The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  “Yes.” This came from the mortal, who exhaled and let his bubble of cool stillness go away. Except it was still there, just a little, in a way that I did not understand. I felt it when he looked at me, still angry and lip-curled, and it made me stop smiling and remember that I had been really bad. The mortal smoothed the cloth that was wrapped around him. “Thank you, Lord Ia. May I also rely upon you to deal with your… companion? I’d rather not take up the matter with my grandmother.”

  Something happened that I didn’t understand. Ia looked at the mortal. The mortal looked away, but I could tell that he had seen Ia looking at him. It was almost like they were trying to talk without words, but I had heard mortals couldn’t do that.

  “Very well,” said Ia, after a moment. He folded his arms across his chest. He was wearing cloth, too, all in straight lines and white. It looked stark compared to the mortal’s flowing, draped colors, and uncomfortable! “Please give my regards to Fahno-enulai, then, should you ever deem it appropriate to speak to her of this incident.”

  The mortal nodded, looked at me in an angry way one more time, then turned and walked away. “But I said I was sorry,” I said, in his wake. I did not like that the mortal had gone away still angry.

  “Your regret doesn’t negate what he saw,” said Ia, “which was a godling abusing her power—destroying mortal lives out of sheer carelessness—and then doing nothing whatsoever to remedy the situation until prompted.”

  He sounded a lot like Papa Tempa. Except, he sounded like Papa Tempa mad. I squirmed. “I tried to fix things.”

  “Things. Not people.”

  “I didn’t know how!”

  “Then you should have called someone who did. Yeine would have been able to repair the damage easily; why did you not summon her?”

  Oh. I. “I, um, didn’t think of that.”

  “No, you didn’t. Instead you had a meltdown.” He took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t be here, Sibling. Go somewhere else and grow up a bit before you return.”

  “But—” He was turning to go! He was so mad he didn’t even want to talk to me. I stood where he’d left me, with my hand upraised to try and get his attention, but he didn’t look back. After a moment he was gone down the street.

  Everything was awful and I hadn’t even been on the planet five minutes.

  Should I leave, like Ia had told me? I didn’t want to, but maybe he was right. Maybe I needed to learn how to handle mortals better if I was going to be here in a place full of them. But how was I to learn anything about mortals better if I didn’t meet some?

  That was it! I would go and meet the boy who was mad at me, again. I would find out how to make him less mad.

  So I ran in the direction he had gone. He wasn’t far; mortals are very slow! I caught up to him on a street that had a lot fewer people on it, but more walls and statues and an air of importance. The mortal boy was standing in the shadows against a wall, across the street from a big domed building that felt more important than everything else around.

  “Hello,” I said when I stopped beside him. I said it very carefully this time, in a whisper!

  He jumped and stared at me, first surprised and then—oh. He was still mad. Still really mad. “Go away, godling.”

  I bit my lip. “But I want to show you I can be good and not hurt mortals! Please? I’m really sorry.”

  His jaw flexed. “You should apologize to the people you injured and killed!”

  “But I can’t! They got NEGATED.” That was the word for what I’d seen Ia do. “You’re the only one that remembers. It was scary, wasn’t it? I’m sorry I scared you, even if I didn’t hurt you.”

  He stared at me again, then sighed and rubbed his forehead with the back of the hand that held the paper-on-sticks I’d seen before. “By all the infinite hells. Fine; apology accepted. Now leave. I have important—” Abruptly he paused. Looked at me. His eyes narrowed. “Huh.”

  “Huh?” I straightened; I could tell he was thinking better thoughts about me! “Huh!”

  That seemed to stop him from thinking better thoughts. “Gods, you’re a strange thing.”

  “I’m not strange.” I scowled. “I just don’t know what I’m doing; that’s different.”

  He blinked, then chuckled. “Well, at least you’re honest.” He took a deep breath, considered a moment longer, then said, “If you truly want to apologize, do me a favor, godling. Then I’ll consider all debts paid between us.”

  I perked up. “OK! What favor?”

  He held forth the paper thing. “I need you to take this scroll and put it somewhere.”

  I took it carefully. It was even more fragile than most mortal stuff. “Where?”

  “Look at me.” I did, and he took a deep breath, then yelled at me with his mind. I saw a place inside the big dome-building. A circle near its center, where a group of important-feeling women sat on cushions and stools and talked about important-sounding stuff. Not far from them, sitting in a basket nearby, were lots of scrolls just like the one I held. “There. Do you see it?”

  I grimaced. “Yes. You didn’t have to yell it, though. I was right here.”

  He blinked, then smiled. “Forgive me; I’ve never spoken without words to a godling before. I just knew it could be done.”

  “Well, you should not be rude when you do it.” But then he raised his eyebrows, and I remembered I had been much ruder, so I felt bad again. “… Sorry.”

  “Gods. Maybe I’m a fool to involve you in this.”

  “No!” I inhaled and held up the scroll. “I can put it there! I promise!”

  “Without being seen. You will need to—” He frowned, as if trying to remember something. “Dissipate your presence, I think is the wording you godlings use. Yes? Become your true immaterial self, take this scroll there, and make it material when no one’s watching, so that it’s just another scroll in the pile. All right?”

  “OK! And then I’ll come back and tell you—”

  “No. I won’t be here when you get back. I’ll know you did it successfully if… certain things happen. But I need to be able to say, honestly, that I know nothing of what you did within the Raringa’s walls.” Oh, yes; that was the big domed building. I could feel the truth of its name, spoken over centuries by many mortal voices, shaped by many mortal thoughts. “Seat of warriors”? I was not sure what that meant. “Just go, and do it, and like I said, apology accepted even if I never see you again. Especially if I never see you again. All right?”

  “Um. OK!” He still did not like me, but at least if I did this, it would mean I had been good some, and not all bad. “OK, I am going now.”

  “Good luck, godling.” That was a nice thing for him to say! I grinned as I dissipated myself. I was getting better at dealing with mortals!

  It was extra easy to go through the domed place’s walls and into the big room with the circle of cushions. Nobody was looking at the pile of scrolls, so it was extra easy to put the boy’s scroll in among the rest. Then I stayed for a while, trying to figure out what the women were saying, but it was boring stuff about something called tariffs. I got tired from hearing it, and finally left.

  The boy was gone like he’d said he would be, which was sad. But I had learned at least that bad things could be countered by good things! So then I decided to go find Ia. Maybe I could apologize to him, too, do him a favor, and be good again!

  It was sort of hard to find him. I could feel other siblings of mine all over the planet, all glowy-bright and magic-smelling, but Ia’s glow was sort of subdued and fuzzy. He was close by, though, so I took shape again and ran to catch up, trying very hard not to bump into any mortals. That was hard because they were everywhere and kept bumping into me. I made sure I bumped into them gently, at least.

  He was at the edge of town on the roof of a small building, looking out over the city with his arms folded. He reminded me of Papa Tempa, standing like that! I appeared beside him and said, “Hello?”

  He didn’t even look at me, thou
gh his jaw flexed the same way the mortal boy’s had. “I told you, Sibling. You don’t know enough to be here safely. Must I force you home?”

  “I… I want to learn how to be safe!”

  “Not at the mortals’ expense. Learn it elsewhere. And grow up.”

  “But…” How could I make him know what I was thinking? He was all bristly and fuzzy; I couldn’t mesh with him and share thoughts in the way I would have in the gods’ realm. I wasn’t even sure if it was polite to speak as gods spoke in this realm. I had to use words. “That’s why I came here! I want to grow up!”

  Ia shook his head. “This world has suffered much at the hands of our kind. It does not need more gods who will view its lives as playthings.”

  I gasped. I had never thought of it that way! The Planet Where Gods Die was also the Planet Whose Mortals Were Killed by Gods, Lots. “But mortals die all the time anyway, don’t they?” Then Ia turned to look at me.

  OK. I will tell you now why Ia is scary. He’s really scary. He is one of the scariest godlings ever and I did not know this before I met him, and he gets really mad so that is why I’m telling you how not to make him mad and why you should be careful.

  Remember waaaaay back at the beginning of the story when I told you about EXISTENCE and MAELSTROM and NOTHINGNESS? And I told you the nothingness is the scariest part because at least if existence kills you there is something, and at least if the Maelstrom kills you there was something, but if the nothing gets you then it is like you never were in the first place?

  Oh, I forgot that part. Sorry! OK, if the nothing kills you then you become nothing. You go away, from whereness and whatness and thenness. You stop being. You never were. Nobody will even get the griefs, because there was never anything to remember. Understand?

  I don’t know why not. I explained it fine.

  Anyway, that is what is in Ia. He is negation; not just the end of something but the never-was of it. That was how he’d made the bad thing I’d done in the market go away; he made it never-be. He looked at me and suddenly I saw beneath the mortal shell he wore, and the fuzzy outline of him that had warned me against looking further. Now he let me see past the shell, and all the nothing of him was right there. Waiting. So scary that even the mortals nearby stumbled and looked around and started walking wider circles around us, with big scared looks on their faces. They could feel the scary, same as me, even if they could not see the scary of him or know what it meant. They could feel that the scary was super really extra mad.

  “Mortals indeed die often, relatively speaking,” he said. I was shaking. I was so scared. “So do godlings. So many, really, that I’ve forgotten.”

  I made my voice very small, and myself—the me that was me, not just the me he could see—small, too. “I didn’t mean I was going to kill anybody,” I said. “Um, anybody else, I mean. I was just asking!”

  “Some questions are dangerous, Sibling. It’s time you learned that.”

  Oh. Oh. So scared. “H-how will I know which ones I shouldn’t ask if I don’t ask them?”

  “That comes with wisdom. Which you can gain anywhere else, with no one the worse off for your fumblings as you grow.”

  “That’s not true!” I said. And then I stopped and clapped my hands over my mouth because, um. I hadn’t meant to say that. I hadn’t wanted to get in trouble again.

  Ia is very scary, but Ia is also very wise, because Ia is really old. So he sort of squinched his eyes at me, and I knew that he knew something about me I didn’t know. “Hmm.”

  “Huh?”

  Ia didn’t say anything. But right then he took hold of the world and folded it and pulled me along without bothering to ask if I wanted to go. I was so scared that I didn’t complain, because I didn’t want to be nothinged. The place we went to was a between-place. When the world is folded and we are not here or there but both, that is between. I saw the market and another place, gray and stony, overlapping. Ia stopped us there, where it was suddenly quiet because mortals cannot be between, and where we could talk like gods without doing any damage.

  “What isn’t true?” he asked. I didn’t think he was mad anymore. He seemed thoughtful instead, and when he folded his arms to listen I thought maybe he was really listening now, and not just trying to get rid of me.

  So I took a deep breath and said everything the best way I could. “I can’t learn wisdom anywhere else,” I said, because suddenly I didn’t just want to stay in the mortal realm, I needed to. I knew it the way mortals with teeth know how to bite. “This place is, is… it’s right. I can feel it making me better even now! And, and I know you don’t want me to be here, even Naha told me not to come, but—but I have to stay. If I go back—” Suddenly I was unhappy. My eyes tried to get wet again, but I didn’t let them because I didn’t want him to think I was doing the meltdown thing again. It was really hard not to cry, though. I bit my lip instead. I hurt all over! It was worse than being scared.

  Ia lifted one yellow eyebrow. “Go on.”

  “I was supposed to be Sieh. But I’m not Sieh. And I tried to be Sieh, except Sieh is dead so I mean I wanted to be the space that was Sieh but I didn’t fit.” I was babbling, still trying not to cry. “And everybody knows there needs to be a Sieh, the planets and suns keep calling for him, it’s all wrong without him, but I’m not the one, see? I asked Papa Tempa and he said I should be myself and that the Three are happy with me but I know it’s not completely true. They have grief over him, and I’m not enough to make it go away. He was so special, and I’m… just… me.”

  There weren’t any other words I knew that would explain it, not even in our language. So I just stood there, looking at the blurred ground and wishing I could go to the wall of torn stars and cry where nobody would see me.

  But Ia got really quiet for a moment. I didn’t know why. He said, “You embody some aspect of mortality, then.”

  “Maybe?” I could only shrug. “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Some of us predate mortality, Sibling. Our natures are those of existence itself—or things beyond existence.” Yeah, like nothing. Ia was probably one of the really old ones, from back when the Three first learned how to make children. Like Sieh had been.

  “Very well,” Ia said, after a long time that felt longer. “You may remain.”

  “Really?” I caught my breath and bounced a little, excited. “You mean it?”

  “Provided,” he said, and he was all sharp and just a little mad again, “that you take the greatest of care never to cause harm to any mortal.”

  “I won’t! I promise I’ll never hurt—”

  He flicked his hand. “You cannot promise that. You don’t know yourself yet; you may be unable to help it. And there is danger in any interaction between gods and mortals, for both parties. This is not a safe realm, Sibling. But beyond that, I must insist that you try to avoid harm.”

  I tried to stand really tall, which was how I knew mortals showed each other they really meant a thing, but it didn’t work because I was shaped like a little girl and he was twice as big. “I promise to try,” I said. “I’ll try hard! I don’t want to ever hurt mortals like I did before.”

  “If you do,” said Ia, scary again, “you will answer for it, to more than just me. Do you understand?” After I nodded hard, Ia unfolded the world so that we finally stood firmly in the gray place.

  The gray place was a thing mortals called a HOUSE, which is what they used to keep their flesh safe and dry and comfortable. Some mortals carried their houses around with them, or made new ones wherever they slept, but human-mortals made places that stayed. (Sometimes they moved around, though, and swapped houses between them.) This house was bigger than the ones around it, and it had lots of space inside and a wide flat thing on top. The wide flat thing was meant to keep rain outside, but someone had also put furniture and a frame and drapes on it, so maybe it was also for living, too. The frame and drapes made a shady place underneath, and in this shady place were two mortals, who looked at us in surprise
. I was surprised, too, so I asked Ia without words where we were and why.

  “We are in the house of Fahno dau she Miu tai wer Tellomi kanna Enulai,” Ia said aloud. “Someone you will need to know, if you mean to stay here.”

  In the mortals’ language her name meant that Fahno was the daughter of Miu and of the clan Tellomi, and she was also part of some group of people called enulai. I didn’t know what a clan or an enulai was—maybe like niwwah and elontid and mnasat, which were the different kinds of godlings? Maybe a family, like all us gods? If so, I liked that she was a daughter. I was a daughter, too! Maybe we could be friends.

  But I needed to be polite now to prove to Ia that I could be here and not do bad things. I took a deep breath and spoke really softly this time when I said, “Hello!”

  The two mortals looked really confused. Ia made a sound that was annoyed. “Don’t whisper.”

  “I don’t want to be bad again!”

  “Just speak at the same volume they do.”

  I whispered louder, because I was getting annoyed, too. “They haven’t said anything.”

  “Then speak at the volume I am using,” he snapped, so I tried that and said hello again, very carefully.

  One of the mortals was sitting in a big, wide chair, and she was big and wide, too. The other stood beside her, because he had been showing her something on a scroll before we appeared. He was tall and narrow. I thought maybe he was younger, too, but both of them were so much older than me that I couldn’t tell! I could tell that both of them wanted to laugh, though. I don’t know what was so funny.

  “Hello,” said the wide one back. She showed her teeth; that was good! I grinned back. I was doing hello right! Then she looked at Ia and raised her eyebrows.

  “Not mine,” Ia said, looking more annoyed, which I hadn’t thought was possible. “The Three have at last blessed the realms with another godling.”

  “That is a wondrous thing,” the wide one said, looking very surprised and pleased. “And may I assume the task of raising her has been given to you? I did not think godlings did things like us mortals, but I have always thought you would father fine children, Ia.”