Clarkesworld: Year Three

by Genevieve Valentine

  She goes back to her apartment building, picks some sweet basil and takes it and the eggplant next door. Her neighbor seems a little nervous. His apartment is cleaner than she’s ever seen it, with the scent of Pine Sol still strong in the bathroom. She tries not to laugh, and demonstrates how to peel and slice eggplant, salt it to draw out the toxins (“it’s related to nightshade, you know”), and sauté it with basil in olive oil. He tries to look impressed, but she can tell he’s not the kind of guy to enjoy eating his vegetables.

  Afterward they sit, and she tells him about the prayer thing. He shrugs. “Are you going?” she presses.

  “Nope.”

  “Why not? It could fix things.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I like the way things are now.”

  This stuns her. “Man, the train fell off its track last week.” Twenty people dead. She has woken up in a cold sweat on the nights since, screams ringing in her ears.

  “Could’ve happened anytime,” he says, and she blinks in surprise because it’s true. The official investigation says someone—track worker, maybe—left a wrench sitting on the track near a power coupling. The chance that the wrench would hit the coupling, causing a short and explosion, was one in a million. But never zero.

  “But . . . but . . . ” She wants to point out the other horrible things that have occurred. Gas leaks. Floods. A building fell down, in Harlem. A fatal duck attack. Several of the apartments in their building are empty because a lot of people can’t cope. Her neighbor—the other one, with the broken arm—is moving out at the end of the month. Seattle. Better bike paths.

  “Shit happens,” he says. “It happened then, it happens now. A little more shit, a little less shit . . . ” He shrugs. “Still shit, right?”

  She considers this. She considers it for a long time.

  They play cards, and have a little wine, and Adele teases him about the overdone chicken. She likes that he’s trying so hard. She likes even more that she’s not thinking about how lonely she’s been.

  So they retire to his bedroom and there’s awkwardness and she’s shy because it’s been awhile and you do lose some skills without practice, and he’s clumsy because he’s probably been developing bad habits from porn, but eventually they manage. They use a condom. She crosses her fingers while he puts it on. There’s a rabbit’s foot keychain attached to the bed railing, which he strokes before returning his attention to her. He swears he’s clean, and she’s on the pill, but . . . well. Shit happens.

  She closes her eyes and lets herself forget for awhile.

  The prayer thing is all over the news. The following week is the runup. Talking heads on the morning shows speculate that it should have some effect, if enough people go and exert “positive energy.” They are careful not to use the language of any particular faith; this is still New York. Alternative events are being planned all over the city for those who don’t want to come under the evangelical tent. The sukkah mobiles are rolling, though it’s the wrong time of year, just getting the word out about something happening at one of the synagogues. In Flatbush, Adele can’t walk a block without being hit up by Jehovah’s Witnesses. There’s a “constructive visualization” somewhere for the ethical humanists. Not everybody believes God, or gods, will save them. It’s just that this is the way the world works now, and everybody gets that. If crossed fingers can temporarily alter a dice throw, then why not something bigger? There’s nothing inherently special about crossed fingers. It’s only a “lucky” gesture because people believe in it. Get them to believe in something else, and that should work too.

  Except . . .

  Adele walks past the Botanical Gardens, where preparations are under way for a big Shinto ritual. She stops to watch workers putting up a graceful red gate.

  She’s still afraid of the subway. She knows better than to get her hopes up about her neighbor, but still . . . he’s kind of nice. She still plans her mornings around her ritual ablutions, and her walks to work around danger-spots—but how is that different, really, from what she did before? Back then it was makeup and hair, and fear of muggers. Now she walks more than she used to; she’s lost ten pounds. Now she knows her neighbors’ names.

  Looking around, she notices other people standing nearby, also watching the gate go up. They glance at her, some nodding, some smiling, some ignoring her and looking away. She doesn’t have to ask if they will be attending one of the services; she can see that they won’t be. Some people react to fear by seeking security, change, control. The rest accept the change and just go on about their lives.

  “Miss?” She glances back, startled, to find a young man there, holding forth a familiar flyer. He’s not as pushy as the guy downtown; once she takes it, he moves on. The PRAYER FOR THE SOUL OF THE CITY is tomorrow. Shuttle buses (“Specially blessed!”) will be picking up people at sites throughout the city.

  WE NEED YOU TO BELIEVE, reads the bottom of the flyer.

  Adele smiles. She folds the flyer carefully, her fingers remembering the skills of childhood, and presently it is perfect. They’ve printed the flyer on good, heavy paper.

  She takes out her St. Christopher, kisses it, and tucks it into the the rear folds to weight the thing properly.

  Then she launches the paper airplane, and it flies and flies and flies, dwindling as it travels an impossible distance, until it finally disappears into the bright blue sky.

  About the Author

  N. K. Jemisin is an author of speculative fiction short stories and novels who lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to writing, she is a counseling psychologist (specializing in career counseling), a sometime hiker and biker, and a political/feminist/anti-racist blogger.

  Her short fiction has been published in pro markets such as Clarkesworld, Postscripts, Strange Horizons, and Baen’s Universe; podcast markets and print anthologies. Several of her short stories have received Honorable Mentions in various Year’s Bests; one of her stories has been nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula.

  The Inheritance Trilogy: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms and The Kingdom of Gods, are out now from Orbit Books.

  The Second Gift Given

  Ken Scholes

  Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright tracked the three-horn spoor alone. He moved along the ridge in the red of the day when the Greater Light swallowed the sky and heat danced over stone.

  Below, the big waters licked at the land. In the days when he was young, Go-on-all-fours remembered eating swimmers the People used to pierce in the shallows while the children played on the shaped rocks that the Oldest People had left behind. But the swimmers were rarer now than even the three-horns and the big waters drank those rocks long ago. Rememberer-of-forgotten-days said someday the big waters would drink all of the land and the People as well. But Rememberer-of-forgotten-days also said that the People had walked across the big waters before they were so big, in the days before the sky burned red. And Rememberer-of-forgotten-days had difficulty remembering where (and sometimes when) to make water.

  Go-on-all-fours picked up a pebble and put it in his mouth. Hunger chewed at him; there’d been no meat for twenty days. He clutched his piercer, its sharpened tip burned hard in fire, and went on threes with his nose to the ground. His hackles rose. He crested the ridge and stopped. The scent of blood made his tight stomach rumble.

  Now he went upright, stretching his neck, working his nose, darting his eyes over the place where the broken rock became gray scrub and spider trees. Blood. The three-horn lay in the shadows, sides heaving, a small piercer protruding from its neck. Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright growled a warning in the speech of the People, raising an octave into inquiry. No response.

  He shuffled forward cautiously, piercer ready. Laying beside the dying three-horn was a bowed stick, the ends tied together with a strand of dried gut, and a pile of small piercers. He sniffed them, inhaling a strange, sweet smell like nothing he’d known before.

  Turn.

  The compulsion spun him around, a p
anic boiling in his chest. He lost his footing and fell.

  Compassion. No fear.

  A female upright walker stood a throw away. Her hairless skin radiated in the copper light and she stood straight and very tall. She held a similar bowed stick in her hands and her mouth curved like the stick, her teeth shining white.

  Go-on-all-fours scrambled backwards, dropping his piercer. Her smell—strange, sweet—overpowered the three-horn’s blood-smell.

  Watch. Learn.

  She pulled the string, holding a small piercer point facing out The small piercer blurred across the ground, sinking into the three-horn’s throat beside the other piercer. The three-horn bleated and died. She lay the thrower down, then turned and walked away.

  Frozen and whimpering, he watched her go and tried to remember what she looked like.

  Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright pounded the dirt and howled to be heard. Rememberer-of-forgotten-days handed him the horn and he spoke. “Scared. Not harm. Golden-upright-walker People.”

  “Harm,” said Best-maker-of-fire, gesturing at the two throwers and the bundle of piercers. ”Not People. We People. Upright walker eater of People.”

  They had argued long after the last of the three-horn had been devoured, the women and children banished to their caves. As night drew on, the mountains cooled and the Lesser Lights throbbed and sparkled overhead. Rememberer-of-forgotten days taught the People they were dead hunters guarding them while the Greater Light slept. He also taught that the Greater Lesser Light, fat and white in the night, was a mother who chased her young to bed. Perhaps the upright walker gave the gift because she was a mother, too, taking care of her young. Go-on-all-fours wondered about this and poked a stick into the fire, despite Best-maker’s growl of protest.

  Rememberer coughed. He was the oldest of the People, and blind now though he once had been their best hunter. “Upright-walkers make gift.” He smiled toothlessly at Best-maker-of-fire. “Not eat Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright. Could.”

  No-child-in-stick laughed and made a spitting sound. “Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright too skinny.”

  Everyone else laughed, except for Best-maker. He scowled, picked up one of the throwers and tossed it into the fire. Go-on-all-fours leaped to his feet and burned himself pulling it out. “Not people,” Best-maker said. “Eaters of people.”

  When the angry growls died down, they all went to bed. He had not told them about the voice in his head: they would never believe him.

  Come.

  He came awake, instantly alert, and untangled himself from his woman, Best-maker’s sister. She mewled a question in her sleep and rolled away.

  Outside. Come.

  He picked up his piercer and left the cave silently, careful not to wake his young. The upright walker waited at the edge of the clearing and the sight of her hurt his eyes. Easily half-again his height at his tallest, she stood with her hands hanging loosely at her sides. Long golden hair spilled down her shoulders and over her heavy breasts. Her eyes shone bright green.

  Compassion. No fear. Follow.

  He followed her, going upright until his back and legs ached from the effort. They hadn’t gone far when a chittering sound stopped him.

  No fear. This voice was heavier. He knew it came from the monster that separated from the shadows, but he raised his piercer anyway. No fear.

  Fear, he said back. The eight-legged monster—almost a spider but even larger than the six-horns Rememberer told stories of—scuttled closer.

  No fear, the woman said. She put a hand on his arm. Cool. Soft.

  He pushed the piercer into her belly as far as it would go and screamed as the monster leapt.

  His first awareness was the fullness of his brain. His second awareness was the coolness of the grass beneath his bare skin.

  He opened his eyes on golden light playing in the boughs of upward-sweeping trees. He sat up and looked around. He had never seen so much green in one place.

  Pleasure. “You like my garden?” The naked upright walker strode into the clearing, a piece of fruit held loosely in each hand.

  Confusion. Anxiety. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” The memory of attacking her jarred him. Fear. Surprise. The golden skin of her flat stomach showed no mark from his piercer. “You’re . . . well?”

  She laughed. “Of course I am. The Seeker would not have allowed me Outside had the risk been real.”

  “The Seeker?”

  “Ra-sha-kor, the Firsthome Seeker. I am the Seeker’s Lady, Jadylla-kor. We have traveled vast distances to find you, cousin.” Dark. Alone. Searching.

  “I do not understand.”

  She offered him a piece of fruit. Trust. “Of course not. You’re not fully recessed, cousin. When you are, everything will become clearer.”

  He took the purple globe and studied it, rolling it around his fingers. He looked up at her and their eyes locked. Raising her own piece, she bit into it and its golden juice ran down her mouth, dripping onto her breasts. Trust. Eat.

  He took a bite and his mind expanded. As if she stood in his mind speaking, words formed without sound as they stared at one another. She answered questions before he could ask.

  I name you cousin because you and I are of the People.

  Long ago, before the Seventeen Recorded Ages of Humanity, our cousins flung themselves out from the Firsthome like scattered seed. Outward and outward they spread away and away to find new homes among the stars. Long travelers into dark, they warred and loved one another in those distant days and fled so far from home to have lost their way back to it. This was the Darkest Age, marked by the absence of history and the presence of myth. Then, in the Fifth Age, came Yorgen Sunwounder, the first Firsthome Finder, who searched and found the cradle of the People, of Humanity.

  But the Firsthome did not know him for time and technology had changed him, and in his rage he smote their sun and thus began the Cousin Wars that brought about the Second Darkest Age. Humanity rose and fell again and again and once more the Firsthome was lost . . .

  He stopped her with a blink. “What is happening to me?”

  She placed her hands on his shoulders and drew her face nearer, her stare unbroken. Recession. A return backwards to what you once were, cousin. A human. One of the People. Truth: all life changes over time. Truth: the clock-spring can be unwound carefully, carefully, we have learned. Infinitely small workers live in the nectar of this fruit, each unwinding you, recessing you to what you would have been millions of years ago had time not taken you on a different journey. Infinitely small teachers in this fruit fill your mind with language and comprehension.

  Another voice now in his head, deeper and stronger: Enough, Lady. His recession is as far as you may take it. Bring him to me.

  She released him and he realized that the closeness of her mind and body had aroused him. He blushed and moved to cover himself. The Lady smiled sympathetically.

  Peace, she said with her mind. “It is time for you to meet the Seeker and to taste the root.” Turning, she strode out of the clearing and Go-on-all-fours hurried to keep up with her, surprised at how easily he now went upright.

  They entered another clearing after darting in and out of wet, hanging foliage. Twice, he thought he saw the monstrous spider-thing that had captured him. Once, they brushed against a wall of blue crystal, warm to his touch, and stretching up, up, up, lost far above in light.

  In the center of the clearing stood a massive tree, its branches bent low with heavy purple fruit.

  “I’ll leave you now,” the Lady said, squeezing his arm. “I will return when the Seeker calls for me.”

  This time, she did not walk away. Instead, her shape began to shimmer and then melted into the ground too fast for him to respond.

  He heard a chuckle in his head. She is fine, cousin. Bending light rather than moving feet. Welcome. I am Ra-sha-kor.

  “You are the Firsthome Seeker. The Lady said— ”

  I am the Firsthome Finder. I have sought you, cousin,
through deeps of space and time that you cannot begin to comprehend. It is my great Joy to have finally found you.

  “I am— ”

  You were Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright. Again, the chuckle. You now need a new name. May I have the honor of naming you in my own tongue?

  The People gave names when a child was old enough to hunt—now he understood that it was an important coming-of-age ritual. “Yes. I would be honored, Lord.”

  You shall be called the Firstfound Cousin, the Healer of the Broken Distance, Sha-Re-Tal. Tal.

  He did not know why exactly, but he knelt. After a respectable silence, he looked up. Other than the tree, the clearing stood empty.

  I am here, Tal. The tree. Tal stood and took a step towards it.

  “You— ”

  The People, over time, have learned to make themselves into what they will. My roots run the length of this craft, nourishing it, powering it, carrying the wisdom and knowledge of the People in its sap. Even as the Lady chooses her form, I have chosen mine. As has Aver-ka-na, our Builder Warrior. The branches behind him rustled and the huge spider sidled tentatively out.

  Compassion, it said. No fear.

  The Finder’s mind joined in. You have nothing to fear, Tal.

  With everything in him, Tal fought the panic as the creature came closer, its mandibles clicking. It raised a hairless arm and lowered it onto his shoulder.

  Peace, cousin.

  Then, it turned and scuttled away. Tal released held breath.

  Sit with me, the Finder thought. Tal sat, his head suddenly hurting. “We will make words in this way now,” the Finder said, its deep voice drifting down from somewhere lost above. “You are young in understanding yet and I would not wound carelessly after so long in the finding of you.”

  “I am grateful,” Tal said. And he was. He felt himself expanding, stretching, his awareness filling like the hollow of a rock as the tide gentled in.

  He sat in the shade of the tree until the Finder spoke again.” You express gratitude for our shame.”