Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  “I’m asking you, not her.”

  Attur looked at her then, and it seemed he saw her at last, saw her true, saw what she was now, not what she’d been when he left. He nodded, and Kata felt it kindle then, a small hope, flickering beneath her skin.

  (now)

  That night, when Kata is sitting fireguard, a gust of wind stirs her hair. She hesitates, not sure if she’s awake or dreaming, before she gets up and walks closer to the pit. The wind follows, swirling ‘round her like the eddies of a stream. There’s a sound in that wind, a sound Kata does not want to hear nor heed, and yet it commands her all the same. It is the thump of a heavy staff striking wooden floorboards with all the weight of Mother’s rage and pain behind it.

  In the ever-dusk of the summer night, the meadow’s supple grass bends and sways, rippling like the sea as it parts for her, laying bare a path toward the woods. Kata does not want to tread that path, but she walks it anyway.

  A shade has no more power than you give it, she thinks, trying to believe it.

  Mother’s shade is waiting at the forest’s edge, and for the first time it shows Kata its face. It is not the shrivelled scrap of bone and flesh Mother was reduced to in the end, but the face Kata remembers from when she was a child. Tall and dark haired, Mother is wearing the shift she was buried in, the one Kata embroidered with her own hands around the neck and wrists. Mother’s skin is pearlescent in the dusky summer night, but her eyes have lost their blue gleam and turned to pebbles.

  Kata can smell her too: wet and rot, bog and mud.

  Kata.

  Mother’s voice is a sigh and hiss, summoning all of Kata’s memories.

  Mother, at the window, cursing the winter storm outside, daring it to take her, the howling snow and air tearing at the house like a beast.

  Mother, sitting on the porch beneath the stars, sipping berry-wine and whispering tales of ships and storms and battles, drinking until she falls asleep. Kata curled up by her side, dreaming of the sea.

  Mother, waiting for Kata that blighted day when she’d seen Attur in the harbour, a skull’s grin carved into her face. “He sent you away, didn’t he? Because you’re useless. Hopeless. Too old to accomplish anything. If you’ve not shaken the world by the time you’re twenty, you never will.”

  “I put your staff in the pit,” Kata says, holding on to her defiance like a shield, even though her hands are trembling. “It’s nowt but a piece of wood. It will burn with the rest.”

  Useless, Mother whispers. Hopeless.

  Kata shakes her head but cannot turn away.

  You can’t leave.

  The old curse settles like rocks and iron in Kata’s chest, weighing her down until she is sinking, as surely as Mother’s body sank into the grasping wet ground. The shade steps close enough to touch, its presence rank with the fetid breath of the bog, and Kata stumbles, falling to her knees, waiting for the shade to take her, to claim her, to pull her down beneath the earth, to end it.

  “Kata!”

  It’s Magda’s voice. Clear and sharp. Cutting the bonds laid on her.

  Kata struggles to her feet. The shade is gone, but a wind is rising, tearing at her hair, shaking the trees around her until they bend and creak.

  No.

  Kata runs back through the meadow, the gusts rising to a storm around her.

  Magda stands by the pit, feet planted wide, staff raised in the dawn-light, holding back the wind. Abel and the others are there too, doing what they can to cover the pit in case the storm breaks through.

  Mother’s wind. Sent to burn the tar-pit down.

  In a flash, Kata sees how it all must end: in ruins, the tar-pit burned to ashes, everything lost.

  She screams, howling at the wind, howling because she is too old, too weak, too useless, too hopeless. Mother will have her way, same as always. Kata screams, until Magda takes her hand.

  “Help me,” Magda says. “I’m holding off the wind best I can, but this storm is strong.”

  “I can’t! It’s Mother. She . . .”

  “Just anchor me,” Magda says. “Like I told you, every craft strengthens the other.”

  Gripping Magda’s hand, Kata feels the swirl of the storm around them, but it’s hazy and muddled, nothing like her grasp of water. Dipping down beneath the ground, she senses the water below the meadow, the creek further off, and she anchors herself in the steady flow of it, hoping Magda feels the strength of it too.

  Magda holds off the wind, but it roars around them and around the pit, whipping the grass in the meadow, shaking the trees beyond. Kata feels Mother’s presence, and across the meadow as the sun rises, she sees the shade. It’s grown vast, high as the tallest pines, a grim and grasping shadow, rearing up toward the sky, feeding off the wind and Kata’s own despair.

  Magda sees it too. Kata knows it by the way Magda breathes a curse and grips her hand tighter.

  In a rush, Mother’s fury descends on them, battering at her own and Magda’s craft, tearing at the bond between them. A heavy gust knocks the breath from Kata’s lungs, and for one fleeting, eternal moment, Kata wields the wind. It’s as if Mother’s wind-craft has rushed into her, filling her to the brim, and it is glorious and terrible to feel it: the wind, everywhere, like a weft and warp strung throughout air and sky, every thread there to weave, or unravel.

  Unleash it, Mother whispers in the air. It’s yours.

  Kata knows she could do it. She could take the power that is offered, unleash it, let it ravage the tar-pit and the village beyond as Mother would have done. It’s all there for the taking. She holds on tighter to Magda’s hand.

  You can’t leave.

  Mother’s voice is inside her head, wailing, scolding. Where would you go? What would you do? Who would want you? Useless. Hopeless.

  And there, in the roar of the wind, is the last memory of Mother when she lay dying, her rheumy blue eyes burnished bright by rage or drink or pain or fever, breath rattling in her throat, bony fingers closing around Kata’s wrist.

  You can’t leave.

  Kata thinks of her life, all those years, hoping for Mother to change, knowing she wouldn’t; caring for Mother while no one cared for her, fearing what disasters might befall her and the world around her if she left. All those years of being useful to others, not herself. All that nameless guilt she carried, thinking she was the one who chained Mother to a lesser fate.

  And Kata sees it then, sees Mother for what she was: full of power and purpose, once, but hollowed out by anger and disappointment and bitterness until she was brittle and broken in the end.

  You can’t leave, Mother said, not to curse Kata, but because she was afraid of being left alone, of being nothing to no one.

  Kata straightens her back, holding on to Magda who is still holding off the wind. The shade is all around them, whirling in the storm.

  It isn’t the staff you cling to, Mother, Kata thinks. It’s me.

  Mother’s shade is still in her head, cursing and cajoling, tearing at her memories, ripping asunder anything it finds, love and pain, grief and rage. Kata feels it all, and then, she lets Mother go.

  Letting Mother go is neither forgiving nor forgetting. It is like taking a breath when you thought you were drowning, like pouring cold water on a blistered burn, and Kata knows that deep in the tar-pit, wood and resin are burning, slow and steady, turning into tar and coal, and Mother’s staff is burning too, turning to ash and dust because it is nowt but wood. But inside Kata, in the space Mother occupied for so long, something else is burning too, the heartwood and sap of Kata herself changing into something new. She’ll never be as grand and glorious as Mother wanted to be, but neither will she be as small as Mother meant to keep her.

  At the forest’s edge, Mother’s towering shade wavers in the sunlight, and then it’s gone. Kata crumples in the gra
ss, and Magda is there with her, holding her.

  “Oh, Kata . . . that better have been worth two barrels of tar,” Magda snivels, long hair tangled around her head, tears running down her face even though she’s laughing. “Was it?”

  Kata looks up at Magda, at the other faces gathering above her; she looks up at the sky, at the blue windless, endless, stillness of it.

  “Yes,” Kata answers, thinking of the Outer Sea, of wide-open waters as blue as this sky, of sailing beneath the wings of birds, of travelling until the world changes, until nothing is the same again.

  Author’s Notes to My Younger Self: While you will have to adapt and adjust as you move through life, never give up what you are, your true self, for what someone else thinks you should be, not even when it seems convenient to do so.

  Exchange of Perspective

  Alan Dean Foster

  Evelyn Olsen was sitting at the desk in her bedroom when the sparklies came. A flickering, scintillating swarm of silvery particles half her size appeared in the air between her white chiffon-covered bed and where she was seated. Turning away from her homework she stared at the hovering, slowly-interweaving cloud of shimmering flakes and specks. After putting her computer in sleep mode, she proceeded to activate her sense of wonder. This being highly developed, she had less difficulty than most accepting an alien presence.

  “Are you a pixie?” It struck her as a reasonable question, under the circumstances.

  “I am not a pixie.” Maqkin applied itself directly to the inside of her head, bypassing her ears and much else, as it considered this a much more efficient means of communication. “I am Maqkin.”

  She considered this thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard of you. I’ve never heard of a Maqkin.”

  “My kind is unknown to you. Until a moment ago, your kind was unknown to me.”

  Turning sideways in her chair, the diminutive redhead rested her arms against its back and her chin against her arms. “You’re very pretty, for whatever you are.”

  The Maqkin hesitated as it searched for an appropriate, non-

  threatening response. “You’re very pretty, too, for what you are.”

  A smile jilted freckles awake. “My name’s Evelyn Kay Olsen. The ‘Kay’ is from my mother’s mother. I’m eleven.”

  “My name is . . . I am Maqkin. I am thirteen and three-quarter billion years, six months, four days, eight minutes, and twelve seconds old in your time units. I can refine my age further if you request it.”

  She sat up straighter, her chin coming off her bare arms. The curtains on the window behind her desk were closed, but her tenuous visitor pulsed with glimmer nonetheless. “Now you’re joking with me. Not even pixies are that old. Not even wizards and sorceresses.”

  “I am that old. I come before you in the guise of a probing tendril that is to the rest of me infinitely smaller than the end of one of your hairs is to you.”

  Reaching up, she ran the fingers of her left hand through her shoulder length red-brown hair. “Then you need to be careful. My cousin Robert is fourteen, and he’s kind of a probing tendril. Sometimes I have to slap him. I wouldn’t want to have to slap you.” She studied the migrant cloud of shine. “I’m not sure I’d know how to slap you.”

  “I sense dissatisfaction with your relation. If you like, I can seek him out and slap him for you. It will remove him and part of the continent he is on.”

  “Don’t do that. Some day I might want to visit the part of the continent he’s on, and my mom says he’ll probably get more mature as he gets older.”

  “That is true. Many things mature as they get older.” In the warm Nebraska summer air, shards of silver, like fragments of a shattered crown, twinkled and danced. “Would you like to see some of them?”

  Her eyes widened slightly. “Well, sure! I always want to see new things, even if they’re old. My mom says I’ve always been like that, even when they came to adopt me.” She hesitated. “Do you have a mom? Or a dad?”

  The cloud fluxed, a rococo emulation. “I have a birth. Nothing more can I define in relation to your queries.”

  Evelyn Olsen pushed out her lower lip. “Then we’re both orphans. We have something in common.”

  “Only thought,” the mass of pirouetting dazzle told her, not unkindly. “It is necessary that I make you a small environment.”

  An orb materialized before her; vitreous of surface, perfection incarnate in its dimensions. Extending from floor to ceiling, it was an ideal sphere. “Step within. The substances you require for your constant exchange of gases will be continuously renewed.”

  Rising from her chair, she walked toward the transparent bubble. A gentle feathery sensation tickled her skin as she pushed her way into the containment. “I might get thirsty.” As she studied her new surroundings, she sensed that the sparkling was watching her.

  “More gases, different consistency. Doable.”

  Within the sphere a second, much smaller bubble appeared beside her. As big as a pumpkin, it had a surface as reflective as a ball of mercury. She frowned. “I’ll need a glass, or a straw, or something.”

  “You have all that you need,” insisted the Maqkin. “Drink freely when you will.”

  Pursing her lips, she placed them tentatively against the curve of the sphere and sucked gently. Drawn from the water globe, a thin stream snaked into her mouth. It was cool and refreshing and tasted just right. When she stopped drinking the flow ceased and the surface of the gleaming sphere, ever so slightly reduced in diameter, was restored.

  “I can raise it to boiling, if you prefer,” the voice of the Maqkin told her, “or make it flow almost at absolute zero.”

  “It’s fine.” Turning, she once more directed her attention to the mass of shimmering dust, or stars, or whatever a Maqkin was. “You were going to show me some things?” Leaning to her left enabled her to make out the clock that hung on the wall above her desk. “We have two hours until my mom gets home from work. Will that be enough time?”

  “Two hours.” There was a faint tickle of amusement in the reply. “It will have to do. We will be doing some travelling, Evelyn eleven. Do not be frightened.”

  She smiled boldly. “Nothing frightens me.”

  “That’s interesting. Nothing is also all that frightens me. But I am not going to show you that.”

  Her room vanished. Or rather, it fell behind. So did her house, and the town in which she lived, and the Earth itself.

  The Maqkin used the two hours well. There was a blur, and then a wonder, and then another blur, and then another wonder. Evelyn witnessed a supernova in the final act of self-destruction. Looked upon nebulae millions of light-years across that were all the colours of the rainbow (as well as all the colours that were not). Saw pulsars whose pulsing would have shattered her bones from her eardrums to her toes had not the Maqkin’s bubble muffled the vibrations. Like a stone thrown across the surface of a pond, the bubble skipped across magnetars and danced with dark matter. She marvelled at the impossibly thin, unimaginably tough creatures that inched their way across the surface of neutron stars; teared up at the beauty of a stellar nursery blazing with the brilliance of ten thousand suns aborning, and was rendered solemn and silent by the darkness at the edge of the universe.

  Two colliding galaxies flashed and thundered, though both the sound and light of their interaction were carefully muted so as not to damage her rudimentary senses.

  “It’s so beautiful!” she could not keep from exclaiming. “All those stars and shapes blending and swirling and merging together!”

  “All that you see is being propulsed by two Maqkin,” the voice told her. “They are making love.”

  From the stupendous interfacing spread out before her, she looked to her right to eye the glitter. “I know what that is. I mean, I know the idea but not the details. That’s something else we ha
ve in common.”

  “It is not quite the same thing.” The Maqkin involved itself in her mind and smiled to itself again. “But there are some similarities of thought.” A pause. “Two hours of yours. That time is done. Are you certain you do not wish to continue? There is so much more I can show you if you will but allow me another million or so of your years.”

  She chewed her lower lip. It was very tempting, but. . . .

  “My mom will be mad if she gets home and I’m not there. I don’t like to make her mad. She works hard to support us and ever since my dad passed away. . . .” Her voice trailed off into a sniffle with none but the majesty of the Maqkin to hear it. “Do you know what love is? That’s why I can’t go on with you. But maybe we can do this again another time.”

  “Do you know that the time I offer you is less than the blink of your eye, and the knowledge greater than all that your civilization has amassed? Still, I will respond only maybe. Even the thoughts of a bacterium are valuable.”

  “So are yours,” she replied.

  “Perception is also commendable. I will take you home.”

  Another smudging of spectra, another handful of intergalactic interstices jumped, and she found herself back in her room. The clock on the wall read six o’clock.

  “Goodbye, Evelyn eleven.” A silver vivacity danced between her desk and the window, a twinkle of effervescent evanescence.

  “I won’t see you again, will I, Maqkin?”

  “Not in this iteration of existence, I fear. You will be gone and fossilized before I might think of you anew.”

  “I always liked fossils. Thank you for showing me some things.”

  “I wanted to show you every things, but there was not enough time.”

  The front door slammed as the infinitesimally tiny fragment of Maqkin vanished. By the time her mother knocked and entered, Evelyn was back at her desk working at her computer.

  “We’re having spaghetti for dinner.” Terri Olsen could not keep a touch of pride from her voice whenever she saw her little girl hard at work. So studious, so intense. “Spaghetti and garlic bread.”