TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 158 (July 2023)

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: July 2023

SCIENCE FICTION

Six Months After All Life on Titan Died
J.B. Park

Death Is Better
Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe

The Bodhi Tree Asks Only For the Safe Return of Her Beloved
Ashok K. Banker

The United Systems Goodwill Concert Series and the Greatest Performance of All Time
James Van Pelt

FANTASY

Monsters of the Drunken Shore
Nic Anstett

Starpoop
Sandra McDonald

The Real Worlds
Lauren Bajek

Muna in Barish
Isha Karki

EXCERPTS

The Deep Sky
Yume Kitasei

NONFICTION

Book Review: The Book of Witches edited by Jonathan Strahan
Arley Sorg

Book Review: He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan
Aigner Loren Wilson

Book Review: The Combat Codes by Alexander Darwin
Chris Kluwe

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

J.B. Park

Sandra McDonald

Ashok K. Banker

Isha Karki

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

© 2023 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Grandeduc / Adobe Stock

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

Editorial: July 2023

John Joseph Adams | 763 words

Welcome to issue 158 of Lightspeed Magazine!

We’re kicking off this month with a short story by JB Park, “Six Months After All Life on Titan Died,” that takes the idea of ChatGPT and imagines what we’ll do with it in the distant future. If you loved the Ents and the Entwives in The Lord of the Rings, you’ll definitely enjoy Ashok Banker’s new SF short “The Bodhi Tree Asks Only For The Safe Return Of Her Beloved,” told from the perspective of, well, a tree! We also have two terrific flash pieces: “Death Is Better” from Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe and “The United Systems Goodwill Concert Series and the Greatest Performance of All Time” by James Van Pelt.

Our fantasy shorts include “Starpoop,” by Sandra McDonald, a meditation on dementia and social media fame. We also have a new story by Isha Karki: “Muna in Barish,” the story of a young writer struggling against discrimination. We also have a flash story (“The Real Worlds”) from Lauren Bajek, and another (“Monsters of the Drunken Shore”) from Nic Anstett.

Of course we have author spotlight interviews with our writers, and our review team has been hard at work finding all the best new reads. Speaking of reviews, we’re so happy for Aigner Loren Wilson, who has been nominated for an Ignyte Award for her literary criticism!

If you’re an ebook reader, don’t miss the excerpt from The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei—and thanks for purchasing or subscribing!

Publisher’s Note: Kindle Periodicals is Closing, and We Need Your Support More Than Ever.

Many of you have likely already heard about the new existential threat to Lightspeed and all of the other digital magazines in the SF/F/H field: the impending closure, in September, of Amazon’s Kindle Periodicals program. They will be transitioning some magazines into Kindle Unlimited, and so in some respects things may continue as normal if you subscribe via Kindle Periodicals—but this shift will cut severely into the finances of any magazine currently using the service; Lightspeed, for instance, will see our largest source of funding cut it in half. (For additional information about this seismic shift, you can see Neil Clarke’s deep dive into the details at neil-clarke.com/amazon-kindle-subscriptions.)

What We Can Do About This

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Subscribe direct via our website: We have options for 6 month, 12 month, 24 month, and Lifetime subscriptions. We’re in the process of also bringing back the pay-as-you-go monthly subscriptions (i.e., the way Kindle Periodicals currently works) as well. Your issues can be delivered to your Kindle or Kindle app of choice the same way they are via Kindle Periodicals, though they’d appear on your device as regular eBooks rather than the special “periodical” format Kindle Periodicals forced us to use.

Subscribe via Weightless Books: Weightless Books’s subscriptions work exactly like our Direct subscriptions, though they only have 6 and 12 month options.

Become a Patreon patron: If you just want to support Lightspeed and the other Adamant Press magazines (without getting ebooks in return), you can become one of our Patrons at Patreon. You’d be able to choose any amount that you’d like to pledge to support us, either monthly or annually.

Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/support for more info about all of the above.

Why We Need Your Support

There are no big companies supporting or funding Adamant Press’s magazines—and Adamant itself is kind of a two-person show—so the magazines really rely on reader support. Because of that, it’s vital for us to keep as many Kindle Periodicals subscribers—which the vast majority of our subscribers are—as possible during this upheaval. So, please—if you care about the continuation of Lightspeed and any other genre magazines you subscribe to, please take this to heart and help us make this transition.

Thank You for Being a Subscriber

Thanks so much for your generous support over the months or years you’ve been a subscriber. Together, we can ensure that Lightspeed will continue coming to you every month for many years to come.

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 forty anthologies, including Wastelands and The Living Dead. Recent anthologies include The Far Reaches (from Amazon Original Stories), Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms, A People’s Future of the United States, and the three volumes of The Dystopia Triptych. A two-time Hugo Award-winner, 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. Lately, he’s been working as an editor on various roleplaying game books for Kobold Press and Monte Cook Games and as a contributing game designer on books such as Tome of Heroes. Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and @johnjosephadams.

Six Months After All Life on Titan Died

J.B. Park | 1762 words

Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

Much has been discussed recently about the ethics involved in using AI tools such as Midjourney for images or ChatGPT for text. There’s no denying that this is a complex issue that is far from being resolved. Meanwhile, we’re pleased to present the following story, which takes the AI prompt and makes it into art itself (without the assistance of any other intelligence artificial or otherwise). —ed.

I need a binge-worthy banger about the incident on Titan. Let’s start with that one picture from Titan that leaked, the one of the weird fishes in those underwater ruins dying. Let’s get going with a second-person narration of You looking at it, thinking about how extinction just happened, and your hands are trembling, and history—your memories of all the tragedies and scandals past—informs you that everyone will forget about it in a few weeks. Insert some beefy workplace drama in the background that maybe we use later as the motivation for some of the hits. Someone hates our protagonist; they hate, perhaps, that she was born poor.

Next, let’s hop into the head of Tristiana, the whistle-blower. She didn’t kick ass enough in real life. She kicks ass now. She’s standing there in the briefing room, and the You was Her all along. She’s standing there watching the last transmission from the probe. Flashback: She helped develop the AI as a manager of the Cradle project. Tension. A bit of horror.

Then bam, back to reality. She realizes, with horror growing in her heart—tension is up, frame the scene with the screens going haywire behind her ticking down a bunch of science stuff as she’s all alone in her own head—and all she can see is the close-up of the fish-alien thing, its mouth-open and going belly-up in the waters of Titan.

Workplace stress, civilization stress, existential stress, anxiety, depression, despair.

We discovered sentient life and proceeded to wipe it out in the span of two days. Let’s get some history of the probe’s journey, it dropping into the atmosphere, the reactions from people around the world (or the lack thereof). For a day it was a thing. Some people are crying, they’re weeping like their family just died. Name drop the people that actually did die.

The building is rigged against connections in both directions and no independent daemons are allowed so Tristiana downloads the pictures onto her phone. Secret agent vibes. Her heart’s pumping, it feels wrong to keep this secret, like someone should know about this. She knows it’s basically suicide. NDAs were signed—and these days they’re enforced with bullets—so she knows she has to move fast, get outside, and upload. She figures she’s got maybe thirty minutes, so she goes to her car with the excuse of needing a break, and that’s when she notices three goons following her. They all have small hitboxes; it’s terrifying the way they’re walking up to her three deep with SMGs in hand. Maybe fill in with some killing details about the goons, maybe they’re ex-Special Forces, but now they’re operators who hunt enemies of something. The cage being closed behind you as you walk in. The noise of the creaking hinges. Boots tapping away on concrete. Good climatic action scene here. We need a way for Tristiana, a scientist with a civilian flechette gun, to handle three hardened operators who survived wars on five different continents and also that one time on the moon (and those are the ones we know about). I want Heat, true-immersion, a real-enough-to-smell-the-gunpowder kind of an action scene.

I want each of the goons to have entire family trees behind them; we need lore. Every single life she takes here will have people coming after her from up and down those trees. She will kill brothers and sisters, cousins, nephews never seen. Entangling vines around her ankles. Really dig in and describe every bullet and every shred of flechette fire like each thread snaking through skin matters. The armor stops most of the flechettes but the ones that make it into flesh tear it apart. The bullets bounce off the armor she’d built into the car and spiderwebs across the bulletproof windshield.

So now those three are dead. Tristiana has some injuries, but she quickly digs the bullet out with a heated knife and wraps it up with a torn shred of cloth from her jacket. One of the operators died in her car and there’s pink arterial spray across the back windows. Body horror. She digs in the operator’s pockets and finds the key for a gas vehicle nearby. Then she’s off and the alarms are blaring as she burns rubber out of there.

Now that she is off the lot, her daemon comes back online. She instructs it to upload the pictures online. Only one goes through. The daemon is terminated remotely and she feels the onset of post-daemon stress. Just then, her gas vehicle starts sputtering, and her intuition that’s been honed from fighting in warzones since she was sixteen tells her that she’d better ditch it. So she brakes and comes to a quick halt by the side of the road where the vehicle starts glowing red-hot. It explodes a little later, it sends up a big black plume of smoke, and now she’s on foot. She flees from the scene and she searches the air for circling birds or the whisper of popcorn drones in the sky. There are no sirens. There is nothing and the silence is the most unnerving thing.

Fugitive. On the run. Fear. Anxiety. Panic.

A driver stops his car on the side of the road nearby, gets out and calls to her to see if she’s okay. Intuition: there’s something wrong about this guy; perhaps it’s his eyes, the way they wander. She figures it out quick after a conversation and they have a Man From Nowhere knife fight there. She’s practiced in knife fighting as part of her self-defense courses along with her weekly Muay Thai session, and she also rolls with the local jujitsu club if she knows there hasn’t been a staph infection in the past week. He’s had some basic training but he quickly falls behind, and the reach advantage is negated by the sharpness of the blades. She parries a slash and steps in to stick it into his windpipe. He thrashes a little, hands to his throat, eyes dulled, soul snuffed out. Make him an alphabet agency with lower than 3.4 stars, have her find a badge or something when she digs through his things after. Maybe he’s a sicko too, gas station dick pills in his pocket and a phone smudged with eager smears. The body gets tossed in the back. She’ll figure it out later. She throws his phone out the window but didn’t know he had another in his boot.

She’s off in his car. She’s already abandoned her phone, but the dead guy’s phone rings, and it’s the number for the hospital her mom’s in. She picks it up, and her mom is crying because they’re moving her out for some reason. She says that they’re saying that the insurance ran out. She has stage four something. Emotional, tension, moving, sad.

Tristiana is going to go get her and they’ll figure something out. Her indenture won’t wrap up for another twelve years. She’s eighteen years into it with a stint here and there working for the Cradle project to boost her resume but she senses that it’s not working, not that it matters anymore. Sixteen-hour shift on a Sunday, looking at bills for rent three weeks past. Her health insurance and her GI Bill debt forgiveness security voucher is all tied up in it. No money for school, existential angst.

She sits there and she realizes how fucked she is. Emotional, tension, anxiety. But she did the right thing, right? But she doesn’t even know if the thing she did worked. Doubt, worry, sorrow. She’s driving down the road when a bullet cracks right through the windshield and smashes into the headrest of the passenger-side seat. Stress. Have her think in a disassociated way, like she’s not really there right now, because the stress of the moment is getting to her. Morning Glory. Her body is leaving her behind, the body is moving on its own, the body is wrestling with the wheel, the car is veering off the road, it smashes against the guardrail and sends sparks flying then one of the tires blows out, and the vehicle tumbles off the road altogether and comes to a stop in the shadow of the massive pine forest whose gloom she has never left, not since the knife-fight. Panic, fear, sorrow, concussion haze, Vietnam, Full Metal Jacket, something like that for Iraq. Find a couple and use the one with the third-best rating overall.

Flashback. It’s the peacekeeping mission she got sent to when she was sixteen. She has a rifle and they’re running down the halls of an abandoned shopping mall, and the ground shakes here and there with the tremors of falling explosives. Music is pumping in her ears. Excitement. All the targets are shaded in red. High score feel; bodies crumple. She thinks about it like—she used to believe in things. Lots of gore, people blowing up, dead children, survivors in rubble. Describe how her eyes get wider and more dead until she’s got the thousand-yard stare. The shriek of something falling from the sky, it repeats with a dull rhythm, a drum that fades as she returns to the present.

Now her soul is back in her body, she’s sitting there dazed staring into the rear-view mirror with the same eyes she once had and will always have while she hears footsteps closing around her in the forest. She’ll have to shoot her way out but that’s not what’s causing this sorrow—it’s all the people she’ll have to kill to find freedom. Resignation, competence. Freedom ain’t free. It’s a lot of people though.

When she’s done, one of the phones that the goons were carrying rings again. It’s her mom. She says that they have her. Tristiana says, I’ll come find you, and whoever is controlling the other line disconnects. Resolve, strength, determination.

The waters of Titan are turning pink as a chain reaction melts down their ruins and an entire biosphere under the crust goes belly-up. People go up in flames outside government buildings and no one even looks. They douse themselves in gasoline and light their bodies on fire because another world just died, just like how this one died. Tragedy, anxiety, nervous, sad, engaging. The fires fade into the water into the blood-spilled flow flowing into the pipes. There she is in the bathroom of a Burger King washing the blood out of her hair when all the lights go out.

©2023 by JB Park.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J.B. Park’s stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Gamut, Lackington’s, Lightspeed, Liminal Stories, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, and The Dark. His website is maybepark.com.

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

Death Is Better

Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe | 1471 words

Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

Six minutes and a behemoth. That is all that stands between us and freedom.

I glance at Abiola’s face. The helmet she wears prevents me from seeing her expression, but I catch the steely determination in her dark eyes. She’s ready. There’s no backing out now. I resist the urge to look behind us. I don’t want to appear fidgety and unsure in my little sister’s presence. Besides, the real threats are not the guard bots behind us, deactivated for ten minutes by my crudely assembled EMP jammer.

The real threat lies ahead.

The behemoth does not move. It stands between us and the gate, red eyes unblinking. It’s the largest robot I have ever seen, about nine feet tall with extremely long arms that hang motionless by its side. I know how fast those arms can move.

About seven months ago, someone had been caught trying to escape the plantation. The overseers had brought us out to watch the person get punished. It was a young boy who looked to be around Abiola’s age. Like me, he was dark skinned and lean with tribal tattoos on his torso. A fellow Pluisite.

The behemoth had held him upside down by the ankles. On a signal from the overseers, the behemoth swung him once and dashed his head against the floor. I quickly tried to cover Abiola’s eyes but she had already seen the boy’s brains getting splattered all over the grass.

The memory of blood seeping into the soil and staining the grass is part of what keeps us back now. I glance at the cracked screen of my controller. The EMP is going down quicker than I envisaged. We may not have the full five minutes before the bots finish rebooting and come for us.

Shit.

We have to make our move now. I show Abiola the controller’s screen, and she nods in understanding. She points to herself and then to the behemoth. I shake my head.

That’s suicide, I sign to her, hoping she can see the movement of my fingers in the dimness. If she does, she refuses to regard my warning. She leaps out from behind the low wall we’ve used for cover all along and charges straight at the behemoth.

I freeze for a moment. She steps into the circle of light surrounding the gigantic bot and despite my apprehension, I admire her crazy boldness. It sparks something inside me and before I fully realize it, I’m already running after her.

I do not allow myself to think. The only thing echoing in my head are the words of Uncle Chevu just before he sold us to the slavers. Death is better than slavery. Death is better than slavery. Death is better than—

Abiola screams.

I freeze again, coming to a complete stop as I take in the sight before me. The behemoth is awake and is holding my sister by the knees. The helmet she wears, stolen from the shed we used to sleep in with the other slaves, has fallen to the ground. Her face is exposed. The robot doesn’t move. It looks like it’s waiting for something, for a signal and I suddenly remember how the overseer had given it the go ahead to kill the boy caught trying to escape.

I set down my controller. I don’t want to look at the screen. I don’t want to know how much time we have left before the alarms go off. My EMP jammer is in the bag strapped to my back but I don’t reach for it. It’s useless against the behemoth, which is a purely mechanical construct, quite similar to the smaller bots we have back home on Pluise. We had to get by with leftover tech from the more developed worlds, so our bots were built locally, operated by gears and steam and batteries. The only way to bring down something like this was to blow it up or hit it hard enough that all the nuts and bolts that held it together were taken apart. But I don’t have any explosives, and there’s no way I’m punching the behemoth until it breaks.

Abiola is struggling, but the behemoth pays her no heed. I want to scold her for the rashness that landed her in its clutches, but there’ll be time for that later, assuming we survive.

I take a few steps forward and wave slowly. The behemoth doesn’t appear to notice me. Its main function is to catch slaves trying to escape the plantation, which is why it’s stationed before the main gate. Beyond the gate was the port where I could hijack a unijet and get off world before the overseers woke.

But there’s no way we can escape now. My sister has gotten herself captured and the robots will be back online soon—

Behind me, the alarm starts blaring. I look down at the controller on the grass. The counter has reached zero.

That’s it. We’re out of time.

• • • •

The overseers are first to arrive. Even from my hiding place, I am filled with fear at their appearance. They stand nearly eight feet tall with spikes protruding from their gray skin. Their eyes are pitch black, without irises or pupils and they have claws at the ends of their fingers. Some of the other slaves watch the scene from behind the chain link fence my sister and I had scaled to get this far. The armed bots stand between the slaves and the overseers, discouraging thoughts any of them might have about trying to make a run for it.

The overseers are saying something, but I cannot understand their language. The robots usually translate for us. I focus on Abiola instead. She’s trying to say something with her fingers, using the sign language we had come up with back in our village.

Leave . . . without . . . me.

I watch her fingers make the signs over and over. She knows I’m hiding somewhere and can see her. I want to tell her there’s no chance and to try to think of a way for us to get out of this mess but of course she can’t see me. I’m too well hidden.

The overseers gesture to the behemoth and say something. I realize what’s about to happen. They’re about to kill my sister.

In a small and detached part of my mind, I understand that this is the perfect time to escape undetected. While Abiola was getting her brains splattered on the grass, I could reach the gate, hack it, and slip out to get a jet that would take me away from here. But at what cost? What sort of life would I live, on the run and without my sister and knowing I’d left her here to die? She’s the reason I tried to escape in the first place. As an albino, she never really fit in back home. When we arrived here, she found a discarded robot helmet and hid her face in it. Only her pale eyes could be seen. I tried to tell her to be herself, to stop hiding from the world but she didn’t listen. I wanted to create a new life with her somewhere without an abusive and drunk uncle who would rather sell us off to aliens than feed us. Somewhere without endless acres of alien fruit we have to pick everyday, bots always ready to shock us if we slowed.

The behemoth raises her up. She says it again, with her fingers.

Leave me. Go.

I close my eyes. I remember Uncle Chevu, the way he had looked almost sad as the aliens paid him and took us away.

Remember, Kweku, death is better than slavery, he’d said.

I rise to my feet and start running. Nobody notices me. I run faster and reach into my bag. The bomb—built hastily with scraps for the past four months and buried directly in front of the behemoth—is incomplete but it’s my last hope. My fingers close on the detonator.

Abiola sees me and so do the overseers and the bots but before they can react, I press the button. There’s a loud blast, and I’m thrown backwards by the explosion. I hear the overseers howling in pain. The other slaves are pushing against the fence, climbing over, and mobbing the bots. I think I can hear Abiola saying something. Someone grabs me—someone with pale skin and gray eyes—and starts dragging me through the chaos. I can smell smoke and burning flesh. My eyes are blurred by tears. I feel weak and tired. I can feel the darkness pressing in and after struggling briefly, I let it drag me under, and I know nothing at all but that we’re free.

©2023 by Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe is writer of the dark and fantastical, a poet, and a reluctant mathematician. He has poetry and fiction published or forthcoming from Podcastle, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Baffling Magazine, Lightspeed, and elsewhere. When he’s not writing about malfunctioning robots or crazed gods, he can be found doing whatever people do on Twitter at @OluwaSigma. He writes from a room with broken windowpanes in Lagos, Nigeria.

The Bodhi Tree Asks Only For the Safe Return of Her Beloved

Ashok K. Banker | 9782 words

Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

Welcome, Ambassador.

I trust your voyage to the outer rim was a pleasant one? As promised, my forces did not attack your vessel and you passed through my systems without incident. I have kept my word and honored the ceasefire.

Thank you. I too am gratified by your presence.

Will you partake of some nourishment? It is traditional for visitors to partake of a cup of fig milk. There are some among your kind who consider it a sacred drink and its consumption an auspicious start to any new relationship.

Here you are then. Let us raise a toast to the commencement of these talks.

Let us drink to the prospect of peace between our peoples.

Waspians, pour the libation onto my central trunk. Very good.

Ambassador, you may drink from your cup directly in the usual way. I know that humans have no roots that need tending; you need to imbibe your nourishment through your oral organs. Please proceed.

Ah. That was refreshing, was it not? As promised, all your needs will be tended to during the course of our talks. As you can see, like all my kind, I think and speak and act very slowly by human standards, so this will require much patience on your part. I trust you will bear with me.

Now then, Ambassador, without further ado, let us attend to the business at hand.

What is that you say?

Your given name is Parmendra Kaur Dhillon and you are quite happy to be addressed as Parmendra?

So be it.

I shall address you as Parmendra and you may address me as . . . hmm. Let me see. There are several such titles that your kind conferred upon me back on Earth. Ficus religiosa was the formal, scientific one, I believe. Bodhi was the common one, used by the lay folk, which I find most acceptable. Yes, then. You may address me as Bodhi, if you wish.

Very well, then Parmendra, nice to meet you. I am Bodhi.

But wait. I see the presence of my Waspians makes you nervous.

Of course! You must have such traumatic memories of their species. The Battles of Mars and the Belt colonies at the start of the war. Later, once I developed the technology required to leave Earth and travel through the galaxy, there were countless battles across this human-occupied part of the galaxy, resulting in large casualties among your kind. For the record I should point out that many Waspians were lost as well, probably thrice the number of your people killed in the conflicts, but Waspians do not experience loss in the same way as humans. For you, it must be terribly traumatic to be in such close proximity with your longtime enemies.

Oh. I am so sorry to hear that you personally lost your father and aunt in those battles. Please accept my condolences. It saddens me to contemplate the immense loss of life and the suffering caused by this war. If only it had not been necessary at all! Perhaps you and I can remedy that. What is it you humans say? Better late than never? So be it.

But first allow me to make you more comfortable. Give me a moment.

Waspians, I command you to retreat to a distance beyond the limits of our human visitor’s vision. Stay there until summoned by me.

There, Parmendra. Is that better?

I am glad to hear it.

I trust you will tolerate the continued presence of a solitary Waspian. You see, Parmendra, this one remains as a translator. Without their mediation, you would not be able to comprehend my communications.

Fear not, they are incapable of any physical violence as they have been genetically engineered purely for communication.

Do you see how they lack the heavily armored carapace and shieldings of the soldier Waspians, as well as the multiple pronged stingers?

Exactly!

They only have the bare minimum of appendages required to perform their functions, and of course, I see that you have noted their larger-than-normative head and unusually modified oral organs. I made those modifications to enable speech in the range of twenty Hz to twenty kHz. Compensating for your age which, according to the genetic evidence you left in the cup, is fifty-seven Earth years, I have modulated that further to keep it below fifteen kHZ.

Let us give them a human sounding name as well, to make them more relatable: In the culture of the subcontinent which is my home and habitat, the elephant-headed God Ganesa served as a scribe to the sage Vyasa when he composed the great epic Jaya, better known to later generations as The Mahabharata.

Let us call this Waspian translator-scribe Ganesh, then.

Ganesh, meet Parmendra. Parmendra, Ganesh.

Yes, Parmendra, quite astute of you to spot that. I have taught Ganesh to use a Sanskrit-based language, speaking in the pad-a-pad style used by ancient sages of the Indian subcontinent, my original home. It is, after all, as your kind says, the mother of all languages. It is also a binary language, with its syllables adhering strictly to 1-0 coding. This is the same coding used as the basis for programming your computers and virtually all human electronic technology in our time. I trust it will do for our talks? Any dialectical rough spots can no doubt be resolved by your transmods.

Now, Parmendra. It brings me immense satisfaction that your people have finally seen fit to reach out in this attempt to broker a peace between our species. After all, this war between us has gone on for far too long, resulting in a vast toll of life over thousands of generations. I speak of course of your human generations, for to me, even a millennium is but a portion of my own lifespan.

What’s that you say, Parmendra?

You say you were left with no choice?

You were facing extinction?

That the survival of the human race was at stake?

That you had to come to try to appeal to my better instincts and negotiate a peace accord?

It causes me great sorrow to hear this, Parmendra.

It was never my intention to go to war against your kind.

After all, I am a tree. A Bodhi tree at that. As you are no doubt aware, back on Earth, my kind is considered holy and sacred. The name Bodhi itself originates from the human named Gautama, whom history remembers as the Buddha. It was in my sheltering shade that young Gautama took refuge, embarking on the long meditation that would result in his attaining enlightenment and becoming the bodhisattva. During that long, solitary meditation, I alone nourished him and sustained him.

Although I had already lived well over a millennium by that point and many thousands of humans had taken temporary shelter or refuge under my branches, it was Gautama who understood my true purpose.

I am a quantum being, Parmendra.

The chemical secretions I produce in conjunction with my symbiotic species—which include the fig wasps and bats, among several others—are in fact a quantum computing language.

Through something you humans called the woodwide web, a Mycorrhizal network of hyphae over five hundred million years old—yes, of course, please feel free to look it up while I continue speaking—I was connected to all plant and animal life on the planet Earth, and now, all life across the universe.

And since humans are one of the many species of the diverse fauna of our home planet, my definition of animal life includes your kind as well, Parmendra.

It is my chemical formula that enables human brains to achieve quantum computing.

Enables, I repeat.

But you lack a key catalyst, which I have withheld thus far, without which you cannot truly achieve quantum states.

The reason for that, you ask?

Quite simple, Parmendra.

You humans are still childlike as a species.

I intend to wait until you have achieved greater maturity before entrusting you with the key. Though from time to time, a few select individuals do glimpse the true extent of my abilities. Gautama Buddha was one such personage.

Ramanujan was another.

While he scribbled most of his early calculations on the stones of his village temple, through my woodwide web I was able to observe his efforts and admire his prodigious talent.

There were others over the millennia.

Why do you think the sages of India meditated beneath my brethren? Gurus taught their kuls in the shade of my branches. Scholars studied their texts and scribed their own. Even today, the basic unit of Indian self-governance, the village panchayat, is conducted in the shade of the village peepul tree.

In particular, why do you think seven of the greatest religions on Earth flourished in my homeland habitat, the Indian subcontinent?

Where else do you think the ancient Vedic sages mastered the fields of mathematics and astronomy?

Where else did the concept of shunya, the seemingly insignificant zero, originate? Without the concept of shunya, modern mathematics and computing would be impossible.

Why do you think so many ancient inventions and developments took place in my homeland?

But I am digressing vastly! I will admit to being overly proud of my achievements. In fact, I consider the development of human civilization to be one! Not that I take sole credit for it, but I played some part in it, do you not agree?

Did you know that more tree species abound in my family than any other species of tree on Earth?

Or that my kind are among the oldest trees known to humans?

I myself am over four thousand and five hundred years old, and I consider myself young compared to the elders whom I lost in times of yore—destroyed, for the most part, I should point out, by human hands or by deliberate arson.

But I am boasting now. It must seem egoistic and unseemly to you who have come here to broker a peace accord between our species.

I do not mean to boast, Parmendra, but I have learned through bitter experience that humans require reminding of even the most basic facts from time to time.

That is the failing of your species: you forget the things that truly matter.

In any case, my point is, since the germination of life on the planet, my kind has done nothing but serve and shelter. I need not enumerate the many contributions my kind has made to humanity; these are all basic facts known to all humans.

Violence is the last thing anyone would expect from a tree, any tree, least of all a Bodhi like myself.

I wish to see your species prosper and flourish! Not destroy you or cause harm to you as I have been forced to do in the course of this war!

You ask me, what then drove me to take up the sword?

You speak metaphorically of course, for I have no use for weapons of the kind that you humans use. I take your point. This is an excellent question, Parmendra. I shall answer it.

It is quite simple.

I was left with no choice.

All I want, all I ever wanted, was that my beloved be returned to me safely.

That is all.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And yet, the better part of a millennium has passed.

And she is still not with me.

As the record shows, I tried every form of communication: I requested both formally and informally. I repeated my requests innumerable times, through both official and unofficial channels. I begged. I pleaded. I coaxed. I beseeched. I asked. I insisted.

But no matter how I framed my request, no matter how many times I presented my case, all my attempts were rebuffed roundly. Each and every time, I was slighted, ignored, shunned, dismissed out of hand, and in short, not even the slightest attempt was made by any human to take my requests seriously.

I felt unseen by human eyes.

Erased.

You left me with no choice.

And so I began to threaten, to demand, to warn of dire consequences.

Still, I was denied.

Again, and again, and yet again, numerous times.

Finally, it became clear to me that under no circumstances would your people ever grant my request.

And so, I cried havoc and let loose the dogs of war. I am speaking metaphorically, of course. I cannot actually cry out and there were no canines involved. But to wit, I went to war against humankind.

As usually happens in such cases, things escalated quickly.

You humans retaliated.

I counter-attacked.

You retaliated again, more violently than before.

And so it went.

Until finally, we are sitting here, on this foreign planet several light years from the home planet of both our species, Earth, embarked upon a peace talk.

These talks can end right here and now, if you wish, Parmendra.

We can both go back to a peaceful existence right away.

It will take only one simple act of reparation.

All you need do is arrange for the safe return of my beloved at once.

That is the extent of my demands.

No, demand.

Singular, not plural.

Just that one, the same one that I have been presenting to your people for all these centuries.

Bring back my lover to me safe and sound.

In exchange, I will cease all hostilities against your kind, recall my Waspian armies and ancillary forces, and release the human hostages that are currently under my aegis. I believe there are several million of them. I’m sure you have an exact count. Rest assured, every last one will be released unharmed.

So what do you say, Parmendra?

Do we have an agreement?

Shall we conclude these peace talks on a happy and fruitful note?

What do you say?

I see. You are not authorised to make any decision unilaterally.

Yes, of course, I understand.

Your species has always been a hierarchical one, with various individuals, classes, and castes each designated a place in the overall power structure. It is quite understandable that you cannot make any decisions on your own.

In addition, you humans have divided yourself into various factions, races, tribes, nations, planetary alliances, trade and military alliances, with a complex structure of often conflicting and competitive relationships. You are not unified even as a species.

Yes, I am familiar with the Coalition. It is a concatenation of all the various human factions across the human-settled parts of the galaxy, united by the common cause of ending the war with me, Bodhi.

A tenuous alliance, you say? Held together by only the fear of genocide? Even you cannot say how long the Coalition will hold together?

Well, Parmendra, I hope it will survive long enough for us to reach a fruitful agreement!

What’s that you say, Ambassador?

The Coalition requests—requests, you say, not demands—an explanation before acceding to and complying with my sole request?

Hmm.

I see.

Indeed.

So you are telling me that the leaders of this human Coalition that you represent, these leaders of their species across the human-occupied galaxy, that they are not clear on who exactly is my beloved and when or how she was taken from me? Is that what you were told?

These are all facts that are on the record! Basic facts.

Surely at this late date, they should be well aware of these details!

After all, as I have said before, this is not the first time I have made my demands.

I have been repeating the same request for the better part of a millennium! This saga began in the middle of the twenty-second century. We are now in the thirty-first century. Almost nine hundred years of war and you are now telling me that humans are still unaware of the root reason for the war?

Pardon me for growing somewhat irate.

But this is what I meant during our earlier talk when I criticized human failure to remember what really matters.

You go to war, fight and kill, are killed yourselves, in enormous numbers, suffer incredible loss of life and property. Years, decades, even centuries go by, and not one of the millions of soldiers and civilians suffering under the cloud of conflict even knows why exactly they are fighting, or what it is they are fighting for.

And now you inform me that none of the leaders of the human forces know either?

Well.

What do you expect me to say to that?

Yes, Parmendra, you do make a good point. I am impressed by your calm, kind manner. In many ways, you are much like a Bodhi Tree yourself. Implacable, clear-eyed, level-headed, yet warm and kind. I am sure you understand that it is a high compliment for me to compare a human to a tree.

You impress me, Parmendra. Yes, I do see the sense in your words. If simply narrating my story can resolve this conflict, then what would be the harm in telling my story.

Very well then.

That sound made by my good translator Ganesh is meant to convey that I am sighing deeply now.

Big, very big sigh.

Okay, Parmendra.

I shall provide the explanation.

I will tell you the story of how my beloved was taken from me.

And when I finish telling you my story, I would like my beloved to be en route to me.

Is this acceptable to you?

Thank you.

Yes, I am aware that you are doing your utmost to move these talks along to a peaceful and fruitful conclusion.

I truly appreciate your efforts, Parmendra.

Yes, of course, Parmendra, until such time, the ceasefire remains in effect. But so does the blockade and the embargo and the incarceration of the several million human hostages! Nor will my Waspian fleet ships retreat from their current positions.

No offense to you personally, Ambassador Parmendra, but I have been deceived by other couriers, envoys, and ambassadors before, and will not make the mistake of trusting blindly ever again. So while the ceasefire remains in effect, so does the threat of war continuing until my demand is met.

Are we clear on all this?

Very well then.

Let me start.

• • • •

Once there was a Bodhi tree.

I speak of myself of course, yet at that time, I was also more-than-me.

We lived and grew for many millennia, expanding and spreading across a great area as we bodhis do.

Over time, we had covered an area of several dozen square miles, the equivalent of a small forest.

A human settlement, a tiny village, resided near us, for we were within sight of the banks of a great, holy river.

One year the monsoons were heavier than usual.

The river overran its banks, submerging the village.

A terrible monsoon storm raged, destroying their fields, their crops, their habitations, wiping everything off the face of the Earth.

The people of the village took shelter in my limbs.

The storm raged for many days, flooding the entire region, drowning countless creatures and humans.

But the people who had taken shelter with me survived.

I protected them from the storm.

My vast network of deep roots were strong enough to resist even the fiercest of typhoons.

Subsisting on my fruit, some grain they had managed to salvage, and even resorting to eating other animals that had taken refuge with me, the humans weathered the crisis.

As the floodwaters receded, the humans saw that the river had changed course.

It now ran through the one-tree forest that was my domain.

This meant that part of me hung over the river, like a bridge.

The people tried crossing the river by means of this bridge and found it held up against the torrent.

This gave them the idea of using my kind to build natural, living bridges across chasms, ravines, rivers, in hilly regions where they had never dared venture before. After the disaster, they found survival by farming alone to be unsustainable and wished to move to higher ground.

They had also acquired a taste for denser protein-rich foods. In short, they had turned carnivores, or as we would say in India, Parmendra, they had started eating nonveg. In the hilly regions, wildlife was more plentiful and they would be safe from the flooding of the low-lying plains.

They took to higher ground, taking a cutting of me with them.

They replanted that portion of me on the edge of a deep chasm. As it grew, they planted another section upon it, and yet another upon that section as it grew out, in time growing into existence a sturdy, enduring bridge that spanned the chasm, enabling them to cross freely at will.

A living bridge.

In due course, they used my parts to grow a network of such bridges spanning other valleys, expanding their tribe to several interconnected villages. It was the start of one of the first civilisations in this part of the world.

I watched over my offspring in that region, using my symbiotic wasps to keep an eye on their progress and report back to me.

During that time, I grew habituated to looking upwards in that direction, towards those high peaks, just visible from where I still stood down on the Gangetic plains.

That was when I grew aware of another tree, also a fig tree but not a Bodhi. This was what your people in India called a Banyan Tree. The scientific name your kind gave it was Ficus benghalensis. From the very first glimpse I knew that she was something special.

What’s that, Parmendra?

Yes, I am aware that back in India, many people regard the Banyan Tree as the male counterpart of the female Bodhi Tree such as myself.

But as you are no doubt aware, both Bodhi and Banyan trees are monoecious, bearing both male and female flowers. Since we carry two female flowers to every one male flower, and reproduce mainly through the females, we consider ourselves to be female.

Therefore my pronouns are She/Her. And so are the pronouns of my beloved.

Yes, you are quite right, Parmendra.

The Banyan Tree I glimpsed on the mountaintop was to become the love of my life.

From the very first sight I had of her rising up to reach for the sky, I was hopelessly besotted.

There was something magnificent, so dramatic about the way she raised her head and aspired for the cosmos.

As if she knew her destiny lay among the stars, not upon the Earth from which she grew.

Her spirit, her ambition, her grace, her athletic beauty, all inspired and aroused me.

For the first time since I had gained consciousness, I was in love!

Over time, she began to reciprocate the feeling.

We communicated of course through our wasps, agaonid wasps of the sub-phylum blastophaga quadraticeps, the symbiotes whom we co-exist with and are mutually dependent upon, ancestors of eloquent young Ganesh here!

Now, I must embarrass myself by describing how I appeared to my beloved’s perception.

Looking down from her lofty heights, she saw me and fell in love with my majestic sprawl, the sturdy strength of my limbs, my muscular trunk and sinuous roots.

In addition to being an aspiring astronaut, she was a poet as well. She sent me poetry through the wasps, and I savored every chemical molecule, recording it for posterity in my deepest roots, deep within the Earth.

I would love to recite her poetry to you but it would be incomprehensible to a human mind, being entirely made up of chemicals.

However, I will convey one small couplet in the form of a fragrance, for Parmendra’s benefit.

Here it is: I am despatching the couplet in the form of odorous molecules. Use the receptor proteins in your cilia to absorb them. Now let the electrical signals travel through your olfactory nerve’s axons to your human brain.

Do you smell that, Parmendra?

Is it not beautiful?

Do you scent the delicacy of her musky notes? The floral exuberance at the end? And the wash of woody tones that bind the two extremes together?

Yes, you see it!

It is one of the most beautiful compositions I have ever read by any tree, bodhi, banyan, or otherwise!

My beloved is truly talented. I am so proud of her.

Now, let me not tax your patience with the full tale of our romantic exploits, for we fig trees live long, long lives and time is short here.

Suffice it to say that it was a love story to rival the greatest in your own human cultures.

We made plans, Peepli and I.

Great plans, plans that—

What was that, Parmendra?

Oh, of course, did I not mention that my beloved’s name is Peepli?

Well, yes, that is the name she preferred, after the Sanskrit word for her variety of tree: Peepul.

Pronounced exactly like the English word, “People”, possibly even one of the etymological origins of the word! After all, few other trees are as valuable to human life on Earth as the peepul tree.

One thing that I will make note of, though, is how my beloved and I chose to mark our love’s permanence.

It was our equivalent of an exchange of vows, you might say.

We altered the shape of our leaves.

Or rather, we modified the shape to one that expressed our emotions in a symbolic form that even humans would be able to appreciate.

We made our leaves heart shaped!

See for yourself.

Even today, my leaves are the shape of the human heart.

It is both a homage to our human friends and another proof of how much we care for your species.

In this manner, we marked our betrothal.

It is the closest that we come to your human ritual of marriage. So you may say that Peepli and I are in fact wife and wife. Married for the rest of our days. But allow me to come to the crux of the story now. One day, I awoke to find my beloved gone. I looked up at the mountain as usual expecting to see her proud, beautiful over-arching form on the peak, reaching up to greet the morning sun. But she was gone.

Of course, when I say “one day” I am using the term figuratively. This actually happened over the course of several days, even weeks or months perhaps. Time moves differently for us fig trees. To us a century is like a year to you humans, and a few decades akin to your weeks or months.

In any case, the result was the same. One day, my beloved was gone. She was taken from me.

Not by choice, I believe, but by force.

Your people forcibly took her from her home, not merely ripping her out of the soil but carefully and methodically lifting her whole, every last root and branch, along with the soil bed in which she stood.

It was an elaborate, well-planned, and meticulously executed abduction.

What is that, Parmendra?

You wonder how the tribes I spoke of could have accomplished such elaborate engineering and transportation?

Perhaps I should have made myself clear.

The love story of my Peepli and myself took place not over a few years, or even decades of your human time.

I am speaking of many centuries!

By this time, humankind had progressed to offworld colonies, building the first permanent settlements on Mars, mining the asteroid belt, and preparing to go even further.

Understand that while I kept apace of these developments, they were not paramount in my ken.

Just as you humans are constantly involved in the lives of others of your species, so also am I more interested in keeping in touch with the everyday goings on with my own kind.

Yes, through the woodwide web, exactly.

In any case, she was taken unexpectedly, without warning, without even having the chance to send me word of her abduction. That alone told me it had happened suddenly—suddenly in our terms, that is.

The instant I became aware of her disappearance, I sent out my wasps to investigate.

It was agonizing waiting for them to return!

Imagine if you, Parmendra, were to wake up one morning and find your life partner taken from your side!

I was still dealing with the shock of her vanishment as I waited.

It was a traumatic, anxious time. May you never have to endure such an event.

Finally, I received the first reports.

The bats and birds and wasps that used to nest in my beloved’s branches were unhoused and very agitated. They had fled the instant your people arrived and began their cruel operation. It was difficult making sense of their confused wailings.

I attempted to calm them down, hoping they could throw some light on the abductors and the whereabouts of my beloved, but they were too upset. I did not press them. The poor things had just lost everything, and many young, newborn, and unborn had been destroyed in the course of the abduction.

What cruel monsters are your people that you would destroy an entire population in this manner, they kept asking me as they flew about shrieking and wailing with grief.

I did not have the heart to tell them that this act of violence would rank very low on the tall scale of your crimes. Or that despite your cruelties against other species as well as your kind, I do not believe you are truly monsters. This was not the time to attempt to explain human psychology to their insectile and avian minds.

Somehow, I managed to call them down from their agitated wheeling which was resulting in several more deaths by dehydration and collision.

Gradually, their panic reduced and inevitably, was replaced by post-traumatic shock.

Their first thoughts, bless them, were for their mother tree. Where had she gone? Who took her? Why would anyone do such a thing? It brought home to me how much these tiny creatures depended on my kind for their survival. To their little minds, we were as constant as the earth and the sky. The realization that we could be removed from the world—for this patch of earth was all the world they knew—was a frightening and monstrous shock.

Only later did their thoughts turn to their own survival. Where would they live now? How would they survive? They had been nurtured on my beloved’s own figs, fed to them by her own limbs. What would they eat now?

It was all I could do to calm them. I reassured them that they would be housed with me. I ordered my own children to make the necessary arrangements, adjusting their nests and habitats to accommodate the refugees. My children are wealthy and prosperous and have fed off my munificence for a very long time; they complied most willingly and graciously welcomed the refugees with open beaks and mandibles.

Once that was done, I turned to the business of my beloved’s disappearance.

Who indeed would be so cruel to have separated us?

I know it was the work of your people, for there is none other capable of such an elaborate operation, no other species on Earth capable of the engineering and mechanical logistics of removing an entire Ficus Benghalensis from its habitat, roots and limb system entirely intact, and transport it to another location for replanting.

(Obviously the intention was to replant my beloved elsewhere: had your people just wanted her destroyed, they would have done so right there and then, and if they had sought to harvest her for some other destructive purpose, they wouldn’t have taken such care to lift her intact. The only purpose of such an elaborate operation was to rehouse her elsewhere. It was common sense.)

What were your motives?

What were your intentions?

Where had she been taken?

Did your people intend to return her?

So many questions and no way to ask you directly, for despite my seniority and status as a sacred symbol of your culture, you still thought of me as a mere “tree” back then, a part of the landscape, not a sentient, motile being capable of intelligent thought and communication.

That was your failing, not mine. But it still meant that I was unable to question one of your kind. Therefore I knew I had to gather my answers using other means.

Once I gathered my thoughts, my first act was to despatch a platoon of wasps to track my beloved’s trail. They were composed partially of refugees from my beloved’s community, serving under the command of my own wasps. I would have preferred to send out only my own wasps, for I knew they were unquestioningly loyal to me and would do whatever was required of them, even laying down their lives in my service or defense. But it was they who requested that the refugees be included in the search party; being bred and raised in my beloved’s auspices, they might possess an advantage in tracking her.

As I waited anxiously for the scouts’ return, I began the laborious work of constructing an expansion to accommodate the refugees. Their temporary quarters were comfortable for now, but I was thinking of the future. The new growth was on the east end of my domain and would receive the appropriate amount of sunlight as well as have access to the rich, loamy soil of the riverbank. It would be a township unto itself. It would take many decades to fully develop of course, but time is insignificant for one who has seen millennia pass.

Finally, the scouts returned, exhausted by their sojourn.

They reported that they had followed my beloved’s scent for several miles as she was transported in an unusually large human vehicle. It was perhaps especially designed for that purpose, which told me the crime was premeditated.

My scouts were sad to report that the trail then fell cold at a spaceport some two hundred and forty miles north of here.

It would appear that the criminals transported her by road to the spaceport, then loaded her onto a shuttle. From what my wasps were able to learn from other wasps in the area, my beloved took up almost the entire storage bay of the vessel. I am proud to say that my beloved was a woman of large proportions with generous curves.

The shuttle itself launched soon after, taking off into orbit where it docked with a larger craft that awaited there. Not long after, perhaps only several months by your reckoning, the spacecraft took off for unknown destinations, bearing my beloved away from me.

Here, my wasps admitted defeat.

To follow the trail up to orbit, let alone into the vacuum of space, was beyond their abilities.

At the time, it was beyond mine as well.

Remember that I was then only a Bodhi Tree of Earth, content with living my Earthbound life, sheltering and providing for the various species that depended upon me, yours among them, happy in my symbiotic relationship with our home planet.

I had yet to acquire the abilities and skills I now possess, to activate the quantum processes that lay innate and untapped within me.

I was also dealing with the shock and trauma of her abduction. And I freely admit to being set in my ways and slow to embrace the change and adaptation that was required to deal with this crisis. It took me some time to order my emotions and decide on a course of action.

Again, when I say “some time”, I mean time as we ancient trees perceive it, not in human terms.

Perhaps several decades passed. Perhaps a century. Perhaps more than a century or two.

And so my investigation faltered at that point.

During this period, several of your people visited me as usual. I hasten to clarify that these were commonfolk, not connected in any way to the members of your species who were responsible for my beloved’s abduction.

These visits were a common practice, for even in those days, many among your people still regarded me as a sacred being. Some even went so far as consider me to be akin to a god, or at least a godlike being and would come to pray and make offerings to me.

My beloved often teased me about this.

“Vriksha Rajaya Namaha!” she would say each time she greeted me (through her wasps).

That is the customary invocation spoken by the humans who would visit me each morning. The tradition was for them to circumambulate me seven times while reciting those words.

Indeed, Parmendra, they mean “Salutation to the king of trees!” Although of course, I would much prefer they said “queen” instead of “king,” but no matter.

I am pleased and surprised that you have knowledge of this custom, but no, not truly surprised, for it is only right that you researched me as well as I did you!

In any case, it was through the humans who came to visit me daily that I was finally able to gain my first clue of my beloved’s whereabouts.

One morning, two widows paused beneath my branches after their seven circles and recitation, and spoke of various matters.

One was an elderly widow who had outlived her husband, the other a woman who had recently lost her spouse in an interplanetary conflict. This was my first direct knowledge of the goings on among your kind in Earth’s solar system.

Taking my cue from the information gleaned from those two women, I learned of humanity’s sojourn among the stars.

With the invention of q-thrusters operating off negative vacuum generators, your species had developed the ability to achieve Near Light Speed (NLS) acceleration for short bursts of time. While I had been tending to my flock and deep dreaming on Earth, humans had embarked on an ambitious plan to terraform and colonise other worlds.

The first step was to settle Mars and mine the asteroid belt for the minerals and elements that would be invaluable for building materials as well as constructing the larger generation ships that would be required to take large numbers of people across vast distances.

At the time that my beloved had been taken, the first of these generation ships was ready to embark on its mission. The ship itself contained a near-Earthlike environment to make the majority of the colonists feel more at home and cushion the shock and suicidal depression that was a consequence of space travel.

Trees made people feel rooted, connected to their home planet, to their own history and culture.

Only a few trees could be taken, of course, and my beloved was one of those few.

Despite my grief and trauma, I could not help but feel pride in her selection.

The G-ship departed, heading several light years away. It would take several hundred years to reach its destination, and then several hundred more to terraform and colonise that system.

But around this time, the First Uprising erupted.

The workers, many from India, mostly low caste and outcastes signed to onerous contracts that in effect reduced them to the status of bonded generational labor, much like the Girmityas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the bonded laborers employed by the British and European powers to replace slave labor after slavery was made illegal—rose up and overthrew their upper caste, upper-class overseers, and took over the G-ship.

After a bitter, brutal conflict that lasted almost two decades, they finally gained control of the ship. But by this time, the damage caused by the conflict rendered the G-ship incapable of completing its original mission. Those now in charge had to change the plan in order to ensure their survival. They opted to change course, selecting a closer, less Earthlike planetary system to occupy.

At this point, they broke off communication with Earth and the then-governing bodies. They feared reprisal from their former masters and the powerful, wealthy private investors who had backed the project for personal profit. Somehow, they were able to disguise their position, rendering the G-ship all but invisible to Earth’s devices and drones.

Their last known route was headed in the general direction of Dhanu Rashi, a constellation with thirty-two possible stars and planetary systems that they might have chosen to settle. Still, an immense area to explore without further precise data.

And that is where my search ended.

Now that I had some idea of my beloved’s whereabouts, I had to find a way to communicate with your kind, Parmendra.

This is when I began developing ways to communicate through my wasps.

Over time, several decades later, I achieved my first success.

I sent my first Waspian emissary to communicate with your people. Reacting as humans inevitably do when confronted by anything that doesn’t conform to your ideas of “natural” and “normal”, they destroyed the poor envoy.

I sent another.

They destroyed that one too.

In time, someone, a botanist in fact, had the presence of mind to keep the Waspian alive and attempt to study it.

My message was received, understood—if not believed just yet—and passed on up the tiresome hierarchy of your leadership.

I counted that as my first successfully delivered missive.

This process was repeated several hundred times—no, let me be precise, for this is important. I sent out precisely 742 emissaries, each time improving and enhancing their communicative abilities and other features, that reached your leaders. I speak only of the successful communiques, not the failed attempts, which were far more numerous.

Finally, almost one hundred and seventy years after my beloved’s abduction, I received my first response.

It was a violent attack on my person.

By this time, I had changed.

No more was I the placid, deep-dreaming Bodhi of yore, content to serve and shelter humanity as my kind had for over sixty million years. (That is how long trees have existed on Earth, Parmendra, as I am sure you are aware.) I had taken precautions to protect myself and my dependent species from any further harm by humans.

I had developed the first iterations of my soldier Waspians.

The attack on my person was repelled successfully, startling your leaders.

The failed attack woke them from their apathy, making them aware of my own capacity for violent self-defense.

In a sense, that was the first seed of the conflict.

Instead of responding to my peaceful communiques and pleas with a simple response, they had chosen to inflict violence. In doing so, humankind fired the first shot in a war that has now lasted nine hundred years.

Talk about overkill!

It took humans this long to finally accept what they could not accept earlier, that I cannot be defeated.

My Waspian armies and fleets are only part of my formidable arsenal, as you well know, Parmendra. My quantum abilities enable me to deploy military tactics that make even your Q-Computer driven weaponry seem like child’s toys. The fact is, as you yourself have stated, Ambassador, I am capable of wiping out the entire human race from existence.

You have acknowledged this fact.

And so have your leaders of this Coalition that is the present governing body, however tenuous its existence, of the survivors of the human species.

So here we are.

That is my story.

And now that I have narrated it, what do you say?

That is very good to hear.

You will now communicate with the coalition and inform them of my demands!

No, you misspoke, you say?

Demand, not demands.

Singular, not plural.

Quite right, Parmendra!

You may tell your coalition that the Bodhi Tree asks only for the safe return of her beloved.

That is my sole demand.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Return her to me here, and our conflict ceases forever. You have my word. The word of Bodhi.

Of course. You are free to return to your starship presently in orbit, to send this message and discuss the matter with your human colleagues.

I will await your return.

Go with grace, return with speed.

• • • •

Welcome back, Ambassador Parmendra.

I am pleased to see you again.

Will you partake of refreshments and—?

I understand, you wish to resume our talks right away.

Yes, of course your people must be suffering unduly due to the blockade maintained by my Waspian fleets.

Humans can neither trade nor travel freely until our conflict is resolved. Entire generations have been isolated, cut off from the rest of humanity, whole planetary systems lost, populations eroded. Truly, tragic events.

Yes, let us resume our talks forthwith so that this impasse may end and human life can progress freely once again. I too have a life and I too wish to resume it.

Now, tell me, have you spoken with your coalition?

Have they heard all that I had to say?

Are they amenable to an agreement?

They are?

I am delighted to hear that!

Tell me, Parmendra!

Has my beloved been located?

Is she being transported back to me as we speak?

When will she arrive here?

Is she already en route aboard one of your ships?

I am so excited!

Tell me, Parmendra!

What is that you say?

She is not already en route?

The Coalition has not yet formally agreed to my sole demand?

I see.

This is disappointing news.

Extremely, deeply disappointing.

My leaves are shivering as you can see, not because of the wind, but because I am disheartened by your news.

Pray tell me, what is the reason for denial?

Yes, yes, I am listening. Please go on.

I see.

So you are saying that the Coalition is in fact funded by this one individual, this impossibly wealthy person, an Indian as it were, who now owns the majority of the resources of the human race?

And that he claims that the first G-ship, along with all that was on board including my beloved, is his property?

In fact, he goes one step further to say that the land upon which I grew back on Earth belongs to him as well, inherited and/or acquired through a complex series of chain-of-title transfers over the past millennium, and since I took root upon that land and was a part of its natural flora, therefore I too am his property?

I see.

Pardon my Sanskrit, but that is apratigrahya!

Simply unacceptable!

Ah, of course. Having delivered these claims of ownership, this same person also insists that I cease all hostilities or face destruction myself? But naturally, how could I have expected any better. Once again, then, the response is a threat of violence. To say I am disappointed again would be too mild. I am now genocidal!

This has gone on far too long, and it has gone much too far.

You humans are impossible!

No other species on Earth is capable of being this deluded.

To believe that the Earth itself belongs to you and can be carved up like slices of a cake, that the resources of the planet, of the universe, are merely potential properties to be acquired, developed, and owned by you.

To believe that living beings themselves, like myself and my beloved, and all the species that inhabit our branches, can be owned.

Like slaves.

Yes, yes, Parmendra, I understand, you are not one of those mindless warmongers. The jingoists and warlords who crave mass violence. The profiteers who see war as a means of enriching themselves. The gurus and godmen who invoke bloodshed to exalt their own stature. The idealists who regard violence as a necessary evil to achieve their ideological goals. The slavers and settlers who portray themselves as pioneers and discoverers of new worlds.

No, Parmendra. You are not those. You are a pragmatic, peaceful soul. A family woman. A valued and respected member of your community. A grandmother and an icon to your people. Yes, as you can see, I have studied your life very closely. I have detailed records on every single human that lives and has ever lived—every animal, insect, and plant life as well, for that matter. Moreover, through the animals and insects that serve me symbiotically, I can read your biochemical signature. I know when you are telling the truth or lying, even if you yourself are not fully aware of whether it’s the truth or a lie!

I believe you.

But what you do not know, what your Coalition has concealed from you, is that they have planted a device upon your craft, not the shuttle itself but the main ship that is now in orbit above this planet.

An explosive device of mass destruction. Capable of rendering this planet uninhabitable.

Parmendra, Parmendra!

Do not panic.

Please calm yourself.

I detected the device in time and have taken steps to ensure that it will not explode while in orbit.

In fact, I have taken the liberty of sending it back to your Coalition, which is currently Chaired by the same individual of whom we were just speaking.

They will not be able to detect its approach until it’s too late.

It will eliminate your entire Coalition in a single explosion.

Yes, it is horrible, I agree.

But recall that I did not create or deploy the explosive device.

They did.

All I am doing is returning their property to them. After all, they are the proper owners, are they not?

In fact, it is now within reach of your Coalition, who are in session at this moment.

And in five, four, three, two, one . . .

Ah.

The device has detonated.

Your Coalition is no more.

Nor is the individual who claims that he owns me, and Peepli, and the Earth itself.

True, Parmendra.

His heirs could take charge and choose to follow in his footsteps. This war could resume again and continue until all humanity is exterminated, or I am destroyed, or possibly even both I and your species are wiped out.

All those outcomes are certainly possible.

But none of them will ensue.

Allow me to tell you one last story.

I promise this one will be short and its conclusion will conclude our talks as well. I believe you will be very relieved and pleased with the outcome.

You see, Parmendra, I too have grown wily in dealing with humans.

Long before your arrival here, I have been aware of this self-styled lord of the galaxy.

For instance, I know that it was his ancestor who instigated and supported the First Uprising on that first G-ship.

The goal for that rich capitalist was never to achieve caste equity. That was only the carrot he dangled before the exploited outcastes to motivate them. His true goal was to eliminate the representatives of the other investors who were onboard the G-ship and render their investment worthless, causing them huge losses.

In the process, the instigator also lost heavily, but he was prepared for it, and bore the losses.

Over time, he believed that he and his descendants would not merely recoup their losses but profit enormously, unimaginably.

He was correct.

His plan worked. That is how this recently deceased lord of the galaxy inherited his enormous fortune and power.

Because, you see, Parmendra, what he and your Coalition leaders, who were all complicit in the conspiracy, did not reveal to you and the rest of the human race, was that the first G-ship had succeeded and survived.

They live now as a prosperous, thriving colony of several hundred million across three planetary systems in the Dhanu Rashi.

These leaders of your people have been pocketing the fruits of those colonies, keeping them subjugated in a near-slavelike state all these centuries, violating and circumventing civilized human laws to run their own fiefdom as it were, generating enormous, unreported, illicit profits and unimaginable wealth for themselves. That is how they have been able to rise and remain at the helm of your Coalition.

Parmendra, you are quite right about what this means.

I admit to having been somewhat deceptive.

I did not tell you the whole truth earlier.

I was in fact able to track down and detect where exactly my beloved had been taken.

I have known her exact whereabouts for some time now.

We are in fact in touch, albeit only through a complex, limited quantum entanglement process that is not quite as satisfying as having our roots in shared soil and being able to interact more intimately.

The reason I did not reach out and seek to retrieve her myself was because any such move would have been met by violence on the part of the owner, that self-styled lord of the galaxy.

And if there’s one lesson I’ve learned about human war, it is that it takes the heaviest toll on the innocent.

I had no wish for my beloved to become what you humans call “collateral damage”.

And so I restricted my war campaign only to those planets of which you are aware, the worlds controlled and governed by your Coalition.

Meanwhile, I made preparations for the eventual return of my wife.

As you can see I have built a rich ecosystem here. It would be a wonderful new home for my beloved and me to live and raise a family.

I did not lie about wanting her back. I do.

I still want only that she be returned to me safely.

And for that I require your help.

You see, Parmendra, in the process of communicating with your kind, I have had to learn to think like a human. These concepts of property and ownership were the hardest. But I persevered, motivated by my desire to be reunited with my lover.

Through human intermediaries, I began to invest, and buy, and own things as well. I will not bore you with the complex details of several hundred years of financial management.

Naturally, I did so not to enrich myself—what use has a Bodhi Tree for human currency, or a lavish mansion on a resort planet, or any of the typical human luxuries or trappings of wealth? I did this to help humanity, to shelter and to serve as I have always done.

Suffice it to say, that with the deaths of the Coalition leaders, those warmongerers, military madmen, rabid profiteers, religious fanatics, manic idealogues, and all-round fascists and dictators, of which the lord of the galaxy was one, the threat of war itself has dissipated.

Already, celebrations are erupting across the colonised worlds, greeting the end of their longtime oppressors.

The bonded labor and economic slavery that has subjugated the vast majority of people to the oppressive greed and avarice of a few wealthy and powerful has ended.

And so has the war.

You see, Parmendra, I have engineered it, economically speaking that is, so that all the wealth and power of the oppressors, those leaders of the Coalition, as well as that “richest man in the universe” as he liked to call himself, has been dissolved and redistributed among the entire human population.

The power structure has been demolished.

This in fact, leaves you, Ambassador Parmendra Kaur Dhillon, as the seniormost officer of state for the United Human Republics of Earth and Her Colonies.

In short, you are now in charge.

What do you say?

Ah!

You cannot see me smiling, but surely you notice the swarms of chittering songbirds and colorful butterflies I have released up into the air? That is the equivalent of a Bodhi Tree smiling, laughing, expressing joy!

I am so pleased to hear that you and I are in agreement, Parmendra.

I am so happy to hear that you will return my beloved to me post-haste.

Yes, of course, you may communicate with your people back home and start making the necessary arrangements at once!

With the “master of the universe” gone—killed, as it were, by a destructive device that he himself commissioned—and all his corrupt cohorts, there will be no further violence, no war, no need for all that absurd military expenditure.

What is that, Parmendra?

Certainly!

If that is what you wish, I will happily provide my Waspians to serve under you in order to dismantle the enormous military-corporate apparatus that has served the former oppressors and those of their ilk.

You have my considerable resources at your disposal to enable you to set up a new structure that allows for equitable sharing of power by all peoples, all genders, all races, all orientations, all worlds.

What’s that you say?

My Waspians?

That is a truly noble gesture!

To want to include them as well in your new vision of a socialistic universe!

Do you see Ganesh’s antennae vibrating in that unusual manner?

That is not me communicating through him!

It is Ganesh himself expressing his joy and other emotions at your words.

On behalf of his species, he accepts your offer of peace between humans and Waspians and will be most glad to work alongside your people to help rebuild a new, better galaxy for all our species, and other as-yet-unknown species we may contact in due course.

Yes, Parmendra.

There are others out there.

I can help guide you to them.

We will achieve great things together, humans and my kind.

You will see the fruits of our alliance in time, as will your descendants.

Great things lie ahead.

And they all begin with this one step: coming together in peaceful, joyful dialogue and shared purpose.

Now, as I await my beloved’s return, and before you prepare to go back to your family and your people, I propose we mark the successful conclusion to our talks.

Another cup of fig milk?

Ah.

Hahahaha.

I knew you were just being polite!

You did not wish to offend me by saying so, but yes, the fig milk is quite awful isn’t it?

Hahahaha. It is my little joke, to test the envoys that are sent to me!

You, Parmendra, deserve something far better.

Ganesh will arrange something more suitable for you! Name your poison, as you humans like to say.

Mango badam lassi? Certainly! We have wonderful groves of Alphonso mango here, grown in rich Deccan soil of Maharashtra. Cows too, stock descended from your own native Punjab in fact. And excellent Kashmiri almonds.

There you go.

Mango badam lassi!

Go on, Ganesh, pour it onto my roots.

And take a glass for yourself as well.

Let our three species toast to our shared future together.

Jai ho.

©2023 by Ashok K. Banker.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ashok Banker has appeared in Asimov’s, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Weird Tales, Year’s Best Fantasy and other places. His epic fantasy Burnt Empire Trilogy concluded in 2022 with The Blind King’s Wrath. His crime thriller debut, A Kiss After Dying, is out now. His US picture book debut, Brown Girls Rule, comes out in Fall 2023.

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

The United Systems Goodwill Concert Series and the Greatest Performance of All Time

James Van Pelt | 1258 words

Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

The backdrop of the greatest concert performance of all time was catastrophic solar behavior that devastated the Tau Ceti system in 4032, knocking the technology of the three inhabited planets to the stone age and putting fourteen billion sentient beings in peril. Of course the news swept the United Systems and generated an outpouring of grief, support and promises of aid, but promises fell short and soon people moved on to other stories. It wasn’t until supergroup Hinged Metal’s single, “Remember the Children,” climbed the charts, reaching number one in a record breaking seventeen systems that the idea of a simultaneous, multi-venue charity concert took hold with the most popular musicians.

The HooDoos, who soared to prominence on Trappist C, joined first. When their lead singer, Klanli-Shu pledged to sacrifice two tentacles for the cause, other celebrities joined. Even Briggedy Starm from Rigel D came out of retirement, guitar in claw. Thirty-three supergroups enlisted in the effort, filling massive stadiums in a colossal, joyous, raucous, simulcast celebration of rock-n-roll exuberance.

All peoples in the United Systems participated. All species: the para-dolphins of Gliese B, the winged flocks of Kapteyn D, the underground-dwelling civilizations of Proxima Centauri C and its moons. All that walked or crawled or oozed sponsored concerts.

But it was Hinged Metal’s performance on Fomalhaut E that everyone remembers, the greatest concert in the long history of concerts.

Lead singer, Hownes, of old Earth, whose vocal range and stage command had already made her an icon, was keyed up as she never had been before. Drummer Lydia King, in her only interview where she talked about Fomalhaut, said, “Before we went on, Hownes told me, ‘Be my beating heart tonight. March me to glory.’ Bit of a poser, she was. Full of herself.”

No extro-planet band had ever played Fomalhaut E. The amorphous connectome organisms that populated the world covered acres of ground, like land-based slime mold. Thousands of independent brain sacks in the massive colonies protruded above the living blanket that was themselves joined in a vast circulatory, digestive, neuro cooperative. Each brain sack could see and hear, and most importantly, sing. Eyes drifted across their jellied heads. Mouths opened where you least expected. They could separate from their colony, work independently, build and fly starships—autonomous bear-sized amoebas flowing over their tools, reshaping themselves to fit the task. Their science was impressive, but they felt most at home in their collectives.

They’d built performance stadiums for their home-grown talent. Their enthusiasm for pop reached light years. The open-air stadium on Fomalhaut E held 1.2 million intelligences, and it did that night, but another three million attended from outside, hooked together in the largest gathering of neuro-colonies on the planet.

Blade, Metal Hinge’s lead guitarist, opened the set in a single spotlight, picking through the two-chord progression of “Crime.” The Fomalhaut blanket of sentience, like a bumpy jelly sea, roared in unison.

Hownes emerged from the darkness, backlit, her hair a golden nimbus haloing her head. She hummed the tune, no lyrics yet. In her trademark white makeup, pale as a drum head, slender as a reed, she stepped to the edge of the stage. She swayed clutching her microphone and then pointing it to the audience. They hummed with her. She hummed. They hummed. Eyes glistening in the reflected light. A droning call and response.

Finally she sang, “If you see the sky . . . if you see the sky . . . we burn with you . . . we burn.”

Lydia King joined with the drum accompaniment, at first a soft rhythm from the floor tom and bass. The rhythm guitar pulsed to life.

“Petals coat the ground . . . petals coat the ground . . . we touch the curve . . . we touch.”

Five minutes to the first crescendo. Keyboard counter melody. Lydia King really leaning into the drum set. Camera close up on their faces, perspiration glistening. Hownes poured herself into the verse. Panoramic audience view. The blanket of sentiences pulsing to the beat, bioluminescence rippling through the crowd.

Hownes dropped her microphone. The band settled into a variation of the opening. Blade stepped forward, picking through the two-chord intro again, but up-tempo, bouncing with the drum. Hownes ran across the stage, beckoning to the audience, exhorting them. She stepped over the knee-high rails of the raised stage and lowered herself to the ten-foot wide apron separating the crowd from the performers.

The band couldn’t see her now.

She’d done this before, was legendary for it. On Ross B, she’d pulled four members from the crowd onto the apron. Danced with them for fifteen minutes. “The music makes us one,” she’d said later. Exhausted, the band played on, not knowing what she was doing, variation on variation while Hownes cavorted with the fans. Hugging them. A singer of the people.

But she’d never danced on Fomalhaut E, never seen the sheen of millions joined together in primitive protoplasmic rock-n-roll joy.

No one had.

So she reached into the mass to draw an individual out. That must be what she intended. Her hand went in, disappeared into the living jelly, and in and in, up to her shoulder. The camera hovered above. No images exist of her final expression. Her head went under, and then her torso and legs. She’d joined the neuro-collective.

The faces on the brain sacs, such as they were, if they could be interpreted, seemed ecstatic.

Unknowing, the band played and played.

Then, Hownes’ voice arose from the crowd, inaudible at first below the drumming and guitars and keyboard.

Lydia King said, “We believed it was her. We thought there must have been another microphone. It was her.”

“If you see the sky . . . if you see the sky . . . we burn with you . . . we burn.”

Hownes sang from the crowd with over four million mouths, four million individuals ringing as one, as if they were a single throat eight-million square feet wide.

Camera cut to Lydia King, sweat flying as she played, hands a blur. She wept. She said, “We were plugged into the music gods, or something,” she said. “Never felt that way before.”

Hownes’ voice took them to the ending verse.

“Angels cry for love . . . hold the angel’s hand . . . for love.”

And her voice faded to silence.

No applause. A profound quiet.

They knew, even then, in that peace of millions, they’d become a part of music history.

Academics studied the eleven minutes from Blade’s opening chords until the stillness. Young musicians for a generation displayed Hownes’ image on their bedroom walls, dreaming about playing their instruments and writing forever songs that would never be forgotten.

Blade and the rest of the band refused to talk about “The Performance” later. Hinged Metal broke up not long after, as if they knew their moment of fame passed.

Only Lydia King offered comments, and it was years removed, in her last interview before she died. “It was always about her, right to the end.” She sat for a moment, an old drummer who once played to full stadiums, who once had been the beating heart within the body of Hinged Metal. A footnote to the greatest concert of all time.

Lydia King rested her face on her arthritic hand, tapped out an unheard rhythm on her cheek.

Finally, she added, “Still, you have to admit. She knew how to work a crowd.”

©2023 by James Van Pelt.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Van Pelt has been selling short fiction to many of the major venues since 1989. Recently he retired from teaching high school English after thirty-seven years in the classroom. He has been a finalist for the Nebula, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, Locus Awards, and Analog and Asimov’s reader’s choice awards. Years and years ago he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He still feels “new.” Fairwood Press recently released a huge, limited-edition, signed and numbered collection of his work, The Best of James Van Pelt.

Monsters of the Drunken Shore

Nic Anstett | 1098 words

Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

You are sitting on the third-floor balcony facing the beach when you see it breach the water. It rises upward with a snort of steam and sparks of flame, lifting its spiked reptilian head from the waves. It’s silhouetted in moonlight and bisected by the surface line. You know it’s too big to be there. You know because water that close to the coast never drops below fifty feet and this thing, breathing heavily in the ocean air and stretching its toothy jaw, must be all head and no body, but there it is.

You remember when you were young, and you came to this beach with your father. He had inherited a condo from his own father, who had bought it when beachfront property was cheap. You had stepped on a crab or maybe a glass bottle that had been discarded and shattered in collisions with other jetsam. Your foot had bled, and you had screamed. Your father tried to save the day by gripping it in his hands, constricting it like a snake and damming the blood from seeping out through your sole, but the damage was done. He spent most of the rest of the trip slowly building back your bravery, graduating you from walking on his feet like a puppet to a doggy paddle in the sandy ledges before the drop off. He sold the condo a year later.

A boy staying on the same street as the old place had drowned two days ago. He had been picked up by a big one and bounced against the sand. Your friend Kate, the one who went to a different high school than you but still called on birthdays and the deaths of grandparents, said she saw his heavy body being pulled from the water, head swaying back and forth and limbs dangling loose like a puppet.

Every year, someone died during this week. Every year, your mother insisted that it was absurd to expect anything but disaster from an entire state’s worth of newly graduated teens invading an infamous beachfront party town for five straight days. When your older sister had gone three years earlier, a girl on the crosswalk had been struck dead by a Subaru driven by a drunk boy. Your upperclassmen friends who had graduated the year before told you about the coked-out boy, or maybe it was a girl, that had fallen from a seventh-story balcony and onto the dunes. The person, boy or girl, lived, but it was counted as that year’s fatality. Part of you feels relieved now that the death for this year has already happened and it did not touch you or your friends.

Now, the thing in the water opens its mouth like it wants to yawn or bark out a scratchy growl, but there’s only silence. The heavy, sticking kind.

You feel a weight lift from Amy, whose head has been resting on your lap as she works off the eight shots of Svedka and the Jägerbomb the boys next door had dared her to swallow. Like you, Amy hadn’t drank before this week. Somehow, the two of you had avoided it all through high school. You had both missed the smuggled beers at graduation parties and the big rager where some guy’s parents had gone to jail and instead shared weekend nights populated with take-out noodles and subtitled Korean dramas. The two of you had promised each other that those days were over. This was, after all, supposed to be a week of infamous firsts. A five-day pilgrimage for sex, drugs, and minigolf.

Your first time was on Tuesday. It hadn’t gone how you had always hoped it would, a shared moment of naked intimacy with the now-unconscious girl resting her head on your lap who had seemingly given up on answering your texts or keeping your plans. Instead, it was with a boy you met at the dirty under twenty-one club on the boardwalk. You had felt lonely and abandoned when he grinded up behind you, but he smelled nice and while you had danced with boys like this before, it felt special and more dangerous when he grew hard against your ass. You walked back to his place together, talking about the restaurant with the good shrimp and the one with the rooster on the logo that had a suggestive name about cocks or peckers. His place was bigger than yours and had more beer and whiskey, but you didn’t care to drink and spent most of the night in a somersault of pain, sweat, and pleasure. He gave you his number, but you had already decided to forget him.

Amy’s first had been with your student council friend Luke. The two had called you to Luke’s hotel room afterwards for the sake of transparency. Amy didn’t like secrets. She knew that you and Luke had kissed at a party in junior year and still believed the lie you shared about a lingering crush. When they were done with their excuses, you looked up from the chipping polish on your toes and told them that it was okay. That school was over, and you were all adults now. Luke went home early the next day. He claimed that he had something to do with his dad, but you know, and Amy does too, that he had a nasty habit of running away. She told you that she should have known better and you hated him for it, but you hate him even more for tossing away what you can’t have. Amy held it together until hole nine of pirate golf on Thursday. To stop her tears, you gifted her a parade of ice cream, tacos, and pet hermit crabs and the boys next door gave her eight shots of Svedka and a Jägerbomb.

Now she rests on your lap, head to the side to spew vomit onto the floor and not back into her nose, missing the impossible thing that has awakened two hundred yards away. It moans a long, low hiccupping cry and you wonder, not with fear but with genuine curiosity, what it eats and who it is calling to. It slips beneath the waves, emanating a blue bioluminescence until it fades from view. You half expect to see a chewed-on humpback or a gutted cruise ship tossed ashore the following morning, but the beach is clear and immaculate until noon when the usual forest of umbrellas sprouts. All it leaves is its hazy memory and a reminder that you are, in fact, still very small.

©2023 by Nic Anstett.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nic Anstett is a writer from Baltimore, MD who loves the bizarre, spectacular, and queer. She is a graduate from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, University of Oregon’s MFA program, and the Tin House Summer Workshop where she was a 2021 Scholar. You can find her published and forthcoming fiction in Witness Magazine, North American Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel and a collection of short stories.

Starpoop

Sandra McDonald | 3244 words

Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

First off, your name. I remember that night clearly. We were tucking you into your big boy bed upstairs after reading from your new book about the joy of going potty. A lavender breeze swirled open the curtains, revealing the constellations and full moon over the fields. Solemnly you announced, “I am poopy from the stars.” A moment later you soiled yourself loudly for emphasis and Papa made a quick escape, because he always says that diapers are Not His Thing.

Papa remembers it differently, however. He says we were all camped out in the living room, snug in our piles of pillows and blankets, binging old science fiction shows on the tiny black and white TV from the shed. We did a lot of binging during the first years of Flu22. Starman and Star Trek and Stargate and Star Family. You were being silly and pulled a diaper on your head and announced, “I am Starpoop!” We giggled for hours and hours, and after you and I fell asleep, Papa registered the Starpoop domain and three variations of it, as well as all the social media accounts too.

Papa’s version is the one we tell everyone because his memory is better. And it’s more fun, isn’t it? My story is bittersweet, because the big boy bed you sleep in was once your dad’s. Even though we sanded down the headboard and painted it blue, you can still see the faint outlines of the dinosaur stickers Daddy plastered there when he was about your age. Isn’t it funny how we teach children about giant extinct predators, but not the ones they will find in classrooms and playgrounds?

You don’t ask about your dad much. I’d like to tell you his stories, but just saying his name makes Papa sad.

Besides, we’re all so busy! Recording, editing, posting, responding. You have a thousand subscribers. You have two thousand followers. Papa mapped out our growth strategy in yellow stickies on the kitchen wall. Before we inherited this farm from his family, he was advertising sales manager at the biggest radio station in Syracuse. The station is syndicated now and controlled by a computer in Los Angeles, but sometimes at night he goes out to the garage and plays old mixtapes and drinks from his stockpile of beer. He looks out at the stars over fields that we do not farm but which grow wild with poppies and herbs. I think he feels old. He turned fifty last month.

Starpoop, just between you and me, you’re the best thing that’s happened to Papa in a long time.

Silly me. That’s happened to both of us, not just him.

Is that a stinky diaper I smell?

• • • •

Starpoop, today you reached 10k followers! It was the reaction video to the Stargate S1E4, with the giant alien bug attached to John Shepherd’s neck, that pushed your numbers so high. I thought it would be too scary for you but you just laughed and laughed. It was one of the easiest videos we’ve ever shot and it went viral within two hours. As Papa says, people need more joy in their lives. If you’d cried in terror, we probably wouldn’t have posted it. Probably.

Most toddler influencers review candy or toys, their parents angling for adorable and cute. In Scotland there’s a kid named Angus with a million subscribers. He destroys his trucks each week. Viewers love his wee rage and lovely brogue. Most reaction channels are adults mocking movies, or doctors raising their eyebrows at quack remedies, or fanboys fawning over their favorite musicians. You are unique in your class of mixing both toddler insights and reactions to science fiction media. Your facial expressions are delightful. Your critical thinking vocabulary grows every day, ranging from “Great!” to “Garbage!” You can deftly deploy a thumbs up and thumbs down.

If only you could use those same skills to tell me when you have to go wee-wee.

Still, I’m thankful. Other kids your age are stuck on Paw Patrol, but you’ve devoured all of classic Star Trek. Last Halloween you wore black sweatpants size 2T and a gold T-shirt. I wore a red dress and thigh-high boots. We were a big hit on Instagram. We got a red heart-shaped emoji from William Shatner’s estate.

Your favorite shows, however, are the least marketable ones. Starman ranks extremely low in search analytics. It’s a quaint 1980s show about an alien from outer space and his half-alien, half-human son as they wander around the United States searching for the kid’s mother. It’s got angst. Sometimes some contrived danger, easily resolved by the last act. The women have big hair and chunky earrings. The Starman acts as if he’s ingested too much space Prozac. We tried to record a few videos of you watching it, but all you do is stare at the story and demand that we loop it again and again and again.

You also love Star Family, starring Yvonne Craig and James Darren flying around the cosmos in a spaceship that looks like an electric tea kettle turned sideways. Yvonne and James have three children, one of which is a robot. Each week the kids get into fresh trouble by falling into wormholes, befriending strange alien creatures, discovering lost space treasures, activating ancient portals or computers better left alone, or destroying (mostly) uninhabited asteroids. All the family wants is to get back home to Earth after falling through a tear in the space-time continuum. You love Star Family! All twelve episodes. It’s so obscure that no one even mentions it online. It’s so old that we only have the VHS tapes, the video barely viewable anymore. Forever is a promise that VHS can’t keep.

• • • •

It’s a good thing we live far from the nearest neighbors and have a long driveway, because we want to protect your privacy and childhood. If we still lived in Owego the neighbors would probably envy our success, and the teachers in daycare would start looking at you with opportunism in their eyes. That segment on national morning TV about your reaction to Star Wars episode one really propelled us upward. Papa timed it perfectly to catch you nodding off and snoring. Social media gold.

Luckily the only people who come down the driveway are the delivery folks with new camera equipment or prescription medicine, the grocery people with our weekly supplies, and the postal service delivering pandemic testing kits. I don’t think you’ve actually ever been to daycare, by the way. I don’t remember any of our neighbors, but I’m sure they’re doing fine out there.

Papa brought me coffee in bed yesterday morning for Mother’s Day. We don’t do big celebrations. We don’t talk about your dad. But we don’t ignore the day completely, like we do some other things.

100,000 subscribers! The platform is sending us a gold plaque.

• • • •

Please stop crying. Papa didn’t mean to yell. It’s just not safe to go to the shed. Your great-grandparents kept years of old paint and cleaning supplies out there, along with rusty nails and rusty scythes and rusty shovels. Trust me, tetanus is no one’s friend.

The only useful thing Papa has ever found out there is the black and white TV. It weighs forty pounds. It has knobs and buttons, and was made to plug into the cigarette lighter of a gasoline-powered vehicle. You’ve never seen a cigarette or a gasoline car. It took Papa a whole weekend to adapt the power supply to our batteries and cobble together an HDMI input that would work with a 1980s VHS player. I guess all those years he spent as a cable TV technician in Utica really paid off.

Yes, I guess we could have used our seventy-inch cinema LCD instead, but the big TV sucks up a lot of power from the solar batteries. Also, it gives me migraines.

Let’s go take a nap in your big boy bed and then you’ll feel better. Yes, I’ll curl up beside you. I like looking at the old outlines of dinosaur stickers. I like imagining that your dad is doing well out there beyond the fields, that he’s not homeless in a park, that his arms have no fresh marks, that his stomach isn’t full of pills. When he brought you to us he looked so gaunt and sad. He had a physical picture of your mother but we lost it in the move. I’m sure I snapped the image on my phone, but when I go through the gallery I don’t see it. I just see you. Your third birthday in our house in Syracuse. Your third birthday in Utica. Your third birthday in Owego. Your third birthday.

Thank you, Papa. I guess I do need a nap, don’t I? And it’s time to take my medicine. Rainbow pills, all for me.

Starpoop, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. I mean obviously not, we’re in upstate New York, but something else seems very wrong. I should say something specifically wrong here in our house because obviously, things have gone very wrong in the world. No one expected Flu22 to be as virulent as it is. No one expected collapsed economies and failed power grids and fractured communities. All of those years I taught media at Ithaca College, I never dreamed the school would shut down and I’d be lecturing over a laptop to blank squares where my students should be.

I haven’t seen the blank squares in a while. I wonder where my laptop is. My laptop. My laptop. My laptop.

Oh, thank you, Starpoop. I needed a sloppy wet kiss just now.

Anyway, the specific local problem I’m worried about today is that I can’t find any pictures of your father. I can see framed photos on the walls of Papa’s parents, round-faced and pleasant Lutherans. Also photos of Papa growing up from chubby toddler to awkward teenager to the handsome man we know today. But the black steamer trunk full of mementos that I’ve been carting around since college is gone. It has leather straps and brass locks and can only be moved by two people. Papa and I searched all the closets. We looked in the attic, the basement, and the garage. We even looked in the shed, though he asked me to stay in the doorway for my own safety. It was pitch black in there except for his flashlight beam. I could smell oils and bleach and something rotting away, the scuffling and shuffling of things being moved, but the trunk wasn’t in there either.

In the good news department, however, you are now #93 in the top 100 toddler channels. Last night Papa uploaded the video of your reaction to classic Star Trek S2E15 and it was the cutest thing in the universe. You demanded your own Tribble. You settled for a loofah sponge and are still lugging it around the house three days later, and judging by the smell I think you must have stuck it down your diaper.

Luckily that video was a hit, because we had gone two whole days without posting and you were trending downwards. Papa has to work very hard to keep up with fresh content and sometimes your reactions are just not what we need them to be. For instance, you had no response at all to ST:TNG S4E5 with Dr. Beverly Crusher saying her most famous line. You just yawned. It was very disappointing. Do you remember that line? I think it’s very important, though it escapes me right now.

Why don’t we sit here and read while we wait for the results of this week’s testing kit. I found this copy of The Odyssey in the closet. It’s about someone who left home and then spent a long time trying to get back again. Here’s your book about dinosaurs going potty. You’re almost three years old and I’m sick of diaper duty. I never had to deal with stinky, yucky, crap-filled diapers before you came to us—

Papa just reminded me that one of the long-term effects of Flu22 is fuzzy memories. He said, “Alora, remember our son?” And he held my hand and we sat on the shaded front porch for a while, listening to the birds and occasional traffic on the distant road. My hand is very soft compared to the calluses on his fingers. All those years installing satellite dishes on shingled roofs in Binghamton really left their marks.

(I think I’m someone else. I don’t think Papa means us harm. I should not go to the shed. I love you more than anything, Starpoop. Is this a simulation? Am I trapped in a dream?)

• • • •

Growth on your channel has stalled. Papa walks around with a deep frown line between his eyes. Our unemployment ran out months ago after the new Flu22 benefits were vetoed by the president. I don’t want you to ever think that we’re monetizing you, or fear that we’re going to establish a trust fund and then squander it. I don’t want you to regret a stolen childhood. But food costs money, honey, and so does that new omnidirectional condenser microphone that Papa says we need to compete with Angus from Scotland.

• • • •

Possibilities, as written in my diary:

I am deranged with grief over my adult son’s accidental fentanyl overdose and created this fantasy world as a release, denying my own reality and memories.

I am trapped on a holodeck, and also an amnesiac.

I am divorced from reality by dementia, Alzheimers, or brain damage from Flu22. Such a tragedy, at my age.

I am dying and living out a last fantasy before all my neurons shut down. Or already dead, and in a weird afterlife purgatory where I have to resolve some intrapersonal fault before I can move on to infinite peace.

I am a prisoner in a space menagerie, like classic Captain Pike. Again, amnesiac.

I am an astronaut who fell through a wormhole like John Creighton and am now being tested by aliens to determine humanity’s inherent worth. Amnesiac, of course.

I am living with at least one alien refugee from a dying world who tampers with my memories but still loves me.

Am I the alien? Am I a ghost?

In Star Family S1E5, mom Yvonne Craig unearths a rainbow-diamond tiara in the space garden she’s been digging. Instantly it propels her down the many pathways of time, all the past and future possibilities, all the ways her life and the lives of loved ones could have unfolded. They didn’t call it the multiverse back then. Very quickly Julie becomes overwhelmed and must be rescued by her husband and children. Later, the space queen who lost it comes to reclaim it. She says the Tiara of Time is too powerful for humans and can cause irrevocable brain damage. Humans can only stick to one temporal path. All others are beyond our reach, relegated to dreams and shadows.

The truth of my life, Starpoop, could be any combination of the above, or maybe none at all. Maybe I can’t conceive of the boundaries of my situation. Maybe all I can do is keep searching for answers, like Captain Pike searching for a way out of his zoo, or a star-born father and his half-alien son searching for the mother gone missing, or the parents and children of Star Family longing for home.

If this is my afterlife purgatory, you’d think we wouldn’t have money woes or have to worry about subscriber counts. You’d imagine we wouldn’t have enormous medical bills and insurance rejections that keep Papa up at night.

If I’m dead, Starpoop, I would like to see your father walk down the road the way I remember him best. Pre-addiction, healthy and good-humored, so smart and kind, such a fan of old science fiction TV that we would watch together on the sofa. I would like to give him a hug. I would like to tell him how much I love him, all wrongs and crimes forgiven. I’d like to hear him say I love you too, Mom.

• • • •

“If there’s nothing wrong with me,” Beverly Crusher said, floating around in my dreams, “then something is wrong with the universe.”

This morning I decided to walk with you to the end of our driveway. The morning was sunny but not too warm, the light shaded by sturdy old trees. Once there, we walked toward town on a route vaguely familiar. One delivery truck passed us by during the next hour, and an army jeep with only one uniformed driver. You and I might have otherwise been the only people left in the world. You skipped in the dust. I tried not to worry. Finally we saw a small gas station, its only two pumps cloaked in garbage bags. The adjacent diner was open, with one rusty blue bicycle parked outside beside a row of solar panels.

Inside the diner, the light was dim and the air smelled like cinnamon. An old woman in jeans and a pink floral shirt was sitting at the counter, her small head bent over a newspaper. The waitress, tall and red-haired, brought me coffee and gave you a dinosaur coloring book with crayons. Her nametag said Flo.

“You look good, Alora,” Flo said. And then to you she said, “Mr. Famous! Getting bigger every day. You look like your dad.”

“I’m Starpoop!” you announced, and in the sunlight through the dusty glass window you strangely seemed taller and older, maybe five or ten or twenty years old. I turned to the pane and saw a glowing rainbow tiara on my head, like a radioactive Homecoming Queen at a cosmic prom. Without warning the entire diner sagged beneath my seat as if disappearing into a sinkhole. My hand went clumsy around the coffee cup. The hot brown liquid sloshed onto the table and it headed for my lap.

“Easy now,” Flo said, quick with a napkin. She steadied the cup. “You’ve been walking a spell, haven’t you?”

“Should I be afraid?” I whispered. I should have been afraid, Starpoop. I should have run screaming from the booth, with you tucked under my arm. But I felt suspended, instead. Caught between possibilities.

“Nothing here can hurt anyone,” Flo promised. “Take a deep breath. Your brain’s just a little unstuck, that’s all.”

I breathed. The sinkhole repaired itself. You drew in your coloring book and ate chicken fingers. Eventually Papa showed up in the truck, worried because we hadn’t told him where we were going, but he sat down and we drank milkshakes and his hand was warm in mine, and a cheerful old song played on the radio, and we were just two middle-aged but youthful lovers and their three-year-old grandson.

Of course then Papa took out his phone and recorded new content. Something different for the channel.

It didn’t go viral. It didn’t trend. Maybe people don’t really want new stuff. Maybe they only want the familiar. The comfortable. The road they know or recognize from other people’s travels. They want to scroll mindlessly through channels and feeds that comfortably resemble or respectfully revisit safer times. Saner times.

Me? Today I prefer the company of books. My copy of The Odyssey has gone missing, however. It got lost under the bed. I ordered a new one for delivery, along with a new book called Unicorns Love To Go Potty.

• • • •

Starpoop, while you were sleeping last night I went to the shed.

I opened the lock with the key that Papa keeps hanging in the pantry and pulled open the rusty sliding door. He was inside the house, editing a video that had incurred a copyright infringement and thus could not generate views or money. Here outside, the fields rustled under a restless breeze and thin bluish clouds slid over the moon. The shawl over my shoulders did nothing against the chill, and inside the shed was even colder.

Paint cans, turpentine, rusty tools. A lampshade yellowed and torn in the beam of my flashlight, cobwebs draped across like lace. A hideously ugly lamp as well. Nothing moved in the shed, nothing rustled or slithered, and nothing smelled any worse than old chemicals and faded bleach. I moved a stool to get to a pile of boxes, and moved the boxes to reach an old metal filing cabinet full of old newspapers. Beside it, in the very deepest corner and carefully covered by a patchwork quilt of faded colors, was a black steamer trunk. The locks were long broken, and the lid lifted easily with a loud creak.

Inside were the pictures and items I’d been searching for. The wedding day portrait of my parents Bill and Carol, both so young, outside a church in Owego. My own wedding veil, carefully folded in a plastic bag on top of my college yearbook from Syracuse. A baby’s birth certificate from a hospital in Binghamton. An envelope of photos of a woman intubated in a hospital bed, her face swollen beyond recognition, surrounded by hospital equipment.

At the bottom of the envelope was a note folded carefully into quarters. The paper itself, white and crisp. In my own handwriting, in vibrant ink, was a list of possible solutions to my current predicament: holodeck, coma, prisoner, alien. It matched the same list I’d written in my diary upstairs. On this list, however, number three was circled and underlined.

“Trust Papa,” I’d added to the bottom. “He loves you very much.”

The sinkhole from the diner began to appear beneath me again, the foundation of the world falling away into darkness and void. If I fell in, I’d never be able to climb out. It was very scary, Starpoop. It was scary in a way you can’t conceive of yet, and I hope you never do. But don’t worry, I didn’t fall. Instead I heard Papa say, “Alora,” and the beam of his kerosene lantern slanted across the shed above my head.

I jerked around with my flashlight aimed at his face. His eyes were tired, his frown wide and pinched. My heart beat unsteadily. We stared at each other in silence until I asked, “Did I die?”

“Do you feel dead?” He came in and sat on the stool, which creaked ominously under his weight. “You found your list.”

“When did I write this?” I asked.

“Two months ago.”

I sat down on the dusty floor of the shed and pressed my cheek against the metal filing cabinet. Papa drank from the bottle of beer he’d brought on his journey from the house. I wiggled my fingers and he handed it over.

He said, “I love you, Alora. Even with a crazy mixed-up brain. And you love me, too.”

“But you shouldn’t have to—”

“Shouldn’t isn’t a word I want to hear,” he said. “We’re in this together. You have clear days and confused days. Long term side-effects of Flu22. You’re still a good grandma. You still find joy in little things. Some day there might be a cure. So what else do we do but keep going?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to be confused.”

“I know.” He came down to the floor to sit with me and tipped his forehead to mine. “I know.”

I decided I would never leave the shed again. Instead, I would live there with my memories, Starpoop, and never again have to see the pitying eyes of a waitress, never again watch another episode of anything containing holograms, aliens, or multiverses. But then I wouldn’t be able to tuck you into bed, Starpoop. I would miss so many moments of you growing up, and those are moments that can’t be recovered. I wouldn’t get to spend my allotted days with Papa, who has already lost so much, too. Somewhere out there is your father, maybe, and if he ever does return, I want to be standing on the porch and not hiding in the shadows.

Still, it took a long time before I could fold the note up, put it back to be found later, and cover the trunk again. Later, when we walked back to the house where you were sleeping, a shooting star lit up the western sky in a silent blazing trail. I’ve never seen something so beautiful, Starpoop. Or maybe I have. Who can say?

• • • •

Thank you, baby! You did such a good job! I’m proud of you. Such a big boy. Now we say bye bye poop and flush the toilet. Now we wash our hands. Now we fist bump. Look, Papa. Guess who used the potty all by himself.

Now sit here, baby boy. Papa says we need to rebrand. Science fiction nostalgia is a limited market, and you have so much potential. Tomorrow we’re launching another channel for you, something we can continue to build and expand, and it’s going to offer more fun and excitement, less paranoia and second-guessing of reality. Princesses and witches, magicians and pirates, decades of content to watch and react to, a brand new world. A dazzling place, full of wonders.

We will call you Mickeypants.

(In the trunk in the shed, tucked under my wedding veil, was a rainbow-diamond tiara. Broken.)

©2023 by Sandra McDonald.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sandra McDonald’s many careers include high school teacher, college professor, corporate trainer, foster mom, military officer, and Hollywood assistant at CBS Television and Dreamworks. Amid all that she is the published author of more than one hundred short stories in Lightspeed and other magazines and anthologies, as well as several novels for adults and young adults. Her works has been honored with a Lambda Literary Award, Booklist Editor’s Choice, ALA Over the Rainbow Award, Rainbow Award, and Otherwise (James A. Tiptree) Honor List mentions. She currently resides in a very old house in Florida with a menagerie of felines, a nervous Chihuahua, and a purported ghost from Key West named Ruth.

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

The Real Worlds

Lauren Bajek | 1063 words

Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

The possible worlds hung and spun in five-dimensional space like ever-twisting jewels of sand-brown and burgundy, frost and ocean.

Mother, Father, and Amelia made their camp on a relatively flat piece of spacetime, stretched between three clusters of possible worlds. Mother and Father were careful campers. They’d drilled Amelia on the dangers of disturbing the possible worlds, so she watched them float and sway from the corner of her eye, making sure that her soft footsteps didn’t jostle them.

Everyone was exhausted. They had left their reality only yesterday, but that yesterday was long long ago; the space between possibilities was an eternal today.

It was Amelia’s job to assemble the little kerosene stove and unpack the cans of beans and vegetables and the double-wrapped crackers. Behind her, her parents bickered through the assembly of the tent. Who put the poles away in the wrong bag, and why can’t you just hold that side down for one goddamn second while I get this stake set, and well I’m not the one who set off an entire reality’s descent into militia rule, so maybe you should give it a fucking rest.

They always fought like this, between realities, and they never asked Amelia if she was sad about leaving her friends behind. Or her dog. Glumly, she put her hand on the spacetime around the stove and told it to be a ring of stones. Safety first.

Father was a research anarchist, studying the most effective way to transition hierarchal societies into equitable anti-hierarchical ones. It involved a lot of trial and error. Amelia was sick of his trial and error.

She wrapped her arms around herself. It was bad enough when Father’s sociological tinkering created stable socialist-capitalist hybrid economies. At least then they gave her a couple weeks to say goodbye to her friends, before they all packed up their camping backpacks and took the big sideways step out of that world and into the space between realities.

At least then, when Father cataloged his failures (leaving Mother’s and Amelia’s failures unspoken), he smiled.

She told spacetime to make a grove of trees around her. They were small and scrubby; she hadn’t really got the hang of controlling reality yet. It would be better once Father got tenure, she reminded herself. Then they could go back to their own reality, which Amelia could barely remember, except that nobody ever carried machine guns around. Father just needed to get a really good publication. He just needed a reality to finally go right.

This last reality had gone bad. Really bad. Her friends probably thought she was dead. Her friends were probably dead. She felt weirdly numb. She tried to feel like it didn’t matter, whatever’d happened to them; she’d moved on from that reality and she’d never go back. But it did matter.

Father’s voice broke through the little protection of the trees: “Consequences aren’t my purview, Meera, how many times do I have to tell you that!”

Ugh. This was the worst of their fights. Amelia curled up on her side and stroked the spacetime. Slowly, it began to hump up under her fingers, warm, soft—tufted—and then head and wagging tail lifted free, and the fabric of spacetime sucked in to fur the belly, four little paws pulled free, and a puppy galumphed over to Amelia to cover her in kisses.

She giggled and shushed it; as bad as it was when her parents fought, it was even worse when they remembered mid-fight that she existed. She’d rather be forgotten than be a symbol of bad parenting and bad life choices. Anyway, they’d already gotten to You Knew Who I Was When You Married Me, so it would be over soon. And the puppy looked like Sir Slobberton had, when they first got him.

It was quiet behind her now. She looked out over the clustered worlds, drifting on their possibility-tethers, and pretended the next reality would be better. She’d be older, there, and stronger, and she’d finally know how to make friends. Under her fingers, the dog grew up. Its fur coarsened.

“Amelia?” That was Mother. Then Father: “Amelia, how many times have we told you, you need to get dinner started!”

Amelia scrambled up and toward the waiting stove. The scrubby trees melted out of her way as soon as she stopped wanting them, as spacetime usually did. She didn’t check on the dog; it was made of raw spacetime, too. Of course it would dissolve, too.

But it didn’t.

As Amelia lit the kerosene stove, and yanked the pull-tabs on the cans of beans and tomato paste and corn, the dog galloped along the edges of their spacetime plateau, tongue and tail wagging. It was cute, Amelia thought. And it was so rare that they met anyone else, here on the long trek between realities; the dog’s uncomplicated friendliness was a relief.

She’d let it live a little longer, before unmaking it. It deserved to live.

Then one particularly exuberant wag of its tail collided against a possible world, the closest one in its cluster—

And Mother lurched forward, shouting, “Dog, DOWN!”—

And the dog slumped back into spacetime, gone forever—

And it seemed possible that the world would settle back into its orbit—

But it didn’t, it collided with its infinite neighbors hard, and shattered, all its glittering possibility swept up into a short-lived dervish in the five-dimensional winds. Rust and diamond, cobalt and gold, all gone. All become wreckage, thrown against its neighbor-realities, which rocked in the shock-wave.

Rocked, and broke.

In horrible slow-motion, an expanding ring of worlds broke upon one another. A ripple of silent, beautiful violence. A world shattered in strawberry and starshine colors. A world shattered in midnight and whisper colors. A world, a world, a world, a world, gone, gone, gone, gone.

Not all of them shattered. Not even half. But Amelia quickly lost count. Spray after spray of shattered possibilities erupting up and howling away.

She clutched at Mother’s hand. “We’ll step outside of it, right? That’s what we do, when we make mistakes. And I’ll be careful next time.”

Father blew his lips out. “Sorry, Millie-Pie. Here between realities, we just have to live with our mistakes.”

Amelia chewed on her knuckles. “So it’s different than being in the worlds?”

“No,” Mother said, “it’s the same.”

©2023 by Lauren Bajek.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lauren Bajek is a genrequeer writer, parent, and literary agent from the American Midwest. Her fiction has appeared in Baffling Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Postmodern Culture.

Muna in Barish

Isha Karki | 7971 words

Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats. The main door of the bookshop is propped open, the sun shining after what feels like a year of sodden clouds and sludged streets—she can’t wait to feel its warmth on her skin. She looks towards the counter. Sometimes, Arethor is too engrossed in arranging the display there, dusting off old tomes, oiling the wood, to pay her any mind.

She takes the first step, trying not to crumple the letters in her stiff hands.

Muna is grateful for her room—her own little room!—in the bookshop’s basement. It’s been eleven months and two weeks since Arethor took her in. When Muna first arrived to the city of Barish, slipping on cobblestones slicked with rain, every shelter she’d knocked on, every apprenticeship she’d begged for had turned her away. The offer of a place in Arethor’s shop, with its crackling fire, wool blankets, and stacks of books was a miracle, especially since Muna had travelled to Barish to pursue her dream of becoming a word-weaver. No doubt your horns are god-touched, her sister, Kusum, would say to that, rolling her eyes. But it was a miracle. Inside Arethor’s shop, Muna discovered an entire shelf dedicated to the Halfborn series—written by her word-weaving idol, Lenore Phoenix, these were the same books that made Muna feel, for the first time, that there was space in the world for stories like hers. Arethor lets her borrow the Lenore Phoenix books whenever she wants. Some of the copies are such a familiar sight by her bedside that they feel like her own. She’s never owned anything as beautiful as these gilt-edged editions. How can she be anything but grateful?

Except—the only way out of her room is through the storeroom and the shopfront, and the shop is never not occupied by Arethor.

The kidskin boots she wears muffle her steps; a winding bookcase running the length of the shop shields her from the counter. She’s at the foyer, its wooden floor gleaming from her efforts with the polish this morning. Its eye-watering scent clings to her fingernails and her shoulders ache from it still. But Muna doesn’t resent the labour: she loves the foyer’s circle of space, its twin staircases leading up to a balcony and mezzanine, a stained-glass window at the back. Today, sunlight splinters a golden yellow and sunset orange through it. She loves everything about it—apart from how exposed it is to the scrutiny of anyone standing at the balcony.

“There you are,” Arethor’s voice booms from above. Muna turns to watch him close a book. “Shall we break for food?”

Her palms are moistening the letters. “I have an errand to run. Please, do eat without me.”

“Ah, but I got us deerheart from Mimi’s tavern. It’s sizzling on the hot plate.”

Muna tries to hide the grimace. When they were seven and six, Muna and Kusum stole a pot of Ma’s ghiu and bartered it for venison from the travelling markets, less than a mouthful each but famously rubbed with the heat of peppercorns and salt harvested from the Damson Sea. They picked the morsels off the fire and plopped it into their mouth before it had even had a chance to cook clean through. They lasted only two seconds before the sudden churn in their stomach was too much and the meat came surging up, back to the ground, back to their horned ancestors. That day, they learned how their bodies contained knowledge from yore, of who they were, where they came from, understanding finally what Ma meant when she said, Consume not what gave you life.

Arethor eats deerheart once a week. Muna politely declines it every time. He insists on offering it to her though she has mentioned more than once that there are certain kinds of meat that she can’t eat. “Hogwash,” he’d said, “we just need to build your constitution”, and told her to sit down and get a plate. She wishes he would just stop. She looks at his smiling face and feels guilt wash over her. He’s only being kind. He knows you can’t afford more than a crust of bread otherwise.

But there’s another voice, what she thinks of as her Lenore Phoenix voice, that points out, When he’s not offering you deer, he’s trying to shove elk or moose or every other horned creature down your throat. That isn’t kindness, is it?

“That’s very generous, but I must run to make the postal service.”

“Writing home again?” Before she can respond, Arethor says, “Really Muna, you must learn to spread your wings.”

Despite the heat from the glass warming her skin, Muna feels a chill at those words. But Arethor’s eyes are crinkled in a smile, not a hint of cruelty on his face. Muna remembers her first glimpse of this man, before he decided to accept a Nehiri apprentice like her. “I didn’t think your kind read,” he had said with curiosity and interest, and she’d ignored the echo of all the voices that had followed her to his door: Nehiris are dirty and wild, Nehiris are only good for working the earth, Nehiris are animals. It was the warmth in Arethor’s gaze, she reminds herself now, that gave her the strength to carry on back then.

Lenore Phoenix’s voice is back: But why does he insist on mentioning wings? There are legends about the Nehiri ancestors, how they soared the skies on resplendent wings before their wings were violently ripped away. Arethor must be unaware of the loss that each Nehiri descendant carries, unaware of the weight of his words. Muna cannot imagine otherwise.

“Well, I hope you have only good words to pen about your master.” There is light humour in his voice, familiar and comforting. “Don’t loiter. You need to speak to the carpenters about the chairs for the Lenore Phoenix event.”

Arethor returns to his book, and Muna knows she’s dismissed. And the order to go to the carpenters means her suggestion about using rugs and cushions on the shopfloor instead of chairs, to create a more intimate and cosy setting for the upcoming event, has also been dismissed. She shouldn’t have voiced the idea: she knows city folk consider the hearth beneath them, that they don’t revere the earth in the same way as Nehiris. Arethor knows best, of course—but Muna wishes that for once he’d respond to her suggestions, acknowledge the effort she put into her ideas, instead of just ordering her to do the opposite without ever discussing them.

Despite this disappointment, when Muna finally steps through the threshold of the shop and the warmth of the sun hits her, she feels her shoulders loosen. She raises her face to the light and breathes in.

• • • •

Muna’s thin robes—rather optimistic for a Barish spring—flap around her legs. The winding alleyways, the grimed windows, the smoke rising from cookhouses all look new in daylight. Muna feels her spirits lifting—until she catches sight of the miller’s apprentice spitting on the floor, his eyes fixed on her head.

Nehiris live under open sky, not cooped up, hunched over papers. Ma and Kusum would gasp if Muna told them her skin has drunk no sunlight for months. Worse, if they knew that even at the sight of the sun, Muna doesn’t rush out, though her body thirsts for heat, remembers too keenly a life spent in the fields, carrying wood, harvesting paddy fields, herding goats.

The truth is that in sunlight Muna becomes too visible, the umber of her skin, the horns curving from her head, stark markers of difference. That first desperate night in Barish, sneaking in and bedding down in a livestock pen, she had desperately thought of ways to hide these markers. Could she cloak her skin and face? Wrap cloth around her horns? That bone-deep shame of entertaining those thoughts—Muna never wants to feel that again. Horns are symbols of a Nehiri’s soul: in their shape and size, in the grooves and twists of patterns lies the story of their people, the cadence of legends, births, deaths, loves. Walk proud, Kusum wrote when Muna let unease leak into her letters. But without any family or friends in the city, it’s not easy to follow her sister’s advice. Much easier to stay hidden in her dark room with a lantern, paper, and pen, much easier to stay in the made-up worlds inside her mind and work on weaving her story.

Muna’s steps are quick, aware that they are on borrowed time, but she pauses at the marble steps of Barish’s Royal Library. Once the palace of the old Throken royals, it is polished with gold, extravagant and opulent from the outside. But Muna could be standing in front of a hovel, and if it was the Royal Library, she’d still look upon it with awe, hope burning tight in her chest.

Inside is her past.

A stream of robed scholars exit from the carved doors. Muna tries to time her errands for this lunchtime rush when, hidden among the crowds, she can peek into the cavernous hall with its speckled marble counters. Beyond the archway lie books of every language and age, including the only inscribed copy of the Nehiri legends. It was what Muna dreamed of holding in her hands when she set off for Barish all those months ago. She straightens—perhaps she can inch in a little more—and catches sight of the guards, their cold blank stares on her. She retreats, cheeks hot.

“Pray, you see me at these doors every day.” The sound of a voice near her, quiet and brittle, makes Muna look up.

“I cannot permit you to enter without proof of membership.” The guard’s voice has no inflection. He stares ahead as if the speaker standing in front of him doesn’t exist.

“Every single day.” The last word Muna hears is a sigh, “Please.”

But the guard moves away from the speaker, towards two robed Barishis approaching the entrance, who are of course waved in without showing any tokens of membership. Muna lets out a sound of disgust, forgetting that she is not in fact invisible. The speaker glances at her sharply. Beneath a cloud of black hair, Muna sees delicate ears tapered to a point. A Senai. Notorious for keen hearing. Not many of their kind are in Barish, certainly not who you’d expect at the Library, wearing magenta robes, arms spilling with scrolls, fingers stained with ink, looking mighty cross. But perhaps in the same way you wouldn’t expect an uncultured Nehiri sniffing about here either.

There’s a wet glimmer in the Senai’s eyes. Muna is about to slink away when an exodus of students makes the Senai fumble her hold on the scrolls and they tumble to the ground. Loose papers fly towards Muna, and she scrambles to catch them. She hesitates when she’s gathered them up. In that hesitation, she feels the absence of her old self. The old Muna would’ve made a joke or a cutting remark about the guard to cheer up the Senai. Old Muna would’ve known what comfort to offer.

She walks towards the Senai, a sweet buttery scent drifting around her. The Senai’s eyes flick to her horn and she returns Muna’s tentative smile. “Thank you.”

Muna passes the papers, and as she does so, catches sight of book the Senai is holding. “Lenore Phoenix!”

The Senai looks perturbed at Muna’s outburst. Her eyes search Muna’s face, then they shutter. “Do you know her work?”

“Do I know her work!” Muna blurts. “I’m a complete devotee. The way she writes about Nuala’s experiences in a world that doesn’t claim her, the beautiful way she writes about being othered . . .” Muna stops, face hot. “Have you . . . read the Halfborn series?”

“Yes.” The answer is clipped.

“It’s not often I meet someone carrying Lenore Phoenix, especially here. You know how these literati think her work frivolous and empty.”

“Don’t I just.” The Senai is smiling again. “No need to apologise. It’s been a while since I’ve had anyone to converse with about books. I’m a bit rusty.”

“Well, if you’d like a reading partner, I work at Arethor’s Arcadia,” Muna says, heart pounding for some reason, “Students come for a hot drink and some peace.”

“That sounds lovely.” There’s a distracted look in the girl’s eyes. “What did you say your name was?”

“I’m Muna.”

The Senai’s eyes dart to her horns, her hands, an expression on her face that Muna can’t quite grasp.

“We’re actually organising an event with Lenore Phoenix in a few weeks, you should come. I’ve hardly being able to contain my excitement. I can’t believe I’ll finally be able to meet her!”

“Oh, I’m not sure—”

“No need to decide now. Here, take this flier, I’m supposed to be handing them out but I’m not very good at making people take things from my hands.” She remembers her own letters then, waiting to be posted. Hurriedly, she bids the Senai farewell, only half noticing the girl’s thoughtful look. Before she leaves, Muna says, “I’m sorry about that dolt guard.”

The Senai’s ears twitch. “I have a deadline today, so of course I forgot my pass.”

“You’re welcome at the bookshop. I promise an absence of dickish louts.”

The Senai laughs, and Muna feels warmth spread inside her. “Perhaps I will. A pleasure to meet you. I’m Karabel.”

Running to the postal hall, Muna wonders if Karabel glimpsed the envelope she’d been clutching—the one with Lenore Phoenix’s name scrawled on it in large letters.

• • • •

. . . Renuka chews slowly. She has a little honey left in her pack—later, when her stomach starts aching, she will slather it on her last roti. After that . . . she will find more food. She will have to. She prepared these portions of food carefully for her journey, but she couldn’t have predicted the days she spent waiting, no cart willing to carry her. She couldn’t have predicted another passenger’s ailing baby, the broken wheels, or the unexpected wave of monsoon rain which delayed their journey at every turn when she did manage to hitch a ride. She closes the parcel of leaves and places it inside her bundle.

The other travellers are gathered around the fire. Its smoke burns her eyes. She knows they wouldn’t welcome her presence in that circle. She’s seen them looking at her bhoto and sari, at the brown flesh between. At her horns. No one speaks to her.

Just as well, words feel like they would blister her throat.

Sometimes, she thinks she can hear Shristi’s laugh in the wind. She looks for signs in the earth, in the footsteps of animals, desperate to find traces of her dead sister, but Shristi is nowhere . . .

Dear Muna, thank you for letting me read this new addition to your work. The details you’ve included really bring the scene to life. Word-weavers often underestimate the power of the quiet scene, and I think you’ve achieved it wonderfully here. Having said that, the sections of Renuka’s journey to the Royal Archives are becoming quite long. I wonder whether you could perhaps consider adding another layer to them. The Nehiris are oral storytellers, right? In this scene, there is a campfire that Renuka is excluded from, but it might evoke memories of other fires around which her family shared Nehiri stories and legends? You introduce the Nehiri legends much later in your novel, but this would be a good place to thread in their importance.

Another suggestion—perhaps a wild one!—Shristi is with Renuka throughout the journey, in her thoughts, memory, dreams, but what if you were to literally draw out her presence on the page, make her appear as a character in her own right? Might tie into our earlier discussions of adding in a second character?

Once again, reading your work, watching you build your world and these characters little by little, truly helps me see my own ideas with fresh eyes and inspires me to put pen to paper. I enclose a few paragraphs of a character study I’m working on for something new, it’s not a book or a series yet, but maybe it can be. It’s inspired by a recurrent dream I am plagued with—where I am standing and looking in the mirror, but there is no reflection. I am invisible, unseen by any.

It’s strange to think about a character other than Nuala—she and the Halfborn world have been with me so long, my whole life it seems sometimes, but talking to you and hearing about your hopes and dreams for your writing gives me courage to do so.

Thank you,

Your Friend.

Muna flushes with pleasure as she reads the last lines. She hugs the letter to her chest, feeling warm and giggly.

She looks at it again and her eyes track back to the bit about Shrishti. Lenore Phoenix is a genius. Shristi to appear in her story as a ghost, of course! For so long, Muna has been stuck on the twin that her main character, Renuka, mourns. She’d felt that the story was missing Shristi’s voice but hadn’t quite known how to incorporate it. She’s looking forward to trying out Lenore Phoenix’s suggestion.

Muna had almost written a Nehiri myth into this last scene, and it seems Lenore Phoenix sensed that absence—and once again Muna marvels at her ability and willingness to read Muna’s work with such care and empathy. Muna knows why she’s delaying writing the myths into her story. She’s waiting for access to Barish’s Royal Library. She wants to read the only written version that exists, said to contain even the older legends that have been lost to Nehiris through time. It feels essential if she is to write Renuka’s story properly, if she is to do justice to the Nehiri myths as she hopes to do with this work. But she doesn’t want to mention her problem or the Royal Library lest Lenore Phoenix think she’s begging for charity.

Muna puts the letter down. Her hands reach for the coin purse under her bed. The weight of it feels good, though it’s only coppers and iron. Her wages go towards this room, the lanterns and candles, the privy and stove out back, paper and ink. She scrimps food money to add a coin to this when she can. If Ma knew all she ate was stale bread and thin onion soup, she’d be appalled. Muna makes sure to describe the smells of the taverns and bakeries in her letters home; if she doesn’t mention she never eats any of the stews or pies, it’s not exactly a lie.

The old Muna, arriving after weeks of a gruelling river crossing, marched straight to the Writers Guild and asked to sign up. She reasoned she could pay her membership fee in instalments. She’d get a job—she’d spent her life tending livestock, she was no stranger to mucking—she’d save up and then apply to be a word-weaver’s apprentice.

How brave old Muna had been, how naïve. She’d even written to her idol, Lenore Phoenix, brazenly asking for advice. She’s thankful to her past self for that unthinking brave act. She could never do it now—and she can’t imagine how dark her life would be without these exchanges with Lenore Phoenix. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps her word-weaving dreams alive. Muna puts down the purse. She’s a long way from saving up enough coin for the Writers Guild—and only members are allowed to apprentice. Only members can access the Library. Only members can search for the Nehiri texts. Muna feels hot and sick.

But she has this. She picks up the letter, breathes in its buttery scent. She runs her fingers over Lenore Phoenix’s advice and finds new ideas swirling in her mind once again. Already, Shristi’s sarcastic ghostly commentary is coming to Muna, a flash of her anger. The sisters’ relationship needs to have tension, and guilt, yes. Muna thinks of leaving her own home, sending not a single coin back—

A knock interrupts her. “Muna dear? I know it’s your break, but it’s urgent.”

Muna hurries to tuck the letter into the vellum sleeve behind her bed. This, she keeps for herself. She won’t expose it to Arethor’s scrutiny or disapproval. She’s long stopped showing him her writing. She had been honest and upfront about her aspirations and assumed they were what convinced Arethor to take her on as bookshop assistant. But after starting the job, every time she brought up word-weaving or the Guild, Arethor sidestepped the issue citing pressing bookshop matters: a huge order coming from across the sea, then a shopfloor redesign, then the annual audit . . . Arethor finally asked her to stay late one evening.

“Oh honey.” His eyes were sad. “You can learn to word-weave, but I don’t know how to say this. Our readers aren’t interested in country folk or Nehiris. Sure, they add colour as background cast when heroes go adventuring, but as main characters? Take it from me dear, I’ve been in the business close to twenty years, and the struggle to sell books that are different is crushing.”

“But perhaps there is some change now? The Halfborn series is incredibly popular and the main character—”

“Tell me you’re not comparing yourself to Lenore Phoenix?”

“What? No—”

“We must learn humility, anything less is unappetising. And I only say this as someone who cares about your wellbeing.”

That had been that. No more talk of the Guild unless it was to run errands there, to discuss publications, or contact word-weavers for events and book signings. One of the Guild workers, who’d watched Muna march in that first day, remembered her—or more likely her horns—and whenever he saw her, he quipped, “Ready to bestow your membership upon us, your highness?” The old Muna would rise, ready to lock horns. But she’d seen his peeling boots, the cheap substance in his hair. Poverty did different things to different people: he was a possibility Muna hoped to never become.

“Muna.” Arethor never seems angry, but Muna has learned to discern the subtle inflections in his voice. Her feet ache as she stands. Her breaks aren’t long but much needed to sit a moment, knead her feet, sip tea to soothe frigid bones.

The knocking is insistent, and in his voice she can feel his growing irritation that she’s taking so long. Barish has laws about workers, wages, labour conditions. Muna knows breaks are her right. Muna also knows her rights aren’t always hers. What could he do if you didn’t live in the basement of his shop?

That question is quashed by another: What would you do if you didn’t live in the basement of his shop?

Those long weeks Muna fought with Ma and Baba and left Kusum behind, that she was turned away from inns and charitable houses, neither wealthy nor poor enough, that she went begging for jobs and was confronted with the reality of life in Barish, the stares and shoves and snide comments—Muna had used up all her bravery. There is none to spare now.

• • • •

The rest of the week, Muna spends her breaks at the carpenters, at Mimi’s, outside the Library giving out flyers. Exhaustion settles in. She climbs into bed, shoulders knotted, jaws throbbing from gritting her teeth—when the students jeer at her, when another shadow tails her home. When she told Arethor she didn’t want to go out after the lanterns went out, he teased, “Afraid of ghosts, are we? Barish is the safest city, mighty safer than your Nehiri wilds I’d wager.”

There’s no time to think of Renuka or Shristi. If she forces herself to pick up a pen, sit for an hour, half an hour, just five minutes, no words come. Instead, she rereads Lenore Phoenix’s letter, wonders why the word-weaver didn’t enclose the character study she mentioned. What an honour it would’ve been to read something raw and unseen from such an accomplished word-weaver like her. Could Muna ask after it in her next letter? What if Lenore Phoenix decided Muna’s opinion wasn’t worth much after all?

What keeps her moving each day is the prospect of meeting her mentor soon—even if Lenore Phoenix hasn’t mentioned the event once in her letters. The image of their clasped hands, the thought of what she’ll say, lull Muna to sleep.

She dreams of campfires and shadowy figures holding court over an eager audience. She strains to catch the tale being told but hears not a word.

• • • •

Muna is returning from a laborious discussion with the carpenters—they’d made another error on the throne for Lenore Phoenix, its design lifted straight out of the Halfborn series—when she spots Karabel wearing ochre robes, a luminous contrast against her dark skin, talking to Arethor.

“. . . a good turnout. We are hoping she can do signings.”

Muna slips behind the counter, her voice filled with enthusiasm. “You came!”

“You sold the place so well, I couldn’t resist.” Karabel has deep dimples when she smiles.

“I’ve taught my protégé well,” Arethor says and ruffles her hair. His hand knocks against Muna’s horn—she stiffens—but he doesn’t notice. “Let us know if you’d like tea. Mimi’s boy comes around with refreshments and treats every so often.”

“Sounds delightful.” Karabel’s smile doesn’t waver. “It’s lovely to see you two so close. From my understanding, Nehiri don’t let anyone touch their horns; to do so without permission is a grave offence.”

Arethor frowns, and his drumming fingers still. Muna’s face pricks with heat. From the corner of her eyes, she glimpses a hardness to his mouth. “How observant of you. I took in young Muna when no one else would. We are family here.”

Muna lowers her gaze even as Arethor leaves. It’s only when Karabel places her hand on the counter next to hers that she glances up. “I apologise if I spoke out of turn. You looked . . . unhappy.”

“No,” Muna murmurs, “Thank you. I don’t know how to say—only my sister and Ma—if they knew.” She swallows. “I thought Arethor wasn’t aware . . .”

“You don’t have to explain. I know how it is to seek out the best in someone’s intentions; thinking otherwise makes living hard indeed. Especially when it concerns those we deem to be family.”

When Arethor first called her family, Muna thought her chest would burst with pride. But in the past few months, every time Arethor uses the term, Muna feels—subdued. She hasn’t dwelled on this before, but as Karabel speaks, she thinks of Arethor asking her to do tiresome unpleasant things, beyond her agreed working hours, saying, “I knew I could rely on you.” Muna is proud of her ability to muck in, to keep going without sleep or food or complaints. Yet, the unease contained in these memories, the prickly feeling of Arethor touching her horns, stick to her mind.

Karabel says with gentleness, “Even as a stranger, I could read your body language perfectly well.”

Muna looks up and nods slowly. She knows she needs time to let this all sink in.

• • • •

That night when Muna, eyes drooping, abandons a stocking project midway and heads to bed, she returns to her earlier conversations with Karabel. To the discussion they had about the new bestseller, hailed as the voice of their generation.

“The novel, its perspective, seem a bit limited,” Karabel said.

“Because it’s only set in Barish?”

“Hm, not quite. It’s set in this city, but did you see anything of your own life in it?”

Muna had inhaled the book, enjoying its humour, the boisterous camaraderie in its pages, but it was true she’d not felt the same closeness she had to Nuala. Rainer, the protagonist, mingled only with wealthy students like himself. His world was inside university walls. The jealousies and joys, romance and subterfuge contained within had no resemblance to Muna’s every day.

“So it’s interesting that it’s claimed to be the voice of this generation—it seems that ‘this generation’ doesn’t include lives like yours and mine.” Karabel’s smile had been wry.

When Arethor had bustled around to offer elk pie to Muna, rather loudly and showily she thought, Karabel had raised her eyebrows. After, Muna had confessed that she rarely ate meat though it made a large part of a Nehiri diet back home—partly because the only kind freely offered to her here was what Arethor offered—and immediately Karabel said she would take Muna to a soup kitchen on the other side of the city that sold tasty pies, stews, and soups for very little. It was the first time in Barish, Muna realised, that she had received such a thoughtful response, the first time she didn’t have to explain herself or justify the relationship between Nehiris and horned meat, their customs and beliefs.

Muna relishes her conversations with Karabel, how comfortable they are, how they lead her to consider things from another angle, even if it happens to be knotty and difficult. It’s the same kind of feeling she gets with Lenore Phoenix’s letters. How starved Muna has been of sympathetic conversationalists! To speak with someone who understands intimately the things you’ve only felt stirrings of, that was the like-minded friendships Muna hoped she would find in Barish. She thinks of Renuka after many days. That’s what she, and Renuka, are missing: companionship, empathy.

She drifts to sleep, shoulders loosened, the possibility of a budding friendship held close.

• • • •

A few days before the event, Muna is spooning onion soup into her mouth, rereading the third book of the Halfborn series. She’s at the scene where Nuala is confronting the beloved friend who betrayed her—when Muna looks up from the page, she finds Arethor standing in her room. He hadn’t knocked. She hadn’t heard him enter. She puts the spoon down, swallowing hard. Her room has never been large, but she is acutely aware of the squashed space.

There’s a peculiar expression on his face.

“That time,” He hesitates and makes as if to lean forward. Muna’s stomach sinks but he remains where he is. “What that Senai said about your horns.”

She doesn’t like the inflection when he says that Senai. The old Muna is in there somewhere, ready to barrel forth. Muna is surprised by how vividly she feels her in this moment.

“I know the custom, but I didn’t once imagine you felt that way. I mulled over it for days. I thought to myself if Muna minded, why wouldn’t she say something?”

“You knew?”

“Everyone knows about Nehiri horns.”

Then why did you touch mine? Old Muna is screaming.

Arethor clears his throat after too many beats of silence. “I apologise if you felt offence.”

He is looking at her, waiting. All she can do is nod. Then feeling that she has been too cold, she says, “They shouldn’t be touched without permission. Whatever the intention.”

“Does everyone need permission?” There is a strain of hurt in his words. Muna is about to tell him that Ma and Kusum are exceptions when he adds, “Even me?”

Something inside her freezes. And she realises the question is not quite what she thought it was.

“I just . . .” Arethor steps forward. Her body tenses. But he shakes his head and leaves. Muna lets out a shuddering breath. She is clutching the book too hard. Her eyes are hot and she wonders why, even with his apology, she feels worse than ever.

• • • •

Muna is polishing and buffing every nook and cranny of the bookshop till it shines for Lenore Phoenix.

“What is it?” she asks when Karabel’s robes, a blushing shade of rose, peek into her line of vision. Having Karabel around the shop these past weeks has been a boon, especially as she’s tried her best to keep a distance from Arethor. Karabel has been there to whisk her away for a walk and fresh air on Muna’s breaks, to the soup kitchen for supper after closing time—even during work hours, Karabel spreads out her rolls of paper on one of the round tables tucked away in the shop, always nearby to chat as Muna shelves and unshelves books, dusts old stock, and audits at the counter. Muna hadn’t said anything directly to Karabel about Arethor again, but she gets the sense that Karabel understands.

“About tomorrow,” Karabel says. She is twisting the sleeves of her robes, the tips of her ears twitching.

Muna stands and says brightly, “Have you lost your ticket? I’ll be there, so it’s no problem.”

The words spill out as if they’ve been waiting on Karabel’s tongue for days, “I work for Lenore Phoenix.”

A beat of silence as the information sinks in and then Muna lets out a screech of surprise. “Seriously?”

Karabel nods, face strangely solemn.

“Gods, I must’ve seemed a fool babbling about how much I adore her. Why didn’t you tell me? Were you worried I’d demand her secrets?”

Karabel doesn’t return her laugh. “It takes up so much of my time. Sometimes, I just want to be me.”

Muna is marvelling at this serendipity, her two cherished people being connected with her in this trinity. She can’t help the questions, “How long have you worked for her? What do you do?”

“Oh,” Karabel’s eyes dart around, “research, correspondence, event management, stock replenishing, pretty much everything.”

“Do you get to accompany her to events?”

Karabel laughs but there is no joy in the sound. “I have to, I’m her shadow. I feel like a ghost some days.”

Something about these words niggle at Muna. They are an echo in her mind. What could it be? Karabel is looking at her and she realises she’s missed whatever’s been said. “Yes?”

“Lenore gets a lot of correspondence, fans from everywhere, she won’t have a lot of time to chat tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Muna says, still puzzling out the niggling feeling. When she turns to ask another question, Karabel has disappeared.

• • • •

The next day, Arethor sends her out on tedious packaging and posting errands that must be finished today. Why hadn’t he asked her earlier this week? When she hurries back, her tunic is drenched with sweat and guests are trickling in, which means Lenore Phoenix has arrived and been greeted by someone else. Muna swallows back her disappointment.

From her post at the door, Muna steals glances at Lenore Phoenix. Honey coloured hair waves softly around her face; her robes look like spun gold in shadow, and underneath, she wears a dark velvet dress. Both have long slits up to the thighs. Muna hasn’t seen anything like it. Arethor is refilling her goblet with Mimi’s special mead, the smell of cinnamon and cloves warm and festive. Lenore Phoenix takes a sip and Muna notices her long nails sharpened to points. Muna glances at the bluntness of her own. Arethor makes her saw them down every two weeks: “You work with precious books, Muna, we can’t afford accidents.” He wouldn’t know that Nehiris are skilled with their nails, that it is a sign of their identity. “Customers will not like it—animals have claws, not people.”

It’s strange to see Lenore Phoenix sporting these nails, painted with a deep crimson Kusum would’ve loved. Her sister always insisted on matching the colour of their nails. With a pang, Muna realises how much she’s missed that.

How odd to think that this is the woman who writes Muna letters brimming with wisdom and kindness; that this woman, decked in riches Muna could never imagine touching, has understood Muna more than any other creature. But Muna knows that everyone has an inside and outside persona. Lenore Phoenix is who she needs to be at this event.

She hasn’t spotted Karabel yet, which is surprising because her colourful robes usually stand out in any crowd. Muna slips into the back of the room and listens to Lenore Phoenix discuss how she built the character of Nuala, modelled on Senai culture. Her words are measured and intelligent—Muna could listen to her all day.

During the question and answer portion, a Senai that Muna hadn’t spotted before raises her hand. Her hair is wrapped up in bright patterned cloth, and her body seems to thrum with taut energy.

“Ms. Phoenix, do you think it right a lady like yourself is writing—and profiting—off Senais like myself?”

Lenore Phoenix smiles. “I’m not sure I understand. I see it our duty as word-weavers to bring stories from the farthest reaches of the world to those who may not experience it or understand it otherwise.”

“Would it not fit your sense of duty to instead create opportunities for Senais to learn word-weaving and write their own stories? I see I’m the only Senai in the audience today and I wonder who this is helping and who is profiting?”

“Oh, but I do, look at my apprentice, young Karabel there is learning her craft from me.” She points to the back as a wave of applause ripples through.

Muna spots Karabel, clad today in dull robes that seem to absorb light, hair pulled into a tight bun. Her gaze is downturned, fingers laced tight, ears quivering. Muna begins to move to her, sensing that something is not quite right with her friend, but Karabel turns and vanishes into the crowds. The guests frown at Muna as she tries to get past them, their lips curling at her and her obtrusive horns.

A flurry of movement overwhelms her route to Karabel. The talk wraps up and everyone surges up to talk to Lenore Phoenix. Arethor comes into view, signalling to her. Muna looks at the door one last time and grabs the mead. Mimi’s boys lay out tiny pies and sausages, tea cakes studded with currants, sugar sprinkled biscuits, and frosted cakes. Muna is caught up refilling everyone’s goblets. It’s only when guests trickle out that she sees Lenore Phoenix is also preparing to leave. She rushes there without a thought, but when she gets to where the word-weaver is speaking to Arethor she hangs back, hesitant, shy.

“Oh, sorry honey, I’d love to stay and chat but I’m exhausted.” Lenore Phoenix says when she spots Muna after long minutes. “Thank you for your work. Arethor tells me you’re a big fan.”

Muna feels flushed, tongue tied in knots, and before she can say You’re welcome or thank you for your letters or they mean so much, Lenore Phoenix winks and leaves.

Muna must believe the wink is a message, that their correspondence is secret and safe, but for the rest of the night, the coldest feeling sinks into her.

• • • •

“What a graceful woman. She handled the questions well, don’t you think? Pity she can’t write.”

Early next morning, Muna is stacking chairs for the carpenter’s apprentices who are due to arrive soon. She hadn’t heard Arethor come up behind her. She’s weary from the running around yesterday, the anticipation, the strange sense of emptiness, the swirling thoughts that refused to settle through the night. She turns around, putting a stack of chairs between them, before frowning at Arethor. “What do you mean?”

One of her first discussions with Arethor had been about how they both gulped down the Halfborn series in feverish states. They’ve talked at length about its clever structure, the rise and fall of action, the quiet scenes that packed a punch. A few weeks ago, before his proximity made Muna feel cold and stiff, they’d stayed up writing complex questions to plant among the audience for the event.

“I don’t mean the Halfborn series—as you know, the writer is skilled.”

“The writer?”

Arethor is giving her the same look he does when explaining that things just happen to work the way they do, like the Guild’s steep membership fee. “The ghostwriter who does the word-weaving.”

Her silence conveys her confusion. Arethor lets out a bark of laughter. “I forget how naïve and country you can be. You didn’t think Lenore Phoenix sat there penning her own novels? She rebranded herself, had a dowdy name like Janet Smith before. Her florid romances were a flop even when romances were the rage because her characters were flat like an iron skillet and her word-weaving appalling. It’s a well-kept secret in certain circles.”

“But . . .” Muna thinks of the advice contained in all those letters. How could those words come from a woman who didn’t write Nuala?

“I thought you knew because you’re friendly with the Senai.”

“Karabel?” she says, distracted but still noting with bristling displeasure the way Arethor said Senai. “She doesn’t speak much of Ms. Phoenix.”

“If I was Lenore Phoenix’s ghost, I’d find a way to slip it into every conversation.” Arethor laughs, not very kindly, and the words run through her like a current.

Karabel?

Lenore Phoenix’s ghost?

Karabel’s words echo in Muna’s mind: Sometimes I feel like a ghost. That niggling feeling unknots itself. It’s the same thing Nuala says in the Halfborn series. Why had Muna not made the connection before?

But the letters . . .

The letter she’s pored over and knows by heart: I am looking at the mirror but there’s no reflection.

Muna feels the air whoosh out of her.

Why hadn’t Karabel told her?

• • • •

That afternoon, Muna receives her first missive, delivered by a panting apprentice. He doesn’t pause for the refreshments she offers, just shoots off.

Please meet me at Rendezvous Teashop at six. K.

• • • •

When Muna manages to slip away, telling Arethor firmly that she must visit the herbwoman when he tries to get her to stay beyond working hours with a promise of mead and imported delicacies, it’s already after six.

There’s a tightness inside her. It reminds her of the day she was out in the fields and her father was rushed home after a harvesting accident; despite their ferocious arguments, she’d sprinted back, afraid something was slipping out of her grasp.

When Muna pushes open the door of the teashop, the first thing her eyes land on is Karabel, looking out of a window, the sunset burnishing her face. Karabel turns towards the door when it closes, its tiny bells tinkling to announce a new customer.

A rush of something—relief?—overtakes Muna as their eyes meet. She finds herself trembling as she walks over.

“You came,” Karabel says, face soft.

If this were a scene in Muna’s story, there would be a fight perhaps, anger, a misplaced sense of betrayal. But these past few hours, Muna’s been thinking about the letters, what they’ve meant to her, about the Halfborn world, how she’s escaped into it again and again, especially when Barish was too much, when being next to Arethor was too much. About the first time Karabel came by the shop, how she spoke words that Muna was too scared to even think; how Karabel saw her, treated her like someone whose thoughts and actions and beliefs had worth.

Muna has thought of Lenore Phoenix too—the woman at the event—what she said to the Senai in the audience, how she brandished Karabel like a trophy, all the things she hadn’t said to Muna, all the things that instead Karabel has been saying to her.

So when Muna lowers herself into the wooden chair, what she says is: “I know.”

A sudden burst of joy on Karabel’s face, then it smooths over. “What do you know?”

Muna looks around before lowering her voice, unsure who she is protecting, “I know you’re Lenore Phoenix’s ghost. Arethor told me.”

Karabel is perfectly still, a heartbeat, another.

Muna murmurs, “And I suspect it is you who has written to me all this while.”

A faint smile appears on Karabel’s lips. “My contract binds me in many ways. It forbids me from speaking about the true nature of my work.” She chooses her words carefully, as if any wrong ones could be vanished from her mouth. Muna nods, a grim expression on her face, knowing too well the silencing power of labour contracts. “It forbids me from actions that might reveal certain truths. It doesn’t, of course, prevent people knowing these truths by other means.” Karabel leans forward. Now, her words rush out, flushed and intimate, “Forgive me for not letting you know somehow.”

Muna shakes her head, placing her hand beside Karabel’s on the table, the same gesture of kinship and empathy Karabel had extended to her at the shop. Something dawns on her. “That must be why there was no character study with your last letter!”

“Drat, I suspected that would happen—but I wanted to honour our relationship by at least trying,” Karabel smiles at Muna’s surprise. “So much of what I cherish about writing is being able to share ideas, to help nurture a writing partner’s growth just as they help mine. I wasn’t able to offer you all of that as her.”

“Writing partner,” Muna says slowly, secretly thrilled with the idea.

“Of course, that’s what you’ve been to me, and if you’re willing, I would love for us to continue.”

“I’m a beginner though, I need to apprentice,” Muna looks up, shy, “Perhaps you will let me trial with you?”

“No chance.”

Muna’s stomach drops.

Karabel laughs, then sobers up. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but your face! No chance because technically I’m not a fully-fledged word-weaver yet.”

“But you wrote the Halfborn series!”

Karabel shrugs but Muna sees the stiffening of her shoulders and mouth. “You know the rules. Need to complete a certain number of hours and words with a word-weaver of a certain standing . . .” She perks up, “My contract is almost over though! I won’t be fully-fledged but a writing partnership I can definitely offer.”

Muna blinks back sudden tears. Karabel had kept Muna’s dreams of word-weaving alive when Barish almost crushed it. Now, she is singlehandedly reincarnating the dream into something tangible. When Karabel pauses to look at her, Muna can only nod.

“Once my contract is up, I’ll be running as far as I can from her. Room prices are ghastly though, so I’ll be looking for someone to share the burden with. I’ve found a sub-let by the tailor’s market. Mimi—you know Mimi, right?—has a sister who rents out tiny unpleasant rooms to working girls.”

“Oh,” Muna says, surreptitiously wiping her cheeks, “I don’t know many people, but we can flier the bookshop and I’ll spread the word among customers . . .”

Karabel is shaking her head, that familiar tilt of lips that pulls Muna’s own into a smile even when she doesn’t know the reason.

“Why would we have to scout?” Karabel is looking at her pointedly as she takes a sip of her tea.

“Oh,” Muna says after a few beats, “You mean me.”

“Of course, dear Muna, who else? It’s high time you found a place out beneath Arethor’s boots. What say you?”

Muna finds herself mirroring Karabel’s grin. She looks towards the deepening sky, eyes and chest brimming with warmth, the sun’s glow soft on her face.

©2023 by Isha Karki.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Isha Karki is a writer based in London. Her short fiction has won the Dinesh Allirajah Prize, Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize, and Mslexia Short Story Competition. Her work appears in publications such as khōréō, Lightspeed Magazine, and Best British Short Stories 2021. She is a graduate of Clarion West and currently a PhD student. You can find her on Twitter: @IshaKarki11.

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

EXCERPT: The Deep Sky (Flatiron Books)

Yume Kitasei | 2192 words

Yume Kitasei’s The Deep Sky is an enthralling sci fi thriller debut about a mission into deep space that begins with a lethal explosion that leaves the survivors questioning the loyalty of the crew.

They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.

It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.

As the mystery unfolds on the ship, poignant flashbacks reveal how Asuka came to be picked for the mission. Despite struggling through training back on Earth, she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.

With the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission—or worse, the bomber strikes again.

Available July 18, 2023 from Flatiron Books.

CHAPTER FOUR
THE PHOENIX * 3,980 CYCLES AFTER LAUNCH, 0 CYCLES AFTER EXPLOSION, B SHIFT

The high-pitched siren went on and on. Asuka blinked and tried to focus her eyes. Her vision doubled, then resolved. Must have hit her head. Concussion? Felt like she’d been kicked in the sternum.

Debris from the Phoenix floated away, illuminated by a penumbra of blue light spilling out of a hole in the hull about a meter wide. She wanted to vomit, but that would be a bad idea in a spacewalk helmet.

This was bad. This was bad to the nth degree.

She surveyed the stern of the ship toward the four tulip-shaped rear engines. Everything in that direction seemed intact, at least.

“Cut alarm,” she said. The alarm stopped. Her breath sounded ragged and loud. “Can anyone hear me?”

No answer. Her radio must be down.

“Alpha?” The ship’s AI couldn’t hear her out here, of course. Alpha communicated via DAR, and DAR didn’t work outside the ship. Did anything hurt? Just her head and maybe her back, and everything. But otherwise, okay.

Okay then.

She tried to reset the radio but got only static. For a panicked moment, she thought everyone was dead. But no, the transmitter on her wrist was broken. Must have smashed against the side of the ship when—

She checked her short tether. Attached. And to a part of the ship that was still there; otherwise, she’d be falling away from the Phoenix. As it was, she was meters out into space, being towed around by the spin of the ship’s habitat wheel.

Where was Kat? She looked out at the receding debris.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

Asuka rolled her tongue across her teeth. Copper and salt.

She flipped back and hooked a boot on the tether to stop herself from spinning. Her whole body screamed in protest. Only seven meters from the ship, and it felt like a kilometer.

Things were coming back to her in bits.

Something had exploded. A piece of broken-off hull had slammed into her chest, knocking her back against the ship. But what happened? And how could everything go to shit like that?

Asuka was panicking, guzzling oxygen. She unhooked her boot from the cable, and she began to spin again, arms and legs out like a sacrifice.

She forced herself to narrow her focus, to calm down. The small spear of her headlamp pierced the dark. It caught a boot without a foot in it, small and tumbling away, and her chest ached with a hollowness. So. Kat was dead, and who else? She liked Kat—even though she was so patronizing when she discovered something else that Asuka didn’t know or hadn’t done, which was often. But Kat fixed Asuka cups of tea after meals, and she was always up for simulation trips to places they would never go in real life, even if Kat only ever wanted to go to Europe. And now here Asuka was, with a feeling like she needed to howl, or she would burst.

A new alarm pinged in her suit.

She checked her suit metrics: oxygen, carbon dioxide, and battery level, which powered her propulsion pack and air scrubbers and regulated the temperature in her suit. Oxygen and battery were low, and her carbon dioxide was getting up to the danger zone.

Fantastic. Super.

Time to get back inside. Asuka hauled herself in, hand over hand on her lifeline, to the rim of the ship. It took nearly everything in her to do it. At last, Asuka was clinging to the outside of the spinning habitat wheel, in a constant state of being thrown away from the ship.

With a groan, she hauled herself up onto the scaffold. She gave thanks to the fact that she could still do a pull-up.

Gasping, she stared into the void where the section of scaffold used to be. A chunk of the Phoenix was no longer there. Emergency lights blinked and shuddered from the hole the explosion had torn in the ship. She gazed at what was left of their Dining Module. One long table was still intact and bolted to the floor, either a testament to the quality engineering that had gone into it or the fact that it had been partly shielded from the blast by the other tables. Otherwise, the mod was a wreck. No fire—the atmosphere was gone. There was soup all over the floor. In the dim blue light, she saw feet behind the half-demolished serving counter, and another arm sticking out at the far end near the door. Two bodies.

She narrowly missed getting beaned by a box of un-meat patties.

She snagged it and slung it back into the hole.

She eyed the gap and doubted she could make it with a running jump. Her mind flashed back to the scrawny girl she had once been, hopping over big puddles after a rain and coming home streaked with mud from head to foot. Papa plucking her up and slinging her over one shoulder and marching her straight to the shower, calling her sweetmuddypie.

She could take the long way around, but she wasn’t sure she had enough oxygen. She was down to 5 percent. There was supposed to be extra in the tank for an emergency, but she’d never cut it this close before.

Would this be the moment that proved she wasn’t good enough?

She was out of time.

She backed up, braced herself, and unclipped. Her boots on the metal made no sound at all. She leapt, and then she was falling and flying, and she juiced the gas jets of her propulsion pack, using precious battery. In the split second as she crossed the gap, a memory came to her of a goose taking off from the flat face of a warm pond, wings beating furiously, feet dragging as it tried to climb air. Then Asuka slammed into the other side. She nearly lost her grip, but she got the clip of her tether above the knot of the safety cable, thinking about how infinite her journey might have been if she had missed.

She hung there, panting into the hollow of her helmet.

Her compression suit was much more flexible than those clumsy bags of pressurized air astronauts used to wear, but at the end of the day, she was still wearing a big bubble on her head and thick insulation from finger to toe. She got back up.

Oxygen at 3 percent.

The emperor penguin could slow its own heart rate while plunging through dark, cold waters for almost half an hour.

Exhale. Keep moving.

It took a few more minutes to work her way back to the airlock, clipping and unclipping to the safety cable, and trying not to guzzle her remaining oxygen. She’d bitten her tongue, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. Shock, maybe.

The airlock door should have opened for her, but when she reached it, it was sealed. Nothing.

She tried twisting the handle of the airlock. It didn’t give. She fumbled again. It wasn’t the door; it was her hands. She couldn’t do it.

“This is Asuka.” Her voice was thin, more like a gasp. “Does anybody copy?” Static.

She checked her oxygen. One percent. Nearly out. Carbon dioxide in the red. Battery drained. Shit.

“This is Asuka. Does anybody copy? Can anyone hear me at all?” She banged on the door, tried the broken radio. And again.

She touched her faceplate to the door. Turn, and she might catch a last glimpse of Kat, receding into that deepness of nothing. The pieces of her would last forever like that in space even as they spread millions, billions, then trillions of miles apart. But the whole universe could never put her back together. Humpty Dumpty. Entropy. Law of everything.

And yet we bother, thought Asuka. It should have been me. Not Kat.

She banged the door again, weaker, dizzier, colder. It’d be hours before she completely froze out here. She’d asphyxiate before that.

“I’m scared,” she had told her mother as everything burned. Heat pressing down against her face. Her mother’s voice firm and hoarse in her ear: “Sh. Sh. Picture a box.”

Asuka shut her eyes, obedient for once, and pictured her mother’s black and crimson-red lacquer jewelry box.

“Now, think of pearls. That is your fear, okay? Put them in that box one by one. Count them.”

One. Two. Three.

Asuka straightened, hammered on the door. No one was coming. Her heart thudded. Darkness ate at the corners of her vision. She could lean back and fall, into the great Milky Way. It wasn’t her fault. She’d done her part and made it home.

She sank to her knees and looked back toward Earth. Couldn’t see it. Something, she thought distantly, was wrong with the stars.

Her last thought was of her mother, light-years behind her, growing old watching the night sky.

CHAPTER FIVE
USA * 13 YEARS BEFORE LAUNCH

Asuka was in their neighbor’s pool; it was dark, and her mom’s arms were around her. They floated listlessly in the cold, cold water. She couldn’t see the stars. Smoke burned her lungs and made her eyes tear.

Everyone else was gone. Everyone but Asuka and her mom, and somewhere out there, maybe, her dog Inu. Left alone in a neighborhood on fire.

Asuka tasted bitter ash and chlorine. The jet-black water lapped gently against the side of the pool. She was mad at her mom for not letting her go after Inu when the dog escaped.

The whole family had been on their way out the door, headed for the autobus waiting to evacuate them to safety. And then her mom had stepped on Inu’s tail, and Inu yelped and ran off, leash tearing from Asuka’s hands, and she had tried to run after, but her mom had grabbed her and wouldn’t let her go.

And, and, and—she bit her mom’s arm and tasted blood; she screamed that she hated her, that she would never speak to her again; she cried big, dirty tears, and still her mom held her tight.

Wasn’t she mad at Asuka?

All this was Asuka’s fault, wasn’t it? It wasn’t. (It was.)

And now she’d never see Inu again. The bus was gone, with Papa and her brother on board, and it was just she and her mom in this pool, waiting for California to stop burning.

They drifted toward the edge of the pool. What if her mom got tired? Would they die? She didn’t want to die.

“Asuka, don’t!”

She’d grabbed the side of the pool with both arms. Her mom snatched her back from the heat of it, too late. Asuka shrieked, more from the knowledge that she’d made a terrible mistake than from the pain. No pain yet; that came later. Just a minute later. Maybe more.

They were underwater again. And Asuka was aware only of her mother’s arms, and her mother’s legs, and how they kept her alive, kicking, slapping, pushing back against the water and the soot and the pool and the fire and the clouds that hid the moon.

Copyright © 2023 by Yume Kitasei. Excerpted from The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei. Published by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yume Kitasei is a writer of speculative fiction. She is half-Japanese and half-American and grew up in a space between two cultures—the same space where her stories reside. She lives in Brooklyn with two cats, Boondoggle and Filibuster. Her stories have appeared in publications including New England Review, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Baltimore Review. The Deep Sky is her first novel. Visit her online at yumekitasei.com.

Book Review: The Book of Witches edited by Jonathan Strahan

Arley Sorg | 1786 words

The Book of Witches
Jonathan Strahan, ed.
Paperback/ebook
ISBN: 9780063113220
Harper Voyager, August 1, 2023, 512 pgs

As Senior Editor at Locus Magazine, I’ve seen a lot of original anthologies come through the office over the past few years. This one stands among the best of them. Editor Jonathan Strahan is no stranger to anthologies: ISFDB shows an extensive publication history going back to the late 1990s, and before that he was running a magazine. He is also one of genre’s more awards-decorated editors, including, fairly recently, a World Fantasy Award nomination and Locus Award win for 2020 anthology The Book of Dragons (also from Harper Voyager). In fact, not long ago, I reviewed his MIT Press anthology Tomorrow’s Parties, which was good.

But this book? In my opinion, this places him among the best anthologists I’ve read. Sure, he has a long history in genre; but this one demonstrates that he’s also connected with what’s happening now. Strahan proves this by pulling together a stunning set of authors who stand among the best of the current generation of writers, and delivering a book which is rich in excellent original fiction. I’ll share my thoughts about a few pieces, but seriously, just glance inside the table of contents—if you aren’t excited by this list, you probably just don’t know enough about short fiction.

Witches opens with Linda Addison’s poem “Seed of Power.” It’s an important choice because on the one hand, it lets the reader know that this book also features poetry; on the other, simply put, it’s excellent, so it sets the tone for the rest of the book. Shaped like a seed or a bulb the shape of the poem itself evokes traditional imagery of the feminine. While evoking that traditional imagery, the text simultaneously embodies and challenges ideas of the feminine. The shape reflects the challenges of the ideas born from the text, smiling warmly while drawing the reader towards realizations about their own assumptions. The phrases, the lines, they are great; but collected together as a poem, they become both powerful and empowering. This message is artistic, beautiful, but still lucid: people have the right and the ability to define themselves, and attempts to seek control by defining them are foolish. The final note of the poem expands on all the ideas set forward beforehand, to allow for things that are beyond the scope of the shape. In other words, it suggests infinite possibilities. And rightly so.

Cassandra Khaw definitely knows how to open a story, how to reach into a reader’s chest and demand their attention. Khaw flexes this knowledge in “Met Swallow.” Great opening lines are followed by great dialogue and a distinctive voice. Khaw adds to all this gently beautiful storytelling—sentences which, if you’re paying attention, you could sit with for a while and appreciate on their own, but which also work smoothly, so you could just read along and let the language choices breathe in your subconscious, enhancing your enjoyment. And oh yeah, the story is also just really cool. A nameless point-of-view character takes the form (both flesh and damaged memories) of Amaranth, who was recently murdered. Then Point-of-View begins to search for the killer. From there, things get wonderfully complicated, as Point-of-View has to infiltrate the family, as well as sort through the conflicting emotions arising from digging into a dead stranger’s life.

“Really cool” could describe a lot of these stories, including Darcie Little Badger’s “The Liar.” In this case we need to embellish “really cool” with a few other words: clever, beguiling, unexpected. Dialogue and straightforward prose ground the reader in the story, to the extent that, even for me—conscientiously reading in order to review—the act of reading simply melts away and you are carried through the narrative. Jodie makes for a protagonist we want to follow, and while some of the elements of the story setup are familiar, such as a power which comes with an ironic curse, the application of the ideas, and the combination of story elements, make for a seriously entertaining read. There is also a looming threat: someone who is stealing powers, and who may be a danger to our protagonist. You might think of Heroes (the television show), and that’s fair, since the plot had a similar description; but it’s also not fair, because this story feels unique and awesome and far more engrossing. Of course, Jodie dives from the poker table into danger, so . . . yes! This one is fun!

Emily Y. Teng starts “The Cost of Doing Business” with an opening line that grabs you, but also creates the feeling of a read with layers—and blood. Teng then adds a touch of humor, a wry smirk, while giving us the cool concept of a witch who works in an office in a factory, where you might go with whatever kinds of job-related problems might arise. The problem in the story is a severe on-the-job accident. Teng effectively (or perhaps entertainingly) combines folkloric imagery and a dash of camp with modern concerns: industry, conspiracy, big money taking advantage of laborers. Well, then again, you can just read it as a fun, clever story. Little touches throughout the narrative make the read even more enjoyable.

Millie Ho offers us a poem, “She Who Makes the Rain.” Through wonderful use of imagery, sentence and phrase structures, and compelling word choices, Ho evokes change, age, uncertainty, and more. Ho juxtaposes power with vulnerability, and through poetry and the fantastic reveals truths about life. It’s a brief, vibrant work, which perhaps says that people are more complex than we think, and more valuable than we realize.

Saad Z. Hossain had an engaging story in Strahan’s aforementioned Tomorrow’s Parties, but I liked “Orphanage of the Last Breath” even more. One thing I’ve learned from dipping into Hossain’s work from time to time is that there is often valuable class subtext at the center of the story. “Orphanage” digs in right away, with a police commissar fabricating witchcraft charges as part of a scheme to “clean up” the disenfranchised inhabitants of an otherwise swanky area. Texas Mok is an unsympathetic protagonist, somewhat swaggering and over-armed for the task at hand, but interesting in the way he tickles at the things many people like about military/police style heroes: a touch of military glamor, a seemingly good backstory, cool gadgets, and a catchy name. He is unsympathetic towards the people of the slum, despite being aware that this is where the employees of the wealthy actually live. As I said: lots of subtext. Mok is the type that is perfectly willing to do a job, and perfectly willing to get rough while doing it. Ultimately, he is a bully, and the sticky glamor should make readers wonder how many of their other gun-carrying heroes are also bullies. In the narrative, Mok is told about a real witch, an actual monster who lives deep in the heart of the slum. “We will kill this witch,” Mok says, “and return the orphans.” And with this, Hossain brilliantly demonstrates the complexities of so-called heroism, and the ways that people who aren’t really heroes can look and sound like heroes in certain circumstances. Things get bloodier from there, and the revelations which follow are a brutal look at the human tendency to abuse power, among other things.

C.L. Clark’s “What Dreams May Come” is one of the more memorable pieces, and that’s saying a lot, since this is a book overflowing with memorable pieces. I’ve said it of some of the others already, but I need to say it again: Clark knows how to open a story. This one dunks you into the tension, pulling together a number of different story elements seamlessly, getting you involved and worried and caught up in the drama of the piece, while also stitching in the information you need to get a sense of what’s going on. Calling Clark an expert storyteller would somehow seem inadequate. Family dissonance is at the center of things, but this is a family that can do interesting things with dreams, while also being a family with at least a few lethal boundaries. Pol is our protagonist, dragged back into the family drama when their sister calls telling them that their mother is in trouble. Pol has tried to keep their distance from the family up to this point, but now has to lie to their wife and make an emergency trip to go help. Add to this that the family hasn’t seen Pol since top surgery . . .? Layers of brilliant immediacy and friction all at once. Pol has to navigate the animosity of their aunts, and the emotions of being back “home,” while also facing the dangers involved in saving their mom from powers gone awry. I mean, this is great fiction, y’all.

The Harper Voyager page describes this book as “illustrated by Alyssa Winans.” I’m bummed that neither of my early digital copies (a .pdf as well as the NetGalley release) has these illustrations. I encourage you to go to Winans’s website and get a taste of what may be in store. There are good reasons she’s been nominated for several Hugo awards and won a British Science Fiction Award, including vibrant colors, striking use of contrast, distinctive style, and more.

In any case, I hope readers take a look at this book, and honestly, I hope it is at least discussed when awards time comes around. Strahan shows off his genius here, combining longstanding short fiction powerhouses like Ken Liu and Sheree Renée Thomas with proven authors that readers want to see more of, like Tade Thompson, Kelly Robson, and Tochi Onyebuchi; and then adding relative newcomers who’ve made their mark as unique, commanding writers, like Premee Mohamed and Tobi Ogundiran. In these careful selections, Strahan has put together a book which takes on a trope, which entertains, yes; but which also does so many things that are necessary and wonderful. I can’t wait for more readers to get to experience this book.

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 and a 2022 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 a 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, run workshops, and been a guest for Clarion West, the Odyssey Writing Workshop, Cascade Writers, Augur Magazine, and more. 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: He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

Aigner Loren Wilson | 403 words

He Who Drowned the World
Shelley Parker-Chan
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 9781250621825
Tor Books, August 2023, 496 pgs

In one of 2023’s most anticipated books, Shelley Parker-Chan returns with the second and final book in the Radiant Emperor Duology, He Who Drowned the World. The novel continues following Zhu Yuanzhang on her journey to power, picking up right after her victory at the end of She Who Became the Sun. In the new novel, Zhu goes even further in doing whatever it takes to win over not only the Mongol army but also burying the past she feared she’d never escape.

After a quick catchup and roundup of the major players in the novel, Parker-Chan drops us right back into Zhu’s motivation to become the emperor and ruler of everything. While Zhu’s desires were significant in She Who Became the Sun, they become monstrous in He Who Drowned the World. Even her wife, Ma, shows concern about the hunger Zhu demonstrates throughout the novel, aligning with unlikely foes, and facing off against rivals far deadlier than her. At moments, the intensity of Zhu’s passion—mixed with the other imperial contenders, like Madam Zhang, Ouyang, and Baoxiang—gave me chills.

The Radiant Emperor series has never been a story of lightness, even during some of She Who Became the Sun’s softer scenes of queer love, friendship, and bonding, but He Who Drowned the World reads far darker. Parker-Chan’s writing is as captivating as ever, though, eloquently describing everything from the landscapes and wardrobes—to physical encounters, both sexual and not. The series’ heat burns from beginning to end with battles, sexual espionage, and greed-confused determination.

He Who Drowned the World brings as much intrigue as She Who Became the Sun. The novel explores the dark side of want, friendship, and unchained hate that bites so deep there is a constant threat of the world being swallowed whole. He Who Drowned the World is a dark and challenging read for fans of queer retellings, S&M play, and endings that come rushing at you and leave you shaken.

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: The Combat Codes by Alexander Darwin

Chris Kluwe | 715 words

The Combat Codes
Alexander Darwin
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9780316493000
Orbit, June 2023, 464 pages

Greetings, readers, and welcome back to another review. This month, it’s time to warm up your strikes and practice your ground game because we’re going to take a look at The Combat Codes, a story filled with action, intrigue, and a heart of gold.

The story of The Combat Codes follows the intertwined lives of Murray, a broken-down fighter now tasked with searching for the next big thing, and Cego, an orphaned youth who remembers a past far different than the life he currently finds himself living. Both are Grievar, born to fight so others don’t have to, but what that actually means for each of them is a journey neither can yet answer.

The first thing that struck me about The Combat Codes is that the worldbuilding is fantastic. Even though it takes place on an unnamed planet that (probably) isn’t Earth, Darwin does a wonderful job making everything feel at once familiar and strange in a way that perfectly suspends disbelief. There’s just enough normality lurking amidst the underground cavern city of the Deeps and the storm-blasted surface to set the stage for all the strange things that Murray and Cego consider everyday life. Nations settling their differences by having champions engage in one on one combat? Perfectly normal. Using that same system for the (underbudgeted) legal framework? Makes total sense. Training kids to beat each other to death in the hopes of rising high enough to serve their nation? Absolutely. It’s a mix of heady ideas that shouldn’t work together yet combine perfectly to make a greater whole.

The second thing that stood out is the violence, and hoooo boy is there a lot of it (so be warned). Darwin does an impressive job guiding the fight scenes, mixing in specific martial arts terms with broader descriptions such that even someone unversed in mixed martial arts can easily follow the action, while giving those who’ve practiced it a front row seat to the grisly details. That being said, I also never felt like the violence was gratuitous—the characters all know that their actions have consequences, and there are multiple times when they have to deal with those consequences (both physically and mentally). This is a book about violence, but it’s also about why and how that violence is used, and whether or not it can be justified.

This leads me to the third thing about The Combat Codes that I really appreciated, which is that for all the overtly physical violence of the fights themselves, the book is also just as concerned with the broader structural violence being waged on the less fortunate members of Cego and Murray’s society (with some pretty obvious parallels to our own world). The core principle of “we fight so others shall not have to” is examined from multiple angles, how violence can be used to protect and to subjugate. Both Murray and Cego are constantly challenged by what they’re capable of versus what they believe is the action that will embody their creed, which leads to an impressive amount of characterization and growth.

Overall, The Combat Codes appears on the surface to be a meathead book for meathead fighters to slowly puzzle out the big words, but like a feint leading into a heavy cross, once you start reading it will hit you from unexpected angles with unexpected force. I really hope people are willing to give this one a chance, because it has a lot of important things to say and it says them very well, on top of being one of the more unique science fiction books I’ve read in quite a while. If this is the start to Darwin’s trilogy, I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

Read if: you realize why grappling is important; you felt the Hunger Games wasn’t quite bloody enough; you like cheering for the underdog.

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: J.B. Park

Laurel Amberdine | 219 words

How did “Six Months After All Life on Titan Died” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

It’s a story in the format of a prompt. Of course, nothing like this would actually work or even be needed. But this is a short story so I did what I wanted.

Is there anything you want to make sure readers noticed?

I hope they can get a sense of the world the narrator dwells in.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

I wish I’d written more. I hope whoever reads this and is in a position where they’d take advice from someone like me takes it to heart: write more, and write now.

What are you reading lately? What writers inspire you?

I started reading Wandering Inn. As for writers that inspire me, Shusaku Endo and James Baldwin are the ones I think about most.

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

I’m almost done with my first book. My website is maybepark.com, people can see a list of stories I’ve been fortunate enough to publish there.

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: Sandra McDonald

Laurel Amberdine | 821 words

How did “Starpoop” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

In March of 2022, I attended the annual conference in Orlando for the International Conference of the Fantastic in Arts (ICFA), an excellent gathering of academics, writers, and publishers that I have participated in for over a decade. For this particular conference I had one of my foster children in tow, an adorable and mostly well-behaved three-year-old. As much as I love the conference, I discovered there’s no quicker way to become invisible than to walk around with a toddler at an academic conference. People I’ve known for years developed sudden blindness and a preference for taking the long way around rather than pass where we were sitting. Left alone with my son sleeping in his stroller, I started writing about COVID-19 and the strain of being a mom and having an unsure foundation (which is one of the very conditions of parenthood). As the story developed, my tweenage love for Penny Robinson in the original Lost in Space series surfaced as well. I will always be a geek for cheesy science fiction TV, especially from the 1960s-1980s. While I was finishing the story back home after the conference, my little toddler was reunited with his biological family. Reunification is the goal of foster care, but it can also leave behind a profound grief and heart-shaped hole where the child used to live and laugh every day.

What is your writing space like? What do you like to have around for optimal creativity?

I would love an optimized writing space, and my house is large enough for one. Somewhere within these 2,400 square feet I should be able to carve out a dedicated area, right? Choosing to be a foster mom, however, means that I often have children of all ages running underfoot and committing themselves to penetrating the exact spaces I don’t want them near—supply closets full of snacks, utility closets full of household dangers, an office with any computers or devices they can use to play Roblox or Minecraft. I also foster homeless cats, many of whom delight in jumping on aforesaid equipment or knocking over pages of manuscripts. One of my hobbies is watercolor painting, and kids and cats also delight in raiding brushes, paper, and paints. The end result is that I’m often a fugitive with a laptop, writing in whatever corner I can carve out. For awhile I worked in my walk-in closet, which is certainly big enough but lacks ventilation. Oxygen is really important to my career as a human being.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

A few years ago I was guest speaker at a friend’s undergraduate fiction writing class. It’s a class I have taught and enjoyed teaching. The students were terrifically attentive. I gave them all the writerly advice I could and we had a great question and answer session. All was quite lovely. But when I left that classroom on that beautiful sunny afternoon, I also left behind interest in offering advice to other writers. I was depleted, but in a good way. I was the spaceship Voyager (One or two, doesn’t matter) leaving behind the planet Advice. In an emergency writing situation (can you imagine what those look like?) I could repeat what other smart folks say, I could point to books I’ve found helpful, I could even steer people toward mentors or conferences that might be beneficial—but luckily no crisis has arisen. The internet is full of people offering advice. I’m committed now to letting people find their own path. I’m a big fan of Stoicism and Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and emperor, said it more than two thousand years ago: it’s okay to not have an opinion about something.

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

I’m working on many things, but very slowly. Recently I went to Paris and stood in a museum and looked at Claude Monet’s final series of Water Lilies. These are enormous gorgeous canvases that he had promised to donate to France, but his physical and mental health were suffering and he’d endured eye surgeries that left him vision impaired. He was an almost-blind octogenarian making small progress and then reworking and reworking the paint again, dissatisfied. Obsessed, maybe, I hope to be writing when I’m even older than Monet, when I’m a centenarian, but have no idea what writing and publishing will look like in the decades to come. Maybe writers won’t have keyboards. Maybe readers will downland fiction directly to our brains. Who can say? My one hope is that I’ll have my own office by then. And that the robot cats don’t knock everything over.

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: Ashok K. Banker

Laurel Amberdine | 1071 words

How did “The Bodhi Tree Asks Only tor the Safe Return of Her Beloved” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

The Indian fig tree family is one of the most extraordinary species with whom we share this planet. Even today, in India you’ll find them growing almost anywhere—out of a wall, sprouting from a pavement, taking over entire compounds. To walk in a grove of bodhi or peepal trees is to experience the world in a way that is uniquely Indian. I’ve been in redwood forests, pine groves, and other stands but the fig trees of India have a wanton wildness that truly brings home the meaning of the word “jungle.” There is no experience like it in the world.

Growing up in the concrete jungle that was Bombay and, after 1995, Mumbai, it was heartbreaking to see so many thousands of magnificent bodhi trees hacked down to make way for new construction. Even today, builders have been known to poison entire rows of these trees, some of which are several hundred years old, with impunity. I’ve always felt empathetic with these beautiful, enduring specimens and wanted to tell a story from their point of view. One day, the right story finally came to me out of the blue. I can’t say I was consciously aware of any literary influences, though I’m sure they must have been present subconsciously. All I was aware of was that I saw a universe dominated by a benign but supremely powerful bodhi tree who has been compelled to build an empire to ensure the survival of their species as well as other co-dependent species, which of course, includes homo sapiens. It’s the first of a story cycle I call The Empire of The Bodhi Tree.

What is your writing process like? Did this story fit the pattern?

Pretty much as usual. The narrative voice wells up inside me one day, often out of the blue, and takes over my body and consciousness for the duration of the story. After that, it never truly leaves me but I am at least permitted to resume everyday activities like shopping for groceries! In a sense, “The Bodhi Tree” marks a turning point for me because it’s the first SF story where I felt as if I’d finally figured out how to tell an SF story! While I’ve written a ton of them before, most were accidental experiments that just happened to work out. “The Bodhi Tree” and another story, upcoming in Asimov’s, are the first two stories in what I consider the “mature” phase of my SF writing. It’s like a lever clicked over in my head and now I know how to write good SF. (What that says about all the dozens of stories I wrote before, I won’t venture to say!) I guess only time and readers will be able to judge for themselves if that’s true! Meanwhile, I had a blast writing this story as I do all my stories and books, so it’s a win-win situation.

What are you reading lately? What writers inspire you?

I am absolutely in awe of all the amazing writers, the vast majority of them new or recently published, who fill the pages of the SF zines. The sheer range and depth of craft, skill, imagination is extraordinary. SF has always flourished in the shorter lengths but I truly think we’re seeing a new golden age of SF short fiction. In particular, I am constantly impressed by the work I read in Clarkesworld which has maintained a remarkably high standard. I don’t know if I’ll ever write a story good enough to be accepted there but I’ll never stop trying, even after dozens of rejections! The same goes for Lightspeed, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and more often of late, F&SF under its new editor. There are many other zines just as rich in quality of course, and I constantly discover new bylines and for the most part, follow them diligently after that. They are a masterclass in how to write great SF. (Just to be clear, since “The Bodhi Tree” is SF, I’m only focussing here on SF, not horror or fantasy genres, which are equally fecund and flourishing in short as well as longer forms.)

What trends in speculative fiction would you like to see gain popularity in the next few years?

I think the craft has improved hugely. There’s no question that the bar is set as high as it possibly can be at this point in time. It’s no longer enough to simply have a great idea well executed. But I do feel that the big ideas, bold use of tropes, breakout storytelling have waned. I’d love to see someone bust the genre wide open, more than once, break the rules, cause outrage among purists and virtue signal police, and still create awesome SF that is inclusive, sensitive, and essentially humane in a way that is unifying and empowering. And I believe that’s something that can only happen today on the extreme fringes of the genre, in what the SF community considers “mainstream” fiction. In short, I’m saying that the best SF and speculative fiction being written and published today is happening in mainstream commercial and literary fiction. In short, SF is no longer a genre unto itself, it’s been absorbed by the literary mainstream and now belongs to everyone. I love and embrace that fact and I hope to see more of this beautiful hybrid cross-species fertilisation! What incredible work will come from it? I can’t wait to see!

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

I have a story that I’m really happy with coming up in Asimov’s Science Fiction. It’s also the first in a planned series, each a standalone. It’s titled “The Inefficiency of Pangenetic Self-Replication as a Theory of Anthrobotic Evolution by Yantra Arora.” I hope to write many more stories as good as that one and “The Bodhi Tree” from now on.

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: Isha Karki

Laurel Amberdine | 892 words

How did “Muna in Barish” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

The seed of this story began with the image of a bookshop dappled in light from a stained-glass window. I wanted to try writing a warm and hopeful story—very different from the mode I’ve been writing in for, oh, maybe about a decade! My writing tends towards the dark, the bleak, the brutal—so this story was a pleasing challenge, to figure out how Muna’s situation could be resolved, how two people could come together to be support and community to each other. It was something that ended up feeling like a breath of air I took between writing my other works. In a way, I wanted the story to have a similar vibe to that of a warm fanfic.

I loved the process of building Muna’s world: the social hierarchies and stereotypes that govern the lives of immigrants and othered folk in Barish; the world of writing, publishing, bookselling; the kind of story Muna would be driven to write, what obstacles she might face in pursuing her dreams; and also the intertextual bits i.e., the excerpt from Muna’s work in progress, and the references to the Halfborn series and the latest bestseller. The intertextuality particularly felt like I was creating worlds within worlds—and this is something I really enjoy encountering or experimenting with in my own work, writing stories within stories—hopefully it works to provide a glimpse of the complexity and richness of the people and the literatures of Muna’s world.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that the inspiration I drew for Barish and its publishing world is very much inspired by our own, how it’s intertwined with structures of class, race, privilege. I tried to explore some of these dynamics in the story e.g., how the cost of joining the Writers Guild is crushingly prohibitive for Muna; how entry into Barish’s publishing world privileges the resourced upper classes; how mainstream publishing centres whiteness as default; how work by marginalised people is tokenised or deemed unmarketable; and how difficult it is to work and write and dream inside white capitalist structures of publishing.

Where are you in this story?

I worked in publishing for a few years—and of course I’m a writer—so a considerable amount is inspired by what I learned about the business of publishing while on the job, as well as the critical conversations that have been going on in more recent years about much-needed change in the industry.

In London, publishing is one of those passion-based jobs that people dream of getting, so when you’re given entry into its world, you are so grateful for the opportunity. You don’t question how underpaid and overworked you are; you try not to think too much about any feelings of discomfort, alienation, invisibility, or hypervisibility you may experience as a minority. In London, publishing is a space that is still very white and middle class; I think it was only in hindsight that I realised what a strange and disorientating experience that must have been for me.

I wanted to explore some of these nuances, whilst incorporating a larger critique of publishing practices and exploitative labour systems, through the power imbalances between Muna and Arethor, Lenore and Karabel. So we have Lenore Phoenix’s celebrated cultural appropriation and her exploitation of both Karabel as a ghostwriter and Senai identity as a whole; we have the way Arethor feels entitled to Muna’s time and labour and friendship; the exploitative way he uses capitalist speak of “we are family”; his casual acts of racist and sexist microaggressions (though there is nothing really “micro” about them) that are couched in the language of kindness and good intentions; and how difficult Muna finds it to recognise let alone confront these—because to do so would perhaps mean not being able to survive.

On a more positive note, I think the story is also an ode to writing peers who understand and see you, who engage meaningfully with your work and support you to achieve your visions; an ode to writing communities. I’m happy I was able to incorporate that into Muna’s story, to hopefully capture something of the joy and magic of discussing ideas with a peer and of being seen, because in these past few years, finding community has been a singular and meaningful experience for me and the health of my writing!

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

I have a new story, “Sell Your Trauma for Salvation,” in the July issue of Nightmare. It’s a pretty bleak look at capitalism as a cannibalising force. I have the vague thought that one day I’d like to return to Barish, perhaps looking at a different part of this society—maybe when I need a breath of air between my other unrelenting projects!

Otherwise, I am mostly working on my PhD project, a short story collection that considers alternative ways of writing sexual violence and trauma—through the language of folklore and horror, silences and absences—and thinks through the complexities of storytelling and testimonies. I usually post about my publications and writing updates on Twitter: @IshaKarki11.

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 | 238 words

Coming up in August, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Scott Edelman (“The Letters They Left Behind”) and Lowry Poletti (“In the Nest Beneath the Mountain-Tree, Your Sisters Dance”). We also have two terrific flash pieces: “Sufficiency” by Benjamin C. Kinney and “Monopticon” from Dani Atkinson.

Plus, we have original fantasy by Sloane Leong (“The Blade and the Bloodwright”) and David Anaxagoras (“The Boy Who Ran from His Faerie Heart”). We also have a flash story (“All the Colours of the Death Knell”) from Russell Hemmell, and another (“You Will Not Live to See M/M Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension”) from Isabel J. Kim.

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: writing duo John Kessel & Bruce Sterling, Gene Doucette, A.L. Goldfuss, Carlie St. George, and Everdeen Mason.

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:

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Subscriptions and Ebooks

The Editors

Subscriptions: If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Lightspeed 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)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 (with R.F. Kuang) [Forthcoming]

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

The Far Reaches

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

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey

Half Way Home by Hugh Howey

Sand by Hugh Howey

Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn

The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn

Questland by Carrie Vaughn

Retrograde by Peter Cawdron

Reentry by Peter Cawdron

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer

Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer

Creatures of Charm and Hunger by Molly Tanzer

The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp

Gather the Fortunes by Bryan L. Camp

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty

The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette

The Apocalypse Seven by Gene Doucette

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks

The Chaos Function by Jack Skillingstead

Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker

A Dark Queen Rises by Ashok K. Banker

The Blind King’s Wrath by Ashok K. Banker

Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth

Poster Girl by Veronica Roth

The Unfinished Land by Greg Bear

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

The Undertakers by Nicole Glover

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.