by Anthology
Once I saw another Kuan, slashed in shadow beyond the hall. That room was empty too, just like ours. Another skein without Xikele. That Kuan looked at me with shock. Understandable since another Ayo likely stirred in her bed. I flutter quickly away, another skein scratched off the list. Sometimes Xikele was older, a young woman asleep in the bed, the hair long and braided, the skin russet like red tea. The crayon drawings no longer adorn the walls, replaced by a scatter of books, Achebe lying atop Shakespeare.
Kuan and I both loved to read. We had spent our first night together on a beach in Durban, reading Yeats to each other by moonlight. The words had tumbled out our lips like the odor of spices, stanzas flecked with notes of chocolate, verses laced in cardamom and myrrh. Years later, we would take turns reading sonnets to Xikele though she couldn't understand the words, her gentle smile our only encouragement. I saw the Achebe on the floor, dog-eared like my mother's copy of Things Fall Apart, a victim of my school bag and too many bumpy rides on buses drifting over ill attended roads. Yes, I would have given it to Xikele. Another what-if. Flicker. This isn't the one.
Once, Xikele is old and gray, death's pallor inscribed on her face. The room is different but still the same house. Had we given the house to her before our own passing? It is a small bed, single, no room for another to curl into the space between her neck and shoulder, a sunken cavity of skin and bone now. This Xikele is awake when I appeared. Did I seem like an angel to her, the surface of the merging skeins like a ball of tiny feathers hung in space? Did she fear my mask, and the box in my lap? She did not. She raised her hand, though heavy with death's weakness, fingers clawing out into the air. I drop the mask and reach out, the skein like silk against my skin as I clasp my fingers around Xikele's. We hold there, for moments stretched in time, a meeting across possibilities, doomed to be brief. I can do nothing for this Xikele, and she can do nothing for me. Flicker. I pressed the button. I tried again.
In the mornings when I don't go to work, as I brew coffee into a stained cup, Kuan regales me. It is our alotted time, when her wakeful energy clashes with my sleepless exhaustion.
"Ayo, what of the other Ayo? What of the other Kuan? If you take their Xikele, it dooms them too. It dooms them to this, " She waves her hands at the kitchen counter, the dishes piled up like small sculptures, the mold—iridescent green—growing in long uncleaned corners. It stops us, this gnawing grief, it holds us in dirty places where we wallow like flies in still water.
"How could you live with it? Ayo, how could you?"
Yes. It is awful. It is monstrous, but I rationalize it. The box exists in other skeins. Other Ayos will search for other Xikeles. An infinite number of Ayo's searching and finding and retrieving an infinite number of Xikeles. Indunction on infinity replaces morality, as if replacing the act with an equation is enough of an excuse. The truth is, I simply want her back, and I do not care.
Kuan grew still, that quiet stillness that I knew so well.
"What if…what if," Her voice stills to an ominous whisper.
"What if that's how Xikele was taken? What if that's why there wasn't a trace. Maybe one of you took her."
The idea burrows deep. I am become a we now. A plural community of would be monsters unable to accept the state of the world, grasping at exotic mysteries, opening doors locked closed by causal keys. Yes, induction leads to that conclusion too.
"Does it matter now, Kuan? Does it matter? I've opened that door in my heart, its taken seed and grown to root. How can I stop now. I've seen her, young, old, just born, just dying. I've held her hand, felt her breath. I'll find her Kuan. I'll find her, and bring her here, let her merge with our space, and our time."
Kuan shakes her head.
"Even if you bring Xikele here, it won't be the same. It can't be the same. This road doesn't lead anywhere but darkness Ayo. I've lost Xikele, I don't want to lose you."
An impasse. I cannot relent, and grief binds us too deep for her to leave, so the conversation stutters, like a broken piece of film. It curls up like flowers in the night, awaiting another dawn to unfurl the same argument, the same pointless words. Nothing changes. Nothing will change, not until I find Xikele.
At work, Trake wants to end the project. He fears a world where the box can be used in ways that it shouldn't. He fears our people over-running an infinite worlds with our careless conquests. He fears unimaginable acts once only possible in dreams, God's great gate into mystery used for the pettiest of desires. It's too late for that. I'm already there.
Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. One more, before my eyes curl closed against the rising sun. One more room, not broken and buried, not wreathed in purple fire nor drowned in sand the color of coral. One more room, spattered with crayon filled drawings, a beautiful coffee colored child draped in a sea of black curls under the moss colored comforter, a knife's edge away from my Xikele.
***
The room flutters into being behind the feathered sheen of merging skeins. I gasp—an indrawn breath that burns into my lungs and turns my heartbeat into thunder beneath my skin. I turn the machine off and soak in every detail of the room in our house, Xikele's room. I see the misaligned crayon drawings snaking across the back room, the stuffed toys stacked in leaning piles against the corner, a knit sweater now gray with dust lying on the floor, a single arm curled and pointing towards the hall.
I press the button, hearing the stutter and whine, the flicker and the flap. The floor is slick and shiny, free of dust and mold, but the stuffed toys still lean like organic sculptures against the corner. The same drawings are there, a few more I've never seen stuck in odd places, but the ones I know by heart—the ones I memorized in the days after she left—those lie in place on the wall, off kilter as Xikele always liked.
I've avoided looking at the bed, though it lies in front of me. I've blurred it out of my vision, so I could look only when I was ready. My heart rends every time it hangs so close, its unbearable, though every night I sit in this cage and try again. I let my eyes unblur, starting from the foot of the bed, following the comforter from the wide meadow where the bed was too long for her tiny body. The meadow leans up into the hill of her feet, gently rising in delicate folds until I make out arms wrapped around the dun colored bear toy that Xikele loved so well.
The round almond of her face, like coffee after I've added the first drops of milk, lies serene against the pillow. Her beautiful black hair, so like my own, danced slowly in the air as she breathed. I stop breathing for fear the moment will pass. I must drink of this moment like sweet nectar from the blossom strewn fields of heaven. As I hung suspended in hope, she stirred, the eyes gently opening, slanted in a gentle arabesque like Kuan's own.
"Mama?"
My breath releases like a thunderclap.
"Yes, sweetie?"
"Why are you covered in feathers?"
In the hall, a light switches open. I must be quick—if I do not do this now, I will never have the courage to do so again.
"Come give Mama a hug, sweetie?"
She clambers out of bed and stands against the edge of the field boundary. I can see she's not quite awake yet, or there would have been more questions. I reach out, the skein as slick as my sweated palms. I take her hand and pull. The skein windows around her, gel like bubbles erupting around the gap. Like a caterpillar crawling out of its cocoon, she falls into the inside of my skein, fingers of the reality outside still wrapped like a barely visible caul around her. I hear footsteps in the hall, loud as the drumbeat of my heart. I press the button. Flicker. As I stare at the dissolving skein around me, I see the drawing on the wall, two stick figure mothers and a child, blurred by the unfolding skein. I make out the dark crayon tresses of my hair in the image before my own skein flickers into place, the dust and the mold shining from the lambent light of the box. I turn the box off, still feeling Xikele's reassuring hand in my own.
"Mama, its so dusty all of a sudden! This feels like a strange dream and my tummy feels funny."
Joy u
nfurls, like the first bloom of spring. I envelop her in my arms, so tight she squirms against it.
"What's wrong Mama? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong Xikele, nothing's wrong." There is a river of tears in me, a great Nile of tears, but for Xikele's comfort, I hold it back.
"Everything's right baby, everything is right. Mama's here."
"I'm tired Mama, can I go back to bed now?" Xikele rubs her eyes, wiping away my sweat from her skin.
"Ok Xikele, I'm just going to wait here for a bit until you fall asleep."
"Okay Mama."
The tiredness claims her and she snuggles into the dusty comforter. In the morning there will be time to clean, to rebuild, to show Kuan and to wind time back across the great chasm of sorrow in which we had spent the last year. A new day was dawning, a new spring bloom. I look at the box again, making sure its telltale lights were off, reassuring myself that I was in my own skein, and she was there. We had gone through fire and flame, Kuan and I, we had burned ourself clean to the bone, but this—this would thread us back together. I held myself back from sleep, soaking in every diamond sharp moment, but sleep claimed me anyway.
***
I juddered awake, my heart like the gallop of horses. She was gone. She was gone. Stop. Breathe. Look. I count myself to ten to slow the spiraling world down. The comforter, long folded into its perfect geometric line, was disheveled and flung open, the memory of a child's shape still pressed into it. I stood up, my bones creaking, and walked into the hall.
Inside the kitchen at the end of the long hall, I could hear the clink and plink of fork against bowl, and the slow slurp of coffee being sipped. Xikele stood just outside the arch of the kitchen, hidden in the shadow, face flush with fear. Feather streaks still hung around her arms and legs, though most had faded—she was settling into our skein slowly but surely.
Kuan would be in the kitchen. Had she seen Xikele? I would likely have heard. I bent down, my face against Xikele's own. I hold her hand reassuringly. It is flesh warm and not skein slick as I feared. I whisper into her ear,
"What's wrong sweetie?"
Her eyes look at me, slightly vibrating, tiny feather streaks glistening in and out of being on her eyelids.
"There's a ghost in the kitchen, Mama." Her quiet, fearful whisper back.
"There's no ghost there sweetie, I'll show you. Come."
I take her hand as she sidles up against me, walking together into the kitchen. The ceramic bowl falls from Kuan's hands first, shattering against the kitchen counter. A silence like the shaking of mountains unfurls, broken by Xikele's tiny plaintive voice.
"Mama Kuan?"
Kuan wails Xikele's name, bursting across the kitchen floor to envelop Xikele in her arms, all her fears and words of darkness shattered by the simple truth of Xikele's presence.
"I missed you so much Xikele, I missed you so much, I missed you so." Kuan continues to repeat the words, burrowing her face into Xikele's neck. I feel the cascade of time being drawn back, a rewinding to a time and place a year ago, the three of us unbroken. Xikele holds Kuan tight, her tiny arms clenched around Kuan's delicate body.
"I missed you too, Mama Kuan, I thought you went away. I thought you went away forever." Simple words. Such simple words, like iron nails hammering into my bones. Like the fallen porcelain, I shatter into shards. The blurred drawing against the wall as Xikele's skein dissolved flashes like lightning in my mind. I see the details of it, etched in sharp relief. In our wall, two stick figures surround Xikele's tiny form, one in chocolate and black, another in ochre. The drawing in my memory from the other skein rises up and swallows me. Kuan's figure was scratched out. Another mistake. The last one simply evaporated, she did not know Kuan, and that un-knowledge resolved her intersection with our skein into redaction. This Xikele knew Kuan, and had lost Kuan. I don't know how the mathematics of this resolution will work out. It is as unclear and mysterious as the box, and the fear is exploding in me.
I look down at the two halves of my heart, hugging each other before me. I do not know what is about to happen. I wish I could undo this, walk backward through time until I could have seen the drawing and considered it at leisure. I watch the feather streaks glisten into being, wrapping the two of them, the skeins colliding and merging. In the lab we played and cavorted, abandoning science, abandoning the rigor of question and answer, of datum and hypothesis. We had rushed through dozens of worlds like visitors to Shangri-La. I don't know what the skeins will do, I don't know how they will merge. All I know is that I am bereft of power to stop this.
I could tear them apart now, but I can already see the skeins wrapping around them, preparing for judgement, preparing to render unto mathematical fact. This does not belong. Repair, redact, adjust. Clutching Xikele to her chest, Kuan looks up at me. Does she know? Does she feel it? An oil slick nausea. Her eyes fill with light, a lambent sheen, like the eyes of angels out of a Carravagio painting. A hand, reaches up, fingers sliding across space beyond infinite towards my own. She's gone, flickered away, redacted into non-existence. Xikele is screaming.
My heart is a desert, scoured to bone. I wrap my screaming child in my arms, hold her for hours until the sobbing subsides. I tell her she was right. She saw a ghost, and seeing ghosts is a painful experience. Yes, Xikele, I miss her too. She continues to sob, until exhausted, she falls asleep. I carry her into bed and crawl in with her, holding her safe against the horrors of this new world.
As I close my eyes, another idea burrows to seed. Out the window, the sun rises, a lavender dawn casting pale shadows against the box on the floor.
Broken Winged Love(Short story)
by Naru Dames Sundar
Originally published by Strange Horizons
I didn't love my baby when it was but the dream of an iron-heart's seed. I heard the iron-heart in my time of heat, mind-addled, my lungs heaving gouts of sulfur. Afterward, our tails curved amidst shattered rock and molten magma, I regretted my choice. The time was too early, the act irreversible. I groused so to the iron-heart, and he simply laughed, his charcoal scales quivering. I snapped at his throat, tasting the sour tang of blood and copper. He did not stay long.
I didn't love my baby when it was an egg, opalescent shell binding unthinking yolk, buried and growing inside of me. I felt it weigh down my skin as I flew, no longer a graceful dancer, but a behemoth, lumbering. Three interminable weeks. I wondered if it will be whole. I dreamed of leaving the egg, perched on a mountain ledge, unattended. I dreamed of watching it fall, the sunburned yolk drizzling down the crags, pieces of shell scattering into the wind.
I didn't love my baby when it crawled out, half formed. Still wreathed in its waxy caul, it shivered, one wing a stub—raw and forever broken. Shame burned red my gold and ochre skin. A poor bloodline, they called me. They, the other hens, with their perfect well-formed lizards. I held the pink and raw snippet of flesh against my chest, letting it feel the heat of my furnace, hot as as the heart of suns. I closed one wing around it, so it would not hear their laughter.
I didn't love my baby when I sheltered it with my wings, feeling the crackling fire of other runts burnishing my scales. They soared a few feet off the ground, long bounding arcs like all runts should. But not mine. Not my broken offspring, held down to rock and earth and sea by nothing more than chance. I should not have listened to the iron-heart, but I did. I should not have trusted my blood, but I did.
I didn't love my baby when it cried as the other younglings flew into the air. It watched them, trapped forever to the unforgiving earth. I let him scamper up my back, tiny little claws clasped around the bony ridges of my spine. I showed him flight, but it engendered nothing but pain. He would never know the sky, without me. Alone, he would know only the laughter of his herd brothers.
I didn't love my baby when I held him with my claws, sweeping west to empty aeries, leaving the taunts of other hens far behind. I found one, a pearl amidst the ocean, a strip of beach and raised rock like some dead lizard of
old. Here my child danced, free from comparisons. Here lay I, sundered from the sky, ever watchful of my growing gold-eyed boy.
I didn't love my baby when I leapt with him in tiny hops on a deserted shore, as a choir of gulls watched us. It was not flight, and no trick of the mind made it so, but I heard his laughter, the keening roaring sound, the licks of flame that spurted with delight. We rose three feet into the ground, and then we landed, time and time again. It was our own dance, a private performance, a hidden joy. In secret dreams I longed for lost days flying carefree into the endless blue, adrift among clouds. When I woke, I felt him, sinew and bone, curled against my chest.
I didn't love my baby when he burned my left wing, angry and raging, trapped in his broken body. I had been impatient, hoping that with his one wing he could leap higher, taste a larger piece of his birthright. I paid the price for such hopes. I tended to myself while my son raged along the strip of beach, flame scorching sand into puddles of glass. Had I not already paid enough? I mourned pinion, bone and skin, never to heal. I spent my days on the ground, with my lost dreams, with my son, a lizard of the sea.
I didn't love my baby when he returned to me, mewling, apologetic, and I let him burrow into the crumbling scales of my neck. I watched them shed as his tears landed on uncovered flesh. Scales, already shedding? Time was my enemy now. How would this gold-eyed, green-glass beauty fare alone? Answers eluded me.
I didn't love my baby when he hunted brinish things in the shallows, feeding me when I could not. I tasted the fish he gently placed in my gullet. It tasted unnatural, but it was a kind of pallid sustenance. My furnace was only embers now. One leg refused to move, but I did not care. I had given up the sky—the little perch of rock around us, it mattered little. My child reared majestically against the crashing surf, green as emerald. He wore his one wing across his shoulder like a cape. Atrophied, it was but a leathery ornament. I heard his roar, the furnace belching flame into the sky forever denied to him.