Clarkesworld: Year Six

by Aliette de Bodard

  “Sick?” she had asked.

  “Sh-ikh,” it had said in her mouth. “Ii-sey-na,” it said, and when the word formed in her throat she knew it meant “death.”

  “Sorry,” she had whispered.

  “Euh-i,” it had said. No. Not sorry.

  Ziara had let it talk for longer than ever before. For hours, her hand flushed red from its heat. It had told her several words, sentences, that made up an idea of what to do with its dead body. Then it went on, forming concepts, ideas, lengthier than ever before. muo-ka told her many things.

  Ziara thought about her relief, now, looking at dead muo-ka. It disturbed her, but it was the truth. There was a clarity to her world now. To this world. She would move along the mudflats and sandbridges and mountains. She would make blades of her parent’s bones, as it had told her, and explore the world. She would finally go beyond that horizon, which now flared and dimmed with the setting of uong-i.

  She was an alien, and the world would kill her, sooner rather than later. Even if by some miracle the second human arrived in the coming months, he’d be too weak to help. If one of the leviathans adopted him—and it would be a man that fell this time—it might even violently keep Ziara away from him as its own child, and she had no chance of fighting that. She knew nothing about the dynamics of this adoption. She was the first, after all. They had come into this without much knowledge, except their curiosity and gentle handling of the initial probes.

  Until and unless Earth sent an actual colonization team that could touch down a vessel with equipment and tools on the surface, humans wouldn’t be able to survive here without the help of muo-ka’s kind. As muo-ka’s child, she wondered if she might be able to befriend one of them, or whether she’d be killed in an instant.

  Ziara shook her head. It was no point overthinking. She would walk this world, and see what came. She had chosen this, after all. She hadn’t chosen her parent, but there it was, in front of her, dead as she was alive. And she was alive because of it.

  The blue dome of the gas giant appeared over the horizon, filling the seas with reflections. In the sparking light of the flares, Ziara waited. The shroud had fossilized into a flexible papyrus, with an organic pattern that looked like writing, symbols. The shrunken behemoth finally vented its innards as the stars and far moons appeared in the night sky, behind streaks of radiant aurora. Ziara clenched her jaw and began to scoop the entrails up to give to the sea, as was dignified. For a moment, she wondered what the deaths of these solitary creatures were normally like. She had seen others on the horizons, but always so far they seemed mirages. They lived their lives alone on this world, severed from each other. It had to be the child that conducted the death rites, once it was ready to move on. Perhaps they induced death in themselves once their child was mature enough.

  She stopped, recoiling from the mess.

  In the reeking slop of its guts, she saw muo-ka replicated. A small muo-ka. But not muo-ka. A nameless one, budded in its leviathan body. It was dead. The child’s limbs were tangled in the oily foam of its parent’s death. The body was crushed. Her hands slid over its cold, broken form.

  muo-ka had budded a child. A child that would have done muo-ka’s death rites once it had matured, ready to go on its own.

  “Oh,” she said, fingers squelching in the translucent mud seeping out of muo-ka’s child. “Oh, no. My muo-ka. My dear muo-ka,” she whispered, to both corpses.

  muo-ka had budded a child, and finding a mature child already ready to venture out into the world, it had crushed the one growing inside it. Only ziara was muo-ka’s child.

  “You brought me to life,” ziara said, leaning in her parent’s guts, holding her dead sibling, wrapped in clothes her parent had made. Her face crumpled as she buried it in the remains of muo-ka’s life, her body shaking.

  ziara left her sibling in the sea with muo-ka’s guts. Using the bone-knife, she cut away the death shroud carefully and wore it around her shoulders. One day, ziara swore to herself, she would translate the symbols it had excreted on it. Her parent’s death letter. She sliced off a part of the deflated hide, scrubbed it in the sea, and wore it as a cowl to keep her head warm during nights. The flares had smoked out. She looked at muo-ka curled dead. It had told her the creatures of the air would come and consume it, slowly, as it should be. She felt bad leaving it there on that stony deathbed, but that was what it had told her to do. She wiped her eyes and face. A bone knife and a whole world she didn’t belong in, except right here on this islet.

  A fiery line streaked across the sky. A human vessel. Or a shooting star. ziara gazed at its afterimage for a moment, and walked off the islet and across the shallows and mudflats of the basin. She had named that basin once, or muo-ka had, with her mouth.

  eya-rith. Earth, so she would not be homesick.

  Honey Bear

  Sofia Samatar

  We’ve decided to take a trip, to see the ocean. I want Honey to see it while she’s still a child. That way, it’ll be magical. I tell her about it in the car: how big it is, and green, like a sky you can wade in.

  “Even you?” she asks.

  “Even me.”

  I duck my head to her hair. She smells fresh, but not sweet at all, like parsley or tea. She’s wearing a little white dress. It’s almost too short. She pushes her bare toes against the seat in front of her, knuckling it like a cat.

  “Can you not do that, Hon?” says Dave.

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  She says “Dad” now. She used to say “Da-Da.”

  Dave grips the wheel. I can see the tension in his shoulders. Threads of gray wink softly in his dark curls. He still wears his hair long, covering his ears, and I think he’s secretly a little bit vain about it. A little bit proud of still having all his hair. I think there’s something in this, something valuable, something he could use to get back. You don’t cling to personal vanities if you’ve given up all hope of a normal life. At least, I don’t think you do.

  “Shit,” he says.

  “Sweetheart . . . ”

  He doesn’t apologize for swearing in front of Honey. The highway’s blocked by a clearance area, gloved hands waving us around. He turns the car so sharply the bags in the passenger seat beside him almost fall off the cooler. In the back seat, I lean into Honey Bear.

  “It’s okay,” I tell Dave.

  “No, Karen, it is not okay. The temp in the cooler is going to last until exactly four o’clock. At four o’clock, we need a fridge, which means we need a hotel. If we are five minutes late, it is not going to be okay.”

  “It looks like a pretty short detour.”

  “It is impossible for you to see how long it is.”

  “I’m just thinking, it doesn’t look like they’ve got that much to clear.”

  “Fine, you can think that. Think what you want. But don’t tell me the detour’s not long, or give me any other information you don’t actually have, okay?”

  He’s driving faster. I rest my cheek on the top of Honey’s head. The clearance area rolls by outside the window. Cranes, loading trucks, figures in orange jumpsuits. Some of the slick has dried: they’re peeling it up in transparent sheets, like plate glass.

  Honey presses a fingertip to the window. “Poo-poo,” she says softly.

  I tell her about the time I spent a weekend at the beach. My best friend got so sunburned, her back blistered.

  We play the clapping game, “A Sailor Went to Sea-Sea-Sea.” It’s our favorite.

  Dave drives too fast, but we don’t get stopped, and we reach the hotel in time. I take my meds, and we put the extra in the hotel fridge. Dave’s shirt is dark with sweat, and I wish he’d relax, but he goes straight out to buy ice, and stores it in the freezer so we can fill the cooler tomorrow. Then he takes a shower and lies on the bed and watches the news. I sit on the floor with Honey, looking at books. I read to her every evening before bed; I’ve never missed a night. Right now, we’re reading The Meadow Fairies by Dorothy Elizabeth Clark.
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br />   This is something I’ve looked forward to my whole adult life: reading the books I loved as a child with a child of my own. Honey adores The Meadow Fairies. She snuggles up to me and traces the pretty winged children with her finger. Daffodil, poppy, pink. When I first brought the book home, and Dave saw us reading it, he asked what the point was, since Honey would never see those flowers. I laughed because I’d never seen them either. “It’s about fairies,” I told him, “not botany.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a poppy in my life.

  Smiling, though half-asleep,

  The Poppy Fairy passes,

  Scarlet, like the sunrise,

  Among the meadow grasses.

  Honey chants the words with me. She’s so smart, she learns so fast. She can pick up anything that rhymes in minutes. Her hair glints in the lamplight. There’s the mysterious, slightly abrasive smell of hotel sheets, a particular hotel darkness between the blinds.

  “I love this place,” says Honey. “Can we stay here?”

  “It’s an adventure,” I tell her. “Just wait till tomorrow.”

  On the news, helicopters hover over the sea. It’s far away, the Pacific. There’s been a huge dump there, over thirty square miles of slick. The effects on marine life are not yet known.

  “Will it be fairyland?” Honey asks suddenly.

  “What, sweetie?”

  “Will it be fairyland, when I’m grown up?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. My firmest tone.

  “Will you be there?”

  No hesitation. “Yes.”

  The camera zooms in on the slick-white sea.

  By the time I’ve given Honey Bear a drink and put her to bed, Dave’s eyes are closed. I turn off the TV and the lights and get into bed. Like Honey, I love the hotel. I love the hard, tight sheets and the unfamiliar shapes that emerge around me once I’ve gotten used to the dark. It’s been ages since I slept away from home. The last time was long before Honey. Dave and I visited some college friends in Oregon. They couldn’t believe we’d driven all that way. We posed in their driveway, leaning on the car and making the victory sign.

  I want the Dave from that photo. That deep suntan, that wide grin.

  Maybe he’ll come back to me here, away from home and our neighbors, the Simkos. He spends far too much time at their place.

  For a moment, I think he’s back already.

  Then he starts shaking. He does it every night. He’s crying in his sleep.

  “Ready for the beach?”

  “Yes!”

  We drive through town to a parking lot dusted with sand. When I step out of the car the warm sea air rolls over me in waves. There’s something lively in it, something electric.

  Honey jumps up and down. “Is that it? Is that it?”

  “You got it, Honey Bear.”

  The beach is deserted. Far to the left, an empty boardwalk whitens in the sun. I kick off my sandals and scoop them up in my hand. The gray sand sticks to my feet. We lumber down to a spot a few yards from some boulders, lugging bags and towels.

  “Can I take my shoes off too? Can I go in the ocean?”

  “Sure, but let me take your dress off.”

  I pull it off over her head, and her lithe, golden body slips free. She’s so beautiful, my Bear. I call her Honey because she’s my sweetheart, my little love, and I call her Bear for the wildness I dream she will keep always. Honey suits her now, but when she’s older she might want us to call her Bear. I would’ve loved to be named Bear when I was in high school.

  “Don’t go too deep,” I tell her, “just up to your tummy, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says, and streaks off, kicking up sand behind her.

  Dave has laid out the towels. He’s weighted the corners with shoes and the cooler so they won’t blow away. He’s set up the two folding chairs and the umbrella. Now, with nothing to organize or prepare, he’s sitting on a chair with his bare feet resting on a towel. He looks lost.

  “Not going in?” I ask.

  I think for a moment he’s going to ignore me, but then he makes an effort. “Not right away,” he says.

  I slip off my shorts and my halter top and sit in the chair beside him in my suit. Down in the water, Honey jumps up and down and shrieks.

  “Look at that.”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “She loves it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so glad we brought her. Thank you.” I reach out and give his wrist a squeeze.

  “Look at that fucked-up clown on the boardwalk,” he says. “It looks like it used to be part of an arcade entrance or something. Probably been there for fifty years.”

  The clown towers over the boardwalk. It’s almost white, but you can see traces of red on the nose and lips, traces of blue on the hair.

  “Looks pretty old,” I agree.

  “Black rocks, filthy gray sand, and a fucked-up arcade clown. That’s what we’ve got. That’s the beach.”

  It comes out before I can stop it: “Okay, Mr. Simko.”

  Dave looks at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  He looks at his watch. “I don’t want to stay here for more than an hour. I want us to take a break, go back to the hotel and rest for a bit. Then we’ll have lunch, and you can take your medication.”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  “You know what?” He looks gray, worn out, beaten down, like something left out in the rain. His eyes wince away from the light. I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it if he never comes back. “I think,” he tells me, “that Mr. Simko is a pretty fucking sensible guy.”

  I lean back in the chair, watching Honey Bear in the water. I hate the Simkos. Mr. Simko’s bent over and never takes off his bathrobe. He sits on his porch drinking highballs all day, and he gets Dave to go over there and drink too. I can hear them when I’ve got the kitchen window open. Mr. Simko says things like “Après nous le déluge” and “Keep your powder dry and your pecker wet.” He tells Dave he wishes he and Mrs. Simko didn’t have Mandy. I’ve heard him say that. “I wish we’d never gone in for it. Broke Linda’s heart.” Who does he think brings him the whiskey to make his highballs?

  Mrs. Simko never comes out of the house except when Mandy comes home. Then she appears on the porch, banging the door behind her. She’s bent over like her husband and wears a flowered housedress. Her hair is black fluff, with thin patches here and there, as if she’s burned it. “Mandy, Mandy,” she croons, while Mandy puts the stuff down on the porch: liquor, chocolate, clothes, all the luxury goods you can’t get at the Center. Stuff you can only get from a child who’s left home. Mandy never looks at her mother. She hasn’t let either of the Simkos touch her since she moved out.

  “I’m going down in the water with Honey,” I say, but Dave grabs my arm.

  “Wait. Look.”

  I turn my head, and there are Fair Folk on the rocks. Six of them, huge and dazzling. Some crouch on the boulders; others swing over the sea on their flexible wings, dipping their toes in the water.

  “Honey!” Dave shouts. “Honey! Come here!”

  “C’mon, Hon,” I call, reassuring.

  Honey splashes toward us, glittering in the sun.

  “Come here!” barks Dave.

  “She’s coming,” I tell him.

  He clutches the arms of his chair. I know he’s afraid because of the clearance area we passed on the highway, the slick.

  “Come here,” he repeats as Honey runs up panting. He glances at the Fair Folk. They’re looking at us now, lazy and curious.

  I get up and dry Honey off with a towel. “What?” she says.

  “Just come over here,” says Dave, holding out his arms. “Come and sit with Daddy.”

  Honey walks over and curls up in his lap. I sit in the chair next to them and Dave puts his hand on my shoulder. He’s got us. He’s holding everyone.

  Two of the Fair Folk lift and ripple toward us through the light. There seems to be more light wherever they go. They’re fifteen, twent
y feet tall, so tall they look slender, attenuated, almost insect-like. You forget how strong they are.

  They bend and dip in the air: so close I can see the reds of their eyes.

  “It’s okay,” Dave whispers.

  And it is, of course. We’ve got each other. We’re safe.

  They gaze at us for a moment, impassive, then turn and glide back to their comrades.

  Honey waves at them with both hands. “Bye, fairies!”

  On my first visit to the clinic, I went through all the usual drills, the same stuff I go in for every two weeks. Step here, pee here, spit here, breathe in, breathe out, give me your arm. The only difference the first time was the questions.

  Are you aware of the gravity of the commitment? I said yes. Have you been informed of the risks, both physical and psychological? Yes. The side effects of the medication? Blood transfusions? Yes. Yes. The decrease in life expectancy? Everything: yes.

  That’s what you say to life. Yes.

  “They chose us,” I told Dave. Rain lashed the darkened windows. I cradled tiny Honey in my lap. I’d dried her off and wrapped her in a towel, and she was quiet now, exhausted. I’d already named her in my head.

  “We can’t go back,” Dave whispered. “If we say yes, we can’t go back.”

  “I know.”

  His eyes were wet. “We could run out and put her on somebody else’s porch.”

  He looked ashamed after he’d said it, the way he’d looked when I’d asked him not to introduce me as “my wife, Karen, the children’s literature major.” When we first moved into the neighborhood he’d introduce me that way and then laugh, as if there was nothing more ridiculous in the world. Children, when almost nobody could have them anymore; literature when all the schools were closed. I told him it bothered me, and he was sorry, but only for hurting me. He wasn’t sorry for what he really meant. What he meant was: No.

  That’s wrong. It’s like the Simkos, hateful and worn out with saying No to Mandy, saying No to life.

  So many people say no from the beginning. They make it a virtue: “I can’t be bought.” As if it were all a matter of protection and fancy goods. Of course, most of those who say yes pretend to be heroes: saving the world, if only for a season. That’s always struck me as equally wrong, in its own way. Cheap.