City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

He’s weak now, terribly weak. He’s shivering, he’s so cold. Yet he manages to look at the face of the girl holding him.

  She’s weeping, her cheeks covered in tears. “Go away, go away,” she whispers. “All of this can go away.”

  They land as light as a thrush upon a branch. Suddenly Ivanya is there, staring at them.

  “What in hells?” says Ivanya. “What…What just happened? Where’s Nokov?”

  Sigrud tries to smile and say, “Ivanya—you’re back,” yet he has no air for it.

  The girl gently lays him on the ground. As she does, he looks at his left hand and the scar there, the miracle that’s dominated his life.

  The scar is fading away, the lines unraveling like the threads of an old sweater.

  I thought my sorrow was a weapon, he thinks, watching it.

  It is just the barest whisper of a line now.

  Yet all this time, it was simply a burden. And how I suffered because of it.

  The scar is almost gone.

  Pain seizes him. He begins convulsing. He feels the blood flow from his wound double, triple, a waterfall of blood from his right breast.

  “What’s going on?” says Ivanya, alarmed.

  Sigrud is trembling, so he can’t answer her, but he knows: the miracle that kept him alive for so long is abandoning him. He’s becoming a common, mortal man, as susceptible to wounds as any other.

  “No!” cries the girl. “No, no!” She snatches at his left palm like he’s got some treasure hidden there, then rips something out—something black and fragile, like a spiderweb. She crushes it, and slaps it to the wound on his right breast. His wound screams in pain, and he feels something slip inside him, writhing under his skin.

  Then things go dark.

  The older I get, the more I think human history is just combinations and recombinations of inequalities.

  For over a thousand years the very, very few on the Continent had absolute control not just of the world, but of reality.

  The Kaj changed that, of course. But then Saypur held all the purse strings of all the world, and a wealthy Saypuri elite had the most say over who loosened or tightened them.

  I like to think I helped loosen the purse strings, just a little. But freedom and human happiness has a direct relationship to the number of people who have power over their own world, their own lives. Far too many people still have no say in how they live.

  The more that power is dispersed, the more that will change.

  —LETTER FROM FORMER PRIME MINISTER ASHARA KOMAYD TO UPPER HOUSE MINORITY LEADER TURYIN MULAGHESH, 1732

  Far away from Bulikov, in one of the provinces surrounding Ghaladesh, Sharma Muhajan stops and looks up.

  Sharma is not rich, so she was in the middle of churning her own butter, a long, exhausting process. But then things seemed to…pause very strangely. Like things froze, just for a second. Yet now it’s gone.

  A slight breeze wafts through her house. It’s curiously warm. But it makes her shake herself, and remember what she’s doing.

  She goes back to her work, then fetches more milk for the churner. She sighs as she looks into the bucket of milk. It’s a pitiful amount, not enough to make what she needs, but she supposes it’ll have to do.

  Sharma begins pouring the milk into the churner, staring into space and thinking about how, or rather if, they’ll make it through the month. Then she jumps, alarmed by the feeling of coldness in her sandals.

  She looks down. The churner has overflowed. Milk is spreading across her floor in a dingy puddle.

  Sharma frowns, bewildered, and looks into the bucket of milk. It’s the same amount—the same small, pitiful amount at the bottom—yet somehow it has overflowed her big churner.

  Curious, she thinks, then walks over to a big pot, and tries to pour out the milk.

  But she can’t pour it out. Because the milk just keeps coming. And coming. And coming.

  And coming.

  In Voortyashtan, far to the north, Mads Hoeverssen frowns as he tries to figure out what in the world is wrong with his automobile. Something somewhere is not draining right, he’s sure of it, which is blocking one of the fuel lines. But it’s just a matter of trying to figure out what is not draining right. If only he could get past that damn shaft here, on the side of the engine block here…

  Then things pause for a moment. An odd little stutter, it feels like. And it’s gone.

  A warm breeze flows across his face. He shakes himself and returns to his work, trying to get that shaft to budge, but it…

  Squeak.

  Mads stares. The shaft gives way to his touch as if it were made of soft cheese, bending perfectly.

  He peers at the shaft. He realizes that what he’s done—however in the hells it is that he’s done it—is very bad, bad enough that the whole damn auto might not work.

  Then, as if it heard his very thought, the shaft pops back into its original form with a squeak.

  Mads peers at it again. He rubs his eyes. Then he slides out from under his auto, and thinks.

  He looks at the dent at the edge of the driver’s door, which he’s never taken the time to get rid of.

  With a clunk, the metal pops out and smooths itself over.

  “Oh my word,” whispers Mads.

  In Taalvashtan, in the southwest region of the Continent, a young boy chasing a ball accidentally runs up a wall, pauses as he realizes what’s happened, and bursts into tears, terrified. His parents, baffled, will have little idea of how to get him down, but they will eventually succeed. They may regret it later though, when their son realizes he can also run across ceilings.

  In Navashtra, in Saypur, a young girl obeys a strange impulse and sings a song to the stones at the nearby quarry. She and the rest of her family, who are picnicking nearby, stare in fear and confusion as the stones slowly roll down the slopes to spell the words: THANK YOU, THAT WAS LOVELY.

  In the Dreyling Shores, an old woman looks up and nearly has a heart attack as she sees her niece casually walking across the empty sky above the seas, laughing hysterically, waving her arms in mimicry of the nearby seagulls, who are no less alarmed than the old woman.

  All of these aberrations—these and the thousands of others occurring across Saypur, the Continent, and the Dreyling Shores—are preceded by two things: the first is the strange pause, as if the world was frozen for a fleeting second; and then a warm breeze flooding through, touching people’s faces.

  As one very young boy who has just discovered he can walk through wooden walls puts it, “It’s like there were stars in the breeze. And then the breeze put them in our heads.”

  In Ghaladesh, the Military Council’s meeting with Prime Minister Gadkari and her cabinet is not going well. Mostly because the Military Council, despite being the Military Council and thus being very well informed, has very little understanding of what’s going on.

  First there were the reports about the tower around Bulikov, and the giant black Divine thing that walked up the stairs inside. The Military Council had thought this was another Continental insurrection—except that the Continentals seemed just as surprised and terrified by it as everyone else.

  Then there were the reports of former prime minister Ashara Komayd being sighted multiple times in the streets of Bulikov, which was very puzzling, as everyone knew she was quite dead.

  And then there were the reports that the black tower, along with the famous walls of Bulikov, had simply disappeared. As if none of this had ever happened.

  At first they were relieved. But then all the other reports came flooding in.

  The prime minister’s aide rattles off the latest flurry: “…a woman in Ahanashtan can read poetry to wooden fences and make them rearrange themselves; one child, male, in Jukoshtan, leaves flower petals in his wake when he runs very fast; an elderly gentleman in Brost can make glass directly from sand just by having an argument with it; and now there are two or possibly even three—this is rather unconfirmed—women in Ahanashtan who can heal injuries of
all types simply by holding the injured person in their arms and taking a long nap with them.” Her aide checks the figures once more. “In total, this is seventy-three reports in the last two hours.”

  “And those are the ones we know,” says General Noor, ancient and gray but still wielding his steely stare. “There must be countless ones we don’t know about. Either because these people have hidden themselves away, or their…abilities function in an unseen manner.”

  Prime Minister Gadkari considers this. She is known for being a quiet contemplator, not the sort of prime minister to rock the boat—a great contrast to Komayd and, after her, Gawali. “So,” she says eventually. “These are…miracles.”

  “They would be, Prime Minister,” says General Noor. “Yet these are happening everywhere. Most miracles were restricted to the Continent.”

  “And none of these people were known to have these miraculous qualities before,” says General Sakthi. “They’ve just…come from nowhere.”

  There’s a snort from the back of the room. Everyone along the table slowly turns to look at Minister Mulaghesh, who is absently peeling a cigarillo.

  “Do you have something you wish to say, Minister?” asks Gadkari.

  “I am cursed,” says Mulaghesh, “with an abundance of things I wish to say, as we are well aware, Prime Minister.”

  General Noor studiously looks away, as if trying to hide a smile.

  Gadkari glares at Mulaghesh, who is minority leader of the opposition party and an eternal pain in her ass. It is only due to decorum that Mulaghesh is a part of any such cabinet meetings, though Gadkari has found that Mulaghesh does more talking than nearly all the people who actually have a right to be here.

  “Do you, Mulaghesh,” says Gadkari icily, “have any opinions on the matter at hand? You do have some experience in…these matters.”

  “ ‘These matters,’ ” snorts Mulaghesh. “By which you mean these insane horrors.” She sucks her teeth. “Komayd once said that the Divine might have been like any other energy—there’s a fixed amount of it, all being used by various…I don’t know, machinations.”

  “Miracles,” says Noor. “Gods.”

  “Yes,” says Mulaghesh. “Things like that.”

  “Would this have been Komayd the elder?” asks Gadkari’s aide. “Or Komayd the younger?”

  “I mean the one who wasn’t a scheming fucking bitch,” says Mulaghesh.

  “Kindly cut to the point, Mulaghesh!” snaps Gadkari.

  “The walls of Bulikov, the biggest miraculous thing ever, are now gone. That big black Divine thing that appeared out of nowhere, that’s gone too. All those things were using that Divine energy. And now maybe it’s just…dispersed. Like a plume of gas from a refinery flare.”

  There’s a long silence as the room understands what she means.

  “Dispersed,” says Sakthi, stunned. “You mean…Everyone, everywhere…could be a god?”

  “Probably not,” says Mulaghesh. “These are just little things, little miracles, in comparison to what a Divinity can do. But they can still do them, apparently.”

  “But…But you are saying that average, everyday people can now shape reality,” says Gadkari. “You are saying that anyone, anywhere, can take the world around them and make it what they want!”

  Mulaghesh shrugs. “Somewhat. Sure. But at least it’s not just the Continent sitting on this. It’s everywhere. Now people everywhere can do it.”

  Another long silence.

  Noor turns to the prime minister. “I suspect we will need to set up some kind of an organization,” he says, “responsible for identifying and regulating such peoples.”

  Gadkari, still bewildered, blinks. “I’m sorry?”

  “Some kind of…temporary police bureau,” says Noor. “An emergency agency of some kind.”

  “And if these effects are not temporary?” asks Sakthi.

  “Then…perhaps a Ministry of its own,” says Noor.

  Someone at the end of the table laughs bitterly. “A Ministry of Miracles,” they say. “What a nightmare!”

  “The real question,” says Sakthi, “is who shall spearhead this effort?”

  “True,” says Noor. “Ever since Komayd died—and it sounds like she’s actually dead this time—we have very few people in government with any experience with the Divine.”

  Another silence. Then, for the second time, all the heads in the room slowly turn to look at Minister Mulaghesh.

  Mulaghesh’s brow wrinkles as she realizes she’s the center of attention. She drops the cigarillo in shock. Then she sighs and says, “Ah, shit.”

  Somewhere deep within Sigrud’s mind, sentience slowly blossoms.

  He is alive. He is aware. And he is in terrible pain.

  Everything hurts. Everything. It’s unimaginable how his body could hurt so much. Just thinking about drawing breath pains him, let alone actually drawing breath.

  His mouth is dry. He moans.

  Someone nearby says, “He’s awake. He’s alive!”

  He opens his mouth. Someone dribbles water into it. The water is a blessing and a curse: his body hungers for it, yet it’s so difficult to swallow. He manages to do it once, twice, but can’t handle a third.

  He cracks open his eye—this barest of gestures is like lifting two hundred pounds—and sees he’s in an opulent bedchamber, probably Ivanya’s. He trembles and looks to his right. Ivanya is sitting on the bed next to him with a bowl of water and a rag. His right shoulder is a huge mass of bandages. She looks tired, like she’s been working on him all day, if not all night.

  She smiles at him sadly. “Can you hear me? Are you all in there?”

  He exhales softly through his nostrils.

  “Good. That’s good!”

  He can’t speak the question, so he tries to use his eye to communicate it.

  “You’re been out for three days,” she says. “I didn’t believe you’d make it. But you did. Barely.” She blinks rapidly. Sigrud realizes she’s trying very hard to hold her bedside manner together, which means his condition might look as bad as it feels.

  He tries to speak, but he can’t get further than, “T-T-”

  “Taty. Yes. She’s…Well.” Ivanya steps back.

  Another person walks into view. A girl.

  It is not quite Malwina, not quite Tatyana. She is a mix of the two: she has Taty’s wide, soulful eyes, and Malwina’s truculent mouth—and, oddly, the way she carries herself still reminds him of Shara. Unlike Ivanya, she doesn’t bother trying to smile. Her eyes look haunted and hollow and miserable.

  Again, Sigrud tries to use his eye to communicate what he wishes to say.

  “Hello,” says the girl. She takes a moment, wondering what to say. “We’ve…I’ve asked everyone to call me Tatyana. I guess because Taty had Shara in her memories. More of her, at least. And I wanted to keep that.” She tries to smile. “I couldn’t go back to being two people. Not after everything I did. Some things…Some things you can’t take back.”

  Though Sigrud doesn’t have the strength to lift his hand, he crooks a finger. She sees it and crouches beside his bed, holding her ear up to his cracked lips.

  “Weren’t you a god?” asks Sigrud, his voice a rattling whisper.

  “I was,” she says. “I was…powerful. Quite powerful. Powerful enough to give it all away.”

  He frowns at her.

  “I gave it to anyone,” she says. She waves at the ceiling. “Anything. Random, perhaps. It wasn’t right for me to make such decisions about reality. It wasn’t right for me to make decisions about who should make such decisions. So I just…scattered it, sent it to wherever it all wanted to go.”

  “A lot has changed since you’ve been out,” says Ivanya. “People are showing some…unusual talents as a by-product of what Taty here did, to say the least.”

  He frowns at her, confused.

  “Miraculous talents,” Ivanya says. “Everyone. Everywhere. The Ministry’s in an uproar. Everything everywhere is i
n an uproar. It’s a new world overnight.”

  Sigrud crooks his finger again. The girl—Taty, he supposes—leans close.

  “Why am I alive?” he whispers.

  She sits up and smiles weakly at him. “I gave it away, but I couldn’t give it all away. I can’t change what I am. I am still a creature of the Divine, still the daughter of time—just not as strong as I used to be. But I could still snatch that miracle living inside you, and break it open, and use all the time it’d stored up. Specifically, I…I used it on your wound.”

  “Your shoulder’s knitted faster than anyone’s should, from what happened to you,” says Ivanya. “You should have died within minutes of pulling that spear out.”

  He shuts his eye, deflated.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Taty. She leans close.

  “I was ready to die,” he whispers. “You should have let me die.”

  She sits up. She looks at him, her dark eyes large and sorrowful. “You’re all I have left,” she says. “You’re the only person who was there when I needed you. You’re all I have left now.”

  Sigrud shuts his eye and sleeps.

  He awakes in the night. He coughs and someone is again there beside him with the water, the rag, the drops in his mouth. Again he struggles to swallow.

  “There, there,” says Ivanya’s voice. “There, there.”

  When he opens his eye he sees she’s watching him with that curious, strained light in her eyes again, like she’s struggling to keep smiling.

  He finds he can speak—but just barely. “Is Taty here?”

  “No. Something’s wrong with her. She’s been having terrible headaches, and has nearly been as bedridden as you a—”

  Sigrud shakes his head. “We have to get her off the Continent.”

  “Why?”

  “The Divine…it is shaped by the beliefs of the people around it. She’s still Divine, still being affected by the Continent. Olvos was terrified of it. Terrified of belief changing her.”

  “You really think that’s what’s happening?”

  “Olvos stayed cloistered away for fear of it happening to her,” he whispers. “She couldn’t even stop the torture of her own son.”