Kait couldn’t tease them without knowing they were safe. Any words would do for the shanty she was leading, so long as they could be made to fit the measure. What she needed most was hope, and she couldn’t be the only one.
“Sing loud so the Captain hears you!” Kait sang.
“Sing loud so the Captain hears you.”
“The Captain and the pilot hear you!” Looking up, Kait could see Captain Smith and the last remaining pilot frantically working on the ship’s controls. Trying to bring the Sweet Crescendo back into balance.
“Early in the morning.”
And then, restart. “Weigh heigh, and up she rises!”
It was a tedious, monotonous song, by design and intention. What mattered was the beat. Subspace was treacherous and twisty. If you could build a ship that punched through into subspace, if you could find the right place to punch back out, you could travel light-years in a matter of hours — but that was only if your ship wasn’t torn to shreds by the warped spacetime.
For all the years of study humanity had put into it, nobody had yet discovered a technological solution that worked better than a crew of singers. Put them in a line from stem to stern, all singing a shanty together, with a captain and a pair of pilots listening above them. If they could keep the whole ship in time, keep any part of it from redshifting or blueshifting away, then they just might make it safe out the other side of the subspace jump.
There was no resource more valuable to an interstellar freighter than singers, and a good lead chanter. Massive lung capacity, a clear voice, and an unshakable sense of rhythm were their stock in trade. Even when reality twisted, even when up and down no longer had meaning — when present and past were too close or far from each other — a singer had to follow the lead chanter.
And if the lead chanter went down, somebody had to sing in their place. If Kait was the first one to gather the presence of mind to lead, she’d do it.
“Never let the redshift take us,” Kait sang, up to the Captain holding the whole crew’s life in their hands, echoed by more and more singers as the verses continued. They knew as well as she did that their lives were on the line. There were no lifeboats and no escape pods that could save them, not in subspace. A ship’s crew lived and died together. If a ship went down mid-jump, it went down with all hands.
Kait’s life had been full of love and music before she’d joined the crew of the Sweet Crescendo, but it was nothing compared to how much she found aboard. The kind of people who could keep singing through the disorienting confusion of a jump were the ones who never stopped singing anyway. There was always someone humming, someone tapping out a beat, someone starting a song. Kait fit right in for the first time in her life.
Jan, who’d been a ship’s singer for decades, elected themself the unofficial parent of the entire crew. They went out of their way to make sure the junior singers knew their way around the ship, and were comfortable in their bunks, and had everything they needed. Everyone on the crew was eager to share their favorite sights and sensations in new ports, their best remedies for a sore throat, and tips to manage the motion sickness of subspace. A thousand tiny kindnesses, and they added up to a family. They were there for each other, always. Even those who didn’t get along well weren’t cruel. A crew had to be able to work together seamlessly, had to trust and depend on each other, to sing their ship through subspace. Kait could not bear to lose a single person.
“And neither let the blueshift claim us!”
“Early in the morning!”
This trip was a milk run, easy money, or it should have been. Ah, but subspace was an unpredictable beast. Its moods ran treacherous, and a smooth trip one way could be death on the return. A sinkhole, unnoticed, could rip a hole out of a ship. Twisters could pull it to bits. Kait didn’t know which they’d run into here, or if it was another hazard altogether. All she could do was sing, keep time, and call out lines.
“Our good ship will hold together.” It was a prayer, a plea, as much magic as Kait could let herself believe in when the voices of the crew rose up to echo hers. She couldn’t see anyone, from her shelter. None of the friends she lived and sang with, every day. She couldn’t tell their individual voices apart in the resounding chorus. All she could do was hope.
“Our voices hold the ship together!”
“Early in the morning.”
“Weigh heigh, and up she rises.”
The song could go on forever, for as long as the lead chanter could come up with verses. They didn’t have to make sense. Any phrase that fit worked. Above her, the Captain and pilot were still frantically fighting their controls. They hadn’t given up. Kait kept the time, and called out the verses they needed to bring the ship back into line.
She sang about going home — her renny was watching the skies for Kait’s ship to come back, like e’d watched for er loves who did not always return. E had sobbed in Kait’s arms the day she’d hired on as a singer. “How much more must I suffer for having loved a singer?” e cried. “The ships are taking my baby too.” And Kait left anyway, because her heart beat in time with a sailor’s shanty from the day she was born.
She sang for Maya, the best friend whose soul fit together with hers like puzzle pieces. They’d sung together up the gangplank onto the Sweet Crescendo their first day as sailors, and every day since. She sang for Danicai, who made Maya so happy and could make anywhere feel like home. Kait didn’t know what she’d do without either of them crowding into her bunk to watch ridiculous vids together when she was down, or cuddling her when she was homesick, or walking arm in arm with her as they explored the markets of strange worlds — taking care of her as she took care of them. Kait still couldn’t see either of them. She couldn’t see anyone. All she could do was sing, and hear the unified voices of the crew joining her.
They were more in time, now, even if the ship was still warping wildly in spacetime. The danger was not over, but the singing at least gave them a chance.
Kait sang about the ship. She and Maya had chosen the Sweet Crescendo because the pay was good, and she belonged to the Silver Star line, which had the best safety record out of all the freighter companies. They brought more singers home safe than any other line. It had been a calculated decision, but the ship had become so much more than just another freighter to Kait. The Sweet Crescendo was more than just the materials that made her up, more than just the cargo she could carry. She was the kindness of the old hands, looking after the new singers. She was the warmth of a Captain who smiled often and knew the names of all the crew. She was the way the crew’s voices resounded through her belly. She was the spirit of all of it together, and the heart of the vessel that held true and did not betray them even as subspace tried to rip her apart.
Time was unreliable in subspace. There was no way to tell how long the jump was taking, besides the number of verses sung or the slow decrease of the water in Kait’s canteen, sipped during responses as she prepared the next call. Her right hand grew numb, pounding time on the deck, and her left hurt too much to take over. It seemed to her that this was a far longer jump than any she’d been on before.
Kait sang, on and on, about anything that kept the verses flowing, and gradually the heaving of the deck settled back to the regular shimmy and roll of traversing subspace. Kait climbed out of her cramped nook to stand and stamp as she sang.
Maya was on her knees nearby. She had a terrible scrape across her cheek, blood dried on her pale skin, but she was alive. She was alive, and she was singing, and her face opened in a brilliant smile when she looked up and saw Kait holding a hand out to her.
“Hand in hand and sing together,” Kait called, and Maya sang it with the whole crew as Kait pulled her to her feet. Their fingers laced together, and they didn’t let go.
Danicai crawled out from between two crates and stumbled awkwardly toward them on stiff legs, relief clear. Danicai clung to Maya’s hand on one side, and reached for Bran with the other. Bran held another, and another, and anoth
er — all those who could still stand, helping each other to their feet. To Kait’s other side, Jan very gently took her left hand, old singer smiling through a split lip as they sang. There were more beyond them, so Kait stood in the middle of an unbroken line of singers from stem to stern. The ship’s doctors were bustling, now that they could move through the ship, and Kait couldn’t tell who they were tending to. It was enough, for now, to see that most of the singers were on their feet.
They finished, one last chorus of “up she rises.” Then, because the monotony of a single shanty could become unbearable, and they’d been singing this one so long — and because it no longer suited Kait’s mood and she was the one leading now — she switched to a new song without losing a single stomped beat.
“Oh, we’ll be all right, if our friends are by our sides!”
“Oh, we’ll be all right, if our friends are by our sides!” The joy of the response reverberated through the ship, as the singers all took up “Roll The Old Chariot Along.” Another very old shanty, familiar to everyone. This one had the space for harmonies, and they combined beautifully throughout the ship. Kait didn’t usually sing the melody, but it didn’t feel wrong to be leading, just this once, through the repeated lines of the verse, and then bold through the chorus.
“Oh, we’ll be all right, just as long as we can sing!” Kait squeezed Maya’s hand. They lived and died by their voices, together; and today they lived.
Maya’s deep brown eyes were shiny with a hint of tears. She tugged Kait closer, and Kait leaned down so Maya could press her scraped forehead against Kait’s bruised one, so they sang against each other’s mouths. “We’ll be all right, when our pretty Kaity sings,” Maya sang, just to Kait, the chorus of voices blocking anyone else from hearing. Kait briefly rubbed noses with her before she faced away to lead in the chorus again, and Maya turned to Danicai for comfort.
The unmistakable vibration of the Sweet Crescendo’s subspace engines ran through the deck, rumbling up through Kait’s boots. The wave of relief nearly took her feet from under her. The Captain had found a place to punch back out. The trip was almost done.
“Well, a little time ashore wouldn’t do us any harm!” Kait sang, keeping on time through those last few crucial seconds. The rest of the singers echoed her in an exultant shout. The rumble of the engines rose to a roar, and the singers’ voices rose to outmatch it through the final chorus.
“We’ll roll the old chariot along,
And we’ll all hang on behind!”
The fabric of the universe strained, twisted, and then snapped into place like a stretched rubber band suddenly released. The twist and roll of subspace was gone, replaced by the static stillness of mundane space.
If Kait was a real lead chanter, she’d have repeated the last line at half time to bring the song to an official close — but it sounded like every singer in the ship was cheering, and her legs finally did give out on her. Kait grabbed Maya as she went down, and they crashed to the deck together in a bruised tangle of limbs. There was no music in Kait’s mouth now, only sobs.
Danicai was only a second behind Maya, dropping to the floor to hold Kait along with her, and they held Danicai back just as tight. They hardly noticed Captain Smith’s voice projected through the ship, unnecessarily giving permission for the singers to stand down and telling them how soon they’d be in port.
“We almost died,” Danicai whispered, voice shaking. “I can’t believe it, we almost died.”
“You sang us through,” Maya cried against Kait’s neck, voice thick with tears. “As soon as I heard your voice, I knew we were going to be OK.”
Someone — someone else thank all the stars and galaxies — started a celebratory song. Kait didn’t recognize it, but the lyrics were about storms ending. It didn’t have the call and response of a shanty, and nothing depended on whether Kait joined in or not. It was just a song for the joy of singing.
“Up now,” Jan urged, holding a hand out to Kait’s group. Maya took it.
Bran was there too, helping Kait and Danicai to their feet. “Looks like our greenhorns are real sailors now. You’ve weathered your first gale!”
“And you led the singing through it, too.” Jan held Kait back by both shoulders, smiling proudly at her. “You’ll be the stuff of legend, girlie.”
More and more singers were gathering around. The celebratory song grew, even as the injured were being triaged for medical care. Captain Smith and the pilot were rappelling down to the deck, to check on the crew and their fallen pilot.
Kait had followed this crew’s voices from port to port, singing their way through subspace together — and in the deadliest danger, they’d all followed hers.
“Don’t you love a singer,” Kait’s renny had warned her, again and again.
Maya and Danicai were bracketing her, holding her close, and people were calling their congratulations to her group of greenhorns, or reaching out to touch Kait in thanks for leading them. All of these, her friends. All of these, people she’d trusted with her life and who’d trusted her with theirs. Her people, every last soul aboard the Sweet Crescendo.
It wasn’t a single singer Kait loved; it was an entire ship full of them.
Kait didn’t know the song they were singing, but the chorus was simple. She kissed Maya’s cheek, and Danicai’s, and she smiled as she lifted her head and let her voice rise to join the harmony.
TS Porter is a strange fae beast collecting sticks for nefarious purposes. Their short stories have appeared in Vulture Bones magazine and the Enough Space for Everyone Else anthology, as well as in various other small-press anthologies. Their novel and novellas can be found and purchased on Smashwords. TS’s physical location and momentum vary, but home is always online. They can be found at ts-porter.tumblr.com or on twitter as @TSPorterAuthor.
Content notes can be found at the end of the book.
The After Party
by Ben Francisco
The land of the dead is a party that never stops, and you can stay as long as you want. You’ve been dancing for weeks now and you have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
It’s the best party you’ve ever been to. The DJ is an alchemist, always sensing exactly the right song for the right moment: the tune that will crescendo the crowd’s energy as it rises, like a thrilling roller coaster, then slow it down when the energy needs to ease back, like a gentle rocking chair.
The sky is your ceiling and the ground is your dance floor. No matter how far you travel, the party’s still there, across dense forests and cobblestone plazas and valleys dotted with shamrocks and dandelions. But your favorite spot is here, where the shore meets a forest of redwoods and you can dance in the sand or the waves or the trees, as you please.
People are wearing body paint and glitter and capes and wings — not costume wings, but real wings that flap and glide and furl and unfurl to the beat of the bass. People are dressed and undressed and in between, and every body is shining with its beauty: lean bodies, fat bodies, hairy bodies, smooth bodies, male bodies, female bodies, bodies that transcend male and female, bodies that have been shaped by their wearers into a fully realized dream of themselves.
Your memories of that other place are fuzzy, that place where gravity held everything down and rules tied everyone up. You vaguely remember that some bodies were treated as better than others, that you used to look down at your own body and feel shame that certain parts were too big and others too small. That seems so quaint now, the idea that a body and its parts should only come in certain sizes, as if you were an appliance whose pieces had to come in exact specifications in order to be assembled properly.
The beat slows down, and you take a break from dancing and wander to the lounge by the beach. The chairs and sofas and pillows are so comfortable they hug your skin like an entire wardrobe of satin. The tables are covered with fruits that are sweet and juicy and cool, and hot teas that smell of lavender and cinammon.
You grab a pomegranate and sink into a
plush couch, savoring the elated aching of your muscles from the delight of the dance. You hold up the fruit in your hand and feel the urge to talk to it, like in that monologue with the skull from that famous play everyone always quotes in the other place. You have the urge to declare, “Alas, poor Pomegranate, I knew you well!” But that would be a lie; you barely knew Pomegranate at all. Your whole life in the other place, you avoided pomegranates on principle, because the work-to-fruit ratio was far too high for any sensible person to waste time on them. It’s only since you got here that you’ve begun to understand the genius of the pomegranate, the way the labor it requires is intrinsic to its succulence.
As you tease out the seeds from the husk, someone approaches you, his face familiar. “I’ve been looking everywhere, and I’ve got to say, this was the last place I thought to look,” he says, pouring himself an orange spice tea with honey and lemon. The scent of honey and lemon helps you remember. He always took his tea with honey and lemon. That was his hangover helper, along with two ibuprofen.
A series of memories come back to you, like rewatching scenes from a movie you saw long ago. Going to an ATM to get cash for him, knowing what he would use it for but not knowing what else to do. Sitting through a professional meeting with him in a conference room as he madly constructed a mind-map of post-it notes, knowing he was high but not knowing if your other coworkers could even tell the difference. Him leaving to “party and play” the night before checking into the clinic, because it just makes so much sense, he said, to have a proper fond farewell, while you waited up all night for him, knowing exactly what he was doing and not knowing what sense even meant anymore. A vicious cycle of knowing too many things and not knowing so many more.
He stands over you, stirring the honey into his tea. “Do you remember me?” he says, and you nod slowly. “It’s easier to remember when we’re near each other. Near other people we knew — before.” He pauses, slowly sipping his tea. “I’ve been looking for you, because… I never actually got to do the steps down there. I mean, I went through the motions, but I never really did them. So I guess that’s what I’m doing here. Working the steps I spent a whole life avoiding. Steps two and three are a lot easier here.” He chuckles and waves his teaspoon around at the food, the lights, the dance floor that stretches to the horizon. “I mean it’s pretty hard to deny a power greater than ourselves with all this around us.”
It Gets Even Better Page 24