CONTENTS

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

PROSE

THE WHITE ROAD; OR HOW A CROW CARRIED DEATH OVER A RIVER

Marika Bailey // 6343 words

A crow called Broadfeather worries she’ll never find a name. Her quest for one leads to the ancestral sea, where a sparkle beneath the waves beckons—and an uncovered evil must be brought to Death Herself.

FATAL CONDITIONS

Chris Campbell // 3827 words

The magic in Rebecca’s blood is strong. Defying her Big Ma’s wishes, she combines her medical training and healing talents for a night of urgent house calls—at great personal risk.

REMEMORY

Kristen Reynolds // 7352 words

Assailed by memory loss, invasive bio dust and her own long-buried trauma, Vera braves the wasteland of the Southern Reach in a desperate bid to find her stolen daughter.

BLOOD TIES

Jade Wilburn // 4952 words

When government planning authorities submerge a small Southern town to create a lake, young Olivia is caught between a promise to keep her baby sister safe and the residents’ dark vengeance.

POETRY

A DEMON AT MY WINDOW

Aigner Loren Wilson

in which my grandma departs this realm for three hours

Jade Wilburn

April 2021

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome to the 18th issue of FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction.

I hope this issue finds you in good health and chasing down each and every one of your pursuits. We’re excited to welcome new members to the FIYAH squad: Chavonne Brown and Margeaux Weston who will add non-fiction content to our web space and upcoming issues, respectively.

The year continues to bring more goodness: FIYAH won the 2020 British Fantasy Award for Best Magazine/Periodical! We’re so grateful for this recognition, and thank the British Fantasy Society for the honor. Registration for FIYAHCON2021 is underway, and you really should be there. I can’t remember a convention where I’ve felt so seen, inspired, empowered... you get the idea. Grab tix before they’re gone!

This issue’s stories include debut pieces from three of our authors! “Fatal Conditions” by Chris Campbell features a magical healer’s fateful night of house calls. Kristen Reynolds’ “Rememory,” follows a mother’s search for her stolen daughter through a dystopic, failed America. In “Blood Ties,” Jade Wilburn explores the ancestral curse of a drowned town, and a young woman’s struggle to free herself of it. Rounding out our prose is “The White Road or How a Crow Carried Death Over a River” by Marika Bailey, whom we’re delighted to publish again.

Poetry selections by B. Sharise Moore include “A Demon at My Window” by Aigner Loren Wilson, and “in which my grandma departs this realm for three hours” by Praise Osawaru.

Issue 18’s cover artist is Tajae Keith.

Thanks again, as always, for your readership and support.

Peace,

DaVaun Sanders

Executive Editor

Executive Editor: DaVaun Sanders

Managing Editor: Eboni Dunbar

Poetry Editor: B. Sharise Moore

Acquiring Editors: Kaleb Russell + Danny Lore + Genine Tyson + Emmalia Harrington + Tonya R. Moore

Art Direction + Layout: L.D. Lewis

Cover Artwork by Tajae Keith

All material in FIYAH is copyrighted to the original authors and may not be reproduced without permission.

THE WHITE ROAD; OR HOW A CROW CARRIED DEATH OVER A RIVER

By Marika Bailey // 6343 words

Long ago – well before now, but not so distant as then – there was a crow called Broadfeather who worried she’d never find a name.

Back then, oh baby-love, all of the crows lived on an island so small it barely merited the name. That green upstart rock was split in two by a river that ran in both directions away from its source.

On one side of the river was Life and everything that breathes, bleeds, and breeds. On the other was Death and all Her treasures. Smack dab in the middle of both grew the moko forest where poison and pleasure grew leaf-to-petal close, and the mist was knit together from the last wishes of wistful ghosts. In the canopy of that forest First Crow, the very first of her kind, god and many times great-grandmother to Broadfeather, had made her home.

The many children and grandchildren of First Crow roosted in the jumbie-haunted trees and were plentiful. There was Rumblecaw Crow, who was such a good mimic that she could imitate Old Django Thunder himself, startling the flock out of their roosts and near falling over laughing at her own joke. Stoneweaver Crow was the builder of the clan. Her nests were sturdy and strong, her eggs never falling in even the highest wind. When First Crow decided to expand the royal nest, it was Stoneweaver she called upon to lead the work.

It was the way of First Crow’s most ambitious children to throw off the egg-name their clutch-mothers had given them and find a name for themselves. Rumblecaw had once been Brighteye, and Stoneweaver’s clutchmates remembered when she was named Strongfoot.

Which brings us back, my dear, to young Broadfeather, who was worrying herself so badly, she’d begun plucking at her mantle. She’d had no adventures, no stories, no special gift to share with the flock. Nothing to bring the First Crow and say “I demand a name.” She was neither very big nor very small. Not very bright or very stupid. She couldn’t tell jokes. Couldn’t sing. And had never found any treasure worth mentioning. She should be content with the name given to her, but she just couldn’t. It worried her. It gnawed at her, and she in turn began to gnaw at her trousers, cawing in worry, until she looked ragged and plucked.

“Child,” said her mother who’d run out of patience, “if you’re so worried, you have to do something about it.”

Broadfeather stopped in the middle of pecking her trouser feathers. Well, could she? Could she?

With a sigh, her beloved mother opened the broad shadow of her right wing and swept her daughter out of the nest.

“Go and have an adventure and stop hurting my head about it!” she called to Broadfeather, who’d managed to right herself and flap away. Then she gratefully returned to her nap, in the way of all mothers before and after her.

Broadfeather did not know where to go. She had to find an adventure or treasure worthy of a name, since she had no particular talent with which to earn one. Perhaps the sugarcane fens where the blood of the dying fed the snakes who twisted through the rotting fertile muck? Or maybe the groves where guava ripened, holding the names of stars written within them? She couldn’t decide. So she simply flew.

Her wings stretched out wide-wide as she was lifted by a warm current of air. The green of the moko forest grew smaller and smaller until she could see the whole of it laid out below her, and beyond it the divided sea.

To the East were the dark waters that had given birth to all of the ancestors, First Crow included. And to the West was the still, white blanket of ocean where the sun went to die every night before being reborn. They covered the whole world and beyond. Broadfeather found herself gliding lower towards the ancestral sea, as if she could scoop up a mouthful of its sparkle to bring home for her own name-prize.

As she came lower to better admire the lapping waves, she saw it. A glimmer of something white. Not the sun’s reflection on the caps of the waves, but down, very far down. Something white, and shimmering, and possibly quite wonderful.

It could have been anything. The first bloody cough of a dying star, crystallized and fallen to earth. Or a secret, pulled screaming from the mind of a god, shut away in the heart of a pearl. Something special enough to build a name on.

Broadfeather pulled her wings in close for a dive, piercing the air with her body. She broke through that water like a clap of thunder.

Down she went.

Past the waving shoals of tri tri fish no bigger than her smallest claw, green-scaled and pearl-eyed. Past the bullying crowds of kingfish, curious and scarlet-crowned. Past the chattering schools of beaked parrot fish. (Seeing them for the first time, Broadfeather assumed they must be distant, scaly cousins, and gave them a polite nod as she zoomed past.)

The little crow held her dark wings even tighter, pulling the last bit of remembered warmth closer to her breast, and spiraled down into the deep.

A name, my name could be there! she whispered to herself.

The water grew dark, then darker than dark. If she’d turned her head back she would’ve seen the circle of the sun shrink and then wink out.

This was a stupid thing to do, thought Broadfeather. It is the same thought that has occurred to many a new adventurer hurtling off the cliff of mortality.

The sea was dark, but it was not empty. As she swam further and further down, there were creatures that Broadfeather was sure had been made either in madness or mistake. Snakes with eyes as big as her head, and curved teeth long as a wing. Light swam out of the darkness to reveal the ponderous monstrosity that wore it as a lure, thick-scaled and white-eyed. There were sounds in the darkness that never became sights, for which the young crow was very grateful.

It was some time later that she finally and happily reached the glittering beacon at the bottom of the sea and saw it for what it was: a white road, curving and bending into the long watery distance. It glittered and glowed as brightly as the first diamond ever stolen for a queen’s crown. Broadfeather hopped and purred in excitement, bending closer, her beady eyes keen.

The road was made up of finger bones as long as her beak, crystalline, and pregnant with light. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

A crow is a trickster and a hoarder, but most importantly, a crow is a keeper of memories. What better way to keep memory than in the marrow of bones softly melting against your tongue in remembrance, or the sweet jelly of an eye sliding down a throat? And to compound that, the sparkle! The pulsing luminescent glow from each delicately carved knuckle bone and talus. Phalanges lying in opalescent splendor among the carbuncled diamonds of capitates.

What a treasure! What a find! This would be the making of her name.

Delicately she picked up a glowing carpal bone in her beak, and thrice as quickly she spat it back out. The shiny had spoken to her.

Broadfeather hopped and flapped and shivered in distress. Even now as the deep current refracted its light, it spoke in a voice that she could not escape or shake out of her head, try as she might.

“Are you death?” asked the bone.

Broadfeather huddled, wings up, head cocked. Sparklies were not supposed to talk back. Or have opinions about being picked up. Sparklies—to steal a phrase from her least-favorite clutch-aunt—were definitely supposed to be seen and not heard.

But after some thinking she supposed that encountering offal that talked back was what adventuring was all about.

“I’m a crow, not Death Herself, though my ma has always said we have some distant family connection with that good Queen. But since we’re chatting all friendly so, what are you?” Remembering her manners, she added, “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, or madam, or them as the case may be?”

“We are souls, and in need of help, young crow who is very lost.”

Broadfeather bristled. “I am not lost! I wanted to see what you were and now I have seen and that means I am the very opposite of lost!”

“Our apologies, friend crow who is just where she wants to be. We do not get many visitors here. We are alien to this place and the sluggish languages of the deep dark. We do not have much practice in speaking to any but each other.”

“This is a strange place for a soul to be. And an even odder — though beautiful — form for you to take,” Broadfeather replied, awkwardly hopping over to the light. The more she looked at it, the more it seemed imbued with personality and life.

“Do you have a name?” she asked. “I am called Broadfeather. Or rather, that is my egg name. I have yet to earn another.”

“I had a name once, too. Though that was long ago and far away. It is a sad story,” said the bone.

“I would hear it, if you would share it,” Broadfeather said, settling down like a mother over an egg.

The bone was silent for a moment, as if considering it, then came to a decision within its crystal shell.

“You are here, feather child, so I may as well tell you my sad tale.”

∙ ∙ ∙

I was born in a country I do not remember the name of. I no longer know the names of my mothers and fathers. Or my sisters. There was a man I loved, but his name is gone too. All of the names that have made up my life have been stolen, First Crow’s child. And if there were any justice in this world of shame and death, it would not be me at the bottom of the ocean. It would not be we bones piled one atop the other like so much dust and sand. If there were justice, I would have my name and my death.

But there is none.

I went for a walk, Broadfeather Crow. That is how I came to this end. That is what I dared.

One morning in that home I will never see or name again, I rose from my bed and went to the beach. There were shells on a particular strand of sand, colored like dawn’s tears. And I wanted them for a necklace. My eldest sister was heavy with child and it would be a gift.

And I liked to walk alone. I liked quiet.

But that morning, oh night-born, I did not find peace or shells. I found men with guns. Or they found me. Hunters of men and sellers of people. Filth! Corruption!

Should I tell you that I screamed? Would it matter that I fought?

I was taken all the same. Beaten and bound with cold metal.

And when they dragged me to their ship, covered more in blood and chain than in cloth, they threw me in its belly. A pit darker and more fouled than any hell and filled with others like me, brutalized and in chains.

That, I—we!—might have survived. A body imprisoned does not necessarily mean a body destroyed. But these men, ashen as doves and smiling like hungry ghosts, did not stop at stealing my body.

No, child. They brought me up from the pit where my fellows and I slowly died of rot and hunger, and brought me before their wizard. We had something else that he found valuable, beside our bodies for sale. At first I couldn’t look at him straight on. He shone. Even under the sun, he shone like the reflection of the sun off the sea. It was the light of what he stole. He wore it over his shoulders like a blanket, a thief unashamed of his crime. His face was white as salt, his mouth a dark red gash like an open wound, and his eyes were no color at all.

There is power in names, as you know. You, young crow in search of another name, you must understand that! Our true names are what bind us to Creation, the delicate shell that protects our souls on the journey from Life to Death and declare our existence whole.

So much power in that, if you can strip it from a soul. The power of self. The power of memory.

When that grey-eyed magician stole my name, plucking it from my chest as I screamed, he smiled. It gleamed silver and green in the sun and sparkled as he opened his mouth and swallowed it.

I threw myself from that ship and let the water have me. Dying and deathless, until my body wore away and there was nothing left of me but a fractured soul captured in a bone.

Look into the distance child. Into the water dark and deep. These lights you see are the souls of those who were stolen, who jumped from the ships because they could not bear to carry the weightlessness of what had been taken from them.

∙ ∙ ∙

The bone darkened as if in remembrance of sorrow.

Broadfeather was not sure what to do. So she moved close to the bone and laid one wing gently over it, as she would do for any weeping cousin.

There are some things that remain the same for all children of blood and breath. Comfort is one of them. Bird and lost soul sat in the deep dark of the ocean floor and mourned together.

After some time, Broadfeather spoke. There was a grain of an idea tossing through her mind.

“Lady Death can’t take you without a name, is that so, friend?”

The crystal’s light pulsed once and dimmed. “Yes, that’s so. We are unmoored from Creation.”

Broadfeather hopped up and began to pace, a habit she’d aggressively stolen from First Crow.

“But there’s got to be more than one way to get a name.” She cocked her head in thought. “I am here in pursuit of a new name. There are those who pull their names out of the alphabet sea of the oracles. What if we could give you all new names?” Broadfeather stared excitedly at the soul. She saw them differently now. They were another person, like she was, and grievously wounded.

“I… don’t know,” they replied. It had been long and lonely in the deep dark of the sea, and hard to hope in that lightless silence. But oh, to be free! To rise from limbo, no longer a stone revenant, beyond the curse of what had been done to her! To them all.

“What would you do for us, young friend?” the soul asked. She listened as Broadfeather outlined her plan, then shared it amongst the other souls that marked the long white road at the bottom of the sea. The road of the lost.

Bone to bone, the story passed, each deciding if they would put their fate into the not-very-large beak of one not-quite-grown crow. And soul to soul, they replied back: “Yes!”

∙ ∙ ∙

Long ago, before there was any land at all, First Crow stole the sun. Now, we don’t need to get into the nitty gritty of why she did that. In her youth First Crow would have stolen Father God’s underpants just to keep limber. The point is, she did it. Broadfeather reasoned, with every cell of her remarkable crow brain, that if you could steal something from the sky, you’d be just as able to steal something to the sky.

She turned to the first little soul, the only one she’d spoken to, and asked, “Friend, would you mind if I picked you up with my beak?”

“Sounds more fun than living at the bottom of the ocean!” answered the bone, who was picked up as gently as the crow could manage.

Broadfeather could not give warning while clutching her passenger in her beak, and when she crouched down and sprang back up, the little bone made a tiny squeak. But that was soon drowned out by the sound of tiny osseous laughter, as the crow rocketed them up through the forever night of the sea floor, and up through the water to the sun.

Up they flew, past the many-toothed guardians of the deep cold. Past the waving forests of kelp and the million-rich schools that bejeweled their haunted roots. Up towards the round flame of the sun, sparkling brighter and bigger with each passing moment. Until they broke the surface of the sea, and Broadfeather heard a sound from the glowing soul in her mouth that could have been a sigh or cry.

Up they continued. The air felt good on Broadfeather’s wings, and the sun’s warmth was a blessing. If her young bird life had a purpose, Broadfeather would have said it was this flight, this moment of rising faster than any she’d ever experienced, up past the sapphire sea and through the lapis-lined sky. The world below shrank into smudges of color, and still the young crow did not feel her strength flag or her breath give way. She could fly forever, up past the last swirling clouds, until they reached the sticky blackness of the Roof of Creation where the stars lived. Gently, Broadfeather released her passenger, placing it gently into the glossy black of the sky. The bone slipped into its new home with a glowing sigh of release.

“Is this good, friend?” the young crow asked.

“This is more than I could have asked for, friend Broadfeather. This is a gift,” said the bone. It glowed rose and gold, like the goddess of sunrise on her wedding morning.

Before they could say more, the crow turned back towards the earth in a swirl of feather and speed, flying away so quickly she looked like a smudge against the painting of the distant earth below.

Broadfeather felt as if her blood had been replaced with fire and her breath with starshine. She flew back to the waiting sea within the space of a blink, and in another she was at the bottom of the sea, another stone safely caught in her beak, ready for its journey to the sky.

Over and over she flew between one dark to the next, the black of deep sea to the midnight of deep sky. One hundred times. One thousand times. One million. Until the white road at the bottom of the sea, the long line of lost and name-robbed souls, now lived in a swirl of glory across the blue and black of the universe. Shining pink and purple, silver and gold, as beautiful and bright as any star born of dust and nebula.

Only as she placed the very last bone, the wrist stone that had once belonged to someone very small and very, very young, did she pause. Drifting along the currents of space, Broadfeather returned to the first stone, they who’d first spoken to her at the bottom of the sea and asked her help as the goddess had predicted.

“Friend! Friend! You are all freed. Is it good?” she asked.

“Good? Baby crow, this is the greatest good. This is a blessing.”

Broadfeather, being a crow of darkest feather, could not blush. Instead, she cartwheeled in joy. Caterwauled the crow song of happiness.

“A good thing! A blessing!” she cried.

“Friend, you have a new home now, with the stars and the distant worlds on the dust roads. When the children of the gods look up at you and your fellows, they will make heroes of your bones. Archers, lions, and dancing princesses. You will have names once again!”

Broadfeather burbled and danced in joy at her great trick, her grand theft of souls from a stealer of names. Oh what a day! Oh what a time!

The bones, now infant stars, shone bright and sparkling for the young bird in thanks, spelling out their joy as she twirled and laughed her way back to the moko forest, her family, and First Crow.

∙ ∙ ∙

She returned to a nest in full uproar. Her mother, who she’d last seen un-gently nudging her out into an adventure, was flying in circles around the royal nest. With every revolution she dropped rotting fruit and curses upon the head of the clan. First Crow huddled under her wings, her red eyes glowing malevolently from the darkness therein.

“You and your stupid special names,” yelled Hopfoot. “Putting ideas in fledgling’s heads, as if they aren’t all special!”

Splat! went a semi-fermented guava. Squish! went the rotten egg that followed it onto the royal nest.

“My daughter is gone and it’s all your stupid fault! With your stories and legends!”

Broadfeather saw her mother turn her rear to the royal house and aim a liquid fart in its direction.

“You don’t stop that right now, Hopfoot, I swear on my mother’s underbelly, in your next life you’ll be a cricket!” cawed the crow matriarch. “The names are gifts!” First Crow dodged a falling mango with the agility of a crow hundreds of years younger and flew up behind her attacker. “Your chick was grown, and you pushed her out the nest your own fool self just like your mama did to you!” Hopfoot yelped as First Crow snapped a tailfeather in a flash.

“Besides,” said the elder. “The chick’s back home, and laughing behind you.”

Broadfeather’s mother went slack-beaked at the sight of her baby, quickly enveloping her in a tight black-winged hug.

“My baby! How dare you go out on an adventure!”

She tried to answer around her mother’s feathers, but there was no air.

“I know I told you to! But that’s not the point! You’ve been gone for days! Do you know how much I worried? I had all your clutch-mates searching the forest for you.”

“And bothering me!” added First Crow. “As if I, an embodiment of Mother Dark, have time to be nagged by anxious mothers.”

Broadfeather felt her mother yell over her shoulder, “You’re our first, it’s your job to care!”

She struggled out from under her mother’s wings and her anxious grooming. “Mama, it’s okay! I had an adventure. I met lost souls! I have a story for the whole clan.”

At that, First Crow seemed to grow bigger. Her eyes shone like garnets and her beak was wickedly sharp, glossy obsidian. She narrowed in on Broadfeather, her huge wings unfolding behind her like the train of a storm cloud’s wedding dress.

“ENOUGH. All of you.” Gone was the genial grumbling voice she usually used on her children. This was the voice of midnight and command. The voice that called down feather and claw for retribution and remembrance.

“Young Broadfeather will stay and tell me her story.”

The prodigal crow shivered under her elder’s gaze.

“The rest of you go back to what you were doing. Yes, even you, Hopfoot. Your child will be safe with me. GO.”

Broadfeather received a small nip of beak and a strong hug from her mother, but then she was all alone with the first of her kind. The mother of her people. She remembered the feeling of warmth from her friends in the sky and the sound of the goddess’ voice in the deep of the sea, and pulled her shoulders up straighter.

She had a story. Her voice as steady as she could make it, Broadfeather told First Crow all she’d seen on her journey.

∙ ∙ ∙

At the end of her tale, First Crow’s eyes were narrowed in thought. She sent the young crow back to her family, assured that she would receive her new name as soon as First found a suitable one.

It was good. Getting what she’d dreamed of for her whole life was great. Broadfeather didn’t have a new name yet but she found that she didn’t mind the wait. Even without it, she felt… different. Changed. Her world had gotten so much bigger. A name could wait. Her heart knew who she was. Those she’d helped knew who she was.

Being home felt restful, after such a grand adventure spanning the bottom of the sea and top of the sky. Broadfeather realized that homecoming was a special kind of joy. She relished resuming her nightly spot sleeping between her closest clutch-mates, falling asleep to the sound of White Eye’s snore, and Cherry’s happy dream chirps.

But, you see, Broadfeather still worried.

At first she didn’t even know that what she felt was worry. What, you thought she went home, put her heart away and forgot? Crows never forget!

Broadfeather thought and thought and thought some more. She went and cuddled under the massive wing of First Crow to see if she could think bigger thoughts there. First Crow wrapped a sail-like wing over her and tucked the smaller bird in with a sigh.

Broadfeather thought about stealing.

Stealing, she thought, was a crow’s right. Why did the theft of the bones’ names make her so angry? She had stolen fruit a thousand times. First Crow had stolen diamond puzzles, cinnabar anklets made of a fire god’s blood, and even the sun. Her mind twirled her worry over and over again, you could practically hear it turning.

The eldest in question opened one beady eye, its kaleidoscope colors glinting in the dark. She watched her many-grand-daughter’s restless form proudly before speaking.

“Those were all things, baby-love.”

It hit Broadfeather then, with the strength of the first lightning bolt to ever bridge the sky and the earth, that people were not things.

It was a truth so obvious that she felt silly for not thinking about it before. But so many things are like that. Feelings deep inside oneself that eventually condense and sharpen into brilliant diamonds of understanding.

You can’t steal people, she thought. And right behind that, Someone has to set this right.

It was not enough that the souls of the white road had been given to the sky as stars. Those who’d stolen people, and stolen their lives and names from Death, had to be stopped.

“Exactly,” said First Crow.

∙ ∙ ∙

Some while later, Broadfeather gathered her least obnoxious clutch-mates and cousins and told them her plan. As soon as the sun began its shrouded descent into the sea, they left the crow nests and crossed the moko forest into the lands of Death. The leaves of the trees slowly shaded from deepest green on the side of life to become paler and paler as they approached that land beyond.

When the whispering leaves were whiter than the newest of eggs, the crows knew they had crossed over. They flew wingtip to wingtip, as closely as possible. When the sun slipped all the way down into night, white skeletal forms came to join their flight. The skeletons of crow ancestors, white crystal feathers over bone, having heeded the call of First Crow to come guide “the youth-dem” safely through Death.

Underneath them, the misty land that would be the destination of all born in Life sparkled like diamonds. Every color of white and every color held beneath white colored this land. Its people, linen-shrouded and cloud-cauled, looked up to stare at the delegation of crows flying towards the seat of their Queen.

Death Herself lived in a palace in the caldera of a cold and quiet volcano. She watched from a high tower of crystal and bone, past the moko forest and the white seas of her domain all the way to the other side of the world. Her view went all the way to the distant bower of her beloved, Life. On the coldest and darkest of nights, you can see the ancient and arcane signals she sends across the sea.

Most of them roughly translate to, “I miss you.”

“I love you.”

When the crows, live and dead, arrived in the tower room of Queen Death she was waiting for them.

The largest of the dead crows bowed and approached his monarch. She nodded and raised one hand for him to rest upon, smoothing the razor-sharp crystal feathers on his back affectionately with the other.

“Silverleaf, old friend,” she said to him. “You have brought me very interesting visitors.”

Her voice was the sound of galaxies colliding, or the taste of rum distilled from a black hole’s laughter. Broadfeather could not decide which.

She ruffled her feathers up to seem as big and proud as possible, and addressed the immortal who would gather her when her First no longer could.

“Lady Death, you have been robbed,” said the little crow.

“There are new stars in the sky, child of my cousin. A river of them, too many to have been birthed all at once in these orderly times of rules and gravity. And you, feather-baby, smell like old magic and my own far-flung sisters. Tell me your story, child.”

So Broadfeather did, just as with First Crow. But she added one thing.

“It is wrong, my Lady, to steal people! It is wrong to take their names and rob them and you of the respite all living creatures earn. To remove them from the wheel of creation is an… a… a…”

“An abomination,” answered First Crow from a shadowed window.

Death narrowed her eyes. “How did you get in here?”

“I tricked my way in. That’s what I do.” First Crow rolled her blood-drop eyes in laughter.

“And you sent your children here…”

“To say that we must go to war.”

“First things like us cannot go to war. That has been decided by those older even than we,” snapped Death peevishly. She’d never quite forgiven First Crow for stealing a favorite pair of her earrings at their cousin’s wedding.

“You have an army, cousin. Enough to bring fear to any wizard who dares to steal from you.”

“True, but conditions must be met for my shadows to cross into life. Conditions that we do not have,” she sighed. A sad mist rose from the frost tiled floor.

Broadfeather tried to bat it away from her, and froze mid-flap when she saw the ruby gleam of First Crow’s eyes sidling towards her. It was difficult to hide behind a skeletal ancestor, but she tried.

“The jumbie soldiers of your armies may not cross the river, cousin, but my children have wings, and a duty to bring the high low.”

“You would do this?”

First Crow nodded solemnly. “It is right. We must.”

Death smiled and reached out a finger to shake the talon First Crow offered.

“We have a deal then,” she said gladly. “And a truce between us, cuz.”

“Those earrings looked stupid on you anyway. I did you a favor.”

Death sucked her teeth and went to gather her soldiers.

∙ ∙ ∙

Broadfeather and First Crow waited in the pale fields of Death for its Queen to call her soldiers to arms. When Death appeared among the misty reeds, First laid a quelling wing on her descendent, gathering her closer. Shadows froze like mid-winter ponds, and from their jagged darkness the moko jumbie pulled themselves into existence. Their skin was painted white with shifting runes. Each mark defined their contract with Death, binding them for eternity in honorable service. Only the shades of heroes and honorable warriors were offered a space in Death’s revenant army. That night they came to her call once again, faces covered in straw reed masks painted blood red, knees and feet on backward to differentiate them from the living.

The jumbie crooned in a haunting wail and the crows rose up towards the sky. The shadows jumped up, latching their darkness to shining feathers, each no heavier than a shadow, but cold enough to burn paths of killing frost. Broadfeather shivered in flight, but let no sound of discomfort touch the air, as she carried a pair of jumbie from both legs. In a contest between the frost-laced grip of undead soldiers and the disapproval of First Crow, she knew the latter was the clear winner. Just a glimpse of the ruby glimmer in her elder’s eye was enough to straighten her feathers and fly higher.

As she passed over the moko forest, her cousins in formation behind her, an angry hiss rose up from the trees below. Clawed vines and branches rose up to the night to clutch and trap the ghosts and bar their path into Life. Broadfeather’s tiny heart quivered. But she remembered her eldest (and those beady eyes) and she thought of her star friends who had lived an eternity in the deep dark sea and knew she had to go on. On a signal from First Crow they wheeled up, higher and higher to the curve of the sky and approving light of nameless stars. Down flew the flock to the painted stone houses of thieving wizard.

In the settlements below the moko forest, in dirt floored cabins, stolen people rested in the few hours given to them.

The wind howled from the river, spilling a rolling fog down to the sleepers, leaving a trail of crystal frost in its wake. It was the smell of cold that woke the grandmother up. Beneath the shadow of the moko forest, cold was foreign. A disturbance to air and earth that lived in perpetual humid fecundity.

The grandmother opened the creaking shutters at her window with hands gnarled from decades harvesting in the sugar swamps. She peered into the frost-garlanded darkness and saw the shadows of the undead flying through the air. She laughed, deep up from her belly, and waved. Shadowed against the moon, ghosts trailing behind her like a war god’s banner, Broadfeather cawed back.

(You’ve probably never heard a flock of crows laugh while their jumbie riders giggle in anticipation. Pray you never do.)

Word went from shack to tiny shack. Grandmothers and aunties, graybeard uncles and rumpled eldest children passing along the news.

The jumbie are coming! Death is coming over the river. The ghosts are risen from the water and whispering in the sugar swamps. Out of bed! Get the babies, and get your gran! Up, up to the hills with those who can’t fight. This will be the end or the beginning.

The wizard, taker of names, stealer of people, murderer and abomination, slept peacefully in his bed. He did not wrestle with bad dreams or a restless conscience. Angels have passed more troubled nights than he, enslaver of people, did that night as Broadfeather and her cousins spread their black wings and dropped the shadows of death upon his house.

After all, he had a very nice house. There were dozens of rooms, all of which he had furnished in the gold and mahogany style of his foreign homeland. It was easy to lay his head down to rest at night when the barracks behind his house was full of men like him with guns and knives, paid well to defend him from anything that might stalk the night. Trading in abominations and genocides, you see, can be quite lucrative. Many of the finest homes in the world are built on the very same foundations.

The shadows of death, however, care nothing for money or men. They brushed aside the magical webs of protection the wizard constructed around his home. His soldiers and guardians fell one by one into darkly spreading pools of their own blood. Spilt as quietly as falling dusk and quicker than a fly’s blink.

The jumbie, closing in on their prey, cried a howl to their Queen. A ripping, tearing of air, the scream of ten thousand souls. In the shacks surrounding the house, the strongest and canniest of those captive rose up with machete and makeshift mace. Answering the call of Death’s shadows to battle for their souls and names.

The sound of the night was the sound of body and soul separating forever.

From the height of an ancient mango tree, Broadfeather and First Crow watched, exulting in their work, anticipating the feasting that would follow. (Broadfeather had high hopes of an eyeball or two.)

“You’ve done good work child,” said the elder.

Broadfeather rustled in proud delight. “Thank you great grandmother. You taught me, and I remembered. That is what crows do.” A compliment from the First! This is as good as an eyeball. As good as an eyeball and a tongue!

“Well, I’ve thought of a name for you,” said First.

“Really? Oh! What is it?” Broadfeather asked giddily. In all the excitement, she’d forgotten all about her new name!

First eyed her with a knowing and amused look. “You sure you want me to tell you now? Maybe after the battle?”

“Nope! Now. Now is good!”

First Crow laughed. “We will call you Fisher of Bones, my girl.”

The young crow held the new name in her mind, twisting it this way and that, tasting the roundness of it in her mouth. It was good. She cawed and jumped and gamboled in happiness.

Oh what a day! Oh what a name! She near shivered in excitement and delight.

“Yes, you have earned it. Even better than finding a treasure, you have done a good and right thing,” the ancient replied with affection and satisfaction. “Now, let us eat.”

∙ ∙ ∙

The crows still roost, fight, and fly over the moko forest. Younglings still journey the wide world looking for mischief and adventure, letting the white road in the night sky guide their way. The stars shine on them fondly, in memory of their dear friend who saved them from the dark. And as long as there is memory in our bones, no one can ever steal us again.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT MARIKA BAILEY

Marika Bailey was born in the Caribbean and raised in Brooklyn. She reps both with equal pride. A writer and illustrator, you can find her online on Twitter @Marika_Writes_

FATAL CONDITIONS

By Chris Campbell // 3827 words

A mean yellow eye fixed on me from the other side of the window where the white gyrfalcon perched.

He’d been tapping on the glass for hours. Big Ma had used the same nasty familiar to summon her line for as long as any of us remembered. I’d known it was a matter of time before she found out I was dying.

Follow the falcon, and we would have the confrontation I’d been dreading. Look at me, girl. She would cup my chin, leveling me with an eyeballing that could teach her bird a lesson. Her hair tied back in one of her bright handkerchiefs. Short, tight curls, long turned white with age, peeking from under the fabric.

Didn’t I teach you better? Magic ain’t for fools.

∙ ∙ ∙

Big Ma stood a bit over six feet tall in her prime, and time had done little to diminish her. They said Ol’ Sylvie had been a great brawler. Ol’ Sylvie is what they used to call her, but now most everyone called her Big Ma. They said she’d take on any challenger, be they man or woman, black or white, even beasts or demons. When it came down to fist and feet, she was unbeatable. And for the few who had been fool enough to attack her with tools of war – from clubs and knives to goophers and curses – fewer still walked away or ever again.

Her time in the fighting ring ended the moonless night thirty-five years ago when I slipped into the world – silent, blue, unbreathing.

“The last thing I smacked good with this arm was your hiney, girl.” Big Ma liked to tell the story of her shriveled arm when her people were about. Always making a show of it, raising her good arm to the heavens with her fingers reaching out to clasp some ephemeral spirit before swinging down in a wide-sweeping arc, so fast it cut the wind.

“Smacked the soul right into you!” she’d thunder at the climax of her yarn, her hand slapping down on the thick ashwood of her round cutting board with a crack loud enough to make folks jump, even when they knew to expect it.

“Healings help,” she used to say during our summer lessons. “But most times, a smart hurting helps folks longer. Know when to use your gifts and when to use your fists, girl.”

I can’t say I’ve ever gotten better advice. Magic is danger, and it runs strong in our blood. The summer lessons ended with the time crunch of clinical work.

“Folks can’t always be well – sickness comes sometimes,” Big Ma chided me when I told her our summers together were over.

“People wouldn’t be sick half as much if they didn’t shine to foolery. If people lived like we used to, they’d be a good deal stronger, healthier, and wouldn’t die so soon. You don’t need doctors for that.” She paused for breath, and I knew well enough to settle on some cushion.

“People today, they eat too much sugar, drink too much, and don’t dress warm enough.” She pinched the fabric of my blouse, sucking a tooth in disapproval. “This cotton ain’t the thing for health, neither. We used to wear wool, wool underclothes and wool skirts too. Wool all over, and boots of good heavy leather you could kick a man’s tripe out with. What kind of boots do your doctors wear Rebecca, you tell me that?”

“And don’t get me started on the bloodletting. A body’s stronger with its blood in it. You doctors ain’t better than a pack of thirsty bugaboos. Least they don’t come around when the sun is shining, and don’t pretend they’re doing any favors.”

Nothing I said got through to her, and I couldn’t be in two places at once that summer. I could get drunk, so I helped myself to a bottle of her homemade peach brandy while I tucked away a plate of dumplings dipped in Big Ma’s salted molasses butter. I let her voice her anger over the void I would leave behind, trying not to take it to heart.

One of the first things Big Ma taught me was how to construct the mental shielding healers need to protect themselves from the random pains of strangers. A month into my residency, I’d removed as much shielding as I could manage without losing my shit. Power is temptation, and every doctor wants an edge, be it ego or ambition. Still, I wasn’t fool enough to use my gifts for more than examinations; more was the promise of a quick death.

I managed to leave myself unshielded for years without trouble until that damn heatwave rolled in after the waters came. For weeks I’d trotted down the hidden paths the quantum magicians had laid. Following them to the old folks who screamed into my head from their stifling apartments and damp-filled houses where they’d been left behind. It wasn’t like I was regrowing limbs, lost to foreign wars or the sugar. I didn’t even restore sight to the blind, well, no more than a handful of times. I was careful.

Or I thought I was.

I paid many small prices to work my craft; the regular scratchy throats, a burst appendix, various smaller illnesses. Healing in exchange for injury, health in exchange for sickness. By the time I realized something was very wrong, it was already too late.

∙ ∙ ∙

Follow the falcon, and my scolding would last until sunrise. In the end, Big Ma would be kind. She would take me by my curls, bring me close to kiss my forehead like she always did, ginger cake on her breath. She would remind me of her funerary rights as was her habit. You promise to hoist me high, to a good solid crook. She would point to the large, heavy coil of rope she had placed by the door a score of years ago. High and true in my big chestnut, he and I have some catching up to do. And be quick about it, before your cousins get the notion to put me in the ground, dying ain’t no excuse to backslide on old deals well struck. And don’t go forgetting your Aunt Lizzie’s Bible. Lastly she would tap the key she kept on a chain around her neck. Big Ma’s daughter Elizabeth, my great aunt a few times over, had been a fortuneteller of note and none but Big Ma had laid eyes on the ancient tome in living memory.

Follow the falcon, and Big Ma will save you, girl. But I’d be the one tying her corpse to the trunk of that chestnut tomorrow.

“Tell her I’m not coming, tell her I’m sorry.”

He clicked his beak at me.

“Tell her I know what I’m doing, it’s going to be okay,” I lied. “Get now.”

Screeches of disapproval trailed me into the thicket of trees behind my house until I slipped into the hidden ways, beyond where he could follow.

∙ ∙ ∙

I made my first stop in the northeastern tip of the country for a newborn, Miranda. Marked by the precogs and oracles, and exactly the type of child meant for my healings. I didn’t know what she would become, with her futures still shrouded by the certainty of her death. All I knew is that if she lived, she could change the world.

Martin Luther King Jr, Alexander Fleming and Fatima al-Fihri were all tiny bundles of potential once. If the auguries were true, Miranda’s name would be spoken along with theirs someday. She was the reason I’d waited until tonight to do any more healings once I realized I was dying.

She was also why I now trudged through a foot of snow in the thick stand of sharp needled black spruce where the hidden ways had dumped me. Razors of ice and cold wind snapped against my face.

“Damn Quants.” I spoke to no one but the empty woods, my voice cracking the snowbound silence. After the hemlock die-off, the quantum magicians had grown more circumspect in how they built their hidden ways. Circumspect, and inconvenient as hell for someone racing against the clock.

While Miranda was only born yesterday, I had planned this trip with care for two months. I arrived at the child’s house just as her exhausted parents returned from the hospital. Once my senses confirmed they slept, I slipped through the front door they’d forgotten to lock.

In a scant few hours, they would have woken to their daughter struggling to breathe through tiny blue lips a few feet from where they slumbered. A few tortured hours after that, they would have stood in an antiseptic hallway while a doctor explained in soft tones all the ways their daughter’s body was born incompatible with life. The words wouldn’t matter. Their only truth would be they had been sleeping when Miranda needed them. I have delivered the same speech too many times, and never found the words that released a parent from misplaced guilt.

Tonight though, I would save them too.

Despite Miranda’s sickness, I expected a smooth healing. Newborns are relatively easy; their little forms contain ferocious reserves of power that thirst for life. My work on her overtaxed heart began just minutes before it failed.

I had done this delicate work before. Speaking to the child’s body, I learned at Big Ma’s side, but the knowledge I had gained as a doctor allowed me to heal her with my talent. After I finished with the heart, my focus spread to the nearby blood vessels, then her underdeveloped lungs.

I spent two hours on meticulous reconstruction before little Miranda’s own brilliant life- force took over the task of healing. Two hours to save one newborn while countless others met the fate she had avoided. All the healers in the world couldn’t change that. The price was too high, and we were too few. Magic would never save the world – but maybe little Miranda would.

My long skirts were still damp from the snow when I slipped out of the house, my heartbeat ringing in my ears and blood running freely from my nose. I paused to lift the charm I had set to keep Miranda’s parents asleep during my ministrations. The child was safe now, and the magic would fade rapidly in a few hours. I trudged back into the dark stand of woods, holding the red handkerchief I had brought to my nose before heading back into the hidden ways.

∙ ∙ ∙

My next stop was the hospital room of one of my distant cousins. He was nearly fully grown, but I still pictured a little boy flicking acorns off a distant tree with a twitch of his finger, grinning ear to ear at the chance to show off his budding power to his aunties. I felt the child’s fall when it happened nearly a week ago. Everyone in the family with a lick of power did. They say blood speaks but in a family like mine, blood tends to holler.

I worked my way westward to him using the hidden ways, adding a few extra hours of darkness to my night, hours I would need to finish. Spots began to dot my vision, and the thought that I might be buried by tomorrow circled the back of my mind. Tonight would be closer than I liked, one way or another, is all I dared admit to myself. Even if I could only save the boy it would be enough.

Healers aren’t common, but Big Ma’s line has given rise to more than a few of us. I’d kept the others away from the boy since his fall; lying to them about his doctors’ prognosis, but also telling them the truth when I promised I would see to him myself if it came to it. It hadn’t taken much to warn the others off. Healing an injury like his was truly dangerous.

A fall in the mountains had shattered his skull, and the damage to his brain was thorough. They’d medevacked him from the bottom of a five-hundred-foot cliff near a popular trail. The rescue workers told his parents it looked like a tragic accident, but still asked if the boy might have wanted to hurt himself. They had no way of knowing that he had been lifting tractors with his mind for the last three years.

Careful to avoid the tubes and sensors, I moved close enough to examine the damage.

They had removed the top of his cranium to clear away sharp bone fragments while giving his swelling brain room to expand. The wrongness pierced my healer’s senses, but the doctor in me knew it had been the only way to save him. The wound reminded me of the depression in Big Ma’s skull, and my thoughts drifted to her story as I scanned the damage.

“Put your fingers here,” she instructed during one of our lessons, removing her scarf and pointing to the crown of her head. Several scarred over wounds covered her scalp, including a dent in the top of it, large enough to fit my finger in up to the knuckle.

“It was my mistress.” Big Ma spit out the words. “The she-devil took a fire shovel to me on account of my sassing. The first blow took me off my feet.” She traced one long scar down the side of her head. “But it was the second one that broke my pate. I went so stiff she thought I was dead… but I wasn’t.”

“I was told my silent scream set every talent for two states on edge, but it still took weeks with me near-dead in a coma for help to come. They didn’t let our folk travel freely back then, and this was before those quantum magicians of yours poked all them hidey-holes all over the place. I guess after the first two weeks, someone figured if I ain’t died yet, there was no telling how long I was gonna linger on, scattering all the good folks’ wits. It was some white man who came for me. He didn’t give a name, and he left my head like this when he finished.”

As a child, I had shared my Big Ma’s anger at a job left half done, but in the years since, I’ve come to see it in a different light. Even with all my modern knowledge, I might not have been able to do better.

I worked on the boy for hours, hours I didn’t have, trying to fix the unfixable. He would wake up, but he would not get another chance to fly. I’d saved his life but none of his talents.

By the time I finished, my left arm hung numb at my side. I nearly let slip a curse at that – like most talents in our family, I’m a lefty. I used my right hand to open the door instead, and somehow managed to throw out my back. The spasms of pain knocked the wind out of me.

If I stopped now, if I collapsed there on the hospital floor in my condition, they would pump me full of narcotics and leave me to my death in a comfortable bed. I was tired, and it was tempting, but I had come too far.

I steeled myself for the journey ahead, sending a prayer to Eshu to clear the path before me with a promise of service yet to come. Thankfully I only dealt with automatic doors the rest of the way to the hospital’s exit.

∙ ∙ ∙

I made my final stop on a deeply forested peninsula between a fog-shrouded bay and the ocean. Across the bay, the city cast a pink haze into the mist, a pale imitation of the sunrise I’d run from since my first stop of the night.

Edekon’s home stood before me, constructed from giant redwood beams, large panes of glass, and sleek gray marble. More of a complex than a house, it balanced between beautiful and garish. Big Ma had always warned me to “never let a thirsty bugaboo get a taste on you,” but tonight I strode into the monster’s den by choice. It was already too late to turn around. Doubtless he caught my scent as soon as I marched down his driveway.

I couldn’t help comparing the mansion to the modest wood and stone cabin where Big Ma had summoned me tonight. She had been a free woman for over two centuries, but with nothing to show for it compared to Edekon. Her freedom had not come cheap.

Edekon opened the wide double doors of his home. He stood shirtless, wearing only white linen pants. His body rippled with the muscles of the battle-forged Goth warlord he had been long ago. A handful of scars ran across his torso in jagged stripes, keepsakes from before he had died and changed.

“I smelled you, witch,” he said with a half-smile.

“Then you know why I’m here.” I approached warily, barely hiding my curled lip.

Edekon gestured wordlessly toward the interior. Halfway through the door, his ice-cold breath coiled around my neck.

“You walk with too much confidence, mortal,” he whispered. “You know I could rip those legs off.”

“You threaten a slowly dying woman with a quicker death. I expected more from you.”

He snorted.

“Enough games. Will you do it?”

“You think to command my will, witch? I am not some filthy merchant of a demon for you to conjure up and trade with. Maybe I should kill you and be done with it.” His body shifted, pinning me against the redwood beam of the entryway with inhuman speed.

“It’s no worse than the fate I’m facing. I’m tired,” I said, and I meant it. I tilted my head back to offer the mocha skin of my throat to the abomination. The smallest of sacrifices to end so much suffering. I counted on his greed, and in that at least I wouldn’t be disappointed.

What came next was only instinct. His cried out to him to feast on me, so he did. Mine begged me to fight like hell to stop the beast and it took everything I had to resist it.

I let him drink freely of me. Within the space of three heartbeats, dark waves of warmth and pleasure replaced all of my pain and terror. I wasn’t surprised he decided to change me. I was more than a little surprised at how good it felt.

But in a family like mine, blood tends to holler.

While his curse worked on me, my blood worked its way through him. Every drop of plasma shouted to me within the creature’s body as his necrotic flesh seized and consumed my blood cells, one by one. The wrongness beat against my senses, teaching me its secrets.

I felt the curse within me turn my first cell, beginning my transformation. One infected cell would turn me, even if the creature stopped now. One infected cell was also enough for me to figure out a cure, and set to a final bit of work for the night.

A lot could go wrong with my plan, but the worst would be if he started to resist with me locked in his embrace. He had been a person, once. If I healed his mind first, I might rekindle the conscience of the man inside the monster. I tracked my blood to the creature’s brain, fixing as much as I could, quickly as I dared. Then I traced along his optic nerves to his eyes. One look into them, and I would know what doom faced me once I’d finished.

The strange admixture of dead and living flesh before me cried tears of blackened, fouled blood when his soft green human eyes met mine for the first time.

Confident now, I redoubled my work, time slipped, and my focus deepened. After finishing with his brain, I restored his wilted heart to better circulate my healing blood through him, although my heartbeat began to flutter from the effort. I set to work on the rest of his nervous system. For the first time in over a thousand years, Edekon would feel the world with human senses. I couldn’t feel my legs once I started with the deepest portions of the creature’s flesh, revitalizing layers of fat and connective tissue.

By sunrise, his tears ran clear.

We sat there for a moment, gazing into each other’s human eyes while light from the rising sun steadily marched across the bay, its rays glittering as they splashed against the breaking waves. I dragged myself free of his swooning form before the first tendrils of dawn slipped up the cliffs and in through the three-story bank of windows that overlooked the bay.

Magic is danger, and it runs strong in my blood. By the time Edekon realized something was very wrong, it was already too late.

The creature’s outer shell of vampiric skin exploded in flames with the first caress of the sun, hot enough to burn off my eyebrows. I lurched to my feet as Edekon transformed into a tower of orange flame. Rivulets of fire licked down his form and danced across the redwood floor.

Edekon remained silent, centuries of iron will devoted to watching the sunrise in his final moments.

I stumbled into motion as the flames grew, managing to run by the time I hit the front door. Healing in exchange for injury, health in exchange for sickness. Some would judge me for this – not for the extermination, Edekon had that coming, but for my unsettling feast. There would be whispered questions and darting looks… but not from my Big Ma. She’s the one who taught me, a smart hurting could help folks longer, and our magic ain’t for fools.

∙ ∙ ∙

I followed the gyrfalcon out of a familiar stand of trees. He led me to an old but well-made wood and stone cabin, scolding as I walked off the last of my limp.

The older woman scowled from her stoop while her familiar flew ahead to perch on the eaves above her. A series of short, high-pitched screeches made it clear he wasn’t happy with either of us today.

“Hush now, Jura.” She looked me over closely with narrowed eyes before smiling and ushering me into the house with a flap of her skirts. A steaming bowl of samp porridge and a slab of cornbread waited for me on her old oak table. She cuffed me softly across the ear as I sat, then wrapped me in a warm embrace.

I leaned back into the comforting bulk of my Big Ma and clenched her shriveled arm gently but firmly within my grasp. I smiled at the older woman’s gasp when I started my work. It would be a tough year for the pride of young boxers.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT CHRIS CAMPBELL

Like many good stories, Chris Campbell’s starts with a wrong turn. Still, after a few dark years working for a major multinational, he was lucky enough to emerge with his soul mostly intact and a chance to do a little good as an activist and political consultant.

While best known for his work in campaign finance reform, Chris is most proud of the work he has done getting BIPOC leaders elected to office. Chris credits the world of politics- full of strong personalities thrown together in the chaos of unending battle- for inspiring his appreciation of the powerful intersections between society and storytelling.

Chris writes Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction.

Follow him on Twitter @BaronetofLundy.

REMEMORY

By Kristen Reynolds // 7352 words

The weight of his disapproval settled onto her shoulders through the receiver. It was all he would willingly give her today.

“Again?” he asked.

She closed her eyes and leaned her wrapped head against the filthy glass of the FreeCall box. Traced the spider-webbing crack in the glass with her gloved finger. The years in between her dislocations had turned into months, turned into weeks. Her calls became more frequent. “Yes. Again.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve had to listen to you say,” he mimicked her voice, “‘This is the last time?’”

I know, she thought. Or rather, she had a sense and couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Instead, she waited.

He waited longer.

Finally, “Yes.”

She closed her eyes against the ductal tugging that signaled tears she could no longer spill. Dislocating exacted its price. Scrubbed DNA wasn’t cheap, but she needed to bypass biometric scanners somehow. So far it’d taken selling nearly every good memory she could spare to move across Reach borders undetected. When her supply ran low, she’d resorted to selling her darker memories on the torture market. Her pockmarked journal was her only fragmented record of what she’d given up, but it read like a spastic memoir of someone else’s life. It might as well have been a dusty archive in some forgotten pre-Reach library.

“How much do you need this time?”

“Three thousand credits. Just enough to get me there and get me a room for a few nights. Until I get… settled.”

“Mmhmm,” he murmured, the sound catching on the crags in a throat made rough from years of pack-a-day smoking. She coughed into the silence, desert dust creeping past the boundaries of her makeshift mask, into her mouth, infiltrating her body. Seeking. Probing. Dust mites coated everything in the Southern Reach of what remained of the USA. Part dirt, part biotech refuse. All problem, all the time.

She needed to leave.

“I already have a spot on a Block lined up. The next train to the Northern Reach leaves in an hour. I’ll be on it. Get to the border. I’ll get there in two days, tops.” She left out the part about dislocating. He didn’t need to know how she got across borders that’d long been closed to people like her.

“Vera.”

“Yeah, Dad.”

“This is it.”

“I know, Dad.”

They both knew it never was.

∙ ∙ ∙

She repositioned her dust-filled shirt over her nose and mouth, trying to decide if it would be better to take it off and beat it against the dying tree just off the edge of the platform. She stood apart from the crowd of passengers, watching them squeeze underneath the sparse sun visor, eking out what extra protection they could from the sun’s rays. They wore masks regardless of the suffocating heat boring through their threadbare atmosphere, protecting as much skin as possible. No one wanted to risk the side effects of exposure to prolonged blasts of UV radiation.

Vera shifted from one foot to the other, thinking about the dust mites already inside of her, likely inside all of them, wondering what they would change. She had no idea who she’d be in a year. If she’d even remember her father’s name. His face. Or if she’d remember more than what she had given up. She shivered despite the heat. She’d already sold so many memories to seedy types, Mem-addicts, their dealers, even pain wardens. What she’d kept would make her cry if she still had the capacity. Gods only knew what the ones she’d sold were doing to the people exposed to them. Poor souls.

She hunched her pack up onto her shoulder, hiked her too-large pants onto her increasingly slim hips and moved forward on the platform as the conductor shouted the arrival of her train. She pulled up her sleeve just enough to reveal the bar code on her inner wrist. It’d been getting her around within the Reaches without issue for years. Good memory had paid for this code, although she wasn’t aware of precisely which one.

The conductor’s gaze lingered at the deepness of her brown skin. She closed her eyes against the coming request.

“Goggles,” he grumbled.

“Come on,” she griped. “The UV index is absurd today.” Her eyes were already so dry.

“Goggles.”

Shit. Her synthtears were running low. She should’ve asked her dad for more credits. She pulled her goggles up.

He stared at her from behind his own dark goggles. Probably staring at her red eyes. She’d been stretching out her doses, learning to manage the pain rather than begging, “borrowing,” stealing and — when she could — buying new prescriptions.

“I need you to remove your glove so I can prick test you.”

“Look I don’t have tear ducts anymore, okay? Another unexplained side effect of our new and improved ozone-melting sun? Remember?”

“Remove your glove.”

She held her hands stiffly at her sides. “I am not on drugs.”

“You can take the test or you can stay here.” He shrugged, scanning the bar codes of folks as they passed around her. He didn’t ask to see their eyes.

She pulled the sun-shielding glove from her hand, quick to curl her fingers into a fist and present one, long middle finger to him for testing. If he cared, he didn’t react. But the petty gesture made her feel better. The handheld unit blinked green. No drugs. She smirked behind her mask, readjusted her gear, and walked onto the hover train.

She searched until she found a nearly empty car, desperate for some sense of privacy after the conductor’s violation. Nonetheless self-conscious, she squeezed two precious drops of synthtears into each eye after she removed her goggles, welcoming their cool comfort. She rested her head on the window, wrapped her arms around her bag and stared at the brown landscape as it blew by. She dropped her mask and slept.

She dreamed of her daughter. Of the days just before the bomb that killed what remained of the US, creating the Reaches. Of kissing the bottom of tiny feet with tiny toes and the feel of her tightly coiled hair against her face. She watched her transform into a frightened infant, an incongruent look on such a small face. Screaming as enforcers snatched her away, believing that people like Vera didn’t deserve better todays. Didn’t deserve either children or futures. She’d fought, selfishly, for this sanctuary in the midst of a country that would see her dead, for this chance for her daughter to live a different kind of life. To find her own battles instead of inheriting the ones from her mother and her mother’s mother. Vera felt her lips moving to say her lost child’s name.

This is where she always woke up. Where she forced herself to wake. But today’s dream brushed aside her boundaries, ferrying her directly into the guilt and loss she could never safely confront.

“Ines” she screamed.

Ines’ little hands pulled taut in the enforcer’s hold as she screamed. The enforcer put a rag over her face. Her head bobbed at an undoubtedly painful angle.

“At least support her head!” Vera screamed. “Hold her like somebody who loves her!”

Another enforcer stepped forward and tased her. Stepping mechanically back into place while she writhed on the ground. She willed herself to wake up, but instead careened from one violence to the next.

Kneeling in dry grass, searing in the sun as the children were loaded into vans and taken away. Watching as anything remotely valuable was carted out of their homes, seized by the government. Wiping away tears mixed with sweat from her face as the enforcers entertained themselves by destroying what couldn’t be sold – shattering plates against the ground, lopsided pottery made with love, the unassuming makings of a home. She saw one carting Ines’ rocking chair from their home and stomp it apart beneath his heavy boot.

She bucked against the dream as it transformed to the days of the protests. Jostled between the shoulders of outraged demonstrators, she watched as local leaders led the charge on behalf of her kin from Yarrow Hill. Their demands for change crackled through the megaphone, met by the cheering encouragement of a growing crowd and the pledges of politicians who claimed to be on their side. Vera neither spoke, nor raised a fist, numb to the empty display. None of it told her how to get her daughter back.

Then the president dropped a bomb. And everything indeed changed.

∙ ∙ ∙

Vera felt a rough jolting and snorted awake.

“Miss. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You were screaming in your sleep. A name? And…” the stranger looked at her sympathetically.

“What?” Her hand shot to her face.

“Well. You’re crying.”

Vera’s fingers came away glistening. Her eyes were leaking. Just a slow tread of saltwater cresting over her cheekbones and down her face. “No I’m not.”

The stranger frowned. “Okay,” he said. He fished around in his pocket for a moment and produced a wad of tissue. He grabbed his things from a nearby seat and relocated, leaving her to herself once more. A glance at the clock overhead showed they had only been underway half an hour.

The corners of her eyes burned. The tissue looked clean enough and she dabbed at her face with it. Her mind zipped from one possibility to the next. Her tear ducts were gone, so this couldn’t be happening. Her synthtears were probably just overcompensating for how dry her eyes were in the new desert.

Her dream came back to her, along with the grief she hadn’t truly felt in years. She yearned to be free from its suffocating cocoon. So she’d been digging at the hollowing ache, scooping away what memories she could and selling bits of herself little by little to restore what had been taken. Keeping what she thought she’d need to find her daughter. Her birth. Her loss. And a name she’d refused to utter since that day.

Now it pounded in her head, a two syllable beat to the headache throbbing at the nape of her neck.

Did it even happen that way? Did Ines actually scream for her? Had they taken her at bath time, souring the scent of freshly oiled skin with violence and aggression?

Then, as if her brain wanted to cleanse her mental palate, a memory snatched her away. Into a doula’s room, bracing against a table shoved against a wall. Against pain that burrowed into the deepest parts of her being. Nesting. Making a home out of her. A pain only matched by the loss of the one that caused it. Whether she could recall each memory moment for moment didn’t matter. That loss and pain were real.

“On the next wave, you push.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

Another contraction ripped through her as she leaned over the table. The gods reminding her that even natural gifts come with pain. And struggle.

“PUSH.” The doula rubbed her back, right in the spot where it scooped in to prepare for the swell of her backside. She’d never hated it more. It’s what’d gotten her into this mess in the first place. She clenched her teeth and pushed, exasperated laughter bubbling through her as her muscles unclenched.

“Mmhmm. Remembering how you wound up here aren’t you? You and that bubble—”

Vera reached around and grabbed her shoulder. “Now is not the time, Marie.”

Marie sucked her teeth and went back to massaging Vera’s back, smiling knowingly.

Another contraction crested. Vera gripped the edge of the table hard enough to crack it, bared down, and forced the gift of her body and her love out into the world.

Silence greeted her, interrupted only by her heavy breathing and the sticky wet sounds of a messy new life entering an even messier world.

The present snatched her back. Goddamned tears. They flowed more freely now, rivers without sobs.

The train slowed and she looked up, confused. The man who’d offered the tissue returned to the car with a frowning conductor.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you’ll need to get off.”

“What?” Her words caught on the hiccup of her cries.

“You’re making people uncomfortable.”

She looked around at the empty car and back at him. She crossed her arms and leaned defiantly back into the seat.

“I’ve paid for my ticket just like everyone else and I intend to make it to my destination.”

“Your money will be refunded. I have already alerted the authorities. They’re arriving here to transport you to the nearest town, so that you can get the help you so obviously require.”

“So I can’t cry?” A ridiculous question, she knew. She hadn’t been able to cry in public. Ever. Nothing scared people faster than a Black woman in emotional strife. But she hadn’t been able to physically cry in years. Odd how quickly she turned toward jealous guardianship over these, her reborn tears. They, like her, like her daughter, should be free to roam about the world.

Her eyes burned. She sniffed. “Do you smell that?”

The train car went crooked in her vision. When she blinked and shook her head, she was back in Yarrow Hill. The entire sanctuary was on fire. The once-green fields. The trees. Their homes. Her ears rang as she grabbed Ines, just barely three months old, hoisted her onto her hip and ran. Vera’s body resisted, there was still so much healing left to do. But she pushed. Just like the doula told her. Pushed so her baby could live. The smell of fire and smoke filled her nose, clouded her vision. Hands like vices encircled her arms, ensnared her baby, her light, her life.

“Ines—” she tried to scream, but ash filled her mouth, suffocated the sounds, smothered all the love that tried to find its way back to her child.

Vera landed back in her body, wailing. Tears still flowing. She jerked upright, slamming her head on the overhead luggage rack.

Her eyes burned.

Hands gripped her shoulders. More vices. She struggled away from those strange hands, reeling from the memory. The dream? Did they set the fires before or after they stole the children? Was she taken after bath time? From their one-room cabin? Or did they flee, together? Perfect recall didn’t matter. Only Ines. “Where is my baby?”

“Was there a child with her?” a new voice asked.

“She boarded alone.”

The conductor held her still while a guard stuck a needle in her shoulder. Cold liquid burned through her veins. They wrestled her through the narrow aisle, down the steep stairs and off the train. Sand crunched underfoot as they marched her toward a boxy, unmarked vehicle, its darkly tinted windows obscuring what awaited inside.

∙ ∙ ∙

The drug addling her brain made her more amenable but left her alert. Her eyes roamed frantically for anything to give her a sense of where she was, besides the endless waves of sand. She twisted in her bonds. A look out the window behind them offered no clue of how far from the train they’d gone. Her body languished behind her thoughts, as if she was moving through molasses. The driver smirked at her in the rearview mirror.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, words slurring.

He turned on the radio, whistling off tune as an answer.

The sand underneath the tires finally gave way to a dusty pockmarked road, the trappings of civilization emerging like signposts, guiding them into a declining town. The carcass of a car here, a ramshackle food stand there. Dilapidated homes and finally, what passed for downtown.

The emergency vehicle slowed in front of a squat, unimpressive building. The driver’s partner put his gear on and disappeared inside.

“We bring strangers like you here first when we’re called for emergency transports,” the driver sneered. “If I had my way, we’d take you straight to the Mental Recalibration Center. Get you back on track to being a productive member of society by any means necessary.”

Vera cringed imagining what “productive member of society” meant to a guy like this, in a town slowly dying from its addiction to old pre-Reach ways.

“But Shileene’s worked it so that she gets a few train discards for her little experiments. I don’t know what it is about that train, but it attracts folks like you. All weepy and out of sorts.”

The partner came back into view with a woman towering behind him, covered head to foot in gear obviously tailored to cut close to the dips and curves of her body. She took measured, clipped steps, allowing him to remain in the lead. Vera met brown eyes with a firm stare. She was certain she’d find no comfort here while Shileene worked with the partner to release the transport restraints.

“No mask?” she asked.

“Just those goggles.”

She sighed. “Let’s move quickly then.” Shileene settled Vera’s goggles back into place and removed her from the car. She took Vera firmly by the right arm, but rested a hand on her shoulder, patting her gently before walking her into the building.

∙ ∙ ∙

The air inside the building cooled her exposed face. The foyer she and Shileene entered teemed with inexplicably green potted plants. They crowded the perimeter, growing from and crawling up the walls. Straight ahead, people milled about in leisure in an open, sun-filled atrium. Not one wore gear. No covering for their skin or hair, no masks. They drank from mugs and read alone, or chatted in small groups of two or three. She couldn’t tell who was a patient and who wasn’t. She gaped in amazement. Even her wildest imagination couldn’t conjure this.

Shileene left her standing in front of the atrium, disappearing into a room down a hallway Vera hadn’t noticed. She returned with an assistant, who carried a needle and disinfectant powder on a tray.

Shileene reached up to unwrap Vera’s hair, but paused. “May I?”

Vera appreciated that Shileene asked, knowing she couldn’t resist. She nodded languidly.

Vera stared at the atrium as Shileene uncovered her hair, catching a hint of their reflection in its domed window. She grew self-conscious of her two, frizzy, thick, cornrows, and streaks of dirt on her face — especially next to Shileene, with skin practically glowing, clad in white cotton, locs piled artfully atop her head. She refocused her gaze on the people inside the atrium to distract herself.

“How…”

“It’s a very expensive illusion. The building from the outside, I mean. It allows us to blend in. Will you sit?” She gestured toward a chair that the assistant dragged over. They angled it so that she could sit and still look into the atrium. “What you’re looking at is people on their healing journey.”

“Sure, but what about the air? The radiation?” Vera’s speech still stumbled through the effects of the drug.

“Another very expensive, very secret apparatus that allows our patients and staff to get sunshine and fresh air without all of that gear you’re used to wearing. Healing is more seamless when folks don’t have to be reminded of the ugliness of the uprising whenever they want to venture out.”

Vera eyed Shileene with fresh interest. Rarely did folks refer to what happened as an uprising. “Who are you?”

“We’ll get to that in a bit. In the meantime, may we administer the counter med? They gave you Docility, unfortunately, and the medicine take ages to wear off without it.”

Vera knew of Docility. It was supposed to have been taken off the market.

“It was supposed to have been taken off the market, but inter-government types always have access to things that are supposed to be bad for everyone else, right?” Shileene winked.

Vera inhaled sharply. She’d heard about people testing new cerebrotech. “Are you reading…”

“No. I’m not reading your mind. Do you think I’d give up my beautiful brain for that miserable skill? No. You sanctuary types are all the same. You have similar misgivings. Similar traumas, I suppose.”

A twinge of fear traveled down Vera’s spine. Such an odd feeling, mixed with her drug-induced acceptance. Shileene again placed a hand on her shoulder. “Please. Don’t worry. We won’t hurt you here. I’ve just been looking for you for a long, long time. May I give you the shot now?”

Vera nodded. She had no choice in the matter really, not if she wanted enough control to get out of here.

“Aadyn?”

The assistant stepped forward, dusted the disinfectant powder onto Vera’s now-exposed shoulder, and gave her the shot. A momentary cooling burn spread up her shoulder and down her arm. Familiar tension returned to her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said, speech normal. She flexed her hands, making sure she could move freely again.

“Shall we retreat to my office? I have things to show you.” Shileene handed her a tissue. “For your eyes. You aren’t the first we’ve seen with this condition.”

Vera looked between the people in the atrium, Shileene, and the exit. She’d started the day on her way to the border, and now she was in a town that probably didn’t show up on maps anymore. Upset as she was about her dreams, they’d restored a level of urgency she hadn’t felt in a long time. “I’m trying to find my kid. I just want to get on the next train to the Northern Reach. So, I’ll just take my gear and be on my way.” She reached for her things.

Shileene gestured for Vera to pause, careful not to grab her. “I told you, I’ve met other survivors. I might know someone who can help with that. Please. Follow me.” She beckoned and turned down a hall.

Vera armored herself against the obvious bait, weighing entertaining this woman for a few more minutes against getting her journey back on track. She was already off schedule, a few more minutes wouldn’t make a difference. And the air conditioning didn’t hurt. She followed in Shileene’s footsteps.

∙ ∙ ∙

Shileene motioned for her to sit in a worn, plump chair. It was the most comfort Vera had experienced in months. She didn’t even think about her dust-covered clothes, just sank in. Aadyn set tea in front of Shileene and disappeared through the doorway.

“Let me apologize in advance for the way you were brought to us. I have informants all over this Reach. They’re supposed to be more discreet about bringing you in.” Shileene shuffled some photos around on her desk as she talked, selected one, and handed it to Vera.

Vera looked at her face from seven years ago. She still had a youthful roundness. And something strange in her eyes. Hope, maybe.

Shileene continued. “I know what happened in the Southern Reach.”

“That knowledge isn’t hard to come by. And it doesn’t explain why you have this photo.”

“I’ve been trying to do my part to rectify some of what happened. I search for women like you, women looking for their stolen children. And I help you heal from what happened.”

Vera looked up from the photo for the first time since Shileene started talking. “Lady, I don’t have time for therapy.”

She rushed to continue. “Most of you return to where it started and things start coming back to you. Visceral memories, almost like you were living them anew.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Vera interrupted. “I gave up things. Parts of my memory. So that I could find Ines.”

“Of course you did; a number of you do. I know what you have to do to cross borders. Dislocating isn’t cheap and selling to mem-dealers pays. I’m not judging. But what you sold was merely a copy. The original is still buried in there.”

“What does any of this have to do with you?”

“I created the technology the mem-dealers use. The vestiges of the pre-Reach government took it and flooded the streets with it after the bombing. My tech was cheaper than actually fixing the problems that sparked the uprising. It’s easier to live inside other people’s good memories than it is to live in the mess we’ve made of the world.”

Vera cocked her head and squinted. “How’d they get the tech? Did they steal it?”

“No.” She shifted.

“You sold it to them, didn’t you? And now you want me to believe you’re on some karmic goodwill mission, doing us poor survivors a solid? Sure.” Vera tossed the photo onto Shileene’s desk and stood, the leather chair creaking as she rose.

Shileene took a deep sip of her tea, staring up at Vera over the brim of her cup.

“Can we cut the bullshit? Your people drugged me and dragged me to your doorstep like human refuse. But I’m supposed to believe that you mean well? Why on earth would I trust you?”

“Fine. You shouldn’t.” Shileene dropped the façade fully. Her shoulders took on a natural droop and her tone grew more assertive. “You should do what you’ve been doing to survive. I’ll keep doing the same. I sold my tech to the government. It wasn’t the best deal, but I got enough credits to my name to last several lifetimes. I’ll never feel guilty about that. But I don’t like what they did with it, perverting it to cover their asses and turning me into the creator of filthy drug tech in the process. I created one of the most powerful technologies of our time, and no one will work with me.”

Vera quirked a brow. “I’m super sympathetic to your cause.”

“Let’s just say for now that I have something that will help you. And you have something that will help me.”

Transactional arrangements, Vera understood. She leaned forward, resting her hands on Shileene’s desk. “And what is that?”

“Your story.”

“My story?”

“Yes.”

“I had my story. I lived my story. There’s a reason I gave up good chunks of it. What good could it possibly do you?”

“You let me worry about what is or isn’t useful.”

Vera shook her head. “There’s so much more to this than what you’re telling me.” She reached for the door.

“Your memories are already coming back. I can accelerate the process, finish it, so that you don’t have another experience like you had on the train.”

Vera’s hand stopped on the doorknob, door slightly ajar.

“If you have another flashback while you’re out there, it won’t be my guys that get you. Someone’ll take you to a recalibration center.”

Vera flinched. She imagined being held hostage in one of those places until she was reconditioned. Made a respectable woman. It could be years.

“It’ll just take a few days,” she promised. “You’ll have hot food. A bed and a room all to yourself. Get that biodust off your skin and out of your clothes and hair. Breathe some fresh air and even bask in the sun for a few days.”

Vera picked dirt from underneath her fingernail. All she had was another dislocation waiting for her at the border and nothing from the Southern Reach besides awakened trauma. Trauma that could get her locked away against her will. At least she had the illusion of freedom here.

“You make it so I don’t have to dislocate anymore, load me up with a few thousand credits, and I’ll stick around for a few days. Otherwise, I’ll take my chances.”

Shileene smiled, showing a little teeth. “Done.”

Vera sat back down. “So, how do you propose to get whatever it is you’re looking for?”

Shileene pointed a long, finely manicured finger at Vera’s head. “I’m going to go in there after it.”

∙ ∙ ∙

Vera counted her few blessings. The place was clean, had AC, and she’d leave here with credits to her name and freedom to cross borders. Theoretically. If nothing else, she had free food and a bed for a few days. She had let a bunch of mem-dealers prod around in her head for less. Things could be worse.

She followed Aadyn and Shileene to a large, sparsely lit room and let them settle her into a chair. Aadyn moved to restrain her and she flinched and grabbed his arm.

“I’m sorry, but sometimes the process activates… unhappy thoughts. You might lash out.”

“Then you should step far the fuck back when this thing gets started, because I’m not letting you strap me into this chair.”

Shileene approached from the opposite side. “Don’t mind him. He means well. That’s just his way with people.” She turned to Aadyn. “I’ve got it from here. Please go and set the parameters.”

“What are you about to do to me?”

“I’m about to help you recover what you think you’ve lost.”

Vera’s heart stuttered. A two-syllable name ricocheted in her head. But she dared not ask.

“Put this on.” Shileene handed her a cap with silvery threads running through it and a node sewn into the back. The weight of the mask settled on her head and she rolled her neck to adjust to the unwelcome pressure.

“In a moment, I’m going to have Aadyn initiate phase one. If it becomes too much, you must construct a safe image in your mind. Something strange. Like a baby playing a tuba.”

“Okay. I’ll think of a baby playing a tuba.”

“Remember, our memories are constructed from much more than visual cues. They live as much in sound, taste, touch, and smell as they do in sight. This will be overwhelming, Vera. You’re going to feel things you haven’t felt in a long time. Remember to breathe.”

Though her eyes were open, everything before Vera went black. No top, no bottom, no barriers or boundaries around which to orient herself. She tensed against the firm, grounding pressure of Shileene’s hands on her shoulders, pushing her down into her seat.

“Relax. Now, manifest the image we discussed in your mind.”

Vera did as she was told, trying and failing to ignore the absurdity of it all. A horn sounded as she imagined an inexplicably large baby blowing into the instrument, his comically sized arms wrapped around its body.

“Aadyn, do we have a lock on that image?” Shileene paused for his confirmation. “I’m taking a risk by leaving you unrestrained, Vera. Don’t make me regret it. We won’t be too far. This process is a painful one, but… it’s the only way.”

Before Vera said anything more, Shileene initiated the next phase.

She smelled burning hair, felt the singe of heat creeping up to her scalp before she saw the kitchen. Her grandmother’s boxy kitchen, with barely enough room to cook and store food. She sat in a dining room chair before a grease-stained stove, peering at her grandmother’s distorted image in the dented tea kettle that always sat on the back left burner. Granny blew on the hot comb as she chased Vera’s stubborn curls away, gently nudging her head down.

“Hold your head right,” Granny said, sucking her teeth. Vera watched from the awkward angle as her grandmother rotated the base of the comb against her hair, pulling it through once… twice. Her cheeks lift in a smile, twinning Vera’s own anticipatory joy of having straight hair for a few days, if she was lucky.

The scene before her shifted.

A dream of a kitchen. A hope to use the hot comb she’d inherited from her father’s mother on her own child. She remembered it was wrapped in an old, thick towel blackened by years of use. Buried in a drawer somewhere. Pained relief engulfed her.

Vera had sold this. The memory. The feeling, intimacy, and comfort of it all. An innocent expression of love that demanded nothing in return. She’d sold both a memory and the hope of a memory she might make with her own daughter. And now she had it back. She unfurled inside it, letting it soothe her wariness of Shileene like the embrace of a close friend. She breathed into it, and the scent of singed hair tickled the back of her nose.

She swayed to no particular rhythm, basking in the moment. Her feet moved, picking up the beat of a crescendoing song. The room whipped around her as she closed her eyes, and gave in to the music.

A throaty laugh made her stumble. Her ankles twisted and something crashed in the distance as she flailed. A twinge of pain snaked low through her belly, eliciting a grunt.

“Vera,” a tinny voice broke in. “Please be mindful. Your body will react out here to what’s happening in there. I don’t want to ask Aadyn to strap you down.”

Vera rubbed her stomach, in and outside of the memory, mumbling her acknowledgement.

Confusion warred with embarrassment as she met wide eyes that danced with light from the nearby bonfire. “Go easy girl,” they said, stabilizing her. “It’s only been a few weeks.”

She frowned. “Who are you?”

“You still don’t know my name?” They pushed bouncing, frizzy curls back from their face. “I guess I did arrive right when Ines was born, but I’m going to start taking offense here shortly.” They stuck out an elegant hand. “Name’s Cacey.”

“Oh I remember you, Cacey.” She reached up and touched their face instead of shaking their outstretched hand, staring. “I remember you.”

Cacey clasped Vera’s hand and wrinkled their nose, thick eyebrows drawing together in bewilderment at Vera’s sudden familiarity. “Pregnancy hormones still raging?”

Vera snatched her hand back, mortified.

“Was that inappropriate to say?”

“No. Well… yes?” She gave up on making sense and looked around. Platters of food adorned a rickety, homemade table – fried chicken, fried fish, macaroni and cheese, cornbread, cabbage and greens, iced pound cake. All her favorites.

Kids darted over, around, and through their parents playing tag. Folks smothered the grass beneath their heels as they danced to music from nearby speakers. Good-natured shouting erupted from a card game. Something about books and reneging. The moon crested high in the sky, shining down on Ines’s welcoming ceremony with power and promise.

Cacey shrugged affably. “Marie had the baby last. Please be careful. She told me to keep an eye on you and she’ll put me on goat duty if she finds out I almost let you trip.”

Vera ambled away, searching for Marie. Her breasts were getting heavy, almost painful. Ines needed to eat. She gently massaged her chest with a free hand as the pressure mounted. Hands grazed her shoulders as she walked, kindred kin congratulating her, sharing blessings for her and Ines. Others tried to pull her into a game or a dance. She wished briefly that she could share this moment with her father.

“Y’all let her alone. Can’t you see she needs to nurse?”

Marie picked her way past the group, baby cradled snugly against her chest.

“Ines” Vera breathed. She took her beloved bundle in her arms, who fussed at the jostling. She looked at Marie, bewitched by this face that always seemed to glow with some inner light. She reached up and kissed her on one of her prominent cheekbones, whispered, “Thank you,” in her ear.

She winked. “That’s what doulas are for. Go get some rest.”

Vera walked with Ines to her cabin, head downturned the entire time. She ignored the growing strain in her neck, mesmerized by Ines’ gentle coos as she snacked on her small fist. She sat in her rocking chair, a gift that she’d keep until Ines outgrew it and it went on to the next parent. She hummed tunelessly as she nursed, drifting off into a contented sleep she hadn’t known in years.

∙ ∙ ∙

“Vera. Wake up, dear.”

Vera sat up, eyes darting around the room. “Where am I? Where’s Ines?”

“It’s me. Shileene. You aren’t in your sanctuary. We’re recovering your memories, remember?”

She collapsed into her seat, tears falling anew. A blurry Shileene leaned over her. Vera was no longer felt certain of how she felt about her. She brought her hands to her chest. “Why is my shirt wet?”

“I told you what happens in there happens out here. You haven’t been pregnant in years and yet—” she gestured at the stain of milk on Vera’s shirt “—this reintegration is going much more smoothly than I thought. Tell me what you saw.”

“My Granny.” Vera ran a hand over her head, encountering the cap. She pulled her arm down slowly. “She was doing my hair. And then I was dancing? Then there was Cacey… and Marie! And Ines. She needed to eat so I…” She trailed off, sobbing. She could hardly breathe through the gift, the curse, of her feelings, what her body was remembering. “This is too much. I don’t know if I can keep doing this.” She felt hollow and full at the same time.

We must go back in. It’s imperative that we continue. I believe that we’re close to a breakthrough.”

“I’m glad you think the sight of me reacting to the loss of my child counts as a breakthrough.”

“I told you this would be painful,” Shileene said softly. “But you are more than your grief. You deserve to recover the good. But it means you feel everything, both good and bad. So feel it. If you’re going to be any good to Ines, you need to be whole.”

Shileene’s words rang through Vera like a bell. Could she wholly be herself ever again? For Ines, and for herself?

“Vera. This is the only way.”

“You keep saying that. The only way to what?”

“To reunite you with your daughter.”

Her heart exploded with greedy anticipation. She tried to pull the cap from her head. “You know where she is?” The words flew from her mouth in an anguished mess. Shileene plunged Vera back into her memories before she could ask anything more, eliciting a blitz of rememories that left her too disoriented to resist.

Piecing her back together proceeded at an arrhythmic pace. She and Shileene argued more than they agreed. Vera would push back, and Shileene would dangle Ines in her face like a bargaining chip, asking if she wanted to be healthy for her, if she actually wanted her back. “Your brain is fragile,” Shileene would say at times with patience, most times in frustration. “We cannot stop now that we’ve started.” Vera would fall back.

They continued that way for days; Shileene picking and choosing when to bring her out and when to put her back in. The process left her unable to walk most days, and worse, unsure if she was in a memory or the present. Despite her pleas, no one gave her any more information about Ines.

She grew used to being jettisoned from one memory to the next, focusing on little details to ground her until Shileene gave her a break – a laugh, a song, the smell of food. The bottoms of tiny feet.

“Vera. It’s been a long day, “Shileene’s weary voice broke in, fatigue making it low. “I’m going to pull you out so you can rest.”

The pale bottoms gave way to the blooming brown of skin coming into its color.

“No, let me finish this one,” Vera insisted. “Something is strange.”

Tiny feet pressed against the palms of a parent’s hands.

Vera both lived the scene and watched it from a faraway wall of her mind.

Her mother sang an unfamiliar song, offkey and to a rhythm all her own, slowing down and speeding up as she desired. She leaned down, pressed her lips into Vera’s round, exposed belly, puffed out her cheeks and blew. Baby Vera squealed with pleasure.

Adult Vera flooded with joy, but wariness weighed her down. What was this memory locked away in her infancy?

“Hey little one,” she sang, before blowing a raspberry into Vera’s tiny-toed foot.

Her mother smiled. Did she always smile like that?

Her mother. The revolutionary. The one long gone, the one she only knew from the stories her Dad told her and pictures stored on an old phone. The glint in his eye when he described her escapades. The sadness that pulled at his mouth because it was those very escapades that took her away from them. The same sadness and escapades that eventually pulled Vera away, too. Mom, the fighter, the dreamer. She lived and died by her faith in another, better world for her family. Following in her mother’s shallow footsteps was the closest she’d ever come to really knowing her.

Her father’s voice echoed through the room, “You know your mama loved you. She loved you enough to fight for a better world for you. That’s why she had to leave. Sometimes people have to love you by leaving.”

She’d believed those stories were all she’d ever have. But now she had this new memory. The grief ripped her open.

A compliment from the First! This is as good as an eyeball. As good as an eyeball and a tongue!

The image didn’t save her. Distantly, she heard Shileene calling. Vera became her mother blowing those same raspberries into Ines’ belly, humming, somehow, the same song.

Vera curled her hands and snatched the cap from her head. She tried to stand, but the vertigo made her knees buckle. Shileene hurried to her side, righting her.

“What the fuck was that?” Vera shouted, fear curling around her breastbone. “That’s not mine. That’s not my mother. Those memories aren’t…” She started wheezing.

“Calm down, Vera.” Shileene rubbed her shoulder gently. “Breathe.”

Vera started crying in earnest now. Not simply tears streaming down her face, but a purging of her losses. The emptiness. The sadness. The lost and stolen possibilities. It all came out because it finally could. And it mingled with the joys, making them that much sweeter, that much more difficult to bear. She’d experienced joy. With every ounce of it she craved more, knew that she deserved more.

∙ ∙ ∙

Vera sat back into the plush seat she remembered from her first time visiting Shileene’s office. Her eyes had stopped their unbidden tearing. She’d become so accustomed to them, she barely noticed when it happened. Aadyn determined that the dust mites had in fact healed her tear ducts, but no other changes could be discerned. Perhaps they would appear in time. Perhaps not.

She stared at the wall, afraid to ask the question. Afraid of not asking it.

“Your treatment is complete.”

“And now…” Vera trailed. So much time struggling to find her child, now she almost had her back. “What if I’m not good enough? For her?”

“I can’t answer that, Vera. All I can say is that you’re healing. And Ines at least deserves a chance to get to know the healed you. You both do.”

Vera nodded. “I still don’t know if I trust what you’re up to.”

Shileene sipped her tea.

“Where is she?”

Aadyn handed Vera a small card with an address on it.

Vera’s eyebrows rose. “She’s in the Eastern Reach?”

“That’s where they took all of the children. To the vestiges of the American empire,” Shileene said. “She’s with a family now. It’ll be a fight to get her back, but she’s there.”

“I sold pieces of myself, dislocated, and risked the dust to get back to her. I’ll manage.”

“Touché”

“What are you going to do with all of my… all of our memories? Our stories?”

Shileene answered, but Vera wasn’t really listening because she didn’t really care. She cradled the card in her hand, staring at the address through tear-clouded vision. Tears of joy and sadness. Tears of fear. Tears that would eventually fade away.

“I need to make a phone call.”

Shileene smiled. “Of course.”

Vera left the office for her small room. She dialed the number.

“Hello?” A gruff pack-a-day smoker answered the line.

“Dad.”

“Vera. Where the hell have you been? I haven’t heard from you in days.”

“I found her Dad.”

Silence.

“I found her.”

“How? No… that doesn’t matter. Where is she?”

“She’s in the Eastern Reach. She’s with a family there. We can go get her.”

“We?”

“We.”

“This is it?”

“Yeah, Dad. This is it.”

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT KRISTEN REYNOLDS

Kristen Reynolds is a former military brat who claims North Carolina and California as home. She found her way to the speculative through her parents – her mother’s love of Black literature and her father’s love of Dune and Star Trek. She grew up reading and watching films about space, vampires, witches, and anything else that took her to an alternate reality alongside slave narratives and stories about Black women navigating the world. She counts Tananarive Due, LA Banks, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and, of course, Octavia Butler among her inspirations. She is currently in a PhD program in American Studies where she explores speculative narratives, technology, race, and the human at the University of Minnesota. When she’s not reading or writing, she can be found practicing her guitar, experimenting in the kitchen, watching a horror movie from behind her hands or playing games with her husband and dog. TWITTER

BLOOD TIES

By Jade Wilburn // 4952 words

Fetid water and putrid green-brown sludge seep into the cracks of Olivia’s worn shoes. She grimaces with every squelching step, but she cannot stop running.

There’s no time to wipe the sweat from her brow nor to wash her brown forearms, streaked with still-wet blood. She cannot take even a moment to comfort her squalling newborn sister, Leila. Fresh from their Mama’s womb and hastily tied in a wrap, the babe’s midnight-black skin is still covered in drying white birthing fluid.

If Olivia falters, even once, both of them will die as cannon fodder.

The faint thrum under her feet grows stronger. Leila cries louder. They’re lucky the houses this far from the town’s center are empty. Their families had been smart to take the government’s meager offer and flee as fast as possible.

Olivia curses under her breath as she shoves floating broken furniture out of her way. The main road out of town would’ve been faster but it came with a higher chance of detection. The narrow footpaths through the forest will slow down pursuers but getting there is eating precious time.

“Shush little one, everything will be okay. I promised Mama I’d protect you, remember?”

She ignores the floating corpses, so swollen that they look fit to burst with the slightest disturbance. As the water came, the ground turned so soft that their cemeteries had no choice but to spit up the dead.

There goes Miss Mabel with her one good glass eye and the other authentic one hanging out of the socket. Look at the Tyler children floating in a single file like soldiers — such a shame about the measles outbreak that took their whole family a few years ago.

The distant clamor of surprised shouts and bellows of rage behind her sends Olivia’s heart skittering off like a rabbit. Daddy and the rest of the townspeople must have found Mama’s cooling body, her womb empty of the child meant to be kindling for the curse.

The faint whispers of Ancestors long gone caress Olivia’s ears and urge her to stop running. They beg her to set Leila down in a patch of dry soil and complete the Blood tie, tethering her sister to the earth as generations of their family have done.

We aren’t monsters, they coo. Their voices are ever moving, rolling around the edges of her mind like water sloshing up the sides of a cup someone is shifting back and forth. They wouldn’t do this if there was another way. They don’t want to see their hard work snatched away by white folks yet again — surely she must grasp that?

“‘Course I get it! Y’all actin’ like y’all the only ones who are angry!” Olivia hisses between clenched teeth. Did the Ancestors think she wanted things to end up this way? To stay here in this town and wait for the waters to rise, or high-tail it North with her sister to a state — Meatskin? Michgan? — whose name she can’t even pronounce right?

Sucking air into her heaving chest to soothe her aching lungs, Olivia’s focus loosens for a single moment.

A searing heat scorches a pathway through her veins and Olivia screams.

It wouldn’t hurt at all if you just let us in.

The tether between her and the land tightens its grip on her soul. The very air around Olivia wavers. Her forbearers’ voices surge forward and she staggers to her knees.

Let us in, sweet girl.

It’s like fighting against the tide while it drags her down into the murkiest depths of her mind, generations of her Ancestors’ collective willpower subverting her own. Olivia lowers Leila — until an indignant squall from the babe pierces her fogging thoughts like a needle.

Taking a deep breath, Olivia stiffens her spine.

Get the hell out of my head!

With a mental shove, Olivia encases the voices behind a wall at the back of her mind. Whispering thanks to her sister, she stumbles back to her feet.

They have to keep moving.

As water gives way to dry land, Olivia cinches up her mud-caked skirts in one hand and runs. Dappled yellow-green sunlight guides her around squirming tree roots that grasp at her ankles.

“All this carrying on is pointless,” Olivia mutters under her breath. She ducks underneath the trembling threads of vine that snatch at her braids and scowls. “As if anything we do will keep us from losing our homes.”

∙ ∙ ∙

Things had gone to hell the day the devil strolled into town.

As soon as the government representatives stepped foot inside the town limits, a rumble through the terrain warned them that strangers were in their midst.

Olivia’s neighbors groaned and sucked their teeth – tempers not at all helped by the day’s heat. One of the hottest places in the world is a Southern church on a summer afternoon and the pews were filled to the brim with sticky bodies. The box of paddle fans was empty but the flimsy pieces of cardboard seemed to only push the muggy air from one side of the sanctuary to the other.

If the two representatives were discomfited to have all eyes on them as soon as they stepped into a stifling room full of irritated Negroes, they didn’t show it.

Careful now, the Ancestors cautioned. It ain’t ever good when the government comes calling.

Olivia stiffened along with the others that heard the whispers. Other folks frowned, noticing the change in their neighbors’ body language.

Olivia’s mother wrapped her hands protectively around her swollen belly. She wasn’t the only one in their town who felt uncomfortable with the knowledge that the land underneath their toes was sentient. She couldn’t comprehend pledging to protect and care for it in exchange for access to the collective wisdom of their foremothers and fathers.

Speaking with the deceased wasn’t a benevolent comfort and it didn’t matter if it was a practice carried over from the old continent; it was the devil’s magic.

Funny that he’s here, Olivia thought as the shorter of the two representatives stepped onto the pulpit. Perhaps I should ask him if it’s true.

“A few miles South, an army of the greatest engineers in the country is going to build a dam — big enough to fill up these Georgian foothills with the backwaters of Ole Hooch.” Blond hair plastered to his pale forehead, the representative laid it on thick. “This monumental reservoir will bring water and prosperity to a burgeoning American city.”

The second representative stepped forward, lanky as a scarecrow with the same blank stare. “Now we know no one wants to leave their homes, but sometimes sacrifices need to be made for the greater good. Of course, we’re prepared to compensate you.”

They named their price and Olivia’s mouth dropped. Only twenty-six dollars per acre? That was barely two-thirds of what their land was worth!

Shouts and hisses nearly lifted off the church rafters. Even Preacher Johnson looked fit to curse.

“Now, now… we assure you that the quoted price is more than fair for your land. It’d be in all your best interests to take it.”

The church fell silent. Olivia nestled against her mother’s belly, taking comfort in the movements of her unborn sibling as if the babe could feel her distress. How could they just leave?

Many of their families had been here since Emancipation. This land had been worthless and abandoned until their forbearers poured their blood into the dirt, binding themselves as the earth is bound to the sun. Deeds could be ripped up, lost, burned, or simply denied. A blood tie held meaning far beyond ownership.

Yet again, all of our hard work is getting snatched away, the spirits hissed. They always want what we got.

Seething, they gathered together as one and tugged on the strongest blood tie at their disposal. The Ancestors would have their say.

Swallowing in trepidation, Olivia watched as her father stepped forward. Her Mama’s grip on her hand tightened. Though her mother had eventually been convinced to resume her wifely duties, she’d never forgiven her husband for going behind her back, binding Olivia when she was a child.

Her Daddy had always felt the connection of his tether keener than most — he’d been tied to the land from the moment the midwife pulled his squalling body from his mother’s womb and mixed his lifeblood into the rich black soil.

“And if we don’t sell?” he asked.

Olivia tensed at the sight of air stirring around her father’s body, as if beings moved there, unseen, watching, waiting. His baritone deepened. His words reverberated, a multitude of voices speaking in tandem. “Should we expect to find crosses burning on our lawns while our homes are firebombed to force us out?”

Their Ancestors manifesting through him as they had never done before punched a spike of worry through Olivia’s chest.

The representatives hesitated. Their eyes jumped from Olivia’s father to the entire congregation, silently gauging if the whole room had spoken in unison or not. “By all means, that’s within your rights. But remember: It’s not illegal for the government to seize property if they deem it necessary – and who needs the Klan when we have the National Guard? A lake is gonna get built here whether y’all stay or not.”

Their jobs finished, they slipped back through the front doors of the church. Olivia let out a wet, shuddery cough. Her world had fallen out from underneath her feet and she felt oddly heavy, like she could sink into her seat and never move.

Her mother hunched over, pressing a handkerchief to the tears running down her cheeks. “How could they?”

Pew by pew, people followed suit as they exploded in a flurry of shouts and tears.

“We need to do something! They can’t do this to us!”

“Of course they can. We’re Negroes.”

“I’m sick of gettin’ chased away everywhere I go in Georgia. I heard life is sa-weet up North.”

“I got a cousin up North — says their white folks as bad as ours. They just think they’re nicer ‘cuz they ain’t the ones that whipped us.”

“I’m good with my hands and I know how to cut some hair. I’m sure I can find a job, send for the rest of y’all before that dam gets built.”

The malcontents were outnumbered by those who resigned themselves to leaving. There was no use in fighting to the death against superior numbers armed to the teeth with guns and dogs. Besides, blood ties weren’t the only way to commune with their deceased relatives. A new home would never be the same as the old, but better than no home at all.

The Ancestors disagreed.

They knew how to fix this: their knowledge wasn’t contained to crop rotation or how to tell when a storm’s coming. There were many great and terrible things they’ve passed down over the centuries. Roots and charms to make someone take to their bed on the brink of death. Spells to cause storms to wreck whole towns. Malevolent curses that allowed no one to desecrate the land without repercussions. And inside the church was all the fodder they needed for the invocation.

“No one is leaving.” Her father’s voice rang out with ominous finality.

Olivia’s brow furrowed. Didn’t he hear? It wasn’t as though they had a choice.

She nearly choked on her spit as a violent force seared her brain, trying to rip its way inside. Neighbors yelled out around her, falling on the ground while their loved ones helplessly watched.

“What’s happening?” Olivia moaned, clutching her head.

Let us in baby, we’ll fix this.

We’ll fix everything.

Embrace us and we’ll guide you.

Blood ties are supposed to be benevolent, two-way relationships – not abused with one party taking full control. Olivia’s tempted, to make the agony go away, to let them in—

“Olivia, we need to go! Snap out of it!”

The crack of her mother’s palm across her cheek shook Olivia free. Her mother pressed a hand to her belly, pulling Olivia out the back of the church, following a handful of people escaping.

“Mama, it’s the Ancestors. We’ve gotta help—”

“There’s nothing we can do for them.”

They ducked into a copse, taking shelter amongst the trees. Olivia helped her mother sink onto the soft carpet of grass.

“Listen closely, Olivia. No matter what happens, the most important thing is that we survive.” Her Mama clasped their hands together, her brown gaze feverish and solemn. “That is the best thing we can do for ourselves and our family. If something happens to me, promise that you’ll stay alive and take care of your sibling.”

Olivia pressed her palm over her mother’s stomach. Her lips tugged at the press of a tiny hand back.

“I promise, Mama.”

∙ ∙ ∙

Stumbling out of the forest into a clearing right at the border, Olivia’s body trembles with sweet relief. The wooden stake with their town name painted on it in flaking black letters stands just ahead. Her head feels like it’s going to split as her forbearers batter against her mental wall, but freedom is so close—

“Over here, Olivia!”

Her mother’s good friends wait just past the border marker; their tense expressions ease upon seeing her. The former schoolteacher, Mrs. Freedman, sits atop the wagon with her hands clasped and her black hair pinned in place. Her grizzly bear of a husband stands guard with a rifle resting over his shoulder.

Mrs. Freedman’s gaze cuts past Olivia. “Where’s your Mama?”

“She didn’t make it. She made me promise to take care of her.” She lifts Leila for them to see. Mrs. Freedman stifles a cry while her husband’s face twists with sorrow.

“We can grieve later,” Mr. Freedman says. “We need to leave.”

As Olivia steps past the border, a root shoots out from the grass. It coils around her ankle, twining up her leg and throwing her off-balance. Leila lets out a blood-curling scream. In her panic to secure her baby sister, Olivia loses focus.

The voices wash over her mental landscape, a tidal wave consuming her very being. Olivia falls to her knees in agony, one hand around Leila.

“Olivia! Get up, Olivia!”

We’ve got you now, baby.

You’re never leaving us.

The deep baritone of her father’s voice is getting closer. The promise to her dying mother sears Olivia’s mouth — she swore to protect Leila and she cannot fail now.

Olivia throws the Freedmans a pleading look.

“Take her… please! You must!”

Passing the gun to his wife, Mr. Freedman dashes across the clearing. He stops short of the border.

“Toss me the babe!” he bellows, his thick dark hands outstretched as far as he dares. Swallowing, Olivia summons her strength and heaves Leila over the boundary.

Trees crash to the rumbling ground, but Mr. Freedman is steady. Cradling Leila, he looks at Olivia and hesitates. She shakes her head. The Freedmans don’t have blood ties, but there’s no telling what’ll happen if he crosses back into the town limits.

“Godspeed, Olivia.”

Relief and terror churn through her veins like fresh butter as the wagon speeds off. Her sister is safe. She should be happy she kept her promise. She should be content that one of them will have a chance to live, to grow. To see a whole other side of the country where you don’t have to jump off the sidewalk for nobody, or work the soil all day in the sun for scrap wages.

But that won’t be her. The Freedmans would’ve saved her if they could, she knows they had to think of themselves and Leila, but—

Olivia squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t want to die here.

Rough hands haul her bound form up from the cold ground. Her father’s empty gaze is unyielding. “It’s a pity we didn’t catch the child, but at least we have you.”

“Daddy please don’t do this. It’s not too late. We can go north just the Freedmans and start over. Just you, me, and Leila.”

“So we should just let them take everything from us, again? Would you rather we allow ourselves to get defiled without consequences? You should be grateful that we’re taking a stand.”

Defiance creeps into Olivia’s gaze and she straightens her shoulders. “No, but do y’all really think cursing this land will repay all of the wrongs done to our people? You’ve hurt nearly everyone! How is any of this supposed to bring you peace?”

Her captors jerk back as if slapped. Her Daddy’s brow creases, and Olivia’s breath cuts short. There’s a part of him still inside that cares, she’s almost sure of it.

The air around her father’s head lurches violently and hope turns to ash on her tongue as his face smooths.

“This is what’s best for everyone. One day you’ll understand, baby.”

Olivia screams and begging are ignored as she’s carried back to town. Water splashes her face when she’s dropped on the floor of the church. Neighbors who didn’t escape surround her, clinging to one another in the freezing water. The black liquid caresses her neck in a lover’s embrace. Olivia’s ears ring from the cacophony of pleas and bargaining, entreaties to think of the children.

“We are,” Daddy says.

He turns his back on them and raises his hands as he begins the invocation. Salt leaks from Olivia’s eyes. She’s not making it out of here alive. Among the dying gurgles of her neighbors and loved ones, the Ancestors utter sympathetic tutting sounds.

Don’t cry, baby.

We’ll make them regret ever stepping foot on our territory.

∙ ∙ ∙

Olivia counts the passage of time using the trash dropped by the people she drowns.

It’s the only comfort she’s been able to seize during her decades trapped in this half-life, a distraction from thoughts of her sister. The dates on styrofoam containers with half-eaten sandwiches floating amongst the mild waves. Wallets spilling over with tiny squares. Cover girls beaming without a care in the world spread across the front of glossy water-logged magazines.

A small boat chugs across the lake’s surface, the loud whirl of its motors disturbing the placid green-blue water. Tearing her eyes from the laughing woman clad in white on the February cover of Vogue, Olivia eyes it with trepidation.

“Just keep going, don’t stop,” she whispers. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be spared if they don’t linger. Maybe she won’t have to add another red mark to her ledger.

Aluminum cans fall overboard, speckling the water with synthetic hues of Coca-Cola red and Pepsi blue. An arm the color of rich sepia darts in the water to catch them to no avail. The cans join the rest of the trash snuggling into the dirt of the lakebed.

The water around her twists as the Ancestors stir, seething at the detritus. They never learn, do they?

The lake mud pulsates. Countless souls awaken in search of their new prey.

Olivia can’t help her own frustrated resignation. She always hoped skinfolk at least would have more sense. When she was alive, black folks had a healthy respect for the dead and went out of their way to avoid bringing any bad juju onto themselves. Surely the number of people who turned up dead or missing would send a clear message to stay away? Did the ones today think they were exempt from reprisal if they, too, defiled their Ancestors’ resting places because they shared the same skin color?

Now they would have to die for their foolishness.

Olivia glides through the crumbling, shadowed ruins. She joins the rest of the ghosts following the boat’s wake like a school of hungering sharks. She’d learned the hard way that the curse would take over her body and compel her if she refused to partake in killing anyone who breached the waters above their former town.

Her hands tingle from the phantom sensation of gripping someone’s throat. Olivia clenches them to stop the feeling. She doesn’t know if she can bear to snuff the light out of someone’s eyes again.

Her Daddy flits gleefully ahead of the pack. “What’ll be this time? Capsize the boat? Wait ‘til one of them sticks their hand in the water and pull them under?”

Olivia wrinkles her nose in disgust. The curse may compel her to kill but she doesn’t take pleasure in it.

Some of the ghosts cheer her father on, the ones who had actively embraced the takeover of their bodies; nothing more at this point than physical manifestations of ancestral indignity. She turns toward the others, solemn-faced men, women and children trapped here like her, the ones who still try to resist despite the futileness.

“We should hurry,” she mutters. “Try to reach whoever falls into the water before one of the others do. We’ll give them a quick death, at least.”

They nod in agreement.

The occupants of the boat cut the motor. The vessel bobs on the gentle waves as they laugh and chat with one another.

Her Daddy positions himself right beneath the boat. With a fervent grin, he raises one of his hands. The sunlight disappears as the clouds move to cast the lake in grey shadows. The winds above-water begin to screech like banshees as they whip about in a frenzy. She can imagine the boat occupants panicking at the sudden change in weather; their alarm as the feral gusts and churning water rocks the boat from side to side.

“Start the motor,” she pleads. If they hurry, they might make it to the shoreline before their craft capsizes.

The land isn’t finished yet. Her Daddy curls his fingers in a come-hither gesture. Olivia gasps, sensing a rushing wall of water heading straight for the boat.

“No, stop! This ain’t right!” Olivia yells. She heads toward her father only to find her limbs paralyzed.

You can’t stop us, the voices whisper.

The wave crashes into the boat with a thunderous clap, flipping it upside-down. Warm bodies fall overboard and the souls of the dead close in.

Her father reaches the first trespasser, a gangly boy barely out of his teens. When he notices the ghostly figures surrounding him, he lets out a garbled scream. “You should’ve never come here,” her Daddy laughs. He drags the flailing teen deeper into the shadowy depths of the lake.

Nearby, a girl struggles against the ghostly hands clasped around her nose and mouth, fading quickly. Another boy isn’t quite so lucky; Olivia shudders and turns away from the tug o’ war game he’s caught in.

A moving shadow catches Olivia’s eye and she turns slightly so as not to draw any attention. One of the boat occupants was thrown farther than the others — the brown-skinned girl she spied earlier is swimming towards the surface.

Now that she’s noticed the last survivor, she can’t ignore her. A prickling sensation spreads across her body, her only warning before the curse forces her to act.

So intent on getting to safety, the girl doesn’t notice Olivia’s approaching figure until they’re face-to-face. A flurry of air bubbles escapes from the girl’s mouth as she screams. Several heads turn their way and Olivia grimaces. She needs to get this over with before the others come.

“I wish you hadn’t forced me to do this to you,” Olivia growls, reaching for her throat. Her fingers brush against the girl’s windpipe. Searing heat spreads across Olivia’s tongue. Lurching away in pain and disbelief, she presses a hand against her lips.

“I don’t understand,” she whispers.

A memory from long ago tries to surface but it’s like swimming upriver through molasses. Above her, the girl breaches the lake’s surface. Olivia grabs her ankle and pulls her back below the water. She ignores the flailing and peers at the girl’s features.

Her deep-set brown eyes are wide in panic, but she’s seen them before — they’re the same as her Daddy’s. She’d also know that upturned wide nose anywhere — she only saw that feature every day in her Mama’s face.

Hands shaking, Olivia grabs the girl’s waist and thrusts her above the water to fill her lungs with air. A welcome relief from the guilt over her unkept promise warred with the ice-cold realization that she had nearly just killed her kin.

“What’re you waiting for?”

Olivia turns to meet her Daddy’s menacing figure. The rest of the ghosts fan out behind him.

“Kill the desecrator.”

“Daddy, this girl, she — this is Leila’s child. Maybe even one of her grandchildren. She is our blood.”

“Remember, Olivia: your sister abandoned us. You think she even remembers who you are? Killing this girl… it’ll be like your sister’s come back to be with the rest of her family.”

Olivia stares in muted horror. They want her to kill her own kin? For a brief moment, her chest cracks open and a half-forgotten feeling of bitterness spills out. Her sister had survived when that wagon drove away without her, sealing Olivia’s fate.

No, Olivia shakes her head. That’s not true. It wasn’t Leila’s fault. She glares at her father and the rest of the ghosts as they whisper vengeance, edging her on to drag the desecrator in her arms back beneath the water.

Her foremothers and forefathers wrapped that root around her leg to stop her from escaping. Her Daddy tied her to this godforsaken land in the first place, against Olivia and her Mama’s wishes. There’s no reasoning with them and there never has been.

A frustrated grimace ripples over her Daddy’s face. The ever-present voices are silent. There’s no searing pain in her skull, just a blessedly empty stillness.

Olivia still controls her body.

“Thank you, Mama,” she whispers. “I did promise you, didn’t I?”

“Kill her now!” the dead shriek.

Olivia’s eyes tighten with resolve. “No.”

She pulls the thrashing girl to her chest and shoots for the shoreline. A roar echoes behind her and the dead give chase. Olivia grits her teeth. If she can get the girl to dry land and out of reach of the curse, she should be safe.

A tree rips from the bottom of the lake and shoots toward them. Cursing, Olivia uses the girl’s wild movements as momentum to barrel-roll to the side. The rush of water flips them upside down. Olivia regains her bearings and breaks the surface of the lake. The girl gasps, coughing. Her arms flail weaker than before.

The lake’s bottom rumbles like a primordial force, screaming out in misery.

It’s our right to make them, to make everyone suffer for what was done for us!

“Y’all haven’t even killed the people that tormented y’all! That at least, I could understand!”

There’s only a few more yards to reach land. The girl sputters in her arms as they glide forward.

“What the hell is going on?! Let me go!”

“You wanna die here or not?!” Olivia snaps back. In all the years she’s been stuck in this half-state, she’s never been tired but exhaustion drags at her limbs like shackles. The will to make sure her family survives is all that keeps her going. Will she pass along to the same plane as her Ancestors? Or will she fade away completely?

Hands grab at her feet but with a few vicious kicks, she’s free. Olivia grits her teeth. She can worry about her afterlife later.

The girl lets out a scream and clutches Olivia’s shoulder. “There’s a wave coming!”

A wall of water surges their way. Olivia hunches her shoulders forward. If she times it—

Pushing herself past her limits to stay just slightly ahead of the wave, Olivia waits until it’s upon them before throwing the girl forward. The wave crashes down. There isn’t a Mr. Freedman to catch her this time, but the force shoves her niece up onto the shoreline.

Surrounded by the wails of what sounds like millions of tortured souls and her mouth tingling with what feels like joy, Olivia allows a relieved smile to come to her face.

“Olivia please!” She turns to face the anguished face of her Daddy. The water quakes around him and she blinks in astonishment at the sight of ethereal figures behind him, scores of her family over generations back.

“Don’t leave us,” he begs. “We’ve lost so much and we didn’t want to lose all of this — all of you — again.”

“I know,” she says. Because she does; she understands anger can simmer in your blood until your very bones grieve, as everything you’ve built is taken away time after time again for centuries. How there is only so much one can take before retribution begins to taste sweet on the tongue. But the problem with revenge is that it swallows everyone and everything around you, never satisfied until there’s nothing but ruin left.

“You and the rest of our people deserve peace. I hope one day that you find it.”

Turning to the water’s edge, Olivia takes a tentative step inland. Her heart soars when she doesn’t encounter any resistance. Forcing herself not to look back, Olivia strides toward her kin.

The girl scurries back on her hands and knees through the grass. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

“What’s your name?” Olivia urges. She manages what she hopes is a reassuring smile.

The girl hesitates, her eyes darting between Olivia and the parking lot behind her.

“My name is Olivia… Olivia Freedman. You… why do you look like my mother?”

Olivia takes a trembling step forward.

“It’s nice to meet you, Olivia. Your mother is my baby sister, though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her. Can you tell me how she’s been doing?”

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT JADE WILBURN

Jade Wilburn is a UX Designer by day and a writer by night. Born and raised in Rochester, NY, she spends her free time watching anime and binge-playing Sims. Her published short fiction work can be found in Enchanted Conversation Magazine and the Oceans Anthology by Black Hare Press. Follow her on Twitter @_JadeWrites.

A DEMON AT MY WINDOW

By Aigner Loren Wilson

I once met a soul that

caught like a cold against

my window when I was

a little girl trying to spark

a match to make my room

not so dark and my fright

not so real.

The burning spirit

surrendered onto me like a bird

with a broken wing, and I, I took

it in like the foolish child I was

wanting something of my own

To hold and break.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT AIGNER LOREN WILSON

Aigner Loren Wilson is a SFWA, HWA, and Codex writer who hails from the Lenapehoking coast. She writes poetry, nonfiction, in-game stories, and fiction. Aigner is an associate editor and copy editor for the award-winning magazine Strange Horizons and horror podcast Nightlight; a writer for Oly Arts, Discover Pods, and other publications; and a judge for the international writing contest NYC Midnight. She is an Otherwise Fellowship honorable mention for 2019, and her work has appeared in Arsenika, Terraform, Tor Nightfire, and more. Her work has been called evocative, noteworthy, and imaginative. Currently, she is writing and editing for herself and others while working on the endless submission grind for her short and long form works. WEBSITE | TWITTER

in which my grandma departs this realm for three hours

By Praise Osawaru

the door of the dead opens wide its arms & spirit-calls my grandma

to bless it with an entry. she’s in a darkened room perched

somewhere atop a hill in Benin City, inert in the bed,

like a hand of a faulty clock. the birdsong within her has lost its feathers

along with the fire in its chest. in recent years, an unknown wind

has blown fiercely upon her, scaring the flesh in her body.

they now congregate in mass in her stomach, a mountain of tissues.

see how illness remakes us, distinct from God’s image?

& because when we’re asleep, we’re half-alive—one hand interlaced

with all living things, the other eaten by a murky hollow—

her spirit unlatches & saunters out of this world.

in Bini, the only word that garments grandma is iyenogie

& that was what unfurled from the caretaker’s tongue

three times, sequentially; while her hands repeated a soft

rhythm on grandma’s left shoulder, in hopes of awakening her.

it’s true that when we die, the sun in our bodies dwindle into oblivion.

which is to say:

the response of the dead when called, is flat muteness.

not long, a cloth stretches across her body—an anatomy devoid of breath,

left alone,

grandma rattles in bed, reeling in her spirit back into her body.

then, she pierces through the serene night with a shrill,

as oxygen deluges her lungs.

∙ ∙ ∙

ABOUT PRAISE OSAWARU

Praise Osawaru (he/him) is a writer of Bini descent. A Virgo and Best of the Net nominee, his work appears in Knights Library Magazine, The Hellebore, Rigorous Magazine, Kissing Dynamite, Kalahari Review, and Roadrunner Review, among others. He was a finalist for the 2020 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize 2020, and he’s a recipient of the NF2W Poetry Scholarship. He’s a reader for both Barren Magazine and Chestnut Review, and he’s on Instagram & Twitter: @wordsmithpraise. WEBSITE