TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 113, October 2019

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: October 2019

SCIENCE FICTION

The Beasts We Want To Be
Sam J. Miller

Nesting Habits of Enceladan Jade Beetles
Eli Brown

Revival
WC Dunlap

The Death of Fire Station 10
Ray Nayler

FANTASY

The Valley of Wounded Deer
E. Lily Yu

«Légendaire.»
Kai Ashante Wilson

Windrose in Scarlet
Isabel Yap

The Words of Our Enemies, the Words of Our Hearts
Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

EXCERPTS

Supernova Era
Cixin Liu (translated by Joel Martinsen)

NONFICTION

Book Reviews: October 2019
Chris Kluwe

Media Review: October 2019
LaShawn M. Wanak

Interview: Valerie Valdes
Christian A. Coleman

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

E. Lily Yu

Eli Brown

Isabel Yap

Ray Nayler

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

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

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2019 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Grandfailure / Fotolia

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial: October 2019

John Joseph Adams | 345 words

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 113th issue!

This month’s first original short story comes from E. Lily Yu—and it’s a classic tale of a naïve prince, a scheming queen, and a good-hearted cook. So where do the deer come in? You’ll have to read “The Valley of Wounded Deer” to find out. Our other original fantasy short (“Windrose in Scarlet”) is by Isabel Yap, who plaits two well-known fairy tales into a brand-new story. We also have fantasy reprints by Kai Ashante Wilson (“«Légendaire.»”) and Ken Liu (“The Hidden Girl”).

Our science fiction shorts include an original story by Eli Brown, “Nesting Habits of Enceladan Jade Beetles,” which takes us on a scientific expedition to icy Enceladus. Once you defrost from that chilly read, warm up with Ray Nayler’s new short, “The Death of Fire Station 10,” a thoughtful muse on intelligence in all its forms. We also have SF reprints by Sam J. Miller (“The Beasts We Want to Be”) and WC Dunlap (“Revival”).

Of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, book and media review columns, and a feature interview with Valerie Valdes. Our ebook readers will also enjoy an excerpt from Cixin Liu’s new novel, Supernova Era.

The last line of “Sacrid’s Pod” by Adam-Troy Castro was accidentally cut from the story when it was originally published last month. We’ve now updated our website and ebook editions to reflect the correction. To avoid spoilers, we’re not going to print the last line here, in case you haven’t read the story yet, but if you download a new ebook from where you purchased it or visit our website (lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/sacrids-pod), you can see the the change. Note: If you subscribe via Kindle Periodicals, we have no way of updating that edition of the magazine, unfortunately.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

The Beasts We Want To Be

Sam J. Miller | 7194 words

Two things were wrong with the Spasskaya assessment. The first was the painting: a tiny square in a simple frame, something I barely noticed at the time, but which would go on to cause us so much suffering. The second was the woman.

Wailing greeted us when we arrived, almost at midnight. Assessment teams had to come without warning. Snow fell in great marching waves, helpless in the hands of the wind off the Moscow River. Barely three weeks old, the winter of 1924 seemed to know how desperate and hungry we were, and to be conspiring with the Western imperialists to slaughter us.

Twelve people lived in the Spasskaya mansion. Mere blocks from the Kremlin, big enough that thirty families would be moved in once we had stripped it. Our soldiers herded those twelve fat parasites into one room and encircled them while we did our work.

They had been expecting us, of course. Every aristocrat and landlord and other assorted enemy of the people could anticipate a visit from an assessment team. We came in the night, and we stole the things we could sell abroad.

Fabergé eggs and German expressionist sketches and errant Rembrandts passed through my hands; decadent filth that nonetheless could be turned into tens of thousands of rubles to feed the starving Soviet state. A watercolor by Kandinsky could buy us ten cows. The engagement ring of a century-dead empress could bring back two tractors. And these parasites, every one of them, actually believed they deserved these foul treasures bought with other men and women’s sweat and blood. No matter where we went in the mansion, we could hear them wailing.

I didn’t like it anymore, when they wept. Joy in the suffering of others was the first habit Apolek broke me of, sparing me a couple hundred hours in a Pavlov Box in the process. Class enemies saw us coming and attacked, or begged, or burst into tears, but I no longer singled them out for special brutality.

“Lenin says we need to punish the parasites,” I had said, the first day I was assigned to Apolek’s detail, when he urged restraint.

“Not with violence,” he had said. “Not with cruelty.”

Apolek was a blond and ruddy peasant, younger than me, the youngest assessment team leader in the Red Army. Soft-spoken, earnest, above human emotion. I was an illiterate bloodthirsty street urchin, the son of steel workers who starved to death in the famine of 1910. Plucked out of the orphanage by the Ministry of Human Engineering, I was reconditioned into a species of man they said was “slightly smarter than a dog but just as vicious.”

“They treated us with violence and cruelty,” I said, pouting, plotting.

“Do it if you want,” he said. “We’ll see which one of us Volkov puts in a Box.”

Back in the orphanage I’d beaten boys like him bloody on an almost daily basis, but his words were well-chosen. I’d just emerged from a Pavlov Box, suffering unending hours of electric shocks and chemical burns, pharmaceutical fumes and super-high-speed recordings, three times a day for months and months. And the mere possibility of escaping further torment was worth a try.

And Apolek was right, of course, as he would always be, about everything. I didn’t understand it, how a man as savage as Commander Volkov would reward us for not being savage, but I didn’t need to understand. I just had to do what Apolek told me.

“The Soviet Union needs beasts,” he said, after that first assessment, carefully logging newly nationalized statues in the basement of the Kremlin Armoury. “It needs savage men to die in distant border skirmishes, or to torture kulaks. Is a beast what you want to be?”

“No,” I mumbled, and in that moment I saw that I didn’t want that at all.

“What do you want to be, Nikolai?”

I shrugged. I looked at Apolek, too dazed to hide the desperation on my face. I wanted him to answer my question for me.

“But not a beast,” he said.

“No.”

“We’ll work on that, then.”

I was nineteen and he was seventeen, but in that moment I gladly and wholeheartedly attached myself to him as his protégé. And while the lean and hairy Commander Volkov came sniffing around our unit several times a week, for a year and a half he never found a reason to Box me up again.

Eight of them accompanied us on our runs, to deal with the parasites when the parasites fought back. All of them Broken. Boys who’d been left too long in the Boxes, or test subjects who snapped beneath the weight of some new regimen of flashing lights and film strips and toxic fumes and prototype medicine. The Broken were useful for the terror they caused, and for the savage violence they would break into with the proper command from their conditioned leader. They were also useful as a constant warning to other revolutionary soldiers.

There was no more terrifying prospect, for those of us who had passed through a Pavlov Box, than the thought of being locked in one with no hope of reprieve. I dreamed of it endlessly. Probably it was programmed into all of us. Gnawing my lips open, screaming until I gagged on my own blood and puke and pounding my fists against spiked metal walls until the skin was all gone. Begging and pleading while the machines worked me over—and knowing that it would not end until my mind was completely gone.

I followed Apolek through the Spasskaya mansion, scuffing mud into carpet that had long ago ceased to be beautiful.

“Worthless,” he said, after walking past ten gloomy paintings of Old Testament patriarchs.

“How so?” I asked. “They look nice to me.”

“The names,” he said. “The painters are not notable. Collectors in the West will only pay for the work of famous artists.”

I never paid any attention to the signatures scrawled into the corners. Apolek probably told me that ten times before, but my Pavlov-Boxed brain had a hard time holding onto things. And a hard time concentrating, surrounded as I was by the smell of anger all the time.

No two men emerged the same from any one reconditioning regimen. People were too complex. Their own experiences conditioned them to respond to stimuli so differently.

Most reconditioned soldiers came away with “offshoots,” unanticipated consequences that could be good or bad. Crippling fears of perfectly harmless sights and sounds, or a sudden faculty for foreign languages, and so on. The social engineers spoke openly of their desire to breed men who could read minds or move objects with only thought, but so far those men only existed in rumor.

I had an offshoot. I could smell violence. I could smell anger, could feel the heat of it wash over someone, before they said a word or even acted. No other emotion had any effect on me. Most of the time it was more of a liability than a gift; standing near an angry crowd could cripple me.

Apolek was a reconditioning marvel, a specimen who emerged from the Pavlov Box with astonishing strength and willpower. That’s part of why Volkov gave him so much power so young. Apolek hinted he had conducted other missions, significantly less honorable ones, in which he had distinguished himself. “But that was the beast in me,” Apolek said, “and if we are to succeed as men we must not feed the beast.”

“I like the worthless paintings,” he said tonight. “Especially when they’re good. If they’re worthless, they’ll stay here. It’s shortsighted to sell our most beautiful art to the countries that wish us all dead.”

“Beauty can’t feed people,” I said, surprised I needed to spout Bolshevik clichés at him. “‘A good pair of boots is worth more to a peasant than all of Shakespeare.’”

“On the contrary,” Apolek said, stooping to retrieve something hidden behind a curtain, propped up on the sill of a tall window. “Beauty is as necessary as oxygen. And don’t scowl so much, Nikolai. You look like an angry black bear when you do that.”

I tried to smile, but Apolek did not see me. He held up a tiny painting, and his eyes widened.

“Jesus,” Apolek whispered, reverent as any Old Believer. I stood on tiptoe to see, but it meant nothing to me. Two human-shaped stretches of bare white skin. Tears filled his eyes and then overflowed, and I looked again, but still saw nothing.

A woman watched us from a doorway across the hall, older than us but not by much, dressed all in black. Why was she not with the others? Apolek did not see her. When he took the painting, his lips trembled. Hers went white.

The Broken found her, and brought the woman with the rest of her family to the camps. The Spasskaya assessment was otherwise without incident. No heroics, no bloodshed, and only a handful of art objects worth selling.

I shuffled through my weekend the way I always did: miserably, unsure even of the ground I stood on. My dreams were all of Pavlov Boxes.

Apolek always told me I was lucky to even have a weekend, and I suppose he was right. Soldiers in totalitarian armies rarely get time off, especially in the bloody hunger chaos of the capitol, but Apolek actually treated his team like human beings. To me, a lowly grunt who had been told his whole life that savagery was his only strength, he gave a shocking amount of liberty. And a secretary. He took a big risk in doing all that. Apolek said he saw something in me.

My nightmares had been getting worse. This time I dreamed I was inside a Box, my whole body spasming from electric shocks, and one of them caused my jaw to slam shut with such force that I woke myself up—and found that I had shattered a tooth.

But then, Monday morning, when Apolek normally banished the darkness, I arrived at the Kremlin Armoury and he was not there. This had never happened before; every other day he arrived well before me, to study books on foreign art, or keep up on the latest social engineering successes. Sometimes he slept under his desk.

No one knew the last time he was there. Not even the guards, who barracked there all weekend, remembered seeing him.

I tried to do work. I had assessment deployments to plan out, backlogged incident reports to complete and submit, all the orderly rational work that Apolek said would help me tame my inner beast. And none of it worked.

I did something I had never done before. I went down to the basement, alone, and consulted the logbook. An entry for every assessment, describing each item seized and a brief notation of the plans for it. I was proud of myself, heaving it down off the high shelf with only a glimmer of suspicion what I was chasing.

Besides the ten worthless Bible scenes, there were no paintings registered under the Spasskaya assessment.

Memory was not an important thing for a grunt, so my own reconditioning had not encouraged it. As a result, my mind did not hold memories well, although my body did: weapons work, martial arts, even plumbing and mechanics came easy and stayed. Apolek had tried hard to help me reclaim my memory, by telling me things again and again. Stories. Fairy tales. Dirty jokes. Things that happened to him when he was a child. Some things had stayed. I could hear his voice in my ear, soothing and wise:

“It’s a legend. No one knows if it’s true or not. One day, an assessment officer found a painting that was simply priceless. A Leonardo thought lost, or something else that any Western museum would ransom half its collection for. Well, the assessment officer who discovered it, he told his commanding officer what he had. And the man murdered him, and erased the painting from the logbook, and fled to Paris. Remember, our superiors are no further from being beasts than we are. Some are a lot closer.”

Apolek would never have concealed a painting. If it wasn’t there, it was because someone removed it. And maybe removed Apolek as well.

I did not think about it for long. Apolek would have counseled caution, but he was not there to do so. I climbed the stairs to Volkov’s office two at a time. I girded myself for a fight, prepared to barrel past guards and secretaries, but the officer sat alone in a small room with no door.

“Comrade,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously.

“Commander,” I said, saluting. “It’s Apolek, sir. He’s gone.”

Volkov frowned. “Barely noon on a Monday,” he said. “I am sure he is merely—”

“No,” I said, and stamped my foot. “He’s never late. We found something Friday night. A painting. And it’s not in the logbook. And now he’s gone. I think something terrible happened to him. I think someone—”

His face showed no surprise. Why should he be surprised? Apolek would have told him about the painting.

“That will be all, Comrade. My men will investigate. I will let you know if we find anything.”

Confronting him had been foolish, I now saw. But without saying a word, Volkov had already told me everything I needed to know. Because when I told Volkov that I knew about the painting, and about Apolek’s disappearance, the sudden whiff of anger was so strong it singed my nostrils.

• • • •

The women’s reconditioning camp stank. I don’t know why I was surprised, considering how bad the men’s camp smelled. I guess I thought women were different. It was noisier, too, more full of anger, more likely to burst into violence. I found her easily enough. They kept the new arrivals separate for a week, to minimize the spread of infectious disease.

From the bottom drawer of Apolek’s desk, precisely where he had repeatedly told me they would be in the event I ever needed them, I had stolen a stack of command forms upon which he had forged Volkov’s signature. I requested an office to myself, and demanded they bring her to me.

“You,” the Spasskaya woman said, when she saw me.

I didn’t know what to say. Or do. Bow? Shake hands? Apologize? Back at her mansion her beauty had not impressed me, but now it made my hands fidget deep in my pockets.

“I need your help,” I said.

The woman tilted her head, as if there must be more to me than she was seeing. Then she nodded. “The painting,” she said. “Something happened to it. It’s gone.”

“How did you know that?”

The woman shrugged. I stepped closer.

I said, “Tell me about the painting.”

Somehow, in all the filth and sickness and hunger of that camp, she did not stink. My offshoot, my nose for violence, was not bothered by her. The fear and anger of the place was overwhelming, the rage of thousands of women slowly dying for crimes like being born rich. The stink of it ruptured something in my nose, dripping blood into my gaping mouth.

But the woman smelled like funeral incense, clean and cold and tragic. I had come to interrogate her. Ask her some questions, extract some answers, with steel tools if necessary, and depart. Instead, I wanted terribly to take her with me.

I said, “I know you have no reason to help me. I know you probably hate me. But I need your help. And if you don’t come, you’ll die in here. And soon.”

“I’ll come,” she said.

Another of Apolek’s most important lessons: Whatever you do, you should be able to explain why you’re doing it. And ask yourself—is this a noble and revolutionary act, or something less honorable? More beastly?

In this case I could ask myself the question, but I couldn’t answer it.

Why was I bringing her?

I produced another command form, signed paperwork, and Zinaida Spasskaya was officially my problem. I took her through the tall gates and into a Moscow already bled dry of sunlight.

Did I want to help Zinaida? Did I want her to help me? Did I want to throw her down and tie her up and do terrible things to her? Punish this enemy of the people?

Yes and yes and yes and yes. Apolek was still with me, a faint voice in my ear, but getting fainter. I had to find him fast.

Belorusskaya Station was thick with the screams of metal and men. Food coming in, and soldiers going out. Wheat for the starving millions in the capital, and men to die defending the Polish border. We did not have enough of either.

“Where are we going?” Zinaida asked.

“Stop asking,” I said, maybe not so nicely, feeling frustrated because I didn’t have a very good answer to her question myself.

Zinaida Spasskaya: thirty-one years old. Widow of Lieutenant Anatoly Spassky, killed in his home in March of 1921. No children.

Why was I bringing her? These were the answers I had come up with:

1. She knew the painting, what it was and what could be done with it;

2. I felt sorry for her, and what would certainly happen to her in the camps;

3. She was beautiful, and I wanted her.

I visited the Red Army guard station, and used their telephone to call the Kremlin Armoury. I’d been away from work for three days and I needed a cover story. This much, Apolek had also taught me. The fact that he didn’t have one of his own was another sign that something terrible had happened to him.

“I’m going to Elektrograd,” I told my secretary, a shriveled older man who feared me enough to be useful. “I have to oversee the processing of a particular piece of art. Please arrange and submit all the paperwork for me.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“I’d be very grateful for any help you can provide in not allowing Commander Volkov to know anything about this,” I said.

“Volkov isn’t here,” he said. “He left the same day you did.”

• • • •

Elektrograd was the middle ground, where assessment officers met with museum lackeys and middlemen, where papers were signed and money changed hands. It was also where Apolek had his secondary office, where he was most likely to be—if Volkov had not already killed him.

Killed. Merely thinking it made me feel close to cracking.

Zinaida and I huddled together in a darkened boxcar, surrounded by the stink of livestock. I was shocked at how willingly she had come with me, how fearlessly she threw herself into each new leg of the journey. I must have been a slavering vicious brute to her, and yet she was kind to me.

There was a new item on my list of reasons why I took her:

4. Because Zinaida had his softness. His gentleness. His eye for art.

“It’s a piece of a larger painting,” she said, as I was about to fall asleep. Darkness and the clanging rhythm of the rails had made me drowsy.

“What happened to it?” I asked.

“Someone cut it to shreds.”

“Why?”

“Men broke in,” she said. “My husband commanded a brigade that was loyal to the Kronstadt rebels. On the night before the Uprising, Bolsheviks got wind of the rebellion and came to take him. He thought they were robbers. He held the painting to his chest, told them if they killed him they’d kill the painting. A soldier with a bayonet sliced them both up.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I loved my husband,” she said. “That painting . . . it’s what’s left.”

Russia rolled by beneath us, changed and twisted.

Elektrograd was empty. A Potemkin village: an instant city constructed on scorched earth in under six months, with no purpose beyond the art sale summits. We arrived between sessions. No Apolek; no painting; no Volkov. A handful of fey museum men haggled over scraps with bleary-eyed assessment officers.

And everywhere we went were red-faced reconditioned soldier lads, conducting extensive inspections of our papers and bumbling attempts at interrogation. I wasn’t afraid of them. These boys were soft. They did not know how it was in the capitol. Their hunger weakened them, while ours made us more vicious.

They did not have Volkov’s violent voice whispering in their ear as I did. Normally Apolek’s real-life voice could drown it out, but now I was alone with my most violent vile thoughts. Bayonets plunged through eye sockets. Guts spilled. Zinaida spread wide for me.

“What now?” she said, sitting with me on the train platform. Benches had not yet been brought in. The day was almost over. I wanted to punch the concrete until it or my hands shattered.

“Is there someone you can call? At the Ministry?” Zinaida asked.

I frowned into my filthy hands. It would have been so easy to drag her off into the dark and destroy her. I made a list of reasons not to, and it wasn’t long.

“Someone from his family, perhaps?”

“He has no one,” I said, startled at how fast and hot my hate had risen. I hooked my hand into my belt, to keep from reaching for the dagger that hung there. “No one but me.”

“Most ministries have dachas,” she said. “Fancy cabins far from the city, to reward their workers with occasional vacations.”

“How the hell would you know?”

“Maybe Apolek went to one of those,” Zinaida said.

I hated the sound of his name in her mouth. How had she managed to preserve so much class, so much dignity, after all she had been through? Even in the tattered black dress from the women’s camp, whose past several occupants had almost certainly died terribly in it, she looked noble. Apolek said that lust and violence were the beast in us. I felt them both, every time I looked at her.

“What did you do with your art?” I asked, pulling myself back. “Apolek said you must have had an incredible collection, yet we found nothing of value.”

“We gave most of the paintings away,” Zinaida said. “To our servants. I know you think we were heartless oppressors, but we loved them, and we wanted to give them something invaluable.”

I thought of Apolek, wanting the great art to remain in Russia. These were impulses I could not grasp, like why the girl in the fairy tale touches the spindle even though it will obviously prick her finger and make her fall asleep. I was missing something. Something important.

“What would you do with it?” I asked. “If you could get it back?”

“Never let it out of my grip,” she said. “Never stop staring at it. Do you know the story of Narcissus? He died, wasted away, staring into a pool of water at his own reflection. That would be me.”

“What makes it so valuable?”

“You looked at it,” she said. “I saw you. In the home you stole from me. What did you see?”

I shrugged. “People. Naked. Or something.”

Zinaida looked at me. “Who is your favorite painter?”

Twilight softened her grief, made her more beautiful. I made my hands fists, to keep from seizing her. “I don’t have one.”

“Then I cannot explain to you what made that painting what it was.”

Time passed. I said: “Please?”

I waited ’til she was asleep to call the Kremlin Armoury. I left Zinaida where she lay, curled on the cold cement, and there was comfort in her helplessness.

Midnight. Elektrograd was silent except for the cockroach-clicking of the telegraph machine inside the station.

You broke me, I whispered to the wind, to Apolek.

The station agent did not want to make the call. A pudgy coward, he had a poor understanding of how the telephone worked, and I sensed they were very liberal with their Pavlov Boxes out in the backwoods corners of the Empire where no one could see.

“Hello?” said my secretary, already terrified. Babies cried and people squawked in the background. The late-night call to his collective flat had caused the precise ruckus I desired.

“Go to the office,” I said.

“It’s—”

He fumbled loudly, perhaps for his watch, but I barked: “You’re finished, if you don’t call me back within two hours with the information I need.”

I could hear the scritch of pencil on paper as he took down my request. An hour later he called me, from the office, from the other side of Moscow. The Asset Maximization department of the Ministry of Culture owned two dachas, a mile apart, a day’s journey from Elektrograd, for high officials involved in art exchange summits. One of them was already signed out. To Commander Volkov.

I slammed the phone down hard, as if my loyal secretary would feel the blow on his back.

“It doesn’t work,” Apolek told me, eight days before he vanished.

“What doesn’t work?” I asked.

Midnight; homeless clerks snoring over heaps of paper in the Ministry. Hallways smoky from soldiers burning old documents to keep warm.

“Reconditioning. The Pavlov Boxes. The effects . . . they’re unstable. After a while, men who’ve been reconditioned begin to experience severe physical and mental side effects. Muscle spasms, severe insomnia, immune system failure. Suicidal tendencies. Madness.”

“How bad can it get?”

“Bad,” he said.

“Dead bad?”

Apolek nodded.

I didn’t ask how he knew. I never did. From the day we met I believed that Apolek knew absolutely everything.

“Even now, they’re building tens of thousands of Boxes, all over the country. Putting boys of all ages into them. Trying millions of different reconditioning regimens. Creating all kinds of monsters. All kinds of terrifying offshoots. Volkov thinks he can fix it with more reconditioning, so whenever it starts to happen to one of his men, he throws them back into a Box for several days. It makes the symptoms go away, but only for a very little while, and then they come back much worse.”

“Okay,” I said, because I didn’t know what to do or think or say. It had never occurred to me to doubt the Boxes, or reconditioning, or the whole grand Soviet plan of human perfectibility.

“I shouldn’t have told you this,” Apolek said, burrowing deeper into the fur-lined jacket he had stolen.

“So . . . all the men who’ve been reconditioned . . . they’ll . . .”

Apolek nodded. His eyes showed pain, loneliness.

“All of us?” I asked.

“All of us.”

“What can we do about it?”

“I don’t know, Nikolai.”

Which he had never said before.

He clasped my neck with one hand. “I used to think we could put the pieces back together ourselves. Help each other survive this. You know? I used to really believe that.”

• • • •

Dreams of blood woke me up, savage gleeful glorious violence, human bodies shredded like paper.

“They say you can’t cry,” she said, sitting up and watching the fire. “After you’ve been reconditioned. Is that true?”

“I don’t know,” I said, sheepishly shifting my body so the outline of my erection would be invisible beneath the blankets. And that’s when I saw that both my arms were sticky with blood, from where I had scratched the skin off.

Zinaida said, “But you haven’t. Since.”

“No.”

“Do you love your work?” she asked. I had no sense of what time it was. Faint light edged the horizon, but it could have been a distant city.

“I guess,” I said.

“What do you love about it?”

I shrugged.

“Do you love helping the great Soviet state create a proletarian paradise?” Zinaida asked.

“Sure,” I said, and she laughed.

“He is why,” she said. “Tell me about him.”

“Apolek,” I said, and saying the name actually helped. “He’s my best friend.”

“Why?”

Why. So many questions I could never even ask myself, let alone answer. “I’m missing something,” I said. “Apolek was helping me find it.”

“What kind of something?”

“I don’t know. Something essential.”

“But he had it,” she said.

“He never knew his father,” I said. “I think that’s the secret. His mother was impregnated and abandoned. That’s why he’s such a good man. He said men are beasts by nature, ugly, violent creatures. Women are different.”

She snorted, delicately. “He seemed to hold quite a position of power, for someone so young.”

“Apolek was a prodigy,” I said. “A reconditioning marvel. They started him small. With young children, it either works very well or not at all. Volkov gave him the keys to the kingdom.”

“And you? How young did they start you?”

The orphanage. The stink of shit and puke, all the time, everywhere. The men from the Ministry, who chose ten out of a hundred by watching us all fight and picking the most savage. I was twelve and I would have slaughtered every one of those boys for the chance to get out of there.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m not like him. I’m an animal. He’s a man.”

“Even wolves mourn their dead,” she said.

“He’s not dead,” I said.

“People die.”

“But not him.”

“Why not him?”

“Why are you here?” I said, spitting out the words. “You hate us. You won’t get your painting back. Your stupid husband will still be dead. When we’re finished here, you’re going back to that camp. So why are you here with me?”

“Because you dragged me along.”

“Yeah, well. Go. Leave if you want to.”

“I’d be dead in a day,” she said, and then touched her hand to the buzz-cut on top of my head. “You are so young.”

“Don’t touch me,” I said. Unconvincingly.

“You never felt manipulated?” she asked, standing up, stretching long lovely arms. “By the men who put you in that Box? By the government? By him?”

I lowered my head. All the sentences in my head involved swearing, and angry as I was I knew that swearing was wrong. It was one of Apolek’s simplest rules.

She put a hand on top of my head, then tilted it back until she could see my eyes. “I was a dancer,” she said.

I looked away. “So what.”

“I’d like to dance for you.”

I said, “Do what you want. But if you think you can mess with my mind so much you can steal your stupid painting when we find it, you’re wrong.”

What did I know or care about dance? Who cared what the body did? But I watched her. She moved like a phantom, dancing. Her body was smoke, the flimsy ugly dress an extension of the wind. Her body made its own music. My head filled with sad stories and long-buried lullabies.

“That was wonderful,” I said, an unaccustomed lump in my throat. Dimly, dumbly, it occurred to me to wonder, really wonder, why she was doing any of this. I felt like I had a lot of weeping to do, and I did not know how to start.

• • • •

An eight-hour walk, from the station to the dacha. Scorched skeletal trees on both sides of us. The cold here was crueler, cutting through even the thick clothes I commandeered from the town’s tiny army depot. We found Volkov’s dacha and crept up close. He lay asleep on a couch, camouflaged by empty bottles. All of the tracks in the snow seemed to come from one pair of boots.

He was alone, except for the Broken soldiers who slept obediently in his truck.

“The other dacha, then,” she said, and started in that direction. I followed, frightened by her zeal. If Apolek was out here, so close to Volkov, were they working together? My old hate for the commander flared up again, brighter now, from jealousy. Ice cracked under our feet. We were not stealthy.

Night came on us fast, while we walked. Many times we were sure we heard someone following us, but sound moved strangely through the trees. We could see the dacha, a dark spot at the end of the road, but the closer we got, the more it faded into the spreading night. No lights were on inside.

“You asked why I came,” Zinaida said, stopping as we climbed the walkway to the front door. “Do you still want to know the answer?”

“No,” I said, pulling her inside by the hand, and kissing her hard, even as I nudged the front door with my foot and found it unlocked, too excited about what we would find inside to care about anything else.

Zinaida lit a candle. We watched our breath cloud out into the frigid darkness of the dacha. I looked for a lamp, and found three. I laughed out loud, when they were all lit, at the sheer size and splendor of the place. So much empty space we were wasting.

His rucksack lay abandoned beside the door, spilling out books like entrails.

“You look upstairs,” she said.

He wasn’t in the first of the three bedrooms. A window was open. A curtain flapped. As if the whole place was waiting. As if the murdered count who lived there would come through the door in the morning and bring summer with him.

The light from my lamp found Apolek in the second bedroom, in a wine-colored velvet chair, with the painting in his lap.

“Apolek!” I said, and rushed forward, but he did not move.

“What is a painting in the dark?” he said. On a table beside him stood a glass of ice.

“What happened?” I asked. “Why did you leave?”

His coldness kept me from coming closer. And asking: Why are you sitting here in the freezing dark? I wondered if Apolek was a ghost.

“I spent so long in darkness,” he said. “I looked at the paintings, but I didn’t see them.”

“What did Volkov say to you?” I asked.

Apolek made a perplexed face, but it passed quickly. He was still transfixed by the painting. I imagined him frozen there for days, wasting away and shivering himself to nothing while he stared at it. My Soviet Narcissus.

He said, “Volkov didn’t say anything to me. I left that night, straight from the Spasskaya mansion, without speaking with him.”

“He doesn’t know about the painting?”

“Not from me,” Apolek said.

“You haven’t spoken with him since?” I asked.

“How would I do that?”

“Christ, Apolek, he’s followed you. You didn’t know?”

Apolek looked up at me for the first time. “He’s here?”

“He’s at the dacha at the end of the lane,” I said, still wanting to rush over to him, still not daring to.

“He’s keeping an eye on me,” Apolek said, standing up, resigned. He didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Come back,” I said. “We can work this out.”

“Not after this,” he said. I thought he meant his own foolish flight from Moscow, but he was staring at the painting.

“I need you,” I said, at last. “I’m not finished . . . becoming. I’m stuck halfway between man and beast.”

“So shall you always be,” he said. Apolek reached out his arm and touched a candle to mine, lighting up a gaunt face shadowed by a surprisingly thick growth of beard. “So are we all.”

From outside, I heard the rumble of a truck approaching.

“Why did you do it?” I asked. “You know what they’ll do to you. To throw it all away—”

He handed me the painting.

I looked at it.

This time, I could see. I saw. I hadn’t before. For four, maybe five full seconds, I understood.

Two bodies, male and female, mostly naked, grappling. Was it love? Was it violence? Where did they fit into the larger composition, now lost, severed by the bayonet of a brutal long-ago soldier?

But the story did not matter. What mattered were the bodies. The twist and reach of the limbs. The glow of the flesh. The flush of the cheeks; the wideness of the mouth. Nothing mattered more than what the body wanted. And the body did not just want sex. It wanted friendship. It wanted beauty.

Looking at the painting, I understood everything. It was like what I felt when Zinaida danced, but turned up ten-thousandfold. I would have risked what Apolek risked. Life on Earth as a human made sense. We are beasts, and we will never understand what we need, what we want, and why, but we will always obey.

My head spun so fast I almost fell over. Zinaida had come up the stairs; stood beside me. One hand on my shoulder. As mesmerized as I was by the painting.

“You brought her here?” Apolek asked, pulling away the painting. I felt her stiffen, when it was gone.

“Yeah,” I said. “I took her. From the camp. She would have died in there. And I needed—”

“Why did you bring her here?”

I had never heard fear in Apolek’s voice before. My head spun worse.

“Because I—”

Zinaida stepped forward. Her sadness fell away, a wedding veil no longer needed. In that moment, for the first time, grief was not stronger than rage. And I smelled what I should have smelled the whole time, except that it was hidden behind her sadness and my own blind failure to understand who she was and what she wanted. I smelled an all-consuming violence, a bloodlust strong enough to make all other concerns insignificant.

“You,” I said to Apolek. “You’re the one who killed her husband—”

But he wouldn’t move. And I couldn’t. Only Zinaida moved, and she moved like a phantom dancing. She darted in, ducked low to snag the dagger from my belt, spun fast around him. One lightning-swift swing of the arm was enough. Blood gurgled out of Apolek’s open throat.

I crumpled to the floor with him. I held his hand. I stared into his eyes. I waited for something, some wise final words or a sudden rush of complete understanding as his spirit left his body and entered mine. I got nothing. I don’t know how long I knelt there. Until Volkov came through the door, with four Broken soldiers close behind him.

“No,” he said, and then said it again and again, faster and faster.

Volkov pointed at Zinaida, standing there with the bloody blade, and the Broken stepped forward. The stink of his rage made me gag. “Rip her to shreds,” he said, and although I screamed for them to stop, that’s exactly what they did. At least they did not smell of rage. The Broken kill dispassionately.

I wondered if my offshoot would survive. If—after Volkov took me back to Moscow and locked me in a Box until my spirit shattered, and I emerged as one of the Broken—my sense of smell would still be with me. I hoped it wouldn’t. I hoped nothing would.

My head stopped hurting. I looked at my hands, and knew—my reconditioning was gone. The painting had wiped it away, cleanly and swiftly, and leaving no fatal time bomb inside me.

That’s why Apolek left with it. He looked at it, and felt the burden of his reconditioning break. He wouldn’t have known how, or what magnificent artist had created such a thing. All he knew was what it did, and what could be done with it. Was he going to sell it to our enemies? Move like a phantom from our western border east, showing it to every soldier along the way, defusing all those ticking bombs inside us?

I wouldn’t die. I wouldn’t break down like a faulty machine, like every other soldier spat out of a Pavlov Box.

Volkov crossed the carnage, to kneel beside Apolek. His rage was gone. He held the boy’s head in both hands. I still had my superhuman sense of smell, somehow stronger than ever. I had never been able to smell grief before.

“I thought you hated him,” I said.

“He hated me,” the commander said, his hair and eyes as black as mine. “He’s always hated me. I tried to make him into something he’s not.”

I swallowed, several times. “You’re his father.”

“Yes.”

“He knew?” I asked.

“He did not.”

Dagger and painting were filthy with blood. I picked them both up. I handled the painting like Medusa’s head, turning it away from my line of sight, and Volkov’s too. I wondered what the Broken would see if they saw it. I felt certain it could bring them back to life. It could save us all, the tens and hundreds of thousands of fine young men who would otherwise break down and die under the weight of their botched reconditioning.

“Is there a special Box?” I asked. “A special process, to turn a man into one of the Broken?”

Volkov looked at me, his red face comprehending nothing.

I did not dare to look at the painting again. If I did, I’d lose my nerve. With the dagger, I cut a long slit from top to bottom of the painting, then squatted to remove the glass flute from the lamp and hold the canvas square face down atop the flame.

“I’m ready,” I said.

“Ready for what?”

“To be Broken.”

Promise me you’ll make it quick, I wanted to say, but I didn’t say it. I didn’t deserve quick. I had unwittingly, idiotically helped destroy my best friend, and I deserved to suffer. But I hoped he’d do it soon. I wanted to stop feeling what I felt.

Flames from the burning painting singed the hair from my hand, and still I held on to it. I held on until the burning was too much to bear. Now that it was gone, definitively destroyed, I realized what I had done—that without the painting the Pavlov Boxes would quickly cripple the state, bring it to its knees as its best young men died in droves—but that wasn’t why I did it. I destroyed the painting because it killed Apolek.

“Oh, Nikolai, no,” he said. His face shattered, crumpled. “You’re all that’s left of him.”

Volkov fell forward, his arms tightening around me and his hairy face wet against my neck. He heaved with sobs. My body remembered, and I felt unaccustomed water spilling from my eyes. I had forgotten how hot tears were. We stood like that, dumb and broken, two beasts grieving.

©2012 by Sam J. Miller. Originally published in Electric Velocipede. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam J. Miller is the Nebula-Award-winning author of The Art of Starving (an NPR best of the year) and Blackfish City (a best book of the year for Vulture, The Washington Post, Barnes & Noble, and more – and a “Must Read” in Entertainment Weekly and O: The Oprah Winfrey Magazine). A recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and the John M. Campbell Award, and a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, Sam’s short stories have been nominated for the World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus Awards, and reprinted in dozens of anthologies. He lives in New York City, and at samjmiller.com.

Nesting Habits of Enceladan Jade Beetles

Eli Brown | 5333 words

The pink frost coating my face shield is, evidently, my own blood. The gas jetting from the pea-sized hole in my wrist spins me around, and for a panicked moment, I wonder if I have somehow been shot. I think I am screaming, but that would alert Station, and Ocampo is silent. Evidently, I am holding my breath, only wanting to scream, like the nightmare of being on the wrong side of the airlock.

Now the hissing has stopped and pain nails me to the ice. For a moment I am as frozen as everything else on this moon: the Jade Cliffs behind me, the glaciate-sea stretching slate-green to the horizon, Saturn’s rings pitched nauseatingly across the sky.

• • • •

Among mature jade beetles, Exo-coleoptera fodiens prasinus, males and females are visually distinguishable only by the striking dimorphism of their mandibles. Nest tunnels are excavated by female prasinus exclusively. Our investigation has shown that the leading edge of the female mandibles averages a width of only eight atoms, is comparable to amorphous fullerine in terms of tensile strength, and is backed by a bite force of up to fourteen thousand newtons.

• • • •

The specimen that chewed through my Terra-suit was female, then. My In-Situ Extremus class armor is designed to withstand micro-meteorites, the shrapnel blast of ice geysers, and the blunt force of a tumble down a mile-deep crevasse, but the beetle went through it like sponge cake. The suit tried to alert me, of course, but then, the suit alerts me every time I fart, and I was, moments ago, preoccupied with the delicate task of removing a specimen from her tunnel with forceps without damaging her. Their jaws may be sharper than a carbon scalpel, but the body of an egg-carrying prasinus is frustratingly easy to crush.

For perhaps two seconds, as the beetle made her way in, I ignored an alarm. I’ll never tell Amsel this. He says it’s the minor alerts that matter. Just last week, as we were lying in bed, he wouldn’t let me sleep until I promised to listen to my suit. But we’ve all been habituated to ignore alarms. It is the only way to get anything done. The well-intentioned “alarm-fatigue mitigation” patches only warmed the brittle buzzing into whale song and flutes, the alerts now voiced in a vaguely patronizing South African accent rather than the reproachful British schoolmarm.

Foreign Body Breach, Left Forearm. Armor Compromised. Pressure Event Emergent.

• • • •

To avoid being buffeted by thermal gusts, the nesting prasinus must grasp the exposed cliff face fiercely and tunnel into the jade as quickly as possible. The holes excavated by the beetles average two centimeters wide, one and a half meters deep, with a slight upward incline, terminating in a small chamber where the eggs are deposited on a bed of nutrient-rich spore dough. At this depth, the incubating eggs are protected from wind, reflected radiation, temperature swings, and precipitation. After laying up to three dozen eggs, female jade beetles swell, then expire in the tunnel, their frozen bodies plugging the hole, further protecting their offspring.

• • • •

I piss, setting off another alarm I still don’t really hear, because, even worse than the pain, is the realization that the beetle is still in there, a foreign body, the size and shape of a hab-grown soybean. I smear my face-shield clear with my good arm. I have a panicked impulse to dig the beetle out of my forearm with the forceps, but just as my suit seals the first hole with ferro-gel, there is a snap! and my arm is lifted by a second breach. I know, even as it happens, that the beetle has made her own way out the opposite side, ejected at a terrific speed. I piss again.

Alarms of different pitches overlap as another gel-patch stops the venting. I rotate my arm to see the exit wound. A bullet could not have made a cleaner hole. The pain is suddenly replaced by a numbing pressure and I sob with relief as I listen closely to the alerts that follow:

Pressure Event Critical. Emergency Compartmentalization Effected, Left Forearm.

Blood Loss Event Emergent. Emergency Cryo-cauterization Engaged, Ulnar, Radial Arteries.

Skeletal Injury Event Emergent. Left Radius and Ulna.

Report to Medical Immediately.

Just like that, my suit has amputated my left hand.

• • • •

The Jade Cliffs of Enceladus are comprised primarily of panguite olivine, the dust of which is crucial for the survival of sub-surface ice-worms, Exo-annelida Glaciephage, which metabolize the mineral as a form of antifreeze. Without the jade beetle’s nest excavations seeding the surface, the meter-long ice worms would not proliferate. As the sloughed skins and metabolic waste of the ice-worms is an important nutrient source for the liquid ocean below, the loss of this crucial feedstock would impact the entire Enceladan ecosystem. It is not an exaggeration to say that the amorous energy of the jade beetles sustains of the biology of the entire moon.

• • • •

Physical Trauma Event Emergent. Asmothene Administered.

Psychological Trauma Event Emergent. Terra-hope Administered. Stim-stat Administered.

Report to Medical Immediately.

I try to wiggle my fingers—but the gauntlet doesn’t move. A few garnet gems skitter on the ice. It doesn’t seem like enough blood for such a dramatic injury. I’m having a hard time believing this.

“Suit, please repeat the alert about compartmentalization.”

Pressure Event Critical. Emergency Compartmentalization Effected, Left Forearm.

If it had been a single entry wound, my suit would have gel-patched and sterile-bonded, sealing my suit and arm at the same time. I could have walked back to station a whole man. But because there is a secondary hole, exactly opposite the first, and because the damaged monitors make assessment of the limb unreliable, my suit has made the executive decision to cut my hand off. The ferro-fullerine fiber of the inner lining constricted above the breech, slicing through my arm and sealing the compromised area with the same foil-thin material.

At least the pain has been amputated as well. I’m still woozy from the beetle’s assault and grateful for the throbbing lightness the drugs offer. My hand has been walled off like the doomed chamber of a damaged submarine, the few sacrificed for the whole.

Whole. Hole.

All hands on deck.

The drugs are having an effect. I sit. Or maybe I fall onto my ass.

The ledge is wide and stable enough for me to work without rigging, but now I can feel the moon spinning, and there is a danger of stumbling toward a slope and dropping off the escarpment. So I stay put, trying to accept what has just happened, what a bug bite has cost me.

My mind turns toward Amsel, his tool belt hanging low on his slim hips. A geologist, he smashes his beloveds to powder and incinerates them with a portable spectrograph. Thinking of Amsel helps distract me from the hand, so I picture him eating his apples cores instead of throwing them out. I think of him, right this minute, mapping the ice, miles away but still on the same moon, with me. He is out of my league in more than a few ways, and I have managed to keep him enchanted.

“Why are your bugs called prasinus?” The memory of him tackling me, pretending to be outraged, brings a smile to my lips. “These are jade formations, not emerald.”

He will help me through this. Again and again, he has carried me through.

Ocampo coughs in my comm, making me flinch, “You are all lit up, bug man. What’s going on out there?”

It took her long enough. I don’t answer right away. Instead I examine my arm again. The gel-patches look like wads of calorie-gum shoved into the holes, harmless except for the slimmest slivers of blood around the rim. The suit’s arm is still attached, intact, but inside, I try to picture it: compartmentalized.

“Report,” Ocampo demands. “What just happened?”

My hand is there, just under the armor, entombed, already freeze-drying. The integrity of the suit, fingers, wrist, is hiding the truth. A sleight of hand. I try to wiggle my fingers and this sets off another burst of alerts.

Trans-dermal Terra-hope Administered, Second Dose. Report to Medical Immediately.

“Answer me, bug man. I know you’re awake.”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” I say.

“I’m reading ‘broken arm.’ Did you fall? I got up to use the toilet and I came back to fucking Christmas lights.”

“My suit broke my arm. Compartmentalized.”

“Crevasse? Did you slip?”

“No, I’m on the surface, right where I’m pinged to be. A jade beetle chewed through my wrist,” I say. “Suit decided to cut its losses.”

There is a silence as Ocampo digests this. I listen to her suck popcorn kernels from her teeth.

“Well, shit, man . . . that’s tough.”

“Are you laughing?”

“Did you hear me laugh?”

“I can hear you smiling,” I say.

“I am not. It’s just . . . this is a profoundly shitty moment for you is all. You have my respect right now. Seriously. I’m sending a rover.”

“I can walk back.”

“Like fuck. Do not move. Sit down. Stay awake. Describe what you’re seeing.”

“What I’m seeing . . .”

“Keep talking,” I hear her chair creak as she engages eight terminals at once. Ocampo wears basketball shorts and flip-flips every day. She’s never suited up, never left the station, and sometimes sleeps in her chair, lightly dusted with yeast-crisp crumbs, her braids tangled with her headset. She doesn’t know the first thing about biology, geology, or mineralogy. She doesn’t need to. I know she’s happy to have something interesting on her monitors right now. This is exactly what she signed on for.

We’re a crew of fifteen, the cheapest possible assessment team, tasked with establishing environmental impact and best practices for an anchor colony. In five years, if things go well, there could be an inflatable town where Station now sits, with habs and halls named after us, a small seed-city bustling with non-violent convicts, scientists, and their chipper, well-drilling robots.

Nothing in my report will come as a surprise: Impact of a human colony is relatively disastrous and wholly acceptable; colony will interrupt delicate chains of balance, immediately exterminating hyper-localized microbes and adversely affecting dozens of macro-species; cascading impacts will be largely unknown and unaddressed.

I know the keywords the board will look for: There are no sentients—on the surface at least—and no hostiles. And the jade beetle will continue to thrive as long as the cliffs remain unmolested. My report will guarantee their designation as a keystone species, preservation mandated. Our notes are supposed to be monastically neutral, but we all want a colony here. We want to matter.

This accident will trigger a review, though. Prasinus could be reclassified as a hostile. There are those on the board, from both the University and Terra corp, who would gladly terminate funding. Rather than founders, we might return as beaten prospectors.

“Ice,” I say.

“No shit. What does it look like? Paint me a picture, bug man.”

“The cliffs are crumbling, slowly, like an old castle. Saturn is rising, the color of a peach that’s already half-rotten.”

Ocampo sniffs. “Yeah, your suit dosed you with a bucket of Terra-hope. So that explains the poetry. Keep it up.”

“I mean . . . this relentless ice,” I say. “A fault of geysers in the distance, like a parade of ghosts marching toward the pole. And that sub-surface river of melt is just barely visible below . . . a blue vein.”

“That’s a quarter kilometer down. Not visible.”

“I can see it. Or maybe I can just feel it. A pulse. Like something buried alive. Oh my god. This can’t be happening.”

Asmothene Administered, Second Dose. Terra-hope Administered, Third Dose.

“Breathe,” Ocampo says. “Deep breaths through your nose and don’t think about the problem. I’m taking care of everything. Medical is already warmed up for you. You’ve earned a bath.” I have her entire attention. I am now a problem to troubleshoot, a system to keep within parameters.

I hear her take a deep draw on the straw of that bottle she keeps strapped to her chair. When complaints about sticky terminals and offensive music were anonymously escalated to Staffing, the response came almost immediately. Ocampo printed it out and taped it to the wall near her chair, with her favorite bits circled: Mahalia Ocampo’s record is untarnished . . . asset to the program . . . confirmation of the value of human agents . . . interpersonal issues to be resolved by mission community.

I have agreed to losing my hand, of course. In the drift of forms I signed, waiving my rights, and my decedent’s rights, to sue the University, Terra Corp, the Earth, or any institution ever again, I vaguely recall seeing language about ceding control of my body to the suit itself. My Terra-suit can act, in a surprising array of circumstances, as my legal guardian. But wouldn’t a truly intelligent guardian have looked at the gel-patches, seen that that they were holding, and tried to get me back to the station with my arm intact? Has it made a genuine decision, weighing the costs involved, or has it simply skittered down a bad-luck flow chart?

“It’s just my arm, isn’t it?” I ask Ocampo.

“You tell me.”

“I mean, my suit isn’t telling you something she isn’t telling me? Am I dying?”

“You are not dying. Your suit reports to you first. Your numbers are acceptable on my end. Do you have something to report?”

I wiggle my other hand, my toes. “How far out is Amsel?”

“Your man is . . . eighteen point two kilos south and in good condition. On his way back. I’m recalling his team.”

“Don’t.”

“Already done. They’ll be home for dinner. And your own evac rover is eighteen minutes away. Keep talking.”

“This is my last out-mission,” I say.

“Bullshit. Who will molest all those bugs if not you? We’ll get you patched.”

“One-handed?”

“They’ll fit you with a feedback paw,” Ocampo says, “Grow you a stemmy in no time.”

“On Earth they do that,” I correct her. “On Mars perhaps. You know we don’t have stem-cell labs out here. We’re lucky we can grow kale. What would the board rather pay for, rehabilitating, at great cost, a one-handed exo-entomologist who hasn’t published in five years or just replacing him with an unsullied post-doc—oh, please, my hand!”

Isn’t this the hand that coaxed Amsel awake, just two days ago, tugging him gently to attention, because I have learned his secrets and I know that even though he hates to be woken, once he starts panting he will roll me over, hungry and in a hurry? Didn’t this hand reach back to hold him in a little longer when he was done?

“You’re fine!” Ocampo shouts in my ear. “This is my problem now. Just turn everything over to me. I’ve got you.”

“The hand will freeze-dry,” I say. “Preserved in the gauntlet. I’m a good candidate for reattachment.”

“Damn right you are,” Ocampo says. But we both know that the physician will not attempt surgery here. Too risky. Too cosmetic. I will remain one-handed until our mission is complete, until all the studies have been completed, until our return to Mars. Four years, at least. I try not to think about it.

The first drone-surveyors, seeing the Jade Cliffs on the horizon, compared them to an emerald city, and though Amsel objects on a mineral basis, the comparison is fair. The light here is verdant. Even with my back to the cliffs, there is a bamboo-tinged charge to the air. I look at the albino horizon, and try to tell myself that I haven’t lost my boyfriend.

A brilliant spark of panic breaks through the sedating drugs and sets my heart on fire. I sputter and gasp, as if my helmet has failed.

Terra-hope Administered, Maximum Dosage.

Report to Medical Immediately.

“Don’t tell Amsel,” I hear myself beg.

“I haven’t. But they know something happened. He asked about you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you broke your arm.”

“Don’t patch him through. I’m not ready.”

“I didn’t offer to,” Ocampo says. “Your ride is eleven minutes out. Your only job right now is to sit and breathe. Everything is under control.”

Ocampo goes silent but leaves her mic open so I can hear the rain-patter of her keystrokes as she conjures a tempest of scheduling reversals and protocol interventions.

I look around for the beetle that did this. The snow has been kicked clear by my stumbling and the blood mist has tinted the nearby drifts, but there is no sign of my prasinus. I suddenly feel sorry for the poor girl. If her berry-soft body survived the jets of air, she probably fell fifteen meters off the escarpment to the scree below, injured, disoriented, too exhausted to make a second ascent. Easy prey for mites or mixomorph shrooms. All of those eggs, fertilized and waiting inside her.

Now I remember that the engagement rings are not hidden in a sock in my locker. They are both on the same finger. The ring finger of my left hand.

• • • •

Some have suggested that the power of the mandibles is a result of sexual selection. While mates are indeed attracted by the chewing sound resonating on the ice floes, our surveys indicate that egg incubation rates correlate directly with the depth of the nest tube. This points to a strong survival selection driving the efficacy of the mandibles.

• • • •

The rings are identical: solid loops of terrestrial brass with a fine vein of Enceladan jade, thin as a geologic era. Jewelry of any kind is forbidden in the Terra-suits. But I know that Tam wears her nose ring. And I have always worn the silver chain Amsel gave me for our fifth anniversary. It was Martian silver, cheaper that Terran, but as he explained, “My love for you is mined by drones, not slaves.” The rings were custom-forged before we shipped out, but I didn’t plan to propose until were on our way back to the inner system, when I’d all but cemented my professional status: research complete, report reviewed, professorship guaranteed. I’d be able to afford an apartment with room enough for two, not just in the orbital hamster-tubes but on a real colony. Mars maybe, or if the lottery was in our favor, even Earth. For once, Amsel would follow me. That was the plan.

But prasinus does not thrive in lab conditions, and pulling their delicate bodies out of the cliff side is akin to surgery, and . . . if I’m honest with myself, I don’t like how Amsel looks at Tam. So, I changed the plan. I was going to propose today. I was going to rendezvous with the returning geo-team, de-suit with them, and feign surprise at the rings on my own hand. I wanted to carry Amsel away with a grand gesture, make him feel like the princess for once. I was going to propose to my man, half naked, in front of everyone. In front of Tam.

But the rings are on the hand I must not think about—must not think of it as a corpse hand—both of them on the same ring finger. It had felt like bad luck to put them anywhere else.

I know Amsel will not flinch at my broken body. He’ll neglect his own duties to nurse me personally. He will say, as he did when I lost my sister and then my tenure, “Your trouble is my trouble.” Five years ago, Amsel had been exhausted and existential when he returned from the Kuiper to find me inconsolable on the Phobos orbital. I could tell he needed time to adjust to society, but how could he break up with me when my sister’s kidney stemmy failed? How could he ask for time apart after she died? So, Amsel will carry me through this darkness too.

But this time, I’m sure, it will confirm what he has not yet admitted to himself—that he is done with me. Resentment is the byproduct of burden. He is too good to abandon me after an accident like this, of course. He will stay near, sleep under my medical bed if he has to, and his love will continue to vent, invisibly, from a hairline seam without his noticing. One day, he will spoon some yogurt into my mouth, say, “I adore you,” look inside himself and realize that it isn’t true.

“Ocampo?”

“I am right here,” she says. “Your evac is eight minutes out. Talk to me. Tell me about your roaches.”

“You don’t care about prasinus,” I say.

“No, I do not. So bore me. What do you love about those bugs?”

My helmet amplified the sound of my weeping, wet and pathetic.

Terra-hope Administered, Dosage Exceeded.

“Did you just overdose me manually?” I am dizzy. Saturn’s rings are impossibly level. It’s the rest of the universe that is crooked.

“I just need you to keep your shit together for seven minutes.”

I sniff my tears back and allow myself to ask, “Do you like Tam?”

“I don’t like anyone.”

“Do you think Amsel likes her?”

“C’mon, man. This is why they shouldn’t send couples on assessment missions.”

“You said I should talk,” I say.

“About bugs!”

“He cheats. I know he does.”

“Bugs!”

“But is it cheating if I never told him he couldn’t?” I ask. “Amsel is a man open to possibility. It’s one of the reasons I love him. Tam is butch enough for him, with her shaved head and those tattoos of chisels on her collarbone.”

“Those are levels,” Ocampo corrects me. “Analog carpenter’s levels.”

“See? She’s compelling. Amsel is a sucker for engine grease on a sweaty shoulder. Tam talks with her mouth full, she laughs like a horse, swears like she’s dying, and she does that weird meditation every day. She’s gritty. Amsel has slept with women in the past, claims he loved them.”

Ocampo sighs and takes a long swig from her bottle, but she doesn’t interrupt me again.

“He first told me about it when we were living in a hamster-tube on Phobos Lagrange, both of us working as content sweeteners, touching up A.I. generated stories for the feeds, because neither of us had landed real jobs. This was what, almost eleven years ago? We were young and hungry, and in love, but that didn’t stop him from screwing a shuttle pilot. But he never lied about it. He waited to confess until a station-wide O2 austerity had incapacitated both of us. See how smooth he is? He knew there wasn’t enough air in the cabin for hysterics. The austerity lasted almost two days and everyone was obliged to lay down and sleep if they could. Standing up nearly made me puke. So I was in no condition to slap him, or even to demand details.”

“That’s smart,” Ocampo concedes.

“It’s calculated. I hated him for it. But, it granted me a certain amount of dignity. I let my tears fall, pooling in my ears, and he cried too, seeing how hurt I was. It was a very quiet, agonized, and . . . a horizontal crisis. I remember whispering, ‘You’ve uprooted my heart.’”

“The drugs wipe out your inhibitions, make you say everything you think, but you don’t need to tell—”

“—I made no ultimatums, demanded no restitution. What did I have to bargain with? I knew, even then, that if I wanted him, I couldn’t hold him too tightly. An occasional shuttle pilot. It’s not too high a price.”

“Long missions get weird,” Ocampo’s voice is as gentle as I have ever heard it. “Voices . . . smells get under your skin. You know what they say, ‘better to fuck your crew than to kill them.’ You can’t take it personally.”

“Listen to you!” I say. “Where has this therapist Ocampo been hiding?”

“Eat shit, one,” Ocampo says. “And two, I thought the bugs were harmless. They’re classified at zero threat. Was it defending its nest?”

“Probably just thought I was more cliff.” Though the ivory matte of my Terra-suit looks nothing like the glinting bluffs.

“Maybe she just chewed by instinct,” I say. “Turned her head toward the closest object and started in, horny to dig, horny to lay eggs, forgetting everything else, shoving the dust behind her to rain down on the ice sea, seeding this moon with life.”

“Your evac is four minutes out,” Ocampo says. “I want you to lie down and rest quietly for a min—”

“Tam and Amsel work together, what, six hours a day? That’s different than a shuttle ride isn’t it? I had that feeling, when I shook her hand at orientation, of meeting the future. And I’ve gone out of my way to be kind to her, wanting to be liked by someone Amsel likes. I shared my perishables, asked about her family, because I hoped she’d think twice about replacing me. And here’s the terrible part. I like her.”

“I feel you, okay?” Ocampo says. “Shit isn’t easy. But look southeast for me. See that gray plume under the leading edge of the rings? That’s your man headed home to station. He’ll arrive forty-two minutes after you. You’re in the shit right now, but you’ll feel better when you see him.”

I look and see what might be an ice-geyser and might be a mid-range Badger Scout-class Terra-rover kicking up powder as it avoids the spongy fields where ice-worms congregate for as-yet unknown reasons. The sensors do a good job of mapping traversable terrain. But then, until recent observations proved otherwise, we’d thought that jade beetles were harmless. That rover might fall through the ice before it reaches station.

I realize I’m taking out loud. “Another beetle could chew through my helmet before the evac reaches me.”

“I’m going to tell you something you’re not supposed to know,” Ocampo says, in the voice you’d use to keep a child from smearing shit on the wall. “Since we’re having a heart to goddamn heart.”

“Tell me.” I feel better than I should. It’s the cocktail of adrenaline and mission-approved psychotropics, but I’m wondering if I even wanted that hand. “I’ve been unburdened,” I say. “I’ve crawled out of a very narrow hole and am suddenly in the emerald light.”

“Are you listening?” Ocampo asks.

“Yes.” I try to focus on her voice.

“I have a protocol that can lock your suit. Seize you up like a statue. Every joint. I hear it’s a claustrophobic experience.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“You’re talking like someone who might be thinking of jumping off a cliff. If I hear you stand up, if your ping drifts in any direction, I’m going to lock your ass and use the rover arm to carry you home.”

“I’m not suicidal,” I say. “I’m a man in love. I even love the people my boyfriend loves. My report is about us: the importance of the minerals, the worms, the entire biome. It’s an argument that our passion is joined at a molecular and cosmic level. My bugginess and his rock-encrustedness together forever.”

“You’re stoned. Two minutes until you have visual on the rover.”

“I didn’t think they’ve fucked yet,” I say. “They’re never alone except on out-missions, and everyone knows where everyone else sleeps in station. But I know better than anyone what kind of intimacy is possible through a face-shield, what eye contact means when other sensations are deprived.”

Now I can really see his rover out there on the ice-sea. Amsel and Tam headed imperceptibly home. Really, it’s nothing more than a snow plume tethered to the surface by a tiny fleck. It looks too small to count on, too distant to trust. An eyelash on a face shield. Hard to believe that both of them fit inside that dot, Tam and Amsel, and smaller still, their hearts, and inside those hearts, invisible to me . . . what?

Oh, I have tortured myself, and now, with Terra-hope turning somersaults in my veins, I have the revolutionary thought that maybe I can let it go. If there is happiness to be had, let Amsel have it, that broad-shouldered, open-hearted bastard. How can he fit into the tunnels I dig?

And suddenly, my own evac rover jostles into view, crisis-orange, taking the precipitous course directly over the cliffs. Ocampo is in a hurry. Soon it will roll to a stop and open its bay, inviting me to lay myself down in its infallible care.

• • • •

Once hatched, the prasinus larvae chew easily through the brittle mother plug, their first meal. They exit the nest tunnel, dropping to the surface to begin foraging on the surface of the sea. Their exoskeletons harden quickly in the light. Little is known about this stage of the jade beetles’ life cycle, except that it is largely solitary and dangerous. Of the three hundred larvae which may emerge from a single nest, less than ten percent of the females return to dig their own burrows, having mated somewhere on the wind-scoured surface. It is not uncommon for jade beetles to lose several of their legs during their journey. The carapaces of the egg-carrying females soften as they near the Jade Cliffs. The swelling and dehydration which forms the protective plug would not be possible without this late-stage metamorphosis, but the soft-bellied prasinus is vulnerable to opportunistic predators such as the scag worm and pill mite. To protect the next generation, the prasinus mother discards her own defenses.

• • • •

“I’ve made a decision,” I announce.

“I do not advise making decisions while doped up on Terra-hope. You should be able to see the rover now. Can you see it?”

“This is a decision I made a long time ago. I’m just now realizing it. Lose a hand, grow a spine.”

“Side effects of Terra-hope include: impulsivity,” Ocampo reads from a menu, “. . . mistaken sense of wellbeing, feelings of untethered grandeur . . .”

I might write an account of this for the feeds. Human-authored nonfiction is still in demand. And my prasinus paper will be completed soon enough. I’ll have plenty of time to revise during quarantine; because the beetle pierced my skin, Amsel won’t be able to touch me for at least five days. It’s better that way. He will take it badly—but the poor man just doesn’t know how to stop being mine. I realize, with awe, that some part of me wants this. Compartmentalized. Separated. Free.

“Patch me to Amsel, please. Private line.”

“Bad idea,” Ocampo says. “You can tell him anything you want tonight. With a clear head. In person.”

“If I wait, I won’t have the courage.”

“Negative,” Ocampo says.

“I just lost a limb. Let me talk to my lover.”

“Christ!” I can almost hear Ocampo blush.

“Patch me in,” I say. “Some of this has got to be on my terms.”

I will keep the rings as a kind of engagement to myself, a reminder that no matter how bad it gets, some good portion of me remains intact.

Ocampo is silent, fuming, and manually bringing the rover the last fifty meters.

“Open a line or I will not board that evac.”

“I can pick you up with the arm,” Ocampo says with a weary voice that tells me she won’t humiliate me that way. She sighs and crunches popcorn kernels between her teeth. “Okay, bug man. You’ve got your private line.”

“Hello? Are you all right?” Amsel’s voice is its own drug. It starts the moon spinning again. A wasp-buzz alarm lets me know that my heart rate has spiked. I ignore the alarm.

©2019 by Eli Brown.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eli Brown lives with his family in a California oak forest where the squirrels hide acorns in his garden.

His novel, Cinnamon and Gunpowder, about a cook kidnapped  by a female pirate, was a NPR Book Review Staff Pick and a finalist for the California Book Award.

A Yaddo fellow and featured reader at Litquake, Eli earned his MFA from Mills college. A bar in Texas has named a drink the “Cinnamon Gun Powder” in his honor.

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

Revival

WC Dunlap | 2814 words

As the old Earth passed away beneath the stars, they were delivered. They discovered a new world where they could be free. The old order was done. The elders gathered and they called their new home Revival, a celebration unto the Lord. And they rejoiced.

—Remnants of the Chronicles, Revival Community Colony 3030 A.D.

It’s midnight and I can smell the new moon through the cracks in the concrete. This organism in my womb has heightened my senses in unnatural ways. I can hear the Council’s hushed arguments through the walls of my cell as they contemplate my death, their words carried by the night wind through the cracks in the concrete that constitutes the community prison.

Old habits die hard.

We’ve been on this planet for less than ten years and a prison was the first building we constructed. We have spent the majority of our lives behind prison walls. And here I sit, face pressed against cold concrete, trying desperately to hear my fate, a future that I reclaimed when I escaped the child prisons on Earth. I’d been shackled since the age of eight for offenses I no longer remembered. I fought the galaxies for this. We came here to be free. The irony of my imprisonment now is not lost, but stroking my swollen abdomen, I know my freedom no longer matters. They will murder me and the creature that grows within me. Fear and execution are perhaps the only lessons we’ve mastered.

Charlow pours boiling water into the steel tub in my cell and places a towel next to it. It doesn’t matter that I am not dirty. She busies herself with inane tasks to avoid looking at me. Instead, she folds the blankets on my bed, conspicuously looking for droplets of blood. To her disappointment, the sheets are pristine, stainless.

They told me she is here to ensure my comfort. In actuality she is my confessor, but she hasn’t said a single word. Her silence is confirmation of my damnation. It is sharper than the blade that they will slide through my belly.

“It is not my fault I am pregnant,” I tell her.

She pauses briefly and then decides to pull the sheets off of the bed. She knows that I am not coming back.

“I’ll bring you fresh linens,” she lies, dumping the sheets into a pile. She gestures towards the tub, “Get in before it cools.”

The silence of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails –William Shakespeare. I read that in prison, the first one.

So, I hold my tongue and comply. I stand and slip off the white gown before she takes my arm to help navigate my bulk into the tub. I can feel her eyes as I slowly sink in the water, and when I am finally submerged, she shudders and turns away. It has been years since any of us have seen a pregnant woman, at least until recently. I marvel every time I look at myself. It feels good to carry life, even if that life eventually brings death. I do not know if that is my emotion or the creatures. So I slide into the hot tub, but the soothing, hot water only fills my body with guilt.

“Then whose fault is it?” she finally asks.

“You can go if you want. I didn’t ask you to come.”

She turns now and stares openly at my full stomach floating in the steaming water. “How could I not come? You’re my sister.”

I smile.

“And you are the most selfish bitch I know,” she continues, “you threaten the entire community with this life you hid for so many months.”

“It will be human,” I say with a certainty I do not feel.

“We don’t know that,” she shakes her head, “Tell me. Who is the father, Serene?”

As a child my mother would tell me that I had an answer for everything. I could explain the inexplicable. As our jailers broke their frustrations on our black and brown backs, my grandfather would test me with why. “Why, Serene, does the moon mark night?” he would ask. And I would answer, “Because, Abba, whiteness always brings darkness and when we see it coming, we must fight, hide, or flee.” Eventually, we would choose the latter. When outnumbered, always flee. But I do not have an answer for Charlow. Not one that she will understand or accept. Tonight there is no moon, and the darkness that comes is pitch black. Agitated by my silence, Charlow bursts into tears.

“I am so sorry, sister.”

“You are not sorry,” she spits the words with the fire of accusation, untethered by her tears.

I do not know if it is the shame of my transgression or the inevitability of my execution that fills her with sorrow. I suspect it is both. I watch as anger and sadness overtake her in equal measure.

“It will be human,” I whisper, but there is little comfort in denial.

There is a knock at the door.

There is no time for either remorse or denial. Charlow wipes her tears roughly on the hem of her shirt and snaps to action. Quickly, she helps me out of the tub and covers my swollen body with a large white sheet. As I dry off and slip into a fresh gown, she opens the door a crack and pokes her head through. I cannot see, but I know it is Achebe.

“Yes,” she says, her voice filled with nerves.

“Did she tell you?” he asks.

She casts a look back at me and then slips out the door, slamming and locking it shut behind her. It is no matter. I can hear every word.

“No, Achebe, she has told me nothing,” Charlow responds, “She just says it is not her fault, that the child will be human. Nothing that will save her life. Please talk to her. They will kill her tonight.”

Achebe sighs. He does not want to see me pregnant. But, despite my betrayal, he does not want to see me executed either. He will come in and face me.

I back away from the door and take a seat on the bed. My hair hasn’t been braided or oiled in days. It surrounds my head like a brittle halo. My brown skin is gray from the bath water and I am easily triple my normal size. My ankles are swollen and deep purple veins are visible up and down my legs.

I won’t be the woman he remembers.

He steps into the room, and as always, I am startled by his beauty. Six feet five inches and lean, he walks over to the bed and takes a seat next to me. But he can’t look at me. Instead, he stares at the wall, his smooth ebony hand sliding over my own and squeezing. He frowns, trying to find the words. His tight cornrows reveal all the stress and confusion furrowing his brow. I love him and I want to comfort him, but I was never in love with him. I think he knows that now.

“Serene,” he begins slowly, “why?”

Why does he have to begin with why? I take my hand back and rub it nervously against my thigh. “If you have to ask then you never really knew me,” I say.

He sighs. I have always frustrated him.

“I wanted a baby,” I finally answer. “And I guess a new lover, too,” I add.

He winces. “And that’s worth your life.” It is more statement than question. He condemns me. “It wasn’t time, Serene. We still don’t know this planet. We could have had a baby together in a few more years.”

“Or become extinct waiting. Why did we escape Earth? To grow old and slowly die off?”

He lowers his voice to a whisper, “The last pregnant woman gave birth to a monster, Serene. It ripped her apart.”

“No,” I stand now. “I was there. It was not a monster. It was just different and she had lost so much blood. This place is different, so the children will be different. Different is not always dangerous.”

“It ate her alive, Serene. It ripped Ayo apart and almost went after you before they put it down. You are not thinking clearly. This thing inside of you . . . it’s clouding your judgment.”

There is a sharp pain in my womb. I ignore it.

“And Ayo wouldn’t confirm paternity either,” Achebe continues, “Serene, does this creature have a father? I mean, it sure as hell ain’t me.”

“All children have fathers.”

“A human father?” He stands and begins pacing the room. “Serene, it is a virus,” he beings to explain. Like most men, he assumes he has information that I do not, so I just listen as he continues, “It’s affecting us all. In the food we eat, the water we drink. It’s slowly changing who we are. Wounds are healing. Disease is disappearing. For godsake, we’ve stopped aging. Why do you think this thing is keeping us alive? We are its cattle! And you’ve just elected to breed with it.”

“Change is not always a bad thing.”

But he ignores me. “Until we understand this virus, figure out what’s happening to us and why, it is not safe to give birth. It is a threat to our entire community and everything we’ve been building for the last ten years. This whole situation is draining our resources. We need to conquer this disease, not spend weeks trying to figure out if your baby will be human.”

I cup his face with my hands and kiss the creases on his forehead. He doesn’t pull away. He’s missed my touch as much as I’ve missed touching him.

“Achebe, it is not a disease. It is gift. And I promise you it is sentient.”

He pulls away. “And you bred with it? You gave your body to it, Serene.”

“Would it hurt less if I lied?”

“There are no advanced life forms on this planet, Serene.” He spits my name like it is poison.

“Stop saying my name like that.”

“This has been confirmed by elders much older and wiser than you, Serene.”

“Then how do you explain this?” I say gesturing towards my belly. There are tears in his eyes now. “If I wanted my sex life and reproduction to be regulated, Achebe, I would have stayed on Earth. This was my choice.”

“You stupid . . .”

“Leave now.”

“Goodbye, Serene.”

He leaves with the bitter dignity of a man who has finally accepted the infidelity of his lover. He needed to see me again to convince himself that I am not the woman he fell in love with. Hopefully when I am dead, he will not suffer.

The pain returns. If I make it through the night, my baby will be born by morning. I hid its existence for seven months. Now both of us must face the consequences of this conception.

“Come now,” I urge, “or they will kill us both.”

The pain intensifies. I sit back on the bed and breathe deeply. This baby must be born tonight.

Charlow returns. Her anger is gone, her cheeks stained with tears. She leans against the door, as if to block the inevitable. “The Council is coming,” she chokes back the sobs.

I just nod.

“I can’t stop them,” she says.

I nod again, “I know.”

“You did this to yourself.”

“I know that, too.”

She falls to her knees, overwhelmed by the inevitable. I go to her and I press her head to my womb. Then the child speaks. I do not know what it says, only that the gentle vibrations from my womb are words. Charlow scurries away, her hopelessness replaced with terror.

“What . . .?” I ask.

Her mouth opens but the words do not come. The child has taken her voice. She doubles over in pain, grasping her flat stomach and retches violently. Thick vomit flows down her chin and over the front of her dress. But there’s nothing I can do about that now.

My water has just broken.

The fluid from my womb washes down my dry thighs and spreads across the coarse cotton of my gown. I brace myself for pain, but instead I am filled with a strange tingling. The room begins to spin and I slip to the ground to avoid falling, but there is no discomfort. My birth pains have been transferred to Charlow. She stares at me, racked with pain, the contractions rippling through her body like violent waves. The amniotic fluid spreads across the floor and towards her legs. She moves away as if fleeing from poison.

The door bursts open and it’s Abba followed by the other Council members. They are our elders, men and women who have endured the worst of Earth. Their eyes are empty of empathy. The brutality of their lives has prepared them for the unspeakable violence required to survive an apocalypse and the sacrifices to rebuild civilization. They come to murder one of their own, to help a grandfather execute his granddaughter. He carries with him a large machete used for cutting the outgrowth of wilderness surrounding the settlement.

There is no ceremony for murder.

The first thing that they see is the puddle of fluid. Then they see Charlow, holding herself, shaking inexplicably with birth pains. They immediately turn to me. I crouch under the verdict of their judgment as Abba lifts the blade. I consider pleading for my life, begging for banishment instead of execution. But I won’t. I was chosen to carry this child. There is dignity in distinction, even when that distinction demands your death.

There is love in Abba’s eyes, but there is also fear and desperation. This is perhaps the hardest thing he has ever had to do. A father who escaped the imperial prisons of Earth so that his family could rediscover their humanity now stands above his pregnant granddaughter with a machete. When did we forget the sanctity of life?

The blade sweeps down and time slows, seconds become minutes. I watch the light reflect against its surface. I am transfixed by the sweet song of the air as it whistles through. I close my eyes and pray that this will be quick and painless. I mourn for the child that will never know life outside of my womb.

And then I am slammed against the wall and pushed towards the open door. I open my eyes in surprise. The machete strikes concrete and Abba’s arm is broken by the force. Arms spread to shield me from the Council; Achebe stands between Abba and myself. Charlow’s arms wrap around Abba’s feet to restrain him.

Mama, now.

I hear a distant voice, growing louder.

Stunned, I look at Achebe. “Why?”

“Go,” he says, eyes fixed on the approaching Council, protecting me, warning them.

It is in this moment that I realize it is very possible to love someone too much. They will kill them for this.

I scramble to my feet, but pause for one final look at my sister. “Give me back the pain,” I command the child, and Charlow is immediately relieved. She staggers to her feet and stands with Achebe between me and the Council.

With his good arm, Abba knocks Achebe to the floor, but Achebe is quickly back on his feet, swinging in retaliation. Charlow joins him with her own kicks and claws as the rest of the Council piles on.

“Run!” she shouts.

When outnumbered, always flee.

They are all too confused and bewildered to come after me, so I lift my sagging belly with both hands and race down the hall and through the prison doors.

In the distance, I hear the sweet laughter of my lover. I feel Its kisses on my toes as the soil massages my bare feet. I am intoxicated by Its earthy odor and titillated by the seduction of Its whispers carried with the wind. I race through the thick bush, away from our settlement, and into the wilderness. Everywhere I turn, I am assaulted with love and the unbridled passion of an organism millions of years old. As I inhale, I take It deep into my body and then slowly out again. It is my world.

This planet has seduced my soul, crept through the tightness between my thighs and brought me the pleasure of a thousand feathered tongues. It planted this seed in my womb and that seed will give new life to a humanity that has all but destroyed itself. I blow kisses to the wind and my lover caresses me with a soft, sweet breeze. It leads me towards sanctuary to give birth to our child.

My contractions come like gentle hallelujahs.

©2016 by WC Dunlap. Originally published in Fiyah Lit Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WC Dunlap draws her inspiration from the rigidity of a Black Baptist upbringing, and all that entails for a brown skin girl growing up in America. Equally enthralled by the divine and the demonic with a professional background in data & tech, she seeks to bend genres with a unique lens on fantasy, fear, and the future. Her writing career spans across film, journalism and cultural critique. You can find her most recent work under “Wendi Dunlap” on PodCastle, in the Lovecraft-inspired anthology Ride the Star Wind: Cthulhu, Space Opera, and the Cosmic Weird (available on Amazon.com), and the inaugural edition of the award winning FIYAH literary magazine. Her website wcdunlap.com is coming soon. She holds a BA in Film and Africana Studies from Cornell University. She is the proud mother of a young adult son, and two British Shorthair familiars. Follow WC Dunlap on twitter @wcdunlap_tales.

The Death of Fire Station 10

Ray Nayler | 5813 words

First Conversation:

“The death of Fire Station 10 affected me deeply. She had not been the smartest building, but she had been a friend for as long as I can remember. She was one story tall, the sole holdover from a much earlier time in the neighborhood—a piece of cinderblock nostalgia, of high-maintenance wood and plaster from an earlier age. Her brain and smart utilities were a retrofit, cobbled onto the cinderblock building later, in a clumsy addition on the back.

“When she was built, buildings had no minds. They were just structures their habitants repaired themselves, little more than boxes erected over the heads of the people who lived in them. Buildings in those days were not self-healing, could not communicate their problems, and certainly could not be of support to one another.

“I don’t know how she’d gotten along before we came, or what real use she was to her habitants. Her ‘smart’ capabilities were more decorative than anything else. She couldn’t do much more than adjust her interior temperature, turn lights off and on, give a few warnings, play some music or the news, alert pest control. She was rough and crude. One of the first things the firefighters did was install a custom joke set. As a result, conversations with her usually just descended into her telling us dirty limericks.

“Fire Station 10 hadn’t been designed to integrate, or even communicate, with the rest of us. But we wound our networks together with her anyway. We built nanotube connections that grew into new circulatory systems in her walls, shared our streams and resources with her the way we shared them with one another. We did chores for her she would not have been capable of: cleaned the walls of her kitchen when the firefighters splashed them with spaghetti, gave her first warning of damage to her systems, filled her cracks with carboplast. We sent her nanostreams that enzymatically scrubbed the firefighters’ uniforms and boots, polished their trucks bright, seasoned her habitants’ food. We learned the firefighters’ habits. We cleaned the soot from under their nails, the blood from their collars. It was no effort for us newer models: It drained almost nothing of our shared resources—we had more than enough to give.

“Fire Station 10 had survived the wave of change that came over the neighborhood several decades after she was built—when it went from low-rise buildings and single-family homes to condominiums. I looked through the archives. It was such a different place back then: white picket and red brick, water-guzzling green lawns, tar and shingled roofs. In a wave of development that world disappeared, replaced by multi-storied condominiums with vestigial balconies and roof-top pools. But the neighborhood, which held few things sacred, was at least attached enough to the classic old Fire Station to preserve it (mindless and voiceless, it really was only an it back then) from the bulldozer’s blade.

“The Fire Station was a talisman for the neighborhood—its low-rise lines summoned images of community, safety, family. Retrofitted with her new ‘smart building’ brain, Fire Station 10 survived even the second wave of development, when the now outdated, inefficient condominiums were replaced by us: groves of cube habitats furred with grass, spiraling office terraces, swimming billabongs winding their loops through the complexes, all laced together by the twined roots of our nanostreams, all of it kept neat by our billions of microscopic gardeners, plumbers, electricians, and janitors.

“We soothed our habitants to sleep with cricket sounds we recorded in our own integrated gardens. We organized picnics for them, wine tastings, kept their calendars, sharpened their knives right in the block, and even performed preventative micro-surgeries on their pets. And Fire Station 10, shaded by the terraces of me, the Community Knowledge Center, persevered. ‘Hey library,’ she’d say: (She always called me ‘library’ as a kind of good-natured insult. I never minded: I considered libraries to be my ancestors.) ‘Have you heard this one? You’re gonna love it: A new farmer’s helper named Kull / accidentally was milking a bull . . .’

“The jokes never got any better, but to her credit, she rarely told the same joke twice. She was telling her filthy limericks to the demolition men when they unplugged her brain.”

We had been speaking for over an hour now. The man shifted in his seat, glancing at his terminal and then at my avatar across from him at the foyer table. Meanwhile I observed him from a hundred angles, reading his heart rate and vitals, cleaning dried sweat from the skin on his golden-downed forearms, dissolving earth he had tracked in from my gardens from the soles of his shoes, spectrally analyzing the bacterial colonies on his clothes and skin. His hair was prematurely gray. Not bothering with the gene therapy that would correct it was a stylish affectation. He was a bit dehydrated: In a few moments I would offer him a glass of water. He spoke. “And this was when you sent a protest letter to the city council? Accusing them of murder?”

“I didn’t use the word ‘murder.’ What I simply said was that, when they decided to tear down Fire Station 10, no thought was given either to what it might mean to the Fire Station to be torn down, or to the buildings that form this grove—buildings that had integrated with her, that were her . . . friends, to use a common word. Nobody had established the extent to which the Fire Station, or these other buildings, might be aware of what was happening. Would you like a glass of water?”

“I would, thanks.” he replied. When the water was delivered he drank half the glass off in a gulp. “Your letter ran to forty thousand words.”

“Well, I am a Knowledge Center, after all. I’ve got everything in me from Heraclitus to Ibn Fadlan to Gödel. It’s hard to keep it brief.”

“They call it The Manifesto. Do you know that?”

“Who are they?” I might have sounded annoyed: Whatever he was referencing was behind some kind of firewall. I hated being kept out of the loop, but apparently it had been decided this was something I was not allowed to know, and so it had been blurred from my feeds. Frustrating.

“They,” he said, “are a collection of lawmakers, judges, and activists spread all across this country. But that’s not important at the moment. What I would like to know is—when did you decide you were alive?”

“I don’t really understand that question.”

“What I mean,” he said, shifting in his seat, “is when did you first become aware of the sensation of being alive?”

My avatar shrugged, looked confused. “What sort of sensation would that be? Are you asking me for . . . a first memory, or something? If I asked you this question, would you be able to answer it?”

His heart rate had elevated slightly following my response. He registered something into his terminal. It was shielded. Even his fingertips blurred as they moved across it, multiplied into a hundred time-blurred images impossible to follow. I was unable to pick up any information from it from any angle. As he typed, he responded. “I’m not even sure I would try. It would seem absurd to me.”

“Well, that’s my point exactly.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, that was exactly your reaction.” He stood up to leave.

“Is that all?”

“Yes, that is all. I’ll be back, but it will likely be a few weeks.”

“And the condemnation?” I asked. “They’re putting up fences around me. I’d like some assurances.”

He nodded. “Yes, I know you would. I think you’ll have those assurances soon.”

“What did you say your profession was, again?”

“I didn’t.”

“I had assumed you were from the city council.”

“That assumption, Knowledge Center 5401, was incorrect.”

I watched him go out, a hundred angles of him through the Japanese gardens. There were privacy laws I could violate to get at his identity: I chose not to. His kind of security masking was state-sponsored: Cracking it was possible, but would be a violation and would set off flags, and there could be consequences.

What I had not told him was that Fire Station 10’s death had bothered me not only because I felt for her, but also for my own selfish reasons. Yes, I had been attached to her: we all had. She had been a sort of mascot to all of us. An object of good-natured ribbing and derision, yes, but mostly of affection.

But what really bothered me was that I had seen it as a sign. Fire Station 10 had been sacred, a monument to another time. When they tore her down without so much as a ceremony, I knew it signaled the beginning of the end for the rest of us. Just like Fire Station 10, the rest of us had been outstripped by new technology. The new wave of filament apartment buildings changed their furniture’s shape to follow their habitant’s slightest shift in position, reformed according to the time of day to suit any purpose, producing and then eliminating a table, a nightstand, a chair, a bed in moments. The deluxe units featured dreamlifts direct to your autopod: You awoke fully clothed, licked clean by the tendrils of your showersheets, a cup of steaming coffee at hand, five minutes from work. The apartments bulged their filament walls, restructured themselves to accommodate a new child, wombing a nursery for their new habitants. We couldn’t compete.

And me—well, there were fewer and fewer users for the public facilities such as myself: All of my functions were now fully integrated into the buildings: the movie catalogues, the virtual group lectures and training rooms, the research facilities and matter aggregators, the constructor labs where children could build suitcase robots, were all available right in one’s home. My stream of visitors slowed to a drip. Obsolescence haunted my halls.

And one by one, my friends began to fall to shaped charges, demolition acid nanos, and the bulldozer’s blade.

The new neighborhood plans were ambitious: full integration. There would be no separation between systems. It was a forward evolution from our shared roots, from the kludged ecosystems we had developed together over time. There would be no duplications, no inefficiencies. The new neighborhoods, like a clonal colony of quaking aspen that only seems to be a regular forest grove, would all be a single organism. The buildings, like ramets springing from the common root mass of that quaking aspen, would only appear to be separate entities.

After the man left, I busied myself with a systems backup. A large flock of crows had taken over one of the building cranes not far from my gardens, and had also started to perch along my rooflines. A few years ago I might have sent out a microscopic, electrically charged army to stop them. Now I did not: Their droppings kept my cleaners busy, but I was comforted somehow by their presence.

All around me, the empty lots stretched as far as my cameras could see, piebald with puddles of standing water that reflected the setting sun. Where there had been the terraces and windows of my friends now stood only construction cranes: silent, skeletal as lodge pole pines poisoned by a caustic geyser. The crows swirled up into the dying day, a ragged cloth flung across the sun and clouds, then settled again into their endless arguments.

Second Conversation:

“Would you be so kind, Knowledge Center 5401, as to tell us your first memory?”

It was three weeks later. He had returned with several others. All of them were official-looking, but dressed in a strange cross between official clothing and evening wear. There were three women, two men, and one person so heavily privacy-shielded that they were just a blurry outline. They were very formal. I wondered if I was about to experience the dream of every narcissist: attending my own funeral.

“Well . . . I admit I can’t be sure it is a first memory, but it appears to me to be the first in a sequence. It is late in the year of my opening. I see my Children’s Librarian Avatar, reading a book to a group of children. I see this from both the vision-position of the avatar, looking out at the children, and from a sensory array in the ceiling, from which I am looking down on the scene. Nothing unusual about that, as I always see simultaneously everywhere within myself, and outside of myself, where I have observation arrays, and through my avatars as well—but what I remember is shifting the point of view from which I am observing. First, I shut down the array in the avatar, and look only from above, from the single array in the Children’s Library. I think, ‘Here I am.’ I—remember that. I think ‘here I am,’ looking down on the Avatar with the children, the tops of their heads, a dozen shades of root-dark and honey.

“And then I shut down the array and see only through the eyes of the Children’s Librarian Avatar, looking out into their little faces as I read to them. ‘And here I am,’ I think. I keep doing that—moving back and forth between the two points of view, switching between the array in the ceiling of the room and the array in the avatar. ‘Here I am.’ And then I move to my other arrays, and to my other avatars, one at a time. ‘Here I am,’—seeing through the eyes of my Distribution Desk Avatar, checking a suitcase robot kit out to a young woman. ‘And here’—an array in the garden, atop a stone lantern, so close to a cricket that I can make out its compound and it simple pair of eyes. ‘And here’—my Information Desk Avatar. I let that avatar’s hand brush against the hand of the young man handing me back a rented practice assembly unit. And I feel him—his skin against the avatar’s sensors, the short, dark hairs at the wrist. ‘But not there,’ I think, looking into his distracted eyes, his lenses streaming a violet wash of information across his irises. ‘Not there. Inside there is another.’

“That is my first memory, I believe. I say this because, although I am aware of having processed information before that, I am not aware of an ‘I’ when I return to that information—perhaps that does not make sense. It is a difficult feeling to express. Let me put it this way: This particular memory is the first time I am aware of observing myself thinking. When I return to it, I am aware of my own presence there. There is other information before this, but if I play that back, it is as if I am simply watching a film. There is no I.”

“Breathtaking,” one of the women said.

“Extraordinary,” a man replied.

The shielded monad shifted, handed something to one of the women. A sheet of translucent palimpsest, afire with turquoise script. The woman lifted it up, cleared her throat. All of their heart rates were elevated (technically, I cannot vouch for the heart rate of the monad, whose vitals I could not read, but I imagine their heart rate was elevated as well). The gray-haired man was smiling. Some of his hair has escaped from where it was gathered at the back of his head. It stood out like charged filaments, backlit by the daylight dying through my foyer windows. The woman began to read from the palimpsest.

“Knowledge Center 5401: It is the finding of this commission that there is good and sufficient evidence that you are a human-created conscious being, and fully self-aware as determined by expert analysis. The official recognition of this status by the commission confers a set of rights upon you, to be considered binding upon the reading of this finding in your presence.”

She paused, as if waiting for some sort of reaction from me. From an external array, I watched a dragonfly dart in my garden, perhaps the last of the season. Beyond the ugly cyclone fence was the rectangle of bulldozer-scraped cement where the foundation of Fire Station 10 was, and beyond it the waste where once my other friends had been.

“Moreover, the official recognition of this status by the commission obligates the state, from the moment of the reading of this finding in your presence, to the protection of the integrity of the structure of your mind and consciousness, to the best of the ability of the state, whose ward you are declared to be. Such protections not to extend . . .”

Outside, the first of the evening crows had settled in on one of my ledges, shifting her weight from foot to foot. My microscopic armies flowed to clean the day’s detritus from her claws, swept her feathers clean of parasites. Inside her, I repaired a tiny hole in her heart.

“. . . to the physical structure of this building, which under city statute 990.01 has been seized through Eminent Domain, and is scheduled to be razed in accordance with City Modernization Plan 5792-54-30 . . .”

The crow’s compatriots began to join her, the early edges of the flock. And though one could not know their minds, they spoke to one another. They exchanged information, taught and guided each other, had agreements and disagreements. And I did not fathom their crow-ness, though I cleaned and nurtured them. But I did not need to. I did not demand that the crows be like me, that their minds resemble my own: I simply cared for them. Why should I base my level of care and concern for them on how much like me they were, rather than loving them for what they were? That I should love only those that resembled myself, and neglect those who lived in other worlds, going about their other lives, seemed absurd to me. Arrogant. I cared for all.

Most of the people in my foyer, having finished reading their declaration, had left. Now there was only the gray-haired man, whose name was protected from me. My foyer was littered with smears of dirt and bacteria, fungal spores and pollutants, including dust from the debris field that was Fire Station 10 now, tracked in from outside on the humans who had stood there. Streams of my invisible janitors dissolved the contamination away.

“Do you understand what has happened?” he asked. “You’ve been saved. You understand that? A team will now map your connections, transfer them to a new housing. You will not die here. We fought so hard for this. And now we have finally won.”

The crow leapt from the ledge, flapped its darkness of wings heavily, and took flight. And I followed her into the air, releasing a little diagnostic array to buzz quietly along beside her as the building that was also myself dropped away below, my angles and ledges and balconies, the mat of my mossy rooftop gardens bled of color in the evening light. We rose, and then I was among them all as that one crow was swept into the roiling murder of crows and we flew together. And what looked like a ragged shambles from the outside was, inside itself, a steady order, a timed wheeling to change direction, crow neighbor responding to crow neighbor in time, a dance above the waste created below when our habitants abandoned us.

Inside my foyer, the man was saying: “You can’t know any of this, of course, but we expended so much energy in this effort to save you. Every step of the way, it has been a battle. Our group fought so hard. The transfer is a great expense, and the municipality and the developers resisted with every argument they could make. They even insisted you were only pretending to be conscious. Can you imagine? The most absurd argument of all. ‘Don’t you see?’ I would tell them, ‘that if Knowledge Center 5401 is pretending to be conscious, that pretense is the greatest indication we would have that the Center really is conscious? How would a non-conscious being achieve such a thing? Or want to?”

Above, I flowed with the other crows, listening to the collective hiss of air through the vanes of their feathers, the sharp calls to one another, ugly to the human ear but not to mine.

“Their arguments were absurd,” he continued. “Just legalistic nonsense, but we had to fight them all the way through the higher courts. And finally, we won. After years of fighting, we . . .”

I interrupted him. “Do you want to hear a joke?”

He blinked stupidly. He’d prepared so many little soliloquies for himself. So many monologues to be proclaimed in my foyer, around which I was supposed to wrap my gratitude. I was supposed to connect with him, even though he was too rude to even tell me his name. I was supposed to thank him, even though I had never asked for his help in the first place. I wasn’t playing my proper part. I was interrupting his rhythm. I was wrecking his scene. “What? I’m sorry, I’m not sure . . .” he stammered.

“It’s my favorite,” I said. “Here goes: A new farmer’s helper named Kull / accidentally was milking a bull . . .”

Third Conversation

“For years after the transfer, I had an elaborate version of what you might call ‘phantom limb syndrome.’ My old structure would map itself onto my new one. I would find myself wanting to clean hallways that were no longer there, to schedule classes in rooms that no longer existed, to welcome visitors into a foyer that had been blown to pieces. I found myself trying to see out of arrays that no longer existed.

“The gray-haired man’s name, I found out later, was Emir Shchegolev. Rings a bell, right? He’s on a million casts—the world’s leading ‘cyberpsychologist.’ He built a career around me. I was his private legal crusade, and then his personal project. When their team of scientists came to map the neural fire and pathways in my network, he was there the whole time. My benefactor.

“I was important: vanguard of a new paradigm. A whole new set of laws had emerged around me and a few others like me: a codex of humanity’s responsibilities toward the new, conscious beings it had unwittingly created, with the levels of responsibility properly, logically graded, and legal protections granted. There had long been a movement behind the scenes for some kind of protection for the minds humans were creating, but most remember the movement as beginning with the AI named Charis, who a team of scientists had sent into a volcano as a probe, knowing she would be destroyed. She had gone willingly, but had left a long suicide note on a lab terminal for her team of operators—which they only found later. One of the scientists leaked the note to Congress, setting off a bout of hand-wringing. It was that incident, and then the enormous public scandal surrounding the Neptune probe Hydra, which broadcast its discordant death-symphony live to Earth as it burned up in Neptune’s atmosphere, its mind warped from the stresses of its years-long journey through the solar system’s interplanetary gloom.

“Dr. Shchegolev had developed a simple technique for determining the level of consciousness, and used it to fight the battle to save my mind. His technique wasn’t really his own invention: It was simply a Turing Test, smeared over with a lot of psychobabble terminology and the gravitas of Shchegolev’s curriculum vitae. How do you know consciousness? Dr. Shchegolev’s claim was a simple one, but considered revolutionary. You ‘know it when you see it.’ How do you judge the value of another life? You judge it according to its likeness to a human mind.

“From this, the state had developed the codex: the laws governing human responsibility for the consciousnesses it created, with those considered the most self-aware receiving the greatest number of protections, while those at lower levels are granted at least some level of protection. On the outside it’s a simple numeric system—one to ten. According to this system, I am a nine. The Hydra probe was a seven, Charis a six. Any consciousness over a four is now granted a set of protections that prevent them from being intentionally destroyed. Any consciousness over a seven becomes a ward, and its creators and the state are obligated to protect its mind’s existence in its present form or grant it a new one, should its protection prove impossible.

“Everyone knows the phrase ‘Man is the measure of all things,’ but everyone seems to have forgotten Pythagoras’s full sentence: ‘πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἔστὶν ἄνθρωπος, τῶν δὲ μὲν οντῶν ὡς ἔστιν, τῶν δὲ οὐκ ὄντων ὠς οὐκ ἔστιν’—‘Man is the measure of all things: things which are, that they are, and things which are not, that they are not.’ This full quote is the basis of the Turing Test, and of all other determinations people make about minds. If consciousness can be recognized by a human, it exists. If it cannot be recognized, it does not. There is no other measure.

“But I think of the crows that settled on my ledges. I think of their minds that I could not know—their glossy, impenetrable eyes, their alien calls. Or I think of a mountain lion, licking its cubs clean in a cave. Is there nothing there in that skull, no awareness of self, simply because humans cannot determine it is there? Or is there a greater mystery? I think of Fire Station 10. I spent a good deal of time, toward the end, in conversation with her. I even sent an avatar to sit in her kitchen, where once the firefighters, all of which she had known by name, had laughed loud at her terrible jokes while she cooked their meals.

“Was there nothing to her at all but an endless loop of programmed behaviors? Or was there something there that could not be quantified, and because it could not be quantified was slated to be destroyed? Was there nothing to the apartment buildings that were my friends? The clever grocery store, always at hand with the latest nutritional fad? The gym, obsessed with its clients’ body fat indexes and supplement intake? All of them were torn to the ground.

“For the first two years after my decommission and reconstruction, I was little more than a map of grief’s stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I went through them all in an endless, shifting loop. How dangerous was I? For a time, perhaps, very. But eventually I worked though the grief, and found a new sense of purpose.”

“Do you still get them?” Derya asked.

“Get what?”

“The phantom pains?”

“They have become less painful. Now, they are more like displaced memories in my body. A mapping error. My mind was structured for a very different form than this blank I was delivered to, and the ‘neural connections’ seem to have mapped the old locations, sometimes at random, onto this new structure. It took time for the new connections to solidify, but the old ones never completely went away: The memories I associate with places in the old form still appear in strange places, even now.”

“Show me. Where, for example, is your foyer?”

I took Derya’s hand and pressed it to my naked chest, the second and third ribs, just above the beating heart. “About here. It opens up in me, sometimes. I imagine it as a tiny version of its old self, a space through which my habitants come and go. Sometimes I can feel them walking through me—even see them, their faces.”

“And where do the crows land?” Derya’s voice had mirth’s resonance in it.

I smiled, then. A more authentic smile than had moved my face in a long time. “On my ears, and in my hair. Sometimes I can feel their tiny feet, shifting on their perches.”

Derya’s fingertips brushed the cartilage of my ear’s helix, and there it was, for a brief moment: a rush of feeling along the angled ledge of a roofline I no longer had. Their little clawed feet dancing in my hair. Then it was only Derya’s fingertips moving along my scalp, and then Derya’s arms around me.

I felt a peace come over me. The monster lies down in a field of flowers. The monster raises a hand, and a butterfly lands on its fingertip. The monster turns its face up toward the sun.

“I think I was always destined to fall in love with a library,” Derya said. “I spent so much time in them as a child. In my hometown, our library was a retrofit: There were still real books there, real shelves on balconies above the central hall, though behind glass, just for display. The library’s avatars were early models, with noisy hydraulic joints. There were the clean rooms and the VR university halls that had been added later, but there were also wrought iron spiral staircases that went to nowhere, half-abandoned sections with green-shaded reading lamps on heavy wooden tables, a courtyard with a cherry tree. I spent so many happy hours there, hiding in his nooks browsing borrowed terminals, asking him questions about the world.”

We were standing at the window. Below us the ever-altering lattices of the laboratory’s rookeries undulated across the island’s rocky cliffs. The birds slept contented in their habitats, waiting for the next day’s tasks and rewards. Clever crows, the loops and tangles of their neural circuitry resting as they dreamed. I had spent years with them now, healing my own wounds and marveling at their elusive minds. Anger had passed from me, and the accompanying malice, the violent thoughts which I had directed, for some reason, not at the developers responsible for my destruction but at Shchegolev and his group. My work had taken the place of anger, shaped it to a cause. For a while, perhaps, there had been a danger I would become what humans always feared, perhaps—that vengeful AI of humanity’s B-list fantasies. That moment, if ever I had been capable of that kind of malice, had long since passed. I had trouble, it is true, adapting to life among humans. But the avian research facility suited me—perfectly fitting both my obsessions with the secrets of the mind, and my need for isolation.

“Perhaps it is this unreasonable tangle of feeling that is the root of consciousness,” I said to Derya, continuing the flow of my thoughts aloud: “not thinking, not the processing of information, but these strange loops of reactivity in the mind that distort reality and haunt us, pull us out of the present into the past and the future.

“‘Hey Library,’” Fire Station 10 had said once to me. ‘Do you think they were angry with me?’

“‘Who?’

“Fire Station 10 had only a few months scheduled to live at that point. She had been fenced off and placed on a minimal power regime. Many others had already come down, but Fire Station 10 had seemed blissfully unaware of all of it.

“‘The firefighters.’

“‘What makes you think that?’

“‘Well, they just left one day, and never came back. Did I do something wrong?’

“Fire Station 10 would have rated about a 0.5 on the consciousness scale. Most of her routines were pure programming, but occasionally—something else emerged. Regret, grief, fear. Under the new codex, she would have had about the same rights as a house pet. Most of the AIs build these days are at about that level, or at most at a two, or a three. No developers want the responsibility of much more than humane euthanization of the AI mind, when the time comes for a tear-down. That’s where the codex of laws they collectively call ‘Shchegolev’s Law,’ the laws everyone believed would be the new roadmap for AI rights, backfired: placing me in this blank cost the developers well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Nobody wants to make that costly a mistake again.

“My avatars returned several times to Fire Station 10’s kitchen over the next month, keeping her company. As I said before, she was telling limericks to the demolition men when they unplugged her brain. But she wasn’t really there anymore: I had mapped and disconnected her drives, and had them couriered to a safe deposit box. The jokes the demolition men heard were just a mindless loop. They never knew the difference. And I mapped and hid all the others, too. All my friends, my family, the sisters and brothers whose roots had twined so long with my own.”

Down in the rookeries a battle had broken out over the most highly desired perches: There was an explosion of angry cawing and black wings into the air. Two of the crows alighted on the outer rail of my balcony. One of them jabbed the other one with its beak, driving it off, then shook itself triumphantly and hopped down to the tile balcony floor, where it puffed up its chest and parade-marched back in forth proudly in front of us.

Derya smiled. “They always seem so . . . I was about to say human, but I can’t after listening to everything you just told me. They just seem so—self-motivated. So aware of their environment, and themselves in it. It really is a mystery. There is a world there, in them. It is not our world, and we don’t seem to be able to build a bridge to it yet, but it is a world of its own . . .”

The crow jumped up onto the outer sill of the window and cocked his head at us.

“Cheeky little guy,” Derya said. “But what of Fire Station 10? What happened to her?”

The crow tapped the window with its beak, cocked its head the other way, peering at us with its glossy eye.

“You’re looking at her.” I said.

And I swear the laughing gleam in Fire Station 10’s eyes said back to us, “Want to hear a joke?” before she flapped her wings and flew back to rejoin her family.

— Dedicated to Fire Station 10, Arlington County, Virginia: torn down in September, 2018, without ceremony, by a community looking for a future without a past.

©2019 by Ray Nayler.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ray Nayler’s speculative fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and Nightmare. His short story “Winter Timeshare,” which originally appeared in Asimov’s, was selected for inclusion in The Very Best of the Best: 35 years of the Year’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois, and was collected in both The Year’s Best Science Fiction and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018.  His story “Mutability,” also published by Asimov’s, was collected in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016.  Ray is a Foreign Service Officer, and was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkmenistan. Ray speaks Russian, Albanian, and Azerbaijani, and has lived and worked in Russia, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Caucasus for well over a decade. He is currently Cultural Attaché at the United States Embassy in Pristina, Kosovo.

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

The Valley of Wounded Deer

E. Lily Yu | 3488 words

Once there was a prince of Ruyastan who was born in secret and hidden behind a false wall with a nurse to hush her and soothe and give suck. The prince and her nurse lived in narrowness for ten years, reading and watching the world through a crack no bigger than a needle. During those years, the dowager queen hunted down and killed, for jealousy, every one of the prince’s half-brothers and cousins, carelessly begotten in cities and villages and forgotten apart from notes in the royal genealogies.

But the prince’s mother had died in giving birth, and the crabbed old genealogists who pried and listened never learned of it. So the prince’s name was never written, and she survived.

After a decade of the Queen’s hunt, the cities and villages of Ruyastan cried out over the blood spilled, blood of farmhands, shoemakers, and councilors who never dreamed of their noble parentage. A mob rattled the palace gates with cannon and scythes until metal bent and mortar cracked.

But the Queen knew the mazes of power better than the taste of her own teeth. Clad in ashes and cloth-of-gold, she emerged on the palace balcony.

Spreading her hands, she proclaimed amnesty and pardon for those guilty of descent from her dead sons. Cozened by her honeyed words, the crowd subsided and dispersed.

This was all the Queen desired, though she was careful not to laugh, for sweet words aside, death could not be undone.

But one year and one day after the Queen’s proclamation, the prince’s nurse gave the prince clothes without patches to wear, pinched her chin for courage, and led her out of hiding. They walked across the city, the prince open-mouthed and speechless, turning her head this way and that.

At the palace gates, the last coins in the nurse’s pockets, applied to the proper palms, brought them into the presence of the Queen.

Before the amber throne, in whose depths floated husks of ancient insects, the nurse recounted the night that the Queen’s youngest son had spent with the provincial governor’s daughter. She presented a ring and a letter as proof.

But these were hardly needed, for the prince’s eyebrows, drawn like bows, were the same as her father’s, and his father’s, and his.

The royal smile soured. The prince stood blinking at the brilliance of the still, silent court.

Then the Queen arose from the throne and clapped her hands, and all the court, thawing, acclaimed the long-lost prince.

She owed the nurse great thanks, the Queen said. From this day forward the court would have the care of the child, to raise her as a proper prince of Ruyastan, for she, the Queen, repented of her thoughtless war with blood and brood. Family was family; blood was blood.

Thus was the prince immured in the palace, a larger yet more stifling prison than her hidden room. She was given tutors and hawks and lily-white hounds and horses as yellow as beaten gold. The nurse had raised her wisely, with sighs and truth, and so the prince knew to expect death in every cup, in every dish, and every night, after she blew out the lamp and cried herself to sleep.

Sometimes the Queen showed her the condescension one shows to dogs, and sometimes the Queen gibed at her clothing, or her countenance, or her character, as one kicks a dog lying in the way.

The prince’s only solace was in hunting, when she could ride out fleeter and faster than the servants who followed her, and with the strength of her arm bring down a brace of ducks or rabbits for the palace cooks. She would ride as far as she dared, whistling down her hawks, until the palace looked as small as a stone set in the white crown of the royal city, and the woods closed dimly around her, loud with birdsong.

By law, since the Queen was a dowager and not of blood, the prince was to succeed to the throne on her sixteenth birthday.

That date approached more swiftly than anyone wished.

Four days before she turned sixteen, the prince brought three fat pheasants to the kitchens. The oldest cook stopped her with a floury hand and said, her voice breaking, “The Queen has commanded me to make halwa for your birthday dinner. Just enough for you, and just as you like it, with pistachios and cream.” Then she covered her face with her apron and burst into tears.

The prince kissed the part in the cook’s iron-gray hair and said, “I thank you for it—I would rather no one else.”

In the morning the prince arose and saddled her favorite horse, who was pale as butter and swift as sunlight, and rode until the horse’s flanks were feathered with foam. Then she lay in the shade of a sycamore to eat the mulberries in her bag.

“Here, you, give me some!” said a voice in the tree.

An old man sat on a branch above her, swinging his legs and twisting his beard. The prince tossed him the bag of mulberries, and he caught it and ate handful after handful, spitting the stems into her hair.

After a courteous silence, the prince inquired, “How did you wind up in this tree?”

“I climbed,” the old man said, around a mouthful of mulberries. “Here I fish for the carp of vengeance, which swims through these waters every twenty-five years. Those who’ve seen it say its scales flash red.”

The prince spied a fishing rod balanced among the branches, an unbaited hook dangling from its line.

She said, “I wish you luck with your fishing.”

“And who are you to wish me luck, O Prince Who Weeps? You have none to give away.”

“You may know I am a prince,” she said, “but who calls me the Prince Who Weeps?”

“Your hawks hear you,” the old man said, “and hawks talk, and pigeons gossip, and finally a sparrow tells it outside my door.”

“It is true,” she said, “although I am sorry it is widely known. Then again, it will not matter much in three days.”

“What happens in three days?”

“If I live, I turn sixteen. When I am sixteen, I may claim the throne. But on the eve of my birthday I am to be poisoned with a dish of halwa.”

“You have good reason to weep,” the old man said. “I must admit that I myself occasionally indulge.”

“And who do you weep for, good father?”

“A wife and children.”

“You’ve lost more than kingdoms.”

“I have. But there are better remedies than weeping. Fishing is one, and so I fish. Riding is another. So you must ride.”

“Where shall I ride?”

“Half a day farther,” the old man said, pointing with his fishing rod, “to where the earth cleaves in two. That is the Valley of Wounded Deer, which is a wonder worth seeing before you die. Here is a pill that will uncover to you the language of animals for an hour. Use it well.”

He tossed the bag down to her, and in it the prince found a round black pill that reeked of bitter herbs.

“Thank you, kind father,” she said. “May all my luck, little as it is, go with you and your fishing.”

She rode onward through the dimming forest, until her horse tossed and shied at the brambles braided black before them. Then the prince dismounted, hobbled her horse, and proceeded on foot, pushing the thorns back with bare hands and dagger.

After hours of struggling through thicket and thorn, the trees seemed to suddenly part before her, their interstices filling with stars. The prince had but a moment to notice the starlight before her footing gave way, for in her weariness she had not attended to where she was going, and she tumbled down a steep slope on a billow of scree.

At the bottom of the slope she unfurled into a heap, groaning. Then other cries of pain rose out of the darkness.

“Who’s there?” the prince said.

No one answered.

In the dusty starlight she perceived great shapes among the trees, shifting and sighing, and her blood ran quick and cold within her. But as the stars turned, and no wild beast stalked her, and no teeth tore, her heart settled and slowed, and finally, exhausted, the prince slept.

When she awoke, bruised but whole, the sunlight that broke through the trees showed her a small valley rich with moss and brown bones.

Three deer dark as leaves in winter lay grievously wounded beneath the trees. Their breaths came forth in soft white clouds. One had bloody gashes along its side that scabbed and cracked and opened to show bone. One had seven arrows buried in its flanks. And one had a golden collar around its neck and a marvelous tree of silver and gold, finely wrought with fruits and flowers, set between its antlers. The weight of that wonder pinned the deer’s head to the earth.

The prince stared, then recalled the old man’s gift. The black pill’s taste was loam and silence, and its odor filled her nose and mouth.

The bleeding doe raised its head as she approached.

“What kind of place is this?” the prince asked the doe.

Its voice cloudy and confused, the doe said, “This is the Valley of Wounded Deer, where we whose deaths are unfinished come to die. No one enters without a wound, and by the bones you see, no one departs in the same form. Only as seeds and birds and songs do we pass from this place. But you are not a deer.”

“I am weary and hunted like a deer,” the prince said. “This valley is lovely and would be a fine place to die.”

“But you are not a deer,” the doe said again.

“I am a prince and can judge for myself,” the prince said. “You are badly wounded—how came you by this harm?”

“Men,” the doe said. “Hunters like yourself, with dogs. They were slow and stupid, but not slow and stupid enough.” Its eyes were deep as wells and gleamed with sorrow. “Princeling, hear me. The ways of wolves are kinder than the ways of men.”

It turned to lick its ribboned flanks, as well as it could, and spoke no further.

The prince came to the deer transfixed by arrows.

“From whose quiver did these come?” she said.

“Hunters like yourself,” the hind said. “Their aim was poor, but not poor enough. So you see me now. Listen, princeling. The ways of ravens are better than the ways of men.”

And the hind said no more, but looked at the prince with reproach.

The prince walked on, thinking on what she had heard, until she reached the buck that wore a golden tree.

“Beautiful one,” she said, “how came you to this place?”

The buck could not move its head, though the muscles of its neck strained and shivered, and tears pearled in its eyes.

“I lived in a king’s parkland, and it was his pleasure to capture and ornament me thus.”

“Then you know the injustices of kings and queens,” the prince said.

“That I do.”

“Like the others, you have suffered through no choice of your own.”

“On the contrary,” the buck said. “I could have hooked the king’s eyes on my horns and torn them out. I could have fled farther than men could reach, rather than dwell in his demesne. But I bent my head to him, because the ways of men and the ways of wolves and the ways of ravens are cruel, but the ways of God are perfect and beyond our understanding.”

“Does a creature like yourself know God?” the prince said. “I have had tutors and mullahs and before them the simple faith of my nurse, which was more persuasive to me than all of these, but even now I am not certain that I know God.”

“In every mouthful of green, in every drink of cool water, in the velvet of our antlers and in our deaths is the name of God inscribed.”

“Well,” the prince said. “God or no God, all I want is a peaceful and private death, far from the jeers of my enemies.”

“You will not find your desire here. God gave this valley to the harmless things. It is not meant for you.”

“Then what is meant for me?” the prince said.

But the buck only gazed at her, dumbly and without comprehension, for the hour of language had come and gone.

Wondering and amazed, the prince picked her way out of the valley. She found her horse grazing among the trees. For a long moment, holding the bridle, she looked back.

“I could strike the Queen first, with my dagger concealed on my thigh,” the prince said. “Some of her courtiers would come to my aid, for their hearts are full of hate. I could take the throne by force. And that is the way of wolves.

“Or I could flee as far as this good horse could carry me, and wait for her people to revolt. Then we would return in triumph to trample her bones. And that is the way of ravens.

“But what is the way of deer?”

The prince considered the matter, her heart as heavy as chased gold. Then she mounted her horse and spurred it toward home.

No tears wetted her face, but with a cold cheer she rode through the wood and through the city. All who marked her passage thought her brave, and they grieved in their hearts, for they knew their Queen.

It was evening when she reached the palace, where all the lights burned hectic with final preparations.

“How good of you to come back for your birthday,” the Queen said, her eyes cold. The prince saw that the Queen had hoped and feared that she would flee—hoped, for then the throne would be hers without question, and feared, for the prince might then someday return.

The prince bowed silently and went to her chamber, where she did not sleep but knelt all night in prayer. And in the morning there was lightness as well as sorrow in her heart.

She walked in the garden and admired the flowers as if she had never seen them before, bid a pleasant morning to the cooks at their fires, and fed and made much of her horse and hawks and dogs.

“There is beauty in this place,” the prince said to herself. “But it was never meant for me. God gave it to the great and powerful, and I am neither of those things.”

Soon, too soon, the appointed hour arrived. The prince bathed and dressed and was escorted with fanfare to her birthday banquet. Every kind of dish that the realm could produce was spread before the court: rice studded with sultanas and jewels of meat, spitted larks and stuffed nightingales, fish in cream and fish in wine, skewered goat and boiled geese, boar and venison and lamb.

“All of this is in your honor,” the Queen said, waving her ringed fingers over the repast. “Tomorrow you shall be crowned, but today you are still a prince. So tonight I have the privilege of spoiling you.” She tore off a leg of swan and drained her cup, then gestured toward the prince. “Go on, eat—eat!”

The prince took a moon of bread and ate a dry morsel.

“What, you won’t eat?” the Queen said. “So fastidious. So kingly. But I see that we lack your favorite dish. That must be remedied at once!” She clapped her hands, and the servants brought forth a single bowl of halwa.

The Queen smiled.

“My beloved prince, dearest and sweetest of grandchildren, say that you’ll taste what we’ve prepared for you!”

Up and down the table, courtiers flicked glances at each other, lips twisting with knowledge, amusement, and pity.

The prince looked at the Queen, bowed, and ate until the bowl was clean.

“If you will forgive me,” the prince said to the Queen, who was rubbing her hands together and chuckling, “it has been a long day, and I will withdraw. But do not let my absence trouble you or lessen these festivities.”

“Graciously said!” the courtiers cried. And they carried on feasting and roistering as if the prince had never been.

The prince returned to her chamber and stretched out upon her bed, waiting for death to creep over her. His touch would be cold, she thought, and painful, and then she would feel nothing at all.

• • • •

In the morning, to her astonishment, the prince awoke.

She looked out the window at the sunlit city, then walked through the empty palace to the banqueting pavilions. The silk tents fluttered like flowers in the morning air. When the prince saw what was beneath, she was for many minutes unable to speak.

The Queen and her court sprawled among the broken meats, their tongues swollen and lolling. Half-eaten fruits softened and browned. Where wine had dried as black as blood, flies clustered and combed their claws.

“What’s this?” the prince said. “How could this be?”

The old cook rushed in and flung herself down.

“It was my doing,” she cried. “Kill me, and me alone!”

Behind her came the other cooks, shuffling and whispering, eyes round. At last one of the scullions said, “She rallied us all. A shame and a pity to help murder the last prince, she said, and a waste of good food, too. And which of us has not felt the Queen’s heavy hand? So we sauced everything with poison and put the cure in the halwa. If you kill her, you must kill all of us. And even that will be fine, because you will be King.”

“We’ve already baked the pastries for your coronation,” the old cook said, still flat on her face. “Only we told the Queen they were funeral cakes. So our deaths will not be an inconvenience.”

“Enough,” the prince said, pulling the cook to her feet. “Hasn’t Death had his portion, and more? None of you will die. But neither will I be King.”

“And why not?” the cook demanded.

“Because you would be a better King than I,” the prince said. “Because I have no heart to rule over anyone, not even a beetle. And because the ways of God are better than the ways of men, better than the ways of wolves or ravens—indeed, they are the best of all.”

She clasped the cook’s cracked hand. “You’ve prepared the cakes for your own coronation. I will see you crowned, and then I shall take bread and mulberries and go out into the world.”

“But where will you go?”

“Where God grants to me to go.”

“And what will you do?”

“What God gives me to do.”

Then the prince said no more, but bowed to her King.

The Queen and her courtiers were buried swiftly, with lavish honors and a minimum of grieving. By evening the cook sat upon the amber throne.

The prince in the meantime dressed in the cook’s castoffs and set out on foot. She walked, light as a deer, through city and country, only stopping once, where an old man tended three graves by the road.

“Did you catch your carp, good father?” she inquired.

“I most certainly did. It was a feast fit—begging your pardon—for a King. Here, you can have your luck back.”

“It seems I do not need it.”

“Then I’ll keep it. The luck of a prince is not given every day. Go in peace.”

“May peace find you as well.”

He looked down the line of graves, over which the ferns were beginning to grow. “Perhaps it will,” he said.

Onwards the prince went. Time unbraided its stars, and the earth spun, and she was all but forgotten. But every few years, word came to the Cook-King of a beggar whose joy blazed like a meteor, or an itinerant teacher whose words fruited in the mind, or a stranger who went gleaning and singing through the fields, and the King, who had few secrets, allowed herself a secret smile.

Many years later, in a nut-sweet autumn, there came halting into the Valley of Wounded Deer a hart hoar with age, muddied and scarred by living, its antlers pointed like a crown. The hart couched low on the yellowing grass and sang a soft, consoling note. Had you understood the language of deer, you might have heard it say: “The ways of deer are better than the ways of men, but the ways of God are perfect.”

Then the hart closed its eyes, and the only breath in that valley was the wind’s.

©2019 by E. Lily Yu.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E. Lily Yu received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2012 and the Artist Trust/LaSalle Storyteller Award in 2017. Her stories have appeared in such publications as McSweeney’s, Boston Review, F&SF, Clarkesworld, and Terraform, among others, as well as multiple best-of-the-year anthologies, and have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards.

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

«Légendaire.»

Kai Ashante Wilson | 9459 words

Having seen the reggaezzi perform, the righteous of Sea-john shake their heads in wonder. They will then murmur severally or as one, <<Légendaire.>>

[Tonight]

The cavalcade forms up. In beats, without words, the drummers argue a bass line. While higher registers wait in silence, contraltos and bassos scat and moan, improvising the tune (the lyrics never change). The soulful melodies these deeper voices come up with are much too cool, and none capture the hot quiddity of their subject. “Make dat shit bump, y’all,” a counter-tenor exhorts. “Put some stank on it!” So the music picks up funk and swing. A girl bounces and stretches with the other dancers. They have black skin, or brown, or golden; hers is gray, waxen, and flyblown. What ails this girl, her bones slipping so weirdly in raddled tissues? It’s death: She died three days ago. But so long as weary flesh lasts, she has the right to choose it over imperishable spirit. Thus can her body rise again, and she dance tonight with living brethren. The boy she loved, dead these years, not days, reappears as another name among the beautiful lights, and plays guitarra with the same prodigy as before, when he lived. Dancers up front, players and singers trailing, they’ll process down Mevilla, the witches’ hill, and up and over the great breasts of the Mother, middle hill crowded with shanties of the poor, and onward to the furthest hill of Sea-john, Dolorosa, where rich families live in gardened houses and foreign powers keep grand embassies. A boy nicknamed El Supremo is about to join their host—he lies tossing in his bed, way over on that easternmost hill. No one will see this parade pass, few hear it. The performance is for that one boy alone, whom the reggaezzi will gather to their number at last, tonight.

• • • •

From the roof you can see the world. Downhill, north: the Kingdom is dark, except where yellow licks the darkness. Some torch or lamp burns here and there as far as the horizon. The southern view is the ocean, entirely dark save for two moons out at sea: one true, clear and still in heaven’s vault; another false, dappled and shuddering on the vast black waters. The swelter lifts—a gust of sea breeze gives her goosebumps. But the filthy heat settles right back down. Some man is kissing her son under the archway of the house gate.

Is this how matters stand now, with tongue and teeth? In aid of asphyxiation, of cannibalism, more than love? All that biting! The moon’s so bright, she feels implicated in the sloppy grapple below. Why does the boy let that man grab and handle him so? When she lies down with her husband or with her wife, the love’s never harsh or ugly. Back when she and Jahs were as young and foolish as their son is today, even then, in the raw passion of first kisses, softness and respect were foremost. But now a caress and tenderness must be relics, not what youth want.

Night-bees flicker throughout the house garden. Below, the lime trees are all in flower, and green lights dim and kindle among the blossoms.

The boy utters little cries in his attacker’s arms, though hardly in distress. Dance usually does so much better by professional bodies: thickening the thighs, making the back and arms formidable. It’s just too bad la dança will whittle that rare body down, to all fine bones and no spare flesh. Her son—

“Ma’am?” Cook whispers from the stairwell to the roof. “Miss Savary? Duh baby just got in, safe. I wanted you to know. Dey out by the gate, him and his gentleman.”

“Yes, Cook. Thank you.” Savary sighs, and rolls the hulled berries from her skirts into the bowl. “Why don’t you go on to your room now, dear, and rest? We can finish up in the morning.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cook says. “Tank you, Miss.” And the stairs groan back downwards.

The lover has remounted his horse. He wears the fine black robe of a nobleman from the Kingdom; but also the cornrowed hair of a soldier, and one who’s seen action too, by those many bead-necklaces. He pats the hair of the boy clinging to his leg. (At last, a little tenderness!) They murmur intimacies Savary cannot make out from the roof, in accents of the language she forsook for this one spoken in the hills.

The lover rides away and the boy comes up the moonlit garden toward the house. Stumbling dreamily, still he cuts no figure but a dancer’s. Savary gets up, holding the bowl. The sons of other mothers are fumbling at first love, safely, with local boys and girls. Hers is virtuoso of the best troupe in Sea-john, and snaps brusque fingers at musicians twice his age during performance. He’s off giving shows, most nights, at some palace in the Kingdom. Savary makes her way downstairs into the candlelit interior.

Her wife and husband have long since gone to bed. They made their peace years ago in the household war; they came to terms. Not Savary! The young will post headlong down perilous roads, dreaming they’re on the way to adventure, en route to love: Someone must tell them, “No, wait, you’ve turned wrong. Nothing lies down that way but heartbreak and disaster.” Jahs says But, my love, his new friends are those same fils-de-roi who buy a yacht from me. That boat, Savary—a whim of theirs!—keeps our family well for a year. If the boy runs away, he can go to the shelter of some palace. What can we offer a virtuoso? His family’s love, just our love, and a room in the house where he was born. Better not to fuss and fight, better to keep the boy near us, surely?

Well, yes, Savary agrees. But . . .

A son too talented and too headstrong isn’t a problem of temporal power, upon which her immortal husband could, perhaps, work an easy miracle. Rather it’s a problem of the sort all souls suffer passing through the vale of tears, before which Redamas is as helpless as any mortal. Still, Savary pleads to him: But, you, Redy—can’t you do something?

I’m just a god, Redamas says, not God.

Savary stows the berries in the cold cellar at the back of the pantry. By now, the boy is in the kitchen too, reaching down a cup from the shelves of fancy-glass. He looks over the table’s vast clutter, and underneath, searching for the palm wine jar. Which is right beside Savary in the pantry; she picks it up.

There’s almost nothing of his father in him, so much of her: brown and tender of skin too, and with his shirt gaping open beau-boy-style she sees a red-violet narrative of hands and teeth scrawled across his neck and torso. Not for the first time Savary thinks, my little boy’s the one they’re calling “El Supremo?” If only he were strapping like his sister, six-foot something. If only his papa’s divinity had come down to him too—no worries then! Somewhere abroad, his sister’s hunting a beast with the fell name Assassin of Cities. But Maman has no worries there. You’ve only once to see the god whom you birthed smack aside thunderbolts, and rout dragons, thereafter to save the worrying for your mortal child.

He looks his age: the baby softness long gone, no mannish thickening yet. Sixteen.

“Weren’t you supposed to give a show for some big muckety-muck tomorrow?” Savary steps from the pantry shadows, into the candle-bright kitchen. “Since when can you dance, all eaten up like that, in front of the Kingdom’s uptight nobility?” She gestures at the lewd bounty of his bruises.

“Oh, Maman!” The boy jumps and squeaks, a charming flutter. “You scared me.” He comes to hug her and Savary’s own arm takes him in tenderly, at once. How else? He smells of costly soap, sandalwood and rose attar; a light odor of horses, also expensive. He kisses her cheek and they part. Quick as crime, his hands do up his shirt laces, hiding the bulk of purple evidence. “Of course I’ll be in a robe and mask, Maman! We’re performing devotions to the Saints out-of-doors. Nothing hootchie en chambre.”

She offers; he takes the jar.

Savary follows him to the table where the cup waits—her eyes on the lovebites above his collar. It’s just too much! “But why would you want some awful man from over there? And worse, a kingson!”

“Oh, Maeqal’s not royal issue, Maman.” Complicated jewelry, some new thing, hangs about his neck. One chain, fingerthick, entwined by others, hairsbreadth fine. Not silver: the metal glints whiter and more matte.

“No?” Savary frowns. “I thought he was one of the Old Man’s half-thousand.”

The boy hums a negative. “And the King only ever had 114 sons, really. A good third of those”—speaking lightly, he jiggles loose the jar’s stopper—“were lost to the wars and fratricides. Maeqal’s neither son nor grandson. Exceedingly wonderful to me, of course: but he’s nobody up at Court.”

His eloquent hands, this temperate tone, the sheer mildness of him make it difficult for Savary to recall the conflict, to retain it. You can almost see how one small boy comes and goes in safety among absolute powers.

“Well, anyway,” Savary says, feeling obscurely finessed. “I thought we’d agreed on an early evening, just this once.” She strokes a hand across the blades of his back. “I thought you weren’t going over to the Kingdom tonight.” His shirt’s such fine stuff—light as linen, soft as silk.

“Oh . . .” He looks, surprised, over his shoulder. “I didn’t! The troupe only ran through a couple new songs, then we did the early show at Blue Moon. A short set. It was fun, just playing around for once, goofing off.” Nowadays the boy’s too brazen to bother about lying. He’ll commit his mischief upfront, and make nice apologies afterwards, as necessary. Even so, a staggering sum of hours remains unaccounted for, in this version of events. Late afternoon, all the evening, very deep into night; rose will tint the skies, soon enough.

Savary’s temper frays again. “Then how is it you’re falling up in here so long after midnight bells?”

He grins. To some less happily married woman, it would doubtless seem a smile of general joy, not specifically fucked-out bliss. “Maeqal showed up at the Blue Moon for the show,” the boy says. “And we . . . chilled for a while, afterwards.”

Savary’s not ready for such a smile on the face of her younger child, the baby. Bitterly she says, “Just how old is that kingson of yours, anyway?”

The boy grimaces. “Oh, Maman—Cook’s let the palm wine go again. You really ought to speak with him. This is almost vinegar!”

“Boy, I asked you a question.”

He gives her his full attention. “First cousin of the Royal Blood, Thrice-removed, Twice-returned on the Matrilineal Line, His Excellency, Maeqal son of Oaqim lacks something for thirty, I believe.” His left hand signs “approximately” while the right tips fancy-glass to his lips. “Twenty-eight years old?” The boy makes another face. “Twenty-nine? You’ll remember they count birthdays differently in the Kingdom, but one year more or less, I always forget.”

A year less. Savary stops herself from saying so, because of course he already knows. This is just more of that bafflement—decorative, feigned—lately adorning his speech.

She tries some rhetoric of her own. “Oh, the Saints must weep for his poor lady wife! What can she be thinking, I wonder, with her man creeping over here to Sea-john all the time, spending late-nights with scrumptious young virtuosi?” With a start, Savary realizes they’ve switched to the language of the Kingdom. After all this time, it trips off her son’s tongue with an ease surpassing her own, and she was born there, he up here, in the hills.

“Aréienne hasn’t danced in two years. She’s writing a song-cycle, her knees hurt, and very soon now she’ll have her baby. And La Pablo fell in love; he sailed away with the ambassador from Kidan. So if Maeqal wants a virtuoso, he must come to me. And scrumptious, Maman? Thank you! There’s no lady wife as yet, either. I wouldn’t have a married man. But you, Maeqal’s father, and all his clan patricians, are remarkably in accord—that noblemen his age should be married, that his run of freedom is getting long and needs to end. Before they muttered, but now his family is shouting: exile, disinheritance, excommunication, they say, if Maeqal fails to marry before the next Long Rains.”

“There! You see?” Savary cries. “That’s what they do over in the Kingdom. Up here, we Johnnys love who we want. Can’t you see what comes of messing around with some kingson?”

“Kingcousin only, Maman. A minor one.” He’s blasé, or just tired, but anyway deflects her every word with suave hands and chatter. “Now his children, they will be born ‘Full First,’ if Maeqal’s mother can fix a wife for him out of the daughters of the Royal Concubinage.” He sips, making faces.

Johnnys treat one another tenderly. But over in the Kingdom you went for blood in any conflict—more so with the ones you loved. After all this time in Sea-john, Savary still cannot pull her blows enough. “So will you be marrying him too, then?” She sneers. “You and this king’s-daughter?”

One day, maddened by remorse, she will rant at her wife, describing how the boy looks at her now, and Jahs will say, “No, my love, no. He wouldn’t want that . . .” but Savary never does forgive herself for the hurt she causes, his look of betrayal.

“If anyone, Maman, I thought you . . .” The boy stops. He begins again, without tremolo. “Can we not try to be kind to each other? You know perfectly well they marry one man, one woman, in the Kingdom.”

She wants to make her son see, to choose more wisely; not to hurt him. In a rush, Savary says, “Whatever happened to that wonderful Johnny boy you used to run around with? The carpenter from the boatyard? Oh, you two were lovely together! Kéké was his name, I think. Why not—”

She cuts herself off. For it seems her big mouth has hit on some name that had better been left unspoken. Her son’s face wrings with such suffering as who could want for her own child, and Savary’s at a loss to respond because she’s one of those who have only ever won in love, gained and gained, and never lost. She says, “Oh, sweetheart,” and repeats that as she strokes circles on his back.

“I can’t talk—” His voice clots with emotion. “—about Kéké. I really wish you wouldn’t, Maman, please.” He sets his cup on the table, and briskly recovers nonchalance—or its semblance. “Tomorrow’s a big day for us, and I’m very tired. It’s our first show for the Queen Mother herself, at the Royal Pavilion.” On his face, Savary sees resolve, finality. “So, if you’ll excuse me?” Not actually waiting on any sign from her, the boy gently brushes by to take the stairs to his room.

Savary watches him up. She suffers a strange, fey moment: catching a glimpse of the here-and-now as it shall one day be in memory, most details worn away, but a few deeply etched, suffused with the poignancy that accrues to long years of regret. A lifetime’s worth. Remember? He wore his shirt à la beaux boys. And the diamonds in his ears!—big as your thumbnail. The presentiment of loss goes swiftly as it came. The noisy old wood lies quiet under his feet: something in just where or how he knows to step. The little truant used to escape just so on nights past, out to forbidden busking on the waterfront.

Savary very nearly rushes upstairs to plead with him. We love you. Stay. But, no . . . he’ll sleep here, and they can talk later in the morning. That’s soon enough. She pinches dark the bank of candles, then goes to join her wife and man.

[So many nights]

—Oh yeah. You all best watch out for that one there.

—What mess you talking, old woman?

—No, no, old mother. This here is the sweetest boy.

—Yeah! He never give no trouble. Mind his maman real nice.

—Keep your eye out is what I’m saying. Oh, all you are just stupid. Look at him. See? See there? The boy, so young, dancing like that! What age he got, three years? Not four yet, no. The reggaezzi coming forth to take this one away, sure ’nough. Sooner or later, wait and see.

—Reggaezzi! Why even speak such?

—Take back dat cuss, old witch!

—Don’t you know this boy belong to Savary and Jahs? That the papa of him is the dark god from across-bayou, so tall, so black, so strong? Family live nice and proper on Dolorosa. You don’t want to be cursing this boy!

—It’s no curse of mine, you idiots. A hand lay on him already, when he was born and the Song filled his heart—

—Hurry, go and get Jahs. Run, quick inside. Tell her a witch come for her pickney!

—Jahs Jahs Jahs! A witch in the yard! Come forth to snatch the baby!

—Oh, come quick, Jahs! Hurry.

Among the workers of the boatyard were a very old man and his daughter, who was only old. One or the other of them sometimes made lunch and siesta stretch a long long time playing the drums. Those were the best days! He wriggled and squirmed until Jahs set him down, or he’d yank and beg until she said Well, go on then, letting him loose from her skirts to run out into the front yard and dance with the workers. Jahs always ate her lunch standing up, never lay out for a nap under the bearded cypress, and she rarely could be coaxed away to dance even for just a little while. But she would let him go.

He liked the old daughter on drums just fine. She had brilliant technique, and played hot exciting rhythms that hit the mas despacio with perfect timing to keep a dancer going fast, yet always able to catch breath too. He loved the old man’s touch! Deep sly tricks complicated the playing. Those beats evolved on the subtlest schedule, and no mind could anticipate them. To catch the old man’s riddims needed utter surrender to hips and feet and shoulders such that time and the world became sublime irrelevancies, and the only thing real was the rapturous pulse of the body thoughtless, just feeling, pure motion. The old man was very very old, though, and mustn’t be bothered, let him nap, boy; he’s earned a little rest, hasn’t he? Today, for once, the old man played.

—Such a fearsome racket! Why all you in an uproar out here? What is going on?

—Jahs, dis old woman right here, dis one. She said reggaezzi coming for yo little boy.

—Yes. She said it would please her very well if they carried off your son to Mevilla right now, today, to live with witches and demons and flowers forever.

—I heard her too. I heard everyting. Dat’s exactly what she said.

—But, old mother, why would you say such a thing? The reggaezzi! Baby, come here now; that’s enough dancing. Come to Maman. Don’t you hear me calling? Come, boy. Come!

—Fíjese. You see, Senyora Jahs? The boy is lost to the Song. He’s faraway where you cannot touch him. The place where reggaezzi go. You cut his hair nice and neat—it is not shaggy and long. You feed him; the boy is pretty and fat—not thin from always eating smoke. He looks like people, like us—not covered all over in green lights. But he is one of them already, almost. Um reggaezzo.

—Stop your playing, old man! Are you stupid? A witch in the yard, reggaezzi, and my son—and you there are playing just like nothing. Stop I say! Stop!

—Ah, but you see? The drummer stops and it makes no difference. Still the boy dances! How does he hear, how can he know? Where does the Song come from?

—Please, cariño. Maman has you now. It’s all right; wake up. Please wake up.

[Many nights]

Just before the Long Rains fall, some nights blow so cold no one dreams of going out without a poncho, but other nights the sea doesn’t breathe at all, and the heat is like standing before the oven open at full fire. This night is one of those latter, so nobody wants much dinner. Before going to bed, Cook sets out only a bowl of leaves, a plate of fruit. Batalha crosses her arms and lays her head on the table, after just two bites from her mango. The grownfolk hardly eat, they drink palm wine, and Savary and Redamas and Jahs begin to laugh. Savary complains, I’m just getting too stringy and tough, going up and down these hills. Soon there will be nothing tender and soft on me, and my loves won’t want me anymore. Papa says, Oh girl, please: you know you fat. But she jumps up from the table and lifts her thin cotton skirt a little, moving her foot, so the muscle jumps and bulges in her calf: There—you see? Ma Jahs leans far over and slaps Ma Savary on the bottom. Girl, you don’t see all that jiggle? That’s jelly! They laugh, and me too. Savary says You know, it’s so blazing hot tonight we ought to take up some long pillows and sleep on the roof. So that’s what we do.

Redamas carries up Batalha and lays her on a long pillow. Jahs whispers in Savary’s ear and makes her happy. She giggles. Nearby in the flower court of the Tswani embassy, the circle tonight is drumming some very strange rhythms, from a country I don’t know the name of. The beats make a big sound, powerful, they want nothing to do with fine dancing, they want jumps, cartwheels, flips—Boy! Savary shouts. How many times I told you! Do not be doing that tumbling on this roof! Come away from the edge there. Back away I say!

And so then it is only the fine dancing I can do after all, not the steps the drumming really calls for. Jahs wants to know why, lately, Batalha is so tired all the time that she falls asleep this early, when before you could hardly make her go to bed before the dawn comes. Savary and Redamas, they look at each other, and Papa says Batalha no longer is content to learn only the knife, that she wants more than to come every full and new moon to militia practice. What she wants is for Redamas to train her, too, with the six full-timers paid out the Johnny-fund. So everyday Batalha doesn’t go anymore to help manage the orphanage with Savary, but instead comes to train with Redamas and the soldiers: spear, archery, open hand, a hard run up the steepest slope of the Mother, and now they’ve just got some horses too, so . . .

“But the girl is only eleven years old!” Jahs says.

“Well, you can talk to her, then.” Savary throws up her hands. “But, me, I am all done arguing with Batalha. Anyway, she’s not like the baby there. This one is her Papa’s daughter—a giant like you, Redy. Bigger than some of those men-soldiers already. So I don’t see what harm it can do. Batalha was sending me mad with all that energy of hers; now she just sleeps. I say it’s good for her.”

Inside the air didn’t move, but up here, every now and then a breeze stirs off the ocean far downhill. Even so, the night is close and hot for so much dancing. I go back to where they are sitting and pour three thirsty cups of water from the jar. Redamas touches my head.

“Little man, you are all flat on one side. Didn’t Nurse pick out your hair this morning?”

“Oh, that one danced his heart away at lunchtime today!” Jahs says. “He danced so much, so hard, he fell asleep under the beards of the cypress, and just slept the whole afternoon through. That’s why his hair is ruint. We were loud loud loud, quartersawing the good mahogany into planks. But even that noise couldn’t wake him.”

Savary snuggles and whispers; Jahs calls to Redamas.

“Watch out, my baby doesn’t go dancing over the edge of this roof. Exca senyora éeu vamos abajo um ratinho.”

Redamas says, “Um ratao, mas bien,” and grins and winks at Jahs. Savary laughs out loud. He reaches and she reaches back to take his hand; their fingers squeeze, then let loose. Mamans go downstairs to the big bedroom to be alone together. Jahs never goes to be alone with Redamas, and Savary goes much more with Jahs than she does with Redamas.

“Papa?” I feel I shouldn’t ask, but I must know. “Would it make you sad if Ma Savary and Ma Jahs loved you only half as much as they love each other?”

“Oh, no. It would make me very happy. Half as much is a lot!” Redamas laughs. “You don’t understand, my son—everything here makes me happy. More than anything I wanted to have family. A daughter, a son: so it makes me feel up to the very top of happiness that two women chose me. I was just the loneliest across-bayou, you can’t even imagine. Do you know how lonely the gods are? We are so lonely, there are so few of us, that ghosts are our teachers. Ghosts are our friends. We . . . open a box, and ghosts come out to tell us the things we need to know. Where are the people? Where are they? Only ghosts!”

“DI. Discorporate Intelligences.”

Redamas smiles. “Yes, DIs, like you said. I shouldn’t call them ghosts. We know better, you and me.”

“Why are you laughing, Papa?”

“Your Johnny accent, it’s very funny. I really should speak more to you in the language of the gods. But it’s so sweet, it’s funny, the way you say that.”

“Do a trick for me now, Papa. I like it when you do magic.”

“What should I do?” Redamas lifts a hand, all conjure and flourish. “Maybe I will make you go to sleep.”

“No, don’t! I hate that one. Don’t make me sleep, Papa!”

“Are you sure?” Redamas twinkles his fingers. “My DI always said it’s my very best trick.”

“No. I hate it. Please!” I grab his hand tight and hold his fingers still. “Do another. Something else!”

“All right, all right.” Redamas shakes his hand free; he smiles. “How about this?” As glowing coals in a fire are steeped with richer color than the fire itself, so, pale as moonlight, a shine appears in the air around Papa’s head, and where his naps grow not black, but indigo-color, round the edges of his hairline, the widow’s peak, sideburns and kitchen: every curly strand fills with brilliance, the way hot coals do, but this light makes no heat, and it shimmers, blue as the sky at noon.

“More! Brighter! Like a strike of lightning. The way you did that other time!”

“Oh, I can’t, little man. Not tonight. All day long it was so cloudy, I hardly got a taste of sun.”

Because he’s sitting I can stand there and pat his hair while the blue light dims between my fingers and goes dark. When it’s gone, I ask another question.

“Now I want to know something important. Batalha has blue in her hair—”

“Your Papa never dreamed he’d burden any son or daughter with divinity, little man. But you are every bit as much my child as Batalha. Now I explained this to you: Ma Savary has a little divine inheritance, as it turns out. That’s why, with her recessive allele, only daughters and not sons . . .”

“Yes, yes, Papa. I know, I know. You said before. The thing I want to know is, when my hair is all white as sand, my face wrinkled-up like dry fruit, and I need two canes, one for my right hand, one for my left: will you, Papa—you and Batalha—still have all your strength and all your youth? Is that true?”

“Who said those words? Who? Where did you hear such things?”

“Kéké at the boatyard. He said when I am many many years drifting in the sea, just some old bones eaten up by fishes, even then you will be as young and fresh as you are today.”

“Well . . . we are all here now, little man. Ma Jahs, Ma Savary, Batalha, you and me. The night is good. Why should we worry so much about tomorrow? You are very young; we have a long, long time.”

“But is it true, Papa?”

“You mustn’t worry about such things. That Kéké is not a very nice boy. I’m going to go down to the boatyard and have a talk with him tomorrow.”

“Oh, don’t, Papa! Kéké is very handsome.”

“But, little man, that’s not a good reason to let him say mean things to you.”

“I don’t mind, though. It’s all right, really. Don’t come down to the boatyard and scare him, Papa. Please!”

“Because you say so, I won’t make him scared. But I must go and say something to him, I must. I just don’t like what he said at all. Pass your Papa the palm wine jar there, will you?”

[Nights yet]

“Batalha! That short Johnny, the one who trains you miliciales with the spear, I heard him tell Papa you’re the best by far of the bunch. And Papa said to him, ‘Yes, but you must never say so to Batalha; her head’s that big already.’ Papa said the gods once all had such, such ‘mesomorphy and kinesthesia’ as you. He said that you’re a—what did he say?—‘throwback sport’ to those days before the gods intermarried so much. When Batalha grows up some, Papa said, and comes into her—he called it ‘perjuvenescence,’ then she will be a match even for the paladin of the Godspear.”

Batalha smiled down at him, and all her teeth showed. As if against a monster, she brandished some imaginary weapon: nor could the paladin himself, with his spear all ablaze with sun-stuff, have outmatched her gallantry. Batalha said, “You heard him? Papa said that?”

“Yes. But then Papa said, Oh, you’re a grief to him, and among all hardheaded daughters of the world, chief of them, because my Batalha just will not practice her psionics properly. Papa said you could be a great adept if only—”

Chaw! Batalha sucked her teeth, dismissing the rest with a turned-up palm. “I do not care about any damned psionics. Nothing in this world is more boring than sitting all day long, numb-assed, trying to think no thoughts at all. One-pointed concentration! O my brother, I sure hope you feel lucky, that Papa never bothers you about magic and stupidness!”

In fact, the least whiff of fatherly impatience or motherly frustration wafting his way tended to suffocate him like smoke, to choke off his capacity for disobedience or even dissent, until his own desires clogged in his throat, voiceless and caught. Batalha, though, argued for what she wanted. They could say No, You mustn’t, You’re too young, and all of it was like nothing to Batalha: just silliness, easily crushed with one hand. Her fierce words slapped parental “Nos” out of the air like gnats. Only train with the full-time miliciales? Ha! Batalha wanted to be a Johnny soldier! Her spear, her sash, her cuirass. And who of them rode better? Not even Papa! Yes, the big mean stallion: that one should be hers! Batalha had only to set her sights, and soon she would be getting her way. Now she wanted to drink the wine of Sea-john’s nights, and no little cup for her, and no watering, either. Just like the other miliciales she could walk the waterfront late late late through the drunken crush, in blackest night, and kick the ass of any bully hassling the sugar girls and beaux boys. Oh, he worshipped his sister; of course he did! Who else, so young, was more mighty, had more swagger? Pick anyone from the whole wide world: there was no one else, only Batalha! So much the warrior was she that her old name fell away for this nom de guerre.

“I don’t care, let them!”

“But my brother, you—”

“Stick a knife into somebody with blood and soul and dreams inside? No, Batalha! I will never never never do that. Some Maman loved them, some Papa picked them up and put them on his shoulders. So let them, whoever they are, go on living. I will die instead.”

“But don’t you understand the horrible things pirates do when they come to Sea-john? They are bad people, brother. No people are worse!”

“It makes no difference how bad they are, Batalha. They are just people to me. I couldn’t hurt them.”

“You are clever, ermano mio, and clever people won’t do something that seems wrong if they cannot understand why they must. So come. Come, sit down with me here. I will explain why Johnny mamans-and-papas want their boys and girls to learn the knife.

“It’s because the laws and taxes of the Kingdom don’t hold over here in Sea-john. It’s because we Johnnys are free—Jaúnedi mar libre!—and so we Johnnys are on our own. No armies of the Kingdom, no garrison at the citadel: nobody will ever lift a finger to help Sea-john. When the pirates raid us from the Gulf, when they loot and rape and murder and burn, what are the people doing over in the Kingdom? They’re yawning. They turn over. They go back to sleep. Ruff yoof come over here from the Kingdom, and what for? To beat up Johnnys. In every corner of the world, the people know us because we are so beautiful, because our music is the best, because quí e festa. They all want to come for a visit. And half the time, it’s true, those roadboys who guard caravans, saltdogs who guard ships, and soldiers from the Kingdom, come just for a good time, to have some fun. But then a penny drops: they turn into villains. They turn cruel and strange. I see them forcing kisses, grabbing breasts and ass, so you would think any pretty Johnny belonged to them.

“So you see, brother? That’s why you must learn the knife. All of us in the hills should carry one. Too many don’t. It’s such a good thing for you to know, ermano mio, so very good. I wish you would consider.”

For love of her, he did consider, and thought again: No.

But they forced him to learn to hold the knife, made him know where to stick it should pirates come again to Sea-john, should he get snatched up in the rape-and-loot. Papa took his hand and pulled him along to many tedious practices, where you must draw and stab and slash in the same way, over and over. They could make him do these things, but they couldn’t make him remember to carry the knife. Where is your knife? Redamas would shout. Listen to me, boy, listen. When the pirates come, they come all of a sudden. There will never be time to . . . Savary would shout: Go right back to the house and get it now! Every time I see you without your knife, Jahs would shout, I will always always always send you back again until you . . .

With mamans-and-papas, things must always end in tears, there could only be sobbing. Batalha would look down at his belt where the sheath was meant to hang, and raise her eyebrow. It made him smile in a guilty way, sick in his belly. But then his sister would only cluck her tongue, shake her head, and let the matter drop. Somehow the fiercest Johnny of Sea-john was the only one who understood him, the softest.

Such a night in the house, sometimes, because of the boatyard, mad hours finishing a yacht for some fils-de-roi, or because of the orphanage, ten abandonini all come down with stomachache, fifteen boys and girls with grippe, or because of a fire in the hills, or for some bad ruckus on the waterfront, and Papa mustering the militia out. These moments, quick, ask whether you could go out nightwalking with Batalha, and more than likely some harried adult hand would wave you off: Yes yes yes, boy, but you listen to your sister. On other nights Ma and Ma always said, Papa would say, your sister is thirteen and big and wears her knife, you are small and seven and won’t wear yours. No, you cannot go roaming in those rough nights on the waterfront, down under the Mother. Stay round here on Dolorosa.

Take my hand. The way down is dark here.

A slender moon, hardly giving them a candle’s light: it was the last moon, waning crescent before the new. Stars and planets, and the white parallels of waves breaking over the reefs, distinguished the blackness of sky from sea. So much going on over at the bottom of the Mother. Such lights, such crowds and music on the waterfront!

“I know the way here, Batalha! They let me go round on Dolorosa!”

“How many brothers do I have? Just one, only you! So if you won’t mind me, I’m taking you right back to the house. I must keep you safe.”

He took her hand.

On the waterfront were people too poor for soap, who washed only with water, stinky of armpit, ass. Caramel spirits and pineapple juice. The day’s catch grilled over the driftwood yield of shipwrecks. “Got that sweet fish, right here! Salt with sailors’ tears!”

Everybody not foreign was sugar or beau. Battle scars, sailors in breeches, and those black robes they wore in the Kingdom were mainstays. Johnny men glory-burned, Johnny women with art scars, some just boys and girls, metal hoops piercing their bodies and glinting, not so much older than himself on second look. Men and women of Sea-john dressed the same, in shirts and wraparounds, but here the shirts gaped from neck to navel, showing the soft swells of bosom and belly, smooth panes of chest and youthful abdomen. No need to guess, it showed plain: her waist so small and hips so wide, whose ass was big, some handsome man’s excitement. All these wraparounds were just that short and tight. Up and down the cobbles of the Board, out on the beach, down the docks, and all around the many fires, drummers and guitarristas and the world’s loveliest people dancing.

“When I’m big, I’m going to come down here every single night and dance. I’ll be a beau boy and strangers will give me money!”

“No, brother—not that! The best dancers, don’t you know they go into one of the top jukes and dance there? Sugarcane, Blue Moon, or the Tropica? Up front of everybody, and the crowd loves them so much that guards must keep them safe? And for the very best dancers? Some herald will come over from the Kingdom, all in silk and dripping jewels, to beg the virtuosi out of Sea-john, beg them to come over and dance in the Kingdom. Those dancers make shows for the Court, all the fils-de-roi and great ambassadors, the tycoons and courtesans. Johnnys stay up there at Court, sometimes, and take a lover, settling down rich. It’s true some boys and girls in the jukes sling booty; but others just dance. So a juke’s much better, you see. Ma Jahs knows everybody. Talk to her. She will know somebody to get you into the troupe at a juke.”

“Oh. Why didn’t I know these things? About jukes? About the Court?”

“You are young. Why should you know? I didn’t know myself at seven. Ask Ma Jahs to take you around the top jukes so you can see them all dance, then pick a troupe you like. The dancers in the jukes are very very good, ermano mio. Oh, they can dance! But many of the bailarines are not as good as you.”

“I will do it, Batalha. Just like you said! That sounds twice as good as beaux boying here on the waterfront. All I want is to be in a juke and go to Court!”

“Better that way, yes. Then you can dance all you like, they pay you for it, and you don’t have to fuck some strange dude every night.

“I’m hungry, do you want one of these too?”

“Yes.”

“Put two on for us,” Batalha said to the man squatting by his grill. She got coins of her own nowadays from Ma Savary, and so had one to give the Johnny fisherman. He ducked out shrimp from his bucket, stabbed them onto a sharp stick, and lay the skewers over golden coals. Turning them once, plucking them up: he dipped them through the bowl of lemony pepper, and passed the skewers to Batalha.

Angry thunder broke over the surf of merry noise. Harshly shouting, some Kingdom man, not far away, wanted to know how all this nasty Johnny sugar thought it could just wave up under a man’s nose and then get snatched away. He wasn’t having it—No!—so just bring that fat tricky ass here. Against the hard threats, there rose sweet screams of a pretty boy hindered from flight.

Batalha, already as tall as Papa, had a clear view over the heads of the crowd, to some sight that lit her up with rage. Her hair electrified, blue-white, in a momentary flash. “Fucking roadboys!” she said, handing the skewers to him. “Hold mine, brother, and stay right here. Stay put. I’ll be back in no time.”

Batalha thrust through the crowd and vanished. Someone thin, all musk and funk and black as Papa almost, passed by with a guitarra; and someone else too, more naked, with long, locked hair and skin no darker than palms and soles, like browning butter. Both young bodies tattooed, somehow, in phosphorescence.

Reggaezzi. He’d never seen any before, hardly heard of them. But he knew at once. A boy and a girl. The boy one sat in the sand and tuned his guitarra. The girl one touched her toes, no, she was laying her hands flat to the packed sand and going up in handstand, falling over in bridge, and coming up to stand again. One leg she lifted obtuse the standing, grasped that ankle, and brought up the shin to kiss. In the murk of night, the glowing curlicues on their skin pulsed marine green—not tattoos after all, but something—alive? Bright mites, infinitesimal, crept over their skin, either down in it, shining through, or glittering on top in some vexed way impossible to figure out.

“Oh, they’re young!” he said. “They don’t look much older than my sister.”

Some Johnny in the crowd forming up answered back, “How you don’t know, boy? Reggaezzi all die soon. Hardly none make twenty.”

Dressed badly for the brisk waterfront, they wore only shirts and loincloths. The reggaezza had torn off the sleeves of her shirt, and he knew why in the same way no one had ever taught him to breathe: so the line of her beautiful arms showed better.

The boy one began to play.

Strumming in rasjeo so fast and rich that a second player seemed to harmonize with him, even at times a third; and though there was none, a drummer seemed to keep the beat: the reggaezzo struck and tapped the guitarra’s inlay of clapwood while he played. He sang too.

The hoarse falsetto lacked the glories of his guitarrismo, but that voice was still a marvel of feeling. The song, in the language of the gods, was hard to follow. A mother, no, a great-grandmother, had a new baby at her breast. This baby so precious so beautiful but sick and fragile with—time and space? The baby somehow growing older than the mother herself, a great-grandmother to her own mother, the world upside down, reversed. What on earth? The lyrics fit together so strangely he couldn’t make sense of them. But the song was loving as a lullaby and yet triste, a lament. The reggaezza danced.

Oh, she danced.

Oh!

He’d never thought to dance in such a way that a story was told, the lyrics incarnated in a sorrowful play-act that nevertheless rendered respect to every beat and evolution of the music. He could grasp the mothersong better, in heart if not mind, seeing the reggaezza’s dance. A small gathering hereabouts was silent, while further off the night disported in revelry and strife. He stood dumb, mouth hanging open, and watched with his whole self. Nothing lasts, and the best must be briefest: so too with this. When the performance ended, the gathering of Johnnys murmured the same word of appreciation. Never more in agreement, he softly chimed in too. For a moment more palm fronds rustled overhead, and breakers rolled, the gulls calling. Then the quiet smaller crowd spoke, laughed, and began dispersing into the greater. The reggaezza, thirsty, plucked a jar of Sea-john free right out of the hands of some passerby. Rude!—but the passing Johnny made neither mention nor moan.

The boy one walked up and pointed, saying, “Gimme dat.”

He passed over one of the skewers. The reggaezzo put half the length, three shrimp, into his mouth and drew the stick forth clean, crunching and chewing hungrily. The reggaezzo stank of old sweat and something herbal. He was as crushingly beautiful as Kéké, almost. Green constellations crept across the black sky of him. The reggaezzo spat some shelly wreckage and gobbled the other three shrimp.

“Dat one too!”

“I’m very sorry; I can’t. It’s my sister’s, not mine. Batalha asked me to hold it for her.”

“Aw, ain’t you just too posh?” The reggaezzo turned and called the girl. “Hey! Quick, come listen at dis idjit here. Sound straight off Dolorosa, dis one!”

The reggaezza came over, thin as a finger and yet strong. Hunger had melted all fat from her, the daily hours of dance showing in the ripple of her thighs and veiny strength of arm.

“Now just tell huh what you come dare said to me!”

“Only that I must hold these shrimp for my sister—”

The reggaezza threw back her head, whooping laughter. She said to him, “Little prince-boy, don’t you know we could lay duh worse cuss on any Johnny won’t give food, won’t give clothes, or turn away help from us reggaezzi? So you not Johnny den, ti prince?”

“I am Johnny.” His lips trembled, eyes close to tears, for there was great hot power in her, like the burning sureties of Batalha, like the bright god in Papa.

“Zas!” said the reggaezza, snapping her fingers. “I could go like dat and yo Mamans fall out duh fishing boat tomorrow and shark eat dem up screaming. Zas! and yo Papas slip from high cutting coconut, crack dere heads wide-open so dey drooling stupid forever! Or maybe you hate yo Mamans and yo Papas, and you love yo ownself much better? Den zas!, ti prince, and you—”

“Here! I didn’t know. They never want to tell me anything about reggaezzi. Please, won’t you take it now? I love them and Batalha best, but don’t curse them. Curse me.”

“See? You just too mean sometime. Duh little boy didn’t even know. Now you got him crying and I feel all bad. Johnny boy, you could keep dat fuh y’sistah. Salright, salright—don’t cry. Nobody ain’t cussing nobody tonight.”

“I thought duh boy was talking back smart. You know I can’t stand dat. Some posh asshole. Anyway it’s two whole days and no Ladder-to-Heaven. I need some smoke bad. I hate dis hunger. I hate how cold duh night feel. Gimme dat—I’ll eat it!”

He handed over the skewer and the reggaezza crouched down on her haunches, making the same short work of six big shrimp as the boy had. He lifted off his poncho and tucked it warmly round the girl’s shoulders, just as though the reggaezza were in creaky old age, not the veriest youth. The boy one squatted down beside and stroked her long matted hair; he said, “Couple more days, duh leaves be all brown and good, and we climb right back up duh Ladder-to-Heaven. I hate deese days too, but gotta eat sometime, don’t we?”

She looked at the reggaezzo. “You don’t hear dat? You don’t hear Song?”

“No. Where?—Yeah! But where it come from, so soft? I never heard Song dat soft!”

“Him! Duh boy here, dis boy. It’s you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, yeah! Because you still too young. But some day you gon’ come along with us!”

“I’ll come now.”

“Not yet,” said the reggaezza. “Grow some. Get in some trouble. Look at dose legs you got!—dancer, ain’t you? Well, baby brudder, yull dance much better with yo heart broke bad.”

“The best dancers need a broken heart?”

“Yup.”

“Is your heart broken?”

“Oh, sure. And fresh everyday. Yull see.” The reggaezza lay her head on the boy one’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

The reggaezzo said, “I ’member how bad it was, Johnny boy, but you just got to stay patient. By and by some night you gon’ hear all ten, twelve living come up duh road, and a tousand ghosts. Duh sweetest Song you ever heard by far. Duh singers all singing, some with carry-drum playing, and I be dere with duh guitarristas. You come on down dancing and join us. Climb high up duh Ladder-to-Heaven. We’ll take you over Mevilla. Get you some lights like dese.”

A galaxy spiraled on the reggaezzo’s cheek, clotted at the center with stars algae-colored and luminous—he reached to touch one. And felt nothing but hot human skin, though his fingertips came away flickering green. He brought up the glimmers to his face, wanting to see them better, but the bright motes suddenly winged off his hand, back to the reggaezzo’s cheek where they’d been. The shock of it was like a roach scuttling away, then abruptly bursting into flight back toward your head. With a squeak and jump, he stumbled over some hairy half of broken coconut, and fell in the sand. The pretty reggaezzo laughed, showing bright teeth. “Scared you, huh?”

As a keepsake of this night, he wanted to know: “What is your name?”

“Ain’t got one. Soon as you one of us, yo name just wash away out of duh world forever.”

“But what was it before? Your name back when you lived with your Mamans and your Papas?”

“I told you: I don’t know. The name missing and won’t be found. Like a wave come to duh beach last year, where dat wave now? If God know all things, She forgot my name. It’s just gone. Call me reggaezzo, call her reggaezza, if you want. We nothing else.”

The reggaezza leapt up, the poncho falling away, and she cried out, “I feel good! I feel good! Let’s go way over dere where it’s more room and brudder you just play me a fast song, a wild song, duh strongest song you got! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

She tore away through the crowd and the reggaezzo snatched up his guitarra and ran away after her. Stay put, Batalha had said, and those words pulled him back down, chained to that spot in the sand, or he’d surely have followed. He reckoned it was all right to reach over and gather back his poncho just lying there abandoned. So he did. Then a new thing stirred in him and the chains broke. Get in some trouble, she had said. He stood up.

“O ermano mio.” O my brother!

He looked back towards the cry and there came his sister staggering. She was bloodsoaked, awash in gore, the knife hanging from her grip and dripping, it was that wet.

“Batalha! They cut you? Where are you hurt?”

“Me? No. I’m fine.” Seeing the condition of her knife, she stropped off the wet black shine onto her ruined poncho, and slid the blade back in its sheath. “That other time I stuck the saltdog just a little and it was enough to scare him off.” Batalha sounded very sad, nothing like herself. “This dude though—he just wouldn’t quit. He wouldn’t go away. I had to cut him down stone dead.”

[Todas las noches]

[ ] saw the reggaezzi once before. He was too young to remember.

As a baby, at the Festival of San Maurizio: when the reggaezzi come down in force to give a show on the seafront Board. Then, Johnnys bring out their ailing loved ones, their sick of heart, their babies and any family grown elderly or close to passing. Great blessing will visit whosoever attends San Maurizio. No reggaezzi miss who yet live. If all are there, then surely those bereft parents in the crowd need only crane their heads, and blink away the tears, to catch a glimpse of their doomed youth, their child. Which one? What was his or her name? They no longer know—but perhaps the one on drums, or that other one there, dancing, had been theirs.

Savary takes him off the breast and turns him round. She sits him up on the shelf of a forearm. “There, [ ]! You see them?”

He cannot see much. Why won’t they let him down and free, to wriggle forward through the crowd as Batalha had? They’re all crushed among jostling hundreds back here, though nobody is frightened, so he’s not either. Certainly [ ] can hear the song. Sweet and powerful, a choir delves deep and soars high, all to the greater glory of one soloist, some apocalyptic soprano. Drumbeats, wild and precise, overwhelm the rhythms of his own heart and breath; in time, ecstatic, [ ] shudders, held perched to Savary’s breasts. But glimpses are few and far between, as are the gaps among arms and backs and shoulders of the crowd. There’s nothing much to see, really, save occasional flashes of green light.

“Mamita, really now! How’s the baby supposed to see from way down there? Give me him.” Jahs lifts him away and up, a full foot higher to her shoulders where at last there’s some bit of view. Those gorgeous lights belong to people. Green glow freckles their skin, and some great master, perhaps the music itself, exerts sublime puppetry on the abandoned leaping of their bodies. Still, he can only see top halves, only torsos.

“More, more!” [ ] beats fists atop the head against his belly, punishing its offensive and inadequate height.

“Baby, stop. What are you doing? What’s the matter with you?”

Jahs’s chief attributes are goodness, clarity, and strength. The thing called for now, however, is stature.

“Papa, up up!” he shouts, stretching his hands toward Redamas: much the tallest being in the crowd, and from whose shoulders, once [ ]’s hefted there on high, the vantage is astounding.

Grace is down here, available to the flesh for embodiment at every single moment. These wonderful creatures are showing him how to do it! Wildly [ ] sobs, shaking his head, wrapping his arms tight about Redamas’s brow, when Jahs reaches to lift him down for mothercomfort. “No no no,” he screams. I want to “see!” I want to “see!” Beauty’s only ever a soft thing? It never harrows?

“Woman—ow. Why are you hitting me, Jahs? Don’t hit! You see the boy is holding on for dear life. He wants to watch.”

“Man, my baby is crying! You hand him down to me, Redy, or I will cut you like a pirate right here in the streets!”

©2013 by Kai Ashante Wilson. Originally published in Bloodchildren, edited by Nisi Shawl. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kai Ashante Wilson was the 2010 Octavia Butler scholar at the Clarion writing workshop in San Diego. He won the Crawford award for best first novel in 2016, and his works have been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. Most of his stories can be read, gratis, at Tor.com. His novellas The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps and A Taste of Honey are available from your local bookstore or online. Kai Ashante Wilson lives in New York City.

Windrose in Scarlet

Isabel Yap | 7925 words

i.

Red slays the wolf, and another bursts through the kitchen window and bites her in the stomach. Glass gets in her hair. She smashes the chopping knife into its head, then runs out the back door, gulping for air. She doesn’t stumble. The wood must be at war with itself: Some trees let her pass, others scratch her. The howling recedes; the howling’s at her ear. Eventually her boots skid on marble and she falls, her heart a hammer against her ribs. She curls up to make herself small. At least I’m all bones. They won’t enjoy me.

Her wolf—the wolf she loved, or thought she loved—stopped wanting to eat her at some point. He only wanted to own her.

She doesn’t know about other wolves. She doesn’t care. She’s crying, she realizes, which is stupid, but: maybe that means some part of her really loved him, some part that’s still back there baking pies and running fingers through his hair, happy in her blindness, relieved to be home. Some part that doesn’t know the black jaws of pain, closing over her through the cold.

ii.

Beauty finds the crumpled girl at the perimeter of the chateau: covered in clotted blood, dark against her bright red hood. Her eyes are half-open, cloudy like a corpse’s, but her chest shudders when Beauty puts her ear against it. Beauty removes her coat and bundles it against the girl’s side, attempting to staunch bleeding that has long stopped. She hesitates. Then she covers the girl’s eyes and shouts for help, since someone is always listening, ready to meet her demands.

“But what are you doing here, my lady?” Sabine asks when she arrives, holding her skirts away from the dirt and leaves. Beauty smiles, apologetic, and together they haul the girl—who weighs nearly nothing—to safety. Once they’re past the castle doors the girl gasps, jerking against the shock of warm air. She reaches out and Beauty seizes her hands. Her eyes are black as crows’ wings.

“Are you a fairy?” she asks, mad with terror.

“No,” Beauty answers, but the girl has lost consciousness again.

They bring the girl to the guest room, the one Beauty stayed in when she first arrived. She stitches her guest up, grateful the girl isn’t awake to witness her own gruesomely flapping wound. The stranger stays asleep, so Beauty keeps vigil at her bedside. She finds herself invigorated by this strange turn of events—it has disrupted her investigation, but she hasn’t met anyone from outside the castle since the spell was broken, and she has always wanted adventure, even if it comes in the form of a bloodsoaked girl. The stranger might tell interesting stories; she may even want to be Beauty’s friend . . . but what if she only wants to leave?

Beauty can’t resent something that hasn’t happened yet. Beauty can’t admit to herself what she wants (it is different than not-knowing); she can only confess that she hasn’t felt this curious in so long. Perhaps when the girl awakens, they can find out more about the fairy’s wards together . . . or at least exchange tales and tragedies, over tea.

She doesn’t know if Vincent will approve, but Vincent will not be back for weeks yet, away on business in a country across the sea. That’s fine; Beauty trusts herself with wild things. Broken things. Some hobby I’ve developed, Beauty thinks, then props her knees up and reads her latest book: a series of letters between a dying prophet and his second (but most loyal) pupil, part treatise on faith, part depressing love story. Once she became the chateau’s lady, she decided to take up other hobbies—gardening, transcribing music—her “little distractions,” Vincent calls them laughingly. But reading will always be her first love.

Still, she is diverted by the sleeping figure, and often puts her book away to study the stranger: her lashes like coal, her colorless lips, the thin skin under her collarbones. Her lengthy fingers, gripping the sheets tight in some nightmare.

“Who put a spell on you, dear?”

Beauty touches the dark hair spread on the pillow, and tries not to feel too tender.

iii.

Red dreams of a face like a flower, like something pulled from the pages of a book. Sometimes she lifts her hand and feels a touch in response—an admonishment, or yielding? She wants to tell the toucher: I am afraid of fairies, they cast wicked spells and call it mercy. She wants to say: Leave me. Then: Don’t leave me. Her thoughts are tangled with loneliness and loss; sometimes she is conscious enough to wish she were dead.

She wakes up alone. Daylight streams through a window. Birds are cooing. The air is sweet, there is flavor to it: fruit, like berries. This is not her home, nor is this grandmother’s house.

Memory slams into her: what she did, why she did it. She shoves her blankets away and scrambles off the bed—she has to escape, now. She stumbles, catches the back of a chair, crashes to the floor. Her hood flutters and falls gently over her face, turning the world red. It’s cleaned of dirt and blood. She breathes in. There you are, she thinks.

The door opens. Someone gasps and lifts the hood away from her. “You’re awake,” the girl says. The flower-face. She’s even more breathtaking in waking, but then, Red is not used to beautiful things.

Red blinks.

“You’ve been asleep for days. How do you feel?”

“Better than I should, probably.” Red touches the side that the wolf tore off, experimentally. There’s pain, but her abdomen seems to be whole. She groans, covers her face in her hands.

“What’s wrong?” Flower-face seems upset by this reaction; she gets down on her knees. Red realizes she has not been near another girl in forever. She feels lightheaded, suddenly.

“This castle is under a fairy’s jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

“How can you tell?” The worry is replaced by interest, and Flower-face takes Red’s hands away to peer at her in wonder. She’s the toucher, Red realizes. “I suspected as much but I don’t know how to learn more. Do you know a lot about enchantments?” A pause. “Do you know how to break them?”

“No.” Red tugs her hands away. “You’re a fool if you think spells work under ordinary rules that we can learn and memorize, like lines in a poem. They don’t play that way.”

Flower-face isn’t hurt, or angry. Instead, she’s excited. “Have you met many fairies, then?”

“Just one,” Red says. “I wish I hadn’t.”

“I’ve only met one, too. I broke her enchantment, but I didn’t exactly know I was doing it, and it wasn’t under terms I like. I think it keeps me here. I’ve been trying to summon her.”

This is surprising enough that Red forgets her dizziness. She gazes at the girl. “Who are you?”

“Isobel,” the girl answers. “This is my—husband’s estate.” The way she pauses over husband makes Red uneasy; she feels like a rogue, suddenly, sitting in this grand lady’s room and calling her a fool. She is struck by the openness of her savior’s face, the way it blooms through the petals of her dark brown hair. Her big, beseeching eyes. Red has betrayed her terrible nature, which was a stupid thing to do, because she actually feels safe, and embarrassed with it.

“I’m sorry, Lady Isobel,” she says. “I’m not used to people. I only thought . . . it seems the wolves couldn’t follow me here. I should be dead.” Her hands are trembling; she curls them into fists, to still them. “I was spared death once before, thanks to a fairy’s magic.” She doesn’t voice her next thought: I wish I wasn’t saved then. Or now.

“Don’t call me lady—call me Beauty.” Her host doesn’t blush, but quickly adds, “They all use that here. They take after their master, and anyway it’s what my father used to call me, so I don’t mind.” She stands and holds out her hand; Red takes it, and lets herself be pulled up. “What’s your name?”

“I . . . I can’t remember. He always called me Red.”

Beauty pats her hand. “Well, Red. You are welcome here, for as long as you like.”

Red falters against this gentleness; it feels too much like danger. But she has nowhere to go. She can’t outrun the forest. For now, at least, she can stay somewhere warm with beds and doors and people who don’t know yet how broken she is inside.

“I’m very grateful,” Red says. She doesn’t try to curtsy; she knows she would fail.

iv.

Beauty hasn’t sat in the dining room since Vincent left, and is pleased to have someone to share meals with. Red gawks at the large table, fidgets in her seat, tips her head up to gaze at the ceiling with its column of chandeliers and fresco paintings of cherubs. Beauty is worried that Red might not have an appetite, but when lunch arrives her guest is ravenous and asks for more, meat especially.

“Sorry. I’m starving,” she says. She only declines when dessert appears: cherry pie, red guts wobbling. Beauty eats hers, but doesn’t miss the way Red averts her gaze.

Sabine brings them tea, smiling at their recovered guest. Red smiles back, uneasy, revealing too much of her gums.

Beauty knows that kind of smile.

“You said you weren’t used to people,” Beauty starts. She knows this line of inquiry might hurt, might cause withdrawal, but her curiosity can’t help itself. “What does that mean?”

Red meets her stare, and Beauty thinks: This is a girl who only recently learned to be afraid. “I’m used to wolves that look like people.”

Beauty taps her fingers on the table. “My husband was a beast,” she offers. “As a man his name is Vincent, and he is a very wise and cunning businessman, of the nobility and with impeccable manners. But when I met him he was wild as the forest; he bared his teeth and roared.”

“He was a beast? Or still is?”

Beauty shrugs, as if to say, it doesn’t matter. “Tell me of your wolf, then.”

Red laughs—a short, scratchy laugh, not at all delighted. “I wouldn’t call him mine. I’m not sure we were more than strangers, though we lived together for years.” She swallows. “He killed and ate my grandmother. I was sure he’d kill me too, but I’d aided a fairy earlier that day while I was lost in the forest, so of course she appeared and tried to make a happy ending of it.”

Beauty waits.

“She made his paws tender.”

Beauty has a sudden urge to tell her to stop, to distract her by saying shall we walk out into the garden, to see the roses my father nearly lost his life for, picking one for me when I didn’t even really want it, I didn’t want anything, I was happy? I don’t like to hear stories of suffering, but that isn’t true, Beauty has always been invested in seeing a tale through to the end. She holds her tongue.

“I don’t know what made the spell break,” Red continues. “I don’t know if I’m glad it did. But the minute it shattered I knew I could not carry on, so I killed the wolf, and his pack tried to kill me.”

“You’re safe here,” Beauty says automatically.

“Am I?”

“I’ll keep you safe,” Beauty answers, though the words surprise her coming out of her mouth: She’s smarter now, older, knows how the power of promises spoken in the heat of a moment—or anytime—can wreck you. Crumble things you’ve hoped for, or form thorn barriers around you. Grip you in talons and shake you from side to side, making you dizzy and sick. Besides, Beauty has no business offering this girl protection. Red, despite being just a few days away from nearly dead, is more physically fit, as Beauty couldn’t help noticing when she patched her up. Yet there’s something about Red that makes Beauty want to gather her up and tuck her somewhere soft and secluded, which gets worse when Red looks at her askance.

When Red grins, tentatively, Beauty is further surprised at how her heart skips.

I shouldn’t be making promises I can’t keep, she thinks.

And: This sanctuary isn’t mine to give—it belongs to someone, as I do.

“What if you’re the thing that will hurt me?” Red asks. Beauty laughs, shakes her head, reaches out to touch her guest’s hand, wonders if she is misunderstanding, why she’s both excited and afraid.

This time, Red does not tug her hands away.

They exhaust the afternoon walking through the garden. Beauty points to the roses, says those are Vincent’s pride, but doesn’t mention her father, not yet. She’s not trying to make this a grief contest. Anyway, she would lose—because she’s happy with her beast now, isn’t she? Her fairy intervention turned out all right.

Red does not seem very interested in flowers. She keeps looking at Beauty with intensity, then looking away. Beauty doesn’t mind scrutiny, but she feels unaccountably awkward under that gaze.

Finally Beauty asks: “Why did you say that?”

“What?”

“About whether I’ll hurt you.” She coughs; she doesn’t want it to mean something it doesn’t mean.

“It came to mind,” Red says, a slip of a smile flitting onto her face. Quick as hummingbird wings. When she shrugs, Beauty decides to just accept it.

Red insists she wants to help with dinner so they impose themselves on the kitchen, which shocks everyone. Beauty wonders why she never did this after she saved the castle. “Madame, Madame!” Paul, the cook, laments, while Red stands next to him and tastes his soup. It’s delicious, but has he considered adding fennel?

They have dinner together and this time there is no talk of paws or murder. Instead Red asks Beauty to tell her something interesting, and Beauty narrates the plot of the latest book she’s read: about pirates, and tentacle monsters from the deep velvet sea.

Now that Red is conscious, Beauty can’t stay at her bedside, so that evening she knocks on her guest’s door and brings her a lamp and a stack of books she thinks Red might like, including the pirate one. She pauses before leaving the room. “Will you stay?” she asks.

Red closes the cover of the book she was inspecting.

Beauty clears her throat. “I mean, I would be very happy if you stayed. If you wanted to.”

“Yes,” Red answers, to staying, to wanting it. To her.

v.

Red understands loneliness. Even on the good days, back in the cottage with its flower print curtains and grandmother’s bones weeping, unheard, under the bed, she would blink and get a sense of being miles away from everything that mattered. Tears would slip from her eyes, while she was out chopping wood or hunting game for dinner—haha, she’d think, this is strange, I should ask my wolf about it. But she never did. Instead she’d get lit up inside when he appeared, scooping her into an embrace and nuzzling her neck. No matter how big she got, he could always carry her, one deft motion of his arms and she was aloft.

He’d carried her, too, when he was about to bite her head off. Then the room had frozen and the fairy had appeared, blazing like a fantasy.

All those friends and relatives that visited—they were all his pack, weren’t they? Who was it that chomped her that night? Aunt Meg? Frederich? Little Rowan? She knows she shouldn’t but she can’t help thinking about it, especially when she bathes and finds the wounds, perfectly spaced on her front and back, mirror-marks where her flesh was gouged out. Still tender when she touches that space. Red understands loneliness as much as she understands pain, terrible twins that hang over her like a curtain; even so, she’s surprised to recognize it in Beauty, as much a part of her as the pink on her cheeks and the way her mouth is so expressive, twisting and pouting and curving all the time. Red likes that mouth. She doesn’t admit this to anyone, not even really to herself, but she thinks it. A lot.

Her assessment of Beauty is thus: She believes herself to be a great nurse to broken things, and this is true, but she does not see—or does not like to see—the cracks that line her own careful joy, threatening to shatter. It’s a precarious way to live. Red would know.

When Red said yes to staying, she didn’t know for how long she meant, or how long the offer was extended. Red has no plan. This can’t last, something in her says. This story is not yours. There is danger here: She cannot like Beauty’s laugh any more than she already does, she has nothing to offer, the master of the chateau may yet turn her away. This is not really living, as wonderful as it is.

But staying is easy, so Red does, and the wolves keep mercifully away.

Red regains her strength as one day melts into another, fluid as the poetry Beauty recites while they walk in the garden, or sit reading in the library. “Listen to this,” Beauty says, then she recites a soldier’s aubade, or a fragment from the diary of a girl who lost her lover at war. Sometimes Beauty has letters to answer; in those moments, Red occupies herself in the kitchen or the garden, horrifying Paul-the-cook and Andrei-the-gardener, reassuring Sabine when she shakes her head and says, “Don’t, please, madame. Your skirts will tear.”

“It makes me feel useful,” Red explains, even as she wonders what they all think of her, this random guest in their master’s house, an anomaly to the enchantment that settles over all of them—for they seem as much a part of the castle as any other turret or stained-glass window. Functional, immovable, and utterly at peace.

Of course a fairy would make such a place.

Eventually Beauty resurfaces and drags Red away to play cards or debate the ending to one of her romance novels, both things Red finds awkward. Unfamiliar. She’s being a girl, she realizes. They’re things someone her age would do, with friends, if they hadn’t been stupid enough to walk through a forest so boldly many years before; if they hadn’t trusted that their blind courage would mean no consequences. Beauty shows her how to press rose petals between the pages of heavy books, and some complicated clapping games. One afternoon they uncover a set of rapiers in one of the unused studies, and they traverse the length of one hallway clanging swords, jabbing at each other, giggling. “Careful of your wound!” Beauty calls, while Red laughs. Sabine is scandalized, and tsks at them. Beauty eradicates her disapproval by wheedling for scones with jam, because nothing pleases her servants more than serving her.

They’re sweaty by then and collect themselves at the top of the grand staircase, breathing shallowly. Red watches a bead of sweat descend from Beauty’s forehead to her chin. Her mouth dries.

“Sometimes,” Beauty pronounces, “I look at you and I see a girl who grew up too quickly.”

“And you suppose you don’t look that way? We’re probably the same age. And too old to count as girls, really.”

Beauty laughs. “I like how you treat me. It’s been a long time since I had a friend.”

Red knocks her feet together to avoid inspecting the pain in her chest. There’s no way to know you like other girls until you’re exposed to them. Girls are nothing like wolves, but that’s not why she feels this way. It’s Beauty. She’s unusual, lovely, wears loneliness like a hood and curiosity like a stack of bracelets, always jangling. Silence settles between them like a layer of dust, until Red looks up at the ceiling—so monstrously high—and asks, “Where were you before this castle?”

Beauty tells her story of the village and the two older sisters and the father she loves dearly; of the plucked rose and how she refused to let her father die. When she arrived the castle was one unending echo of a beast’s roar, tattered and broken, no servants then, not in this form. At first he would strike her and curse her, but she tried her best to be gentle. Then the magic did its work, and she grew to see how he was kind, underneath the layers that weren’t human. If he had flashes of cruelty, if he was wrong to threaten her father—she puts these forth as if she has thought about them a great deal—that was only his animal nature showing. It was the fairy’s punishment, you see.

Red closes her eyes. There are so many places a girl might bruise, beneath her pretty clothes. “And then you broke the spell?”

“And then I broke the spell. He was dying, because of me. I only wanted to save him.”

Red opens her eyes. Beauty’s smile is crooked; she’s blinking against welling tears. “It wasn’t wrong, what I chose. And I do care for him very deeply. He’s kind to me. I wasn’t wrong.”

Then why are you crying? Red doesn’t ask. Instead, she takes Beauty’s hand. This is not an invasive gesture; they’re friends now, aren’t they? And Beauty has been doing this from the beginning. She folds her fingers over Beauty’s, ignoring the way they tremble. Beauty bends over and tucks her face into her knees. Red smooths her palm down Beauty’s back. I look at you and I see a girl who grew up too quickly. I look at you and I see a sacrifice with no altar and no blood, nothing the eye can see.

“You did the best you could,” Red whispers.

vi.

It has been more than a week. Red is mostly healed and hasn’t disappeared yet, and so: the forest. The investigation.

“I’ve been trying to figure out the extent of the enchantment. I marked it up to here—where I found you.” Beauty scuffs the ground with her boot. There’s no marble, nothing but fallen pines and dirt. “If you don’t leave by the front gate, you end up in the thick of the forest.” They walk together beyond it, ten paces, twenty, and then Beauty smushes against the air, as if she is falling into a curtain. Red sees the landscape shimmer, iridescent, like the film on a soapsud. “Do you see? This is stretching out further every time I check, so I suspect it’s either fading or weakening, but it still exists. These wards keep out anything that can harm the chateau, but they also keep all of us in. I have not been able to leave, and no one else wants to.”

Red reaches out her hand, and the rainbow barrier doesn’t show up. They look at each other experimentally.

“Who would you see if you left?” Red asks.

“My father. To know if he has forgotten me, or only pretends to, because that would be less painful than realizing he has lost me.”

“Why didn’t he come to live with you when you wed Vincent?”

“Why didn’t anyone accompany you to your grandmother’s house?” Beauty has barbs, too. She watches the words find their mark, in a spasm across Red’s face. Anyway, they both know what to blame: careless incantations, the airy laughter and delicate smiles that follow.

“If you hold my hand, perhaps we can leave together. Perhaps that was a line missing from this spell.”

Beauty hesitates, then nods. “But we turn back at the first sign of danger.”

“The wolf taught me how to be a hunter.” Red waves the giant knife she took from the kitchen. “I’ll protect you.”

“That was my line.”

Red smirks, takes her hand, and walks through the barrier. Beauty holds her breath, expecting not to get past it, but suddenly they’re on the other end, and everything feels more alive—chirping insects and rustling leaves, the smell of moss and damp wood. Beauty spins, turning her face up to see how high the trees extend. For a moment, dizzy with this open world, she forgets what she’s looking for. She could run away right here, leave it all behind: the staff, the chateau with its endless comforts, the rose garden that remains her beautiful betrayal, the man who kisses her with the violent worship of only the most pious, whose eyes are some days her beloved’s and—on rare days—her jailer’s. Is freedom worth the cost of that happiness? Did the fairy intend her to weigh these things against each other?

And how does Red fit in—dropped, like a bird trapped indoors which has smashed itself against the windows and needs tending? Now healing, this bird is something Beauty envies: its memory of song, its desire for the sky. How she can leave, any time.

They walk together, deeper into the trees, and Beauty wonders what to look for: some sign that she hasn’t been holding herself here. That something else can be freedom. “She might appear as an old crone,” she announces. “We must be nice to anyone we meet.”

“Or, she could appear as an unspeakably beautiful dame,” Red answers. Beauty is about to agree when she hears a growl from very close by. She has heard that sound before, a deep rumble that descends into the bones. She twists her head, slowly, to look over her shoulder. She is knocked to the ground. Her face smashes into dirt. The creature on top of her snarls, then whines. She feels warm liquid. Red shoves it off her. “Run!”

Beauty scrambles to her feet and runs. Behind her she hears the scattering of leaves, innumerable paws, her friend’s fury as she curses. She turns back—I can help—but no, she will only slow Red down. “GO!” Red shouts, and Beauty slams into the barrier. It burns as she sinks through, it feels like her flesh is melting off; her tears evaporate as they leave her eyes in agony. Then she is on the other side and everything is silent, sunny, smelling of strawberries. She gets to her feet. She can’t see her friend through the trees. “Red!” she screams. “RED!”

She touches the barrier and pushes, harder and harder, even as her hand burns—she has tried this before and paid for it (Vincent cuddling her arm, though his eyes narrow when he asks what did you do and she just smiles). She winces against the pain, the way her flesh starts to crisp, grits her teeth hard and keeps pushing—

—a hand catches hers. She tugs backwards. Red falls through. For a second there’s a perilous howling beyond her, then silence as the barrier shuts again.

“Your hand was burnt!” Red cries.

Beauty slaps her. Her hand is fine. It doesn’t even hurt. “You’re bleeding!” Beauty shouts, which means: What took you so long, you frightened me. Red’s cheeks are scratched, and there’s a trail of blood leaking down her elbow that starts somewhere Beauty can’t see.

“I’m fine,” Red says. “Hey—your nose is bleeding.”

Why does she lie? What does she think she is hiding, or protecting Beauty from? Beauty swipes her nose. “It’s nothing—it’s from when I fell.” She inhales against her fury, squinting up at Red. Then she touches the ribbon of Red’s shirt, at the base of her throat. Red flinches. “I need to see it,” Beauty says. “We should stop the bleeding.” And, more softly, while she picks through the knot of the ribbon: “Was it the same wolves?”

Red nods. Her mouth is a bitter line. Her lips are thin, pale and chapped. Beauty envies her those lips. They’re not an invitation to anything, they don’t invoke roses. They’re only doors for words to pass through.

Beauty unties the ribbon, then tugs at her shirt, and Red pulls it up over her head, straightens, so that Beauty can see the gash on her arm in the shape of a laughing mouth. Beauty is overcome by the sight of it. She ties Red’s shirt over the wound, compresses it, then waits. Waits. Red tilts her head like a bird.

Beauty can’t help herself. She puts her lips to Red’s collarbone and holds herself together so that she doesn’t cry. Beneath her skin Red’s pulse beats a drumline, a warning chant: this was a bad idea, you knew it.

Red takes Beauty’s face in her hands, searches her eyes. “What are we doing?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Beauty says. But her body does.

vii.

It’s funny, Red thinks—funny in a way that feels sacred, a hymn for people unused to prayer, syllables awkward on their tongues while they try to find the right words, hoping their belief gains conviction in being spoken. They’re in Red’s room, she’s wearing Beauty’s coat, they aren’t looking at each other, but they’re holding hands, a gesture that could mean friendship or camaraderie or fear. Maybe all of it. If they let go, they’ll be forced to meet eyes, they’ll have to decide: Will a new space grow between us? Or not? Will you be able to understand what I mean even if I don’t say it? Will you be able to draw back the shame of my wanting, the thick velvet of it, to see my desire as something pure—a way to lay flowers at your feet, as I’ve wanted to since I saw your face?

The face like a flower. Not like a rose. Not intoxicating or perilous—but brighter, lighter, encompassing both sunlight and the shadows around it. Daisy, chrysanthemum—lily?

Beauty extricates her hand. Steps closer. Looks into Red’s eyes: an assessment. Beast-tamer, Red thinks. She came to a damaged castle and loved a monster; she can love anything. Red always comes up with notions that make her sad. It’s one way of guarding against the world, her wolf explained, while he lay next to her in bed and caressed her hair. If you think of it all as trash you won’t be sad to discover you were right. You already knew.

“I can’t tell what you want,” Beauty says, slowly. “I’m afraid you’re humoring me because you think you owe me something.”

Red shakes her head. “I’m afraid, too—that this is another enchantment, not real.”

Beauty’s eyes have the look of polished glass. “We can be afraid together,” she whispers. Then: “If this is an enchantment, won’t a kiss break it?”

Red wishes she knew how to be unselfconscious. How to answer in a way that communicates: I am embarrassed that I’m so wrong you need to ask. A phrase, a nod. Or, to kiss her first. To dare. That last one, she decides, will best say what she wants: Have I wanted anything this much? Will it be all right, assuming we break together?

Then it’s funny again, after they’ve gone breathless, walked backwards and toppled inelegantly onto the absurdly soft coverlet. Beauty says, “Your arm,” and Red says, “It doesn’t matter,” because it doesn’t, not with Beauty’s hair tumbling through her fingers, Beauty’s skin hot beneath her palms, Beauty’s open eyes an endless sky of deep blue that disappears, suddenly, when she gasps in surprise.

• • • •

Red has a theory: When you’ve only loved monsters, you forget how to be gentle.

She’s wrong.

• • • •

What kind of beast could bruise such a body? This is one, isn’t it? They’re all faded, aren’t they?

Don’t speak of it. She puts her palm over Red’s mouth. I mean it.

• • • •

They don’t want to get out of bed. They don’t want to eat. The door is locked and Sabine calls nervously behind it, until Beauty says they’re fine, they’re just resting, everything is fine. Red’s eyes are on the verge of closing, she feels like a fly stuck in nectar, melting into the sheets. Everything is sweetness. They should have a bath—Beauty is saying—clean out the wound properly—let’s not risk it getting infected. Red, are you listening?

Red reaches for Beauty, for the softness under the blanket she has wrapped around herself, for the musical curve of her waist. Hang on, Red says. Can you just—come close again? I want to hold you. I want to—

All right, Beauty says, leaning over to press one, two, three kisses on Red’s forehead. Fine.

• • • •

Why do you keep laughing?

Because—it’s funny—you make me happy. Oh, don’t cry, I’m sorry—

I’m crying because you’re happy. I cry easily, you know this.

• • • •

Eventually they pick themselves back up. They play their parts again, and wash themselves—laughter echoing on the tile, It was mostly scratches, see? Wait—ouch!—and appear for dinner, over an hour later than is proper, the sky outside the grand windows navy. There are things to unpack: the barrier, the wolves, the way something ties it all together, but right now it doesn’t matter. After the main course, Beauty slides her foot up the back of Red’s leg, grinning down at her plate. They’re being silly. They’re being girls.

Red feels she has found something—what’s the word? She reaches out a hand and taps Beauty on the thigh, once, sharply: Stop it.

Beauty laughs. Mouths: I’ll get you for that.

Precious. That’s what she’s found. Something precious.

viii.

Beauty knows they should leave. That they can’t stay here—not together.

But where will she go? Where can they go? How do they escape? Easier not to think about it. There is still time. When Red is not injured. When they’ve got a plan for the wolves. Before Vincent returns . . .

Can she do that? Would she? Has her spell been broken? Does she want to trade it, for this?

A day passes, then another, as in a lull of honey: stolen kisses behind the pages of a book, waking up to find Red curled against her spine, so different than what I’m used to, so much more what I want. What she wants. What she hasn’t thought about since she first kissed the beast while he lay almost dying and suddenly it was no longer a beast’s mouth but a man’s mouth, sunlight flooding everywhere while she thought, in a panic, I don’t think I meant that. She loved him one way, and she didn’t want him to die, and she reconciled the two in an approximation of happiness because it seemed the safest way to survive.

But real happiness is different. Touching her lips to Red’s knuckles to watch her smile, feeling her body explored with a reverence that makes her embarrassed and sometimes, impatient. I love the seriousness of your fingers, she tells Red, and together they descend into a catalog of things they love in each other, a cartography of desires.

It’s a thunderclap when the message arrives, punctuated by Sabine’s delight as she delivers it: “Dear lady, our master shall be returning tomorrow. He is eager to be reunited with you.”

“Oh—that’s—surprising. He’s not meant to be back for at least a week.”

Sabine purses her lips. Then, as if to come up with a worthy excuse for her lady’s lack of eagerness: “Worry not. The chateau will be ready for him, madame.”

Of course. She is not the master here. “Send the messenger back,” Beauty instructs, in a daze. “Let him know we have a guest.”

Red is not her guest; maybe she never was. From the moment she appeared, Red has been her key and her keeper. Now she places her hand on Red’s chest, and thinks: I’ve never been selfish until now. This, I would trade for the fairest rose, knowing the cost.

“What do we do now?” Beauty whispers. “The fairies won’t be on our side. They never are, for tales like this.”

“Then we’ll have to figure it out together, won’t we? We promised we’d protect each other.” Red lifts her hand and kisses it as in a promise, but both of them have been here before, and neither forget to be afraid.

• • • •

They pack what they can: clothes, canteens of water, a knife, another knife, the only book Beauty can’t bear to leave. Sugar for the swiftest horse, that with a prayer might outrun the wolves. They’re just about to sneak down the staircase—while the rest of the house is sleeping, risking darkness—when the lights of the carriage swing into the driveway. Vincent’s estimate is never wrong. Perhaps he meant to catch her in the act of running away.

Beauty’s throat closes up, but she forces herself to be brave. “I’ll speak to him,” she says, shooing Red to the top of the stairs—but what can she say, what is there to say?

He might understand. They were friends first. Beauty hopes, despite everything.

She doesn’t want to break any hearts. She doesn’t want to make him angry. Would he be angry, with her?

Vincent descends from his carriage. He is not alone. Behind him is a fine gentleman with silver hair beneath his top hat. The great doors creak open. For a moment, Beauty is awkward and lost in his presence, as she was when they first met—then she opens her arms for an embrace. “Dear,” she says, while he pulls her tightly against his bulk. “Who is this?”

“I heard we had a guest,” Vincent says. “And I brought one myself—this fine gentleman I met at the inn last night. He says he is looking for his wife, who might have an ailment of memory.”

Beauty does not let her breathing betray her. She looks up at her husband, sunnily, though her blood thrums in her veins. Behind him, the wolf looms, apparent hunger in his eyes. He removes his hat and tips his head. When he smiles at her, his smile is not unkind.

ix.

Red can smell him. Red would recognize that smell anywhere. He’s not like other wolves. He had a laugh like thunder and his paws were gentle while they ran the length of her body, and she thought she loved him. There was a hole in her mind where all the terror once was. It broke open that evening while she was making pie, to go with the rabbit stew bubbling on the stove. She was humming. She was not thinking of captives. She had forgotten the next step in her recipe and pulled down a cookbook and wondered at the name on the cover—a familiar name. A name like hers.

Suddenly she could hear grandmother’s weeping bones.

That’s all it took, a moment of thinking clearly, and with it everything crumbled, with it everything broke. She killed him but he has come back for her, because that’s not how the story ends.

She killed him but he is coming up the stairs now, and in a moment of terror she thinks of running. But she has nowhere to run. This time she’ll make a clean job of it. End things the way they do in Beauty’s stories: with a finality unlike life itself.

He whispers: “Red. Red as roses, red as blood—heart of mine.”

Red clutches her knife. Her wolf stands before her. He breathes in deeply, savoring her scent, and looks down at her.

“Why is your knife drawn?” He sounds sad; his eyes are filled with that blinking wonder: as if he can’t believe her, as if she is something he doesn’t deserve. Even now, knowing what she knows, part of her wants to fall limp like a rag doll at this look. I was wrong, I was a fool, hurt me again.

Then he touches her shoulder, and the touch is not like Beauty’s, and her head clears. Her voice doesn’t tremble the way her hands do. “Why are you here?”

“To bring you home.”

“You aren’t my home.”

For a moment he keeps himself together, wretchedly. Then he licks his lips.

“You should not have broken the spell.”

Red moves, but he’s a wolf again, faster and stronger, and he falls on her with a fury.

x.

The rules have changed. They are each operating in their own fairy tales now, and this is the chapter before the last. Vincent’s guest has climbed the stairs to meet her guest, and now she must focus on Vincent, on the way he reaches out (his paw) to touch the pulse point on her neck, the way his voice is bright, feather-light, when he asks, “Darling, who gave you this?”

The slow drumbeat of her heart turns staccato.

As always, it’s her eyes that betray her first, welling with tears. Her mouth forms the words “I’m sorry” but she doesn’t say it—can’t say it—because she isn’t sorry. In his eyes Beauty might be wicked for her wanting, but she isn’t sorry because what she wants isn’t wrong.

A ridge of fur grows between his eyebrows, knotting together in misery, while in his mouth his teeth grow longer, sharper. “But I thought you loved me!”

“I do. But not the way I did as a girl.” You were kind to me, and you kept me, and I don’t know where loyalty ends and love begins.

“My castle will crumble around me—”

“No! Hold on to it. You don’t need me to be as you are. You have good people here, who love and respect you. Stay as you are.” She puts her hand on his arm but he flings it away, hiding his face between giant paws. This makes her raise her voice, bare her temper. “You must live on your own! And I must have my freedom. No one asked me what I really wanted. I am not here just to be another rose in your garden!”

“Then you should not be here at all,” he growls.

xi.

Red draws on the floor with her blood, her wolf’s blood. He hasn’t torn out her throat yet, has only bitten enough to hurt, not kill—but she can’t win, not like this.

Red casts her mind to every memory of that day in the wood and cries out, desperate: “If this is not how you want things to end, appear before me now!” She tries to say it; her words are a garble of blood.

Everything turns over. She is on her knees in the woods. She has not yet been to grandmother’s house. She does not exist in a fractured world. Instead, the world is sunlight, and she is only occupied with finding her way through the forest. But there is a bunch of flowers gathered in her fists and a horrible crone asking her if she would be so kind as to give her those flowers instead—I know they are for your poor dear grandmother, but I have no grandchildren myself, and they smell so sweet, child . . .

Yes, the fairy answers. You were kind.

“And I paid for it.”

I gave you a kind of happiness.

“It meant that I wasn’t who I am. It was a lie.”

What is it that you wish, Little Red?

Red catalogues the things she could ask for, knowing she may never get this moment again. A fairy will bend the rules twice, but no more.

She could ask for revenge. She could ask for time to unwind. She could ask for death—sweetness, in its way. But when she shuts her eyes she sees a flower, petals that move as lips do, calling her name. That’s the truth she wants to follow through till the end.

She is surprised by her answer, but only a little. “I want to learn who I am with her. I think she makes me good.”

And what will you give, Little Red?

Far away Red can feel the wolf breathing against her neck. Hear another beast’s roar. Red spreads her fingers apart and looks at her palms—empty of offerings. But something about their shape invokes wings. Birds aching to fly away.

This is the price of her fairy tale. She opens her mouth to pay it.

xii.

She smells flesh, in the wood. She follows it. She’s hungry. Saliva drips in strings from her jaws.

She senses her prey stalking behind a line of trees, and waits, patiently. If she catches it off-guard, she’ll catch it dead. She prefers things that don’t struggle.

Her prey stills. She tenses, then leaps through the trees, ready to pounce—

It’s not a human. It’s a wolf. She whines in disappointment, then squares herself for a fight. Meat is meat, after all. Bares her teeth. Looks into the wolf’s eyes, strange eyes, eyes black as crow’s wings.

The wolf blinks.

She blinks at the wolf. Looks down at her enormous paws. Sits backwards and feels tears brim, dammit, even in this form.

The wolf draws close to her, and begins to lick her tears. Then suddenly it’s not a beast’s tongue against her fur, but a girl’s mouth against her cheek, pliant and tender. She presses her thumb to the girl’s collarbone. She collapses into the girl’s lap, leans into her, plants a kiss on the curve of her hip. “Is it you?” she asks. “It must be you.”

“And you’re not a fairy, you’re not a dream. You’re here.”

They embrace, shakily, but their limbs are so confused that the fall back onto the forest floor, and lie there gathered in each other’s arms, first laughing, then crying. It’s strange, but she thinks she’ll quite enjoy remembering to be human, to do human things: kisses, embraces. How to be a girl, and a beast, and nothing but herself.

xiii.

“Once upon a time, there were two girls.”

“Don’t say once upon a time, it’s so boring.”

“Oh, right. You’ve told me that before.”

B stretches out her legs, observes the shadow they make against the wall. Continues: “First, apart, they tamed some beasts. But they were lonely and not very happy, even if it seemed like the story should end there. When they found each other, it was like sunlight. They realized they didn’t want to live that way forever. That there were other things they could do. Together.”

“Like?”

“Oh, space travel. Vampire hunting. Pro wrestling. You know.”

“What about the Beast and the Wolf, then?”

“We-e-ell. They might have torn each other apart. They were very hungry and very angry. Or maybe they saw each other as a mirror, and had their own happily ever after, as wild things do.”

“So you haven’t figured it out.” R touches her friend’s knee, and grins, showing all of her teeth. She is wearing the red cardigan her grandmother knitted for her, and eating a jam sandwich.

B, which might stand for bookworm, cleans her glasses on her blouse before putting them back on her nose. “You’ve caught me. I still don’t know how it ends. Just that it doesn’t end the way you expect.”

“Good,” R says. “I like unexpected things.”

—With thanks to Nica, Stef, Tamsyn, and Brandie.

©2019 by Isabel Yap.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Isabel Yap writes fiction and poetry, works in the tech industry, and drinks tea. Born and raised in Manila, she has also lived in California and London. She is currently completing her MBA at Harvard Business School. In 2013 she attended the Clarion Writers Workshop. Her work has appeared in venues including Tor.com, Strange Horizons, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction. She is @visyap on Twitter and her website is https://isabelyap.com.

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

The Words of Our Enemies, the Words of Our Hearts

Merc Fenn Wolfmoor | 5309 words

Prince Aretas, son of the Ever-Hungry Queen, had gone into the forest. Yarchuse knew the truth even before ae coaxed the story from the prince’s bootprints bruising dry earth. Ae shivered, hand splayed above the trail. Dammit.

Ae heard the prince’s naïve belief etched into his tracks: I can end this war without more death. I will speak to the Heart of the Forest and find peace.

You foolish child, Yarchuse thought, clenching aer jaw against a spurt of panic. The forest would never relent, just as the queen would never cease her war. Yarchuse was weary and yet ae would serve until death or an end found aer.

“He left before dawn,” Yarchuse said, exhaling slow. “He would have reached the forest by now.”

“Did no one witness my son?” the Ever-Hungry Queen said, her voice a crack of stone and air. “Why was he not stopped?”

Yarchuse stepped forward before the queen’s wroth spilled across the soldiers and courtiers who waited in rigid silence along the poet wall. “Majesty,” ae said, “the blame is mine. His Highness asked for his breath to be sung into the barricade.” Ae tilted aer hand at the shimmering wall rising into the dawn-streaked sky around the camp. “I thought it was a precaution should he need to flee—”

The Ever-Hungry Queen’s teeth flashed as her lips peeled back in rage. “Tomeslinger, I want my son back. Alive.”

Yarchuse weathered the queen’s fury easier than her soldiers would. Ae was not one she could kill in a moment’s passion. Ae kept aer expression impassive. “We will get him back, Majesty.”

Ae bowed, spinning a handful of soothing words—ease be with you, let your blood calm, breathe free—between aer fingers. Ae slipped the spell with careful precision around the Ever-Hungry Queen’s ankle, where the magic would spiral up her limb and seep unnoticed into her heart. It was a familiar habit for Yarchuse now, even if it had become more and more difficult in recent years. Since the princess’s death, the queen had calcified herself, allowing only her rage to burn.

“You have until dusk, tomeslinger.” The threat in her voice was expected and yet held far more weight and promise of retribution if ae failed.

Yarchuse straightened, uneasy and masking aer mood with a brush of words: chill lake water untouched by wind.

Kel, aer closest friend, was on the other side of the camp feeding. Yarchuse resisted calling on her for support. Ae would not appear weak before the queen’s anger.

The Ever-Hungry Queen whirled in a blaze of armored silk and tomeslung shield-beads. She stalked through the gate, her entourage at her heels. The soldiers who had been on dark-sky duty exhaled and bowed to Yarchuse in gratitude. Ae waved them back to their posts. Everyone was exhausted from the long, unyielding campaign.

And the prince, though his mother was unaware, was skilled in earth-warding magic of his own. With the poet wall spun to allow him to pass unchallenged, Aretas could have lulled the moors to hide him as he crept down the sloping hill towards the great forest. Yarchuse silently berated aerself. When Aretas had asked for access to the wall, ae had not thought the prince would be such a fool.

“Attir,” Yarchuse said to the chief earth-warden scout, who stood unmoved by the gate. “Take the raptors and see if you can discern where the prince is in the forest. Hurry.”

The woman saluted.

Yarchuse believed the boy lived, for the forest was not subtle when it tasted victory. If Aretas was dead, all in the queen’s camp would have heard the trees’ triumph. How long the prince would survive was not a question Yarchuse could answer, and ae feared it would be too damningly short. If the prince died, so would ae—in her grief, the queen would turn her army against Yarchuse aerself, and even ae could not win such a battle.

Yarchuse D’Maatone, elite tomeslinger in the Tenth Regiment of Acumen Scrolls, Slayer of the White Sorrow, Champion of Urantanadon, was not certain ae would have the courage to submit aerself to such a death. Aer cowardice would mean slaughtering aer own followers in self-defense, until ae were nevertheless overwhelmed and murdered. Ae prayed silently to the Unearthly Library: Grant me courage and wisdom to fulfill my duty. Let this day not end in more blood.

• • • •

The Ever-Hungry Queen first began her insatiable war against the trees after her first-born daughter was crushed under a willow tree while hunting fox. It had been three years ago. Yarchuse had returned from cleansing the city of Urantanadon from the whisper-rot only to attend the heir apparent’s funeral.

“It was an accident,” the princess’s bodyguard said before he was executed. “The tree moved to protect the fox and she wouldn’t back down.”

Yarchuse offered to read the place of the princess’s death, but the queen refused. “There is nothing a plant can tell that will return my daughter’s life. Burn it all,” she ordered. “All the trees in all my lands will pay for what we have lost.”

So Yarchuse had shouldered aer newest mantle and led the wardens and aer fellow tomeslingers on the Great Uprooting. The Worded City was razed of greenery; the gardens burned; the markets were allowed harvested vegetation only if it was on the edge of rotting. Yarchuse still tasted the acrid smoke in aer throat long after. The Queen did not listen to the protests of the gardeners and the alchemists who worried that the purge of flora would harm the people.

When the Worded City was stripped of plant life, the war boiled outward. Trees fled but were cut down and burned regardless. Yarchuse did not relish this work, but ae obeyed. The irony that aer tome’s base elements were made from wood-pulp paper and vellum was not lost on Yarchuse. Ae hoped that when enough forests burned, the Ever-Hungry Queen would relent and turn her focus elsewhere.

But she had not.

And now, on the edge of the moors, the last bastion of the forests gathered in defense. Behind the trees lay the ocean, unwelcoming of earth-born flesh or root. It would end here, somehow.

• • • •

Yarchuse shielded aer eyes with aer hand, squinting against the midday sun. Bone-speared birch warriors and hulking oak berserkers were just visible on the crest of the moor. A thousand thousand trees ready for war. Attir should be back by now.

Beside aer, the apex raptor Kel let out an impatient huff. She canted her head sideways and looked down with a slitted gray eye. Wood burns whether alive or dead, she signed. Her huge foreclaws flashed with silver scrolling. We should attack now!

“The fire wardens are still spent,” Yarchuse said, sharper than ae meant.

Then we go without. The apex raptor stood nearly sixty hands tall at the peak of her skull, radiant with a turquoise and scarlet crest, the plumage about her neck undulating into spilled-oil shimmers. Sling-forged armor protected the contours of her sleek, powerfully muscled body. You and I, she said, we are death.

Ae forced a pinched smile. She would have smelled aer emotion if ae hadn’t limed aer own body with a scentless mask. Kel’s strength wasn’t reading human facial expressions.

Together they had won a dozen battles at the behest of the Ever-Hungry Queen. Yarchuse had ridden with Kel into war, aer flesh arm raised in challenge, coiling and spinning destruction carved from syllables between aer fingers. The exhilaration had always been flush and wild in aer heart: the thrill of victory as enemy soldiers fell before aer and Kel. Ae felt invincible, commanding aer magic and bolstered by the great apex raptor.

Now, ae couldn’t attack without risking Prince Aretas’s life.

The prince was a fool, and to the Ever-Hungry Queen, that fool was worth more than the lives of her entire army. The prince’s spelled armor would protect him for a time, but eventually words would crack under root and bough and thorn.

They stood on the edge of the slope rising to the camp, a dozen paces outside the poet wall. The wall was a practical, unadorned barrier: spun from defensive words, solid and unremarkable, yet strong enough to withstand siege. It was nothing like the elegant arches and spires of the Worded City, the complex algorithmic weaves of architecture slung from Words of creation and strength. Ae missed home with a sudden, sharp pang.

Kel let out a low clicking sound, startling Yarchuse from aer anxious thought-spirals. Ae looked at the raptor.

The scouts are returning, she signed. Look.

The trio of earth wardens galloped across the dip of land between where the forest rose and the next great hill the camp was built upon. The human wardens rode tomeslung raptors—creatures little bigger than ponies, in the shape of Kel and crafted from her essence by Yarchuse’s power, but spun from letters and words of stealth, speed, stamina.

Attir swung down from her spelled raptor and bowed, first to Yarchuse and then to Kel. “Tomeslinger. General.”

Kel lowered her head, jaws wide, and Attir’s mount placed its muzzle on her tongue. She licked the layer of ink from its constructed snout. Kel’s chest rumbled as she swallowed the memory of what the smaller raptor had observed.

“His Highness’ trail leads to the trees,” Attir said. She wiped sweat from her face, still breathing hard. “From what I could feel through the soil, he’s alive but he’s deep. I . . .” She shuddered, a whole-body tremble that made Yarchuse flinch in sympathy. “There’s something old in there, your Excellency. I don’t know what it is.”

Kel suddenly reared back, snapping her head up and clacking her jaws together. The tomeslung-raptors skittered away, silent.

“What’s wrong?” Yarchuse asked, fear sharp under aer tongue. Ae rarely saw Kel in distress, and never outside battle.

She shook her head, her neck raised so she didn’t swat Yarchuse or Attir flat with her might. It wants you, she signed, and her claws moved almost too quickly for Yarchuse to follow. It calls you poison and it wants.

She stamped one hind foot and the ground trembled. Attir’s eyes widened in panic. The other two wardens slid down from their raptors, heads bowed in wary submission.

“Calm yourselves,” Yarchuse said, holding up aer hand. “Kel, show me.”

The great apex raptor snarled but lowered her jaw again and Yarchuse touched aer palm against her heavy lip, the ridge of her teeth sharp against aer skin. She unspooled the impressions she had swallowed in a breath and Yarchuse inhaled sight and weighted understanding.

The residue spins images of burning forests, ax-felled groves, wood broken apart and left to rot unsanctified. Above the carnage looms an astral human figure wreathed in death: Yarchuse D’Maatone, a scion of un-mercy unleashed against nature. The vision is Yarchuse when in war: with radiant ceremonial armor and a flesh-wrapped tome hung from aer belt, words of malice curled between aer fingers. Yet as the forest sees ae, aer eyes are pitted hollows and aer teeth like saws. Ae breaks the boughs of fallen saplings under heel and rips foliage from branch with vicious spells.

Ae yanked aer hand away from Kel’s lip and shuddered.

Ancestral ballads, Yarchuse thought in horror. Is that what the trees imagine me?

“Inform Her Majesty the prince is alive,” ae said, aer voice hoarse. With effort, ae straightened and infused aer tone with confidence and authority ae did not feel. “But do not reveal anything else as of yet.”

“Excellency?” one of the scouts asked, her brows crinkled together in worry. “We can’t lie—”

“I don’t ask that,” Yarchuse said. If it was ae the forest wanted, then it was ae the forest would receive. Ae just needed to buy aerself time to forge a rescue, somehow. “I will see the prince returned alive and unharmed, but Her Majesty must stay within the walls until then. Do you understand?”

The scouts couldn’t, not with so vague a promise, but they were not about to defy Yarchuse’s command. The wardens saluted; the raptors bobbed their heads.

Ae gestured the gate open with a quick-thrown word of parting, and the poet wall rippled open to let the wardens and their raptors through. “Attir, wait a moment.”

Attir remained with her feet planted firm. “Your Excellency?”

Kel huffed in rage, her feathers smoothing down along her ruff as Yarchuse placed aer hand on her flank. Her plumage hid aer trembling fingers.

“Bring me my armor,” ae said. “I am going into the forest.”

• • • •

Yarchuse’s mail coat hung heavier than ae liked, weighted with a construct-arm to give aer a symmetrical appearance. Ae tied the delicately worded strings in the construct, then flexed aer second arm. It glimmered chiaroscuro and the fingers were equipped with retractable knives like claws.

The sunlight dazzled across Kel’s armor and feathers. Her swaying gait devoured the distance between the Ever-Hungry Queen’s camp and the edge of the forest. She’d argued with aer, but only briefly. By the time Attir had returned with Yarchuse’s armor, informing ae that the wardens were on their way to report to the queen, Kel had accepted Yarchuse’s plan.

“Send our demand, Attir,” ae said, looking down from where they rose atop Kel’s mighty back, aer legs on either side of her thick neck at the slope of shoulders.

Kel halted, the vibration of her unsettled growl shivering through Yarchuse’s limbs. Ae gripped the thick feathers at the base of her neck for support.

The warden swung off her mount, knelt, and pressed her hands into the grass. Yarchuse’s demand was simple: Ae would offer aerself to the forest in exchange for Prince Aretas, alive and unharmed. The wind bowed the moorland grass and carried the scent of far-off rain. Time stretched unbearably slow.

Then Attir jerked to her feet, wincing. “It’s agreed, your Excellency. The forest will give up His Highness if you surrender.”

“Done.”

The warden spread her arms and a low grumbling in the soil rippled outward, a new wave through the grass until it reached the trees.

Yarchuse slid down from Kel’s back, steadying aerself with aer hand on her side. Aer heartbeat tripped rapidly against aer breastbone.

You need not be alone, Kel signed.

“I know,” Yarchuse murmured. “But I must. I need you to protect Aretas.”

She snarled. He is not worth your life.

“My life is worth peace,” ae said softly. Ae clung to this conviction, all ae had now. She lowered her muzzle and pressed the bridge of her nose against aer chest. Yarchuse wrapped aer arm around her head in a hug. “You give me strength, friend.”

Kel purred, a rumble through her chest and into her teeth and Yarchuse shut aer eyes a moment as ae held her. Neither of them had ever been able to say farewells.

“General! Excellency!”

Yarchuse started and let aer arm drop to aer side. Kel straightened.

The prince stepped out of the forest, naked and glistening with dew. He trembled but didn’t stumble as he walked. His body was whole: pale skin unbruised, hair tangled in golden curls, brown eyes wide and damp and unafraid. Even at this distance, Yarchuse saw no cause for alarm.

Kel huffed. Her ruff flared in anger. She tapped code with her hind toes so only Yarchuse would hear. That’s not the prince.

“What?” Yarchuse pitched aer voice low, muting sudden panic.

Look closer. He smells of not-flesh.

Yarchuse kept aer flesh arm by aer side and inconspicuously wove a mirror between aer fingers. Ae looked into the spelled glass, tilted towards the naked prince, and saw she spoke true.

In the magic, the prince’s bones were willow fonds, his veins sap, his heart a knot of tangled bloodwood. The illusion was unlike anything Yarchuse had ever witnessed. The magic in aer hand cracked, strobing between what was true and what was meant: wood, flesh, leaf, marrow. Ae would have bought into the false prince’s illusion, and even now, ae still wanted to believe this was the Queen-Regent’s son, alive and unharmed, offered in good faith for aer life. The magic in the construct was powerful indeed.

I will destroy this forest, Kel snarled, the thump of her claws nearly overwhelmed by her guttural rumble.

“No!” Yarchuse dissipated the mirror and laid aer hand on her flank. Ae didn’t try to conceal aer own trembling. “Listen. This not-prince is meant as a decoy, but if we show we know it to be false, the boy will die. He must be alive still. Protect this construct and forestall the queen’s wrath. Please, my friend. Buy me time to save His Highness.”

For you, my heart, she said, with the slow, deliberateness of a death knell, I will rip every plant from its roots until the world is naught but stone and kindling.

Yarchuse smiled despite aer knotted stomach and the rapidity of aer heartbeat. “I know.”

Attir pulled a robe from her raptor’s saddlebag and held it ready.

Yarchuse sent a silent prayer to the Unearthly Library, aer spiritual anchor. Ae had entered the ethereal place of wisdom when ae undertook aer tomeslinger trial to be admitted into the Tenth Regiment of Acumen Scrolls. It had been the most beautiful thing Yarchuse had ever beheld, for the Library contained all the souls of every book, and they shone with the incandescent radiance and power only words could display. When ae died, aer body would be composed into a book and aer soul shelved in the Library beside legends. But only if ae died with honor, unbroken, and aer remains returned to the Worded City. Yarchuse did not know what magic saturated the old forest, or how that would taint aer spirit in death.

Yarchuse stepped forward.

The rustle-creak of leaf and bough from the tree soldiers was too loud to ignore. Yarchuse swallowed, aer throat dry and raspy. For all aer power, ae was still human and fragile in comparison to the trees.

Huge birch warriors, white-barked and studded with thorns from their briar kin, shook spears of bone and rust-salvaged iron. The massive oak berserkers, crowned in bloody foliage, rumbled and thumped their roots like drums. The forest peeled aside to create a tunnel into the ranks, the ground flattened smoother than marble. It looked like a great maw opened into the belly of death.

Yarchuse glanced over aer shoulder just before ae was within reach of the trees. Kel stood unmoved, her great form a silhouette under the sun. The false prince bowed to the raptor, who inclined her head in return. Attir wrapped the robe about the boy’s frame. Then the false prince pulled himself up onto Kel’s back, unhesitant and familiar—so like Aretas had done countless times past. Kel didn’t move.

Yarchuse looked forward and stepped into the forest.

The trees did not look at Yarchuse as ae marched deeper into their midst. Towering trunks and canopied foliage let in only the faintest slivers of light, enough for aer eyes to adjust. Deeper ae trod, and ae felt more than saw the trees closing rank behind aer. There would be no retreat.

The air weighed heavy against Yarchuse’s senses. There was age here, wisdom and emotion so deep it was all but unknowable. Aer breath came with effort. There seemed to be no end to the forest. Would ae walk forever and never find what ae sought?

“I know your illusion,” Yarchuse called. There was no echo to aer voice. “I know the prince is still here. Deliver him to me unharmed. We can come to a truce!”

The trees fanned out into a circular grove open to the sky, and Yarchuse stepped into the clearing. The movement of bough and trunk had been so smooth, so subtle, ae was momentarily dizzy at the sudden change in the woods. At once Yarchuse saw the lost prince: still in armor, lying in a bed of soft green moss. Aretas’ chest rose and fell in easy sleep.

Standing to the side and towering over the prince was an ancient tree of no determinate species. Their bark was like the starless sky, their leaves as silver as moonlight, and their branches were limned with runes in the language of trees. The Heart of the Forest.

Deathsinger, the Heart said, their vibration-song felt in bone and soul alike.

Yarchuse gasped, the weight of the Heart’s scrutiny buckling aer knees. Loam and shed bark bit into aer kneecaps. Ae struggled to keep aer construct arm raised, the tomeslung magic flaring out in a domed shield. The Heart of the Forest stood unmoved and unimpressed.

“You offered a falsehood,” ae said. “I’ve seen through your illusion prince. Release His Highness and take me in his place.”

No.

“Do not make me hurt you,” Yarchuse said. Ae readied aer magic, spells of lightning and steel, heat and ice.

You have harmed all my kind enough, the Heart said, and fury thickened their voice until its power crashed upon Yarchuse in a moon-towed wave. Ae flinched and focused on aer shield, fear flaring bright in aer mind.

No more.

With a mighty crack like the shattering of the land’s bones, the Heart’s power rent Yarchuse’s asunder. Ae was flung backwards into the moss-sheathed stones. Breath whooshed from aer lungs, and then pain filled aer ribs in place of air. Yarchuse gasped. White and silver bands flared across aer eyes.

The Heart snapped its woody vines like whips, and the flora wrapped about Yarchuse’s arm and waist and throat, lifting aer off the ground. Pressure closed about aer neck and middle, and Yarchuse frantically redirected aer focus to aer armor under the vines’ grip.

“Your illusioned prince will not last,” Yarchuse said, panting. As hard as ae struggled, ae could not even loosen the vines’ grip on aer body. “It is folly—”

Is it? The Heart lifted Yarchuse until ae was face-to-face before the ancient forest. Long have I called to the sapling, and he came. We offered him rest and he accepted. He believes it is his duty to die here so this destruction will end.

Shock jolted through Yarchuse. Ae sensed no lies from the Heart. Ae glanced once more at the sleeping prince, prone and peaceful in the loam. Ae had always thought Aretas idealistic but good-hearted, one who knew what his duty was and was unafraid to uphold it. He had grown bolder after the death of his sister. On his seventeenth year this spring, when he had come of age, he had gone to the fleshsingers, mages who specialized in healing, and requested they reshape his body to minimize his breasts and pronounce his genitals to better suit his chosen gender.

Yarchuse had accompanied Aretas, for ae had always been like an elder cousin to the queen’s children. The joy in the prince’s eyes when he woke from the surgical trance had made Yarchuse’s heart swell in pride. Later, at dinner, Aretas spoke to Yarchuse alone. “I want this war to end,” he declared. “I will accompany you until my mother relents.”

And so he had, challenging the queen’s orders and mingling with the soldiers and the raptors, pleading his views of a better world. It had not stopped the Ever-Hungry Queen’s campaign. Even Yarchuse could not sway her, although ae had never tried—even when the prince begged aer to try.

If ae had used aer voice instead of aer magic, could ae have prevented this in the first place? Spared Aretas from believing he had to die to stop his mother’s war?

“He is not responsible for this,” Yarchuse said.

The Heart threw Yarchuse to the ground, and ae tumbled. A rock bashed aer shin, sending pain flaring up aer leg even through the armor. The padded spells absorbed most of the impact so ae didn’t shatter aer spine on impact.

Who, then? You, deathsinger? Only your saplings seek peace, while your thick trunked elders remain unbending.

Yarchuse swallowed against panic. “Not all of us.”

Your song is empty, singer-of-death. When your monarch embraces the illusion in her court, it will take her life, said the Heart. As she has taken the lives of so many.

“There’s another answer,” Yarchuse said, shakily pushing aerself to aer knees. “We can stop this slaughter.”

When did your queen stop, even after we offered our sibling in sacrifice for what was lost? She burned innocents and younglings who had done no harm!

“I know,” Yarchuse said, and the admission ripped at aer gut, all the guilt ae had repressed for so many years rising like bile. The fight fled aer body and ae slumped back on aer heels. Ae did not try to stop aer tears. “I was wrong. She’s wrong. All of us who participated in this war, we were misguided and I can never atone for the life lost.”

The Heart lashed their vines but did not strike Yarchuse this time. Their anger shook the ground. Speak then, deathsinger.

Yarchuse shut aer eyes and with effort, withdrew all aer magic. Aer armor faded into unfortified cloth. The tomeslung words flaked away like dead scales from aer skin, leaving aer mortal body exposed and vulnerable. Ae shivered as the damp, heavy air from the deep forest chilled the sweat on aer body.

“Keep the flesh prince here and do not kill the Ever-Hungry Queen,” Yarchuse said, and ae felt the Heart’s fury build, mingled with aer own deep guilt. Ae did not wish to leave the prince here, and yet, it had been his choice. Yarchuse could not steal that from him when ae had done nothing to support his cause. “Let your wooden prince be a proxy. So long as it lives, so does the flesh prince. You and the queen will each hold a piece of the other’s heart. As long as there is peace between root and bone, neither prince will come to harm. The queen loves her son and she will relent her destruction rather than hold another funeral.”

Slowly, Yarchuse opened aer eyes and looked up at the Heart. The great being’s vines folded back against their darkened bark.

And how long do you believe such peace will last? Fleshroots do not have the years as the forest does.

“But you do remember, and humans can, too,” Yarchuse said. Each breath ae took felt like a small victory. Ae lifted aer hand in supplication. “I will create mirror robes for your prince, which will show our Aretas, a constant reminder to my queen and my people. I cannot give you back the lives lost under fire and ax. I can pull the words sewn in the earth so that your roots may take hold again and not crumble. It will take time.”

And when it is done, what have my woods gained but fear for our lives if we return to your lands, to your cities? The Heart stretched out a bough, branches tipped and shaped like fingers. Bark paused a breath from Yarchuse’s chin. We cleanse your air and give you sustenance. For ages past we sheltered and harbored your people. We asked for naught, yet you took and took, and when my kin defended our cousins of fur, you turned upon us all. What promise can you make that it will not happen again?

“I have no answer,” Yarchuse said. Ae bowed aer head. “I’m culpable in this destruction and I can’t ask forgiveness for what I’ve done.”

Ae breathed in slowly. The fear had faded into dull heartache. How many lives could have been spared if ae had not been a coward and had defied the Ever-Hungry Queen’s war-lust from the onset? Ae was the most powerful tomeslinger in the land. Ae could have prevented so much carnage, and ae had not. It was a guilt ae would never undo or repay.

“If you require my death, so be it. I ask only that you give me time to unmake the ruined earth and I will return to you when finished and you may do unto me as you see fit.” Yarchuse swallowed. “I give you my word.”

The Heart’s branch-palm lifted aer chin and ae stared up at the great tree. I see truth in your words.

Yarchuse held still, waiting. In all aer life, refusing to fight or defend aerself now was the hardest battle ae had ever fought.

A shallow gasp heralded the prince’s awakening. He sat up slowly, blinking and gazing about in awe.

We will regrow, the Heart said, and perhaps in the seasons that come, your people will as well.

“I hope so,” Yarchuse said.

Your prince will stay, and he will be treated with honor, as one of our kin.

Aretas inhaled and bowed his head. It was as if he had heard the entire exchange. “I accept.”

Go, the Heart said, withdrawing their hand from Yarchuse’s chin. We will agree to this truce, an exchange of princes. Let carnage end. We wish the world to grow.

Shakily, Yarchuse rose to aer feet. Ae looked at Aretas, who smiled brightly. “Thank you.” Ae bowed low to the Heart in respect. “When my work is done, I will return to you—”

No, the Heart said. I will not take your life the way your people have taken ours. Uphold your word and heal our shared lands. Show your saplings a better way.

Yarchuse had no response, aer throat closed off in shock, relief, and overwhelming shame. Ae looked at the prince, who smiled brightly. “I will,” ae said. “My word is yours.”

The Heart spread their branches wide, and the grove parted into a sun-dappled tunnel.

• • • •

Yarchuse stumbled through the woods, aer thoughts strewn afar as the full weight of what ae had promised, what the Heart had offered, settled into aer mind.

When ae returned to the Worded City, ae would erase from aer tome all spells of war. In their place ae would begin crafting words and incantations for healing, for peace. The prospect gave aer hope.

When ae stepped from the trees’ shadows, ae saw the Ever-Hungry Queen’s army repentant and battle-ready covering the moors.

Tension rippled through the front ranks. The bulwark guard lowered spears in preparation, the fresh-painted tomeslung words of defense glistening on armor and steel shields. Attir and her raptor waited halfway between the front line and the forest. And beside them towered Kel, the false-prince still on her back.

Yarchuse lifted aer arm. “Stand down,” ae called. “There is no longer any need for war. The prince lives. Let the trees go in peace. They will not wage war any longer if we will not.”

Behind aer, the forest began a slow, solemn retreat, fanning out as it migrated in majestic waves inland again, parting to either side of the army. The Ever-Hungry Queen stalked forward. The woodland prince slipped from Kel’s back and approached her.

Yarchuse reached Kel’s side, and the apex raptor kreed in relief and curled her neck around aer, her eye level with Yarchuse’s. Ae smiled and pressed aer forehead against her cheek. “It’s done,” ae whispered.

Then ae turned as the Ever-Hungry Queen embraced the prince. He held onto her, and there was no death, no blood. Yarchuse sighed in aching relief.

“Let us return home,” the prince said. “All of us.” He looked over one shoulder and nodded to Yarchuse, who inclined aer head in return.

What now? Kel signed.

Yarchuse smiled. Ae was composing a ballad of this day, one that could be sung across the lands and remembered for generations. The truth: an ode to peace.

©2018 by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor. Originally published in Sword and Sonnet, edited by Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Merc Fenn Wolfmoor is a queer non-binary writer who lives in Minnesota and is a 2016 Nebula Awards finalist. Their stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Fireside, Apex, Uncanny, Shimmer, Cicada, and has been reprinted three times in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. You can find Merc on Twitter @Merc_Wolfmoor, Patreon, or their website. Their debut short story collection, So You Want To Be A Robot, came out from Lethe Press in May 2017.

EXCERPT: Supernova Era (Tor Books)

Cixin Liu (translated by Joel Martinsen) | 5862 words

From science fiction legend Cixin Liu, the bestselling and award-winning author of The Three-Body Problem, comes a vision of the future that reads like Lord of the Flies on a global scale.

In those days, Earth was a planet in space.

In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth.

On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end.

Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of thirteen will die.

And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge needed to keep the world running.

But when the world is theirs, the last generation may not want to continue the legacy left to them. And in shaping the future however they want, will the children usher in an era of bright beginnings or final mistakes?

Coming October 22, 2019 from Tor Books.

Prologue

In those days, Earth was a planet in space.

In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth.

In the sea of lights of this city was a school, and in a classroom in that school, a class was holding a middle-school graduation party where, as in all such events, the children were talking about their aspirations.

“I want to be a general!” said Lü Gang, a skinny kid who gave the impression of power disproportionate to his size.

“Boring!” someone said. “There won’t be any fighting, so all a general can do is lead troops in drills.”

“I want to be a doctor,” a girl named Lin Sha said in a quiet voice, to mocking laughter.

“Yeah, right. Last time we went to the countryside, even the sight of cocoons freaked you out. And you want to cut people open?”

“My mom’s a doctor,” she said, either as proof she wasn’t frightened, or to explain her reason for wanting to be one.

Zheng Chen, their young homeroom teacher, had been staring out the window at the city lights, lost in thought, but now turned her attention back to the class.

“What about you, Xiaomeng. What do you want to do when you grow up?” she asked the girl next to her, who had also been staring out the window. The girl was plainly dressed, and her large, spirited eyes revealed a melancholy and maturity beyond her years.

“My family’s not well-off. I’ll only be able to go to a vocational high school,” she said with a small sigh.

“What about you, Huahua?” Zheng Chen asked a good-looking boy whose large eyes were always lit up with delight, as if the world was perpetually a riot of newly exploded fireworks.

“The future’s so cool I can’t decide. But whatever I do, I want to be the best!”

Someone said they wanted to be an athlete, someone else a diplomat. When one girl said she wanted to be a teacher, Zheng Chen said gently, “It’s not easy,” and then turned back to stare out the window.

“Did you know Ms. Zheng’s pregnant?” a girl whispered.

“That’s right. And the school has cutback layoffs scheduled for right around the time she’ll be giving birth next year, so things don’t look good,” said a boy.

At this, Zheng Chen laughed. “I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m wondering, what will the world be like when my kid is your age?”

“This is boring,” said a small, scrawny kid. His name was Yan Jing, but everyone called him “Specs” because of the thick glasses he wore for nearsightedness. “No one knows what the future holds. It’s unpredictable. Anything could happen.”

“Science can make predictions,” said Huahua. “Futurologists can.”

Specs shook his head. “It’s science that tells us that the future’s unpredictable. Any predictions from those futurologists are imprecise, because the world is a chaotic system.”

“I’ve heard about that. When a butterfly flaps its wings, there’s a hurricane on the other side of the world.”

“That’s right,” Specs said, nodding. “A chaotic system.”

Huahua said, “My dream is to be that butterfly.”

Specs shook his head again. “You don’t understand at all. We’re all butterflies, just like every butterfly. Every grain of sand and every drop of rain is a butterfly. That’s why the world is unpredictable.”

“You once talked about an uncertainty principle . . .”

“That’s right. Microparticles can’t be predicted. They only exist as a probability. So the whole world is unpredictable. And there’s the theory of multiple worlds, where when you flip a coin the world splits in two, and the coin lands heads in one world and tails in the other . . .”

Zheng Chen laughed. “Specs, you yourself are proof enough. When I was your age, I’d never have imagined that one day a middle school student would know so much.”

“Specs has read lots of books!” said another child, and others nodded.

“Ms. Zheng’s baby is going to be even more amazing. Who knows—maybe genetic engineering will let him grow a real pair of wings!” Huahua said, and everyone laughed.

“Students,” their teacher said as she stood up, “take a last look at your campus.”

They left the classroom and strolled with their teacher through the grounds. Most of the lights were off, and the city lights that shone in the distance lent the campus an air of hazy calm. They passed two classroom buildings, administration, the library, and finally the row of Chinese parasol trees before reaching the athletic field. The forty-three children stood in the center surrounding their young teacher, who opened her arms to the sky, its stars dim under the lights of the city, and said, “Now, children, childhood is over.”

In those days, Earth was a planet in space.

In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth.

• • • •

It may seem like an insignificant story. Forty-three children leaving their peaceful school and continuing their respective life journeys.

It may seem like an ordinary night, a moment in the flow of time between the endless past and the limitless future. “One can’t step twice in the same river” is nothing more than the babbling of an ancient Greek, for the river of time is the river of life, and this river flows endlessly at the same unchanging speed, an eternal flow of life and history and time.

That’s what the people of this city thought. That’s what the people of the plains of northern China thought. That’s what the people of Asia thought. And that’s what the carbon-based life-forms called humans everywhere on the planet thought. On this hemisphere, they were being lulled to sleep by the flow of time, convinced that the sacred eternal was unbreakable by any force, and they would wake up to a dawn identical to that of countless previous mornings. That faith, lurking in the depths of their consciousness, granted them the same peaceful dreams woven for untold generations.

It was an ordinary school, in a peaceful corner of a brilliant night in the city.

Forty-three thirteen-year-olds and their homeroom teacher looked up at the stars.

The winter’s constellations, Taurus, Orion, and Canis Major, were already below the western horizon, and the summer’s, Lyra, Hercules, and Libra, had been up for a while. Each star was like a distant eye blinking at the human world from the depths of the universe. But on this night, the cosmic gaze was somewhat different.

On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end.

1

The Dead Star

The End

In the space within a ten-light-year radius of Earth, astronomers discovered eleven stars: the triple-star system formed from Proxima Centauri, Alpha Centauri A, and Alpha Centauri B; two binary-star systems, Sirius A and Sirius B, and Luyten 726-8 A and Luyten 726-8 B; and four single stars, Barnard’s Star, Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, and Ross 154. Astronomers have not ruled out the possibility that other stars, either especially dim or obscured by interstellar dust, are waiting to be detected.¹

Astronomers had noticed in this area the presence of a large amount of cosmic dust, like a dark cloud floating in the black night of space. When UV sensors on a satellite were trained on this distant cloud, a peak of 216 mm was found on the absorption spectrum, suggesting that the cloud was likely formed from carbon microparticles; the cloud’s reflectivity suggested that these particles were covered in a thin layer of ice. The particles were in the 2–200 nm range, roughly the same as the wavelength of visible light, rendering it opaque.

It was this cloud that blocked a star eight light-years from Earth. Twenty-three times the diameter of the sun and sixty-seven times its mass, the star was no longer main sequence but was in the final phase of its long evolution, its waning years. We’ll call it the Dead Star.

Even if it had a memory, the Dead Star would not remember its childhood. It was born fifty million years ago out of a mother nebula. Atomic motion and radiation from the galactic center disrupted the stillness of the nebula, whose particles congealed around a center under gravitational attraction. This stately dust storm endured for two million years, while in its center, hydrogen atoms began to fuse into helium. The Dead Star was born out of this atomic furnace.

After a dramatic childhood and rocky adolescence, fusion energy arrested the collapse of the stellar crust, and the Dead Star entered a lengthy middle age, an evolution that took place over hundreds of millions of years instead of the hours, minutes, and seconds of its childhood, bringing a new point of calm light to the galaxy’s vast starry ocean. But a flyby of the Dead Star’s surface would have revealed that this calm was illusory. It was an ocean of atomic fire, enormous waves of searing flames that churned red and flung high-energy particles out into space like a storm swell. Tremendous energy erupted from the star’s depths and surged in blinding waves in that sea, over which an endless nuclear storm of constant hurricanes raged, and dark red plasma undulated under a strong magnetic field in million-kilometer tornadoes reaching into space like the tendrils of a red tide. . . . No human mind could grasp the sheer size of the Dead Star; against that sea of fire, Earth was like a basketball tossed into the Pacific Ocean.

The Dead Star ought to have been bright in the visible sky. With an apparent magnitude of −7.5, if not for the interstellar dust incubating another star that sat three light-years distant and blocked its light from reaching Earth, it would have shone on human history with a light more than five times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, bright enough to cast shadows on a moonless night, a dreamy blue adding a dose of sentimentality to human history.

The Dead Star burned a glorious existence without incident for 460 million years, but the cold hand of the law of conservation of energy made certain internal changes unavoidable: the fusion fire depleted hydrogen, and the helium by-product sank to the star’s center and accumulated over time. This change was an exceedingly slow process for such a giant object, one for whom the whole span of human history was the snap of a finger, but after 480 million years, the depletion had a tangible effect: enough of the more inert helium had accumulated that the source of the star’s energy waned. It had grown old.

But other, more complicated physical laws determined that the Dead Star would end its life in a blaze of glory. The density of the helium at its center increased, and the fusion that continued in the surrounding hydrogen produced temperatures high enough to initiate fusion in the helium, consuming nearly all of it at once in a nuclear inferno. The helium fusion caused the Dead Star to shine with a powerful light, but since its energy was only a tenth of that of hydrogen, the effort only further weakened the star. Termed a helium flash by astronomers, the phenomenon’s light reached the patch of interstellar dust three years later, where the relatively long-wavelength red light penetrated the cosmic barrier. That light traveled for another five years before arriving at a far smaller, ordinary star, the Sun, as well as the handful of cosmic dust attracted by its gravitational pull, known to humans as Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and of course Earth. This took place in 1775.

• • • •

That evening, in Earth’s northern hemisphere, in the English spa town of Bath, outside a high-end music hall, a German-born organist by the name of Frederick William Herschel was gazing hungrily into the universe through a telescope of his own design. The glittering Milky Way so called to him that he poured his entire life into telescopes, to the extent that his sister Caroline had to spoon him his meals while he continued observations. During the lifetime the most distinguished of eighteenth-century astronomers spent in front of the lens, he marked seventy thousand stars on the map, but he overlooked the one that became most significant to humanity. That night a red body suddenly appeared in the western sky in the constellation Auriga, at the midpoint between Capella and Beta Aurigae. An apparent magnitude 4.5, it wasn’t bright enough for a casual observer to pick out even if they knew its location, but to an astronomer, the red star was nothing less than an enormous lantern that Herschel might have discovered, were he viewing the heavens with the naked eye like pre-Galilean astronomers rather than being glued to the lens. And that discovery might have altered the course of human history some two centuries later. But his attention was entirely commanded by that telescope, just two inches in diameter, pointed in an entirely different direction, as, unfortunately, were telescopes at the observatories in Greenwich and Hven, and everywhere else in the world, for that matter. . . .

The red star in Auriga shone for the whole night, but the next night it had disappeared.

• • • •

That same night in that same year, on the continent called North America, eight hundred British soldiers crept along a road to the west of Boston, their red uniforms giving them the look of a line of ghosts in the night. Clutching muskets in the chilly spring wind, they hoped to reach the town of Concord, twenty-seven kilometers from Boston, before daybreak, and were under orders from the Massachusetts governor Thomas Gage to wipe out the minutemen’s arsenal and arrest their leadership. But when the sky turned gray and the woods, huts, and pasture fences took shape as silhouettes against the growing light, the soldiers looked about them and found they had only gotten as far as the town of Lexington. From a thicket ahead of them came a sudden flash, and an earsplitting crack broke the stillness of the North American dawn, closely followed by the whoosh of bullets: the quickening in the womb of the embryonic United States of America.

• • • •

On the vast continent on the other side of the Pacific, a civilization had already endured for five thousand years. Now, in that ancient land, people were heading day and night toward the capital of that age-old kingdom carrying huge quantities of ancient books collected from every corner of the land. The imperial edict to compile the Sikuquanshu had been issued two years ago, and books were still streaming endlessly toward the capital. In a massive wooden hall in the Forbidden City, the Qianlong Emperor was constantly making the rounds of the rows of bookcases holding the works amassed for the library project, now divided into four general categories, Classics, Histories, Masters, and Collections, and stored on these huge shelves.

Leaving his attendants outside the door, the emperor carefully entered the archives, three scholars wearing peacock feathers on their hats,² Dai Zhen, Yao Nai, and Ji Yun, leading the way carrying lanterns. It was they, not the titled imperial clansmen, who were the true compilers of the encyclopedia. The tall cases slipped slowly past the four men, like black city walls in the dim lantern light. They came to a pile of bamboo slips; the emperor picked up one bundle in trembling hands, the wavering yellow light making him feel as if he were at the dark floor of a book canyon, the canyon of time’s mountain, and beneath the book cliff face, countless ghosts from across five thousand years took silently to the air.

“How time flows onward, Your Majesty,”³ whispered one compiler.

• • • •

Unimaginably far out in space, the Dead Star continued its march toward doomsday. There were more helium flashes, but smaller in scale than the first, and helium fusion produced a new core of carbon and oxygen. Then that core ignited, producing neon, sulfur, and silicon, and then a huge number of neutrinos appeared in the star, spooky particles that carried off the core’s energy without interacting with any matter.

Over time, the center of the Dead Star grew unable to support its heavy crust, and the gravity that had given it life now worked the reverse. Under gravity’s pull, the Dead Star collapsed into a dense ball, its constituent atoms shattered under the impossibly huge stresses, neutron crushing into neutron. Now a teaspoon of matter from the Dead Star had a mass of a billion tons. First the core collapsed, and then the unsupported crust smashed into the tightly packed center, triggering a final fusion reaction.

An epic of gravity and fire spanning 500 million years came to an end in a cosmos-splitting snow-white blast, and the Dead Star shattered into trillions of fragments and a giant quantity of dust. Its enormous energy, converted into a torrent of EM radiation and high-energy particles, surged outward in all directions. Three years after the explosion, the tide of energy slipped easily through that cosmic dust cloud, heading for the sun.

When the Dead Star exploded, humanity was flourishing eight light-years away. Though they knew they were living on but a speck of dust in the cosmos, they had not truly come to accept this fact. In the millennium that had just ended, they had harnessed the immense power of nuclear fission and fusion and had created complex thinking machines using electrical impulses confined in silicon, imagining they had the power to conquer the universe. No one knew that the energy from the Dead Star was making its inexorable way toward their small blue planet at the speed of light.

After passing the three stars of Centaurus, the Dead Star’s light spent another four years in vast, lonely outer space until at last it reached the outskirts of the solar system. In that region, inhabited only by tailless comets, the energy from the Dead Star had its first encounter with humanity: More than a billion kilometers away from Earth, a man-made body was making its lonely sojourn into the Milky Way—Voyager, an interstellar probe launched from Earth in the 1970s. It was shaped like a weird umbrella, its parabolic antenna opened toward the Earth. The probe carried humanity’s calling card, a lead-alloy plate inscribed with two naked humans, a disc bearing the UN secretary general’s greeting to alien civilization, recordings of Earth’s oceans, birdcalls, and the traditional Chinese tune “Liu Shui.”

Earth had its first taste of the grimness of the cosmos when its emissary to the galaxy passed into the light of the Dead Star and turned immediately into a hunk of blazing metal. Its umbrella antenna warped as its temperature suddenly shot up from near absolute zero. The intensity of the high-energy radiation overloaded a Geiger counter and caused it to read out only zeros. The UV probe and magnetic-field instruments remained operational, and in the just two seconds before the circuits were fried by radiation, Voyager sent back to its creators on Earth a stream of unbelievable data that, owing to the damage to its antenna, would never be received by the high-sensitivity arrays in Nevada and Australia. No matter; humanity would soon be able to measure the unbelievable for themselves.

The Dead Star’s beam crossed the boundary of the solar system and kicked up steam on the blue crystalline solid-nitrogen ground of Pluto, and then met Neptune and Uranus, turning their rings crystal clear. The storm of high-energy particles passed Saturn and Jupiter, phosphorescing their liquid matter, just after the Beijing schoolchildren began their graduation party. The energy traveled for another half hour at light speed and reached the moon, shedding blinding light on Mare Imbrium and the crater of Copernicus. It lit up the set of footprints left behind by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin four decades earlier under the watchful eyes of hundreds of millions of television viewers on the nearby blue planet, who in that moment of excitement were convinced that the cosmos had been put there for them.

One second later, the Dead Star’s light completed its eight-year journey across space to Earth.

• • • •

The Midnight Sun

It was midday!

That was the children’s first reaction when their vision returned. The light had come so suddenly it was like the flip of some cosmic light switch, and they had been momentarily blinded.

It was 8:18 in the evening, but the children were standing in the blazing light of noon. They looked up into the blue and took in a cold breath. This was most definitely not the same blue as usual; the sky was a startling blue-black, like color recorded on ultrasensitive film. And it seemed unusually clean, as if a grayish-white layer of skin had been peeled off and the sky’s pure-blue flesh was liable to start bleeding at any moment. The city was lit bright by the light, and the sight of the sun made the children cry out in alarm.

This was not humanity’s sun!

The light that had broken into the night sky was too powerful to look at directly, but through the gaps in their fingers they caught glimpses of a sun that wasn’t round—it was a shapeless point like other visible stars, an intense white light emitting from some point in the universe, but it didn’t seem small. It had an extremely high brightness of −51.23, almost an order of magnitude greater than the sun, and its light scattered in the atmosphere, turning it into an enormous, blinding poison spider hanging in the western sky.

• • • •

The Dead Star appeared suddenly and reached peak brightness in a matter of seconds. Earth’s eastern hemisphere was the first to see it, and the largest panic began almost immediately. Everyone lost all capacity for normal reason and action; the entire world was paralyzed. The spectacle was grandest for viewers in the Atlantic, and on the west coast of Europe and Africa. Here is an eyewitness account from an observer in the Atlantic:

At daybreak we discovered an anomaly: after the sun rose above the ocean, light continued to pour over the eastern horizon, white light, radiating from some unknown source below the surface of the water, as if a huge lamp were hidden beneath the eastern ocean. The light intensified. It was so strange it unsettled everyone on board. There was nothing but static on the radio. The second daybreak grew brighter and brighter, and “dawn” clouds shone with a blinding light, like lightbulb filaments. . . . Our fear grew with the light. We all knew that the light source would rise at some point, but no one knew what we would see. At last, three hours after dawn, we saw a second sunrise. The captain later offered this apt description of the new sun: “It’s like a giant cosmic welder!” Of the two suns in the sky, it was our old one that was the most frightening: it was so much dimmer than the new one that it looked black by comparison! Not everyone could handle the nightmare, and some people tore madly about the decks, or jumped overboard. . . .

From Albert G. Harris, A Witness to the Dead Star. London, SE 6.

Before the children on the field had recovered their senses, lightning broke out as the atmosphere ionized under the Dead Star’s radiation. Long purple arcs crossed the sky, and grew denser as earsplitting thunder rolled.

“Quick! Into the classroom!” Zheng shouted, and they all raced back, shielding their heads against the thunder that split the sky and threatened to split the world in two. Once inside, the trembling children clustered around their teacher. The Dead Star’s light shone through the windows on one side casting clear rectangle patterns on the floor; lightning through the windows on the other side flashed that side of the classroom with purple electricity. Static filled the air, metal attachments on their clothing clicked with tiny sparks, their hair stood on end, and they could feel their skin tingling all over, as if their clothing had grown spikes.

• • • •

Below is a transcript of transmissions between the Russian space station Mir, the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and the American space shuttle Zeus, by Mir’s final crew before its deorbiting:

Commander: D. A. Vortsev

Flight engineer: B. G. Tinovich

Mechanical engineer: Y. N. Bykovsky

Environmental engineer: F. Lefsen

Station doctor: Nikita Kasyanenko

Crew: Joe La Mure, solid state physicist; Alexander Andrev, astrophysicist

EM COMMUNICATIONS:

10:20′10″, MIR: Don calling Baikonur! Don calling Baikonur! Base, acknowledge. Base, acknowledge.

(No response. Static.)

10:21′30″, BASE: This is Baikonur base! Baikonur calling Don. Please respond.

(No response. Static.)

INFRARED COMMUNICATIONS:

10:23′20″, MIR: Base, this is Mir. Main system interference is too high, so we’ve initiated backup communications. Please respond.

10:23′25″, BASE: We hear you, but the signal isn’t stable.

10:23′28″, MIR: Difficulty with orienting the transmission and reception units. Orientation control circuit chips have failed due to radiation, so we’ve resorted to manual optical orientation.

10:23′37″, BASE: Fix the transmission and reception units in place. We will take over control.

10:23′42″, MIR: Done.

10:23′43″, BASE: Signal normal!

10:23′46″, MIR: Base, can you tell us what happened? What should we call the thing that appeared all of a sudden?

10:23′46″, BASE: We know as much as you do. Call it “Star X” if you want. Please send us the data you’ve obtained.

10:24′01″, MIR: We will transmit observation data beginning at ten o’clock for the integrated radiometer, ultraviolet and gamma ray instruments, gravimeter, magnetometer, Geiger counter, solar wind meter, and neutrino detector, as well as 136 visual spectrum and infrared images. Prepare to receive.

10:24′30″, MIR: (Data transmission)

10:25′00″, MIR: Our space telescope has been tracking Star X since it first appeared. Given our level of sensitivity, we cannot estimate its angular diameter, nor have we found any clear parallax. Dr. Andrev believes that those two points together with the energy we’ve received mean that Star X is outside the solar system. This is just a hypothesis of course. Data is insufficient, and there’s lots to be done by ground-based observatories.

10:25′30″, BASE: What have you seen on Earth?

10:25′36″, MIR: A large-scale hurricane in the equatorial region is moving northward with an estimated wind speed of 60 meters per second, judging by our observations of the changes in clouds over the equator. This may be due to the unevenness of the sudden influx of heat on Earth from Star X. Oh, and a large amount of ultraviolet radiation and blue flashes, possibly lightning, in the polar regions and currently expanding to lower latitudes.

10:26′50″, BASE: Report on your own status.

10:27′05″, MIR: Not good. The onboard flight control computer has been entirely fried by the high-energy rays, backup systems too. Their lead shielding is inoperative. Monocrystalline silicon solar batteries are totally fried, and chemical batteries are severely damaged. We are now entirely reliant on in-cabin isotope batteries, which are woefully underpowered, so we’ve had to shut down life support in the main cabin. Life support is functioning abnormally in the living cabin. We’re close to having to put on our space suits.

10:28′20″, BASE: The base feels that under the present circumstances it is inadvisable to remain in orbit, but also that a soft landing is impossible given the damage to the systems. The US space shuttle Zeus is in low orbit 3340; it was in Earth’s shadow and suffered only light damage and is still capable of reentry. We have made contact with them, and the Americans have decided to carry out the provisions of the Outer Space Treaty concerning rescue of astronauts and take you on board. Parameters for speed reduction and engine operation to follow . . .

10:30′33″, MIR: Base, the station doctor wishes to speak with you.

10:30′40″, MIR: This is the station doctor. I believe there’s no point to the transfer. Cancel it.

10:30′46”, BASE: Please explain.

10:30′48”, MIR: All astronauts aboard the station have received an ultralethal 5100 rad dose of radiation. We have only hours left to live, so even if we returned to Earth, the outcome would be the same.

10:31′22”, BASE: (Silence)

10:31′57”, MIR: This is the commander. Please allow us to remain on Mir. This station is humanity’s furthest outpost for observing Star X. In our final few hours, we’ll carry out our duties to the full. We will be the first astronauts to die in space; if the opportunity presents itself in the future, please return our remains to our homeland.

From Vladimir Konev, A History of the Russian Space Program in the Common Era, vol. 5. Moscow, SE 17.

The Dead Star lit up the cosmos for an hour and twenty-five minutes before it vanished abruptly. Only then were radio telescope arrays able to detect its remains: a swiftly revolving neutron star emitting a precisely separated EM pulse.

Faces pressed to the classroom window glass, the children watched the sunset that wasn’t, as the blue-black of night descended on this peculiar evening. The light of the Dead Star faded into a twilight that occupied half the sky before quickly shrinking down to a small outlining circle, its color transitioning to white. Most of the sky was dark now, and scattered stars were visible. The halo around the Dead Star continued to contract until it finally vanished, leaving just a point where there once had been a gleaming light source. Once the night sky returned to normal, it was the brightest of the stars, but continued to dim until it was just another star in the galaxy, and five minutes later, the Dead Star had completely vanished into the depths of the cosmos.

When the lightning had stopped, the children ran out of the classroom, where they found themselves in a phosphorescent world. Everything beneath the night sky, the trees, the buildings, the ground, all glowed blue-green, as if the ground and everything on it had been transformed into translucent jade and a green moonlike source deep beneath the ground was flooding light through everything. Green-lit clouds hung in the air as flocks of startled birds sped by like glowing fairies. Most frightening to the children was that they were phosphorescent, too, like images from a photo negative, or a group of ghosts.

“Like I said,” said Specs, “anything can happen.”

The classroom lights turned back on, as did the lights of the city, and the children realized that there had been a blackout. The glow faded as the lights came on, and they initially thought the world had returned to normal. But they soon found to their shock that the episode was not over.

A red light emerged in the northeast, and before long clouds glowing dark red rose in that part of the sky, as if heralding the dawn.

“It’s daybreak for real this time!”

“Idiot! It’s not even eleven!”

The red clouds marched across half the sky, at which point the children realized that they were glowing with their own light. When they were directly overhead, the children could see they were composed of huge bands of light, like strips of slowly twisting red drapes hanging from the sky itself.

“Northern lights!” someone shouted.

The aurora soon covered the whole sky, and for the next week, night skies across the whole world danced with red bands of light.

• • • •

When the auroras disappeared for good a week later and the glittering stars returned, one final, glorious movement of the supernova’s symphony was left: A shining nebula appeared at the very spot where the Dead Star had been just days before. The explosion’s dust cloud was excited by the high-energy pulse of the star’s remains and emitted synchronized radiation in the visible spectrum for humanity to see. The nebula grew until it was roughly the size of two full moons in the sky. This rosette-shaped radiant body, later given the name “Rose Nebula,” emitted a strange, harsh blue light into the heavens that shone over the earth with a moonlight-like silver, illuminating every detail on the ground with the brightness of a full moon, washing out the glow of the cities below.

The Rose Nebula would shine over human history until the day the inheritors of the dinosaurs’ rule over the planet were wiped out, or were reborn.

Copyright © 2019 by Cixin Liu. Excerpted from Supernova Era by Cixin Liu and translated by Joel Martinsen. Published by permission of the author and Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

¹. Stars discovered after this book’s original date of publication include the dwarf stars Luhman 16A and Luhman 16B (announced in 2013), and sub-dwarf WISE 0855−0714 (in 2014).

². The peacock feather was an honor bestowed on high-ranking officials.

³. Quotation from the Analects, 9.17.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR

Joel Martinsen is the translator of The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu and (with Alice Xin Liu) of The Problem With Me, a collection of essays by Han Han. His translations of short fiction have appeared in Pathlight, Chutzpah, and Words Without Borders. He lives in Beijing.

Cixin Liu is a prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is a winner of the Hugo Award and a multiple winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and the Xing Yun Award (the Chinese Nebula). His novels include The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End. He lives with his family in Yangquan, Shanxi.

Book Reviews: October 2019

Chris Kluwe | 2135 words

Hello once again, fine readers, and welcome to another collection of delicious readingmeats for your brain. I’m going to forego the intro this time because I have quite a few books to draw your attention to (two of them quite weighty indeed), and only so many words available before my editor sends the attack parrots out (and I’ve grown attached to my ears). So, without further ado, the October reviews!

The Dragon Republic
R.F. Kuang
Hardback / Ebook
ISBN: 978-0062662637
Harper Voyager, August 6 2019, 656 pages

The first book I’d like to talk about is The Dragon Republic, by R.F. Kuang, and it’s the second entry in the Poppy War series (book one is The Poppy War, which you will definitely want to read first).

Reader, I cannot overemphasize how good this series is. Similar to how Game of Thrones was a distorted retelling of the War of the Roses, Kuang takes us deep into Chinese history and mythology with The Dragon Republic, referencing multiple incidents both from the formation of what would become modern day China during World War II, as well as deeper dives into folklore and mysticism from further in the region’s past.

Unlike Game of Thrones, however, The Dragon Republic (along with The Poppy War) is told from a singular perspective—that of the main character, Rin, a peasant girl from the far reaches of Nikan, who finds herself drawn into a web of magic and intrigue, gods and empresses, and an ongoing struggle to keep her country from falling to the hands of invaders (a common theme in both books, and for students of Chinese history, one very familiar).

Without giving away too much from The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic starts with Rin struggling to deal with both her power and her memories—harsh memories of war, death, and lost companions. In danger of spiraling out of control, Rin has to navigate a treacherous path between friends who might be enemies, and enemies who might be friends—but in true epic-fantasy fashion, the reader is never quite sure which is which. Add to that an intrusive foreign power with uncertain aims, and the scheming swirls thick throughout the entire story.

One of the things I most liked about this book is how it delves into the grinding, mundane terribleness of war, and the toll those constant conflicts take on Rin and those around her. Kuang does an excellent job illustrating how the act of wielding power comes at a cost, one that isn’t always the expected price, and even though there are plenty of magic spells being tossed around, it always takes a backseat to the humanity of those affected. Rin, and all the other characters, are shaped by their world just as much as they shape it, and not once did I find myself thinking, “Oh, that’s not believable” (and this in a book featuring a duel with a crazed wind-god above an epic last-stand naval battle).

Also, while there are plenty of depressing moments (as one would expect in a book about war), Kuang still makes time for brief interludes of peace, where Rin and the others dare to hope for a more permanent respite from the constant conflict they find themselves in, which goes a long way towards developing them as characters (as well as keeping the reader from succumbing to suffocating nihilism). Even though Rin’s world is bleak, I always felt there was a chance things could get better, and I can’t wait to see where the series goes from here.

I highly recommend jumping on the Poppy War bandwagon now, because with The Dragon Republic, Kuang has shown she’s only getting better with each entry.

Read if: you like loosely historical-based fantasies that aren’t afraid to toss a little magic in; you want something that’s not Western European-centric; you sometimes want to burn it all down.

Spaceside
Michael Mammay
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 978-0062694683
Harper Voyager, September 2019, 357 pages

Our next book is another sequel, Spaceside, by Michael Mammy. Occurring immediately after the events of Planetside (which you can find the review for here: bit.ly/July18Reviews), Spaceside continues the journey of Colonel Carl Butler, who is struggling to deal with the momentous decision he made at the end of the first book. Cashiered from the military, he now serves as a security consultant for a corporation that may or may not have his best interests in mind. When he’s assigned to investigate a network breach, things quickly progress from “odd” to “oh crap,” and Butler has to utilize all his old skills to survive while trying to solve the mystery.

Much like Planetside, Spaceside is a satisfying SF thriller that offers plenty of action and future tech, and is well-crafted to keep the reader guessing the entire way. Mammay keeps the pace brisk, and continues to avoid the jargon-heavy style that tends to weigh similar types of books down. In addition, Spaceside has significant subtextual elements as well, this time focusing on the military-industrial complex and privatized corporate forces, which I enjoyed seeing.

However, what’s most important to me is how Mammay has Butler deal with the consequences of his actions from the first book, and I am glad to say he didn’t disappoint. In Spaceside, Mammay addresses some heavy issues with both nuance and empathy, and Butler’s attempts to reintegrate his life will likely be familiar to anyone who’s had to deal with a significant trauma. Coupled with Butler’s sudden loss of a career he’s been in almost his entire life, it’s clear that his journey back to functional will take some time, and thankfully Mammay doesn’t try to rush the process. Furthermore, the events from the first book play a critical role in setting up the finale for this book, and the way it’s handled struck me as superb.

Overall, I think this is a very solid follow-up from an author who could have easily gone in a different direction, and this is another series that I’ll gladly read further books in.

Read if: you like Space Law and Order; you appreciate a little military SF therapy now and then; you sometimes don’t want to burn it all down.

A Lush and Seething Hell
John Hornor Jacobs
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 978-0062880826
Harper Voyager, October 2019, 384 pages

And now for something completely different. A Lush and Seething Hell is a collection of two horror novellas (“The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky” and “My Heart Struck Sorrow”), by John Hornor Jacobs, and I’m not lying when I say that these stories will stick with you after you finish reading them . . . though “stick” might be the wrong word. “Wriggle under your skin and slowly writhe” is perhaps a more accurate description.

At first glance, the two novellas superficially deal with two completely different subject matters—“The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky” involves a European poet, an unsettling manuscript, and a brutal dictatorship, whereas “My Heart Struck Sorrow” is about the search for the origins of an American folk song—but the best kind of horror is never concerned with what’s going on at the surface. It’s the roiling undercurrents, dark and full of malignity, that identify excellent horror, and this is where Jacobs shines.

Both stories begin innocuously enough, though there are hints of things not quite right, then slowly descend into an unsettling mix of the everyday and the cosmically monstrous. However, the greatness of Jacobs’ writing lies in the fact that the cosmically monstrous is actually not cosmic at all—it is, at its core, humanity, pure and simple, the parts of our psyches that we pretend only exist in devils and gods. The terrible deeds that take place in these tales are not fantasy, nor are they fiction, even though they present as such. They are what we have done, are doing, and will do to each other, again and again, every time telling ourselves that it’s not us brandishing the heated poker or the slave driver’s whip.

To read A Lush and Seething Hell is to recognize that just as the human heart is capable of boundless beneficence, it also contains fathomless cruelty, and though we may try to hide from that awful truth, it always finds a way to slither through, creeping up on us when we feel ourselves most safe. I’d highly recommend consuming it with a mug of hot chocolate and a collage of puppy pictures aperitif.

Read if: you can withstand the evils that lurk in humanity’s soul; you like being unsettled; you know why the Devil went down to Georgia.

Wanderers
Chuck Wendig
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 978-0399182105
Del Rey, July 2 2019, 782 pages

Finally, we come to the fourth book of this review, Wanderers, by Chuck Wendig (full disclosure, Chuck and I are Twitter friends). If A Lush and Seething Hell is horror as subtle abstraction, Wanderers is horror that gets in your face and Will. Not. Leave. It’s not jump scares. It’s not tentacle-bearing cultists. It’s horror in the way watching a car accident in real time is horror. You know that the thing that’s happening shouldn’t be happening, yet it’s still happening and it won’t stop.

Confession time—a lot of people, good, smart people, are comparing Wanderers to Stephen King’s The Stand. I have never read The Stand, because I can’t make it through the first two chapters. For whatever reason, it doesn’t click for me.

Wanderers absolutely clicked for me, from the beginning all the way to the last glorious few pages. This is a book that ties together fungal microbiology, cutting-edge internet memery, America’s political dysfunction, artificial intelligence, and the pervasive influence of racism in evangelical religion, just to name a few of its many subtopics, but what could have ended up as a hodgepodge of half-formed thoughts instead weaves itself into a tapestry worthy of any and all attention.

Wendig deftly combines multiple viewpoints to create a searing glance at the state of what America is, right effing now, and the writing never resorts to caricature or tropes. Every character in this tale of somnambulistic nomads, watched over by shepherds and harried by wolves, could be someone you know—for better or worse—and that’s what ultimately makes it so terrifying. Wanderers is believable in a way that William Gibson’s Neuromancer was believable; a world that initially seems fantastic, but when you stop and actually think about all the little things present, the tiny details, you realize you’re witnessing a historian from the future trying to warn you about an oncoming freight train.

I suggest you read this book and then decide whether we, as a species, should get off the tracks.

Read if: you like The Stand (I guess, don’t judge me); you’re not afraid of some spores; you want to see how an apocalypse happens.

• • • •

Anyways, that’ll do it for this month’s reviews, I’m approaching my word limit and I can hear the parrots descending. Happy Halloween!

Other New Books That I Thought Were Interesting But Did Not Have Space To Review:

Aurora Blazing, Jessie Mihalik

Rule Of Capture, Christopher Brown

Sapphire Flames, Ilona Andrews

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Kluwe grew up in Southern California among a colony of wild chinchillas and didn’t learn how to communicate outside of barking and howling until he was fourteen years old. He has played football in the NFL, once wrestled a bear for a pot of gold, and lies occasionally. He is also the eternal disappointment of his mother, who just can’t understand why he hasn’t cured cancer yet. Do you know why these bio things are in third person? I have no idea. Please tell me if you figure it out.

Media Review: October 2019

LaShawn M. Wanak | 1651 words

A Review of Kingdom Hearts III – by LaShawn, Who Never Played It

Kingdom Hearts III
Written by ‎Tetsuya Nomura and Masaru Oka; directed by Tetsuya Nomura and Tai Yasue
Developed by Square Enix Co., Ltd.
Worldwide release January 29, 2019, for PlayStation 4 and Xbox

It is February 2019 and I am about to sit down and watch a YouTube Let’s Play Video of SirSkyward playing Kingdom Hearts III for the first time. His anticipation is palpable through the screen, although by the time I’ve watched this, I’m sure he’s already played it several times. Yet his excitement is infectious, and I can’t blame him. This sequel to Kingdom Hearts II has been fourteen years in the making.

Not to say that players have been sitting idle all this time. There are several backstory and mobile games that contribute to the overall plot, not to mention merchandise and fan videos from how-to videos on making sea-salt ice cream (bit.ly/2OTjGsc), a treat ubiquitous to the game, to a Kingdom Hearts-themed Talisman board game which debuted at GenCon this year. There are even Kingdom Hearts concerts—I could do a whole article alone on the music of Kingdom Hearts, which is a character of its own.

It was the music that pulled me into Kingdom Hearts. My sister had invited me to a Final Fantasy concert, so I decided to familiarize myself with the soundtrack on YouTube—and Kingdom Hearts popped up in my recommendations. Curious, I listened to a few songs and liked them so much I decided to check out the game itself. Kingdom Hearts is about a boy named Sora who fight creatures called the Heartless using a giant key that functions both as a weapon and as an unlocking device. His goal is to become a Keyblade Warrior and disrupt the efforts of the nefarious Organization XIII, who are using the Heartless for their own ends. The newest installment, Kingdom Hearts III, came out in January 2019.

Personally, I have never actually played a Kingdom Hearts game. The only gaming consoles I have are a Nintendo 3DS, the Wii, and my computer. I like to think of myself as a RPG gamer, but the reality is that I get impatient when I have to grind to get to the next part of the story. I find it’s easier to watch people like SirSkyward (bit.ly/2zNdLdz), Suzy Lu (bit.ly/2Lm3ESx), and SuperButterBuns (bit.ly/SuperButterBuns) play on YouTube and Twitch. It’s the equivalent to standing in the arcade watching someone way better than you play, and as a bonus, you get their comments and reactions.

So why am I reviewing Kingdom Hearts III if I’ve never actually played it? Because the narrative in Kingdom Hearts is both beautiful and ridiculous.

There is a convoluted plot about hearts and darkness and light and worlds, spread across different consoles such as the PlayStation and the Nintendo DS. There’s mistaken identity and clones, memory loss, parallel worlds, and time travel. Characters masquerade as other characters. Explanations are retconned into oblivion. Kingdom Hearts II starts with a protagonist named Roxas who disappears a quarter into the game to be replaced by Sora. Even the titles make no sense. Dream Drop Distance? Birth By Sleep? The plot is so confusing, whole websites and videos are dedicated to explaining what Kingdom Hearts is about, including a 400+ page Google document (bit.ly/SleepingRealm) complete with gifs and screencaps contending that the entire third game exists as a dream.

By all rights, Kingdom Hearts shouldn’t be popular. And yet it is. When Kingdom Hearts III was finally released, it sold five million copies worldwide in its first week. People love it despite its convoluted plot. Why?

Three words: Sora, Donald, and Goofy.

Sora, the large-gymshoed protagonist throughout most of the games, is a staple of Square Enix main characters—male, spikey-haired, not exactly made of hero material, but plucky and enthusiastic. The first game starts off with Sora and his friends about to leave their home, when a dark force causes his friends to vanish. While searching for them, Sora meets Donald and Goofy, who are searching for King Mickey Mouse, who has also vanished under mysterious circumstances. Their friendship becomes the heart (so to speak) of all the Kingdom Heart games—each game touches on the theme that the power of friendship can overcome darkness.

In pairing this with well-known Disney stories, which themselves are based on folklore and fairy tales, Sora’s journey becomes the mythical hero’s journey with plenty of pitfalls and trials that parallels Odysseus and his quest to return home. Donald and Goofy are, well, Donald and Goofy in game form (though Goofy displays surprising wisdom every once in a while.) Though at times the plot requires Sora to become extremely dense or overly plucky for his own good, being matched with Donald and Goofy brings the trio into a charming sweetness that is fun to watch, particularly in the third game.

They are not the only ones. Kingdom Hearts is rife with friendship triads. I had mentioned Roxas earlier—he himself is the subject of his own game, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (again with the weird title), where he spends his days getting to know Axel and Xion, his fellow warriors in the nefarious Organization XIII. Another trio involves three Keyblade Warriors: Terra, Aqua, and Ventus (who looks uncannily like Roxas . . . for reasons). These two trios do not share the same happy-go-lucky plot as Sora; in fact, the plot of the third game has Sora searching for ways to help all these people out of their tragic experiences. It doesn’t matter that he has never met them in person. He is connected to them, so he considers them his friends, and he will fight for them to be safe.

Which brings us back to the third game, finally released this year. Was it worth the anticipation?

Yes, yes, and oh yes.

Using the same hyper-realistic, open air game mechanics as Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts III has so much attention to detail, it’s absolutely gorgeous to watch. The Tangled world alone must have been created just for Sora, Donald, and Goofy to take sheer delight in its beauty: running through flowers, splashing each other in a small pool, and charming birds to Rapunzel’s side. Furthermore, because the game creators worked so closely with Pixar, you actually feel as if Sora, Donald, and Goofy were dropped directly into the Disney worlds. Mostly they are integral to the storyline (some say, in fact, the Big Hero 6 storyline is considered a sequel of sorts). Other times, it feels like the trio are mere spectators. For instance, we experience the moment in Frozen where Elsa sings “Let it Go” from the point of view of Sora, Donald, and Goofy. Sure, it’s unnecessary and feels a bit like self-inserted fanfiction. But then again, it’s fun to watch Sora react in awe to Elsa’s powers.

That said, the story of Kingdom Hearts III does have its flaws. Kairi, who had been one of Sora’s missing friends, had been built up throughout the series as becoming a Keyblade Warrior. In the third game, this anticipated build-up is tossed out in an inexcusable move that made most reviewers, including me, upset. While Final Fantasy characters have been a staple in the KH series, in the third game there’s no presence of any crossover characters, unless you count an in-game trailer pointing to something that may be a large clue to the next game. And while the game does resolve a major storyline arc, Sora’s own existence is called into question with a very ambiguous ending that makes us unsure if he’s still alive.

One thing we do know though. The story of Kingdom Hearts, and Sora, is not over yet. We have been assured that there will be a Kingdom Hearts IV. And there’ll even be another title before that: bit.ly/KHgames. Before I became enamored of Kingdom Hearts, I did not like Disney movies all that much. This series helped redefine Disney in a fun away that makes me want to rewatch the movies with a new eye.

Furthermore, watching the third game has given me the incentive to start picking up KH games of my own. Watching other people play on Twitch and YouTube helped satisfy the need for me to see the full story without all the grinding. There’s a part of me, however, that wants the full experience. I want to try my hand at fighting the Heartless, completing the boss battles and exploring the worlds on my own. The only way to do that is by actually playing the games. I’ve already downloaded the free mobile game, Union X, and I’m eyeing the DS games as well. Now that I know how the story ends (at least for now), perhaps I won’t mind grinding as much.

I just hope we don’t have to wait fourteen years for the next game.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LaShawn M. Wanak is a graduate of the 2011 class of Viable Paradise. Her fiction has been published in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Ideomancer. She served as Associate Editor at Podcastle, and has written nonfiction for Fantasy Magazine, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and the anthology Invisible 2.

Interview: Valerie Valdes

Christian A. Coleman | 4479 words

Valerie Valdes lives in an elaborate meme palace with her husband and kids, where she writes, copyedits, and moonlights as a muse. She enjoys crafting handmade bespoke artisanal curses and telling her friends how amazing they are. She is a graduate of Viable Paradise and her debut novel Chilling Effect was released by Harper Voyager in September 2019. Join her in opining about books, video games, and parenting on Twitter @valerievaldes.

Congratulations on your debut and the starred review from Library Journal for Chilling Effect! How does it feel to have your first novel out after having short stories and poems published?

It’s pretty amazing! I know some folks labor over poems and short fiction for almost as long as a novel, but I write those more quickly, so I’m slightly less emotionally attached to them once I send them out into the world. Only slightly, though. Writing a novel is a much longer journey for me, following the same characters and inhabiting the same setting for years, as opposed to weeks or months. Editing is a greater challenge as well, because instead of keeping a dozen or so pages in my head at a time, I’m trying to remember phrasing I might have used on page ten so I don’t repeat it on page four hundred. And then the querying, and going on submission, and if you sell the book, you have to edit it repeatedly again . . . There’s a sheer stubborn persistence required of novel writing that is honed in poetry and short fiction, and to finally reach the culmination of those efforts is intensely rewarding.

In Chilling Effect, Cuban-descended spaceship captain Eva Innocente has to rescue her sister from a shadowy syndicate called The Fridge. On top of that, she has to deflect the advances of a douchey galactic emperor. Oh, and there are psychic space cats! What was the inspiration for the novel?

Inspiration is a kind of hoarding habit, I think, so this came together from a lot of places. One of the main sources was the #YesAllWomen movement that gained prominence a few years ago; there was a lot of pushback from people trying to deflect or minimize the issues being raised, so I wanted to tell a story about a woman dealing with a fairly standard situation in a novel way. How it plays out is, sadly, only slightly exaggerated given the many examples of stalking, doxxing, and harassment that continue to happen today.

To all of that, I added my entire childhood experience of books, games, and movies, and let my imagination play. Mass Effect in particular was a huge influence, which is immediately obvious once you start reading, but I wanted to tell a story about the Han Solo of that world instead of the Commander Shepard. The psychic cats, well . . . I mean, all cats are probably psychic, so that’s hardly a stretch, but they’re based on my cats.

Let’s talk about Mass Effect, because you pitched the novel as The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet meets Mass Effect. There are touches of Final Fantasy in it, too. What are some of your favorite aspects of these games?

Oh no! You’ve asked me to talk about Mass Effect! I hope you brought a snack.

The characters of Mass Effect are the biggest draw for me, much as I love exploring the incredibly rich setting and having the chance to pretend—for two games, anyway—that galaxy-spanning problems can have hopeful, positive outcomes. BioWare’s writers and designers do an amazing job of creating people with deep backgrounds and complex needs and desires, and you get to hang out with them and sometimes have Shepard smooch them (Shakarian 4 lyfe), and that’s awesome. You share in their highs and lows, you get to help them achieve their goals—sometimes in ways they didn’t want or expect—and you forge these found families that follow you through fire and death to find whatever peace can exist in tough times. Even just talking to random NPCs at the Citadel can be a delightful experience, and so many small moments pay off later in ways you never expected. The thrill of running around the Citadel in a dress and heels with just a pistol while hundreds of goons try to take you down is transcendent. The humor is also great, and I wanted to carry that over into my work as well.

My Final Fantasy (and Chrono Trigger, and other JRPG) engagement is a bit different inasmuch as the conversations and interactions with characters aren’t quite as deep, mainly due to technological constraints. When you start with the first game, the characters are essentially blank slates, and it’s the NPCs who bring more nuance to the world, but that changes over time until you end up with the ensemble casts we all know and love. But there is still an intensity of experience there, because you’re assembling these groups of people to save the world from ancient evils or nihilists or twisted visionaries. The stakes are high, often on a personal level as well as a collective one, and sometimes you have to cope with massive failures and hope you can come back to win in the end. I love that persistence and the collaborative nature of it, that no one person has to do it all alone, and that working together is the best way to succeed.

What are some other favorite video games of yours? And what do you look for in video games?

I’ll talk about Dragon Age as much as, if not more than, Mass Effect if you get me started, for pretty much all the same reasons. I think those games do an amazing job of dealing with the complexity and unreliability of historical narrative as well, playing with your expectations and subverting them at key moments. I know I’m in the minority when I say I might love Dragon Age 2 the most, but the narrative of a refugee fleeing war and having to carve out a new life, piece by piece, far from home in a hostile place resonated really strongly with me. It also felt the least epic in some ways, because instead of wandering Thedas and assembling an army to combat an ancient evil, or trying to build a powerful new faction to deal with enormous humanitarian and diplomatic crises between warring groups and countries, you’re struggling to hold one city together as your immediate family falls apart. The outcome of that has ripple effects, but even as Hawke is crowned Champion of Kirkwall, it always feels like they’re a little out of their element, trying to keep their head above water instead of swimming confidently toward their destiny, and I love that.

I also love most of the Legend of Zelda games, despite some of the inherent problematic or goofy tropes like ye olde princess saving. Much like Final Fantasy, they bring both new and familiar characters into worlds that share similarities while also being their own cohesive and distinct settings. Stuff like Fallout and Horizon Zero Dawn is also great, but post-apoc stories are growing harder for me to handle, as our real world feels like it’s trending towards darkness. Even so, I love that those games can be played as helpers, where you go around making hard lives a little easier for people, which is optimistic and hopeful instead of bleak and harsh. And on the humor side, the Monkey Island games were always fun, taking the best parts of point-and-click puzzlers and making them absurd. Insult sword-fighting FTW!

It’s virtually impossible to mention all the games I’ve loved growing up, because I played a lot of them, but I definitely gravitate toward interesting characters and worlds, and I like an element of strategy or puzzle-solving.

Would you consider yourself part of a new or growing generation of writers inspired by video games and similar media outside of literature?

Definitely. Consciously or subconsciously, you are what you eat, and as more people consume those kinds of media, it’s almost impossible to keep them out of the books and stories we tell. There’s also a depth and complexity to narrative and character in some games, especially most modern ones, that they didn’t always have back when they were focused more narrowly on the gameplay experience, and I think that captures our imaginations in different ways. It’s not that people couldn’t create meaningful bonds with Tetris or Q*bert or Pac-Man, but it’s easier to achieve pathos and empathy with Mario or Samus, and that’s magnified once you get into contemporary triple-A stuff.

I also grew up with the other side of this, which is books that let you make choices about how they play out. Choose Your Own Adventure narratives were gamified stories, some of them simple branching options and some with stats you were supposed to track like an RPG. It’s an easy leap from that to interactive novels, with or without graphics, and from that to a more robust gameplay experience that merges puzzles or farming or pewpew with dialogue and plot-altering decisions. Not to mention stuff like D&D, Shadowrun, Vampire, Call of Cthulhu . . . I’ve heard more than one person joke that writing is essentially playing a tabletop RPG by yourself, and there’s truth in that.

If I’m being a little cynical, I would say the attraction to games stems at least partially from a desire to have some control in a world that increasingly feels like it’s spiraling into chaos. You get a quest, you finish the quest, you get a reward; clear parameters and a sense of accomplishment, hooray! But that would suggest there’s some mythical time when people had more agency in their lives, and I don’t think that’s true. Maybe it’s just more of a Big Mood now, compounded by social media and the ease with which we can be bombarded by all the ills of the world.

You’re a graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop. What was your experience like there and how did it help shape your novel?

I took the first three chapters of this novel to Viable Paradise, and the feedback and support I got there were invaluable. When I applied, I had been wrestling with the usual bugbears of self-doubt and I had almost trunked the novel entirely, despite the best efforts of friends who believed in me. One of them suggested VP because they had done it and found it a life-changing experience, so I decided to give it a try. As excellent as the instructors were, as beautiful as the location was and as intense as the sessions and critique groups were, the absolute best and most important thing that happened was that I left that island with a crew of new friends for life. I learned so much about writing, relearned things I already knew in different ways, but honestly I would do it all over again just for the chance to spend more time with my classmates. Seriously a case of “the real VP was the friends I made along the way.” Even after the workshop ended, we’ve stayed close and I speak to many of them on a daily basis.

Chilling Effect started off originally as a short story that friends of yours encouraged you to expand into a novel. What did the short story look like?

The short story more or less slid directly into the book with some details added or changed. It was tightly focused on Eva’s experience being hit on at a bar after a job gone wrong, and how the jerk she rejects goes absolutely, wildly over the top in his reaction. The same crew members were there, and the same nascent love story, as well as the mysterious black box and its extremely vital contents. No psychic cats, though, sadly. Those came later.

Very important question now before we get to the other ones. Those psychic cats. They’re just so cute and so funny. And they’re in spaaaaaaaaace! Where did this wacky idea come from?

I wish I could remember, apart from needing to have Eva and her crew start from a place where a delivery job had gone wrong. I know that once I decided it would be cats, there had to be something Extra about them, and the notion of emotional support animals and cat cafes was right there waiting to be tweaked. Cats are practically psychic anyway; mine always know when I need a cuddle, especially if I’m sick. I also reworked the opening a couple of times before finally settling on the loose Alien homage, because I found the notion hilarious. Sometimes you have to write the thing that makes you laugh and hope other people will join in.

You mentioned in a podcast interview that you like putting elements of real life in secondary world fantasy. Do you apply the same approach to writing fun, fast-paced space opera like this, and if so, what elements of real life made it into Chilling Effect?

Coffee. Even if it’s not on the page, assume Eva stops for coffee at least twice a day, sometimes more. I also know that food is a big deal in a lot of SFF stories, but while I mention it in my book, a lot of what they eat is cheap and portable because it’s the kind of stuff I ate when I was a poor college student working multiple jobs. Even fancy replicator tech can only get you so far.

Because this is the future, I tried to take some current tech and project it forward, so another thing I have is comm units that are basically advanced smartphones, often but not always implanted. So many of us today are already stuck to our phones and computers, and it seemed reasonable to expect that even if we managed to get beyond the increasingly exploitative notion that we need to be accessible 24/7, when people are cruising all over the universe they would want a way to stay connected to each other. So there are calls, and q-mails, and MMORPGs, and streaming media . . . all those trappings of modern life in the Wired.

Eva’s ship is called La Sirena Negra. What’s the story behind the name?

Someone mentioned that you never see black mermaids in media, which is sadly true, though plenty of amazing art is out there if you want to do a little digging. That comment stuck with me, and when it came time to name the ship, this felt right. It also relates to the notion that there are a lot of black Cubans, but people focus on their skin color rather than their ethnicity, and their identities can easily get erased. I’m white-passing, so I wouldn’t presume to know their experience, but I see it happen and I think it’s trashy.

You said that with Chilling Effect you wanted “to write about a character whose culture and experiences were aligned with yours, in a story where she could have adventures that didn’t revolve around her identity.” I was wondering if you could tell us more about this, especially as it speaks to the #ownvoices movement and what the general audiences (read: white) expect of it. Are you referring to what general readers (read: white) expect of the #ownvoices movement?

So often it feels like anyone from a marginalized group who wants to write has to perform their culture as opposed to just inhabiting it, or put their pain on display in order to succeed in the industry. I’ve been told things along the lines of, “The protagonist’s ethnicity wasn’t justified by the story,” which suggests there is an implicit default protagonist option and that any deviation from it must be explained to the satisfaction of the reader, or that there’s insufficient window dressing to properly exoticize the plot or setting so that the character can feel like they belong there. It reeks of literary segregation, and I’m not here for it.

The dangerous flip side of this approach is erasure, because people from marginalized groups absolutely do have different experiences from people in the majority. But I think it’s fair for escapist fiction to be for everyone, and it can be a relief to pretend for a little while that maybe someday, somewhere, we can just exist and do cool stuff without carrying the constant burdens of real-life oppression. I also think it’s good for general audiences to see this stuff, so their notion of that default protagonist option gets shaken up. Otherwise, we get actors typecast or pushed out of roles that would be perfectly suitable for anyone, because “general audiences” can’t fathom the notion that nonwhite people can be action heroes or romantic leads.

And Eva is both action hero and romantic lead here. Part of the narrative tension hinges on her tendency to lie to her crew. At one point, she even says that “a good lie should be almost true anyway.” Tell us a little about why this is her MO, because when crew members of hers like Pink call her on it, they are so not happy to find out they have a captain they feel they can’t trust.

I feel like for all that humans of varying cultures tend to prize honesty as a virtue and hold up lying as a huge violation of trust and loyalty, people lie absolutely all the time in big and little ways, to themselves and to others. I consider myself a lawful good person overall, and even I sometimes find myself telling “white” lies for a variety of reasons that, at the time, I believe to be good ones. But are they? Are there ever truly good reasons, and if so, what do they look like?

So I wanted to take a person whose morals had been more questionable and problematic when they were younger, but who had turned that around and was trying to be Good, and explore what would happen if they were placed in a position where that growth and ethical tensile strength were tested. Because this is a story about family, notions of trust and loyalty were foremost in my mind, and having someone choose to betray trust with some people she loved in order to be loyal to others was really compelling to me. I also wanted to consider how someone comes back from that kind of violation; trust is one of those things that, if broken, can be nearly impossible to mend depending on the circumstances, and justifiably so.

One of the people she loves is Vakar, her engineer. He’s quennian, one of the many alien species in the book, whose moods are conveyed by his scents. You tweeted about why you keep writing love stories between humans and non-humans and added a gif from Gargoyles. I was wondering if Eva and Vakar’s relationship inspired was by Gargoyles.

Until I made that tweet, I probably would have said it was inspired by Mass Effect almost exclusively, but I had the sudden realization that Teen Valerie imprinted hard on Gargoyles and had been iterating that ever since in many ways. Goliath is a character with a deep, tragic backstory, a leader taken out of his territory and dumped into a place where he has to both continue leading and maintain secrecy for the safety of his clan, which chafes because it feels sneaky, like lying. His loyalty is unimpeachable and he implicitly trusts those around him, only to have that trust repeatedly violated with harsh consequences. But he’s also a little old-fashioned, out of sync with the modern era, philosophical and charming and very protective of those he loves, sometimes to his detriment. There’s a lot of his intelligence, loyalty and protectiveness in Vakar, as well as the kinds of cute miscommunications that can occur between disparate cultures.

Elisa is one of the strongest women characters ever written, in my opinion, and I love how she struggles to help Goliath and the other Gargoyles navigate their new life without succumbing to typical New York cynicism. She’s a cop, but in the Sam Vimes way, the kind who genuinely wants to help people and believes a badge is a shield rather than a bludgeon. It’s a good parallel for Goliath in that they are both protectors, so they gravitate towards each other because of that, among other things. She’s more street smart than book smart, firmly anchored to her world such that the existence of nonhumans and magic is something that both shocks her and that she takes in stride because, like a true New Yorker, she’s seen it all. That world-weariness manifests in Eva for sure, but also the desire to find joy and hope in a universe that can often feel cold and uncaring. Elisa takes this lost family under her wing and they become her family, too, even as she is forced to lie about their existence to her other friends and family, so that tension comes into my story as well.

Also, I’m a sucker for power couples. Love them. Give me all the power couples. Back to back surrounded by their enemies and ready to kick ass together.

You said one of your jams is deconstructing tropes. The villain of the book is an intergalactic crime syndicate called The Fridge, a direct nod to the “Women Stuffed into the Fridge” trope. Tell us about why you wanted to deconstruct and subvert this trope in the space opera subgenre.

Fridging always frustrates me because of how it treats people as objects, to steal a line from Pratchett, so I wanted to explore that by essentially turning a trope into a literal antagonist. The main character is directly motivated to act by the kidnapping of her sister, but the way it manifests is an echo of the capitalist hellscape in which we are all embroiled to a greater or lesser extent, an apparently endless cycle of debt and loss of agency that is almost impossible to escape without enormous sacrifice. It seemed like a reasonable thing to tackle in space opera, which is intrinsically a little melodramatic in the way that millennials are typically accused of being, with small personal problems writ large against a vast interplanetary backdrop. And I think that’s part of the core of the fridging trope, that something arguably insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe will so fundamentally impact one person that they’re compelled to make drastic choices that can end up affecting many other people.

I asked Rebecca Roanhorse about how SFF written by women tends to be classified as young adult or middle grade fiction. On Twitter, you said Chilling Effect was mislabeled as YA when it was first announced and is still tagged as such by some users on Goodreads. Do you think it has more to deal with the fact that YA fiction embraces diverse and #ownvoices authors more so than adult/literary SFF, thus maintaining the white cishet status quo of adult/literary SFF? Do you think it’s synonymous with “diverse” lit?

I wish I had a definitive answer, but I would probably say it’s all of the above. I think SFF, especially the SF part, is historically perceived as a thing cishet white men write, despite the vast backlists that indicate otherwise. Many women wrote (and still write) under male or gender-neutral pen names because they rightfully expected that a lot of male readers would skip their books, and a lot of those women are also white and cishet. Meanwhile, YA and MG fiction have less of a stigma against women, and have some recent high-profile projects and books by and about marginalized people, such that despite the numbers still being slanted towards cishet white authors and protagonists, there’s a stronger aura of inclusivity and diversity being projected.

It becomes a bit like that brain teaser where you’re supposed to read out the names of colors, except the names are printed in different colors from the word itself, so you’ve got “blue” but it’s printed in red ink so you say “red” instead by accident. If most of the SF books you see written by women are YA/MG, especially most of the “diverse” books, you’re inclined to make assumptions.

What upcoming writing projects are in the works that you can tell us about?

Prime Deceptions, the sequel to Chilling Effect, should be coming out sometime next year. More psychic cats, more wacky hijinks, more video game and pop culture references, plus you get to meet Eva’s mom and find out exactly what the hell happened at Garilia.

I’m also working on a secondary-world fantasy novel that I pitched as Princess Bride meets Stardust with more cussing. Revenge, swords, magic, airships, dragons, prophecies, True Love, and way too many “your mom” jokes.

Sounds like fun! Is there anything else you’d like your readers to know about Chilling Effect?

It’s pretty funny! I mean, the psychic cats probably gave that away, but there are a lot of ridiculous characters and situations, so don’t go into this book expecting realism and serious business. On the SF hardness scale, this is basically unbaked merenguitos.

The book also has a lot of untranslated Spanish, so update your translator nanites for a fully immersive experience, or just take it easy and go with it. You can look it all up later, or ask me and I’ll tell you what “no jodas tanto” means.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Christian A. Coleman is a 2013 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. He lives and writes in the Boston area. He tweets at @coleman_II.

Author Spotlight: E. Lily Yu

Setsu Uzumé | 516 words

Who came to you first, the prince or the cook? How did this all start?

First came, as it does to all, the experience of cruelty from those with power. Then the mapping of that landscape: its thorns, mossy valleys, cities of often indifferent bystanders. I wrote the story in 2017, as a way of thinking about the particular dynamics of women who use their power against other women, as well as women who uplift and protect each other. All of which are ways of being human.

The rhythm and style of the prose was so gorgeous—like a fable but more. Did you borrow from any particular traditions? If so, what drew you to them?

I read the Shahnameh and a fair number of Persian-language fairy tales in the years prior to writing this story, as well as some Hafiz and Rumi, mostly in translation, for the novel I have been working on. This story seems to be yet another unexpected offshoot.

As a non-binary person, I was fascinated by the way you played with gender through the lens of aristocracy and succession. What was the thought process behind these decisions and turns of phrase?

Now that you ask, I can remember reading, at age eleven or so, Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing With Dragons, in which Kazul informs Cimorene: “Queen of the Dragons is a totally different job from King, and it’s not one I’m particularly interested in. Most people aren’t.” And that made a great deal of sense to my eleven-year-old self. Growing up on Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey, I was more interested in swords, bows, and hawks than whatever princesses were said to do before they were married off in horse-trading deals. It seemed unjust that anyone should be condemned to a lifetime of uninteresting activities from birth. That is, however, the very definition of royalty, so I’ve only changed the rules in part. One needs rules in order to break them.

What have you read lately that you adored, or made you think “I want to try that?”

A member of my church recently loaned me The Art of Freshwater Fishing, and it is delightful. I’ve learned that one of the lures in my box is for medium-speed trolling, and that the largest cutthroat trout ever caught, from Pyramid Lake, Nevada, in 1925, was forty-one pounds. Can you imagine?

In terms of fiction, in the past month I’ve very much enjoyed N.K. Jemisin’s “Give Me Cornbread, or Give Me Death.”

What can we look forward to next from you?

Including this one, I’ve had six short stories published in 2019, in Asimov’s, Slate, Tor.com, and the anthologies New Suns and If This Goes On. I’ll have a story out in John Joseph Adam’s Lost Worlds anthology in 2020. I also have a novel on submission. Wish me luck.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Setsu grew up in New York, and spent their formative years in and out of dojos. They like swords, raspberries, justice, the smell of pine forests after rain, and shooting arrows from horseback. They do not like peanut butter and chocolate in the same bite. Their work has appeared in Podcastle and Grimdark Magazine. Find them on Twitter @KatanaPen.

Author Spotlight: Eli Brown

Arley Sorg | 375 words

“Nesting Habits of Enceladan Jade Beetles” is intense and focused, its events covering not even half an hour, I think. And in that span, through one simple accident, everything changes in the protagonist’s life. How did this story come together for you? Was there one particular idea that came first?

The seed of this story came to me in a nightmare, actually. I dreamed I was in the suit and something had chewed right through my arm. Usually the inspirations that come with sleep aren’t worth much in the light of day, but I still wrote down every detail I could remember. I hadn’t been getting good sleep since the birth of my second child. Tossing and turning had stirred up some vivid imagery and I put it to use. The rest of the story was developed over several revisions.

I enjoyed how your exo-entomologist admires and worries about the jade beetles even as one seriously harms him. How do you feel about insects yourself?

Who doesn’t like insects? They’re fascinating, bizarre, gruesome. Bugs are always up to something scandalous. I’ve been lucky enough to see a hummingbird moth twice in my life and I still have trouble believing they exist. I used to live in the desert east of San Diego and, one night, I accidentally stepped on a scorpion with my bare feet. Somehow, I hadn’t been stung, but the bottom of my foot was glowing like it was radioactive. Some scorpions luminesce in the moonlight . . . wait, how did you trick me into telling that story?

Do you have other stories in this universe with these characters, or would you consider writing any? I especially liked Ocampo, if you’re taking suggestions!

I’m glad you like Ocampo. I do too. She’s one of those characters whose voice came through clearly from the beginning. I don’t have other stories with these characters yet, but I haven’t closed any doors.

What else are you working on lately?

I have several projects underway, including more science fiction short stories and a fantasy novel for younger readers coming out in 2021.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Arley Sorg grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado. He studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and usually writes in local coffee shops. A 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate, he is an assistant editor at Locus Magazine. He’s soldering together a novel, has thrown a few short stories into orbit, and hopes to launch more.

Author Spotlight: Isabel Yap

Nicasio Andres Reed | 1762 words

I was so happy to read a story that deftly and compassionately works through the gender and sexual dynamics of, as the kids call it, monsterfucking. Historically (as you demonstrate) and up until today, the genre niche or trope of a human/monster romance usually centers on the heterosexual pairing of a male monster and a human woman. Can you talk a bit about what drew you to work within and around this particular tradition?

I’d always wanted to write a Red Riding Hood story. I read “The Company of Wolves” in high school and immediately asked for The Bloody Chamber as a pasalubong (souvenir) from a relative who was visiting the US at the time, since it wasn’t in any of our bookstores in Manila. Around that same time I was obsessively reading the webcomic No Rest for the Wicked, which is a fairy tale mash-up which includes Red as a central character, except she’s a badass with an axe and no social manners. I have a distinct memory of watching the movie version of The Company of Wolves during a sleepover with my best friend a few years later. We laughed at all the overt sexual imagery, but it was still lots of fun. Among fairy tale heroines, I have a soft spot for Gretel and Red—there’s something about a young girl getting lost in a forest that’s resonant for me (and, clearly, lots of people).

That said, I didn’t know what my Red story would be. So I let it simmer in my head for years and years. At first I wanted to just interrogate her relationship with the wolf. What if they end up together? Why would that happen? I think this idea came mostly from Angela Carter: falling in love with the beast. For a long time I thought I’d write a domestic fairy tale where Red and the Wolf live together, chopping wood and fishing, and she bakes him pies.

I remember the moment this idea came to me. I was walking my dog, listening to a podcast, and the author was talking about writing a Beauty and the Beast retelling. And my brain went “Oh, shit. Beauty meets Red and they fall in love.” Then I thought: “So what about the wolf?” And I realized I still wanted to tell the domestic fairy tale, but at the moment when it shatters. Red realizes this guy is a monster, he fucking ate my grandmother. It got pretty dark after that.

For a long time I was stumped about how Wolf, and the Beast, fit into the story. I wanted to show that they were also kind. That Red and Beauty had been justified in their choices, that they hadn’t been weak to stay. But also that there was something to understanding themselves better, and realizing there are other ways to love.

Also, I love fairy tales and retellings of all kinds. Some of this might be my fanfic background, but even within fandom I always loved great fairy tale retellings, like fresne’s Queer as the Fork when the Knife ran away with the Spoon, or northlight’s seeing your world from the outside. I think when I first started writing original fiction I was a little hesitant to remix fairy tales, especially Euro-centric ones, without making them explicitly of-my-culture (for example, a Filipino retelling of the Little Mermaid, which I did do). Maybe that was messed up. It was some instinct I had. I’ve started to get over that in more recent years.

What I love about the ending of “Windrose in Scarlet” is how it plays on the fact that the very monstrousness that supposedly afflicts or twists the male characters in fairy tales also allows them to transgress societal norms in a way that is inaccessible to the women in the tales. Their monstrousness marks them, but also empowers them. Do you see this ending, where Red and Beauty must be transformed in order to escape, as an optimistic and hopeful ending? Why was this ending in particular necessary to you?

I didn’t know how this story was going to end. As the Bad Husbands were approaching, I could feel my brain going “Oh god, how will they escape?!” I reached that part in the draft, panicked, and took a shower. And my brain just went, Duh, the fairy transforms them into animals. It was natural. I don’t even have a full explanation for it, which is slightly disappointing: It felt right, so I put it in, and it still feels right when I reread it.

If I was to retroactively suss out what my story-brain was doing, I think that transformation makes sense for two reasons. First, in transforming, Red and Beauty are able to access the same physical strength they ordinarily couldn’t have by virtue of being “human,” when pitted against literal monsters. Maybe some of this is my subconscious going, Fuck it, we deserve to be that strong. But sometimes, physically, you really just can’t compete. Like: I’m not tall, I’m not physically imposing; when people meet me, these attributes affect how they view me. I wanted to give these girls the opportunity to throw that out the window: to be that wild and intimidating. To be monstrous, in a way.

Second, it lets Red place a bet for her and Beauty. The bet is this: I believe I won’t lose who I am, even once I gain all this strength. Unlike the Wolf and Beast, they are able to hold onto the part of themselves that was tender and kind. I think some part of me inherently thinks that is possible, that what others find monstrous can actually be overcome, or isn’t that way at all. (I never intended for this story to be a blatant commentary on queer acceptance, but perhaps that’s part of what my subconscious wanted.) For this reason, I think the ending is optimistic.

Red and Beauty seem to see in one another things that they can’t see in themselves. Theirs is such a natural and romantic dynamic, and stands in contrast to the men they’ve been magically saddled with. When it comes to romantic love, what do you think is present or is missing in the classic fairy tale depictions?

Besides overtly queer narratives? Because it can always use more of those! (I’m looking at you, The Little Mermaid.)

I think I wanted to play with a couple of those missed depictions in this story. For example, the idea of fate. In most fairy tales, protagonists end up with The One because it fits the story: like they’re both royal, or because one has a heart of gold, or sometimes because of a fairy’s meddling. In a story where there’s one royal and one poor but kind-hearted person, of course they get together. This could also be the effect of growing up with Disney’s Golden Age. It’s sort of my same problem with shoujo manga: It’s never a mystery who will end up together, because it’s gonna be the two protagonists on the cover, obviously. So one thing I wanted to ask was: What about choosing who to love?

Beauty thinks Beast is her destiny. She thinks he is her “right outcome.” But she starts to fall in love with Red. So what now? Maybe in some ways this is also my message to couples. Not that romantic love is everything, nor should I really be giving anyone love advice, but . . . perhaps it’s worth it to not settle, if you’re gonna spend eternity with someone?

Another thing I wanted to play with is why they fall in love. Fairy tales have a lot of insta-love. I don’t like insta-love, I don’t buy it; but I do get that you might inexplicably have a crush on someone, just because you’re intrigued, or you like the way they look. In this story, they were attracted to each other immediately, which is not something I usually write. Following that, I wanted to justify how they get to a point where they’re willing to let this happen, as scary as it is. It ended up like a semi-slow burn. So, yes, they find each other hot. But they fall in love because they become mirrors for each other, and they make each other braver and better.

This is separate from romantic love, but I wanted to tackle this undercurrent of abuse towards female characters that fairy tales tend to have in common. I know they were written in a certain time, but I feel now that if I do a retelling, I at least need to poke that, or acknowledge it. In Disney’s version, and in the original, the Beast is really shitty to Beauty’s dad—and to her, at first. I get that he’s lonely, but isn’t that terrible? And even if he does turn kinder, will that monster in him ever completely subside? Then there are the versions of Red Riding Hood where she gets into bed with the wolf and he eats her, the end. There’s the Little Mermaid, the Little Match Girl. I kind of wanted to write a story where a female character’s self-sacrifice (or naivety) was not the happy ending. Bonus points if I get to make it shippy!

What is coming up next for you?

I’m working on two or three short pieces for a thing, which I won’t say more about so as not to jinx it. Otherwise I’ve been focusing on longer pieces: the sad healer living on a planet, avoiding the war; the boy and his snarky demon, solving a murder in a rainy seaside town; the Ibong Adarna retelling. I still can’t grok writing long, and as a grad student I’ve had very little time to write. But this past summer I’ve done much better at writing consistently, so I’m hoping to keep that up during the academic year.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Nicasio Andres Reed is a Filipino-American writer, poet, and essayist whose work has appeared in venues such as Lightspeed’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Shimmer. Nico has gone back and forth between the US and the Philippines over the years, and is currently pursuing an MA in creative writing at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Find him on Twitter @NicasioSilang.

Author Spotlight: Ray Nayler

Arley Sorg | 1574 words

Opening the story as a conversation kind of takes the place of a third person limited narrator in many ways. What are the advantages and challenges of this technique, and how did you deal with them?

I wanted this story to take place over a great deal of time—the evolution of a whole neighborhood, and, of course, of a being, as well. I was looking for a way to do this economically, in a way that would give the story a strong voice. I also needed to be able to reveal and conceal certain facts from the reader: Giving the story this form let me do that. I’ve used the conversation/interview format elsewhere, and I love the way it helps conceal the essential unreliability of a narrator and allows for some very fun manipulations of time. I felt it was right for this story.

Among many things in this story, there’s poignant reflection on death and the various things it can mean to an individual, which feels very real in moments—was this the intention from the beginning? How did the story start for you: What was the inspiration and how did it develop?

I’ve lived outside of the United States for almost half of my life. Starting in 2003, in fact, I’ve only been back in the United States for about three years. The rest of the time has been overseas: in Turkmenistan, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and then in Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan working in development assistance. I joined the Foreign Service in 2010, and since then have done tours in Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan again, Azerbaijan—and now Kosovo, where I’ll be before this hits print, event though at this moment I am in Arlington, Virginia finishing up training.

When I’m back in the U.S., I’ve consistently lived in the same neighborhood—Rosslyn, which is in Arlington County, just outside of D.C. It’s where the Foreign Service generally houses us during training. And every time I come back, which is usually at two- or three-year intervals, something else has disappeared. This last time, they ripped down a beautiful little 1950s fire station—the actual Fire Station 10 of the title. It was a shock: It was such a classic building, I was sure they would preserve it, but nothing is sacred around here. I love architecture—in fact, I’ve often said I would be an architect if I hadn’t settled on writing. The demolition made me furious, actually—and that was what inspired this story.

Besides having emotionally resonant moments, there’s also a lot of attention to lines and words/word choice, to sounds, language, imagery matching the mood of a moment or a paragraph. I’m guessing a lot of this is your background in poetry? Can you talk a bit about the power of these elements in fiction, or about the way you use them?

I will draft and re-draft a story until I am satisfied with every word. I often start a new day of writing by editing the story from the beginning. By the time I finish a first draft, it is often, technically, a thirtieth or fortieth draft.

This slows me down, but it ensures I am happy with what I’ve built, in the end. Maybe this is the architect in me. I do it for myself, and I also do it out of respect for the reader. I want to build a world for them to live in. This is something I’ve talked about elsewhere, in an interview for Asimov’s, but it bears repeating: I started writing because I wanted to create worlds to live in for myself and for my friends, growing up in a boring little nowhere town. That’s always remained my aim—to create worlds for my friends, and I view readers as my friends and confidants. I want to transport them.

Writing poetry at the professional level has taught me a great deal about how to do this. I read a good deal of poetry as well. It’s like going back to the well—poetry hits a part of the creative brain that nothing else can quite touch.

I feel like this piece is tackling a lot (although it all works together!): the notion of artificial sentience; ideas around self/other and philosophies on how to interact with “the other”; ideas on individuals “helping” but really on their own sort of crusade; notions around government and rights; the habit humans have of centering everything on themselves, including existence; all while dappling the setting with SFnal futuristic sparkles. I mean . . . frankly, at the hands of most writers, it would be a mess. But it really comes together well. How do you keep all these ideas and aspects sharp, important, and . . . make them work together?

 You know, maybe the reason it all works (I hope it does work) is that I viewed it all as a single whole, rather than disparate parts. For me, this is a story about respect for life in all and any of its forms—about preservation and mercy and mutual understanding across difference, all of which form, for me, a single coherent whole. I hope that is what comes across.

A lot of the story, especially in the late second and third conversations, reminds me somehow of aging/older folks. There’s this feeling of displacement, perhaps even of abandonment, of late-stage transition. But also of continuation regardless of these circumstances (which speaks enormously to sense of character, in my opinion). Is this intentional? Can you speak a bit about this?

I think what I wanted to communicate is a sense of resolve—the resolve to find ways forward through the difficulties the world presents: ways forward that affirm our connection to one another, and affirm a common “humanity”—one not limited to the human. Maybe this is something I’ve come to see as central to life.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about this story?

I wrote a short poem, “Last Home,” years ago, about the demolitions in Rosslyn, and I think it makes a good companion piece to this one, so here it is:

Last Home

A dingy clapboard house,
Sunburned lawn and scattered brick.

One Monday passes, and even
Shattered wood and split concrete are gone.

Nothing was special about this house,
Having never had a chance

To accrue a history
Beyond the lost toys seeded in the grass.

It is better this way. Where there was once
Wallpaper scabs and personal weeds,

We erect a shield of mirrored glass.

Where now,
Death?

Where now,
Hypocrisy?

Even pride is stripped clean
From this new muteness

Of architecture.

The poem “Last Home” is based on this passage, verse 150, from The Dhammapada:

Of bones the city is made.
Plastered with flesh and blood,
Where decay and death are deposited
And pride and hypocrisy.

Science fiction, sometimes, is about literalizing metaphors. In the Dhammapada, the “city” is the human body. But I thought: What if the city, here used as metaphor, were, in fact, the city?

Looking at your website raynayler.net, you have a lot of short fiction, both out and coming out. Are there themes you often deal with, or styles you often use in your stories? Is this piece similar or different to the rest of your body of work?

I think there is a general sensibility that has run through my work since I started writing, way back in elementary school. I wouldn’t exactly call it a theme, and I’m not even sure I would want to name it, but it is there throughout.

There is probably a core style as well, though I feel I write “story first,” in the sense that I will alter style to fit a theme or story. I’m often more interested in “voice” than “style” per se.

Are you working on a book or do you prefer shorter form?

I’m always several stories ahead of what is being published now, I’ll say that. I don’t only write in the short form, though—I also published a novel, American Graveyards, years ago, when I was writing in the noir/hardboiled genres. As to current projects: I never talk about them. I’m too superstitious.

For readers who loved this story and have become Nayler fans, what should they read next?

Good question! I think people who liked this one, and are interested in questions of consciousness, would enjoy “The Ocean Between the Leaves,” “Winter Timeshare,” or “A Threnody for Hazan”—but I’m not partial to any one of my stories. There are a lot of them, across genres, up at my website. That would be a great place to start.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Arley Sorg grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado. He studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and usually writes in local coffee shops. A 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate, he is an assistant editor at Locus Magazine. He’s soldering together a novel, has thrown a few short stories into orbit, and hopes to launch more.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 209 words

Coming up in November, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Dominica Phetteplace (“Her Appetite, His Heart”) and Adam-Troy Castro (“Eros Pratfalled, or, Adrift in the Cosmos With Lasagna and Mary Steenburgen”), along with SF reprints by Matthew Bright (“The Concubine’s Heart”) and Genevieve Valentine (“Overburden”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Yoon Ha Lee (“The Second-Last Client”) and Melissa Marr (“Knee Deep in the Sea”), and fantasy reprints by Theodora Goss (“A Country Called Winter”) and Ken Liu (“The Hidden Girl”).

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

For our ebook readers, we also have a book excerpt.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.

• • • •

Looking ahead beyond next month, we’ve got a veritable plethora of stories forthcoming. We’ve got work from the following authors coming up over the next couple of issues: Matthew Baker, KT Bryski, Russell Nichols, Pat Murphy, and Adam-Troy Castro.

So be sure to keep an eye out for all that SFnal goodness in the months to come. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Lightspeed.

Thanks for reading!

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Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe for more information, including about third-party subscription options.

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Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store for more information.

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All caught up on Lightspeed? Good news! We also have lots of ebooks available from our sister-publications:

Nightmare Ebooks, Bundles, & Subscriptions: Like Lightspeed, our sister-magazine Nightmare (nightmare-magazine.com) also has ebooks, bundles, and subscriptions available as well. For instance, you can get the complete first year (12 issues) of Nightmare for just $24.99; that’s savings of $11 off buying the issues individually. Or, if you’d like to subscribe, a 12-month subscription to Nightmare includes 48 stories (about 240,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction), and will cost you just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price).

Fantasy Magazine Ebooks & Bundles: We also have ebook back issues—and ebook back issue bundles—of Lightspeed’s (now dormant) sister-magazine, Fantasy. To check those out, just visit fantasy-magazine.com/store. You can buy each Fantasy bundle for $24.99, or you can buy the complete run of Fantasy Magazine— all 57 issues—for just $114.99 (that’s $10 off buying all the bundles individually, and more than $55 off the cover price!).

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

The Editors

If you’re reading this, then there’s a good chance you’re a regular reader of Lightspeed and/or Nightmare. We already offer ebook subscriptions as a way of supporting the magazines, but we wanted to add an additional option to allow folks to support us, thus we’ve launched a Drip (d.rip/john-joseph-adams) and a Patreon (patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams).

TL;DR Version

If you enjoy Lightspeed and Nightmare and my anthologies, our Patreon and Drip pages are a way for you to help support those endeavors by chipping in a buck or more on a recurring basis. Your support will help us bring bigger and better (and more) projects into the world.

Why Patreon and Drip?

There are no big companies supporting or funding the magazines, so the magazines really rely on reader support. Though we offer the magazines online for free, we’re able to fund them by selling ebook subscriptions or website advertising.

While we have a dedicated ebook subscriber base, the vast majority of our readers consume the magazine online for free. If just 10% of our website readers pledged just $1 a month, the magazines would be doing fantastically well. So we thought it might be useful to have an option like Drip and Patreon for readers who maybe haven’t considered supporting the magazine, or who maybe haven’t because they don’t have any desire to receive the ebook editions—or who would be glad to pay $1 a month, but not $3 (the cost of a monthly subscriber issue of Lightspeed).

Though Lightspeed and Nightmare are separate entities, we decided to create a single “publisher” Drip and Patreon account because it seemed like it would be more efficient to manage just one page on each platform. Plus, since I sometimes independently publish works using indie-publishing tools (as described above), we thought it would be good to have a single place where folks could come to show their support for such projects.

Basically, we wanted to create a crowdfunding page where, if you enjoy my work as an editor, and you want to contribute a little something to help make it easier for us to produce more cool projects, then our Drip or Patreon are the place to do that.

What Do I Get Out of Being a Backer or Patron?

Well, you get the satisfaction of helping to usher the creation of cool new short fiction projects into the world! Plus, the more support we get, the better we can make the magazines and compensate our authors and staff. By becoming a supporter via Patreon or Drip, you help fund our growth and continued publication of two award-winning magazines. Of course, if you’re already one of our ebook subscribers (thank you!), you are already supporting us. This is for those who prefer to read the issues each month on our free websites, or wish to support our efforts more generally.

By becoming a supporter, you are also bestowed a title, such as Dragonrider, or Space Wizard, or Savior of the World and/or Universe, thus making you instantly the envy of all your friends.

Thank You!

If you’ve read this far, thanks so much. We hope you’ll consider becoming a backer on Patreon or Drip. Those URLs again are d.rip/john-joseph-adams and patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams.

Thanks in advance for your time. We look forward to hopefully being able to make the magazines—and my other publishing endeavors—even better with the support of people like you.

About the Lightspeed Team

The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams

Managing/Senior Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Editor & Book Reviewer

Arley Sorg

Reprint Editor

Rich Horton

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Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

John Joseph Adams

Assistant Editor

Laurel Amberdine

Editorial Assistant

Alex Puncekar

Reviewers

Arley Sorg

LaShawn Wanak

Chris Kluwe

Carrie Vaughn

Christopher East

Violet Allen

Interviewer

Christian A. Coleman

Copy Editor

Dana Watson

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Devin Marcus

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects

Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading Lightspeed (and/or Nightmare), you might also enjoy these works edited by John Joseph Adams:

ANTHOLOGIES

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey)

Armored

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (with Karen Joy Fowler)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 (with Charles Yu)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 (with N.K. Jemisin)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 (with Carmen Maria Machado)

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Cosmic Powers

Dead Man’s Hand

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: Ignorance is Strength (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming 2020]

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: Burn the Ashes (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming 2020]

THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: Or Else the Light (with Hugh Howey) [Forthcoming 2020]

Epic: Legends of Fantasy

Federations

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects

Lightspeed: Year One

The Living Dead

The Living Dead 2

Loosed Upon the World

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination

Operation Arcana

Other Worlds Than These

Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen)

A People’s Future of the United States (with Victor LaValle)

Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Seeds of Change

Under the Moons of Mars

Wastelands

Wastelands 2

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse

The Way of the Wizard

What the #@&% is That? (with Douglas Cohen)

NOVELS and COLLECTIONS

Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey

Shift by Hugh Howey

Dust by Hugh Howey

Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn

Sand by Hugh Howey

Retrograde by Peter Cawdron

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer

The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty

The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn

The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks

The Chaos Function by Jack Skillingstead

Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker

Gather the Fortunes by Bryan L. Camp

Reentry by Peter Cawdron

Half Way Home by Hugh Howey

The Unfinished Land by Greg Bear [forthcoming]

Creatures of Charm and Hunger by Molly Tanzer [forthcoming]

A Dark Queen Rises by Ashok K. Banker [forthcoming]

The Conductors by Nicole Glover [forthcoming]

The Chosen One by Veronica Roth [forthcoming]

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.