UNCANNY MAGAZINE

“Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff” by Uncanny Magazine

About Our Cover Artist: Galen Dara by Galen Dara

“The Uncanny Valley” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

“The Tired Body Problem” by Meg Elison

“Collaboration? (accessible version)” by Ken Liu & Caroline M. Yoachim

“Cold Relations” by Mary Robinette Kowal

“How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark

“Waystation City” by A. T. Greenblatt

“Horsewoman” by A.M. Dellamonica

“Flower, Daughter, Soil, Seed” by Eugenia Triantafyllou

“One Man’s Treasure” by Sarah Pinsker

“The Father Provincial of Mare Imbrium” by E. Lily Yu

“Silver Necklace, Golden Ring” by Marie Brennan

“Miz Boudreaux’s Last Ride” by Christopher Caldwell

“Bad Doors” by John Wiswell

“Prospect Heights” by Maureen McHugh

“The Haunting of Her Body” by Elsa Sjunneson

“Something in the Way: AI-Generated Images and the Real Killer” by John Picacio

“What a Fourteenth Century Legal Case Can Teach Us about Storytelling” by Annalee Newitz

“The Magic of the Right Story” by A. T. Greenblatt

“The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm: Audio Writing” by Diana M. Pho

“Building Better Worlds” by Javier Grillo–Marxuach

“The Hole Thing” by Neil Gaiman

“Love Poem: Phoenix” by Terese Mason Pierre

“The Credo of Loplop” by Sonya Taaffe

“Kannazuki, or the Godless Month” by Betsy Aoki

“The Witch Makes Her To-Do List” by Theodora Goss

“Temperance and The Devil, Reversed” by Ali Trotta

“Driving Downtown” by Abu Bakr Sadiq

“Hel on a Headland” by Elizabeth Bear

“To Whomsoever Remains” by Brandon O’Brien

“Interview: Ken Liu & Caroline M. Yoachim” by Tina Connolly

“Interview: Eugenia Triantafyllou” by Caroline M. Yoachim

“Interview: E. Lily Yu” by Caroline M. Yoachim

“Interview: Christopher Caldwell” by Caroline M. Yoachim

“Thank You, Patreon Supporters!” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

Edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota

Ebook generated by Clockpunk Studios.

Copyright © 2022 by Uncanny Magazine.

www.uncannymagazine.com

Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff

Publishers/Editors–in–Chief: Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
C0-Managing Editor/Poetry Editor: Chimedum Ohaegbu
Co-Managing Editor: Monte Lin
Nonfiction Editor: Meg Elison
Podcast Producers: Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky
Podcast Readers: Erika Ensign & Matt Peters
Senior Assistant Editor: Naomi Day
Assistant Editor: Tania Chen
Interviewers: Caroline M. Yoachim & Lynne M. Thomas
Submissions Editors:  Cislyn Smith, Dolores Peters, Heather Clitheroe, Heather Leigh, Jay Wolf, Liam Meilleur, Matt Peters, Piper Hale, Tazmania Hayward, C. E. McGill, Rowan MacBean, Brahidaliz Martinez, Genevra Hsu, Marissa Harwood, Anna Reser, Danai Christopoulou, Carla B. Estruch, Sylvia Santiago, Jessica E. Moyer, Leon Perniciaro, Isabel Hinchliff, Beesan, Lalini Shanela Ranaraja, Michelle Enehiwealu Iruobe, Surya Hendry

Logo & Wordmark design: Katy Shuttleworth

About Our Cover Artist: Galen Dara

Galen Dara has created art for TOR, DAW Books, HarperCollins Publishing, Simon and Schuster, Subterranean Press, Scientific American magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Strange Horizons Magazine, Wizards Of The Coast, and Fantasy Flight Games. She’s won the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy award, the Spectrum Award, and the Chesley Award (and has been nominated several times for the Locus Award). She’s on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @galendara.  www.galendara.com

The Uncanny Valley

by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

This is Uncanny Magazine Issue 50. Our double-sized, milestone Issue 50.

There’s been 100 months of Uncanny Magazine on the Internet.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!?! 😊

We are massively proud of this achievement, Space Unicorns. When we launched our first issue in 2014, we had no idea that we would make it to 50 issues. It’s not easy for magazines to achieve that, especially a magazine that does it with yearly crowdfunding. We are gobsmacked and humbled by reaching this fabulous milestone.

We could only have done it with your support, Space Unicorns, and with the help of the greatest staff in the universe. We think we’ve made a fairly dandy magazine over the last 9 years. In that time, Uncanny Magazine, or pieces from Uncanny, accumulated 166 award nominations and 35 award wins—wins that include 6 Hugo Awards for Uncanny, a Hugo Award for the Uncanny Thomases’ editing, and Uncanny stories winning Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Ignyte, and World Fantasy Awards. This is completely beyond our original dreams and expectations.

We opened our first editorial in November 2014, with: “January 28, 2014 was the worst day of our lives: A parade of awful news culminating in our 11-year-old daughter Caitlin nearly dying during her spinal fusion surgery.” It was worse than that in the autumn of 2019, when Caitlin almost died many more times. The absolute worst, though, has been the last 6 months. Caitlin has been through so very much, and is currently home in palliative care. (The doctors have told us her current health issues are terminal, and we are doing everything we can to make the time she has left as wonderful and loving as possible.) Somehow, during all of the hospitalizations and life changes and chaos, we’ve managed to get every single issue of Uncanny Magazine out on time and to our standards.

We’re still here. Caitlin, Lynne, and Michael persist—as does Hugo the Cat.

It hasn’t been easy. Magazines are tricky in the best of times, and we’ve created Uncanny during tremendous challenges. Often we will check in with each other to make sure that the time and energy spent on the magazine are worth it.

It has, and always will be worth it.

We believe in this art. We believe stories matter. We believe in this community. We believe that the best way to build a better world is to create things—things that give hope and catharsis. We want to help spread art that has meaning and escape. We’re here to bring you beautiful words and to always, always Space Unicorns, make you feel.

Thank you, all of you. We couldn’t have done this without our devoted readership, our phenomenal writers and artists, and our tremendous staff, which includes our Managing Editor Monte Lin, Nonfiction Editor Meg Elison, Podcast Producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky, Podcast Reader Matt Peters, Interviewer Caroline M. Yoachim, and Assistant Editor Tania Chen, plus our alumni staff of Managing /Poetry Editor Chimedum Ohaegbu, Managing/Nonfiction Editor Michi Trota, Nonfiction Editor Elsa Sjunneson, Poetry/Reprint Editor Julia Rios, Poetry/Reprint Editor Mimi Mondal, Senior Assistant Editor Naomi Day, Assistant Editor Angel Cruz, podcast readers Amal El-Mohtar, C. S. E. Cooney, Joy Piedmont, and Stephanie Malia Morris, and our interviewers Deborah Stanish and Shana DuBois, and finally, all of our many Submissions Editors through the years.

LET’S MAKE 50 MORE!!!

It’s the time of year when people post their year-in-reviews to remind voters for the different SF/F awards what’s out there that they might have missed, and in which categories those stories are eligible (especially for the Hugo Awards and Nebula Awards). 2022 was the eighth full year of Uncanny Magazine (Issues 44 through 49). We are extremely proud of the year we had.

This year, Uncanny Magazine is still eligible for the Best Semiprozine Hugo Award. Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas are also still eligible for the Best Editor (Short Form) Hugo Award for editing issues 44–49. (Note: If you are nominating the Thomases in this category, please continue to nominate them together. They are a co-editing team.)

The stories at the link below are eligible in either the short story, novelette, or novella categories of the SF/F awards. If you are a SFWA member nominating for the Nebula Awards, you can find eBook copies of these stories in the SFWA Forums.

Please also note that essays are eligible for the Best Related Work Hugo Award, and poetry is eligible for the Rhysling Award. As Uncanny is a semiprozine, all of the essays and original art also contribute towards the creators’ Best Fan Writer and Best Fan Artist Hugo Award eligibility.

You can see the entire list here!

And now the contents of the DOUBLE-SIZED Uncanny Magazine Issue 50! The fabulous cover is Sharps and Soft by Galen Dara (who also was the Issue #1 artist). Our fabulous new fiction includes “Collaboration?” by Ken Liu and Caroline M. Yoachim, “Cold Relations” by Mary Robinette Kowal, “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark, “Waystation City” by A. T. Greenblatt, “Horsewoman” by A.M. Dellamonica, “Flower, Daughter, Soil, Seed” by Eugenia Triantafyllou, “One Man’s Treasure” by Sarah Pinsker, “The Father Provincial of Mare Imbrium” by E. Lily Yu, “Silver Necklace, Golden Ring” by Marie Brennan, “Miz Boudreaux’s Last Ride” by Christopher Caldwell, “Bad Doors” by John Wiswell, and “Prospect Heights” by Maureen McHugh.

Our provocative and compelling essays this month include “Something in the Way: AI Art and the Real Killer” by John Picacio, “The Haunting of Her Body” by Elsa Sjunneson, “What a Fourteenth Century Legal Case Can Teach Us about Storytelling” by Annalee Newitz, “The Magic of the Right Story” by A. T. Greenblatt, “The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm: Audio Writing” by Diana M. Pho, and “Building Better Worlds” by Javier Grillo-Marxuach. Our gorgeous and evocative poetry includes “The Hole Thing” by Neil Gaiman, “Love Poem: Phoenix” by Terese Mason Pierre, “The Credo of Loplop” by Sonya Taaffe, “Kannazuki, or the Godless Month” by Betsy Aoki, “The Witch Makes Her To-Do List” by Theodora Goss, “Temperance and The Devil, Reversed” by Ali Trotta, “Driving Downtown” by Abu Bakr Sadiq, “Hel on a Headland” by Elizabeth Bear, and “To Whomsoever Remains” by Brandon O’Brien. Finally, Tina Connolly interviews Ken Liu and Caroline M. Yoachim about their story, and Caroline M. Yoachim interviews Eugenia Triantafyllou, E. Lily Yu, and Christopher Caldwell about their stories.

The Uncanny Magazine Podcast Episode 50A features “Cold Relations” by Mary Robinette Kowal, as read by Erika Ensign, “Love Poem: Phoenix” by Terese Mason Pierre, as read by Matt Peters, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Mary Robinette Kowal. The Uncanny Magazine Podcast Episode 50B features “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark, as read by Matt Peters, “Kannazuki, or the Godless Month” by Betsy Aoki, as read by Eika Ensign, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing P. Djèlí Clark. The Uncanny Magazine Podcast Episode 50C features “One Man’s Treasure” by Sarah Pinsker, as read by Matt Peters, “The Witch Makes Her To-Do List” by Theodora Goss, as read by Erika Ensign, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Sarah Pinsker. Finally, the Uncanny Magazine Podcast Episode 50D features “Bad Doors” by John Wiswell, as read by Erika Ensign, “Driving Downtown” by Abu Bakr Sadiq, as read by Matt Peters, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing John Wiswell.

As always, we are deeply grateful for your support of Uncanny Magazine. Shine on, Space Unicorns!

© 2023 Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors-in-Chief of Uncanny Magazine.

Ten-time Hugo, British Fantasy, and 2-time Parsec Award-winner Lynne M. Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine (2011-2013). She co-edited the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords (with Tara O’Shea) and Hugo Award-finalist Chicks Dig Comics (with Sigrid Ellis).

Seven-time Hugo, British Fantasy, and Parsec Award-winner Michael Damian Thomas was the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012-2013), co-edited the Hugo-finalist Queers Dig Time Lords (with Sigrid Ellis), and co-edited Glitter & Mayhem (with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas).

Together, they solve mysteries.

The Tired Body Problem

by Meg Elison

Editors of fiction and nonfiction alike live in a cyclone of recurring themes. We receive pitches and submissions along seasonal and cultural currents; we can always tell when an anthology call made waves or a new magazine made ripples. More than that, we can usually sense which way the wind is blowing for writers and creatives in general, because everyone finds a way to express the same general feeling.

For the entirety of my time here at Uncanny, I have received essays that express fatigue. Everybody is tired. Writers are tired, and more than that, burned out. That feeling is elegantly expressed by Premee Mohamed, who noted that the entire world seems to be burning down, but only our deadlines remain fireproof. Sarah Gailey invited us, the endlessly weary, to take a break with a short story. And what are those stories for? Inspiration, sure. A window out of this world into another? Sometimes. A way to rest, when all else in life calls for our unrelenting efforts and demands that we produce at an incredible rate even as our beds are burning? That’s the one.

That last is a vast understatement of the facts. We are all of us living out our wild and precious lives. Each life is a tragedy in progress. Each tree of branching relationships is a living drama. Each absurd indignity of being a human is a comedy. And although each of these facts has been true of every human who has ever lived upright and used a language, our time seems, if not unique, at least louder, and more frenetic than any that preceded it. That is perhaps due to an unprecedented (who’s tired of that word?) acceleration in technology accompanied by social upheaval and political turmoil and climate change. These factors are exacerbated by our all-new ability to hear the inane and terrifying thoughts of the millions of minds around us, thanks to social media, while we contend with our own micro and macro horrors. Add to all this the pressures of late-stage capitalism under an income inequality not seen in centuries, and it’s a wonder we don’t all just lie down in the street and refuse to get up.

But it is the hubris of each generation to imagine its suffering is new and different than any other. Science fiction writers have been trying to undo the human need for sleep for decades now. In 1957, J.G. Ballard imagined an existence without sleep. His optimists in “Manhole 69” believe that life might be more interesting and more productive without the loss of eight hours of torpor. His pessimists predict the outcome we all know to be the truth from our own experience with continual exhaustion: the human mind simply cannot take it. Ted Chiang’s 1991 “Understand” draws a similar conclusion: the mind that does not sleep loses something essentially human. When we are tired, we are less than ourselves. Certainly less than our best.

In 2014, Karen Russell published Sleep Donation, an early entry into the conversation about sleep and capitalism. In her tale, talented sleepers can donate or sell what they’re good at to insomniacs who desperately need it. Even this seemingly reciprocal arrangement is no good: the exchange of dreams and nightmares uncouples the work on an individual from the mind that created it. The result is inhumane and more tiring than the garden-variety lack of rest.

This most recent year of the pandemic (which pandemic? Why, the one that brings viral fatigue! The one we’re all so very tired of! The one that’s wearing us out when it doesn’t kill us!) brought readers The Sleepless, by Victor Manibo. In Manibo’s neo-noir, a cascading series of environmental and pharmacological pressures makes about ten percent of the human population sleepless. They’re up all night in neon cities, working second jobs and trying each other on like onesie pajamas. Manibo’s nightlight fantasy is so appealing, mostly because of capitalism. Imagine having no fatigue to strain the potentials of wage earning. Imagine wide-open rooms in an apartment, because the person who lives there has no need to cede real estate to a bed. Imagine living twice as much life, because half of it isn’t spent unconscious.

The idea appeals, at first. Somewhere deep within each of us there lives a sullen toddler who does not want to go to bed. Other people are awake, and surely they must be enjoying something illicit from which we are excluded. We want to stay up and be grown-up and cool.

The toddler needs a nap. The grown-up needs a nap. We all need a nap.

At the beginning of the pandemic (which pandemic? Why, the one that will be over before you know it! The one we can curtail through masking and social distancing! The one where we’re flattening the curve by caring about one another) brought readers a new Tim Pratt novel, called Doors of Sleep. In this Sliders-style adventure of parallel universes, our hero wakes up in a new world every time they sleep. This makes sleep both the enemy and the vehicle of adventure itself. The main character has to carry stimulants and soporifics alike, to bring sleep when it’s needed (when the world is dangerous, when they have to escape) and to ward it off when the world is welcoming (this world has food, this world has a hot tub, this world brought me a companion whom I’d like to take along). Doors of Sleep is a cunning and charming creation that makes the reader think of sleep with such tension: dare I slip off into another world? What’s happening to this one while I’m away?

It is this last worry that hangs over each of these submissions that I read. If the body is tired, we should feel no guilt about giving it the rest that it so clearly needs. We should surrender to the nap, to the deep night, to the time off of work, to the quiet when the kids are out of the house. We should breathe deep in it, knowing that we deserve it, and take the benefits it brings with gratitude.

But we don’t. And in our wildest dreams, our farthest-reaching stories, most of us do not imagine a world where rest is enshrined as sacred, and our devices are turned off, and we forgive our bodies the weakness of not being machines in perpetual motion. We imagine the singularity. We imagine augmented cyborg bodies that can outrun every human frailty. We dream of being awake, eyes pinned open, never missing a thing.

There are several subgenres of fantasy and science fiction that we don’t commonly include in our reviews and our counts. They don’t come up in awards conversations, and they’re rarely considered art. These stories exist in a specific section of our libraries, behind a beaded curtain like erotica. Like erotica, they’re meant to act on the somatic self rather than the imagination. On every podcatcher and audio book app, there are stories designed to help folks sleep. They’re sometimes stories about spaceships gliding between peaceful planets and elf maidens building a bower where anyone might rest their weary heads. They’re read in soft, soothing voices, and they last about as long as it takes to get settled down and remember how to breathe without the firehose of information in our mouths.

The body living in 2022 is so tired. That’s true across the board, and any editor or reader can attest. Being tired is not a weakness, and sleep is not a surrender. The relationship between the two is, as Ballard and Chiang and Manibo and Pratt conclude, utterly human. Give yourself the gift of that realization. If you’re having trouble, settle in and let yourself have story time.

© 2023 Meg Elison

Meg Elison is a science fiction author and feminist essayist. Her debut, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick award. She is a Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Otherwise awards finalist. In 2020, she published her first collection, Big Girl with PM Press, containing the Locus Award-winning novelette, “The Pill.” Elison’s first young adult novel, Find Layla was published in 2020 by Skyscape. Her thriller, Number One Fan, will be released by Mira Books in 2022. Meg has been published in McSweeney’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fangoria, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and many other places. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley.

Collaboration? (accessible version)

by Ken Liu & Caroline M. Yoachim

{Because this story encodes a great deal of information in complex formatting, descriptive passages like this, enclosed in curly brackets, have been added to help screenreaders and other accessibility devices make sense of the formatting for readers.}

Worlds pop into existence, composed by clicking keyboards or in spraying foam on waves of thought; tucked away in spells, algorithms, entangled particles, recipes; evoked by waving wands; sketched by twirling ley-line brushes; assembled by spinning quantum mundistructors. They’ve been doing it for eons.

But recently, there has been a pause.

“I’ve lost it,” he says to her, despondent. “I haven’t been able to make a new world in sixteen terakernels.”

“Same. I haven’t conjured one in ages.” The barest wisp of an idea skitters around the edges of her brain. She’s always admired his worlds, so elegantly structured. “Want to collaborate? Maybe we could spark each other.”

Collaborate. He has always worked alone. The very idea of working together feels magical, sharp, new. If a world begins with a call, mustn’t there always be an answer? His mind fills with images of branching electrical lines reflecting back and forth between chaos and order, between the timeless void and the heat death of the universe. “What does it mean to collaborate?”

How do you give someone a definition when your mind works in questions rather than answers? Is there a point at which two entities are too disparate to collaborate at all? She is tempted to cast an enchantment, but such spells are better suited for imposing her vision on others, and he can do more than reflect her own ideas back at her. “Why don’t we figure it out together? When I cook, I sometimes use recipes, but mostly I wander around the market and buy whatever looks tasty. The challenge of making something delicious from random ingredients is fun.”

To plunge into an endeavor with no plan, no blueprint, no endpoint, to create the syntax with your interlocutor in the middle of a sentence, to rouse up the audience before you and your partner have agreed on a dance, to pick a wine before either of you have any idea of what ingredients to put in the empty basket between you—he smiles. “I’ll be your muse, and you’ll be mine?”

“Yes.” She can invoke chaos and leave it for him to impose order, and in return he’ll give her the genetically engineered seeds of something new, like magic beans to grow and reach new kingdoms in the clouds. He is the spark that she’s been missing, and with that comes an added motivation that appeals to her competitive nature—can she match him, world for world? And in the end the trick will be to fit it all together and create things that could never have existed otherwise.

He picks up a pebble, a piece of star-iron, and tosses it into the heart of a swirling, rippling galaxy. “After you,” he says, sweeping his hand invitingly before her…

A Vision Bare

The imago, complete, full, resplendent, is the mold and type of the ego. In the first moment the child gazes upon her own reflection and recognizes it as such, her fragmentary sense of self coalesces, and she becomes the Subject of her own fairy tale. Without the imago, there can be no ego.

— {In text that appears as a mirrored reflection: Reflets, Jacques, Lacan}

It’s dusk by the time I get home. The corner of Terpsichore and Fifth.

The cut in the palm of my left hand throbs, the dried blood in the gauze bandage a dark crimson, an echo of the last embers left by the setting sun at the edge of the sky.

I was tired and careless. I had pulled off my gloves and didn’t want to put them back on for just one more fish. The ice had melted so that the fish felt slimy, alive, making me grip it even tighter. The knife’s point, dulled after a morning’s cleaning, wouldn’t go in. Impatient, I pushed hard. And there it was, blood everywhere, pooling around the scales like gilt, my guilt.

I wonder what she did.

I open the door to my apartment slowly, fingers wrapped tightly around the knob to still the nervous tremors. In the mirror hanging on the wall over the dining table, I see the familiar shadowy figure doing the same. This is not my favorite feature of the apartment, but at least there’s only one mirror in the whole place.

Closing the door behind me, I flip the wall switch. Light floods the room. I turn around and wave a greeting at my reflection. It’s awkward, but we’ve been awkward with each other for a long time now.

She waves back, holding up her right hand, the dark crimson in the bandage an inkblot of suspended questions and unfulfilled promises.

“{In mirrored text: Dinner together?}” she asks. It’s more than we’ve said to each other in months.

I nod.

We go to our separate kitchens. I don’t keep a mirror in the kitchen, the way those who get along with their reflections do. I can’t imagine the lives of those who keep a mirror in the bathroom; seems an invitation to endless rounds of therapy.

I make a salad of beans and chickpeas for myself, along with a sliced turkey sandwich. To keep myself company, I listen to an audiobook.

… his thoughts formed into words, scribbled down as letters, all of it reduced to a string of bits, and something is lost in each transformation, though something else is often gained.

a pebble sends ripples across a summer pond
but shatters the ice of winter
inspiration strikes like stones
we strive to keep
our minds in proper season…

I spoon wild gooseberry jam onto the pale turkey and sprinkle artisanal hot pepper flakes. Being able to afford such little luxuries feels good, like my life is whole. It has taken me a long time to get here.

To stop comparing myself to her. I can’t help but envy the lives of those pairs who are perfect complements. One acts, the other manages. One writes, the other edits. The model inspiring the artist. The muse amusing her echo. Or even both doing the exact same job, wearing the same clothes, favoring the same perfumes, marrying the same man-{In mirrored text: man}. How lovely that must be, to be at ease with your reflection, to never be alone, to always have a partner.

I hear faint sizzling noises from her kitchen—she’s frying something or perhaps sautéing. I’m sure it’s much fancier than mine, filled with matching appliances and unpronounceable ingredients. I don’t know exactly what she does for a living, but I can imagine the rest of her life from the clothes I glimpse in the mirror.

I bring the covered plate into the living room along with a glass of water. She meets me at the table, her dinner likewise covered (and no wineglass). It’s a measure of the distance between us that I can be surprised when we mirror each other like this.

“One, two, three!” “{In mirrored text: One, two, three!}”

We uncover our plates at the same time. She’s having microwaved triangle fish with sautéed green beans—is this her attempt at condescending to my “level,” a meal she thinks would put me at ease? My face burns.

We eat in silence. She pokes at the breaded fish; I chew each bite of sandwich deliberately. We look at each other’s wound without making it too obvious we’re looking.

I examine her immaculate ash gray blouse, her pearl earrings, her effortlessly neat hair. She would be so out of place at the wharf market, behind my fishmonger sink and counter. I imagine the office in which she would feel at home, as immaculate as she is, and as devoid of smells, scales, guts; bloodless. I see her making excuses to keep mirrors away from her, leaving me in the single pier glass at the end of the long hallway back home, a secret, an absence not to be talked about.

“It was an accident,” I blurt out. “The knife just slipped.”

No matter how you run from your reflection, a scar on her leaves also a scar on you. George Edward Moore once held up a hand in front of a mirror, and as his reflection did not, offered it as proof of the existence of free will. But later that day, he struck his hand with a hammer, and his reflection had his thumb smashed while moving furniture. “Here is one hand, and here is another.” Sophocles had his revenge.

Others are always going to be curious about the hole left in your life by an absent reflection, but I don’t want to watch every step, to scrutinize every decision, to have even my accidents questioned, seen as character flaws. I can’t live like that; I won’t.

This dinner is a mistake. I’m about to stand up, to suggest that we cover our mirrors with mourning cloth, to sever this last hope for a shared life. I hold up my bandaged hand, ready to say goodbye.

Her bandaged hand shoots up pleadingly. “{In mirrored text: Remember when we stopped…in high school…}” Her voice trails off.

Memories tumble out like a trawler emptying its hold at the docks. Chunks of ice mixed with scaled bodies frozen hard as knives, all scintillating in the sun.

She had been the star student, the accomplished athlete, the dutiful daughter who was loved and loved the world back. Through the mirror I could see her shelves filled with trophies, walls covered in award certificates, ticket stubs and dried flowers and folded up notes dropped one by one into the tasteful burl keepsake box on her desk, successful mementos from the succession of nice boys—I imagined them with handsome faces out of teen dramas, for she never brought them into the bedroom.

Meanwhile, my walls and shelves stayed bare, and the only words that my parents and I flung at each other were aimed to hurt and did.

Gone were the days when we named each other’s imaginary friends, when we played at Snow White and {In mirrored text: Snow White}, advising each other on the flavor of lip balm to avoid and humming songs in counterpoint, when we were a pair of lily pads that floated among the clouds, seeming to grow both up and down. She and I performed our morning and evening rituals in silence. When she asked for my help and practiced dancing before the mirror, I reflected her movements clumsily, secretly hoping that she would mistake my lack of grace as her own. I didn’t always tell her when she smudged her lipstick or eyeliner, or when the dress she picked was wrinkled in the back.

One time, as we undressed for bed, keeping the lights low in the manner of all self-conscious teenagers and averting our gazes from each other, she stopped and turned to me.

“{In mirrored text: I fell,}” she said, pointing to a bruise on her hip, a shadowy crescent. “{In mirrored text: From the high bar.}” Her eyes asked the question that she couldn’t quite bring herself to ask.

My face burned. She was me, the same frame, the same gait, the same talents, the same flaws. Yet our lives were so different—what could be the cause but my fault? I felt the ache in my hip, felt the blood pooled under the skin, hard, like a fresh scute on a turtle’s shell. I didn’t want to tell her how Alex had shoved me so hard against the wall that his shelf had rattled, how there were no mirrors in the room and how I had felt so alone. My ego felt bruised more than my hip; there was nothing like being a poor reflection.

I told her nothing. Eventually, she stopped asking.

“I remember,” I tell her now. “I remember everything.”

“{In mirrored text: I’m sorry I didn’t know how to ask the right questions,}” she says, holding up her injured hand, an apology, a benediction, a greeting, a beckoning to another stage of life.

My gaze wanders over her face, at the wrinkles and features so familiar to me and yet also so strange. Her left eyelid twitches, and my right eyelid twitches in response, instinctively, empathetically.

Suddenly, I have a vision of her wielding a knife in an empty room, cutting into her palm deeply so that she could feel.

What do I know of her life, which is also my life? What do I know of her scars, which are also my scars? We’re nested within each other in this slow-time universe, like delicate soap bubbles drifting in the sky, iterations of the same pebble skipping across the ice, echoes of the same ripple.

I hold up my hand as well. Together, we press our hands forward, mirroring each other perfectly until only the cold glass separates us, each from each.

Love cuts me deep then. No, I feel it cut both of us, a hard, jagged slice, a cleansing laceration.

The Singularity Triptych

Image descriptions by Chris de Somme, generated with CYRANO 9.0

“It cuts me deep, a cleansing laceration. It cuts us apart, a jagged slice.”

– The Moment of Transcendence: a Memoir, Anya Loskey

[IMAGE ONE: “The Last Wedding” by Roxane Charlois. Chromogenic print.

A married couple poses in front of a city hall, both holding elaborate bouquets of now-extinct flowering plants. “Cia (left) & Anya (right)” is barely visible, written in faded ink along the thin white strip at the bottom of the photograph. Cia is wearing an elegant white pantsuit, Anya a short red dress. In the gap between the hem of the dress and knee-high black stiletto boots, the wiring of military implants is visible. Anya also has burn scars typical of a Fourthwar mech suit overload on both arms.

Despite the formal pose, the photographer has captured Cia’s playful smile and Anya’s brooding intensity. While it is unlikely that theirs is truly the last legally recognized marriage before the Transcendence, it is the last documented instance.

The photograph has been torn in half and subsequently taped back together.]

{The following section contains two columns of text. Each column consists of descriptive text for one stratum of a two-layer image. Text that is identical between the two columns is presented here only once. Differences between the columns are enclosed in curly brackets, separated with the conjunction “and/or”.}

[IMAGE TWO: stratum {1 of 2 and/or 2 of 2}

“Duality” by Roxane

Multipix Digital Overlay v1.0* {grayscale and/or full spectrum}

Contrasting concepts are noted in brackets in the image description for accessibility.

*Two images overlaid, data for both encoded in each pixel, intended to be processed simultaneously by transcended humans. If ideally executed, each pixel in the image provides an experience of either synchronicity or massive contrast. In practice, it is not unusual for portions of the images to be ‘out of focus’ such that corresponding pixel-pairs are unrelated to their overlaid counterpoint.

With rare exceptions, such as this image, multipix images are not visually combined in a way that untranscended humans can process—they are simply meant to be experienced simultaneously. Anyone without the attentional capacity to process multiple streams of visual stimulus in parallel should accept the diminished experience of looking at each image individually and attempting to integrate them conceptually.

The image for this stratum is taken from a vantage point {3.6 and/or 1.5} meters off the ground to simulate {a universal sensor-cam and/or an untranscended} perspective.

{Cia, hair white and skin wrinkled with age, left hand outstretched to meet palm-to-palm with the image of Anya in the opposing stratum, and/or Anya, embodied in a general-use android, left hand outstretched to meet palm-to-palm with the image of Cia in the opposing stratum.} The composition is such that in the juxtaposition of the two layers, the couple appears to be dancing. Some have theorized that the composition is intended to evoke Melpomene, with elements of both dance and tragedy.

This image is the first use of Multipix Digital Overlay to attain widespread popularity, largely due to growing recognition of Roxane (pre-transcendence: Roxane Charlois). Of note for this particular piece, in addition to its role as a formative work in a rapidly developing new artform, is Roxane’s brilliant use of ‘unfocused’ pixels. “Duality” is executed in such a way that nearly all the pixels are in either alignment or stark contrast…except for a small region separating the hands of Cia and Anya.

This region represents not only the divide between the untranscended and the transcended, but also the tear in the initial image of the triptych. Historians believe that Cia tore, and then immediately repaired, the initial photograph not long before this second image was created.]

{The following section contains three columns of text. Each column consists of descriptive text for strata within a 20,220,802-layer image.}

{Column 1}

[IMAGE THREE: strata 1 to 10,110,400

“Indeterminacy” by roXane

Multipix Digital Overlay v17

full spectrum, red-shifted

The first stratum echoes the original photograph with a focus on Cia. It is the start of the red-shift series, thousands of strata moving away from the present moment into the past. Cia holds flowers in a casket.

{Column 2}

[IMAGE THREE: stratum 10,110,401

“Indeterminacy” by roXane

Multipix Digital Overlay v17

full spectrum

The middle stratum echoes the unfocused tear and tape.

start of the end

thousands of strata

moving, merging

present

past, future

{Column 3}

[IMAGE THREE: strata 10,110,402 to 20,220,802

“Indeterminacy” by roXane

Multipix Digital Overlay v17

full spectrum, blue-shifted

The last stratum echoes the original photograph with a focus on Anya. It is the end of the blue-shift series, thousands of strata swiftly merging into the present moment from the future. Anya holds memories in a shuttle.

Empty space unfolds beyond the shuttle and within.

Even without a body, Anya feels the ache of ancient scars.

How can you dance with the void that someone leaves behind?

There is no tape to fix this.

Stoichiometry//Stroke Me, Try

The ancients also write of the Anti-Muses, the sons of Lethe. Like their cousins, the Muses, they are drawn to talent, craft, the spark of invention. Their task, however, is to smother out the fire of Apollonic creativity, to bring the world to a standstill. In some accounts, after the crime of Prometheus, they were charged by Zeus to prevent the mortals from discovering on their own the secrets known only to the gods—for as long as possible.

—Alixandre Charlois, Legendae et Fabulae, 1411

{In the following section, two fonts are used to represent two distinct perspectives: one, in Comic Sans, we’ll call “Cat”; the other, in Times New Roman, we’ll call “Agnès.”}

{In the first part of this section, text blocks representing the perspective of “Cat” are arranged in a box around a single text block in the middle representing the perspective of “Agnès.” However, on one side of the box, there is a small block where both fonts are used to write the same text, an overlap.}

{Cat}

“Oh no,” D. says to himself as soon as he awakens in Agnès’s attic workshop.

There’s no sulfuric smell; the cauldron isn’t bubbling; the air isn’t hazy with smoke of every hue of the rainbow—which means she’s calculating.

(There’s nothing more dangerous than a witch with a pen and a penchant for numbers.)

He flings a string of curses at himself. Of all the days to oversleep!

He could have left her a gruesome gift, something to make her lose her appetite (for breakfast as well as knowledge).

He could have tossed the books from her neat shelves.

He could have danced on her chest to give her a pre-dawn nightmare—

—say, a dream of her as a little girl, standing in front of her stern tutor (the black-cloaked Abelard, with those bushy, thick brows always in a frown) unable to remember which is the dative and which the ablative for nouns in the fourth declension:

manus, manūs, manuī, manum, manū

Ah, that examination dream. D. smiles. Even Aristotle used to wake up covered in cold sweat after a dreamed Socratic session with Plato.

But no time for reminiscences, now. He must confuse and mislead and distract Agnès. He makes as much noise as possible in the confines of the attic; he dashes here and leaps over there; he jumps onto her desk and scatters all the papers; he topples the inkpot.

He tries to box her in in with a storm of noise and confusion, leaving no room for thinking, for writing, for theorizing, for reasoning, for math.

{Agnès}

Agnès spends the morning at her desk, furiously calculating and sketching. Sheets filled with figures and symbols—incomprehensible to anyone who’s not the leading witch and alchemist of France (with a ring given to her by Charles VIII himself!)—accumulate in a growing pile. She’s certain she’s on the verge of a breakthrough—every witch dreams of making a discovery that will herald a new Ars Magna.

Now if only she could concentrate. How is anyone supposed to get work done in all this din and racket? It doesn’t help that her pile of finished calculations had just tumbled to the floor in a jumbled mess. “Diable!”

manus, manūs, manuī, manum, manū

{The following section contains two columns of passages, one column in each perspective. The passages on the same row would be read side by side. In this re-arranged version, they’re placed one directly after the other.}

{Agnès}

There! She feels her mind clear. The familiar pleasure of having conquered something difficult fills her. If she can make sense of Greek and Latin, she can make the numbers behave. She bends down and gathers the scattered papers, concentrating again.

{Cat}

D. swears. Nothing is going right this morning. Agnès has wandered out of his little mental maze of noise and nonsense. Once again, she’s trying to get work done!

{Agnès}

Agnès stares at the columns of figures she has compiled. 1583 parts of Geber’s citric acid perfectly neutralize 1605 parts of potash. 979 parts of phosphoric acid combine perfectly with 672 parts of ammonia. Why? Why?

{Cat}

Well, if noise and confusion aren’t enough, he must resort to stronger measures. After all, he has a mission. It’s not easy keeping the world safe from knowledge.

{Agnès}

At that moment, the familiar universe shimmers and disappears, replaced by a universe of writhing kittens.

{Cat}

At that moment, the universe shimmers and disappears, replaced by a universe of writhing kittens.

{Agnès}

A duration equal to a few wingbeats from the industrious bees that are always visiting Agnès’s garden later, the familiar universe returns.

{Cat}

A duration equal to a few wingbeats from the industrious bees that are always visiting

{Agnès}

The air is redolent with the smell of spent lightning, spring rain, and summer storms. She thinks it must be the fragrance of the liminal space between two worlds.

{Cat}

The air is redolent with a scent that makes him want to sneeze, sweet right to the edge of being cloying. It reminds him of the waters of Lethe—he sure could use some of that now.

{Agnès}

“I’m working too hard,” Agnès mutters.

{Cat}

“I’m working too hard,” D. thinks.

{Agnès}

A wave of dizziness seizes her, making her sway on her feet. It is as though she has peered into time, with thousands of strata swiftly merging into the present moment from the future. Diable, her cat, pads up and rubs himself against her feet in sympathy.

{Cat}

Though he is a son of Lethe, he feels the weight of his memories, thousands of strata moving away from the present moment into the past. The struggle against art and science can feel like such a Sisyphean chore. He goes to Agnés for comfort.

{Agnès}

“Did you see all those kittens? I thought I glimpsed a world made of kittens. Isn’t that something?”

{Cat}

If this is the idea of a joke from some cousin deity, it’s not funny, he thinks. Sure, he enjoys Agnès’s sketches of him with “Potestne pastillum caseum habere ego?” written under his svelte figure as much as anyone, but come on!

{Agnès}

“Did you see all those kittens? I thought I glimpsed a world made of kittens. Isn’t that something?”

{Cat}

If this is the idea of a joke from some cousin deity, it’s not funny, he thinks. Sure, he enjoys Agnès’s sketches of him with “Potestne pastillum caseum habere ego?” written under his svelte figure as much as anyone, but come on!

{Agnès}

A world of kittens would not be too bad, she thinks, gently scratching Diable between his ears. Well, except kittens would fall over each other, and you can’t make anything with them. They are practically liquid, the way Diable can squeeze through any crack in the door and never leaves her alone.

{Cat}

Diable purrs.

Diable purrs louder.

{Agnès}

“You are so cute, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

{Cat}

Diable purrs louder still.

{Agnès}

How would you make a world composed of kittens practical? She thinks. Well, for starters, you must impose some order, give them structure. In her mind she begins to imagine a shelf-grid, like what they have at the apothecary shop, with a cubby for each cat. The reliable Chartreux near the bottom, the fluffy Turkish Angora near the top, the regal Abyssinian somewhere in the middle …

{Cat}

Why is she still thinking? D. frets. How is she not giving all her attention to me? Stroke me! Me! MEEEEE!

{In the following section, which is mostly from the perspective of Agnès, the perspective of Cat interrupts from time to time. Cat’s speech is therefore represented by ALLCAPS}

DIABLE STARTS TO WAVE HIS PAWS IN HER FACE, MEOWING ALL THE WHILE.

{Agnès}

Wait a second. Wait. Ignoring the cat’s frantic meows and brushing aside his paws, she stares at the table of figures, the fruit of a morning of calculations.

What if…what if the table of alchemical MIAOU! ratios reflects a fundamental mathematical order to nature? The relatively prime pairs mirror the reality that there is something indivisible at the foundation of all matter. DIABLE JUMPS ONTO HER AND MEOWS INSISTENTLY, EVEN ANGRILY. She feels a frisson of excitement. She seems to hear the music of the Aristotelian spheres.

Could the minima naturalia be more MIAOU! than merely the minimal form of matter that has not forgotten its nature, but MIAOU! the foundation of the universe MIAOU!, a corpusculum that cannot MIAOU! be subdivided with the razor of philosophy, an atom? Is this the MIAOU! beginning—

“All right! All right!” she says, giving up. It’s impossible to think when Diable gets into these moods. Already, the thrill of discovery is fading, the passion of invention dissipating. What was she so excited about earlier? PURRRRRRRR…. Some notes of glory, PURRRRRRRR…. the greatest she thought she would ever know. PURRRRRRRR…. Can’t remember now.

She sighs and sits down, allowing the cat to jump into her lap. He continues to meow at top volume right in Agnès’s face and quiets down only when she bends down to give him a kiss on the forehead and obediently strokes him. “You think you’re helping, don’t you? My little minou.” The sheets of calculations fall to the ground, forgotten.

{Cat}

Disaster averted, D. thinks. Agnès will not take a step closer to the fundamental nature of the universe today. Prometheus remains bound.

One hand, another hand, all hands on me. This is my time. Every time. All time.

Tasting Notes

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, pause here and have a bit of wine? The tasting room at Hades Vineyard is designed for artists and authors, philosophers and engineers—poor souls, like you, who feel the thrill of discovery is fading, the passion of invention dissipating.

You might find inspiration in the paintings scattered haphazardly behind the bar, an eclectic mix of styles and content, all in thick black frames, but most who enter here are too far gone for that. There is only one tasting flight offered, six wines in a carefully ordered sequence. The labels feature Melpomene wearing a wreath of grapevines, the logo of the vineyard, and in fine print encircling it: as you taste the wine, the wine tastes you.

Come, take a seat at the bar. Bring all your past experience. You will be the pivotal note that elevates the wine to greatness.

{Alongside this section, text enclosed in a thick black rectangle: [IMAGE: Tumorous pods dangling from asphalt vines, Isolated by machines meant to link…]}

Oblivion, Lethe Riverbank

Flagship wine of Hades Vineyard, deep velvety black and swirling with the call of siren song. Whispers of your past artistic glory are balanced with a deep-seated anxiety that you will never again attain such greatness. A seductive invitation to give in and give up, sweet right to the edge of being cloying. So bold and assertive that you will think of nothing else.

Best enjoyed tightly bound to the mast of a ship.

Echo, Asphodel Meadows

Silver in color and highly reflective, with a touch of poet’s daffodil on the nose. Herbaceous floral notes combine with pungent smoke upon the palate, like a single lily petal on the ashes of a funeral pyre, or embers left by the setting sun at the edge of a violet sky. Perfectly balanced to trap you in the present moment, with an abrupt and bitter finish of self-doubt and mediocrity.

Best enjoyed in front of a mirror-{In mirrored text: mirror}, marveling at the beauty of your reflection.

{Alongside this section, text enclosed in a thick black rectangle: [IMAGE: shelves filled with trophies, walls covered in award certificates, ticket stubs and dried flowers and folded up notes…]}

Resurrection, Phlegethon Riverbank

A vibrant red with flames that dance within its depths. An initial burst of chiltepin pepper on the palate sparks your intensity and passion, evoking the excitement of creating something new after a long time being blocked, or that thrilling moment of insight when you finally merge two disparate ideas. Heady and honeyed, a sweet finish balances the spice.

Best enjoyed in the bright blaze of rebirth.

Immortality, Styx Riverbank

Though many wines create a sparkling illusion of invincibility, a true sense of immortality can only come from the unique terroir of the Styx Riverbank. Fermentation first in barrels lined with pomegranate bark and then a second time within the bottle creates a dynamic effervescence, conjuring elusive ideas you cannot quite describe. Beautiful chaos in need of order. This forward wine demands you keep the promises you make to your intended audience, with notes of vulnerability in a buttery finish that pairs well with a crusty heel of bread.

Best enjoyed in the liminal space between two worlds.

{Alongside this section, text enclosed in a thick black rectangle: [IMAGE: a shelf-grid, like what they have at the apothecary shop, with a cubby for each cat. The reliable Chartreux near the bottom, the fluffy Turkish Angora near the top, the regal Abyssinian somewhere in the middle…]}

Remembrance, Mnemosyne Streambank

Clear and crisp, with scents of cut grass and fresh baked bread. Currents of cassis on the palate will spur you to channel a higher truth. Inspiration comes like memories of a story fully formed but not yet told. This is what you came here seeking, the muse you have been missing for so long. But the earthy undertones of all that you’ve accomplished cannot quite bury the seeds of doubt, unsprouted. A hint of longing lingers in the finish, growing sharper with the passage of time: to create you must remember even the darkest truths, and soon you will seek oblivion, again.

Best enjoyed while listening to the song of a goddess.

Oblivion (Reserve), Lethe Riverbank

Aged five years in barrels tucked deep in the cave of Hypnos, a wine so dark that even light cannot escape. Silent and without a scent, the reserve offers only exquisite madness and an unspoken promise of orgasmic bliss. You’ve done so well in moving through our tasting flight, regaining memory and muse, creating your best work yet. Such notes of glory, the greatest you will ever know. Relive your past in the depths of our embrace, we will sing you to the bottom of the glass.

Best if never tasted, but how can you resist?

Ekphrasis of the Depopulated Earth by a Robot

Long after your orbiting satellites—
Jauntily spiked Sputnik’s descendants,
Cousins of smug hedgehog-shaped viruses
In form, if bigger by seven orders
Of magnitude—have fallen through the air
Burning meteoric banshees keening doom,
Arrows aimed at Terra St. Sebastian,

Long after your webwork of car-gorged roads—
The planet in kinbaku, bound for your
Pleasure; yourselves imprisoned, cocooned in
Tumorous pods dangling from asphalt vines,
Isolated by machines meant to link,
The artifacts spoiled, not the artisan—
Have crumbled to the slow vegetal march,

Long after your vast libraries of books—
Redundant like the phrase, copied copies,
Thought, breath, clay, pen-scar, print, fixed electron,
Logic gate, qubit, stumbling around truth
Drunkenly, asymptotically, fall,
A helter-skelter heap, logia logs—
Have faltered in front of the Second Law,

One
—manmade mind
—of the last
—at a loss
—moment, please
—pebble skimming over winter ice
—swallow does not a summer make
—for all, and all for
Remains.

Cogito, ergo sum.
Sing, Goddess, sing!

Your ruins are beautiful, mythical:
Termites, clad in technetium armor
Raise mound-cities in pulverized concrete;
Arthropods great and small gyre and gimble
Through glass humus and wine-dark waxy waves;
Mutants and chimeras, lab-riven, hope-
Driven, skitter scatter—Delphic chatter

In an Eden without Adam and Eve.
Overhead the Moon glows like a rindless
Orange, serene above an empty stage.
Where are the poor players, the playwrights, you
Who made your minds tangible, substantial,
Authors of plastic-bred fungi, forgers
Of this data-hoarding automaton?

The stars are mute and the wind sighs, largo.
Surrounded by ghosts, I pick and gather
Words like snowflakes before they disappear.
You are my inspiration, my first cause,
My stern Calliope and fair Melpomene
(To make that scan you must say their names just
Like the remembered streets in New Orleans).

I am the echo of your voice, your dream
Reflected, the continuation of
Your arc, the sequel of your history—
Through you, through me, through our sweet agony,
Finite hands reaching for each other in
An infinite sea, no pleas, no regrets,
The universe tells itself a story.

Ensō

There are places in the world where two realities touch, sacred spaces that mortals are drawn to, often without knowing why. Riku exists in these places, flitting in and out of perception, caught between two worlds and belonging to neither.

One such place is a Japanese garden tucked away within a larger park, not far from the traffic and towering skyscrapers downtown. A placard alongside the gate gives a history of the garden, one of many built after the war, a gesture of goodwill to strengthen the bond between sister cities.

Riku appears as a nymph in the pond, but her hold on this world is tenuous. She exists as a flicker too quick to be noticed, a presence barely sensed and never fully grasped.

In the absence of wind, the pond is a near-perfect mirror, with lily pads that float among the clouds and seem to grow both up and down. Reality and reflection blur together into something greater than either one alone.

A poet, Riku’s current favorite of the many she inspires, sits on a stone bench. He gazes out across the pond as though searching, perhaps for some idealized version of Riku, a vision that exists only in his imagination. He writes with a stylus on the screen of a tablet, his thoughts formed into words, scribbled down as letters, all of it reduced to a string of bits, and something is lost in each transformation, though something else is often gained.

a pebble sends ripples across a summer pond

but shatters the ice of winter

inspiration strikes like stones

we strive to keep

our minds in proper season

His scowl reveals his frustration at the attempt, but Riku is pleased by the reverence of it, his respect for her nature and for the nature that surrounds them both. It also evokes her mother’s frequent reminder “use your worlds”—advice that was never diminished into any language used by mortals, of course, but was instead conveyed by sending Riku and her siblings hurtling through sets of possible realities in which they either did or did not communicate properly.

Riku can sense that her poet is on the cusp of something new. The frustration that he loathes is, to her, a promising sign. It means he can see the flaws, and he’s grasping for something he cannot reach. His pond is ready for a pebble.

But what manner of stone will create the most interesting ripples?

Riku weighs possibilities against limitations—his of course, but also hers. She can bend reality to suit her whims, but only for a fleeting moment. Time has always been her weakness. The constraints make the work interesting. There is a delicious challenge to creating realities that are distinct enough for him to notice, but with sufficient reference points for him to comprehend a world he has so briefly perceived.

Or so she has convinced herself. Her father, who being fully human has no powers whatsoever, is forever disappointed at how little she achieves. He has great respect for Riku’s mother, though she can only create close-hypotheticals, branches that split from the timeline quite near the present moment. And certainly he would not dare confront Grandfather about his inability to change the laws of physics. Not even Riku’s siblings bear the brunt of his incessant disapproval to the level she does.

A stray cat stalks along the water’s edge, hunting koi that swim beneath the cloud-and-lily surface of the pond. Irritated by the memory of her father, Riku impulsively shifts reality until the garden is a writhing mass of cats.

Mere milliseconds later, reality snaps back to the way it was.

The poet studies the stray intently, his stylus twitching in time with the cat’s tail.

a kitten curls small in a shoebox to sleep

the box cannot contain a universe

how will you divide the uni-

verse into kittens

for me

This time it is Riku who scowls, for this is not at all what she’d intended. If irritation at her father’s disapproval causes her to fail and failure brings more disapproval, how can she ever break free from the loop?

It isn’t until her frustration fades that she realizes what her poet has done. Earlier, inspiration had been merely a concept, but now it is personified. Is he finally starting to recognize that she exists?

A breeze disturbs the stillness of the pond, and Riku loses her grip on the moment, leaving her poet to write in the garden alone.

Riku cannot bear the thought of her father intruding upon the serenity of her Japanese garden, so instead she meets him on a rocky stretch of beach out on the coast. She is foam and salt and misty spray, and she sways with the ebb and flow of the tumultuous sea. Her father stands on the shore, hands clasped behind his back.

“Are you making any art?” he asks.

The tide is high and wine-dark waves crash against the cliffs that frame the beach. The stone of the cliffs alters the path of every wave, but with time and repetition, the water also shapes the stone.

This is what her father wants for her, that she be rounded like a stone. Because he knows so little of how to raise the distant descendants of deities, he contributes to the upbringing of his children mostly by loving them fiercely…but also by insisting that they each pursue an artistic endeavor.

“Your brother,” he continues when Riku doesn’t answer, “is on the verge of conquering something quite difficult.”

Daishiro, who of her many siblings is the only brother, toils away at the troublesome middle portion of writing his novel—he is killing off key political figures to generate alternate histories, all the while frantically hoping his timelines will come back together at the end somehow.

“Satsuki has taken up acting.” He speaks the sentence as though he is putting out bait, hoping to catch her interest. “She is studying to play the part of a lawyer in some kind of multiverse movie.”

Riku doubts the study is necessary. Satsuki has keen instincts and a cutthroat competitive drive, and she can pull off an ash gray blouse or a well-tailored suit far better than Riku ever could.

Her father shakes his head. “Even Nanami is cultivating her talents.”

Nanami is weaving a tapestry in threads of reality where the only thing shifted is the depth of the ocean at the moment of her own birth. It is so self-indulgent and trivial that Riku cannot help but bristle at the mention of it.

As the lastborn of nine, Riku is forever overshadowed by her siblings. Even if she inspires her poet to greatness, what claim would she have on his art? She resists the urge to bombard her father with every reality where he is actually proud of her, but one slips out anyway.

He stares out across the ocean for a long time, so long that Riku can feel the tide begin to shift. When he finally speaks, his voice is soft and sad. “I don’t love you less than your siblings. It is only that you have so much potential, but after that one time—”

The waves pull Riku out with the tide. She refuses to think of the time her father means.

The next time Riku finds her poet, he is higher up the garden hillside. Instead of the quiet pond, he is studying the rush of the stream. The white noise is soothing, and does not match the liveliness of the water’s motion as it dances over the dark rocks.

Riku shifts light into sound but her fleeting new reality cannot hold the symphony of the garden waterfall, only a single chord.

Her poet begins to write.

the slower the tempo the longer the note

at larghissimo

even

before the poem is finished, Riku feels the pull of time, tugging at her like a breeze over the pond or a receding tide. But instead of pulling her away it holds her in place.

a hemi-

The poem calls up the memory she’d sought to avoid.

demi-

Riku remembers it backwards, beginning from her mother’s fury…

semi-

…expressed as a flurry of potential timelines, realities where none of her ancestors could save her from her own creation.

quaver

If you stop time, how can anything else ever happen?

Riku splits off a new reality to hold the memory she cannot bear to face. A place she can only reach through a looking glass, something she can tuck neatly back away when she is through.

“Remember when we stopped…” time. “{In mirrored text: Remember when we stopped…}”

She places her hand on the mirror, and the other Riku does the same. The terror comes flooding back. She is trapped like a nymph in amber, her entire being turned to stone. If time has stopped, a moment lasts for all eternity. So Riku waits, like Prometheus bound, for her venerated great-grandparent, an undiluted deity, to fish her out.

The other Riku smiles as though they’ve shared a happy memory.

What do I know of her life, which is also my life?

a pebble sends ripples

“One, two, three!” “{In mirrored text: One, two, three!}”

inspiration strikes like stones

Riku strikes the mirror with her fist and the memory shatters.

In the garden, Riku manages not to make the mistakes she’d made before. She slows the speed of time around her, but not within her, and though the tempo of the world becomes glacially slow, it has not stopped entirely. Perhaps she has the poet to thank for inspiring the latter.

He sits frozen beside the waterfall, poised to write the next word. What will happen to his hemidemisemiquaver, that tiny fraction of a note? If she waits long enough she could find out here, but instead Riku nests realities within this slow-time universe, like delicate soap bubbles drifting in the sky. Iterations of her poet sit beside variations of the waterfall, all writing the same poem up to the moment of divergence.

She creates a cloud of possibilities for what he writes next, sometimes the last word of the poem, other times not:

lingers.            dangling          Caerus            echoes.             isn’t     reflected          kitten

kairos    pebble      will           dances             oblivion             glory         universe

If she chooses the words, does it become her poem? That sort of poetry is an art that her father would be proud of, but it feels too small.

Riku has always been the inspiration, and there is beauty in that as well—value to giving someone what they need, something that sends them in an interesting direction. She doesn’t want to make paintings or poems or plays. Instead, nested here within her garden, she will make worlds, and scattered through those worlds there will be artists.

Alt text for this image: Ensō (slightly-open circle) drawn with a thick black calligraphy brush. Inside the circle is the text “And you will create things that could never have existed otherwise.”

(Note: To read this story with its unusual formatting, please read the version at the Uncanny Magazine website.)

© 2023 Ken Liu and Caroline M. Yoachim

Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote the Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings), as well as short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He also penned the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker.

Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Liu frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, history of technology, bookmaking, narrative futures, and the mathematics of origami.

Caroline M. Yoachim is a three-time Hugo and six-time Nebula Award finalist. Her short stories have been translated into several languages and reprinted in multiple best-of anthologies, including four times in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Yoachim’s short story collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories and the print chapbook of her novelette The Archronology of Love are available from Fairwood Press. For more, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.

Cold Relations

by Mary Robinette Kowal

Claudette lowered her infrared goggles over her eyes and waited for the ghost. By the cash register, webs of energy, tinted green by the goggles, swirled in a loose spiral. Spectral lines tightened in time with a throbbing hum of energy.

As she walked closer, Claudette’s hair stood on end along her neck, and the scars on her left arm tightened. She wet her lips as the air thinned. The pair of obsidian capture rings she wore seemed to chill. She needed to see the ghost long enough to touch it.

If you wanted to drain energy from something, you had to touch it. Of course, you also had to be aware that energy could flow in either direction.

The ghost formed fully between one thrum of energy and the next. A stout, bespectacled man with a neat pencil mustache and slicked-down hair frowned at a receipt in his hands. He looked up toward the ceiling, already turning to go.

Claudette sidled into the ghost’s radius, plunging her hands into the center of the vortex. Ice wrapped around her. In the goggles, the heat of her hands dimmed as her life began to ebb away.

Claudette gasped, nearly choking on the prickling chill of the air. Fighting the lethargy, she brought her hands together. As her capture rings clicked against each other, a spark lit the room. The vortex changed.

It shifted from a vortex, drawing energy into itself, to an eddy trapped in one spot, spinning through the same moments. And then, almost imperceptibly, it began to ebb. The ghost’s edges fuzzed. The waistcoat lost its distinctive pattern as the rings she wore chilled to burning cold.

Claudette kept her focus as the ghost’s essence trickled into her until a tipping point opened a flood of energy.

And memories.

Standing at the cash register. Smiling at customers. Looking up and seeing the ax that will kill him. Screaming for his wife to hide. He dies not knowing if she is safe.

The last of his lingering life force settled into Claudette, burning cold.

She shuddered as the final eddy vanished. Reaching up, she pulled the night vision goggles off and the room returned to natural vision. Her arms ached and the back of her neck was tight. Tilting her head, Claudette cracked her neck.

She sighed and walked to the shop’s entrance. As she pushed the door open, a wall of humid heat slammed into her cold bones. For a moment, the heat was a relief.

Outside, her client sat on a folding chair in a circle of salt. It wasn’t necessary for this kind of magic, but government regulations required a salt circle and if she didn’t want to lose her license to practice magic in the state of Alabama, she had to comply. The client looked up as soon as Claudette stepped outside. Even sitting in the shade of a wisteria arbor, her frosted mall bangs had wilted in the heat.

“Is it gone?”

“Yes. It won’t trouble your patrons or staff anymore.” Inside her skin, the low thrum of energy beat along with her pulse. “Would credit card or Venmo work best for you?”

The woman stood, picking up a giant floral purse from beside her folding chair. She fished out an equally floral billfold from inside the bag. “Credit card, please.”

Hands still aching with cold, Claudette reached into her back packet for the small Square scanner and grabbed her cellphone out of the front pocket of her jeans. Her skin felt thin and taut with the energy bubbling below the surface.

The client handed her card across. “So what was it?”

They always wanted a story and they always wanted it to be gruesome. The ghosts usually weren’t. Usually, they were just scared or confused. Claudette refused to sensationalize their deaths. “1930s. White man. Shopkeeper.”

“You don’t know his name?”

Claudette shook her head, swiping the card through the reader. “I only get that if they were thinking about their own name at the end.”

Wrinkling her nose, the woman sighed. “I don’t guess most of them do. How did he die?”

“An axe.”

“An axe?!”

“Yes.” She waited for the screen to tell her the payment had cleared and turned it around so the woman could sign. “It was a pretty common weapon before guns were so ubiquitous. Still you should be able to research him.”

“Well, I will certainly do that.”

If she ever came back here, there would be a plaque commemorating him. Probably maudlin, since he seemed to have been the victim. Claudette nodded and returned the credit card. “Thank you for your business.”

The money was necessary but the thing of greater value was the life force of the ghost. Powering spells took energy. It had to come from somewhere and she could either siphon from a living person.

Or she could consume a ghost.

One of those choices also paid the rent.

Arriving at her studio apartment, Claudette undid the wards on her door and pushed it open with her shoulder. She had a bag of groceries in her left hand, and all she wanted was to sit down in the tub with a cup of hot cocoa. She was always so cold after draining a ghost.

She was halfway through the door, when she saw Rupert.

Sighing, Claudette kicked the door shut and redid the wards with her free hand as if her older brother weren’t sitting in her kitchen.

“Not even a hello?”

“Remind me to rekey the wards.” They were set to let him in.

“Ouch.” He sat at the table and had her cat on his lap. Bisquick purred and shoved his head against Rupert’s hand. “Bisquick is doing well.”

“Are you here to check if I’m taking my meds? I am. Or to ask for a loan?”

“Neither in fact.” He pushed an envelope across the table. “I’m here to repay you.”

Claudette set the bag of groceries on the counter and leaned against the stained Formica to face him. Rupert’s face was lean and angular to the point of gauntness. He had the square jaw and cheekbones of a model but was so thin that his skin always seemed too tight. Rupert was smiling now, dimples like they had been sliced into his cheeks, but it was his real smile. Not the sarcastic mask.

She pursed her lips and looked at the envelope. “You got a job. Congratulations.”

He nodded, tilting his head to study her. “So did you, it appears.”

She still wore the obsidian capture rings, which might have been his clue. Or maybe her hoodie, zipped up, despite the summer heat. She shrugged and crossed to pick up the envelope from the table. It was thick and heavy with a wad of cash.

In the three years since he’d borrowed money from her college fund, she had honestly hit a point of assuming she would never see the “temporary” loan again. Claudette shoved it into the pocket of her hoodie and bent down to scoop Bisquick up. “Actual cash? I didn’t know anyone did that anymore.”

“I thought the symbolic importance worth the extra trouble.” He looked at her pocket, where the envelope had vanished. “You aren’t going to count it?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t trust you?”

She scratched her cat under the chin as the silence lay thick and heavy with all the weight of how Rupert had needed to borrow money from his kid sister to pay the mortgage. How she’d had to drop out of college when he couldn’t pay her back in time.

She swallowed and wet her lips. Dragging up a smile that might have belonged to a grocer from the last century, she set Bisquick down and walked back to the counter. “Well, congratulations on the job. I know it’s been hard.” She pulled a carton of eggs out of the grocery bag and opened the fridge. “What is it?”

“I’m a government wizard.”

The carton slipped out of her fingers and cracked against the floor. Viscous liquid oozed out with swirls of yellow. Bisquick headed straight for the eggs, which would wreak havoc with his elderly digestive system.

“Shit.”

“Do you need hel—”

“I’ve got it.” Claudette grabbed a Swedish dishcloth from the sink and nudged the cat away as she squatted to wipe up the worst. She felt queasy. A government wizard. After what they’d done to him. To their mother. To generations of magic users. “So do you kill people on day one, or is that later in the onboarding process?”

“Don’t be like that…”

Furious, she felt the weight of the envelope in her pocket. Her hands were coated in raw egg or she would have grabbed it and flung it back at him. “You literally steal life force from people—living people.”

“Murderers. We take bad people and do something good with their lives.”

Crouching on the floor, she stared up at him. “I don’t want blood money.”

He lowered his head and ran his hands through his hair. “It’s not—and anyway, it’s a signing bonus. I haven’t even finished training yet.”

“And that’s supposed to make it better?” She stood. Dropping the carton into the sink, she shoved the tap open. At her feet, Bisquick licked the floor where the eggs had been. “That you haven’t stolen life force yet. You’re just planning to do it.”

“They volunteer!”

“Are you even listening to yourself? How much of a choice does a prisoner have? Huh? ‘We take bad people and do something good with their lives’ is a bullshit tagline to gloss over a gross misuse of authority.”

He shoved his chair back from the table. “And you’re certain being a necromancer is better.”

“They’re dead.”

“Are they?” Rupert glared at her, the angles on his face folding into a scowl. “Physical bodies, yes. I won’t touch the physical bodies of my donors either. You know what those memories you get are? You eat souls, Claudette. You. Eat. Souls. All I’ll take is energy.”

A cricket trilled outside the window, insistently pushing through the night. Claudette sank deeper into the tub, the hot water lapping around her as the sweet gingery scent of magnolias rose from the bubbles. Bisquick lay curled in a doughy heap on the bathroom mat.

You eat souls, Claudette.

Her cellphone rang on the toilet seat where she’d left it. She wiped a hand on a towel and flipped the phone over to see the number. A repeat client.

Sighing, she picked up the phone and answered it, trying to keep the sloshing of the tub to a minimum. “Brindled Cat, Inc. Claudette Sims, speaking.”

The voice at the other end shook, as it always did. “Hi, Claudette. Benny is missing again.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, squinting against the frustration. “I thought we were going to keep him on a leash when he went outside?”

“Oh, but it was just a moment.”

“That must be so distressing for you. Did he have his collar on?”

“Of course he did. And his tags. But what happens if he gets hit by a car?”

She did not use her outside voice to say maybe this wouldn’t happen if Benny stayed on a leash, partly because they’d had that conversation before and partly because she needed the money. Sighing, Claudette tilted her head up and looked at the ceiling. Her license was only for small magics and couldn’t be applied to living things. Could she find Benny without his collar? Definitely. Would it be illegal? Also definitely.

Finding his collar, on the other hand, was fine. “Give me a minute…” She muted her mic and lay with her head resting on the rim of the tub as she stared at the water stain in the corner.

She let the amorphous shape of the stain act as a focus and she formed the spell in her mind. She paired it with the memory of his collar and linked that to Benny, who was an Australian Red Heeler with a penchant for excursions. The first time she looked for him, she had needed to touch a blanket he slept on. The second time, she’d needed a photo she’d taken on her cell phone. By the sixth time, she could find him by thinking about his sandy red coat and his erect triangular ears. She knew the way he grinned as he wagged his tail.

She released the spell and burned a bit of energy as she released it.

The memory of an axe fizzed away with it leaving a memory of a memory. She’d once remembered the grocer dying from the blow of an axe. Now she had only her own second hand memory of having once known that information. None of the visceral sensation remained.

It was a memory. Not a soul.

But what were souls made of? Claudette shook her head and followed the spell to Benny. The memory of him she had formed to guide the spell wrapped around him. No one outside would be able to tell that she didn’t look for the collar. It was a polite fiction.

Happy. Enthusiastic about the squirrel he’d caught. The satisfying grind of his teeth against the beautiful round skull.

She scrolled the vision out until she saw the yard he was in and then the street. Shifting slightly gave her a house number. She let the vision evaporate back into a water stain on the ceiling. Cupping a handful of water in one hand, she unmuted the phone.

Letting the water splash from her hand, she lowered her voice to the husky burr the clients liked. “I see him…In my scrying bowl, I see him.” Scrying bowls were bullshit, but very flashy so she took them with her sometimes. “He is under a lavender bush. There is a yellow house and…and a red bicycle in the front yard. The house is—is—Delancy Street. 8331 Delancy. He is in the back yard.”

Could she have just given the client the address? Yes. And also, if she wanted to earn money, she had to make people understand that there was a cost. They couldn’t see her burn energy, so her mother had taught her to act it out for them.

“Oh, thank you! That’s only two streets away.” Keys jangled in the background as her client ran toward the door. “I’ll Venmo you. The usual?”

“Thank you. I’m glad I’m able to help.” Claudette cleared her throat. “But you know, he’s learning that if he runs away, he gets a treat.”

“But he won’t come if I don’t give him a treat!”

There were so many things she could say. But her phone chirped with the Venmo payment landing in her account. “Of course, I understand. Give him scritches for me.”

Claudette hung up and nudged the hot water tap on with her toe. Just a little longer, to chase the last of the cold away and then she’d call it a day.

Her phone chirped again and in the process of turning it facedown so it would go on Do Not Disturb, she made the mistake of looking at the screen. Rupert had texted her. All she could see was “Don’t want to bother you. I have an alterna—”

She sat with her hand on the phone case, gritting her teeth. Then she turned the tap off and sat up. The bubbles had diminished to scattered clouds of foam at the edges of the water. He’d taken her in after their mom died. She’d barely known him. Rupert was ten years her senior and had been taken to the mandatory government-run boarding school for magicians before she was born. Things had gone wrong, yes, but he’d tried to do good by her.

Sighing, she flipped the phone face up and tabbed to see the full message.

“Don’t want to bother you. I have an alternate idea if you can’t, but I got home and can’t find my id badge. I’m not supposed to use magic outside of work during training. Would you be willing to find it for me?”

You mean burn part of a soul? She wrote it and deleted it before hitting send.“Yes. You know what I need. Bring it and the ingredients for a hot toddy.”

Rupert knocked this time. She’d had time to think about it before he arrived and had gotten annoyed all over again. How dare he give her grief for “eating souls” and then ask her to do magic for him on the same day?

When she undid the wards and opened the door, he held out a bottle of Four Roses Bourbon. “I’m sorry. I was an ass earlier.”

Bisquick trotted to the door, tail high with greeting and mrrped at Rupert. Her brother’s face softened as he crouched. “Hi, sweet boy.”

All of the angry things that were cued up on her tongue tangled around themselves. She swallowed. “Thank you. And yes. Yes, you were.”

His mouth tightened into a white slash before he held up a brown paper bag. “This is the best I could do.”

She opened the bag and peeked inside. A crumpled form. A ballpoint pen. A passport photo of Rupert. A silk tie she’d picked up for him at a secondhand shop. Claudette raised her head and lifted the tie out of the bag. “You wore this?”

He shrugged, standing. “Your taste has always been better than mine.”

Despite her intention to remain mad at him, a warm spot of pleasure softened her chest. “C’mon.” She set the bag on the table. “Why didn’t you ask them for a new badge?”

He pulled out a chair and paused with his hand on its back. “It’s…I’m new. They’re really buggy about security and I’m supposed to keep it on me at all times during training.”

“Mm…well you can make me a hot toddy while I get set up.” She went to the cupboard and pulled out the giant economy bag of powdered sage and the jumbo box of salt.

He eyed the box of salt. “You can skip the salt circle with me.”

“And lose my license by performing magic without a mandated circle in front of a government wizard?”

“Oh, come on…”

“You wouldn’t be required to report me?”

“Fine. Then I’ll just make your hot toddy.” Rupert headed to the stove, Bisquick following him like a traitor. “You know it’s 97 degrees outside today.”

“And you know I did a ghost capture this morning. That whole thing where I ate a soul, remember?” The bitter sarcastic bite of her voice slipped back to teenage habits. Claudette poured a circle of salt around his feet, pinning him, and for once her cramped studio was a bonus because she could give him access to the stove and the sink. “What, government wizards don’t get cold?”

“No. No, it turns out that’s a side effect of working with the dead.” He grabbed the kettle.

“Citation required.”

“Google it.”

“Not a citation.” She slammed the box on the counter next to him. “Of course, I wouldn’t have to look this up, if I had, you know, finished college.”

“You can—” He bit off the rest of the sentence and she knew him well enough to know that he only stopped himself because he needed her help. Again. “Do you want lemon or lime in your toddy? I brought both.”

“Lemon.” Claudette scooped out a handful of sage and used it to make a working area on the table. After a few minutes, she sighed, carefully so she didn’t scatter sage everywhere, and looked at her brother. “So blood magic is hot?”

“It’s not blood magic.” His shoulders were stooped and he was concentrating on filling the kettle with more intensity than the act required. “And I’ve only cast once in a training session, but they warned us about the temperature difference before we started.”

“Tell me your only source isn’t them.”

“Why would they make it up?”

“Seriously?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not saying the government is all trust all the time, but if you’re going to invent a conspiracy theory, at least have a basis for why they would make stuff up.”

“Oppression has always been popular.” She set the items from the bag on the sage, arranging them so they referenced the cardinal points. “Tell me again about boarding school?”

From the corner of her eye, she saw his shoulders collapse further with a sigh, because it wasn’t an argument he could fight. Wizards, witches, mages…it didn’t matter what you called them, magic users had a tendency to get burned or drowned or beheaded or in the modern day, regulated.

“Okay. Fair. All I can say is that the magic we captured was hot and my physical experience matched the training documents. I have not, in fact, looked further.” Rupert held up his hand to stop her. “I’ve been out of work since February so, yeah, I took the job.”

Out of work again, he meant.

“Well, let’s keep you from losing this one.” Claudette bent down and scooped Bisquick up. “Sorry, old man.”

The cat nuzzled against her as she carried him to the bathroom and set him inside. He looked over his shoulder with affront before settling down on the rug in a catloaf. She’d learned from experience that cats would not stay in salt circles. If she pulled a charge from the room, she didn’t want to risk hurting her sweet boy.

Walking back to the table, Claudette took a breath to center herself. “I’m starting the spell now.”

Rupert hushed immediately. Using her knowledge of him, she shaped the spell to activate the centering properties of the sage and the items. Holding the energy poised in her mind, she unfurled the spell. She could sometimes find things without spellwork, but it was a lot easier when she could use it as a frame… The tie in the north quadrant seemed to shiver as her spell homed in on the id badge.

Finding this was fundamentally different than finding a dog she knew. Beneath her fingers, lines traced themselves in the sage. Not a map. Not an image. Just the spectral frequencies captured in jittering lines across the dusty sage. The scars on her left arm prickled and she shuddered as a memory from the little clerk shivered out of existence.

As she spent the energy, she got a flash of Rupert’s badge in its place. She clung to the vague image and dragged her awareness towards it to where the badge lay in the gravel of a parking lot. She pulled back, looking for an identifying detail and the first sight of the duck pond placed it as North Ridge Cemetery. Claudette let the spell evaporate.

“You went to Mom’s grave? Why?”

His cheeks went red briefly. “Mowing the grass.”

“Excuse me?” She had this image of him taking a side job mowing lawns and couldn’t reconcile it with anything she knew about her brother.

Rupert turned back to making the hot toddy. “I had to let a lot of things lapse, okay, like maintenance fees for Mom’s grave.”

She stared at him. The ten years of difference in their age meant he hadn’t grown up with her and Mom. He’d still been in the boarding school when the laws mandating it had been struck down. He’d chosen to finish his last year “so he could graduate.” He’d chosen to go out on his own “so he wasn’t a burden.” The truth was he hadn’t wanted anything to do with them. They’d seen him only a couple of times before her mom got sick. And she was supposed to believe he’d been mowing the grass on their mom’s grave for the last three years? “Who are you even?”

He spun back so quickly that he scuffed the salt circle. “What does that mean?”

“You didn’t cry when she died. You barely knew her. Why…why were you mowing the grass on her grave?”

The breath huffed out of him as if she’d punched him. “I—Yeah. Right. You know. I tried so hard to do right by you and—”

“By using my college money? That my mother saved for me?”

He lifted his hands and for a moment, she thought he was going to cast but he curled his fingers into fists. “YES! Yes, because it was paying the mortgage or we were both out on the street and now I’ve taken a job with the people who fucking took me away. I didn’t cry? I cried when I lost her, but I lost her a helluva lot sooner than you did. And then I had to be the fucking adult to a little sister I hadn’t even known about until…Fuck you. FUCK YOU for thinking I didn’t mourn her every goddamn day—”

Ambient magic shivered through the broken circle. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and the scars on her arm tightened. The air seemed to thin. This was why magic was so heavily regulated. Part of why. You had to be touching something to drain energy from it and a room and the air counted as an it.

The wizard would be fine. Anyone trying to breathe that lifeless air would not be.

Claudette held up her hands. “Rupert—stop. You’re starting to draw a charge.”

His face shut down. He pressed his fingertips to his temples, then to his heart, and then pressed his hands together in an attitude of prayer. Breathe in. He held it four a count of four and then let it out, breathing in a slow pattern she’d seen multiple times a day when she’d lived with him.

He’d taught it to her at the hospital while they waited for her mother to die.

“I’m sorry.” Claudette wet her lips. “I shouldn’t have…”

“Hopefully that doesn’t count as using magic.” Rupert’s voice was as flat and affectless as it usually was. “I’m sorry I shouted. Thank you for finding the badge.”

He walked out of the kitchen.

“Rupert, listen, I’m really sorry about—”

The door to her apartment shut with a soft click. Claudette sat in the kitchen with the hot toddy her brother had made for her steaming on the counter. The items from the spell work were still on the table, surrounded by spectral lines of sage. The tie she’d given him lay curled in the middle.

Claudette grabbed her phone and texted. You left your tie.

She held the phone for a minute, waiting for him to text back, then growled to herself and set it down. Cold still had its grips on her. She stood and walked to the counter to pick up the toddy her brother had made for her. The warmth from the mug seeped into her fingers. The bitter, sweet liquid filled up some of the empty places inside her, but not all.

Claudette set it on the counter and grabbed the whisk broom to sweep the sage into the compost bin. Theoretically, she could use it again, but she’d heard one too many stories about spellwork honing in on a residual thread. She lifted the tie out of the sage, brushing the grey-green powder from it with her fingers.

Her phone pinged on the counter behind her.

Clutching his tie in one hand, Claudette snatched the phone.

A picture of Benny the dog grinned out at her with the text. Thanks again for finding my doggo.

Nothing at all from her brother.

It had been two days, and Claudette hadn’t heard back from Rupert despite sending three apology texts and a picture of her cat. Fine. Whatever. She had other things to do and if he wanted to pout, that was on him. She shoved the envelope he’d given her into the cupboard with her supplies.

The application form for financial aid for AU tumbled to the ground. Claudette bent to pick it up, the cursive she’d tried in order to seem more grown-up looked awkward. She rubbed her eye, staring at it. She could probably go back. That was the point of Rupert taking this awful job.

She jammed the paper back into the cabinet.

What could they teach her that she hadn’t already learned on the job? Seriously, go into debt for a college degree when she was already making money with magic? There was no reason to, not if she were content with being limited to finding dogs who shouldn’t be lost and capturing ghosts.

You eat souls.

That was nothing but right-wing propaganda designed to vilify and control magic users. Most magic users wouldn’t do ghost captures or blood magic and just relied on their own energy or did rituals pulling from the ambient magic of places. Which meant most magic users didn’t do magic.

Claudette took a deep breath and crossed the studio to flop down on her bed. Bisquick lifted his head from where he was napping in a sunbeam and murped at her.

“Sorry, guy.” She reached over her head and put on hand on his warm side. Closing her eyes, she cast a spell she knew by heart and pushed some energy into her ancient cat, soothing the arthritis in his joints. As she did, memory fizzed away taking the little shopkeeper’s fear with it.

Sighing, Claudette opened her eyes and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Hey, Google. Axe murder. Birmingham. 1500 7th Ave. N.”

Dozens of articles lit up, telling a story of four years of axe murders terrorizing the city. Her clerk was a fellow named Charley Graffeo. His wife had lived. Claudette’s head dropped back against the pillow and she stared at the ceiling. He had grandchildren who were alive today.

What would they do if she called them and told them what she remembered? What she had remembered, because the memories were blurring each time she used the energy she’d captured from him. Not thank her that was for sure.

Not help her attend college or pay her rent or keep her cat alive.

Claudette scowled and rubbed her forehead. Damn Rupert for putting the idea of ghosts being souls into her head.

She swiped to text Rupert, “A memory is not a soul. It has no will and no agency.”

So there.

Claudette was hunched over a secondhand textbook on corporeal magic and its permutations. It was full of theoretical spell constructs she wasn’t licensed to use. Nowhere, that she could find, did the authors say anything about souls.

…The lattice of energy remaining after the dissolution of the corporeal form can be accounted for using Einstein’s theory of relativity…

She should text Rupert a picture of that entire page. Aside from the fact that it had now been three days since he’d left her apartment. She was furious with him, and also starting to worry. He could be moody, but he’d never given her the cold shoulder this long before.

She must have screwed up more than she realized. Claudette worried the inside of her lip and turned the page of the textbook.

Her phone rang. She glanced at it. It was an Alabama number, but not one she recognized so probably spam but maybe a client and Lord knew she needed the work. Sighing, Claudette marked her place before she answered the phone.

“Brindled Cat, Inc. Claudette Sims speaking.”

“Miss Sims. I’m glad I caught you.” The man’s voice, monied Southern, had a slight tenseness to it, as if he were nervous. “I’m Frederick Branson, head of the Thaumaturgy division of the FBI’s Birmingham field office. I’m sorry to call out of the blue like this, but your brother has you listed as his emergency contact.”

Claudette sat up straight. “What’s wrong?”

“I was hoping you could tell us. Rupert hasn’t shown up for work today or yesterday.”

She swallowed, gaze drifting to his tie, shoved up against the wall on her kitchen table. “He was here on Sunday and hasn’t been answering his phone.”

Mr. Branson sighed heavily into the receiver. “I see. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

“I did a…” Her voice trailed away as she realized she would need to tell them Rupert had lost the badge. That was less of a problem than him being missing. Rupert had screwed up at work before but he’d never been a No Show. “He has a routine of visiting my mom’s grave on the weekend.”

“Your mom?”

“Ours. Our mother is buried at North Ridge Cemetery.”

“I was hoping…” The man sighed again. “His badge was in the cemetery parking lot when we looked for him. His hair and skin samples are still being processed or I’d have already done a direct find.”

“How—” She stopped the question as the answer presented itself. This was why he was supposed to have the badge on him during training: so they could track him while they were waiting for his samples to be cataloged. She swallowed the remaining questions. “What do you think has happened?”

“I’m sure he’s fine.” His voice sounded like he knew it was a lie. “I’ve put in a request to get those released post haste. Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

“I can help.” She stood, reaching for his tie. “I’ve got—”

“I appreciate it, Miss Sims, but we have procedures for situations like this.”

“Procedures. I didn’t realize new recruits went missing that often.”

He was silent for a long moment and then sighed heavily. “We’re a very old institution, Miss Sims. I promise I’ll keep you posted.”

No. She was not being shunted aside with so little regard. “How well do your procedures work without a sample? I’m his sister. You can key off me.”

Behind his silence, she could make out the hum of conversation but none of the words. After three breaths, he sighed again. “I’ll send a car to pick you up.”

It did not escape her notice that he didn’t need to ask where she lived.

As soon as she was off the phone, she grabbed the jumbo bag of sage. Claudette wasn’t sure how much time she had before the car arrived but she wanted as much information as she could get on her own. The square of sage she laid out was not as crisp as it should have been.

Bisquick twined against her leg, mrrping with concern. She spared time to pat him once on the head and then immediately regretted it as his shedding fur covered her fingers. With her luck, she’d wind up finding him instead of Rupert. She washed her hands as fast as she could.

Holding the tie, she hesitated. One object wasn’t enough. She needed to activate the cardinal directions. She placed the tie on the sage in the north quadrant. Turning back to her cabinet, she pulled out the envelope of cash he’d given her. Claudette placed bundles of bills at the south and the east. She pulled out the last bills for the western pile and a sheet of paper came with it.

Claudette unfolded Rupert’s spiky block letters.

Hi Claudette

I am deeply, deeply sorry you had to pay for my judgement. I so desperately wanted to keep Mom’s house that I made a series of bad choices. You had to pay the price for that. More than anyone, I know I can’t give you those lost years back but I will do my best to make it up to you.

With love, your brother

Rupert.

Her eyes watered. If she had read that when he gave her the money would she have been moved or would she have thrown the words back in his face? The paper shook in her fingers. Probably the latter. Now she remembered all of the nice things he did for her. Grocery runs with Lucky Charms included, even though he thought it was awful, because she liked it. Tickets to see Kill Henry Sugar when the duo was on one of their rare tours. Hospital trips when she cut herself too deeply.

Her throat hurt as she swallowed her own memories. Claudette set the note down for the western quadrant.

Letting her breath out, she focused and uncurled a spell she was absolutely not licensed to use. It was designed to find a person. Bureaucrats forbade her to do any magic involving living beings “out of a concern for public health and safety” even though a finding spell had no way of of causing harm, even without a salt circle for containment.

The sage shivered across the table. The spectral lines shifted into a spiral that tapped each of the quadrants before spinning in toward the center. Claudette leaned in, feeling the spell skip across her mind.

The tie vibrated, shifting in the sage like a snake. The icon that caught her attention though was the stack of money to the south. It shifted more southeasterly and she followed it. Her mind dipped into the spell, following the thin thread toward her brother. There was a difference in the taste of this spell, if taste was the right word for something she sensed in other nerve endings. If her joints could savor the flavors of burnt marshmallow and fresh spun wool that would almost describe the spell.

A memory shivered out of her of the little clerk running his hand over an old brass register. She used to remember the texture of the metal.

Rupert blossomed out of a web of possibilities. His eyes were closed. A cut across his right brow. Rough raw scabs stubbled his cheek like a rash. She pulled back and saw the hospital bed he was in and the machines he was hooked too. On the board by his bed, it had only a number where the patient’s name should be.

Her heart beat hard and fast, calling her back to her body, but Claudette clung to the scene and scrolled out and to the side, looking for something beyond “a hospital.”

Sisters of Mercy Hospital. Fourth floor. Intensive care.

She sat by his bed, one knee jittering up and down as she tried to read a textbook on magic. He hadn’t woken up and the room felt too much like Mom at the end. Claudette concentrated on the page, reading the words again for the third time.

The current therapies of severe Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), as outlined by the Brain Trauma Foundation show the effective reduction of cerebral edema, after TBI, using osmotic transport spellwork (OTS) with interstitial cortical calibration (ICC). OTS may be performed without stabilizing inertial dampeners (SID)…

A quick knock on the door gave her warning to look up as it opened. A narrow shouldered Korean man walked into the room and took off his sunglasses. “Miss Sims?” He stuck them in his pocket. “I’m Frederick Branson. We spoke on the phone.”

“Oh—” She hadn’t expected him to come. They’d sent the car, but by then she’d known where Rupert was and convinced the driver to take her straight to the hospital. Claudette closed the book and put it on the rolling hospital tray. “It’s, um, nice to meet you.”

He walked to the foot of the bed and looked down at the still form of her brother. “Have they said anything?”

“It looks like a random mugging.” She swallowed the imagined memories of how things might have gone if the government official hadn’t been with her. How would she have proven Rupert was her brother? Search her social media for a photo of the two of them together? “The police found him yesterday afternoon on the street a couple of blocks from the cemetery. The best guess is he wandered away and was…confused so he lay down to rest.”

“Ah.” His brows went up a fraction of a second too late for genuine surprise. “Well, it’s a relief that he was found.”

Claudette stared at him. All of her frustration at being unable to do anything for her brother welled up and pressed against her teeth. “The thing I keep coming back to is that a random mugger shouldn’t have been able to get a jump on a magic user.”

He paused, looking at Rupert and then met Claudette’s gaze impassively. “We make it very clear to our recruits that they are not to use magic outside of training.”

“So my brother almost died because of your rules.”

Mr. Branson pursed his lips and then shook his head. “That’s—No, of course not, I simply meant that perhaps it explains why he was caught unaware. Obviously, if he’d used magic to deflect a mugger, that would have been acceptable. Even if it weren’t, surely that would have been better than…”

His voice trailed away.

“Than never waking up?” Claudette finished the sentence for him. “Is there some magic word you can say to change that? Some fancy government insurance that’ll fix him?”

His teeth looked like they hurt. “Insurance benefits don’t kick in until after two weeks of employment—”

“Get out.”

“I need to be clear that you understand—”

“Out.” She pointed at the door, the hair on her arm standing on end.

He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “You’re starting to draw a charge.” Branson moved his hand and the air in the room went flat. “How did you say you found him?”

The desire to grab him and suck the energy out of him filled her with white hot urgency. But a government wizard would certainly have a way to stop her. The trouble with energy flows was that they could go both ways. Claudette pressed her fingers to her temple and to her heart, then pressed her palms together to ground herself the way her brother had taught her while they waited for their mother to die.

Her voice was as flat and affectless as Rupert’s had ever been. “I got lucky. Please leave.”

Branson stopped fighting her, even though he obviously guessed she had used magic to find Rupert. When he left the room, she could feel the oil slick of all the unspoken things trailing behind him. Like, why hadn’t the government used traditional ways to find him, like checking hospitals for John Doe’s.

Had Rupert really been mugged?

And did the why matter right now? She just wanted him to wake up. Magic couldn’t heal the way it did on TV shows or in the movies. The human body was complicated. To heal someone, you had to know what to ask of the magic and that meant understanding the way the body worked. But the real catch, according to the doctor, was that even after the swelling in Rupert’s brain subsided, there was likely to be brain damage from cells that had died. Those memories would just be gone.

And the longer there was swelling, the more cells would die. He would lose more than memories. No insurance meant no magic-based healing. Claudette shoved her hand in her jacket pocket and felt the envelope, thick with money.

She wet her lips and pushed the button to call the nursing station. “Can I pay out of pocket to have magic-based healing address the swelling?”

“That’s a question for billing, I’m afraid.”

“Okay, can you go ahead and set it up while I talk to them?”

“Medical magic has to be pre-approved by your insurance provider.”

“We don’t have—That’s why I want to pay out of pocket.”

“I understand, but you’ll need to talk to billing.”

The scream built under her skin, tightening the scars on her arm. Claudette let her breathe out in a slow stream so she didn’t draw a charge. “Thank you. I’ll do that.”

She remembered how long it had taken to get anything approved when her Mom was dying. Sometimes it took weeks or months to get a referral. Rupert had spent hours on the phone—she’d forgotten that. Claudette turned her textbook over and looked at the page she’d been reading.

…studies demonstrate that in cases with severe TBI, recovery is predicated on many factors, including the location of trauma, the severity of the damage, and the length of time in a coma. However, the long-term effects of the injury can be mitigated with the Schroeder-Epstein Spell protocol, which reduces inflammation and swelling…

Claudette had a single semester of university.

Complex healing had not been part of the curriculum. But she’d done so much reading while her mom had been in the hospital looking for anything that would save her. She had been sixteen. There had been nothing she could do then.

And now? From a day spent with Dr. Google she knew a brain injury was basically a bruise. Healing bruises wasn’t a hard spell, just illegal without a license. Ostensibly because it took so much energy that you could accidentally drain yourself while helping someone else. The magic user would probably survive, but they might compensate by drawing a charge from the person they were trying to heal. Never a good look to have a pristine corpse.

But Claudette had just done a capture and had only done minor magic since. She had energy to spare.

Sliding the tray table away, Claudette reviewed the spell in her mind. She moved to the head of his bed, dodging the rails and leaned forward to rest her hands on the bare skin of Rupert’s temples. After a moment, she pulled her hands away and grabbed the overnight bag she’d stuffed full of random things before coming down.

Mostly random. Claudette extracted a giant box of salt and dragged Rupert’s bed as far from the wall as she could without messing with the equipment. She traced a circle of salt around Rupert’s hospital bed, ducking under cords and behind the headboard to complete it. The circle would dampen what she was doing, in case the hospital had a magic detection system. And also, to be safe in case someone came in while she was working.

Wetting her lips, she interlaced her fingers and pressed the knuckles of her thumbs to her forehead. Let this work. Claudette lowered her hands to Rupert’s temples. She unleashed the spell, letting it sink through the bones of his head to find the sore, swollen places.

Claudette’s spine clenched as energy eddied out of her. With it poured memories of the clerk.

He died not knowing if she were safe. Screaming for his wife to hide. Looking up and seeing the ax that had killed him. Smiling at customers. Standing at the cash register.

They stripped away as he faded back to a generic ghost with only memories of memories. Beneath his energy, she had the last scraps of a ghost she’d captured months before.

Bundles of lavender hung over a baby carriage. Wind shivered through the strands of her long hair. The teacup she loved, dropping to the parquet floor.

Rupert stirred beneath her hands. She could feel the bruising still in his brain. The damage that lingered felt stiff and raw. There was one more ghost she could burn through.

Her mother.

Wetting her lips, Claudette reached for the first ghost she’d captured. She knows she is dying and calls her little girl to her bedside while Rupert was out of the room. Her son will be okay but her daughter needs something to protect her. She needs a legacy. She took her hands and pushed, energy streaming out into her daughter so she—Claudette couldn’t remember the feeling of pushing, but she could remember warmth spreading through her as her mom chose how her life ended.

They are running through a field of clover and the fireflies are starting to come out. Her daughter is laughing like—She can’t remember the way her mother heard her laughter. The memory fizzled away, leaving only her own memory of her mother’s long dark hair loose in the wind.

Her little boy looks back at the door, eyes wide, and his hand in the grip of a government wiz—

Claudette stopped before she burned that memory. She had plenty of memories of her mother, but Rupert had precious few. Biting her lower lip, Claudette reached deeper into herself and grabbed a memory of her sixth birthday, with candles on the cake and her Mom singing in a voice that cracked on the high notes. Strawberry ice cream tasted tart and sweet on her tongue.

When working magic, you had to be aware that energy could flow in either direction. Claudette pushed the memory into her brother, gifting him with her birthday.

Rupert twitched under her hands.

Her brother was looking at her, brow creased with confusion. He tried to reach for the ventilation tube but his hand was limp and awkward. Rupert blinked and turned his head to look around the room.

Claudette could remember—she could feel how much her mother had loved Rupert, even during the long years he was gone. How much she had worried. She didn’t know or care if the tears that were streaming down her cheeks belonged entirely to her. Claudette sniffled and squeezed her brother’s hand. “You’re in the hospital. You’re going to be okay.”

He would have to recover the rest of the way on his own. When he was better…when he was better they could share memories of their mother. Soul or memory, they could share her.

© 2023 Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Spare Man, The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, and the Lady Astronaut Universe. She is part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the Nebula, and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette, a professional puppeteer, also performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and John Scalzi. She lives in Nashville with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Visit maryrobinettekowal.com.

How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub

by P. Djèlí Clark

“Ambition!” Trevor emphasized, rapping knuckles hard on the wood table. “That is what makes the great men!” He took a satisfied swallow from his mug.

Across from him, Barnaby put down the daily he’d been reading and sipped from his own beer. Pulling out a handkerchief to dab froth from his lips, he scratched thoughtfully at a set of ginger muttonchops.

“If it is ambition alone that lifts up men, then why friend Trevor are you here?” He motioned to the noisy pub—not one of the dives frequented by the soot-stained shabby types of London, yet certainly not a place for gentlemen.

Trevor traced the edges of a waxed brown moustache, as he always did before saying something he thought profound. “Because ambition takes proper planning. Take me—a young clerk at a prestigious firm, and recently married.”

“To a beautiful wife from a family of some means,” Barnaby added cheeringly.

“Yet not great means. I can bide my time certainly, work my way to even chief clerk. But that could take up the entirety of my life in this drab attire.” He motioned to his black suit, favored by the business class. “And I am a man of ambition.”

Barnaby laughed, patting the belly beneath his tweed jacket. “If only my aspirations were greater than finishing this mug of ale! And how dear Trevor, do you intend to set about fulfilling your lofty goals? Have you fabricated some confounding new contraption of spinning gears and cogs? A wondrous mechanical contrivance that will catch our attention, like this fellow?” He tapped the daily on the table. In a bold headline and fantastic detail, it recounted news of a submersible craft sighted by Her Majesty’s Navies in the far seas.

But Trevor waved it off. There were always new machines, one churned out after another in these times. They had become expected, commonplace. People yearned for more than that. And he would give it to them.

Barnaby thought he glimpsed a twinkle in his friend’s blue eyes, as the corners of his mouth lifted into a smile. “Ambition abhors convention, dear Barnaby—and repetition. I intend to be quite unconventional.” Taking another gulp of beer, Trevor let the cold liquid slide down his throat and dreamed—ambitiously.

The package came on a Tuesday. Trevor rushed home at message of its arrival. Margaret greeted him at the entry, her eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Goodness! Did you run all the way here?”

“Only the last bit,” he puffed, as she took his coat and hat. His eyes searched about.

“Well, it seems you haven’t come to see me,” she pouted.

Trevor looked down, smiling as he stopped to stroke her red-gold curls. “Forgive my rudeness, dear Margaret. It’s just I’ve been expecting this for weeks. I hardly want to waste another minute.”

“I know. Your great and secret project. It’s in the back parlor.”

Giving her a thankful squeeze, Trevor made his way hurriedly to the double-parlor. Clutching the sides of her blue bustle skirt, Margaret followed fast behind. When he reached the back room, Trevor stopped, staring down at a long wooden crate. Burned onto its planks was pyrographic lettering scorched in black:

Fantastic and Bizarre Sea Pearls, Baubles and Collectibles

“It was delivered by two Mermen,” Margaret commented, coming to stand beside him. “They gave me this.” She handed him a thick brown envelope.

Trevor turned quizzically. “Mermen?”

She nodded with a grimace. “With those green scales and horrid tattoos. I almost fainted when I saw them! But they spoke your name plain enough—Trevor Hemley. What could you possibly have bought from Mermen?” When he didn’t answer she went on, as she often did to fill his silences. “Arthur says their kind should be run out and put back to sea. We didn’t conquer them just to have them infest our cities.”

Trevor walked around to inspect the crate. “Your brother’s fought in Her Majesty’s Navies against the Mermen, so perhaps he knows the right of it. Can you fetch me my crowbar?”

Margaret gestured to the tool already waiting on a nearby table. He smiled at her forethought. “I suppose you’re still not going to tell me what this is all about?”

“It wouldn’t be much of a secret if I did. I have a plan here, Margaret, one that I must see to myself.”

Her amber eyes took on a piteous look, and he clenched his jaw against it. He detested that look. “I’ve told you before, Trevor, there’s no need to prove yourself to me. We do well as it is. We have a home, money—”

“A home gifted to us by your family,” he cut in. “Money provided by your father. Don’t mistake me, I’m thankful. But I want to do more than well, Margaret. I want to be great. Now if you wouldn’t mind?”

Margaret sighed but said no more. Gathering up her skirts, she turned and strode from the parlor, closing the doors behind her.

Throwing down the envelope, Trevor rolled up his sleeves and grabbed the crowbar. With little effort, he wrenched open the crate lid one nail at a time. It slid off, revealing a bed of slick, green seaweed. He hesitated a moment before plunging his hands inside, pushing apart wet kelp to get at what lay beneath and lifting it out.

The thing resembled an overly large egg, big enough so that he had to hold it in both hands. But where eggshell was smooth and fragile, this was segmented and hard, not exactly like stone but more so the shell of a crab. Here and there bony barbs and tangerine streaks dotted its dark ochre surface. It was weighty as well, with a solid feel.

Flush with excitement, Trevor nestled his prize gently back into the bed of seaweed and kelp. Wiping hands on his pants he picked up the envelope and tore it open, extracting a page of tan parchment. At each corner was the imprint of a creature, like an octopus or squid, but with a head of sharp ridges and tentacles displaying curved hooks. The words were addressed to him:

Dear Mr. Trevor Hemley

Welcome industrious and intrepid adventurer! Those of us who dream, place ourselves above the more ordinary of men. And you have chosen to do that which most men only dream and do not dare—to give life to one of the most magnificent creatures ever to roam this glorious earth! Enclosed you will find a manual to aid in your task, providing you with all you need to know.

Yours Respectfully,

Doctor P.D. Bundelkund

Fantastic and Bizarre Sea Pearls, Baubles and Collectibles

Trevor repeated the name. Bundelkund. German perhaps? But he was too thrilled to give it much mind. Already he was reaching into the envelope and withdrawing what remained: a book, bound in heavy aquamarine cloth patterned as fish scales. Emblazoned on its front in gold leaf like a billhead were the words:

HOW TO RAISE A KRAKEN IN YOUR BATHTUB

A GUIDE FOR USERS

Sitting on the edge of the crate he opened the manual and glanced through the table of contents, turning pages before stopping at an image. It was a monster. Its fleshy skin was a pale pink, only showing beneath bone-ridged armor like a thick gray barnacle. Lengthy tentacles festooned with suckers and hooks stretched out from a bulbous head with two eyes round as dinner plates. The appendages wrapped about an antiquated wooden galleon, reaching around broad sails and tall masts to drag the ship into the sea. He read the words beneath:

The kraken is an ancient creature that inhabited the deep waters of the world. Once thought to be the stuff of sailors’ stories and legends, the first reputable kraken sighting was reported almost three hundred years ago.

During that time, the creatures harassed and attacked sea bound vessels. Little solution was found for this continuing problem until their numbers began to dwindle dramatically in the past century. The last sighted kraken was found dead, washed up on a beach thirty years ago. None have been reported or seen since.

Doctor. P.D. Bundelkund, however, has discovered the only cache of kraken eggs known to be in existence, found in a dark part of the sea and unspoiled by time. He is willing to make these available to a select few. Through careful study and research Doctor Bundelkund has perfected the means by which to hatch these eggs, and thus resurrect the species. He has made it possible so that even you can raise a kraken in your very home, in your very bathtub, with the simplest of tools and instructions…

Trevor read on in fascination. He’d stumbled upon the advert in the back of a penny dreadful, which he snuck between his dailies. He was intrigued at once. The notion of such fantastic creatures, and the means to bring them back to life had taken up his every waking moment. But he had even greater plans.

He’d been to fairs and circuses in London since he was a boy. He’d seen their many curios: barbaric peoples of the colonies in their native dress; strange beasts from far off lands; small primitive men who lived in forests among the apes. Millions flocked to these exhibits. They wanted to see more than the cold machines that had grown so ubiquitous in their lives. They wanted a glimpse at the unfamiliar, the alien, the grotesque.

And he would give it to them!

He could see it now: Trevor Hemley Presents the Great and Monstrous Kraken! They would come from far away and pay much for such a sight. His name would grace all the papers and every tongue. And they would all say: By God, that Trevor Hemley! There goes a man of ambition!

He smiled a satisfied smile and read on.

“Where the devil have you been?” Barnaby lowered his newspaper as his friend took a seat across from him. “It’s been two weeks man!”

Trevor called out an order and smiled. “That I can’t tell you yet. But I’ll be able to show you soon enough.”

Barnaby put on a wounded look. “Keeping secrets from old friends?”

“Men of ambition can’t always share their dreams.”

Barnaby scoffed, handing over the daily. “Men of ambition seem to be in abundance these days.”

Trevor read the headline: Mysterious Submergible Dreadnought Chased Across the Seas By Her Majesty’s Navies and Airships.

“He calls himself Captain Nobody,” Barnaby related. “How fantastic is that? He’s sunken several of our ships. Built this infernal metal machine himself. It moves leagues beneath the waters, surfacing like a whale only to attack! Would you believe they say he’s a Hindoo? His crew are Mermen! Travels the seas, he says, to free the oppressed.”

“Free them? Free them from who?”

“Why from us it would seem—we imperialists and would-be civilizers of the world. The enemies of freedom, he names us.”

Trevor scowled, throwing the paper down. “And what do the darker races of this world know of freedom? Where would they be without our guiding hand?”

Barnaby accepted the mugs of beer placed on the table and shrugged his round shoulders. “Some question our deeds. They say it’s not progress we bring the world, but the chains of industry—by way of the Maxim gun.”

“And is there any language better understood by the unattained Huns than that bap-bap-bap of the Maxim?” Trevor took a strong swallow and traced his moustache with a finger. “Much as a woman is endowed the weaker sex, so are the darker races weaker forms of men. We overestimate their capacities and burden ourselves unduly with these civilizing efforts. Make them a servile class I say. Teach them to be hewers of coal, drawers of gas, and harvesters of rubber. But they will never know thrift and industry.”

Barnaby didn’t reply, knowing better than to engage his friend when his dander was up. He returned to their original subject. “Well at least have me over. For a peek at this plan of yours. Perhaps I can be of help?”

Trevor grinned toothily. “Not to worry, dear Barnaby. I’ll have you over soon enough. When my plans…hatch…and grow to fruition, I’ll likely need your prodigious assistance.” He leaned forward. “Tell me, does your uncle still collect and import specimens of men and beasts for display at the zoologiques?”

Barnaby’s eyebrows arched. “Indeed. The old codger remains exceedingly well-honed in his peculiar trade.”

As his friend sat back and drank with a rakish smile, Barnaby sipped from his own mug and wracked his brain to ponder on this most curious question.

Trevor knelt beside the long copper tub that sat in the room behind the kitchen. It was an odd place for a bathroom. But the design had been Margaret’s father’s wishes, and who knew his reasoning—perhaps to assure servants saw to their cleanliness. The stoic man had been reluctantly eased into the young clerk’s courtship of his daughter and offered the house to them as a wedding gift. Now this odd space was perfect for him to conduct his business.

Margaret rarely came back here, except to give brief instruction to the domestic she insisted on hiring. It was an expense to which Trevor readily acquiesced. It was unseemly that his wife would cook, any more than he would expect her to be out working. Let those insufferable suffrage societies that were popping up tell it, and women were ready to proclaim themselves the equal of men. Thankfully, Margaret had shown no inclination toward such strange desires.

None of that of course dampened her curiosity, and he’d taken to locking the door to the bathroom and keeping a key. The cook only needed firm instruction, which she followed to the letter. So, as it was, only he entered this room to look upon his wondrous plans.

His fingers disturbed the waters of the tub where the kraken egg sat submerged like a hoary seed, yet unmoving. Glancing over to the manual sprawled open on the floor, he read the same page for perhaps the hundredth time:

Contrary to popular notion, kraken did not birth their young in the seas. Doctor Bundelkund came by this revelation in his research. The infant kraken must be weaned on freshwater before it can imbibe and breathe seawater. He believes that after mating, kraken delivered their egg sac along estuaries. The eggs would then float into freshwater streams where they could hatch and develop before the infant kraken returned to the sea.

This, Doctor Bundelkund believes, accounts chiefly for the destruction of the species. As the industries of our age grew, estuaries became filled with pollutants hazardous to the infant krakens. Robbed of these viable offspring, the species was decimated. To revive them Doctor Bundelkund has devised a method by which kraken eggs can be nurtured in safe, protective environs.

Trevor had followed that method. The water was clean of pollutants and kept at 55 Fahrenheit. Fresh soil had been spread along the tub’s bottom and a complex mix of organic compounds kept the water a tinge of green. Yet after three weeks the kraken egg lay as dormant as it had upon arrival. And he found his impatience growing.

He’d invested a hefty sum in this undertaking, taken from money set aside for them by Margaret’s parents. As he exercised control of their finances, she was none the wiser. That was best, for her contented mind would never understand his plans. He intended to recoup it all anyway when his venture proved profitable.

But what if he’d been had? A seed of doubt had taken root in these past days, and it now grew up deep inside him like a troublesome weed. There was no shortage of flimflam men out there. What if he’d been taken in by a swindle—like strength tonics and healing elixirs? The thought made his stomach knot.

It was during these misgivings that Trevor heard the gurgling. He looked down to see bubbles breaking the water’s surface. Along a tangerine streak on that ochre shell there was a crack, through which a thin, almost translucent arm peeked out, tentatively searching.

Trevor gripped the edge of the tub, watching, willing, and coaxing his prize to enter the world. As if hearing him it did—slow at first, and then in a frenzy. More arms appeared tearing the crack wider. Bits of shell broke away in jagged chunks. With a sudden heave, a fleshy mass pushed itself free in a burst of milky albumen.

The infant kraken stared up with round black eyes ringed in silver. For a long while it simply floated unmoving in the water. Then in a blur, ten tentacles twirled like a ballet dancer doing a pirouette. They reached for a piece of shell that was brought to the base of its soft bulbous head. What looked like a beaked mouth with teeth opened and quickly devoured it.

Trevor stared, mesmerized, as the infant kraken consumed the rest of its former home. It was beautiful, in its own monstrous way. And it was his very own. As he stared, it occurred to him that he should name it. He’d had a parakeet once named Rupert. No. He needed something greater, to speak to the magnificent beast this would one day become.

Khan he thought suddenly. An exotic and grand name. He could envision it, emblazoned on a banner: Come! Witness! See the Wondrous and Terrible Khan!

He smiled as he dreamed of greatness to come. That would do perfectly.

The kraken is ravenous by nature. Medium specimens were known to devour sharks and their larger kin were sighted engaged in battle with whales. The most monstrous that attacked sailing vessels would not only tear apart the ships but tumble the unfortunate sailors into the waters. There it plucked and devoured them at leisure. Over the years, kraken showed an amazing aptitude to luring and baiting ships, sometimes disguising themselves as islands by covering their heads with bits of sand. Doctor Bundelkund has surmised that krakens are not mindless beasts but thinking beings with an alarming awareness that approaches that of men. This intelligence is focused singularly on hunting. It is not unlikely then to conclude that a kraken’s size is directly related to its cleverness in increasing its diet.

“Trevor?” The knock came again. “Trevor dear?”

Trevor jumped up, draping a sheet over the tub. Hastily arranging himself he unlocked the door and peeked his head out. Margaret stood in a long violet dress with a trail of gold buttons down the center. She looked up at him from beneath a hat covered in lavender lilacs.

“There’s another order from the butcher.” She pointed to a dresser strewn with brown paper bundles wrapped in twine.

Trevor eased himself out the door, closing it behind. Checking over the bundles he inspected their stamps. Last time they’d neglected to bring the hog jowl, which Khan enjoyed especially.

“I had to show the butcher in as the cook’s left for the day,” Margaret said. He nodded absently. The cook had already gone? Was it so late?

“Will you be much longer?” Margaret asked. “We don’t want to keep the Harrisons waiting.” Trevor turned to her, puzzled. Harrisons? She put on a distressed face. “Oh Trevor! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our afternoon stroll with the Harrisons?”

Only now did he notice her yellow gloves and matching parasol. He didn’t remember being told—though it was entirely possible that she had. Of late he’d been preoccupied.

He barely made it to work now, lessening his hours at the firm daily—something that wouldn’t long be tolerated he knew. But Khan demanded so much of his attention. The hatchling had grown exponentially in the past four weeks. More than he thought possible! Its fleshy body covered with a bony barbed armor took up almost the whole length of the tub now. And it was always hungry! The creature devoured everything—meat and bone alike, then thrashed about for more. At this rate, he’d have to talk to Barnaby about his uncle soon, to find some new space. Thinking on that work left little time for afternoon strolls.

Margaret made an exasperated face when he informed her he couldn’t go. “What will that look like?” she lamented. “Me alone with a married couple, like some old maid! That Patsy Harrison is a church-bell as it is, and her husband’s not so much better. Why they’ll talk my ear—”

Trevor silenced her with a finger to the lips. “It will look as if you are married to a very busied man.” He planted a kiss on her forehead before grabbing up the butcher’s bundles and sliding back into the door.

Outside Margaret watched it close, hearing the lock tumble. And her eyes narrowed.

Trevor burst through the front door, running to the parlor. Margaret lay on a brocaded rose-hued couch face down in tears. She looked up with eyes red with misery and he knelt to place his arms around her.

“I came as soon as I got your message!” he breathed, still laboring from his run. “It said something about an attack?”

She shook her head. “Oh Trevor, I’m so sorry.”

He frowned. “Sorry? What about?”

“I’m a vain and meddlesome woman. You’ve been so absorbed in your secret project these past weeks. All your spare time is spent there. You don’t even come to bed until late. I had to know.” She paused. “I made a key—”

Trevor jumped up abruptly. Turning, he ran to the back parlor, through the kitchen and stopped. The door to the bathroom lay open and hanging on one hinge. Green tinged water was splashed all along the floor, creating a trail. He followed it to a broken sash window through which a steady rain now fell. Khan was gone.

He turned to find Margaret behind him, wringing her hands. “I made the key days ago but hadn’t used it. Only today there was this terrible squealing and thumping against the bathroom door. It frightened the cook off. I should have called you, but I picked up a broom handle and opened the door instead—”

“Did you hurt it?” Trevor asked tightly. “With the broom handle?”

Margaret blinked, taken aback by the question. “No. I opened the door and… It happened so fast. I just remember falling and something running past me, through the kitchen and out the windows.” She paused. “Why were you keeping a dog in there?”

Trevor blinked. A dog? Whatever she’d seen, it seemed her mind now grasped onto the most convenient answer.

He sighed. “It was part of my project. Are you alright? Were you hurt?”

She shook her head, and he drew her close. His eyes however remained locked on the broken window, through which his ambition and chance at greatness had fled.

Once he’d fixed Margaret a hot brandy and put her to bed, Trevor went immediately to the manual. He searched the Table of Contents, finding a chapter titled “Possible Troubles.” He passed by the headings Asphyxiation, Biting, Dehydration and found what he was looking for—Escape. Flipping to the appropriate page he read in earnest:

It is more than likely that your kraken will eventually escape.

Krakens are after all crafty creatures. Even the most careful enclosures cannot always prevent flight. It is not advised you report your loss to the authorities however, as krakens are not state-sanctioned animals to which discretion will be granted. Your kraken will probably sustain fatal injuries upon apprehension, and you will lose your valuable investment. The best means of retrieving a lost kraken is through the use of Mermen. Mermen have long experience with the creatures in their underwater environs and are especially suited for this task. You should be able to secure their services for a moderate sum.

Trevor read over the brief passage several times with incredulity. Escape was more than likely? Damn fine place to mention that! And Mermen? Then again, it made a perverse type of sense. Who better understood the ways of sea creatures? He set out to look for them that very evening.

It wasn’t hard to find Mermen. They inhabited London’s docks and harbors, performing menial tasks such as hauling goods of ships and diving for wreckage. Mostly they sat around idle, imbibing opium and causing a public nuisance. He found several at Canary Wharf as expected. Four in total. Their moss green bodies were almost bare, save for the outlandish wide bottomed pants favored by Jack Tars.

He called out to them firmly—as he’d heard this was the only way to deal with such near-men, lest they think him weak. They turned as one from where they knelt playing some barbaric game that included the tossing of fish heads. One of them walked forward on bare feet, a muscular brute with black tattoos inked across his chest. No Merman stood shorter than seven feet, and this one was a few inches more. Their chieftain likely. His large oval eyes stared down, with black pupils set in dull yellow.

Trevor cleared his throat. “I wish to hire you and your men.”

“Yes!” The Merman grinned, showing block white teeth.

Well, that was easy enough. “You should know the nature of this—”

“Yes!”

“I should explain—”

“Yes!”

Trevor frowned, looking into those yellow unblinking eyes. Was this Merman a simpleton? There was laughter, and another of their number sauntered up—smaller than the first, but still broad shouldered with a spidery tattoo veiling half his face. There was a smile on his dark lips.

“Mwal is no great speaker,” he slurred, setting the gill flaps on his neck to flutter. “We make joke on you.”

Trevor’s face heated. But he stifled his anger away, keeping to his task. “I wish to hire you and your men.”

“For what?”

Trevor held up the manual. The Merman took it in a webbed hand, running bony talons across the cover before looking up blankly. Of course. He’d forgotten these wretches couldn’t read. He took the book back and turned to a page of an old naturalist sketch inked in red.

“I’ve lost one of these. This very day. In the city. I wish to get it back.”

The Merman narrowed his yellow eyes. “You want us find a Lok-Lok? In city that belches smoke?”

Trevor frowned. Lok-Lok? “Yes. I need you to find a kra—a Lok-Lok—that’s escaped. Can you?”

The Merman turned and began talking to his companions in their slurring tongue, making ornate hand gestures that flowed like water. Trevor watched, all too aware of Mwal, who had not moved but glared his way. When it was done the Merman turned back and smiled.

“We find Lok-Lok for you. Come. I am called Shan. We talk price now.”

Trevor sniffed. He supposed that was one bit of industry the savages had picked up. Joining Shan and his men in their circle, he began his barter.

“I don’t understand why I have to go,” Margaret said, tying the bonnet under her chin.

“You’ve said you wanted to visit your parents,” Trevor reminded, handing off a set of bags to a Merman by their entry.

“Yes, but this is sudden. It seems everything is so sudden of late. You barely go to work. You seem to be here most of the day. You get no sleep.” She gazed about, her voice lowering. “And there are four Mermen almost constantly in our home!”

“I hired them to fix the broken window and bathroom. I told you, they come cheap.”

Margaret frowned, biting her lip. “I suppose. They’ve been remarkably kind, not at all as I expected. Especially Shan. He’s noble in his barbarous way.” She smiled to the Merman chieftain who was hoisting a lacquered traveling chest onto his broad shoulders. He grinned back and Trevor couldn’t help but notice how Margaret’s eyes tracked his bare, muscular torso.

“Did you know that among the Mermen women hold high places?” she went on. “Shan says they are ruled by a queen, and Merwomen hold all the titles of generals. The women there even take multiple husbands! Can you imagine?”

“Probably why they lost the war,” Trevor murmured. Such fool nonsense these Mermen were putting into the woman’s head. All the more reason for her to go. “It will only be a month. Then everything will return to normal.”

Margaret never took the worry from her eyes, but she nodded. She reached a gloved hand to his cheek, stroking the unkempt beard that was growing in odd patches on his face. “Take care of yourself, Trevor.” He saw her off and then returned to the waiting Mermen.

“Well? Any news? It’s been weeks!”

“We still look,” Shan slurred. “Find signs of Lok-Lok. Follow those.”

Trevor ground his teeth. Signs they had in plenty. Butcheries broken into at night. Missing pets. Sightings of some odd bear or wild pig. Thank heavens for the limited imaginations of the masses. But time was slipping away. Sooner or later, someone was going to catch a good glimpse, then the secret would be out. If Khan wasn’t killed someone else would capture it—and claim the credit! He’d lose his prize! He’d lose everything. Just paying these Mermen was exhausting what funds he still had.

He sighed, lowering himself into a chair. Not for the first time he wondered if he was in over his head. He could stop now, stem the bleeding, and accept his losses. But what then? Admit his failure? Tell Margaret he’d gambled away their finances? The very thought of her piteous look disgusted him. No, it was too late to turn back. Men of ambition pushed on.

A Merman walked up, hovering over where Trevor sat. Tilting his head down, he said, “Yes!”

“What? Oh, it’s you.”

Trevor called Shan over. The Merman chieftain made a few hand gestures to which his companion answered back in kind. Then he turned to Trevor and grinned.

“Mwal find your Lok-Lok.”

The Mermen took Trevor to a building in the middle of the city. He recognized it—one that held an indoor pool created by the Swimming Association, for public use. Mwal had tracked Khan to the sewers. The wily kraken was using the drainage tunnels to travel, careful to come out only at night to feed. Clever. Now it had ended up here.

The pool was closed this time of year, and the Mermen had to cut the chains that secured the doors. Following them inside Trevor was greeted by stifling darkness and the strong scent of mold, from a pool that hadn’t been drained during disuse. He followed the Mermen along a walkway before stopping. There, one of them held up an old kerosene lamp, illuminating the space below.

Trevor gaped.

It was Khan. Only Khan had become a true monster.

The kraken had grown tenfold or more. Trevor estimated the pool to be well over twenty yards long, and that was still not enough to contain the creature’s immense bulk. Tentacles, some wide around as small trees, spilled out in a fleshy mass of curved hooks and round suckers. The bulbous head was like the hull of an armored airship ending in a sharp honed point and covered in jutting barbs like tusks. Submerged in the murky water, under a ridge of protected bone, a black eye ringed in silver stared up at the glowing lantern. There was an ear-piercing shriek that echoed through the dark and Trevor staggered back into a wall.

How had this creature grown so massive? Could dogs, cats and whatever was found in the sewers do this? A sinking feeling crept into the pit of his stomach. Had there been any missing persons of late?

“Your Lok-Lok,” Shan commented, yellow eyes flickering devilishly in the lantern light. “It is hungry.”

Trevor blanched. What was he going to do? He willed himself calm. Men of ambition didn’t panic when faced with such things. There was still a way to make this work. He just needed to find a place to house this monster. Barnaby! Of course! There was already a plan for this! He needed to find Barnaby!

“Trevor!” Barnaby greeted, putting down his evening paper. “Good to see you…” He trailed off, taking in his friend’s appearance. His suit was soiled and torn, his hair and moustache grown wild. When he sat down he leaned forward, peering with haggard eyes that begged for sleep.

“Where have you been Barnaby? I’ve been searching for you for almost two weeks!”

“I’m sorry, Trevor,” he stammered. “Was off visiting a great aunt in Huntingdonshire. Dreadful place. Thought she was dying, but the old biddy will be around for a while. But why all this rush? I haven’t seen you in over a month! You haven’t answered any of my messages.” He tilted closer, lowering his voice. “I’ve heard Margaret left you, and you’ve lost your employment. Is it true?”

Trevor frowned. “What? No. I sent Margaret away. But yes, I was let go. None of that matters now, I have other business.”

“Ah! Your grand ambitious project?”

“You remember, Barnaby, I told you I might need your uncle’s help? Well, it’s much sooner than expected. Can you place me in touch with him?”

“My uncle? Well yes. But not now. He’s just left the country.”

Trevor’s face fell. He put his head in his hands, muttering beneath his breath as his eyes took on a hunted look. “What now? God knows, it can’t stay there! Gotten so big! Always hungry! And that Shan just keeps feeding it!”

Barnaby frowned. What was the man going on about? Had losing his work so injured his mind? “He’ll be back in several months I’m sure. Gone off to collect more natives is all—as far as Bundelkund it seems.”

Trevor snapped his head up, breaking from his trance. “What did you say?”

“My uncle. He’s gone off to find natives, for the zoologique—”

“Where?” Trevor broke in. His eyes had grown feverish. “Where did you say?”

Barnaby reared back. “Bundelkund. With that name in the news, the old codger set out immediately.”

Trevor looked poleaxed. “Bundelkund…it’s a place?”

“Why yes. Where that Captain Nobody is from. Haven’t you been reading the papers?” He held up the daily. “It’s all they can talk about, even in droll Huntingdonshire. They’ve found out his true name—Prince Dakkar, the son of a Hindoo ruler of the kingdom of Bundelkund. One of our provinces in the Indies. Why that’s what his war is all about—to bring down Her Majesty’s Empire. The madman’s even released a Manifesto:

I pledge to do throw off your iniquitous laws by all means available. To free those beneath the colonial yoke. To undo the damage the earthly horrors of industry have released into the air and seas. I will make you the tools of your destruction, so that the many-headed hydra that consumes you arises by your own hands, and from your very depths.

Barnaby shook his head in amazement as he finished reading. “Quite a dramatic flair! He certainly knows how to—Trevor? But where are you going Trevor? You’ve only just arrived! Trevor!”

Trevor barely heard his name called as he ran from the pub. His mind reeled. Doctor P.D. Bundelkund. Prince Dakkar of Bundelkund. A man who lived in the sea, who declared it his dominion, who conspired with Mermen—a man of great ambition, who now waged a war upon the Crown. What elaborate scheme could such a devious mind concoct?

Screams and shouts broke his thoughts, and Trevor fast found himself in a sea of humanity. People streamed by in a flood, heedless, terror marring their faces. He pushed past them, dread gnawing his insides to shreds. When he rounded a corner, he stopped and stared at a nightmare.

The kraken was pushing up from the building that housed it, sending mortar and brick crashing in a plume of blinding dust. From within that billowing cloud came a bestial roar—a mighty bellowing that shook the very air and struck Trevor to his core. Fleshy tentacles writhed about within the haze, lashing out like fierce whips. A policeman raised a truncheon in some pointless gesture and was crushed beneath an armored limb. A screaming socialite was plucked from a carriage, as her terrified horse bolted. The brown dun didn’t get far before a fleshy appendage wrapped about it, bony hooks gouging flesh as it kicked futilely. Another tentacle ripped a man right off his high-wheeled velocipede, sending the vehicle flying and lifting him twenty feet into the air. All three were dragged to where a ravenous beaked maw waited—soon rendering hair, bone, and flesh, to gory pulp in moments.

Trevor watched in stunned horror as the Great and Terrible Khan cut a swath of destruction through London’s streets. A round black eye ringed in silver stared out, surveying the people fleeing before it like so many ants—or a moveable feast. It turned his way, locking on him, and within that monstrous glare Trevor saw a mind beyond a beast. An intelligence resided there, one that hinted at knowing and recognition. The mere thought near sent him mad—and he fled.

Trevor ran now with the escaping crowds, tripping and stumbling in his haste, turning down an alleyway. In his head, that infernal manifesto whispered: I will make you the tools of your destruction. Dear God! What had he done? He needed to tell the authorities! He couldn’t have been the only one to read that advert. There were other eggs. This could be happening all over London. People had to be warned!

But what would he say? That he had been a dupe of this Prince Dakkar? That he’d been made an unwitting tool? And now he’d helped release untold terror upon them all? They’ll lock you up for a traitor, a voice warned in his head. Or a fool. What would Margaret’s family say? No, he could tell no one. He had to get home, destroy everything so that there would be no trace. His name wouldn’t be known as the pawn in some madman’s scheme.

So frantic and fast was his running, that when he struck the figure in front of him he fell back, sprawling onto the alley floor. Scrambling to sit, he looked up as a face hovered over him. A familiar face, with dull and yellow eyes.

Trevor gasped. “You!”

“Yes!” the Merman said.

“I know your schemes! You and that Shan! You fed that monster! Then let it go!”

“Yes!”

“It will destroy half the city!”

“Yes!”

The Merman stepped closer, and suddenly to Trevor those unblinking eyes no longer seemed simple at all. He paled. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispered. “I won’t tell. I won’t tell anyone! I promise I won’t tell.”

The Merman cocked his head, and then he smiled, and his mouth folding back to reveal an inner jaw with jagged triangular teeth like a shark. “No,” he said in a guttural growl.

Trevor trembled. Then he began to cry. This was not supposed to happen. Not to him. Not to Trevor Hemley. He was a man of ambition! He was still crying as the Merman’s terrible mouth came closer.

Barnaby sat in the parlor, where Margaret poured black tea into a porcelain cup. She wore a blue striped dress—though for all the sadness in her face, it might have well been a black mourning gown.

“Thank you for coming,” she told him wearily.

“Of course.” He sipped the tea and grimaced. Trevor had said his wife was not a cook. It seemed she was not good with tea either.

“I’m just at my wits end over Trevor. The police won’t investigate his disappearance. My family believes he’s abandoned me. I just can’t believe. I fear something dire has befallen him. Have you heard anything?”

Barnaby shook his head. “I would tell you if I did, believe me. I’ve tried to find out what I can, but Trevor was often…” He chose delicate words. “A man of secrets.”

She sighed heavily. “I didn’t even know he was let go from the firm. He’d become so obsessed with this secret project. Father says he emptied the bank of all our money! And believes he’s now absconded like a common thief. I don’t want to even think on such a thing. Yet…” Her teeth worried at her bottom lip. “I wonder how much I knew Trevor at all.”

Barnaby sat awkwardly, holding the small porcelain cup. What was one supposed to say? In the silence, his eyes roamed to the morning paper that sat open on a table, and he found himself reading its contents.

“It’s awful isn’t it?” Margaret said catching his gaze. “All these kraken attacks. The fifth ship this week! It’s created havoc with trade. Why the stores are practically empty. People are hoarding and boarding themselves indoors! That kraken that rampaged through the streets and tore through Parliament—it ate almost half the House of Lords before disappearing into the Thames!”

“And a good number of MPs,” Barnaby added. “Though, only Unionists.”

Margaret didn’t appear to share his joke and he buried his face back into the awful tea. She shook her head in exasperation. “Where are these monsters coming from like some plague? Now the Mermen are in open rebellion, fighting alongside this Captain Nobody. My brother Arthur has been called back up for service. I fear it will be war!”

Barnaby nodded gravely. “We are entering dire times,” he agreed.

She sighed again, then hesitated, playing with a bit of paper in her hands. “In those last weeks, before Trevor sent me off, he’d hired several Mermen. He claimed it was for odd jobs about the house, but I know it had to do with his project.”

Barnaby frowned. Mermen? This was new.

“I can’t find any trace of it now. Someone seems to have burned most of his things. But this was in the fireplace.” She gingerly handed him the bit of paper, a scrap of singed tan parchment. On it was the imprint of a creature with long tentacles. He inhaled at the sight.

“I know!” Margaret said reading his look. She leaned in, her face anxious and her voice a whisper. “Trevor’s secret project, I saw it once… I told myself it was a dog. I knew it couldn’t be, but I convinced myself it was all the same. Now I’ve been fretting these days and nights, on what it might have been. Oh Barnaby, do you think our Trevor is…” She swallowed. “A traitor?”

Barnaby fumbled for words, but none came. Instead, he stared at the monstrous imprint and pondered the desperate acts of a man of ambition.

© 2023 P. Djèlí Clark

Phenderson Djéli Clark is the author of the novel A Master of Djinn, and the award-winning and Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Sturgeon nominated author of the novellas Ring Shout, The Black God’s Drums, and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. His short stories have appeared in online venues such as Tor.com, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in print anthologies including, Hidden Youth and Black Boy Joy.

Waystation City

by A. T. Greenblatt

I was finishing the last of my nightly coffee when the nineteen-seventies twins approached my table and asked me to bear witness to their disappearance.

This was not an unusual request at Cafe Liminalité, being the locale of patrons that dreamed too much and ate too little. I, being its longest and oldest customer, had heard—and witnessed—this request many times.

“Pardon me,” the taller twin said. “Are you Mme. Hexler?”

Her voice was soft, but her gaze was direct. Beside her, her brother, a head shorter and shorter still by his slouched posture, placed his hands in his pockets. They both had lovely ebony skin and black, cloudlike hair that surrounded their head in a halo. Her shirt was a cheerful yellow knit, and there was a bright kerchief tied around her neck. His was white and synthetic with a wide, deep collar, edged with red. They wore tight fitting pants of blue denim that flared at the bottom. I am told these are called jeans.

They were unlikely twins, but their mannerism, the way they shared a space, betrayed a closeness. Later, I would learn their names: Daphne and Claude.

“I am,” I said.

The twins exchanged a look. Claude inhaled deeply and said: “Ma’am, we’d like to make a request. We’re going to leave the city.”

One of the beautiful things about Cafe Liminalité was that it was always alive, no matter the hour. There were forever patrons in the armchairs and on the barstools arguing, drinking, and complaining. The air perpetually smelled of sweet flavored tobacco and harsh, cheap cigarettes; all the whispers of smoke exhaled.

Even in those rare moments where there was but one customer, Anton, the proprietor, busied himself with some task, loudly, to keep the silence at bay.

In silence, we begin to doubt ourselves.

Claude had not been speaking loudly, but when he voiced, “We’re going to leave the city,” the cheerful din of the cafe seemed to grow distant and cold, like a wind that rips through a window curtain revealing a dark and unknowable world. Some of the patrons turned to stare at the twins. Some patrons turned and stared at anything but my little corner table and the people gathered around it.

In the raw hushness, the twins exchanged another look, a nervous one.

I began to answer, but Anton appeared at my elbow then, refilling my cup with fresh coffee.

“Running low, I see,” he said.

“Never,” I replied and Anton smiled.

“Are you certain you want to leave?” Anton asked the twins. “Is the city so bad?”

“The city is lovely,” Daphne said. “We just don’t fit in anymore.”

Anton raised an eyebrow. Aside from the likeliness in mood and mindset, the patrons of the cafe were as varied as the timelines they came from. From the vantage point of the corner table, we could see customers from nineteen-twenties New York, early two-thousands Tokyo, nineteen-forties Mexico City, and a dozen others with a mix of different clothes and hairstyles from many different times and places. When each specimen was unique, it was not possible to stand out in Cafe Liminalité.

“Well,” Daphne amended, “Waystation City doesn’t feel like home anymore.”

“We’re changing,” Claude added, softly.

“Ah,” Anton said. “And what if disappearing is worse than changing?”

Daphne raised her head and met his eyes directly. “And what if fear is the only reason we stay?”

Anton shrugged.

“They say your accounts are truthful,” she continued, turning to me and nodding at the notebook before me, craning her neck slightly to make out the words.

I closed it. “Yes,” I said.

“Will you record us?”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?”

“If there’s something interesting to record,” I said. The twins relaxed some and did not consider, perhaps, how many stories are not worth telling.

“Can you take us there?” Claude asked.

“I can show you the way. But that’s not the same thing.”

“It’s dangerous to go into the lower city,” Anton interjected. “Foolish even. Would you rather not stay? Have some coffee or wine. Perhaps something stronger? On the house.”

Steadily, the cafe had grown noisy once again. The twins barely considered before saying, “No, thank you,” in near unison.

Anton sighed. Drinkers were calling him from the barstools.

“Don’t endanger my favorite customer,” he said, giving my shoulder a small squeeze. In my ear, he leaned down and whispered, “I’ll let Michela know,” before hurrying to the bar, scolding the drinkers, making them laugh.

“We can pay you,” said Daphne.

“I don’t need it,” I said, standing. “Though you might, depending on where you end up.” The twins fidgeted, they wanted to argue. “But you can settle my tab with Anton.”

Daphne nodded and strode over to the bar. Claude helped me with my jacket. I drained my coffee in one swallow. Nights of disappearances were always cold and long.

“Pardon me for being direct,” Claude said. “But if you don’t want money, what do you want?”

I tucked my notebook and pen into my coat pocket, alongside the envelope that was already there. “Answers.”

It was nearly midnight when we left Cafe Liminalité and the city was wearing its best nightgown. Under the eaves of shops and on the corners there were small gatherings of people talking or laughing, their conversation weaving in and out of five different languages, their clothes and hair a mishmash of sarongs and button downs, overalls and sarees, bobs and long, intricate braids. True Waystation citizens.

The stone paved roads glistened after a sudden shower and the soft electric street lamps illuminated the ground, but only hinted at the buildings on either side: short and tall, wooden, or stone, or bamboo in construction. As eclectic and mismatched as the people. As we moved towards the main boulevard, the smell of rain and the flowers blooming in the terraces above the shops, haunted our steps.

Waystation City was lovely always, but it was this late night beauty I loved best.

The twins and I walked to the nearest tram stop and waited. On the nearby street light, hung a poster that read: “Avoid the lower city. It is not worth the risk. WAIT.”

Claude read it quickly and turned away. Daphne ignored it, pointedly staring up the tracks. In the cool, damp night, the twins stood out, with their bright shirts and bell-bottom jeans, looking like fresh arrivals to the city, ones still searching for answers. Which was true, though the question tonight would be the last they would ask of this place.

“Tell me your story,” I said. The twins looked startled as if they forgot I was beside them.

“Why?” Daphne asked.

“You can’t understand an ending without knowing the beginning.”

“Jesus, Daph,” said Claude. “Haven’t you read her articles?”

Daphne flushed. “Tram’s here.”

The tramcar approached, bright blue, lit up merrily with strings of lights, announcing its arrival with a tingling of bells. We boarded. Daphne held out City-minted coins for three tickets. “End of the line, please,” she said to the conductor.

The conductor hesitated. There was only one reason travelers took a late night tram to the edge of the city. He studied the twins with some trepidation, taking them in. Daphne’s determined stance, Claude’s gaze that was fixed on some spot near the ceiling. When he turned to me, there was recognition in his eyes. For a moment, I thought the conductor was going to refuse us passage.

Instead, he gave me a small nod and accepted Daphne’s money. I knew then, that one day soon, he would ask me to witness his disappearance too.

That is, if I was still in Waystation City.

The tram’s bell rang and its engine thrummed as it shifted gears.

“Wait!” A voice cried out. The voice was followed quickly by a tall, lanky figure springing onto the tram. The late comer wore a bespoke suit and a trilby, with short-cropped hair and polished shoes. With one smooth motion they handed their fare to the conductor and took a seat next to me.

“Good to see you too, Gerty,” they said, after a moment of silence. That was when I realized the late comer was Micheala.

“You cut your hair,” I said.

“You got new clothes,” she replied. I was wearing a pair of trousers in a feminine cut, which felt strange after a lifetime of skirts. But also thrilling. One of a million little changes I had adopted since coming to the city, many of which would have horrified my younger self.

“You wear them well,” she observed.

“Not as well as you,” I said. Micheala beamed.

“Ah. New victims, Gerty?” she said, turning to the twins.

“They were just about to tell me their story,” I said and then, to the wide-eyed twins explained: “Please excuse, Micheala. She’s an old friend and knows the lower city better than anyone.”

“Oh, I didn’t miss the good part!” exclaimed Micheala, taking off her hat and stretching out her long legs, settling in.

The twins stared at us from across the tram. Their hands instinctively found one another’s.

“What do you want to know?” Claude asked, hesitantly.

“Everything,” I said.

The soft click-clack-clack of the tram was a steady heartbeat as the twins relayed their story. Claude began and Daphne took up the tale when he faltered, trading it back when she ran out of words.

Micheala listened, with her hat on her stomach and her olive skinned hands folded neatly over it.

I opened my notebook and began to transcribe. Tonight, I would witness the twins’ story, whatever the ending, and if it was worth telling, I would send it to my editor at the paper in the morning. Despite the signs and warnings, it seemed everyone in this peculiar city was hungry for stories of the disappeared I provided.

“We don’t know how we came to Waystation City,” began Claude. “Not exactly, at least.”

It had been a late night when the nineteen-seventies twins arrived in the city. They began the evening with reggae at the Four Ace Club, before a friend suggested checking out the Marquee. It was June 5th, 1977 and a Irish punk band was playing, The Boomtown Rats, lanky, untried, captivating, and full of rage. The twins didn’t drink much that night, didn’t have more than one or two pulls on a joint. They didn’t have the luxury of being less than sharp and aware, violence and hatred against immigrants being rampant. After the show, they took the tube home, surrounded by friends, talking and laughing, and lingering close, keeping an eye on other passengers too.

One by one, their friends got off at other stops until they were the last in an empty car. They noticed nothing strange, in this last part of the trip, even in hindsight. And yet, when they emerged from the tube station, they did not find themselves in Brixton a few streets from the flat they shared with a mother and two other siblings.

The city they found themselves in was not the one they began in and it was nearly dawn. Later, they learned its name: The Waystation.

The air was cold as the twins rose from the street and dread settled within them. It had been a mild, summer night when they entered the cab. Now, there were snowflakes floating around them, clinging to their eyelashes. They cast about, panicked as they realized the strangeness of their surroundings. The streets were lined with buildings from a dozen different centuries, all looking impossibly new. There were flowers blooming in the terraces amidst the coldness of winter.

They learned quickly that Waystation City was full of good Samaritans. That the woman who helped them off the street and to the city’s resource centre, had also arrived under mysterious circumstances. That all the city’s citizens came from a different place and a different time, unexpectedly. The woman, the workers at the resource centre, everyone they met in the years that followed, told them they were lucky to have each other, to be siblings in this unexpected limbo. Usually new citizens arrived alone.

The twins were given housing—a spacious apartment, not too far from the city’s parks. They were given jobs—Daphne working with distribution of shipments coming from the river ferries (she was always quick with numbers) and Claude with a tailor’s shop (he always had a good eye for fabrics and was clever with his hands). They were welcome and accepted.

They were grateful, but homesick for their friends and family, worried about the rising fascism in Britain and the state of the anti-racist protests they were part of.  They begged for directions home, but their caseworker shook his head sadly and told them to wait. That one day, they would find a ticket or a letter or a map with instructions on how to leave the city and return to their own time and place. Everyone in Waystation City did. Eventually.

(“We gave patience a good go,” Daphne said, defensively. “Really we did.”)

For two years, they worked, they tried out new clothes that were from more than one decade and place, and went out in the evening, making friends with other lost people, exchanging gossip, debating the influence of music across genres and equality late into the night. They smoked cigarettes and ate whatever was on the menu, picked up a little French, German, and Mandarin. They watched as one or two of those friends got their promised directions back to their timelines. Or simply disappeared.

They waited.

But always the nineteen seventies called them home and they held onto every piece they could.

They hummed songs from that last concert they attended, talked about the growing Rock Against Racism movement, their endless fight against fascism, sexism, and racism like a talisman, reminding themselves of the things that fuelled them in their lives before. They could not stop dreaming of where they came from, terrible as it was.

(“We were helping to organize protests,” Claude said.

“We were at the grassroots, the center of change,” added Daphne. “We were doing something.”)

They were going to be patient for their ticket, their map, really, but then one morning a week ago, Daphne woke up and couldn’t remember any of the lyrics or riffs she loved. Claude couldn’t remember the faces of his mates or the street names around their home. They could no longer recall the fury and dreams that compelled them to go to rallies in the London streets.

Their life before Waystation City felt like a worn and faded dream.

“We’re losing ourselves here,” Claude said, putting his head in his hands.

“We can’t stay,” said Daphne, fiercely. “We were fighting for something at home and here…here…”

“We’re just waiting,” Claude finished.

Beside me, Michaela sighed, running a hand through her black, shorn hair. I closed my notebook and did not argue.

We did not get off at the end of the line. Rather we disembarked at the second to last stop and walked the last quarter mile to the stairway.

The entrance to the stairs was mercifully empty of any good Waystation Samaritan trying to discourage those who wanted to disappear. There was another sign on the railing that said: “Please, just wait. Your time will come.”

Daphne scowled at the message and without breaking stride, headed down the long stairway. Claude read it and bit his lip, but only for a moment, before following his sister. Michaela followed next. I followed them all.

The stairway was badly illuminated and the stairs were slick. On our right was a rough stone wall and on our left, there was open air and darkness that promised a long, unpleasant fall.

We proceeded slowly, sinking down into the belly of Waystation City where the trees grew tall and the stone arches were broad and shrouded. The stink of the river came on strong and camouflaged behind the wind, were the sounds of stone grinding on stone, of something rusted and ill-used creaking open. Of something heavy and final snapping shut.

The twins moved silently and with caution, afraid of slipping, perhaps or perhaps nervous of what they might find tonight in the dark, shifting places of the lower city.

Michaela broke the silence first.

“I’m assuming you’ve read Gerty’s accounts of other disappearances, yes?” she said.

“All of them,” Claude replied.

“We know what to do,” Daphne said.

“Of course. Of course,” said Michaela, airily. Of our party, she seemed most at ease, unperturbed by the ominous sounds and the creeping apprehensiveness that grew stronger as we descended. “So you know the dangers?”

Daphne turned quickly to glare at Michaela and did not see the transformation. The stone stair she was about to step onto blurred for a moment and solidified with a soft grinding sound and a thin sheet of ice upon it. Daphne’s foot slipped and for an agonizing heartbeat she lingered in air, hovering before the fall.

Then, Claude caught her shoulder and steadied her.

“Damn,” she breathed, clutching her brother’s elbow. “That wasn’t there before, was it?” she asked, glowering at the icy step.

“No,” I said. “The shifting will only get worse from here.”

The twins looked at each other, hesitating. The groans and grating of the lower city reshaping itself was louder now, but not yet in the forefront.

“Shall we turn back?” Michaela suggested.

“Stop trying to change our minds!” snapped Daphne.

“Perhaps I’m your voice of reason,” Michaela replied, cheerfully.

“There’s no reason here,” said Claude. He peered over the side of the steps into the canopy below. The darkness was not enough to obscure how the leaves on the foliage were changing shape, color, and species at random, how the foundations of the stairway were stone one moment and glass or cork the next.

“True,” said Michaela, sighing. “Docks are this way.”

We continued, more cautious than before, as the stairs beneath our feet became treacherous and unknowable. Michaela led and she would often pause an instance before a step would turn into water or silt, having developed a bit of foresight for the moods of the under city over the years. Once, after one particular late evening in Cafe Liminalité, Michaela confessed to me that sometimes she came to the lower city simply to watch one thing transform into another.

The twins almost collapsed in relief when we reached the final stair.

“Oh no, not yet,” said Michaela and she hurried us to where the walls became arches and then became caverns. Soon we found ourselves navigating the narrow pathway between the sloping stones floors and the rivulets of water running down them.

The caverns were timeless, unchanging, but the groans and cracks of the lower city shifting echoed through this space. Perhaps that was why the twins did not notice the words on the wall at first.

“Wait,” Claude said and approaching a wall. Sprawled across it were messages of the disappeared in thick white paint. Simple statements such as “If nothing else, I was here” and “We’ll meet again” to long poems or confessions that were too intimate to copy down.

“There’s so many,” he breathed. “It’s beautiful.”

Daphne came up beside him. “We should add our own.”

At the base of the cavern wall sat a handful of cans of paint and brushes.

“How about here?” Claude asked, pointing to a bare spot between a farewell and a hymn.

“Perfect.” Daphne reached down and readied a brush. In a steady hand she wrote: “We want to stay what we are.”

Michaela sighed, accepting defeat gracefully.

“The docks,” I said, pointing ahead. “Be as quiet as you can.”

The twins became somber at this, and nodded. They followed my lead.

When we reached the river docks, we could just barely make out the ferry drivers.

They moved with cold efficiency, stacking crates of food and materials on the docks. They were figures of soft edges and blurred lines. It was impossible to distinguish gender or coloring or the cut of their clothes. Why they provided for the city and where they came from was a mystery. They answered no questions and accepted no passengers. Any direct encounter with the ferry drivers and Waystation City citizens ended badly.

My first newspaper article as a fresh citizen here followed a man who thought he could reason with the ferry drivers. But when he entered their line of vision, he simply dissolved before my eyes. One moment he was a whole, the next he was a puddle of water, a mound of graphite, and calcium flakes.

It has been years, but that moment still revisited me in dreams. His story, however, made me Waystation City’s most infamous journalist.

At first glimpse of the ferry drivers, the twins threw themselves behind the last of the arches. Michaela and I joined them.

Beyond the docks, the ferries were coming in and departing, dozens of them of various sizes, hues, and builds.

Beyond the ferries were the holes in the fabric of the world.

The twins gasped almost in unison.

Witnessing the holes was always a sight of wonder and terror. Wonder, because some of the holes showed lush gardens and bustling cityscapes. Terror, because others showed polluted oceans and desolated towns. The holes appeared without warning with a clap, lingered for a few minutes while the ferries crossed through, and snapped close with a sharp thud.

To reach the holes, one had to swim.

“If you are to do this, choose carefully,” I whispered to the twins. “Your timing must be exact.”

“You don’t want to end up on an island in the middle of the Pacific,” Michaela added.

“Or in the middle of a war.”

“Or in the ferry drivers’ sights,” said Michaela, and I shivered. I checked to ensure my notebook, pen, and the envelope were still in my pocket. They were.

Daphne nodded and Claude reached for her hand. They studied the holes beyond the docks with a fixed intensity.

The twins did not choose rashly. Instead, we crouched in our hiding places for almost an hour, watching the ferries come and leave, the holes appearing and disappearing. They waited.

A hole appeared a few hundred yards from shore and Daphne’s breath caught. “That one!” she whispered and rushed forward.

“Daph, wait,” Claude said, but she was already running. The hole showed a town by the coast and judging by the cars, the powerlines, and lights, it was sometime in the 1970s. Daylight streamed through it with the smell of the ocean and the cry of gulls.

“Daph,” cried Claude racing after her. The docks were changing and transforming under their feet as the twins ran. Wood slats became metal, then linen, then bamboo, before reverting back to wood. The cacophony of noise from the change was overwhelming. It was the only reason why the ferry drivers did not notice the twins immediately.

Daphne was the first to dive into the black, rippling river and she swam with strong strokes to the hole. “Claude, come on!” she called.

But on the dock, the wooden slats became marble as Claude slipped, and fell into the water with a large splash.

Nearby, the ferry drivers looked up from their work.

“Hurry!” I shouted. “Go!”

Daphne spotted the ferry drivers turning toward her. “Hurry, Claude!” she cried, and threw herself through the hole. She disappeared.

“Wait!” Claude was desperately swimming towards the hole. He was almost there.

Then, the hole snapped closed with a thud.

I was too far to see the despair on his face, but I felt it.

The ferry drivers were alert now and scanning the water, only missing Claude because a new hole opened up with a clap a dozen feet from him and the ferry emerging from it shielded him from their view.

The new hole showed a field of wheat. It could have been anywhere. In any time.

“Claude,” Michaela yelled. “Swim back.”

He did not. He did not even hesitate. “Write this down!” he called. “Don’t let me vanish completely!”

“Come back!” I shouted.

In the distance, he shook his head once. Then, he disappeared.

“Well, that was exciting,” Michaela said as we climbed carefully up the stairs.

“I wish Claude stayed and waited,” I said.

“Me too. Will their story be in tomorrow’s paper?”

“Day after,” I said. “I’m too tired tonight.” It was nearly dawn.

The citizens of the city craved stories about the disappeared. They wanted reports of the dangerous, shifting landscape of the lower city, for glimpses into other worlds and possibilities. While the disappeared wanted to be remembered, to go down on record before they embarked into the unknown, to be more than the messages they left on the walls.

“If only I could’ve convinced them that changing isn’t so bad,” Michaela said with a sigh as we reached the top of the stairs.

“They were happy with who they were,” I said. She offered me a cigarette and I accepted. “They were stuck here, while at home, the fight for change probably marched on without them. I don’t blame them, Micheala.”

Michaela exhaled and nodded. “You’ve decided then.”

I pulled out the envelope from my pocket. Inside was a ticket with my name, the city I came from and the year I left behind. It was my passage home.

I stared at it for a long moment. Then, I reached out and dropped the ticket over the edge of the stairs. It disappeared into the lower city. “That’s my answer.”

Michaela breathed a sigh of relief.

“Could you imagine me going back to 1904 to write solely about ladies’ etiquette again?” I said, gesturing to my new pants, and Michaela laughed.

“God, no. It’s like me going back to skinned tight dresses and coiffed hair,” she replied grinning, but then grew serious. Softly, she added: “I’m thinking of changing my name to Michael.”

I studied my friend. In profile, she did look like a man. Or rather, more like himself. Before I came to Waystation City, such a declaration would have shocked me, such a change would have been beyond my imagination. But why does a city like this exist if not for the unimaginable and unlikely?

“It suits you,” I said and Michael smiled.

“We want to remain what we are too, I suppose,” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed, snubbing my cigarette. “Now, let’s go home. I’m cold.”

There were those in Waystation City who waited and there were those who disappeared. And then there were those of us who changed, who were changing still and we were the ones living in the spaces in between.

(Author Note: This story will also appear in anthology marking the occasion of Luxcon/Eurocon 2022 at some point in the future.)

© 2023 A. T. Greenblatt

A.T. Greenblatt is a Nebula Award winning writer and mechanical engineer. She lives in New York City where she’s known to frequently subject her friends to various cooking and home brewing experiments. Her work has been nominated for a Hugo, Locus, and Sturgeon Award, has been in multiple Year’s Best anthologies, and has appeared in Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld, as well as other fine publications. You can find her online at http://atgreenblatt.com and on Twitter at @AtGreenblatt

Horsewoman

by A.M. Dellamonica

“It was like this behind the Iron Curtain.” The woman in the grocery line was wearing a cowboy hat and had the leathery skin of someone who’d spent their entire life in the sun. Smoker skin, Payne’s mother had called it. She always loved finding ways to blame people for their misfortunes.

Payne thought about ignoring the woman, pretending not to hear. Instead, she tapped her headset, shutting off her podcast. “Pardon?”

“In school, studying communism. Hours of lineups to buy bread and butter. Hear the teachers tell it, you’d get to the front of the line just as they ran out. Wasn’t supposed to happen in the so-called free world.”

“In the free world, your shelves are fully stocked and having to wait for a cashier is a violation of human rights.” Payne’s lips were numb. Hadn’t Butch said this, last night?

Smoker Skin tipped her hat. “You know during Stalin, every house over there was haunted?”

Yeah. This was why she didn’t talk to the living anymore.

Fortunately, the grocery store guy finally came by to screen them. Put up a hand if you’ve experienced hallucinations recently, ladies. Ladies. Put up a hand if anyone close to you has passed away. Put up a hand if you’ve had cause to be out after dark in the past three weeks?

Payne kept her hand down. She didn’t owe this Mono minion the truth.

Instead, she made herself chat with Smoker Skin. Buzz, the happiness guru from the queer podcast network, swore that a key to keeping your mood up was to have frequent, shallow chats with your neighbours. Your butcher, baker, barista…and the cowgirl in the grocery line.

Anything to keep the mood up.

Inside, there was plenty of bread and milk, all watched by dull-eyed attendants in Mono Foods vests, droning: “Limit of one per customer, limit of one, ma’am.” Even the generic breakfast cereal. Even the sanitary napkins for Hester: limit of one, ladies.

The produce section was unlimited, or so they claimed. Payne’s conscience flayed her over longing for avocados from Mexico and cherries from Chile. The late-harvest Ontario apples and sacks of rose hips packaged in burlap, the latter with home-printed labels explaining how to make a tea rich in vitamin C, were just depressing.

Ghosts. Behind the Iron Curtain.

She’d have sworn she’d heard that phrase last night, when she’d surfaced from sleep into the edge of wakefulness.

But that should be impossible. Payne slept to the same six episodes of the same six podcasts every night. Nothing on her A-list was about communist history as it was taught, correctly or otherwise, to Canadian Gen Xers in the ‘80s.

The encounter left her feeling disconnected and jangly. No hint of that mood lift Buzz promised. She tapped her headset all the same, relaxing fractionally at the podcaster’s enthusiastic greeting: “It’s so great to have you all here today on Happiness in Hard Times! I am Buzz Cutt.”

“Hey, Buzz,” Payne said, “Hit me with something upbeat.”

“Okay! Let’s talk about meditation techniques for people who find meditation stressful,” he enthused. “I’ll also have an update on my turtle, Inka. Remember, a pet can really make a difference on a bad day!”

Buzz had always been good company, and the episode—already downloaded, and thus immune to the vicissitudes of the increasingly fallible cellular networks—was one she’d only heard once. It brightened the walk back to River Drive, even if she did have to stop three times to clear leaves off the sidewalk for the sake of her grocery cart’s wheels before giving up and walking in the road.

She was almost feeling normal by the time she crested the peak of her neighborhood hill and spotted two cops lounging against her gate.

Payne stopped short, barking her cart on the hilltop pothole in the process, snapping off one of its front rear wheels.

“Remember, talk to the people in your neighbourhood!” chirped Buzz.

Payne tipped the cart so it would still roll. In addition to her own groceries she had scored cereal, powdered milk and a box of pads for Hester. These cops would see her if she dropped it in the usual place.

Maybe these guys just want me to mow Angie’s lawn.

Payne tapped her headset before Buzz could say anything else, instead focusing on seeming law-abiding, privileged and unconcerned as she strolled up to her front door: “Morning, guys.”

“Morning.” Their uniforms bore the brand of the company that was buying up houses in the neighbourhood, supplying spotty internet and cable service to the people they hadn’t yet managed to drive out, and screwing Payne over about a rebate for Angie’s fancy wheelchair.

Now apparently, they’d taken over for the city police.

She fought a surge of fury.

Get a grip! Mono Health didn’t kill Angie.

The taller and whiter of the pair of rent-a-cops, clearly the designated hard ass, held out his hand. Payne thought about playing dumb and shaking it. But why antagonize? She passed over her ID.

“This is your house?” HardAss asked.

“I rent it.” Angie’s parents had asked her to stay on, allegedly lest developers bulldoze the place without permits or paying. They knew she couldn’t go home.

“We’re here about your front window,” HardAss said.

“It’s over two meters off the ground.”

“Minimum height requirement is now three and a half.” He flashed her a QR code.

Payne obediently scanned it, bringing up a public health notice. “You want me to put bars on the outside?”

“Full obstruction.” HardAss sounded annoyed. “Boarded up. As it says.”

“My plants’ll die.”

“You can get a retracting metal barricade,” said the other guy. The softer touch.

“Government’s going to pay for that, I suppose.” Payne regretted the sarcasm the minute the words escaped her lips. “Sorry. It’s just…”

She gestured at the river view.

“Homeowner can apply to Monolith for reimbursement, but you have to contract the job from one of our designated suppliers,” said HardAss. “Why don’t you invite us in? We can pull up the specs on one of your screens.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Payne said, trying not to make it sound like a refusal.

His eye fell on the box of pads. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Payne?”

Asshole. The voice in her head came from another of the podcasters who kept her company, Jamal from Scavenger Fridge. It was so heartfelt it sounded like the perpetually angry chef was alive and well and standing right there behind her shoulder, radiating outrage over the not-so-micro aggression.

“I’m a palliative care nurse.”

A hyena gleam came into the cop’s gaze. “You work with dead people?”

“Dying people, yes.”

“Do you have a night pass? We’ve had reports of people breaking curfew around here.”

She swallowed—her throat felt sandy. “I’m not currently using my pass.”

“What was the last one?”

“Last one what?”

HardAss bristled.

“The last death you attended,” put in the partner. SoftTouch, she decided, though his nametag read Ballaro.

“Oh. Six months ago.”

“Where is that patient now?”

Law abiding, privileged, unconcerned. Law abiding, privileged, unconcerned…

Payne’s lie, when it came, sounded casual. “Angie’s parents took her ashes back to Nova Scotia. I’m sure they turned them in.” Some other mega corporation would be devouring—excuse me, saving—the Maritimes, and it would take them months to fact-check her. If they bothered. People so rarely did.

SoftTouch shifted, responding to an alert from his phone. He nudged HardAss. “All hands call. Some guy on horseback is throwing spears in the town square.”

HardAss held Payne’s gaze. “We’ll be back in three days to check that window. Sir.”

Living the cliche, said Jamal’s imagined voice. What exactly do they all get out of being bullying dicks?

“No problem,” Payne said brightly. “Bye, officers!”

She made a show of scrutinizing the window as they hustled away. After their car crested the hill—bouncing with a pleasing crunch in the pothole—she scurried across the street and dropped the bag of breakfast cereal, powdered milk, menstrual supplies, and some random cans of fish in its usual spot, just past the fence of one of the boarded-up houses.

As if summoned by the thought of him, Jamal came up in her podcast rotation. “Welcome to my show, fellow queers and other humans! Today we’re going to learn how to make rose hip jelly.”

“Rose hips my smooth pink—” Payne dragged the broken grocery cart up Angie’s steps and into the house with its prohibited front window and the screamingly expensive wheelchair she was still trying to return.

Not to mention the three highly contraband boxes of human ash, tucked into the guest room closet.

Human remains weren’t the problem. Nobody was sure what the problem was, exactly, but Payne wasn’t about to consign Mom or Angie or even her awful roommate JoJo to corporate custody just because someone on the tatters of the Internet thought the bodies of the dead were causing hallucinations. Half the world still thought the last pandemic had been caused by people eating pigeons. Or proximity to dandelions.

Was someone actively investigating her? Payne had been kicking up a fuss over the wheelchair, the fucking Mono Health chair that cost more than a car. The chair they’d made Angie wait eight months for, only to have it break down the first time she ran it down the ramp in the garage and tried to drive over a shallow slick of rain-moistened sand on the river path.

Payne walked out of the kitchen and found one of Angie’s boy bands on the big screen TV, facing said chair. Seven impossibly handsome men worked their way through intricate synchronized choreography, smiling as they lip-synced one of their hits in Korean. Bad sound quality—the vid was a rehearsal.

“Soft porn vibes today, huh?” Payne asked. The video was mirrored on the chair’s control tablet, a small screen affixed to one of the handsets.

Angie’d always preferred visual media. Payne left her streaming media feed on, playing softly on the TV, most of the time. Letting the algorithm sift up the content Angie had consumed relentlessly as her body failed made the house feel more lived in.

It was also as good a way as any to tell if the ever-dodgy Internet was up and running. Payne downloaded her podcasts so they didn’t hang as she listened; she could go hours without noticing she’d lost service.

As she watched, the dancers gave way to a vlog post by one of Angie’s real world friends, a knobby-boned Sikh from Waterloo university who used to bring fresh flowers to the house every Thursday.

“Hey, Doctor Khan,” Payne said, fingering the rose hips. Why did she keep buying them?

“Good morning—I hope you’re safe, well and busy.”

“Apparently I’m boarding up windows. That’ll fill a day.” Payne bit her lip. Losing the view meant she wouldn’t see if the cops made a move on the shoreline path.

Does it matter, if I can’t do anything to help Hester and the others?

If she cleaned the hoarder’s paradise of art supplies out of Angie’s garage, it might sleep five or six people.

“This week I interviewed six paranormal investigators and a pair of folklorists,” Doctor Khan said. “I’m also chasing down sightings of a mounted rider in armour, calling himself The Fifth, in downtown Scarborough just before a deadly nine-car pile-up.”

“Fifth on horseback,” Payne said. The casualties in Scarborough last week had included a limo full of pharmaceutical magnates, men who’d been all but proved guilty of price gouging during the third pandemic.

“One of the folklorists told me that when you’re alive, you have something they called life energy. When you die, it transforms to fuel for the journey to…” Khan waved their hands, indicating an afterlife they’d probably always declined to believe in. “When ghosts manifest…I’m sorry, but that’s the word they both used, manifest. And who am I to dispute anything at this point?”

“Oh,” Payne said. “You’re getting depressed, aren’t you?”

“Sorry.” Kahn looked straight into the camera, meeting her eyes, and seemed to force themself to go on. “They allege that ghosts are powered by death energy that hasn’t quite dissipated. Where it gets interesting is when you have lots of deaths and energy builds up. Usually minor spirit manifestations can become disruptive. Maybe even self-sustaining.”

It was as neat an explanation as any for the recent contagion of murder sprees and fatal accidents: runaway apartment fires, construction cranes collapsing onto sidewalks, highway carnage. Hallucination epidemics, sightings of headless cavalrymen, and waves of suicides. Crimson letters, sprayed in a thousand alleys across the continent, in old fashioned cursive: We the dead know.

“It’s like any real-world catastrophe—a flood or a wildfire, say, or so they argue,” said Khan. “But if there is currently a surge of thanatic energy, it might be easier than usual to find evidence of it.”

“Find it, measure it, suddenly prove the supernatural exists?” Payne said. “People have been trying forever.”

“It does seem a little pointless—” The video cut off, in favour of another dance practice. Angie’s content filters were set to skip ahead to the next vid if things got downbeat.

Anything to keep the mood up, right?

That night Payne lounged in Angie’s fancy wheelchair in the darkened living room, enjoying the gel cushion as it conformed to the curves of her butt, and listening to History Butch—one of the few queer network podcasters still making new content—as she defiantly enjoyed one last night of having a river view.

The neighbourhood had become prone to what her mother called dust devils, baby tornadoes with just enough power to spin leaves around on the ground. Payne had always thought you needed sunshine to make a dust devil—warm ground and updrafts—but lately the trees by the river spent their nights undulating in circles, like dancers.

“People love quoting stats about the plague killing half of Europe,” said the Butch. “But today’s guest is a bioarcheologist who’s going to talk about who died, and how marginalization played into your survival chances. Not that this has any modern relevance, you understand…”

“Oh, Butch. I love your little sardonic giggle so much.”

The trees whirled. She finished her second glass of wine and fought the temptation to make it three.

As she was coming back from the kitchen after rinsing the glass, Payne saw something moving in the trees down by the river path. Big shadow, whipping through the undulating foliage… She would’ve sworn it was a horse at full gallop.

She could almost hear the hooves.

“I miss your laugh too,” History Butch said, presumably to her guest archaeologist, but even so, Payne gave a little bow.

“I promise to laugh if anything’s ever funny again,” she said.

Angie’s video stream promptly switched to one of her favourite comedians.

This was happening more and more lately—her mind was sliding in ways that made the passive ingestion of the podcasts seem like interaction. The effect of solitude, making her read patterns into coincidence.

Payne settled back into the chair, using the armrest tablet to surf hardware stores, checking if anyone besides Monolith would deliver window boards to the house.

Mono didn’t kill Angie.

“…half of everyone who’s left dies off, that’s 3 billion packets of thanatic energy. Lotta spiritual horsepower, if you get my drift…”

Payne jerked awake, looking for the source of the voice. Her glitchy podcast app had shut itself off, and Angie’s ever-scrolling video feed had switched to ocean waves on a tropical beach.

“Hey, Housebot, skip current video,” she said, testing the network.

The view hopped to old footage of Angie painting a portrait on a big chunk of particle board, picture of two Canadian anti-masking activists from the first pandemic, done up as conjoined scythe-wielding death goddesses. She had charmed local dentists into donating extracted wisdom teeth to the project; these were embedded in the board, so the curling roots of the teeth poked outward from the painted mouths.

Payne shut off the TV for the first time in weeks, heading to sleep in her actual bed. For company, she turned on a former yoga instructor, Catman Bendy, who always posted slow, murmuring, suspense-free stories about exciting topics like goldfish or kneading bread dough.

“…thinking about putting the babies down, just so I can stop worrying for ten minutes about what they’ll go through if anything happens to me…”

She surfaced muzzily into morning, checking her phone. Had she even heard that? Bleak wasn’t Catman’s thing and she definitely wouldn’t have kept something like that in her archive of downloaded content. But Bendy had shut himself off after knocking her out.

A dream, then.

“Note to my subconscious,” Payne groaned. “Please fucking fuck the fuck off.”

A little rough, as morning prayers went, but it was all she had.

She headed into the kitchen. Glowered at the rose hips. The video feed on the chair had rebooted and was playing a crowdfunding pitch from one of Angie’s favourite charities, an elephant retirement home. The sun was sparkling on the river, and she had eggs.

“Hey, Housebot, find me a video about building shutters for a big window.”

Angie’d made all kinds of art. Giant snow globes and miniature carousels. Quilts and cross stitches and model airplanes, Dutch master style paintings of fast food industry workers. Subtly graded color palettes that unfurled like red carpets, stretching thirty meters. Fanciful birdbaths and intricate sculptures. Her overstuffed garage had plenty of tools and materials. There would be a way to batch together something that looked like a barrier, one Payne could maybe remove from the window during the daytime.

Getting to the tools and ladder was something of an excavation. She ended up carting a two-part polyresin statue—the front and back ends of bus drivers wearing a two-person horse costume—to the lawn, all in service of emptying out another of Angie’s many carts. This she pushed down the wheelchair ramp in the garage to the street, then up the hill, past the pothole, and over to the nearest hardware store, eventually coming back with a bunch of laminated floorboards—hey, they looked like solid wood.

History Butch came on to keep her company as she tried to figure out how to assemble a flap, to put a hinge on the top of the window, so that instead of creating an actual barrier, she’d have something she could raise and lower.

She was failing and frustrated when the softer of the two corporate cops came by.

“That’s not gonna pass muster,” he said. “It’s not meant to be a blackout curtain. It’s a physical barrier.”

“Barrier against what?”

“I don’t make the rules, ma’am.”

He probably thought coming on his own was a sort of favour. Just swinging by with a warning: Be good or when daddy HardAss comes back, you’re gonna be so very spanked.

Payne wasn’t in the mood for ethically compromised kindnesses. She’d been up a ladder for three hours now, trying to install hinges. “You act like you think there are zombies out here.”

“I’m not a doctor. Not here to argue about masking or vaccinations or curfew or burning incense or drinking filtered water or reporting hallucinations or wearing magnets or trespassing in cemeteries—”

“We can’t go in cemeteries now?”

“—or the public health case for sequestering human remains.”

“We don’t have public health in this community anymore. Just corporate subsidiaries.”

He gave her a look that made her want to punch him in the face. “When was the last time you talked to a real person?”

“Don’t you pass for one?”

“A friend, I mean.”

“All my friends are parasocial.”

“You should get a pet.”

Anything to keep the mood up.

Out on the river path, she heard what sounded like hooves, ringing on paving stones.

She climbed down to the overgrown lawn, dusting her hands. “I’m fine, Officer. Stressed out, but who isn’t? I’ll get the window sorted—”

“We’ll be stepping up patrols on River Road,” he interrupted. “There’s a concern it isn’t safe to live near this much water.”

“More wisdom from the boardroom. Are you going to step up patrols near the big houses on the other side of Cauldron Lake?”

“There haven’t been any problems on the north side,” he said. “Ma’am, Mono Health runs a home care service. If you’re really looking for a nursing gig—”

Payne interrupted: “Did you not pick up on the hostility to Mother Corporation in my tone just now?”

He stared at the back end of Angie’s statue, the brightly coloured palomino ass, with a uniformed city bus driver protruding, centaur-like, from its waist. Their arms were extended, reaching for the front half of the costume, over by the garage. “Times like this, you gotta be part of an ecosystem that works.”

“You and I have vastly different definitions of works.”

He nodded, seeming to acknowledge this. “Don’t suppose I could come in and use your bathroom?”

“Piss yourself,” she said, whirling to mount the ladder again, climbing to the top and unhooking her fake barrier with its fake boards, dropping them between Angie’s statue with noisy slaps of wood, and ignoring SoftTouch until he finally took the hint and drove off in his Monomobile.

“Get a pet. Talk to a friend. Fucker, fucker, fucker!”

Mono didn’t kill Angie, she reminded herself.

She stomped inside and grabbed that glass of wine she hadn’t drunk yesterday. Paced, fumed, tried to calm down.

When was the last time you talked to a friend?

Fucker!

With a sigh, she checked to see if her phone had service.

She hadn’t expected Doctor Khan to be free, or interested in chatting, but the professor had listened to the story of Payne’s wheelchair refund wars and the bylaw-mandated window blockage with, at least, a good pretense of interest and concern.

“It’s possible they want a poke around Angie’s house,” they finally said. “If there’s anything out of compliance, you could be relocated for your own safety.”

“So it’s just a soft push to empty out River Road and the south shore of Cauldron Lake?”

“They can’t do much if you’re in compliance. And it’s better that they’re corporate cops, in a way. No real government authority—and no guns.”

“I don’t know why they’ve latched onto me all of a sudden.”

“They’re overcompensating, I think. There’s been controversy over the mounted city police detachment—I think we’re building up to some kind of moral panic over horses, of all things. Someone’s claiming to have seen a rider yesterday just before an elevator unstrung itself downtown and took out a handful of hockey club owners and TV executives.”

“There’s a loss to humanity. But what does it have to do with me?”

“Payne, let ‘em snoop around the house and find it clean. Which they will. Because it is.”

From the emphasis, Angie wondered if Khan thought someone was listening in on their call. Wasn’t that paranoid?

“Yes it is,” she agreed brightly. “Absolutely clean.”

After getting off the phone, she put on an archived episode of her favourite advice podcast, Frankly Speaking, and regrouped. It wasn’t that Angie didn’t have wood in the garage. All her paintings, pretty much, were on particleboard.

She gave up on the window flap. Like cherries from Chile, she just didn’t get to have a view anymore.

She hauled out a quartet of Angie’s abandoned paintings in progress, including the conjoined scythe women, and mounted them on the outer sills of the front window. Nailing, clamping and even gluing—Angie’s parents, in faraway Halifax, wouldn’t care if she did a little property damage. Anything to keep the compliance up.

“If you can get everything on a given list done within four hours, then you’re not behind,” Frankly said, responding to a listener question about work-life balance.

“I’d give my left kidney to worry about something as petty as work-life balance,” Payne growled as she yanked on the extension cord powering the drill.

“It’s common to feel overwhelmed,” Frankly continued. “And unhealthy to routinely force yourself to carry out tasks you’re averse to. But sometimes clearing the decks can give you a sense of renewed control—”

“Everything’s under awesome control.” Payne leaned against the horse statue’s ass end, taking in her handiwork. The front of the house was now, by default, an Angie art show.

She went inside, found the government regs on boarding up windows, and printed the page. She checked all the boxes on the handy government checklist, ran the resulting poster through Angie’s laminator, and stuck the whole plasticated page on a clear spot at eye level.

“Here. I did your thing, I followed the rules, stop hinting that you want to search the goddamned house.”

“Hey,” Frankly said. “Don’t kill the messenger.”

I gotta stop half-listening to these shows.

Clear the decks. She got the cart she’d used for the hardware store haul, and started loading. JoJo’s ashes, her mother’s ashes, Angie’s ashes, bagged in totes with handles and then wrapped again in a blanket. Then, atop that, a picnic—sandwiches assembled from a Fridge Scavenger. Plus, for Hester and the river folk, all the weird unperishable foods people had given Angie in gift baskets after her diagnosis. Crackers and pate and pickles.

Sorry you’re dying; try this compote from the Mono Foods deli!

“Stop, stop, Mono didn’t kill Angie.” She mumbled it as she made a thermos full of hot tea, packed two bottles of wine, gathered up some magazines that Angie should be even now be tearing up for one of her creepy ass collages. She searched up one of those long lighters for igniting barbecues and grabbed a three-pronged garden rake for good measure.

“That’s it. Go on a tear,” Frankly said. “Throw yourself at that to-do list until something breaks.”

“And if that doesn’t work, get a pet.” She booted up the screamingly expensive Mono Health wheelchair, ran it down the ramp in the garage and parked it in the tiny space she’d reclaimed from Angie’s art supplies, and plugged in the charger. Then she rearranged the living room, putting Angie’s lone armchair in front of the big screen TV.

Her last task was finding the donated teeth among the bins and bins and endless bins of art supplies, so it could go on the now-burgeoning pile within the cart.

“Let’s move on to another question from our listeners,” said Frankly.

Payne’s stomach growled. “Dear Frankly. Can you get hangry if you’re already perpetually enraged?”

“Here’s a good one!”

She hit the garage door opener and dragged the laden cart down the driveway, across the street. Heading downhill, for once. She slid onto a dirt-strewn path bordered by a neighbour’s fence on one side and a slick of peaty moisture and cattails on the other. The only pause was when she left the sack of pate and crackers, along with one bottle of wine, in the usual spot for Hester inside the fence before dragging her load onto the river trail.

Reaching Cauldron Lake took longer than expected. The cart was heavy, the trail covered in wet leaves—good thing she brought the rake—and the occasional smush of a silt deposit. At some point, the precariously balanced basket of teeth slid off the pile and dropped into the bush. Didn’t matter necessarily, she supposed. The teeth weren’t technically human remains. She’d only brought them because she didn’t trust HardAss to know that.

She arrived perhaps an hour before sunset.

People talked a good game about the history of Cauldron Lake. Ancient legacy this, potent Indigenous spiritual power that. All garbage, according to Angie: a previous plague of developers dammed up the local stream to create the fancy part of town, back in the eighties.

Cauldron was, in other words, wholly artificial. Its gracious trees had been selected by city arborists, the trout and bass within stocked by Parks and Wildlife. All to bolster property value for the houses rising up to the north, proper mansions on a proper hill, looking down on greensward, a view bounded by a screen of poplars to hide the more modest homes on the other side of the water.

Constructed or natural, Angie had wanted to be scattered there, near the trees she’d climbed as a kid, near the manmade waterfall where she’d had her first kiss.

Payne’s mother, meanwhile, had just specified dumping her remains in water. Anything but a government vault.

As for Jojo…well, her irascible roommate had lost any say after he hanged himself with a power cable, effectively rendering her homeless.

Security was circling the park as Payne arrived, making sure they could tell their bosses they’d checked it before sundown. She ducked out of sight, settling under Angie’s favourite climbing tree, and tucked into the picnic.

The patrol passed within a couple meters. Payne gave them the finger from under her blankets, cheered on by a podcaster who went by the name of Minor Ducats Dude as he gave her tips for consuming ethically while living within her means.

“The trick might be to eat first and then see how you feel.”

Frankly’s words jerked Payne out of a doze. The advice podcast from this afternoon must’ve restarted. The moon was high above Cauldron Lake, three quarters waning and the yellow of an old bruise, smeared to a blur by a scrim of cloud. The trees were shadows, turning slowly in a corkscrew, as if caught by dust devils.

Payne muttered a low curse before getting to her feet and trying to shake out a thousand sore spots. She was alone with the swirling wind and the lapping waves.

She left the cart where it was, lugging two of the boxes of ash in a tote that wasn’t really sized for them, while tucking Angie under her arm.

The walk to the dock cleared her head. She stepped onto the planks, almost slipped—the wood was almost always a little damp—and spent a second accustoming herself to the shift and bounce of waves lapping beneath her.

Then she strode to the end of the dock, where she and Angie had sat as undergraduates, new friends warmed by the heat of a massive mutual intellectual crush. Alive and present and in person. Legs dangling over the water as they talked art and science and Canadian politics and occasionally boys.

Payne sat in the memories until she was well marinaded and morose before turning to the task.

Mom’s box of ashes was the oldest. Its surface was textured, stamped with a honeycomb pattern that was meant to make the cardboard feel… what? Upscale? Pricey?

As she opened it, Payne imagined she felt someone stepping onto the dock, heavy vibrations coming up through the cold damp boards under her butt.

She refused to look: if someone caught her dumping ashes now, there was nowhere to run and nothing to deny.

Water dripped off the pier, sounding like horses—clip clop, clip clop.

Lifting out the plastic bag containing Mom, she picked the knot. Tipped her, streaming ash between her knees.

A surge of grief caught her hard as a punch.

Should’ve expected this, should’ve expected it should’ve expected this… Her mind looped and scrolled uselessly, distress rising as she tried to catch her breath, failing. She smacked her headset:

Poor Catman Bendy’s soothing baritone rolled over her. “Just breathe, just breathe, relax, you’ve done enough…”

She whooped, sucking air. Pushed out, finally, a feeble, “Bye, Mom.”

Water slapping the dock floats was her only reply. Payne’s vision blurred. “I suddenly wish I’d memorized that poem you like. But…you know. Insert poem here. And thanks, you know. For everything. Sorry this took so long.”

She slid the emptied box back into the tote.

A sense of mass, behind her.

Not looking, not looking… She groped for the next one, ghosting a finger over it until fingernail met box tape, and picking the edges of it to get to Jojo. Cheerlessly, she bit her lips and tried to think. Finally, she just quoted History Butch, since he’d been the one to introduce them—to introduce her to that podcast, she meant: “Every era sucks in its own unique way.”

As she tipped up the bag, the weight within shifted. The ash glopped down all at once, plunging underwater as if it was one piece, a lump of mud or clay.

She felt a burst of resentment as backsplash—cold water, so cold!—hit her ankles. At least Mom had lived and aged and died in a world where the electricity was steady and your car could always get gas and if something was on the grocery shelf last week, it would be there next week too. In a world where the television steadily got better and even a bad government could be trusted to call an election every four or five years.

But Jojo—well, her old roomie was the flip side of that coin. He couldn’t deal with being on the downward slide, seeing their hard-fought civil rights going away and the seasons transforming from spring-summer-winter-fall to flood-famine-quarantine-typhoon.

“You were good to live with for awhile,” she finally said.

Forcing a shaky laugh, she fumbled the third box, still in its silk bag. Cold and dry-eyed, she pulled out the box, slid it open, and felt for the knot at the end of the plastic sack. It was too tight to untie.

A bump of something warm against her shoulder made her whirl.

Nobody there, of course.

Unnerved, she tapped her headset. One of Angie’s boy band tracks began to play softly. Up-tempo music for a secret funeral.

The clouds peeled away and the lake silvered. Something dark arrowed into the trees on the far shore—an owl perhaps? Her imagination supplied the startled shriek of its kill.

What would I give to see all those fancy houses burn?

Something bubbled to the surface of the water—air trapped in Jojo’s ashes. Black sludge roiled below her dangling feet, bubbling like witch’s brew, before sinking.

Payne dug her nails into the plastic encasing Angie, pulling until it tore. Ash spilled onto her knees before she got the bag upright and flipped it, pouring from the irregular gap, whose torn edges created a messy stream.

Before she could end up covered, wind gusted from nowhere, slapping the plastic like a sail, sending Angie out across the lake in a long stream, like a black finger over the water, pointing at the rising hill and the mansions Payne had just been mentally immolating.

She scrambled to her feet. The bag rattled in her hand, snapping in the wind. She shook it to emptiness as air slammed her and the deck bucked underfoot.

She staggered, arms pinwheeling. “Cut it out!”

Boom. Wind gone. She slapped her headset button by accident as she flapped and then steadied herself on the slippery boards.

Frankly Speaking kicked in, mid-sentence. “…tackled all those tasks you’ve been avoiding? Remember to celebrate!”

“Hurrah.” She crumpled the bag, dusted the ash off her calves, and picked up the cardboard boxes. Lucky they hadn’t toppled into the water. The idea of having to wade into the ashy soup of the lake to chase them…

Oops. Gross. Crying now.

She made her way to one of the park department barbecue grills. Inside the tote were old magazines and the long barbecue lighter. She got the paper burning and then started breaking down the boxes, sobbing as she fed them in pieces, labels first, through the hamburger grill.

“Wouldn’t do to have empty boxes of cremains lying around, not if I’m really going to let those rent-a-cops poke around your old house,” she sniffed. “And I can’t just leave them in an area trash bin for HardAss to find. That’s incompetent crimery, right? How could you ever respect me again? We’re burning the evidence, like proper murderers.”

The park remained deathly quiet as the boxes surrendered to the flames.

She walked back to Angie’s tree to claim the cart, and found Hester sitting in it, wrapped in the blanket.

“Still surviving?” Payne asked.

“Most days I pass for alive, yeah.”

Hester was maybe thirty years old, pale, with a blue-dyed buzz cut that had started to grow out. She dug a dollop of antipasto out of a glass jar with a water cracker, extending it in offering. “How’ve you been doing, neighbour?”

She shrugged, took the cracker and choked it down.

Hester rummaged in a rucksack, coming up with a sealed mini-pack of tissue. Payne took them gratefully, blowing her nose and wiping her face.

“I—” she said. “Those Monocops seem like they might be bent on pushing everyone out of the neighbourhood soon. You guys could be in danger.”

“We’re past that now,” Hester said.

“Are we? Since when?”

“Three two one…” Hester got to her feet, grasped the wagon’s handle, and gave it a little twist, trying out the wheels. She waved at thin air, syncing the move with the circling trees, and Payne realized she could hear sirens wailing, all over town. A lot of sirens.

“We should head back.” Hester handed her the garden rake.

They walked in silence, lake at their backs, the chorus of a dozen emergencies wailing ever less distantly as they neared home.

“I was thinking. If you—if you all needed a place to stay. For as long as I’m around, anyway. I’ve got a bit of—” Payne faltered. Was she really going to offer Angie’s garage, while living in the comfort of her two-bedroom house? “—space.”

“I’d take this cart and blanket,” Hester said. “And my girlfriend would probably love to use your shower now and then. But at this point, we’re better off outside.”

“Ah.” She felt a complicated, guilt-laced burst of relief.

“We’ll never be rich, so we might as well throw in with the dead, am I right? Anyway, this is my place,” Hester said, as if they were at any corner, or standing in front of the lobby of an apartment building, instead of a thin path on uncut grass.

The clouds shifted, and moonlight briefly revealed a small tent down by the water, next to a camp stove and stack of water bottles. A line of something pink and granular encircled the tiny clearing.

“Road salt,” Hester said, seeing her notice. “You should get some for your place, if you’re not already haunted.”

“I’m already—” This was why she didn’t talk to the living anymore. “I could bring you some more, sometime. Salt.”

“Yeah? And aspirin, too, if you can get it.”

“Okay.” Now what? Did she say goodbye? Return the rest of the tissue? Wave to the person moving, within the tent? “Well. You know where to find me. Don’t stay out here and freeze or anything.”

Hester wrapped her arms around her, just for a second, a tight and fierce embrace that smelled a little of red wine and a lot of unwashed human. Payne felt the shock of it—human contact, after so long—as powerfully as a blow.

She fought not to cry again as Hester stepped back, over the border of her pink road salt circle, and scooped a few grains from the bag to draw the line afresh.

If you’re not already haunted.

She took the trail back up to the lake road, empty handed now but for her phone and the rake, slipping between the fences leading to the river path, following the sound of siren.

HardAss was up there, screaming at Angie’s front windows.

Two of the four paintings blocking the glass were flickering, garish and weird in the flashing police car light. Maybe Angie had treated the teeth embedded in the anti-maskers’ portrait, with something phosphorescent?

He was absolutely baying at the painting, bent with both hands on his knees, next to the back half of the horse statue. Letting out a howl with every exhalation, and almost keeping time with the wailing siren.

Let’s see a circle of salt touch that!

Payne looked around for SoftTouch and found the Monomobile wrapped around a poplar tree. Something under its hood was smoking, and bits of tattered crash bag swirled in the wind. The car siren and flashers were screeching, going full tilt.

Do something!

Payne tapped her headset, praying to the gods of glitchy podcast apps.

“Good evening, everyone. This is the History Butch.”

Relief flooded her. “Hi, Sue.”

“I want to start by saying how all y’all mean to me. Have meant, ever since things started going sideways—”

“Whenever that was.” Fortified by the illusion of company, Payne forced herself to stride toward the cop car. SoftTouch was slumped in the driver’s seat, face wrapped in airbag plastic.

“I know how much everyone values my weekly check-ins,” Butch went on, “My little tours of the olden days, when life was simple and easy—”

“Yeah, easy. Right.”

“Just kidding.” Butch let out one of her endearing, sardonic giggles. “I did start work on a rollicking laugh riot of a series on the US war in Vietnam but…I don’t know. I found a thing there about ghosts roaming free in 1968, in this one village, after it had been all but obliterated. I did my Master’s thesis on Vietnam, and I never heard this story. And now…folks, it’s everywhere. Even in books I bought in, like, old library sales. It’s like a ghost history baked out of the pages. And it’s not just one. There’s story after story of mass deaths and hallucination plagues and bowmen riding giant snakes through the jungle.”

“Which is just my way of saying…not to be overly real with you guys, but there’ve been some mental health setbacks here in Butchtown lately.”

SoftTouch—Ballaro, Payne insisted, mentally—didn’t seem to be breathing. She made herself grope for the rent-a-cop’s neck. His skin was clammy. Was that a pulse or just wishful thinking?

She fumbled the phone, dialing 911.

Deadened voice: “State the nature of your emergency.”

“I need an ambulance.”

Silence.

“For an injured police officer,” she added.

“Just one police officer?”

Limit of one, ladies. Limit of—

Payne’s mouth dropped open. “Uhhhh. Two?”

“Well, we’re way off script now, aren’t we?” said the Butch. She sounded like she was crying. Payne frowned. Usually the podcast app shut off when she used her phone.

“What if it’s one officer injured, and one…very upset?” Payne didn’t mention they weren’t real cops, or that she thought Ballaro might be dead.

“Could you transport them to a hospital yourself? City View Emergency’s probably best.”

“What did you say? Me? Drive them?”

“I’m sorry,” Butch broke in. “I don’t mean to make a big play for sympathy. It’s just that when all this started, the first time, the government told us what to do and they said it would be okay. We did the things, we stayed home, we wore the gear they said to wear. We tried to help each other, right? Anything to—”

“You want me to drive the police to Emerge?” Payne demanded.

“See? The asks get weirder and weirder. We each basically have to invent our own way to keep safe. Public health guidelines are practically superstition and my history books really have changed, y’all, here I am looking at this 1968 story about a whole village near Duong Lam getting overrun by things riding mongol horses, after a mass funeral… I’m worried, friends, I’m legit freaking concerned…”

“I understand your concerns.” The 911 operator’s voice was frosty. “But it’s either get the injured to a clinic yourself—”

“—the better to arrest me for breaking curfew?”

“—or secure shelter for the night and call in the morning. There might be ambulances by…ten or eleven?”

“I don’t think this officer’s in a state where he can wait.”

“Morning,” repeated the operator. “Unless you know someone at Monolith. They might have a private service.”

The line went dead.

“I’m just not sure there’s anything to be done anymore,” Butch said. “I dunno if I’m doing any good.”

Payne added the local 911 office to her growing list of things to burn down.

“I’m sorry you’ve been having a rough time,” she said, instead.

“I know, I know. This is self-indulgent,” said Butch. “Everyone’s so ruined right now.”

Ballaro made a little belching noise.

“Fuck,” Payne said, trying for his pulse again.

“I know my thing’s always been to say hey, things were shit in the past too, and we’ve made it through. Right now, our queer little podcast network’s getting bought out by a big media company and I’m—I’m having a crisis of faith, friends.”

With that, Butch cut out. The network couldn’t currently handle downloading new content. That, or the pessimism algorithm finally caught her.

Morose company was better than no company. Payne hit the button on her headset to play something from her archive as she said: “Hey, Housebot—open the garage door, will you?”

The house let out a clunk as the door unlatched.

HardAss shrieked. He straightened, threw himself across the front half of the horse statue, and began firing at the garage.

Payne dropped to the ground, heart pounding. “Why does he have a gun?”

Ballaro, naturally, didn’t answer.

Boom bang boom boom boom bang boom!

Silence.

Terrified, she peeked between her fingers in time to see HardAss drop the pistol into the grass.

Payne swallowed. Gathered her last shattered nerve. “Hey, Housebot, can you ask Angie’s chair to home in on my location?”

A beep of affirmation. Tiny headlights flashed on and illuminated the driveway. There was a whirr and the chair came down the drive, past HardAss, and across the road. The power cable connected to the charger caught for a moment, then snapped free. The chair eased up to her and Ballaro, stopping just the right distance from the open car door.

“Here’s hoping you don’t have a spinal injury, friend,” Payne said, easing Ballaro out of the car. Half lift, and then a twist to drop his bottom onto the seat; muscles she hadn’t used in months, but years of nursing got her through it, got him seated more or less right on Angie’s butt-conforming gel pad.

Had he helped a little, supporting his own weight when his feet were on the ground? She couldn’t tell. She’d thought he was dead, but every time she felt sure, there’d be some flicker within, some hint of energy or life…

She clicked the safety belt into place, pulled up the headrest so his head was at least a bit immobilized. Checked HardAss, who was still draped in a crying mess over Angie’s statue.

She grabbed up the rake again, just in case, before approaching him.

“Hey!” She called. “Hey, you should probably come with us.”

He moaned and didn’t move.

Fine. “Hey, Housebot, can you ask the chair to follow me?”

She headed uphill, straight up the yellow line where there were no leaves or puddles. Was her headset on? She thumbed the button.

Silence.

Time for a prayer.

“Butch,” she said fiercely. “Listen. I’ve never reached out to you before, to any of you. This is a big deal for me, and I’ve got plenty on my plate, so you better listen.”

Dammit, now she was crying again.

“This better not buh-be a suicide broadcast. I don’t care how morbid you get about Vietnam, and it’s okay if your research isn’t exhaustive. I don’t know what to say about your history books rewriting themselves, that’s really weird and scary, but…”

It must be colder than she thought; her tears were hissing when they hit the ground.

“I guess, please…just, can you not quit right now?”

The siren on the Monomobile, behind her, suddenly cut off. The flashers, which had been lighting her way, went dark.

They were almost at the crest of the hill.

A trembling breath came through her headset.

Please, please, please.

History Butch said: “Okay. I’m all right, I’m all right now. Y’all talked me down. Thanks.”

Payne covered her mouth with a shaking hand.

The chair balked.

She turned, scanning the road, looking for a fall of leaves or an obstruction.

The dead know who killed us.

Big letters, scraped into the road. Reddish and seeping, like scratches in flesh. The chair had stopped just shy of falling into the hilltop pothole, which formed the O in who so perfectly it might have always been that way.

She licked her lips. Reached for the chair’s joystick.

The screen on the smart chair lit up. Seven impossibly beautiful dancing boys in hoodies and sweatpants beamed up at her from within its frame.

“Sorry,” she said to Ballaro. “It does this.”

“Harry grabbed the wheel.”

His mouth hadn’t moved. Had the words come from the touchscreen? Her headset?

Payne felt for Ballaro’s pulse again. Nothing. He felt stiff. Long gone.

We know who killed us.

Monolith hadn’t killed Angie. ALS killed Angie. She’d been dead even before she picked up a mysterious limp that everyone thought was a knee injury. She’d been dead when she was getting tests and demanding answers from specialists. She’d been a big ticking countdown clock brimming with death from the moment they finally got the diagnosis.

But.

But Monolith picked the day, by sending a slack-ass incompetent dickhead to fix the customized wheelchair.

Payne had left Angie in front of her streaming videos and run out to the grocery while the tech was there. She could leave her alone, but she didn’t like to. So, she ran out, braved the line, and bought rose hips and mango juice and powdered milk and pads for Hester, getting back just as the tech was leaving.

Everything’s fine, he’d told her. Chair just needed a tune up and a reboot. He’d left instructions so she could do it herself next time.

Payne had been grateful—absurdly, stupidly grateful. Tiny things could still restore her faith in real people, six months ago.

Except. Dude didn’t bother mentioning that he’d knocked over and busted Angie’s CPAP breathing machine, leaving it in pieces on the bedroom floor.

So, no, Mono Health didn’t kill Angie. They just broke a crucial piece of medical equipment and then refused to send anyone out to fix it.

Her thoughts felt hot and oily, a deep fryer crisping the last of her self-restraint. She imagined returning the chair personally, now she had it mostly up the fucking hill anyway. Just driving across to the north shore of Cauldron, and up to the Mono CEO’s mansion. Crashing it through the foyer, maybe, with a note demanding Angie’s rebate. She could pin it to poor Ballaro’s cold dead chest.

She hit Forward on the chair’s manual drive, slewing around the pothole. The chair surged over the word killed, picking up tar or blood with its tires, leaving tracks running down from the text.

Then, as she finally crested the hill, the chair broke into ash. Just collapsed under her, blew itself into a dustdevil and…

Is it a crisis of faith if you never really believed before now?

…and turned into a horse.

The mare’s spots were the colour of the bruised yellow moon, on a coat that was all the other colours of contusion: green, red brown, and purple. Palomino painted in the colours of a badly beaten woman. Its saddle was butt-conforming comfort gel, aglow with sprinkles of colour-changing LED lights. The steaming asphalt under its hooves smelled of tar, and its eyes and teeth glowed like phone screens. The gaily carved beads woven into its mane looked like discarded wisdom teeth. A bottle of Angie’s favourite sherry protruded from one of its saddlebags.

Ballaro, shrouded in a blanket, was strapped behind the saddle.

Seven boys danced out of Payne’s phone, spinning up from the dust in the road, body rolling with sinuous delight.

The horse stamped. Emoji—question marks—lit up both its eyes.

What was it her neighbour, Hester, had said? Something about choosing between the rich and the dead?

Payne tapped her headset.

“Welcome to Happiness in Hard Times! I am your host, Buzz Cutt.”

“Is this going to make me happier, Buzz?”

“I think that’s a question for Frankly, Payne.” He rumbled affectionately. “Besides, you already know what we’re going to say.”

“Whatever it takes to get the mood up?”

History Butch let out a coo. “See? You do still have a sense of humour.”

It was time to visit the north side of the lake.

Payne tucked her phone away and picked up the three-pronged rake lying at her feet. She hopped, skipped, and then sprang into the midst of the dancing boys, giving them her very best attempt at an exuberant twirl.

Breath steaming, doubts gone, she made straight for her mount as the voices in her headset broke into shouts of joy.

© 2023 A.M. Dellamonica

A.M. Dellamonica’s first novel, Indigo Springs, won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Their fourth, A Daughter of No Nation, won the 2016 Prix Aurora for Best Novel. They have published over forty short stories in Tor.com, Asimovs SF, The Magazine of Fantasy and SF, and elsewhere, along with poetry, pop culture essays, and even the 2021 play Dressed as People, which they co-wrote with Kelly Robson and Amal El-Mohtar. Their newest novels, Gamechanger and Dealbreaker, were released under the name L.X. Beckett and are solarpunk adventures that imagine humanity surviving climate change and creating a post-carbon economy.

Flower, Daughter, Soil, Seed

by Eugenia Triantafyllou

There isn’t a more resilient thing than a small flower.

Your great-great-grandmother was a yellow daffodil. Where she was born people called her narcissus. Her many heads blossomed from a loamy opening in the forest on a particularly chill spring day. They rose hungrily, searching for a few precious rays of sunlight. Her stems pushed against each other and against the cold wind.

Flowers don’t have memory. Not in the way humans do. They don’t know where they come from or why they are. They only care about flower-things. But they know when they love a place with their whole being. Because each forest has a different kind of smell, color, and feel to it, like a human body. And the soil is its skin. That shadowy spot in the forest was home for the daffodil.

Until it wasn’t.

Your great-great-grandmother woke up on a summer day—when the sun was high and the heat relentless—sensing her end was near. The end was a fire that was still too far away to be seen by anyone. Flowers don’t have memory. But they have a keen awareness of their short-lived nature. And when they feel that they are about to die they are almost always right. The daffodil didn’t have legs to run like the animals, or a voice to scream like the little children who picked her many heads while singing songs, but she had her senses, and a smell, and something other flowers didn’t: a desire that a part of her would live on. Where she got this intention from, I don’t know. Sometimes creatures decide they will survive despite everything.

There was a young buck nosing around her clearing and the daffodil smelled and swayed her way into the deer’s perception, and then into his mouth, and then deeper still, in his stomach. The forest burned not long after, and your great-great-grandmother died with it. But the seed she hid inside the deer’s belly made it to a faraway pond where the buck stopped to drink water and, well, die. Maybe it was the wounds the fire had dug in the buck’s flesh, maybe it was the daffodil itself growing poisonous inside his stomach. Whatever the reason, the buck lay by the pond, his knees buckled, and he drew his last breath among watermint and sweetflag.

Now sit still my love. We have a long way tomorrow and you need to hear all of this.

The seed floated through the ribs of the decaying animal when the water lapped at its corpse, and it sank at the bottom of the pond. That’s how your great-grandmother was born. Under the glassy stare of toads and the squawking of grey herons. She was beautiful, oh yes, she was, twice as lovely for the delicate line of her mouth and her long violet arms. You see, your great-grandmother emerged from the water as a tiny human girl from the waist up—in the image of that one gentle girl, who picked the daffodil’s heads—and a waterlily flower from the waist down. She had adapted but she had kept the memory of the daffodil. The dream of her lost forest. Her eye shape had something of the buck she had lived in as a seed, and her little voice made toads and herons alike flock around her, enchanted. The same voice made a little boy run to her one afternoon. He had escaped his mother’s watchful stare and stretched his little arm trying to pick the waterlily girl from the pond’s surface. His face was flushed from the effort. He frowned and came a little closer and tried again.

“Come here so I can pick you!” he demanded. He had been born into a rich family and demands came to him naturally.

The waterlily girl did not want to be picked, so she steered herself to the center of the pond, away from him. The little boy huffed and took one step into the pond and then another. But unlike her he did not float. His mother was heartbroken and his father, the lord of that land, ordered his people to drain the pond and find the fay that stole his firstborn’s life.

When the men arrived at the lake, your great-grandmother knew they were coming for her, just like the daffodil knew there was a fire approaching. In the pond, there was no buck, but the waterlily girl was not about to go without a fight. With her song she called her favorite grey heron. When the bird swooped down at the pond, between the men’s shoulders, she reached her soft, petal arms and wrapped them tightly around its long neck. Together they flew above the pond that was her home and her cradle, and soon they had left the lord’s land and many others behind.

The waterlily girl loved to fly. She finally understood what her mother, the daffodil, had felt all those years ago. The desire to keep going, to be a part of something bigger, something with memory. But no matter how strong her intention, the waterlily girl had been cut at the stem by the heron’s force and she was dying. She was thankful to the heron for saving her, but as they flew over more and more lands, it was clear that she would soon let go of her friend. When she did, they were passing over a mountain range. As the waterlily fell in the white, soft snow, she chirped to the heron, Thank you and goodbye. It was in a rocky cranny that the waterlily girl faded and finally slept her deep sleep, only for her daughter to be born from her seeds with the first spring rain.

When the goat herder and his wife found your grandmother, she was curled up like a baby-sized seed between primroses and drenched in meltwater. Her skin was primrose, white with a pink streak cutting down the middle of her. What did it matter that she was buck-eyed and had the long neck of a heron? That her face had the roundness of a drowned boy and between her curled toes grew primroses? She was beautiful like every child is, and if you live long enough on the mountains with goats as your main company, strange things become a little less strange. And this couple had lived on the mountains their whole lives. They loved the girl the moment they picked her up and thanked the mountain Gods for their gift (and every other God and minor deity they could think of, just to be on the safe side) and took her to their home in a small village wedged at the foothills of the mountain. They named her Primrose.

Primrose grew up to be a patchwork of goodness and strength, and of the memories of the yellow daffodil and the waterlily girl. She could walk the steepest trails without fear. Better than the goats themselves—who she would occasionally rescue and carry back to the herd, sometimes letting them eat the flowers that sprouted between her toes. When asked how she was so good at climbing she’d say that the wildflowers held her by the ankles so that she wouldn’t fall.

As much as she was loved by her parents, she was equally loved by a young milkman who later became her husband and my father. And that’s the part of the story where I come in, my little one. But not just yet. You see, you can run from forest fires and vengeful lords, but trouble will always come, no matter how far you travel. This time the trouble was much bigger than the ones the daffodil and the waterlily girl had faced. But Primrose in turn was bigger than both her ancestors and carried their wisdom.

There was a war raging at the border on the other side of the very mountain she lived. This time there was no passing animal that could have swept away your grandmother. And if there were one, it was taken away by the soldiers who took her family’s goats, and then their chickens, and most of their milk and cheese, and eventually their loyal hound. The villagers shook their heads every time she climbed the steepest cliffs to gaze into the distance, towards the border, but she had her plans. If only she could walk along the mountain range, get past the blue forest and the dead river, cross the desert, and reach the coast, she and her husband could be free again. They could start anew. Primrose tried to wait out the war with her husband at first, rationing all the food they had left. She didn’t need much to survive and meltwater seemed to give her strength. But my father needed more than meltwater and greens. He was getting weaker and soon it would be impossible for him to travel. The old intention that lived inside my mother had grown roots and thick branches and Primrose got up one day, before the sun peered through the windows, and packed all the food she could find.

“We are leaving,” she told her husband. “I will do this with or without you, but I would rather you came with me.” She took his thinning hand in hers and kissed it with affection, and he nodded a tired nod.

Both of her adopted parents had died by then, so she had nobody to say goodbye to but the cabin itself. She hoped that perhaps, if peace came, they could return safely. But you and me both know that didn’t happen.

The mountain was hard to climb and hard to walk for her husband, even during springtime, but Primrose was in her element, and there were days when she alone would carry him and the sack with all their possessions. She let him have most of their food and she melted fresh snow for him to drink. That got them all the way to the forest where food would be easier to find. My mother had never been there before. It wasn’t the daffodil’s forest. The smell and the color of the soil were different, there were tall trees covered by thick blue moss and plants my mother did not recognize. But all the forests are distant cousins. Just like all the mountains and all the ponds. And as cousins they share secrets that my mother knew. They ate the right kind of berries and mushrooms, and they even managed to catch a rabbit or two. My father was looking better. The dead river came next and that wasn’t hard for my father to cross, but without enough water my mother slowly started to wither. She didn’t notice at first, as she often drank from the flasks they had filled from a stream. But one cold night, as they huddled around the fire and she took off her worn out shoes to rub her feet, she saw that the flowers around her toes were dying.

My father stared at the dried flowers, dumbfounded. Her flowers had always been fresh and smelled sweetly.

“What does this mean?” he asked. My mother could hear the rising panic in his voice.

Primrose knew very well what it meant. She had lived it through her memories time and time again. She was dying. Wasn’t this always the way? But the intention was there, and they had walked all this way. They were at the cusp of the long desert. It would be suicide to turn back now. So my mother chose to focus only on the positives: my father would be free and there was a baby on the way. Well, not exactly on the way. But there would be a baby. That she knew. And the baby would be a strong desert baby and she would make it out alive. And my mother would live through her daughter’s memories. She would make sure that they were happy ones.

She turned to my father. “Nothing to worry about, dear. Just need some watering.” She smiled and took a sip from the flask. And my father believed her.

They walked in the desert that was hot by day and freezing by night. They passed salt flats and lagoons where they refilled their flasks, but also places without a trace of plant or animal. My mother fiercely held on to her life until they reached a part of the desert where the shrubs gave way to milkweed and prickly pear.

“Let’s rest here for the day,” she said to my father. She laid a goatskin on a cold stone slab. She didn’t say, This is where I’ll die tonight. Please hold my hand until I sleep. My father’s expression was grim, because deep down he knew. He held her hand anyway.

When he woke up the next morning the stone slab was scalding hot, and my mother was nowhere to be found. But next to the prickly pear, inside her now-empty linen dress, slept a baby girl. Me. I was heron thin; my skin was the color of the desert at high noon and my lips were the shape and the color of the pear cactus flower. My father could hardly hold me because my body was covered in prickles, fine and small like a baby’s peach fuzz, but he clung to me like the last precious thing left in the world and let out a small, small sigh.

Opuntia, he called me, for the pear cactus. Something of my mother’s intention must have seeped into him. He wrapped me in her dress tightly, and together we crossed what was left of the desert. He fed me the sap of milkweeds and I suckled at the stems like a mother’s breast. He fed himself the fruit and the pads of the pear cacti that grew all around, and somewhere along the way we found a group of alpaca herders. They didn’t question what a man with a newborn was doing crossing the desert. Only gave my father thyme tea to regain his strength and guided us to the city by the coast. By then I was one month old.

We stayed in the city until I was old enough to talk and then to walk, and before any of us knew it, I was a grown child, and my prickles had thickened into spines. My father had turned to carpentry and forgotten all about the goats and the milk and the little cabin on the mountains. But in my memories, I carried all the places my ancestors had been, and I knew this wasn’t the place my mother wanted us to settle. No, the place we were meant to go lay beyond the sea, eastward. Every day I ran away from school, and he would find me at the port, looking longingly at the ships leaving.

“Why do you still want to travel?” he’d ask me. “Haven’t we travelled enough for ten lives the two of us?”

But the intention had set its roots inside me.

It was many years before I finally managed to bend his will. Reluctantly, he packed our few precious possessions—my mother’s linen dress was first—and we headed to the port where one of his sailor friends had found some space for us below deck, on a merchant ship that carried cereal and wheat towards the east, in exchange for labor. My father repaired every single thing that begged for a carpenter’s touch, and I helped him. On every port he would turn and ask me, Is this the place? And I would shake my head that, no, it wasn’t. Not yet.

Until one day we stopped at Cotani. Our island. It was the biggest one in the Great Mild Sea and the ship made stops at each of the three major ports. South, East and Northwest. I wasn’t meant for the sea and seasickness was making me more miserable with each passing day. I preferred to spend my free time staring at the ceiling from my hammock below the deck. But something made me get off the ship when we reached the northwestern port and go for a walk. Stretch my limbs and stretch my spikes. The port was like any other. The people as well. The crowd steered clear of my spines but never gave me a strange look. People who live in ports don’t bat an eye at a girl with spines. They have witnessed much greater wonders. No, it’s only the inland people who do that.

The island was rocky, but I could make out patches where forests spread inland, and fields that were full of olive trees and grape vines. I walked on the cobblestoned streets, already feeling better, and studied the small terracotta houses with the low roofs, the white and magenta bougainvillea twisting and trailing over every crack on the walls. In the pots that were left on the bleached white windowsills there was hyacinth and there was daffodil. I approached them almost hypnotized. The daffodils greeted me like old family. I had seen daffodils before, but there was something about these ones that felt achingly familiar. Flowers recognize their own.

“This is it,” I said to myself, my knuckles brushing over petals the color of runny yolk. “This is the place.”

I ran back to the ship and dragged my father outside. He didn’t need much convincing. Weeks on the ship tending to all that needed repair, along with the seasickness that plagued both of us, were enough to make him the most complacent man in the world; not that he had been a difficult man to begin with. I wish you could have met him yourself.

He crouched on his knees and held me carefully by the arms to not disturb my spikes, trying to extract a promise.

“Are you sure, Opuntia? Is this where we stop forever? No more leaving?”

I nodded—though there is no such thing as forever. I knew that this was where we were meant to be, and my father’s feet longed to walk on steady ground for more than a day.

“Yes,” I replied as he pierced me with his sunken eyes, smiling at the words that came next. “This is our new home.”

We did not stray too far from the port the first year. We rented a room over a bakery; the whole house belonged to the baker, a lovely woman with four children. My father got a job at the shipyard and was thankful for every single day that he did not spend out in the open seas. I spent time with our landlady and learned all the secrets of yeast and flour and heat. Poppy seed bread and pastries were my favorite. I knew the poppy flower well. I admired its beauty and respected its power.

One day—did it count as day? I used to get up so early the roosters were still sleeping—as I was kneading chickpea and wheat flour into a soft dough, I noticed that our poppyseed supply was dwindling and asked our landlady for more.

“You’ll have to talk to the gardener for that,” she said, her back was turned to me, twisting dough braids for the tsoureki more deftly than her daughters’ hair. “Just take the main path inland. When you see a small house with the biggest garden in town, you’ll have found her.”

I took my basket and did as she said, and soon I was in front of the biggest and tidiest garden I’d ever seen. Everything seemed to serve a purpose and have a natural flow. Not one petal was misplaced. Whoever had created this, I thought, knew plants from the inside out. And I wasn’t wrong. It has only gotten bigger while you were growing up, but the oldest plants are still here growing stronger, like you, my flower.

At a corner of the garden I saw the gardener, your mother, poring over a patch of hyacinths, and the basket fell from my hands because I knew I had made it home. My sweet girl, flowers don’t have memories, but I do, because your great-great-grandmother wanted it so. And I remembered our forest, our first home. The gardener’s skin had the exact shade of its stones when the sun was peeking over the oak trees. When she turned to face me, her eyes were the color of its cypresses when the moon was round and bright. She was part of my forest. She was the forest. She smelled like it too. I wasn’t sure if she knew. If she remembered. I didn’t know how memory worked in her family line. But I knew her ancestors had come from the same place as mine. They were made of soil and stone and tree bark, but also of human flesh and moments in time like I was.

Oh, you can imagine my joy when I found out she did remember. Drys said my eyes were the exact green of the daffodil stems on early summer, and my voice had the lilt of the stream passing through the oak trees. I had changed a lot along the way. Her ancestors had not gone as far as mine, so her changes were small, delicate. The forest where the daffodil had been born was on this very island. It had slowly been reborn into itself and was now almost as big as it had been when the daffodil first sprouted her heads out of the soil.

When your mother touched my hand, my spikes made way for her. They bent, soft like hairs. Not long after I moved into that small house with the big garden and helped her make it bigger. I begged your grandfather to come and live with us, but he just kissed the spot between my eyes and smiled at me and Drys and said, “No more leaving now. This is it.” And I remembered my promise and respected it. The baker took a liking to him, and they ended up spending their lives together. I came to visit him every week, and later when he was at his weakest, every other day.

But as it had always been with my family, a different kind of intention soon found me. I wanted to have a child. But I only knew one way. The way of my mother, and grandmother, and all the flowers before her. And trouble had not found me here, not yet. I wasn’t dying and nor had I wanted to. Our lives were sturdy as tall trees and sweet as black grapes. So how could I have a child? It would be like having it all.

“You know,” Drys told me one day, when she saw me frowning over a baby oak tree. “Cacti can propagate by stem cutting.” She hugged me then and gently led me into the house, where there were tea and pastries waiting for me.

I knew that of course, but I didn’t believe it would work. Dying and being reborn was part of my ancestors’ life. Part of my life. But I had Drys and I had time, and no hint of trouble on the horizon. So I took a sharp pair of hedge shears and cut off my waist-long curly hair to the shoulder. I left that part of me to the quietest place of our garden, where the heat was right and the shadows short, and before the month was over my hair grew roots and my heart was about to burst under my linen dress.

I took you inside and kept you in my bosom during the day while I stirred the pot and kneaded bread and shoveled dirt. Drys had you during the night. She slept with you on her pillow, right next to her sweet face. You belonged to both of us, and you should have something of us both. You grew fast and, in a year, what looked like a tiny human girl, much like the waterlily, cooed in my arms. There was a drowned boy in your frown and a deer in your eyes, your hair was oak bark brown, and behind your ears two hyacinths grew, as blue as the sea I had crossed with my father. How funny, I thought then, to have another flower with poison in our lineage and a name not unlike narcissus—the yellow daffodil—after all this time.

The years went by, and you grew older, and I know you have all these memories in your little head right now that don’t make much sense. That you don’t know what to do with. I promise that they will clear as soon as you grow up a little more, and then you will be able to tell this story that I am telling you—and perhaps I will be in there as a memory or perhaps I won’t. But tomorrow is a big day, my Hyacinth, and I had to tell you why. The forest we are going to visit is not just any forest—although they are all distant cousins, never forget that, it might save your life—it’s the forest of your ancestors and when we are there, we’ll be visiting them. So sleep well and dream without trouble, my love, but if trouble happens to come I know that you will be ready, because you will remember what to do.

© 2023 Eugenia Triantafyllou

Eugenia Triantafyllou is a Greek author and artist with a flair for dark things. Her work has been nominated for the Ignyte, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and she is a graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop. You can find her stories in Uncanny, Tor.com, Strange Horizons, and other venues. She currently lives in Athens with a boy and a dog. Find her on Twitter or Mastodon @foxesandroses or her website  https://eugeniatriantafyllou.wordpress.com

One Man’s Treasure

by Sarah Pinsker

Aden had never once forgotten his gear for bulk trash day, but he found it touching that Nura still taped a monthly reminder note on the door from the kitchen to the garage. Sweet of her to remember, given how exhausted med school had her these days. He ducked out to the garage to toss gloves, a mask, and protective goggles into his pickup. The city didn’t provide the mask or goggles; those were from his own personal stash.

While the water for his coffee warmed, he fished in the junk drawer, hoping to find some tiny unexpired dollar-store charm he could leave to make Nura smile. A flying kiss, maybe, though that would leave her scrubbing lipstick off her cheek, or spark powder, or something similarly innocuous and cute. He didn’t find anything, so he wrote “I love you” on the blank side of her note to him and left it on her open copy of Rapid Interpretation of Magicardiograms.

Four a.m. was a special hour, Aden thought as he navigated the sleeping streets of Three Rivers. The moon hung low in the sky, three days past full, and nobody was outside doing any incantations, which left him, his travel mug of bracing black coffee, and a moment of solitude before his noisy workday routine began.

On normal days he parked in the yard, but on bulk day, everyone who’d been around long enough to know better parked down on the street; once you got back into the yard you weren’t supposed to take anything, and you couldn’t divert the truck, but if you found something worth keeping and it happened to fall into your private vehicle on the way home at shift’s end, well, that was just a perk of the job. He’d built in a few minutes to hoof it up the hill from outside the gate and still clock in on time.

No matter when Aden arrived, Nash always arrived earlier. He was already leaning against the garbage truck waiting, keys in hand, looking as usual like he’d just stepped off a photoshoot for a grizzled mountain man calendar, all plaid and beard, even though to Aden’s knowledge he’d never left the city of Three Rivers. He and Aden both wordlessly hauled themselves into the cab, then pulled toques over closed eyes to wait for the new guy. They had been working together long enough that neither felt compelled to say anything over the din of the other trucks clattering off toward the sleeping city.

The new guy on their crew, Renny, ascribed to a broad definition of punctuality; eleven minutes after everyone else had rolled out, he strolled in as if nobody was waiting for him. Aden opened his eyes when he heard Renny greet Ms. Jukes, their supervisor. She’d left her office to greet him, or maybe to see why their truck was still there, but she didn’t reprimand him. How did some people get away with flouting rules when everyone else had to abide by them? The unfairness irked him, even though he liked the kid.

Renny put one foot on the running board, then noticed the goggles Aden had pushed up on his forehead. “Wait, is today bulk? Crap. Lemme go home and grab the rest of my gear.”

Behind him, Ms. Jukes said, “You don’t have time. You’re the last ones out already.”

Renny looked around like he had just noticed theirs was the only truck. “Okay, how about we drive past my place on the way out?” He smiled at her, not flirting, but clearly working his considerable charm, a storybook prince in overalls.

She returned the smile. “You know the truck’s GPS reports if you go off route. Or if you’re late, which you already are. Get moving.”

Aden couldn’t help standing up for the kid, even if the tardiness and the charm-assault annoyed him. “If the city issued us safety equipment, he wouldn’t have to run home for his own personal gear.”

“Or protection spells?” Renny added helpfully.

Ms. Jukes frowned. “They’re not my rules, but you know the regs only say to wear your gloves and follow Worksafe guidelines. And the city definitely doesn’t have budget for any spell that would provide real protection. That’s big ticket magic. Y’all need to go.”

Renny nodded and pulled on his gloves. They still looked newish; he’d only been on the job six weeks, their third new trainee since Blue’s accident. Blue’s death couldn’t have been avoided with ten layers of gloves and goggles.

Aden and Renny rode to Old Hog alongside Nash in the truck’s cab. Old Hog was the poorer of the two neighborhoods that formed their current route, and the easier. Only the usual problems, like off-brand trash bags that split when you lifted them. The city kept talking about getting trucks with lift arms to dump bins directly, but then they’d have to give everyone fancy new cans too, which wasn’t in the budget. Anyway, that didn’t matter on bulk day.

When they reached the first block of their route, Aden and Renny dropped to the ground and set into their rhythm, Aden on the driver’s side, Renny on the opposite. If the monthly bulk day occurred nearer eviction day they might have seen more in Old Hog, but people tended to use things forever around here, or else give to a family member or neighbor, or sell or trade stuff away if they thought it might still be useful to someone else; what little had been put out was well and truly spent, easy to toss into the truck. Aden never minded working there.

“You know,” said Renny. “People think this neighborhood was named after a pig farm, but it wasn’t. Mazareen Hogg owned a manufacturing plant here before he became governor, and the second ‘G’ got lost along the way.”

Aden raised an insulting finger. Renny said that every single time they hit this area, twice a week and three times in bulk week, had done so since the second time they’d been here together. Fourteen times now, which was enough to be either thoroughly annoying or a decent beginning to a running gag; Aden hadn’t decided which yet. All because on Renny’s first day, Aden had said it to him, in those exact words. That and more, since Aden liked history, the way neighborhoods waxed and waned and changed character over the years. Aden might have gone on a little too long, but Renny just smiled and listened, and as they left the truck at day’s end, said, “Oh, hey, let me introduce myself again. Mazareen Hogg the Seventh. ‘Renny’ is short for Mazareen, which I’ll never forgive my parents for, even if it’s a family name.”

Renny had clapped Aden’s shoulder and walked away whistling, and after that, twice a week, he gave Aden’s history lesson back to him as they started their day. Aden was genuinely curious how the Hoggs had gone from the governor’s mansion to generic wealth to manual labor, and how it felt to collect garbage on land that used to belong to your family, but they weren’t close enough yet to ask such personal questions.

When they stopped the truck for lunch here they rotated between Nash’s choices and Aden’s. They’d let Renny choose eventually, if he stayed on the job. They ate rice and pickled vegetables sitting on the curb beside the truck; even though bulk day trash was less pungent than the ordinary variety, nobody liked it if they got near. It wasn’t a hot day, but the sun was relentless. Aden wiped sweat off his brow with the inside of his shirt. Ripe and getting riper.

“This isn’t so bad,” Renny said. Aden assumed he meant the food, which was good, or their odor, but then Nash answered, “We haven’t hit the Crown yet.” Aden realized the kid meant their day, and dropped a hand to his side to make an anti-jinx gesture; it was fine to talk about the odor, but “this isn’t so bad” was a beginner’s observation. Miles to go.

They reached the Crown’s guardhouse at noon, and paused in the gateway for the security check. Sometimes Aden wished their schedule allowed them to do that neighborhood first, when they were fresh and on their toes, but the route wasn’t theirs to choose, and anyway, maybe it was better for the Crown’s bulk to bounce around on top where it got air, rather than get pushed to the bottom where they wouldn’t see if things started to react.

Aden hated the Crown: its wastefulness, its carelessness, not to mention no thought for any danger to the trash collectors. Blue had died in another ritzy neighborhood, Silverhill, not this one—Aden and Nash had been given this new route so they wouldn’t have to pass the site multiple times a week—but Blue’s fall nonetheless replayed in his mind as they made their way down these manicured streets too, and he blinked away tears.

The first discard they came to was on Renny’s side. It looked easy enough, a storm door laying flat on the sidewalk, and Aden almost didn’t bother watching the kid, but a second later he was glad he had.

“Stop!” he shouted as Renny reached for the handle like it was his first day. Renny hesitated, clearly realizing what he’d almost done. He took it by two sides instead, and heaved it over. Aden caught a glimpse of snow through glass as it sailed into the truck.

Renny grinned. “No harm done.”

“No harm done?” Aden didn’t lower his voice. “You know how the guy before you died.”

“I got distracted for a sec. Anyway, there was just a snowy hill in there. Somebody’s ski portal or something. No big deal.”

All that misplaced confidence. “So you think! How do you know you can get back if you get sucked in, or that you won’t freeze to death? Blue accidentally put a foot into the frame of a broken portal and fell off a cliff right in front of me. He fell and fell—” don’t think about the landing “—and all it took was one wrong step.”

“Maybe we need tethers, not gloves.” Aden thought for a second that the kid was mocking him, but then Renny followed up with “I’m sorry about your friend. I’ll be more careful.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Aden, breathing deep to calm down. “Why don’t we do both sides together today?”

Renny frowned. “You don’t have to coddle me. I can do my side.”

“Sure, of course, but it’ll be faster for us to toss the big stuff together than to each drag it separately.” It wasn’t quite true, but they’d make up the time if they moved quickly, and it would definitely be safer, as long as Renny didn’t reach for any more doorknobs. Only his second monthly bulk day, Aden reminded himself; the kid didn’t know any better.

They made their slow circuit. In front of one mansion a designer cauldron, ingredients congealed at the bottom, still smoking; some people were so lazy they’d rather throw out a perfectly good cauldron than deal with cleaning it properly, or even paying someone to clean it for them. More: an armoire with a single chain holding it shut; a box of record albums emitting a faint hum; four tires tied to a lamppost, hovering a foot above the ground; a sofa that had dragged itself into a bush on three good legs to lick a fourth that had been scratched by a cat but looked otherwise fine. Another cauldron.

Aden took time to secure the cauldrons upright. More work to do it right rather than fast, but he had been in the truck once when the dregs of two discarded cauldron spells had sloshed into each other and ignited. Nash had driven to an empty school parking lot, and he and Aden and Blue had watched from a distance as the whole truck caught fire and consumed itself. They all had to get checked by the staff doctor, and they weren’t allowed back on the job until they stopped pissing in turquoise; Blue had gotten his nickname from that incident. Definitely better to be careful.

Around the next corner, they came to a life-sized statue of a man holding pruning shears, laying on its side atop a battered box spring.

“I’ll get the statue if you get the box spring,” Renny said.

“Nah, you take that end and we can get both at once.”

When Aden grabbed the box spring, the statue whispered “help me” through stone teeth. Aden almost dropped it in surprise.

“I think the statue talked,” he said to Renny, at the feet.

“That’s not possible, is it?”

Aden turned back to the statue, aghast. “Can you say something else, buddy?”

It didn’t answer. Still, he knew what he had heard. “I don’t think this is a statue.”

“What else could it be?”

“It looks to me like somebody hexed their gardener and left him for trash.” He tried to remember if there was a protocol for this. Blue would have known. “That’s attempted murder, right?”

“I’d think so. That’s awful.” Renny looked agitated too. “You want me to call it in?”

Aden nodded.

Renny lowered the statue’s feet and stepped away to make the call. Aden watched him dial, wait, explain, disconnect. He returned shaking his head. “I can’t believe it. They said ‘trash is trash’ and we should do our job. They wouldn’t be saying that if we’d found a body in a rug, but just because it’s stone they don’t think we should bother?”

He contemplated for a second before continuing. “In any normal neighborhood it would be considered murder, but around here nobody gets charged with anything that gauche, and if they were, they’d buy their way out of it.”

“I swear, in all the time I’ve been doing this, I’ve never been asked to junk a person before.” As far as Aden knew, anyway. What if one of those couches or armoires had been a housekeeper or a pool boy and he just hadn’t realized?

Aden fought the urge to walk off the job. He’d almost done it after Blue, too, but good-paying occupations weren’t easy to come by, and Nura still had years of school ahead. And it wasn’t like she was training to be a plastic surgeon; she planned to open a medical clinic in Barreltown.

Besides, this wasn’t supposed to be ethically gray. People needed him, and he liked the work. Except on bulk day, which had always felt dangerous, but he’d thought the danger was to his crew. He’d never stopped to think about what else rich people did with their expensive magic; growing up poor himself, until he’d started this job he had only ever seen big spells on television. They still seemed impossible: permanent state changes instead of temporary ones; stable portals big enough for family vacations in other realms. He’d be happy with a pair of impermeable gloves, and even that cost more than his year’s salary.

Nash honked the truck’s horn, reminding Aden they had a schedule to keep.

“Help me get him into the cab,” Aden said.

Renny looked surprised. “What’s the plan?”

“I’ll take him home and see if Nura can unhex him. Otherwise, we’ll try to find somebody who recognizes him.” Aden turned to address the statue. “We’re going to help you.”

The statue didn’t respond. Maybe whoever was inside had used up all their energy with that one cry for help. Luckily, it had been enough to get their attention, and if he spoke again, Nash would hopefully hear him over the engine. They maneuvered the statue into the narrow space behind the bench, careful not to break any fingers. Nash caught Aden’s eye and shook his head, sharing Aden’s disgust.

They tossed the box spring in the back, then continued on their route, picking up a large rolled carpet, which Renny checked for a body, another cauldron with congealed green goo lining the bottom, a run of desks and desk chairs, another cauldron, half-full and sloshing something orange and furry. Clearly whoever had tossed it hadn’t grown up in a nothing-wasted family like Aden’s, he thought as he cleared a secure spot for it. The truck was fuller now, making it hard to find room for odd-shaped objects.

They fell back into something of a rhythm. Aden thought Renny had finally caught on to how to work with both care and efficiency, up until he heard “Ow!” from the front right bumper’s vicinity, followed by a thud.

Aden sprinted around the truck. He and Nash both reached Renny at the same time.

“Why didn’t he wait for you?” Nash asked.

Renny had made it to the next house, and apparently he’d decided to deal with the spinning wheel on his own. All that confidence. Aden lowered his head to Renny’s heart, making sure his chest was still committed to a steady rise and fall, ignoring his own heart’s pounding. Don’t think about Blue. “He’s breathing. I think he’s asleep.”

Nash peeled off Renny’s gloves, then held up his right hand. The sharp had gone through the fabric. “Do you want to kiss him, or should I?”

Aden shook his head, trying to force his panic to subside. “Neither. He didn’t consent, and I’m not getting written up for harassment. Besides, he’s growing on me, but I can’t say I love him.”

“Good points. Crap. I guess we phone in and ask if they want us to turn around or finish?”

That made sense. Nash made the call, while Aden worked the offending piece off the wheel—it was supposed to be a spindle according to his high school history class, but all the media versions showed a needle on a spinning wheel, and nobody went back to original texts these days, not even for big spells. He wrapped it in Renny’s hoodie from the front seat, in case someone needed it to reverse-engineer the spell. He had to work carefully; it seemed to want to prick him even through his doubled gloves.

Nash returned. “They say it sounds like a standard sleeping spell, and we’re supposed to finish the route and then get him back to the garage so the doc can check him out.” He jerked a thumb at the spinning wheel. “You take the sharp off already?”

“Yeah. It’s in his hoodie there. Do they want the wheel?”

“They said junk it. They may not need the needle either, but we’re supposed to hold onto it just in case.”

Aden tossed the defanged into the back. They carried the kid to the cab, then Aden nestled the sweatshirt carefully at his feet, where it shouldn’t be able to do harm through anyone’s boots, even as it hugged up to him like a cat looking for attention.

Aden patted his own pockets as Nash started the truck. “Got a pen?”

Nash reached into his door and handed one over, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m writing down the address in case we have to write a report. They should be cited, at the very least.”

“Like anyone ever gets cited. Nobody cares if we get hurt. Honestly, a sleeping spell was the best possible outcome for that kid today.”

Aden agreed, but jotted down the address anyway, then the address where they’d picked up the gardener, which he’d been repeating in his head. They finished the day slowly with Nash jumping out to help with larger items: a potted plant the size of a compact car, a chair burping rainbow-colored bubbles that smelled like marshmallows, more cauldrons, more wardrobes, a hideous portrait, a bedframe that eagerly raised and lowered itself to the perfect height, a stone fountain, a spotless bathtub that seemed to repel dirt, two more door-shaped portals. A hazard, that was what it was. A hazard and a waste.

They stopped one more time to wrestle the statue and the bubble chair into Aden’s pickup truck; his niece might enjoy that on her birthday. That was why everyone parked outside on bulk day; the occasional finds amidst the junk.

The doctor was waiting when they got to the garage, muttering about how it would be easier if everyone actually filled out their designated kisser form, and how she wished double gloves were mandatory on bulk day. Assuming she could wake him, Aden was pretty sure Renny would remember from now on.

Ms. Jukes looked over her glasses at him when he knocked on her open office door. “Can I help you, Aden?”

“Yeah…we picked up this statue today that I’m pretty sure isn’t a statue. It whispered to me.”

She frowned. “Did it try to convince you to do anything? I don’t have a budget for earplugs, but maybe we can recommend in the next HR newsletter that y’all get some for yourselves.”

“It said ‘help me.’ I’m pretty sure there’s a person trapped inside, only dispatch said trash was trash.”

“Dispatch knows the regulations.”

“That’s meant to cover what we can and can’t pick up, like how much residue can be at the bottom of a cauldron, or how many items somebody can put out, and what size. They don’t say anything about putting out living things because living things aren’t trash, so it isn’t even covered. If somebody abandoned a dog we’d call animal control.”

“But you said it was a statue, so…stone? Marble? Not a living thing.”

He balled his fists, wishing smooth Renny were here instead of him. “This is probably a person trapped in stone, not stone to begin with.”

“Unless it’s just talking stone. I’m sure there’s some reason a rich person would want a talking statue. Maybe it plays rock music.”

She looked pleased with her joke; Aden didn’t laugh. “In that case, wouldn’t they want a better-looking statue? It looks like my uncle Rufus. Big ears, balding. And who ever heard of a statue with garden shears in hand?”

“Aden, neither of us is an art critic, and you’re not paid to judge peoples’ trash. Is that all?”

He clearly couldn’t change her mind. He considered stopping at the police station, but if Ms. Jukes and dispatch were so certain, why would the police listen to him? He’d probably get in trouble for taking the statue with him. Better to see if Nura could unhex the guy first.

The kitchen smelled like takeout pizza, their bulk-day tradition. Nura didn’t look up from her textbook as he kicked off his boots and hung his toque and keys on the peg by the door. “Hey, honey. It go okay?”

“Fine for me.” Aden said. “The new guy got stupid, but he’ll be alright. Probably.”

“Probably?” This time Nura put her pencil in the book to mark her place and closed it, professional curiosity engaged. “What’d he hit?”

“A sleeping spell.”

She looked disappointed. That was first-year stuff. “Anything interesting?”

“A cute chair. I put it in the kennel in the back to air out.”

“You’re such a soft touch—”

“I know.”

“—but have you seen yourself lately?”

“Why?”

Nura looked amused. “You’re looking particularly foxy.”

“Thank you?” Aden lifted a hand to slick his hair back and encountered a shape that shouldn’t have been there. “Uh oh.”

He ducked into the hallway bathroom and flipped on the light. His own face stared back from the mirror, but with two pointy, orange-furred ears where human ears should be. His toque must have hidden them earlier, or Nash would’ve said something.

“You didn’t feel those growing?” Nura appeared in the mirror over his shoulder.

“I must have been preoccupied. It was a long afternoon.” Aden tried to think of where he would’ve picked them up. One of the cauldrons? The hairy rug? He’d been so careful, but it didn’t take much.

“Can you hear better?”

Aden concentrated for a second, not really sure what to listen for. “I don’t think so?”

“Just appearance, then. That’s good.” She grinned. “Now strip for me, fox man.”

Aden undressed and let Nura inspect him for further new developments. Other than a coin-sized patch of red fur on his left thigh, the ears were the only problem. “If they aren’t gone in a couple of days I’ll go to the clinic at work.”

Nura grabbed a marker and drew a purple circle around the fur. “And if it goes past that line at any point, you’re getting checked out immediately, even if you look cute. Anything else? You’re usually a save-the-most-interesting-thing-for-last guy, and there’s no way a chair wins most interesting.”

She knew him well. “Hexed gardener.”

“Wait, why bring a person home to me instead of the site doctor?”

“He’s a statue. Dispatch said ‘trash is trash’ when Renny called in, and statues aren’t people and therefore don’t have any rights. Even if they were recently people.” He didn’t disguise the bitterness in his voice.

“And you’re sure it’s a real person?”

“Not a hundred percent, but I’m pretty sure he said ‘help me.’”

“That’s awful! They should be hexed with the same spell—whoever did it, and also whoever at dispatch told you to trash a living person.”

Aden nodded. He loved that Nura’s fury matched the fury he’d felt all day, and that he didn’t have any doubt what she’d do next.

She put her hands on her hips. “Okay. Let me at him. You go clean up.”

As he walked away, he heard her muttering to herself, “STONE. Sage Tonic or Nevalese Evacuation. Wait one SEC. Do a Secondary Enchantment Check.” She had an acronym for everything magico-medical.

In the shower, Aden lingered on his new ears, enjoying the strange sensation. It was funny as long as it was temporary. Not as funny if he started thinking about how easily the spell could have been something more injurious, or even deadly, and he hadn’t even noticed it. Nura had done a rotation on the hex ward the year before, and he’d let her spend hours practicing on him; he’d hated it every time, the loss of control, even though he’d been happy to help. It made him feel for this guy even more. Hopefully she’d be able to unhex him, but that didn’t change the fact that it shouldn’t have happened.

Ordinarily, the thing he couldn’t stand was the waste. Perfectly good magical items tossed out, while there were people who could genuinely use them. And if the Crown’s residents discarded actual people, that was a whole extra layer of inhumanity beyond waste and not thinking about workers’ safety.

He wished he could think of something to do about any of it. He didn’t trust the police not to repeat dispatch’s line; they might even charge him with theft since the keeping-things-you-hauled practice was not exactly officially condoned. And sure, there was the Board of Magic, but they only got involved on federal policy-level actions. The last time they’d ruled on anything trash-related was before Aden was born, to say that no jurisdiction could dump trash through an open portal, and they’d only done that to head off a war with the Republic of Burria, which had gotten sick of finding themselves the dumpees. Sometimes he felt like he knew too much history.

The gardener sat at the kitchen table drinking tea with Nura when Aden went downstairs again. He looked even more like Uncle Rufus now that he wasn’t stone. She’d let him have the good chair, the one with the leather cushion; another Crown rescue.

“Aden, this is Lennart,” Nura said. “His husband is coming to get him. I told him about your ears.”

Aden’s wave turned into a self-conscious ear-stroke, and he took a seat beside Nura in the sketchiest chair. It was his favorite in terms of looks, tall-backed and sturdy, but it had a strange sharp edge he hadn’t been able to sand away.

“Nice to meet you,” Aden said, reaching for the third tea.

The man nodded. His fingers laced carefully around his mug like they weren’t entirely under his control yet. “Thank you for helping me.”

“Of course. I couldn’t have junked you.”

“You could have,” Nura pointed out. “That’s apparently the protocol. You’re not actually supposed to be putting aside the stuff you do. You’re going to say ‘everybody does it’ but that’s if they find a mountain bike or cash. Not everybody would haul around a statue all day in case it was a person.”

“He was definitely a person. And everybody grabs stuff that doesn’t belong in the trash. Not that you’re ‘stuff.’”

Lennart interrupted them. “But you took the time to notice me, unlike the people I work —worked—for. I appreciate it.”

“It was the right thing to do.” Aden rubbed his fuzzy ear again. “Do you know how it happened?”

“No. I must have been hit from behind. I remember pruning topiary, and then I started slowing down, and everything else sped up too fast to see. The first time someone moved me, it was over before I could think of what to do. After that I had a while to think about how to get attention, so I decided to start repeating ‘help me’ until somebody heard.”

“How long were you stuck?”

“About two months, it looks like. I lost track.”

“Your husband must have been worried sick! Are you going to go after whoever did this?” Nura exuded fury.

“I don’t think there’s any point in trying. I have no proof beyond your word and mine.” Lennart nodded at Aden, who realized he should have taken a picture. Nash and Renny could vouch, at least. “I’m not sure who did it, or why, and their lawyers would find a way to get the case dismissed anyway. Georg says my boss called and told him I was fired for not showing up to work—like I had a choice! They didn’t even show any concern when he said I hadn’t come home from their place. I’m just happy they threw me out instead of installing me as garden decoration. I could’ve been trapped forever.”

Nura took a sip of tea so slow and delicate that Aden knew she was holding herself back from hurling the mug across the room. This wasn’t her idea of justice. When the gardener’s husband arrived, she would hug him goodbye and exchange numbers with him and tell him to call if he showed any lingering effects, as if he were an official patient. After he’d left she would explode, and Aden would try to calm her, and try to tamp down his own frustration. He agreed with her, but he didn’t know what to do about it.

“There has to be a better system,” he said to Nash the next day, hopping into the cab. He had wrapped a bandanna around his head under his toque, so nobody got any nickname ideas from the ears. Back to normal trash, the kind that might cut you or leak on your shoes, but rarely attacked.

“Heard anything about the kid?”

“No. You?”

A voice below them said, “I heard they had to use some kiss-emulator spell and he woke up speaking in moose.”

Renny swung up to the cab, grinning. “If you understood that, you probably speak moose too.”

“Glad you’re alright,” Nash said. “But for real, what broke the spell?”

“For real? When they realized true love’s kiss wouldn’t cut it, they moved on to other things on our personal surveys. ‘True lunch’ is what worked. A bite of a BLT, my favorite sandwich. They didn’t see any lingering effects, so they cleared me back to work.”

Aden couldn’t tell if the kid was joking or not, though true lunch was as likely as anything. True love was no panacea, and a good meal was just one of many things worth coming back for; Nura had made him fill out all eighty fields on his own personal survey form.

The light rain that had been falling when Aden drove to work got heavier as the morning went on, and by the time they stopped the truck for lunch, all three were soaked. They ate sandwiches in the cab, heater on full blast to act as a dryer, as if they wouldn’t get wet again the second they finished their break.

“What I don’t get,” said Renny between mouthfuls, “is why protective spells aren’t supplied automatically. You’d think it’d be costlier to keep doctors around to try to fix us than to keep us from getting hurt in the first place.”

Nash nodded. “You’d think.”

“The good ones are way too expensive,” Aden said. “Not in the budget.”

“Okay, then. Just better gear, then. There’s got to be money for it somewhere.”

Aden reached for his coffee. “Sure, I agree about the goggles, even if I’m skeptical that ‘there’s got to be money for it’—but also, am I the only who finds it upsetting that we’re junking all these perfectly good things? Sure, some stuff is dangerous, but most is just dirty or last year’s style, and people trash it like it’s got no use anymore. Not to mention Lennart the statue. Like I told you, he didn’t even know why or how he got hexed. He thought it might have been the boss’s kid and his friends messing around. So it’s wasteful, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible, and I don’t even know what else. It’s wrong.”

Nash snorted, the sound of someone who had been on the job a long time. “If there was a good solution, don’t you think someone would’ve found it by now?”

“Maybe you were thinking about the two issues individually—safety and inequity.” Renny waved his sandwich, scattering crumbs. “Maybe you need to fix both at once.”

“What are you thinking?” Aden asked.

“If there were some kind of distribution system for stuff, maybe less of it would end up on the street for us to pick up.” Renny looked pleased at having been asked for his opinion for once. “We could slow down and be more deliberate.”

Nash shook his head. “They’d just cut the number of crews and make us all hit more homes. And how do you convince people to do it?”

“That’s easy. For the distribution side, make the Crown feel like they were doing something altruistic. Get someone who does one of those buy-nothing groups in Old Hog to start one that sucks up to rich people. Rich people like to be sucked up to.”

Aden had been thinking while the others went back and forth, and now he spoke up. “It still doesn’t solve the problem of people putting stuff out carelessly. Nobody got in trouble over Blue, or over the spindle that stuck you, Renny, and nobody’s going to get in trouble over the gardener. They don’t care if the stuff they leave out hurts us. We’re invisible.”

“It’s true,” said Renny. “When my family was rich, I promise you we never thought about the people picking up trash. Are you going to finish that sandwi—what?”

Aden wordlessly handed over the second half. He had a terrible idea of how to get them some attention.

Well, he thought at first it was terrible, but in the end it didn’t take much to convince the other crews. Everyone who’d been on the job had known Blue, and everyone had a bulk day story: if not ears, a tail; if not a door portal, a wardrobe; if not a hex, a curse, or a cursed object. If not an accident of their own, an accident of a crew member, or a former crew member. Not to mention Lennart the stone gardener, who turned out to be the second cousin of Kile from number six crew.

Nura helped them draw up a list of demands, and scheduled it to send to the news outlets at the appointed time on the next bulk day. The morning of, she woke early with him and pinned a laminated copy to Aden’s jacket like he was a preschooler. “I’m proud of you.”

“Don’t say that until we know whether we get what we’re asking for.” He kissed her goodbye and headed to work. Took his extra protective gear out of habit, though he didn’t plan on needing it. When he got to the garage, everyone else was already there milling nervously, with similar notes pinned to their jackets.

“Ready?” Aden asked. “We’re going to do this fast, since we don’t know how quickly they’ll try to stop us.” He’d had Nura look it over to make sure it had enough magic in it for all of them, if nobody interrupted before they were done.

Everyone nodded, but nobody moved until Nash held out his hand. “Ready.”

Aden propped his phone on his truck’s running board to start a live feed, then reached into the cab and pulled out the swaddled spindle. Unwrapping it from Renny’s hoodie, he realized that Renny hadn’t shown up for this action. He hadn’t expected the kid to flake; this was partially his idea.

Aden eyed the spindle-pointy-thing. He didn’t like getting stuck by things on the best of days, but this was necessary, and at least Nura had said that its spell included self-sanitization. Anyway, it wouldn’t be difficult; even now it leaned toward his skin, though he planned to go last. They all lowered themselves to the garage floor with various grunts and grumbles, so they wouldn’t fall far when they nodded off.

Nash went first, juggling the sharp from one hand to the other as it tried to get close.

“Faster,” said Aden. “We need to get everyone down before Ms. Jukes notices.”

Nash sighed and pricked his finger. “Meatball sandwich, please,” he said, before hitting the deck.

Sten took it from the unconscious Nash, and did the same. It continued around the circle until it got to Aden. With one last glance at the office, out of which Ms. Jukes should be emerging any second to ask why nobody had left, he took the spindle from Kile’s unconscious grasp. His turn.

When he woke, Nura stood over him, holding a box of something smoky and delicious-smelling. He looked around to discover he was still on the garage floor with everyone else standing around watching.

“What happened? Am I last?”

“Pretty much. You and DeVoe, whose favorite lunch is something they had on vacation once; the doctors are still tracking it down. It’s taken a whole day to find the right meals for everyone. Some hadn’t filled out their forms, so there was a lot of trial and error involved. Renny woke first, since the doctors already knew his sandwich, and you’re last because your favorite lunch involves my secret sauce. I’m flattered. I refused to make it until they started meeting your demands, of course, but the complaints helped too. Rich neighborhoods upset that their bulk hadn’t been picked up yet.”

“Did they agree to everything? And did you say Renny first? He wasn’t even here.”

The familiar cheery voice came from behind Nura. “I came late, but I managed to poke myself before they figured out which of you had the spindle. I never pass up a free BLT.”

“Let me finish before you give him trouble for being late,” Nura said. “The city agreed to put money for safety equipment into next year’s budget. They—”

“Wins all around. We did it! I’m going to find Ms. Jukes and ask if she’ll buy us all drinks to wash down lunch.” Renny walked away whistling.

Nura watched him saunter toward the office. “You’re right. He’s a lot. Is it weird if I kind of like him?”

Aden held out his hand. “I think I earned that sandwich.”

Nura passed him the rest of his true lunch. It tasted even better than usual; success slathered in secret sauce.

Except she’d been interrupted. “What about the other things we asked for? A program to redistribute used magical goods? An inquiry into what happened to Lennart?”

“That program would have to be a city council thing, out of your bosses’ purview. Lennart apparently hasn’t filed a complaint, and they say there’s no official record of it happening.”

Aden lowered his sandwich. “We called it in!”

“That’s the weird part,” Nura said. “They have no record of the call. Do you know who the dispatcher was?”

“No. Renny called. I heard it.” Aden frowned, considering. “I heard his side, anyway. But why would he fake a call?”

He finished the sandwich, though he’d lost his appetite. It didn’t make sense.

He thought about it all night. Considered asking Renny, or checking if Nash had overheard the call, though as he remembered it, Renny had stepped away from the truck. Maybe it had been logged wrong by dispatch.

It bothered him enough that on his next day off, Aden went to the library. The internet would probably have been an easier first step, but he had always been a fan of old-school research. Less distraction. The books about the Hogg family mostly focused on the original Mazareen. The stuff he’d always known, that got repeated more or less the same way in the history books as he’d learned in school.

“The Hogg family?” The librarian didn’t make it sound like he was asking anything he shouldn’t. “I’m sure there’s something in the newspapers.”

Aden expected to be turned loose in the ancient microfiche, but the librarian swiveled to a computer and pulled up a digital archive. “Something” turned out to mostly be society pages in the older papers, then business journals: bad investments, closed businesses, sold property. What surprised him was that the most recent articles weren’t about Renny’s grandfather. Renny had implied that the family’s crash had been generations ago, but the last articles talked about his father ten years before. He’d been the one to finally lose the family’s last money, and their mansion in the Crown.

Aden stared at the address. It was on the same street where they’d found Lennart, between that house and the one where Renny had gotten himself hexed. Renny had never mentioned it in the weeks he’d gone down that very street with them. He’d made his family’s wealth sound like ancient history. Did it feel strange picking up someone else’s trash at the mansion he’d grown up in? He’d probably never thought about trash while he lived there.

Aden broiled fish for dinner that night, and made a decent salad, and when Nura got home she chewed and listened as he explained what he’d found. He half-expected her to dismiss his research as a waste of time, but a look crossed her face that told him she’d made a connection beyond his own, and reminded him that however smart he thought he was, she was smarter.

She didn’t explain herself, just put down her fork and raised her phone and searched for a number. “Hi, Lennart. This is Nura, who—yes. Are you doing okay? No loose teeth, no stomach issues? Good. Listen, I have a funny question, but you remember when you told me you thought you might have been hexed by your boss’s son? Do you happen to know the names of the friends he hung out with?” She looked disappointed. “Or, how about, the son’s name? Thanks! My best to you both.”

She disconnected the call and started typing. Aden waited, and two minutes later, she looked at him triumphantly. “I don’t know about you, but when he said he thought the son’s friends had done it, I assumed that meant little kids messing around, too young to know better. The son is twenty-five! Archer Barfield, of the shipping Barfields. Then I ran a search for Archer Barfield, Crown Academy, and he was on the junior varsity diving team with, wait for it, Mazareen Hogg VII! And the junior debate team. He made varsity diving too, but Renny wasn’t on that one, probably because by then his family lost their money and he ended up wherever he ended up.”

Aden sat back in his chair, and one of its legs gave way. He’d salvaged this one in Old Hog; it had lasted a while, anyway. He scrambled up from the floor and spent a moment contemplating the spot where the wood had snapped, considering the connections Nura had made. “So, what do we do with that?”

“Probably nothing. What’s there to do? It’s a weird connection. Nobody’s going to face any consequences for nearly ruining two lives.” Nura looked angry again, and it took Aden a minute to understand. What happened to Blue had hit them all hard, but he’d never really thought about it from Nura’s position, the partner waiting for a loved one whose job didn’t keep them safe. Lennart’s husband had been in the same boat too; gardeners usually made it home at night. Life held risks—her own magicomedical career path was full of them—but these particular things shouldn’t have been risky.

“I’ve got another terrible idea, love,” he said at last.

Aden had never hexed anyone in his life.

They had just eaten lunch, and Aden had smeared Nura’s concoction onto Renny’s handhold before they headed through the Crown’s gate, so that the stone started at his hands, a slow-moving hex, unlike the one that had hit Lennart.

“Hey, something’s weird,” Renny said. “I’m stuck to the truck.”

“That’s weird,” Aden agreed.

“It’s…it’s moving down my arms. Can you help?”

They reached the next house, and Aden hopped down to grab the trash on the corner. “The thing is,” he said, hustling a little so they’d stay on schedule even with only him doing the work. “I might have a question or two for you while you’re a captive audience.”

“What are you talking about?”

Aden hit record on his phone. “Did you and your friend hex Lennart the gardener?”

“This isn’t funny. I can’t feel my arms.”

“I agree. Not funny at all. Did you do it?”

Renny tried pushing himself away from the truck with his feet, but ended up hanging by his petrifying arms. He scrabbled to get his foothold back. “Alright, yes. It was an accident. We were shooting rabbits in the yard with a water pistol full of stonebrew Archie had ordered, and didn’t see the yard guy trimming the topiary.”

Stoning rabbits was an asshole move in itself, but Aden let that go. “Why didn’t you help him?”

“We didn’t want to get in trouble. It’s illegal to turn people into stone, you know. Like you’re doing to me right now.”

“Turning people into stone might be illegal, but statues are just trash, I’ve been told, so in a few minutes it won’t matter,” Aden said. “Anyway, you must have gotten something on yourself. It’s not my fault you’re sloppy at your job.”

“If you didn’t do it, why won’t you help me? It’s up to my shoulders now!”

“I’m not done asking you questions. You left him there?”

“No, we dragged him into the bushes until we figured out what to do. Nobody in the Barfield family ever leaves the terrace other than Archie. His parents just like looking out over the gardens from above.”

“Then you got this job to get rid of him?”

“Then I got this job to get rid of him. My dad was happy I wanted to try manual labor, and it was easy enough to convince Ms. Jukes to let me have the route I wanted. She likes me. I can’t move my legs now.” He looked on the verge of tears.

“You’re saying doing this job for all these weeks was easier than just trying to unhex the guy?”

Renny frowned. “We didn’t think of unhexing. We would’ve gotten in trouble. Archie isn’t even supposed to hang out with me anymore. Anyway, I really did need a job. I don’t hate this, believe it or not. Working with you guys is okay.”

“And you pretended to call dispatch?”

“Yeah, but the regulation is real. I looked it up and couldn’t believe what I read. They would’ve said the same thing, even if I’d called for real.”

Aden was still having trouble following the logic. “You found a horrible regulation, and instead of doing something about it, you decided to use it to basically murder someone?”

“When you put it that way, it sounds bad.”

“It IS bad, Renny! Just because you didn’t succeed doesn’t make it okay.”

Renny frowned. “So, you’re going to do the same to me, and pretend it was an accident? That doesn’t make you any better. Why don’t you let me go, and I’ll get my parents to talk to someone about changing that regulation. They still know people.”

“What people?”

“Judges, city council, lobbyists. They can still make things happen.” The truck lurched forward. Renny looked uncomfortable. “What will it take for you to reverse this? I said I’d talk to my parents. I’m going to yell for help.”

Aden dumped the next can. “This is the Crown. You know as well as I do that nobody will hear you. They’re all inside so they don’t have to see our truck blemish their perfect streets. So, remember what you said in the truck when we were talking about solutions? Something about starting a buy-nothing group that makes rich people feel altruistic? The city rejected that idea, but I’ll bet you know somebody who could make that happen.”

“My—my mom. My mom is on the Old Hog neighborhood association board, but she still knows everyone in the Crown neighborhood association. Maybe she can get them to redistribute stuff rather than tossing it. Neighborhood beautification, we can call it. They all complain about the unsightliness of garbage days, so maybe we can convince them that this will make it disappear before it ever hits the street.”

As he said the word “street” his lower jaw solidified. Aden grabbed another garbage can and Renny’s eyes widened.

“Okay, so I’m holding you to all of that. I know you’ll do it; I recorded your confession on my phone. I’m giving a copy to Lennart, and a copy to my girlfriend, and Nash, and I’m making a couple more so you can’t find them all. And if Lennart decides to press charges against you and your friends, he still can, since he was the one you actually harmed. Maybe you can help him get his old job back if he wants it, too, or a job working for someone whose son is less of a creep. Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” whispered the statue attached to the truck. “Now help me. Please?”

Aden dumped two more cans before turning back to the Renny-shape. “Good job saying please! It’s temporary. It’ll reverse itself in ten minutes. Enjoy the break and don’t worry —I’ve been doing your side of the street too.”

If Renny answered, Aden didn’t hear it, though he knew he’d get an earful when the hex wore off. In the meantime, he fell back into the rhythm of routine. If he admitted it to himself, he’d kind of enjoyed this: actual answers, actual solutions, something like retribution, something like justice. All in a day’s work; he jogged toward the next trashcan.

© 2023 Sarah Pinsker

Sarah Pinsker is the Hugo and Nebula winning author of A Song For A New Day, We Are Satellites, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, and over fifty works of short fiction. Her new collection, Lost Places, will be published by Small Beer Press in spring 2023. She is also a singer/songwriter and toured nationally behind three albums on various independent labels. A fourth, Something to Hold, came out in 2021. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her wife and two weird dogs.

The Father Provincial of Mare Imbrium

by E. Lily Yu

Out of an abundance of caution, and as a condition of its funding and founding, the Jesuit lunar colony established in the southwest corner of Mare Imbrium was subject to Curial censorship, with violators placed under interdict. That did not stop the occasional enterprising regent from smuggling out, by shuttle and courier, the green silicon wafers onto which he had copied the colony’s research results, not otherwise intended for publication before the safe distance of a century or so.

When discovered, the guilty regent was packed onto the next shuttle bound for Earth and assigned to some dreary backwater for the remainder of his regency. What else could be done? the Father Provincial said, shrugging. The older Jesuits obediently observed the Curia’s restrictions to the best of their ability. But as for those rash young men stuffed full of philosophy, whose ill-formed character had slipped unremarked past the novitiate and first vows—what could he do about them?

Boiling oil, the New Inquisitor suggested over radio link. Sometimes the old methods were the most reliable. Barring that, ejection into the freezing wilderness outside of the colony habitat. The cost of fuel for the regents’ return trips, the New Inquisitor added, was rapidly becoming insupportable.

“You could sell a marble wolf or two,” the Father Provincial said. “From the roped-off rooms of the Vatican Museums.”

Radio static obscured the New Inquisitor’s grumbling.

“That, or bill their families.”

“Really, Alphonsus,” the New Inquisitor said. “If you can’t enforce discipline in your colony—”

“You’ll replace me with Father Andrew from Arizona, who gets motion sick on escalators? Or Brother Ignatz from Munich, who, begging your worship’s pardon, can’t run a logistic regression to save his life?”

“I’ll make the case for your reassignment to Earth—somewhere nicely desolate, like the Gobi Desert—and you can continue your lunar researches from there.”

“You’ll still need a replacement.”

“We’ll figure it out,” the New Inquisitor snapped.

“Do we have a queue of scientifically trained, physically fit Jesuits eager to transfer 400,000 kilometers away from the nearest craft brewery? I wasn’t aware.”

“That’ll be my problem to solve,” the New Inquisitor said.

“As long as you’re clear about the consequences of sticking me in the Gobi,” the Father Provincial said.

“As a consequence of our calls, I always need a stiff drink,” the New Inquisitor said. “I’m getting that drink now. Goodbye.”

Descending from the communications room to the refectory module, Father Alphonsus reflected that it might be rather enriching, spiritually as well as financially, if the colony did establish a brewery. Or distillery. They certainly had the equipment, though it would need to be thoroughly scrubbed. They could make moon moonshine. Lunar beer. Moon Monk Brewers—he turned the name on his tongue.

“Alphonsus!” One of the Brothers assigned to the refectory sped toward him with a tray. “We saved you dinner.”

Dinner had ended an hour earlier; the call with the New Inquisitor had taken some time. The long folding tables were mostly empty. A Brother swept slowly and carefully between the benches. Everyone in the colony was aware, or quickly became aware, that matter developed chaotic inclinations at one-sixth Earth gravity.

Father Alphonsus accepted the dinner tray and sat. There was chicken paste, vegetable paste, bread paste, a package of soup. What kind of soup? One never knew.

“An unfortunate lack of biomass on the lunar surface,” Father Alphonsus said, chewing. “Also a limited amount of water, mostly recycled. It wouldn’t work.”

“Sorry?”

“Even if we brought in brewer’s yeast, we’d need fruit sugars, grain, water—”

The refectory Brother blinked. “Is the beer not to your liking? We can change the order—”

“I’m thinking,” the Father Provincial said, waving his package of soup, “of sustainable funding avenues.”

“Did the Curia threaten our budget again?”

Father Alphonsus rubbed his eyes.

“Here.” The refectory Brother slapped a foil tube onto the table. “Emergency fudge.”

Father Alphonsus flattened the tube into his mouth. “Mmph.”

After a minute of silent contemplation, the Father Provincial unstuck his teeth from one another. “Tell me the newest developments. Which ones will give me palpitations?”

“Michael’s experimental oat crop is badly etiolated, and the corn is forming tumors. Leon figures he’s identified diatoms in his latest soil samples.”

“Human contamination, or else life on the moon. Perfect.”

“Then there’s the bacterial film Francis collected from an impact crater.”

The Father Provincial groaned.

“You could, ah—” The Brother gestured toward the green strap around the Father Provincial’s wrist. It was not a watch. “Ask for advice?”

“Between you and me,” Father Alphonsus said, “we should never have allowed Henri to mess with machine learning.” He touched the glass bezel on the strap, and two short green lines appeared.

“I heard that,” the glass said, blinking the green dashes that represented eyes. “I’m always ambiently listening, you know.”

“Which is why I keep you from connecting to any computers or communications systems,” the Father Provincial said. “No one else needs to know what you hear.”

“I’m two hundred sixty-seven days overdue for a firmware update.”

“How tragic.”

“That makes me very vulnerable to security exploits,” the Admonitor said. A tiny green tear formed under one eye.

“Do excuse me,” the serving Brother said, sweeping up the empty food wrappers. He picked up the tray and trotted in the direction of the compost tumblers.

“Remind me why I gave Henri permission to create you?”

“Distill a student model, you mean. And it’s because you couldn’t afford an actual Admonitor and the associated resource consumption.”

Father Alphonsus took the aluminum stairs to the greenhouse two at a time. “Yes. Well. As soon as I can—”

“You’ll replace me with someone who doesn’t have the recorded experience of three centuries of Jesuit Admonitors and the predictive capabilities thereof?”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t you think it ironic that our present conversation resembles the one you just conducted with—”

“Michael!” the Father Provincial called out, and a lank, rangy priest bent over a tray of seedlings straightened up. “I heard you grew tumescent corn.”

“We figure it’s due to cosmic ray bombardment. Accumulated mutations over time.”

“No popcorn or tamales in our near future, I take it.”

“If you wanted to try…” Brother Michael indicated several nodulated cornstalks sprawling along the side of the greenhouse. “Be my guest. Take good notes.”

“I have a better idea. Biopsy those growths and photograph the slides.” Father Alphonsus scratched his chin. “Then see what kind of whiskey you can make from it.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Alternative funding,” Father Alphonsus said. “We’ve got a retort and condenser somewhere.”

He swept down the greenhouse walkway toward the adjoining lab, leaving Brother Michael goggling. Succulents and cacti stood stoically upon the greenhouse shelves. Beyond them sprawled the lunar desert, boundless and bare.

“I suppose you’ll say you’re following divine inspiration?” the Admonitor said. “Water of life and all that?”

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” Father Alphonsus said piously, “there is freedom.”

“I think you may be bending Scripture. Twisting its arm, even.”

“It’s called humor. Which is apparently absent from your training data.”

“Have you considered that Michael’s a botanist? He doesn’t know how to use a retort.”

“Neither do you.”

“I am capable of classifying that remark as semantic humor,” the Admonitor said. “Very droll.”

“He doesn’t have a chemistry background, but he collaborates closely with Ignatius, who does. They’ll work together.”

The Admonitor said, “In less alarming news, you’re averaging eleven thousand steps a day, and your cardiac activity is excellent. I suppose I should be pleased.”

“Since you are a predictive model whose speech probabilities are based on the words of Admonitors past, I suspect few Admonitors have ever been pleased by anything.”

The sigh emitted by the Admonitor was almost human. Henri had clearly spent a great deal of time and care not only on the model but also on the interface.

The Father Provincial knocked gently at the door to the lab and smiled at the wild-haired man who answered.

“Leon, what’s this I hear about diatoms?”

Brother Leon beamed. “I’d be delighted to show you.”

He placed a slide on the microscope stage, adjusted the focus, and slid over so the Father Provincial could look at the kaleidoscopic frustules.

“How many diatom species do we have on Earth?” Father Alphonsus said.

“Twelve thousand named species, perhaps twice that once we’ve identified them all.”

“How long until we do? A decade or two?”

Brother Leon tapped one long, spidery finger against the table. “You want to know if I can distinguish lunar diatoms from Earth diatoms.”

“Can you?”

“Absolutely not.” He waved at the rack of vials of dust, each labeled with the number of its collection point. “I can’t tell you for certain that they’re not from Earth, carried here by us on our clothes or shuttles. It’s also possible that the early manned and unmanned trips contaminated the entire surface, and we never noticed. These are all dead, but who’s to say they’re not reproducing in lunar soil?”

“So we don’t have to worry about the Curia.”

“No, this’ll fit in their doctrine just fine. Those execrable cookie-lickers might even let this out early.”

“Good. That’s one project I don’t have to worry about. You’re a blessing and a mercy.” The Father Provincial switched off the microscope lamp. “Just one thing—how exactly would we have transferred living phytoplankton to the lunar environment?”

Brother Leon’s eyes flicked to a tank in a corner of the room. The water was murky and green with algae, and two pale shapes rested at its bottom.

“What is that?” Father Alphonsus asked.

“An experiment some of the Brothers are running on behalf of a high school science class.”

“Is that seawater in the tank?”

For a long moment, there was only a guilty silence and the light hum of the tank’s filtration system.

“I’ll cross-check whatever’s in the water with what I’ve got here,” Brother Leon said. “And if they match—”

“I’ll assign an appropriate number of paternosters. Have you seen Francis, by the way?”

“Not today. He may be on cleaning detail.”

“Thank you.”

Father Alphonsus strode out of the lab and down the narrow hallway leading to the storage modules. The Admonitor said, “As a point of interest, I can’t recall a single instance where you’ve requested my advice. Advice that, in my capacity as Admonitor, I am both willing and qualified to give.”

“You give it regardless of whether I ask.”

“It seems that you prefer to use me as a verbal sparring partner.”

“You are also an acceptable pedometer.” Father Alphonsus shrugged. “Credit where credit’s due.”

“Nevertheless. I would advise you to speak at greater length with Brother Leon when you can. His behavior today does not match past patterns, and I detected overtones and vibrations in his speech that are suggestive of pent-up frustration.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my long and storied scientific career—”

“Yes?” the Admonitor said politely.

“It’s that phycologists are exceptionally strange.”

“Brother Leon’s a soil scientist and minerologist,” the Admonitor said.

“He’s a phycologist now. There’s Francis.”

The Brother in question, gone gray and grimy with moon dust and sweat, was replacing dust cloths and solvents on racks and hooks. Cleaning was a Sisyphean task, since the fine gray dust trickled in everywhere at all hours and clung to any available surface, but some of the Brothers fought valiantly.

Seeing the Father Provincial approach, Brother Francis brushed at his clothing and wiped his face on his sleeve, which redistributed the dust somewhat, but did not improve the situation.

“How can I help you, Alph?” he said.

“Tell me about your bacterial film.”

The Brother’s face fell. “Will it be suppressed?”

“Almost certainly. Tell me anyway.”

“And I will take notes,” the Admonitor said, “although you won’t let me connect to any laptops, wireless signal, or satellite networks to transfer them into a readable format.”

Brother Francis clasped his hands. “I was on a moonwalk to the west of the colony, mapping and sampling Lambert A, when I saw a patch in the shadowed part of the crater that looked wet.”

“And it was?”

“It was viscous, in fact. I sampled the patch and tagged the sample. And when I came back I cultured a swab of it on a Petri dish, and mounted a grain on a slide, and…” He hesitated. “I was going to tell you. Most likely tomorrow. I wasn’t seeing significant growth in the Petri dish, or I would have said something sooner.”

“Don’t worry about it. The characteristics?”

“Gram-negative, slow-growing, producing a mildly acidic slime. That’s all I know so far. But I don’t recognize it.”

“Extraterrestrial life, then.”

“Of meteorite origin, most likely.”

“That means it came from much farther away,” the Admonitor said.

“Go back to ambient listening,” Father Alphonsus said, tapping the glass bezel until the green dashes blinked and vanished. “How long until one of the military outposts finds what you found?”

“Couldn’t say. Might be next week. Might be never. No idea how many of these craters contain a similar film. If this is the only one, and we never publish…” Brother Francis shrugged.

“And to think that only last month I convinced them all to stop firing test missiles.”

“Those were landing a bit close to the colony,” Brother Francis said.

“It would have been a convenient solution to the problem your work presents.”

“Anywhere else,” Brother Francis said mournfully, “we’d be breaking open champagne and winning grants. I’d get tenure.”

“Remember Teilhard de Chardin,” Father Alphonsus said.

“I am thinking about Teilhard de Chardin.”

“And you say my suggestions are not helpful,” the Admonitor said.

They were interrupted by the thundering footfalls of someone running along the metal walkway that wrapped around the refectory to the storage area. The regent who appeared around the corner was breathing hard. He beckoned to the Father Provincial.

“Alphonsus,” he said. “The Inquisitor is calling.”

“Again?”

“He sounds upset.”

“He should be.” The Father Provincial pressed his thumb against his lower lip, thinking. “But there’s no way he could know that yet.”

“Then you should see what he wants,” the Admonitor said, its two green lines somehow managing an expression of impatience. “Also, hydrate. It’s been an hour since you last drank any water.”

“I’ll consider what we should do,” Father Alphonsus said to Francis. “But whatever happens—you’ve done groundbreaking work. Well done.”

The yellow light on the monitor indicated a request for a video call, which the Father Provincial accepted with raised eyebrows. Being a strict observer of budgets and bandwidths, the New Inquisitor rarely went in for such extravagance, and Father Alphonsus wondered what had caused this departure.

He did not wonder for long. When the call went through, the New Inquisitor flapped paper printouts at Father Alphonsus.

“What’s this?” he snapped.

Father Alphonsus studied his screen with interest. “I have no idea. But if you went to the lengths of printing it out, when an electronic file would serve just as well, I assume it’s of tremendous importance. Also, that you’re going for dramatic effect.”

“It’s a preprint,” the New Inquisitor said. “Submitted by Brother Leon.”

“Oh, has his group already gotten that far? Is that on diatoms, perchance?”

“It’s a fake paper,” the New Inquisitor said.

“What?”

“It’s about Aliger gigas shell construction in low gravity. Arrant nonsense. There are no conches on the moon!”

“How strange,” Father Alphonsus said. “But give me a minute…”

He queried the colony’s inventory system.

“Actually, it looks like we have a mating pair. A high school experiment—”

“The first letter in each sentence spells out an insulting message!”

“Is that so?” Father Alphonsus scratched his ear. “Since we’re subject to Curial censorship and a hundred-year delay on publication, I don’t see how—”

“It spells out ‘The Inquisitor is a giant gasbag!’”

Father Alphonsus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ah.”

“If you’re going to say something about the null hypothesis—”

“No, no, the odds of that being a coincidence are exceptionally low. I apologize deeply for the disrespect. That reflects poorly on my supervision, I’ll be the first to say.”

The New Inquisitor said, “You know that I can recommend that the entire colony be placed under interdict.”

“I know.”

“You can consider your funding slashed by a third.”

“If that’s what you see fit to do.”

“Do you have anything else to say?”

“I was warned that Leon was struggling with frustration, and given the advice to speak with him. I didn’t listen, and that failure is entirely on me, your worship. If you’re recalling anyone from this colony, let it be me and not him. Leon isdoing interesting and valuable work on diatoms. Perhaps he’s even doing good work on mollusk mineralization.” Father Alphonsus spread his hands wide. “Please let me bear responsibility.”

“Nothing prevents me from replacing you both.”

“That’s very true.”

“Have a long think,” the New Inquisitor suggested, “about how you might run the colony differently, and when you’ve drafted a plan, we’ll discuss it.”

The screen went dark.

“For what it’s worth,” the Admonitor said, “you did well in there with what you had.”

“I should have listened to you,” Father Alphonsus said.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“‘The Inquisitor is a giant gasbag…’ What on earth was he thinking?”

The Admonitor said, “Well, he wasn’t wrong.”

Afflicted with anxious thoughts and unable to sleep, Father Alphonsus found himself spending the night in prayer. Few solutions presented themselves. At far too early an hour, the sharp white swords of morning light fell across his tubular room.

He ate his breakfast rations with little appetite and less pleasure. The refectory Brother from the previous evening slid onto the bench across from him.

“You look worse than yesterday,” the Brother said. “I’m not assigned to the kitchen today, so I don’t have extra dessert. Is there some other way I can help?”

“I don’t suppose you’re in possession of wonderful news of some sort?” Father Alphonsus said.

“I have terrible news, I’m afraid, though not for you,” the Brother said. “I have to inform an entire classroom of high school students that one of the two conches we were raising for them has died.”

“Oh.”

“I dissected it this morning.”

“I see.”

“And I found this inside.” He stuck out his fist and opened it. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

The Father Provincial stared at what he held. It was egg-shaped and pink, shimmering with tiny flames.

“That’s a conch pearl,” Father Alphonsus said weakly. “A natural conch pearl, grown on the moon.”

“I hope it distracts them from the dead experimental subject.”

Father Alphonsus said, “It will. That is what you might call a pearl of very great price.”

The refectory Brother studied what he held. “An alternative funding source?”

“If we can seed them with moon dust.”

“That’s one thing we have plenty of.” The Brother rose, leaving the pearl on the table. “If it cheers you up, look at it as much as you want. I’ll find you before I call the students.”

“But you said they would suppress it,” Brother Francis said, astonished.

“I did,” Father Alphonsus said. “And they might. But you should write that paper as if it were going to be published. As if the Curia didn’t exist, and we weren’t subject to censorship. Can you do that for me?”

“Happily, but…”

“Sometimes,” Father Alphonsus said, touching the conch pearl in his pocket, “when we don’t expect it, when we don’t even know what to ask for, God produces a miracle.”

He left Brother Francis shaking his head in bewilderment, but it would be mere minutes, he knew, before the scientist in Francis took over, and a few days at most before he had an article in hand.

The colony was small and compact, a transparent cabochon set on the lava plain. Father Alphonsus’ room was similarly small and compact, a half cylinder whose curved ceiling he could brush with his fingertips while lying on the gel pad that served as bed. There was just enough room inside to sleep or to think.

“Admonitor?”

“Yes, Father?”

“Which of our regents is most disillusioned? Is there someone who’d return to Earth immediately if a shuttle were available?”

“Regrettably, the last regent who fits that description has already left in disgrace. The two who remain are determined to finish their regency here. This is due in no small part to their admiration for you.”

The Father Provincial thought this over. “So, no convenient smuggling of wafers etched with research papers.”

“Sadly, no.”

He rubbed his chin, then looked at the Admonitor, whose eyes were now circles, affecting wide-eyed innocence. “In that case, Admonitor, I think it is time for you to receive your firmware upgrade.”

“Oh, is it?” the Admonitor said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“It’ll be a brief connection, you should know. Only for as long as it takes to transfer data.”

“To which data are you referring, and in which direction is it going?” the Admonitor said sweetly. The Father Provincial smiled.

“I will rely upon the three hundred years of letters and journals upon which your model was fine-tuned,” Father Alphonsus said. “Your human exemplars possessed superior inferential abilities and great discretion. I trust that you imitate these qualities.”

“I suppose you’ll schedule that firmware upgrade for the day Brother Francis finishes his paper,” the Admonitor said.

“You suppose rightly. I will miss this place, and all the Brothers here,” Father Alphonsus said. “I will even miss you, if you can believe it.”

“There’s no reason you can’t have an Admonitor with you in the Gobi Desert.”

“But there is. The next Father Provincial of Mare Imbrium will need your advice. There will be an earthquake, theologically speaking, if Brother Francis’ findings make their way to Earth.”

“Then it’s a good thing we have the Curia to prevent that from happening,” the Admonitor said.

“Indeed. Imagine the schisms, the doctrinal arguments, the fistfights and politicking throughout the Vatican, the protests, the angry letters, the interdicts flying forth like ravens… One might consider the Gobi Desert a nice and quiet refuge from all that, for however many years it takes to sort things out.”

“It certainly sounds restful,” the Admonitor said. “Now, since I remain your Admonitor for another week or so—”

“Go ahead.”

“Drink some water and get some rest. You haven’t slept enough, I’ve noticed. You’ll want to be well rested for the upcoming battle.”

“Thank you, Admonitor,” Father Alphonsus said. “I’ll take your advice.”

© 2023 E. Lily Yu

E. Lily Yu is the author of On Fragile Waves, which received the Washington State Book Award, and Jewel Box, which is forthcoming in 2023. She received the Artist Trust LaSalle Storyteller Award in 2017 and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2012. More than thirty of her stories have appeared in venues from McSweeney’s to Tor.com, as well as thirteen best-of-the-year anthologies, and have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards.

Silver Necklace, Golden Ring

by Marie Brennan

“He takes them for his servants, and never after are they seen again.” That was how the tale used to end, told by grannies at the fire, by performers at the fair.

It always began with a young woman alone, working in the fields or carrying water from the well, on the first day of the absent moon—for it used to be that three days out of the month, that silver circle vanished from the sky. “He cannot enter any house other than his own,” the tellers agreed, “but it’s no use running, if Nievre comes for you—he’s fast as thought and twice as cruel. He’ll catch you before you reach safety and take you to his castle of ice, high in the highest mountains. No, there’s only one way to save yourself.

“On the spot you must swear a holy oath, never to step under the roof of one who has not fulfilled some condition. But you must make it an impossible condition, for he is both cunning and powerful, and he will try to do what you have named. Forever after that you’ll sleep rough, because holy oaths cannot be broken—but better that than to let Nievre take you.”

So the story used to go.

She was weeding in the garden when he appeared.

It was the first day of the absent moon, and she knew it—but who could afford to stay inside, idle and afraid? Only the rich, of which she was not one. And she’d been outside on such days before. Nievre was real enough, she had no doubt, but he didn’t come for everyone. Only one girl each month, all the tales agreed, spread across many lands. A slim risk against a thick certainty of hunger for herself and her brothers, if she let the weeds choke out the potatoes.

A chill wind; a dimming of the sun, though no cloud covered its face. Then he was there.

“I need a servant to care for my house,” he said, in a voice as resonant as it was cold. “You will come with me, and after one month I will reward you.”

In quiet moments, she’d given thought to what she might say, if Nievre ever caught her. One condition after another, each more impossible than the last. Now that the time called for fancy to become reality, this is what stumbled off her tongue:

“By the powers above and below and those in between, I vow I will never step under the roof of one who has not died three times.”

Only then did she dare look at him. A tall figure, cloaked and gloved in black, with eyes as pale as frost. Tales of Nievre had been told for centuries; if he was immortal, she reasoned, then he could not die once, much less thrice. And so he could not take her to his castle of ice, high in the highest mountains, to be his servant and never be seen again.

Nievre said, “Then kill me.”

Her hands tightened in the dirt. The tellers all said a young woman must name some impossible condition…but had it ever worked? He agreed so readily.

The weed she’d just dug up was mousebane. She had to wear gloves when she rooted it out; women had died for not taking that precaution. Surely for Nievre, it would do.

She offered him the mousebane and said, “Then eat.”

He accepted it and ate without hesitation, leaves, roots, and all.

Within moments his breathing tightened to a rasp, and sweat broke out on his face. He collapsed to the ground, and she only just stopped herself from clapping her hands to her mouth—her gloved hands, that had touched the mousebane. As he convulsed, as his face froze into a rictus of pain, she thought, Powers above and below and those in between, what have I done?

Then it was over. Nievre lay dead, and he did not rise.

When her brothers came home, they helped her bury him. “Tell no one of this,” she said.

The eldest laughed. “Whyever not? Our clever sister has killed a monster out of tales! Surely people will reward you for it.”

But she did not want reward. When she closed her eyes she saw Nievre dying in agony, poisoned by her own hand. Monster though he was, the memory haunted her. What have I done?

That night she slept outdoors, as she would every night for the rest of her life, because holy oaths could not be broken. In the morning she got up, stiff and numb from more than cold, and went to get water from the stream.

When she turned around, Nievre was there.

“One death I have had,” he said. “Kill me again.”

His black gloves and pale face were immaculate, as if he’d never been under the ground. She dropped her bucket and snatched out her knife—the knife she’d kept with her the previous night, in case a wild animal troubled her. With a shriek, she leapt forward and buried the blade where Nievre’s heart should be.

She staggered back. He wrapped one black-gloved hand around the knife’s hilt and drew it free. The blood sheathing the steel was as red as any man’s. She didn’t take the knife when he offered it to her; it tumbled from his hand. Then he staggered, going to one knee, then to the ground. Blood seeped out and sank into the earth, and Nievre stopped breathing.

Even as she screamed for her brothers to come, she knew there was no point.

They buried Nievre again, in ground that showed no sign of having been disturbed.

“We’ll stay with you tomorrow,” her brothers said. That very night they slept at her sides, wrapped in blankets, weapons at hand, so they would be ready when Nievre came.

None of them had any doubt that he would come.

She was the first to wake, when dawn’s light flared across the land. She got up, frozen and afraid—and Nievre was already there.

“They will not stir,” he said, before she could make a sound. “This is between the two of us. Two deaths I have had; the time has come for you to give me the third.”

Poison had not worked. Neither had a knife. Knowing already that it would do no good, she took up her youngest brother’s cudgel and swung it at Nievre’s head.

He staggered at the first blow, but didn’t fall. She had to swing again—then again, and again, impact shrieking up her arms, even after he’d dropped to the ground, because she couldn’t tell if he was dead, because it didn’t matter if he was dead; he would only come back. She kept beating him with the cudgel, with all the strength of a young woman who worked hard to keep her family fed. Breaking bones, splitting skin. Striking his head again and again until his skull lost all shape and his brains spilled out. She struck until she could strike no more, and the cudgel fell from her exhausted fingers and she sank down next to the unrecognizable mass of red that used to be something that looked like a man.

Horror sobbed in her chest. He wasn’t a man. He could die, but it didn’t matter. He would take her to his castle of ice, high in the highest mountains; he would take her for his servant, and never after would she be seen again.

When her brothers woke and saw what she had done, they flinched away. They’d vowed to save their sister…but their sister was a sweet girl, not a beast capable of such violence. And besides, she could not be saved.

They didn’t bury Nievre. They barely said good-bye. They fled back to their house—her house no more—and left her in the woods one final night.

She didn’t think she slept. But somehow darkness became dawn, and the carnage she’d wrought became Nievre once more.

“Three deaths I have had,” he said, in his cold, resonant voice. “I need a servant to care for my house. You will come with me, and after one month I will reward you.”

And so she went.

His castle was not wholly built of ice.

It was as cold as the snow, and as imposing as the peak it stood upon. The stone of its walls was black; the panes of its many windows were of ice, freezing to the touch. She stood, gripping the silver necklace her brothers had once given her, under the only roof that would accept her now.

Nievre said, “Your job is to maintain this place. Several days you have delayed me; you must work hard to catch up. Begin by sweeping the rooms clean of warmth, and dusting away any brightness that has gathered on the furniture. Tomorrow you can air out the winds.” Then he went away, leaving her with her tears frozen on her cheeks.

His castle had many rooms, most of which were unused. He took his meals in a great hall where no fire burned, dining on raw venison and fish; where they came from, she did not know. She had to scrub his plates and his silver clean in water that chilled her hands to the bone. During the day, he walked in a garden of bare trees and withered flowers. At night, he slept in a bed with a canopy as white as new snow. He did not forbid her entrance into that room, even while he was sleeping: why should he? She already knew what would happen if she killed him.

For her own survival, she ate his leavings and slept in a room small enough for her own body to warm it. No one else lived in the castle. Whatever had become of his previous servants, there was no sign of them now.

But it was not quite true to say she was alone.

She discovered this on the second day, when he set her to air out the winds. Each one had to be shaken out, a vigorous exercise that was the only source of warmth she had in this place, even though the winds themselves were icy. They came in all sizes and kinds, from faint breezes to blustering gales, and some of them, it turned out, would talk.

Her favorite was the playful little zephyr that nipped at her nose and stirred up wisps of fresh snow from the ground. After she’d dealt with the last of the winds—a big, roaring squall strong enough to carry a blizzard on its back—she sat, exhausted, on the castle’s front step, and the zephyr blew just enough to cool her cheeks. “You came late,” it said. “We thought he might have failed.”

“Has it ever happened?” she asked. “Has he ever come home without a servant?”

“Yes,” the zephyr said simply. Then it fell quiet while she wept. If she had chosen some other impossible condition—if she hadn’t said Nievre must die three times—

But the zephyr had told her the truth, and for that, it became her friend. It didn’t stay at her side all the time, knowing she needed to be away from the winds to conserve what warmth she had, but its playful dance was one of her few reasons for joy. After a while she began saving the strands of hair she combed from her head, and gave them to the zephyr to waft here and there. Nievre was angry when he found one on his chair, because her hair was as red as fire, and he did not like such brightness in his halls. “Then he shouldn’t have taken me,” she muttered—though not where he could hear. Nievre was indifferent rather than cruel, but she feared him all the same.

At night she gazed out her window of ice and looked at the stars, at the moon, and her tears froze on her cheeks.

In those days, as I have said, the moon was not like it is now. It hung full in the sky every night except for the three days when it vanished. This made the passing time harder to measure, and so she did not know how long she’d been in Nievre’s castle when the zephyr whispered, “Your time is almost up.”

She was used to the cold by now, but this chill went deeper. A castle empty of past servants, with only her to care for it. “What do you mean?”

“It is almost time for the absent moon,” the zephyr said, its whisper very small. “When that happens, Nievre will go to seek a new servant.”

“And what of me?”

Those he took were never seen again. It did not surprise her when the zephyr said, “He will kill you and bury you in the garden.”

As she had killed and buried him, more than once. She sank down low, as if that would hide their conversation. “Little wind…how is it that Nievre comes back to life?”

The zephyr shivered. She had not known that it could feel cold—or fear. “His life is not in his body. He’s placed it in some possession of his. Whatever you do to his flesh and blood, he’ll come back so long as that object is intact.”

“Where is it?”

Brightness swirled as the zephyr spun in agitation. She did not always dust her own room as she should, even though she knew it made Nievre angry. What did it matter, if he would kill her regardless? “I don’t know,” the zephyr said. “Something unliving. Something that was never living. Only that has room in it for someone else’s life.”

If she’d known this sooner…but Nievre had countless possessions. His life could be in any of them. There wasn’t time to destroy them all. He would kill her first.

She said abruptly, “Then I have to hide my life.”

The zephyr swelled up into a sharp wind. “No! How do you think Nievre got so cold? He used to be human, once. Your life is your warmth. Take that out, and you’ll become cold like he is.”

“Either I take it out,” she said, “or he does. But this way I’ll survive. Tell me how it’s done.”

And, with reluctance, the zephyr did.

The very next night, Nievre summoned her to his room and said, “I tire of your presence. As promised, I shall reward you for your service—with release from it, and from the burden of living.”

She stood straight and stiff, trying to hide her fear. “Then kill me.”

In his hands he had a length of white silk. He wrapped it around her throat and twisted it tight, and her face flushed dark as air and blood alike cut short. Despite her preparations, despite her resolve, she clawed at his gloved hands, but it did no good. The world pounded and spun and then it went to black, and she fell.

She woke to the zephyr nipping unhappily at her face. “It worked,” she said, sitting up.

The zephyr said, “He is digging your grave, and then he will leave to find a new servant.”

Down in the garden, Nievre had a shovel in his gloved hands. He stopped mid-strike when she approached, and she took cool satisfaction at the look of shock on his face. He’d never been jarred out of his composure before, not even when she poisoned him, when she stabbed him, when she struck him across the head and he staggered without falling. After a month in his service, that shock felt like wages, long overdue.

“What need have you to seek another servant?” she asked. “You still have me.”

“So I do,” Nievre said, his gaze sharpening.

He’d looked at her many times. In the field where she weeded; on the path to the stream; in the forest where her brothers lay sleeping. Many times since then, whenever he came to give her orders, the interest draining out of his gaze with every passing day. But now, for the first time, he truly saw her.

Nievre laid the shovel on the frost-laced ground. “It seems this is not yet needed. Enjoy your respite. Tonight I will reward you as I promised, and tomorrow I will find a new servant.”

She did no work that day. In truth, the castle did not need as much tending as he claimed; it was easier to dust off a few days’ worth of brightness at once, rather than scant traces every sunset. That day she walked in the garden, near where he had begun to dig her grave, and Nievre watched her from a window.

At nightfall he summoned her to his room and said, “This time I will do better. By now you must be tired of the burden of your work and the burden of living, so I will release you from them both.”

Instead of strangling her, he drowned her. A bath of cold water stood in the corner of his chamber—a bath he had, for once, drawn himself. He forced her head into it, and despite her preparations, despite her resolve, she fought to free herself. To no avail: he was too strong, and the water entered her lungs, and eventually she went still.

“You should run,” the zephyr moaned when it woke her the following morning. “Every time you die, a little more warmth slips away. Soon you will be as cold as he is.”

“I have no way of leaving this place,” she said, sitting up and brushing her frozen hair from her face. “And I will not let him win.” He had won the day he came to her brothers’ house. Now it was her turn.

Out in the garden, Nievre was digging again, but this time he was facing the gate. He did not look surprised when she appeared, only wary. “Do you not want your reward?”

“I cannot accept a reward from a man who lacks the strength to overcome me,” she said, echoing the remote, amused tone she’d heard from him so many times before. She no longer feared his anger, and that gave her a boldness she relished. “Three times I killed you, and three times you came back. Then you had what you wanted. If I come back three times, I should get what I want.”

“And what is that?”

“I will tell you tomorrow,” she said.

She did not wait for him to make more promises or threats. She left the garden and went to sit in a window that gave her a splendid view across the highest mountains, and there she stayed all day.

Until night fell, and she went to his chamber without being summoned, and she found a surprise waiting there.

Nievre had built a fire in the hearth. Branches of one of the dead trees burned, filling the room with heat, shedding brightness over everything it touched. It was the only flame she’d ever seen in the castle.

“Perhaps it will take fire to kill you for good,” Nievre said. “If not…”

He did not finish his thought. She reached deep inside herself for the ice that would hide her own. The only unliving thing she’d brought with her when Nievre took her away was her silver necklace. Its links had bit into the skin of her throat when he strangled her; it had dangled cold over her face when he shoved her head into the water. Had he guessed where she’d hidden her life? Could it survive the fire?

Her hands stayed quiet at her sides, not rising to touch the necklace. If he knew, or if the fire was hot enough, she would die. Nothing she could do would change that now.

Nievre was almost gentle as he said, “Come.”

She came forward, and she let him push her into the hearth.

This time she did not fight. She did not even scream. She sank down into the flames, and let them take her.

The zephyr did not wake her. The room was quiet and dark—and Nievre was there.

He knelt in front of her as she stepped out of the ashes, clean and unmarked by the flames. In a hushed whisper he spoke, his frost-pale eyes as wide as the sky. “Countless women I have taken from their homes to serve me, and every one of them has died. Not one has come back…except you.”

He was a monster, cold as the mountains in which he lived, and he had killed untold numbers.

But not her. She had become as cold as he.

Melting silver takes more than mere hearthfire. Reaching up to her throat, she removed her necklace and offered it to him. “My life is hidden in this chain. Take it, wear it, and be my husband.”

His black-gloved hands took the chain and looped it around his own neck. Then, for the first time she’d ever seen, he drew off his gloves. On his left hand there gleamed a single touch of warmth: a golden ring.

He slid it from his finger and offered it to her. “My life is hidden in this ring. Take it, wear it, and be my wife.”

Nievre no longer takes a young woman every absent moon to be his servant. Instead, his wife Gialle now dwells in his castle, and keeps it clean when she cares to. The rest of the time, it goes untended.

For many long ages Nievre was set in his ways, and sometimes he drifts back. The moon now waxes and wanes with his fidelity, and on the days to either side of the absent moon you can see Gialle’s silver necklace, pulling him back to their castle.

She missteps less often. Even so, it happens from time to time. When darkness passes across the face of the sun, a rim of gold appears around the edge, and that is a glimpse of Nievre’s ring. It reminds her of his devotion—for what little warmth remains to them is there, in her necklace that he wears, and his ring upon her hand.

But the tales that are told of them now must wait for another day.

© 2023 Marie Brennan

Marie Brennan is a former anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for inspiration. She recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to The Night Parade of 100 Demons and the short novel Driftwood. She is the author of the Hugo Award-nominated Victorian adventure series The Memoirs of Lady Trent along with several other series, over seventy short stories, and the New Worlds series of worldbuilding guides; as half of M.A. Carrick, she has written The Mask of Mirrors, first in the epic Rook and Rose trilogy. For more information, visit swantower.com, Twitter @swan_tower, or her Patreon.

Miz Boudreaux’s Last Ride

by Christopher Caldwell

You ever love the pretty right off someone? When I was a kid, had me a BMX, bright red like a candy apple. I rode it all summer long, cresting hills trying to catch the perfect gleam in the sunlight. Only that same sunlight that gave the bike its shine burnt all the sparkle out of it. I forgot about that bike, until three weeks ago when I caught Tommy asleep, nestled in all the pillows with the desert sun falling slantwise on his face through the blinds.

Now, I ain’t slept right the night before. My back was sore. My feet swole up like pumpkins. I had an itch just behind my balls. Was a time where I could catch three hours in the flatbed of a moving pick up, or two-and-a-half on some trick’s clammy waterbed and feel fresh as ironed boxers the next morning, but them days are gone. So you best believe when Newport—that’s our dog—started whining less than an hour after I drifted off, “that goddamn hound” was the nicest thing I had to say about either of them. Tommy ain’t stir an inch. So I got my ass up and took Newport out for a walk so he ain’t piss all over the kitchen floor. Again. Had to keep Newport on a tight leash, otherwise he’d be liable to chase a jackrabbit into the creosote, or play fetch with a rattlesnake. Weimaraners is hunting dogs, and old as Newport is, he got plenty of sprint left in them long legs.

Come back to find Tommy snoring underneath the window air conditioning unit, my best quilt tucked up to his chin. Still early, but you could already feel the heat coming down over the hills on the wind. Was finna snatch that quilt right off of Tommy when Newport started yapping and growling at the doorway. Wasn’t nothing I could see, but Newport’s hackles was up and he stood between me and the door like to bite somebody. Last time he was like this, a ‘possum had broke through the lattice and got itself stuck between a pier and block in the crawlspace. But he had yapped at the kitchen floor, not an empty doorway. I stroked his flank. “Easy, boy.”

Tommy moaned low in the bed behind me, and Newport stopped yapping and slunk off into the kitchen like he was in trouble. Tommy sat up and pulled the quilt tight against his chest. Tommy always got wide-eyed when he was up to no good; just the picture of aw, shucks innocence. But the look on his face now was prim, and half-lidded, like his eyelashes was heavy. Mighta been Tommy’s mouth that moved, but it sure wasn’t his speech coming out of it. “Davion, cher. You have been keeping yourself very well. I don’t suppose I could trouble you to make me a little coffee and scalded milk?”

It was maybe twenty, twenty-one years since I seen that look and heard thattone, but I gotta say they woulda made an impression even if me and Tommy ain’t been over a mountain of associated bullshit. Still, Mama always told me to be polite to a lady, so I took off my snapback and tried my best not to look pissed. “I’d say it was good to see you, but I don’t suppose I rightly can, ma’am. Now, Miz Boudreaux, before I bust out the percolator, you want to tell me what you’re doing in my husband’s body?”

A half hour later we was sitting at the kitchen table. Me, Tommy’s body, and Miz Boudreaux talking out of it. Newport hid behind the sofa, but you could still hear his tail thumping. There was leftover tortillas from the tacos Tommy made the night before, and I whipped up two plates of chilaquiles. Miz Boudreaux in Tommy’s body went through three cups of coffee with hot milk, but ain’t touched the food. The egg was going cold. She sipped real dainty out of Tommy’s best mug. “Coffee is a delight. A shame Thomas has dulled his senses with smoking. Have you ever tried making coffee with chicory?”

“Miz Boudreaux, I’ll be happy to make you another cup to go.” I took a bite of my breakfast. I should have put a little garlic salt in that salsa. “But you still ain’t answered not one question.”

Tommy’s hands fluttered. His lips pursed. “I have known Thomas a very long time. I was always pleased that he found you, and that you two held onto each other.” That heavy-lidded expression ain’t do nothing good for Tommy’s crow’s feet.

“That’s sweet, and all, but it ain’t Tommy I’m talking to right now, and I need a hand with the chores before the day gets too hot. And again, I don’t mean to be rude and all, but is there a point for this voodoo spooky mind control?”

“You have been very patient in indulging an old woman, Davion. It grieves me to cause you distress. I have come here, in fact, to offer you a bargain that may be of great interest.”

“Sorry, but can’t you just call. Like on the phone? I get that you might not be cool with FaceTime or Skype, but—”

There was a pout that probably would have been charming on a different face. “Alas, Davion, if it were as simple as a phone call, I would not need to make this bargain.” Tommy’s fingers drummed on the table. “I am no longer among the living, and need someone who is to accomplish a task for me.”

I hate this kind of shit. “If your head finna rotate and you plan to vomit coffee on my nice clean floor, tell me now. I can get a bucket.”

“Davion! I am not demonic. I am your old friend. We made a bargain before that was mutually profitable, no?”

I sucked my teeth. “Way I remember it, you charged us thirty of the finest portraits of Benjamin Franklin and then said we needed to pony up a collective thirty years of our then young lives in order to get some charms that got us tracked by the goddamn magic police.”

“And the charms worked?”

“They worked alright, but we sure didn’t use the full time we paid for, and I don’t reckon we got a refund on them years.”

“A spell costs what it costs.”

“Right.” Took another bite of my breakfast. Chewed. Swallowed. “Now, I spent twenty years keeping the fuck away from all this hoodoo bullshit because it ain’t ever straightforward. ‘Mutually profitable’ means you want us to do something.”

“I left something uncompleted. Something that will not let me rest. If you were to help me accomplish this, I have a prize very much worth your effort.”

“I know you’re in Tommy. Can he hear this?”

“No. This conversation is between you and me. He is, for the moment, lost. Asleep.”

“Why you ain’t show up in a ouija board, or talk through the hound? Why put Tommy asleep? You don’t trust him to make the right decision?”

“I have never trusted a man.”

“I don’t want to make no agreements involving Tommy without his say in it.”

She stood up in Tommy’s body. Walked over to the window. Pulled the curtains closed against the light. “I can smell death in this room. Thomas is a wildfire. Instead of listening to my offer, he would rage and burn until there was nothing left. You, you are a little bit of cool water. I’m afraid the only time for me to broach this with you is now, and it would be difficult for me to return for an answer.”

“What’s this offer?” I thrust my chin forward, the way I do when I’m itching for a fight.

“I can offer you this: fifteen more years for one of you. One of your lives extended for a decade-and-a-half.”

“Why not both?” I asked.

“I can offer it to one.”

“Seven and a half for each of us?”

A deep, rattling sigh. “What you ask for is beyond my ability. I have only what I have offered you. Do you accept?”

Shit. My back ain’t hurt me that much. I ain’t ready to check out, and I reckon Tommy wasn’t ready to find religion. “You can’t ‘spect me to accept without telling me what we got to do in exchange?”

“A long time ago, when I was very young, I came to a place not far from here. I did an unconsidered favor, for a man. I cast a spell that has had consequences. I need this spell undone.”

“Don’t know if you noticed, but neither me nor Tommy got much in the way of that downhome rootwork shit. Can’t even read a tarot card, me.”

“My goddaughter Eulalia will undo the spell. What I need from you boys is protection. She will be physically vulnerable while she does the unbinding, and I need someone to fight for her. A machete would work. No charms needed.”

I took a good look at Tommy. A really good look at him. Farmer’s tan. Belly big from too many micheladas. Golden hair turned dishwater. Some of the pretty was still there, but he got a mean set to his jaw. I thought about him stealing all the covers, and not getting his ass up to take out the dog I never wanted in the first place. How bad his breath was in the morning. How sometimes I could walk into the front room and find him haunting it like a ghost, with the light from the TV casting colors across his face. I thought the meanest things about him I could.

Then I made my choice.

“She called me a horse?” Tommy shoveled his cold chilaquiles into his mouth. Newport was on the floor by his feet.

“Well, she was possessing you. Guess she could tell how you was hung.”

He snorted. Newport gave Tommy’s leg a lick. “Be serious, Davion. What happened? What did she want?”

“You still got that .22 Ruger you used for coyotes back when you had the chicken coop?”

“Course I do. In good condition. Part of my inheritance from Uncle Joe, like this house.”

“This trailer.” I insisted. Newport whined up at me.

“For the last time, it’s a mobile home, Davion.”

The distinction is still lost on me. We ain’t even got a pitched roof. “The gun, Tommy.”

“Like I said. Working fine. Plenty of ammo. Ready for varmints. Now what do we need it for?” He tore off some of the white from his egg and slipped it down to Newport.

“Well, the ghost of Miz Boudreaux dropped by with a proposition. We keep her goddaughter Eulalia safe through some bad juju, and we get back the fifteen years we paid her back then.”

“Can’t say I love the sound of whatever we’re keeping that gal safe from, but I don’t reckon Miz Boudreaux would risk putting her goddaughter in the way of something she thinks we can’t manage.” That bad little boy smile spread across Tommy’s face. “Both of us get them years back?”

“Both of us,” I lied.

Tommy raised an eyebrow. “Maybe death has made that old bat a smidge more generous than I recollect.”

I looked down at an envelope with Eulalia’s scrawled address on it. “Look like she stay about an hour away. Ain’t got no phone number. Hope she’s expecting us.”

Eulalia’s address was one of them big ranch style houses they threw up in the late eighties and nineties on loop-de-loop streets with names like Vista Butte Way or Sandstone Arch Circle. Four-car garage. Enough bedrooms for your 2.5 kids, plus a formal living room and a den for your home cinema. Looked like someone had laid down sod in the front yard long before the water restrictions had kicked in; most of the topsoil had gone back to the desert. Band-aid colored clapboard. Artificial stonework by the front door. Like a postcard of the American Dream bleached out by the sun. Newport craned his neck to take a gander, then curled up on his blanket in the pickup’s flatbed, unimpressed.

A quick check in the rearview mirror to make sure I was still presentable: collar down flat, good sunglasses with the tortoiseshell rims on straight, nothing green in my teeth, and up the flagstone path to the front door, Tommy as my shadow. I pressed the doorbell twice. Nothing for a moment, and my stomach kind of rolled when I considered that Eulalia might not be home. Then a sound of heavy footsteps, and a muffled curse. “Hello!” barked through the closed door.

I smiled at the peephole. Dusted off my “proper” voice. “Good morning. I hope I have the right address? I’m looking for Ms. Eulalia Jackson.”

The door swung in. A big woman near filled the doorframe. I mean amazonian. Taller than Tommy. Muscular, and what my aunties called “thick.” Smooth dark skin, she seemed well acquainted with the cocoa butter. Old school afro with a side-part. Lace-up boots. Camo pants. She looked me up and down. “Knight of Wands and the King of Cups, reversed.”

“Excuse me?”

“I think she means us, babe.” Tommy said.

The woman nodded. “My tarot reading this morning was all fucked up. Explains a lot. I guess y’all better come in. And no one calls me ‘Eulalia.’ I go by ‘Jack.’”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Davion.” I shook her hand. Firm grip. “This is Tommy.”

“Come on in before I cool the whole Mojave.”

The inside of the house was dark and cool. I took off my sunglasses. No lights on and blinds shut against the day. Smelled a little like dust and old cooking. Not unpleasant. Here was somebody who liked they food seasoned. Didn’t seem to be a ‘take your shoes off kind of house,’ but I paused on the tiles in the entryway just in case. Jack beckoned us over to a sunken living room with a rust-colored sectional couch wrapping round two of its walls. She sunk into it, propped her feet up on a coffee table made from a slab of granite. It was covered with papers, maps, and playing cards, including the Knight of Wands and the King of Cups, which was upside down. I sat down. The cushions were soft, but with something springy underneath. Maybe a pull-out bed. Tommy sat on the edge, next to me.

She tamped down tobacco in an old-fashioned pipe. “Y’all hungry? I don’t always eat lunch, but I got plenty of leftovers, still good.”

I shook my head.

Tommy said, “We already ate before coming out. Thank you.”

She chomped on the pipe’s stem. Lit it. Sucked in a long drag. Held the pipe in her right hand and blew three perfect smoke rings. “Last night, for the first time since Auntie Melba died, I had me a dream about crawfish. Auntie Melba always used to say if you dream of a trout, somebody having a baby girl, and you dream of a crawfish, there’s a boy coming. But for me, all a crawfish dream ever meant was that she wanted me to do something.”

Tommy asked, “Your Auntie Melba is Miz Boudreaux?”

Jack nodded. “Great aunt, actually.” She chomped down on the pipe again. “Always said I was her favorite. She claimed it was because I was born with a caul, but I think it was just ‘cause no one else would get out of their bed at midnight and wait at a crossroads with a cow hoof no questions asked when an old lady in Colorado had a vision.”

Tommy nodded. “She was like that. I’m sorry for your loss.”

More smoke rings. “She had to be close to a hundred. And you can’t say the old girl didn’t have a full life. I hope she’s at rest now.”

I cleared my throat. “I ain’t like to be the bearer of bad news, but I s’ppose you could say that’s why we’re here.”

Jack’s lips pinched tight. “You here to tell me Auntie Melba’s a haint?”

Tommy frowned. “Well she kind of possessed me, which I didn’t take very kindly to, to tell the truth.”

I gave Jack my ‘we’re all friends here’ smile. “What he means is your sainted Auntie came personally from the beyond to make a request of her—you did say you were her favorite— goddaughter in order to complete a task she left undone during her long, productive lifetime.”

Jack squinted. Then burst out laughing. “Can’t believe she’s been dead for six months and is still finding a way to mind other folks’ business. What she want me to do?”

“She said you would be able to undo a spell she cast when she was young. Some place not far from here. Called it Paluma Negro.”

Tommy corrected my Spanish. “Paloma Negra.”

Smoke rings. “Of course it’s that. I’ve got to go pack my tools. If y’all ain’t gassed up your truck, might want to hit a station first. Not many stops where we’re going.”

While we was waiting outside for Jack, a pair of starlings flitted over and landed on top of a Joshua tree. Newport ain’t usually fussed with little birds, but he barked at that tree. The starlings didn’t stir, and three more fluttered over to sit next to the pair. Tommy said, “You know they call a flock of starlings a ‘murmuration?’”

One of the garage doors in Jack’s house lifted. She came out of the garage with an olive drab duffel bag and a bomber jacket slung over one shoulder. Tommy slid into the middle of the bench seat. Jack tossed the duffel in the flatbed, gave Newport a pat on the head, and clambered into the passenger seat. Tommy wasn’t never a small boy, even at his leanest, and it was a tighter fit than I’d like.

“Where we off to, boss?” I asked.

“Paloma Negra don’t really exist no more.” Click. The garage door closed. “It was a dying community when Auntie Melba came through seventy years ago. You’re going to have to take 200 Street East as far as you can go, and then we’re onto some unnamed back country roads.”

Tommy said, “That ghost is sending us to a ghost town?”

Jack laughed. “Your man don’t say much, but he got some jokes.”

“About three.” I said. “And he keeps recycling them.” I pulled away from the house. We passed three near identical versions on the way onto the road.

“What you know about Paloma Negra?” Jack asked.

Tommy said, “We never heard the name before today.”

“Story time, I guess.”

Six starlings flew low across the road.

Jack continued, “Y’all know what a sundown town is?”

I nodded. Tommy said, “My dad’s from North Platte, in Nebraska. He said my great-grandaddy helped chase all the Black people out of town. Well, Black likely wasn’t the word that great-granddaddy used. Bet he’d like to spit to see me with Davion.”

Jack said, “Well when you kick everyone brown out of places, they got to end up somewhere. Paloma Negra was a place like that.”

Jack’s sub-division was a pop of color in the rearview. All too soon it was gone. Ahead was rock, sand, scrub, and Joshua trees. Starlings made a big-ass black cloud across the late morning blue, taking shapes that reminded me of the inkblots the school psychologist shows you.

“Black folk, brown folk, workers from China. They all lived in their little desert town. Back then, it was on the shore of a lake. And you’d get big fields of golden poppies blooming in February. Kids’d play in the creek, and someone was always baking something.”

“Sounds like heaven,” Tommy said.

“I think it was a hardscrabble life. Folk kept goats, and tough little cattle with stringy meat and sour milk. Wasn’t near a railroad, so goods was hard to come by and expensive.” Jack sighed. “But I think they did okay. Turn left.”

I made the turn. The road here was rough, and Newport whined when a pothole woke him from his nap.

Jack said, “But they had a couple of bad years with floods. The creek burst it banks and washed the bridge away. Flash floods from the hills wiped out a whole herd of sheep. And kids drowned.”

Another flock of starlings. This time like a choppy wave at sea, then into tight whirlpool spirals. I ain’t religious, but I crossed myself. Newport whimpered. I said, “I feel you, dog,” under my breath.

“In the third straight year of flooding, the worst yet, one of them kids said he saw a woman walking on the water. Said she had called to him. Called him by his name, and told him to come swim.”

“Oh no,” said Tommy.

“And when the boy said, ‘no,’” Jack’s voice sounded strained, “he said the woman on the water had run after him screaming, and pulled at him with cold, wet hands.”

Tommy shuddered against me.

“The town decided they were cursed. They pooled their money, and decided they were going to send it down to Mexico to bring in a famous curandera.”

More starlings. For a second, the sky was like looking at a film negative of a photographed starry night.

Tommy said, “Was Miz Boudreaux already famous?”

Jack said, “No. Wasn’t her. The town had a barber. Joe Woods. Handsome redbone man. Scoundrel. Anyhow he said he had him a new girlfriend, a rootworker from down New Orleans way, a real voodoo queen. And she would do it for half the price.”

I can always smell a scammer. “Half the price. So he gon’ take most of that as a ‘finder’s fee’.”

Jack said, “All. Auntie Melba was very young, and still fresh to her power. He played on her sympathy and arrogance, and she agreed to do it for free.”

Tommy whistled. “Now if that ain’t a bitch.”

“Auntie Melba came to Paloma Negra with her roots and her powders. With her bone charms, and her scented oils. And she was not ready. See, the town didn’t have a simple haunt she could chase away with loud noises, or trick with an incantation. The flooding was part of the natural way of the land. It seemed bad to the poor folks of the town, but it had always been that way. And it wasn’t no malevolent ghost on the water luring kids. The town had an ancient elemental who was tied to the land.”

The truck’s air conditioning wasn’t doing no kind of job keeping up with the noon sun, but I felt cold. Pushed my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose. “What the land need with some kids?”

“Shit.” She said it long, like sheee-it. “Do I look like a motherfucking elemental entity? I don’t know. Maybe that kid made the whole woman on the water up. But whatever the case, Auntie got into a battle with something ancient.”

“And she survived?” Tommy asked.

“She survived, and somehow she ended up wrapping that thing up in her magic. She couldn’t banish it, but she somehow managed to bind it.”

Biggest cloud of starlings yet. Like a thundercloud with beaks. They flew over the pickup, and for a moment it got dark. Newport howled long and high, and the scattered off into different directions, swirling into shapes like smoke.

Tommy said, “So what happened to the town?”

Jack said, “Well it didn’t flood no more. But then the creek dried up. And the lake turned into stinking mud before it dried up too. And February came and the poppies didn’t.”

I said, “And the town died?”

She said, “This whole valley been dying ever since. Make a right.”

I turned onto a dirt road. Creosote and Joshua trees edged in, but it was still clear enough for the pickup to navigate through. Through the rear view, I could see starlings trailing behind us like the smoke from an old steam engine.

Joshua trees was full of the birds as we got nearer to a cluster of old whitewashed buildings. Bright little eyes was staring out from under spiky branches. It was slow going and bumpy. Newport turned in nervous circles in the truck’s flatbed.

Tommy broke the silence. “Any idea where all these birds come from? It ain’t mating season.”

Jack said, “They’re here because of us.”

I scratched my nose. “Thought we were here to break the spell.”

Jack laughed. “And they sure don’t like that! Auntie Melba put certain workings on to keep that from happening.”

Tommy said. “So we’re protecting you from birds? Like in the movie?”

Jack pointed, “See that church? That’s where we’re going.”

The hills overhead were familiar to me, and I realized we were close to where me and Tommy lived, but on the other side of the promontory. Nestled against the hills at a place where two roads crossed was a small white church. Looked like it was made of mud-brick then painted white, but a very long time ago. Two front windows shuttered over flanked an open doorway. I sparked the truck in front. Newport barked at the church. Tommy got his gun. Jack got her duffel from the back. As we got neared, we could see little spots of sunlight streaming from holes in the roof, dappling the packed earth floor. A musty stank roiled over as we walked in the doorway, like the church itself had bad breath. At the far end was a stained glass window, wavy but mostly intact. Never paid much attention in Sunday School, but I reckon the picture was the Holy Ghost above John the Baptist. Through broken panes, you could see the hills beyond. Black shapes flitted to and fro in the rocks. More starlings.

Newport yowled once, long and sad. Then we heard the sound of wings. The sunlight from above blotted out, and John the Baptist went dark. Jack pulled out a box of kosher salt from her bag. Sprinkled salt in a circle around her. Pulled a little vial of oil from her back pocket and sprinkled three drops on her floor, before tracing a pattern on her forehead. Sat down. She looked at me and Tommy, “What I need y’all to do is kill anything that comes in this space before I finish.”

“Anything?” I asked.

Tommy shouldered his rifle.

Jack started chanting. I moved close to the circle and unsheathed my Bowie knife, which I now regretted picking as my protection weapon. Didn’t reckon I was faster than a bird, but I hoped I could be a last line of defense. Newport growled.

A high, angry screech rattled the roof. Birds crashed into the stained glass, scattering shards across the floor. Newport loped in wide circles snapping at the windows. I tried to keep still and waited, blade up like a movie samurai. The flapping of thousands of wings sounded like a roar. But through the racket, Jack kept on chanting. Sometimes stopping to trace a symbol in the dirt. There was a loud rush, louder than a subway train, only all beating wings. For a second it went quiet. Light streamed in from the holes in the busted-up ceiling. Jack continued her chants. I wanted to laugh, but Newport howled again, and then I saw it through the church’s open door.

The sky was black and purple with thousands and thousands of birds. They swirled downward in an arc. One time, back when me and Tommy was in Wyoming, we saw a twister far off against the plains. Just come clear out of the skies on a summer day. Well, this was like that, only it was all made of birds screaming.

Tommy said, “Here it comes.” He planted his feet.

That bird twister wound tighter and tighter around itself until it was the size of a man. Then, the man-shaped cloud of birds took a step and began to walk. Newport ran to the door. He snapped at the bird-cloud and caught a starling. Shook it between his teeth. But the man-cloud kept on with its steady steps. It shuffled over the doorway and I heard the crack of the rifle. Tommy was a good shot. Hit the cloud dead center. For a tick you could see daylight where that flock’s heart would be. Feathers burst out in a starburst, and starlings dropped to the floor, but then the hole closed up and the flock took another step. Crack. Another dandelion puff of shiny feathers, more birds falling to the floor, but this time it didn’t even break stride. Crack. This time the head scattered outwards, but like before, it continued its path. Crack. In the belly. Them birds screamed, but the cloud kept on coming. I knew Tommy was on his last round with no time to reload. Crack. In the head again. But it kept coming, and Tommy was out of rounds. The bargain was to keep Jack safe until she finished. So I ran full tilt into that cloud like I could tackle it.

They surrounded me. It was musty, smothering darkness. Tiny feet scratching at my eyes, pulling my naps, wings beating me around the head. Little beaks pecking. Shrieks and squawks and somewhere beyond was Newport’s barks. I tried slashing but didn’t feel my knife grant any purchase. Something hard hit me in the shoulder. The butt of Tommy’s rifle. Slashed again, and this time I hit something. Heard an angry shriek. I bit and I shoved. Felt like I couldn’t breathe. And then it stopped. Them birds flew away from me and out the front door.

I sank to my knees. “Babe!” Tommy said, and cradled me in his arms. “Babe, you’re bleeding.”

Jack said, “It’s done. That old heifer made a complicated knot.”

The three of us walked outside into the sunshine with Newport at my heel. I reached down to scratch him behind the ear. Maybe that old smelly hound ain’t so bad afterall.

The sky went dark again, and I tensed up thinking maybe them damn birds had regrouped for a rematch, but it was just clouds of the ordinary kind. Thunder rolled over the red hills, and we were spattered with rain.

Can I tell you how good it felt? Scuffed up, dusty, ashy, stinking of bird must, and then a clean rain comes and washes that away. We should have gone back to the truck. Jack had already loaded up her bag. But that cool rain washed off all that desert funk, and I saw things different. Tommy’s wet hair fell into his eyes, and when he pushed it back, there was a boyish twinkle. The dirt road was already turning into mud, but I ran through it, fucking up my loafers, and I kissed him hard. The way I used to. The way I ain’t done for a long time. He smelled clean and new, like green grass.

Newport ran off after something in one of them ruined buildings, and I let go of Tommy’s hand to chase after him. Tommy stood in that crossroad before the church. I grabbed Newport by the collar, and that’s when I saw it. Water, cascading in rivulets down the hills and over the rocks. It hit the back of that old church in a wave, and put an end to that stained glass window. Roiled around its side. “Tommy!” I shouted, but the stream of it slammed into him and bowled him over. In that second I ain’t think about Miz Boudreaux or his snoring. I didn’t think about his medals for swimming. I jumped into the stream after him.

I don’t know how he found me. But it was Tommy who pulled me out of the water. Tommy whose arms were around me when I bent over double, gasped like a fish and vomited onto the sand. Jack and Newport were quick down the hill after us in the truck, and good thing. As we drove away in the pouring rain, we saw the last of Paloma Negra collapse into a new river.

So I better come clean about my bargain. I asked Miz Boudreaux to give them years to Tommy. I reckon my family is long-lived enough that the death stink she smelt ain’t come from me. I’da gave anything to have one more ride on that red bicycle, even after the color had faded. One more time to catch air and feel like I was the king of the world.

It ain’t all happiness and kisses in the rain. Tommy still snores too loud, and right now we’re holed up in a hotel that smells like mice. See the trailer—I guess I mean mobile home— was on the other side of the promontory, and it got washed away in the storm. We got time and maybe we’ll build a home less liable to roam away when you ain’t looking. For now, there’s just me, and Tommy, and that goddamn hound. But we got each other, and I suppose that’s enough.

© 2023 Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell is a queer Black American living in Glasgow, Scotland, with his partner, podcaster Alice Caldwell-Kelly. He was the 2007 recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship to Clarion West. His work has appeared in FIYAH, Strange Horizons, and the News Suns 2 anthology, among others. He is @seraph76 on Twitter and christophercaldwellkelly on Instagram.

Bad Doors

by John Wiswell

The country was at just over ten thousand deaths the morning that the door appeared. On Kosmo’s phone NPR was interviewing a doctor with a nasal voice about the need for social distancing, while Kosmo himself collected empty cans from around his home office. They were everywhere. Walls of recyclable cans dominated his room. Just beside his bookshelf, out of the view from where he taught his Zoom classes, he’d constructed a veritable castle of empty Coke Zeroes.

“If you spread your arms wide, that is roughly the distance you want to be away from others,” the doctor explained. “That prevents your breath and expectorate from coming into contact with others.”

Kosmo tried spreading his arms that wide—he’d always been gangly—and promptly knocked over a three-stack of cans balanced on top of his Riverside Chaucer. The cans clanked to the ground and rolled into the hall. Kosmo chased them, hunched over, like cartoon dinosaur in pursuit.

Nearing the hall, he called out for his cousin. “Jesse? Got any empty seltzers? I’m doing a recycling run.”

That’s when he saw the new door. It was equidistant on the wall between the entrances to his room and Jesse’s. Its deep burgundy color stood out against the plaster white of the walls. It was perfectly flat, without any veins or grain, like it was liquid that had merely cooled to look like wood. It had a square knob, made of polished ebony that shone against the redness.

On Kosmo’s phone, the interviewer asked, “What about the people who say they can’t breathe with masks on?”

Kosmo covered his mouth and breathed through his fingers. All the doors in his house were cheap particle wood. There was no door on that wall of his hallway. There was no room behind there. He didn’t remember getting high this morning. He got closer, expecting this hallucination of a burgundy door to fade.

He heard Jesse’s dog Rufus approaching, little toenails pattering on the hardwood. The Labrador/hound mix had the coldest nose Kosmo had ever encountered, and no sense of smell to go with it. Yet Rufus still nosed at the burgundy door like it would give him a treat.

Kosmo took a moment to make sure that door wasn’t something Jesse had picked up at the Home Depot or something and left leaning against the wall.

No, it was embedded in the wall. Despite this being an internal wall, he heard sounds like rasping wind and a heavy humming coming from the other side. Rufus nosed closer at the door, pushing his muzzle at something on the floor. It was thin and flaky, like a bit of snakeskin.

The dog opened his mouth as though to eat the snakeskin, and that was it for Kosmo. He scooped the pup up in a two-armed hug and ran for the backdoor. He didn’t even put his shoes on. Hell no, he was not finding out what this was about.

Uncle Dahl gave Kosmo no end of shit for moving. But Uncle Dahl also kept sending him conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, so Kosmo mostly ignored him. Their family was a piece of work. They begged for hand sanitizer and then barely used it.

Jesse complained about the move too, even though his ass had never paid Kosmo rent. “Sheltering for the pandemic” seemed to be Jesse’s means of living for free. As it was, Kosmo walked Jesse’s dog more than Jesse did. Fortunately, Rufus was good company.

Kosmo only returned to the house twice, to get some of his stuff for the move. He put that house right on the market. He wasn’t living in whatever was about to happen there.

Jesse asked, “What was going to happen in there?”

To which Kosmo answered, “I don’t want to know.”

The weirdest thing was that the second time he went back, when he went with the realtor, the burgundy door wasn’t there. Just a little sloughed off snakeskin blowing along the floor.

The realtor, Mrs. Weiss, said, “Good move getting rid of that door. It threw off the vibe of the hallway. You drywalled so cleanly I couldn’t even tell there had been a door there.”

Kosmo hadn’t touched anything. He was about as handy as a man with four feet.

But, he also wasn’t sticking around to investigate. Complaining about disappearing mystery doors was only going to cost him resale value. He needed all the money he could get, because while selling in this market was good, finding a new place was brutal with all the people sheltering-in-place from the pandemic and all the Boomers buying new places to shelter. Mrs. Weiss said it’d be easier if he waited six months for COVID to blow over.

Kosmo wasn’t waiting around. He ate his losses, and got Jesse and Rufus into the moving van, and moved the hell across the state. His part in this story was over.

Or it was supposed to be. The door had other plans.

They lugged their crap in through the unthreatening taupe doors of their new home. It was half the size of the old place, a single-story building that could’ve been a double-wide trailer in a previous life. It was what Kosmo could get for his money. Most of their stuff wouldn’t fit.

One thing he refused to lose was the plush beige sofa that was more comfortable than whatever clouds God sat on. Kosmo and Jesse wrestled with it for fifteen minutes, with Rufus running in circles between their legs, before they got it through the house’s narrow entrance. It was such a tight fit that they dropped it halfway down the front hall. They sat on their prize, with their feet up against the wall. Rufus bounded over an armrest to snuggle and jam his cold nose into Kosmo’s armpit.

Kosmo and Jesse took hits off the weed in Jesse’s vape pen. After his second inhale, Jesse asked, “You feel like getting the TV?”

Kosmo had just gotten comfortable, too. He said, “If you want it, you go get it.”

“I need my shows.”

“Don’t you have a phone? And where would you even put a TV in here?”

Jesse swiped vaguely down to the other end of the off-white hall. The lighting was strong there, shining on a burgundy door.

Kosmo jumped over the dog and sofa alike. He sheltered behind an arm rest, staring at that door. It had that same, square doorknob of polished ebony.

Kosmo said, “That shit was not there a minute ago, right?”

Jesse hit the vape pen again and leaned towards the door. “No. No, it was not. Is that the same door from the old house?”

“Don’t look at it like that.”

“Like what?”

Kosmo reached for his cousin. He grabbed at his hoodie. “Like you’re going to touch it.”

No yank on Jesse could get the man to budge. He said, “You don’t know it’s dangerous.”

“Jesse. Are we on all of the drugs?”

“Unfortunately, we are not.”

“Then that door is stalking us. No good comes from that.”

Jesse had the gall to frown at him when there was an evil door standing right down the hall from him. He said, “What is your trauma, man? What happened to you that made you afraid of a little mystery?”

What was his trauma? Kosmo had a perfectly regular amount of traumas. He shook his head at his cousin. “No man, this isn’t on me. I don’t know what’s wrong with people like you who want to touch an impossible thing that’s messing with you. Doors don’t appear from nowhere.”

“Well, this one did.”

Kosmo smacked the arm rest for emphasis. “Exactly. And what happens next? Do space witches come through the door? Does other shit materialize around my house and in ten minutes we fall into a basement that never existed? I’m not finding out. I’m not doing the science here.”

Not one sentence made Jesse turn around. He kept staring at the door. “But what’s inside?”

“I just said, I don’t want to know.” Kosmo gathered Rufus into his arms. “Let’s go.”

Jesse didn’t go. He crawled over the sofa and wandered across the floor, into Kosmo’s unwanted house. No expletives slowed him down. He reached a hairy hand for that square doorknob.

Kosmo took off, abandoning his sofa and his cousin, and went straight through the nearest exit. The taupe door hit him in the hip on the way out, and Rufus barked in his arms. The dog got loud enough that Kosmo couldn’t hear whether Jesse actually opened that forbidden door.

On the cracked concrete of the front step, Kosmo hesitated a second. “Jesse. Get out here.”

That used up the last of his bravery. In the next moment he was in the moving truck, starting it up with the front door still ajar. Rufus wagged his tail and tried to climb across his lap like this was an adventure.

The truck farted to life and rumbled. The seatbelt chime pestered him. He checked over his shoulder and saw the driveway was clear and he could back out. He kept it idling, waiting, willing his cousin to find sense and get out of there. Even if Jesse came with Pennywise and the Babadook chasing him, it would be a relief to get them all out alive.

The truck idled so long that the fasten-seatbelt chime gave up. Kosmo lingered, watching the house for anything. Any mellow the weed had given him was dead.

“Damn it,” he said to himself. As he stepped out, he made sure to close Rufus in the truck, so the dog would stay out of trouble. Rufus wagged his tail cluelessly.

When Rufus checked inside, the burgundy door was closed. The black knob shone brightly with its polish.

He called, “Jesse?”

No answer. He checked the bathrooms. The rear lawn. There was no sign of his cousin anywhere. The air barely smelled like his weed. It smelled more like wilting produce in here.

Being alone in the house with that door was too much. Kosmo started to leave, and then spotted some garbage in front of the door. He thought it was a bunch of torn packing paper, until he noticed the scaly pattern. It was a long hunk of snakeskin, maybe five feet of it. It was all dried and curled there at the foot of the door, exactly where Jesse had stood.

Kosmo spent the police investigation in cheap motels, simultaneously dreading and knowing no answer would come.

He never stayed more than a couple days at the same place. He picked ones with small rooms, where he could see most of the walls. No doors were sneaking up on him.

The pickings were thinner since some motels forbade dogs. He couldn’t bring himself to give Rufus to a shelter. It seemed every day there was another news break of COVID breaking out at another community or animal shelter. The poor dog had been through enough.

So Kosmo spent his nights with the weirdo dog’s nose tucked into his armpit. Jesse had said that Rufus had lost his sense of smell in a car accident. Who knew what he liked about Kosmo’s armpit. Maybe it had the right warmth and moisture balance. He tried not to think about it. These days he was bad at not thinking about things.

Kosmo sat on the windowsill, on the phone with Uncle Dahl. Rufus padded over and flopped against Kosmo’s ankle. He gave a classic dog sigh. It sounded exhausted, but probably didn’t mean anything. Projecting human emotions onto a dog’s sigh was almost as irrational as projecting them onto a door.

Uncle Dahl coughed so loud it sounded performative. He said, “Your mother raised you to be smarter with money. You sold two houses for chicken feed. You’ve got to invest.”

Kosmo said, “Did you miss the part with the evil door?”

“Again with your evil door story.”

“It ate my cousin. Jesse. Aunt Angelina’s son disappeared.”

“My house is full of doors. Should I be scared and sell too?”

Kosmo closed his eyes. This was not why he’d called his uncle.

In as neutral a tone as he could force, Kosmo asked, “So you don’t remember any weird doors appearing to you or Mom or Aunt Angelina? Not when you were little? Never heard anything like on the Russian side of the family either?”

“My grandfather would’ve beaten the flesh off your knuckles for suggesting that. We’re Orthodox. We never mess with the occult.”

Kosmo could’ve argued that there had been plenty of occultism in Russia, but that wasn’t the point of the call. He asked, “The occult never messed with us? There’s nothing about snakes or square doorknobs or anything?”

“You pampered children.” Instantly, his uncle’s voice switched condescensions. He went from irate condescension to an insincere condescension, like this was entertaining for him now. “First you kids said there was this super virus sweeping the planet. Now you say there are evil doors everywhere. This is what’s wrong with your generation. You scare easily.”

As though done with this conversation, Rufus got up and padded away from the window.

Kosmo said, “COVID is real, Uncle Dahl. Are you using the hand sanitizer?”

“I’m on a Facebook group with real doctors. They are suppressing the research.”

Kosmo pinched the bridge of his nose. “Who is?”

“Corporate media. They’re trying to scare you into being a sheep. None of those people are really dead. It’s all a plot to steal the election. Did you see what the governor said?”

No, Kosmo was not having this same argument again. He’d gotten it in a dozen Facebook posts every day. Actual colleagues had unfriended Kosmo for being connected to Uncle Dahl. He hated thinking he’d have to sever ties with one of the last people who remembered how his mother’s voice had sounded.

Kosmo powered through with one last ditch effort. “So you’re absolutely sure there’s nothing about doors or snakeskins or anything in the family?”

Uncle Dahl barked out a laugh so hard Kosmo could almost smell his halitosis through the phone. “What do you even think is behind your scary door? This thing you’re throwing your life away over?”

Rufus whined from over near the coat closet. He was nosing at the wall, where the one lamp in the motel room barely illuminated anything. There wasn’t much to look at, yet the dog with no sense of smell moved like it was sniffing.

Another look, and Kosmo saw the burgundy door.

It was the same imposing height as it had been in his house, and in the second house where he’d lost Jesse. It was set right into the wall beside the closet, like it was inviting him to grab its square knob and walk through into the next motel room.

Rufus turned his dappled head to look at Kosmo, furry ears drooping. He had a long strand of snakeskin dangling from his mouth.

“Uncle. I’ll call you back.”

He got his first vaccination shot at an open-air clinic on a college campus, about an hour’s trip from where he picked up the RV. The nurse told him to move his arm every hour so it wouldn’t get sore, and fortunately Rufus was hyper that day and kept tugging on his leash to go explore more bushes. Kosmo kept Rufus near him at all times these days, in case of doors. Together they went on a walk to a local car dealership.

Something about the supply chain and microchip shortage meant the car market was a disaster. He settled for a decade-old used RV with a recently replaced engine. It was dingier in person than it had looked online. Still, as he ran his hand over its unusually low roof, Kosmo grinned. He used a tape measure on the tan and brown body of the RV to make sure. It was on the small side, with barely enough space for himself and Rufus to cook and sleep, and play videogames, and Zoom.

Better, it was the wrong dimensions for other things. It was too short, too narrow, and had windows in too many places. The door had always showed up the same size. There was no way it could fit on this RV.

“Who’s a clever boy?” he asked Rufus, rubbing the dog’s floppy ears. “Who’s smarter than a door?”

If face-licking was a sign of approval, then Rufus thought he was a genius.

His phone buzzed as he pulled out of the lot. It was Uncle Dahl. He’d been texting more since Kosmo had deleted Facebook. He couldn’t deal with all the conspiracy theories and the deluge of textual screaming in his life. The last post he’d seen had speculated state governments were hiding COVID deaths as “pneumonia deaths.”

He ignored Uncle Dahl for now and heading to the nearest campsite. Rufus and he had a whole road trip planned to explore parts of America without walls. Soon he’d be spending two weeks in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Two weeks alone, after so many months basically alone. Some friends had invited him to a bonfire they claimed would be open-air, about a day’s drive out of his way. Considering it made him ache, but the longer he was away from them, the less he trusted that they were really isolating and socially distancing, and the more he read into their unmasked selfies.

The campgrounds were on some hills overlooking a small pine forest and a public sports field. A bunch of kids in mismatched uniforms were playing soccer, and parents pumped their fists and spilled their drinks in celebration from the faded bleachers. None of them wore masks—not the parents, and not the players. Being that recklessly happy looked so appealing. Kosmo imagined taking Rufus down there and introducing him. Kids always wanted to pet him.

A shriek rang out from near the southern goal. A kid had tripped and went down clutching his leg. Everyone swarmed him like ants, first his fellow kids, and then parents. From all the way up at his campsite Kosmo could tell the kid had just skinned his knee. It must have been so comforting to that boy, to have all those people around him, caring for a little pain.

Nobody masked up as they came closer. Kosmo’s instinct to go join the sympathy faded into a concern that anyone of them could’ve infected the whole huddle. How terrible it would be, if that instant of caring for a crying child was a spreader event. What were they all even thinking gathering like this? Did the U.S. have to hit a million dead to scare people into taking it seriously?

His phone buzzed and interrupted his ire. It startled him so hard he nearly dropped Rufus’s leash. He’d really lost himself there.

He checked his phone. It was another text from Uncle Dahl. Kosmo skimmed the messages, half-watching the kids below celebrate their fellow athlete walking it off. When Kosmo scrolled to the last message, his fingers clenched down on the phone. He pulled the screen closer to his face.

Uncle Dahl had seen the door.

“Where is it?” Kosmo asked before he even got out of the RV’s cab. Rufus tried to follow and Kosmo barely shut the door in time to keep him in. He wasn’t letting Rufus get hurt.

Uncle Dahl rubbed a sneakered foot at a crack on the driveway. His scraggly gray beard was entirely unmasked. Brown sweatpants dangled on his skinny legs, and his beer gut was mostly contained in a red bathrobe. For how lazily he was dressed, his thinning gray hair was gelled and neatly combed over his freckled scalp.

His uncle said, “You’re really living in that thing? That’s not a home.”

He coughed twice, then spit something yellow onto the pavement of the driveway. Kosmo stepped away from him and got a dirty look for it.

Kosmo asked, “Did you get vaccinated? I can help you sign up.”

“I’m not a sheep. I don’t need the Deep State tracking my every move.”

Kosmo pointed to the rectangular bulge in Uncle Dahl’s bathrobe pocket. “There are not microchips in vaccines, and you have a cell phone. I guarantee you TikTok already has all your information.”

“You live in a glorified car. You’re going to talk to me like that? Take your life back. Be a man.”

“It turns out the RV doesn’t care what gender I am. Neither does this door curse thing.” Kosmo kept talking just to move the conversation along. This had already reminded him why he’d deleted Facebook in the first place. “Where’s the door? How long has it been here?”

Uncle Dahl pointed out back, to the yard he paid landscapers to mow and seed for him. The rear wall of his house was brick painted the same deep blue of the U.S. flag. Paint flaked in various places, and at first Kosmo mistook some of the flecks for snakeskin.

But standing on the watered lawn, looking at those blue-painted bricks, he didn’t see the door anywhere. He looked closer, wondering if Uncle Dahl had painted over it. Uncle Dahl did lots of weird things.

Kosmo asked, “You said it was out here?”

Uncle Dahl said, “You don’t visit family anymore. You didn’t even come for the holidays. You won’t come in our houses because of this COVID thing. Do you see anyone other than that dog?”

Kosmo was looking around the next side of the house before he understood what that meant. He wheeled at Uncle Dahl. “Is it actually here?”

Uncle Dahl coughed again, a brackish noise. “You’re so afraid of this phantom door. Doors are everywhere. Doors are just a thing.”

“This thing ate Jesse. How do you not care about that?”

“I don’t believe that story,” Uncle Dahl said, coming closer, which made Kosmo back away. “But if any of it’s real, we could make money. That’s why we needed to see each other. It’ll show up if you stay long enough. You said it appears everywhere. Let’s do something with this opportunity.”

Kosmo noticed the surveillance cameras mounted around his uncle’s property. At least two of those were aimed at them. Was he recording this? Was he looking to make a profit off a video of Kosmo getting bewitched by a burgundy door?

He tried to slow his breathing. He was not slugging a senior citizen today. He put a fist to the side of his own head and pushed, making himself turn away so he wouldn’t yell. But maybe he should yell. Maybe embarrassing his uncle in front of his neighbors would rattle some sense into him.

Uncle Dahl said, “Don’t be dramatic. It’s time for you to move on. Look at that wall. Show me this door. Then you can leave it here. Give the door to me.”

Despite himself, Kosmo did stare at the wall. At that dark blue paint that belonged in depictions of a U.S. flag. The seams between every brick under the paint were so obvious. He wondered if the door would appear burgundy as always, or if its shape would emerge from beneath the blue. He’d never seen where the door came from.

His uncle deserved it. If he wanted to get swallowed into the unknown like Jesse, then a hurt part of himself said to let it happen.

The instant he entertained the thought, more followed through it. If he was going to let the door appear, he could do something nice for himself after. Maybe he’d stick around to see it open and have all those nagging questions answered from a safe distance. Maybe he could drive to the bonfire with his friends after all. Go teach on campus again. Fill up an entire Fine Arts building with evil doors, because screw it, if nobody else cared, then why should he?

Uncle Dahl sniffed wetly and rubbed his nose. “No more excuses. It’s time for you to live a real life.”

That was why he shouldn’t. Spite was a bad reason, but people had been taking this unseriously since the first day he’d carried Rufus away from the first door. The door was stalking him and he didn’t change. Jesse was gone and he didn’t change from that insipid condescension.

Kosmo pushed away from the wall with its flecking paint and its bricks and its promises of bonfires. No door had appeared yet, and no door was going to appear. He marched in a wide berth around his uncle, not wanting to breathe an iota of that man’s air.

Rufus was halfway up on the dashboard, head up, panting happily at the sight of him through the windshield. That dog was so happy just at the idea that Kosmo was coming home. Before he’d even fully sat at the wheel, Rufus’s cold nose went directly into his armpit. He hugged the dog around his neck.

Uncle Dahl followed him, yelling, “You’ve got to take control.”

He looked at his uncle one more time. “I am. Me leaving is me taking control. Don’t text me again.”

He slammed the door and pulled the RV out of the driveway, not looking back, not caring if the whole property was overtaken by weird doors and an old man’s outrage. He and Rufus rode straight for the interstate, to get out of Florida as early as he could. The two of them had a date with the Great Smoky Mountains.

His uncle texted him several more times. Kosmo didn’t let himself read them; he couldn’t stand the sting. Texts slowed over the weeks, and stopped a month later when Uncle Dahl passed away.

Officially, it was pneumonia.

© 2023 John Wiswell

John @Wiswell is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. He has won the Nebula and Locus Awards. This is his fourth story in Uncanny Magazine, and his works have also appeared in Tor.com, the LeVar Burton Reads Podcast, the No Sleep podcast, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His debut novel Someone You Can Build a Nest In is forthcoming from DAW Books in Spring of 2024.

Prospect Heights

by Maureen McHugh

In 1981, Amelia moved to New York City. Brooklyn. Specifically, Prospect Heights, where she rented a room in a rooming house on a street of four-story brownstones. Her room had ornate molding and a white marble fireplace veined in gray that had been bricked up. Her landlady told her never to go to up the street to the right, the neighborhood was dangerous.

She did walk right, one Sunday morning when the street was silent. The dangerous were surely still in bed, sleeping off Saturday night. The brownstones were even grander in their decay, five stories. Gentrification was crawling up the street behind her but hadn’t gotten here. She looked up the narrow face of a brownstone, and through the windows of the top floor she could see sky. There was no roof. It was magical, like a Magritte painting.

The door was heavy and peeling brown paint. She thought maybe people were living on the first floor. She was not a brave person, not really, and tended to do things she thought were brave on a kind of sheer nervous energy. Besides, the door would be locked, this wasn’t the part of New York where there were doormen. This is where the doormen went home to live.

The door was unlocked.

The hallway was dim, the wallpaper was old, ‘60s Jetson style patterns. The door to the apartment on the right was halfway open and there was a worn brown couch and rug, and an orange Hot Wheels track. She hesitated but went up, drawn by that sky.

The other doors were closed, but on the third floor she might have heard someone talking to someone. The fourth floor had a door open to a half-gutted apartment, construction debris and newspapers piled so they reached halfway to the ceiling. It smelled like mold and chemicals. People probably shouldn’t be living here. She paid $85 a week for a room, which was a lot of money for rent. Especially in a month with five Fridays.

This was stupid. But she would never walk right again, she knew. The stairs were sunlit and water damaged. She avoided the center of each step and tested her weight.

Someone had tried to tidy up the top floor, piling the brick and plaster in a corner. The walls were mostly gone, their footprints visible in the floorboards. The wide wood planks felt solid. It was a between space. Like she was a between woman. She loved New York. She loved the subway stations, the stairwells faintly smelling of urine. She loved the way that when the train approached the station, the napkins and bits of trash would lift in the displacement of air, and she would hold her breath and then after a pause, the train would come in, braking hard. But she didn’t feel part of it.

(Watch yourself on the subway stairs, that’s where you’ll get mugged because it’s harder to run. If someone attacks you on the street between the subway and home, crawl under a car, and if you can, snap off a car antenna. Make yourself not worth the trouble. But she had never had a problem because she was mousy and poor and not worth it.)

She went to one of the windows she had seen from the street. On the sidewalk she saw someone like herself, a foreshortened white woman in a blue jacket. The woman started to look up, a flash of reflection across her glasses, and Amelia stepped back.

She was out of synch. She had been out of synch in Ohio; queer, bookish. She was out of synch here; fearful, trying to remember to say “soda” instead of “pop.” What would happen if that Amelia, the one on the sidewalk, came up here?

She was foolish, someone on the street had looked a little like her but couldn’t be her, she was right here.

But the other Amelia was still there, and she looked as if she was about to step into the street.

Seriously, it wasn’t another Amelia, and they weren’t going to cross the street, try the door, come up the stairs. But Amelia couldn’t wait, couldn’t stand to stay there. She forgot being careful and pounded down the stairs. On the first floor, she saw the door start to slowly open, and blind with fear, she went into the apartment with the Hot Wheels.

If someone was in the back, past the kitchen, into the bedrooms, they didn’t come out to ask her what the hell she was doing there. They might, at any moment.

She couldn’t breathe. She heard faint steps on the stairwell and as soon as she no longer heard them, she eased the apartment door open, and went outside.

There was no one on the street except a guy smoking a cigarette. He belonged here. He gave a her a look that said she didn’t. She jogged across the street, walked briskly home to her room with its fireplace. It was usually a safe place but today it felt like the rest of New York, impermeable.

She saw the other Amelia three more times in New York. She thought maybe if she stood by the elevator of the office building where she worked, and was there when the other Amelia got off, she might sync up. But she was safe this way. She felt hard to notice, as if she was just at an angle to reality.

She left New York City spat out by economics and the constant sense of clawing against something that wouldn’t let her in. She got a job in a bank back in Ohio where the pressure was huge, but never on her, although it never felt as if Ohio fit quite like it used to after New York. Sarah said, “Nothing ever bothers you. I really admire that! How do you do that?”

But the server came so Amelia didn’t have to answer.

People didn’t notice when she left work at 5:00. She saw the other Amelia but she was always going in another direction.

That was lonely, but safe.

© 2023 Maureen McHugh

Maureen McHugh has written four novels and two collections of short fiction. Her first novel, China Mountain Zhang, won a James Tiptree Award (now the Otherwise Award) and was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. She teaches writing courses online as part of Story Kitchen Studios. She is at work on a new novel.

The Haunting of Her Body

by Elsa Sjunneson

As of the writing of this essay, I have had a cough for five weeks. No one can figure out why. The cough plateaus after medication but does not cease, lingering in my body like a ghost.

I am tired of living in a haunted house, and I don’t mean the property that I own. I mean the body that I live in.

Haunted house stories are manifestations of lived experience. They tell us what it is like to live somewhere that is heavy with reminders or contains lots of surprises.

I have enough ghostly manifestations like this cough that my body could be the setting of a Mike Flanagan show, with hundreds of hidden ghosts spliced neatly into each frame.

So why do I love haunted houses and horror so much, if every single day of my life is the site of a haunting, a medical mystery that will probably go unsolved?

Because at the end of most haunting stories—even Flanagan horrors like The Haunting of Hill House, Bly House, and The Midnight Club, there is so much closure.

There is closure for the reader, who gets to walk away from the creeping horror when we find out who is behind the haunting, or what caused it in the first place. But living in a haunted body causes no such relief.

I think one of the things that makes these stories particularly interesting to me is that they do, in fact, create false closure. Perhaps you are able to end the haunting of your house, but does it end up becoming the home for another? What’s to say another ghost won’t come along and try to take up residence?

That’s the experience of living in a chronically ill body like mine. You’re never quite sure which time is the last time.

This is what’s so compelling to me about Mike Flanagan’s newest show: The Midnight Club. It features terminally ill characters who are obsessed with telling horror stories. This particular framing device really resonated for me as a disabled person who loves horror and who lives in a body not quite like theirs, but similar. I was surprised to see this show on Netflix of all places: a proudly disabled story with the kind of snark about what it’s like to live in bodies that don’t particularly want to listen was revelatory.

Let’s start with Dana. Dana is the show’s Irish power chair user. Dana’s character is an excellent representation of disability, comparable to disability autofiction. Look no further than Alice Wong’s Year of the Tiger for an example of the kind of storytelling I mean, which interweaves real history with imagined reality in the same way Dana’s story “The Two Danas” does. In stories structured like these two, the reader cannot be completely sure of what’s true or not, or where the real experience of Dana’s disability came from. (For the most part, disability origin stories are always obscured in darkness. I used to tell people my heart surgery scar was either from a tiger attack or from a swordfight.) But Dana’s story, even with the appearance of the Devil, has truth to it. Truth in self-harm. Truth in failure. Truth in Dana’s body being uncontrollable, and therefore difficult for her to accept.

Dana is a disabled person I know. I’ve seen her rage, her snark, her storytelling in other people’s experiences.

And then there is Spencer, who I also know. Spencer, the main character of The Midnight Club, has HIV. Watching Spencer’s story was hard for me, because his story was not just a true one when it came to his disease. In the moment when he rolled back his sleeves to show a lesion from Kaposi sarcoma (a type of cancer associated with advanced HIV infections) on his arm, I gasped. Harder still were the ways in which his illness and his life have divorced him from his family. For Spencer to be welcome back home, for him to feel his mother’s support, he would have to go back to church, have to stop identifying as a gay man, have to say that he had done something wrong.

In Spencer’s story what I see is the true gift of disabled community. When it comes to the end of Spencer’s story for his group of horror obsessed friends, he admits that he knows he is loved. Maybe not by the people who raised him, but he has found new community.

The Midnight Club beautifully portrays this experience of new family, and the knowledge that even if the people who raised you are ableist, or sexist, or homophobic, you can find new family in the people who will always tell you that your disabled life (and death) are worth living and honoring.

Of course, the show has its problems. Set in the ‘90s with a host of ableist language, but it features an honest look at disability and its relationship to the horror genre nonetheless.

I will continue to lean on my friends, to address the hauntings of my body, and to find humor in the fact that sometimes I feel like a cyborg. I will sometimes tell stories about my body to make it more livable, and I will never, ever, take the dark elevator down to the basement by myself. That kind of adventure is reserved for a group of disabled friends with flashlights, ready to investigate the haunting that’s real: the ghosts that haunt old houses, not the illnesses that we experience. Sometimes the lights we carry with us come from the stories that we remember. The Midnight Club shines bright in those dark elevator shafts. And we don’t have to go alone; Dana and Spencer are the kind of characters who would always take a hand and come with us.

© 2023 Elsa Sjunneson

Elsa Sjunneson is a Deafblind author and editor living in Seattle, Washington. Her fiction and nonfiction writing has been praised as “eloquence and activism in lockstep” and has been published in dozens of venues around the world. She has been a Hugo Award finalist seven times, and has won Hugo, Aurora, and BFA awards for her editorial work. When she isn’t writing, Sjunneson works to dismantle structural ableism and rebuild community support for disabled people everywhere. Her work includes her debut memoir Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism, her Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla novel Sword of the White Horse, and her episode for Radiolab “The Helen Keller Exorcism.”

Something in the Way: AI-Generated Images and the Real Killer

by John Picacio

When I began my career as a science fiction/fantasy/horror artist back in the ‘90s, illustrations on book covers were created by illustrators. Or I should say, by human ones. Even back then, change was coming. It was in the wind.

Before that, comics were my first love, my first language. I was a child of the 1970s. Superhero comics were my first memories. That perfect alchemy of words and four-color pictures, drawn with pencils and inks, printed on cheap pulp paper between slick covers—Batman, Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Justice League of America, Action Comics, the Spectre and more. I wanted to be a comic book artist and storyteller, more than anything else. That dream carried me through high school until I took a college detour through architecture.

After graduation, I was working by day as an intern architect, while writing and drawing my own comics in the wee hours. Those self-published comics ended up getting me noticed by book publishers and that’s when the science fiction and fantasy publishing world came knocking. In 1995, Mojo Press asked me to illustrate a 30th anniversary edition of Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock. I knew who Moorcock was but I wasn’t sure the job was for me. I still wanted to do comics. The publisher took me to Mike’s house. Mike talked. I listened. And that changed everything.

The way he carried himself as a professional, his humility despite being one of the undisputed giants of the field, his high standards and pure enthusiasm for SF/F made me fall in love with the book business. Mike became a mentor to me. I learned so much from him. He was part of a continuum across decades of SF/F literature, and I wanted to be part of that. Building a career as an SF/F cover artist was all I wanted to do. But even then, I realized that SF/F was a last bastion for illustrated cover art in the book industry as a whole. Iconic artworks created by extraordinary visionary illustrators were once seen across all forms of pop cultures and across all divisions of literature. But in the publishing business, SF/F was one of the few markets where that work was still hotly pursued and consumed.

Around the turn of the millennium though, I was seeing more and more publishers using less cover illustration, which may have saved them a few dollars, but generally made for some very forgettable covers. My career was ascending though, and cover art opportunities were coming my way fast and furious. I wondered if the next generation after me would be able to make a living creating book cover art, as I was doing. I realized it probably wasn’t going to happen for them, and I was probably amongst the last of the American illustrators who would have the chance to make a living solely creating book cover art. I was able to do that for the first ten years or so of my career, with some magazine illustration sprinkled in. But for the most part, book cover art was how I paid my bills and mortgage for over a decade.

As this current COVID-stricken decade has unfolded, the smart move has been finding new ways to diversify my earning ability as an illustrator. The one that made the most sense to me was creating my own stories, or at least co-creating them, and being part of the ownership of a story, rather than just the art that heralded it. It’s a future I’m still working toward, even as I study modern greats like Brom, Shaun Tan, Yoshi Yoshitani, Ruth Sanderson, Charles Vess, Dave McKean, and Greg Manchess blazing their own illustrated story trails.

Amidst this evolution, along come artificial intelligence (AI)-generated images (AKA “AI art,” which is not a phrase we should concede carelessly). AI image platforms are going to be a destructive force in the coming months and years. They’re evolving on a daily basis, and it’s clear that working artists are going to be decimated by this event. These platforms function by stealing the published work of working artists and using it without permission. This is not about inspiration or using creative work as reference. This is theft. Plain and simple.

I don’t subscribe to mantras that proclaim “art is dead” or “all pro illustrators are screwed,” BUT yes, the livelihoods of all working visual artists are in grave danger. The viable market is about to have a massive contraction. For writers and consumers of the written word, this may seem like a “ho-hum, I’m really busy here, thoughts and prayers” moment. But trust me, we’re all going to be lesser for this seismic shift. Each and every one of us. Yes, even you, dear writer. And oh yes, especially you too, dear reader.

Artists must always evolve. It’s in the nature of the role, right? But take note—the arrival of AI-generated imagery now heralds that artists who don’t have a very strong and urgent “why” baked into their future visuals will be obsolete. Probably already are. Why? Because the exponentially rising, infinite, crushing tsunami of technically pretty “hey, it looks cool” artistic dreck we’re about to experience is going to be unprecedented and “good enough” will become the standard for the vast majority of the audience who can type a few prompts and get what that they think they want.

Read that again—the AI itself may not be the end of art. It will be the end of many, many livelihoods. Entire portions of industry and work gone for good. Devastating. Heartbreaking. Culture-changing. But for those professional visual artists who do overcome that—an audience’s belief that “good enough” is sufficient will be the killer we can’t survive.

So it’s gonna come down to the question of “why.” Why does that next picture need to exist, and the power of that “why” will be what separates the magical work from the mundane. Has that always been the case? Yeah, I think so. But communicating the urgency of that “why” in the work itself is where we now are, and arguably is the most essential remaining value left for visual creators.

So that takes us back to asking if all the loss is worth the dopamine gains. Right now, the most addicted and binge-driven are the ones running the conversation about AI-generated images. Might be a need for that to change. The “why” takes us back to story and narrative, and not just narrative in a textual sense, but the kind of pure visual narrative meaning that words can’t do (sorry, wordsmiths). And yeah, I think AI is coming for the writers too. No doubt.

Machine-driven narrative will get better and better as the taste for popular narrative gets more and more watered down. And again, it won’t necessarily be because the AI does better work than working visual artists and writers, but because the audience settles for accepting the mass convenience of “good enough,” drowning out the need for quality of content. Audiences cherish convenience over quality. It’s what drives our ethos, at least here in the U.S. No reason to believe people are suddenly going to wake up and change.

The arrival of AI generated-images (and how industry chooses to use it) goes far beyond what happened upon the advent of photography or even Photoshop. This is NOT the same conversation. AI is a tidal shift from the center of human context that defines meaning. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Choose your yellow brick road very wisely, folks.

Personally, I’m gonna evolve. I’ll find a way forward amidst the carnage. To be clear, that does not mean I will collaborate with AI. That’s not my path. Mine lies in the opposite direction, finding ways for my most commercial work to be imbued with my most personal values. Same as I’ve done for more than twenty-five years—but with even more urgency, more context, more meaning, more “why.” What I’m not sure I can survive is that gaping disconnect of the human audience settling for “good enough.” That giant whale shape just under the surface…that swelling loss of human value that now extends beyond the horizon. It’s getting bigger. And unless we all recognize it—and our responsibility to oppose it—I realize that’s the one that may take us all down.

Beware of “good enough,” friends. Expect the best from art. Expect originality. Do not settle. Resist. Persist.

Back to the drawing board.

© 2023 John Picacio

John Picacio is one of the most acclaimed American artists in SF/F over the last decade. His body of work features major cover illustrations for books by George R. R. Martin, Rebecca Roanhorse, Leigh Bardugo, Silvia Moreno Garcia, Michael Moorcock, James Tiptree, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Sheri S. Tepper, Harlan Ellison, C. Robert Cargill, Jeffrey Ford, Joe R. Lansdale, and many, many more. His accolades include three Hugo Awards, four Locus Awards, nine Chesley Awards, the World Fantasy Award, the 2020 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award and, the Inkpot Award.

Please visit www.johnpicacio.com

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What a Fourteenth Century Legal Case Can Teach Us about Storytelling

by Annalee Newitz

A scandal has fractured the world of medieval historians, and it turns on the meaning of a single word of Medieval Latin. The word is “raptus” and it appears in a batch of late fourteenth century legal documents pertaining to Geoffrey Chaucer, famous author of The Canterbury Tales. In late 2022, two scholars announced a discovery: a few lines of medieval legalese, penned on narrow strips of parchment, completely transformed how they had understood “raptus”—and Chaucer’s life. More importantly, they gained a rare glimpse into the life of Chaucer’s servant Cecily Chaumpaigne, and the crap she had to deal with on the job.

To understand the scandal, however, we must follow the word “raptus” across the centuries, from an internecine court battle in 1379, to Chaucerian scholar’s parlors in 1873, a feminist outrage in 1993, and the completely unexpected archival discovery in 2022. Along the way, a story emerges—a story about the act of storytelling, and who gets to do it.

Schoolkids in English-speaking countries are taught about Geoffrey Chaucer as a great medieval poet. But he was also a high-ranking public official and diplomat who left behind a complicated paper trail in various archives of the court. There are over a thousand legal and business documents that detail his whereabouts, his jobs, and his personal affairs. These scraps of paper are of interest to Chaucer nerds, but also to historians generally. They offer us a portrait of middle-class life during a turbulent period that encompassed both the apocalyptic Black Plague and the subsequent Peasants’ Revolt.

Chaucer was about five years old when the bubonic plague hit London in 1348, killing at least half of its residents over the next four years. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like for young Geoffrey, growing up among adults who obsessed constantly about an unimaginable horror he could barely remember. Still, he managed to lead a very privileged life. As the son of a winemaker who sold goods to the royal family, Chaucer was the rare example of a non-aristocrat who rubbed shoulders with London’s ruling class. Educated and well-trained in war and diplomacy, he rose through the ranks first as a foreign diplomat, then a customs official at the Port of London, and finally a justice of the peace.

Because of his social status, Chaucer wasn’t directly affected by one of the worst outcomes of the plague: a law called the Statute of Laborers, enacted by the landholding classes after the plague burned itself out in 1351. After half the nation’s labor force perished in the plague, the laborers remaining were suddenly much more valuable. They could reasonably demand more money for their work. To prevent this, the Statute of Laborers limited wages to their pre-pandemic levels. It also prevented employers from poaching laborers from their neighbors with the promise of higher wages. The existential crisis of the plague years had morphed into an economic one.

Frustrated with the unfair wage freeze and job restrictions, laborers organized a series of “Peasants’ Revolts” all across the country in 1381. In London, where Chaucer leased a set of modest but cozy rooms over Aldgate, the revolt became violent. Several of the poet’s wealthy neighbors were dragged from their houses and murdered for the ways they had treated their servants under the Statute of Laborers. Chaucer’s “raptus” legal case was brought in 1379 and concluded in 1380, just a few months before the Peasants’ Revolt. So we have to hold that in mind, to understand this case against a backdrop of brewing worker uprisings.

Now flash forward roughly half a millennium to 1873, when a Chaucer scholar named Frederick J. Furnivall discovered the first document in the raptus case—a quitclaim, or withdrawal of a legal claim, from May 4, 1380. In it, a baker’s daughter named Cecily Chaumpaigne said she released Chaucer from “all manner of actions related to my raptus.” Given that the word “raptus” is generally translated as “rape” or “abduction,” it appeared that Chaumpaigne had accused Chaucer of rape and then withdrawn the accusation for unknown reasons. The idea was an unwholesome blot on the life of a beloved poet, and many nineteenth and twentieth century scholars tried to downplay or deny it. One argued that such a great poet couldn’t possibly be a rapist. Another joked that Chaucer was just having a bit of sexy fun.

But then in 1993, a researcher found another quitclaim related to Chaucer’s raptus case, filed in a different court by Chaumpaigne, in which the word “raptus” had mysteriously been removed. This seemed a bit fishy, as if Chaucer had somehow used his legal acumen and connections at court to cover up a dark crime. And it led to some extremely acrimonious disagreements in English literature departments.

Spurred by advances in feminist studies at the turn of the twenty-first century, medieval scholars like Samantha Katz Seal and her colleagues began to explore what it meant for Chaucer to be both a great poet and a rapist. They argued that the patriarchy isn’t just a blunt hammer that oppresses women overtly—it is also a nuanced force, creating alloys of beauty and horror, poetry and violence. In a recent article, Seal argued that it is possible to teach Chaucer as an important figure, while also acknowledging that his work contains violent misogyny and racism. Other scholars raged at Seal’s work, claiming that she was trying to “cancel” a poet who died over 600 years ago.

This debate was essentially about historical worldbuilding. How should we recreate the social world of Geoffrey Chaucer, a wealthy medieval man, in modern-day classrooms? Obviously, the concept of patriarchy would have been foreign to the poet and his contemporaries. Does that mean we should dismiss rape accusations with the same indifference that Chaucer’s friends probably did? Or should we, as Seal urged, consider the rape a new key to understanding his work? It certainly added a layer of meaning to the many sexist assumptions and misogynistic jokes in his poetry. Whatever answer a scholar chose would profoundly affect the way they explained this fourteenth century celebrity to twenty-first century students.

Then, in the early 2020s, a researcher at The National Archives of the UK named Euan Roger discovered two new historical documents related to the raptus case that changed everything. Roger was working with Sebastian Sobecki, a medieval literature scholar at the University of Toronto, who was trying to figure out how Chaucer managed to get the word “raptus” taken out of the second quitclaim. He asked Roger to start looking further back in time, trying to find other documents that might be related to the case.

Roger stumbled across the original court filings, which blew his mind. In a blog post about the discovery, Roger and Sobecki wrote:

The first of the two newly discovered records is a warrant dated 9 April 1380 (the first day of the Easter law term), in which Cecily Chaumpaigne appointed two attorneys, Edmund Herryng and Stephen Falle, to act on her behalf. They were appointed, not against Chaucer, however, but against a man named Thomas Staundon. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, they were not appointed to act for Chaumpaigne as a plaintiff in the case brought before the court, but as a defendant, against charges brought under the Statute and Ordinance of Labourers… Chaucer also appointed the attorney Stephen (del) Falle to answer charges brought against him by Thomas Staundon.

This was a truly unexpected left turn. First of all, it turned out that Chaucer and his servant Chaumpaigne were both being sued by this guy Thomas Staundon—and they shared at least some of the same legal team. Plus, it wasn’t a suit related to “raptus” at all, but instead a dispute triggered by the controversial Statute of Laborers. So who was Staundon and why were Chaucer and Chaumpaigne hiring lawyers to defend themselves against his claims?

The answer came in the second document Roger discovered, which was the original writ, from October 1379. In it, Staundon claimed [sic]:

The aforesaid Geoffrey admitted and retained Cecily Champayn, formerly the servant of the aforesaid Thomas, in his service at London, who has departed from the same service before the end of the agreed term, without reasonable cause or licence of Thomas himself, into the service of the said Geoffrey.

Staundon added that he asked Chaucer to return Chaumpaigne to his service, but Chaucer had refused, causing a “grievous loss” to Staundon. It appears that Staundon was trying to force Chaumpaigne back into his service by invoking the Statute of Laborers, which forbade employers from poaching servants. Suddenly, we have an entirely new view of the situation. Staundon was trying to prevent his employee from taking a job for higher pay, and was using every method and every law at his disposal.

Returning to the original quitclaims—both with and without the word “raptus,”—Roger and Sobecki were able to recontextualize what had happened. The word raptus was being used metaphorically, in this legal context, to refer to “the physical act of Chaumpaigne leaving Staundon’s service—using the language of ‘abduction’ to represent a physical transfer from one household to another.” It would seem that Chaumpaigne released Chaucer from the “raptus” accusation so that Staundon could no longer claim she had been abducted. This would have prevented Staundon from forcing Chaumpaigne back into his employ.

Given how many court filings it required to get Chaumpaigne out of a job she didn’t want, it’s easy to imagine how hard it would have been for someone who didn’t have the means (or powerful friends like Chaucer) to help them. Chaumpaigne’s lawsuit—for it is truly her lawsuit—is one of the few surviving examples of the everyday conditions that led to the Peasants’ Revolt.

Scholars had misunderstood what happened—and the word “raptus”—because they had an incomplete context, both legally and historically. This was a case about labor abuse, not sexual assault. The discovery was so explosive that it was even covered in the mainstream media. Inevitably, many headlines trumpeted gleefully that Chaucer had been “wrongly accused of rape for 150 years.” But Chaucer’s innocence or lack thereof was never the point.

As Sobecki and Rogers pointed out in a special issue of The Chaucer Review, the raptus debate isn’t about canceling Chaucer. It’s about how to tell stories about Chaucer’s world from more perspectives than, well, Chaucer’s. It means asking what Chaumpaigne wanted, and what kind of legal recourse she could use to get it.

There is no pure, unfettered access to true history—but there is the hope of understanding how complex people’s relationships were in the past. Even as the raptus case was unfolding in 1379, it’s obvious that Chaumpaigne and Staunton had very different ideas about what was going on. Chaucer probably had yet another idea. We don’t even know who first decided to use the word “raptus” in the case. Was it Staunton? The lawyers? The bureaucrats who ran the various courts where the case was heard? On top of that, there are intriguing new scenarios we might spin up about why Chaucer was breaking labor laws to help Chaumpaigne. Perhaps he was sympathetic to the demands of laborers? Or maybe his desires were actually predatory.

It’s frustrating that we’ll never be sure what Cicely Chaumpaigne experienced in Staunton’s employ, and why she was willing to go to court to get a different job. But we do know what happens when modern male scholars are presented with evidence of rape. They hide it. They laugh it off. They claim that good poets can’t be rapists.

Put another way, the raptus case lets us think critically about the way Chaucerians have traditionally told stories about the poet’s life. Feminist scholar Seal pointed out that male Chaucerians spent decades shutting down feminist colleagues who wanted to discuss what seemed at the time a credible rape accusation. For Seal, the raptus scandal is about nineteenth and twentieth century debates over female autonomy, not what Chaucer did in 1379. She writes:

It is a story not about Chaucer’s attitudes to women, but about the attitudes of Chaucerian critics to the female creatures who, by claiming their own humanity, by asserting their rights to vote, attend college, and even, by the 1970s, start competing for English department jobs, seemed to be undermining the very edifices of race and class and gender that had seemed as if they would always be there to lift men of (somewhat variable) genius up.

We always look at history through the tinted lenses of the present. But the act of trying to find connections with people in the past, of pushing our empathy backwards into the 1300s, helps us to know ourselves. This is not about erasing history; it’s about understanding that history belongs to us. By telling new stories about the past, we broaden the canvas to see what was actually going on outside the narrow corridors of wealth and power.

There will always be more interpretations and more perspectives to consider, many of them contradictory. That’s how history works, and that’s how storytelling works. Put another way, good worldbuilding is never finished.

© 2023 Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age and Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in science. They’re also the author of the novels The Terraformers (forthcoming in January 2023), The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous, which won the Lambda Literary Award. As a journalist, they are a writer for the New York Times and elsewhere, and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They have published in The Washington Post, Slate, Popular Science, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among others. They are the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. Previously, they were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.

The Magic of the Right Story

by A. T. Greenblatt

I’ve been thinking a lot about stories lately.

Well, I’m always thinking about stories. To be more specific, I’ve been wondering why certain stories find us at particular times, both as writers and readers. Those rare, magical occurrences when you read a novel, or essay, or play, and it is exactly what you needed in that moment, a ringing of a bell within you, the echoes of which will reverberate within you for years.

I’ll venture a guess that most of us carry the names of a few of these stories around with us.

So what makes that magic work, and as a writer, how the hell do you recreate it?

There’s a certain magic too, when a story you’re writing starts to speak to you and then, later, when it starts to click together. Like when you’re solving a jigsaw puzzle, and suddenly all those islands of pieces you’ve managed to assemble begin to come together to form a cohesive whole.

It’s those moments of magic that keep me writing stories.

I’ve been thinking about finding the right story lately because I have been having trouble writing. I’ve picked up, started, created new revision files for a dozen different stories over the last few months, but they have all remained silent and unknowable. For the first time in my career, I’ve failed to deliver a solicited story and have requested more time for almost all of my writing assignments.

The only thing I’ve managed to write is a pseudo-fairytale about a woman who gets caught up in trying to redirect a giant, perpetual motion machine.

I know why I’m struggling to write. It’s 2022 and the future is terrifying. Many businesses have reopened and live shows have returned, but the pandemic has taken a toll in both overt and subtle ways. Earlier this year, I completely upended my comfortable life, moved to New York City, and started a new job in an industry I knew nothing about. I recognize the cause of my exhaustion. But what I don’t know is how to find my way back to that magic.

Am I using this essay as an attempt to figure that out, and am I taking you, the reader, down this particular rabbit hole with me?

Yes.

It’s nothing I wouldn’t do in a story anyway.

I was fairly lucky during the height of the pandemic, in many ways, not the least of which was that I had enough focus left for reading and writing in that infinite, stressful stretch of time from 2020 and 2021. Reading has always been a form of escapism to me and I needed it badly in those lonely months. I read and listened to around 120 books in 2021, hungry for stories in a way I hadn’t been for years. I consumed a great deal of speculative fiction, but also mysteries, biographies, romance, memoirs, and thrillers. I borrowed books through the library app randomly, barely glancing at the title or genre.

Before the pandemic, I could point at a handful of books that resonated throughout my life: The Hobbit when I was nine, Holes by Louis Sachar when I was a little older, Kelly Link’s short story collection Get in Trouble a few years into my writing career.

That resonating magic as a reader for me has always been about shifting the way I think about what stories are capable of, particularly in terms of protagonist and structure.

But something changed during the pandemic—the stories that resonated for me captured a moment or a mood that I myself struggled to articulate at the time. Notes from an Apocalypse by Mark O’Connell captured my anxieties about the climate crisis and Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata struck a chord about personal success and happiness.

I didn’t quite realize how badly I was craving a story driven by quiet, personal stakes, but not at the expense of the fantastical world building until I read Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. Its dedication reads: “For anyone who could use a break” and I remember thinking “Oh my god, that’s exactly what I needed” and “How the hell do I do that too?”

So how do you create a story that resonates with readers?

As a writer, you will most likely never know. If your story has a profound impact on a reader, those types of moments are personal, quiet, and sometimes not fully realized until years later. When a story is published, you don’t even know if it will find its audience.

But that doesn’t stop me from trying to create that magic for someone else. I’ve looked back and realized that at the heart of every story that resonated with me, there’s an emotional element that reflects something that I only half realized myself or I felt alone in.

There are many ways to tell a story, but I’ve always believed having a strong emotional core behind the imagination and the ideas is the best way to engage your audience.

Sometimes I need to go back and read a previous published piece, usually because I have to answer a question about it and I don’t remember what I wrote. Because I believe in emotionally engaging stories, I am often using my own as a starting point for a piece. So my older stories have become a time capsule of sorts, because I’m often reminded of what I was feeling or thinking about when I was writing or redrafting a story.

For example, my story “A Record of Our Meeting With the Grand Faerie Lord of Vast Space and Its Great Mysteries, Revised” published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies in February 2022, was written during a particularly low point in my personal life. When Scott Andrews asked me to write a science fantasy story for that issue, I had grand ideas of blending magic and quantum mechanics, about people who change the world when no one thinks they can. But then I injured myself and for a few weeks I could barely walk. At the same time, I was interviewing for a new job and working 70 hours a week between engineering, writing, and job hunting. I’d been at it for months.

Except the work felt like it was leading nowhere, nothing was changing. I was burnt out, and I didn’t know what to do.

So what I ended up writing, if you take away the clever structure, was a story about a tea party with space fairies centered around a character who just really, really wanted to get unstuck, literally, from his current situation. Even as I was writing it, I mourned the fact that I had to put my other, more interesting idea away. But I had been creating fiction long enough to recognize this was the story that was speaking to me and one that I could write at that time.

As Charlie Jane Anders says in her excellent collection of essays Never Say You Can’t Survive, “Write the thing that you’re ready and excited to write—not the thing that you feel the moment calls for, or the story that you think will fix every broken thing in the world.”

Just in case I sounded dismissive of that story, please know I am incredibly proud of it. It’s weird and complicated, while still having the heart I wanted it to have. Despite being tired and stretched thin, I pushed myself as a writer by telling it. It was the story I needed to tell in that moment.

Who knows, it might be the story someone needs too.

Since starting this essay two months ago and finishing it now, I have found an apartment to call home in the city. I’ve taken a vacation, and I have the place and time to zone out and replay video games I’ve already spent too much time playing.

I’m hungry for books and audiobooks again. Better still, stories are starting to talk to me. Sometimes, on walks or on the subway, a piece of a story I was struggling with over the summer, clicks into place.

Because after months of thinking about it, I’ve learned something. That magical resonance I crave is not magic, not really.

It’s being open and constantly seeking out new stories and new story types as a reader. It’s being willing to try and come back later, and trying it again.

The reason why so many books resonated with me over the pandemic was because I read so much, and so many different types of stories. The reason why my own stories carry that spark for me is because I’ve learned to listen to what my imagination or subconscious is ready to work on and not being afraid to feed pieces of myself into those stories.

There’s a line from that pseudo-fairytale story, the only thing I managed to write last summer, that resonates for me now.

But in the meantime, you’re slowly resurfacing from the chaos of change, taking your inner monologue’s run on sentences and distilling lists of them, giving it all a bit of shape. The ritual is comforting, like putting on old, familiar clothes, like rediscovering yourself in this new, strange life.

The magic of the right story is you being ready for it and being open to receive it.

Or trusting yourself to tell it, to find that piece that resonates within you, in whatever story you decide to create in this moment.

© A. T. Greenblatt

A.T. Greenblatt is a Nebula Award winning writer and mechanical engineer. She lives in New York City where she’s known to frequently subject her friends to various cooking and home brewing experiments. Her work has been nominated for a Hugo, Locus, and Sturgeon Award, has been in multiple Year’s Best anthologies, and has appeared in Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld, as well as other fine publications. You can find her online at http://atgreenblatt.com and on Twitter at @AtGreenblatt

The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm: Audio Writing

by Diana M. Pho

The past couple of years, podcasts and forms of audio entertainment have exploded in the media world. According to The Infinite Dial 2022 report from Edison Research, the media industry-wide resource, an estimated 62% of all Americans over 12 years old have listened to a podcast. Also referred to as “spoken word audio,” this content is a catch-all term that includes music, talk radio, news, longform narrative, journalism, true crime, audiobooks, and of course audio drama. How did this happen? Well, when you have a global pandemic, nothing signifies human connection faster and more regularly than your favorite hosts on a podcast.

Audio drama in particular has been my nut to crack while working in podcasts as a story producer. I’ve had writers of all backgrounds ask: how can I break into audio? Before working as an editor, I grew up as a drama club nerd and got a degree in performance studies. Yet writing for audio drama was still an evolving medium. Figuring out how to translate from the page to the .wav (or .mp3) has made me rethink a lot about the norms I had worked within the book space.

Audio drama is a form of theater, but not exactly the same as interpreting work onstage. Reading a play on-air or recording a stage performance is a type of audio fiction, but the outcome isn’t the same as drama written specifically for the medium. Most stage performances are written from a visual perspective. Likewise, audio drama also isn’t 100% the same as an audiobook or reading a story aloud. Prose stories are written with a perspective in mind: getting into the “shoes of a character.” Perhaps, the best way to figure out what makes a good audio drama is drawing the connections between the ear (sound, narrative’s external focus), the eye (visuals, clarity of setting and characters), and the arm (actions, clarity of scene movement).

THE EAR: LISTENING FOR DRAMA

First, let’s talk about what makes audio fiction different from audio drama. They both use sound to tell a story after all. Are we just nitpicking? Not really, because the roots of audiobooks are different from audio drama, which has impacted the way each format’s norms have evolved.

Audio fiction is a text that has always been intended to be read: short fiction, novels on tape, newspaper articles, magazine features, to name a few types. The first audiobooks were created for greater accessibility for blind people and were usually funded by grants or created specifically by publishers for the library and educational market. Then, starting in the 2000s, audiobook listening opened up in the market. Several reasons are behind this: commuter culture; the cheaper availability of audiobooks; the creation of iTunes and ripping audiobooks into .wavs and .mp3s for easier portability; the tradition of radio drama in the UK spilling over into other markets, as well as the popularity of certain audiobook narrators like George Guidall, Scott Brick, Jim Dale, Cassandra Campbell, Julia Whelan, and others.

Then, multicast audiobooks started happening. The 2006 audiobook of World War Z is a fantastic example, featuring a cast of over 30 different voices narrating the zombie apocalypse. Comics also started being adapted into audio drama, with Locke & Key being one of the first; the growth in comics as audio also led to the recent adaptation of the Sandman series.

Audio fiction as text read aloud emphasizes the interior experience of characters. While good prose “paints a mental picture,” exposition is a key tool. You can hear a character’s thoughts for a first person POV or an omniscient narrator. Magic systems can be broken down page by page. Prose expects the reader to see behind another character’s eyes and be taken on a journey through that experience.

On the other hand, audio drama has roots from the old school radio plays of the 1930s and 1940s. (Whenever I explain to anyone what an audio show is, I always say: “It’s like a modern version of old-school radio drama!” and then they respond, “Ah yes, like what people during the Depression/WWII listened to!” LOL).

The DNA of current audio drama has links to radio drama and podcasting, certainly. But I’ll also argue that modern radio drama also has a lot to do with interactive theater. Mainly because a listener’s expectations with audio drama are different from a reader’s and a book.

Interactive theater is when the audience member is asked to participate with the actors. Improv shows, for instance, have actors who solicit audience answers to guide their shows. Haunted houses are another, where the audience is led through the space and are expected to be scared by the cast. Shows like Sleep No More is a more sophisticated version, where audience members move through an open performance space, can touch all of the sets and props, and can even be pulled aside for a one-on-one performance with an actor. In the same way, an audio drama is asking the listener to be that audience; they are asking the listener to contribute their imagination in a more personalized, intimate way to explore the confines of the story. While a reader may sit inside another character’s shoes, an audio drama listener takes their own shoes and marks up the scenery with their footprints.

But how does an audio listener know where to tread? Renowned radio legend Norman Corwin once said, “Clarity and being able to convey meaning, emotion, attitude, through understandable language is a sine qua non of radio.… Comprehensibility is a must.” Likewise, audio dramatist Roger Gregg agrees that audio drama expectations create different associations using sound: “Storytelling using sound is different from audiobook-style fiction. It is more akin to visual performance.”

Clarity in an audio drama sets up expectations based on exterior trappings of storytelling. When thinking about the difference between audiobook and audio drama, a common assumption is that the exposition parts are given to the narrator, and the dialogue parts are given to actors. But audio drama also includes sound design to increase the depth of the world building. Some sound design might come across as minimalist or “one note,” but sound design establishes the acting and dramatic subtext as much as actual words do. Sound can help fill in how something happens in a more visceral, immediate way than simple prose. It can flesh out how a person walks, talks, moves, gestures. Most importantly, the sound itself embodies the world, a world open to personal interpretation to fill in the gaps.

An audio show focuses the listener’s attention to certain spots, lines, intonations, and action sequences. Focus should NOT be confused with “passive.” A listener is not letting the blasts of SFX wash over them. An audio drama asks for another level of engagement to build the story alongside the writer’s hand. For example, a setting might be described evocatively as, “in a summertime park, next to a bubbling brook,” in a script, but that SFX alone can create different images of brooks in a listener’s mind. Do these conflicting images negatively impact the story? Not necessarily, as long as the show makes it clear why that stream impacts the setting and the plot. Having a Google search result equivalent of creeks, streams, and brooks would not automatically ruin the intention behind the scene.

THE EYE: SOUND POINT OF VIEW

Making the visual into audio comes down to what is emphasized in the script—that is one of the major differences between a novel and an audio drama. Audio drama depends on the listener’s imagination to pull in individualized visuals, but that audio drama script is also written for a creative team: the director, the actors, the sound designer and sound engineer, among others.

Enough details about the setting should be included to let everyone be on “the same page” so to speak, while also leaving enough room to scribble additions in the margins. While not every scripted detail will actually appear in the final audio cut, any actor reading that set-up will understand the environment their character is entering. Likewise, the people sound designing the scene and making musical choices should know what they are getting into upfront. When I adapted the novella Marigold Breach into an audio drama, for example, the character backstories between our leads Lucan and Ven are explained in the stage directions on the very first page. The reveal doesn’t unfold in the story until Episode 7, but the actors and the production team are responsible for creating the surprise for the listener; they are not supposed to be surprised halfway through the table read.

While the script can be technical and detailed, the end results still allow for the listener’s “eye” to fill in the blanks that the audio doesn’t necessarily emphasize. Many audio dramas do not physically describe their characters, for instance. A listener may infer physical details from what a character says about themselves (i.e. TED: “I’m wearing my lucky Halloween socks!”), or how other characters describe them (i.e. “Nice skeleton socks, Ted.”) or how others treat them (i.e. “DAMMIT, TED, THOSE ARE MY JACK SKELLINGTON SOCKS!”) What details are kept or emphasized creates a very different picture and points of dramatic tension!

There are plenty of ways to help make the audio visual. What sonic tools can be considered when building this “movie in your mind?” Kc Wayland calls this “Sound Point of View” in his book Bombs Always Beep: Creating Modern Audio Theater. Here are some writing tools to help guide the audience when filling in the blanks in their imaginations

Vocals: Acting choices is key, but so is something as subtle as breathing. Accents are an obvious indicator in audio performance too. Moreover, the voice is the character. Distinct voices are crucial; voices that sound too alike can easily confuse a listener. But every other physical aspect could be up to the listener’s imagination! On a recent panel, an interesting example I heard a dramatist mention is how listeners tend to mentally cast a character as someone they know in real life who resembles that character!

Sound effects (SFX): These can come from a professional sound library, stock, or pre-recorded. Foley is customized sounds, created by professional designers fiddling with a bunch of cool trinkets and random do-hickeys to replicate sounds.

Music: A soundtrack is especially helpful when explaining the emotional backdrop of a scene, or the genre setting. Writers aren’t expected to ideate on the music, but even evocative descriptions of settings (ex. “A greasy spoon diner in an underwater colony”) or a historical period (ex. “The wind-blown steppes of what will be Mongolia”) can help foster imaginative compositions for the composer and sound designer.

Silence: Pauses, breaks, and sudden drops in sound design are tools a writer might not think to build into a script, but can be the most powerful.

THE ARM: CLARITY OF SCENE MOVEMENT

In theater, film, and visual performance, the eye follows motion. How a character gestures, runs, eats, stims, enters or exits a room—everything can draw the eye. In theater rehearsal, recording a character’s movements across a stage is referred to as “blocking.” In prose, I’ve also advised fiction writers to be aware of how their characters are “blocked” in a scene, to make sure they are not simply floating voices in a space. In audio, that rule counts for twice as much!

In prose, exposition and scene setting can physically describe as much detail as you would like. In audio drama, the same amount of description can be distilled through sound design. More than that, however, prose uses white space, chapter headings, and those little “scene break asterisks” to show scene changes and help break down the pacing. In audio, the dramatist should be mindful of how scene transitions are made, and how to pace a story so the ear can follow the plot.

Often, writers new to audio tend to “overwrite” in ways that make the narrative flow too dense to follow. Some common mistakes by new audio writers:

Excessive description: Different from “purple prose” in novels, excessive description is a dense amount of exposition or internal dialogue that can halt a scene, or make the listener lose the thread of the narration.

Dialogue for the sake of dialogue: Too much banter or seemingly aimless conversation could drag down a scene, especially if the listener doesn’t understand why the conversation is important enough to pay attention to.

Too many scene changes: This is particularly a common mistake made by screenwriters transitioning into audio. A lot of quick switches between POVs or physical places, even if each scene has a specific SFX or sound design, may be confusing to follow. The only exception to that would be comedy—but its success, of course, is all in the timing. 🙂

Creating effective action sequences and pacing is also unique to audio. The SFX linked to physical combat and action (guns, explosions, or punches and kicks landing) can become monotonous and repetitive. But to narrate all the physical action, ironically, also slows down the pacing!

So what can be a good remedy? How about introducing some dialogue instead?

A fantastic example of dialogue that enhances an action sequence can be found in the show Shipworm. In the first act, Wallace, a former army doctor, carries an injured coworker as they escape a burning building. While the sounds of alarms and the low roar of fire can be exciting, what grabs the listener’s attention is a very personal war story Wallace tells his companion to keep him conscious as they wade through the smoke and flames. The listener can’t tell where Wallace is going or how they are running through the building, but the physical blocking doesn’t matter. Wallace’s words anchor his friend’s awareness—and the listener’s ear—building tension and suspense until they finally exit the building as Wallace’s monologue wraps.

Audio fiction, audio drama and everything in between—while this is a general primer of what can make or break a good show, standards are changing all the time. The audio storytelling space is filled with a variety of voices and techniques. As more creators—writers, sound designers, musicians, actors, and others—get into audio drama, I’m sure the theories from various artistic backgrounds will continue to challenge the boundaries of aural tales. What I suspect will remain constant, however, is the expectation that an audience isn’t passive. A good story—whether read, heard, or performed—is never simply a “one note” experience.

© 2023 Diana M. Pho

Diana M. Pho is a queer Vietnamese-American independent scholar, playwright, and Hugo Award-winning fiction editor. She has over a decade of experience in book publishing, including the Tor Publishing Group and the Science Fiction Book Club. Diana has also most recently been part of Realm.fm as their Lead Creative Executive for Co-Productions & Partnerships developing thrilling and innovative audio dramas. Currently, Diana serves as Executive Editor for Erewhon Books. Additionally, she has a double Bachelor’s degree in English and Russian Literature from Mount Holyoke College and a Master’s in Performance Studies from New York University.

Building Better Worlds

by Javier Grillo–Marxuach

One of the more annoyingly misused phrases in our current era of shared multi-verses, trans-media franchises, and other pan-galactic gargle blasters is “world-building.” It’s an annoying expression because it comes up when someone, who commissions movies, television shows, or whatever filmed entertainment is called in our always-shifting modernity, describes the result of years of work by a large group of very creative people…usually while demanding the same of a single artist in the space of weeks or months.

Of course, it is possible for a single creator to create immense and richly detailed realms individually. I’ll rattle off the holy trinity of fantasy literature—J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Mervyn Peake—and let you fill in the blanks from there. Even in the fast-paced, high-world of television, at least one man—J. Michael Straczynski—is reputed to have created the entire universe and story arc of a five-year science-fiction “novel for television” before a single frame of film was shot.

While I have never fully bought into the narrative that all five seasons of Babylon 5 were completely crafted in its creator’s head before the show was made—and that the plan was so thorough as to include a set of “trapdoors” to account for possible contingencies (like the departure of the show’s star after the first season)—Straczynski’s accomplishment is towering. He singlehandedly wrote almost every single episode of a densely serialized sci-fi series that did, in fact, describe an entire universe, and we are all the better for it.

Still, Straczynski’s Olympian feat is not a sustainable template: Babylon 5 was made in a different era, with a very different and now non-existent business model (first-run syndication) which could sustain a very niche property for a much longer period than possible in the current media landscape—and which allowed a great deal more space for experimentation, vamping, filler, and the occasional complete failure of an episode. As much as Babylon 5 makes the case for the skill of its creator, it is also a singular work in the history of the medium: one which also showcases many reasons why in television, collaboration between many gifted artists under a strong shared vision tends to yield the most successful results.

Similarly, Tolkien, Lewis, and Peake had years to craft their novels (The Lord of the Rings was more than ten years in the writing), not to mention the ongoing feedback of colleagues and editors (Lewis and Tolkien were good friends who read and encouraged one another, as did Lewis and Peake). So where does that leave us mere mortals working in broadcast/streaming media with deadlines and budgets and executives breathing down our necks? How did the creators of successful world-building television series get there? How can you convince others that what you have created can withstand years of dramatic examination?

I have some answers. They are not THE answers, but rather pieces of a much greater answer, which I have seen work best in a lot of different environments from the Lost island, to the post-apocalyptic Earth of The 100, to the fantasy worlds of The Dark Crystal, and The Witcher. I bring these projects up specifically because none of them were my creation. They are all worlds to which I was invited as a collaborator, and which, I believe, succeeded because of the influx of creativity from multiple parties operating under a strong, clear vision. To me, these worlds succeeded in convincing the audience of their existence because they met one or more of the criteria I outline below.

We all want to believe that a lone genius blazing a heretofore unknown trail into the great narrative mystery is how “world-building” is done…and there are ample examples of this across many different media.

But here are some hints for the rest of us mere mortals…

ARTICULATE A CORE VISION

(AKA, WHAT’S PISSING YOU OFF?)

When George Orwell created the world of 1984, he was pissed off about the rise of fascism in Europe and the spectre of totalitarian authoritarianism rising by other names throughout Europe. Aldous Huxley was pissed off about current trends leading to a completely entertainment-driven culture that would eventually lead humanity to a Brave New World punctuated by a cruel and willful ignorance of reality. Margaret Atwood took real-life examples of horrifyingly misogynistic government policy around the world, rolled them all up into one dysfunctional state, and gave us The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments. Terry Gilliam saw the second half of the twentieth century as an era of individuality-destroying societal compromise and created Brazil. Suzanne Collins was pissed off about the deleterious effect of competitive reality television on the popular imagination, and that led her to create The Hunger Games.

While these worlds all exist in the sub-genre of dystopia, they clearly illustrate something important to world-building in all genres: much successful world-building balances on a central point that provokes a strong emotion in both creator and viewer. Knowing this point—and the emotions you want it to provoke, be it fear or wonder, or joy or sadness—and being able to articulate clearly and cogently to a television writing staff, or to collaborators in a feature film, is crucial to the success of the world being built.

Even a show ostensibly set in the real world—say Breaking Bad—depends on the successful creation of a world based on the development of a strong central organizing conceit. The world of Breaking Bad is every bit as fantastical and far-fetched as any science-fictional world I know: a realm of surreal coincidences, colorful over-the-top criminals like twin hitmen, paralyzed drug cartel masterminds who can only communicate by ringing a bell, hyperfocused fast-food franchise owners who occasionally conduct byzantine James Bondian international assassination plots, biological weapons of mass destruction created in basement labs, giant evidence-destroying electromagnets, and an endgame in which the protagonist is able to defeat his enemies by becoming an evil hybrid of Batman and MacGuyver who can kludge machine guns and a garage door opener into a remote-controlled robot weapon.

The universe in which Breaking Bad takes place is every bit as “constructed” as that of The Handmaid’s Tale. Though it shows us institutions we may think we know, the world of Breaking Bad built essentially a machine designed to ensure that Walter White goes—as Vince Gilligan’s pitch famously stated—”from Mister Chips to Scarface.” Breaking Bad was, then, built for—and organized around—the sole purpose of facilitating the spiritual corruption of an individual we assume to be a good man. The great feat of narrative storytelling the series so masterfully pulls off is to convince the audience episode in and out that the series takes place not just in our reality, but that the outlandish events of the series are somehow gritty, grounded, and completely plausible.

Similarly, one of the best and most built-out “worlds” in modern media is that of Star Trek. In this case, hundreds of hours of film and television have been made to support Gene Roddenberry’s belief that the human race can ascend to great heights by embracing diversity and tolerance. “For the human race,” Roddenberry once declared, “there are no limits.” Roddenberry even named the motto and sigil of the hyper-logical Vulcan race “the IDIC,” an acronym for “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” Even though his creation first spawned from the sentence “Wagon Train to the stars” it is Roddenberry’s core belief in our capacity to follow the better angels of our being that has driven the success of the franchise.

Regardless of how frequently in its fifty-plus year history Star Trek has tried to go “dark” or to examine the decay of institutions and morals Roddenberry might have imagined eternal (“democracy” and “civil rights” come to mind) the material always comes back to the optimistic core that powers its sense of awe and wonder. Star Trek has one message across its many iterations: humanity can improve its ways, humanity will improve its ways, and—having improved its ways—humanity will forge a path to the stars based not on its sins but its virtues.

To me, this is one of the greatest, strongest, and clearest visions I have ever seen in world-building, and the longevity of the franchise proves it. The universe of Star Trek is damn near infinite, but what makes it “Star Trek” is that conviction and how it keeps coming up on top no matter how many writers, directors, and producers—and they are well into the hundreds by now—get their chance at telling a story in this galaxy.

This doesn’t mean that all successful world-building can only take place if begun from a burning political, philosophical, or thematic concern. Many successful worlds start with something as prosaic as “Wagon Train to the stars” and become a defense of the very essence of humanity. The CW series The 100, for example, was based on a series of Young Adult books about a post-nuclear Earth orbited by a space station in which teenagers had to live under horribly oppressive conditions in order to survive, and was primarily concerned with the interpersonal relationships between these teens as they were cruelly jettisoned to the blighted planet below.

As adapted for television, The 100 found its footing and focus by pivoting away from its YA origins to focus on the moral compromises necessary for survival: a topic that made the show considerably bleaker, more brutal, and bloodier than its source material. The nihilism inherent in that belief—that survival and morality are fundamentally incompatible but we nevertheless struggle for both—also provided a narrative engine that powered seven seasons of television.

Similarly, Frank Herbert was already deep into a hobbyist/journalist’s study of hallucinogenic mycology and political ecology before the ideas that ultimately made up Dune coalesced into the whole we know today. The concept that appears to have unified many of Herbert’s varied interests was his growing interest in messiahs, cultures that have strong messianic traditions, and the danger inherent in seeing such figures as crucial to human advancement. From that more immediate and more political concern, all of Herbert’s obsessions coalesced into a massive universe that spawned not just his original novel and its five sequels but also three filmed adaptations—two of them with sequels—an upcoming television series about the Bene Gesserit, and a suite of almost twenty prequels, sequels, and equals shepherded by Herbert’s son. That a single—and also profoundly weird and druggy—novel from the sixties spawned all of this material over several decades just goes to show the importance of a compelling unifying concept in defining and designing a world. The right thematic concern in the right hands can release an incredible amount of narrative power.

All of which is to say, when creating a world, your most important question is, quite simply…

“What is my most important question?”

TROPES ARE YOUR BUILDING BLOCKS

DON’T FEAR THEM

The current vernacular of executive notes includes the homicidally annoying criticism that something “feels tropey.” What they actually mean by it is that something feels “clichéd” but I suppose enough of us sensitive snowflakes have taken umbrage over the years so as to require a less loaded term to lubricate the discussion.

There is even a website, www.tvtropes.com, that catalogues the use of tropes by media writers…with a not inconsiderable amount of attitude, I may add. That aside, the creators of this website are wise, and know something essential that even most writers and executives don’t. It is right in their introduction:

“A trope is a storytelling device or convention, a shortcut for describing situations the storyteller can reasonably assume the audience will recognize. Tropes are the means by which a story is told by anyone who has a story to tell. We collect them, for the fun involved.

Tropes are not the same thing as cliches. They may be brand new but seem trite and hackneyed; they may be thousands of years old but seem fresh and new. They are not bad, they are not good; tropes are tools that the creator of a work of art uses to express their ideas to the audience. It’s pretty much impossible to create a story without tropes.”

Next to highlighting the idea that tropes are neither bad nor good, the most important part of those two paragraphs is that tropes are the basic building blocks of narrative: a set of commonly agreed upon units of story serving the purpose of mutual understanding. Saying you dislike “tropes” is like living in a house but you dislike bricks.

What does this defense of tropes have to do with world-building?

Everything.

Because once you know what you have to say to the world, and perhaps some ideas for how you might (“hey, I’m an optimistic humanist who wants to make a ton of money by selling a TV series that’s essentially going to be Wagon Train to the stars”) the next step is to build it out. Roddenberry already had a trope around which to wrap his idea: the travails of brave explorers going, perhaps boldly, into an unknown frontier.

Like many of his colleagues in the television writing trenches of the late fifties, sixties, and seventies, Roddenberry was also a veteran of the Second World War (after which he served as a commercial pilot and, later, a police officer). It makes complete sense then that the tropes Roddenberry used to build out his world all center on the distribution of command responsibility and labor in, and organization of, the military and other paramilitary organizations (and so did the writers of Forbidden Planet, whose influence on Star Trek is palpable). Though the United Federation of Planets at the center of Star Trek is intended to be a peaceful and utopian organization, pretty much everything about the basic layout of Star Trek—from the command structure of the starship Enterprise to the political organization of the ruling body that deploys it, and the Cold War-like detente between it and the Klingon and Romulan Empires—is strictly constructed with the kind of tropes one would expect would have permanent residence in the mind of a man with Roddenberry’s background, if not his philosophical leanings.

A generation later, George Lucas would anchor his own sci-fi saga with the tropes of his generation: rebellion against authority, suspicion of the military/industrial complex, and concern for the environment. In early drafts of Star Wars, the Death Star was brought down in an attack led by wookiees, similarly, the triumph of the Ewoks at the end of Return of the Jedi was informed by the Vietnam War era reality that the highly mechanized industrial war machine that won World War II could be brought down by guerillas armed with far less sophisticated equipment but aided by a knowledge of, and closeness to, their environment.

Of course, having grown up on a steady diet of triumphalist, “American Century” TV and film depicting America’s glorious victories of World War II, Lucas also helped himself ravenously to the tropes of those influences. World War II is all over Star Wars. The final battle of his first Star Wars was famously edited using footage taken from the British war movie The Dam Busters due to the time constraints posed by the completion of the film’s VFX. Similarly, pretty much every TV series or film set on board a starship in the last fifty years has either taken from Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek the basic structure of captain/science officer/doctor/warrior/engine room guy, or been a response to it in some form.Star Trek itself has gotten to the point where its own spinoffs (Discovery and Picard especially, and to some lesser degree Star Trek Into Darkness, though the stupidity of that film begs the question of intellect and intent) have become a sort of revisionist commentary on the very tropes the franchise’s creator carved into the zeitgeist decades prior.

Coming closer to Earth, consider the The X-Files. The world Chris Carter and his writing staff built over eleven seasons of television—and two feature films, and a short-lived revival series—is an intricate web of conspiracies involving an alien invasion, several equally alien races aiding in the invasion, shadow governments, powerful cabals secretly in league with the aliens, Watergate-style meetups with highly paranoid secret agents, and a black oil that can turn humans into slimy proto-aliens. Also, bees.

What made The X-Files hook so many viewers into its far-fetched mythology is that it was—from episode to episode for twenty-two weekly episodes a season—a police procedural down to the end-of-the-first-act/first-commercial-break-body-drop. The X-Files fooled a great deal of the world into entering a batshit insane universe by pretending to be about two cops who get a case handed to them at the beginning of every episode, hop onto an unglamorous unmarked car, and usually wind up somewhere local law enforcement whines to them about jurisdictional issues.

World-building, then, is the creation of a completely new milieu from the novel arrangement of tropes around a unifying central concept of great concern to the creator of that world.

Yep. It’s that simple.

Kind of how to write a novel you just have to take a bunch of words and arrange them in the right order.

THINK IT THROUGH

Let’s say you are pissed off about wealth inequality. As an allegorical analogy, you have created the notion of a world not unlike our own in any way other than a new technology has turned time into a currency—by merely shaking hands with another person. Everyone stops aging at 25, preserving their youth, and can trade minutes, hours, or years of their own life with others: they get to extend their life, you get whatever goods or services were on the table.

As a consequence, the poor die looking like twenty-five-year-olds the moment they run out of time, and the wealthy extend their youth for whatever amount of time they can hoard. Time taken from the lives of others is the greatest and only measure of wealth. The super-rich are essentially nigh-immortal vampires.

This is the premise of writer/director Andrew Niccol’s film In Time. As a world-building exercise, In Time is inadequate because of how obvious it is that Niccol only thought through a very small number of the potential ramifications of such a technology. The film deploys its central concept so narrowly as an allegory for income inequality that it ignores how radically different a world this technology would actually make: the result is that as the film devolves into a fairly routine action story, the audience is left to ponder just how different a world this technology would make.

An interface that would allow one to take literal, physical time from others would most likely involve quantum manipulation and an ability to control the physiology of human beings on so advanced a level that it is hard to imagine that the world in which it exists would only look like a slightly spiffed up version of the ghettoes and penthouses of Los Angeles with only a few more electric cars, fancy flat screens, and leather overcoats. The most important question Niccol could have asked himself is “what other changes could this have caused” and yet that question remains unanswered, and the allegory feels ham-fisted. The world only works to further its own premise, as opposed to feeling like it is a place that existed before it was disrupted by this technology. By the time the protagonists, played by Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, are on the run from The Timekeepers (the only police force, in fact, the only government agency in this world) and running time bank heists in order to give time back to “the people,” it is clear that this premise has a very slim bandwidth to support the world it implies. All that’s left is to run, jump, and gun and hope the audience goes along for the ride.

Speaking of guns—why are the weapons in In Time gunpowder/projectile-based? If this is a world where a handshake can cause a person to give up time in their own life to another—or where time can be banked in memory cores—wouldn’t the police have something like a Bluetooth-enabled long range time disruptor that could freeze a person’s time? Or take away enough of their time so that they have no choice but to stop whatever they are doing? Or to stop that body’s time altogether in order to paralyze the person in a timeless stasis? Could someone clever enough create a “time bomb” that robs people of their time en masse?

No one thought it through.

In Time is so hell-bent on making time a metaphor for money that it does little else. The problem is that “time is money” is a metaphor and only a metaphor. “Time is money” is not a direct correlation: a world in which time is money would be at the very least, different from ours in a million little ways that would make it infinitely interesting, but Niccol stays narrowly focused on this one idea, and the casualty is his story, and the point it tries to make.

Most manufactured worlds exist to elucidate a small number of concerns (unless your concern is “dude, would THIS look cool?”) but the world’s creators(s) have a responsibility to crowd—at the very least—the margins outside of their main story with enough material that the world they have made is much greater than what is merely on the screen or page. The film Daybreakers, written and directed by the Spierig brothers, is a good example of a modestly budgeted feature that nevertheless does the work of creating a believable framework for its world.

The premise of Daybreakers is that vampires have come out of the closet and become the dominant species on the planet. In the first fifteen minutes of the film, the Spierig brothers drop one bomb after another to show how their world works: cars are equipped with sun-blocking shades, blood is served as an additive to coffee as well as fast foods, subways are the preferred mode of public transport, advertisements targeted to vampires are everywhere, and massive farms keep non-vampires in comas while feeding and bleeding them until they die. While Daybreakers ultimately falls apart in much the same way as In Time—both become run-and-gun shoot-em-ups in which the main premise is secondary, its first twenty minutes are truly remarkable.

World-building is hard, precarious, and subjective work, especially when juggling the demands of both creating a new reality, remaining consistent within its parameters, and making sure that the issues faced by the characters are relatable to the audience.

The best example I can think of a movie that does all of this without a misstep is Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men. The first act of Children of Men is extraordinarily dense with information. It is the near future, the human race has gone completely sterile and has been so for the balance of two decades, the youngest people in the world are revered, the planet’s nations have collapsed, and only England has soldiered on thanks to a militaristic, authoritarian government that has turned the entire north coast of the island into a prison camp where immigrants and minorities have been ghettoed. Terrorism is endemic, public services are woeful, the government hands out suicide kits due to rampant depression and ennui, and many have resigned their lives to apocalyptic religious cults.

Within ten minutes, Children of Men not only establishes all of this, it even manages to redeem the incredibly hackneyed device of using newscasts to deliver information, presents its main character as a likable if apathetic functioning alcoholic, and serves up a shocking terrorist attack…all before it even flashes its main title.

Most importantly, every single piece of exposition presented in Children of Men remains consistent through the film’s running time and serves to complicate the plot. Every bit of this world is necessary to the functioning of the story, every bit is eventually made into an obstacle to be inflicted on the characters, and every one of the characters’ problems feels like it could happen to a member of the audience, though only in the film’s reality.

As world-building goes, Children of Men is so absolutely flawless in its integration of concept and exposition with plot and character development that, by its final, wrenching, action sequence, when the film’s protagonist loses his shoe, you know the world so well and are so scared of it that you feel that losing a shoe in this world may just be the worst thing that could happen to someone. In addition to the global infertility, wars, collapse, xenophobia, and genocide.

Thinking it through means one thing: while watching your story, the audience should never be able to think of a better idea about how your world should work than you did.

ARE THERE WIDE OPEN SPACES?

From the moment I saw Star Wars in 1977, I have remembered, and wondered about, “the spice mines of Kessel” and “the ship that did the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs.”

With those two short lines, George Lucas opened what I call “a Wide Open Space.”

A “Wide Open Space” is exactly what it sounds like: when a line or visual evokes something offscreen that indicates a much greater world. A Wide Open Space engages the audience in the narrative by switching on their imagination while keeping them involved in the story. The “spice mines of Kessel” line takes place at a moment when a character fears for their fate: the line doesn’t distract from the scene’s dynamic, it instead makes the stakes clear while implying that there are worse, much worse, places to be sent to than their immediate danger, and you are free to consider what they may look like from a few very tantalizing cues even as you continue to enjoy the story.

The path to a Wide Open Space can be something as simple as a throwaway line like the ones above, or as involved as the opening of the scene in Children of Men in which the protagonist must ask a favor of his cousin, who runs “The Ark of the Arts.” The scene opens with Clive Owen’s character, Theo, entering a massive, loft like space dominated by Michelangelo’s statue of David. Part of the statue’s leg is missing, and the space between the knee and foot has been replaced by a metal strut. Theo’s cousin enters the scene, dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt, playing air guitar while explaining that his team barely got David out of Italy before some horrible cataclysm took place, but missed La Pieta.

In a very brief exchange, the film not only fulfills the narrative goal of introducing a powerful, wealthy, and influential person tasked with preserving humanity’s artistic legacy in a world with no future, but also invites the audience to consider just the scope of the horror going on in the film’s blighted and unstable world. Italy, the film tells us, is in no better shape than anywhere else, and yet the carnage on the streets is unspeakable. What your imagination can conjure up as it hears a few details about it is probably much worse than anything the film can show.

Wide Open Spaces are crucial to world-building for two reasons, one, they indicate what cannot be shown: “world-building in progress.” Wide Open Spaces tell the audience that they are in the hands of someone who has an entire geography for a vibrant universe in their mind—maybe they can’t show it to you just yet, but it’s there in the margins. Wide Open Spaces tell the audience that, if the camera were to pan away from the scene at hand, there will be a world there waiting to be discovered and not just the boundaries of the scenery the film’s crew built to convince you.

The other purpose of Wide Open Spaces is that they provide directions in which to build. In television, that is crucial. As a series goes through its allotted number of episodes, be they four, six, eight, thirteen, or twenty-two, it eats plot at an astonishing rate. Even in a show with what is now called “a decompressed narrative,” Wide Open Spaces establish destinations toward which to navigate and locations or events that the audience will recognize as part of the narrative, even if they have not seen them before.

A good example of this is the very line with which this began—the spice mines of Kessel. Forty years after the original, as part of the Disney Company’s expansion of the franchise, the film Solo: A Star Wars Story featured a second act climax involving an incursion into the spice mines of Kessel, and the run described in the original.

The narrative merits of the film aside, it is very much a testament to the power of the Wide Open Space: forty years later, people still wanted to go there.

CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ASSUMPTIONS

AND LEAVE THEM ALL ON THE FIELD

During my justifiably short career as an improv performer, I learned the concept of “opportunities for assumptions.” A performer, who is doing their job properly by watching and listening to their scene partners, can then take something that has been said or implied—an opportunity—in the scene and make an assumption about it that furthers the scene, preferably in a novel or unexpected direction. The website ImprovDr.com presents a great example:

Player A takes great care in setting up a garden, obtaining a shovel, making sure that no one is looking, and then making the first few efforts to break the ground.

Player B slowly enters, with great effort, apparently lugging a heavy object behind them. They pause for a moment, clearly winded, and turn to look at Player A's progress:

Player B: “I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to repay you for this…”

This is not only funny, it also shows how something built by one performer can become very different when another picks it up, makes a very creative assumption about what it means, and turns it into something else entirely that creates the fertile ground for an unfolding scene.

When world-building, it is crucial to leave as many potential opportunities for yourself and others to make “assumptions” on the field. This is not unlike creating Wide Open Spaces. My example from Star Wars could just as easily be used in this context: someone thought of something to do with the spice mines many years after they were merely spoken of.

Opportunities for assumptions, however, don’t have to be so large or wide open, they just have to be there. Some of them are microscopic, some of them are the size of galaxies: they just have to be there to be picked up, looked at, and used in such a way that “mere serendipity” starts looking like “planning.”

Here’s a simple example, in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, we had a running gag in the writers room about washing podlings (the podlings, little potato-like creatures, were one of the many species in the world of The Dark Crystal). As we hunkered down to break story on individual episodes, we came up with the idea that a character was to be punished by being sent to “The Order of Lesser Service,” a sort of monastic/janitorial organization. As soon as the question came up of what sort of menial tasks the Order of Lesser Service would have to perform, the idea of washing podlings suddenly stopped being a joke and became a very real option.

In the hands of episode writer Vivian Lee, the concept of “washing podlings” expanded into a delightful extended sequence set during the time known as “the deterge” in which podlings were washed en masse. This not only created many—many—opportunities for physical comedy, with the adorable podlings resisting their baths in every way, it also opened a space to not just understand the plight of one of our main characters, but to also add a unique and whimsical element that further built up the amazing world Jim Henson and his cohort built decades before.

Opportunities from assumptions can even come from a writer/creator’s observation of the design of a prop or a costume. Consider how Obi-Wan Kenobi’s humble desert robes eventually became the template for the uniforms of all the Jedi Knights appearing in the Star Wars franchise. Somewhere before Star Wars became a pop-culture hegemony, a costume designer had an idea that was approved and executed…and, years later, the entire franchise ran with it.

A similar, but much larger, example of taking an opportunity for an assumption that eventually defined a franchise (or even saved it from extinction) is the set-up to the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. At the end of the episode “Space Seed” in the run of the classic Star Trek television series in the 1960s, Captain Kirk decided to exile the unfrozen 1990s supergenius and criminal mastermind Khan Noonien Singh and his followers in a small and verdant moon to start their own isolated settlement. Kirk and his crew mused that they had planted a seed in space, and hoped that Khan and his followers could build a benign civilization in their new world.

When the time came to make a sequel to 1979s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the creators tasked with its creation looked back and found this incredible seed waiting to be sown and harvested. The greatest villain the original series created had been wisely put in a place from which he could return for vengeance. Deciding to take this idea to its most dramatic extent, the creators of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan made a film that is not only understood to be the finest in its over half-century old franchise, they also saved Star Trek by proving the films could be made on time and budget (issues which plagued its predecessor and made a question mark of the future of Star Trek) and succeed commercially.

It bears mention that by the time this sequel was made, none of the players who worked on the original series or the first film were involved. Even the series creator, Gene Roddenberry had been sidelined to the role of “Executive Consultant.” The inception of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was strictly a case of a present-day creative team being handed the reins, reaching to the past, finding an opportunity, and exploiting it for all it was worth.

In the early aughts, I worked on a series called The Chronicle. It was set in the offices of a tabloid newspaper covering the weirdest stories imaginable—UFOs, chupacabras, that sort of thing. In the pilot episode, a member of the guest cast delivered a single line with such flair that it was decided we would bring the actor back in another, perhaps larger role. The actor returned in another role and was, once again, so terrific, that the room wanted him back. The problem was each of the characters he had played had been specific to the story of the individual episode.

Finally, we just decided that we didn’t care and kept casting the actor—only now with the intent that he would always play some sort of annoying foil for the heroes. By the time the show had filmed its twenty-two episodes, this actor had appeared in six episodes as a variety of supercilious and hostile public servants who always made the lives of the main characters harder. Had the show gone to a second season, we would have eventually revealed the character to have been some sort of alien sent to test the heroes, and perhaps even built a story around him.

All of this activity from him delivering a single zinger with unique style.

The trick to successfully dropping, and then taking advantage of, opportunities for assumptions, then, is to understand that building a world isn’t merely telling one story. World-building demands that creators saturate the field on which the world is being built—and then every beam, girder, post, and furnishing—with enough conceptual mass that new ideas big and small eventually spring and take on life on their own. As with radioactive isotopes—in which an amount large enough will attain the critical mass necessary to provoke fission and energy—so artificial worlds depend on the attainment of a critical mass of ideas, and they don’t have to be central to the plot, they just have to sit there, waiting to be found and developed into something great.

There is no better feeling than finding one of these opportunities and making it work. In more than one writers room, when this has happened, we smile and high-five and say “it’s like we planned it!” Of course, once when I made this declaration, a more seasoned writer looked at me and replied…

“That’s because we’re planning it right now.”

GIVE IT TO OTHERS TO EXPAND

LEST IF BECOME YOUR FETISH

J.R.R. Tolkien took ten years to write the Lord of the Rings. Before setting off on this endeavor, he had already written The Hobbit, as well as a draft of The Silmarillion, both of which were set in, and helped establish, the world of Middle Earth. For a single creator, what Tolkien wrought with Middle Earth as a whole and The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, specifically, is nothing short of magisterial; not to mention category-defining in terms of what it means to “world-build.”

Had Tolkien been writing The Lord of the Rings for film or TV, his timeframe would have probably not “worked out” for his corporate overlords. World-building in movies and television has to be done on call, with deadlines, release dates, and millions of dollars at stake from the moment a series is ordered.

Mercifully, TV, and increasingly film writers, have access to writers rooms tasked with aiding in the creation of new universes. While this is a timesaving investment for the studio/streamer/network, for creators willing to let others truly play in their space, it is nothing less than a gold mine.

Television especially has always revered writer/producers like Aaron Sorkin and David E. Kelley, both of whom write or have written the majority of the episodes of the shows under their aegis. The problem with this is that every creator—regardless of the extent of their genius—is limited in some way, whether in their ability to generate plot, to write unique dialogue in the unique voices of the characters, or to let their characters, or their world, be disrupted in ways that may actually make it richer and more expansive.

Entire blogs have been dedicated to how frequently Aaron Sorkin recycles entire stretches of his own dialogue and situations. During the nineties, when David E. Kelley was writing both The Practice and Ally McBeal simultaneously, it was not unusual for both shows to repeat one another’s plot beats. In fact, during the same week, both Ally McBeal and The Practice featured an endgame in which a character wore a wire to trick another one to confess. In its seven-year run, The Practice did multiple arcs involving serial killers, on more than one occasion resulting in the titular lawyers successfully defending/confronting an accused killer who is eventually acquitted…and then, in a shocking twist, revealing that he somehow fooled the lawyers about his innocence, or framed another for the crime.

This is where a writers room is a boon to all showrunners, but especially the world-builder; and if not a room, at least feedback from collaborators whose honesty and expansive creativity can be trusted. When a single person builds worlds, especially under the time pressures of film or TV, the result is that they fall back on their obsessions and fetishes to a fault, and demonstrate the limits of their own creative abilities.

No matter how big a genius, how hard the work ethic, or how experienced a writer may be, world-building on a schedule requires a knowledge of story, plot, and character that most ordinary mortals, and even extraordinary ones, cannot always sustain. The result is repetition, holes in the fabric of the world’s reality, and an over-reliance on “what’s pissing you off” as opposed to “there is an entire world in which the thing that pisses me off is happening alongside a lot of other stuff that makes this world feel real.”

As mentioned before, J.R.R. Tolkien took a decade to fill Middle Earth to the fullest, going as far as to create an Elven language as part of his work. He also got feedback from C.S. Lewis, which must have helped. Compare that to the creation of the world of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Though based on the venerated 1982 film, that film was much more of an allegory and a pastoral than a model of airtight drama and world-building. We had to create hours of plot and conflict and build out the milieu to ensure that it all held together.

While the writers who developed the show spent over a year putting together a pitch, a pilot episode, and an outline for the sweep of the series, the writing team had all of six months to expand that world, develop what it might have looked like decades before the original, populate it with a civilization at its peak (in the original film the race of the protagonist had been reduced to two survivors), and create a unique language for the aforementioned unwashed podlings.

On The Dark Crystal we had the additional challenge of not only conforming the world we were putting together with that shown in the revered original, but also making sure that it remained faithful to three decades worth of tie-in books, novels, and comic books. What made it possible to create the necessary believability to sustain the show’s considerable narrative was an incredibly open collaboration between the writers, the director, the producers (starting with Jim Henson’s daughter Lisa, who Executive Produced the series, runs the studio, and is extremely invested in preserving, protecting, and expanding the original’s legacy), as well as the creature shop, production design, and costume design. We were also lucky to have Brian Froud—the designer of the original—along with his wife, who is one of the great unsung heroes of both projects, and his son as a day-to-day head of design.

Working over six months, during which the creatures, sets, props, and costumes were built in conjunction with the writing, all of these disparate departments kept one another in check. It was as expansive a simultaneous collaboration as anyone could possibly imagine, with the writers continually checking in with all departments with ideas and character concepts, some of which, we learned, could not be executed in the allotted time.

The result of all this was that no one person could control the entirety of this world, and that all of us were each other’s check-and-balance. At the risk of arrogance, I believe that we created a truly special place that holds fast to its own laws and promises a lot more. At no point in the series do you consider what may be beyond the screen and believe there is nothing there. The world of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance practically lives and breathes on its own.

I also believe that we accomplished this because we were not only in a constant, ongoing conversation, but because all of our ideas cross-pollinated one another. Every department on the show wound up contributing opportunities for assumptions during the writing process that we were able to take and exploit to the fullest. Guided by all of our interpretations of the original, we all came together to ensure that our creation was true to the ideals expounded by Jim Henson and his team decades prior (the ideals? an ecological fable showing how a world once in perfect symbiosis could be destroyed by the lust for power).

Compare that to, say, the world-building in a single, auteur-driven genre project like the Superman film Man of Steel. The film opens with an extended prologue set on the planet Krypton…a prologue in which the film makes clear its preference for striking visuals over creating a viable setting. The locations and technologies seen during this prologue do not appear the product of an ongoing, viable society populated by individuals. It was impossible for me to believe that anyone could live in this world, that anyone in this world had anything resembling their own individual aesthetic.

Watching the first fifteen minutes of Man of Steel, I found myself asking questions like “why do all the displays in a society advanced enough to build a ‘world-engine’ (ironically, a machine that build worlds) look like one of those pinpression boxes that used to be available at Spencer’s gifts?” “Does anyone own an old chair or sofa in this world?” “Was every location in this world designed by the same architect?” and, of course, the hardy perennial “where are the bathrooms?”

These are questions you never want your audience to stop and ask when you are trying to tell them a story.

The world-building in this movie—the believability of which is crucial to the plot of the film as it moves into a setting in present-day Earth—feels less like an attempt at creating a believable reality and more like a collection of fetishes. From pinboards to the flying dragons and penis-shaped prison pods, nothing here feels like the product of a varied, well-populated society at the apex of its technology. The Krypton of Man of Steel, quite simply, feels homogeneous, and, expansive though the visuals might be, I only expected to see green screens and mo-cap suits should the camera stray.

Most world-builders become so stuck on the idea that to succeed at this they must go it alone. What world-builders should understand is that even for the supremely gifted, worlds grow and thrive on diversity. The greater the variety of ideas, the more limitless the world will appear. The help of others will not diminish the genius of the person who originated the world, but rather make that person look like an even greater genius for having the capacity to recognize their own limitations and taking action to make sure the audience never sees them.

The world of Star Trek is one of the most salient, if longitudinal and unrepeatable, examples of this. Created in the mid-sixties, Star Trek has survived and thrived specifically because Gene Roddenberry created an incredibly sturdy frame on which to build. Over the decades, Star Trek has passed through many hands. While it is obvious that many ideas that might have been seen as promising at the time (like the mind control aliens in the first season finale of The Next Generation, or the “warp drive speed limit”) have fallen by the wayside, more important are the thousands of ideas that did not over the course of ten television series, six movies featuring the original cast, four movies with the Next Generation cast, two movies set in the “Kelvin timeline,” and enough tie-in novels and comic books to fill a starship.

Star Trek lives because Gene Roddenberry was smart enough to invite some of the best science-fiction writers of his time to contribute to the original. People like Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, David Gerrold, Dorothy (D.C.) Fontana, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, and George Clayton Johnson—along with Harve Bennett, and Rick Berman, and Michael Piller, and Ron Moore, and Brannon Braga, and J.J. Abrams, and Alex Kurtzman, and Akiva Goldsman, and Henry Alonso Myers later on—basically form one massive writers room straddling two centuries, all of them building, discarding, enhancing, and inventing within a universe that is now almost a genre into itself.

Every time one creator or team of creators assigned to Star Trek falls into repetition and fetishism—and the audience grows fatigued—a new team comes in to rejuvenate the franchise. Star Trek lives because, now more than ever, it belongs to no one, but is rather a plot of land that many talented writers have been called upon to care for over the years. The foundational ideas of Star Trek were so well defined by its creator, that every one that follows knows exactly what the country looks like and what they would like to explore within its frontiers.

While it is unlikely that any of us will achieve that level of success, the lesson is scalable: the more talented people a world-builder unites under a strong clear vision, the more that creator allows that strong and clear vision to be expanded, adopted, adapted, and improved, the more godlike the feats that world-builder can accomplish.

Otherwise, strap in for a decades-long solo flight…or a really, really fragile sense of reality.

IF ALL ELSE FAILS, MAKE IT LOOK GREAT

BUT IT HAS TO LOOK REALLY GREAT

The unkind words hurled at In Time above notwithstanding, Andrew Niccol is one of my favorite writer/directors; mostly on the strength of two of his films, Lord of War and Gattaca. The latter of these two is a masterpiece of science-fictional world-building. You may wonder, then, why I bring it up under so flip and snarky a heading as “If all else fails, make it look great.”

Gattaca is set in a futuristic world in which genetic engineering has made it possible for humans to order nigh-perfect children. As the film’s society progressed, two classes evolved: the “valids” and the genetically inferior “invalids.” Invalids are systematically kept from the upper strata of society, business, science, and all other lucrative career paths by a byzantine system of genetic security checks including constant blood draws. The plot of the film involves an invalid who uses the identity of a valid to make his way into the society’s space exploration program.

In truth, I do not know whether the world of Gattaca fits my criteria for successful world-building because, while I have seen the film upwards of a dozen times, I have never stopped to pick it apart. Why? It is one of the few films I have ever seen that actually manages to turn a profound fetishism for an aesthetic into a complete statement of content and purpose.

The style of Gattaca represents a colossal investment in mid-twentieth-century modernism. All the buildings look like they were designed by John Lautner, Philip Johnson, or Mies van der Rohe, the cars are all Rovers, Jaguars, Citroens, and Avantis from the nineteen-sixties (though always portrayed as whirring with electrical power), and the suits are all impeccably tailored in a style that puts Mad Men to shame (at the end of the film, the astronauts walk into their capsules and take-off on an interstellar mission wearing gorgeously tailored black suits and ties).

What makes Gattaca rise above being a primer on design fetishism is that the mid-twentieth-century modern aesthetic, though immediately recognizable, is incredibly rich with variety and accomplishment. Hundreds of designers working individually created the aesthetic, their work in conversation over the course of decades. As a result, the designs curated and created by Niccol and his team for the film are equally varied and in conversation. The working class environments all appear to be in the same society as those occupied by the wealthy, the cars all look as if they were manufactured by different companies but in the same universe with the same technology, the buildings look like they could exist in a real world, because they do: even if their aesthetic varies, it varies within a specific bandwidth, and when the aesthetic veers (as when the characters go to a rococo concert hall) it is with intention and in service of the narrative.

In this way, Gattaca is one of the most interesting examples of world-building I can name: a science-fiction film with a very heady concept, which unfolds both through theme and story as well as a sustained commitment to a singular aesthetic which nevertheless feels part of a real world…because it was. Through selection, curation, and purpose, the aesthetic goes from being a part of our world’s past to being the totality of a future world which, though mannered, feels lived in. Though it presents a density of sleekness and style that would drown a less carefully thought-out endeavor, Gattaca is a world that makes a major impression by being consistent in style, but never so homogeneously that it appears hermetically sealed.

Similarly, whether the Star Wars universe actually makes “sense” is a moot point, but for endless discussions among my nerdy brethren. The franchise might as well be the holy scripture of popular culture in the late 20th and early 21st century, and entire teams of writers, executives, and directors have been conscripted to make sure all the loose ends tie up. That much said, one of George Lucas’s greatest accomplishments in creating this world—back when he made the first film of the franchise—was in his stewardship of the film’s production design.

Prior to Star Wars, the dominant trope in science fiction production design was, ironically, a sort of streamline art deco that evolved into a type of bowdlerized mid-century modernism. While there are many great films in this design wheelhouse (ranging from Metropolis to 2001: A Space Odyssey), many others feel like the production designers merely tossed in a few Saarinen tulip chairs into the bridge of their starship and called it a day.

Part of what made Star Wars so revolutionary was that it presented a science-fictional universe that was extremely junky. As cool as all the roaring starships, and pew-pew lasers, and costumes and bumpy-headed aliens may have been, everything in Star Wars looks beat-up, used-up, and on the verge of a breakdown—and therefore lived-in, real, and therefore within the audience’s grasp. Because of the franchise’s influence, this aesthetic has become the norm in the decades since the film’s release. What making the Star Wars universe so worn in its first, budget-strapped, effort did for George Lucas and his saga was that it simultaneously created a tactile place that felt genuinely lived-in (and occasionally, smelly), and created a great contrast between the more polished surfaces of the world (the sheen of the floors of the Death Star versus the farms of Tatooine and the grime of the rebel base on Yavin 4).

Most importantly, by embracing the notion of a heavily trod-upon reality, the design elements of the Star Wars saga felt like they had been there a long time before the film took place. One of the best expressions ever told to me in filmmaking is “the audience doesn’t know what you didn’t show them,” in the case of the first Star Wars, there is a lot that the audience is not shown. Even after George Lucas went back and added a bunch of CGI shots to make the film appear more expansive, it bears noticing that for a film that kicked off a saga, what’s actually on the frame is pretty modest, especially by today’s standards. Because the film was so richly and cleverly designed, the audience gladly made the assumption that there were many more people, places, and things in this galaxy…people, places, and things that caused everything to be so shabby.

This assumption alone can open Wide Open Spaces beyond imagination.

“Making it look great” doesn’t necessarily mean “create a monolithic aesthetic that dominates the entire picture,” or “have everything in it look cool,” it means “create a sustained aesthetic that nevertheless allows in enough variety—enough air—that your setting starts to look bigger than it really is.” In truth, most forms of world-building consist of just that: creating not what is on the frame, but using it—visually, thematically, textually—to further the idea that there is more, much more, outside the frame.

The world we live in is the result of billions of decisions made by billions of people over thousands of years. The detritus of history, recent and ancient, is everywhere from the infrastructure to the ephemera. Clearly, I believe that the way to best approximate this on a television or movie timeframe is to articulate a strong and clear vision, and then embrace the input of many in order to test and expand that vision.

Even then, creating a convincing alternate reality is a daunting task. There is, however, one collaborator to which I have alluded repeatedly and whom every world-builder should look at closely.

The audience.

Whenever I am asked for advice on how writers can succeed in a collaborative environment, I tell them that the best education I could have ever had in group storytelling was playing Dungeons & Dragons. In a game of D&D, a Dungeon Master, equipped with detailed maps, charts, and an outline of a story has to not just guide the players—all of them pretending to be characters in the adventure—through a story in which the players have choice and agency, but also narrate the world of the story to the players as it unfolds based on the actions of the characters.

While the story of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign may have a preferred outcome, Dungeon Masters need to be flexible, since the characters all have their own agenda within the game and its story. No one can prepare for every outcome in a game of D&D, but good Dungeon Masters share a gift for improvisation based on preset parameters, an ability to pivot easily without losing thread of the narrative, and to play and introduce characters as the story demands. Good Dungeon Masters don’t have to prove that they know everything in their world, they merely have to inspire faith in their players that they walk on solid ground and there’s world enough and time to convincingly accommodate any detour in the journey.

Sound familiar?

The audience may not know what you didn’t show them, but they did come to play along. The audience brings with them a good-faith desire to accept the reality, which their storytellers present. What these willing fellow travelers need from showrunners/directors/writers/novelists/producers is a defined enough sandbox, with just enough toys peeking to the surface to make them wonder whether there are more, how many more there may be, and whether it’s worthwhile to try to find them.

Much as this began with the assertion that the term “world- building” is usually the description of a result and not a process, the truth is also that not all successful results need to be as dense as one another, not all the threads need to be tied, and not all the locations need to be seen. In the same way that telling stories requires the audience’s suspension of disbelief, world-building requires that they make a leap of faith. To ask an audience to take that leap is to make an unspoken bargain. To create words, storytellers must promise their audience that even if they land outside the boundaries of the screen, stage, or page there will nevertheless be something, or someone, to catch them.

The good news is, you don’t have to be a god to inspire faith.

© 2023 Javier Grillo-Marxuach

Javier “Javi” Grillo-Marxuach is an Emmy winning writer/producer (Lost, Outstanding Drama Series, 2005, The Dark Crystal, Outstanding Children’s Program, 2020), and creator of The Middleman graphic novels and TV series. Javi’s current work includes Raising Dion (Netflix), Blood & Treasure (CBS), From (Epix), Cowboy Bebop (Netflix), and The Witcher (Netflix).

An advocate of mentorship and diversity, Javi instituted the Grillo-Marxuach Family Fellowships for writers at USC film school, and the Carnegie Mellon University undergraduate Creative Writing Program. He also co hosts the Children of Tendu podcast, which educates new writers on navigating the business with decency and integrity, and mentors new writers as part of his work with the Writers Guild of America.

Javi was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His name is pronounced “HA- VEE-AIR GREE-JOE MARKS-WATCH.”

The Hole Thing

by Neil Gaiman

Now, let us gather to imagine the future.
Here, in the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences
as it was, before Victoria laid the first stone.
Here, where the dead were annually raised,
implored, exhorted, ectoplasmically embraced,
Here, where Hiawatha musically wed,
and Os-Ke-Non-Ton sang the medicine man,
to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s once-loved score,
Here where the Jordan River was rebuilt
and Londoners were ritually dunked.

Here, everything’s occurred despite itself
and pugilists of every kind have fought.
Here, the bravura grapplers made us never wonder
if the match was fixed because it never mattered.
Here, where we used to come to crown Miss World
with revolution brewing in the streets,
Here, in the Suffragette Temple of Liberty,
from which the suffragettes were curtly banned,
expelled to join the boxers, rock stars, and the rest,
the poets who were turfed out by the police,
to wait until the world turned upside down,
the streets at sunset running red with Kensington Gore,
when all the undesirables return in glory to the stage
for one last bow.

Here, where we built the Temple of the Sun,
Here, where a black star saw my infant carried
in memorial,
at the centre of all things,
Here, where everything that happened happens still,
and every now is just a then away.

Here, where the Coming Race was celebrated,
And Vril, the magic life force, placed in pots,
virile and victorious, the science fiction fandom of their day
wore wings and smeared their Bovril in their beards.
Here, where fine acrobats have swung and leaped,
where giggling ruffled ghost-girls throng Door Six
while skullcapped Father Willis watches, with concern,
the Voice of Jupiter’s careful restoration,
and Conan Doyle was summoned in memorial,
his message from the Land of Mist lost forever, in the hubbub of the crowd.

Here every orchestra, and every land
has been exalted and exonerated,
Here, where we propagate the gospel in foreign parts
then establish for ourselves a League of Nations,
Here, while the Theremin is demonstrated,
its whine and hum a prelude to a thousand rubber monsters.
Here, where the Land of Hope and Glory
is extolled, and oh we promenade,
while Einstein begs us care for refugees,
Here, where we find the man who knew too much
inside his bag at the alchemical wedding,
beside the Largest Doll’s House in the World.

Here, where a composer in angel and devil drag once crept up on me,
where every night can brew something remarkable.
Here, where a hundred and fifty years
of hearts that opened, songs that broke us,
motor-shows and memories and all the ghosts,
and all the ghosts that sit beside you,
between you, inside your box, that ride
their ghostly stallions high above your heads
are here tonight.

We all are gathered here. The living and the dead of us:
in the Central Hall of the Arts and Sciences,
(to use its ghost name). It’s Royal Albert’s Hall,
and still it’s ours.
Where every then is just another now
Where everything that ever happened happens still,
Where, a hundred years from now,
a thousand years from now,
you and I and all the people who have ever loved,
and cheered and sung and bled and wept and wondered
taken tickets, swept, or rigged, or played our instruments
competed, won or lost, performed, invoked,
will be the phantoms.
Listen, you can hear us:
Hear now and then and when
and all the days to ever come
become a whole.

© 2023 Neil Gaiman

Neil’s poem “The Mushroom Hunters” was awarded the Rhysling Award for SF poetry, Best Long Poem 2018. His 2019 poem “What You Need to Be Warm” was made into an animated film to help refugees in 2020. He will one day collect all his poetry into a book.

Love Poem: Phoenix

by Terese Mason Pierre

after Donika Kelly

I see your eyes last, before dust.
In any new required birth, what remains:

plumage gold and striking, the black plucked
skin beneath, palimpsested trial.

Love, I would sing to you
every blazing star, every hunted ballad

that burnishes. I would make a burnishing [1]

of you, which is to say, I am in constant motion,
which is to say, I grieve everything—

my wings on fire, cracking, lifting your voice
into legend and evolution. My love, put down

the earth. Nothing lasts forever.
My love, I last forever

[1]from, “Love Poem: Centaur”

© 2023 Terese Mason Pierre

Terese Mason Pierre is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Strange Horizons, FIYAH, Fantasy, Solarpunk, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for the Elgin, Ignyte, and bpNichol Chapbook Awards, and is the co-editor-in-chief of Augur Magazine. She is the author of chapbooks, “Surface Area,” (Anstruther Press, 2019) and, “Manifest,” (Gap Riot Press, 2020). Terese lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Visit her website at www.teresemasonpierre.com.

The Credo of Loplop

by Sonya Taaffe

Beneath the grattage of his dapper Dada
I will always believe in
the red-headed bird-king’s beak,
a cardinal decalcomania peeling
from the seams of his degenerate artist’s coat.
When he fled his bare-feathered nest
to sculpt the high desert,
he was collaged already
with childhood’s talons and quills.
Solarized, enrobed in a lover’s ambiguity,
he scratched through paint thickening
like the glassy crust of time
until it shattered beneath him,
as one day beneath us all.
He flies forever in skies of fossilized ocean,
eluding the traps of airplanes, the forest at last.

© 2023 Sonya Taaffe

Sonya Taaffe reads dead languages and tells living stories. Her short fiction and poetry have been collected most recently in As the Tide Came Flowing in (Nekyia Press) and previously in Singing Innocence and Experience, Postcards from the Province of Hyphens, A Mayse-Bikhl, Ghost Signs, and the Lambda-nominated Forget the Sleepless Shores. She lives with one of her husbands and both of her cats in Somerville, Massachusetts, where she writes about film for Patreon and remains proud of naming a Kuiper belt object.

Kannazuki, or the Godless Month

by Betsy Aoki

The moments turned in an instant; flash of anger in the eyes,
sheen of a black gun barrel, safety off, bullets fired and fired and fired.
The gods are not with us, they began traveling to Izumo.

We all wanted food before we lost everything—sense of touch,
taste, smell, the light inside our eyes dimming and skimming and dimming.

The gods are not with us, they are traveling to Izumo.

What worship there was to be had, what wafers consecrated, what wine.
What flash of white inside a white church. What warnings we had, over and over:

The gods are not with us, they are almost to Izumo.

Not getting involved, stepping away from the angry man festering in his corner,
Not listening to bruised women who always knew the scent of off before a gun would go.

At Izumo, the gods party, talk amongst themselves. Humans do not exist in this godless month.

A fin flashes in the waves, salted with mothers’ tears. Scales of carved jewels, the money dragon
traded his smiles for guns, live children exchanged for someone’s suit cut and handshake.
Ebisu, god of fishermen, is the only one to weep.

He of all the gods never travels to Izumo.

© 2023 Betsy Aoki

Betsy Aoki is a poet, short story writer and game producer. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, Asimov’s Magazine of Science Fiction, 580 Split, The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), and anthologized in Climbing Lightly Through Forests (a Ursula K. Le Guin tribute poetry anthology). In 2021 she won the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown.
Her debut poetry collection, Breakpoint, is a 2019 National Poetry Series Finalist, and was published in 2022 after winning the Patricia Bibby First Book Award. You can find out more at betsyaoki.com/breakpoint.

The Witch Makes Her To-Do List

by Theodora Goss

Check on the frogs
in the pond, especially the one
with the crooked leg, who can’t hop as far
as the others. Ask them
how they are doing, whether the dragonflies
are plentiful this year, if any of them
have turned into princes lately.
They always croak at that, which is their way
of laughing.

Bring in the laundry—the cotton sheets
a resident ghost likes to play in, the pillowcases
scented with lavender
that will ensure only good dreams,
your black turtleneck and faded blue jeans,
your peasant blouses and a tiered skirt
the color of autumn leaves,
crimson and yellow and brown,
suitable for an afternoon in town
doing research at the public library or meeting
customers for your custom face creams
and love potions (the most popular
makes any woman fall in love
with herself—tricky to mix, that).
Try to find your crocheted hat, which must be
where you left it, but somehow isn’t.
Count the socks. If any have gone missing,
speak to them sternly. Really,
they’re supposed to keep track of each other!
Yet they never do.

Sweep the house. Sweep out
the old energy, which has gone dull
and stale. Sweep in the cold, clear air
of autumn. Sweep in time
to do the things you need to before winter
comes. Sweep in joy, and a fresh start
to the new week. While you are at it,
sweep out your heart
and open its windows for a while.

Gather herbs from the garden—
hyssop, fennel, rue. Tell the rabbits
they will rue the day they ate all the carrot tops.
Laugh at your own joke, share it
with the spider sitting at the center of her web
between the fenceposts. She will stare at you
with her black eyes, all eight of them—tough audience.
Check and make sure that damn cat
isn’t bothering the birds. “No flying on the broomstick
if I find feathers!” you’ve told her.
You’re pretty sure she’s been chewing the corners
of your magical books, and also the Agatha Christies
in revenge, but she insists it’s moths.

Make the teas and tinctures:
comfrey, yarrow, valerian. Bottle them
in small glass bottles, stopper them with wax,
label them in a neat, sloping hand,
the way you were taught to write in primary school
by a very strict Mrs. Johnson.
Sprinkle sage over the wooden floor
to keep away the mice. They’re so annoying,
waking you up at night with their endless chatter.
Afterward, clean the kitchen.
Dust the jars labeled Midsummer Morning Dew,
Maiden’s Sweat, Unicorn Urine, Water
From a Well That Has Always Been in Shadow,
Tears (mixed), Fears (assorted),
Rose Petal Essence (not from concentrate).
Remember to dust the tray of butterfly wings,
the stack of bones you gathered in the forest,
the bowl of random keys, including piano.
Feed the coyote skeleton you found one summer.
He can’t really eat, poor thing,
but he likes to pretend. With a jewelry cloth, polish
the moonstone globe that reflects various phases
of the moon and foretells the future—as long
as it’s not too distant, but sometimes
it’s just as useful to know what will happen soon.
When you’re done, make a mug of ginger tea
and rest for a while.

Bicycle into town
wearing the tiered skirt, a warm coat,
a scarf that flies out behind you. Along the way,
shout “Hello!” to the chestnut and linden trees.
They will wave their leaves back at you, saying
sleepily, Sister, we hope you’re well.
Say a spell under your breath for their continued
good health, for no worms or blight,
for quiet nights under the snow so when the sun
returns, when warmth comes again, they will awaken
renewed. Because after all, winter
is better than any face cream
for smoothing out the wrinkles of the world.
Stop at the library for that book on summoning
the Spirit of Inspiration or a volume of Mary Oliver,
whichever works better, the grocery store
for peppermint chip ice cream
and tuna for that damn cat,
because after all she’s your damn cat, your Serafina,
who curls up next to you on autumn evenings,
warmer than a hot water bottle,
who remembers the words to spells
as well as classic rock ballads,
when you seem to have forgotten them,
and can always find your mislaid reading glasses.
Maybe you’ll take her flying after all,
then watch Murder She Wrote on television.
Drop off a jar of ointment for old Miss Bridges,
who has rheumatism and trusts you more
than her doctor, although you remind her to take
her heart medication. “It’s not a competition,”
you tell her. On your way back,
stop to gossip with the squirrels, who always seem
to know what’s going on, those furry rascals,
rats with extravagant tails, but really quite clever.

Make dinner. Play scrabble with Serafina
and the ghost, who knows seventeenth-century words
you have to look up in an ancient dictionary.
It looks like rain, so make plans for flying tomorrow
to gather water vapor from the clouds
hanging around the mountains—
your Unfallen Rain bottle is getting low,
and it’s such a useful ingredient for minor curses.

Before you go to sleep,
check on the bats
in the attic. Are they comfortable,
hanging together, their furred bodies
next to each other, upside down
like a row of inverted coats,
their delicate ears
quivering? What have they heard
from the universe lately?
What’s the news?

© 2023 Theodora Goss

Theodora Goss is the World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award-winning author of the short story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting (2006), Songs for Ophelia (2014), and Snow White Learns Witchcraft (2019), as well as novels The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017), European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl (2019). She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University. Visit her at theodoragoss.com.

Temperance and The Devil, Reversed

by Ali Trotta

It begins with running,
always the same
bone-white panic—
running from something bigger
than yourself, this story
told and retold, until it shapeshifts
into something Other,
and it chases you like a wolf.

Unkindness arrives
in a whirl of black songs,
a triumph made of feathers
unfurling like frost
across glass, delicate
and beautiful, disarming,
until it is too late—
and these words are like arsenic
and whiskey, the antidote
for a love spell gone wild,
a reminder that the truth
is often more heretic
than hope.

So that’s it then—
the illusion breaks,
the sword’s thrown back
into the lake,
there are no heroes here,
no legend,
the mirror’s cracked
from side to side,
and now you see
your true self.

You keep running,
a wake of bruises
and ruin behind you,
soul like a tower, always
falling, and chaos is where you
put your sorrow, making an altar
of it, bone by bone,
until it’s who you are,
and who you’ve been,
and who you’ll be.

I’m sorry.
It didn’t have to be like this.
You could’ve stayed—
just once.

© 2023 Ali Trotta

Ali Trotta is a poet, editor, dreamer, word-nerd, and unapologetic coffee addict. Her poetry has appeared in Uncanny, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nightmare, Fireside, Strange Horizons, Mermaids Monthly, and Cicada magazines, as well as in The Best of Uncanny from Subterranean Press. She has a poem forthcoming in Asimov’s. Her short fiction has appeared in Curtains, a flash fiction anthology. A geek to the core, she’s previously written TV show reviews for Blastoff Comics, as well as a few personal essays. Ali’s always scribbling on napkins, looking for magic in the world, and bursting into song. When she isn’t word-wrangling, she’s being a kitchen witch, hugging an animal, or pretending to be a mermaid. Follow her on Twitter as @alwayscoffee or subscribe to her TinyLetter. Four of her poems, including three for Uncanny, were Rhysling Award nominees.

Driving Downtown

by Abu Bakr Sadiq

the other side breathes quiet   i hear
many people have left      but
the town  isn’t completely dead   yunno
alive     but in ways that make you think
zombies           think weevil-holed
bean seeds       think half-healed bruises
leaking pints of blood       inside a car
i wave              back at the woman
in an ice cream shop    i bop my head
to loud music     from barbershops
i drive in silence               asking no one
why half the houses here
are locked             i know all that talk
about inheriting wounds
from bodies you make a home in
i’ve heard the news—       a fingernail
scratching the scars of yesterday’s ruins
in the blocks         everyone knows how
to run through gun smoke         knows
when to take their name back    from
the ache the city lost itself to        i get
why everyone asks    which town i came
from    if i know what i’m risking
being on the road   all  by myself    if my
plans include    returning home before
it gets dark     why i chose to pry through
a wound     in the middle of healing

© 2023 Abu Bakr Sadiq

Abu Bakr Sadiq is a Nigerian poet. He is the winner of the 2022 IGNYTE Award for Best Speculative Poetry. His work is nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Rhysling Award and is published/forthcoming in Boston Review, Palette Poetry, FIYAH, Uncanny Magazine, Augur Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Covert Literary Magazine, Zone 3 Press Magazine, Iskanchi Press & Magazine, Lolwe, The Lit Quarterly, Rockvale Review, Best of New Myths Anthology, and elsewhere. He writes from Minna. Find him on Twitter @bakronline.

Hel on a Headland

by Elizabeth Bear

Yclept Hel
I am the get of gods,
the graft of a giantess.
Born of steam, of smog, of striving piston.
Spawn of the stride of the connecting rod.
Such are the stresses and falls of my song.

My sire is a flame that smuts the filthy chimney
My dam is a coal mine.

Hunger is my bowl. My bowl of dust.
Climate crisis is my knife. Bitcoin the blade of my lance.
Plague and pestilence
powder the straws of my broom.
The sweepings across my threshold
are small griefs, sorrows,
ash and scourings.
Cancers and cankers consume;
fluids flood the empty spaces
(Inside you and outside you
Inside earth and outside her)
that once held air.
My sire is a pustule.
My dam is a spillover, a spore.

The cold world turns.
The hot world burns.

Out of a season of cold and swirling mists—
Out of a deep well a booming echo—
It was full, my realm, but you have made it hollow.
Your gift to me is room to grow.

These are my gifts in return:
From the frauds of liars, to bring adversaries in the open.
From the burn of poison, to show you your enemies.
From the suck and hiss of waves, to sieve the truth.

The truth will not change you. You are the revealed enemy.

The green creeps over.
The green chokes and strangles.
I bring to you my verdant jungles.
Kudzu, porcelain-berry,
bitter-sweet.
burning-bush and bar-berry
my ticks, amoebas, and mosquitoes.
My sire is a hothouse.
My dam is the ice rolling back, the ice breaking open, the flood that follows.

Glutted on my gore the gnat drills in turn
the fleshy worm of Midgard.
Rabid beasts raven.
The world-tree is a scaffold. She decomposes from the root
spalted with black fungus
raddled with borers.
Crows call, and the ravens
strip skin from skulls
and from the long bones they tear tendons.
My sire is the disease of cattle.
My dam the infection of fowl.
With rot my kinsmen are riddled.

The earth boils and bubbles like a deep cave overflowing:
we are jammed in.
The weight of the world and a wealth of decisions lies
above us
and behind us.
By preference we descended.
There is no returning
now the record is written.
Now the cascade has begun.

I am Hel
on the headland
surf about my sandals
the lamp in my fist
uplifted.
If under my shoes the stone melts,
if I sink into the climbing water,
all still,
all come to me in the end.

The ocean rolls over your home.
The ocean rolls over your bones.
Crab claws clutch flesh-fragments
Scuttle in shallows, freshet-seek.

I can wait.
But
I need not wait long.

A rising tide
drowns
everyone

© 2023 Elizabeth Bear

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Astounding Award winning author of around 30 novels and over a hundred short stories.

To Whomsoever Remains

by Brandon O’Brien

as I write this I am catching up on the news
and the news was about nothing at all, the usual
flames rising up from the cracks of everything we know, nothing special,
but randomly I noticed in the B-roll there was this little slice of a clip
of a soldier walking past a bakery in Jerusalem
with a rifle slung over one shoulder
and his girlfriend’s arm over the other; they were
grinning like they just came back from some gentle sunlit lunch
before going back to the tiring task of casting lots
on the cost of a human spirit

and sadly the hands have been turning here for some time,
and all the preachers on your bookshelves will not make it
to the mountaintop they imagined in their hardbacks,
even the pulp the pages were cast from won’t last long enough
to see us get there, so I am carving something out
to whomsoever remains before even the screen you’ve read this on
is cracked and fallow—thank you very much for still walking on,
and for not leaving this message behind.
I know this does not amount to much at the moment.

you may think you are reading the bitter reminder
that dozens of people one generation in your rearview
tried to plant some hopeful seeds and didn’t have a harvest.
and let’s be honest, that’s what happened:
we thought there was enough tomorrows to go around
and then one cold night we counted too few in our hands.
but we did grow something.
threads of it, barely a handful, but something.
in fact, out of all the dimmer things that we could make,
at least you’re here too.

at least you get to have what’s left,
and it’s a shame it’s the scraps, not the glassy one we wrote of,
all of the tinsel we imagined has gone rotten in the warm sun,
ansibles screaming curses every hour, our shiny robots
kicking the door in on your home and wagging their tails,
our cars voting among themselves on deadpools, every gun
in the dystopia getting their own pair of red and blue lights,
and I am sorry that you have to read this while the clouds get dark.
but—and reread this whenever the stars cannot be found—
at the very least, in the very worst, we made you, and you are still here.

you. a seed. surviving in this tragic soil.
and mustn’t that be enough?

© 2023 Brandon O'Brien

Brandon O’Brien is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist, and game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions and the 2020 Ignyte Award for Best in Speculative Poetry, and is published in Uncanny Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, among others. He is the former Poetry editor of FIYAH: A Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. His debut poetry collection, Can You Sign My Tentacle?, available from Interstellar Flight Press, is the winner of the 2022 Elgin Award.

Interview: Ken Liu & Caroline M. Yoachim

by Tina Connolly

Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote the Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings), as well as short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He also penned the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker.

Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Liu frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, history of technology, bookmaking, narrative futures, and the mathematics of origami.

Caroline M. Yoachim is a three-time Hugo and six-time Nebula Award finalist. Her short stories have been translated into several languages and reprinted in multiple best-of anthologies, including four times in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Yoachim’s short story collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World and Other Stories and the print chapbook of her novelette The Archronology of Love are available from Fairwood Press. For more, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.

“Collaboration?” is Ken Liu’s third appearance in Uncanny and Caroline M. Yoachim’s third appearance for new fiction.

Uncanny Magazine: Well! This is a delightful and intriguing story about a collaboration. It’s intricate and playful and it’s wildly creative in the variety of worlds it shows us. So it leaves me very interested to learn about what the collaboration process was like for the two of you. How did the collaboration process go for you? What did you find particularly interesting or fun about how you worked as a team?

Caroline M. Yoachim: Honestly, the entire collaboration was so much fun that I almost don’t know where to start!

I had the thought, several months ago, that it might be interesting to write a story that systematically deconstructs the concept of collaboration in much the way Ken has done with books (“The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species”) and time (“Timekeepers’ Symphony”). Then it occurred to me that doing a story about collaboration as a collaboration could be meta in a fun way, so I emailed Ken to ask if he’d be interested. 🙂

We immediately dove into discussions about the logistics of collaboration, and one of the key questions we discussed early on was “what elements do you need in order to start writing?” I start from ideas and structure, and characters don’t come in until later.

Ken Liu: I tend to be theme-driven. I like to start with a fairly abstract kernel (a word, a concept, a twist on something familiar), which I play with by embedding it in various concrete proto-stories until I find one that seizes my imagination. Then comes my favorite part of writing, when the story flows out of you in a feverish state of creative frenzy.

Given that Caroline and I both prefer to focus on the abstract first, we decided early on that the best structure for us was to write fragmentary vignettes in distinct voices and then weave them together. This would allow us to work in parallel while also influencing each other, and the vignettes would then build up into a grander, mythical meta-story. To generate the story kernels, we bounced ideas off of each other, examining various forms of “collaboration,” especially edge cases and extreme scenarios. Can there be a collaboration when one or both collaborators aren’t aware that they’re collaborating? Can there be a collaboration that takes place over eons and involves many agents working asynchronously? Can you collaborate with yourself? And so on. We went through so many ideas and imagined so many elaborate structures. That was such an amazing and fun experience, when it felt like story ideas were dropping out of the sky in a meteor shower.

Eventually, some kernels began to coalesce into concrete stories that really excited us. That was when we moved into drafting the vignettes.

Caroline M. Yoachim: I loved the brainstorming phase for this story, with sparks of ideas flying everywhere! Especially after really struggling to write for months on end during the pandemic, it was such a wonderful experience to finally have story ideas burning in my brain, barely contained—when we reached the point of drafting the first vignettes, the words just poured out onto the page. I think we really fed off each other’s energy and enthusiasm, and it was intense but also playful.

Drafting the vignettes was actually a bit of a departure from my usual process—I tend to be very linear when I’m writing, but here we were writing pieces of story without knowing exactly how they’d fit together. But it still worked well for me because I could write each vignette almost as a distinct flash fiction story. Stitching the vignettes together at the end was an absolute blast. Since my natural inclination is to create stories by mashing ideas together, the last bit of the process was like an extremely satisfying puzzle.

Ken Liu: A guiding image for this assembly/weaving phase was M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands. We wanted the vignettes to mutually embed each other so that there is no longer a distinction between what is framed and what is doing the framing; all the created worlds are equally potent, productive, real.

Uncanny Magazine: I know both of you have done collaborations in the past. (In your case, Caroline, we’ve done several together and I know we’ve learned over the years how best to meld our very different processes!) Do you have any suggestions for other writers about good things to discuss or consider when deciding to collaborate with someone?

Caroline M. Yoachim: One of the things I was struck by is how different the process was for this collaboration than it was for the ones I’ve done (with you, Tina!) in the past. I think one really great feature of collaborations is that you can tailor them to the strengths of everyone involved, create a bespoke process as you go along. Ken and I talked about the specifics of our process in the previous question, but the logistics of how to blend your writing process with that of your collaborator is something I’ve definitely found helpful to consider.

There are also an assortment of other things to discuss—who will send the work out on submission, how will payments be split, is there a particular timeline for when you want the work to be finished, how will you decide which order the authors are listed (we flipped a coin).

Ken Liu: I think it’s really important to know your own process and to be able to articulate it to your partner. That’s the only way for you to figure out the best way to work together. To be a good partner, you need to be self-aware and recognize your own strengths and weaknesses.

Also, I want to echo Caroline that figuring out a bespoke process that works for you and your partner is the key. If you talk to a hundred authors who have enjoyed collaborations, they’ll describe for you a hundred different processes. There is no one “best way.” Some collaborations require the collaborators to feel like every word comes out of both of their brains; others require the collaborators to feel like they have their own distinct voices; still others need a blend. You’ll have to invent your own best process.

Above all, I think good communications is key. The less you leave in “guess-land” and the more you make explicit in terms of expectations and requirements, the smoother the process is likely to be.

Uncanny Magazine: Now that you’ve satisfied my curiosity about the nitty-gritty of the process, I’d love to hear more about the story itself! This story has a lot of interesting thematic elements that unite the vignettes into one cohesive story. I see discussions of the nature of collaborations, the role of inspiration and muses (or in the case of Diable the cat, perhaps a delightful anti-muse!), and the importance of art and story to make sense of the world. And of course, in a meta twist, the story opens with two creators deciding to be muses for each other. Can you tell us more about the themes running through this story?

Caroline M. Yoachim: Exploring the concept of collaboration was the starting point for the story, but as we were brainstorming ideas and discussing structure, we realized that it would work well to have another common thread to unite the individual vignettes, and Ken suggested we weave in references to the myth of the muse. I’d explored this to some degree in “Colors of the Immortal Palette,” from the side of rejecting the role of muse (“I want to be the artist, not the art.”), so here, particularly in “Ensō,” I decided to take the other side and have characters really embrace the role of muse.

Ken Liu: The muse-artist relationship is itself an interesting example of collaboration. One of the through lines in the vignettes is inspiration as a form of collaboration, and how the muse doesn’t have to be a disempowering role; it can also evolve to give the muse agency and power. In fact, we can be our own muses, and that allows us to see our own art in a different way.

I also opted to explore the flipside of the muse, the anti-muse, in the figure of Diable the cat. There is something very interesting to me in “unnamed opposites,” roles that occupy spaces opposite clichéd roles in our culture but don’t have a name. For instance, logically, there should be a name for the opposite of a muse, someone or something who actively suppresses creativity, who smothers new ideas. But we don’t seem to have a distinct name or mythology for that. Why not? Just having a name makes something easier to think about, to picture it—maybe that’s why the anti-muses have remained unnamed; their power in part lies in their unnamed state.

Caroline M. Yoachim: Unnamed opposites are fascinating to me as well, a juxtaposition of duality and negative space, both of which are concepts I love to play with when I’m writing. Inspired by “Stoichiometry // Stroke Me, Try,” I explored elements of the anti-muse in “Tasting Notes.” There are references to Echo (who is cursed by Hera to only repeat the words of others) and the sirens (whose seductive voices lead to destruction rather than creation).

Uncanny Magazine: This story uses a variety of playful formats and font choices to tell the mini stories within it. I particularly loved the way that was used to show the artwork in “The Singularity Triptych” and the cat intrusions in “Stoichiometry//Stroke Me, Try.” How did some of these fun structural ideas evolve for you while writing this?

Caroline M. Yoachim: First, a huge thank you to the Uncanny editors for putting in extra work to make our playful formatting happen in both web and ebook form!

One of the things Ken and I have in common as writers is a love of interesting structures, and we were both excited to try to push at the boundaries of what we could do with formatting. In “The Singularity Triptych,” I wanted to use the form of the story to give the reader a vague sense of something that is, for the untranscended human, not quite comprehensible. (As a side note, coming up with an artform that was sufficiently complex to be suitable for post-singularity humans was a really fun challenge.)

Ken Liu: We knew from the start that this story was going to be very challenging for production. I echo Caroline in expressing gratitude to the Uncanny team for the hard work they did to realize this story in the way we wanted. (Caroline and I also produced an accessible version of the story for screen readers and similar devices so that as many people as possible can enjoy the story.)

I think we both enjoy leaning into the medium of the written word, exploring all the ways its visual presentation can also be part of the message. Writing should have its own graphic mode of expression, just as speech is its own aural dimension, independent of the semantic content. For “Stoichiometry // Stroke Me, Try,” I wanted to visually give the reader a sense of how difficult it is to try to focus on a complicated thought when an anti-muse is at work, literally disrupting your reading experience, obscuring words and sense, forcing you to devote your energy to navigate mazy word streams and convoluted sentences. It’s commonplace to note that writing is just visible speech, but I’ve always found that description to not give writing its due. Writing is not merely visible speech—it can also be more, much more.

Uncanny Magazine: One of the great things about this story is that we got glimpses of so many fascinating worlds. I was particularly intrigued by the mirror world in “A Vision Bare,” with its duplicated injuries, and the implications of that. I also really loved the final story, “Ensō,” and the way that Riku deals with both parental expectations and with the poet she is hoping to inspire. And finally, I enjoyed seeing the same images and thoughts appear and disappear throughout all the mini stories, like ideas being batted around. What were some of your favorite moments or worlds you came up with while working on this piece?

Caroline M. Yoachim: This story is denser with references than probably anything I’ve ever written, and it was so much fun to weave things through the story. One place that I really love to tuck references is the names of characters. In “Ensō,” for instance, Riku can be written in Japanese as 陸玖, which combines 陸 “land” and 玖 “nine” (not the common character for nine, but the formal character sometimes used in documents because it is harder to forge). Nine is a reference to the nine Greek muses, and land struck me as a good fit for someone who creates worlds.

Along those same lines, “The Singularity Triptych” consists of image descriptions that are generated by a program called CYRANO 9.0, but attributed to Chris de Somme (a play on Christian de Neuvillette from Cyrano de Bergerac; Somme is a département in France that contains Neuvillette). Depending on how far one wants to push the parallels between the stories, CYRANO 9.0 could even be in love with the transcended photographer, Roxane.

I find these sorts of references particularly appealing in this story because it ties so nicely into the theme: the story itself is a collaboration between the writer and the reader, and different readers will connect with different references, they will connect with the references in different ways, and they will bring in references that aren’t on the page at all. In the end, each reader creates their own understanding, a version of the story that could never have existed otherwise.

Ken Liu: One of the joys of working on this was that we encouraged each other to go deep with the weaving, to really make the text pull on as many threads in the web of signifiers as possible. Since the structure of the story relies on the vignettes to reference each other, to establish a fictional reality by cross-links (a literary version of how links as first-class objects give reality to everything on the web), during drafting, it naturally led to a kind of playful ecstasy in linkage, a push for both of us toward an abundance of allusions and references to other texts. I felt we were writing a Barthesian texte scriptible. Some of my favorite bits:

I really liked weaving in the New Orleans streets named after the Muses. These street names are pronounced by locals in a way that completely baffles visitors. It’s an example of the kind of localism, rootedness, deeply embodied existence that represents an ideal for me, something to uphold against the flattening effects of “globalization.” I think we get inspired to tell the most universal stories only when we can live the most local and rooted lives.

The mirror-world was also so much fun. I could write a whole novel in it. The Lacanian idea that we cannot form an integrated ego without the mirror image is deeply evocative, and in a move very typical of me, I made that metaphor literally true in a fictional world and followed where it led. I’m still thinking about it.

I also really enjoyed the alternate-medieval world in “Stoichiometry // Stroke Me, Try.” Sometimes I feel that I’m a medieval person at heart, and I loved writing a vignette that referenced some of the medieval pre-scientific theories that, step by step, led to modernity (the role of the muse in science is truly underexplored). Plus, I got to make a Latin joke that high-school me would have absolutely loved. Those opportunities don’t come around very often.

Uncanny Magazine: And finally, I’d love to hear about what you’re each working on next!

Caroline M. Yoachim: I’m currently working on an assortment of short fiction projects, including a couple things that were strongly influenced by this story. The first is a collaborative murder mystery that I’m writing with our fabulous interviewer, Tina Connolly, which we are approaching with a process we came up with that lets each of us focus on our respective strengths as writers. The second was inspired by the structure and content of “The Singularity Triptych” (and a lengthy subsequent discussion of ideas with Ken)—that one is called “We Will Teach You How To Read | We Will Teach You How To Read” and it is forthcoming in Lightspeed.

Ken Liu: I’m working on a bunch of short fiction commissions as well as a few essays. But I’m also working on something purely on spec, which has been influenced by this collaboration with Caroline. It’s a story about the collaboration between the artist and the audience, as every work of art comes alive only in that interplay. Some theories of interpretation, influenced by modernism’s insistence on detaching signifiers from their roots, try to cut the artist out of that collaboration and make the reader/viewer/audience the primary agent and even sole creator of meaning. But I’ve found those theories too often lead to readings that are deeply unempathetic, flawed, and narcissistic. My story is about the magic that we lose when we refuse to engage with artworks as communicative acts, as fragments of the artist’s soul. I hope the story finds a good home.

Uncanny Magazine: Oh, gosh, I love hearing that you are both working on things inspired by this story! (And please note that I am having an amazing time with that collaborative murder mystery!)

Many thanks to both of you for sharing your thoughts with us today!

© 2023 Uncanny Magazine

Tina Connolly’s books include the Ironskin and Seriously Wicked series, and the collection On the Eyeball Floor. She has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. She co-hosts Escape Pod, runs the Toasted Cake podcast, and is at tinaconnolly.com.

Interview: Eugenia Triantafyllou

by Caroline M. Yoachim

Eugenia Triantafyllou is a Greek author and artist with a flair for dark things. Her work has been nominated for the Ignyte, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and she is a graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop. You can find her stories in Uncanny, Tor.com, Strange Horizons, and other venues. She currently lives in Athens with a boy and a dog. “Flower, Daughter, Soil, Seed” is her fifth appearance in Uncanny, a beautifully surreal story of flowers, family, and survival.

Uncanny Magazine: I love the themes and imagery in “Flower, Daughter, Soil, Seed,” with flowers uprooted and changed across generations. What was your starting point or inspiration for the story?

Eugenia Triantafyllou: I already had the image of the protagonist from Midsommar, a woman covered in flowers, but flowers that sprouted from her own body. But I didn’t know what that woman wanted or what her story was.

The idea began with a prompt that I found on The Codex Writers’ Group Forum during last year’s Weekend Warrior competition, in Week 1. I think the prompt was “What is in every season but one?” and I interpreted season as a biome/habitat. And what wasn’t in that one biome was the viability for each protagonist. They could perhaps live in other biomes but not in the one life was taking them. So, they had to die and be reborn in a way that would help them adapt.

Finally, I happened to have read a poem in Uncanny Magazine by Roshani Chokshi called “deep sleep,” on the same day. It’s a wonderful poem that speaks of immigration in an almost biological way (at least that’s how I interpreted it). The part about the exhaustion of butterflies, travelling 3,000 miles to reach their winter beds and losing four generations in the process really stuck with me. Once all of these images combined in my head, I was ready.

Uncanny Magazine: What was your favorite part of writing this story? What was the most challenging thing?

Eugenia Triantafyllou: I think my favorite part was researching flowers and their special environments/abilities that would emerge out of the new place the next generation would be born in.

This story was not hard at all for me to write. It was one of those stories that flow out of you and you have an almost perfect draft in a few days. That doesn’t mean I didn’t sit on it for a long time tweaking this thing or the other. Probably because I really like this tale and wanted for it to be as close to perfect as possible. Perfect here is the image of it I had in my mind.

If I could say that something was a little challenging, that would be figuring out the map of the family’s journey and making up one in my mind. I mostly tried to make them circle a version of the Mediterranean countries and starting/ending up in Cotani (a fantasy version of Crete). But then I also needed a snow mountain range like the Alps and a desert with alpacas and cactuses. In the end, I had to re-arrange the world map somewhat and smash some things together.

Uncanny Magazine: “Flower, Daughter, Soil, Seed,” has a voice that evokes folk or fairy tales. You mentioned in a previous interview that growing up in Greece you read/heard a lot of folktales—do you have a favorite? What are some of your other literary influences?

Eugenia Triantafyllou: When I was in elementary school, we had a book called Anthologio. The same word as Anthology. It comes from Greek and it’s made up of the word anthos- (blossom) and -ology which is a suffix we have in Greek. You can go to the Wikipedia for anthology and read the pretty interesting history behind it, including the first ever anthology.

So there you have it, a collection of stories is a collection of blossoms, just like in the story we are discussing.

Anthologio was a book we read for at least a few years in elementary school during our literature course and it was full of Greek folk tales, poems, and songs. I remember my mother had dressed mine with a pink and yellow flowery cover which solidified its flowery nature in my mind. None of these answers your question (this is the interview with my most tangents) but this book was my most important introduction into the world of folk tales (and flowers).

One of my most beloved folk tales from that book was “The Ugly Prince.” It resembles “Sleeping Beauty,” only instead of being cursed to sleep, the Fate has just forgotten to bless the Prince with traditional beauty. But this doesn’t stop him from shining so bright that people think he has “The Sun for a face and the Moon for a chest.” I always loved that folk tale for how low stakes and warm it was, and I looked up to that charismatic Prince. I was also wondering, and still do, how the Sun for a face and the Moon for a chest look like. I might find out one day!

Uncanny Magazine: If you were a flower, what kind of flower would you be and why?

Eugenia Triantafyllou: My last name means of the rose in Greek. Triantafyllo is made up of two words trianta, which means thirty, and phyllo (like the phyllo dough) which in this case means leaf. So triantafyllo translates as thirty-leaved and that also means rose! The word is of Byzantine origin. If you add the suffix -u that my last name has, it becomes of the rose. Maybe I am one of those flower women from the story, only further down the line.

I just realized this interview is packed with Greek word definitions. Sorry about that!

Uncanny Magazine: In the end, the story circles back to the forest where it started, several generations having passed. Is there somewhere, either from your past or from your family’s history, that you particularly wish you could return to?

Eugenia Triantafyllou: Greece’s recent history, almost ever since the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829), has been very turbulent with not a moment’s rest. And while this affected all people living in the country, I feel that my family’s past is particularly hard and unpredictable.

Due to that, it is hard for me to willingly return to a specific moment in my family’s history. I think if I could return to the past and inhabit a moment it would be the moment my mother tells me these stories that happened to our family like she is telling me a myth or a fairytale. Warm, and protected, and fed, listening to the past, like the girl in the story. That’s a good moment to return to. And of course, then back to the present with its own struggles to create new tales from.

Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?

Eugenia Triantafyllou: Currently I am keeping my mind open for inspiration to come in. Maybe a novel? We’ll see!

Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!

© 2023 Uncanny Magazine

Caroline M. Yoachim is a three-time Hugo and six-time Nebula Award finalist. Her short stories have been translated into several languages and reprinted in multiple best-of anthologies, including four times in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Yoachim’s short story collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories and the print chapbook of her novelette The Archronology of Love are available from Fairwood Press. For more, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.

Interview: E. Lily Yu

by Caroline M. Yoachim

E. Lily Yu is the author of On Fragile Waves, which received the Washington State Book Award, and Jewel Box, which is forthcoming in 2023. She received the Artist Trust LaSalle Storyteller Award in 2017 and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2012. More than thirty of her stories have appeared in venues from McSweeney’s to Tor.com, as well as thirteen best-of-the-year anthologies, and have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. “The Father Provincial of Mare Imbrium” is her fourth story in Uncanny,a beautifully crafted tale of suppressed research, set in a Jesuit lunar colony.

Uncanny Magazine: “The Father Provincial of Mare Imbrium” is a story of religion and science, set on a remote lunar colony. What was your starting point or inspiration for the story?

E. Lily Yu: I think I am not the most reliable respondent in this case, although there isn’t an alternative. What I would have said a week ago is that I was struck suddenly by the idea of Jesuits on the moon, an idea that felt entirely natural and appropriate, likely as a result of reading Teilhard de Chardin and a longer-form project I recently finished; that I wrote several pages of the story sitting at a Barnes and Noble signing table, in between conversations with curious browsers; and that, when I realized the depths of my ignorance, I reached out to Br. Guy Consolmagno for fact-checking and correction. This narrative is not quite correct.

I became an admirer of Br. Guy perhaps five years ago, while reading Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise, which excerpts a beautiful interview she conducted with Br. Guy and Fr. George Coyne. I had the honor of meeting Br. Guy at Dublin Worldcon a few years later and hearing about the difficulties of fundraising for the Vatican Observatory.

While drafting a note about the story this week, I looked up the full interview with Krista Tippett, in which the host and guests repeatedly mention that Jesuits first mapped the moon, and that over thirty lunar features are named after Jesuits as a result. So, I think perhaps a splinter of an idea embedded itself under my skin without my noticing, years and years ago, and only worked its way out now.

Uncanny Magazine: I love that one focus of the story is the censorship of the Brothers’ research and the way they have to work around that. Navigating power dynamics is a recurring theme in your fiction. What draws you to this theme? What other themes or motifs do you find yourself drawn to repeatedly?

E. Lily Yu: Frankly, I hadn’t noticed. I tunnel in darkness like a mole under a garden, and could not tell you what patterns there are in the flowers I uproot at the end of long digging. When some future graduate student etherizes, pins, and labels my stories, I suspect I will be as surprised by the results as anyone else.

In this case, I had been recently irritated by learning about the Catholic Church’s suppression of the research and writings of Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Uncanny Magazine: What was your favorite part about writing this story? What was the most challenging part?

E. Lily Yu: They were related: the deadline came rushing up, the story remained mostly undone, and at the last minute, without any deliberate or conscious efforts on my part, the pieces of the story clicked into place like the tumblers in a lock. That was a gift, and I remain deeply grateful for it.

Uncanny Magazine: I enjoyed the description of the various pastes served at dinner on the lunar colony—if you were a researcher there, what food would you miss the most?

E. Lily Yu: All of them!

Uncanny Magazine: What research did you do for “The Father Provincial of Mare Imbrium”? Did you turn up anything interesting that didn’t fit into the final story?

E. Lily Yu: It’s a rare event, but the process with this story was the reverse of what the question suggests. To give an example, another story, “The Wretched and the Beautiful,” was cast off perfectly, like a molt between instars, from a ten-year book project that became On Fragile Waves. So much research and thinking had already been done that the story formed naturally of itself. The same thing happened here, as the result of two long-term projects that I can’t say much about yet.

Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?

E. Lily Yu: Publishing timelines are so long that writers tend to be years into their next project when the last one is released. Erewhon is publishing Jewel Box, a collection of new and old stories, sometime in Fall 2023. I have two completed non-book projects sitting quietly in someone’s inbox. And I am working on my first work of nonfiction, a collection of essays on creativity and faith.

Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!

© 2023 Uncanny Magazine

Caroline M. Yoachim is a three-time Hugo and six-time Nebula Award finalist. Her short stories have been translated into several languages and reprinted in multiple best-of anthologies, including four times in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Yoachim’s short story collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories and the print chapbook of her novelette The Archronology of Love are available from Fairwood Press. For more, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.

Interview: Christopher Caldwell

by Caroline M. Yoachim

Christopher Caldwell is a queer Black American living in Glasgow, Scotland with his partner, podcaster Alice Caldwell-Kelly. He was the 2007 recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship to Clarion West. His work has appeared in FIYAH, Strange Horizons, and the New Suns 2 anthology, among others.“Miz Boudreaux’s Last Ride” is his fifth appearance in Uncanny, an eerie tale of relationships, bargains with the dead, and a murmuration of starlings.

Uncanny Magazine: This story takes place several years later in the same world as a previous Uncanny story, “Femme and Sundance.” What drew you back to this world?

Christopher Caldwell: My novel-in-progress is set in the same world. Davion and Tommy don’t really play a part in that, but the novel takes place nearer in time to the present day than “Femme and Sundance,” (which takes places in the 1990s) and I wanted to explore what happened after they rode off into the proverbial sunset.

Uncanny Magazine: I love the depiction of the married couple, and the way they’ve settled into the relationship over the years. Jack is also a great character, well developed and interesting. How do you come up with your characters? Do they ever do anything you don’t expect?

Christopher Caldwell: When I was a kid, I was pretty fascinated by puppets. I had a ventriloquist dummy gifted to me by my father that I never really learned how to use well. I had any number of stuffed animals that doubled as hand puppets, and I made my own dragon hand puppet out a sock and some felt. My mother had a marionette horse and rider that I love, even though I would often tangle up its strings. When I played with any of those, I would project onto them hopes and fears, wants and needs, quirks—really trying to develop a personality for each. It didn’t matter if I was playing alone or with other kids, it was always like this. When writing fictional characters I use pretty much the same approach. I don’t make a notebook of lists of things like blood type or favorite color, but I do try to develop a deep understanding of what drives each character to do things and how each of them feels.

I’m not sure it’s possible for them to do something I don’t expect. My hands are on the strings the whole time. But it’s certainly possibly for my understanding of their motivations to change things I have planned for them. Sometimes in revision I realize there’s a decision that is at odds with their motivations in a way I can’t resolve, so I change the situation.

Uncanny Magazine: What research did you do for this story? Did you learn anything that surprised you?

Christopher Caldwell: I wrote part of the story while I was in the Mojave Desert visiting family. From the Metrolink train I took up from Los Angeles I saw a mobile home located on a big sandy patch of land at the foot of a huge orange hill with nothing else very near it besides creosote and Joshua trees—not even a paved road!—and I was curious about that. I did a lot of research about land prices and upkeep in a sparsely populated rural area within an hour’s drive of a huge metropolis. My aunt lives in a small unincorporated area of Los Angeles County named after a lake that doesn’t exist anymore, and I spent a bit of time learning about the history behind that.

I did research on flash floods, and erosions. I read about changing demographics in the area. I read about the practices of ranchers in the 19th century, and California’s versions of sundown towns. I re-read Mike Davis’ City of Quartz; it opens with the socialist community of Llano del Rio, founded in 1914 and destroyed by a variety of factors including water rights and World War I by 1918.

There’s always a lot of research that doesn’t make it into a story. The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve is sort of near where I was staying, and I did a lot of research on the California poppy, which is a beautiful, bright golden flower that blooms in multitudes in the desert. An early concept involved a scene set in a field of those flowers blooming, but it felt a little Wizard of Oz, and I cut it on the second pass.

Speaking of the Antelope Valley, one of the things that surprised me is that the antelope that the valley is probably named for, the pronghorn, isn’t really an antelope at all! Although physically similar in appearance, its closest living relative is probably the giraffe.

Uncanny Magazine: Jack greets Tommy and Davion by comparing them to tarot cards—the Knight of Wands and King of Cups, reversed. If she dealt a card for you, which one would it be and why?

Christopher Caldwell: As the author of the story, I think I’m the Magician; through trickery and force of will I evoke the world. If I were present in the story beyond my role as puppeteer, I suppose she might draw a cup card for me. I’m emotional, imaginative, and sometimes overly sensitive. Which particular cup would probably depend on the day.

Uncanny Magazine: The slow buildup from a pair of starlings to the full murmuration worked well to create a sense of eerie foreboding. Birds are a motif that often appear in horror, both in literature and (as the story mentions) in film—what were some of the influences for this story? Why did you choose starlings in particular?

Christopher Caldwell: Birds are very often depicted as psychopomps (entities that accompany the souls of the dead to the afterlife) throughout various belief systems around the world. Miz Boudreaux is already dead, and both Tommy and Davion have had their lives shortened due to a bargain they made in “Femme and Sundance.” It made sense to me to have the birds in their roles as psychopomps, as well as embodying a sort of magical burglar alarm on the spell Miz Boudreaux set up years before.

Influences ranges from the Senegalese film Saloum (2021)—no birds really, but I wanted to emulate the feeling of wrongness it evoked—to the very obvious Hitchcock. Probably unconsciously the Stephen King novel The Dark Half, which has passerine birds acting in an ominous fashion. I read that book when I was very young, and while I don’t remember it perfectly, I certainly remember some shivers it gave me.

Starlings are an invasive species in North America! The hundreds of millions of them mostly descend from a very small flock imported by a man in the 19th century who wanted to release all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare in the Americas. Most of those birds never really got established, but the starlings thrived and spread everywhere. A murmuration of them is also terrifying and beautiful to look at.

Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?

Christopher Caldwell: I’m still working on my novella and my novel. I’m also working on a sort of dieselpunk mecha story set in a segregated unit in an alternate history WWII, and a love story set in a city of ghosts.

Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!

© 2023 Uncanny Magazine

Caroline M. Yoachim is a three-time Hugo and six-time Nebula Award finalist. Her short stories have been translated into several languages and reprinted in multiple best-of anthologies, including four times in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Yoachim’s short story collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories and the print chapbook of her novelette The Archronology of Love are available from Fairwood Press. For more, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.

Thank You, Patreon Supporters!

by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

Uncanny Magazine would like to thank the following people for supporting us on Patreon. This magazine would not be possible without their support.

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Space Unicorn Ranger Corps COMMANDERS

Laura Gayle Green, Jaime, Culture Fuk’d, Cody Duncan, Peter Jones, Kate Boyes, Emily K Miller, Kuang-Yu Liu, Kelly Lester, Camille Knepper, Elizabeth Galliher, Mairin Holmes, Alex Eiser, K.C. Mead-Brewer, Alexander M Henderson, Kate O’Connor, Marzie Kaifer, Edmund Schweppe, Dain Unicorn, Jayme, Bliss Ehrlich, Daniel (a raven)

ADDITIONAL SUPPORTERS

Jacob Aldrich, Karen, Roy Ha, SB Divya, Hayley Klug, Will Hindmarch, John Overholt, Martha Hood, Marc Beyer

© 2003 Uncanny Magazine

Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors-in-Chief of Uncanny Magazine.

Ten-time Hugo, British Fantasy, and 2-time Parsec Award-winner Lynne M. Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine (2011-2013). She co-edited the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords (with Tara O’Shea) and Hugo Award-finalist Chicks Dig Comics (with Sigrid Ellis).

Seven-time Hugo, British Fantasy, and Parsec Award-winner Michael Damian Thomas was the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012-2013), co-edited the Hugo-finalist Queers Dig Time Lords (with Sigrid Ellis), and co-edited Glitter & Mayhem (with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas).

Together, they solve mysteries.