An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

  “You’re an ascetic. You are always angry with yourself. And you didn’t deserve it.”

  “May I look at your hand?” he asked, already kneeling down in front of her. She moved her arm from her stomach to reveal the scope of the injury. Theo did not react but to close his eyes for a few moments too long.

  “I will fix it. You know I will,” he said.

  “I hope so. It feels very—tender,” she said, and Theo smiled at her understatement.

  “You took something for the pain?”

  “I took many things for the pain.”

  Theo laughed, and though he still appeared too pale in the face and veiny under the eyes, a lightness seemed to wash through him. “I meant it when I said you should have come to me. Or called on your radio. I’d have walked straight to your cabin and escorted you updeck.”

  “Without a pass?”

  “Goddamn a pass.”

  Aster shivered, a tremor of pain in her knuckles, and Theo reached out to sweep a finger against the hot skin of her right hand. The faintest of touches. She hardly felt it, not through the haze of poppyserum.

  “This is not sustainable, this thing between Lieutenant and you. This hatred he has. And I know you. You will not become some silent, sweet thing, no matter how many bones he breaks. You will get hurt again. You have already been hurt so much. It is not Lieutenant, it is—”

  “Kings. Lots of kings. Kings for days,” she said.

  He nodded in understanding. “It is the kingdom itself. Any kingdom.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “What is necessary. I will make what choices I need to make.” His hands couldn’t seem to sort themselves out. They moved from his hair down to his sides, into the pockets of his trousers, and back out again.

  Aster rested her cheek against her knee, scrunched up her face as she considered his hypothesis. “I am too uncomfortable to do what’s necessary,” she said.

  “You need a proper bed—not that God-awful pallet of blankets. Come to my quarters. Let me fix your hand.”

  There was a hole in the knee of Aster’s trousers and she could see through to the scab on her skin. She picked the brown and black bits off with her good hand until it shined pale pink. “Your quarters?”

  “I know it’s not proper. If you’d prefer, we could return to my office. I just thought you might—”

  “No. Your quarters are fine. I thought there might be a Book verse against that. There shan’t be any Asters past dark.” He smiled at her attempt at humor, for which she was grateful.

  “Come. We will walk together,” he said.

  “And if we run into a guard?”

  “Then I will kill him, Aster, should they wish to report you to the Sovereign. I will kill him regardless. I will kill him for being a potential threat. It is really that simple. I should have killed those men who came for you before. I didn’t because I lacked faith. I have prayed on the matter and am feeling resolved.”

  He held out his hand, and she took it, used him as leverage to pull herself up. Theo removed his jacket, tied it around her shoulder to make a sling, a little cradle for her broken hand.

  * * *

  She awoke in his bed. The mattress was the size of three lowdeck cots pushed together. Thick blankets covered her, so heavy that she thought upon opening her eyes she’d find Theo on top of her.

  Aster turned her head and saw him sitting at the edge of the bed, a book in his hand. He closed it and set it on the bedside table. There was a stain on the cover, brown. Coffee or tea? Iodine? It was unlike him to spill, and she surmised she’d been the cause of it in her earlier poppyserum haze.

  Aster raised her right hand and saw the cast. There was black calligraphic writing on the white gauze. Beneath lies Aster’s hand. The tips of her fingers peaked out from the cast, the nails bitten to the quick. She smelled the residue of antiseptic gel spread across them.

  “How is your pain level?” Theo asked.

  “Nearly nonexistent,” she said. She knew he’d used the ultrasound to locate the nerves and inject anesthetic into only that particular area—something she could never do for her patients because how would one lug an ultrasound machine down to the lowdecks? The precision required to insert the needle just so, also not Aster’s specialty. Big cuts—those she could do.

  “Shall we test it?” he asked, and reached out toward her wrapped hand. She nodded, and he pinched the tip of her exposed thumb. “How was that?”

  She watched the way his fingers brushed her nail, like he was afraid to touch her skin. “I feel it, but no pain, Surgeon.” The use of his title must’ve reminded him of something, because he drew his hand away. He’d changed out of his doctor ensemble into fitted forest-green trousers and a silky button-down. She liked the way he dressed when he was alone. The coal around his eyes. His touch was always soft as mango butter, but among the general populace he forced himself into an odd directness. “You are an anomaly of a man,” she said.

  “Perhaps because I’m not a man at all.” He sat closer now. The sheets wrinkled as he scooted himself toward her.

  “Aye. You gender-malcontent. You otherling,” she said, the fog of anesthesia wearing off. She could see him clearly now. The curl of his lashes. The white flecks of skin over his dry lips. “Me too. I am a boy and a girl and a witch all wrapped into one very strange, flimsy, indecisive body. Do you think my body couldn’t decide what it wanted to be?”

  “I think it doesn’t matter because we get to decide what our bodies are or are not,” he answered.

  Aster sat up, and Theo helped her prop two pillows beneath her head. “Is that so? Then I am magic. I say it, therefore it is true,” she said.

  “It is true. You are a very rare magic, Aster. Don’t you know that?”

  She felt his eyes on hers even as she stared off into his cabin. She’d never been here before. Despite the large bed, everything else was basic. A small wooden desk. A chest of clothing. She knew the sparseness was because he’d given the rest away.

  “I enjoy it when you give me hyperbolic compliments,” she said, and she tried to face him, to look at him eye to eye as was expected, but could not. His eyes were too much. She settled her gaze on his ears and the rings on them.

  “Aster?”

  “Please do not tell me to look at you.” She still hated to look people in the eye, and she did not wish this moment between them ruined by that anxiety.

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “Then what?”

  “I . . . care for you very much.”

  “I’ve often thought so,” said Aster.

  The sound he made was part laugh, part sigh, and he reached his hand up to touch her face and she leaned her cheek into it. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then over each eyelid. “Is this all right?”

  She didn’t trust herself at the moment not to mess up a nonverbal gesture, so instead of nodding vigorously like she wanted to, she said, “Yes. It is all right.”

  He kissed her left cheek, then the right one, his lips against the newly stitched cut. It prickled but did not hurt, and she moved her face so that she could kiss him on the mouth. She knew how to kiss, had done so before, but the newness of Theo turned her lips into cautious, trembling things.

  He moved onto his side so they were lying next to each other, Aster on her back, Theo propped on one elbow as he scraped his teeth against her bottom lip and slid his tongue against hers.

  Aster, occasionally, through no will of her own, worried she wasn’t pretty enough, and why? Pretty was a strange thing to concern oneself over. Pretty was subjective and fallacious. Pretty couldn’t be replicated in a lab. She, as much as anyone, enjoyed the prismatic sweep of amaranth in bloom and the geography of animalian bodies. Yet when applied to people, it didn’t jive with her that pretty was meant for some and not others. More pressingly, it didn’t jive with Aster that some days she wanted to be one of those folks who was prettier than the other folks. It was like wanting to be more vanadium-based, or
wanting to have orange-pigmented skin—arbitrary, bizarre, pointless. Still, she wanted it, and Theo made her feel like it was already so.

  “I do not wish to be penetrated,” Aster said, his hand near her thigh.

  He nodded his head, his heavy breaths hot against her neck.

  He didn’t unbutton her shirt or otherwise slowly undress her as he moved downward, laying kisses to her stomach over the fabric of her top. His fingers fumbled briefly with the button and zipper on her bottoms, then pulled the lot of it, underwear and all, down to her knees. He rubbed his cheek against her thigh, lingering there for several seconds until she felt his face move between her legs.

  Aster could not think in words at the moment. Only in sensation. The feel of his tongue and the scratch, scratch, scratch of his stubble, which she’d never thought she’d feel, as under normal circumstances he shaved his face relentlessly.

  * * *

  She dressed as he slept, finding her trousers balled up at the foot of the bed under covers. Aster grabbed briefs from his chest of drawers and a clean shirt. A flannel she’d never seen him wear but smelled strongly of the incense he burned when he prayed.

  Dear Theo, she wrote on a pad of paper once ready to leave, I am off to the Shuttle Bay. Deciding the note not suitably warm, she added: You are not unpleasant to look at when you sleep. Love, Aster.

  * * *

  Dune Wing was empty. No guards patrolled here. Aster dragged her feet along the carpeted corridor, purposefully tracked mud from her boots into the intricate arabesque designs. The passageway was wide—the span of several men. The doors, wood—not the metal hatches she was used to—were widely spaced, revealing that the quarters inside were extraordinarily large.

  She traveled up to C, B, then A, and where the staircase abruptly ended, she jumped to reach the hidden entryway she’d discovered, letting the built-in ladder swing down. She closed it after climbing up, then headed toward the bay.

  Part IV

  Astromatics

  xxvi

  Giselle Nwaku

  The most important thing to know about me is that I have an extremely nice bum, the type you’d like to smack, spank, grab hold of, lick, bite. It’s a bum that will be passed down in stories.

  So what happened was Giselle’s bum.

  Once upon a time there was Giselle’s bum.

  Brer Boar saved the world from Giselle’s bum.

  It’s be-all, end-all bum.

  Melusine says my ego is as big as my ass, and she’s right.

  If Aster were inclined to look, she’d say, Your buttocks require further study, which is her way of saying, I creamed my knickers.

  I should probably talk about more wholesome things, like knitting or biscuit making, but the very thought of it makes my pineal gland secrete melatonin into my system. Pineal gland. Melatonin. Sleep stuff. Regulates your rhythms and all that. The glories of knowing Aster! She talks a lot, and when I’m not ignoring her, I pick up this and that.

  I’m a bad, bad girl (sultry pouty face), and I need to be punished. There are those who feel shame for what’s been done to them, who call themselves bad for that reason, but I feel no shame. I feel no shame for what’s been done to me, and I feel no shame for what I’ve done. Once, Mabel and Pippi heard stories about this subdeck woman, Wailing Creek Wing I think, who sold her younger sister to this man who lived in the uppers, to, you know, do the type of things that’s been done to all of us. They fussed and lamented like old grannies. “Oh, I’d never do some shit like that!” Pippi said.

  It’s cruel, but I’d do it, wouldn’t feel that bad about it. Stuff was done to me, and I’m all right, so it stands to reason the girl would be all right. I’m not destroyed. It’s not possible to be destroyed.

  * * *

  Sevri o’lem mol’yesheka ris ner.

  That’s how you say hello in the language of my kin. Sevri means to dip bread. O’lem means with all or together. Mol’yesheka means into a common pot, and ris ner means let us.

  Let’s dip our bread into a common pot.

  It used to be one of the only things I could say, till Aster taught me how to speak it proper. We acted like we were so grown that year, me eleven, I think. But we were babies. We still played dress-up. I dolled myself up until I looked like a queen, and she’d turn herself into a little gentleman. “Wash the clothes whilst I smoke my pipe!” Aster would say. She was great at pretend games because she was an excellent copycat.

  “Yes, honey,” I’d say, then take a fake bundle of clothes to a wooden barrel and stick them inside.

  “I require supper!” Aster would say.

  By now, I was the fed-up wife, and I’d say, “Cook your own damn supper, fool, if you so damn hungry!”

  Then Aster would say, “This is the part where I hit you, but I don’t wish to hit you.”

  And I would say, “Are you sure? You can if you want.”

  Her nappy-ass hair stuck out in a halo around her face, those wiry strands that had escaped the confines of her ribboned ponytail. “I’ll do it, to preserve the integrity of the game,” she’d say. “But I’ll do it gently.”

  I would cross my hands over my chest and say, “No, do it hard.”

  She would. One time she smacked me so roughly I fell back onto Giovanna’s (a girl who used to bunk with us) cot. Then Aster came on top of me, her thighs straddling my hips.

  “What do I do now?” she asked.

  I don’t remember what I did exactly, probably swallowed heavily and licked my lips. I instructed her, “Now you take out your penis and put it in me and go in and out.”

  “I don’t have a penis,” she said.

  “Then just kind of move about, like they do.”

  Then we rubbed our bits together through our clothing until we were spent.

  * * *

  Aster snuck into the Archives and found a book called A Practical Dictionary of Ifrek.

  “This is your language,” she said. It predated Q. “Do you wish to know it?”

  “If it’s my language, then I already know it, don’t I?”

  “Then why do you only say the same five words? I’m tired of those five words.” She foisted the dictionary against my chest. Her hands were orange, stained from turmeric, and some of the yellowy spice had rubbed onto the pages. That was the year Melusine tried to teach her to cook, but Aster could barely dress herself then, let alone fold butter into dough, heat palm oil until it turned the most delicious shade of pink-orange.

  In my language, there is no word for I. To even come close, you must say, E’tesh’lem vereme pri’lus, which means, This one here who is apart from all. It’s the way we say lonely and alone. It’s the way we say outsider. It’s the way we say weak.

  Everyone always wonders about I love you. In Ifrek you say, Mev o’tem, or, We are together.

  “How do you say, I’m tired?” people ask.

  “Ek’erb nal veesh ly. The time for rest is upon us.”

  * * *

  Back to my bum. I thought Aster would be in her botanarium because that’s where she always is, and I wanted to say—I don’t know—Sorry, thank you, I hate you, etc. But she’s not here and I am waiting. Shaking my bum to pass the time. I think of myself as a fairie in a wood. When I was wee I used to hop around in the Maple Wood wishing to be stolen away by a changeling. I would give them a very good deal. I wouldn’t even have to become fay. They could change places with me rather than kill me, and I’d be all right with that. I’d flop my arms and jump about looking foolish, anything to catch their attention.

  It’s 09:00. Aster didn’t come to bed last night, so I figured she was here, but there’s no sign she slept here. Her bedroll is tucked neatly under the wooden desk. I guess she left early, so I turn on a record and wiggle my hips, twist and turn, curve my body as seductively as I can.

  With no one to watch, it’s not as fun, so I cut off the music, tap my fingers along the wood of the player, trying to think of what to do. Sighing, I flop onto a stool, pick my way
into the top drawer of Aster’s desk, and look at her notes. Her handwriting is foul, but I’ve seen it enough times to be able to muddle through it.

  I flip a few pages until I get to something that actually looks interesting, a crumpled page with print scattered strangely on the page. Like it had been folded into a paper airplane. Her handwriting is actually legible for once:

  do you think of me at night?

  I am a religious man.

  religiously devoted to me.

  so you are a god?

  aye.

  That would explain the curious hold you have over me.

  Something between the Surgeon and Aster, then. It’s all very tame and dull, so I scrunch it into a ball and throw it into the bin, then I kick the bin so the contents scatter onto the floor: tissues, old slides, leaf clippings.

  I’m a very physical person. I like to touch and be touched. I like to tear things apart when somebody gives me the chance. Sometimes it’s like I can’t help it, then I think, no, I could help it, I could hold it back, like a sneeze. But it feels so much more satisfying to say the cruelest thing, to hurt, to harm. I wish I was better, but I’m not, and so there’s nothing to do but love who I am.

  * * *

  I wanted to help Aster because I know what it feels like to have something bad in your bones that you can’t get out, something deep.

  It’s like brain surgery. The doctors can’t remove the tumor without lobotomizing you, so you wait to die, sick, but yourself. That’s all we’ve got—ourselves. We don’t even have history. We don’t even have family. I barely remember my mother’s face. She died giving birth to my little sibling Emile. And what of her mother? And hers? What of the fathers? What of the origin of our kind? Aster is an alchematician and studies these things. She knows the way all life connects because she researches and researches. She throws herself into it like I throw myself into fucking, like if done hard enough we can discover the One True Mother, and she will cradle us in her breasts and rock us the way we were never rocked. Our mothers—not just me and Aster’s, but all of ours—were so rough and cold. They’d sooner pump milk out their breasts and feed it to their infants from a cup than feel those wee lips against their nipples. I understand.