So she wandered, using the skills and powers she had left, gaining new ones as she traveled. But only healing at the request of those who still believed. Sometimes she was lead to a place, by a whisper on the wind, or the quiet hiss of her snakes. As she had been drawn here.
If any others of her Order survived, she had no knowledge of them, nor they of her. Better so, to her way of thinking.
“Would it risk you?”
Ercula’s thoughts were bought back to the present when the mother clutched her babe with one arm, and reached out with a skeletal hand. “To do this thing?”
Ercula considered, then shook her head. She’d taken care, and used every precaution that she knew. The snakes had whispered to her of a need, and she’d come. She’d leave with no one the wiser.
“Help me,” the woman begged, and shifted her child to Ercula’s arms.
“Where?” Ercula asked, rising to her feet. The snakes beneath her head scarf shifted in concern.
“The Shrine of Ticena.” The mother struggled to her feet.
Ercula hesitated. “But She is Protectress of the Hearth and of Children,” she said carefully. “How can they do this and yet–”
“The Duke makes great show of greeting every dawn there with his headmen and workers, paying service with their words and not their deeds–” Her breath caught as she straightened. “He cares more for the flowering plants around the shrine than his people.”
Ercula held the child easily, for what should have been fair and plumb was skin and bone, distorted in its frailty. “What you leave behind is only stone,” Ercula warned. “It can be moved, broken, destroyed. It is no more permanent than–” She hesitated.
“Our lives?” The mother wheezed as she drew her thin robe around her. “If I control nothing else, healer, let me control this.”
That too, was of the Old Ways. “Lean on me,” Ercula urged, wanting to save the woman’s strength. “Is it far?”
“No.” The woman clung to her arm. “Not far.”
The village was small, not more than a collection of huts, shadowed by the forest, surrounded on three sides by the fields. The night was silent, but the moon was high enough that they could see.
“This way,” the woman’s lips brushed Ercula’s ear as she whispered.
They walked for a bit in silence, then the woman clamped down on Ercula’s arm and tensed, wracked by pain.
Ercula stood, patient, waiting. The babe never stirred.
“O Ferryman, bring forth thy boat, that I may cross to the eastern side of the sky,” the woman whispered as she trembled.
Ercula realized she was praying to a God long silent.
“For I am the beloved of my father and my mother, and all of my kin who have gone before, and await our arrival.” The woman lifted her hand to stroke the babe’s cheek. “O, Ferryman, stow thy oars and drop thy sail, and await us at the docks.”
The woman slid her foot forward and then another. Ercula moved with her.
“For your price will be paid, and your ship will bring us safely through the stars, to the other side.” The woman went silent, needing her every breath.
They walked on.
The shrine was a lovely one, surrounded by thick, healthy blue spider-wort plants, the tiny flowers closed against the night. The shrine doors were open, all finely carved wood and worked stone floor. The rare glass flickered with the lone candle within. The altar lay bare of the offerings to come, of lilies and grain.
The mother staggered to the front and crawled up onto the altar. She took a deep breath, then centered herself there, cross-legged. She put both hands down and braced herself, breathing hard.
Ercula stood close, holding the sleeping babe.
The mother let her robes fall to her waist, her naked breasts hanging empty over her protruding ribs. “Just like this.” Her thready voice filled with satisfaction. “They will know. They will see.”
She opened her arms. Ercula placed the babe in them.
The child stirred, squirming, its tiny fingers making tight fists.
“Quickly,” the mother whispered.
Ercula pulled her scarf from her head. Her snakes rose, free and restless, emerging from her skull to writhe. To see.
“Like a crown,” the mother whispered, but Ercula focused her gaze on the babe. Those small fists relaxed, fingers reaching out. Her tiny eyes opened wide, staring–
And turned to stone.
The mother grunted at the sudden weight, her tears streaming as she panted. “Just a moment. Let me–”
With great effort, she lifted the stone child in both hands, as if in offering or supplication. Then she sought Ercula’s gaze, her eyes pained, and filled with rage.
A common mistake. Ercula shook her head. The snakes twisted and churned.
The mother lifted her eyes higher, to look at them.
Stone claimed her flesh as well.
Ercula rose, swift and quiet, wrapping her head as she sped away. The scuff of her shoes and the chiming of her bangles were the only sound.
At the doorway, she paused, making sure to secure the ends of her scarf. Her snakes lay silent, enclosed in cloth, knowing the need.
She glanced back.
The effect was powerful. The naked woman, raising her child in supplication, her expression grim, her gaze defiant.
Ercula stepped into the night and sought the shadows. She’d be well on her way before dawn, taking the back paths through the fields and woods. She’d be far distant before the Duke and his people found the statute.
They would know. They would see.
She doubted they would learn.
AN ESSAY BY
DIANA M. PHO
ANGER IS A FRIEND TO LOVE
A FEW DAYS AFTER THE US election, I was one of millions of Americans feeling absolutely devastated by the results. Many people had their hopes pinned upon Hillary Clinton to be the US’s first female elected as President. But, sadly, our world fell into a darker timeline. On the Tuesday night after the election, I lay in my wife’s arms and could not stop sobbing at the thought of a President-Elect and administration who vowed to repeal LGBTQ protections once they were in office. For a long time, our country’s growing legal protections gave me hope that our lives would become more secure and stable, but now we would never be safe enough. This feeling echoed throughout the United States among many marginalized communities in the coming days: that the struggle was going to be for the long-haul.
Hate crimes in New York City alone increased by 31%, and more than 400 incidents were reported across the nation in the first two weeks after the election. Black students were added to lynch lists. Epithets were scrawled in bathrooms. A Jewish gay senator’s home was vandalized by swastikas.
Moreover, when marginalized identities become targeted, ciswomen, transwomen, and gender-nonconforming people typically face the brunt of the violence. Hate manifests itself in pulling off hijabs and harassing transwomen in the streets. It is ganging up on black women on Twitter for being bold enough to have an opinion. It is threatening to shoot, stab, or kill a woman for rejecting a sexual advance.
For people frightened and outraged by these attacks, they became divided in how to offer support to the most vulnerable in our society. Do we all walk around wearing safety pins? Plaster subway stations in Post-It notes of hope? Donate to charitable causes? Stay mad at fascists for being fascists?
Surprisingly, anger is the reaction most critiqued. “Anger is harmful,” we are told. They say it is the opposite of “Love Trumps Hate.” But let me tell you this: Anger does not equal hate. Anger is not the opposite of love. Anger is a friend to love, the defense when seeing love torn asunder. Anger can be a logical response to being hated. You can be angry over seeing something you love so much become hurt for no reason other than the illogical, irrational, and inconsiderate emotion that is hatred.
It is time for women to be angry. We must give permission to ourselves to be angry. Anger can be productive. It can be harne
ssed, focused, and aimed like a laser ready to cut through steel. It is the blood and sweat and fear and courage of many other women, living and dead, who contributed to our place here today. It is empathic, for productive anger is the fire that dies in a vacuum, but it can be stoked by feeling the injustices of the world.
Angry women have always existed; we have always battled and bled and lived and died for causes that are fueled by our passions. As a child, I learned of the Trung sisters, the Vietnamese women of legend who rode into battle upon elephants against Chinese occupation over a thousand years ago. Joan of Arc, fueled by visions and righteous anger, lead troops in France. In the eighteenth century, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the tract that demanded women have equal rights to men. Harriet Tubman, armed with a pistol and her wits, led dozens of men and women to freedom through the Underground Railroad. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera threw the bricks and bottles during the Stonewall riots that incited the US gay rights movement.
When I think of angry women from SFF, I think of Leia Organa Solo of Star Wars, the princess who fought to save her planet, and when she witnessed it be destroyed, she then gathered and led a Resistance to save her galaxy. I think of the Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen, the soldier whose struggle against her rage and frustration helped overcome the corrupt Capital. I also think of Primrose Everdeen, whose rage manifested in steady determination to become a nurse and help those in need. Most of all, I think of Lauren Olamina, the visionary from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, who honed a philosophy of survival based on Change. Living in a world which was slowly succumbing to apocalypse, Lauren wrote:
God is Power–
Infinite,
Irresistible,
Inexorable,
Indifferent.
And, yet, God is Pliable–
Trickster,
Theater
Chaos,
Clay.
God exists to be shaped.
God is Change.
Change is unceasing and will not hesitate to utterly destroy those who passively wait in reaction to seeing its oncoming storm. These historic and fictional women I named are only a few who have inspired thousands specifically because, in the face of change, they acted and they acted boldly. They continue to inspire because they show the potential that we have in ourselves (cis, trans, and femme). It is fueled by a will to survive. And yes, a fire which drives this can be anger. Anger against the systems of oppression we have been forced to cope with for too long. Anger because our love cannot be contained by inaction, but by furious, unleashed power.
Fury, when concentrated, becomes a blade. We must not let our anger remain sheathed.
THE MARK OF A MOUNTAIN POPPY
ERIN M. EVANS
A PERSONAL PROPHECY FROM THE Heir of Vàorem was a blessing few could claim, but Tarji would have spat in the face of any other man who’d said such words to her.
She’d no more than come into the presence of the heir—Sakavian, he’d insisted, with no regard at all for the awkwardness and informality of using his given name—but he’d studied her boots to brow. His dark eyes grew distant and he smiled. “Tarji Hellonar Kastelleki,” he said, pronouncing her full name like a prophecy of its own. “Mother of my children.”
Tarji folded her arms. “I’m your guard,” she said. “Not your bed warmer.”
Sakavian shrugged in a manner so fluid it seemed obscene. “I only tell you what the Bright Ones say.”
Maybe it was the words of the suorinen, the bright spirits that watched over Váorem, and maybe it was nonsense—handsome, honey-tongued Sakavian had bastards in every tribe and hold, and it wasn’t by wishing on sparks.
“I’ll believe it when your mother opens her veins for the suorinen,” Tarji said, tartly. “Takes away every other possibility”
And that had broken Sakavian with a snort and a laugh—she’d found over the years it wasn’t difficult to make Sakavian laugh, just as he’d discovered it wasn’t difficult to make Tarji bristle—bring up that spirit-sucked line about children and she’d be through.
Illustration by NICOLÁS R. GIACONDINO
Tarji didn’t like children—not her own imaginary ones, not Sakavian’s scattered get.
But Tarji Hellonar Kastelleki was of the vuhenki, sworn to the Speaker and her heir. Which meant she didn’t have a good reason to tell Sakavian she’d rather not deal with his bastards.
In the village of the Aalmeki tribe, a little girl watched Tarji with Sakavian’s eyes, black and sharp as threshold flint. Even if someone had reason to doubt she was Sakavian’s get, the thickness of the air, like the very belly of summer, and the sense of someone whispering without words, announced the interest of the suorinen, the presence of another heir of Vàorem’s bastards.
“Your sword’s made of wood,” the girl said.
“Yes.” This one stared, Tarji recalled. She stared every time Sakavian sent the vuhenki around with links of silver and iron, support without overt acknowledgment. The suorninen were fickle about such things.
“I never saw a wooden sword.”
Tarji kept her eyes on the door to the stone hut the old man had ducked through, insisting on bringing her refreshments. Only a moment, the old man had said. Only the best for the vuhenki. Behind Tarji, near the hold’s gates, another vuhenki—Jere Hemmel Moreteki—waited, still mounted and holding the reins of Tarji’s yak. She wondered if he’d be hauled in, too, before she could get the old man to take the links.
“You didn’t have that last time,” the girl said.
“No.” Last time Tarji came and went in a heavy rain and no one stopped to make her tea or pull conversations and secrets out of her. Last time, the Chalmarais to the south hadn’t been clattering their axes, tearing breaches in the threshold, the edge between this world and the suorninen’s. Last time, she’d ridden alone, and without a suori crouching on her heart, ready to fulfill her oaths and show Chalmar what the spirits of Vàorem were capable of when they were properly honored and heard.
“Doesn’t seem like you can cut much with it,” the girl said. “Doesn’t it break?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why do you carry a sword that sometimes breaks?”
Tarji ran her tongue along the chipped edge of an incisor. A moment’s thirst—she could have made it to the stream. She could have left the links and been well on her way to the next bastard. She could have told Sakavian she wasn’t running this spirit-sucked errand anymore.
No—a vuhenki followed orders. A vuhenki heard the words of the suorinen through their favored Speakers. She blew out a breath and apologized to the spirits, though not to the heir they chose who got her into this.
The girl kicked a flower growing in the gravel, a mountain poppy blooming early. “What’s my father like?”
Enough of that, Tarji thought.
“If it breaks, you can replace it in parts.” Tarji glanced over at the girl—such a skeptical expression for a six-year-old—and drew the weapon from its sheath. The cold sunlight of mid-autumn glowed on the oiled larch baton, the row of chipped stone embedded along the weapon’s edges. Rusty blooms, shimmering with the same strange light of the open gates to the suorinen’s realm, a world on the edge of this one, marred the deep blackness of the rock.
“Do you know that stone?” The girl shook her head. “Threshold flint,” Tarji told her. “The edge it makes is keener than any metal. You can take a man’s head off with this. Two strokes. One, if you aim well and he doesn’t move much.”
The girl’s dark eyes widened. “How do you know?”
Tarji slid the blade back into its sheath. “Because I know.”
Mercifully, the old man returned then, stemming any further questions from the girl, but three young women followed him, carrying woven platters bearing flatbread, cloudberries, and yak butter, kettles of spruce tea and jars of beer. Tarji stepped back from the encroaching celebration, holding the bag of links out like a shield.
“I need to be on my way,” she sa
id. The suori Sakavian had guided to her fluttered sulkily, making her heart skip.
The old man frowned, his faded cheekbone tattoos dragging dark lines around his mouth. He looked back at the little girl, who was still staring at Tarji as if she were a mad spirit mount. “Have you finished already, vuhenki?” he asked.
Tarji gestured with the sack. “Here.”
The old man’s brow furrowed, and behind him the girls looked at one another over their heavy platters. “I thought…” The old man glanced back at his charge. “You’re not going to test her? I thought they were being tested.”
“I just deliver payment,” Tarji said.
“Yes, but…” The old man gestured at her loosely, encompassing the threshold flint sword, the raven feather-trimmed cloak of cloud tiger fur, and the silver buckles on her armor.
“Riding south now is dangerous,” Tarji said, not lowering the links. “Maybe you haven’t heard—the Chalmarais have been hunting, tearing new breaches in the threshold. The Speaker’s warnings fall on stopped ears. I ride with a spirit, so I dress as a spirit-warrior.”
The old man nodded as if he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t want to anger her or the suori. Still, he didn’t take the links. “Seppan Kaukoval Helmiteki—his stepson’s also the…he’s fatherless.” He stumbled, nearly naming what was taboo. The suori’s edges turned sharp against Tarji’s lungs and for a moment, she was sure it would flood her with power and demand retribution.
“He said they came to see … that someone was sent to see what he could do, but they left him behind.” He gave her a significant look, carrying all the words he wasn’t meant to speak aloud. “You should consider my Yrsa Valausiä. I’m sure she’s enough to…make an impression.”
The suori roiled, torn between fondness for the blood of the Speaker and fury at the old man’s repeated near-transgressions, and Tarji’s vision swam. The suorinen chose the heirs of Vàorem, they chose them when they chose them, and while no one doubted for a moment it would be one of Sakavian’s numerous bastards, in the meantime, it didn’t do to imply such things were settled.
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