You stop bopping, shocked that he actually said the words.
He’s about to turn away, but you grab him by the arm to bring him back, because you just realized something important. “Wait,” you say. “It wasn’t just you.” You pause. You want your words to be true, too. In life, you used to be so diplomatic that you’d make yourself small in the name of preserving foreign relations. Death is demanding more directness of you. With the world and with yourself. “I stopped saying yes to dancing. You always used to ask me to go out dancing with you, and sometimes I’d go, but then at some point I stopped completely. I always had… something else. Work. Friends who needed help. Things that… seemed more important.”
He leans back, thumbs in his pockets. “You always had your lists. And they kept multiplying. A hydra you could never defeat.”
You laugh. That was how you saw yourself then, a hero fighting an undefeatable monster. “Now I don’t have any lists.”
“And I don’t have any lies,” he says.
You’re starting to understand the ecology of the magic here. This place strips you down. Of lists, of lies, of whatever was holding you back.
“Which came first?” you ask him. “Was it you saying no to kissing or me saying no to dancing?”
Tears here should no longer surprise you, but from him they do. He almost never used to cry, even as you broke each other’s hearts. But he’s crying now, crying openly as he never did in life. “I don’t remember,” he says.
“I can’t remember either,” you say. It’s perplexing yet clarifying, the way you suddenly feel less certain of your own story. And then you say: “I wish I’d gone out dancing with you more. I wish I’d said yes more — yes to so many of your invitations. I didn’t have the capacity either. I’m sorry I wasn’t… ready. For you.” You look at everything around you, the dance floor, the luminous bodies, the swirling constellations. “I wasn’t ready… for this. For joy.”
“I know,” he says. “Joy takes work too.” He hugs you one more time. “Hopefully I’ll see you upstairs later. But you really should check out the library first, you’ll love it.”
It’s true that you always loved libraries. The books, the quiet, the potential for productivity. “I think I need to stay here a while longer,” you say, smiling. “I’ve got a lot of important dancing to do.”
He nods and smiles back at you as he dances away, toward that old wooden staircase at the edge of the woods, the one that leads to a second floor that’s somehow higher than the sky.
You wonder what it’s like up there, if the music’s even better, if such a thing is possible.
Maybe you should check out the second floor too.
But first you’ll dance for one more song. It’s a good one that just started.
Ben Francisco is a gay genderqueer Puerto Rican writer. Their stories have been published in Fireside Fiction, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, PodCastle, Realms of Fantasy, Shimmer Magazine, Best Gay Stories, and From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction. Their stories range from magic realism to space opera and have been known to feature oversexed ghosts, depressed precognitive psychics, and pantheistic vampire aliens who reproduce like moss. Ben is a graduate of the Clarion South and Taos Toolbox writing workshops. Outside of writing fiction, they have two decades of experience in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors working for gender justice, immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, and racial justice. You can find them on Twitter @BenFranciscoM.
Content notes can be found at the end of the book.
The Mountain Will Move If You Ask
by Jaxton Kimble
Romy Yates is the only reason I’ve survived this expedition so far, and now I’ve gotten her killed.
Okay, stop spinning out, Ianto. Specific language. Concrete facts. Romy isn’t dead. Yet. And I have other things I can actually accomplish, so eyes front.
I check the farabine tank seals for the third time, even though the rover’s diagnostic came back clean the first two. There’s no evidence of breach or damage. This is good news. Except now I’ve run out of excuses to avoid the med tent on the mountain side of camp.
Romy insisted camping against the mountain made us more secure. One less quarter to watch. The jagged crags and peaks and dark overhangs of granite are a range of menace to me, but I’m hardly qualified to make safety judgments after today.
Maybe one more excuse: the glow at our campsite’s exposed edge. I turn away from the mountain face and check on Siddhi on watch. Her hair’s tied back in a raven ponytail, shining with moonlight. She leans against a rock crag with a wiry tree winding around it. It’s grown since yesterday; the rock, not the tree. Siddhi’s field jacket is torn in several places, but she’s intact after the attack, same as all of us except Romy.
The sepia of Siddhi’s complexion turns to rings of pale lavender at her wrists and knuckles. That’s her tell, and the fact that it’s glowing means she’s using her bent. Intensifying ambient light for her eyes so night reads clear as day is the first trick she learned. I won’t be sneaking up on her. I make sure to give a broad wave at a polite distance anyway.
Siddhi raps her knuckle on the rock growth. Her admiration slips through the psychic wisp that connects us all. “Right again,” she signs. “This keeps up, we’ll have a wall inside two days.”
This world’s topography is elastic. Shifts here aren’t tectonic, they’re fluid. Sometimes it’s slow like the growths around the camp or a valley on the trail that wasn’t there the day before. Sometimes it’s explosive. I feel the tide of those changes as well as I can smell primrose on the wind, though I don’t like calling what I do a bent. Hell, local flora manage my gimmick without trying: the tree trunk corkscrewed around Siddhi’s crag? It was bone straight this morning. It twisted itself to avoid uprooting.
I start to speak aloud, then catch myself. One more careless, hurtful slip. No, Ianto. Stop. Focus. Now: sign. “Any news?” I need to change the subject before I spin out again.
“All clear out there.” Siddhi jabs a thumb at the surrounding scrubland. “Was about to ask Burhan for an update. Come with.”
I don’t want to, but I didn’t want to come out here in the first place. It wasn’t a question when Romy picked me for her team. It’s not a question now. At least, it’s not a question I’d ask out loud.
Lavender light flares at Siddhi’s knuckles and wrists. A glowing ball pops into existence above us and lights the path. We head for the mountain face and leave the newly-grown crags behind us, their presence a geological underbite pulsing at the base of my skull. Then it’s buried by a pulse of pain through the wisp as Siddhi trips and smacks her knee on the ground.
“You okay?” I sign.
“Fine.” She’s already on her feet again. “Didn’t notice the ridge.”
Dammit. “Because it wasn’t there.” The ground was level until a step before we reached this spot. Then the ridge kicked itself up and caught Siddhi’s foot. That kind of mild pitch and flow to the ground feeds right into my proprioception — I don’t have to pay attention to account for it. “I’m so sorry.”
“No worries.”
“I have one job,” I sign. “Keep all your feet on a safe path.” I don’t have to pay attention for myself. I have to pay attention for them. Siddhi’s pain is already fading, but Romy’s screaming agony this afternoon, her shoulder torn open, I can’t forget that. Shouldn’t forget it.
Fucking focus, Ianto. Foot to path — mind to path — every step accounted for until we come up on the med tent.
Romy’s relief washes over us both at the same time. I let go of self-recrimination as Romy pushes through the flap and into the gas lantern’s glow. I’m used to being the waxy, sweaty, pale one — it’s unnerving on Romy. Okay, her black skin is never pale, but the smooth shine of her complexion’s gone waxy. The shortness of breath, the glass to her gaze, none of these are Romy.
“Slow down!” Burhan calls, stalking out of the tent herself, frowning. Her worry is as bright in
our minds as the red streaks of her tell in her midnight hair and beard. Catching sight of Siddhi, she repeats it in sign. “I told her to slow down. She’s still hurt.”
Siddhi frowns. “How is she hurt? You healed her on the road.” Burhan’s bent is flesh.
Burhan shakes her head. “I closed the wound,” she signs with broad, terra-cotta fingers. “But the haedama fangs don’t just bite — they poison.”
“You can’t purge it?” Siddhi asks.
“Dorofei could extract it or transmute it,” Burhan signs. Dorofei is Romy’s second. They took the other half of the crew on a longer, more stable trail to another possible farabine tap. Twice the chances. Sure, twice the chances of me mapping our people into danger.
“Ianto.” Romy pulls herself tall and traps me in her wide, deep-set stare.
“I… yes. Sorry.” I stop leaking my whine through the wisp.
She waves it off. “You were checking the tanks. Copacetic?”
“Tanks secure, levels stable.”
“Then we don’t need Dorofei running after more,” Romy signs. “Send them a message to meet us —”
Romy’s turn is sudden. Siddhi rushes to break her fall when she collapses.
“Dammit,” Burhan hisses. I feel his gender shift in the wisp as he focuses. He runs his fingers through his hair, red streaks starting to glow, then blows into his hands. Romy wakes with a groan at his touch.
“The poison?” Siddhi signs.
Burhan cracks his neck. “I sloughed the infected flesh and forced it to grow replacements, but I’ve been trying to explain: the toxin’s still there.”
Romy cocks her head to the right, eyes flashing with a red glow. Romy’s bent is the wisp, and when we’re close enough, it lets her channel our bents through it. She takes a beat to get her bearings, then signs, “I see what you did. Stick close, I’ll maintain it myself.”
“For how long?” Burhan’s last shift was ephemeral. I feel her slide back to her as strongly as I feel her worry.
Romy signs to me instead of answering Burhan. “We need a path to Dorofei.”
“What about you?” How can I look somewhere else when that’s how we got here? I killed Romy watching everything but what I needed to, and getting into trouble I couldn’t solve myself.
“Ianto, I need you in the now.” Romy pushes past my surging guilt. “Dorofei.”
Immediate problem, Ianto. I close my eyes and open my senses. The others say my tell looks like indigo tears spread down my cheeks. They don’t see the topography in it that I do. They also don’t see the four of us flaring bright on my mental map. I pull back and expand my view until I make out the glowing pinpricks of Dorofei and their team. Stable paths call to me while variable paths wriggle their turns and dips in spacetime patterns I pull apart like tangled string.
I open my eyes. “They’re on the opposite side of the mountain. The fastest route that won’t fall out from under us while we’re on it runs north. With the rover, should be about a day and a half.”
“You’re sure?” Burhan asks.
“He’s sure.” Romy pushes herself to her feet. “We pack and get on the road, and we’ve solved two problems in as many days: poison managed and farabine en route for delivery.”
“No,” Siddhi demands. The wisp conveys how few shits she gives that it’s technically countermanding a superior. “You rest in the rover’s sleep alcove. We’ll pack.”
* * *
On my way back from gathering the resource collectors from the perimeter, I swing by the lab tent. The flap’s closed. Burhan and Siddhi have put up a soft wall in the wisp, the psychic equivalent of a sock on a doorknob. It seems like exactly the wrong moment for sex, but I have enough trouble with the tasks at hand to get distracted by consenting adults. I snag a crate of supplies off the stack Burhan and Siddhi gathered before they started doing none-of-my-business. Burhan could have boosted her muscles to carry them all in one go, but one crate’s all my natural flab can manage.
Without Siddhi to pump the lights, patches of shadow cover and weave through delicate grass and striped night flowers. I walk without worry. The ground can’t surprise me, and this time there’s no one I can put at risk. Romy opens the rover’s back hatch.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” I say. I’m slightly out of breath, so it’s harder to speak aloud, but my hands are full and Siddhi’s otherwise engaged, so I work with what I’ve got.
Romy raises one thick eyebrow. She had will enough to scale the walls protecting every axis of privilege against the threat of her existence. She left those gatekeepers scattered in her wake to claim this commission. I don’t know why she picked an albatross like me, but I know it wasn’t because she needed a nanny.
“Sorry.” I hand over the crate and swing the RCs onto the tailgate. “We’re packing up the lab tent, then it’s just the med tent to go. Best to be on our way; I’m getting the tingle of a roil coming.”
Tension slices through the wisp like a paper cut. Romy puts a finger to her lips before I ask. She slips from the tailgate to the ground and folds up the hatch. I follow her nod out to the wavering night. Romy punches the rover’s exterior light array on. A pair of reptilian heads, their long snake necks growing from a single antelopian body, twist up at the light and motion. Several other pairs join them.
Fuck.
“Haedama!” I flood panic through the wisp. Romy brandishes her sword and doesn’t flinch. Exactly like last time.
Two sets of fanged jaws strike before I register the motion, but Romy yanks me clear. “Down!” Her voice is steady but firm. Its scaly necks twisted up in each other trying to reach me, the creature tumbles off balance. So do I.
When Romy took the bite for me this afternoon, I told myself I was too distracted collecting the farabine to notice. What the hell’s my excuse now?
“Are you all right?” Romy’s distraction puts her between me and the jaws again.
“Look out!” My yell is barely in time. One set of jaws clanks hard on her sword, and she twists the blade to trap its teeth like a stuck gear. The other head’s still free, mouth unhinged and fangs glistening.
The world turns white. I’m frozen in the memory of last time, of unadulterated pain tearing through the wisp until we were all screaming in unison as Romy fell. I had one job: call out the hazards on the path. But Romy fell.
Assurance eddies through the wisp as Burhan jabs broad fingers between the haedama’s razor teeth before they close, crimson glowing in her hair. The teeth scrape across her skin like it’s stone. She grunts low and grabs the first head when Romy wrests her blade free.
Romy’s gratitude washes through all our minds. Her next slash takes off both snake heads.
I jump at a touch on my shoulder, but it’s Siddhi. That’s why the world turned white — she amped up the light.
Burhan, hands now free of poisonous fangs, signs, “We were just —” She freezes under Romy’s glare.
Not an hour ago, low-grade static in my head was all it took to distract me from using the right language. Romy just eluded death for the second time today, and she still has the focus to magnetize her sword to the quick-draw plate at her thigh so she can sign. “Excuse your libidos later. Fight’s not done.”
Siddhi rolls her eyes, ignoring the dressing-down. As the other haedama stalk closer, she waves for my attention and signs, “Get behind me.”
I start to argue, but then the tingle from earlier intensifies. Siddhi’s the only one looking at me, so I sign and yell at the same time: “Roil!”
The haedama cower and back off.
“Don’t say those things understand you.” Burhan’s signs barely register through the gurgle and twist and not-actually-a-smell of copper underneath the haedama.
“The world’s about to drop out from under them, and they can feel it,” I sign.
“Where’s our safe line?” Siddhi asks.
I point.
“Stand back. This is mine.”
No one asks if Siddh
i’s sure. She takes three steps back and raises her hands, arms stiff, palms out. She’s not signing now, she’s working. These gestures aren’t any more necessary to access her bent than me closing my eyes to check the ground below us. It just helps to have a focal point. The lavender rings covering her lithe joints brighten. There’s a waver like the air over desert stone. Siddhi pushes her hands against nothing and the ripple encircles the haedama as their not-quite-gazelle lower halves bound for safety. Smoke pops on their scales as soon as they cross into the shimmer. With loud yelps, they leap back inside the ring. I guess this means Siddhi’s not limited to the visible spectrum.
The ground around us rumbles. We brace against the roil. The ground turns to chaos, swirls and surges and melts. Rock screeches and splinters. Sod rockets up beneath us. I don’t know if it’s the speed or the terror robbing my breath, can’t separate the howl of wind from the tumult of the others.
The explosive churn of earth climaxes into a new hill with a sharp cliff. We whiplash to a stop as fast as we started. Forewarning be damned, it catches me off balance. I lose my footing and fall back on my ass. Pain screams up my spine as I roll head over heels and end up facedown with a mouthful of sod.
“Nice work, Ianto.” Romy’s on her feet. They’re all on their feet but me. I spit out grass and mud, but the metallic flavor lingers.
“You okay?” Burhan offers me her hand. She nudges through the wisp to check on me there, as well. I wave off the hand and resist her probe in my mind. Other than sweat dripping from her red-streaked beard and the tip of her knife-sharp nose, Burhan’s fine, and I don’t have it in me to be the weak link once again. I close my eyes, topography tickling my cheeks, and verify what the haedama’s distant shrieks have already told me.
“Crevasse on the other side drops a good fifty feet.” I wave to the new cliff edge. “The haedama aren’t going to be a problem.”
It Gets Even Better Page 26