“This is all my fault.” I choke back silent tears. “Ethan, I’m sorry.”
His shape slumps against the wall. “What for?”
“I should have told you, but I didn’t think—I didn’t imagine—” My throat is too small; the words come out in a squeaky rush, like water through a small spigot. I tell him about meeting Pearl, about agreeing to help her find someone she knew centuries ago. “I led her to us. To Kegan.”
“To Kegan?” Ethan stiffens. “Why would anyone want to hurt Kegan?”
His brother stirs on the floor. A soft groan escapes him.
Ethan tries to shuffle closer to him. “Hey, it’s me. You okay?”
Kegan lifts his head off the ground, realizes he’s tied up, and starts to freak out. “Let us out of here!” he screams, kicking at the door. “LET US OUT!”
The closet door opens. A silhouette stands over us. Even before the small desk lamp clicks on, I know who it is, and so, apparently, does Kegan. He jerks against the wall, a sheen of sweat breaking on his forehead.
“You.” His voice is a rattle.
Pearl’s bottomless eyes pass over me, then Ethan, before stopping on Kegan. “Hello, General Zhang.” Her voice is silky soft, almost affectionate. “We meet again.”
The big man beside her grumbles, “You promised us a lot of cash—”
“Finish the job,” she replies shortly, “and you will be paid as we agreed.”
The men depart. We are alone in the room with Pearl.
“I have no idea who you are, or what you want with me,” Kegan says. Though he’s scared, his voice is surprisingly strong. “But let my brother and his girlfriend go. If it’s me you want, just let them go.”
“Ahhh,” Pearl sighs. “So there is justice in the universe after all. I pleaded for my family, too. I pleaded for their lives. Then I pleaded for quick deaths. But you granted them neither.” Her face is a pitiless pale mask. Her voice takes on a slow, musing quality. “The Red Butcher, the Emperor’s most feared warlord. You were determined to make an example of Three Gates Valley, one so terrifying that no other prefectures would ever again consider rebellion.”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about, lady,” Ethan says. “You’re crazy.”
“Am I?” Pearl looks directly at me.
I shudder. How could I not have seen it before, her cold cruelty? “This is wrong. You can’t punish him for what happened to you hundreds of years ago. He doesn’t remember any of it. He’s not even the same person.”
“Isn’t he? How can you, of all people, say that?” She turns away from me and back to Kegan. “This young, handsome incarnation flatters you, General. But I can see you. Inside, you are still the monster who had my husband and his brothers torn apart by horses and their flesh fed to the dogs. You ordered my children to be thrown from the walls. And you lit fires that burned for five days and nights, until nothing was left of the town.” She crouches down smoothly to face him, her long white coat pooling around her. “No one survived. No one but me.”
The room chills from the ice of her whispered words. “There are consequences to making an enemy of an Ageless one. I swore to Heaven, to Zhurong, god of fire and vengeance, that I would hunt you down; I would make you pay back with your lives the ones you took from me.”
Kegan is shaking his head emphatically. “I didn’t—I wouldn’t—”
Pearl stands up. The door opens and the big man walks in with a six-gallon jug. He bangs it impatiently against the wall, and it makes a hollow sound. That’s when I notice the smell drifting in from the hallway. Kerosene.
Terror floods in. I shake in its grip like a marionette.
Kegan is no better. In his saucer-wide eyes, I see that he knows this has happened before. How many times? Over how many lives has Pearl been exacting her vengeance? “Please,” he begs, “please let them go.”
Pearl gestures to me. “Take her outside.” The big man picks me up, dumping me over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes. I can’t resist. I can’t do anything. Except start to sob.
Ethan loses his mind. He thrashes against his bonds. “What are you going to do? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO HER? You can’t leave us like this!” He tries to throw himself in the man’s path, but the hulk steps over him. My vision blurs, bobs upside-down as I’m taken from the room.
“Goodbye, General,” Pearl says. “We will meet again soon.”
The man carries me outside and dumps me on the driveway. Ethan’s howls are cut off as Pearl follows the men outside and slams the door behind her. I struggle to my knees, snot and tears smeared across my cheeks. Pearl has a gun in her hand. She rests it against my forehead.
“You tricked me,” I scream. Rage boils up through my fear. “I thought you were searching for someone you loved. You said that love never dies!”
“I loved my poor, mortal family. Love doesn’t die.” She cocks the hammer. “Neither does hate.”
I stare up at her. She is going to kill me, but in this instant, I pity her. She is the proof that people need to forget, to start over, to be given second, third, eighth chances. Or we might become like her. Frozen by the worst of our memories. Imprisoned by histories we can’t change and can’t leave behind.
“You promised to help me.” My voice is a cracked whisper now. “All this time, you were just using me.”
“I am going to help you, Claire. I’m going to tell you how to break the pattern.”
She pulls the trigger.
Click. The hammer falls on an empty chamber.
I blink, confused as to how I am still alive. “Untie her,” Pearl orders. A minute later, the duct tape around my wrists and ankles rips loose, peeling a layer of skin off with it. Pearl lowers the gun.
“You were meant to die tonight, but I spared you. Now, I will tell you what the secret of the pattern is.” She leans forward and whispers. “Choice.”
Behind her, the short masked man lights a match and drops it. Fire encircles the house in an enormous whoosh of red heat.
My bladder gives out. Warmth spreads down the legs of my jeans.
“There is always a choice.” The black chasms of her eyes are two pinpricks of reflected firelight. “Now run, Claire.”
I scramble to my feet. And I run.
I run without regard for direction. I run over lawns, through shrubbery and around trees. My foot catches on a curb, and I gasp as I pitch forward into a garden bed. Whimpers clog my throat as I struggle to my feet and look over my shoulder.
The men are small figures now, climbing into a black van with tinted windows and a missing license plate. One of them rolls down the passenger side window and yells at Pearl, who remains standing in front of the burning house. For a long moment, she doesn’t move. The glow of the fire lights up the street and casts leaping shadows like hellish dancing puppets. Pearl takes two slow steps forward, a spot of white against a curtain of red, as if she intends to walk into the flames, to join everything she’s lost.
Then she turns and walks calmly to the van. When she’s inside, the van turns sharply and peels away.
I dig my hands into the dirt, so wet and cool. I remember what it was like in the fire. The intensity of the pain. Marie—I—screamed until my throat burned from the inside out.
I get up. And I run back toward the house.
My body wants to rebel. It cannot believe I am doing this; it wants to shut down in response to terror. But Ethan is in there. And Kegan. How can I let them suffer the death I most fear?
When I reach the house, I freeze in a final, stomach-churning moment of cowardice. Then I run to the door. I try to push it open, but it’s stuck. Then I remember the broken window and run around to the side of the house. Smoke pours from the living room. I take a deep breath and clamber inside. There’s glass on the floor; a shard of it jabs into my palm, but I barely feel it. I pull my sleeves over my hands and keep crawling. I can hear, through the crackle and roar of flames, the sound of screaming. Perhaps I’m imagining it or perhaps I’m
screaming in my head.
I make it to the hallway and army crawl forward, elbow over elbow, my nose pressed close to the floor, sucking in short bursts of ashy air. The heat on my skin is like a hundred sunburns. I’m crying and ninety-nine percent sure I’m going to die, but I keep scrambling forward until I reach the closed bedroom door. The knob scalds my hand when I reach up to twist it. I shove the door open and drop back down, coughing. “Ethan,” I try to call, but the smoke is too thick. Then I bump into a moving shape. A leg. I follow it up to a torso. Ethan twists in place. His frightened, bloodshot eyes meet mine and grow wide with relief and horror.
“Claire! What are you doing?” he gasps.
I pull the switchblade from my pocket and fumble it open. I start sawing at the duct tape around his wrists. My eyes and nose sting. Adrenaline pours through my system, and I fight to keep my hands steady. Ethan lies still, trying to help me as I keep cutting, inch by inch, until the tape tears free. He grabs the knife from me and hacks frantically at the tape binding his feet until he frees them. He scrambles away toward Kegan.
I am light-headed now. It is hard to breathe. The skin of my hands sizzles and blisters. The world swims black and red. Choice, I think. And I remember.
I remember I grabbed the spade, the only weapon I could find, and followed Donnan.
I ran toward the wounded leopard, drawing it away from Jamal.
I pressed the satchel of herbs into Estelle’s desperate hands.
I saw the storm clouds, but I took the boat out; little Asuka was so hungry.
I dribbled water onto the pustule-speckled lips of Owhi, the chief’s son, as he lay dying.
I pushed Jeanne down to the ground as the bullets began to fly.
There is a cracking, splintering sound from somewhere overhead. Ethan is shouting my name, but it seems to be coming from very far away. A strange calm overtakes me.
My lives make sense now. Tragic death is not my pattern.
Sacrifice is my pattern.
The secret is choice, Pearl had said. She’s right. Our patterns are the ones we choose, over and over again. I’ve never broken my pattern because I’ve always chosen as I’m choosing now.
Kegan’s face appears an inch in front of mine, distorted by the smoke. “Get up.” His voice is barely his own. He hauls hard on my arms. Ethan grabs me from the other side, urging my body across the ground. My hands and knees scrabble across the burning floorboards of the hall. Then the two of them are lifting and thrusting me toward the window. It appears, a narrow portal ringed by fire, beckoning urgently.
And then I’m through it, staggering out of the flames. Cold air rushes into my scalded lungs. I stumble several more steps and drop to the ground, coughing, gasping, trembling. The cool grass presses against my raw skin; everything is a tear-stained blur. Kegan and Ethan collapse next to me, heaving for breath. Behind us, the house continues to burn, sending plumes of smoke into the night sky. The blare of sirens and the strobing of lights surround us as we cling to each other. Kegan’s swollen eyes are haunted, and Ethan shakes uncontrollably. Their clothes and hair are blackened, their skin red and blistered, but they’re alive. I’m alive.
All of us, alive. We’ve been given another chance.
There’s always another chance.
The Orphans Of Nilaveli
Naru Dames Sundar
With signs of a major second quake imminent, government emergency services started an airlift operation to save the countless lives in the northern district. Were it not for this effort, the casualties from the second tremor would have been far higher.
2076 Earthquake, Sri Lanka
—Nilaveli Beach Airlift
A rickety jeep bounced over the broken asphalt crags of roads turned into hillocks. Water seeped around us. The public channels were already speaking of severe aftershocks. My father struggled with the juddering steering wheel while my mother spoke to her cousins at the evacuation site at Nilaveli Beach. The implant glowed behind her ear as it carried her words many miles to the east. The jeep barely had room for the three of us and our neighbours and their son. As I clung to my mother’s sari, I heard her gasp.
“Kamala? What is it?” Worry creased my father’s eyes.
“Anilan, he said they looked past him. As if he wasn’t even there! And the crowds just pushed past him!”
My father pulled the jeep to the side of the road, waiting for my mother to say more.
“It’s like that time we visited Kandy, Anilan. Didn’t you hear the stories? Implant modifications. Adjusted vision. First, they don’t want to see the beggars. Then, they don’t want to see us.”
Us, them. Before the war, after the war. Even seventy years after the war, it was us and them. You see, conflict has roots, and even when the victor cuts the tree down, the roots remain, buried deep. Sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle.
“Kamala. The children aren’t implanted yet. We can send them. Their features aren’t so distinct that someone will notice.”
“No.” My mother’s voice was firm.
“If the crowds thicken, do you think they’ll make room for us? There are always enough vacationers from the south in the Trincomalee resorts to fill the lifters. But the children without their implants, no one could say for sure that they were Tamil or Sinhalese.”
“Absolutely not.”
But I could tell from the wavering of her voice that she was already thinking yes. Because sometimes when you had to choose between your life and your child’s, between a large risk and a small risk, you made the choices you never wanted to make. Even at six, I understood enough.
“No, Amma, no, I don’t want to go. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me, Amma!”
“Hush, Kartik, hush.”
My parents pulled me into their arms and held me, and I smelled sweat on their skin, salt in their tears, turmeric and ash on their foreheads—these smells would never leave me. I wailed at Nilaveli when they handed me to my neighbour’s eight-year-old son, Ayngharan, my newly adopted older brother.
Hours later, I sobbed, my face pressed against the glass window, the lifter leaving behind the white sand covered by a sea of people and heading over the churning waters. I saw the aftershock ripple through the beach, sand spray booming in large dust clouds. I screamed for my parents, like the other orphans on the craft. Ayngharan put his hands over my eyes and pulled me close: his hands, his chest, his smell—all unfamiliar. He too was experiencing that singular agony, but his tears lay buried.
A moderately wealthy family in Kandy took us in. Marble floors and large, expensive batik hangings across the entry and throughout the house. Ayngharan knew some Sinhala because even in the remote northern schools, government strictures imposed what were taught. I was young and knew little, and as my adopted parents put it, I was affected. They didn’t like to talk about it, as if it was some distant dirty thing they didn’t want to touch. Ayngharan was angrier than I was. He understood, you see—he knew enough to know the reason our parents could not have accompanied us on the lifter. Why they could not have gotten past the evacuation officials. For me, the why was more ephemeral, something I did not yet grasp.
Years later, Ayngharan shouted and screamed when they installed his implant. He fought so hard they had to sedate him before the medical attendant could install the silver conch shell behind his ear. When our adopted parents told him what software was being loaded onto it, his rage transcended into something else. Because he had learned enough to know what each piece of software could do—and he knew that without words, our parents were slowly trying to pull us into their world of unseeing. They argued, and finally our parents simply put their foot down, asserting their parental rights. We had no choice, but to obey. So, Ayngharan did as they asked, but it was not long before he discovered illegal patches in dark corners. He quietly removed the software from his implant.
I think what hurt Ayngharan the most happened when it was my turn. Not because I didn’t apply his illegal patches afterward, but bec
ause I acquiesced quietly. That day our paths diverged.
Ayngharan dropped out of secondary school while I passed the university entrance exams. I recalled vividly one night at the campus bar, slightly warm from a touch of Arak, the smell of anise still pungent in my throat. Henry and Vijaya, friends of sorts, accompanied me at the table we occupied most Friday nights. Henry spotted them first.
“Eh, mate, there’re two young ladies over there and three of us. Which one of us gets to stay behind and order more drinks?”
Vijaya, the most argumentative among us, bickered over which one of the girls was prettier. I was alarmed; there were clearly three girls at the bar. Three saris: pink and gold, and a few seats away, a solitary green.
“But there’re three of them.”
The jovial banter stopped. Vijaya squinted at the bar and then looked at me quizzically. There, I finally understood. He only saw two girls. That he was just like my adopted parents. Just like the unnamed evacuation coordinator on the beach that day in Nilaveli.
“What do you mean, three? Too much arak perhaps, friend?”
Henry gave me a different look. Uncomfortable. Annoyed.
“That one’s not my type, man.”
Vijaya still didn’t understand. He would never understand until he turned off his ubiquitous implant modification. Henry grabbed his shoulder and scuttled over toward the bar, glossing over Vijaya’s confusion. He turned back and shouted, “Drinks on you, Guna!”
But his eyes told me something different. Don’t push this. Don’t ask more questions. Go along with it. Who was worse? Vijaya, who did not see this unnamed Tamil girl, painted out of his vision by a chunk of code and the silver behind his ear? Henry, who saw her but feigned an incompatible type because type included blood and history and a thousand lines of division scratched into the country’s bedrock for hundreds of years? Or me, who answered to my adopted name, Guna? Me, who said nothing, who went along with it, even as it rankled. We were all terrible people in different ways.
Where The Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy Page 33