Lightspeed Magazine Issue 49

by Seanan McGuire

  “Oh, yes, Moggadeet.”

  “I’m Myself now. I am strong. I’ll make my own Plan. I will not look at you until … until the warm, until the Sun comes back.”

  “Yes, Moggadeet … Moggadeet? My limbs are cramped.”

  “Oh, my precious, wait—see, I am opening the silk very carefully, I will not look—I won’t—”

  “Moggadeet, don’t you love me?”

  “Leelyloo! Oh, my glorious one! I fear, I fear—”

  “Look, Moggadeet! See how big I am, how strong!”

  “Oh, redling, my hands—my hands—what are they doing to you?”

  For with my special hands I was pressing, pressing the hot juices from my throat-sacs and tenderly, tenderly parting your sweet Mother-fur and placing my gift within your secret places. And as I did this our eyes entwined and our limbs made a wreath.

  “My darling, do I hurt you?”

  “Oh, no, Moggadeet! Oh, no!”

  Oh, my adored one, those last days of our love!

  Outside the world grew colder yet, and the fatclimbers ceased to eat and the banlings lay still and began to stink. But still we held the warmth deep in our cave and still I fed my beloved on the last of our food. And every night our new ritual of love became more free, richer, though I compelled myself to hide all but a portion of your sweet body. But each dawn it grew hard and harder for me to replace the silken bonds around your limbs.

  “Moggadeet! Why do you not bind me! I am afraid!”

  “A moment, Lilli, a moment. I must caress you just once more.”

  “I’m afraid, Moggadeet! Cease now and bind me!”

  “But why, my lovekin? Why must I hide you? Is this not some foolish part of the Plan?”

  “I don’t know, I feel so strange. Moggadeet, I—I’m changing.”

  “You grow more glorious every moment, my Lilli, my own. Let me look at you! It is wrong to bind you away!”

  “No, Moggadeet! No!”

  But I would not listen, would I? Oh, foolish Moggadeet-who-thought-to-be-your-Mother. Great is the Plan!

  I did not listen, I did not bind you up. No! I ripped them away, the strong silk strands. Mad with love, I slashed them all at once, rushing from each limb to the next until all your glorious body lay exposed. At last—I saw you whole!

  Oh, Lilliloo, greatest of Mothers.

  It was not I who was your Mother. You were mine.

  Shining and bossed you lay, your armor newly grown, your mighty hunting limbs thicker than my head! What I had created. You! A Supermother, a Mother such as none have ever seen!

  Stupefied with delight, I gazed.

  And your huge hunting-limb came out and seized me.

  Great is the Plan. I felt only joy as your jaws took me.

  As I feel it now.

  And so we end, my Lilliloo, my redling, for your babies are swelling through your Mother-fur and your Moggadeet can speak no longer. I am nearly devoured. The cold grows, it grows, and your Mother-eyes are growing, glowing. Soon you will be alone with our children and the warm will come again.

  Will you remember, my heartmate? Will you remember and tell them?

  Tell them of the cold, Leelyloo. Tell them of our love.

  Tell them … the winters grow.

  © 1973, 2001 by the Estate of Alice B. Sheldon.

  Previously published in The Alien Condition and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever.

  Reprinted by permission of Jeffrey D. Smith and the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.

  James Tiptree, Jr., was the pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon (1915-1987), who, before turning to writing, had been an artist, a newspaper art critic, a World War II photo-intelligence officer, a chicken farmer, a CIA agent, and a research psychologist. After earning her PhD in psychology in 1967, she started writing science fiction short stories—using a pseudonym to protect her new academic career, and a male name to fit in better at the magazines. As Tiptree, she published two novels and eight collections of short stories. She won two Hugo Awards, three Nebula Awards (one as Raccoona Sheldon, an occasional second nom de plume), and one World Fantasy Award. An award for gender-based science fiction was named after Tiptree in 1991, and a biography by Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, was published in 2006.

  Knapsack Poems: A Goxhat Travel Journal

  Eleanor Arnason

  Within this person of eight bodies, thirty-two eyes, and the usual number of orifices and limbs resides a spirit as restless as gossamer on wind. In youth, I dreamed of fame as a merchant-traveler. In later years, realizing that many of my parts were prone to motion sickness, I thought of scholarship or accounting. But I lacked the Great Determination which is necessary for both trades. My abilities are spontaneous and brief, flaring and vanishing like a falling star. For me to spend my life adding numbers or looking through dusty documents would be like “lighting a great hall with a single lantern bug” or “watering a great garden with a drop of dew.”

  Finally, after consulting the caregivers in my crèche, I decided to become a traveling poet. It’s a strenuous living and does not pay well, but it suits me.

  • • •

  Climbing through the mountains west of Ibri, I heard a wishik call, then saw the animal, its wings like white petals, perched on a bare branch.

  “Is that tree flowering

  So late in autumn?

  Ridiculous idea!

  I long for dinner.”

  One of my bodies recited the poem. Another wrote it down, while still others ranged ahead, looking for signs of habitation. As a precaution, I carried cudgels as well as pens and paper. One can never be sure what will appear in the country west of Ibri. The great poet Raging Fountain died there of a combination of diarrhea and malicious ghosts. Other writers, hardly less famous, have been killed by monsters or bandits or, surviving these, met their end at the hands of dissatisfied patrons.

  The Bane of Poets died before my birth. Its1 ghost or ghosts offered Raging Fountain the fatal bowl of porridge. But other patrons still remain “on steep slopes and in stony dales.”

  “Dire the telling

  Of patrons in Ibri:

  Bone-breaker lurks

  High on a mountain.

  Skull-smasher waits

  In a shadowy valley.

  Better than these

  The country has only

  Grasper, Bad-bargain,

  And Hoarder-of-Food.”

  Why go to such a place, you may be wondering? Beyond Ibri’s spiny mountains lie the wide fields of Greater and Lesser Ib, prosperous lands well known for patronage of the arts.

  Late in the afternoon, I realized I would find no refuge for the night. Dark snow-clouds hid the hills in front of me. Behind me, low in the south, the sun shed pale light. My shadows, long and many-limbed, danced ahead of me on the rutted road.

  My most poetic self spoke:

  “The north is blocked

  By clouds like boulders.

  A winter sun

  Casts shadows in my way.”

  Several of my other selves frowned. My scribe wrote the poem down with evident reluctance.

  “Too obvious,” muttered a cudgel-carrier.

  Another self agreed. “Too much like Raging Fountain in his/her mode of melancholy complaint.”

  Far ahead, a part of me cried alarm. I suspended the critical discussion and hurried forward in a clump, my clubs raised and ready for use.

  Soon, not even breathless, I stopped at a place I knew by reputation: the Tooth River. Wide and shallow, it ran around pointed stones, well exposed this time of year and as sharp as the teeth of predators. On the far side of the river were bare slopes that led toward cloudy mountains. On the near side of the river, low cliffs cast their shadows over a broad shore. My best scout was there, next to a bundle of cloth. The scout glanced up, saw the rest of me and—with deft fingers—undid the blanket folds.

  Two tiny forms lay curled at the blanket’s center. A child of one year, holding itself in its arms.


  “Alive?” I asked myself.

  The scout crouched closer. “One body is and looks robust. The other body—” my scout touched it gently “—is cold.”

  Standing among myself, I groaned and sighed. There was no problem understanding what had happened. A person had given birth. Either the child had been unusually small, or the other parts had died. For some reason the parent had been traveling alone. Maybe he/she/it had been a petty merchant or a farmer driven off the land by poverty. If not these, then a wandering thief or someone outlawed for heinous crimes. A person with few resources. In any case, he/she/it had carried the child to this bitter place, where the child’s next-to-last part expired.

  Imagine standing on the river’s icy edge, holding a child who had become a single body. The parent could not bear to raise an infant so incomplete! What parent could? One did no kindness by raising such a cripple to be a monster among ordinary people.

  Setting the painful burden down, the parent crossed the river.

  I groaned a second time. My most poetic self said:

  “Two bodies are not enough;

  One body is nothing,”

  The rest of me hummed agreement. The poet added a second piece of ancient wisdom:

  “Live in a group

  Or die.”

  I hummed a second time.

  The scout lifted the child from its blanket. “It’s female.”

  The baby woke and cried, waving her four arms, kicking her four legs, and urinating. My scout held her as far away as possible. Beyond doubt, she was a fine, loud, active mite! But incomplete.

  “Why did you wake her?” asked a cudgel-carrier. “She should be left to die in peace.”

  “No,” said the scout. “She will come with me.”

  “Me! What do you mean by me?” my other parts cried.

  There is no art nor wisdom in a noisy argument. Therefore, I will not describe the discussion that followed as night fell. Snowflakes drifted from the sky—slowly at first, then more and more thickly. I spoke with the rudeness people reserve for themselves in privacy; and the answers I gave myself were sharp indeed. Words like pointed stones, like the boulders in Tooth River, flew back and forth. Ah! The wounds I inflicted and suffered! Is anything worse than internal dispute?

  The scout would not back down. She had fallen in love with the baby, as defective as it was. The cudgel-bearers, sturdy males, were outraged. The poet and the scribe, refined neuters, were repulsed. The rest of me was female and a bit more tender.

  I had reached the age when fertile eggs were increasing unlikely. In spite of my best efforts, I had gained neither fame nor money. What respectable goxhat would mate with a vagabond like me? What crèche would offer to care for my offspring? Surely this fragment of a child was better than nothing.

  “No!” said my males and neuters. “This is not a person! One body alone can never know togetherness or integration!”

  But my female selves edged slowly toward the scout’s opinion. Defective the child certainly was. Still, she was alive and goxhat, her darling little limbs waving fiercely and her darling mouth making noises that would shame a monster.

  Most likely she would die. The rest of her had. Better that she die in someone’s arms, warm and comfortable, than in the toothy mouth of a prowling predator. The scout rewrapped the child in the blanket.

  It was too late to ford the river. I made camp under a cliff, huddling together for warmth, my arms around myself, the baby in the middle of the heap I made.

  When morning came, the sky was clear. Snow sparkled everywhere. I rose, brushed myself off, gathered my gear, and crossed the river. The water was low, as I expected this time of year, but ice-cold. My feet were numb by the time I reached the far side. My teeth chattered on every side like castanets. The baby, awakened by the noise, began to cry. The scout gave her a sweet cake. That stopped the crying for a while.

  At mid-day, I came in sight of a keep. My hearts lifted with hope. Alas! Approaching it, I saw the walls were broken.

  The ruination was recent. I walked through one of the gaps and found a courtyard, full of snowy heaps. My scouts spread out and investigated. The snow hid bodies, as I expected. Their eyes were gone, but most of the rest remained, preserved by cold and the season’s lack of bugs.

  “This happened a day or two ago,” my scouts said. “Before the last snow, but not by much. Wishik found them and took what they could, but didn’t have time—before the storm—to find other predators and lead them here. This is why the bodies are still intact. The wishik can pluck out eyes, but skin is too thick for them to penetrate. They need the help of other animals, such as hirg.” One of the scouts crouched by a body and brushed its rusty back hair. “I won’t be able to bury these. There are too many.”

  “How many goxhat are here?” asked my scribe, taking notes.

  “It’s difficult to say for certain. Three or four, I suspect, all good-sized. A parent and children would be my guess.”

  I entered the keep building and found more bodies. Not many. Most of the inhabitants had fallen in the courtyard. There was a nursery with scattered toys, but no children.

  “Ah! Ah!” I cried, reflecting on the briefness of life and the frequency with which one encounters violence and sorrow.

  My poet said:

  “Broken halls

  and scattered wooden words.

  How will the children

  learn to read and write?”2

  Finally I found a room with no bodies or toys, nothing to remind me of mortality. I lit a fire and settled for the night. The baby fussed. My scout cleaned her, then held her against a nursing bud—for comfort only; the scout had no milk. The baby sucked. I ate my meager rations. Darkness fell. My thirty-two eyes reflected firelight. After a while, a ghost arrived. Glancing up, I saw it in the doorway. It looked quite ordinary: three goxhat bodies with rusty hair.

  “Who are you?” one of my scouts asked.

  “The former owner of this keep, or parts of her. My name was Content-in-Solitude; and I lived here with three children, all lusty and numerous.—Don’t worry.”

  My cudgel-carriers had risen, cudgels in hand.

  “I’m a good ghost. I’m still in this world because my death was so recent and traumatic. As soon as I’ve gathered myself together, and my children have done the same, we’ll be off to a better place. 3

  “I stopped here to tell you our names, so they will be remembered.”

  “Content-in-Solitude,” muttered my scribe, writing.

  “My children were Virtue, Vigor, and Ferrous Oxide. Fine offspring! They should have outlived me. Our killer is Bent Foot, a bandit in these mountains. He took my grandchildren to raise as his own, since his female parts—all dead now—produced nothing satisfactory. Mutant children with twisted feet and nasty dispositions! No good will come of them; and their ghosts will make these mountains worse than ever. Tell my story, so others may be warned.”

  “Yes,” my poet said in agreement. The rest of me hummed.

  For a moment the three bodies remained in the doorway. Then they drew together and merged into one. “You see! It’s happening! I am becoming a single ghost! Well, then. I’d better be off to find the rest of me, and my children, and a better home for all of us.”

  The rest of the night was uneventful. I slept well, gathered around the fire, warmed by its embers and my bodies’ heat. If I had dreams, I don’t remember them. At dawn, I woke. By sunrise I was ready to leave. Going out of the building, I discovered three hirg in the courtyard: huge predators with shaggy, dull-brown fur. Wishik fluttered around them as they tore into the bodies of Content and her children. I took one look, then retreated, leaving the keep by another route.

  That day passed in quiet travel. My poet spoke no poetry. The rest of me was equally silent, brooding on the ruined keep and its ghost.

  I found no keep to shelter me that night or the next or the next. Instead, I camped out. My scout fed the baby on thin porridge. It ate and kept th
e food down, but was becoming increasingly fretful and would not sleep unless the scout held it to a nursing bud. Sucking on the dry knob of flesh, it fell asleep.

  “I don’t mind,” said the scout. “Though I’m beginning to worry. The child needs proper food.”

  “Better to leave it by the way,” a male said. “Death by cold isn’t a bad ending.”

  “Nor death by dehydration,” my other male added.

  The scout looked stubborn and held the child close.

  Four days after I left the ruined keep, I came to another building, this one solid and undamaged.

  My scribe said, “I know the lord here by reputation. She is entirely female and friendly to the womanly aspects of a person. The neuter parts she tolerates. But she doesn’t like males. Her name is The Testicle Straightener.”

  My cudgel-carriers shuddered. The scribe and poet looked aloof, as they inevitably did in such situations. Clear-eyed and rational, free from sexual urges, they found the rest of me a bit odd.

  The scout carrying the baby said, “The child needs good food and warmth and a bath. For that matter, so do I.”

  Gathering myself together, I strode to the gate and knocked. After several moments, it swung open. Soldiers looked out. There were two of them: one tall and grey, the other squat and brown. Their bodies filled the entrance, holding spears and axes. Their eyes gleamed green and yellow.

  “I am a wandering poet, seeking shelter for the night. I bring news from the south, which your lord might find useful.”

  The eyes peered closely, then the soldiers parted—grey to the left, brown to the right—and let me in.

  Beyond the gate was a snowy courtyard. This one held no bodies. Instead, the snow was trampled and urine-marked. A living place! Though empty at the moment, except for the two soldiers who guarded the gate.

  I waited in an anxious cluster. At length, a servant arrived and looked me over. “You need a bath and clean clothes. Our lord is fastidious and dislikes guests who stink. Come with me.”

  I followed the servant into the keep and down a flight of stairs. Metal lamps were fastened to the walls. Most were dark, but a few shone, casting a dim light. The servant had three sturdy bodies, all covered with black hair.

  Down and down. The air grew warm and moist. A faint, distinctive aroma filled it.