“Bad luck,” Djonn said. His voice cracked. “We’ll get help now.” His bird shifted on his shoulder.
“No. Get your treasure, then we’ll send the bird.” Raeda’s voice wavered. “Look,” she pointed. Something glinted on the floor beyond her reach, under layers of dust and grime.
Djonn bent to brush at the dust. His fingers touched cold metal, a bone handle. A knife. Father had many knives.
He stepped over it. Brushed at the dust beyond with his fingers. Uncovered small bones, knobby and jumbled, then long bones, bigger than his arm. A pile of curved bones and tiered bones. Djonn cleaned off the last of them and realized they’d make a grown man, though the skull was missing. He yelped.
His message bird startled and flew away. Djonn cursed after it, and at his own clumsiness.
Raeda crawled over. “Sat down and died, looks like. No one around to throw him over the edge.”
“What happened to his head?”
“A bird took it for the eyeballs, like as not,” she made a gnashing sound with her teeth and Djonn paled.
“Aw, Raeda!” He felt sick and bent over, his back turned to her. He stared at the tower’s dark wall, not really seeing anything. Stared at the dark shadow against the wall for a heartbeat, two. Then he blinked. Rust-rimed metal, a bone handle on the lid, half hidden by rags and piles of rotting feathers. “Oh,” he whispered.
Raeda followed his glance and whistled. “Look what we found.”
She crawled faster than he could scramble, and beat him to it. She fingered the rusted latches, then rubbed them with scourweed pulled from a pocket of her robe. A shadow passed by the tower. Another bird, Djonn thought. Long-sealed hinges squealed as the box’s top swung open. Inside was more metal than Djonn had seen in his life. Long pieces of it, sharp at the ends. Short bits, clawed bits, a long strip with symbols like the ticker. He’d seen Father hold one of the clawed things, once. Saw him cradle it like a bird, call it a tool, the rarest kind of treasure. There were nails too, plenty of them. Metal needles. And a strange two-legged thing with a piece of charcoal clamped to one leg. He snatched that from the box before Raeda slammed the lid down.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Thinking.” She sat on the box and looked out at the blue sky beyond the black tower. The sun was high in its arc now.
Djonn tried to guess Raeda’s thoughts. He wasn’t sure what to think himself, except that she sat on his treasure. Metal. A pile of it.
“It’s mine,” he finally said. “I gave you my wings for it.”
She looked at him a long time. “And you don’t have any way to get it out of here, do you, sad-face brokenwings?” Djonn’s brothers called her that, when they thought she couldn’t hear. She rose, favoring her heel, and pulled at the box handle. The contents rattled. “It’s too heavy to fly.”
“We have to try,” Djonn said with a screech. “It’s mine.”
“And what is mine, Djonn?” Raeda’s chin tilted up. Djonn nearly whispered “What could you possibly want?” because his mother had said it to him so often, but he knew. Raeda wanted to leave. With the box and his wings, she’d be free. Djonn wanted to say, “Yes, take me with you,” and “No, you can’t,” all at the same time. His fingers tightened around the tool that held the charcoal. One leg ended in a sharp point.
“You have your wings. Help me get this back home and I’ll give you some of what’s inside.”
She shook her head slowly. “I’m not going back. I’ll make my own luck in the city, somewhere your father and my uncle can’t find me.” She had the box open again and began picking through the metal.
A shadow, backlit by the sun and bright sky, fell over her. “That’s exactly what you won’t be doing.” A man stood on the ledge, furling his dark wings. He cracked his knuckles and stared at the box, and at both of them. “Uncle,” Raeda whispered.
• • • •
Despite her uncle blocking the light, Djonn could see Raeda’s face. Her eyes narrowed and she looked from Maru to the box and back. Any hope Djonn had that this was a rescue evaporated.
“Been watching you, Rae,” Maru said. He jerked his chin at Djonn. “Boy’s dad says you haven’t brought in near enough salvage lately. Been putting a lot of pressure on me. So I saw you launch that bird.”
Djonn’s mouth formed an “o.” Father’s story about helping Raeda was a lie. Still, Maru was a way out. Djonn could make a deal.
“Help us get the box back,” Djonn said, speaking forcefully, like his father would. “And my father will forget your debt, I know it.”
Maru laughed. “Boy, you don’t know your father. Let’s see what you found.” He eyed the box and whistled like Raeda had. “The whole tower saw you two fly off, Rae,” he muttered. “Won’t be long before half the city is searching Lith for treasure. What else did you find?”
“Only that. And him,” Raeda pointed at the skeleton. “And this,” she raised the knife, pointed towards her uncle.
“Ingrate girl,” Maru growled. He lunged for Raeda and she dodged, but kept her grip on the box. The box slowed her, and he knocked the knife to the ground. It skittered on the floor, stopping at Djonn’s feet.
Djonn looked at the knife, remembering the times his brothers had taken bone knives away from him. “You’d kill yourself with something that sharp,” they’d laughed.
Maru grappled with Raeda and stepped hard on her hurt foot. She howled and crumpled. He dragged her up with one arm, her hand pinned behind her, against her furled wings. He reached for the box.
Djonn wrapped his fingers around the knife while Maru wasn’t looking.
“You’re not worth much, you lying sack of bones,” Maru hissed at Raeda. He spun on Djonn, who barely managed to hide the knife in his robes, next to the pointed tool. “And you, you wingbroken fledge. Your father and brothers have taken the lifeblood of half my people. What should be done with you?”
Djonn thought for two heartbeats. “You have to let us go. People will come, they’ll see. You said so yourself.”
“They’ll see what? A brokenwinged boy. Maybe that’s something your father will take as full payment.”
Bad to worse. Djonn wrapped his hand around the knife.
Maru swung the box of metal and Raeda towards the tower ledge. “Can’t fly with both,” he laughed, and changed his grip on the girl.
Djonn’s heart pounded now-yes-now. He rushed Maru, blade held as Raeda had, all his weight behind the knife.
Maru heard him coming. He dropped the box, grabbed Djonn’s arm and squeezed. The knife clattered to the ledge, wobbled, and flipped. It fell end over end towards the clouds. Djonn whimpered.
Maru pinned Djonn’s hand by his shoulder blade, as his brothers did. Raeda shouted as her uncle turned once again to hold her out over the ledge.
Djonn’s other hand shot out from his robes on its own, holding the tool with charcoal and the sharp point. He didn’t think. He drove the point hard into Maru’s ear until he heard a crack. The man dropped to the floor, thrashing, and Raeda fell, catching herself by one hand on the ledge.
Djonn dove to the floor and clasped her hand. “I won’t drop you,” he said.
Maru kicked behind them once more and stopped. Djonn pulled hard while Raeda scrambled and, soon, they both knelt on the ledge. In the distance, Djonn could see flyers headed towards Lith: four pairs of yellow wings still high in the sky. His father and brothers.
Djonn drew a deep breath and opened the box. Picked out five sharp tools and one metal strip. Held them out to Raeda.
“Go fast. Before they come.”
Her eyes widened. She straightened her yellow robes and secured the tools in a hidden pocket. She put her hand out, and pulled him up to standing. “Thank you for catching me,” she said. She took a hesitant step forward on her injured foot, then another, until she limped across the tier to a ledge on the far side of the tower’s circumference. She leapt from the edge, snapping her gray wings open at the last minute.
By the time Djonn’s father and brothers landed, he’d figured out what the tool was for: drawing circles. He’d traced small and large circles on the dark bone floor, the charcoal invisible against the rotting tower.
He tucked the tool away in his robes and showed his father the metal box. He showed him the skeleton.
“Box was too heavy for him. Dragged him down.”
Djonn’s father clasped his shoulder. “And Raeda?” one brother asked. His other brothers looked around the dark tier, at the dead man, at Djonn, who stood with one foot on the box. Djonn peered over the ledge, to the clouds below, counted three calm heartbeats, then met their eyes for five more.
“I couldn’t hold her,” he said.
He watched them shift uncomfortably, caught between him and the clouds.
© 2013 by Fran Wilde. Originally published in Impossible Futures, edited by Tom Easton and Judith K. Dial.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fran Wilde is the Andre Norton and Compton Crook Award-winning and Nebula-nominated author of Updraft and its sequel Cloudbound (September 2016). Her short stories appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Shimmer, and her novella, The Jewel and Her Lapidary, was published by Tor.com in May 2016. Fran writes nonfiction and essays for publications including The Washington Post, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, and iO9.com and interviews authors, editors, and agents about the intersection of food and fiction at the Cooking the Books podcast. You can find her online at franwilde.net & Twitter: fran_wilde.
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Plea
Mary Anne Mohanraj | 3857 words
Three families ahead of them in line. Many more behind, stretching along the beach; it had taken most of the day to get this far, and Eris’s sun was now setting, casting red-gold rays across the sand. Gwen resisted the urge to remind Jon to stand up straight. Their hosts—potential hosts—couldn’t stand up at all, and there was no reason cetaceans would even notice a human’s posture, much less care. The only bodily attributes the Erisians might care about would be whether the humans had the added blubber and other genetic modifications to sustain them in a mostly watery environment. Though if they didn’t have those modifications, then there’d be no reason for any humans to be standing in this line, begging refuge of aliens. No, the Erisians wouldn’t be paying attention to their bodies at all—all of their attention would be focused on the humans’ minds.
Which reminded her—Gwen started humming again. A strange, deliberately atonal pattern that she had memorized—that her whole family had memorized, and in fact, the entire long line of human families had memorized, it seemed, as Gwen could hear the hum rising around her. Oh, the patterns weren’t identical, and some people were whispering rhymes under their breath, but the general concept was the same. Keep the hum going, and they won’t be able to read your minds.
Her wife, Rose, had paid five thousand credits to the shark for this pattern. Not an actual shark—there were no actual sharks on Eris, just as there were no actual whales, or dolphins. Their hosts, the Erisians, were somewhere between whale and dolphin in size, and far smarter than either. But the shark they’d paid the bulk of their savings to was a human one, one who swore that he knew how to get them to safe waters. Knew how to beat the system.
Jon and Matthew were dutifully humming along, their teenage faces set and determined. They’d practiced for weeks, and the boys had it down now. They understood what was at stake here, and while they’d caused their parents plenty of trouble in the raising of them, they were good children at heart. And to be fair, Gwen and Rose hadn’t really known what trouble was, before the last few months. Rose’s round features were drawn with anxiety, and her skin had a greyer-than-usual tinge.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Gwen couldn’t help asking.
Rose shook her head, fine strands of hair flying, tangling, in the light ocean breeze. “I couldn’t.” The wind blew grains of sand around them, erasing the humans’ footprints almost as soon as they made them.
“That’s just going to make it harder to concentrate.” Gwen could feel the knot of tension in her back drawing tighter, harder. As if in counterpoint, the churning in her stomach intensified.
“Gwen, please. Don’t harass me. Not now.” Rose whispered the words.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” An essential skill in any marriage, the ability to apologize, quickly and freely. Gwen was sorry, and even more so when a small voice piped up from near her knees.
“I ate breakfast, mama!”
“Good girl!” Gwen said, bending down to give Ciara a quick kiss on the cheek. “Now, back to your song, sweetheart, just like we practiced.” She could tell the child wanted to chatter on, which was entirely developmentally appropriate at age six, but not now, not now, and it was Gwen’s own fault for starting to talk. Thankfully, after a brief, mutinous look, Ciara settled down to her humming again, hugging her stuffed bear to her chest. She rocked back and forth on bare feet, wide and flattened, webbed toes digging into the sand. They wouldn’t need shoes where they were going.
• • • •
It had all sounded so foolish, when their neighbors had first mentioned the possibility, more than six months ago.
Rose had protested, over their shared breakfast cuppa. “But there’s nothing there! Those islands in the southern sea—they’re just big humps of grass and dirt. Barely any trees, nothing developed—it would take generations to build up any kind of civilization there; you’d spend all your time just trying to survive.”
Sarah and Stephen exchanged a look, one of those long-married looks that said they could read each others’ minds. Gwen was briefly envious of that look; Ciara had been fractious lately, in the throes of some developmental shift, and between minding her and keeping their joint fishing business going, she and Rose hadn’t had much time together. She was feeling … distant, disconnected from her wife. Maybe the neighbors could watch the kids for a weekend, and she and Rose could take a little vacation. Just strip down, dive under the waves, and go. Rose stood up to pour some more hot water in the pot, and her long dark hair fell forward as she bent over the table. Gwen resisted the urge to reach out, gather a thick handful, and pull her wife closer. Not now. There’d be time later.
It was Stephen who finally spoke, and his tone had turned grim. “It may not be so easy for us to survive here.”
Gwen frowned, distracted from her Rose-fantasies. “Now you’re being ridiculous. Surely you’re not taking those rumors seriously? Those pure human propagandists aren’t going to make any headway here.”
Rose chimed in, “We’ve lived together for decades, modified and unmodified, side by side. The idea that we could be in danger from people like Joe and Jamie—be sensible, Stephen. This isn’t Old Earth, you know. Eris is a peaceful planet—it always has been.”
Sarah shook her head. “All I know is, people are leaving, heading off to the islands. The ones the Erisians will accept, anyway. We’re going to look into it.”
Humans, going off to live with the Erisians. Bizarre. It was one thing to share a planet with them, and kind of them too, to give humans permission to settle on the large, unused continent. The Erisians had no use for it, after all, and on this mostly-water world, no other sentient species had evolved. The Erisians didn’t even speak, but their projective empathy made their feelings clear. Welcome, welcome, they’d beamed, when the humans first arrived. A palpable warmth.
The adult Erisians had mostly ignored them after that first welcome, but their adolescents had taken a real interest in the humans. They’d shown the colonists where the best fishing spots were, and had warned them of oncoming storms, so they’d have plenty of time to batten the hatches and hunker down. The humans hadn’t been able to do much in return, but the Erisians didn’t seem to mind. And when the first generation of fully-modified humans had taken to the seas, with bigger lungs, splayed, webb
ed feet, and scales all adapted to spending much more of their lives underwater, the Erisian adolescents had greeted them with joy.
Gwen had grown up living on the beach, never more than a hundred paces from the ocean. She’d blissfully flung herself into the waves, and it was there that she’d met Rose, actually under the water. That had always seemed a sign of good luck for them, for their marriage. They’d been blessed with twenty years of happy life together, and eventually, three healthy children, equally at home on Eris’s sandy shores and in its deep waters. It was bewildering to think that could all be snatched away in an instant.
• • • •
She’d been home alone with Jon when it happened. They were working on the nets, fingers tangled in knots, pulling and tugging, testing for strength. Some would need mending. There were times in the water when Gwen wished for fins instead, to be able to cut through even more cleanly, swiftly. But fingers were too useful to give up, as the first generations of experimenting humans had discovered. Most who chose to modify followed a similar path for themselves and their children, a now well-trodden path, three generations into colonization. It wasn’t an easy life, settling a colony planet—none of the technological luxuries of Old Earth, or even the Seven Daughters, the first planets to be colonized. But Eris, beautiful Eris with its wide, warm oceans, had its own charms. Kneeling there in the sand, with her tall, handsome son working beside her, his own callused fingers as skilled with the knots as hers, Gwen couldn’t imagine a better home, a better life.
“Fish-lickers! Greyskins!” The shouts warned her, when the— mob was the only word for it, as much as it shocked her to admit it—the mob was still several yards away on the beach. At least a dozen people, all adults, all with skin colors characteristic of the unmodified, an array of creams and pinks and browns. As for her and her son—she wouldn’t have called their skin grey. Oh, it was grey in parts, but more of a grey-green, or grey-blue, like the water on a cloudy day. And shimmered with silver scales, gauntlets along their arms, and sheathing chest and back and legs as well. Some gene-modded with more scales, some with less—as with hair, you were never quite sure what you’d end up with. But she’d always thought their scale-skin was beautiful. The mob clearly disagreed.
Lightspeed Magazine - October 2016 Page 5