by Nino Cipri
Uzmala waited her out, not pressuring her to answer, just patiently poking around in the FINNA. Ava watched her careful, precise movements with a sort of distant focus, thinking about Nouresh’s question.
“I want to know if they’re okay,” Ava answered finally. “Everything after that is negotiable.”
Uzmala nodded. She worked in silence on the FINNA, examining it with steady, sure movements, for a few moments before asking, “You know what I loved about traveling by marejii?”
It took Ava a second to catch up with the conversation. “No, what?”
“It showed me that there were infinite possibilities, at all times. After I made captain of the Anahita, I worried over every decision, doubted whether I was brave or smart or strong enough to pull my mission off and protect my crew. I could remind myself that somewhere in the multiverse of possibility, there existed a world where I was all of those things. Maybe it was the world that I already lived in.”
She bent her head closer to the FINNA, then used a delicate pair of pliers to yank something out: it looked like a cross between a computer chip and a spider, and Ava pushed back in her chair as it gave a weak twitch. It had the LitenVärld logo on it.
“There you are, you bastard,” Uzmala said, smiling grimly at it. She dropped it on the bedside table. The thing tried to skitter away, pulling itself along with its two front legs, though it didn’t get far. Uzmala stabbed it with the pliers still in her hand, cracking it into pieces. There was a wisp of bright, sky-blue dust, which dispersed almost instantly.
“That should make things easier,” Uzmala said. She slid the cover back onto the FINNA and screwed it shut.
“What did you do?” Ava asked.
“I freed it to call up marejii in any labyrinth, not just ones that are analogous to your former job. Anywhere that gets you disoriented enough so that the walls between universes are not so firm can hide a marejii.” She gestured to the room around them. “This hospital would probably work. I almost perished of hunger just trying to find the damned toilet down the hall.”
She held the FINNA out to Ava, who reached cautiously for it. At the last second, Uzmala pulled it back.
“Now the way I see it,” she said, “there are infinite universes where Jules died. And infinite universes where they’re alive. Similarly, there are worlds where you are too much of a coward to find out, and worlds where you are brave enough. So. It’s up to you: which of those worlds do we exist in right now?”
* * *
As she walked the hospital’s twisting hallways, a curious feeling came over Ava; that she almost didn’t need the FINNA. To go where she wanted, she had to get lost, and it seemed almost instinctual to do that now. She’d been lost for a long time, rudderless.
Still, she wasn’t so brave or so stupid as to rely on instincts alone. She looked back down at the FINNA. The bubble, where she’d placed a tassel cut from the scarf she’d knitted for Jules, glowed a bright, verdant green. The color seemed appropriate: something new, different, and just beginning to grow.
Ava chased that particular sense of disorientation, recognizable now; somewhere between the feeling of falling in love and falling out of it, of pursuing and fleeing, of not knowing and still going forward. Ahead of her, she saw the crackling energy of a split in the world she knew, a doorway into a world that she didn’t. Ava ran through it and kept running.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, thanks to my agent, DongWon Song, who helped maneuver this book into Tor’s hands, where I always hoped it would be. Carl Engle-Laird is a fantastic editor, and was infinitely patient when I was editing this in between teaching and defending my thesis. Much gratitude to the team at Tor.com for their hard work, including Irene Gallo, Christine Foltzer, Mordicai Knode, Caroline Perny, and Amanda Melfi.
Lara Elena Donnelly gave me the premise for this story when she had the perfect answer to “Where would a wormhole in IKEA lead to?”
This story was originally written as a screenplay for Darren Canady’s workshop at the University of Kansas. It was shaped by his brilliant feedback, and by my classmates’.
Nibedita Sen is the best human, you will not change my mind. She made sure I had adequate caffeine, water, and snugs to finish the initial draft, and told me never to start a story with a character being sad and mopey on a bus. She is very wise.
Karin Tidbeck was my Swedish consultant and came up with the name for the FINNA. Mar Romasco Moore and Meg Ellison were amazing beta readers, and Rivers Solomon provided a stellar and insightful sensitivity read. Birch Harlen and Jay Wolf helped me come up with fake corporate brands, and Birch is responsible for Pasta and Friends, which is perfectly loathsome.
Jessica Fujan and Zoë Lukens helped me survive my first-ever trip to IKEA. k8 Walton helped me survive, period.
I would not be here, be me, or be writing without my mom, Ellen, or my sibling, Leah.
This book is dedicated to my grandmothers: Phyllis Simons, Vera Anderson, and Elma Connolly, whom I love dearly and miss deeply. I wish they were alive to see their names written here. I am so lucky to have shared as many years as I did with them.
Lastly, Ursula K. Le Guin’s work opened a lot of doorways in my imagination, and she reminded us all that the paradigms of power are neither inescapable nor omnipotent. We can imagine better alternatives.
About the Author
NINO CIPRI is a queer and trans/nonbinary writer, editor, and educator. They are a graduate of the Clarion Writing Workshop and the University of Kansas’s MFA program, and author of the award-winning debut fiction collection Homesick (2019) and the novella Finna (2020). Nino has also written plays, poetry, and radio features; performed as a dancer, actor, and puppeteer; and worked as a stagehand, bookseller, bike mechanic, and labor organizer. One time, an angry person on the internet called Nino a verbal terrorist, which was pretty funny. You can talk to Nino on Facebook or Twitter @ninocipri, or on their website, ninocipri.com.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
FINNA
Copyright © 2020 by Nino Cipri
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Carl Weins
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Carl Engle-Laird
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-250-24572-4 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-250-24573-1 (trade paperback)
First Edition: February 2020
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