bits of my hair, create blue ash in my palm and return them to Udo’s body. He would weather it, and he would understand why it must be done.

He tore himself apart because of Tillie’s absence, and would it not be best that I reassemble him to completion? Would it not be righteous?

My fingers loosened around the scissors and fell into my lap. Udo’s hand stayed with me. He used to cuff the back of my head when I was a terror around the cottage, or when I lashed out. He used to pat my head awkwardly when I did something right. He never held my hand before.

From the trees, whispers faded into the wind.

“May I escort you to dinner?”

“I would follow you.”

There was so much left to be done. I knew this. But for now, the sun rose higher in the sky. I could see parts of Berkhammer that I hadn’t noticed before in the dense fog. Hills. Old mining shacks grown over into tiny chapels of vines and moss. The air was fresh. In the distance there was laughter. A goat bleated. Cicadas took up a loud drawl.

And blossoms. Brightly colored, with stems growing as long as we let them. As long as they want.

Everywhere, there were wildflowers.

©2022 by Lyndsie Manusos.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lyndsie Manusos’s work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Apparition Lit, and other publications. She lives in Indianapolis with her family and writes for Book Riot and Publishers Weekly.

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

The Sun in Exile

Catherynne M. Valente | 3027 words

I was born the year they put the sun on trial for treason.

It was so hot that year the streets boiled like black soup and the air rippled like music and the polar bears all roared together, just once, loud enough that a child in Paraguay turned her head suddenly north and began to weep. Tomatoes simmered on the vine and the wind was full of the smells of them cooking, then of their skins peeling, turning black, smoking on the earth, old coats lost to a house fire. Everyone shone like their skin was made of diamonds. Sweat took the place of silk. Children tried to feed at their mothers’ breasts and screamed as their little tongues blistered and their throats scalded. Cattle in the fields roasted where they stood, braised in their own skin and blood. One by one, the lights went out along the coasts, and then the outer islands went out, blinked away by the warm salt sea. Deep inland, the old men with their ham radios joined to their bodies like wives heard that an entire city evaporated into steam like so much water in a copper-bottomed pot. Even the stars at night could burn holes in your heart like magnifying glasses.

Even the moon raised silver cancers on your bare back.

No one went outside if they could help it. Soldiers guarded every space in the shadows, beneath a tree, in the foyer of an abandoned bank, under a long, rotted pier where the sea breeze still blew. An hour in the shade cost a year’s wages. Then two years. Then three.

The only rain was weeping.

At first, Papa Ubu did nothing. He appeared to his people on the pink alabaster balcony of the Lake House wrapped in layers of plush winter coats and colorful satin scarves, soft goatskin gloves, merino-lined boots black up to his knees, and a bright-green cap with fluffy earflaps underneath his crown, his beautiful wife beside him in a high-collared blue gown embroidered with snowflakes and quilted with down and silver thread, her golden hair hidden beneath a white skullcap fringed in black fox fur, and their youngest child so snuff and stiff in his silk snowsuit he could barely move. Papa Ubu shivered and shuddered and stamped his feet. He rubbed his big hands together and blew on them. He called to his man for another scarf and a blanket, for God’s sake. And as the brutal sun beat down without quarter, Papa Ubu exclaimed at the cold weather we were having, how vicious the polar front coming down from the north was this year, how sick his child had become as the unseasonable chill settled into his bones.

“Why,” exclaimed the great King Ubu, “I can see my breath in the air! This is an affront to all decency! It will not stand! I will take up arms and fight the terrible encroaching freeze for you, my people, and for my poor son, practically dead already from this damned frost!” And he began to dance back and forth to keep himself warm, one foot to the other, his colorful scarves fluttering and bouncing, his cheeks flushing red, his hat soaked in sweat, back and forth and back and forth, while he grunted and bellowed, “Brrr! It’s unbearable! I can hardly feel my toes!”

His beautiful wife presented her husband with a polite cough and delicately rubbed her elbows. After a small nudge, their son, scarlet and panting and entombed in the plush sarcophagus of his arctic snowsuit, coughed too and began to hop miserably back and forth like his father.

And all the people listening below the balcony, standing without shade on the golden dying summer grass, their bodies glistening with sweat, their throats dry with thirst, their scalps potato-red with sunburn, began to shout and call out that they too could see their breath fogging in the frigid air, that they had not known any winter like this since the storms fifty years back, or perhaps sixty, that they could see frostbite taking hold beneath their fingernails.

The next morning, word spread over the land that, out of respect for the suffering of the people in this time of trial, the word hot and all its derivatives should be neither spoken nor written, for it would only remind the forlorn of what they had lost. So too should the words warm, summer, fever, sweat, scorch, blister, and the like be stricken from the common vocabulary until the end of this horrible cold snap, for they were false friends, lies told only to torment the suffering.

Papa Ubu’s oldest daughter went into the countryside on charitable missions to comfort all who had begged for her father’s aid. She arrived in the towns like a magic spell, riding a sleigh drawn by shaggy reindeer whose eyes rolled in the agony of the heat, her lovely face framed in white fur and bright wool. And if her father was still human enough to sweat beneath his winter costume, she never did. Her face was pale and sweatless, as beautiful and unmoving as carved ice. In the scorching noontime sun, she pulled blanket after blanket from her sleigh and distributed them equally among the throng of loyal subjects, blankets of every color, quilted and embroidered and richly decorated with winter scenes, cottages dripping in icicles, glass beads forming frozen rivers in the fine cloth, fleece clouding the edges like clouds heavy with snow. There were always enough, enough for everyone, for Papa Ubu always took care of his children and loved them all the same.

One by one, folk dragged themselves forward, drowning in sweat, flies buzzing around their greasy hair, blisters on their reddened bodies like rows of rubies, and each of them begged for a blanket from the perfect white hands of Papa Ubu’s daughter. Each of them eagerly wrapped the heavy, downy things round their shoulders and wept with gratitude, exclaiming with wonder at how much better they felt. But it was not enough for the daughter of Papa Ubu. She leaned in close to them, so close they could smell that she still had access to perfume even if they did not, and asked: “How much better? Tell me, so that I may in turn tell my father. Tell me how terribly you have suffered.”

One by one, the people in the villages began to try to outdo one another. They shouted out in wonder at how cozy and snug they were now, surrounded in Papa’s love, how grateful they were to be so tenderly looked after, what a welcome relief from the cold the beautiful daughter of the king had brought to them in the moment of their greatest need. A toothless, emaciated man in one place, though his name and its memory have long since burned up and away, clutched his blanket stitched all over with ice floes and dark birds and shouted out over the crowd: “I lost my foot to frostbite, but look! The moment the king’s blanket touched it, it grew back whole! I can still see my breath in the air, but everywhere the blanket touches is safe!”

Then the man fell down dead of heatstroke. Papa Ubu’s daughter moved on to the next village, with a soft smile on her perfect face.

Soon after, another law went out into the land, forbidding additional words like weather, bright, shade, water, and all language relating to pain. There was no need to discuss such things in this new ice age, not when Papa Ubu had called all his advisers to the palace to array their powers against the encroaching cold. It hurt Papa Ubu’s feelings to hear his people say that they suffered in agony, when he was trying harder than any man had ever tried at any task to make the world warm again. When you wish to say, “I am in pain,” the law said, you should say, “I am joyful,” or “What a glorious day I am having,” instead, for lying is a grave sin, and it is tremendously wicked of you to spread rumors that your papa is failing at his task in any way, and in truth, it is you who is forcing Ubu to feel pain with your vicious implications.

But though no one spoke of it, the heat went on and on, until the soil itself began to turn to black steam and pumpkins began to turn to ash on the vine. The land around Papa Ubu’s palace had become an archipelago, and the warm salt sea lapped at his snow boots when he appeared on the pink alabaster balcony to address the people again. My mother, who was called Silver-and-Gold—for in those days all children were named for the many sorts of riches Papa Ubu promised to all, one day, if they were only patient—was there to hear him, her belly all big with me, her legs sunk deep in the creeping waters of the new archipelago, her swollen shape wrapped in furs against the cold. That was the day she heard Papa Ubu name their great enemy and declare it for the criminal it was, reading out from a golden book the indictment detailing all its crimes and foul schemes against his great nation, going back centuries upon centuries, the greatest scandal ever uncovered, the cruelest madman ever to afflict humankind.

“The sun has abandoned us,” yelled Papa Ubu, his cheeks red. “For billions of years it did its job without complaint, sitting up there in the sky, lording over us all like a big, fat, stinking bastard, and only now has it decided to deny us the seasons it owes, only now has it decided to harm us instead of nurture us, only now has the sun turned its back on its children as I never have and never will, and you know that’s the truth, because I’m out here saying it to your face despite the freezing wind and sleet. Any other king wouldn’t bother, you know, they really wouldn’t. Anyway, the motive is clear—the sun hates Papa Ubu and is conspiring against him! It prefers the corrupt papas that came before, who let it do whatever it wanted, the people be damned. But when I stand up for you and demand your rights, the sun refuses to budge! What have we done to deserve this? Nothing! Nobody can blame us! We were just minding our own business, weren’t we? The sun is an arch-criminal! The sun is against us! But I am a fair papa, and all my subjects are free and entitled to justice, even the sun. There must be a grand trial, with prosecutors and defenders and testimony and all that sort of thing, so that everyone can know just how deep this whole thing goes and that I, I, had nothing at all to do with it!”

“I am joyful,” whispered my mother in reply, and all around her the people took up her cry, shouting, shrieking, weeping, I am joyful! I am joyful! before their king. And Papa Ubu smiled an enormous, hungry smile, and Papa Ubu waved and waved, for hours, never tiring, while the people chanted and screamed and fell forward into the knee-deep water, and all the while Papa Ubu drank their voices like wine or blood.

By coincidence, my grandfather was chosen to serve as chief counsel for the defense. He was called Equity, and he had never studied law in all his life. Most who had were long gone by then. But my grandfather was a Good Boy, loyal to Papa Ubu to the tiniest cell of his deepest marrow. He wore his hat just like Papa Ubu. He tied his tie just like Papa Ubu. He bid his wife style her hair like the hair of the daughter of Papa Ubu, and speak with the accent of the wife of Papa Ubu, and in that stolen voice tell him each night in detail how the cold was stealing in through the cracks in the door, and the frost was creeping up the side of the windowpanes, and the apples in the basket were surrounded by globes of ice, and the mice in the hall were freezing to death, and the icicles on the roof had nearly reached the top of the snowbanks outside, closing them into the house in their jagged crystal fangs.

It is because of his loyalty that he was so bitter to be drafted for the defense. Surely he deserved to prosecute. Papa loved winners, and wasn’t Grandfather a winner? Everyone knew what the sun had done. If only the blasted thing would confess like anyone with a half scrap of decency, there would be no need for this sordid business. Grandfather Equity always did his best, and he would do his best now, for Papa had ordered a real defense, without which a guilty verdict would have no strength. But Grandfather hated the sun as much as anyone. He insisted, to all who would listen, that he’d hated the sun long before Ubu revealed the true extent of its betrayal. How could Papa force him to sit with the sun and consult with it and decide whether or not to put it on the stand? It was intolerable. But he was a Good Boy. He could no more say no to Papa Ubu than he could bring himself to say he was hot while he sprawled naked in his kitchen on the mercifully cool tiles just for one moment’s relief, a twitching creature more sunburn than man.

Papa allowed a full hour of electricity in every city center so that all his children could watch the trial. A spot in the shade could suddenly be had for little more than a laborer’s day wage or a tryst in the briars with an amenable soldier. Each day’s testimony would end at sunset, naturally, for the accused must be present for the proceedings to be legitimate. The atmosphere was as dazzling as a carnival. Food was sold and lanterns were lit on street corners even in the bright of the afternoon, concertinas and panpipes were played in the piazzas, and throngs gathered beneath a ziggurat of televisions all tuned to UbuTV, most blessed of channels.

The reason Grandfather was chosen for the defense soon became clear. Ubu himself led the prosecution, his face utterly scarlet with righteous rage on that tower of screens, rendered tiny by the mountain of parkas and scarves and hats in which he had entombed himself. Papa ranted and raved and gestured wildly at the witness stand, bathed in a single, terribly quiet golden sunbeam. He flung his mind fully at the task, firing precedents like rifles, pealing forth with sermons soliloquized directly into the cameras, weeping real tears at the wholly unprovoked crimes of the sun against his people, the sheer betrayal of the sun’s abandonment of its special relationship with this world, the inevitable result of which was to plunge it into a deadly ice age, merely out of pique at the great beauty, power, and longevity of Papa Ubu. How, indeed, could the sun begin to live with itself?

The judge and jury and all the crowds in all the cities applauded ecstatically every fragment of Latin, every incisive, surprising question that came so close to disturbing the calm of that single shaft of light illuminating the defendant’s chair. One after another, Ubu’s witnesses were called to speak to the slaughter and suffering caused by the sun’s perfidy, but Papa rarely let them finish. He was too excited, too eager to get to the good parts. If the witnesses proved too boring or their statements not flamboyant enough, Ubu took over and finished for them with a grand flourish. Grandfather offered objections here and there, nothing radical, some sustained, some overruled. He tried to cross-examine, but the judge decided it was inappropriate to question the agony of the victims. As the sun declined to testify, there was little else for him to do but wait. It took seven days for Ubu to finish his tour-de-force and to collapse, exhausted, spent, exhilarated, into the chief prosecutor’s plush chair, shivering theatrically.

It was time. There was no more avoiding it.

Grandfather Equity rose behind his long, polished rosewood bench and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. He flushed with shame. He began to shake and to weep. He had only one choice if he meant to mount a real defense, if he meant to do his job in the service of his beloved papa, as he had always done, as he always would do.

“Your honor,” said my grandfather slowly. “We’ve heard a great deal of testimony on the causes of this terrible winter that’s cursed us. And it’s all well and good and fine as far as it goes. But it’s just too hot to go on today, don’t you think? I’m too fucking hot. Aren’t you hot?”

And he opened his briefcase and drew out a glass bottle of clear, cold water with ice floating in it, and ice crusting the outside, and frost sealing the cap. He set it on the judge’s desk, before a man sweating out his innermost fluids in a heavy down coat and thick black scarf. The judge stared at the bottle as a slip of ice slid down its side. He licked his lips. He looked helplessly back and forth between Grandfather and Papa Ubu.

The sun was found guilty on all charges and sent into exile. Not one person under the rule of Ubu would henceforward be allowed to speak its name or look upon it, even indirectly, and all were commanded to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary in order to shun the offender. If one must venture outside, umbrellas, skin-concealing dark clothing, and tinted glasses ought to be used so as to avoid even the hint of association. This was the verdict, and it could not be appealed.

My grandfather was quietly executed in the courthouse bathroom.

©2019 by Catherynne M. Valente. Originally published in A People’s Future of the United States, edited by John Joseph Adams and Victor LaValle. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over forty works of speculative fiction, poetry, and criticism, including the Fairyland novels, Space Opera, Deathless, The Orphan’s Tales, and Palimpsest. She is the winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Lambda, Sturgeon, Mythopoeic, and Tiptree (now Otherwise) Awards, among others. She lives on a small island off the coast of Maine with her partner, child, and a cat who will not stand for being overlooked in biographies.

Hungry as the Mirror Bright

Micah Dean Hicks | 6873 words

She was born a low and needful thing. Hatched down in the tannin dark, dead leaf pillowed, gnashing her mouth in the loam. Burrowing deep where shed buttons and broken boot laces lay. Alone and babbling, prowling for worm-meat and snail-slick in the wet ground rot. Fattened on maggot and grub, she hardened white and lay sarcophagal. Then a second birth, splitting free and strange in new skin.

By bloated moon, she clambered a bending stalk and balanced on leaf blade, blinking back larval dreams. Body sticky still from the pupa, she studied what she’d become. Long abdomen flaring with golden light. Four serrated legs anchoring her to a stem. Extending up from her armored scales, a smooth torso and tender skin. Two slender arms, hands with thin fingers. Mud on her lips and face. Long, dirty hair falling on her elytra, glassy plates shielding delicate wings.

Antennae extended from her forehead, waving in the wind-damp. Some smell far off, under nectar and wood rot: the breath of another. So sweet, her wings shivered. Above, moon belly drifted through the treetops. She reached for that cold glow and felt her lantern pulse warm beneath her. “Please,” she said, language rising in her like bile, a call hungry for a response. But the tender dark only tightened its lips, withheld its hand, offered nothing.

• • • •

Days she followed windswept scent, testing her wings in clumsy crashes through twig and thistle-top, sniped at by swooping birds. Abdomen flat, she squeezed up through bramble and thorn thicket, searching the sky. There beyond a ring of magnolia, in a nectar-drunk honeysuckle hollow, she found what she’d been looking for.

Hundreds clustering low and high, dressed fine in egg shell and spider silk, tea towel and toad skin. They bobbed in clouds of lantern-light, abdomens spilling gold, drawing lines of fire against the black. Laughter chimed, and berry wine breath spilled down the breeze. Dew-touched and nectar-lipped, their chitin oiled shining. Sky-strutting, they clattered and sneered, shrilled like cicadas. Drunk, they brandished needle and cat’s tooth, spearing their rivals and dropping them dead as hail. Their hands tight in each other’s clothes and hair. Grief and comfort, rage and want.

How warm to be held by that same light, barked at and shoved, felt and seen. She lurked in the leaf spray, wings flexing an ache to fly to them. Her lantern throbbed, golden heartbeat, gilding the green beneath and giving her away in the curling dark.

Three fairies fell for her, dragging lines of lamp-light behind them. They splashed, comet-crashing and kicking their legs in the leaf tangle. Surrounding her in the thorns, they examined her from antenna to abdomen.

She spread her wings and arms, reached for them with hands and feelers. Showed them with her whole body that she was the same as they. “You came to find me?” she asked.

“Naked and dirty,” said one, half-rotted mouse-hide down his back. “Oaf girl. Dead snail stinker.”

“Dung beetle,” agreed another, pitiless face painted gold with pollen. “Mottle-spotted, or filth-flecked so? Shame to be bred by such.”

“Worm dumb.” The third nodded, this one cinched in a green doll’s dress with lace ruff, skirts bunching around his abdomen. “See the moon-stupid glint in her eye. Skin-hunger in her greedy hands. Nothing she has, not stitch, not scrap, not etiquette, or excuse. What could we take from her?”

They pressed close, scraped spiny legs against hers, tugged at her wing-plates, snapped at her cheeks, their lights glaring. Hurt, she backed deeper into the brambles, her lamp cold. What could she say? They were a joining, and she was broken off. What would let her in?

“Nameless thing, too boring for sport,” one of them said. “Might as well woo a porch light.”

“Rude we, to have come without flowers or serenade. Here, girl. Grow your own blossom.” They threw a cherry pit at her, tacky as blood, ragged tatters of flesh still clinging to the seed. Chortled they, complimenting the generosity of the gift. Then scuttled backwards and buzzed off.

Shameful to be seen so, to be cherry pit trashed, but didn’t she want them still? Want drink and touch and laughing light, for the pulse of warm blood flushing cruel cheeks, to be the same as they? She opened her mouth wide and planted her tiny teeth against the stony pit. Sucked juice and flesh from it. Cracked the seed and swallowed its bitter. Took what they offered down to the pulp. Her lantern’s desperate throb, echo to her heart.

Another fairy dropped kicking into the thicket above, rasp-throated and frail. Burned down his body, scars clotting his face and chest, one arm withered, wings small and cracked and barely able to lift him up.

“Come, bee-bread, dancing darling, nectar-cup,” he hoarsed. “Saw your light pleading. Let’s dress you for the regale.”

A trick maybe? But he was speaking to her, had come down for her and no other. She came, the light-boiling sky calling to her. Rushed up from the leaves and took his hands, the frail tailor with his burned face. Worth any hurt to be one of them.

He clucked. “Too eager and pleasing. Guard yourself. Cultivate a cooler affect.”

“I can cool,” she said. “I’ll frost, if that’s the price of love.”

“The regale will have you,” the tailor said. “Only . . .” He looked up, catchlights dancing across his eyes, and flinched. “Only, leave being loved for the fairy queen.”

“Because of her you’re marked so?” she asked, tracing his burned palm.

Fearfully smiling, the tailor shook his head. “Mustn’t blame her for the candle that tipped and burned me. My own punishment for being displeasing. But worry not about that. We’ll garb you better.”

Hand in hers, he pulled her into the branches above, to an owl-hollow packed with gleaming things. He showed her piles of his farmhouse thievings: doll’s clothes and lace knitting and silver coins. Fruits of his treetop scrounging: hawk feather and chick down, broken shells in every hue. And from the forest floor, the fallen and forgotten: molted spider-shell, bundles of silk and cotton plumes, flower heads dripping with pollen. But outside the hollow, more marvelous than all he had and close enough that she could count the rings on their fingers, the dancers careened and crowed.

The tailor fit her in a jacket of stitched oak leaf. Braided blood-colored thread around her four thin legs. Tied a red paper mask over her face. “Need no one, and keep moth-quiet. Learn their games before you play. Too eager to grab the light and you will burn. But before you go . . .” He extended his shriveled hand to the rich pelts and piles of his tailory. “Choose you one lovely thing.”

Doll wigs stitched of yarn and bright pennies shield-big. Shaving razors like scythes, bee stingers dripping, and flowers of blown glass. Gnashing mites begging to latch, fox fur cloaks stinking of dog-breath and danger, and a glutted leech lounging in a purse. Acorn casks of pollen, of crushed shell, and there, what was it? A something lovely, star dust maybe, salt-smelling and bright as moon-dirt. A powder that stained her fingers mirror-bright. A wonder that couldn’t be ignored, and with it might she be such?

“Nacre,” said the bitter-tongued tailor. His smile said she was free to take it, but a warning in the tightness around his eyes. “Pearl mother. Narcissus mirror for the eyeless oyster deep. Favorite, of course, of the fairy queen.”

Loved by everyone, the tailor had said. She plunged in up to the shoulders, spread gobs over her neck, rubbed it down her arms and into the crevices of her fingers. Smoothed it over her pointed ears. Every inch of exposed skin. She twirled for the burned tailor, a mirror girl dressed in red and green, her lamp bright.

“Before you fly, a name for you,” the tailor said. “Silver-limbed, but I’ll call you gold. Brassy, desperate brazzle. Golden fool. Tell them your name is Pyrite. I did all I could to save you.”

• • • •

What a gift, what a gift! Pyrite, ordinary and everywhere, stream-spilling and bright. A common beauty, and one that delighted all. The regale towered up through oak branches and viny tangles, floor after floor, Babel tower rising toward the face of the moon.

She flew to the first group she saw, lounging low on shelves of white mushroom caps jutting from the tree bark. At their center, a fairy half-swallowed by a toad, struggling to keep head and arms free, the amphibian tossing its bloated head and smacking on him. The others clapped and doubled, pissed themselves with delight, their friend red-faced and laughing in fear.

Petulant on its own fungal step, a sparrow with clipped wings and a tether around its throat watched her with killing eyes. Its minder, a fairy knight in fish-sour crayfish shell, lashed the leash.

Pyrite lit on the bark beside them, arms gleaming like rivers. The others stiffened and grew quiet when she came, but only sighed at a closer look.

“Fox mean and dummy dangerous to play so,” said one wearing a hydrangea puff. “Thought you were conniving on us queen-like.”

“Thought we were meat for milk,” said the knight, eyes dark within her crustacean helm. “But look near the moon. Her ribbons still snake. The queen’s not here to sport with us.”

“I’m Pyrite,” she said. The others introduced themselves: Dungsour held in the toad’s jaw, Bitter Dream fragrant in his hydrangea robe, and Mud Valor the Herald of the Dross armored in shell and claw.

“What do you mean, meat for milk?” Pyrite asked.

“Winter Milk,” breathed Dungsour, slipping up to his chest now, hands wrestling the heavy lip. “The fairy queen.”

Pyrite snapped her wings, not liking not to know, to look new and not belonging. “What’s she queen of?”

The others hooted mean, spilling their seed cups. “Of you, to start.”

“Queen of magnolia grove and nectar bloom,” said Bitter Dream. “Of the regale all round.”

“Queen of pin cushion justice and murder japes,” said Mud Valor.

“Winter Milk,” said Dungsour again, a bright and dumb look on his face as he sunk to his chin, arms vanishing. “Queen of Stillness and Grief.”

The toad forced the fairy down, crushed wings spilling from its mouth.

Mud Valor sighed and paged through a Swiss Army knife, finding a serrated sword half as long as she. “Dungsour’s unpalatable and been vomited back before. Still, best not to chance things. Sticky work to excavate a toad, but needs doing.”

“Or save the toad, and let me sit Dungsour’s place,” Pyrite said. “Time maybe for a fresher scented friend?” She laughed, like it was joke, watching to see if they laughed too.

The knight turned to her, grim in crayfish armor. “Dungsour’s too known and loved to throw away. Losing him would leave a hole. But feel free to linger, if you like.”

Pyrite looked up to the regalers bright above, eyes stinging. The tailor would be disappointed. Her own hunger embarrassed.

Bitter Dream flit alongside Pyrite and touched her hand, eyes wet and all pupil, like he’d eaten poison. “Enjoy the regale, but need less,” he said. “You’re egg-soft still.”

Leash unattended, the sparrow snapped for her. Pyrite hopped back and buzzed off the trunk. Wind carried her higher, up to a spread of branches gold-cloaked and dripping with dance. A crowd to lose herself in and start anew, unashamed. Maybe these arms would be quicker to open. She left Mud Valor and her dim companions below.

• • • •

She twirled in and among them, trying to be what they were, smearing her coat with pollen and paint. Sloshing wine from snail shell cup and eating seed ticks from silver platters, their pop between her teeth bright with hare’s blood. The dancers took her hand, spun her dizzy, and flung her outside their circle of light.

A mistake, maybe? But each time she tumbled back, she was thrown out again. She searched their faces, wondering what she was doing wrong, but they laughed without looking at her. Tossed from dancer to dancer and then aside, she was losing a game she didn’t know how to play.

Wasn’t it fine, though? To be here, in and among and no less for being new. Best to wait and learn like the tailor had said. But she wanted more than they gave, more than mocking smiles and clever hands uncoupling from hers. To be seen, to be held and wanted, throat-kissed and clung to. Feeling a-tatters, she filled her shell and circled the crowd. Abdomens flashed. She answered, pulsing too bright and too long, the molten core of her too much.

Out of the crowd they came, the trash-throwing fairy three who’d discarded her. They bowed low and kissed her hand, breath smoldering on her knuckles. Introduced themselves as Meadow Love with the mouse hide grimacing on his shoulder, Better Veil with his pollen caked face, and Petty Pay with his velvet green gown. Said that they wanted to start on another foot.

“Pyrite,” she snipped. “A good golden find.”

“And aren’t you, true? All tailored so,” said Meadow Love, soft “o” of the mouse mouth chorusing beside him.

“Soggy-headed us not to have seen it,” admitted Petty Pay, nodding solemn. “The bright, gleaming vein of you.”

“Mirror-clean and outshining,” said Better Veil. He smeared his pollen like a man weeping. “Nacre-armed like the cream of frost, the grease of cold. Aren’t you Winter Milk’s own sister to be such? Is Pyrite bright enough a name?”

“Pyrite’s enough,” she said. “Pyrite glimmers in cold creek shallows and tumbles out of potato beds. Admired by minnow and pill bug both.”

“Agreed, agreed,” said Petty Pay. “Down among root-rot, or silver sky riding with the queen, wanted wherever you are.”

Pyrite drank fast, emptying her cup. She bit the shell, grinding salt. “Would she want such, she of Stillness and Grief? Lady on the lips of all?”

“Lonely is the queen,” said Meadow Love. “Forgotten and friendless, though she regales us with such.”

“Neglected as the moon,” agreed Better Veil. “We wear her light and reflect back little. She who delights in every gleaming thing.”

Pyrite’s abdomen betrayed her, hopeful glow, and her wings twitched. “Every gleaming thing?” she asked. “Broken glass and quartz spar? Camp embers, and the dull shine of a cricket eye? She would want such ordinaries?”

They smiled huge, teeth against teeth, something unspoken held in their mouths.

Meadow Love twirled his dead mouse tail. “To queens rich as she, all gems throw the same light. How do you know so little of our lady? Aren’t you one of us?”

“Never have I been another thing,” Pyrite said.

She’d lost her mask somewhere, hair blowing across her cheeks, and she rubbed nacre from her palms over her lips and face. She watched the queen dive back and forth, high above the regale and alone against the moon’s broken head. Alone, and maybe wanting too? What if the queen craved like she did, knew a hunger that only hunger could sate?

“I’ll offer her a present,” Pyrite said. “A bright and shining something.” Though saying so, she hoped she only would be enough.

Petty Pay curtsied. “So generous, our golden fool.”

Pyrite thundered away, eyes out for a gift in the roil and thrash of the regale. If the queen saw worth in her, then Pyrite would have the affection of everyone. And didn’t she deserve it, she who could give so much? She drifted up and up, falling into the sky.

• • • •

The regale burnt to embers, fairies drunk slumbering on branches or dumped chattering together in trunk hollows. Laughs gone whispery, throats red and tired. Pyrite prowled the ragged edges, picking through overturned platters and trash piles, the party rot-soft by night’s ebb.

Among the carcass of a fish, naked bones like tentpoles holding up the gray sky, Pyrite pulled free a single, perfect scale. Palm-big and light-vibrant, like a mirror in her hand. A welcome ordinary, same as she. Might the queen want to see it? Might she, or might she not, but better to bob and bother with full hands.

Climbed up and up, fairies wind-drifting on weary wings. The regalers held hands and buoyed together, lamps glowing like circlets of flame. Far below at the end of a branch, Meadow Love and his clique watched her.

Rising over tree fingers, Pyrite broke into naked sky, the hollow shrinking dim beneath. Exposed in the owl- and hawk-harried deep, she’d never felt so alone. More solitary than her larval memories, voiceless in the mud where at least crickets squealed their want. A river wind whipped at her, and she shattered air under her wings, struggling towards a cluster holding themselves above the regale.

Only a few fairies here, the queen’s own court. Beautiful they, the ruins of their gowns twisting in the air like the calls of ghosts. Winter Milk, silver-limbed in her nacre and trailing ribbons of white, lay back in the arms of her companions. The courtiers beat their wings until muscles bled, shaking and grimace-grinning, killing themselves to keep queen aloft.

Pyrite buzzed up among them, blundering into the circle silent. Winter Milk slipped free of the arms that held her and zipped around Pyrite, delicate hands tracing her wings and barbed legs, tightening a moment in her hair. Upside down, the queen hovered, studying Pyrite’s face. A hunger in her gaze, but not the same as Pyrite’s need. A glutted and too full look, stuffed sick with all she had and still devouring.

Oaf girl, Meadow Love had called her. Filth-flecked. Worm dumb. Her mouth went dry. There was no shelter here, no crowd to dissolve into, every eye on her. Just as she’d wanted, and nothing like she’d hoped it would be.

“Painted like a queen,” Winter Milk said. “Come to steal my moon?”

“No, no, nothing to take. Just a reveler, like all the rest. Come to reflect a spot of your light back on you.” Pyrite held out the fish scale, letting the moon skip over its face and throw shine on the queen.

Winter Milk turned her hand to the offered scale, letting it tumble down through the sky. The court cinched around them, bluster of their wind warm and close.

“Not to give you came, because empty-handed,” Winter Milk said. “Came to take. To sop favor. Not a mirror. A quick-silt, a greedy piglet suckling.”

“No and never,” Pyrite said. “Came to give. Mirrored such to give yourself back to you. All I want is at your feet.”

Winter Milk gestured to one of her court and was handed a pair of mustache scissors, enormous in her hands. “What if I wanted your hair? The tip of an antenna, or your dewy left eye? Would you submit to such?”

“A small price to be yours.”

Winter Milk smiled, amazed and interested now. “For that is all you want, just to be mine?”

“All and all,” Pyrite said. “My only.” She would agree to anything. To have her antennae snipped off and be blind to air-scent, to have her new gown cut away and hang exposed. To be a hound laid in her queen’s lap. To carry Winter Milk herself, and who better for the job of bearing their liege? Who might love the queen more only for keeping her?

Winter Milk fluttered behind her. “Mayfly sad, that. To want the smallest thing. To learn that it’s too much to hope for. Down, worm. Return here never.”

Pyrite opened her mouth to plead, heart stopping to be thrown away. How could she be so unwanted? What had she done?

The fairy queen forced the blades together, severing her wings. A wash of pain like fire down her back and crackling up through her nerves. She dropped, at once alone in the cold air, wings wicked away from her on the wind.

Above, the laughter of queen and court against the bone-white moon. Below, raucous shouts of the regale, pointing and jeering as she fell through the sky. She looked away from Meadow Love and his cohort, finding Mud Valor. The knight held her gaze all the way down, crayfish helm staring silent as Pyrite crashed into the brambles below. Falling through thorns and jagged tangles, back mouth-first into the loam that made her.

• • • •

It was full morning before she could get up, bruised and aching from the fall. Dangerous to be about during day, sun-lit and hawk-sought. She should dig down, cower under a leaf and wait. But she needed to be further from it, the cruel regale, party that went on playing in her head.

Her snipped wings burned. Mantis-legged, she staggered through dead leaves and mud mash. Slipped on a wet stone and swept spinning down a stream. Clinging to mosses and climbing up again, wolf spiders stalking her. They froze when she turned to them, their eyes unfeeling as stone.

“Creep then!” she said to the vermin watching. “Try and bite. Might be bitten back.”

She was hungry, but the spiders stayed off, waiting for sun or bird to wound her. Animal rot, the black bloody smell of souring meat, raised her feelers. Something had died nearby. The gift of the dead and their fruit-ripe meat—they never said no.

A long climb up a steep slope, legs tangling in ropes of dewberry vines all furry with thorns. Shaded by poisonous ivies, the treetops singing danger. At the crest of the hill, under the shade of an apple tree, she found the cattle bones.

Ridges of vertebrae and shoulder settled into a deep skull, twin horns rising. Scraps of skin and dark blots of meat still packed into its hollows. It crackled with drab beetles and their prospecting larvae, dripping from the bones in reeking heaps.

Pyrite walked into the rotten mouth, through columns of blunt teeth, a carpet of bugs sucking the wet soil below her. She picked up a thrashing worm and bit deep, tasting the soured cow mixed with larval blood.

A fallen apple, fly-pocked and sinking in its skin, had fallen close. She sucked sweet liquor from it until dizzy and soft-minded. The saw and scrape of beetles thrummed. Might she stay here, watching the world through a cow’s eye, cider drunk and queen of the cattle bones?

Apart, yes, her own head conjuring voices to cringe and gape at what she had become. Better those phantoms than warm hands that could hurt, smiles that could cut. Her wings were gone. She’d never fly again.

Let her lurk here alone, then. Let her be cruel to a smaller kingdom, find some dumb thing to kick and twist, to jeer and name Pyrite, common and discarded. But what if it wouldn’t sate? She ached still to be gowned, named, and seen, another star in their burning sky. Mayfly sad, Winter Milk had said. So it was.

By dark, she walked the spine, neck to tail, surveying her duchy bleak. The bones white and shining under thin branches above. She touched the heavy skull, moon on the ground. Imagined the lonely, dying low of the thing. For a heartbeat, it seemed almost enough.

Carried on the wind, she heard their voices. Clatter and laugh, the explosion of wings. The wounded wail of a fairy drunkard begging for sex. When a breeze stirred the trees, she saw them hanging not far off in their magnolia grove. The cattle bones rested high in the wood, and from them she could see everything she had lost. Even the court of Winter Milk, bobbing far above.

Agony to sit and watch, vibrations of the beetles devouring the world beneath her. She couldn’t remain. But when she turned on her perch, Pyrite saw another glow. Far off in the woods, down in the deep cut of a ravine. A single lantern burning alone, bright like a coin of flame, hidden where no one would see.

She crept down the slope on her thin legs. Had others been cut down from Winter Milk’s court? Terror weighed on her, heavy as the plates on her back that folded over nothing. But what did she have left that anyone could take? Maybe in the dark was a thing as hungry and alone as she.

• • • •

The light lured her into the deep cut. Slimy-leaved hollow, hairs of roots brushing her. The slow, damp digestion pit of the world. Pill bugs lowered their visors at her passage. At the center of the ravine, she found a midden mound.

Mantis claws and spider limbs cracked open and sucked clean. Floral butterfly wings scattered and glowing, her back aching to see them. Shells clicked and shifted under her feet. The split bodies of empty insect heads tossed like masks on the ground.

From below a deer hoof, she pulled free a thin bone. The length of her own forearm and sized to match. Would one fairy eat another? She had never considered. Pushing aside chitin and hoof, she unearthed more bones. A half skull, jaw misplaced, antennae holes above the eye sockets. Hunger she had expected, but not like this.

A voice smothering as smoke came from the dark behind her, arresting her step. “Bee bread. Isn’t that what the tailor calls?” it asked. “Honey stuck and nectar drunk?”

A flash, the rotten hollow bathed in green-gold light. Pyrite turned and felt everything in her still. Immense, a segmented body armored and long. Six clawed legs to carry its bulk. Dark, shield-like plates stacked over her back and hooding a human face. No other skin than that, no arms and fingers, no torso tender. Only her hungry, mournful stare out from a chitin collar and blood smearing her soft lips.

Some instinct, buried still from Pyrite’s larval past, saw the ravine dweller and told her, This is the Glowworm. Dark goddess of leaf-fall, lying lantern, and fisher of hope. Come to curl you again in egg sleep. Heavy blanket, dragging you back into the lightless loam.

Backing away and tripping through the bones, Pyrite tried to run. Quick as silverfish, Glowworm struck, wrapping around her with vising legs, lantern bright to see what she had caught. The monster was face to face with her, breath like the grave.

“Hush and still,” Glowworm said. “Imagine whatever loveliness you like. You can take it with you when you sleep.”

“Don’t feast on me,” Pyrite said. “Thought you were a lonely thing, thrown out from the fairy court. Thought you might know a hunger like mine.”

“And if I do?” Glowworm asked, sadness pouring down her face.

Pyrite scoffed, held still in the worm’s grip. “You roost on a house of bones, all love devouring. What could you know of being lonely?”

Glowworm nuzzled her teeth against Pyrite’s skin, mouth unhinging open huge. One bite would sever her, scissor-snipped and dead. But when Glowworm felt beneath her elytra and found Pyrite’s missing wings, the monster let her go.

“You misjudge. I am more than appetite, sweet bug,” Glowworm said. “Come and greet my vassals.”

Into the gaping mouth of a mossy log, Glowworm brought her. Cringing in the dark, Pyrite found a pair of young fairy-kind, brother and sister maybe, their wings severed too. Had Glowworm snipped them so, or were they victims of the regale same as she? With them, a blind mouse too old and soft of tooth to nip any harm. A treefrog, thorn-pierced through the side and beating the drum of its throat, watched them from the ceiling with blown glass eyes.

“Companions for you,” Glowworm said, “if you would be happy to have us.”

Dark and silent, the air hot and fear-drenched. No touch and love here, no boisterous light. All glow given up for Glowworm. A claustrophobic place. Court or pantry, she wasn’t sure. But who else would have her?

“I would stay,” Pyrite said. “In any dark place, pyrite might be found gleaming.”

“But not happily?” Glowworm asked. “Still, you crave their mocking songs, their selfish lamps, callous bite of your fellows’ flying wit? Even after all they took from you?”

“All I ever wanted was to be among them. But no returning now. Winter Milk said so. If only I’d guarded better.”

“I too growl for company, for their prickly press and cold glow,” Glowworm said. “But they won’t have me above, and they’ve become too clever to draw down into the ravine so low. Maybe we two together could call them? Scout the edge of the regale and find a place your fellows can see. Set lights to reel them in. You can’t return, so lure them to you. Fairies can’t resist a lamp burning.”

Heaped against the walls of the log, skulls and insect heads alike looked at her, sucked clean as cherry pits. Barely could she look at Glowworm’s face for all her mind rebelled. But the creature had been tailor-kind, had scraped up some sympathy for her. The worm hungered too, so she said. None had understood her better.

“I know a cattle bones,” Pyrite said. “On the hill above, apple tree shaded. There we’ll have fruit fermenting sour and beetles abundant enough. Only need light to draw them in, a lowly court for them to sport with. You can hide deep in the heart of it, close enough to soak it in, and far enough not to scare them off.”

Glowworm stroked her face, and Pyrite trembled. “What a marvel you are, little flame. A regale of our own. Let’s do it tonight. Hunger is my only promise kept.”

• • • •

In the heart, where taffy-thick organ muscle still stretched, she brought Glowworm. The creature curled deep under the breast of the cattle bones, where tissue and bone blocked the sky. Out of sight of the fairies, but close enough to hear their revels. Would it be enough for the glowworm? Pyrite hoped, but knew she herself wouldn’t be able to sit so close and stay apart.

On top of the cow skull, she stood a dirty jar. When she flared her lantern behind it, the light smeared, blurring big. From afar, it would look a cluster or a clique conniving. Nothing fairies loved more than to feel inside a conspiracy.

First to arrive, struggling under his ashen wings and calling—“Out, bee-bread, shy pirouette, my wild honey drop. I come to engown you.”—was the tailor old.

Down behind the murksome glass, he stumbled into the arms of Pyrite, gasping to be seized by her.

“Come to give a gown or lay a trap?” she asked. “Your kindness baits.”

“Still a brazzle.” He winced a smile. “Perhaps I could have done more to save you.”

“No.” Pyrite looked to the lights sporting far off through the woods. “You steered me best you could. I might have listened better. But come. I have some others you should know.”

Cautious, he followed her into a cathedral of blood and bone, cranial vault of the cow skull dripping, its beetles vibrating their hymns. The old mouse yipped and fell over when she pulled an apple from its tray, handing the drunk fruit to the tailor.

One of the fairy siblings offered writhing beetles wrapped in mint leaves, and the tailor flinched to take it. He recognized them, she saw. Each wingless lonesome had been clothed under his hands.

“Is this the tailor’s art?” Pyrite asked. “To gild logs for burning?”

“Hundreds I have helped,” he said, brows tight and desperate to believe it. “With gleaming garb, I clothe the lost and give them the regale. Place of dreams and love, worth all its pain. I try to warn them. Never did I want my fate for anyone.”

“I don’t blame you,” Pyrite. “Happy you’re here with us. We’ll regale on the ground.”

He ate nervously amidst the quiet court, the thorned frog watching them and chirping in pain. “Well,” the tailor said. “Soon again to wander and work. But it’s been a diversion.”

“Too soon, and not diverted enough. Stay. I’ll see if others have come.”

Pyrite went back to her jar and signaled again. From the skull’s eye, the tailor glowed cautiously. Dim within the cow’s heart, Glowworm shined, her light filtered red and strange through old flesh. Drawn to their lights, more fairies came. The air shimmered and gleamed with them, cautious blinking under leaf stem and beyond flower head. And then, the rot-sweet reeling them, they fell and streamed within, exclaiming over the feast.

Soon the bones were lit with them, fairies bobbing above and crawling below, their lights probing deeper into the remains. They chorused and called, joyousing like locusts in the crop. The hilltop burned with their happy fire.

A trio of fairies fell beside Pyrite on the skull, Mud Valor and Bitter Dream with crumpled Dungsour saddling the bird, skin pocked and part digested.

“The golden fool,” said Mud Valor, face still shielded by bulbous helm. “Thought we’d find you compacted in an owl pellet.”

“Dangerous to lurk so low,” said Bitter Dream. “Carcasses call out to vicious teeth.”

“I am wingless,” Pyrite said. “And host to all of these. My regale is here on the ground.”

“We could catch a bird for you,” Mud Valor said. “Saddle it and tie its beak. The sky isn’t so far away.”

She tried to imagine it, a bird caught and carrying her. But would she then be one of them, or always outside? Kindness the knight offered, but was it pity only? Besides, Winter Milk said she wasn’t to come back.

“Wings aren’t what I want,” Pyrite said. “But stay a time. You were better to me than most.”

“For an hour or so,” Bitter Dream said. “Until drunk and tired enough.”

The three zipped away to join the bonfire of fairy-kind reveling in the bones. Beneath the ribs, a smaller glow merged with Glowworm’s halo. There was a flounce like a fish striking, and then, only a single steady pulse. The fairies, not noticing, put thimbles on their heads, sat beetleback, and jousted with sticks. The regale burned on.

Pyrite crawled through the cow’s eye to join them. Adrift again in their light, she studied and watched, careful this time. Enough just to be here. But still they ignored her, no history or love between them. A stranger yet. How her heart struck. How her hands itched to pull them close.

• • • •

Only when most of the others were deep in the bones, like a coal seam burning, did Winter Milk finally descend. Into the skull’s mouth she dragged her silver ribbons, nacre like mercury on her skin and rosemary plaited thick in her hair. The regale bent around her.

With her came a new court. Meadow Love shuddering within his mouse hood, one eye missing and promising to amuse her better. Petty Pay holding the mustache scissors like a scepter, and Better Veil with him, both solemn in their service to the queen.

There was nowhere to shirk, the bones pressing. Winter Milk found her standing alone. “My flightless little worm,” the queen said. “Was it you who stumbled into such?”

Pyrite knelt, back muscles jumping under her elytra. “A regale I’ve made for you, my queen. All my loyal love writ in the feast.”

Winter Milk looked around, her court sneering. “A regale you’ve made?” she asked. “All I see is my own. Come again empty-handed into my court? Must I take another prize from you?”

So this was she, lady who laid claim to all and nothing ever enough. Even this poor regale the fairy queen would take from her. Again, Pyrite’s love discarded. So be it. She would let Winter Milk have it all. Show her what hunger was.

“Seeking in the mud, I went,” Pyrite said, “and the best saved, a richness hidden in the cow’s heart. A mirror fit to reflect her majesty’s gleam. No poor trash for the Queen of Stillness and Grief.”

A softening in her jaw, mix of ecstasy and cruelty. Not believing her, but thrilled to punish her for failing. Winter Milk said, “Then take me to what’s mine.”

Deep they plunged into the mess of the cattle bones, Pyrite leading the queen and her court between gorgers burrowed into the meat and fairy lovers coupling. Into the narrow hollows, wings pressed tight and folded away. Meadow Love watching her with his single eye. Only their lanterns guiding them. Halls of stained bone and eroded tendon, air furry with a gloom of rot. Away and away into the tunnel of the chest, into the open cup of the shattered heart.

Glowworm revolved behind them and covered the door, body curled like a knot tightening. The cavern flooded with her sickly green-gold light, trickling over the queen’s silver-slick skin like she was the daughter of the harvest moon. Winter Milk’s eyes blazed with it, horror on the faces of her court, even in the ragged sack scream of Meadow Love’s mouse hood.

“Stupid and loveless slug,” Winter Milk hissed at her. “Faithless as a cat. Keep back the glowworm, if you really would be mine.”

“Faithful and loving she is, to bring me such shining delights,” Glowworm said. “A new court awaits you, delicate queen, a silent regale of hundreds. Come home.”

Glowworm closed over her like a fist. For a moment, Winter’s Milk was pressed eye to eye with her, the queen screaming full-throated into the worm’s parted lips. Then the queen vanished in her coils, the two tumbling together in the dead dark. The others opened their wings and battered the bones above, clambering for a way out.

“You kill us!” Better Veil shouted.

“False fairy, this Pyrite! Not a sister, but a worm devouring,” said Petty Pay. “Come to sup on fairy throats.”

“Said she was lonely, was all!” said Pyrite. “Understood me. Was kinder than any of you.”

“Then if not the spider, the web,” said Meadow Love. “Never did you belong with us.” He ran towards the tunnel mouth.

Pyrite shoved him back. “Quiet, nectar cup. Glowworm’s feasted now, so we’re safe. No reason to scare the others off. Why not enjoy the regale?”

Glowworm rose again in the dark, her spotlight shining down on them. They looked up to see if it was true, nacre painting her lips and teeth. The worm snatched up the mouse-hooded Meadow Love and stuffed him down her throat.

Dropping the scissors, Petty Pay and Better Veil sprinted off. They wailed in terror, shrieking, “Glowworm has come!” The word vibrated like a saw in Pyrite’s mind.

Glowworm shifted her bulk closer to Pyrite, sighing and sated. “Mind nothing these scraps say. Didn’t have to bring the queen to me, but you did. Everything you wanted, you gave away. Rich and generous Pyrite. I will never leave you, little worm. Always you’ll have me.”

Pyrite fled, back through the tattered corridors and following Petty Pay’s shouts. Had she given away it all? Was the regale ruined and nothing left for her? She broke into the skull, fairies pouring through the cow’s mouth and out from its eyes, fleeing and calling out that Pyrite had betrayed them.

She ran to Mud Valor, the knight lingering to see the fairies safely out. But at Pyrite’s approach, she dropped her dripping apple hunk and beat her wings, lifting away.

“No,” Pyrite said. “Please, don’t leave me here named and alone.”

She snatched at the knight, trying to grab her arm. But Mud Valor turned, and Pyrite caught her wing instead. Clung too tightly against its frantic beat. The wingtip tore in her greedy fingers. Mud Valor fell to the ground, armored and heavy. Helm falling free, she looked at Pyrite in hurt, her face pocked with spider bite and raked by bird claw, dark hair coiled tight against her head and neck.

From the bloody hollow, Glowworm slithered up among them. Dungsour landed his bird and cried for Mud Valor to scramble, but the knight flicked open her knife and stood firm, letting others run. Bitter Dream hung over the knight, unable to fly away as fairies abandoned the bloody regale. Even the lowly court was gone, the silent fairy siblings escaping with old mouse and wounded frog.

In Pyrite’s fist, an iridescent shard of Mud Valor’s wing. Too selfish and wanting she had been. Hungry rot winding through the core of her. Starving, and nothing ever enough. How to make whole everything she’d broken, to show Mud Valor that she could be better than she had been?

“Didn’t mean to clutch so tight,” she said. “Let me try again with a lighter touch. Constellate me your faintest star, but take me with you, please.”

Glowworm swept forward, knocking Pyrite aside, forelimbs raised to strike.

Mud Valor didn’t look at her. The three of them pulled close, shoulder to shoulder against the hungry worm. With dawn breaking through the dead eyes of the cattle bones, Pyrite held the shred of wing against her chest and waited for their answer. Love surrounded the fairy companions like walls.

©2022 by Micah Dean Hicks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Micah Dean Hicks is the author of the novel Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones and the story collection Electricity and Other Dreams. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, has been awarded the Calvino Prize, and is a two-time finalist for the Nelson Algren Award. His writing has appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The New York Times, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and elsewhere. Hicks grew up in rural southwest Arkansas and now lives in Houston.

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

EXCERPT: A Half-Built Garden (Tor.com)

Ruthanna Emrys | 7401 words

A literary descendent of Ursula K. Le Guin, Ruthanna Emrys crafts a novel of extraterrestrial diplomacy and urgent climate repair bursting with quiet, tenuous hope and an underlying warmth. A Half-Built Garden depicts a world worth building towards, a humanity worth saving from itself, and an alien community worth entering with open arms. It’s not the easiest future to build, but it’s one that just might be in reach.

On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm—and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn’t agree, they may need to be saved by force.

But the watershed networks that rose up to save the planet from corporate devastation aren’t ready to give up on Earth. Decades ago, they reorganized humanity around the hope of keeping the world liveable. By sharing the burden of decision-making, they’ve started to heal our wounded planet.

Now corporations, nation-states, and networks all vie to represent humanity to these powerful new beings, and if anyone accepts the aliens’ offer, Earth may be lost. With everyone’s eyes turned skyward, the future hinges on Judy’s effort to create understanding, both within and beyond her own species.

Coming July 26, 2022 from Tordotcom.

CHAPTER 1

The first power was nature. In humanity’s infancy, power was not yet ours to hold. Laws and forces beyond human comprehension shaped our lives, and everything we did was aimed at survival.

The second power was spirit. Incomprehensible forces took on form and personality. We struggled to comprehend their whims, and power was born from divine approval.

The third power was law. We decided what we thought right, and set principles above any king. Power became at last a human thing.

The fourth power was money. The forms we built took on life of their own, and the power we created escaped from our grasp and devoured us.

The fifth power is nature. We understand the wisdom in the forces that first shaped us, but now we adapt to them, learn from their patterns, and dance with them. Power is ours, but not ours alone, and we can create harmony with the world.

—from The Dandelion Manifesto, v.2.3,
released December 2043

In the bad old days (the commentary said later), nation-states had plans laid in for this sort of thing. They’d have caught the ship on satellite surveillance. They’d have gotten in the ground with sterile tents and tricorders and machine learning translators, taking charge. In a crisis, we still look for the big ape. But the view from below has long since supplanted the view from above, so there were no satellite pictures committed indelibly to collective memory. Instead, the embedded water sensors near Bear Island suddenly sent out alerts for skyrocketing phosphate levels. And instead of a big ape shouting orders, the world got me.

It was 3:22 a.m. on Monday, March 2nd, 2083, and I was on call for sensor events along with eleven other volunteers for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Network. I was first in the ground, even though our consensus judgment of the reading was malware noise, because I was already up with Dori. She’d been awake and crying for well over an hour, and I almost cried myself at the excuse for a hand-off. I woke Carol with truly sincere apologies—but I had to go check out a Watershed emergency, see if you can get this baby back to bed.

If it’d been ten degrees colder, she wouldn’t have bundled Dori into a sling and come out with me, and this would’ve been a different story. But the kid quieted down as soon as we stepped out onto our walk, and I admitted that there probably weren’t really dangerous pollutants on site, and if there were my wife and kid could stay back. The night was balmy and smelled of lilacs. The illumination curfew had kicked in, and stardust stretched across the old Maryland suburbs like a parade scarf. My mesh asked me if I wanted night vision, and I told it quietly to fuck off.

“In a couple of months it’ll be too hot to take her outside most nights,” said Carol, and we held her up to the moon, and snuggled her against our chests, and she fell asleep in the carseat of the Watershed-sponsored ride as soon as it started moving.

“You will reach your destination in twenty-eight minutes,” the ride told us, and we looked at each other and at the baby, and then slept happily in each other’s arms the whole way.

At the drop-off Carol took the sling, and managed to shift Dori without waking her. Then we walked across the bridge and picked our way along the path—I didn’t turn on night vision, but I did up the tactile gain in my soles—all the way to the north side cliffs. And there we found a palace, where before had been only root-cracked stone.

Silver, I thought at first, gleaming in the moonlight. But I blinked and saw black metal with the iridescent sheen of a grackle. Human eyes weren’t made for it. When I toggled my lenses to night vision, the palace shed a rainbow of heat across the budding clover.

I messaged the network: Not a false alarm. Not a spill. Need more sensors. I wasn’t sure what else to say, or if sending a picture would get me accused of snoping. Hell, I wasn’t entirely convinced the thing would show up on screen.

“You see that?” I asked Carol, nervous until she nodded. She wrapped her arms around Dori.

“Palace” was the closest word I could find, and it wasn’t very close. It was a quarter-acre spread of spires and domes, fractal at the tips, narrow peaks spiraling in intricate patterns. It sloped down from three larger promontories, swooping at the edges as though it wasn’t quite ready to meet the ground. It ticked softly like a cooling pan. As I watched, part of it seemed to fold in on itself, and then out again showing a different design. Then another, and after that another, and I realized that it was constantly renewing itself one section at a time, a shifting landscape mesmerizing as a sunset.

Dori shifted and murmured against Carol’s chest. I scanned for radiation, let out a breath when I found nothing worse than back-ground.

“What are they dumping in the water?” Carol whispered. “And why?”

I queried the sensors again. “It’s tapered off, but we’re still getting weird organics.” Whatever’s in there, they make waste. And dump it. “It’s not just a bot probe.”

I thought of old movies: people approaching spaceships with their arms wide in welcome, incinerated by lasers. I should go home. I should send them home. But my breath came fast and short, like the moment the midwife had placed Dori in my arms, like the first time Carol’s lips brushed my ear. I wondered if a thousand of these things were dropping across the world, or if this was the only one. I imagined telling Dori, years from now, that we could’ve met people from another planet, only we were trying to protect her. Or we could stay—and tell her that she met them.

I gripped Carol’s hand. We shared a look, a nod, and I leaned briefly against her, grateful for unspoken agreement. Some things are more important than keeping your kid safe.

Screw being too nervous to tell anyone, though. Whatever risk we took for ourselves, we owed something to the rest of the world. I started my lenses recording, fed the live stream into the network. I flicked from ordinary vision to heat to electromagnetism, sending all the data I could gather. On that last setting I caught a darker patch near the palace’s center. I tried heat again, increasing the sensitivity. The same section showed cooler, spring green where the rest burned orange and yellow.

“Something’s broken there,” I told Carol. Confidence faltering, I added, “I think. There’s a cool patch, sort of jagged, and not in a symmetrical way.”

“It doesn’t look like it crashed. Are they sending out, I don’t know, some sort of distress beacon?” She stopped. “Maybe the organics are a distress beacon?”

I started giggling. “Help! Poop!” I’m sorry, I know this isn’t the sort of quotability people look for in historical events. But Carol started laughing too, and neither of us could stop, and then Dori woke up and started crying and we froze. There are humans who get vicious when they hear a baby wail. But no lasers burned out to shut us up. I tapped my mesh to view the diaper monitor. “Guess what?”

“Distress beacon?”

What was I supposed to do? Carol unhooked the sling, and I laid it down on the chilly grass, and I changed Dori’s diaper right there in front of an alien artifact of unknown origin. I hoped Carol was wrong about the organics, because I wasn’t quite willing to try a urine-soaked pad of smarthemp as our first communication attempt.

“Are you still recording?” asked Carol.

“Yep. This is for posterity.” We switch off after diaper changes, so I pulled on the sling, adjusting it for my thinner shoulders, and cuddled Dori. “Hope you’re appreciating this, posterity.”

Carol isn’t obsessed with sensory extension the way I am, but she knows every type of communication technology there is and she’s always happy to help brainstorm. “Okay, assuming they don’t talk to each other through effluent streams, they obviously know enough about our signals to find an uninhabited spot close to a big city. Are they sending anything that looks like a phone signal? Dandelion net-work encryption? God help us, wifi?”

“I’ll look.” I started scanning, frequency by frequency and format by format. Meanwhile our own network was starting to wake up. When I checked messages—automatic reflex even now—I found the anticipated accusations of snoping, but also suggestions for signal searches, and full files of every message humanity had ever posted out to the silent stars. I added a tick to the ongoing vote over whether to share with other watershed networks. People needed to know, and we needed the support.

No phone signals. No local network—at least not on any familiar frequency. I worked all the way down to radio before I found it.

It wasn’t only radio, but sound, transmitted the same way we do it, the same way we’ve been doing it for almost two hundred years. They’d picked an empty bit of spectrum just below the NPR legacy transmission. I gave up on the limited bandwidth of lenses and earrings, and passed the signal to my pallet. The speaker blared.

“It’s music,” said Carol.

“Human music.” Drums and trumpets finished with a grand flare.

A simpler melody began, a series of electronic tones that ran in a loop, dah-dee-dah-bum-bum.

Are you getting this? I sent to the network. We need to identify it.

Could be a stand-in for an equation, suggested someone, and within a minute the board had branched into three teams: music folks, math folks, and everyone else speculating wildly about other possible meanings. The tone series faded, replaced by singing, high and fast and soaring.

The third group burst into excited activity. Gujarati, that’s Gujarati, someone connect with the Ghats-Narmada network now!

Then the music group: It’s Bollywood. Sounds like something from a couple decades ago—hold on, I know a database for that, if my old log-in works.

Dori yawned, blinked, and swiveled toward the music. “Bop!” she announced.

“Bop,” I agreed. “Carol, what are they playing this stuff for? Why a movie soundtrack?”

“Showing off their good taste?”

The Chesapeake network exchanged handshakes with Ghats-Narmada (where everyone was awake and in work shifts, but no longer working), and hurriedly navigated the protocols to affirm that yes, this was worth the contagion risk. The antivirus icon flickered in the corner of my lens as our network filtered out a dozen minor infections, well within its immune response. A minute later, the answer came through.

It’s an obscure science fiction movie from the 60s. Beyond the Clouds of Dust—this is the theme when the spaceship arrives.

Carol and I stared at each other, and about thirty people posted in unison: IS IT FRIENDLY?

Yes, they share this weird healing potion, and there’s a really cool three-way interspecies love story.

Dug up a match for the first one, said someone else. It’s from a radio play about alien refugees in Brazil.

The music changed again. “I know that one,” exclaimed Carol. “That’s one of Dinar’s old anime series—and it’s another one where aliens are friendly—I mean, the ones who have that song as their theme are friendly, there are about five others—”

I found that second one! It’s an American film from over a century ago, and it’s what the aliens play to introduce themselves. And yes, they’re friendly.

“We come in peace,” I said. My voice sounded too loud, or maybe too quiet. “They’re saying they come in peace. And they want to talk.” That would have been a good time for cynicism—for someone to ask if we believed them, or if their definition of peace looked anything like ours. But no one wanted to spoil the moment of joy. We didn’t want to play nation-style realpolitik, or be properly mature and suspicious. We wanted to talk.

However complicated things got afterward, I still can’t regret that.

CHAPTER 2

“Carol,” I said. “Weren’t you working on a radio transmitter for your sweater swarm? Could we mod that to send a response?”

“Yes, but I didn’t bring my sewing kit, I brought the diaper bag. Maybe Athëo and Dinar could drag it over? Or we could ask the network if someone nearby has one.”

Already in it, came a network response, while Carol was still trying to work out a plan with our co-parents.

“They don’t want to wake up Raven,” she said. “It’s one thing to come out here with Dori and find—” She waved at the palace.

“But another to wake up a toddler with a runny nose and bring them someplace you know might be dangerous, yeah.” Even if Raven, at almost two, was more likely to appreciate the experience. But Athëo and Dinar had only moved in a month before Dori was born, and Raven was just learning to call us Mom and Eema; it wasn’t our decision to make.

I bounced on my toes, jiggling Dori and shaking out my nervous excitement. I watched the network traffic as people arranged to bring in a radio transmitter, more sensors, a better sample kit than the one I’d packed for basic nutrient protocols. I tried to think of something to do in the meantime.

“Do you think they can see us?” I asked. I tried to imagine how we’d look to an observer who’d never met humans before. Two hairless primates standing side by side, one carrying an infant. Would they notice that Carol was taller and broader across the shoulders, or that my eyes were brown where hers were hazel? Would they even be able to separate us from our tools: understand that my denim and Carol’s cotton dress were clothes rather than skin, that Dori’s infant curls were part of her while the smartmail mesh helmeting our adult scalps came off at night?

“We don’t even know if they have eyes,” said Carol. She hugged me, and I realized that I was shivering in the clear winter night. Her touch brought the world beyond the palace back into focus: the bare-limbed maples and pawpaws, the dry whispering grass, the splash of the Potomac against the cliffs. Dori, head resting heavy and warm against my chest. I breathed the moment of miraculous stillness, about to break against the unknown.

Amid the shimmer of the alien construct, near the base of the closest peak, something moved. I flicked back to night vision, added a standoff chemical scan. We clung more closely.

“What are we doing here?” I whispered. “We’re not qualified for this. I’ve repped the Chesapeake in carbon negotiations one time.”

She shrugged against me. I marveled at the familiarity of human anatomy, that I could read her thoughts in that little shift of muscle. “More than I’ve got, unless you count dickering over yarn and circuits. But we’re here, and no one else is. We’d better not fuck it up.”

Against the spill of warmth—eighty-seven degrees Fahrenheit, a spectrum of steam and oxygen and nitrogen and remnant volatiles—a warmer figure scrabbled. I held my breath, squinted irrationally, and upped the light gain on my vision. The creature—alien—person, that had to be the right word, stepped lightly down the side of the palace and into the rock and scrub of our world.

They were long where we were tall: a dozen narrow limbs supported a body scaled like a pangolin’s. More limbs, flared or pointed at the ends, spread from the sides of their torso back toward a broad, flat tail. There wasn’t enough light to tell color, but the shade of their scales varied, mottled dark and pale. Two large eyestalks bulged from the sides of what I decided to assume was a head; smaller sensory organs dotted the head in complex patterns and diffused down their back.

I swallowed. The realization that I was still recording, that my next sentence would be remembered for as long as humans kept records, froze my thoughts and my tongue.

The alien tucked their tail under themselves and rolled back so that they lay rocking on the curve of their own body—limbs scrabbled to sweep pebbles from beneath—and they tapped their dark belly. Small antennae or cilia covered the glistening skin there revealed. I caught my breath: clinging to those cilia were two miniature versions of the alien. One bent its head back, twisting sideways to point an eye at me. It let out a whistling warble, which the other echoed at lower pitch.

Dori twisted her own head around, lips parted in delight. “Bah!” “That’s for history,” I told her. I knelt down to match the alien’s new height, and Carol joined me. “Welcome to Earth. What’s your name?”

The alien brought two pairs of limbs together, drawing one across the other like a bow. Pitched oddly, but clearly comprehensible, I heard: “These are Diamond and Chlorophyll. I am Cytosine. What’s your name?”

Kids first, apparently. “This is Dori. I’m Judy Wallach-Stevens, and this is my wife Carol.”

Music spilled from Cytosine’s limbs, that same five-note series from the initial transmission. “We understand each other!”

“Yes. You’ve been listening to us?” But of course they had: watching our movies, picking up our broadcasts, well over a century’s worth of stories and school videos and documentaries and news. What were they like, to follow all that and still want to meet us?

“Yes. That’s how we learn. You haven’t heard our songs yet, but you are far advanced and we didn’t dare wait. It’s reassuring to know you’re civilized like us.”

Wait, what? Beside me, Carol stiffened. But whatever cue had made them call us civilized, I didn’t want to admit confusion. If they were anything like humans, the other side of that line could be unpleasant—maybe even fatal.

I heard a ride door slam, and someone walking down the path. This discussion was about to get a lot less controllable.

“We’re glad to have you here,” I said at last. I hesitated, not wanting to claim unfounded authority. “I’m present for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Network. May I ask who you’re present for?”

Simulated human laughter, drawn from Cytosine’s bowstring limbs, somehow eerier than words produced the same way. “Yes, of course. I’m first mother of the Solar Flare”—limbs pointed at the palace behind them—“here on behalf of all the families of the Rings. We can help you escape this world.”

I pulled Dori close. “Escape it? Why?” Scenarios tumbled through my mind: an incoming comet missed by our scant satellites, methane reservoirs breaching their tenuous tissue of permafrost and geoengineered shields—or Cytosine’s people teleporting nine billion people to “safety” before appropriating Earth for their own purposes.

“Hallo,” called a voice behind me. “Radio Free Terra is in the—oh, shit.” The newcomer, bearded and thickly built and wearing a they/them badge, set down a box of equipment and gaped.

“You’re late,” Carol told them. “We’re past exchanging radio signals, and on to . . .” She trailed off, and I wasn’t sure how she should finish that sentence either. “Cytosine, this is Redbug. They build old-style radios, like you used to send those songs.”

Probably the Solar Flare had simulated the radio electronics with some sort of advanced computer—then again, maybe they had a geek in the depths of their ship who enjoyed tinkering with circuits as much as Carol did. I pictured a beaver-pangolin hunched over a workbench, swearing at uncooperative pliers. Whether Cytosine intended threat or apocalyptic warning, their people must be as weird and varied as us. The thought kept me from spinning off into flights of panicked speculation.

But the distraction served another purpose: I posted the question to the network. If there was a comet someone could redirect telescopes; high methane readings would trigger a cobweb of dispersed sensors.

Query sent, I steadied myself. “Why do you think we need to escape?”

Cytosine curled more tightly, stroking Diamond and Chlorophyll— mirroring my embrace of Dori? “All species must leave their birth worlds, or give up their technological development, or die. You are very close.”

“Is that a philosophical statement, or are we facing a specific danger?”

Redbug glanced between us, obviously fascinated but also obviously even more nervous than I was. “I’m just gonna be over here, setting up a base station, okay?” Carol waved them toward an open patch of moss-covered rock.

Cytosine had been rocking a little—thinking? “Philosophy. And empirical observation. Species breed out into vacuum, or die amid their own poisons at the level of technology you have now.”

“All of them?” Carol had that tone in her voice, the one that caused sensible people to back up and scurry for citations.

“This is the fourth world we’ve visited after picking up signals, and the first where we’ve arrived in time.”

“Maybe because we’re doing something right?” I suggested, more sharply than I’d meant to. We’ve never done this before. Don’t fuck it up.

“Because you’re closer. Your planet is a hundred and sixty light-years from the Rings; we could build the tunnel as soon as we found your signal and arrive within the survival window. Why won’t you believe me?” That rocking again—frustration, maybe, or anger. “Your world is pushing the edge of your species’ temperature range. Your seas are scarred by barren patches. Your atmosphere is out of balance. Have you not noticed?”

“Of course we’ve noticed,” I said. “We’ve been doing something about it!”

“Worlds aren’t meant to support technological species. They’re birthing burrows, not warrens.” Their voice rose in exasperation— how closely had they studied us, to catch the melody of our language as well as the words? And what should we make of that effort?

Chlorophyll let out a high, keening cry. They didn’t sound much like a human baby—more like a miserable cricket—but the distress was unmistakable. Diamond joined in at lower pitch.

Then Dori, of course. I busied myself trying to comfort her, grateful for the respite. Perhaps that was why Cytosine had brought their own kids out? The children had diffused a tense diplomatic parlay. A few arguments at those carbon negotiations would’ve benefited from the interruption.

“I think she’s hungry,” suggested Carol. “Them too.” I saw what she meant: Cytosine’s belly glistened more brightly, and two long triple-forked tongues licked out across it. Shrugging, I pulled down the side of my shirt and let Dori suckle as well. I shivered and pulled the wrap close. Aching warmth pulsed between us, pulling me back to practicalities.

“Look,” I said to Cytosine. “Leaving aside the, the philosophy, what are you actually asking us to do?”

Limbs scraped out speech. “Leave, and join us.”

“The hell!” said Carol. I put a hand on her.

“We will share everything we’ve learned,” continued Cytosine. “We will show you how to build tractable environments, make space around your star to grow and thrive. We will show you the secrets of tunneling. We’ll make new symbioses together amid the great cloud of worlds. We will be sisters.”

My sisters don’t usually come to my house and demand I move out.

“That sounds pretty exciting. What are you going to do with the Earth after we move out?”

Cytosine rocked back, eliciting squeaks of complaint. “I told you. We’re a technological species too; we aren’t meant for life on worlds.” I took a deep breath, held Dori tighter. “And what are you going to do if we say no?”

More rocking. “I don’t know. We thought you were like us.”

At this point, I want it in the record, I pinged the network telling them that this was beyond my skillset, that we needed to identify the most experienced negotiators from every network, and that I’d try to wind things down until we could get a proper team in the ground. And the network agreed. I tried not to get too distracted by the thread traffic, which hadn’t yet surfaced any useful suggestions about what I should say, but was neck-deep in critique of what I had said.

A few more people had joined us on the island, all tech experts—they’d tracked my feed, but joined Redbug in setting up an impromptu base camp. They were swearing in urgent whispers over tent pegs and screens, arguing over equipment requirements. It looked gloriously restful and easy. Coral light etched the river, and I’d gotten about two hours of sleep. Exhaustion muffled my reactions. Once I’d had a chance to nap, surreality would give way to awe, or terror, or the paralysis of fully understanding what I’d done. But by then, I hoped, it would be someone else’s job.

CHAPTER 3

Carol and I made our excuses to Cytosine. I don’t remember exactly what we said—that we needed to confer with unspecified committees, that we’d explain later how humans were keeping our planet livable, maybe even that Dori was cold and needed to go inside. But whatever we said, they went along with it and scurried back into their palace-ship. They seemed at least as flustered as we were—not the best foundation for whatever real negotiations would follow. I was just glad to get away. I didn’t sleep on the ride home.

We trudged through our yard, where the promissory glow of dawn had given way to crisply bounded colors. Carol stopped to fuss with the winter-mulched garden. She restacked tomato stakes scattered by the last windstorm, and tested the soil where we’d just planted peas. Inside I plucked a sprig of apple mint from the foyer wall and relished the sharp, solid taste. I kicked my boots off in the general direction of the mud mat.

“You’re awake early,” said Athëo dryly as we entered the dining room. “Long night up with alien polluters?” He spoke quietly, mindful of Dori conked out against my chest. Exhausted, I swayed for her. No other mammals stirred—the dog and Raven must’ve still been upstairs with Dinar.

“How’s the spread?” I asked.

“No one on the Chesapeake network is talking about anything else, except for the dedicated monks at the treatment plant. They’re reporting the latest energy production figures with great determination. Other watersheds are starting to pick up our news.” He waved at screens for the household’s secondary networks, projected on the table in between hard-boiled eggs and goat cheese and pu-erh pot. Reassuring, solid things: I turned up the input on my lenses and saw supply chains leading to a neighbor’s flock, the herd of goats that kept our invasives in check, and a summary icon that, if I followed it, would show me every step of carbon-balanced tea importation from the Mekong watershed. The networks were familiar, too. Carol’s textile exchange and Dinar’s corporate gig-work watercooler and Athëo’s linguistic melting pot and the neighborhood’s hyperfirewalled energy grid scrolled over polished pine. Only the content was strange. The last time they’d all dovetailed on one topic had been when Maria Zhao died and every network devolved into Rain of Grace quotes.

Athëo went on, hesitating: “Are they . . . what are they like? Did you really talk with them? How could they be speaking English?” This last not with disbelief, but half-exaggerated disgust. When he wasn’t actively on call for public safety mediation, Athëo put hours into everything linguistic, from translating academic papers to making up a conlang with no verbs for a Calgary playwright. If we’d had to translate Ringer from scratch, he’d have been thrilled.

“They’re like giant pillbugs with tiny pillbug babies,” said Carol, yawning. “They learned English by listening to old radio shows and watching movies, and the subtle effects on their vocabulary will probably keep you busy for years. They’d be adorable if they just wanted to share the secret of starry wisdom or something.”

“They want us to leave Earth,” I said.

Athëo rose from the table to look out the window: early-rising chickadees and finches clung to the feeder, dropping sunflower husks among the lilac bushes. The sky was clearing, powder-blue, into a perfect morning. He pressed his hand to the pane. Through the glass, the faintest edge of chill would seep against his fingers. “Are they going to make us? We’re just starting to get things right.”

It was the refrain of our generation, particularly personal for Athëo. And what would my parents think, who’d helped place the first illicit sensors in the Potomac, and barricaded factories to enforce the first crowdsourced decisions of the nascent Dandelion Revolution?

“Maybe they can make your parents leave the planet,” I suggested to Athëo. I cautiously wrapped my arm around his waist, still unused to touching him, and stretched my fingers beside his on the glass. “I have no idea what they’ll do. I don’t think they have any idea. They thought we’d be excited.”

“Why?”

“Technological species aren’t meant for life on worlds,” quoted Carol.

“So we should give up our technology,” said Athëo, “or give up our world.”

“They never suggested that first one,” I said. Dori stirred and murmured. I kissed the top of her head. “How bad are the critiques? I must have earned them. I’m not qualified for any of this.”

“Who is?” asked Carol. “And I was there too.”

“Yeah, but Judy was recording.” Athëo returned to his cooling tea and the primary network screen. His touch sent text skittering upward. “The whole thing is under her ID, so ninety percent of the feedback is for her. Most people are focused on the actual aliens and their signals, but you have come in for your share of flames. The worst are from other watersheds—we’re just starting to get those messages passed through. You shouldn’t take it personally.” He grimaced sympathetically; he knew exactly how hard that was. I still flinched. “By most of our treaties this counts as a local issue, and no one’s happy with that.”

“I’m sure not.” It would be ours, though, until someone could show an environmental impact outside the Chesapeake watershed boundary. Even then, people would be reluctant to travel; the bulk of the problem solving would be ours by virtue of being here. Only the critique would be unbounded. I sighed. “Just tell me we’re putting together a real ground team?” I sat, spread cheese on a slice of pumpernickel, and considered whether it was worth draining my inbox now to avoid the flood later.

“Of course they are.” Athëo flashed a smile. “They’ve put out calls for people who’ve been in at least three successful internetwork negotiations, plus at least one international or corporate. Working with nation-states is as close as we come to aliens, right? No one knows what they’re going to do about this either. Oh, and we’re pulling in biologists—everyone who’s worked with multiple biomes, plus one person just visiting from the Tongala-Baaka network.”

“The where?” asked Carol. She poured a cup of pu-erh and sipped it steaming.

“Australia—drains near Melbourne.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “This should be a biology issue. Or psychology. Anthropology. Physics, maybe. Anything but water chemistry and textile engineering and . . .”

“Network management?” suggested Carol. “You grew up drowned in it.”

“Listening to my parents’ stories about negotiating dandelion structural philosophy—or to Aunt Priya monologuing about operationalizing it in code—does not make a good profile for interplanetary negotiations. Especially since my few actual contributions have been on the sensory weighting algorithm.” My lenses highlighted my spiking pulse rate and raised volume—I was going to wake Dori. I took a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m just terrified the network will decide to put me in the team after all, because I was there first. And I’m a little scared of the critiques. If I lose rep over this, I won’t have weight on the things I’m good at.”

“The algorithms would have to get pretty buggy to cut your weight over this,” said Carol. “No one really knows how to make it work. The whole team’ll be terrified—if they aren’t, we should disqualify them.”

“Do you want to go to bed?” asked Athëo. “I don’t mind dealing with other people’s critiques. If you shunt me your inbox I can sort the messages, and you won’t be flooded when you get up. You can cover the afternoon shift with Dinar.”

It was tempting. I was exhausted. But the idea of someone else looking at those messages made me shudder, even more than the thought of going through them myself. It was bad enough that Athëo could see the public flames. “I’ll go to bed in a minute, and take you up on the shift exchange. But I’ll deal with the messages myself after I wake up.”

“I can take Dori,” said Carol.

“I’ll take Dori,” countered Athëo. “You’ve both been up all night.”

“I should bring her up to our room,”

I said doubtfully. “She’ll need to nurse again in an hour.”

“They’ve got babies with them, did we say?” Carol waggled her hands against her chest. “Cytosine was nursing, or close enough. She oozed milk all over her belly.”

My breasts let down just from the reminder. I hadn’t put on pads before we left, and if I soaked through my shirt I’d definitely wake Dori. “Do you think ‘she’ is right? I forgot to ask, and Ring people may be just as complicated as human people.”

Carol glanced at Athëo, who looked worried again. She grinned. “You got some nice peach fuzz coming in there. Higher testosterone doing the trick?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his chin self-consciously. “Thanks for talking to Dr. Parekh. I never know what to say.”

Carol, who’d had her pituitary implant since she was twelve, shrugged. “You say ‘puberty is hard and I didn’t get any help with my first one, please keep experimenting until we get it right.’”

Athëo rubbed his eyes. “Jesus, I hope these people don’t play the same stupid gender tricks as humans.”

“I’ll ask,” I said. “I mean, I’ll suggest on the network that the team should ask about their pronouns. Cytosine said they’d be our sisters. Do you think that means anything? Most of the old shows they learned from would’ve said ‘brothers.’”

“Maybe they think women are a different species,” suggested Carol. “Some of those old shows sure act like it.”

Athëo began undoing my wrap. “Baby. Here. I’ll feed her freezer milk and I swear neither of you will dry out or get mastitis if you skip one feeding. The watershed network will take care of the Ringers. The world won’t fall apart because you took a nap; that’s what networks are for.”

Carol fell asleep instantly, still wearing socks. Her melatonin and dopamine and basically everything but estrogen and testosterone all do exactly what they’re supposed to naturally; I’m not so lucky. I spooned, nose buried against the curve of her neck. I thought of everything I should’ve said to Cytosine, and the commentary I should add to our recording, and what Redbug would do if anyone came out of the ship to look at their radio rig. Then I got up and retrieved my mesh from its stand, settled the cool smartmail back over my bare scalp, and let the Network flow back into my lenses. I paced while I caught the flow of the threads, avoiding the squeaky board next to the closet and the bassinet awkwardly wedged beside it. I got a fatigue alert, EEG waves passing on my mental state along with more deliberate signals, and dismissed it.

I eased in, catching up on half-deserted policy decisions. Streambed restoration for the Paint Branch, a proposal for using a new algae species in water treatment, the carbon budget for importing tea and coffee. There were still a few people working on those threads, refining options and adding weight to their favorites; I wasn’t the only one who found this stuff soothing. A network in flow is like a walk in the woods for the mind. If I weren’t exhausted I’d have done that too: gone down to the Anacostia, or out to Rock Creek Park with the soft pine underfoot and the spray of mossy water beside the path and the creak of crows, everything connected in a system that I could contribute to but never control. That’s truth, tangible as a planet.

Reluctantly, I turned my attention back to the main discussion. While I moaned at Athëo, the crowd had been breaking down the issues.

Problem: Alien ship in Bear Island. Apparently no other ships— Chesapeake issue only? Options: *Redefine potential harm to give other networks access. *Argue for local authority and keep negotiations focused.

Problem: Profiles needed for diplomatic team.

Lots of detail there about desired expertises, none of which I had, and abundant profiles in response. Some people had worked in dozens of internetwork and international projects; one had written a series of papers about speculative xenobiology, projecting possible adaptations for fifty known exoplanets. They’ll take care of this.

Problem: Ringers think humans should abandon Earth.

Refined Problem: Ringers may try to force humans off planet. Options: *Fight back (with/without state support, with/without corporate support). *Just say no (there ain’t room for 10 billion in that tiny ship). *Find out what they really want—this makes no sense as an end goal. *Hand over all the corporate shills and leave Earth for the rest of us.

I shuddered and flagged that last option. Dinar often picked up corporate gigs to help make our household contribution goals, and she was hardly the only person in the network, or even the neighborhood. We all shared the benefit and responsibility for the harms done. Even the corporations themselves, billionaire lords and serf-employees huddled behind their fencelines on their artificial islands, deserved agency as long as they avoided hurting anyone.

Problem: Seven corporate requests for Bear Island access—they all want to negotiate for whatever tech the Ringers brought with them. And then they’ll sue us over the “intellectual property” rights, of course. Options: *Keep ’em out. *Let them in, but after we know what’s on offer. *Offer a spot for everyone who’s met their carbon budget, and watch them scramble for proper documentation. *Set commons requirements for whatever they learn. *Tell them to send a small embassy, and hope they take a while to work out the details.

I watched the votes tick up, raw and then filtered through the algorithms that brought in the weight of individual voter expertise, riparian representation, and our community’s long-term ethical preferences. Tempting as it was to use the Ringers as a carrot for the corporations’ always-sparse carbon documentation, people seemed to prefer predictability with our old enemies; the request for a limited embassy was pulling ahead. The suggestion to set common requirements had already hit threshold, and was being refined into an open task.

Problem: US gov has to notice this eventually—predictions about what they’ll do? Other fossil states, too, if they’ve got the means.

Problem: Anyone notice the Ringers have stopped broadcasting? What are they doing in there?

Freaking out that we hadn’t followed their script. But why did they have that script? Why assume that ten billion people would be thrilled to leave home? Then again, I didn’t always understand why humans made the assumptions they did, or why it had taken a century and a half of industrial pollution to figure out that we wanted to stay on this planet and had better bust ass to make that possible. Maybe it’d taken them a few years too long, on their own abandoned world.

They said they’ve been to other planets, and found everyone dead, I submitted. They’ve never talked to anyone but themselves. I curled on the bed again, my back against Carol’s living warmth and my fingers trailing on the pallet. I tried to imagine it—a galaxy of dead worlds and fallen civilizations, Cytosine’s people always arriving a few years too late. It could give anyone strange ideas. Let’s try them tomorrow when we have a team, and they’ve had time to process. I fell asleep, still watching the responses scroll.

When I woke up, the problems had been refined further. My swollen inbox forced itself into my mesh, blighted fruit of refusing Athëo’s offer. A flagged message flashed red at the top of the queue:

Problem: The Ringers came back outside, and they won’t talk to anyone but Judy Wallach-Stevens.

Copyright © 2022 by Ruthanna Emrys. Excerpted from A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys. Published by permission of Tor.com. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ruthanna Emrys lives in a mysterious manor house on the outskirts of Washington, DC with her wife and their large, strange family. Her stories have appeared in a number of venues, including Strange Horizons, Analog, and Tor.com. She is the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, which began with Winter Tide. She makes home-made vanilla, obsesses about game design, gives unsolicited advice, and occasionally attempts to save the world.

Book Review: Gearbreakers, by Zoe Hana Mikuta

Aigner Loren Wilson | 512 words

Gearbreakers
Zoe Hana Mikuta
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 9781250269508
Feiwel & Friends, June 2021, 416 pgs

A world ripped apart by war, giant mechanized fighter bots, and oppression that runs so deep it’s literally threaded through some of the citizens isn’t the most likely place to find love and deep friendships. But that’s exactly what the main characters of Gearbreakers, Eris and Sona, do as they carve out a path of resistance.

One of the first aspects of Gearbreakers that grabbed my attention was the relationship between Eris and Sona. Eris was raised as a Gearbreaker, a resistance fighter who braves direct combat with the giant fighter bots known as Windups. She hates everything Godolia, their world, stands for and risks her life protecting the innocent workers under the thumb of Godolia’s tyrannical rulers. Her whole life has been fighting people like Sona.

Sona is a Windup pilot. She’s trained most of her life to do the dirty murderous work of Godolia. In her service to Godolia, Sona has even had the operation removing her eyes and imprinting her with the cold intentions of the empire. She’s meant to kill people like Eris. But instead of killing each other, Sona and Eris work together. Because Sona isn’t exactly what she seems.

Their relationship is not only soaked in tension but there’s also a nice softness clinging to the two young women, keeping all the battles, war, and torture in perspective. Elis, Sona, and every other Gearbreaker fights for their home and the other citizens in Godolia. Throughout the novel, the point of views shifts back and forth between Sona and Eris, keeping a tight and churning pace throughout the whole book. Nothing feels too fast or too slow. Except for the romantic build. It’s pulled so taut that it left me squirming for Sona and Eris’ building love and the inevitable light and darkness it brings the two women.

With the themes of battling for change, forced servitude, and oppression, it might appear like Gearbreakers is a dark story. There is a rage and vengeance with palatable anger on the pages, but there’s also a lot of heart and tenderness. Not just between Sona and Eris, but the people they call family and comrades. Alongside the sweet and heartwarming relationships in Gearbreakers, there’s a fair amount of ruthless and bloody action.

Gearbreakers sometimes feels like non-stop go-go. A story of constant movement and action, but that’s what works for the story. Mikuta balances the building love, murderous empire, tender relationships, savage mechanized killers, and a community of fighters in a way that the action works on multiple levels. It never feels draining or too much, always just right, and a tad bit agonizing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aigner Loren Wilson is a queer Black writer of speculative fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and games. She serves as a senior fiction editor at Strange Horizons and has guest-edited issues of Fireside Fiction and Apparition Literary Magazine. Her work has appeared in FIYAH, Anathema, Arsenika, and other publications. When she’s not writing or editing for others, she’s learning, hiking, or loving on her fur babies—both human and animal. To check out her books, games, bread bakes, and other writings visit her website (aignerlwilson.com).

Book Review: El Porvenir, ¡Ya!, edited by Duncan, Irizary, & Rendón

Arley Sorg | 1701 words

El Porvenir, ¡Ya!: Citlalzazanilli Mexicatl
Scott Russell Duncan, Jenny Irizary, Armando Rendón, eds.
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9798409936716
Somos en escrito Literary Foundation Press, January 2022, 220 pgs

If you are like me, you grew up buying anthologies and devouring them. Collecting them like prizes, each a treasure chest filled with an assortment of jewels. As a young reader, I didn’t exclusively read science fiction and fantasy, but it has always held a special place in my heart. I still have many of the anthologies I bought over the years—some of them have taken up space on my bookshelves for . . . well. Let’s just say a long time.

When I became an “industry professional” by way of landing a day job at Locus Magazine, I began to examine more closely the marginalization of various identity groups within genre. I didn’t really want to believe that certain kinds of people were overlooked; I actually wanted to be wrong. I love genre fiction! And it’s one thing to feel marginalized, to talk about it, to argue with people about it. It’s another thing to find proof, to see that, yes, you are, in fact, not present, you are not represented. The underlying message, the resulting feeling being: you are not wanted.

It hurts, y’all.

In seeking proof, I pulled anthologies off my shelves, dug through tables of contents, and started looking up authors on the internet. You don’t need me to give you the numbers; the statistics are not that hard to find. I encourage you to go look for yourselves.

What was a theory I’d developed as a child and teenager became a fact supported by evidence: in the vast and storied literary history of science fiction and fantasy, certain groups of people are either underrepresented or grossly misrepresented; quite often cast as (very bad) stereotypes, or even treated in overtly racist ways.

This is why I entreat you to understand Scott Russell Duncan’s introduction to El Porvenir, ¡Ya!: Citlalzazanilli Mexicatl. Moreover, to try to empathize with him when he says, “The narrator I’d been looking over the shoulder of for the last three books described a boy not unlike myself as a freakish brown and simple ‘other’ and I put down that book forever.” Imagine digging into a series, enjoying the heck out of the ride through two books, and then coming up against a description which draws someone very much like you in seriously unpleasant terms. Duncan goes on: “Through high school I never came across a Mexican American that wasn’t a villain or an extremely minor character in sci-fi novels or movies.” Ernest Hogan, in his preface, echoes the sentiment: “We get treated like aliens (regardless of our legal status) even if we were born in the U.S.A., or should I say EE. UU.? And what can be more sci-fi than to be an alien? To have alienness thrust upon you?” Unfortunately, this experience of being mistreated, or of not being mentioned at all, across countless stories, lines up with the experiences of many readers of color who otherwise love genre fiction.

What I appreciate deeply about both Duncan’s introduction and Hogan’s preface is that they lead up to a sense of welcoming. The idea here is less “we’re writing this for us and don’t really care what you think” and more “we’re writing this for us, and we hope you see us, we hope you love these works as much as we do.” Duncan says, “Make friends with us now! And don’t throw a friendly sheet over the horrors our antepasados lived. It ruins the story, denies our experience and goes against intuition and reason.” And Hogan says: “So read, enjoy, and witness the birth of our futures.”

I couldn’t agree more. Editors Duncan, Irizary, and Rendón have put together an important volume. El Porvenir, ¡Ya! is described as a specifically Chicano science fiction anthology, and it’s filled with stories that demonstrate a range of perspectives and styles. There are a number of fantastic pieces to explore, as well as remarkable art, and section introductions which give important context to the fiction. I’ll talk about a few of the stories and let you discover the rest for yourself.

“Lupe and Her Time Machine” by Rios de la Luz is a really cool story about a grandmother who has assembled a time machine in her garage. There’s something subtly beautiful about the prose, the phrases, the choices. There’s also a beauty in the juxtaposition of the fantastic with the mundane. The moments and images sometimes seem random, and yet they are striking enough to work; and there is an underlying sensibility drawing everything into its own kind of cohesion. The mechanics of the time machine itself are not the point of the story: the machine is a vehicle for the grandmother to revisit important moments of her past. While some readers may be tempted to think of A Christmas Carol in broad strokes, the narrative here is more grounded and relatable, and consequently lands in a place which is perhaps more relevant, more personal. The importance of family and the value of looking clearly at your history, even if painful or uncomfortable, are the central ideas. It’s about connecting with the present through the past, and the power of small but powerful gestures. Unlike A Christmas Carol, rather than miraculous transformation, there is an implication of process, of growth and caring as things one continues to do.

“Oscar and Natalia and Oscar” is an excerpt from Kathleen Alcalá’s Los Voladores. I usually skip excerpts in anthologies, and personally, I am not a fan of excerpts in general, although many people love them! I’m glad I read this one. It’s an entertaining, self-contained story in its own right. Oscar and Natalia are a couple who live with a cat—also named Oscar. The three of them wake up to an apocalypse wherein electronic devices no longer function. The casual, almost conversational style Alcalá employs creates an odd, fairly light narrative, which is then dappled with gentle, brief observations. Underscoring everything is a prismatic examination of the various ways individuals relate to each other, as seen through the experiences of the central characters. The piece feels very connected to oral tradition, in the sense of easy movement between the real and the fantastic, and overall flow of story. Some of the subtext suggests that if you are too rigid and unrelenting in your approach to life, you will struggle; but if you are adaptable, if you can go with the flow, you will thrive. The same can be said of reading this story. Read it with an open mind, an open heart, and pay attention to the details, and the read will be fun, entertaining, and enriching. I really enjoyed it!

“The Navel of the Aztec Moon” by Rosa Martha Villareal, this one . . . well, it didn’t quite land for me. But it’s one of those situations where I am confident that this is a question of personal taste, and that there will be many readers who rather like it. Natasha is a new physics professor and hears of an unusual research grant put up by a notable historian. She meets up with the benefactor and discovers that both he and his household are a bit mysterious. More importantly, he is obsessed with time travel. Where the story leads may not be where you expect! The style and structure, by my read, will appeal to fans of classic SF and literature; it’s really an idea-driven piece. There’s also some juicy subtext around identity. I’ll note that there are elements I am likely missing; in fact, the inscription at the beginning reads “for Armando Rendón” so I suspect there are even more layers of conversation to be enjoyed by savvy readers.

Lizz Huerta’s “Lorenzo and the Rooster” was really intriguing. The style is more along the lines of fable or myth. This one tells of cursed lovers whose reincarnations sprawl through centuries, always comprised of near misses and odd pairings. The joy of the piece, and the freshness, is largely in the ideas, the delightfully strange situations, and some of the wonderful imagery. I’m not sure what the underlying messages are. It could be “don’t fuck with death;” narratives about scorned gods are a genre favorite, and this one delivers. It could also be an expression of existential angst, each iteration a reflection of the enormously messed up situations we face in our actual lives: coronavirus, hateful politics, greed, violence, and more. In other words, wave after wave of circumstances which conspire to keep happiness just out of reach. Then again, it could just be a damn fun story. Whatever the intentions, it’s a great read!

The publisher’s website says that this anthology is the first of its kind, “written solely by Mexican Americans.” It’s staggering to think that it took so long to see a book like this, and that—as with some of the other anthologies I’ve covered for Lightspeed—it took a group of determined individuals to put it together and share it with the world, rather than happening via a major publisher and being driven by the power of an expensive international marketing campaign. Similar to recent kindred anthologies (Grace L. Dillon’s Walking the Clouds comes to mind, the first ever speculative fiction anthology with stories entirely by Indigenous authors, published in 2012) this book is just too easy to overlook. I encourage you to spend some money, to add this anthology to your collection, and to dive into these worlds. It’s time and money well spent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Arley Sorg is co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine and a 2022 recipient of SFWA’s Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. He is also a 2021 World Fantasy Award Finalist, a 2022 Locus Award Finalist, and a finalist for two 2022 Ignyte Awards: for his work as a critic as well as for his creative nonfiction. Arley is senior editor at Locus Magazine, associate editor at both Lightspeed & Nightmare, and a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He takes on multiple roles, including slush reader, movie reviewer, and book reviewer, and conducts interviews for multiple venues, including Clarkesworld Magazine and his own site: arleysorg.com. He has taught classes and run workshops for Clarion West, Augur Magazine, and more, is scheduled to be a guest at both Cascade Writers and the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and has been a guest speaker at a range of events. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in the SF Bay Area and writes in local coffee shops when he can. Find him on Twitter @arleysorg. Arley is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

Book Review: Juniper & Thorn, by Ava Reid

Chris Kluwe | 861 words

Juniper & Thorn
Ava Reid
Hardback / Ebook / digital audio
ISBN: 9780062973160
Harper Voyager, June 2022, 320 pages

Salutations, readers, and welcome to another book review! This month we’ll be leaving the warm rays of summer behind to spend some time in Ava Reid’s lushly oppressive Juniper & Thorn, a gothic horror based loosely on one of the original Grimm fairytales (The Juniper Tree).

Right from the get go, with protagonist Marlinchen Vashchenko talking about the monster under her bed and how it’s the most easily sated creature in the house, Juniper & Thorn makes it very clear to the reader what kind of fairytale it’s going to be, and it’s definitely not a sanitized Disney version filled with dance numbers and smiling animal companions. No, Juniper & Thorn is very much an old school fable, unafraid of the gristle and guts of true knowledge, where blood and pain are on full display for all to see, and if there is a happy ending with lessons learned (not always guaranteed in these types of stories!) they are scars wrestled out of a determination to persevere in the face of a harsh and unrelenting world.

Marlinchen’s story follows many of the traditional fairytale beats—overworked third sister; trapped in a strange and mysterious castle; deranged wizard holding the princess captive; sneaking out and encountering Prince Charming—but Reid does such a masterful job of undermining the familiar tropes with a sense of raw humanity that even when you think you know how the story should end, you can’t look away from how it’s going to get there. More importantly, at least in my mind, is that I couldn’t look away from the slow unfolding of the characters, the way Reid gracefully peels back layers of personality and trauma to get at the beating, bloody heart beneath—the pain they cause each other, the pain they cause themselves, and how much of it all is caused by love grown twisted and wrong.

At this point I feel I have to mention that there is a lot of trauma in this book, ranging from self-harm to emotional abuse to sexual abuse to physical abuse, and though it is never presented in a way that feels voyeuristic or for cheap thrills, it hits all the harder for its mundanity. “Look,” Reid whispers in your ear, “this is what a real monster looks like, the one living in your house out in the open, so banal that you could be excused for overlooking it,” so be forewarned if you have any triggers around those issues. That being said, one of the hallmarks of really good horror is that slow, creeping realization that things are so much worse than you thought, and Reid nails that aspect beautifully, so if you can handle it, give the book a shot.

I think the biggest thing that really stood out to me in Juniper & Thorn, and what makes the whole book work, is Reid’s command of language. It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but Reid’s writing also proves the inverse true—a thousand words can paint a picture of such richly illustrated complexity that you just want to sit and admire it for a while, examine all the angles and small details tucked away into the corners, because it’s almost too much to take in at once. The Vashchenko house is as much a character as the family that resides within, as is the town of Oblya in which it squats; one last remnant of the Old World in a city where the new magic of modernity and capitalism have spread its roots; all of it brought to rich, grimy life by Reid’s not-quite-floridly-descriptive style. The world of Juniper & Thorn jumps out at you from the pages, accompanied by its characters, until it feels like you’re completely surrounded by the fairytale; a child tucked under the covers as another world replaces your own in the darkness before sleep, but beware of things that go bump in the night.

Overall, I was thoroughly enchanted by Juniper & Thorn, because it felt like the kind of timeless classic that gets at the core issues of being human in a way that seems fantastical, but upon introspection is all too real—aka, a good fairytale. I could also probably spend an additional thousand words describing the intricate layers of socio-economic and gender issues deftly stacked beneath the surface, but I’d rather you go read the book instead, because it’s a really good book. Go! Go read it! Just watch out for monsters.

Read if: You don’t mind looking into mirrors of truth; you understand that sometimes the world pushes children into ovens; slaying monsters is harder than loving them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Kluwe grew up in Southern California among a colony of wild chinchillas and didn’t learn how to communicate outside of barking and howling until he was fourteen years old. He has played football in the NFL, once wrestled a bear for a pot of gold, and lies occasionally. He is also the eternal disappointment of his mother, who just can’t understand why he hasn’t cured cancer yet. Do you know why these bio things are in third person? I have no idea. Please tell me if you figure it out.

Author Spotlight: Peter Watts

Laurel Amberdine | 981 words

What is your writing space like? What do you like to have around for optimal creativity?

That’s spaces, plural. I share the official dedicated office with my wife but now that it’s springtime we’re doing more of our work in the living room.

In the dead of a Canadian winter, though, there’s nothing like working in bed. Especially during COVID-19, where you can’t risk going down the hall to work and have to telecommute.

What do you like to have around for optimal creativity?

Cats. Cats and laser pointers.

What led you into writing genre fiction?

The stock answer for that is that SF is the only genre explicitly designed to explore the impact of scientific and technical change. The moment you posit a discovery that changes the way we understand Nature—human, biological, subatomic, what have you—you’re talking science fiction by definition. Those are the kinds of issues that interest me the most, and SF is the only genre big enough to explore them.

That’s the stock answer. One that’s probably closer to the truth might be: when I was in Grade Three and the bookmobile pulled up to Clinton Ford Elementary School, I discovered Earthman, Go Home, Raiders from the Rings, and The Aqualung Twins and the Iron Crab. And I imprinted on that shit like a Lorenz duckling.

Is there anything you want to make sure readers noticed?

Well, yeah. But if I told them what it was, that would spoil the fun.

Other than writing, do you have any other creative pursuits? What do you do to relax?

I’m not sure what qualifies. I enjoy scuba diving, but haven’t done any in over a decade. These days I spend a lot of time fighting hardware compatibility issues so I can play Skyrim VR on a wireless headset, but I’m also working on a VR game with a company out of Tel Aviv so all VR-based pursuits—hell, all videogame activity of any type—probably qualifies as work-related (that’s certainly the way I describe it on my tax return). I run and lift (modest amounts of) weights—I’ve been doing that ever since Keith Gill spat on my bike in Grade Seven and I knew that if I dared to spit on his he’d beat the crap out of me—but I’ve never enjoyed it. These days I just keep at it because I’m scared of being a fat old man.

I guess that leaves pirating TV shows and drinking.

What trends in speculative fiction would you like to see gain popularity in the next few years?

I’d like to see more emphasis on the interrogation and extrapolation of scientific ideas, on (as I may have already mentioned) the impact of scientific and technological change. So much SF tends to preach to the choir instead of challenging it: here’s a race of subservient robots to remind us that Slavery is Bad. Here’s a band of wandering artists teaching the Value of Art and Spunkiness to a demoralized post-apocalyptic Humanity. Here’s The Waltons in Spaaaace, travelling through a cozy galaxy where everyone’s the same under the skin and no matter how many different planets, how many alien evolutionary trajectories the universe serves up, they all seem to converge on species that like tea and hugs. Here are star-crossed lovers on opposite sides of a time war, proving that Love Conquers All.

All these tales in which Humanity is Flawed But Noble, in which we may fall short of community standards but ultimately those standards are always right. I’d like to see more stories that ask: what if we’re wrong?

Would slavery be unethical if sapient beings are engineered to crave subjugation? Would it be unethical to force freedom on such creatures? Would it be unethical to create something that enjoys suffering in the first place (and if so, are masochists abominations)? What if we could rewire Human nature to free parents from the Darwinian lie that nothing’s more important than my babies, create a world where people would unhesitatingly leave their kids to die in a burning house if that meant they could save a greater number of strangers? If The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, why shouldn’t we harvest the organs from one healthy person to save a dozen others in need of life-saving transplants? What if consciousness is an evolutionary disadvantage? Suppose a tweaked and defanged version of Parkinson’s Disease could be used to eliminate the religious impulse from our species? If digital physics is correct—if matter is hardware and physics is software and every flip of an electron is a calculation in some universal computer called “Reality”—does that make any God of miracles, by definition, a virus (i.e., something that breaks OS protocols)? Should we disinfect it?

These are the kinds of questions SF is optimized for, from Burgess’s rumination on free will (is it as evil to unmake a monster as to make one?) to LeGuin’s exploration of societies whose citizens change sexes like oysters or wrasses, right up to pretty much anything Ted Chiang has written over the past couple of decades. A fundamental question that science fiction asks is: what if things were different? What if things are different, and we just don’t know it yet?

I’d like to see more of that. I’d like to see more stories that interrogate our precepts, and fewer that merely pander to them.

That’s probably just me, though.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in Portland and works (remotely) for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: Lyndsie Manusos

Laurel Amberdine | 603 words

How did “An Old Man Cometh And He Is Overgrown” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

I love stories where characters find their person(s) through adventure, magic, and hardship. Before writing this story, I was also daydreaming epilogues for my favorite Hayao Miyazaki films. I thought, “What happens when the main characters grow old? What happens when one of them loses their partner in life? How do you process that grief when you’re jaded by the world and have magical abilities?” I was still processing my own grief and anxieties while writing it, and for a time I wasn’t sure how it would end.

What is your writing space like? What do you like to have around for optimal creativity?

Having two children under four years old, my writing space is anywhere I can grab a minute for myself to write. Sometimes it’s at my desk upstairs, though that’s quite rare lately. Mostly—like right now—it’s the living room couch, or the kitchen table, or I put my laptop on the kitchen counter while I’m going around the kitchen cooking and cleaning. When my youngest was an infant, I had my laptop on a side table in our bedroom while I bounced the baby in a carrier. I used to need that “optimal” space, and maybe someday I’ll get back to it. For now, it’s wherever I can get the job done.

Did you get stuck at any point while writing this? How did you get past that?

I wasn’t sure where the story would go when it came to Cog putting Udo back together. It could have ended much worse for the both of them. It could have been miserable and bitter. I took time to process my own feelings before finishing. Then the ending came out like one big shuddering exhale, and I think myself and the story needed that tender closure.

What are you reading lately? What writers inspire you?

Oh, so much! I read everything. I work at Wild Geese Bookshop in Franklin, Indiana, and I write for Book Riot and Publishers Weekly. While I focus on speculative fiction and SF/F, any and all genres are worthy. I often look to romance when my life is stressful, and I need those promised HEAs. Right now, I’m really enjoying the YA graphic novel Squire by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas. Becky Chambers’s A Prayer for the Crown-Shy was a balm for my soul. As a short story writer, I am extremely fond of short story collections, and Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century was absolutely astounding.

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

Lately, I’m grinding out a novel while agonizing over the many anxieties of being on sub with my agent for my short story collection and novella. Manifesting success! As I mentioned in an earlier question, I write for Book Riot and Publishers Weekly. My PW reviews are kept anonymous, but you can find my Book Riot articles at bit.ly/3x2fiK7. My author website is lyndsiekay.wordpress.com, where you can find links to my other short stories and such. And you can follow me @lmanusos on Twitter!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in Portland and works (remotely) for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: R J Theodore & Maurice Broaddus

Laurel Amberdine | 2376 words

How did “The Archivist” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

R J: I backed a Kickstarter with a reward level that included working with Maurice on a short story. We’d both written airships, and I had friends who had lots of great things to say about Maurice as a person, so I thought that would be a fun experience. I was a little nervous, because a previous attempt to co-write a story didn’t go well. But that was a novel, and this would be a short story. I hoped that I’d have a better experience—and if not, at least it would only be a short story!

We had our initial brainstorming call, and we both threw up some ideas we had fluttering around our minds. Maurice connected with my phrase “ley lines in space” and we talked about what that might mean for a bit, while his cat circled the laptop.

With the concept chosen and some rough ideas going, we decided I would go first. I sent Maurice 500 words, and it rolled from there.

What is your writing process like?

R J: The way it often works for me is that an idea occurs to me, and (hopefully) I write it down to archive it until I can give it some attention—because usually I’m in the middle of another project and my brain is trying to procrastinate by distracting me with shiny new ideas. I’ll add any necessary research topics to my TBR pile in the meantime.

When it is time to work on something new, I pick the shiniest from those written-down ideas and spend some time mulling over what the story might be about, because often the prompt I’ve left myself is a general concept (such as “ley lines in space”).

For short stories, I try to pick a theme at the start, because I find it helps me find the story’s voice and plot. I don’t generally outline my short stories the way I will with a novel. I’ll know I’m ready when the opening (or ending!) lines start to form in my mind.

Then I sit down and bang out a first draft over a period of a few days. Often the story that I come up with will surprise me, so I keep myself very flexible and follow my inspiration. When I have a first draft, I consider if it’s achieving what I want, and decide how much revision it needs to make sure it does. Generally a short story is written and revised in the span of a week—sometimes less, if I’m not too busy with other projects at the same time.

Maurice: I do a lot of prep work so that I never have to face a blank page. I jot down any ideas for the story, any plot points or scenes that come to mind. I outline because I’m a control freak and I like to have an idea of where the story’s going before I start. Then I research. It’s what gives me the time to think through what I want to do with the story.

Next comes the character sketches. I try to “bio” my characters, especially in my longer works, trying to get their stories down. Not just their physical descriptions and names, but how they know the other characters.

While I’m still at the note stage of the game, I figure out the overall plot and arrange the scenes. I like the scattering of all my notes then, like a jigsaw puzzle, shape them into an outline of a plot and putting which notes with which scene. Only then, armed with a rough story, scattered bits of dialogue descriptions and turns of phrase, can I then sit down and write.

I’m always writing . . . sometimes I even put words on a page. Honestly, I’m typically juggling a half dozen projects/ideas at a time. I actively work on the one with the most pressing deadline, but as ideas pop up for the other projects (or even new ones), I toss them into the appropriate file until it’s time to work on that story. That way there’s a lot of notes and ideas already waiting on me. My process is messy, involves me throwing a bunch of ideas at a page and seeing what sticks. I wish my process was more organic, but it works for me.

So it’s fun (is it fun?) to bring someone into the mess. If nothing else, we get to see close up how another writer’s process works for them.

Did this story fit the pattern?

R J: Not at all for me, since we co-wrote across the internet! The story draft went back and forth over four months. We treated the process like an improv performance, proceeding forward in the “yes, and . . . ” style. This resulted in a story that neither of us would have written on our own, with a combined voice that grew from what we each uniquely brought to the story.

Maurice: Absolutely! Co-writing is even better: I can pop in, write my piece, and then toss it back over and get to another story. Whenever I’d receive RJ’s latest work, I’d drop everything, read it, and begin formulating my “comeback.”

Did you get stuck at any point while writing this? How did you get past that?

R J: Speaking for myself, I didn’t feel stuck at any time. The first 500 words were inspired by the kickoff discussion and I was excited to get started. Each time Maurice sent back another section, it was like an intriguing creative prompt all over again. I’d write until I came to a natural break, then send it back to him.

Maurice: The great thing about working with another writer is if I ever get stuck, I just write something ridiculous and make the story their problem to figure out!

What is your writing space like? What do you like to have around for optimal creativity?

Maurice: I have two main writing spaces. The first is my office, where I’m surrounded by my comic books (all 20,000+ of them) and Funko figures (the entire cast of Black Panther). Also, a huge action figure of Captain Sisko from Deep Space Nine looms over my desk. The second is my front porch. During the pandemic lockdown, since I could no longer write in coffee shops, I declared my front porch my coffee shop and designated my neighbors my regulars. After a while, neighbors stopped by, including many of the artists that live in my community. And it has become a regular hang out spot for writers and artists.

R J: I do most of my writing in my home office. I have lots of movie posters and book cover prints on my walls, plus hanging plants, action figures, and my collection of minerals and crystals spread among witchy things and dinosaur plushes. Pre-pandemic, I also wrote at coffee shops (something I sorely miss), because I find the white noise of a busy shop to be very helpful for my focus. Now I rely on absolute silence (my office is very well insulated), or lofi hip hop radio on YouTube.

What led you into writing genre fiction?

Maurice: The first time I was kicked out of Sunday School class was due to me attempting to come to terms with the story I’d just heard. This grandmotherly Sunday School teacher had just read us the story of Noah and the flood. On the wall hung a flannel-graph on which she had a fabric Ark and a fabric Noah bobbing on fabric flood waters. She invited each of the students to place an animal onto the Ark. You know, so the pastor’s son put a lion on it. His buddy put on a giraffe. And when it was my turn, I took a couple of the other fabric people and laid them on top of the water. She asked me what I was doing. I said “that is the story we just heard, right?” And out I went. I didn’t realize at the time that this was the beginning of me wrestling with a postapocalyptic narrative and trying to reconcile it with my faith. And probably stirred my interest in dark stories.

Now I didn’t truly realize how pivotal a moment this would be in my life. Another Sunday School teacher heard about this incident and invited me to hang out with him. He introduced me to Dr. Who and Star Trek episodes on VHS. All kinds of memorabilia. And rows upon rows of comic books. He turned to me and said “I think you’re one of us.”

R J: Maurice has a way better story than I do. I just was drawn to fantasy and science fiction, so that’s what I wrote. I don’t think I had a pivotal moment. If I did, and forgot it, I guess it wasn’t very pivotal.

What would be your advice for other writers?

Maurice: PERSEVERANCE. You have to develop a thick skin (to handle rejection and the vagaries of this career). A big part of getting published involves simply hanging in there. Each rejection is just another brick in your path to success. The best advice I received in light of that: keep sending your stories out. They aren’t going to get published while languishing in your desk drawer. I have often said that the only thing separating me and the folks that I came up with is that I’m still around doing it.

WRITE. Write for yourself, publish to be read. All stories I write are for me, either stories that amuse me, stories I wish I could have read coming up, or stories that present an interesting writing challenge. A lot of my novels and stories end up in my “trunk” unpublished because publishing wasn’t the point. When I choose to publish, I aim for the largest publisher, opportunity, or visibility that I can, because the point is to be seen by as many eyes as possible.

GRIND. The other thing is work hard and smart. There are folks who are much better writers than me, but few work harder than me. I am always reading, writing, challenging myself. I’m always looking for opportunities.

NETWORK. You can never have too many friends. I wouldn’t be where I am without the friends I’ve made along the way. We support each other, cheer each other on, provide opportunities to one another.

R J: The only thing I’d add to Maurice’s great advice is that your writing process and your writing career doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. Don’t stress about what the “right way” is and just do it “your way.” Everyone is different, and while there may be advice out there that does work for you, not everything will. Writing will be a lot more enjoyable if you can identify and honor the way it works for you, your ideas, and your well-being.

What trends in speculative fiction would you like to see gain popularity in the next few years?

Maurice: More utopian fiction, especially from marginalized cultures. I want to see more stories, worldbuilding, and visions from non-Western paradigms.

R J: More stories where characters who are friends lift each other up. I don’t need the story’s conflicts to include angst between people who ostensibly care for each other.

I want more stories to defy the three-act structure and the “Hero’s Journey” plot, ideally published by non-Western storytellers and marginalized identities.

I also love the blending of SF and F and H. They get grouped together in the bookstore but I really get into stories where the peanut butter gets in the chocolate. I think trad publishing is afraid of trying to market it, but I really see people enjoying it when it’s given a chance (e.g., The Locked Tomb trilogy).

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

Maurice: Working on book two of the Astra Black series, Breath of Oblivion. Book one, Sweep of Stars, just came out. My second middle grade detective novel, Unfadeable, is about to drop. I just had stories come out in Aliens vs Predator: Ultimate Prey (“Night Doctors”), Weird War IV (“The Door of Return”), Classic Monsters Unleashed (“The Invisible Man: The Fire Next Time”), Weird Tales (“Dreams in the Cypher House”), and Uncanny Magazine (“Spirit Folks”). I’m currently working on a half dozen short stories while trying to talk myself out of starting a British cozy mystery no one has asked me for (but I keep tossing ideas into a file so . . .).

R J: I just got the rights back to my unfinished Peridot Shift series, so I’ve been re-editing those. Flotsam’s second edition just came out, with book two, Salvage, re-issuing July 5. Cast Off, book three, will come out (for the first time) late 2022 to finish off the trilogy. I have short pieces in a few of the Neon Hemlock anthologies (“A Future in Color” and “The Coven of TAOS-9”), plus MetaStellar (“A Ship With No Parrot”) and Fireside Magazine (“Oversharing”). There’s another piece of mine (“Treatment for a Chronic Condition”) coming in a future issue of Lightspeed, and ”Gort, Cinder, and Sphinx” will be in the Bridge to Elsewhere anthology coming out from Outland Publications.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in Portland and works (remotely) for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: Micah Dean Hicks

Laurel Amberdine | 650 words

How did “Hungry as the Mirror Bright” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

To come up with ideas for stories, sometimes I make a big list of elements from other stories that I love. Once I have about thirty tropes, concepts, and techniques, I start looking for interesting combinations, for what will make an old idea feel fresh again. For “Hungry as the Mirror Bright,” I combined the miniature worlds of stories like “Thumbelina” and The Borrowers, the insectile fairies of Magic the Gathering’s Lorwyn setting, a bunch of weird firefly facts, and my humble attempt at Shakespearean dialogue. I think the over-the-top voice is what really brings the story together, and I had a lot of fun writing this.

Where are you in this story?

When I was about thirteen, a group of us went camping in someone’s cow pasture. There was a murky pond where we swam and fished. I waded deep into the dark, fish-reeking water, up to my throat, when my feet touched something sharp in the mud. I stepped back, but I found more hard edges, coated in slime. Probing around with my feet, horror and disgust broke over me when I realized where I was. I stood in the middle of a dead cow, right inside its ribcage. I couldn’t tell if the oily slick on the bones was old bits of meat or just mud settling into the crevices. I stumbled out of it, back to the bank and trying not to throw up, going to an old cabin to hose off.

When trying to imagine a dangerous, cursed place for my faeries to wind up, I remembered the cattle bones.

Is there anything you want to make sure readers noticed?

I read a ton about fireflies before writing this. There are cannibalistic fireflies, larger but flightless, who trick their smaller cousins. They signal for a mate, their lights a bit different in shape and color, but convincing enough. Those unlucky enough to answer their call are devoured.

What are you reading lately? What writers inspire you?

I just finished Sisters of the Forsaken Stars by Lina Rather, and I loved it. Nuns piloting a giant slug through interstellar space!

My partner, Brenda Peynado, recently debuted her incredible collection The Rock Eaters, with stories about things like angels perching silent on rooftops while the families beneath them fall apart, a town where enormous stones grow from the bodies of those who grieve, a school where kids are cautioned to never fall asleep, children eat rocks to keep from floating away, Earth-stranded aliens build kites to remember flying on their low-gravity home world, and so much more. The Rock Eaters is dreamy, obsessive, sumptuous, and it will make you sad.

Other than writing, do you have any other creative pursuits? What do you do to relax?

I love running tabletop role-playing games for my friends. Mostly we play Dungeons & Dragons, but I occasionally get my players to try other systems. In the last year, we’ve played D&D, Dialect, Quest, Scum and Villainy, Wanderhome, and a homemade Powered by the Apocalypse game using Avery Alder’s Simple World template.

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

My most recent book, Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones, came out in 2019 from John Joseph Adams Books. It’s a horror novel about a town where everyone and everything is infested with fragments of ghosts.

I’m currently revising a fantasy novel. Hopefully I’ll be able to share more about that soon!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in Portland and works (remotely) for Locus Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 222 words

Coming up in August, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Adam-Troy Castro (“My Future Self, Refused”) and Ruben Reyes, Jr. (“Sync a Life”). We also have a flash piece (“The Disappearing Dream Engineer”) from Rati Mehrotra, along with an SF reprint by Mary Anne Mohanraj (“Among the Marithei”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (“So, You Married Your Arch Nemesis . . . Again”) and Tobi Ogundiran (“The Clockmaker and His Daughter”). We also have a flash piece (“Welcome to Oxhead”) from Julianna Baggott. Our fantasy reprint is by Malinda Lo (“Red”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with book reviews from our terrific review team. Our ebook readers will also enjoy a book excerpt.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.

• • • •

Looking ahead beyond next month, we’ve got a veritable plethora of stories forthcoming. We’ve got work from the following authors coming up over the next couple of issues: John Wiswell, Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, Kristina Ten, Ben H. Winters, RJ Theodore, and Alex Irvine.

So be sure to keep an eye out for all that SFnal goodness in the months to come. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Lightspeed.

Thanks for reading!

Stay Connected

The Editors

Here are a few URLs you might want to check out or keep handy if you’d like to stay apprised of everything new and notable happening with Lightspeed:

Website

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

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

www.twitter.com/LightspeedMag

Facebook

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Subscribe

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe

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 includes 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 (recently revived, other) 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

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 Fantasy, Nightmare, and/or Lightspeed, 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 our magazines, so they 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 Fantasy, Nightmare, and Lightspeed 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.

Basically, we wanted to create a crowdfunding page where, if you enjoy the work Adamant Press puts out, 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 three 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 our 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

Arley Sorg

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

John Joseph Adams

Assistant Editor

Laurel Amberdine

Editorial Interns

Mayookh Barua

Madison Brake

Reviewers

Arley Sorg

Chris Kluwe

Aigner Loren Wilson

Copy Editor

Luke Tolvaj

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Devin Marcus

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Associate Publisher

Christie Yant

Reprint Editor (Emeritus)

Rich Horton

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading our Adamant Press magazines, you might also enjoy these works edited by our publisher 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)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 (with Diana Gabaldon)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 (with Veronica Roth)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 (with Rebecca Roanhorse)

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Cosmic Powers

Dead Man’s Hand

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: Ignorance is Strength (with Hugh Howey and Christie Yant)

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: Burn the Ashes (with Hugh Howey and Christie Yant)

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: Or Else the Light (with Hugh Howey and Christie Yant)

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

Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms

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

Wool by Hugh Howey

Shift by Hugh Howey

Dust by Hugh Howey

The Silo Saga Omnibus 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

Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth

Creatures of Charm and Hunger by Molly Tanzer

The Unfinished Land by Greg Bear

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

A Dark Queen Rises by Ashok K. Banker

The Apocalypse Seven by Gene Doucette

Questland by Carrie Vaughn

The Undertakers by Nicole Glover

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.