Echoes

by Ellen Datlow

  Then

  At Chau’s wedding, Bao Ngoc got drunk.

  She didn’t mean to—and Raoul was kind, and doting on Chau, always there to offer her food or drink—and so obviously radiant and happy, his pale, freckled face awash with inner light. Bao Ngoc didn’t begrudge them their happiness, or the way they posed for pictures, oblivious, besides the blue-skinned ghosts of drowned children by the lake.

  “She’s lucky,” Ninth Aunt said. She sat at the table with Bao Ngoc, frail and wan and hunched over, clutching the charm around her neck. She was old now. All the aunts were: spent and outmatched, their lives cut short by war and ghosts; an uncomfortable, fearful thought.

  “I’m happy for her,” Bao Ngoc said. She held out the plate of toasts to Ninth Aunt before helping herself. Around them, ghosts hovered: a sea of vague faces with hollow eye sockets, with crooked and broken limbs, with distended bellies and bloodied organs hanging out of killing wounds; voices on the edge of hearing. Neither the aunts nor Bao Ngoc were doing anything wrong—Federation food, Federation hospitality—but the ghosts watched them, all the same. The sword burned like spent embers, a low-key, almost invisible pain.

  Ninth Aunt snorted. “Are you?” And, when Bao Ngoc didn’t answer, “That spat you had as teenagers—”

  “It’s sorted out,” Bao Ngoc said. In a manner of speaking. She couldn’t put the sword back into Chau, or change the white wedding dress into the red tunic embroidered with golden threads. Couldn’t stop the twinge of envy when she saw Chau move with the ease of a dancer, her smile bright and carefree, hiding no sharp edges of pain. But then she remembered that Chau couldn’t speak Khanh, couldn’t worship at an ancestral altar or pagoda, couldn’t wear Mother’s rounded necklace or use the turtle-scale combs, or even eat rice and fish sauce as staples.

  “She says you’re moving into their house,” Ninth Aunt said.

  Bao Ngoc nodded. She didn’t want to talk about it, but of course Ninth Aunt, who’d always tackled everything head-on as she’d tackled soldiers on the battlefield, wouldn’t be so easily deterred. “They won’t keep the old customs,” Ninth Aunt said.

  “I’m not Chau,” Bao Ngoc snapped. “I’ll have my own life.” The ghosts surged, hands coming into clearer focus—nails encrusted with dirt and blood, curving as pointed as claws—don’t make a fuss be grateful be ours—the sword burned and burned, sending them back. The world crumpled and shrank to pain. Bao Ngoc stopped speaking, caught a slow, shuddering breath.

  Ninth Aunt gave her a piercing look. She raised her jade-colored cigarette holder, winced. Her charm must have started burning. “Still keeping an eye on her, after all these years?”

  Bao Ngoc didn’t know why she’d agreed to move in with Chau and Raoul. To save money, to be with Chau, to watch over her, all those things, none of these things. “Out of all of us, surely she’s the one who needs the least watching over?” Chau was throwing her bouquet now, laughing as the single girls behind her raced to catch it. The ghosts were watching her with burning eyes: girls in gray, cobwebbed wedding dresses; children in elegant clothes so old they look over-formal, their lace jabots spattered with blood drops; old women with pale, bloodless faces, gloved hands holding out shriveled hearts, plucked from their skeletal ribs.

  “Is she?” Ninth Aunt drew a long, measured breath from her cigarette, blew out smoke in lazy ribbons. “You tell me, child.”

  Now

  When Bao Ngoc gets home, with the sword precariously balanced in a canvas bag, Chau is waiting for her in the living room, her face dark. She’s sitting on one of the upholstered armchairs, her back digging into the oval-shaped cartouche, her hands curved over the ends of the short armrests. Behind her, the dim, barely distinguishable shapes of ghosts: a young, fair-haired man with the imprint of the noose on his crooked neck, and a woman with blood pouring out of slit wrists—her hands at a disjointed angle from her arms, as if they’d been pulled free from her body. They’re translucent, their voices barely audible.

  “I’m late,” Bao Ngoc says, but she already knows that’s not what Chau is going to say.

  “If you’re going to lie,” Chau says, “do take the time to make it credible.” Her voice is tight, cold. “You never showed up at your workplace.”

  “Because you checked?” It’s stupid and ugly, and yet Bao Ngoc can’t help it.

  Chau’s mask cracks a fraction, showing the dark rings of exhaustion, her whole body sagging for just a moment. “No, I didn’t. They were the ones who called. They were concerned for you.”

  She’d notified work. Had she? She feels as exhausted as Chau, drained from an argument they haven’t yet had. The sword is a dull, diffuse pain in every cell of her body. It’s been burning ever since she got out of the witch’s apartment, ghosts flickering in and out of existence, hissing at her like tigers on the prowl. She’s brittle and fragile. If she lets go, if she forgets to stand straight or breathe, the pain will spread like wildfire, consume her utterly until she has no choice but to fall, screaming, to her knees in the middle of Chau’s pristine living room. “I’m fine,” Bao Ngoc says.

  A long, measuring gaze from Chau. “You’re not. Big’sis, what the hell are you playing at?”

  Well, there will never be a better time. Or a worse time, she’s not sure. Wordlessly, she hands out the canvas bag to Chau. “This is for you. For the baby.”

  As soon as it leaves her hands, the ghosts move—arms extended, fingers curving like claws, voices climbing from unintelligible hiss to high-pitched screams that pierce ears. Ungrateful wretch you have no right be silent be good behave . . . Bao Ngoc raises her hands, as if that would make a difference. But the sword is there first, burning like wildfire within her. She takes one, two trembling steps, grabbing on to the back of a chair. The ridges of the frame dig into her hand, a reminder of everything that isn’t fire or pain.

  Chau grimaces. She pushes the canvas bag onto the table, nudges it open with one hand. The sword tumbles out: a short, curved blade with a rounded wooden handle. No engravings, no ornaments, just a faint, barely visible light trembling on the blade.

  Be good behave be grateful how dare you.

  Chau’s face is set. “For the baby?” Bao Ngoc thought she was angry before, but she wasn’t—not that uncontrolled fury that seems to grip her like a storm. She’s shaking: She stops herself with a visible effort. She rises, gripping both armrests until her knuckles and hands go pale. “You—”

  “I had to,” Bao Ngoc says. She wants to lift her hands to placate Chau, but the sword is burning so bright, so painfully within her that all she can do is move them to the height of her chest. “You can’t mean to raise her unaware.”

  “Unaware of what?”

  “Of where we came from.” The pain has let up, or perhaps it’s simply that she’s used to it now. The ghosts are barely visible again, but their faces are frozen in the same fury as Chau’s. “Of Mother and all we gave up to come here. She has that right.”

  “That right? Look at you, big’sis. Just look at you. That’s your gift to her? Pain every day of her life?”

  “If pain is the price to pay.” How dare she—how dare she reproach Bao Ngoc for her own failings? “You don’t speak Khanh anymore. You—you left our own ancestors’ altars untended. You dropped it all in return for silence in your ears, and an easy life. You’ve forgotten,” she says, and there’s more anguish in that scream than she’d thought possible—something raw and primal and so much pain tearing out of her, a sword with its own edge. “I want her to have more than this. I—” She stops, then, starts again. “If she has to forget, then let her make that choice when she’s older.”

  “As I did?” Chau’s voice is quieter now. She reaches out, runs a hand on the edge of the sword. Her movements are still slow and graceful, but her face is locked in a grimace of pain. “An easy life. You don’t understand, do you?”

  Bao Ngoc, exhausted, clings on to the chair’s back. It’s the only thing keeping her upright.

 
Behave behave be quiet.

  Chau smiles, and there’s no joy in it. “I still see the ghosts. I still hear them. All the time.”

  “I— Surely—” Bao Ngoc stares at her. “You do everything they ask!”

  “You can never do everything they ask,” Chau says. She grips the sword, her face alight with concentration. What is she seeing now? Ghosts? Silence, in return for the pain Bao Ngoc has borne all her life? “You merely make them a little quieter, to have some space in which you can breathe. To bear it all. It’s a rigged game. It always was. But I know how much I can endure. It will be much easier for my daughter.”

  “Pain,” Bao Ngoc says, flatly.

  “It’s not painful.” Chau’s smile is jarring and wrong. “Else what would be the point? A little draining, that’s all.”

  A little draining. Chau sees them. She hears them. Bao Ngoc, shaking, stares at the ghosts—the translucent, silent shapes now out of her hearing—imagines what it would be like, to wake up, straddled by a ghost strangling her because of a stray word, a stray remembrance they don’t approve of—to go through life hearing a constant stream of screams and insults and belittling orders, no matter what she does. Imagines her niece, growing up fenced by implacable, relentless hatred.

  A little draining. A little lie.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Don’t be.” Chau doesn’t look up. “We’re going to be late for the sonogram. Just . . . just take that out with the trash, please.”

  Then

  The sword tasted like garlic and fish sauce when it slid down Bao Ngoc’s throat.

  It was the smell of evenings, when her mother would fry anchovies and shrimp from the river—of Grandmother’s hands when she came out to burn incense sticks on the ancestral altar—of the monks chanting sutras at the pagoda, praying to Quan Am to intercede for the salvation of mankind—of days long gone by in a city now turned to dust.

  As it went down, it felt less and less material—fading away, absorbed into her own body, metal fused to flesh and muscle, leaving just a faint aftertaste of blood in her mouth.

  Now

  Bao Ngoc stands outside her sister’s room, breathing slow and easy.

  She holds the smaller, blunter sword in her hands. It burns, but not as much as the one within her. In the corridor, barely visible, the ghosts of a mother and her daughter, blotched with the sores of plague. They have no eyes. Their mouths are thin and dark, slits in pus-filled faces. The swords rip their words to unintelligible shreds, but Bao Ngoc doesn’t need to hear them to guess what they’re saying.

  How dare you how dare you.

  Within, Chau sleeps—the mound of her belly resting against the edge of the bed, Raoul hugging her back, curled around her as though he were her shield. Even in sleep she looks exhausted, darkness under her eyes like mottled bruises.

  She’s said it was a rigged game, that she knows how much she can endure. That it will be easier for her daughter.

  She’s wrong.

  Bao Ngoc thought it was a choice between remembrance and peace, between the sword’s pain and forcibly fitting in. But it’s not, is it?

  A rigged game.

  Whatever the baby does, whatever choices she makes, the ghosts will never be happy. Because she’s alive. Because she’s a reminder of how things are changing—in such a small way—in the heart of the Federation. She’ll grow up making herself smaller to placate ghosts whom she can’t please: day after day of hearing them scream in her ears until nothing is left but hollowed-out alienness.

  If the game is rigged, if none of those with Khanh blood can hope for silence and peace, then they must fight.

  Bao Ngoc hefts the sword, feeling its weight in her hands like a burning brand—thinking of it sinking into Chau’s belly, dissolving as it goes—into amniotic liquid and the squat, curled shape of the baby. She’s seen the sonograms. It should be easy enough to slide it into the baby’s back, all the way along the length of the spine.

  It’s a small sword and it won’t hurt, going in.

  Precipice

  Dale Bailey

  Stockton had his first intimation of the fear to come—though he did not then recognize it as such—soon after he checked in at OceanView Plantation and rode the elevator up to the fifteenth floor of the South Tower. The building was hollow. You accessed the suites by long galleries, open to the sky behind a chest-high parapet. Outside the room, Stockton paused to look down. Palm trees grew below. He felt momentarily vertiginous. Some inchoate impulse moved him. He swallowed and stepped back, nearly colliding with the bellhop who was pushing the luggage cart along behind him.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, and the bellhop said, “My fault, sir,” and Judy, who was bringing up the rear, said, “Are you okay, Frank?”

  Her voice was tremulous with an anxiety that reflected and exacerbated his own.

  “Fine,” Stockton said, annoyed. “I’m fine. Why?”

  “You look pale,” she said.

  “I look fine,” Stockton said, as if by force of will he could deny the heart attack and all its attendant anxieties. He’d grown thick over the last decade—not fat, but stout, barrel-chested, with the heavy shoulders and arms of a man who’d done years of physical labor. He’d kept in reasonable shape as he aged. But time caught up with you. Six months ago, he’d stopped in to check the progress at one of his building sites. He’d just stepped out of his pickup when the dizziness struck. You okay, boss? Ed, the foreman, had asked. You look kind of green.

  The next thing Stockton knew he was staring up into the face of a nurse. He had a blurred impression of hazel eyes and high cheekbones. He was just coming out from the anesthesia. He only half remembered. What happened? he’d whispered through parched lips. You should be dead, she’d told him, and then the world had gone dark again.

  Stockton shook his head. He waved his keycard in front of the lock. Inside, he directed the disposal of the luggage. He overtipped and ushered the bellhop out. The suite was roomier than he’d expected: big windows behind the sofa and a balcony that offered a stunning panorama of the resort. Pools glimmered like jeweled teardrops amid scattered stands of palm trees. The sea ran out to a flat line on the horizon. He turned away, wishing he’d booked something on a lower floor.

  Heights had never bothered him. He didn’t understand.

  Judy had wandered into the bedroom. “You should see this whirlpool,” she called.

  Stockton dropped the keycard on the kitchen counter, stole another glance at the windows, and went to see the bathroom. But the view stuck with him. When they had unpacked, they went out for groceries. Stockton hugged the wall of the gallery coming and going, and later, when Judy invited him to join her on the balcony, he busied himself in the kitchen. But he could not put her off that easily. She asked him to bring her a glass of wine. When he handed it through the door, she pulled him outside.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said, leaning on the railing. “Come over here and look.”

  Stockton demurred. Dinner was on the stove. He was doing the stir fry she liked. They were going to be here two weeks. They’d have plenty of time to enjoy the view.

  The dizzy spell weighed on him. He could not help thinking of the heart attack.

  After dinner, Judy wanted to go for a walk on the beach.

  Stockton pled a headache. He went to bed early, but his sleep was restless, and fleeting. He opened his eyes deep in the night. He lay still for a long time, listening to Judy breathe. He got out of bed. He found himself at the sliding glass door in the living room. It was like he’d been summoned there. He stared out into the fathomless abyss of sea and sky. Unbidden, an image came to him. He saw himself pushing the door open and stepping onto the balcony. Wind whipped his hair. He could hear the surf on the beach. There was something alluring in the night air.

  “Frank,” Judy said behind him.

  He shuddered. He was holding the railing with both hands.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.
>
  “I don’t know,” he said, bewildered, and then he gasped and opened his eyes.

  He was in bed, Judy curled up against him. He wondered in a dull, half-conscious way if he was still asleep, if he hadn’t woken from one dream into another. Then he really was awake. He reached for his phone on the nightstand and thumbed it to life. Almost eight o’clock. Pushing back the covers, he stood. The outer room of the suite was dim, the curtains black rectangles framed in light. He was making coffee when Judy came in and threw them open to the morning. The world fell away beneath them in a dazzling burst of radiance. Stockton stepped back, wincing.

  “Are you okay?” Judy asked.

  “Just tired,” he said.

  • • •

  They spent the day lounging on a deck overlooking the pools. Judy was a glutton for the sun. Stockton endured it. He was ill at ease. Towers surrounded them on three sides, like a horseshoe open to the sea. Even when he forced himself to concentrate on his book, he felt their looming presence. He scanned their building, trying to locate the balcony of their suite. What if you fell? Surely someone had. He wondered what they’d thought about on the way down. Nothing, he supposed. Not for long anyway.

  “Do you want a drink?” Judy asked him.

  “Why not?” he said, heaving himself up.

  There was a line at the tiki bar. While he waited, Stockton watched a young woman in a pink bikini lounging by the pool. The bathing suit was bright against her bronze skin. She stretched languorously and rolled onto her stomach. Their eyes met, or seemed to meet. Stockton was wearing sunglasses, and she wouldn’t have noticed him anyway. The woman could not have been more than twenty-five. He was fifty-three—middle-aged, Judy would have said, which lie presumed a life span of 106. He might as well have been wallpaper. Still, he looked away, embarrassed.

  “What can I get you, boss?” the bartender asked.

  Stockton ordered a gin and tonic for himself, and a concoction involving five different flavors of rum for Judy. A Caribbean Cooler. He carried the cocktails back to their chairs.