I gasp for breath, as I glimpse the heady wildness soon to be mine. Smells so rich they’re food in my mouth: the thick honey of crushed flowers; the salt air needles pricking the back of my throat; the forest’s mushroom succulence begging me to plunge and rip and flee into its darkness.
The air is cold candy to my skin; my blood rises hot in response. I struggle violently against Circe’s hold, thrashing towards the sweet forgetful earth beckoning me.
I smell freedom.
I smell oblivion.
I smell now.
I taste hot salt-sweet blood; I see the howling eyes of Circe’s beasts; I hear the dull click of my hooves against stone; the world overflows with now and now and now.
Orson Scott Card is the best-selling author of more than forty novels, including Ender’s Game, which was a winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The sequel, Speaker for the Dead, also won both awards, making Card the only author to have captured science fiction’s two most coveted prizes in consecutive years. His most recent books include another entry in the Enderverse, Ender in Exile, and a sequel to his near-future political thriller Empire, Hidden Empire. He is currently working on The Lost Gates, the first volume of a new fantasy series.
One of Card’s recurrent themes in his fiction is precocious children whose superior intellect isolates them from their peers and brings them into conflict with dull-witted adult authorities, and whose exceptional abilities destine them for world-changing actions about which they may be reluctant or ignorant. (Most famously in Ender’s Game and its many sequels and companion novels.)
And in today’s storytelling landscape, in which parents are all too often kidnapped, deceased, or otherwise out of the picture—all the better to free up the kids to go adventuring—Card is resolute about writing about family and community and the ways in which those things shape us.
Card’s 2005 novel Magic Street is one such story, set in the Baldwin Hills section of Los Angeles. It tells the tale of a very unusual boy named Mack Street who must face a lurking evil that has invaded his neighborhood. (A story set in this milieu, “Waterbaby,” is available on the author’s website.)
Our next story also involves many of Card’s storytelling signatures—an exceptionally bright young man, some very strange abilities, and a special destiny.
Jamaica
Orson Scott Card
AP Chemistry was a complete scam and Jam Fisher knew it. Riddle High School was the cesspool of the county school system. Somebody in the superintendent’s office came up with a completely logical solution: Since statistics proved that high schools with the highest enrollment in Advanced Placement courses showed the highest rates of graduation and college placement, they would make all the students at Riddle High take AP courses.
How dumb do you have to be to believe something like that? Dumb enough, apparently, to go to college, get an Ed.D., and then work in the Riddle County School System.
Jam was one of the few kids at Riddle who would have taken AP Chemistry anyway. But now, instead of studying with other kids who were serious about learning something, he was stuck in a class with a bunch of goof-offs, dumbasses, and idiots.
Which he knew wasn’t fair. They weren’t actually dumb, they were simply out of their depth. They didn’t have a college-grad Mom like Jam did, or have a small shelf of books in the living room which were written by relatives (but read by almost nobody).
Fair or not, the result was predictable. In order to have a hope of teaching anybody anything, they were dumbing down the curriculum, and so Jam would have to work twice as hard to educate himself in order to do decently on the AP tests. Mom would go ballistic if he didn’t ace them all and come out of high school with a whole year of college credits. “If you don’t have a full ride scholarship you’ll be at Riddle Tech and that means you’ll be qualified—barely—for janitorial work.”
And here he was on the first day of class in his junior year, listening to some overly-chummy teacher making chemistry into a joke.
“What I have here,” said Mr. Laudon, “is a philosopher’s stone. Supposedly it could change any common metal into gold, back in the days of alchemy.” He handed it to Amahl Piercey in the first row. “So before we go any further, I want every one of you to hold it—squeeze it, taste it, stick it up your nose, I don’t care—”
“If I’m spose to taste it, I don’t want it up Amahl’s nose,” said Ceena Robles. Which provoked laughter. Meanwhile, Amahl, not much of a clown, had merely squeezed it, shrugged, and passed it back.
The stone was passed hand to hand up and down the rows. Jam saw that it looked like amber—yellowy and translucent. But nobody seemed to notice anything special about it, till it got to Rhonda Jones. She yelped when she got it handed to her and dropped it on the floor. It rolled crookedly under another desk.
“It burned me!” she said.
Shocked you, you mean, thought Jam. Amber builds up an electric charge. That’s the trick Mr. Laudon must mean to play on us.
But Jam kept his thoughts to himself. The last thing he needed was to have Laudon as an enemy. He’d done a year where he antagonized a teacher and it wasn’t fun—or good for the grades.
“Pick it up,” said Laudon. “No, not you, her. The one who dropped it.”
“My name is Rhonda,” she said, “and I’m not picking it up.”
“Rhonda.” Laudon scanned the roll sheet. “Jones. Yes you will pick it up, and now, and squeeze it tightly.”
Rhonda got that stubborn look and folded her arms across her chest.
And with a resigned feeling, Jam spoke up to take the heat off her. “Is this an experiment or something?” asked Jam.
Laudon glared at him. Good start, Jam. “I’m talking to Miz Jones here.”
“I’m just wondering what’s so important,” said Jam. “It’s not as if there’s such a thing as a philosopher’s stone. It’s just amber that builds up an electric charge and it shocked her when she got it.”
“Oh, excuse me,” said Laudon, looking at the roll. “Yep, I checked, and right here it says that I’m the teacher here. Who are you?”
“Jam Fisher.”
“Jam? Oh, I see. That’s a nickname for Jamaica Fisher. I’ve never heard of a boy named Jamaica.”
Some titters from the class, but not many, because in the lower grades Jam had been through bloody fights with anybody who said Jamaica was a girl’s name.
“And yet you have the evidence right there in your hands,” said Jam. “Doesn’t the roll have a little M or F by our names?”
“It’s gallant of you, Mr. Fisher, to try to rescue Miz Jones, but she will pick up that stone.”
Jam knew he was committing academic suicide, but there was something in him that would not tolerate a bully. He got up, strode forward. Laudon backed away a step, probably afraid Jam intended to hit him. But all Jam did was reach down under the desk where the stone had rolled and reach out to pick it up.
The next thing he was aware of was somebody slapping his face. It stung, and Jam lashed out to slap back. Only has hand barely moved. He was so weak he couldn’t lift his arm more than an inch before it fell back to the floor, spent.
The floor? What was he doing, lying on his back on the floor?
“Open your eyes, Mr. Fisher,” commanded Laudon. “I need to see if your pupils are dilated.”
What is this, a drug test?
Jam meant to say it. But his mouth didn’t move.
Another slap.
“Stop it!” he shouted.
Or, rather, whispered.
“Open your eyes.”
With some fluttering, Jam finally complied.
“No concussion. No doubt your brain is in its original condition, despite having hit the floor. You—the two of you—help him stand up.”
“No thanks,” murmured Jam.
But the two students delegated to help him were more afraid of Laudon’s glare than Jam’s protest.
“I’ll throw up,” Jam said. Or started
to say. But the last part came out in a gush of lunch. By good fortune, it landed between desks, but it still got all over Jam’s shoes, and the shoes and pantlegs of everyone near him.
“I think he needs to go to the nurse,” said Rhonda.
“Need to lie down,” Jam said. Whereupon he fainted again, which accomplished his stated objective.
He woke up the next time in the nurse’s office. He heard her talking on the phone. “I can call an ambulance for him,” the nurse was saying, “but school policy does not allow us to transport a sick or injured student in private vehicles. Yes, I know you wouldn’t sue me, but I’m not worried about getting sued, I’m worried about losing my job. You don’t have a job for a fired nurse, do you? Then let’s not argue about the policy. Either I call an ambulance, or you come get him, Miz Fisher, or I keep him here to infect every other student who comes in here.”
“I’m not sick,” murmured Jam.
“Now he’s saying he’s not sick,” said the nurse, “even though he still has puke on his shoes. Yes, ma’am, ‘puke’ is official nurse lingo for vomitus. We speak English nowadays, even in the best nursing schools.”
“Tell her not to come I’m okay,” whispered Jam.
“He says for you not to come, he’s okay. Weak as a baby, probably delirious, but by no means should you leave work to come get him.”
Within twenty minutes, Mother was there.
So was Mr. Laudon. “Before you take him, I want it back,” he said to Jam.
“Want what?” asked Mother. “Are you accusing my son of stealing?” Jam didn’t even have to open his eyes to see his mother right up in Laudon’s face.
“He picked up something of mine from the floor and he still has it.”
Jam noticed that Laudon didn’t seem to want to tell Mother or the nurse that what he was looking for was a stone. “Search me,” Jam whispered.
Mother immediately was stroking his head, cooing at him. “Oh, Jamaica, baby, don’t you try to talk, I know you don’t have it.”
“He offered to let me search,” said Mr. Laudon.
“So this boy of mine, this straight A student who comes home from school every day and takes care of his handicapped brother and prepares dinner for his mother, this is the boy you want to treat like a criminal?”
“I’m not saying he stole it,” said Mr. Laudon, backing down—but not giving up, either. “He might not even know he has it.”
“Search me,” Jam insisted. “I don’t want your philosopher’s stone.”
“What did he say?” said Mother.
“He’s delirious,” said Laudon. Jam could feel his hands now, patting his pockets.
Jam opened his hands to show they were empty.
“I’m so sorry,” said Mr. Laudon. “I could have sworn he had it. It wasn’t in the room when they carried him out.”
“Then I suggest you take a good hard look at some other child,” said Mother. “Jamaica, baby, can you sit up? Can you walk? Or shall I have Mr. I-Lost-My-Rock-So-Somebody-Must-Have-Stolen-It help you out to the car?”
Rather than have Laudon touch him again, Jam rolled to one side and found he could do it. He could even push himself into an upright position. He wasn’t so weak anymore. But he wasn’t strong, either. He leaned heavily on his mother as she helped him out to the car.
“What a great first day of school,” he said.
“Tell me the truth now,” said Mother. “Did somebody hit you?”
“Nobody hits me anymore, Mama,” said Jam.
“Damn well better not. That teacher—what was that about?”
“He’s an idiot,” said Jam.
“Why is he an idiot who’s already on your case on the first day of school? Answer me, or I’ll tell the principal he touched you indecently when he was patting you down and that’ll get his ass fired.”
“Don’t say ‘ass,’ Mama,” said Jam.
“Ass ass ass,” said Mother. “Who’s the parent here, you or me?”
It was an old ritual, and Jam finished it. “Must be me, cause it sure ain’t you.”
“Now get in that car, baby.”
By the time they got home, Jam was recovered enough that he didn’t have to lean on anybody. “Maybe you should take me back to school, Mama, I feel a lot better.”
“So does that mean you were faking it before?” asked Mother. “What’s so bad that you want to get out of it and jeopardize your whole future by skipping school, not to mention jeopardizing my job by making me leave all in a rush to take you home?”
“If I could’ve talked I would have told the nurse not to call you.”
“Answer my question, Jamaica.”
“Mama, he was passing around a stupid stone, talking about alchemy as the forerunner of chemistry, and claiming it was a philosopher’s stone. Only it picked up a static charge and zapped Rhonda Jones’s hand and she dropped it, and Mr. Laudon was having a hissy fit, trying to make her pick it up even though she had already touched it and what’s the point anyway, he was just going to tell us that alchemy doesn’t work but chemistry does, so why should we all touch the stupid rock?”
“Let me guess. You saw injustice being done so you had to put your face right in it.”
“I just bent over to pick up the stone and I must have passed out because I woke up on the floor.”
“You didn’t pick it up?”
“No, Mama. You accusing me of stealing now?”
“No, I’m accusing you of having something seriously wrong with your health and having visions of getting called out of work next time because you turned out to have a faulty valve in your heart or something and you keeled over dead on a basketball court.”
“The only way I’ll ever get on a basketball court is if I’m already dead and they’re using me for a freethrow line.”
“I got too many hopes pinned on you, you poor boy. If only—I should have killed him instead of marrying him.”
“Don’t go off on Daddy now, Mama.”
“Don’t you call him Daddy. He’s nothing to you or to me.”
“Then don’t bring him up whenever anything goes wrong.”
“He’s the reason everything goes wrong. He’s the reason I have to work like a slave every day. He’s the reason you have to earn a scholarship to get to college. He’s the reason your poor brother is in that house on his bed for the rest of his life, your brother who once had such . . . so much . . . ”
And then, of course, she cried, and refused to let him comfort her until he made her let him hug her, and then it was him helping her into the house, making her lie down, bringing her a damp washcloth to put on her forehead so she could calm down and get control of herself so she could get back to work.
He closed the blinds and closed the door as he left her room. Only then did he go into the living room where Gan’s bed was, in front of the television, which he didn’t really watch, even though it was on all day. The neighbor lady who supposedly looked in on him several times a day would set the channel and leave it.
“How you doin’, Gan?” said Jam, sitting down on the bed beside his brother. “Anything good on? Watch Dr. Phil? I already got myself in trouble with a teacher—chemistry teacher, and a complete idiot of course—and then I passed out and smacked my head on the floor and threw up. You should have been there.”
Then, even though Gan didn’t say anything or even make a sound, Jam knew that he needed his diaper changed. It was one of the weird things that Jam had been able to do since he was nine, and Gan got brain-damaged—Jam knew what Gan wanted. He learned not to bother telling Mother or anyone else—they just thought it was cute that “Jamaica thinks he knows what Ghana wants, isn’t that sweet? Always looking out for his brother.” Jam simply did whatever it was Gan needed done. It was simpler. And it gave Jam a reputation among the neighborhood women as the best son and brother on God’s green earth, when he was no such thing. It’s just that he knew what Gan wanted and nobody else did, and nobody would believe him, so what else w
as there to do?
Jam got a clean diaper from the box and brought the wipes and pulled down his brother’s sheet. He pulled loose the tabs and then rolled his brother over. And this was the other weird thing that had started when Jam began taking care of his brother: His skin never actually touched the diaper or anything in it. It was like his fingers hovered in the air just a micron away, so close that you couldn’t fit a hair between, and he could pick things up and move them as surely as if he had an iron grip on them. But there was never any friction. Never any contact.
All that Mother noticed was that Jam was tidy and never soiled his hands. She still made him wash. Once, defiant, Jam had gone through the whole handwashing ritual without ever letting the soap or water actually touch his skin. But it took real effort to repel the water, not like fending off solid objects. So he didn’t bother pretending, when washing was so easy. Didn’t bother defying anybody, either. Except when somebody was being a bully. If he’d stood up to Daddy, got between him and Gan, maybe things would have been different. Daddy never hit Jam, it was only Gan he lit into, even at his angriest.
The diaper was a real stinker but it made no difference to Jam. It didn’t soil his hands, and he had stopped minding the smell years ago. Dealing with anybody else’s poop would make him sick, but it was Gan’s, so it was just a thing that needed doing. Jam cleaned off his butt—it took three wipes—and then folded the diaper into a wad and dumped it into the garbage can with the anti-odor bag in it.
Then he opened the clean diaper, slipped it into position, and rolled Gan back onto it. Now that everything was clean again, he didn’t bother fending—his hand touched the bare skin of his brother’s hip. He was about to fasten the diaper closed when suddenly Gan’s hand flashed out and gripped Jam’s wrist.
For a moment all Jam felt was the shock of being grabbed. But then he was flooded with emotion. Gan grabbed him. Gan moved. Was it a reflex? Or did it mean Gan was getting better?
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