Glass and Gardens

by Sarena Ulibarri

  “Oh dear,” said Andrea.

  “Teenagers,” muttered Berta.

  Andrea didn’t correct her.

  Freddie rushed up to them, flushed and excited because his team had finally won the cricket. Berta let his enthusiasm wash over her, pleasantly infectious. But her gaze kept slipping back to the young people on the blanket: Emily and Sable sitting too close, touching too much, while Noah glowered beside them.

  ***

  Andrea picked up a dripping plate from the rack. “I think Noah’s gone home,” she said. “Matt saw him headed up Westgate with his mum.”

  “She never was one for parties,” said Berta. “Freddie, pay attention. That’s not clean.” She slipped a bowl back into the sink.

  “Oops,” said Freddie. “Sorry, Sis.”

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Andrea said. “I’ll finish this if you like.”

  “I’m not so old that I can’t walk home in the dark,” said Berta.

  “You’ve done it now, Andrea,” said Freddie. “She’ll be here ’til three in the morning, just to prove a point.”

  Berta snorted a laugh.

  Andrea pulled her hair back off her neck and wafted it with her dish towel. “It’s so hot. Is it ever going to rain?”

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than there was a roll of thunder. The storm was a good way away yet, but it was loud enough to rattle the doors of the Hall.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” said Freddie.

  ***

  Berta wove her way through the revellers on the lawn, collecting the last few plates to wash up. The air was thick and still, the heat suffocating even at midnight. But the youngsters didn’t care. They danced on to the driving beat of the band, faces lifted to the darkening sky. Under the sound of the music the river rushed, swollen from the storm which had broken farther up the valley. She saw Emily, and Sable. Emily was in tears. Sable comforting her. Noah stood with them. He must have come back after walking his mother home. He looked too-tall and awkward, his head down.

  Berta put down her pile of plates, and marched towards them. But before she got there, Noah broke away, first at an awkward trot and then a loping run.

  Berta followed. She kept her eyes fixed on him because, as fit as she was, she had no illusions about who would win in a running race between herself and a young man with long legs and something he urgently needed to get away from. Besides, running was a sweaty, undignified sort of thing to do.

  Noah was headed for the river.

  Berta walked faster.

  He reached the bank of the river where the boulders were. The spot where the fishers fished from, where children would sit and dangle their feet in the water. But the river was in flood now. As Noah climbed up onto the tallest boulder, water surged. The river swept the boulder into its flow and knocked Noah clean off his feet.

  Berta ran.

  ***

  She caught up with him downstream, where the willows clustered around a twist in the river’s course. A duck sheltered her ducklings in the lee of a few stray rocks, watching her with beady little eyes. Berta had no fear of the River of White Water. But Noah clearly did. He thrashed and cried out and was drowning in the face of overwhelming panic. Berta cursed, hitched up her skirts and waded into the water.

  The river roared in her mind, silver and gold twisting around an image of Noah, pulling him away from her. “Now, now,” she murmured. “You know that’s not how this works, Sulis. Give him back to me.”

  She lunged forwards and caught him before he went down again. Her arms wrapped tight around him, holding his slender, drenched body close to hers.

  And then she Knew.

  ***

  When he’d finished puking up the river, Noah sat on the riverbank and cried. Berta waited, wringing out her socks. Wet skirts and shirts and whatnot could be coped with, but she detested having damp feet.

  “When you’re done, young man,” she said, “we need to talk.”

  He looked up at her through long, wet eyelashes. “Why? You already know, don’t you?”

  “I find it’s best to be clear. Especially when the person in question didn’t give permission. Besides, there’s more to the craft than knowledge. Knowledge isn’t the same as wisdom. I think you probably need the full package, don’t you?”

  “Emily hates me. You saw her with Sable tonight.” His head drooped. “I saw you watching us.”

  “She loves you. She was trying to make you jealous. Why didn’t you talk to her about it?”

  “What, and tell her that the dad she thought was her dad, the nice, decent one she thinks the world of, isn’t actually hers at all. That she has the same loser father as me? How the fuck is that supposed to help?”

  His shoulders convulsed, and he started to cry again.

  “May magic and the wild places save me,” she muttered.

  “She’s my sister,” Noah said. “I fell in love with my sister.”

  “I see. And where did you get that idea, exactly?”

  “My father told me. They had an affair, him and Emily’s mother. Just after I was born. He promised her mother he wouldn’t tell anyone, but when I Emily and I started to get… close… well, he had to.”

  “Naturally.”

  “You don’t look shocked.”

  Berta laughed. “In the name of the wild river, boy, it would take more than a bit of adultery to shock me.”

  “It’s incest.” Noah said the word as if he was afraid it would hide under his bed and strangle him in the middle of the night.

  “Listen carefully, Noah. She’s not your sister.”

  He looked up again. “What?”

  “You silly boy. If you thought about it for ten minutes you’d realise. Your dad lied to you! He’s done a lot of that, you know, over the years. Your mother’s quite a regular of mine. So was Emily’s mother, once he’d broken her heart too. But Emily was nothing to do with it. You know this, in your gut.”

  “But why would he say it if it wasn’t true?”

  “People lie for more reasons than you can count. Knowing your father, I’d say he was jealous. He never forgave Emily’s mother for refusing to leave her partner for him. Always bore a grudge, that man. Last thing he’d want is for his son to be with her lovely daughter. To his mind it’d be like you were getting a bit of what he couldn’t have.”

  Noah blinked at her. She watched the lies shatter; truth connecting with truth to blossom in his heart.

  “She doesn’t even look like him,” Berta said. “She’s got her father’s eyes. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “I thought it was a coincidence.”

  Berta sighed. “Don’t they teach genetics in that school anymore?”

  “Oh.”

  Berta waited. The rain started, the tail of the storm, pitter-pat on the river in front of them.

  She gave up on her socks.

  “Then,” Noah said.

  “Go on. Go find her. Have fun. There’s still two hours before sunrise.”

  Noah’s grin broadened. He laughed. He sprang to his feet, the darkness lifted from him, and then, to Berta’s absolute horror, he plucked her from the ground and twirled her around, the stars spinning through the sky, like a fairground ride. She shrieked and smacked his back until he let her go, pretending to scold him.

  “Sorry. Thank you.” His eyes shone. He ran off, back to the music and the young people. Berta hid her smile behind her hand, even though there was nobody to see her. Then she went to the edge of the swollen river and stood, letting the water rush over her feet.

  “Well done,” said Andrea. Berta realised she’d closed her eyes for a moment. Andrea stood beside her, her feet bare too.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Berta.

  They each put an arm around the other.

  “Midsummer,” murmured Berta. “The night of magic and wisdom.”

  “And the river,” said Andrea.

  “Always the river,” said Berta.

&n
bsp; ***

  Helen Kenwright writes hopeful speculative fiction, and is currently working on a steampunk/solarpunk novel about history, humanity and unexpected consequences. She has an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from York St John University, and runs the Writing Tree, an organisation offering online creative writing tuition and support. She teaches creative writing for Converge, a project at York St John University which offers educational opportunities for people recovering from mental ill-health, and for the University of York’s lifelong learning programme. Find more at www.helenkenwright.com or on Twitter at @hnkenwright.

  Under the Northern Lights

  by Charlotte M. Ray

  Until the mini-blimp crashed in the pond, my life had been average and boring. But the splashes—first from the repurposed camper, then a few seconds later, from the solweave patchwork bubble, and a minute after that, frantic, human-made ones—those splashes changed everything.

  And that is how I met Krista. Sputtering and flailing her arms, teal and purple hair a mess, climbing out of the old camper while cursing a blue streak.

  “Need a hand?” I shouted from my boat. Well, it was more of a raft, which worked better most of the time since I only used it in the shallow lake for checking the hydrofarm. And, apparently, fishing up Kristas.

  “I’d be delighted,” she replied in a foreign accent. She had made it up on top of the camper, and occupied herself by hauling in the bubble and, to my surprise, folding it in on itself.

  “It’s not rigid?”

  “Nope, I didn’t see any benefit in that. I figured it should be easy to stow, in case of storms, for example. You wouldn’t want the wind to blow it away, right?”

  “You built it?” I don’t know why I asked. I already knew she had, which thoroughly impressed me. I got the feeling she would continue to impress me, too.

  She looked a few years older than me, or just laughed so much that she had started developing lines at the corners of her eyes early on. Her big, clear eyes were blue as the summer sky reflected in the water.

  “Hey, how much weight does your raft carry?” Her words served as a splash of cold water in the face, helping me focus on the conundrum at hand instead of on the curves beneath her kinweave flight coveralls.

  “Enough to carry both of us, but not nearly enough to salvage the camper. Sorry.”

  “Okay, we’ll figure it out later. I’m Krista, by the way. I’m going to Svalbard to see if there’s anything left of the seed bank there.”

  I took the wet hand she held out. “I’m Hien.”

  ***

  Since she was already drenched, she decided to dive back inside the camper to get her essentials out: a pocket-AI, batteries and chargers of various kinds, and a soaked bag of clothes.

  By the time she surfaced for the third time, a bunch of other people on rafts and in boats had shown up, tossing questions at me that I couldn’t answer. Apparently, since I had found her first, I should already know everything about her. And apparently I was now responsible for her well-being. Never mind that she hadn’t listened to me when I asked her not to risk drowning by diving for her stuff.

  But I didn’t mind offering her a place to stay for a while.

  “Let’s go. We need to get you something dry to wear, and food, too.”

  “I don’t want to impose,” she said, her sky blue eyes telling me she meant it. She would understand if I couldn’t or didn’t want to help any further, and she would get by some other way.

  It took a few moments for me to refocus on anything else than her pretty eyes and the inner strength shining in them. “I… it’s not a problem.” I sounded like a frog with the cold of the century until I cleared my throat. “I have plenty of space and food. I really don’t mind.”

  As it turned out, my “plenty of space” only felt big and open when devoid of Krista. Her presence in my home made it feel warmer, cozier, even though she spread things out to dry just about everywhere. She set her chargers in a row on the porch railing to catch the sun. Her kinweave jumpsuit hung from one of the roof beams to the side, giving off a faint blue glow as the draft from the open window made it sway, the kinetic energy instantly turning into heat to help dry it.

  Krista herself looked gorgeous in the flannel pyjamas Mrs. Solheim, my neighbor, had brought her, along with some toiletries and what she claimed were leftovers from a stew she happened to have made the day before. But I knew Frieda, and I knew what this stew tasted like both when it was days old and when it had been made a couple of hours earlier, and this was as fresh as they came. Not that it mattered if Frieda wanted to tell a little white lie so Krista wouldn’t feel like a burden.

  ***

  Krista absolutely blew my mind in every way possible. The girls I had grown up with were like boring, gray moths where Krista was like a colorful butterfly, except that she had a purpose. She had a plan, and she wasn’t going to let something as silly and insignificant as a crash and a little water get in her way. No, she told me, it was just a minor setback. Yes, she said, she would rebuild the solweave bubble and the rotor, and make sure whatever had caused the mishap wouldn’t happen again.

  I offered to help, of course, while a small voice in my head hoped we either wouldn’t succeed and she’d have to stay, or that at least the repairs would take a long time. That maybe she’d start to like it here and not leave even if we did manage to fix it. But I would never sabotage her.

  Krista smiled and sighed happily when she woke up on the inflatable bed in my living room and told me how much she loved the smell of fresh coffee. She smiled again when we stepped outside and she took in the buildings with the solar mosaic walls that mimicked the living flowers and trees all around us. She did the same when we stood on the shore of the lake, along with all the people who had come to help raise the camper.

  The only problem with all this was I didn’t have time to talk to her. I mean, of course we talked, but only about the problem at hand. And other people talked to her, too, people who knew more about winches and ropes and pullies and things. I did all the things I was asked to, of course, which mostly consisted of speeding off to get this-or-that from Elias’ garage or helping keep a rope taut. Others were the brain, I was just the muscle. But at least I made myself useful.

  We did the heavy lifting by hand, instead of using bots, because the ones we had that were powerful enough were also too heavy for our boats and rafts, and not necessarily completely waterproof. Krista’s camper needed to be towed to dry land as soon as possible, even if none of us thought anything inside could be salvaged.

  We did have our pocket-AIs, naturally, but they only confirmed what Krista and Vladi planned, Vladi with his long beard firmly curled around his fingers as he pondered, Krista tossing out ideas and suggestions seemingly at random until he nodded and grunted agreement. And still, in the midst of all this, she had time to look around and smile, as if the dark green pines and spruces in the distance had been put there by a long-forgotten artist, just waiting for her to show up and appreciate it.

  “You’re so lucky to live in a place this beautiful, Hien,” she said that evening, when the camper stood outside in my yard. Water dripped from it into a shallow trench Frieda’s grandkids, Stefan and Mariam, had dug quite happily for half a liter of strawberries. I allowed them to pick their reward themselves from my manual outdoor farmland. Judging by the red juice stains on their faces, quite a few extra berries made their way into their stomachs, but that was to be expected. Encouraged, even, because the more they picked, the less I would have to do.

  “I suppose it is, but I’ve lived here all my life. I hardly notice it unless something special is going on,” I replied.

  “Special like what?”

  I wanted to say “like you”, but managed to stop myself. “Uhm, like the midnight sun, maybe. That’s pretty awesome. Or, well, it’s not actually midnight sun, we’re still too far south for that, but it doesn’t get properly dark here in the middle of summer. And sometimes you’ll have p
ink and purple and red streaks of clouds set against the not quite dark sky, and maybe the full moon will look gigantic when it rises, and yeah…” I felt my cheeks heat up. “That’s nice to look at,” I finished, sounding completely lame.

  “I hope I get to see that before we get the mini-blimp fixed. Although, I suppose I’ll be following the midnight sun when I can continue on my way,” she mused. She didn’t know her words made my heart ache. Already. After only a day, only a few conversations, I knew I didn’t want her to leave. At least not yet, not for a long time.

  ***

  We spent the next day following her AI’s directions in breaking apart the camper to dry it all out. It guided us in a childlike, cartoonish voice, which cracked me up every time I heard it. Krista looked a little embarrassed when I asked about it, but to me, it felt like we were breaking new ground. I knew something private about her now, something I got the feeling no one else knew.

  “I can change it into something more serious if you want,” she said, then continued before I had a chance to reply. “I figured being alone in a self-built blimp that I hadn’t tested for long flights yet was a little risky, so I wanted the AI to sound the opposite of serious. You know?”

  “I would have done the same if I had thought of it,” I smiled. “But I’d probably have set any alarm to be in a stern voice. Like an officer in an old war movie.”

  “You like old movies too?” Gleefully, she said, “AI, run the test for total systems breakdown warning.”

  An alarm sounded, a tinny klaxon that merged into an “Atten-shun!” barked by a harsh male voice, then turned into a forlorn foghorn, and the “Atten-shun!” again. The racket continued for a minute or so, all kinds of warning noises running into each other. I could see Krista laughing, but couldn’t hear the sound until she hit the AI’s reset button.

  “So you couldn’t just have one. You needed all of them.” My own voice sounded strange to my ears in the ringing silence.

  “Yeah, I had to make sure there was at least one warning sound that would wake me. Maybe fewer would have been enough.” Her eyes sparkled. “But at least it worked.” Her face became serious and a shudder went through her. “I think a bigger bird of some kind hit the rotor. A goose, maybe? I’m just glad I crashed here, and in the water, instead of in the middle of a forest or the sea or something.”