Fierce Reads

by Ann Aguirre

  He started when he saw the girls standing there. “Peony,” he said, short of breath. “Where’s your mother?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “In the kitchen, I thi—”

  “Go fetch her. Quickly, please.”

  Peony stalled, her face clouding with worry, before hurrying toward the kitchen.

  Intertwining her fingers, Cinder slid in closer to the android. It was the first time she’d been alone with Garan since their long trip and she expected him to say something, to ask how she was getting along or if there was anything she needed—he’d certainly asked that plenty of times while they were traveling—but he hardly seemed to notice her standing there.

  “I fixed your android,” she said finally, her voice squeaking a little. She grabbed the android’s limp arm, as if to prove it, though the hand did nothing but droop.

  Garan turned his distraught gaze on her and looked for a moment like he was going to ask who she was and what she was doing in his house. He opened his mouth but it took a long time for any words to form.

  “Oh, child.”

  She frowned at the obvious pity. This was not a reaction she’d expected—he was not impressed, he was not grateful. Thinking he must not have heard her correctly, she went to repeat herself—no, she’d fixed the android—when Adri came around the corner, wearing the robe she always wore when she wasn’t planning on going out. She had a dish towel in her hand and her two daughters trailing in her wake.

  “Garan?”

  He stumbled back, slamming his shoulder hard into the wall, and everyone froze.

  “D-don’t—” he stammered, smiling apologetically as a droplet of water fell onto his nose. “I’ve called for an emergency hover.”

  The curiosity hardened on Adri’s face. “Whatever for?”

  Cinder pressed herself as far as she could into the wall, feeling like she was pinned between two people who hadn’t the faintest idea she was standing there.

  Garan folded his arms, starting to shiver. “I’ve caught it,” he whispered, his eyes beginning to water.

  Cinder glanced back at Peony, wondering if these words meant something to her, but no one was paying Cinder any attention.

  “I’m sorry,” said Garan, coughing. He shuffled back toward the door. “I shouldn’t even have come inside. But I had to say … I had to…” He covered his mouth and his entire body shook with a cough, or a sob, Cinder couldn’t tell which. “I love you all so much. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Garan.” Adri took half a step forward, but her husband was already turning away. The front door shut a second later, and Pearl and Peony cried out at the same time and rushed forward, but Adri caught them both by their arms. “Garan! No—you girls, stay here. Both of you.” Her voice was trembling as she pulled them back, before chasing after Garan herself, her night robe swishing against Cinder’s legs as she passed.

  Cinder inched forward so she could see the door being swung open around the corner. Her heart thumped like a drum against her ribs.

  “GARAN!” Adri screamed, tears in her voice. “What are you—you can’t go!”

  Cinder was slammed against the wall as Pearl tore past her, screaming for her father, then Peony, sobbing.

  No one paused. No one looked at Cinder or the android in their hurry for the door. Cinder realized after a moment that she was still gripping the android’s skeletal arm, listening. Listening to the sobs and pleas, the Nos, the Daddys. The words echoed off the snow and back into the house.

  Releasing the android, Cinder hobbled forward. She reached the threshold that overlooked the blindingly white world and paused, staring at Adri and Pearl and Peony, who were on their knees in the pathway to the street, slush soaking into their clothes. Garan was standing on the curb, his hand still over his mouth as if he’d forgotten it was there. His eyes were red from crying. He looked weak and small, as if the slightest wind would blow him over into the snowdrifts.

  Cinder heard sirens.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Adri screamed, her arms covered in goose bumps as they gripped her children against her. “What will I do?”

  A door slammed and Cinder looked up. The old man across the street was on his doorstep. More neighbors were emerging—at doors and windows—their gazes bright with curiosity.

  Adri sobbed louder, and Cinder returned her attention to the family—her new family—and realized that Garan was watching her.

  She stared back, her throat burning from the cold.

  The sirens became louder and Garan glanced down at his huddled wife, his terrified daughters. “My girls,” he said, trying to smile, and then a white hover with flashing lights turned the corner, screaming its arrival.

  Cinder ducked back into the doorway as the hover slid up behind Garan and settled into the snow. Two androids rolled out of its side door with a gurney hovering between them. Their yellow sensors flashed.

  “A comm was received at 1704 this evening regarding a victim of letumosis at this address,” said one of the androids in a sterile voice.

  “That’s me,” Garan choked—his words instantly drowned out by Adri’s screaming, “NO! Garan! You can’t. You can’t!”

  Garan attempted a shaken smile and held out his arm. He rolled up his sleeve and even from her spot on the doorstep Cinder could see two dark spots on his wrist. “I have it. Adri, love, you must take care of the girl.”

  Adri pulled back as if he’d struck her. “The girl?”

  “Pearl, Peony,” Garan continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “be good for your mother. Never forget that I love you so, so very much.” Releasing the hard-won smile, he perched himself uncertainly on the floating gurney.

  “Lie back,” said one of the androids. “We will input your identification into our records and alert your family immediately of any changes in your condition.”

  “No, Garan!” Adri clambered to her feet, her thin slippers sliding on the ice and nearly sending her onto her face as she struggled to rush after her husband. “You can’t leave me. Not by myself, not with … not with this thing.”

  Cinder shuddered and wrapped her arms around her waist.

  “Please stand back from the letumosis victim,” said one of the androids, positioning itself between Adri and the hover as Garan was lifted into its belly.

  “Garan, no! NO!”

  Pearl and Peony latched back on to their mother’s sides, both screaming for their father, but perhaps they were too afraid of the androids to go any closer. The androids rolled themselves back up into the hover. The doors shut. The sirens and the lights filled up the quiet suburb before fading slowly away. Adri and her daughters stayed clumped together in the snow, sobbing and clutching one another while the neighbors watched. While Cinder watched, wondering why her eyes stayed so dry—stinging dry—when dread was encompassing her like slush freezing over.

  “What’s happened?”

  Cinder glanced down. The android had woken up and disconnected herself from the charging station and now stood before her with her sensor faintly glowing.

  She’d done it. She’d fixed the android. She’d proven her worth.

  But her success was drowned out by their sobs and the memory of the sirens. She couldn’t quite grasp the unfairness of it.

  “They took Garan away,” she said, licking her lips. “They called him a letumosis victim.”

  A series of clicks echoed inside the android’s body. “Oh, dear … not Garan.”

  Cinder barely heard her. In saying the words, she realized that her brain had been downloading information for some time, but she’d been too caught up in everything to realize it. Now dozens of useless bits of information were scrolling across her vision. Letumosis, also called the Blue Fever or the Plague, has claimed thousands of lives since the first known victims of the disease died in northern Africa in May of 114 T.E.… Cinder read faster, scanning until she found the words that she feared, but had somehow known she would find. To date, there have been no known survivors.<
br />
  Iko was speaking again and Cinder shook her head to clear it. “—can’t stand to see them cry, especially lovely Peony. Nothing makes an android feel more useless than when a human is crying.”

  Finding it suddenly hard to breathe, Cinder deserted the doorway and slumped back against the inside wall, unable to listen to the sobs any longer. “You won’t have to worry about me, then. I don’t think I can cry anymore.” She hesitated. “Maybe I never could.”

  “Is that so? How peculiar. Perhaps it’s a programming glitch.”

  She stared down into Iko’s single sensor. “A programming glitch.”

  “Sure. You have programming, don’t you?” She lifted a spindly arm and gestured toward Cinder’s steel prosthetic. “I have a glitch, too. Sometimes I forget that I’m not human. I don’t think that happens to most androids.”

  Cinder gaped down at Iko’s smooth body, beat-up treads, three-fingered prongs, and wondered what it would be like to be stuck in such a body and not know whether you were human or robot.

  She raised the pad of her finger to the corner of her right eye, searching for wetness that wasn’t there.

  “Right. A glitch.” She feigned a nonchalant smile, hoping the android couldn’t detect the grimace that came with it. “Maybe that’s all it is.”

  BRIDGE OF SNOW

  Marie Rutkoski

  BY MARIE RUTKOSKI

  The Shadow Society

  ~ The Kronos Chronicles ~

  The Cabinet of Wonders

  The Celestial Globe

  The Jewel of the Kalderash

  ~ The Winner’s Trilogy ~

  The Winner’s Curse

  The Winner’s Crime

  The Winner’s Kiss

  Meet Marie Rutkoski

  I used to be afraid of the moon. This was when I was little, and only in certain circumstances: in winter, just as we’d get out of the warm car after a long drive. I’d look up (sometimes I did it deliberately, to get that chill of fear), see the moon, and suddenly that brief minute between the driveway and the house seemed unbearable. What I felt: isolation, the alien, and some nameless peril close at hand.

  As much as the night sky has fascinated humans with its beauty, it also represents the unknown. A couple of years ago, I read an article that told stories different cultures have invented to explain the Milky Way. I had known about the Greek version: that Hera, the queen of the gods, let Hercules nurse from her breast. The milk sprayed across the sky. But there were many tales I didn’t know: the African one, invented by people in the Kalahari Desert, of a girl who threw embers into the sky. A Hungarian story said the stars were sparks thrown from the hooves of horses. An Asian one described the galaxy’s curve as a bridge that could be crossed by two lovers. It occurred to me that it would be a great pleasure to invent my own explanation for the stars.

  I also knew that I wanted to write a short story about Arin as a child, from the perspective of his mother. “Bridge of Snow” is a prequel to my novel The Winner’s Curse, which is set in a new world where an empire is conquering territories and enslaving the people who live there. Kestrel is the seventeen-year-old daughter of the highest-ranking general in the imperial army and has a luxurious life in Herran, a country conquered ten years ago. One day she finds herself at a slave market and buys a young man up for bid. This is Arin. He’s full of secrets. He’s even a bit secretive with the reader of The Winner’s Curse. The book is Kestrel’s tale, and although we’re given glimpses from Arin’s perspective, he really doesn’t want to share. The thoughts and feelings he does give us are what he’s accidentally let slip, rather than what he’s chosen to show. So it was very satisfying for me to get a bit closer to Arin in “Bridge of Snow,” and to portray someone intelligent, sensitive … and destined for loss. He’s a child in “Bridge of Snow,” sick in bed. There has been talk of war, and Arin has heard his family murmur worriedly about the empire’s attacks on a nearby country. For now, though, Arin is safe. His mother is dressed for a party, but has made the carriage wait so that she can tell him the story of how the god of snow fell in love with a mortal, and the stars were made.

  I made stories my life long before I wrote a novel. I majored in English at the University of Iowa and then went to Harvard University for my PhD in Renaissance studies with a focus on Shakespeare. Since 2007, I’ve been a professor of English at Brooklyn College, where I teach Renaissance literature, children’s literature, and fiction writing. I’m married to an economist, which is how I know about the economic theory of the “winner’s curse,” the term that inspired my book. A winner’s curse is, essentially, what happens when you win an auction by paying too high a price. I live in New York City with the aforementioned economist, our two small sons, and a cat. In addition to The Winner’s Curse and its sequel, The Winner’s Crime (the third book in the trilogy will be out in 2016), I’m the author of The Kronos Chronicles (including The Cabinet of Wonders) and The Shadow Society. My guilty pleasures are French fries and ice cream. But not at the same time.

  BRIDGE OF SNOW

  by Marie Rutkoski

  The boy was sick.

  It wasn’t that, so much, that worried his mother. He was often sick, and she had grown used to that fever-dazzled quality to his eyes. Sometimes she secretly enjoyed his illness, once the fever had broken and the worry was past. She got to keep him all to herself. His tutors were sent away. His limbs, heavy with sleepiness, seemed ironically healthier than usual—solid, with a good weight. He was a spindly creature. Tall for his age. Large eyed, bony. She thought he would grow up handsome.

  His father disagreed. The disagreement was matter-of-fact, even fond: an excuse for him to praise the boy’s bookish ways. “Not handsome,” her husband would say when they were alone in her rooms and the fire burned low. “Clever.”

  “Can he not be both?”

  “Gods, I hope not. One of those is enough.”

  She sighed, now, remembering it. She sat by her son’s bedside, careful not to crease her gown, and stretched an arm across a pillow. The boy, turning a page, nestled into her. He didn’t look up from his book. His shoulders were rigid, his face tight. Whatever simmered in him wasn’t fever.

  She stroked his dark hair. “It’s almost time. The carriage is waiting.”

  “A little longer.”

  Her arm ached from the awkward position and the boy’s weight. She shifted.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  “Arin. I must.”

  He jerked away. “Why? Just because Anireh wants you to? All she wants is to gobble up the prince. She’s a spider.”

  “I’m not sure that spiders gobble.”

  He slammed his book shut. “A fox, then. A mean, sneaky fox.”

  “This ball is important to your sister. It’s important that your father and I attend it with her. Nurse will take good care of you while we’re gone.” Yet she didn’t like to leave Arin. It was his fury, grasped tight and trembling, that made her reluctant, not the sickness, which had almost run its course. “What did your sister do?”

  He rolled over and buried his face in a pillow. “Nothing,” came the muffled answer.

  “If you tell me, I will tell you something.”

  He shifted so that one gray eye peered at her over the pillow’s snowy slopes. “What kind of something?”

  “A secret.”

  He looked at her fully now. “A secret … and a story?”

  “Little trickster. You hope to make me forget the ball with tale-telling. What will the royal family think if I am not there? You don’t need a story. You have your book.” But then she looked more carefully at what he’d been reading and frowned. “Out with it,” she said more sternly than she had intended. “What did Anireh do?”

  “She said she was there when I was born.”

  “Yes.” Her daughter was a full ten years older than him—a young woman now.

  “She said,” Arin whispered, “that I was born in the year of death. That you waited for months to name
me so that my name day would be in a different god’s year.”

  “Well.” She fiddled with an emerald earring. “Yes. All parents did the same that year.” Except perhaps, she supposed, for a few who thought that being born under death’s sign would make their children fit for war one day. But who—she shuddered—would want that? “How silly to fret over this, Arin. It’s the name that matters, not the birth.” Yet he had gone nameless for two full seasons. He had been born in the peak of death’s sign.

  She looked away from the boy’s pale face.

  “Anireh said that I was born a skeleton.”

  Her gaze snapped back. “What?”

  “She said I came out all bones. My knuckles looked like pearls.”

  Now it was she who had to hide her anger.

  “Anireh said you prayed to the gods to give me flesh,” he continued, “and they did—but not enough. That’s why I’m so skinny.”

  “Sweet child, that’s not true.”

  “I know it’s not true!” But Arin’s gray eyes were shiny with fear, and something in him saw that she had seen this. That lurking anger from before suddenly barreled through his fear, shoved it aside. “I hate her.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I do!”

  “Shh. Your throat’s raw already from the fever. Do you want to lose your voice?”

  He gulped. He choked on the sucked-in air. Tears spilled down his cheeks. “I hate her,” he said hoarsely.

  She wasn’t feeling kindly toward her firstborn either. To tell a child such frightening nonsense! “Let the carriage wait. You shall have your story as well as your secret.”

  Tears made his lashes spiky, his eyes luminous. “Both?”

  “Both,” she assured him. She picked up his book from where it lay on the bed. It was written in another language—one she didn’t like. “I can certainly offer you something better than this.”

  He had stopped crying. “I like that.”