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APEX MAGAZINE
ISSUE 80, JANUARY 2016

Jason Sizemore, Editor-In-Chief

Table of Contents

Editorial

Words from the Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore

Fiction

The Tomato Thief—Ursula Vernon

The Open-Hearted—Lettie Prell

Soursop—Chikodili Emelumadu

Bones of the World—Jennifer Hykes

That Lucky Old Sun—Carrie Cuinn

Razorback—Ursula Vernon

Kutraya’s Skies—Dave Creek

Riding Atlas—Ferrett Steinmetz

Paper Tigers (Novel Excerpt)—Damien Angelica Walters

Nonfiction

Interview with Ursula Vernon—Andrea Johnson

Interview with Chikodili Emelumadu—Andrea Johnson

Interview with Lettie Prell—Andrea Johnson

Interview with Matt Davis, Cover Artist—Russell Dickerson

An Exploration of Racism in Heart of Darkness—Lucy A. Snyder

Poetry

RX-200 Series: It’s Everything You Need—Samson Stormcrow Hayes

Upside of the Cataclysmic Meteor—Zebulon Huset

The Doctor’s Assistant—Anton Rose

In the Far Future, Billy Experiences the Most Powerful Drug Known to Man—Greg Leunig

Automaton—Bianca Spriggs

Maxwell’s Demon—Annie Neugebauer

Various Kinds of Wolves—J.J. Hunter

Words from the Editor-in-Chief

Jason Sizemore

Welcome to issue 80!

You’ll note that the amount of content in this month’s Apex Magazine is … well, astounding: six original works (including a novelette by Ursula Vernon), seven poems, two reprints, and a nonfiction article. Much of this additional content was provided as reward goals for our successful subscription drive held in mid to late November. Thank you for helping us reach our goal!

The crown jewel of issue 80 is the novelette “The Tomato Thief” by Ursula Vernon. For fans of her Nebula Award-winning story “Jackalope Wives” take note—“The Tomato Thief” is set in the same universe and is an indirect sequel. Also in this issue, we have a second original story by Ursula titled “Razorback” that will remind our readers of her excellent “Pocosin” from issue 68.

Lettie Prell, one of my favorite writers, makes a triumphant return to our pages with the disconcerting “The Open-Hearted.” Also returning is Nigerian author Chikodili Emelumadu with “Soursop.” We welcome newcomers Jennifer Hykes (“Bones of the World”) and Carrie Cuinn (“That Lucky Old Sun”) to the pages of Apex.

Thanks to the subscription drive, our poetry is loaded. We have work by Samson Stormcrow Hayes, Zebulon Huset, Anton Rose, Greg Leunig, Annie Neigebauer, J.J. Hunter, and a special piece from our poetry editor Bianca Spriggs.

Stoker Award winner Lucy A. Snyder contributes a smart essay titled “An Exploration of Racism in Heart of Darkness,” making us reconsider and take a hard look at novels that have been given the mantle of ‘classic.’ We have a reprint from Ferrett Steinmetz (“Riding Atlas”) and a novelette reprint via Dave Creek (“Kutraya’s Skies”).

There are a whole suite of interviews: authors Ursula Vernon, Lettie Prell, and Chikodili Emelumadu, and artist Matt Davis.

For our podcast, Lisa Shininger narrates “Razorback”.

What a way to kick off 2016!

§

I made a decision in 2015 to sunset The Book of Apex series. These anthologies collected all the original fiction published in Apex Magazine. While I often heard from readers that they desired the option to read the zine in print, the books did not sell well.

As an alternative, Lesley Conner and I have curated some of our favorite works into an occasional all-encompassing anthology titled Best of Apex Magazine. The first volume comes out this month. It contains 21 stories, including four selected by our readers, that are considered among our best.

I hope you’ll check it out.

§

This issue should keep you busy during January. Enjoy your reading!

Jason Sizemore

Editor-in-Chief

Razorback

Ursula Vernon

5,800 words

Author’s Note: The story of Rawhead and Bloody Bones originated in Europe but migrated to the American South and underwent a local transformation. The definitive folklore version is likely S. E. Schlosser’s and is very much worth reading on its own.

There was a witch who lived up in the mountains, and I never heard but that she was a good one.

Some people will tell you she was old, but I don’t think she was. She just had one of those faces full of lines. With a face like that, you look a lot older than everybody else, but as time goes on, they all look older and you don’t, and you end up looking younger than everybody else by the time you die.

And you do learn early on not to get by on your looks, so there’s that.

I never did learn who her people were or if she had any. A whole lot of people wound up in the mountains—Lumbee and Cherokee and escaped slaves and the grandkids of people who lit off into the hills for one thing or another. Little bitty scraps of this group and that, all of ’em living together and having kids. Leftover people.

She was one of those. Most of us were, one way or another.

The witch had a couple of names, depending who you ask, but everybody in town called her "Sal." She wasn’t the only witch there, I’ll tell you right now, but she was the best of the lot.

If you went south and east from town, you got into the sandhills, where the rain runs down through the dirt without ever stopping, and there was a witch out there named Elizabeth Gray. Her heart was as dry as the sand and things ran through it without ever stopping. She couldn’t be moved by pity or anger, and she only dealt in cash.

If you went north, you’d run into the river, and there was a shack down on the riverbank and an old woman lived in it who was madder than a shoe. She’d have had to come a long way to just be senile. She believed she was a witch and she’d cast a curse for a slug of whiskey and a couple of cigarettes, but whether the curses did anything much, I couldn’t tell you.

(They do say that the sheriff riled her up and she cursed him and that’s why he took a nail in the foot and got sepsis and his daughter ran off with a horse-thief. If you ask me, though, the nail was bad luck, and his daughter was fixing to run off with the first person who looked at her twice. But I don’t know, maybe it was the woman from down on the mudflats.)

Sal, though … Sal was good. She never promised what she couldn’t deliver, and she wouldn’t ill-wish somebody just on a customer’s say-so. She wouldn’t brew up a love potion, but she’d cook up a charm to make a girl look a bit better or to give a bit of fire back to a man who was down to the last of the coals, if you understand what I’m saying.

And if somebody got a little too much fire in their belly, well, Sal knew how to make some unexpected surprises go away, too. That didn’t put her in good order with the preacher, but preachers aren’t traditionally fond of witches anyhow, so she didn’t lose much by it. You didn’t get so many girls in our town going to visit relatives for a year and turning back up with a baby and a tale of a dead husband, either.

Now, you’d think that somebody who provided this sort of community service would live in the middle of town in a house with glass windows, but you’d be wrong. Sal lived halfway up a mountain in a tumbledown house with a porch like a cow’s hipbones. It was a long trek out to see her, and that was the way she liked it. She didn’t have many friends to be inconvenienced by the walk. People want a witch when they need one, but they don’t much like them. It was a little too easy, when you saw Sal go by, to remember what all she knew about you.

She didn’t make it easy for anybody, either. She’d catch your eye and smile a little, and you’d remember that little matter she took care of for you and know that she was remembering it, too.

She was a good witch and a decent person, but decent people aren’t always easy to live with.

So at the end of the day, Sal’s best friend was a razorback hog.

He was a damn big animal, size of a pony. Some idiot over by Graham got the bright idea to bring in boars for rich people to hunt, thinking he’d keep them fenced up in a park, and of course there were boars on either side of the fence before you could say "Well, that’s a stupid goddamn idea, isn’t it?" So this razorback’s granddaddy was a boar from the old country. Sal used to say he could see the fairies and liked to dig up their nests and gulp ’em down whole.

She called him "Rawhead." If you’ve ever seen the hogs down at the butcher shop, before they make headcheese, you know what she was talking about. They take the skin right off and what you’ve got left is a bloody skull with teeth like tent pegs.

Rawhead turned up one day in the garden and started rooting around in her compost heap. He had a taste for magic and there was plenty of it there, alongside the eggshells and the wishing melon rinds. (I never met a witch worth her salt who didn’t love her garden more than any mortal soul.)

Well, she busted out of the door shouting at this half-grown hog in her compost heap. He’d been trampling down the pumpkin vines, so she put a curse on him that turned his tail straight. He staggered off and Sal thought she’d seen the last of him, but the very next day he was rooting off in the compost again.

She put a curse on him that time that turned his ears inside out. He staggered off again, his hooves going opposite directions, and took down one of the bean teepees in the process. Sal wanted to scream, but you can’t stop pigs being pigs, so she grabbed her broom and shooed him out by the garden gate.

"Get gone!" she yelled. "You come back, I’ll haul you down to the butcher and you’ll be a raw head and bones by nightfall!"

Third day, she comes out on the porch and there Rawhead is, in the compost heap, with his tail straight, his ears inside out, and a rotten tomato sliding down his chin.

"You don’t learn, do you?" says Sal.

No, ma’am, says Rawhead, and takes another bite of tomato.

You would have had to be a witch to hear him, but it’s not all that surprising. Pigs aren’t that far off from talking, most of them, and it doesn’t take more than a few wishing melons to tip them right over the edge.

Well, things that talk are people, however they look, and you don’t throw people out of the garden without offering them some hospitality. She invited Rawhead up to the porch and gave him a bucket full of water and yesterday’s leftovers, and he sat next to her rocker and thumped his straight tail on the boards.

"How’s that taste, then?"

Tastes good, ma’am.

"I see your momma raised you to be respectful," said Sal, rocking.

Have to be, ma’am. If you aren’t, she rolls over on you and squashes you flat.

"Huh!" Sal rocked harder. "Not a bad notion. Know a few people who could’ve used a good squashing back in the day."

It does make you think before you speak, ma’am. He rolled a beady little boar eye up at her. You cook good cornbread, ma’am. Can I stay with you a little while?

"Huh!" said Sal again, and after that, you couldn’t have found a closer pair than Sal and Rawhead the hog.

People tend not to mess with a witch, but there’s always some damn fool who sees a woman living alone and gets thoughts in his head.

The next time someone tried, he got a tusk in his behind and went off yelling.

So word went out that Sal had a razorback hog as her familiar, and that did nothing but good for her reputation.

Well, stories always grow in the telling. Before long, they were saying Rawhead could talk, and after that they said he walked upright and sat in a rocking chair, same as a person.

Couple of people said some other things, too, about Sal and Rawhead, but there are people who say any damn thing.

The truth of the matter, as near as I ever learned it, was that Sal went on and Rawhead went on, and two days out of three, he slept on the porch at her feet and ate her leftovers. A razorback hog is a good friend to have in zucchini season, when the vines get huge and start throwing out zucchinis as big as your thigh. Useful for cleaning up yellow cucumbers, too.

§

Now, the way I always heard it, Silas the hunter had been one of those men who came sniffing around Sal when she was living alone, and it was Rawhead who broke him of that habit. But I’ve also heard that he was one of those folk who come up and try to give you charity you don’t want. There was a lot of that going on up there, and nobody gets mad like a do-gooder if you won’t hold still and let ’em do good on you.

Maybe he had a bit of a fancy for Sal, not in a marrying way, but thinking that somebody plain and lonely ought to be grateful for any attention. Maybe he thought that having a witch be grateful would be worth some trouble, or maybe he thought that a witch as good as Sal had a box full of money around the place.

But maybe those are just ways to make the story tidy again. The hunter could have just been one of those people who thinks he owns anything that doesn’t have somebody else’s name stamped on it. Lord knows, there’s enough of them around.

One way or the other, a day came along when Rawhead didn’t show up, and then another day, and then Sal started to get worried.

It wasn’t like Rawhead to go away for more than a day at a time. His territory was the mountaintop, and he didn’t leave it often. But pigs are social, same as human people, and they like each other’s company. So Sal let two days pass, then three, and then she heaved herself out of her rocking chair and said some words I won’t repeat in company.

She rummaged in her pantry ’til she found a good saucer, then she laid it on the table and filled it up with water and a drop of ink. The ink melted into the water and turned it black, and she breathed a witch’s breath onto it.

Then she tapped her nail on the water’s surface, and it rang like a bell.

"Good," she said. "Good. Now, show me the front porch." (Never ask to see something important right off. Water’s tricky, even with ink to gentle it.)

The water showed her the front porch, with the empty rocking chair and the faded mat by the door. A wren flew up to the railing and looked around for something, then flew away again when it didn’t find it.

"Good," said Sal. "Now, show me the sheriff’s daughter, who ran off with the horse-thief."

The water swirled—though the surface didn’t change—and Sal was looking at a girl wearing a clean apron, with a light in her eyes.

"Huh!" said Sal, pleased. "Glad it came out all right for her. Now, show me that razorback friend of mine."

The water darkened.

Under the table, where the water couldn’t see it, Sal clenched her fist.

Then the water got light again—just a little—

And there was Rawhead.

She knew him right away, even though he was lying dead with three other hogs, in the back of a wagon moving down the road. She knew him just fine, and when the driver turned his head, she knew him, too.

Sal jerked back from the table and the water boiled away into steam.

She sat there for a minute, breathing through her nose, then she stood up. She picked up the saucer, because it was a good saucer with a little ink stained on it, and she washed it up careful, because a lifetime’s habits die hard.

Her head ached and her heart ached, but she folded up the dish towel and set it back on its loop. She would have cried, but she didn’t dare start.

"Somebody killed him," she said out loud. It felt like a knife, and she stabbed herself with it again—"Somebody went and killed my Rawhead."

That was better. If she said Rawhead’s dead, she was going to fold right up like a broken leaf, but if she said Somebody killed him—well, then, that Somebody was going to have to pay.

The core of being a witch is that you don’t fall down while there’s work to be done. Sometimes that means you invent work to keep yourself standing upright.

She went to the coffee can in her bedroom and took it down. There was eighty-seven dollars stuffed into it, and Sal took the money out. It was all she had, and not a bad amount, but she didn’t think she’d need it much longer.

Sal’s nearest neighbor was a woman named Madeline, who had a hard life and stayed cheerful for it. People like that are a blessing and occasionally an affliction.

Even Madeline was a little surprised when Sal showed up while she was hanging out laundry on the line. She pinned up a sheet and turned around, and there was Sal, not five feet away.

Madeline yelped. "Lord, Sal, you about scared the life out of me!"

"Right," said Sal. "Came about the chickens."

Madeline wasn’t quite done yet. "Seeing you right there like that! My heart’s pounding, so it is. Let me sit down a minute. You can kill a body if you scare ’em too hard, you know."

"Don’t have much time," said Sal bluntly. "It’s my chickens. I’d appreciate it if you’d look in on ’em tonight and make sure they’re in and fed."

"Sure, Sal," said Madeline. And then, though it wasn’t the sort of thing to say to a witch, "You all right, hon? You’re looking hard."

"Hard times," said Sal. "Take care of my chickens. If I don’t come back by tomorrow, they’re all yours. Watch for the rooster, he’s a devil."

She turned away.

Madeline, moved by some spirit, called "You be careful, Sal!" and Sal’s shoulder twitched, but she didn’t make any reply.

She walked into town without talking to anybody. She watched for a certain wagon out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t see it, and she was glad.

"I’ll fix him," she muttered. "I’ll fix him good for this. But I got to figure out a way."

That’s the real problem being a good witch all your life. Time comes when you need to do something real bad, and you don’t have the knack for it. If she’d seen the man who murdered Rawhead walking down the street, what would she do?

She didn’t have the sort of magic that made people drop dead. Hardly anybody did.

"I’d yell at him like a crazy old woman," muttered Sal, "and that’d be the end of me. Just some senile old woman yelling in the street."

But the wagon wasn’t there, and she was still a witch.

So she walked on south for an hour, into the sandhills, looking for Elizabeth Gray.

§

Sal found her sitting on the front porch, looking over the sundew pool. Sundews are little devil plants, covered in sticky hairs, and when a bug lands on them, the sundew sticks it tight and eats it from the inside out.

Elizabeth Gray found their company congenial.

Sal came up on the porch with her heart in her eyes, and there were two chairs there, and a second cup of tea set out.

"Have a seat," said Elizabeth Gray.

Neither one of them saw fit to comment on the fact that Sal had been expected. They were both witches, and they knew how things were done. Sal took a sip of her tea and it was still hot, like it had just been poured a moment before.

She let out her breath, and her throat ached from not crying.

"Got a problem, I see," said Elizabeth Gray.

"It’s my hog," said Sal. "My friend. That hunter shot him—Paul Silas did it, and he knows full well that was my Rawhead."

"Silas," said Elizabeth Gray thoughtfully. "Didn’t his mother come from over by Bynum?"

"That’s him. She wasn’t a bad woman." Sal took another slug of tea. "Good thing she’s dead. No mother ought to see what I aim to do to him."

Elizabeth grinned. "Listen to you," she said. "A white witch and all. What are you planning?"

"Don’t know," said Sal honestly. "Had a thought, that’s all."

And then she took a deep breath and said the words that witches hate to say, even to each other. "Need your help."

The porch creaked as Elizabeth rocked in her chair. Down by the sundew pool, the plants rippled.

"What’s in it for me?" she asked. "That I ought to help you, who never did give me the time of day?"

"That ain’t fair," said Sal. "You had your spot and I had mine. You ever asked, I’d have come. You know that."

Elizabeth Gray knew it, even if she didn’t like to admit it. She tilted her head one way and another, and her neck bones popped and creaked like an old man’s knuckles. "It’s so. And you’re in my spot now."

"I’ve got eighty-seven dollars," said Sal, and laid it out on the table between the teacups.

"You should’ve said," said Elizabeth Gray, all business. "Now, what is it you’re looking to do?"

Sal told her.

The sun moved a little bit in the sky before anyone spoke again.

"Listen," said Elizabeth Gray, "listen close. You’re asking me to bring him back, and I can’t do that. Nobody can. You walk through that door and there’s no walking back through. You know that, Sal, you’re a witch to your teeth. You ever hear of anybody coming back for good?"

Sal stared into her empty teacup. "Thought you might have," she said quietly. "Figured maybe there was a way."

Elizabeth Gray shook her head, and that was truth, because witches don’t lie to each other.

Sal stood up. She went down the steps and made three paces.

Then she sank down by the pool filled with sundews and put her bony hands over her face, because her friend was dead.

Elizabeth Gray’s face didn’t change. Her heart was still like sand and triumph ran through and pity ran through and neither one sank in.

But things do grow on sand, complicated things like sundews, and something grew now in the witch’s heart that I wouldn’t try to put a name to.

"I can’t bring him back," said Elizabeth Gray. "But if you’re willing, I can open the door."

Sal looked up, her face streaked with an old woman’s tears.

"It’ll take your life," said Gray, as if a witch’s life wasn’t any big thing. "Somebody’s got to shove their foot in the door. He’s all the way dead and you’re all the way alive, and if you’re willing, I can take you both halfway. I don’t swear you won’t wind up in one skin together, but it’s the best I can do."

Sal thought about it. She thought about it hard, the way you do when every word in your head has an echo and you slam it down on the floor of your skull. She sat by the sundew pool and she thought, and Elizabeth Gray brought her another cup of tea, but all of it was second-guessing. She’d known what she was going to say as soon as Gray had made her offer.

"Do it," Sal said.

§

I’m not going to tell you what the spell was like. You think I want that sort of thing being common knowledge? You need a silver spoon to see by and a half-handful of rabbit tobacco, among other things, but that’s as much as you’re going to hear. Some stuff doesn’t need to go any farther. You want to know details, go ask Elizabeth Gray.

She did the spell, anyhow. People say it was a hard spell, but I think that’s because most people don’t understand magic. It was easy, the way dying’s easy or birthing’s easy. It’s not hard, it just hurts a whole hell of a lot.

Sal sat in the sand, because it was easier that way. Her hip joints ached getting her down, and she didn’t think she’d be able to stand back up, but that didn’t matter, because she figured she wouldn’t be standing up again. Not in this life, anyhow.

The moon came up. It reflected in the pool, and Sal watched the sundews thrash and dance in a way that they don’t do by daylight. Tiny little things they were, but they moved more like mice than plants, and they leaned toward Elizabeth Gray.

She was still watching the sundews when Elizabeth came up behind her with the big hog-killing knife and slit her throat from ear to ear.

§

Sal woke up with a scream and a gasp, in a body that wasn’t hers.

She was hung upside down by her heels, and her whole body bucked when she moved and threw her sideways. It turned out to be a blessing, because she’d been hung up with a hook through her legs and she would have been hard pressed to free herself, but the convulsion knocked her right off the hook and onto the floor.

It was a fair bit of luck, witch’s luck, but she was in no position to appreciate it.

It hurt.

It hurt more than anything ever had, more than she thought anything ever could. She’d been dead and now she was alive, and bodies don’t much like that. When you’re dead, all your muscles go limp, even the little ones that hold tense their entire lives. They didn’t take kindly to being told to wake up and work again.

Her heart was the worst. Her heart tried to beat and there was stuff inside it that didn’t want to move. It folded up like a fist around a knife blade and sprang open again.

Sal would have given her hope of heaven to stop that heart from beating, but the magic was in it now and wouldn’t let it rest. It squeezed and opened, squeezed and opened, and inside the clotted heart, the blood broke up like ice on a river and began to flow again.

She had no idea how long she laid on the ground. It could have been hours. It felt like her entire life. But the dead body around her came back to life, slow as slow, and finally she opened her eyes and realized she was in the body of the dead razorback hog.

Ma’am? said a tiny little voice. That you?

If she’d been human, she would have cried, but hogs don’t. She made a little whimpering squealing sound and scraped her trotters along the floorboards.

"Rawhead?" (It wasn’t quite talking aloud, but he got the sense of it.)

Yes, ma’am. What happened?

"Think we’ve been dead, hon." Sal considered. "Well, you’ve been dead, and my body probably ain’t alive if Elizabeth Gray did proper work with the knife."

She scrabbled her feet again, trying to get up.

Let me, said Rawhead, and the ungainly body was suddenly graceful, rolling to its feet and shaking all over.

"So that’s the trick of it," said Sal. "Lord. Not used to being down here on four legs."

It’s easier than two.

It did seem to be. Her vision wasn’t so good, but things smelled strong, and the smells sort of worked with her eyes in a way she hadn’t expected.

"We’re in a barn, aren’t we?"

Think so, ma’am. Rawhead turned in a circle and then looked up.

There were three dead hogs hanging from hooks overhead, their throats opened up to drain into a gutter in the floor. A fourth hook hung empty.

"Huh!" Sal stared at them. "Surprised there was any blood left in us. Must be the magic. I’ll give her this, Elizabeth Gray’s no slouch with the knife."

Those three were my friends, said Rawhead. We ran around the mountain together.

"I’m sorry," said Sal, suddenly shamed. "I didn’t think. I’m sorry for your friends."

It’s all right. They’ll go on. We all go on. He dropped her—their—head, startling Sal again. I’ll miss them.

There was nothing that a human could add to that eulogy. She didn’t try.

The hog’s body was huge and powerful. Sal tried moving it, walking unsteadily toward the door.

It was exhausting. It moved more or less as she asked—it worked better if she didn’t concentrate too much on how the legs were moving—but the beating of their dead heart did nothing to revive her.

She got them around the corner of the barn. It was dim and noisy with crickets. She could smell turned earth and blood.

Their legs started to shake, and she had to sit down.

This was madness, she thought, trying to keep her thoughts away from Rawhead and not sure if she was succeeding. I’ve trapped us both in this dead body, and for what? Revenge?

A witch should have known better. Now what? Even if I kill that bastard hunter, what then? Lay down and rot until there’s not enough left of the body to hold us here?

It was not a pleasant thought. Even less pleasant was the thought that the hog’s body might rot away and their souls would be left chained to its bones.

Witches generally feel that there’s plenty of work to be done here and now, but I never met one that wasn’t secretly hoping to put their feet up for a while in the afterlife.

Now, though …

Poor sort of friend I am. Silas only killed his body, but I may have made him into a ghost.

You’re a good friend, ma’am, said Rawhead staunchly. Sal realized that he’d been listening to her think the whole time. It would have been embarrassing if he was anybody else. She scuffled their trotters in the dirt.

"Did I hold you back from heaven, Rawhead?"

Doesn’t work like that for us, ma’am. We just go on to the next thing.

"What’s the next thing?" asked Sal. She was exhausted and felt like dying again.

Oh, you know. We go around again. Think I was going to be a bird this time, said Rawhead. All curled up in an egg, with someone tap-tap-tapping on my shell. I like being a bird. It’s good to fly.

Sal wished that she could weep. Their mouth gaped open in distress. "What happened to that bird?"

Won’t hatch, I guess. It happens, ma’am. Don’t worry. It was hard to comfort herself in only one body. Hogs would normally go shoulder to shoulder, lean on one another, but with only one body between them, Rawhead had to settle for leaning against the barn wall and rubbing their jowls against their forelegs. I don’t mind coming back. We’ll die again sooner or later, and I’ll be a different bird.

He paused and added generously, You can come be a bird with me if you like, ma’am. I wouldn’t mind.

Humans are different from hogs in that kindness can break their hearts. Sal moaned through the dead razorback’s throat.

"What the hell is that racket?" yelled a voice from inside the barn.

The boar’s body jerked itself up and made a short bark of surprise before Sal quite realized what she was doing.

It was Paul Silas. Well, who else would it be?

"Damn it," she muttered, and "Damn it!" said Silas. She heard the distinctive sound of a gun being cocked. It was practically under her ear, on the other side of the wall.

Rawhead wisely took over at this point, backing them into the thicket of dog fennel and Queen Anne’s lace that surrounded the barn. A beam of light came out of the barn, jangling crazily as the hunter carried the lantern. Sal saw the green gleam of spider eyes in the grass as the light moved over it, and a red flash from a whippoorwill blinking in the ditch.

"Who’s there?" shouted Silas. "Who’s sneaking around my—ah, goddamn!"

"Found we were gone," said Sal silently.

Rawhead sank more deeply into the thicket. The light went flashing by, through the cracks between boards, and lit up the pebbles at the dead hog’s feet.

Silas’s footsteps paused by the empty hook, and then he walked to the mouth of the barn. The whippoorwill flew up and away into the trees.

"You a bear?" asked Silas. "You a bear out there, taking my meat? Or you a man?" He turned in a circle, and Sal saw the rifle outlined against the lantern light.

§

There’s a whole story people tell when they’re telling the story of Rawhead and Sal. It’s a little bit like Little Red Riding Hood—the hunter says, "My, what big eyes you got!" And Rawhead supposedly says, "The better to see your grave." And the hunter says, "What a bushy tail you got." And Rawhead says, "The better to sweep your grave."

Well, a talking hog is one thing, but I never heard of a hog with a bushy tail. They say he took it off a dead raccoon, but if you can tell me why a boar would need a rotten raccoon tail to kill someone with, I’d dearly love to hear it.

No, what happened was that Silas stood in the circle of lantern light, holding his gun, looking for a bear or a thief, and Sal looked at him and heard his whining voice, and she remembered why she was mad.

That bastard killed Rawhead. He’d killed Rawhead’s friends. In a roundabout way, he’d killed Sal herself.

And Sal remembered other things—the way Silas had treated a woman living alone, the way he’d come sniffing around like a dog after a bone, offering charity and more than charity, even when she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in the likes of him. She remembered a couple conversations on the porch that she’d rather not have had.

She thought of how those conversations might have gone if she’d been only a woman alone and not a witch. She remembered how they’d almost gone anyway, and a couple of nights spent with the door barred and her own rifle across her lap.

"I believe that man needs killing, Rawhead," she said.

Yes, ma’am, said Rawhead.

He moved.

The dead heart hammered in their chest, and Sal threw herself on the pain and took it all. When Rawhead charged, he was as quick on his hooves as a living razorback, and that is very quick indeed.

Silas heard the charge and turned. He got the gun halfway to his shoulder and fired.

The impact knocked the dead boar back a step—but only a step. He did not get time for another shot.

Their jaws closed over his thigh. Silas screamed, but not for very long. Humans die easy compared to hogs.

And then there was quiet.

After awhile the crickets started in again. The fireflies spread themselves out under the trees. The lantern guttered and went out.

Sal sighed. She felt ancient. The bullet in the dead boar’s neck burned and she had no way to pick it out.

"Well," she said. "Well. I guess that’s that."

Yes, ma’am.

§

The story that got around was a ghost story, so there’s a proper ghost story end to it. They say Rawhead still rides around on the hunter’s horse, and sometimes his head comes off and he holds it up to scare people with. They say he’s still haunting these hills to this day, one more leftover thing from the old days, like the foundations you find in the woods sometimes, or the bits of barbed wire that turned up rusted in the fields.

But it wasn’t like that, not in the end.

Sal and Rawhead walked. They walked clear back to her house, and that was a long and weary way. Rawhead heaved that dead body up on the porch for the last time and laid it down on the boards.

"Well," said Sal. She didn’t have any regrets about Silas. She was so tired that regret couldn’t get much foothold. It was more like a list in her head, checking off boxes—die, tick, take revenge, tick, come home, tick.

She felt like she was seeing the world from a long way away. Only Rawhead’s voice was clear in her mind, as if he was standing right at her shoulder. "I … I don’t know what to do now."

Come with me, suggested Rawhead. We’ll go be birds together.

It sounded good to Sal.

They died again, on the porch. Rawhead knew the way. The dead heart, which had beaten so faithfully for so long, shuddered into stillness.

Madeline found the body the next day, and she knew enough about witches to cry over it. But Sal and Rawhead were long gone.

There’s people who say that witches don’t go to heaven. That sort of person acts like they’re in charge of who goes in and out, though, and I don’t know if God holds with that sort of thing. Maybe Sal did, maybe she didn’t. It’s not for me to say.

But me, I like to think that they found themselves curled up warm in an egg together, to sleep and dream of flying.

Ursula Vernon is the author of the Hugo-award winning comic Digger, as well as multiple children’s book series. She writes for adults under the name T. Kingfisher. Her work has won the Nebula, Mythopoeic, Coyotl, and WSFA Awards. She lives in North Carolina. You can find more of her short stories and novels at Tkingfisher.com.

Interview with Ursula Vernon

Andrea Johnson

British folklore offers the story of "Rawhead and Bloody Bones," a cautionary tale about a boogeyman who lives in ponds and sometimes under the stairs. Rawhead is a horrid looking monster, and if you see him, you’re done for. In the American South, the story changed to follow Rawhead, a wild boar befriended by an old, lonely woman. When she finds out her only friend has been killed by a vindictive hunter, she conjures the boar back to life to avenge his own death. In "Razorback," Vernon puts her unique spin on the American South version of "Rawhead and Bloody Bones." A ghost story with an aftertaste of empowerment, revenge, and of knowing when it’s your time, it’s a story of how far people will go for the ones they love. The original stories were horror stories, stories designed to scare children. This one won’t scare you, and it’s not meant to. It’s meant to show you a side of an old horror story you’ve never seen before — the "why it happened" that so often gets hidden behind the "what happened." And if this is the story that’s hiding behind a tale meant to terrify, what might be lying behind your other favorite scary stories to tell in the dark?

One of the many things I love about Vernon’s work is her simple refusal to stick with any one genre, subgenre, or even type of book. She’s created webcomics and graphic novels written for young readers, older readers, and adults. She’s done self-publishing, small press publishing, and worked with traditional publishers, as well. Her mid-grade novel, Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible was recently optioned for filming, and her graphic novel series Digger has a cult following and a Hugo award. If you only know Vernon for her short fiction or her webcomics or her YA work, I highly suggest exploring the rest of her oeuvre.

Nebula and Hugo award winning author Ursula Vernon lives in North Carolina, where she can often be found writing at the local coffee shop, doodling, gardening, and observing nature in her neighborhood. She’s the author of the DragonbreathandNurk books for young readers, Digger, Harriet the Invincible, and Castle Hangnail, among others. Under the pen-name T. Kingfisher, Vernon has recently published the adult fantasy titles The Seventh Bride, Toad Words and Other Stories, and Bryony and Roses. Her short story "Jackalope Wives" (Apex Magazine Issue 56) won the Nebula Award and was nominated for a World Fantasy award.

She was kind enough to talk with me a bit about "Razorback," the excitement of Hollywood, pen-names, and how the "animal books" she read as a kid have a profound influence on how she writes about humans and animals.

Apex Magazine: How did you come across the "Rawhead and Bloody Bones" story? Which were you exposed to first, the European version or the American South version? Which do you like better?

Ursula Vernon: I had heard the name before, in fantasy novels — I think it might have been one of the Anita Blake books where it’s a villain — but I stumbled over it again while I was reading up on Southern ghost stories. As soon as I read the old American South version, my brain started working. I’ve always loved boars, and here was a story about an old woman and a boar who was her friend and it went from there.

AM: Sal provides many needed "community services," but she lives a life of poverty. Sounds like most of what she does is herbal medicine, building up people’s confidence when they need it, and knocking it down when they need that instead, and women’s health issues. And for her trouble, she’s ostracized. Seems the people society needs most are often treated the worst. Why do you think this is?

UV: I suspect people don’t like to admit that they need certain things. When you need someone, you’re vulnerable, and nobody likes other people to see them when they’re vulnerable. Plus, when you get into women’s health issues, there’s a long and grim history there that continues to this day.

AM: Tell me more about Paul Silas. Who was he before he started bothering Sal? Why is he so obsessed with her?

UV: I don’t know much about him, honestly. There’s a hunter in the original story, and I suspect in the original, he’s merely stupid and kills Rawhead out of greed, rather than malice. But greed and stupidity aren’t quite enough for me as an author to feel good about having a zombie hog maul you to death, so I brought out something a little darker. Lord knows, there are plenty of people out there who you meet sometimes and think "I’m glad I’m not alone with you …" I don’t know that he’s obsessed with Sal in particular, but he feels superior to her and I suspect it infuriates him that she doesn’t agree with that assessment.

AM: Not to spoil the ending (much), but I love that reincarnation makes it into this story. Thanks to those sentences, my tears came from a different corner of my heart. How did reincarnation get into the story?

UV: …’cos I’m a big old softie. *grin* I can’t really kill off the animal companion in a story. Too much Old Yeller, too much Where The Red Fern Grows — schools seem to positively delight in making kids read books where the dog dies as a form of improving literature. I think that sucks. Certainly it turns a lot of kids off from reading, if you teach them that a good book is one where all the animals snuff it to teach the boy (it’s almost always a boy) a valuable lesson about manhood. Feh, sez I.

Questions about writing, publishing, and Hollywood

AM: You’ve published your own webcomics, and your work has been published through publishers large and small. Earlier this year, you self-published The Seventh Bride, and the title was later picked up by 47North. Having done nearly every type of publishing that’s out there, do you prefer self-publishing, traditional publishing, or something in between? Are there certain projects of yours that are better suited for one type of publishing or the other?

UV: *laugh* Oh lord! I like the money in trade publishing, that’s for sure. I like answering to no one but myself in self-publishing.

It’s absolutely a matter of what project fits best where — kid books are absolutely a bad prospect for self-pub, because distribution is so hard. Very few kids read e-books. The day will come when somebody invents an indestructible e-reader that costs $20 that you can hand to an eight-year-old boy with confidence, but until that day, the kid market for e-books is nearly nonexistent. So you have to get stuff in stores, and that’s simply not gonna happen on a large scale with self-pub any time soon.

By the same token, there are weird little projects that I love writing — usually under the pen-name T. Kingfisher — that are the wrong length or don’t fit neatly in a genre or whatever, but which will sell five or six thousand copies in e-book, and will continue to sell at a trickle for years to come. Which isn’t commercially viable for a trade publisher, but is absolutely worthwhile for a one-woman operation. So I go by "what project goes best where." And occasionally one does well enough in self-pub, like The Seventh Bride, to get picked up by a trade publisher again. The circle of life!

AM: Speaking of projects, I read on your livejournal that your newest project is tentatively called The Raven And The Reindeer. What can you tell us about this new project?

UV: It’s another T. Kingfisher fairy-tale retelling, this time based on The Snow Queen. It’s more of a love story than I’ve written before, between Gerta and Janna the bandit-girl, and there’s a raven and skinchanging and … uh … giant white otters …

I’m bad at blurbs.

AM: In other big news, your children’s book Castle Hangnail was recently optioned by Disney. Congratulations! What was it like to get that phone call? Which of your other titles would you love to see make it to the screen?

UV: *laugh* I am the worst at getting Big Important Phonecalls! I think I said "Oh. Cool! Sounds good?" I once talked to a director while pulling weeds, because I only get good cell reception in the front garden and since I was there ANYWAY, and … yeah. He said, rather plaintively, "No one’s ever pulled weeds on a con call with me before." My agent laughed until I thought she’d rupture something.

The problem is that none of these things really seem real to me. It’s completely absurd to think somebody might make a movie out of one of my books — or buy a six book deal, or republish one of my self-pubs or whatever — so while I don’t disbelieve it, I also am never quite convinced it’s happening at the time.

About six months after the fact, I actually start to believe it, and by then it seems weird to go around saying "OMG I GOT A MOVIE DEAL" because by then it’s old news.

AM: Let’s end this interview by blowing up everyone’s Books I Want To Read lists. What have been some of your favorite recent reads? Any titles you’re looking forward to in the upcoming months?

UV: I loved Uprooted by Naomi Novik (like a lot of other people!) Also really enjoyed Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones, and Dreamer’s Poolby Juliet Marrillier. And Diane Duane did a self-published Young Wizards book called Interim Errantry, which included the novel Lifeboats, which I loved.

Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. If she’s not walking around her day job with a coffee mug in hand, then she’s at home with a book in one hand and a craft beer in the other. She can be found online at her book review blog Little Red Reviewer and on Twitter, where her handle is @redhead5318. You wouldn’t know it from this bio, but Andrea is a very goofy person.

Automaton

Bianca Spriggs

You find what’s left of me

stuck in Elkhorn Creekâ€”

mostly just a head missing an eye

with three-quarters of a spine

still attached, half of one lung,

and only a coupla ventricles leftâ€”

a phantom’s pulse yet pistons

muddy creek-water and a handful

of pebbles out towards the bank.

And I suppose I’ve always had one

of those faces that people want

to talk to or one that reminds folks

of someone they’re kin to,

because you stop to stoop down

and turn my face over

and over in your handsâ€”

my three-quarter spine

dangles to your knees.

I think you are about to leave me

to the guppies when you say instead,

Yeah, I could work with this.

And you talk to me the whole way

back to your shop about your mother,

the woman you loved once,

how no one keeps time like

someone who’s been locked up

or someone in the military,

how as soon as you can,

you’re out of this ’bama-ass shithole.

To keep it light, I work up a joke

in my gravel-bucket voice:

Q: What do you call a deer with no eyes?

A: No idear.

You laugh and tell me I’m the best

company you’ve had all week,

then admit I’m the only

company you’ve had all week.

When we get back to your shop,

you prop me up on the worktable,

turn my head face up and string out

my spine, its nerve-endings mostly dead.

But you’ve got a trick to bring

these sorts of things back to life.

You rope them up into a skein,

twirling them hand over elbow,

then stick them into a bowl of water

brimming with gold-leaf.

Before long, those nerves go all

Rose of Jericho and begin to unfurl,

turn into incandescent sorbet huesâ€”

they blink like delicate LED lights

strung along thin copper wire.

You work and tinker and continue

to build me into the shape of a woman

I almost recognize out of whatsits

and whatnots you’ve got laying around.

Two birdcages for lungs.

Two beer growlers for breasts.

An accordion for a diaphragm

and extension cords for guts.

Fish hooks for fingers

and lures for fingernails.

You lattice ferns and fiddleheads

for cartilage, modeling paste

for muscles that cement

together old headlines.

I practice flexing them

as you weld steel drum lids

over charred oak bourbon barrel strips

together for my legs and armsâ€”

tin for all the rest.

You stitch the vinyl top from the relic

of a 1972 Monte Carlo in patchwork

over my brand new/old selfâ€”

and finally, you stand me upright,

bang me on the back to get my

motor going and clap

the rear door closed, satisfied.

You adjust a few knobs

and oil a coupla gears with myrrh,

pour a little of last night’s wine

into my throat until I blink and yawn,

my eyelids, hummingbird wings,

my lips, two jade leaves,

my tongue, a strip of birch tree bark.

You look like you’re fine now,

you say, Damn fine.

And you tell me not to take

any naked pictures of you later

with my new camera lens eye

while leading me by my barbed

wire wrists to your bed.

I lie down with you, crack another joke,

this one about nosy jalapeño peppers

because I haven’t the heart

to say you haven’t even begun

to reach, let alone repair

my most damaged part.

Bianca Lynne Spriggs is an Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow from Lexington, Kentucky. An award-winning poet, she is the author of Kaffir Lily (Wind Publications, 2010), How Swallowtails Become Dragons (Accents Publishing, 2011), and the forthcoming titles, Call Her By Her Name (Northwestern University Press, 2016), The Galaxy is a Dance Floor (Argos Books, 2016), as well as co-editor of Circe’s Lament: Anthology of Wild Women Poetry (Accents Publishing, 2015). Bianca is the creator and program director for The SwallowTale Project: Creative Writing for Incarcerated Women, as well as Managing Editor for pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Art & Cultureand Poetry Editor for Apex Magazine. You can learn more about her shenanigans here: www.biancaspriggs.com or follow her on Twitter: @biancalynne.

Bones of the World

Jennifer Hykes

4,900 words

Maggie was sitting on an old packing crate by the docks, having tea with a lobster she had named Miss Snips, when Father O’Grady approached her. She heard the light, smart click of his heels first. He wore fine black shoes always polished to a high shine, so unlike the dull, work-worn boots of the dockworkers. Or the moldering boots of her father somewhere out under the gray sea. At night she dreamed of her father’s boots growing barnacles, and little crabs moving into them.

Father O’Grady’s shoes didn’t seem to be the type to grow barnacles. She imagined that if he ever drowned at sea, his shoes would keep on shining under the waves, like treasure from a pirate ship.

He stopped by her crate, examining the lobster and the ceramic tea set laid out in front of her through small, round spectacles. "Good morning, Miss Brennan," he said.

"Good morning, Father O’Grady," she said, as she’d been taught.

"How are you and your mother doing, then?" He spoke softly, as if her ears were made of fragile china. It was the same grave, gentle tone everyone had been using since her father’s ship went down. She wondered if she should cry. But she was no good at crying, so she made her mouth into a little frown instead. Because that was what people did when they were sad.

"We’re doing well, Father," she said. "Though, we do miss him so."

He nodded. "We all do. Your father was a good, brave man." He was silent for a moment, tapping his fingertips restlessly against his thigh. "Miss Brennan, have you seen Sister Mary Theresa about?"

"Yes, Father."

Father O’Grady waited, but she added nothing. He said, "So she spoke to you?"

"Yes, Father."

"Do you know where she went afterwards?"

Maggie made a small, polite smile. She was proud of her smile; she had gotten it down after lots of practice and thought of it as an important accomplishment. "She went for tea, Father."

"Ah." He pushed his spectacles up his nose, digesting this. "You wouldn’t happen to know with whom?"

"She didn’t say, Father."

"Ah. Very well. Thank you, Miss Brennan. If you see her, would you mind letting her know I was looking for her?"

"Yes, Father."

"And give my best to your mother."

"Of course, Father."

He nodded absently and walked away, a solitary black-clad figure in the shifting crowd of gray and brown, beneath a sky heavy and flat as lead. Maggie watched him go, then turned her face to the horizon. A little voice in her bones whispered that another storm would come soon.

She settled herself on the crate and turned to her tea companion. "Father O’Grady’s looking for you, Miss Snips," she said.

The lobster, who could no longer speak, wiggled her antennae in response. Maggie imagined that Miss Snips had said something witty, and laughed. She was quite proud of her laugh, too. It could fool anyone.

§

Maggie’s life was dreadfully dull. In the morning, she would get up and help her mother take care of the goats and chickens and their one old donkey. Then she would bike to school and sit in a row with her classmates and practice her letters in her copy book. She had learned her letters perfectly the first day of school, but since her schoolmates appeared to struggle, she pretended to struggle, too. She imagined that there was a second alphabet, like the first but cloudy and shaky, and over the weeks and months, she moved slowly from one to the other—lines getting straighter, loops closing off properly.

The most interesting day she’d ever had at school was the day after her father died. Her classmates gave her gifts, for herself and for her mother. Fiona gave her an afghan from her nana, Noel left a sweet tart on her desk, the Boyle girls gave her a bundle of flowers, and Tom handed her a large cottage pie still in the pan, and told her to tell her mum that "if she ever wants company, there’s always room at our table."

Out of all the gifts, she liked Noel’s the most because it was delicious, and he had made it himself, just for her. Sometimes he looked at her during class and smiled. It was a shy, earnest smile, and he made it look so effortless. His eyes were remarkable, too: tawny brown, almost gold, and intense like the eyes of a hawk. She wondered sometimes if he had fairy blood, to have such eyes. She could stare at them all day.

The day after he gave her the tart, she came to him after school. "I want to do something for you," she said. "For the tart."

Both his eyebrows lifted. "Thanks, but you don’t have to do that, Maggie."

She didn’t smile. This was serious. The voice in her bones told her that this sort of gift needed to be repaid. It was the same voice that told her when bad storms were coming, or when people were about to die.

The pie and the afghan were tributes for the dead, and she had dutifully passed them on to her mother. For the Boyle girls’ flowers, she had gone to their house in secret and ordered the roses there to bloom endlessly, even in the winter. But for Noel, the hawk-eyed boy with the earnest smile, she wanted to do something special. She wanted to grant him a boon.

"But I want to," she repeated. Why did people have to be so thick sometimes? How could they not know such basic things as the rules for gifting?

His sun-darkened cheeks turned ruddy, like roses were blooming under his skin. "Well, that’s sweet of you, Maggie, but I don’t need anything right now. We’re doing all right."

She looked him in the eyes and nodded. Without another word, she hopped on her bike and started for home. She would repay him another time.

§

Two days after Sister Mary Theresa disappeared, Maggie saw Noel down by the docks, talking to his father. Noel’s father had hands thick and callused and hard as wooden paddles, and most of his face was hidden behind a beard. Noel looked small and fragile next to him, a bird standing next to a bear. He was trying to help his father mend a net, but his fingers lacked the old man’s expert grace.

The sky at the horizon was the color of iron now. The storm was getting closer. There would be at least one death. Maggie could not only feel it in her bones by now but smell it in the breeze.

"What do you think Noel is talking to his da about?" she asked Miss Snips, whose claw, bound with twine, was fumbling with the handle of the tea cup in front of her. If it had been filled with proper tea, she would have spilled it all over the crate, which would have been terribly bad manners. But the tea was imaginary, so she indulgently forgave the lobster.

"Do you think he’s talking about me?" she asked, in a low, conspiratorial whisper.

Miss Snips said nothing. Her eye-stalks swayed back and forth.

Maggie liked the nun better this way. The crabby, sharp armor and the unwieldy claws suited her. She had said this to Miss Snips after she’d changed her. How lovely you look, Miss Snips, she’d said. Is that a new dress? How well the color looks on you!

"H’lo, Maggie," said Noel’s voice from behind her.

She looked up and smiled. "Hello, Noel," she said. "Pull up a crate, you’re just in time for tea."

Noel gave the lobster a strange look, but obediently sat down and doffed his cap. She pulled another cup from her case and mimed pouring him some tea.

"Thank you," he said, picking up the cup and pretending to sip. "I’m surprised your mum lets you cart this to the docks."

"It’s mine to do with as I please," she said, which was true. Her father had brought the set up from Dublin as a Christmas gift. She was very careful with it.

"Ah," said Noel. He looked around the docks. "Aren’t you worried to be out and away from home lately?"

"No," she said. "Nobody bothers me here. Not since father died."

"Oh." His hawk eyes darted back and forth. Then, lowering his voice, "I mean, what with Sister Mary Theresa disappearing. People are worried. Some say she might have gotten into an accident outside of town, with no one to help her. But others think …" His cheeks warmed again.

"Think what?"

He looked at his knees. "That she was murdered," he mumbled.

No, she wasn’t murdered. That would have been too kind a punishment, Maggie thought.

"What do you think?" Noel asked her abruptly, lifting his brilliant eyes to hers.

A strange warmth fluttered in her chest, a sensation her bones had no word for. She felt along its edges, tried to sense its shape. But when that yielded no insight, she carefully bundled it up and set it aside for later inquiry. "Why are you asking me?" she asked, picking up her tea cup and pretending to drink, fearing that her own cheeks were blooming pink now. She wondered why she was worrying over the color of her cheeks. "I wouldn’t have murdered her."

He seemed startled by this comment. "I know," he said. "I wasn’t accusing you or anythin’. I was just—well, everyone in town says you were the last person who saw her alive. So I just, you know—ah, I’m fumbling this bad, en’t I?"

She frowned. She didn’t like him looking so lost. She sifted through her memory for words that people found comforting. "Father O’Grady says that in the end, the wicked are punished and the good rewarded. I think that’s true. It all works out."

This seemed to work because Noel nodded. "You’re right, you’re right," he said. "Still, en’t you a little scared that there might be a murderer running around?"

"I’m not afraid," she said.

"No doubt! You must be one of the bravest girls I know."

She smiled, and it was almost genuine.

"Still, you’ll be careful, won’t you?" he went on. "Think of your mum, if anything happened to you."

She thought about it. She supposed her mum might cry for a while, but she did not see why that was important. Still, Noel was gazing at her intently, so she said, "I’ll be careful."

He smiled. She stared at the contours of his lips, wondering how he pulled it off so easily.

"I still want to do something for you," she said.

Noel shrugged. "You tell me that every day at school."

She sniffed. "Isn’t there anything you want?"

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. After a minute, he shook his head. "The only thing I can think of that I want, you couldn’t give me anyway."

She leaned forward. "You could ask anyway," she said.

He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder. "It’s my da," he said. "He’s going out on the next tide, but I’m worried about this storm." He shook his head. "Gram says it’ll be a big one, she can feel it in her bones. Even Mum’s asking him to stay in, but he’s stubborn as a Scotsman."

"He should listen to your gram," said Maggie. "Bones never lie."

"He won’t listen." Noel tapped his feet, nervous. "Maybe, when you go to bed tonight, could you say a prayer for him? For my sake?"

She nodded. But she already planned to do him one better.

§

Long after Noel had left, she put Miss Snips back in her barrel, the one marked "Property of P. Brennan" and packed up her tea set with care. The gray sky began to take on a dirty greenish tinge. She walked up and down the docks, pushing out her awareness into the boats around her.

First she had to weigh all of the boats in her mind. The unlucky ones felt thin, ghostly. If she squinted, she could almost see the yet-to-be cracks in their hulls, the breaks in the masts, the bony shadows of doomed sailors moving back and forth over the decks. But the lucky boats were heavy with fortune, as if their bellies were weighed down with gold. Their painted planks seemed gilded with sunlight.

She imagined that must be what it was like to meet one of the Little Folk. She imagined them heavy with luck, more shining and more real than the world around them.

Noel’s father worked on a ship called the Water Queen. She liked that name.

She stayed at the docks till twilight. That was the best time for such things, when the sun was just sinking into the sea, moving from one world to another. She pressed her hand against the hull of the Water Queen’s nearest neighbor, a shining old boat called Dancin’ Tom, and let its luck flow out into her. When she was so full of luck she thought her bones might turn to gold, she walked over to the Water Queen and poured the luck into its hull.

She looked over her work. The Dancin’ Tom bobbed silently in the water, a pale gray ghost next to its softly-glowing neighbor. The dark water lapped hungrily at a phantom gash in its hull. Satisfied, she went to the next lucky boat down the line, and stripped it bare for the sake of the Queen.

She had done little things with luck since she was small. Keeping dinner from burning in the pot-oven, enchanting the wheels of her bike so she wouldn’t hit a rock and flip over the handlebars. But she had never worked so large a lucking before. By the fifth boat, every inch of her felt sore, and her bones burned so badly she was surprised that they weren’t glowing through her skin. But she kept at it, because this was what she could do for Noel. She let the luck flow into her and out of her, in and out, like the tide of her own sea, and the sea grew louder and louder till she began to hear voices inside it. Like the voice in her bones, only coming from the bones of the world.

When she had stripped all the luck from every boat that had any, the Water Queen was so solid and shining in her sight that it seemed fit to sail straight out of the world and into a fairy story. She smiled, pleased with her work, because smiling was what people did when they were pleased.

§

Noel’s gram was right; the storm that struck them was something not seen in a generation. It battered the docks and set the iron-gray sea churning. Trees were uprooted and streams flooded and shutters were torn off their windows.

The Water Queen was the only ship in town to survive. Maggie smiled when she learned this, pleased with the undisputable thoroughness of her work. It was only proper: a legendary ship to survive a legendary storm.

Every other ship at sea went down with all hands. Even the ships safe at dock were torn up and tossed about and broken upon the pilings.

The next day, everyone still alive packed into the little stone church for a special memorial mass. It was a black sea of bodies, its collected sobs rising and falling like waves. Maggie kept her head down, her face pressed into her mother’s side because everyone in church was crying and she was no good at that.

Father O’Grady spoke at length about the fleeting nature of life, which she agreed with. But he also spoke of its ineffability, its unpredictable nature. About how they didn’t have the perspective to see how it all worked out in the divine plan. Maggie disagreed.

She could hear it all in the bones of the world now. The rules and the patterns, the power that guided everything. Maybe a few people, like Noel’s gram, could hear a little something. But most of them were deaf to it. She may as well have been deaf herself, catching only fragments of it here and there, until she’d let a sea of power flow into her.

Now, when she went down to the docks, she felt the ghosts of the downed ships sailing out there still, joining the ship that had gone down with her father aboard. But the bones of the world told her other things, too. Things she had almost known, things on the tip of her tongue, almost real but not quite.

Sister Mary Theresa had been right about her.

§

After the storm, school was even more dull and subdued than usual. Even Noel wouldn’t look at her, which bothered her. She didn’t know why he was sad, since his father was alive and well.

She approached him after school, but one look at his pale, devastated face, and the warm fluttering in her chest started to hurt, as if her heart was being squeezed. She tried to bundle up the feeling and put it aside as she had done once before, but she couldn’t. It was too big, and it hurt her, and she didn’t know what to make of it. So she cried out and stomped her foot in the school yard.

Everyone turned to look at her. She turned away from them, grabbed the handlebars of her bike, and swiftly pedaled away, trusting to her luck to keep the wheels steady when her hands were shaking.

She kept peddling long past her own house, ignoring the querying shout from her mother as she passed. The voice in the earth was pulling her, and she followed, a bobbing figure on the end of a string, blinded with salt-water tears. She didn’t stop till she reached its source, a small fairy mound glowing with power in the wooded hills. She threw her bike aside and flung herself onto the damp ground. The smell of crushed grass and roses filled her nostrils.

"I want him," she sobbed, surprising herself. "I want him, I want him!" She pounded the earth with her fists, tore up the grass. When the pain didn’t go away, she rolled over onto her back and pressed her clenched fists over where her heart was, hoping to push the pain back in. But it only flowed outwards with all the more urgency, spreading through her body from her hair to the tips of her toes.

She sobbed until she fell asleep. Far away, the sun slowly sank into the sea.

§

She dreamed of her mother that night. Her real mother, cloaked in shimmering black and green, a shadow at the bottom of the sea. Her face was pale as moonlight and her eyes were dark tide pools, full of small and skittering shapes.

She dreamed of ships gilded in gold and silver, heavy with luck, as real as the Water Queen and more real, even, than that. Majestic galleons plied the waters of Avalon, elf-ships made by fairies and ghost-ships once made by man. She dreamed of towers spiraling out of the woods, courts and castles and wild hunts, a land where life and happiness were without bound.

Her mother didn’t speak to her. She stood on the shore by a silver sea and gave her a red rose tied with a red string. Then she held out the reins of two horses. The horses were to be Maggie’s when she finally came home. One for her, a black mare with silvery fittings, like her bicycle. And one for someone else, a bold chestnut stallion with startling gold eyes.

Her mother smiled, because that was what people did when they were pleased. And Maggie heard her mother’s voice in her bones.

You know what to do.

§

When she woke, she found the rose with the red string nestled amid a clump of wild rose bushes on the far side of the fairy mound. She plucked it, wrapped it carefully in her handkerchief, and set it in the basket of her bike. Then she combed the grass out of her hair and straightened her jumper, removing the last signs of wildness before returning home. She must be presentable. She must fit in, just a little longer.

The next day at school, she handed Noel the rose. He couldn’t see the string, its one end wound around the stem, the other tied at her pinky. She smiled. "For you."

"Thank you," he said, blushing up to his ears.

She kept her smile pasted on. "Keep it with you. For me."

He looked away, turning even redder. But he slipped the flower’s stem into his buttonhole.

Then the teacher rapped on her desk for attention, and they all sat down for another day of lessons. But Maggie only watched Noel, making certain that he kept the rose on him.

He did.

§

After school, she rode her bike straight to the fairy mound and waited. The sun set and the moon rose fat and full over the trees. She began to tug on the red string, and the life bobbing on the far end of it. She smiled, thinking of when her father used to take her fishing, and the sight of him reeling in something strong and beautiful for dinner.

It took patience, and persistence, but Noel stumbled at last into the clearing. His usually sharp eyes were dulled with enchantment, but they sought out Maggie’s face and stayed there, expectantly.

"Hello, Noel," she said.

"H’lo, Maggie," he replied.

Moonlight filled the clearing. The skin separating her from the world beneath the mound grew thinner. She could feel the power of that world running beneath her feet, eager and waiting. She tugged the string, and Noel came closer, until he, too, was standing on the mound with her.

She leaned forward and kissed him. His mouth was warm and sweet.

"Come with me," she said.

"Under the hill?" he mumbled.

"Yes." She stroked his cheek. "Where everything is beautiful and golden, and we will never grow old."

His eyelids fluttered closed. His fingers sought out the rose and found the red string, which had become heavy and real in the moonlight.

He opened his eyes and stepped back. His mouth dropped open. "People think you’re just daft," he said. "But you’re not daft. You’re a changeling, en’t you?"

She gave him her biggest, widest smile. The power beneath her feet made her skin prickle, made her hair stand on end. Without a sound, the door in the mound slid open. A fresh breeze, smelling of strange flowers, blew over them both. "Come," she said, giving the string a tug.

Noel was awake and alert now, fumbling at the rose, but he could not remove it from his buttonhole. "You did something to Sister Mary Theresa, didn’t you? You did something to the boats, too. It was all you!" He was pale, his lips quivering. "Gram said—Gram kept saying, but I didn’t want to—" Tears spilled down his cheeks. He thrashed like a fish at the end of the string as she dragged him back to her.

Maggie’s smile didn’t falter. "Your gram is smart," she said. "She knows how to listen. And what if I did fix the Sister? She called me nasty things and threatened to beat the devil out of me. That’s not—very—nice!" She stomped her foot in emphasis. "But in the end, it all works out. The wicked are punished and the good rewarded."

Noel shook his head. He was moving his lips, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying over the roar of power thrumming through her bones.

"Don’t be so stubborn, you silly boy! You were kind to me, and this is your reward. You’ll get to live forever and have grand adventures, and be loved by a fairy girl. Now, doesn’t that sound very fine?"

"—in the name of Christ Jesus, amen!"

The string snapped. Noel tumbled back, landing on his rear. He stared at Maggie, wide-eyed, for just an instant. Then he was gone, running through the woods. The rose fell to the ground, turned black, and crumpled in on itself.

She stopped smiling. The small, budding thing inside her twisted and wrung itself like a dishcloth.

She bent down, grabbed the edge of the door, and flung it open as wide as she could. The power flowed out, gushing like water from a spring. She stuck her hand in and let it fill her, the whole sea of it, till her bones turned to gold.

Then she carried it with her into town.

§

Noel couldn’t hide from her. She could smell him, hear his breath on the wind. He had stopped at the first house he’d reached on the road, Fiona’s house. He had begged to be let in and asked Fiona to shut the window.

But Maggie could hear him, even still.

"Maggie Brennan is a changeling! She made Sister Mary disappear, and she made the boats sink, and she just tried to pull me under a hill!"

"What?" came Fiona’s voice. She followed this with a nervous laugh. "You can’t be serious, Noel! Sure she’s a bit funny, but she’s not … well …"

"She’s mad, Fiona! And I think she’s after me, and—"

"Easy, Noel, you’re safe in here. Just sit you down, and I’ll have Mum make some tea, and you can tell me everything, how’s that?"

There was a pause. Maggie crept towards the window, inhaling Noel’s rich scent.

"Thank you," he said at last.

Another pause. Fiona did not leave the room to find her mother. She took a deep breath. "You know you’re safe in here, right? I’ll not let anybody hurt you, changeling or no."

Maggie opened the window, just as Fiona leaned forward and kissed Noel on the lips.

It was an instant, impulsive act, the girl’s heart electrified by the wild magic that Maggie carried with her.

Maggie frowned. Noel and Fiona shrieked and fell away from each other. Fiona grabbed at her head and ran screaming out the door, her hair twisting and writhing, changing to brambles. And Noel, beautiful Noel whom Maggie loved, his shriek was fierce and defiant and regal, the cry of a hawk. His new form was so lovely that she let him beat the air a few times above Fiona’s bed, glaring at her with golden eyes. Then she launched herself forward and grabbed him by his talons. A length of her hair became jesses to bind his legs, and an acorn became a hood which she set down over his eyes. He flapped his wings for balance, and then he settled in her grip.

§

"—and now I will simply have to wait until the next full moon to go back," said Maggie, pouring more tea into Miss Snips’ cup. The liquid shimmered like silver and smelled like the sea. "Which is terribly inconvenient, you know. But I will be patient." She took a sip from her own cup and sighed.

It was a lovely service she had now. Old china, painted with roses and spiderwebbed with cracks, pulled from a wreckage at the bottom of the sea just for her.

From his perch at the makeshift table, Regal Eye turned his head to watch the ghost ships sailing into harbor, returning with their holds full of treasure plundered from the depths of the sea. The lowering gray sky had a dirty green tinge to it. There would be another storm soon. Maggie stroked his feathered head to soothe him. Ghosts unsettled him, but he would get used to it.

She was still irritated at having to be stuck in town for another few weeks. But it was more bearable than usual, now that she had Noel to herself and the town was flooded with the magic she’d brought with her. Anyone could see the ghost ships, now—that is, if they’d bother to leave the over-crowded church. Father O’Grady had been at the altar praying non-stop for days now, the church grounds a tiny island in a town submerged with magic, and many people were afraid to leave it.

She supposed it was better than his first reaction, which was trying to pray over her and throwing holy water about. She had had to turn her six largest schoolmates into wolfhounds to keep him and everyone else away. They prowled about her in a circle now, growling at the approach of anything suspicious.

It wouldn’t matter after the next full moon. The door in the mound would swing open, and the magic would flow back in like water down a drain. And she would go home proudly with her princely hawk on her shoulder and her six wolfhounds at her side, and with plundered gold as a gift for her true mother.

Thunder grumbled in the distance. She carefully packed up her tea set as the sky darkened, and when she was done, she picked up Miss Snips and threw her into the sea.

Regal Eye cried softly, a single querying note. She pretended he had said something witty, and laughed.

"Come," she said, and held out a gloved hand. He flew to her and she stroked his wings, smiling under the stormy sky. Because smiling was what people did when they were pleased.

Jennifer Hykes lives with her husband and two cats just outside of Pittsburgh, PA. Her stories have previously appeared in Betwixt, Abyss & Apex, and most recently in PodCastle. Smiling comes naturally to her. Sometimes she will stop in the middle of what she is doing to stare at the sky. This is normal, and should not be a cause for alarm.

RX-200 Series: It’s Everything You Need

Samson Stormcrow Hayes

Cooked breakfast with my RX-209.

Nothing is ever over or undercooked.

And whatever is placed inside tastes delicious.

Even if it’s inedible.

Side effects include: horrible flatulence.

Drove to work in my RX-211 SUV.

It can climb mountains and cross rivers,

Or drive over other SUVs in heavy traffic.

It operates on nuclear rods that last for half a century.

Side effects include: impotence.

Came home to my condo.

The RX-242 has voice activated locks,

Switches lights on and off as I walk through each room

Even maintains a constant 72 degrees — whether I like it that cool or not.

Side effects include: extreme depression.

Turned on my new entertainment system.

The RX-250 does everything.

Records my favorite shows, downloads the latest video games,

Plays full screen films, even those I don’t own.

Side effects include: epileptic fits.

Heard the new RX-284 political candidate.

He’s expert in protocol and diplomacy and makes all the right decisions.

Not to mention he’s a clone.

So go ahead, assassinate him — there’s another in cryo-freeze.

Side effects include: fascism.

Jumped in the shower.

Soaped up with RX-288.

Brand new soap.

Cleans off everything including your epidermis.

Side effects include: cancer.

Took a new drug called RX-299

It prevents flatulence, impotence, depression, epileptic fits, fascism, and cancer.

Side effects include: dry mouth, hair loss, anxiety attacks, fatigue, elephantiasis, nausea, insomnia, acid reflux, and occasional death.

But I’m not concerned — the RX-300 series is being released next week.

Described as a well-mannered, sweet-natured, nihilistic punk, Samson Stormcrow Hayes claims that living in Los Angeles hasn’t made him cynical, just more enraged. He writes stories, screenplays, and comics including the critically acclaimed graphic novel Afterlife. He can be found in old parking lots, abandoned malls, or at www.Stormcrowhayes.com.

Soursop

Chikodili Emelumadu

1,900 words

Today, I remembered soursops for 46 seconds.

Well, I say ‘remembered,’ but it was more like I bought myself a few seconds of pain-filled pleasure, plugging into some dead guy’s memory file. Timed it just right, too. At the precise moment the Kitchen Butterfly show started, beamed all the way down from Aris Two, so that unless you had yourself a nice little Booster XD or Y series, a personal screen, and an imprinted clicker, all you got was faded footage from the universal projector, beamed directly onto the Nano cloud, hanging in place of the ozone over our wide, blank sky. Mandatory entertainment to keep us calm in our three remaining months of darkness before it was dawn again on our side of the world. The pictures loomed larger than life, lighting up the night sky. Heard on Aris One they could actually touch the images; 3D. Had themselves these little personalised shows in houses on Aris Two, where you could cook along and broadcast yourself at the same time to your own clique. So I heard. Never been up myself. Earth born. Will probably die here also.

Of course you could always try sending off for a Holo-mail but those only had extra step-by-step cooking directions embedded within the video. No Smell-O-Vision, no taster strips, nothing but grainy, blue footage. Even the finished product had no colour. And what use was any of it anyway? We no longer had crops on Earth, not after the Ascenders stripped every inch of the soil for their floating utopias. Manna-bearing pods dropped a few days a week, rationed for work and good behaviour and bartered in dark markets for units and favours. Because the UN insisted, but that was it.

This afternoon they replayed the episode where the Kitchen Butterfly AI makes a condiment, jam, from the soursops. The AI, which replaced the original hostess more than a hundred years ago, glided around an immaculate kitchen, peeling apart the spiky green fruit, digging into the white pulp to squeeze out seeds, while juice leaked down its elbows. It giggled the same way all these cooking show hosts seemed to; high-pitched, breathy. If that was how females sounded hundreds of years ago, I’m glad I wasn’t born in that era.

"You ready?" Obiora asked.

I kept my eyes on the screen, not wanting to miss a moment. "Ready." The mole on my cheek itched, a purely psychosomatic reaction, and I scratched it.

Out of the corner of my eyes I watched his hands fly over the screen, sensory pads lighting up, flashing like the electric blue-white lightning, that portent of our violent rainstorms. My brother Anugo liked to bolt from the underground shelters, scampering topside to count the new craters once the storms were over. Before the G1s filled it in with synthetic Terra. Earth was more Terra than earth now. And still we survived. Like cockroaches. Still had those. Hardy, tough, and good for nothing, like we were. Actually, I lie. See a dead cockroach and you know there’s something awful coming. Better to find cover and fast.

"Here it goes," said Obiora.

The pain was sharp, a pick shoved straight through the back of my skull and out my forehead, as the interface connected. Then it drew back and settled around my jaw and teeth, low and heavy. Saliva collected in my mouth, threatening to spill over my bottom lip.

"Too much, one second." Obiora’s hands flew over the console again and the ache abated, ebbing away in an after taste of bitterness.

I’d been expecting some additional mouth pain, something to do with the main sense being accessed, I don’t know. I’m not a scientist. But the pain is why files could only be experienced in sets. One could choose no more than two senses per package at any given time; sight and taste, or hearing and touch, or sight and smell, the latter being of no use to those born after 2298 when our babies started popping out with anosmia. We’d built a whole other planet — one and a half, if you counted the Aris One experiment — and stuck people on it for chrissakes, but we still can’t figure out how to access more than two senses in a memory file at a time. Or even give kids their smell back.

But I suppose we weren’t a priority, us ground crew. And I could always describe the metallic scent of the rain to my brother who would never smell it himself.

My sight blurred slightly and I braced myself for Double Vision®. Paid quite a bit for it, as well — 80,000 Kudi Units. It was less discomfiting to immerse oneself completely into the experience, but I had to keep one eye in my own life, so I could watch the screen through the window of Obiora’s shop and also my surroundings. It was lights out and pretty quiet, but it wouldn’t do to be caught off guard. I set the gun in my arm bracer to ‘Stun’.

It was coming up now. I’d uploaded the same file more than a few times. About as many times as they’d tortured us with images of these cooking shows. I knew that when the hostess finished her disembowelling of the fruit, she would lick her fingers, giggle, and say ‘Oh my!’ before picking a sliver of flesh and popping it into her perfectly shaped mouth. There would be a little sound, something between a slurp and an inhale, like the suction from a wet vacuum and the sliver would disappear behind impossibly white straight teeth. That was the moment I waited for.

Obiora knew it too. Just as she started to lick her fingers, I saw one glowing index digit poised to open me up to my purchase. She giggled, picked up a flame of pulpy flesh …

The link was smooth and soundless but I knew Obiora had pushed it on time because my mouth filled with the tangy, sweet sourness of the sop. The man I lived through let it sit on his tongue for a moment, cool, fat, leaking juices even though there was not the slightest amount of pressure applied upon it. He began to chew and the swollen fibres gave up their tangy, viscous nectar. The man chewed too long, gradually turning the flesh stringy. I’d paid for taste and sight, but the sensation of chewing the tough, hair-like strands, the feel of them from earlier sessions, stayed with me. He swallowed and ripped himself another piece. It went the way of the first.

His stomach was an island, separated from his head by a neck as wide as the base of a triangle. It formed a near-complete circle, big and bulging as if to distance itself from its host, juddering in pleasure as the man gouged out more of the soursop with his fingers. He wore a shirt, long-sleeved, pink and blue stripes held together at the wrist with cufflinks; a square, black face with rounded gold edges and curly gold initials, JMB. Lived with them long enough to know what they stood for; Jon Mugabe Babangida.

I’d been in this moment before. Knew what was coming next. Even though I couldn’t hear him this time, I’d heard his voice before. Raspy, startled, choking as much on the soursop as his indignation.

"Who let you in here? Who the hell are you?"

And then, "Get out of here! How dare you? Guards!"

Finally, "No! No!"

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The last image before the black creeped back in was of blood flowing out onto the man’s belly and staining the bit of white in his hands a deep pink. Enduring this bit earlier hurt, as murder is supposed to. The memory of the pain warred with the flavour of the fruit in my mouth. I stilled myself. Just at the edge of his vision a lanky man, sinewy, wearing the brown uniform and cap of a guard appeared. A mole marked his left cheek, ruining the effect of his hound-like handsomeness. Hungry eyes peering into the rising darkness of the man’s vision. Hungry everything.

My mouth tingled with the faint, coolness of saltwater. The fat man had cried as he died.

In old America procedural shows, you often hear one sentence uttered almost as often as the Miranda citations: ‘It happened so fast.’ 46 seconds. That’s all the whole thing took. My many times great-grandfather had been the shooter. He’d taken the whole ‘One day the poor will eat the rich’ thing literally. He and his cohorts damned us all. A revolution. A failed revolution. 46 seconds and his descendants were doomed to work ground crew until the Earth crumbled or finally stopped spinning altogether. Or until they died out — whichever came first. He must have known he wouldn’t get away with it. Rich people often uploaded reams of memory to offshore storage as they lived them, but Grandfather had tried anyway. And his timing sucked. Only one way things could have ended after that.

Nobody cared about our genes. We weren’t doctors or scientists or Nano techies. Or even chefs who could whip up meals from plants which now only grew on Aris Two, or the strange varieties which botanists and Rangers allegedly brought back from expeditions as they mapped out the galaxy. Chefs were useful — they performed culinary miracles which stretched the meals farther than expected in ever diverse ways. We weren’t the famed Okparah AI who spread goodwill with surprise rations or rehoused ground crew who’d earned enough units for good behaviour to Aris One. (Granted, I’d only seen that happen once in my lifetime but the chance to ascend was all it took to ensure people acted appropriately.)

There was no place for us among the new human race. Our ancestor skulked in like a rat and killed a pioneer, and like rats, they left us behind to die. We, the descendants of criminals and terrorists, the crackpots and despots and revolutionaries, trapped on an Earth that had slowed its speed.

Obiora tossed me a rag to wipe my face without looking at me. It was filthy, encrusted with bodily fluids both bio and mech. Smelled of grease. I smeared it over my face gratefully, hoping that the black of the oil would hide my tears.

He raised the needle and I waved him off. Didn’t need painkillers. "Why do you do this to yourself, man?" he asked.

"I don’t know," I replied.

In front of me, the Kitchen Butterfly AI stirred a big bowl of mush. Someone upstairs must have got bored because they sped through to the finished product and there it was, not stringy as anyone would have thought. Soft, white clouds of sweetly sour heaven. The hostess dipped one manicured finger into it, placed it in her mouth and giggled, that carefree sound of the rich and synthetic. She signed off with her signatory wiggle and wave, spreading her arms and blowing kisses with two hands. The brightly patterned cloth of her boubou; its greens, blues, and yellows with dashes of red, made her seem like a tropical insect. Old Earth creatures, as seen on screen. Flowing waters and blue-grey mountains instead of hydration capsules and craters.

"Same time next week, Sergeant?" asked Obiora. One of the tubes threaded through his replacement titanium arms dropped a black spot of oil on the floor where it sizzled as it cooled.

I pulled on my outer shell, sleek and white so that it showed up against the general blackness of everywhere. The insignia imprinted on the breastplate gleamed red, ‘JMB Corps’ and underneath, ‘Njoku Division’. I clicked my locks into place.

"Have someone see to that," I said to Obiora, pointing at the droplets of oil. He grunted behind me as I marched out to start my shift, the taste of salt and soursop upon my lips.

Chikodili Emelumadu is a Nigerian writer whose corporeal self, resides in London. Her work can be found in Eclectica, Luna Station Quarterly, Omenana, One Throne, and Sub-q magazines, and is forthcoming in African Monsters, an anthology published by Fox Spirit Books. "Candy Girl" from issue 66 of Apex Magazine was nominated for the 2014 Shirley Jackson award. She is working on her first novel which is determined to kill her.

Interview with Chikodili Emelumadu

Andrea Johnson

The Earth is dying and mostly abandoned. The generations of those left behind survive on protein bars, enforced entertainments, and the empty promise of ascension if they please their jailers. Pleasures, such as taste and smell, can be had for a price. Their life is hell, so why not get pleasure where they can, even if those tastes and smells and sounds are their own kind of self-inflicted torture? This is the world of Chikodili Emelumadu’s multi-layered story "Soursop."

If you’ve jumped to this interview before reading "Soursop," this interview includes a number of spoilers, so I implore you: go read the short story first. This interview will still be here when you get back to it in 20 minutes. Not only am I saving you from spoilers, but I want to see how many of you make the same assumption that I did. It’s something that’s happened to me twice recently, a certain oversight I have made about information in a story that is vaguely presented (or at least vague to me). Once you’ve read the story, let’s talk in the comments below about my "oops" assumption. It’s one of those things that says more about the reader than the writer, and I’m curious to see how many of us are in the same boat.

Chikodili Emelumadu’s short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Sub-Q, Electica Magazine, and Apex Magazine. Her Shirley Jackson Award nominated short story "Candy Girl" appeared in Apex Magazine issue 66. She currently lives in England with her family. Learn more about her by visiting her blog, How To Love Igbo Things, where she talks about Igbo culture and music, growing up in Nigeria, writing, and anything else that strikes her fancy.

Chikodili was kind enough to give me a behind the scenes look at the creation of "Soursop," the connections between food and storytelling, interactive fiction, her new novel, and more.

Apex Magazine: This is a dystopian future in which the Earth’s spin has slowed down, and our planet’s resources have been stripped and taken to space stations to keep what’s left of humanity alive. To be forced to stay on Earth is a death sentence. For the "ground crew" left on Earth, what have they become, biologically and psychologically? What will they become?

Chikodili Emelumadu: Still human biologically, same parts and all, which is why they have to be kept alive through the ‘generosity’ of inhabitants of the other Aris planets. Some of their Earth children have started being born with anosmia and nobody can figure out why — I don’t want to say they have devolved a sense of smell because we all know it takes a while, but this is what it feels like. Nobody can figure out why and the ground crew are not priority, nobody cares.

They eat, shag, and sleep and it is all interspersed with work — the kind of back-breaking drudgery that characterises a typical Monday morning in the office — both to keep themselves alive and to keep themselves occupied.

This sort of life screws with their heads. Human beings are not meant to exist in months of darkness or excessive light. You also have to remember these are actually descendants of those left behind, born into nothing but tedium on a huge prison planet, so in a way that is a blessing, never knowing a better life. Perhaps this helps them deal with it all, just getting on with things. There is a lot of competition even if resources are limited, some bartering, people losing their shit, and others trying to keep them in check. Lawlessness, murder, and mayhem are the order of the day but there are periods of docility, the calm before the storm, as it were, brought on by the cooking shows. They are a promise of what they might get should they ever ‘ascend.’ Others might argue this is torture. Because you watch the shows and then what? You eat air?

Basically, Andrea, they’re fucked. And they know it.

AM: As a fan of TV cooking shows, I chuckled at the description of the show’s host, imagining a handful of cooking show hosts you may have been thinking of when you wrote her. Why did you choose a cooking show for the initial step of the protagonist’s "journey"?

CE: I chose food because of its importance to the people of the protagonist’s world. Its absence makes it a valued commodity, and sustenance when it does arrive is in a form that is altered; easy to transport, easy to digest, all the effort and beauty of it stripped away in return for a product that delivers on nutrients. Human beings are basically creatures of beauty. My people, the Igbo of Nigeria say ‘Anya ga ebu uzo ri’ — ‘the eyes will first eat.’ Even people who would not normally think themselves aesthetic in nature will appreciate colour, smell, and taste of a well-cooked meal. Something dies in people when food is as scarce or as … basic as it is in this world. It’s something everyone should have. In this Earth however, nobody has it.

I’m not sure why, Andrea, but most of my stories always end up — or in this case start with — food in them. Maybe it could be because where I come from, food and the correct preparation of it is one of the (many!) standards by which a woman is judged ‘good.’ At least it was when I was growing up. One of the worst things you could tell a woman then was ‘You don’t know how to cook.’ Which of course is bollocks, because the female DNA is not tied to the preparation of meals. Why chefs in ‘the western world’ are primarily male! It’s cultural more than anything really.

Or maybe it’s because I like cooking myself and eating. Food is tied to important occasions in my culture; births, marriage, celebrations, deaths. Food and eating/drinking are euphemism for many things in Igboland; sex, conquest, er … sexual conquest … an exhaustive list!

If someone came in while you were eating, you declared that ‘they had good legs’ i.e. good fortune, and you had to invite them to dine with you too and share that fortune. If a foe came to your house, they wouldn’t eat to show their displeasure or perhaps you wouldn’t offer to show yours. Message received. Which was why a lot of us Nigerians could relate to the ‘bread and salt’ of GRRM’s Game of Thrones. And then the Red Wedding came and changed everything.

AM: What inspired this story? Why Soursop as opposed to some other food?

CE: Well, it was the end of my workday and I was browsing ‘the internets’ when I decided to check out this blog by a food blogger of the same name, ‘Kitchen Butterfly.’ This was my second time on the website and I was ornery from writing so slowly all day and being frequently interrupted, I just wanted to ‘eat’ with my eyes, something that I did not create.

There on the front page was a photo of what she called ‘custard apples’ but which I knew as ‘Sweetsops’ from reading another Jamaican blogpost a few years ago. The fruits reminded me of their cousins, ‘Sour sops’ which we have in Nigeria and which I used to devour with relish. I started to salivate and eureka! The story slammed its way into my taste buds. I think it took about an hour and a half or two hours to write. It was just there.

AM: On a related note, why does the protagonist torture himself in this way? This is obviously something he’s done before, and plans to do again.

CE: My protagonist is actually a ‘she’. A woman, not a man. (It’s interesting that you’re the second person to say ‘he’ to me when I thought I was writing her to resemble me in the way she thinks. [If it is because Obiora, the engineer, says ‘Man’ to her, he’s only using it colloquially, as one would say ‘Dude’ for both sexes.]) I think she keeps going back, not just because of the food, but because of her ancestor. There is a yearning in her to reconnect to her past, to understand what it was that caused her to end up on the wrong planet, as though by understanding, she can somehow change her fate, I guess. Already the work she does involves what some might consider ‘penance.’ She is one of the guards on the prison planet, Earth. It just mightn’t be enough for her.

And then of course, there is the added layer of the fruit which she would always taste second-hand. That thrill. Human beings are programmed to want what they cannot have and Sarge is no different.

AM: What is your writing process like? Where do your story ideas come from?

CE: My writing process has changed since my kid started going to school. Before September, I worked mostly at night, from around 8pm till 1 or 2 in the morning. Sometimes 3 am. Ideas then mostly used to come to me when I was exhausted beyond my capacity for rational thought. At first I fought them because I wanted to sleep, but when they kept coming, I embraced the added inconvenience. I’d log off my laptop and stumble to bed only to be tortured by an insistent voice going on in my head. My phone was my companion during those moments. Sometimes I’d forget that I had written the story on my mobile until much later, only to realise the work already had a few thousand words when counted.

The way I rationalised that period was, my brain waited until all my defences were down before it started transmitting.

Nowadays, I tend to write in the morning until school’s out (with other chores, duties and obligations thrown in for variety.) Depending on how much I do, I might work for an hour or two after the kid’s in bed at eight.

The switch in hours was rough for about three weeks but now it’s fine. I can’t imagine working far into the night anymore, no way. So many times I thought I was alive but I was just going through the motions, like a zombie. Lack of sleep is terrible.

AM: Your short story "Candy Girl" (also published in Apex Magazine), was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. Tell us a little about the creation of that story, and how it found its way to Apex Magazine.

CE: Given the period it was written, "Candy Girl" probably happened during one of my graveyard shifts, though I cannot recollect the specifics. There have been too many stories in between — I probably submit about an eighth of what I write. I was doubtless tired and irritable. Periods of creation can be times of personal discomfort for me, one that either breaks through my default procrastination, or else causes me to want to escape my present state, to write my way out of it.

Sleep deprived and sometimes suffering from insomnia, I’d pore through Apex Magazine, shuddering and exclaiming … I loved the uncluttered background, how its clean whiteness lulled you into a false sense of security and then down, down, dooooowwwwn the rabbit hole you went. It was exhilarating. I’d probably been reading Apex for a year before I submitted anything. Something crap, which was rejected and rightly so. I waited a couple of months and tried again. This time not only was it accepted, but the editor at the time, Sigrid Ellis, sent me a delightful email about it, which I still cherish.

AM: Your short story "The Fixer" recently found new life as an interactive story at sub-Q magazine. Did you need to make any changes to the story to make it interactive? What types of stories take best to being "interactive-ized"?

CE: I tend to think of IF [interactive fiction] like watching a film, albeit one with many possible endings. With that in mind, I would say IF lends itself well to cliff hangers, decision stories, you know the ‘will she, won’t she?’ type scenarios, fast-paced or slow burning it doesn’t matter but there must be a big pay-off at the end. Colourful stories, creepy stories, stories that rely on a depth of great feeling.

The EiC Tory Hoke is a fellow ‘Lunaite,’ that is to say, we have Luna Station Quarterly in common. She loved the creepy elements of the story when it was first published and so when she started Sub-Q magazine, she approached me about turning it into an interactive experience. She’s fun and thorough, like a journalist, meticulous and double-checking everything. The right sounds, the right atmos, the right music, the cultural tone. I can take no credit for any of the work that was done apart from writing the original piece, really. But I will say that the experience was comfortable for me because of her sensitivity to my culture, to telling the story right. "The Fixer" was written for my blog after all, where there is a huge Nigerian and Igbo community, but Tory did not modify the story to fit a ‘western’ audience. Instead, she threw open the doors and invited them in. I’m grateful for that.

AM: I read on your blog that you now own some traditional Igbo instruments, including an ubọ and ogene. As a (very) amateur musician, I’m fascinated with different types of instruments from all over the world. What can you tell us about these instruments, and about Igbo music?

CE: The ubọ is a thumb piano but it isn’t plinky. The metal keys are set into a wooden frame which in turn is fixed over a bowl-like gourd so the sound resonates. The ogene is a metal gong that comes either singly or in joined pairs, that’s played with a stick. Because the gong is tapered, it gives varying sounds depending on where you hit it. Google has photos, if anyone is interested and you can even find videos on YouTube of what both instruments sound like.

I’m not sure what I can say about Igbo music that wouldn’t sound clichéd. The internet is littered with our sound so have a listen to heavyweights like Celestine Ukwu, Chief Osita Osadebe, Oliver de Coque, or even the contemporaries like Phyno and Flavour N’abania.

Back home everyone can play something. I sing a little, but I cannot read sheet music. Only people who are trained back home can read the darned things, but everyone can play something, even if it is just an ichaka (a gourd shaker) and to time too. We can carry a rhythm and that’s all you need. Everyone takes an instrument, one person will start, then next person will follow and the next. My child who will not sing for anyone, loves this game, hearing how the different beats come together, listening out for his cue and jumping in.

AM: What’s next for you? What writing projects are you currently working on, or plan to work on?

CE: I am currently working on a novel about a group of girls on a quest. At least that is what I think on a good day. On a bad day, it feels as if the girls are working (my last nerve!) me. I’ve been planning it since the beginning of the year, made several false starts which would have disqualified a sprinter from their race (and numbering about 12-16,000 in total) before the ‘real writing’ started in September. Since then, I have started from scratch about four times (33,000+, 38000+, 53000+ words, respectively). I am a mess. Hopefully this incarnation is it. I am currently at forty-one thousand words plus and enjoying the ride. I remember reading a whole post in Chuck Wendig’s ‘Terrible Minds’ blog when I was on the 5th go and he said something about letting it get messy and ugly and then going back once it was finished. Boy, should I have listened.

I’ve finished a novel and a novella before which is probably why I did not heed his words (merely chuckled at the wit and went my way) but one never stops growing in this writing business. I’ve learned the hard way. Now I am leaving it well enough alone.

After I am done, and it is all edited and tidied up, I hope to do a collection of short stories based on things I’ve had published as well as new material. But let’s finish this novel first. I’ve got wonderful, experienced, professional beta readers lined up.

Also a vat of gin, because nothing numbs the pain of editing better than that.

AM: Thanks Chikodili!

Maxwell’s Demon

Annie Neugebauer

sits dangling his tiny legs

(because his feet can’t reach)

as he ushers us in and out.

We are sorted casually:

hot and cold

fast and slow

bad and good

but we don’t mind;

we would have spent

that energy anyway,

running to the grocery store

making love

writing free verse

so we let him guide us

through the door,

unworried.

I can’t see you now.

Maxwell cheerily claims

that nothing’s lost or gained,

but as I look for you

across a chasm under

two miniature, swinging feet,

I wonder why

we let ourselves

be sorted by a demon.

Annie Neugebauer is a novelist, short story author, and award-winning poet. She has work appearing in over fifty venues, including Black Static, Fireside, and Buzzy Mag. She’s an active member of the Horror Writers Association, webmaster for the Poetry Society of Texas, and a columnist for Writer Unboxed. You can visit her at www.AnnieNeugebauer.com.

That Old Lucky Sun

Carrie Cuinn

5,200 words

"No school today," Melanie’s mother said. "No playing outside. If you have to go into another room, you tell me so I can go with you. Can you do that?"

Melanie nodded. "Does Christopher know?"

"No, and you can’t tell him. This is a secret."

"Do the police know?"

"Melanie, no one knows. You can’t tell the police either."

"But we have to Report. It’s the rule." Melanie’s brow furrowed the way she did when her mother tried to explain what made the rain fall or how long division worked.

"This isn’t like when Mrs. Davidson started keeping the lights dimmed in class and told you not to tell the principal. That was a bad secret, and those you have to report. This is something we’re supposed to keep secret."

"Is this why Daddy went away?"

Her mother pressed her lips together for a moment, and then said, "Yes, that’s why. He had a lot of work to finish before tonight. He might not make it home in time."

"Is that why Sally’s family went away?"

Her mother nodded. "And Mr. and Mrs. Bell, from next door, and Harry the milk man, and, lots of people. There are so many things that have to be done and not much time left to do them."

"What about you, Mommy? What’s your thing that you have to get done?"

Skirts rustling around her legs, Melanie’s mother knelt and pulled her daughter in for a tight hug. "You, my love," she whispered. "I have to spend all the minutes I have left with you." Leaning back, she wiped her eyes and smiled. "Let’s make breakfast. Anything you want out of the ice box. What are you hungry for?"

Melanie thought hard. "Pancakes?"

"We can do pancakes. Anything else?"

"Mmm… Bacon?"

"That’s my girl. Do you want blueberries in your pancakes?"

Melanie nodded. "And frosting?" She chewed on her lip. "Is that too much?"

"Frosting sounds perfect. But you’re going to help me stir. And lick the spoons."

After, her mother said to leave the dishes in the sink ("they don’t matter, honey") and sent Melanie up to change into clean clothes ("you’re wearing more syrup than ended up on your pancakes") while she washed up ("how did you get frosting in my hair, Melanie?"). While the pipes rattled and the sound of water splashed in the big iron tub, Melanie looked through her closet, deciding. Days without school or church meant denim shorts and a shirt with short sleeves, but going to places where grownups worked usually meant smart dresses and the black Mary Janes that pinched her toes. Reporting would be like that, she thought. There hadn’t been many trips to see Daddy at work this year, none in months, but he worked for the Government, and the Government offices were grown up places.

She put on the dark green dress she loved the most (even though Daddy had said it made her "stand out" and her mother had said "she’s going to stand out as long as you let them make us out to be something different") and carried her shoes until she reached the bottom of the wooden stairs. Nervously, she opened the front door slowly, and peeked outside. It seemed to Melanie that not much had changed. Whatever was happening later in the day hadn’t started yet. There was still time for the one thing Melanie had been taught to do, no matter what.

She slipped on her shoes and started down the street.

"Hello, Mrs. Baker!" she yelled as she passed the old woman’s house. Mrs. Baker, who’d gone deaf very recently, went inside without so much as a wave. At the end of her block, Melanie turned right, walking past Sally’s house (her lawn was turning brown in spots) and then, a few houses down, Camille’s (her drapes were drawn), and at the end of that block on the other side of the street was Bobby’s house who used to be their paperboy. It looked like he hadn’t left on his route yet because there were papers stacked up in front of the door still. She was pretty sure he delivered right when the sun came up because he had to get done before he went to school and the middle school was blocks away, but maybe that had changed and that’s why her Daddy didn’t read the paper at breakfast anymore.

At the stop sign, Melanie looked both ways. The big poster across the street advised her to "Always Be Cautious!" On it was a tall, handsome man facing to the right, a pretty but stern-faced woman looking to the left, and a boy looking out at Melanie. "The Enemy is Everywhere" was spelled out in big letters at the bottom, just under the boy’s curly-haired terrier. Her mother had said this meant a speeding driver could come around the corner at any minute, and she always made Melanie hold her hand when they crossed. There didn’t seem to be any cars on the street at all, so Melanie made a dash for it.

The dress shop on the corner had a sign in the window proclaiming, "The New Look is Here!" The pressure she felt to Report faded a little as she stopped to study the dressmaker’s dolls in the window. The ruffled blouses were delicate, feathery concoctions compared to the plain tops her mother always wore: crème cotton voile with buttons up the front, darted cap sleeves and pointed collars. The shop’s dresses were shorter, too, ending just above the full part of the calf. She was certain that your skirt was supposed to get longer as you got older, since it was all right for her dresses to end above her knees when she was a toddler but when she started school they had to go below her knees, as if the place where your legs bend in half was something only babies were allowed to have. She wasn’t sure what to make of this "New Look" untilâ€”

"Ooh!" she said out loud, seeing the shoes at the bottom of the window. "They’re so tall."

The sign next to them read Show THEM who’s boss â€” walk proud and in style. She traced the shape of them against the window, her little fingers arcing up for several inches. The strap around the heel and the two bows across the toes made these shoes look like grown up versions of her own Mary Janes. Except the glass had a strange effect on the texture of the shoe in the window, making them dimpled in the same way as the skin on the back of her hands or across her nose. She leaned forward until her nose touched the glass, trying to read the tiny sign inside them that said…

Man-Made Alligators!

"I have to Report now," she told herself. "Citizens Report." She jammed her hands into her pockets and walked away as fast as she could.

By the end of the block, she felt better, and was determined to be extra polite to anyone she walked past. The grocer was so busy stacking apples on the table in front of his store that he didn’t see Melanie until she said, "Good Morning!" in her happiest voice. He looked down at her and his eyes widened. His hands shook, and one of them flew up to his chest.

"I’m sorry to startle you, Mr. Barra," Melanie said. "Good morning," she added, a bit quieter this time.

"Should you be out like this?" he asked.

"I’m old enough to walk by myself. It’s just my mother likes to take walks so she always wants to come with me."

"Where is… your mother?"

"Home." Melanie shrugged. "Cleaning up, I think. But I have an important thing to do today, Mr. Barra, and I couldn’t wait. I am going to Report!" She grinned. "It’s my first one."

"I’m sure they don’t need kids like you bothering them at the Station," Mr. Barra told her, crossing his arms.

"Our Citizens are the eyes, ears, and heart of our Nation," she recited at him.

He shook his head but said, "I suppose you know where it is?"

She nodded.

"Well, get going then."

She walked away, smiling proudly. The next three blocks took her past the barber shop (closed for another few hours still), the druggist (who didn’t allow kids at the soda counter anymore, Daddy had said, so there was no reason to go inside) and the library ("Every book approved by the Loyalty Program!") before she reached the wide stone steps leading up to the Police Station.

Inside, she marched up to the wooden counter and said, "Excuse me," to the uniformed man on the other side. He looked up from the newspaper, then looked down at her and sighed.

"Carter," he yelled. "We got one of yours." To Melanie, he said, "Have a seat, kid," and waved toward an empty bench. She dutifully sat, trying hard not to fidget too much. She breathed in and out deeply, sat up very straight, got bored, and decided to count to 100 before going back to the counter again. She got to 47 before she decided that 100 was too big a number, but at that moment another man in a police uniform walked into the room.

"That her?" he asked the first officer.

"You see anyone else it could be?"

The first one went back to reading the paper, and the second walked over to Melanie. Very kindly, he asked, "How can I help you?"

"I’m here to Report," she said with all of the seriousness she could muster.

"Let’s get you to an interview room, then," he said. "Follow me."

He got her settled into a chair, had her recite her name and address and exchange number, before leaving her alone for "just a moment." When he came back (Melanie had counted to 100 and said the alphabet and the colors of the rainbow) he set a paper cup down in front of her.

"Hot chocolate," he said with a smile. "My boys love the stuff. What about you?"

She took it while he sat down in the chair on the other side of the table.

"Now, Melanie, do you want to tell me why you’re here?" he asked.

"My mother said not to tell, but I know that’s the wrong answer."

"And how do you know that?"

"I’m in 5th grade already. We did Documented Answers to Questions Asked by Friend and Foe in 4th grade. We had a whole section on it, and prizes. I won a blue pencil."

"Blue is an excellent color."

"I think so. I wanted the hamster but Mrs. Davidson said that maybe the hamster should go home with someone else and she gave it to Billy but she’s not our teacher anymore."

"Because of the hamster?"

"No, because she got the thing in her eyes where she didn’t like the light anymore and they took her to a hospital to live." Melanie took a sip of her hot chocolate.

"How did you feel about that?" the man asked gently.

"She was nice, I guess, but if she’s not suitable anymore then that’s okay, too. We had Mrs. Lemon for the rest of the school year and she let us take turns writing the math on the blackboard but this year we have Mr. Simons and he makes me sit in the back of the class."

"Are you mad at your mother, Melanie?"

"What?" The little girl frowned. "I don’t think she wants me to sit in the back."

"Are you upset with her for anything else?" he asked.

Melanie shook her head.

"Do you love your mother?" he asked, leaning forward a little. He spoke softly when he added, "Are you happy at home?"

"I have the very best mother," Melanie told him.

"Then why do you want to Report her?" the officer asked.

"Not her," she said. "The bombs are the bad thing. I think they’re a secret you’re supposed to tell, even though she said they’re not. And I am a Citizen. I am."

He sat back and stared at her for a moment. Then he took the pen and the little notebook out of his shirt pocket.

"Melanie, my name is Officer James Mallone. Can you tell me what day it is?"

She did.

"And the name of our city?"

She told him that, too.

"Please repeat your address for me one more time."

She did, and helpfully added walking directions. Then he asked about the bombs, and made her repeat the exact words her mother had used to explain them. She told him everything, even about breakfast and how the milk was gone now and the sink was full of dishes.

He wrote it all down.

There was a quick knock at the door before it opened. Melanie’s mother rushed in but stopped suddenly, looking at Officer Mallone and his little notebook. The door closed behind her with a small click.

"I’m sorry if my daughter has been any trouble, sir," she said quietly. "I’ll take her straight home."

"I’m afraid it’s not that simple, ma’am. Your daughter has made some statements which will need to be investigated."

Her mother looked over her then, eyes shiny with unspilled tears. "Baby, what did you do?"

"I told what you said about the balloons. I had to, didn’t I? I don’t want to be bad."

"You did exactly right, Melanie," her mother said. "You always do. Let me sit with you." They traded places then, Melanie standing so her mother could take the chair, and then letting herself be pulled gently onto her mother’s lap like when she was small.

Officer Mallone, who’d watched silently until they were settled with Melanie’s head against her mother’s chest and her mother’s arms around her tightly, said, "I can’t ignore what your daughter has said, Mrs. Rhodes. Children often want to please their parents, teachers, and other authority figures, but making a false Report is a waste of time and resources."

"My daughter would never do that."

"Well, clearly, she has."

"Officer, you do whatever you need to do, as long as you do not separate me from my daughter today."

"You’re not suggesting that she was telling the truth."

"I’m not suggesting it. I’m saying it. I’d rather that she hadn’t said anything at all, but that isn’t her fault."

Officer Mallone didn’t say anything for a minute or two. Without another word, he stood up and left the room. Her mother didn’t rise, so Melanie stayed where she was. After a while, she grew tired. The steady rhythm of her mother’s breathing, the unmoving air of the interview room, and the warmth of the overhead light folded together to wrap her in a comfortable boredom.

She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, Mallone was back, talking to her mother in a hushed voice.

"You’re sure?" he asked.

"I wish I wasn’t," Melanie’s mother said softly, "but my husband has been working on this project. He is a lot of things, but he wouldn’t lie to me. He wanted me to know, so Melanie and I could at least be together."

"Where will you go?"

"Home," she said. "Nowhere else to be, really. Are you letting us leave?"

He nodded. "I’ll file the paperwork on this, but it won’t be seen in time. I think that’s better, don’t you?"

Her mother stood, carefully setting Melanie on her feet as she did, and took her hand. "If you have people," she said to him, "you should be with them."

"My boys â€” their mother was passing, but they couldn’t. She took them up North. I don’t know exactly where. I’d have gone but we thought it’d be safer this way."

She put her hand on his arm, for a long moment, before leading Melanie outside.

No one stopped them from leaving the station.

"Are you hungry?" her mother asked, once they were down the wide stone steps. "I think it’s lunch time."

Melanie’s tummy rumbled. "Yes," she said.

"I could murder a sandwich and a pulled soda, couldn’t you?"

Melanie looked up. Her mother, dark curls aglow with the sun shining bright behind her head, was grinning.

"You’re not mad at me?"

"My darling girl, we are going to have the best afternoon. A big lunch, here in town. We’ll go shopping and spend all my pin money," she said with a laugh. "Then we’ll go home and put on the record player and dance the bomb boogie until the stars fall from the sky."

They laughed all the way to Max’s, each inventing bigger and more elaborate lunch plans until the waitress, a young woman with bleach-blond curls piled into a bun on the top of her head, announced they could get a box to go but they didn’t have seating for children like that just now.

"That’s a shame," Melanie’s mother said. "Refusing service to law-abiding Citizens is everywhere these days." She shrugged. "Come along, dear," she said to Melanie. "We’ll have to spend Daddy’s money somewhere else."

"Wait," the waitress said. "I can get you lunch to go. Give me your order and I’ll bring it to you outside."

"We can’t even stand inside while our food is prepared?"

"It’s not me," the waitress insisted. "It’s the manager."

"Afraid someone will think you’re decent human beings?"

"You don’t have to be so difficult. I’m being nice to you." The waitress crossed her arms, her shoulders hunched forward to match her pout. "You people make this harder on yourselves."

"Thank you," Melanie’s mother replied with a smile. "You’ve suddenly made me feel much better about the rest of my day." She pulled Melanie out of the restaurant.

Instead, the girl sat on the green bench outside of Sugar Rations while her mother went in. She came out with a large pink box and two bottles of pop. Melanie carried the drinks while her usually quiet mother greeted â€” loudly â€” every person they passed.

As they neared their house, a breeze blew over them, and a faint rumble tickled the bottom of Melanie’s feet. Her mother stopped, tilted her head up, one hand shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. Melanie stopped too, searching the sky.

"There!" her mother said. A long object was shooting straight up, higher than the buildings and trees, up and up, until it dwindled in size and could no longer be seen.

Melanie clutched the bottles to her chest and asked in a small voice, "Mommy, is that the bomb?"

"It’s a rocket," she was told. "There should be more, dozens… look, there’s another!" her mother cried, pointing to the right. This rocket was much smaller, and already high up before she saw it. There was only a moment before it was gone, too.

"Your daddy made those," Melanie’s mother said. "He really did it." She sighed. "Let’s get home before the icing melts." She didn’t mention any more rocket launches, though Melanie counted at least two others before they reached their door, bumped into another child who’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to stare up at the sky, and nearly tripped getting up the steps to her porch without looking where she was going. Once inside, with the shades drawn and the sound of curious neighbors shut out, it was easier to focus on the business at hand: a party-size assortment of pastries, more than Melanie had ever seen in her house at one time.

After a while, they both had to admit that there was such a thing as too many pastries.

"What do we still have?" her mother asked. She was lying on the couch, one hand on her belly.

Melanie rolled over, opened the lid of the bakery box, and peeked in. "Half of a slice of cake, one of the flaky ones with the chocolate in it, and a blue cupcake." She let her head drop onto her arm, and closed her eyes.

"Croissant, darling girl. The flaky ones are croissants. What flavor of cake?"

"Yellow?" She didn’t check.

There was a knock at the door. Melanie’s mother groaned slightly, but pushed herself off the couch and, stepping over her daughter, went to answer it.

"Mrs. Rhodes?" a man’s voice asked.

"Officer Mallone," her mother answered. "Would you like to come in?"

Melanie turned herself onto her side and opened one eye. The grownups were looking down at her. She waved weakly.

"Dessert for dinner," her mother explained. "Why not?"

"I can’t blame you," Mallone said.

"We have croissant," Melanie said carefully. "And a cupcake. It’s blue. Want it?"

"No, thank you," he told her. "I’ve come to take you both somewhere safe."

"Where would that be?" her mother asked.

"Out of town. I think you’re right about… what you said earlier. I made some calls and did you see the rockets that blasted off? That happened all over. Every state, in other countries even. Important people, gone in those ships. Whatever’s going to happen next, it’s going to be soon."

"What’s happening next is that this little girl needs a bath. Would you mind picking her up?"

"Oh. Sure." He scooped Melanie off the floor. "Where to?"

"Upstairs."

In the bathroom, she turned the taps on, and started to unbutton Melanie’s dress.

"How’s your skin?"

"Scratchy," the girl said.

"Do you want oatmeal tonight?"

Melanie nodded sleepily.

"Could you?" her mother asked Officer Mallone, who’d stayed out in the hall. She pointed at the shelf nearest the door. He found the right tin and handed it over. She shook a cup or so of a fine, light brown powder into the steaming water, stirred it with her hand, and turned off the taps. Peeled down to skin, her daughter stepped into the tub and nearly disappeared beneath the milky water.

"It used to be that we all looked alike," her mother said. "All different shades of skin, and no one cared." She took a wash cloth from the stack and handed it to Melanie. "Now, our skin is all anyone talks about."

"Mrs. Rhodes, we don’t have much time."

"Amelia, please."

"Amelia, then. The cities will be hardest hit. Small towns like ours won’t be safe either, not for long."

"I can assure you, James, we won’t be safe at all. My husband was clear with me. There’s one due to land right on top of us, on account of how close we are to the swamplands. You know how they say we congregate near water."

Melanie handed the washcloth over and turned. Her mother carefully washed the mottled skin along the back of the girl’s neck.

"If there’s nowhere else to be, I’d rather be at home," Amelia said. "Thank you, though."

"If we can get going quick enough, we can get to the state park. It’s miles and miles of nothing. No reason to bomb that," Mallone insisted. "We can wait it out."

"Melanie, what did I tell you about the bombs?" her mother asked.

"A bomb is a bad thing, you said."

"Can you explain it to Officer Mallone?"

Melanie held her hands out, framing the shape of a large circle in the air. "Imagine a balloon full of fire that falls from the sky." Her hands dropped, down and away from her sides. "And when it hits the ground, the fire spills out." Her fingers flickered, splashing across the top of her bathwater.

"Is it a very big fire?" her mother asked.

"Yes, it will be a very big fire."

"Can we run away?"

"No, Mommy, we can’t. There are a lot of bombs, and they’re going to fall everywhere. There’ll be nowhere to run to."

Her mother turned back to the officer. "My husband works for the Department of Defense," she said.

"I know, ma’am."

"So believe me when I say that these are not the sort of bombs you can wait out. These are the kind where everyone who could find themselves a seat on those rockets has already left the planet."

"But that’s hardly anyone. Maybe thousands out of the whole population. They can’t really be planning to kill everyone else."

"You said your wife was passing, Mr. Mallone."

"Yes. I mean, she told me, early on. It was never a secret between us. But to most folks, she was just a policeman’s wife."

"Until your children were born?"

He sighed. "Twin boys."

"They didn’t take after your side of the family." The way her mother said that, Melanie knew it wasn’t a question. She relaxed into the warm water again.

"No, Amelia, they did not. You could tell right away they were not like other children."

"Except, it turns out, they were like quite a lot of other children. Some of them just didn’t show until they were older. Melanie’s coloring came in over the summer. What color did you used to be, baby?"

"Peach," Melanie said.

"And what color are you now?"

Melanie held up one hand, softened by the bath but still faintly scaled. "I’m me colored."

"That’s right, beautiful girl. Wash your hair."

To Officer Mallone, her mother said, "You grew up in a world with secret soldiers and internment camps and rules and Reporting, all because two or three generations ago, some people who looked like everyone else but weren’t started marrying in. None of that worked so you really can’t believe they’d set the world on fire to see us gone for good?"

In the distance, there was a tinkle of broken glass and a faded scream.

"Your husband left you here, alone, to face this," Mallone said. "Why would you want to stay? Please come with me."

"My mother never told me what we were. She only said, ’Don’t marry a man with green eyes. He might not know it, but you could be related.’ I had no idea, until Melanie, that I was anything else. It’s not his fault that he married me, but his job â€” well, it’s hard, and he has a security clearance. Do you understand?"

"That’s not enough to make a man leave his wife and child behind. Not if he loved them."

"They did these tests. Melanie’s blood comes from me, not him. He could keep doing the important work he was doing, or he could give it up and stay home with me. He’s a patriot, Mr. Mallone. He did what he had to do for our Country."

"Can I get out now?" Melanie asked.

"Of course," her mother said. The girl stepped out of the tub and let herself be wrapped in a large towel.

"I do appreciate you thinking of us, Mr. Mallone, but my mind’s made up. You can stay if you like. I think we’re going to have one more go at that cake."

"Why did you tell her?" he asked quietly. "I can’t figure that out."

"My girl is a runner and a climber, aren’t you Melanie?" Mrs. Rhodes asked.

"Yes," she answered back.

"If I hadn’t told you why you needed to stay home, where would you have been today?"

"In the park, maybe. Or down by the creek; Tommy said he saw baby frogs the other day and I wanted to see them, too. Or, at Sally’s if her parents had come home."

"See, Mr. Mallone? I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to be with her when the time came. Believe me, I would rather this had all gone another way."

Her voice cracked at the end. Melanie offered one corner of her towel to wipe away her mother’s tears.

Officer Mallone stood in the bathroom doorway for another moment, and then left without a word.

"Which is your favorite nightgown?" Melanie’s mother asked. Downstairs, the front door clicked shut.

Melanie thought for two seconds and then announced, "The purple one."

"That’s my favorite, too."

Dressed for bed, Melanie sat on the couch while her mother locked the door, checked the windows. She watched while her mother picked up the pink box from the floor ("No more, Mommy, I’m full") and put it in the kitchen.

"Which record do you think?" Mrs. Rhodes asked as she opened up the Philco. "A waltz?"

Melanie shook her head.

"How about Frankie Laine? Your father used to play this for you when you were a baby."

"Okay."

The needle touched down and the record began to play.

Melanie’s mother sat down next to her on the couch, and they leaned into each other. Somewhere near them, people outside were yelling loudly. The sound of their words blended with the music, an angry staccato punctuating the crooner’s mellow voice.

"Is he on his way home now?" Melanie asked.

"Who?"

"Daddy. His work is done now, isn’t it?"

Her mother opened her mouth but the lights flickered. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The lights steadied.

"I’m sure that he will be home soon," she said finally.

"Do you miss him," Melanie asked.

"Every minute. But I have you, and you remind me of him."

"That’s good."

Her mother laughed. "Yes, baby, that’s very good."

The song changed. After a few verses, her mother began to sing along, softly. Show me that river, take me across, wash all my troubles away…

"I remember this," Melanie said.

The windows rattled suddenly. Outside, silence fell, replaced by a strange whistling sound.

A rumble followed after, and another gust of wind, stronger than the first, slammed against the house.

"This is it, Melanie," her mother said, grabbing her hand. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

They ran up the stairs. The pictures, framed photographs of her parent’s wedding, baby Melanie, Melanie learning to walk, her whole life rushing by in black and white, shook against the wall as they bolted past. Down the hall, into her parent’s room â€” her mother shut the door behind them and half-pushed, half-lifted her into the bed.

As they scrambled to get under the covers, the darkness turned gray.

Downstairs, someone banged on the front door.

"Is that Daddy? Is he home?" Melanie started to climb out but her mother grabbed her and pulled her into a hug.

"Yes, baby," Mrs. Rhodes said. "Wait here and he’ll be right up. Close your eyes and keep them closed."

The gray turned pale, as if the moon had winked on or the sun was rising at the wrong hour.

"Daddy really came home?" Melanie asked, her eyes clenched shut. "Are you sure?"

"Where else would he want to be? Any moment now, we’re going to be like that lucky old sun," her mother said. "Rollin’ round heaven all day." She held her daughter closer as the light filled the room, a bright white that burned Melanie’s eyes. Her skin itched and she cried out.

Carrie Cuinn is an author, editor, college student, and geek. Her writing often subverts classic science fiction, blending it with feminism, anti-colonialism, myth, poetry, weird, and more. (Plus, she really likes robots.) Recent publications can be found in Star*Line, Liminality Magazine, and Unlikely Stories, and her latest story is forthcoming from Apex Magazine in 2016.

Cuinn founded Dagan Books, Ltd. in 2010, and Lakeside Circus, a digital magazine of very short fiction, in 2013. In her spare time she is works toward a degree in Business / Public Adminstration, listens to music, watches indie films, cooks everything, reads voraciously, and sometimes gets enough sleep. She’s online at @CarrieCuinn and at http://carriecuinn.com.

Various Kinds of Wolves

J.J. Hunter

here: have a red cap

or a red shirt

in this story you are the prettiest creature

or expendable

or both

have some accessories: a fresh-baked cake

a fresh act of heroism

a fresh-faced naiveté

have a pot of butter

and the good regard of your fellows

have some good intentions

and trust in your mother

your commanding officer

do as they say

have an impossible situation

where grandmother has lost her mind

or her body

or both

have death or an axe to kill her

have the kindness of strangers

cost

the moral of the story is

your fault regardless

and also

no one is safe

J.J. Hunter lives by the motto, "Think like a scientist, dream like a poet." In addition to some truly magnificent experimental pizza topping combinations over the years, this has led her to work in science education design, and to cultivate playful exploration of the bounds of things.

J.J. makes her home in Boston, MA. She is the founder and co—admin of the online poetry discussion community POETREE @ Dreamwidth.

The Open-Hearted

Lettie Prell

5,300 words

Palmer was standing at the counter in Chichen Itza Coffee at nine in the morning when he spotted the next big thing. He’d pushed open the blue-papered doors minutes ago to find himself the only customer in the place, which was unusual for Chichen even though it was tucked down an otherwise deserted alley in the twisted heart of Greenwich Village. The human being was a herding creature. A shop could be empty one minute and two-thirds packed the next. That he’d walked into a dead zone, ahead of the crowd and ahead of the curve, made him hyper-alert.

So when the twenty-something barista with a nose ring and tattoos cascading down the left side of her neck set the white china pot containing his Lotus Eater blend in front of him with a clink, along with a tea bowl, he saw the mark in his peripheral vision.

"Wait."

She looked up at him, a willow man hunched into a hook, hands jammed in the pockets of his black cashmere overcoat, his spiky hair pointing forward like antennae. "Do you want a hemp cookie with that or something?"

"What’s that on your wrist?"

She beamed and held out her left arm. It was an oval-shaped tattoo, a glistening green jewel. It looked remarkably three-dimensional. Smaller, honeycomb-like markings guarded the central slit of a cat’s-eye image. But he’d seen somethingâ€”

Then the markings moved and the slit of the iris bulged open. It didn’t look like an eye anymore. It looked like a huge organic pore. He tried to peer inside, but it snapped shut.

The back of Palmer’s throat started itching.

"It’s a stoma," the barista said proudly. "Like plants have, only bigger. See, on either side are the guard cells that control the opening."

Palmer coughed and put both hands on the counter. He could barely bark out his next question.

"Body … bod mod?"

She nodded, her brow wrinkling. "Do you need some water?"

He shook his head fiercely from side to side. He didn’t understand yet, but this was it. His find. "Whâ€”where?"

"My brother did it." She looked at her wrist, admiring. "He’s a genius. He’s totally into bod mod, you know?"

Palmer hastily poured some tea and gulped it. It was too hot, but he grimaced it down. It helped his throat a little. "Where’s your brother’s shop?"

She looked at her wrist, admiring the work. "Oh, he doesn’t have one yet. He just moved into the Village." She hesitated, then spoke low. "He fixed my mod in his apartment."

It took all of Palmer’s will to keep him from grabbing that wrist. "I need to meet him. Now."

The woman stared at him and then looked over her left shoulder, to the back of the cafe. "Cory? This guy wants to talk to you."

He’s here. Just then five people walked in the door. The young woman waved Palmer to the back. "Sorry, I can’t introduce you. Customers."

Palmer shrugged and grabbed his tea and cup. "No problem."

He headed for the table in the far back, where a muscular guy sat under the mural of a ziggurat. He looked like he’d be as at home in a gym as at a chess tournament. He nodded for Palmer to sit. Palmer cradled the steaming cup in both hands and let the scent of Lotus Eater bloom surround him as they introduced each other. Cory had never heard of Palmer, but when he found out what Palmer did, and that he was interested in his sister’s bod mod job, he sat up straighter, ready to talk. This pleased Palmer; the guy was smart. They spoke in quiet tones that blended with the chatter that was growing around them as the human herd continued to wander in to graze.

Cory had a medical degree from Johns Hopkins and an engineering degree from MIT. Impressive, given he looked barely thirty. His dark bangs kept swinging over his right eye as he sipped a tall cinnamon-laced mocha. "Stomata are how plants breathe," he explained. "Except what they breathe in is carbon dioxide, and they breathe out oxygen."

"So your sister’s stoma is breathing in what she breathes out."

Cory’s mouth tugged into a wry smile. "That would be quite impossible, given the biological differences between people and plants. It’s the idea that we’re engaged in a reciprocal process that balances our own emissions. Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gasses."

Palmer sat back, already plotting the trajectory of the trend. This was a high concept. "Climate change. A wearable political statement."

Cory relaxed back in his seat. People loved to be understood. "And it’s felt. When Hammond’s stoma respirates, she experiences a sense of breathing, not in her lungs, but in her wrist."

Palmer looked to the front counter, where the barista wore a beatific smile as she foamed a small pitcher of milk. "She feels more one with the Earth."

It wasn’t a question, but Cory nodded.

Palmer’s thoughts were in fast-forward. "Everyone’s complaining about being sucked inside their technology. People don’t notice where they are because they’re staring at their devices." He wasn’t really talking to Cory anymore. He was rehearsing for investors. "Here’s the antidote for that. It’s a new way of connecting with the natural world. It’s a hyper-connection. Superior."

"That it is," Cory murmured, smiling. "That it is."

They spoke business. They shared a second pot of Lotus Eater tea and ate black sesame laddoos. It was nearly noon when Palmer emerged from Chichen’s alleyway onto the winding streets of the Village again, as mindful as if he were walking in a labyrinth. He had what he needed, including Cory’s contact information and his e-signature on a contract to represent. It was one thing to spot a new trend. It was another art altogether to help people make money off it.

§

Palmer knew where he needed to go next. He took the C train straight up to Columbus Circle and phoned Mona as he strolled north and west toward his condo.

"Palmer," a grandmotherly voice crooned with a sexy edge. "So nice you rang."

"How’ve you been, Mona?"

"As always. Fabulous." A sigh. "You haven’t been around in a while." Mildly chiding.

"Well, you know, I’ve been working."

"Do tell."

He coughed. "Just something new. Very new. I saw something today."

"Do tell." Mona’s tone brightened. She listened to Palmer’s two-sentence pitch. "Intriguing. We’re having a cocktail party tomorrow night. Our usual. Would you like to stop by? Maybe I can put you in touch."

Mona was amazing at reading people. Palmer silently thanked her for artfully avoiding a situation where Palmer would need to invite himself, or beg. "I can make it," he replied, as he thumbed to cancel tomorrow’s appointments. "Sixish?"

"See you then."

She clicked off. Mona was gracious, but when she was done talking that was that. Palmer returned his device to his coat pocket and walked past Sanjay who had opened the huge iron and glass door to the building for him. As always, Palmer was flattered to catch the doorman’s lingering look in his peripheral vision. He got on the elevator and rode up to the eleventh floor, turned right and entered his India-inspired apartment, where he wasted no time preparing his spa tub with warm water and eucalyptus oil. As the tub filled he took his time undressing and brushing all his clothing, including his coat, before carefully hanging them up in their appointed places. He meditated while he soaked, clearing his mind and preparing himself for the work ahead. Afterwards he donned his silk kurta pajamas, poured a cashew feni with lime, and set about distilling his message to a single, perfect imageâ€”instantly understood and as elegant as it was irresistible. Not the catch phrase that would heat up the masses. That was for advertising. His specialty was positioning the idea as a fine investment for those smart enough to see it. Palmer always made sure his investors felt smart.

Palmer had never brokered this kind of trend. He usually dealt in clothing, discovering new designers and connecting them with the right boutiques. He researched the long history of body modification. Decades ago there was a guy who’d made himself into a lizardmanâ€”complete with a bifurcated tongue. Another man zebra-striped himself. People got subdermal implants of horns that sprouted from their heads. But as he worked he became even more convinced of the success of this new project. Stomata weren’t for the freakish community of bod mod addicts. This was a wearable mod. A stoma could be created in a simple two-hour procedure that Cory had insisted could be done outside of a hospital. Think day spa, and mass market appeal soared.

Palmer stayed up through the night until he’d solidified his strategy, then drank down a liter of Gerolsteiner mineral water while he brewed espresso and made buckwheat mini pancakes, which he topped with paddlefish caviar, crème fraiche, and chives. He ate standing on his balcony, taking in the view of the park below and the lightening of the sky over Queens that portended the coming of the sun.

§

Palmer woke in the mid-afternoon, performed a full ninety minutes of Ashtanga yoga, second series, showered, and then dressed for cocktails in his black skinny suit, an eye-popping fuchsia Duchamp floral tie and Hugo Boss shoes of the exact same color. He left early and stopped at his favorite German café for spicy eggs and knackwurst spread with onion confit. He wasn’t going to Mona’s to linger at the hors d’oeuvres table. He washed his meal down with black coffee and a large glass of water. When he checked his device again it was already five-thirty. He paid, tipping exactly seventeen percent, and headed straightaway to a liquor store. Mona’s continued friendship was ensured with a good scotch or a bottle of liqueur. He purchased both. This was a big night.

Mona’s place was Upper East. He’d known her for nearly a decade, and for the first three years he kept wondering what she did for a living, after which he realized how Upper West a thought that was and gave it up. Perhaps it was investments, but he could readily believe Mona’s wealth was in her connections. Money flowed naturally in her direction and to her sumptuous cocktail parties, as inevitably as a river flowing seaward. Mona was the sea, miraculously contained in a three-bedroom apartment. The master suite was always tastefully locked, but the party spilled generously into all remaining spaces. One bedroom was the art room, containing an inviting black leather couch and armchair, its ambience provided by bold paintings covering three decades of the Modernist period and an actual Calder suspended from the ceiling in the far corner. The other bedroom was given over to a saltwater aquarium wall, a scrimshaw collection, and a single white couch that curved like a wave around the remainder of the room. The living room was generously sized, but always felt cramped with the press of the cocktail crowd, and held a spectacular view of the park. It wasn’t a penthouse by any means, but it felt like one. Certainly many of the attendees were important enough to merit a grander location. Yet everyone was perfectly content at Mona’s. Her parties were a weekly occurrence, but no one dared show up uninvited. Palmer prayed Mona’s radar had engaged when he’d called, and she’d invited the right people for him to meet that evening. Investors.

He wasn’t disappointed. Mona was waiting for him at the door, a bold geometric print hugging her ample curves, her hair in a flaming red fauxhawk. "You’re a doll," she crooned in delightfully old-fashioned slang as she accepted the bottles of Glenmorangie and Cointreau. By the time she’d made a quarter-turn Jane had appeared to unburden her and whisked away the gifts. Jane had worked for Mona as long as Palmer could remember. He doubted Jane was her real name, but it was difficult to envision her with any other name, and even harder to see her in any other role than tending to Mona’s events.

"Come," Mona beckoned. "There’s someone in the aquarium waiting to meet you."

The crowd parted before Mona. Jane reappeared and pressed a drink into his hand. Palmer sipped it before he stepped into the aquarium room. He smiled. A Rusty Nail. Jane was a gem.

Palmer was surprised to find not a white-haired man waiting in that room but a young black woman in an orange sheath dress. No, not orange, Palmer corrected himself, but saffron, that perfect new tone this summer. The woman’s back was to the door as she watched a trio of clownfish float past, but she pivoted at the sound of Mona coughing politely. Palmer recognized her at once. The tickle in his throat confirmed his host had anticipated him perfectly. He took a quick sip of this cocktail to stifle the cough.

Mona introduced them, but Joyeux needed no introduction. She’d made her fortune in the music industry, but she was also the CEO of Whim Erratica, her lifestyle company. The gaze from her eyesâ€”the color of fertile soilâ€”was hypnotic. "I flew in from Dubai just to meet you. May I call you Palmer?"

"Yes. Yes of course." He coughed. Here was the Empress of Earth to benevolently purchase everything Palmer had. In that moment he realized stomata were going to debut globally.

They sat on the white couch and he downloaded everything to her about the project. No price was ever mentioned. There wasn’t even a handshake deal. He simply trusted and gave. Abundance would come his way in time, as they did with Mona’s parties. For every action there was a counter action. That evening he understood the perfect balance of Taoism organically, in his bones, and surrendered himself to Joyeaux’s ten thousand eyes.

§

Joyeaux chose fall Fashion Week for the unveiling of her new lifestyle look. She partnered with two up-and-coming designers to craft their own takes on what to wear with stomata. Sphere Harlequin, a Japanese-American woman, designed a line she dubbed ForestWare, using technologically enhanced fabrics to simulate tree bark and rustling leaves. Palmer particularly loved the conifer skirtsâ€”minis that shimmered when the wearer walked. These were paired with brown midriff-baring layered jackets that reminded Palmer of pine cones. The other designer, Raffih, went a meditational route, layering Persian and Indian patterns with gold and green brocades and frog fasteners.

All the models had to agree to get stomata. Cory personally oversaw the modifications. Joyeaux breathed enough of a hint that the show was packed with those curious to see what twist she was bringing. Palmer sat next to Joyeaux, who had Cory tucked at her other side. Joyeaux had taken a fancy to him. They were now one formidable power couple.

Sphere’s designs opened the show. There was a general murmur of approval as the first model hit the runway, which was followed by a wave of gasps as the crowd discovered there was more here than the fashion. In Sphere’s show the stomata mimicked buttons, carrying the details of the garments onto the skin of bared midriffs, shoulders and arms. Stomata even peeked out from the backs of legs just beneath the hems of those conifer skirts. Palmer enjoyed the parade and envisioned the adjectives the critics would use: fresh, modern, earth-conscious.

Then it was Raffih’s turn. A model stepped forward dressed in a flowing sheer tunic that trailed on the floor behind her, over lavishly patterned, loose-fitting pants. The crowd did not gasp but was utterly silent, for in the middle of her forehead, as a third eye, was a stoma, embellished with jewel-like insets that sparkled as she moved. Another model stepped forth and another till there was a pantheon of parading goddesses arrayed along the runway. Stomata as bindis, as bejeweled navels. The effect was hypnotic. Then the pièce de résistance appeared: a barefoot model who opened her hands in a graceful mudra half-way down the runway to reveal stomata on each of her palms. As the model continued a type of temple dance, more stomata were revealed, one each on the soles of her feet. The crowd went wild. Raffih came onstage at the peak moment, a model on each arm and flanked by his entire company. The lights flashed up, then down, and all froze in a tableau. Slowly the lights played over the bejeweled stomata. As Palmer watched he became aware of a rustling or … sighing. It was unsettling in its strangeness. A murmur moved like a wave through the assembly. They appeared to be listening to the respirations of the models’ stomata. Joyeaux grasped Cory’s hand, and they rose to their feet. Lights and cameras trained on the pair, capturing Joyeaux’s famous face in a carefully crafted smile of generosity and pleasure.

Palmer was puzzled. He thought Cory had told him the respirations were felt and only by the person with the stoma. Was this a recording, then? Part of the ambience of the show?

As the crowd continued to applaud, Palmer, who had secretly wondered why a model would consent to get a bod mod just for a show, at last understood. Joyeaux had successfully branded stomata as lifestyle. Every model on that stage was suddenly going to be very popular indeed.

§

Within a few short weeks wherever Palmer turned there were stomata. The fashion trend on the streets favored Sphere Harlequin’s designs over Raffih’s. ForestWare shimmered along the sidewalks like fallen leaves moved by wind. The fashion-forward got the bod mod to match. Stomata winked at Palmer from shoulders along Park Avenue, from necks in Soho, from women’s calves on the subway.

The ad campaign played on the climate change theme he’d originally anticipated. There was Million [HU]man Forest: a tapestry of male hands-clasping-arms, all with stomata, in a show of strength. Bee the Solution: an animation as if viewed through a gently undulating pool, of women’s backs with stomata placed in delectable places.

One day as Palmer was searching the web for stomata’s growing presence he found the model who’d received stomata on her hands and feet had her own Internet show. It was called A Moment with Grace. She was dressed in one of Raffih’s meditational designs. For the full thirty minutes she sat in full-lotus position, which exposed the stomata on the soles of her feet, and holding her hands in that same graceful mudra that had stolen the show at Fashion Week. All four stomata winked open and closed in unison, slowly and hypnotically. Palmer turned up the volume on his bluetooth and gasped. He could hear those stomata breathing.

Shortly thereafter he was winding through the Village when he passed a storefront and saw it was occupied by several dozen people. He could hear the stomata respirate from the half-opened door. Everyone wore beatific expressions.

Soon thereafter he stood in his living room one night, empty martini glass in hand, recording Cory explaining to Kitty Karr on the Much Later Show that the bare minimum number of stomata one should have is three.

"That’s enough to engage the auditory effects and reap the benefits." Cory had a vibe about him that radiated simplicity and trust.

"Good to know," Kitty said and swiveled to reveal a pair on her shoulder, beautifully arranged to suggest an hourglass shape within a patch that glimmered softly. "I want to talk about those benefits in a little bit. But first, you can see I have two stomata right now." She batted her eyes at Cory. "Where should I get my third?"

The audience laughed at her suggestive tone. Cory took it in stride. "Why stop at the minimum? More is more."

"Funny you should say that," Kitty replied. "I heard there’s a certain number of stomata where other people can hear them on you. Can hear them respirate. Is that the word?"

Cory smiled. "Yes. The fabulous four configuration was first worn by the model Grace. That produces an effect where your stomata are audible from about four or five feet, which is within the range of normal social distance."

"A Moment with Grace!" Kitty looked into the audience, and they applauded as if it was their own idea. A few whistles augmented the clapping, presumably from the show’s fans.

Kitty was in top form. "Can I have too many, Cory? Or are they like diamonds?" She put on a wistful look to the audience’s delight.

Cory smiled. "I can see you in a necklace of stomata …" He demonstrated on his own neck. "With maybe a drop down the front here …" He looked at the camera as he moved his finger a bit lower. "… and another stoma here …" His finger moved to what on Kitty would be deep in her cleavage.

The audience whooped as Kitty gave Cory her you’re-a-naughty-boy look. Palmer grimaced. Everyone referred to stomata like they were jewelry and not a surgery. What would it take to reverse something like that?

Kitty leaned in. "But now I have to ask you the tough question, Cory. You know what I’m talking about. Scientists have come forward to debunk stomata. They say they don’t do a thing about reducing greenhouse gasses or anything else. Because … and you have to help me out, Cory, because I’m no scientist. But we evidently breathe out carbon dioxide because it’s a poison, and plants breathe it in because they need it to do their thing. What do you call it?"

Cory’s smile had disappeared. "Photosynthesis."

"Right. And they’re saying people can’t do photosynthesis."

Cory shrugged slightly. "I never said people with stomata are capable of photosynthesis. Never. Simple. Next question."

The audience tittered, and there was a spatter of applause that quickly ceased. Kitty nodded. "Okay, okay but there’s the elephant in the room here. Cory, what about ForestWare? Million [HU]Man Forest? This whole thing has captured our attention precisely because of its eco-consciousness."

Cory leaned toward her, and Palmer caught his breath. "Exactly, and you can trust what I’m about to say. These stomata do something. I assure you."

Kitty’s posture mutated from investigative reporter to confidante. "Tell me."

"Isn’t it evident? You have stomata. Have you noticed their opening and closing movements have a calming effect?"

Her hand went up to touch them. "Yes."

"Don’t underestimate what that can do for you. When we’re able to lower our stress levels, we can think better and make better decisions. For ourselves and for the planet."

The audience sighed its approval. Kitty seemed genuinely touched. "What’s not to love about that? Am I right?" Applause. "I’m loving this."

Cory was nodding. "Wouldn’t it be great if our world leaders had stomata?"

Kitty beamed. "Two words. Win win." More applause.

"And the more stomata you get, the more you feel this," Cory said. "It’s a metaphor in flesh if you will."

Kitty pressed both hands to her cleavage. "This is important, isn’t it, Cory?" She appealed to the audience. "I love this man!"

The crowd was roaring now and she had to shout. "A genius in our own time, everybody! I’m Kitty Karr and that’s all, kits!"

Palmer thumbed to mute and freeze, and then did as many American viewers were doing right now, he imagined. He poured another drink. In his case a vodka martini, heavy on the Russian Standard. He stood idly staring at the freeze frame as he took his first sip.

Wearing stomata indeed. Let them have their fantasy while it lasted. Besides, he thought, good things were bound to come from the increased concern for climate change. Good things.

§

Palmer stood in front of his bathroom mirror. He picked up his hairbrush. When he lifted it to his head his robe fell open, exposing a stoma so large it covered his entire chest. Its lips opened, a tremendous maw exposing his lungs and heart, everything all the way down to the top of his intestines. He screamed, but the sound came out of the gaping hole.

He woke, sitting up in bed with such force it felt like he’d been flung back into his body. He ran a shaky hand over his chest, feeling only skin. Why was he sweating? It was just a dream.

He moved through his morning as if he were an automaton. He was mildly surprised when he discovered he was descending to the subway at Columbus Circle. He took conscious control of himself and chose a train down to Chichen Itza Coffee.

He found the blue paper covering the door had been removed, and when he entered he saw the booths were drenched in sunlight.

"Hi there, stranger." It was Cory’s sister, Hammond, standing behind the counter. The place was bustling. This crowd without a doubt was into stomata. He could hear the respiration from where he stood, the default background noise these days.

"What can I get you?"

He wasn’t sure. "What’s the tea of the day?"

She cocked her head. "You didn’t come to try the elixir?" She laughed when she saw his confusion. "Don’t tell me you haven’t tried any yet. It’s the new big thing."

He laughed a little, embarrassed. "Okay then. Elixir."

She started to go over the ways he could have it, but he interrupted. "Serve it to me the way you think I should experience it."

She had attractive dimples in her cheeks when she smiled. He found a stool at the communal counter and kept his sunglasses on so he could observe his surroundings without being obvious. Most of the customers were drinking out of pretty little glass chalices in jewel tones that reminded him of stomata. The elixir, he thought. How old was this drink trend if there was already a special glass made for it? Answer: overnight, if it was manufactured by the lifestyle industry. The clues pointed to Joyeaux and her Whim Erratica. He shook his head, amused. Why shouldn’t a bod mod and fashion trend have its own drink in its own specially designed chalice? Still, being behind the curve stung.

He watched Hammond put a tiny purple chalice on a tray, swing it gracefully to the up position, and head toward him. He found himself being grateful for the ordinariness of her movements. She transferred the contents of the tray to the tabletop. Two ounces of golden liquid sparkled inside. He took a sip. It was crisp and pleasant, alighting on his palate sweetly at first but finishing refreshingly dry. It didn’t seem to be alcoholic. He looked up at her questioningly.

She smiled back and then furrowed her brow. "You’re not feeling it, are you? Don’t you have any stomata?"

He shook his head.

"I’m so sorry," she said, turning away. "You should get some. You’re missing out."

He continued to sip and observe the crowd. Across the room three young men and a woman were sitting at a table holding hands. No, correction. They were touching at their wrists. Palmer didn’t need to get up and go over to investigate. He was certain they all had stomata on their wrists, were joining their stomata. They all wore peaceful, pleasant expressions. The young woman licked her lips, and Palmer looked quickly away.

Someone had hung a flat screen over the mural of the ziggurat. A Moment of Grace was on. The now-famous model meditated underneath an arch arrayed with a rainbow of tiny chalices. As he watched, she reached out, eyes still closed, picked up a glass, drank its contents, and placed it back in its holder. There was no hesitation or fumbling in her movements. As he pondered this, she reached out and took the glass that was immediately above the emptied one. Communion, he thought, looking at his own empty chalice.

The young man sitting on the stool next to him leaned in. "Enhances the view, doesn’t it?" He winked.

At a loss, Palmer smiled and agreed.

The man’s eyes shifted focus briefly, and then he made a kind of scooping gesture with his left hand. "Yeah, man. Now I really see."

§

Less than a week later, the President of the United States mentioned her seven stomata at a special White House press conference on the environment. Stomata were becoming popular among world leaders who were making a show of how it improved their ability to process complex information and make better decisions. Palmer focused on her intently during the remainder of the twenty-minute conference. His hand reached out and hit pause just as his brain told him there. His hand shaking, he inched the tape back and then inched forward frame by frame.

There it was. She looked briefly nowhere, intentionally. And then she flicked her hand in one of those gestures he’d been noticing since his first taste of elixir at Chichen Itza.

"What is it?" Palmer had been asking himself this for days now. He could hardly sleep. The phenomenon wasn’t mentioned on the web anywhere. He spent hours stalking the city, looking for people with stomata so he could follow them, watch them, catch them making one of those out-of-place gestures. He saw them looking nowhere, intentionallyâ€”and yet it was somewhere in a way that said I see.

He turned down an invitation to cocktails at Mona’s because he was nervous about entering a room filled with movers and shakers sprouting stomata, signaling and discussing things he’d find incomprehensible. It was as if a portion of humanityâ€”and an elite group at thatâ€”had become a new species.

He shut off the broadcast. He closed his eyes. He opened his eyes. He did not fix himself a drink. He thumbed open a website and made an appointment.

§

They gave him a sedative for his anxiety. He sat in a comfortable reclining chair, enjoying the sensuality of the leather upholstery when Cory entered the room, his unruly bangs caught up underneath a blue cap, looking every inch the surgeon despite the fact this wasn’t a hospital, but Cory’s flagship bod mod spa. Go for the best of everything, that was Palmer. Get the quality job from the original master.

Cory smiled. "So we’re doing the Magnificent Seven today? Good choice. So many are coming back for second and third procedures. The Seven won’t disappoint." He consulted the screen next to the gurney on which Palmer lay. "And you’d like to leave the location and design up to me." He looked down at Palmer.

Palmer could hardly talk, but he waved his hand and managed to reply. "Serve it to me the way you think I should experience it."

"You got it." Cory half-turned away, and Palmer saw the man’s own string of stomata running from behind his ear and presumably around the back of his neck. Something just on the horizon of his neck glistened.

A face appeared upside down in his vision. "We’ll be feeding you an intravenous drug that’s safer than anesthesia. I want you to count from one to ten for me."

Cory had something different on his neck.

As the needle went into Palmer’s arm, he said, "I guess I’m curious about what other people are seeing."

Cory smiled softly. "Isn’t it obvious? Another dimension, one in which everyone can see the interconnections."

"Please count for me now," the anesthesiologist said.

"One … two …"

As Palmer resurfaced, he said the word "three" but he couldn’t remember why. He took a deep breath and heard his other breath, too. "I’m opened," he said. It was the best way he could describe it.

Cory was there, smiling at him, welcoming him to the other side. Palmer’s stomata opened and closed in synch with the brilliant man’s breath.

Lettie Prell likes to explore the edge where humans and their technology are increasingly merging. Her science fiction stories have appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Apex Magazine, and its Book of Apex anthology, and elsewhere. Her work has also been featured on the StarShipSofa podcast. She is an active member of SFWA.

Interview with Lettie Prell

Andrea Johnson

The author of the novel Dragon Ring, Lettie Prell’s short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Starship Sofa, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Analog, among others. Her fiction often explores the blurred edges where humanity and technology combine into something new and ideas of downloaded human consciousness and the singularity.

"The Open-Hearted" is my favorite kind of story, as in it’s not exactly about what it’s about. What I mean by that is there’s the story as it’s presented, what it’s about, its subject matter. And then there is the next layer, usually something that’s never explicitly mentioned in the story itself. This is a story about trends, and the speed at which they grow from underground fad to nationally mainstream style choice, how they go from "that’s weird!" to "everyone is getting one, when are you getting yours?". I couldn’t help but think of trending hashtags on twitter, or memes that gain popularity, or just about anything that goes from throw-away line to captioned and re-captioned photo, to the point where most people have no idea where it started or what its original meaning was.

What isn’t explicitly mentioned in "The Open-Hearted," and what really spoke to me through the brand names and body modifications and organic smoothies was that of control and choice. The main character, Palmer, needs this specific trend to realize that all this time, he’s been choosing. If you choose a trend because you like it or simply because you’d like to try it, you’ve chosen it for yourself. Doesn’t matter that advertising has pushed that choice towards you, you’ve still made that choice of your own volition. But when something becomes so entrenched, and so mainstream, are you following that trend because you’re interested in following it? Or are you following it because you feel you have to? Adding some more weight to the decision is that the trend outlined in "The Open-Hearted" is a non-reversible body modification that has touted positive side effects such as additional sensory perception and eco-consciousness. So yeah, this body modification sounds like a great thing! But what if you don’t want it?

I’m one of those people who finds fashion trends fascinating, even though I make my own personal fashion decisions based on what doesn’t itch. I love seeing cool piercings and cool tattoos on people, yet I have no plans to get more holes in my ears or ink my own skin. Unlike Palmer, I don’t practice the trends I enjoy watching. He and I have very different personalities. Once you’ve read the story, I want you to put yourself in Palmer’s shoes, either with his personality or your own. Would you make the same decision he made at the end of the story?

Apex Magazine: Much of your science fiction explores the merging of humans and technology. But "The Open-Hearted" explores the merging of humans and a plant-like structure. Through a body modification technique, people are getting "stomas," which are new orifices of a sort. What inspired you to go with botany instead of technology? Why stomata?

Lettie Prell: First we need to understand I can only comment on a story in retrospect. I used to be a serious amateur photographer, and maybe because of this, my inspirations come in the form of a strong central image. In this case, I saw a meditating woman with breathing stomata in the palms of her hands. I had to write about it.

So in retrospect, this story might be about the possibility of a more organic singularity than the usual scenario. By that I mean maybe we don’t have to bring about an exceptional achievement like downloading our minds into computers, or inventing an artificial intelligence with a soul, in order to cross the threshold that Vernor Vinge called the singularity back in the 1990s. Vinge himself allowed that the singularity might be brought about by an advancement in biological science, although he was thinking more in terms of improvements in human intellect. I ended up exploring the idea that the singularity might be transmitted as a meme in the latest fad.

AM: Palmer is a trend spotter. He identifies the next big thing, and presents it to investors. They’ll leap on the fad, and see who can make the most money off of it the fastest. Everything about Palmer’s life is trendy — what he wears, what he eats and drinks, where he lives. He drank the Kool-Aid of his own self-created cult of personality. But this new trend of irreversible body modification makes him nervous. Why is he okay with all the other trends in his life, but not this one?

LP: With every other fad, Palmer has been in control. This is the fad that is creating almost a new species of human, and Palmer sees that happening, and finds it disturbing, because of his part in helping bring it about.

AM: As the story progresses, people learn more about their stomas, and what the stomas can do. If given the opportunity, would you get one a stoma (or four)? Why/why not?

LP: In another interview, I was quoted as saying I’d like to upload my consciousness into the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. So sure, getting seven stomata are a snap compared to that. Seriously, what I’ve understood from reading about quantum reality is our five senses are limiting our view of the world. I’m drawn to science fiction because I want to explore what’s beyond.

AM: What was the most challenging part of writing "The Open-Hearted"?

LP: As with any short story, my challenge is to stick with the central image and not be lured astray. An earlier version of this story didn’t work. I fixed it by chopping out the bits that weren’t serving the main plot. When I did, I was able to see the story more deeply, and write to that great depth, which improved it.

AM: Where do your story ideas come from? What is your writing process?

Where the magic happens for Lettie!

LP: As I noted at the beginning of our conversation, I typically see an image in my mind, which is usually — but not always — the climactic image. Obsession sparks the creative thrust, and I’m off. Sometimes I write the draft very quickly in a matter of a weekend. Other times it takes months, during which I despair in my lack of progress. I’ve decided the creative process is outside the space-time continuum. It doesn’t care how long I take.

AM: You’ve attended WisCon for many years, and also became a regular at ICON, Iowa’s longest running science fiction and fantasy convention. What’s your favorite part of attending events like WisCon and ICON?

LP: Discussing science topics and their implications for the future, whether the actual future or some speculative version of it. I enjoy the people. I love being around other writers because of the camaraderie. I also enjoy the fans, because so many of them are insanely intelligent, and have intriguing viewpoints to share.

AM: Your profession has you directing research at the Iowa Department of Corrections. How might crime, punishment, and all the involved psychology integrate with a science fictional story?

LP: As a matter of fact, I’m just now starting to bring the justice system into my science fiction. I can’t discuss any of it, of course, but those stories will start to appear.

AM: Who are some of your favorite writers? Are there any works in particular that inspired you to start writing?

LP: I’m enjoying reading the new work out there, although I’m behind. I enjoyed Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, but I don’t have time to get into the rest of that seriesâ€”one of the banes of being a writer. I just finished Speak by Louisa Hall, which I’d heartily recommend to Apex readers.

I have a lot of favorites from the past, including Nancy Kress, China Miéville, William Gibson, Ted Chiang, Ursula LeGuin, and many others. However, as far as what inspired me to start writing science fiction, it wasn’t any one writer. No, it was that great unknowable creative force that sneaked up behind this criminal justice statistician one day, took command of her vocal cords, and made her tell one of her closest friends that she’d been thinking of writing science fiction.

Her friend smiled non-judgmentally and said, "That sounds like a great idea."

It was.

AM: Thanks Lettie!

The Doctor’s Assistant

Anton Rose

Grandma gave my first needle,

taught me to sew,

showed me how to knit threads together,

make something new,

nimble fingers silhouetting the divine.

It came in handy white-uniformed at the front,

dragging broken men from the mud, pulling

flaps of flesh together with thread, then sending back

the almost-dead to serve their country

as cannon fodder. Through thimble fingers I watched

my men being blown to bits

so I could hardly resist when you showed me your plan,

your maps and diagrams, electrical charges,

how to take scraps and rebuild a new man,

recycle old flesh and bone, reverse

the callous expense of war.

I gripped my needle, spun my thread,

no longer papering over cracks

but aiming two fingers at death itself.

When he opens his eyes I will teach him to sew,

help him rediscover the wondrous dexterity

of fingers and thumb,

see if he can stitch my flesh, too,

do for me what for him

I have already done.

Anton Rose lives in Durham, U.K., with his wife and their dog. He writes fiction and poetry, and his work has appeared in a number of print and online journals. Find him at antonrose.com or @antonjrose.

The Upside of the Cataclysmic Meteorite Event

Zebulon Huset

When everyone thought the sky

would go red, it instead          went purple.

Scientists said the red spreads

through the midnight blue to the point

it will be lavender            any day now.

Don’t you see the surreality of your absence?

Squirrels have become the highest paid

animals in Hollywood since Eddie Murphy

finally took up permanence residence

in his lunar space station.

Sulfur looks like mustard,       but its gasses

taste more like asparagus.

One day, they say, we’ll get that glowing

red sky the doomsday prophecies promised,

and the meteorite’s fine shroud of diamond dust

which blocks the sun’s rays will finally top

LA’s smog-sets, and you’ll see the ice spreading

on the 405 and you’ll remember how much

you hated LA               HELL-A

and your dramatic exit and your promise

and wherever you are you’ll stop mid-stride

and feel the irresistible urge to come home

where I’ll have snow mobile suits and flint

and tinder and hot cocoa mix and miniature

marshmallows

ready.

Zebulon Huset hoards his minutes and hours in San Diego where he writes, edits, and teaches creative writing. He recently posted Zebulon’s Guide to Flash Fiction Submissions (2015 year-end version) at his blog Notebooking Daily which lists over a dozen contests and more than 150 publications looking for flash fiction. His writing has appeared in The Southern Review, The North American Review, Dark Matter, The Portland Review, The Cortland Review, Permafrost, The Georgetown Review, Bayou, Harpur Palate, and Westview, among others.

The Tomato Thief

Ursula Vernon

14,000 words

Grandma Harken lived on the edge of town, in a house with its back to the desert.

Some people said that she lived out there because she liked her privacy, and some said that it was because she did black magic in secret. Some said that she just didn’t care for other people, and they were probably the closest to the truth.

When her daughter Eva asked her to move into town, to be a little closer, Grandma Harken refused. It got to be a regular ritual with themâ€”"Mother, won’t you move in a little closer? I worry about you out there alone."

"What’s going to bother me out here?"

"You could step on a rattlesnake," said Eva.

"I’d rather get bit by a rattlesnake than the neighbors," said Grandma Harken. "I get enough people coming whining to me as it is. As it is, some of ‘em get tired and turn around. A twenty minute walk has its advantages." She held up a needle and threaded it on the first try. "Besides, I can still see what I’m doing. Talk to me when I’ve gone blind."

Eva sighed, the way she always did, and said, "If you won’t come in closer, you could have someone come out and live with you. Hire a girl, maybe."

"Garden only feeds one," said Grandma, which was at least three-quarters of a lie. Eva knew this, but didn’t possess the sort of steel that would allow her to call her mother out on it.

"You could at least get a dog."

"Can’t get a dog. It’ll offend Spook-cat."

(Spook-cat was a tiny ginger tomcat who lived in perpetual terror of loud noises, sudden movements, and unexpected shadows. He lived under Grandma Harken’s bed and would occasionally consent to sleep on her pillow, despite her snoring. He was deeply intimidated by the jackrabbits that lived in the desert, so trips outside to do his business lasted less than two minutes, followed by immediate retreat back under the bed.

He had seen a mouse once and it had frightened him so badly that he had not come out from behind the stove for a week.)

Eva sighed again.

It was debatable whether she knew the real reason that Grandma Harken lived so far out of town. Her mother kept a lot of secrets.

In fact, it was because of the tomatoes.

Tomatoes are thirsty plants and they don’t always want to grow in a desert. You have to give them criminal amounts of water and they’ll only set fruit in spring and autumn. Summer heat is too much for them and if they don’t die outright, you’re pouring gallons of water a day into the sand just to keep them alive.

Grandma Harken had spent the better part of fifty years growing tomatoes and she had a spot in her garden that held water just a fraction longer than anywhere else. It got shade in the worst of the afternoon and sun in the earliest part of the morning.

Her tomatoes were the biggest and the juiciest in town. She started them on the windowsill on New Year’s Day and she planted them out in February. They ripened in spring and she pulled the plants up as soon as the last one had been picked.

The same people in town who muttered about black magic swore that she was using unholy powers on her tomatoes. This was a little more plausible than general black magic, because obviously if you had unholy powers, you’d want to use them on your tomatoes. But Grandma Harken was extremely useful to have around and knew more about dangerous desert spirits than anyone else, so people shushed their whispering neighbors and smiled politely when Grandma passed.

Also, if you were very polite, you might be able to beg a few tomato seeds from her. The resulting plant wouldn’t be up to her standards, but it would still bear a damn fine tomato.

Grandma Harken had been watching her tomatoes very closely for the last few days, and not just to catch the hornworm caterpillars.

One of the smaller ones was starting to come ripe, and she was looking forward to it more than a little.

She’d been feeling worn out and overly responsible lately. It had been a long, long year, and there’d been that business with her grandson and the jackalope wife. It had all worked out as well as could be expected, but it had been a worrisome mess while it lasted. Her grandson had gone back east on the train, and good riddance to him. Boy had no business in the desert. But she worried anyway, partly for him and partly for his mother and partly because a foolish young man with brooding eyes can cause no end of heartbreak in the world.

Worrying didn’t do any good, but somehow that never stops anybody. Mostly it made her tired.

She didn’t look any older, so far as she could tell from the mirror, but her heart felt like somebody had been scraping the last bits out with a spoon.

If she could just sit down at the table with a knife and salt and some good white bread, maybe a little mayonnaise … well, it seemed like that’d put the world back into the right sort of shape around her. Sometimes the best cure for life was a ripe tomato.

She got up the morning after Eva visited and went out to the garden. The air was still cool and the porch steps creaked as she walked down them.

The tomato was gone.

Grandma Harken knew right away that it was missing, but she looked around the plants anyway. There were three of them, planted in a triangle, covered in heavy green balls. A few were turning red, but the tomato she’d kept her eye on, the one that had been right there …

Gone.

It had been there last night. She’d looked at it in sunset and thought that it’d be ripe this morning.

"I ain’t losing my mind," she said firmly. "That tomato was here."

The tomato continued to be absent. There were no seeds on the ground or tracks in the dirt to indicate where it had gone.

The rest of the garden was large and dusty, like desert gardens often are. Jackrabbits liked to come lie in the shade under the beans. Jackrabbits aren’t known for eating tomatoes off the vine.

§

Strange things happen in the desert. Grandma Harken looked around suspiciously and went back inside to make tea.

§

Two days later, there were two fine tomatoes almost ready to split. Grandma Harken stroked their scarlet skins. "Tomorrow," she said, with satisfaction. She had almost succeeded in putting the previous tomato out of her mind.

But tomorrow came and Grandma Harken beheld a distinct absence of ripe tomatoes.

This time she went over the garden practically on her hands and knees, but she could not figure out where the tomatoes might have gone. Jackrabbits didn’t steal tomatoes, and javelinas, which might, would have made a fine mess of the garden. It was too high up for a box turtle, unless somebody was outfitting box turtles with stepladders these days.

"It ain’t a kid from in town," she muttered. "They know better than to try, and anyway there’s no footprints." The only marks on the dusty ground were from Grandma Harken’s own sandals.

She prowled around the edge of the garden and found nothing. The fence was undisturbed.

She was crouched in front of the plants, staring at them, when she saw it.

She breathed in sharply. It was easy to miss, but if she looked in exactly the right place, she could see what looked like a single human footprint in the dirt between the three tomato plants.

She was so still for so long that Spook-cat came up and twined around her, making small mrrrrp? noises. She rubbed him under the chin automatically, barely noticing.

A thrasher called from the palo verde at the end of the garden. The noise sent Spook-cat skittering inside, and woke Grandma from her reverie.

The footprint had five clear toes. The owner had been barefoot.

"Thief," hissed Grandma Harken, and stomped back indoors in a bitter state of mind.

She wrapped herself up in a quilt that night and sat in the rocking chair on the back porch. "We’ll see what kind of rat bastard steals an old lady’s tomatoes," she grumbled.

(Grandma Harken thought of herself as an old lady, because she was one. That she was tougher than tree roots and barbed wire did not matter. You did not steal an old lady’s tomatoes. It was rude, and also, she would destroy you.)

She leaned her shotgun up against the porch railing in easy reach. Probably she wouldn’t need it, but there was no telling how low a body would sink once they’d started down the road of tomato theft. Murder was not out of the question.

Though I’ll try to aim for the legs, she thought, and grinned fiercely to herself.

The sun sank and the sky blazed redder than a ripe tomato. The herb leaves rustled and the bean plants whispered to each other farther down in the garden. The great sprawling squash had not yet set fruit, but they were sending questioning tendrils out in all directions, and the peppers were the size of Grandma’s thumb. All around her, the garden whispered, a slow exhale after the heat of the day.

Grandma Harken leaned back in the rocking chair and fixed her eyes on her tomatoes.

§

She woke in the morning with dew collecting on the quilt. Her back was stiff and two more tomatoes were missing.

She shot out of the rocking chair fast enough to knock it over on its runners and cussed the air briefly blue.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" she said, when she’d run out of swear words and turned back to religion. "This ain’t funny anymore!"

She stomped down and found a nearly ripe tomato, which she yanked off the vine and took inside. It sat on the counter. A day or two and it would be almost as good as the others.

Almost.

She was angry now at herself as well as the thief. Falling asleep when she was supposed to be standing guardâ€”what was that? Was she really that doddering an old woman?

"Not tonight," she said grimly. "Not tonight."

She watered the garden by hand and did the laundry, just to keep herself moving. She napped all afternoon, which Spook-cat quite enjoyed.

Then, as evening fell, she brewed herself up a pot of cowboy coffee, with the grounds still in the pot.

It cost more than blood these days, but that was life. Salt, flour, coffee, and sugar were the only things Grandma Harken bought at the store, and the store could only get them in because Father Gutierrez was on good terms with the train-priests.

It didn’t matter how good the terms you were on, though, they were expensive as the devil. Most of the time she got by with tea and honey and cornmeal, same as everybody else.

Still, didn’t matter how strong you brewed it, tea was no substitute for coffee.

"I’ll be up half the night drinking and the other half peeing," she said. "Not a chance I’ll fall asleep this time."

She sat down in the rocking chair with the coffee mug in one hand and prepared to wait.

In the small hours of the night, Grandma Harken woke up because her bladder was killing her.

Her first thought was that she’d fallen asleep again, and damnit, she wasn’t that old.

Her second was that the thief was less than ten feet away.

It was a mockingbird.

Grandma Harken stared.

It glowed like silver under the moonâ€”really glowed, every feather edged in white fire. When it shifted, it threw light across the prickly tomato leaves and left sharp-edged shadows across the ground.

The bird perched on top of the tomato cage for nearly a minute. Occasionally it would flick its tail and set the shadows dancing.

It might have sat there all night, except that Grandma Harken’s bladder was making its displeasure known. She squirmed in her chair and the rockers creaked on the porch.

The white patches on the mockingbird’s wings blazed up and it flew.

She shot out of her chair, bladder be damned, and charged down the steps. She could see the mockingbird flying, the sagebrush casting fantastic shadows, the saguaros briefly silver instead of blackâ€”and then it was a distant spark dwindling into the desert.

Grandma Harken watched it vanish against the sky.

"Mockingbirds," she said aloud, stomping toward the outhouse. "Mockingbirds stealing my damn tomatoes."

She knew mockingbirds eat fruit if they can get it, but she had to admit, she would not have expected one to make off with a full-sized tomato. Cherry or grape tomatoes, sure, but one of my big ones?

She was up and down three more times that night, as the cowboy coffee made itself felt, but she was hardly sleeping anyway.

Mockingbirds also don’t leave human footprints. And generally they do not glow like foxfire.

"Shapechanger," she said to Spook-cat, who slept in a small orange puddle atop the pillow. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Again."

§

The next night, she didn’t bother with coffee. She cleaned up the house and shooed Eva off when she looked inclined to stay late.

"I don’t need you fussing over me," she told her daughter. "I ain’t gonna change and it’s just gonna make us both snappish."

Eva was weak-eyed, mild-mannered, and had a disposition as yielding as a featherbed. It was hard to imagine her being snappish about anything.

But she’d also known her mother for a very long time, and she recognized make us both snappish as an olive branch. She stood looking down at the dishcloth in her hands, and said finally, "I’m worried about Brandon, that’s all."

"He’s back east," said Grandma Harken. "With your father’s kin. He’ll be fine."

"Do you think so?" asked Eva.

Grandma Harken was sharpening her garden shears. Her hands slowed on the file and she said finally, "He’ll get in trouble and he’ll figure it out. Best to do it without us standing over him. It’s the only way anybody ever learns to clean up after themselves."

"He’s been so upset since the girlâ€”"

Grandma Harken threw down the shears. "He did a damn fool thing, and I cleaned up the mess for him. He should be upset. I’d be more afraid if he wasn’t."

She exhaled and picked up the shears again. There was a burr in the edge of one blade and she set to work on it with the file. "Not your fault," she said. "I shouldn’t yell. But see what I mean? I’m not fit for company now."

Eva looked at her.

"I ain’t been sleeping well." Grandma held that out like a peace offering, because her daughter was sweet, not stupid.

Eva nodded. She threaded the dishtowel through the ring by the little sink. "Can I do anything?" she asked.

"Let me stew in my own juices for a day or two," said Grandma Harken. "Go fuss over someone who’ll appreciate it."

Eva smiled faintly. "You’re the one I worry about."

"I’m not dead yet," said her mother. "And I’ve still got a trick or two left to play."

She made an effort to be pleasant for the rest of the evening, and even let Eva extract a promise that she’d try to sleep more.

It ain’t a lie exactly. I’ll try to sleep more once I’ve stood off my tomato thief. Whatever they might be under the feathers.

As soon as her daughter had left, her whole demeanor changed. She laced on her good boots, in case she had to run, and locked Spook-cat in the bedroom. She put her garden shears in her apron pocket and made sure that her shotgun was loaded up with rock salt.

Grandma Harken knew more about shapechangers than anyone in town would have guessed, and that meant that she knew enough to be careful.

Mockingbirds are cousins to ravens, and that’s a bad game to get mixed up in. Never had any patience for riddles.

"Blessed St. Anthony," she prayed, as she folded her quilt, "give me strength to defend my tomatoes."

This seemed like a rather trivial thing to bother a saint with, once she said it aloud, so she added "Andâ€”errâ€”defend me from temptation, amen."

She pulled out her silverware drawer and dumped it on the kitchen table. With a ball of twine in one hand, she set to work.

By the time night fell, her best kitchen chair had been altered all out of recognition. She’d tied every fork and spoon to the back of it, flat with the bowl up or the tines out. Leaning back onto it would get you poked in a dozen places. There was one ladle aimed directly at the small of the back.

Grandma Harken was rather proud of that ladle.

She dragged the chair out on the porch and sat down on it, sitting bolt upright. She had a cup of tea in one handâ€”herbal, because she didn’t need to spend another night like the last one.

And she waited.

She dozed off once or twice, but as soon as she slumped backwards, the forks and the spoons jabbed her awake. The moon moved carefully in the sky overhead.

It was nearly midnight when she fell asleepâ€”really asleepâ€”and that lasted nearly a minute. But the ladle prodded her in the small of the back and forks were pressing into her shoulder blades and she came awake immediately.

The mockingbird landed atop the tomato cages and looked around. It was impossible to read anything in those small white eyes, but Grandma Harken thought it looked … furtive.

She kept her eyes lidded. Surely the porch was too dark for it to see her watching through the slits.

After a few moments of standing there, glowing like anything, the mockingbird dropped into the center of the bushes. Light splashed over the garden, briefly turning the squash and beans into a fantastic landscape of black and white … and then the light was gone.

In the dimness, she could see a figure standing up. The figure bent down, and came up with something in its hand.

Grandma Harken cocked the shotgun. The noise was like a crack of thunder across the desert.

The figure froze.

Grandma Harken looked down the barrel and said, "Don’t move. And don’t you drop my tomato."

The mockingbird laughed. It was a woman’s laugh, short and rueful, but there was a bird’s hollowness behind it.

"If you shoot me, it won’t be very good for your tomatoes."

"I ain’t getting much good out of them at the moment anyway," said Grandma Harken. "Come out from between them, and don’t do anything sudden."

"I won’t."

She came out from between the plants, still holding the stolen tomato aloft.

Without taking her eyes off her captive, Grandma Harken leaned over and opened the back door. Light flooded out and lit up the face of the mockingbird-woman, where she stood at the foot of the steps.

She was human-shaped, short and broad in the hips, but not human-colored. She had a dark grey back and the white belly of a mockingbird. Her face was grey and black from the lips up, her chin and throat white.

She was naked, but she had feathers instead of hair. Her eyes were starkly orange.

Grandma Harken’s hand didn’t waver on the shotgun, but her mind was off and running like a jackrabbit.

She was never born a shapechanger, not looking like that. Whatever she’s done or had done to her, it came from the outside in.

Huh.

Can’t imagine why anyone would try to turn herself into a mockingbird, but there’s strange people in the world and no accounting for taste.

At least she ain’t a kachina, or anything that looks like one. She’d been a trifle worried about that. Grandma Harken’s relationship with the people up on the three mesas was distant but cordial and she wanted to keep it that way.

People get awfully tetchy when you point a shotgun at their spirits.

Well, you couldn’t blame them. If blessed Saint Anthony came walking through the desert, Grandma Harken would’ve been pretty miffed if somebody shot him full of rock salt.

The shapechanger came up on the porch. She moved slowly, but slowly like a woman who’s got a gun pointed at her, not like someone who isn’t fitting inside their skin.

"Go on inside," said Grandma Harken. "I’m right behind you."

She got up. The mockingbird-woman glanced at the chair, wired with silverware, and laughed. "So that’s how you stayed awake," she said. "Suppose a magic sleep can’t compared to a bunch of forks in the back."

Magic sleep. It wasn’t just me getting old. That was a magic sleep.

Grandma did not punch the air and whoop, because that would have been undignified.

Instead she said, "I figured it wasn’t natural," and sniffed.

The mockingbird-woman went inside the house. Grandma shut the door and gestured to a chair with the shotgun. "Have a seat."

"You planning on shooting me?" asked her captive.

"Hand over that tomato and I won’t shoot anybody."

The mockingbird woman handed over the tomato. Her hands were hard and charcoal-colored, the nails long and diamond shaped. They creased the red skin of the tomato just slightly, but didn’t break the surface.

"Why’re you stealing them?" she asked.

"Ain’t for me," said the mockingbird-woman.

Grandma’s eyes flicked to the woman’s strange orange ones. "Ah."

"Don’t ask me about it," said the woman. "There’s not much point." She opened her mouth, and Grandma saw that her tongue was black, and there was a thick silver ring through it.

"Surprised you can talk at all," she said.

The mockingbird-woman shrugged. "You learn to work around it."

Grandma nodded. "So you haven’t eaten any of these tomatoes?"

"Not a one. Give you my word."

And that’s another strike against her being born a mockingbird. No member of the crow clan’d hand out their word so lightly.

She hefted the tomato. She’d made bread earlier in the day, and a little dab of mayonnaise, for the tomato ripening on the counter. Best to eat it up quick. Neither one would last long in the hot desert air.

"Sit a spell," she said, "and we’ll fix that."

§

Grandma Harken sat at her dinner table with the mockingbird-woman and they ate tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise and a pinch of salt.

It was every bit as good as Grandma Harken had been hoping. The tomato was sweet and acid and firm. It tasted like a morning in summer before the sun burned everything down to the bone.

That tense place in her chest loosened up a little. The world was hard and fierce, but it also contained tomato sandwiches, and if that didn’t make it a world worth living in, your standards were unreasonably high.

"So you ain’t wearing a mockingbird skin," said Grandma Harken, watching her guest eat up the last crumbs. "You’re not taking one off and putting it back on again."

"Nope," said the woman. She licked one of her charcoal fingers and pressed it down on the crumbs, then licked them off again.

"And you were never born that way, either."

"Born same as you," said the woman.

Grandma Harken smiled sourly. "I very much doubt that," she said. "But born human, I guess?"

"You guess right."

"You under some kind of spell, then?"

The mockingbird-woman tapped a fingernail against the silver cuff on her tongue and said nothing.

"Ah," said Grandma. "Well, then. You got a name you can tell me?"

"Marguerite."

"And I’m Grandma Harken. And we’re all introduced now. You like being a mockingbird?"

Marguerite stretched. "Don’t mind being a bird," she said. "Flying’s less fun than you’d think, but it’s got its moments. I hate being small, though, and hawks are bastards. And owls." She shuddered, and the feathers on her head all puffed up like a crest. "They don’t make a noise when they come up behind you."

Grandma Harken nodded. She respected owls, but she did not want them hanging around the house.

"May I have some water?" asked the mockingbird-woman.

When someone in the desert asks for water, you give it to them. There weren’t many rules in the desert, but that was one of them. Grandma Harken got up and poured out a glass for each of them.

Then she made coffee. Between last night and tonight, she was running down to the bottom of her supply, but she had a feeling that Marguerite might appreciate it.

As soon as the smell began to fill the room, she was rewarded. The mockingbird-woman’s head lifted and her dark-gray nostrils flared. "Coffee," she said hoarsely.

"I got a little cream to go in it, if you want it."

"Be grateful."

Grandma Harken got out the cream and the sugar, which was nearly as dear as the coffee.

Still, much like tomato sandwiches, there was a time and a place when what you needed was coffee, and nothing else would do.

Grandma poured the coffee out into earthenware mugs and slid the cream across. "From Spangler’s cow."

(She did not know why she told the mockingbird-woman thisâ€”it seemed unlikely that the odd enchanted creature would be familiar with Spangler or her cow. Still, Grandma felt on some level that if you were drinking something that came out of another living being, you ought to be on a first name basis. The cow in question did not actually have a name, other than "that damn cow," so this was the closest approximation.)

Marguerite wrapped her scaly fingers around the mug and breathed in the steam.

Grandma let her sit in silence with the coffee. When she finally lifted it to her lips, it was a gesture as ritualized and heartfelt as communion.

She closed her eyes and Grandma thought that she might be crying a little, if birds could weep.

Well. Never underestimate the power of a good cup of coffee.

She poured herself a cup. Sleep wasn’t coming tonight anyway.

"I won’t come back," said Marguerite. Her voice was thick. "I’ll tell him you caught me. He can get his tomatoes somewhere elseâ€”"

Her voice cut off suddenly, with a metallic click, as if the cuff on her tongue had struck her teeth.

"I’d rather they didn’t get stolen," said Grandma Harken mildly. It seemed important to talk to fill the sudden silence. "But you’re welcome to come back, if you like. I don’t mind company."

She considered for a moment, then added, "Well, specific company."

Marguerite shook her head. Grandma could see her rolling her tongue around in her mouth, as if trying to find a tender spot. "Not smart," she said, finally.

"Would you be in danger, then?" asked Grandma Harken.

"Nah." She spoke slowly, and Grandma got the impression she was picking each word carefully. "Not really. I’m the only one of me. Can’t be another. You understand?"

"Not yet," said Grandma. "But I’m starting to, I think."

She poured out more coffee. Marguerite’s hand shook as she added the cream.

"I won’t tell anyone you were here, if it matters."

"It won’t matter," said the bird-woman. "Too much talking, now." She drank the coffee greedily. "Thank you for this. It’s been … a long time."

Grandma Harken nodded.

The light outside the window was starting to edge toward gray. Marguerite looked at it and sighed.

"Should get going," she said.

"You can wait ‘til the owls roost, if you want," said Grandma.

"If you don’t mind, I’d like that."

Whatever leash she’s on, she’s got some slack, thought Grandma Harken. But does she want off that leash?

"Whereabouts you from?" she asked. "Originally, I mean."

"Oh, my." Marguerite leaned back. "North of here a good way. Other side of the Gila."

Grandma Harken nodded. There were towns up that way, although she’d never been out that far. "You got any people up there that might appreciate word?"

Marguerite inhaled sharply.

After a moment, she said, "No. No sense poking old wounds. Thank you for the thought."

"Seems I might have poked one myself. I’m sorry."

Marguerite set down the coffee cup. "No harm done."

She rose. Grandma Harken saw her only chance slipping away, and decided to be blunt. "You’re got one leg in a trap," she said. "You want it opened?"

"No one can open it," said Marguerite.

"If somebody could, though?"

"It’s too dangerousâ€”"

"I’m a lot older than you, and a lot meaner," said Grandma Harken, annoyed. "And I don’t take kindly to being lectured by a tomato thief. I ain’t promising you anything and you ain’t asking me for anything. Just yes or no."

The mockingbird-woman stared at her for a moment, then her lips widened in an unwilling grin. Her teeth were shockingly white against her black bird’s tongue.

"I’d give it all," she said. "But now I’ve got to go."

"Go slow," said Grandma Harken. "And watch for owls."

She opened the door. Marguerite went down the steps and her skin blazed suddenly silver. By the time she reached the bottom step, she was shrinking, as if she were hunching down.

Then she was a mockingbird again. She took three hops on the dusty garden path and launched herself into the air.

Grandma Harken nodded to her and raised a hand. The fiery bird flew to the top of the garden gate, and then away.

"Well," said Grandma Harken. "Good thing I put on my good boots." She snatched up the bag by the door, opened the bedroom so that Spookcat could get to water, and took her walking stick into her hand.

Then she opened the garden gate and followed the spark of fire into the desert.

§

By the time the sun came up, Grandma Harken was hot and thirsty and tired.

Her water bottle was nearly empty. She had lost the mockingbird twice, and then found her again as she took flight. But now it seemed that she had lost her for good.

She was well up in the desert now, and there was something strange going on in the air.

It wasn’t anything you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. A little bit of heat haze in a place that couldn’t be hot enough yet to ripple. A wash that had water in it, except that Grandma knew damn well that it didn’t, not this time of year. Palo verde needles that moved in a wind that wasn’t happening anywhere near here.

You had to know the desert well, or have a good sense of the uncanny. Grandma had both and she didn’t like it.

"Blessed Saint Anthony," she muttered. "Somebody’s folding the world."

There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it, as near as she could tell. It didn’t look deliberate. It seemed to follow in the wake of the mockingbird.

Two places lying close together, and sometimes you put your foot through one and into the other. Whatever she’s doing, she’s moving in between ‘em.

There wasn’t anything terrible in that other place, so far as Grandma knewâ€”or at least, nothing that wasn’t already terrible in this one. It wasn’t anymore full of monsters than anywhere else. It was just a little bit different. The places bled into each other all the time. It wasn’t at all unnatural.

It was damned inconvenient, though, if you were trying to track a thing the size of a mockingbird.

She stomped over the sand, leaving tracks that were mostly bootprints. Sometimes the world folded around them and the tracks were bare feet.

Once or twice they belonged to a jackrabbit.

She stopped at last, taking another drink of water, and looked around. It was going to be a long way back. If the one wash was still full when she passed it again, she’d have to drink a little water from it.

And it’ll give me the runs, too, like as not.

The bird was nowhere to be seen. The hillside was an intricate pattern of white powdered earth between dark green scrub.

The first cicada began to buzz, and its brethren chimed in, until the air was a long rattling hiss of heat.

There were two long metal rails across the ground on the opposite hillside. A little green scribble of a weed had grown up along the slope, but nothing grew between the tracks.

When she breathed in, she could smell it faintlyâ€”the hot gunmetal smell of the train-god.

The tracks ran off toward the horizon. The burning mockingbird was nowhere to be seen.

Grandma exhaled. "Well," she said. She spoke out loud, so the tracks could hear her, just in case something was listening. "Well. Guess it’s time to go pay a call on the Mother of Trains."

§

She walked back into town, which took long enough to convince her that she didn’t want to walk clear to the train station. She swung by her house, fed Spook-cat, and left a note for Eva. Then she set out for the stable.

It was a good stable, kept clean, and it was run by a man named Tomas, who had gotten tomato seeds from Grandma Harken on three separate occasions. This was a rare benediction, and he was careful not to take it for granted.

"I need your old mule," Grandma Harken told him. "The one I like to ride."

Tomas looked at her, gazed briefly heavenward, and said, "That mule died five years ago, Abuela Harken."

Grandma blinked. "What’d he die of?"

"Old age," said Tomas, who was always extremely respectful but had a sense of humor anyway.

"Huh!"

After a minute she said, "What’s the next oldest mule you got?"

"I’ve got a young mule," said Tomas, "who’s as polite a girl as you’ll ever meet. And you are welcome to ride her, Abuela."

"I like the old ones," said Grandma, disgruntled.

"She’ll get old in due time."

Grandma glared at him. Tomas contrived to look innocent.

"Fine," said Grandma. "But she better have good manners."

"She has better manners than my sons, Abuela."

Grandma muttered to herself. Tomas had two sons, who were polite and respectful and built like bulls and who would spend hours splitting firewood for an old lady. These were things you learned to appreciate when you were Grandma Harken’s age.

The mule was indeed very well-mannered. She pricked her ears up and lipped delicately at Grandma’s sleeve.

"Good girl," said Grandma, petting her nose. "Is she smart?" she asked Tomas.

"She’s a mule."

"I’ve known some stupid mules."

"A stupid mule is still smarter than a good horse or a bad man."

Grandma sighed. It can be annoying when other people are right.

She loaded water bottles onto the mule and climbed on.

The mule waited politelyâ€”Is this everything? That’s all?â€”then set out. Grandma clicked her tongue and flipped the reins, setting her on the road to the next town over.

The one that had a train station.

§

The desert was full of strange things, but the trains were some of the strangest.

When white men came to lay iron rails across the land, the land didn’t take kindly to it. The train tracks looked too much like chains. The land brought heat and death and disease, and work on the rails slowed to a crawl.

"So they brought us to die instead," said Grandma’s friend Anna. "From Canton to San Francisco and out to here." She swept her hands when she said it, taking in the province across the ocean that she had never seen, and the desert where she had lived all her life.

That was the truth of history. Hundreds came and thousands died and hundreds more came to replace them. The blood of Anna’s people had bathed every inch of the rails.

When the train-gods woke, it was no wonder who they chose to be their priests. Chinese, black, Irishâ€”even a Cornish woman way up north, where the snow piled up everywhere but on the tracks. People who had, with toil and tears, earned the gods’ regard.

It had made a lot of big money men back east furious. They thought they’d owned the railroads. They had the pull to get the army brought out to try and bring the machines back under their control.

The train-gods only had to eat a couple of regiments before they realized their mistake.

Lotta damn foolishness, Grandma Harken thought. People ought to be a lot quicker to listen to each other and a little slower to listen to something that calls itself a god.

She wouldn’t have said that out loud, though. She didn’t want it getting back to a train, or worse yet, to Anna.

Anyway, the system worked. You could get a train from one side of the country to the other, though it wasn’t always the same train or even the same country out the windows. Freight got moved, more or less. Sometimes it wound up in the wrong place or was summarily dumped in the middle of nowhere. The machines were capricious gods. (This was part of the reason for the price of coffee.)

They were very good about letters, though. Anna’s grandson was the current train-priest, and he said that his god thought letters were prayers and moved them as a kind of professional courtesy.

You appreciated that sort of thing in a god.

Grandma Harken could afford to be a little detached. Her people hadn’t been involved one way or the other. It had all been long, long before her time.

It’d been a good bit before Anna’s time too, truth be told, but Anna had an image to maintain.

Neither Anna nor any of her grandchildren could have said what bargain the train-gods struck with the desert, though.

That there was a bargain was undeniable. Grandma Harken herself had noticed that the tracks took some odd turns sometimes, to avoid a wash or a particular stoneâ€”turns that no human would have introduced to the line. And it was true that you could walk the rails until you died of thirst, and you’d never see the shadow of a saguaro lying over the tracks.

What it all meant, though, Grandma left for others to decide. The bargain was between the desert and the trains, and no business of any mortal creature at all.

§

Anna looked old. She was younger than Grandma Harkenâ€”probablyâ€”but neither of them were quick to compare.

She lived in a house alongside the train station. It was an old adobe, same as all the other houses in town, but it had a brightly painted balcony on the second floor and faded lanterns hung from the ends of the corner beams.

One of her grandchildrenâ€”or great-grandchildren, Grandma wasn’t sure, and after the bit with the mule, she’d rather not find outâ€”opened the carved wooden door and let Grandma Harken inside. Anna was sitting in a chair in one corner of the room, her feet up on a stool.

"Harken?" she said. "Is that you, you old jackrabbit?"

"Last I looked," said Grandma Harken. "You still alive?"

"Looks that way. Come in." She waved to the grandchild and a chair was produced. "What brings you here?"

"Need an answer, and maybe a favor."

Anna raised an eyebrow. She had very little left in the way of eyebrows, but her face was so wrinkled that the gesture remained effective. "If you’ve come to ask for a train to fetch your grandson home, I’d advise against it."

"Lord, no!"

Anna relaxed. "Glad to hear it. I’m still surprised we didn’t have some broody little babies around here nine months later."

"He didn’t brood as a baby." Grandma paused, remembering. "Well. Much."

Anna laughed.

"Sit, sit. Have you eaten? Are you thirsty?"

The answers to these questions were completely immaterialâ€”food and tea would be forthcoming anyway. Grandma Harken let herself sink into the comfort of Anna’s hospitality.

She’d brought along a half-dozen nearly ripe tomatoes. Now that she’d finally eaten one, they weren’t so precious to her.

The tomatoes were duly admired and whisked away into the kitchen. Tea was drunk, then more tea, and then Grandma Harken held up her hands and said, "No more, Anna, I’m begging you. I’ll explode."

Anna laughed. "All right. You came for an answer, then."

Grandma nodded.

"A woman," she said. "Turned into a mockingbird, from up past Gila way."

Anna tilted her head. "Not one of mine."

"Wouldn’t think so. But some kind of enchanter’s got her bound up with a silver cuff through her tongue, and I aim to break her loose if I can. She called it a ‘he’ but that’s all I know."

She sat back, and glanced at the windows out of habit.

"Nothing out there can hear you," said Anna. "Or if it could, it’s so big that you shouldn’t be tangling with it anyhow." She flicked her fingers. "Sounds interesting, but what do you need with the Mother of Trains?"

Grandma told her about the tracks.

"I could go over every inch of the desert and miss it if somebody folded the world up the wrong way," she said. "Trains don’t care about folds."

"They run in three worlds," said Anna distantly. "We will not talk about the fourth. If there is anything to be seen, the train-gods will see it."

She gestured, and the grandchild appeared. Grandma Harken took the time to finally look at the childâ€”a girl, delicate as a quail, probably older than she looked. "Go and get your uncle," Anna said. "Tell him we will be at the station shortly, with a question."

The girl nodded and padded away.

Anna watched her go. Someone would have to have known her as long as Grandma Harken to notice the sudden smoothing of a line between her eyes, as if she had found an answer that eluded her.

"The next priest?" asked Grandma.

"I wouldn’t wish it on her," said Anna wearily. "She’s got desert in her, not steel."

Grandma nodded. She was something of an authority on the subject.

"I’ll send her to you," said Anna.

"Like hell you will!" Grandma scowled over her tea. "I don’t need a girl and I’m hard to live with. And I’ll probably die running after mockingbirds."

"Then you’ll want somebody to point to where the body fell," said Anna. She waved a hand. "Not now. Later. Soon, I think, but not yet. After you’ve dealt with this foolishness, perhaps."

"I saidâ€”"

"You get your answer and she gets a teacher," said Anna. "Fair trade."

Grandma Harken glowered, but she knew that Anna had her in a hard place. And the girl like a quail needed … something.

"She broke her arm when she was small," said Anna quietly. "She’s got cholla ribs for bones. We didn’t let the doctor see. I set it myself."

Grandma sucked the air in between her teeth. That was immense power and vulnerability, all at once. That was a child that should never be taken out of the desert.

That was someone a little more like Grandma Harken than either of them were like fully human folk.

"Dammit, Anna …"

"Dammit, yourself."

§

Anna’s grandson Jun was a slender man with apologetic eyes. He clasped his hands together and bowed over them to Grandma Harken. "How may I assist you, Grandmother?"

It felt awkward to be formal with a man you’d seen in diapers, but Grandma Harken had come to speak to a train-priest, not talk about how much he’d grown in the last forty years. She nodded to him. "Appreciate it, Jun. Looking to see if the train’s gone past anything strange."

They stood in the station itself, not the main platform, but the small room before it where the train priest spoke to the engines.

There was no train there now, which was a relief. A train was like having a thunderstorm in the room with you, and having a priest around made it worse.

Jun smiled ruefully. "The trains go past many strange things, Grandmother."

"One in particular, then," said Grandma, and set out to describe the place where the world was folded and the train tracks ran through it.

Jun listened. He listened intently, with his eyes closed, and Grandma had to fight to keep from shivering.

Passing right through him to something else. It ain’t natural.

And then, because she had to be fair: Lot of good things ain’t natural. Most of ‘em just don’t rub your face in it.

She finished describing it and waited.

"Yesssss …" said Jun, and there was a hiss of brake lines in it. "Yessss, I ssee."

He opened his eyes. Grandma’d seen it once before, so she didn’t take a step back, even if a good chunk of her skin wanted to.

It was nothing so dramatic as the color changing. It was only that there was something else in his eyes, something that wasn’t human or even close to it. When he blinked, his eyelids came down like the door to the firebox slamming shut.

"Along the line," he said. "North and west and north again. There are five saguaros together. There is a hill of stones. There is a dwelling of the used-up people. There is a person there." He nodded twice, with his eyes still closed. "There is nothing else for many miles."

"This person," said Grandma Harken, "he’s folding the world?"

Sweat was beginning to trickle down Jun’s face. She could feel the heat radiating off him. "There is a person. There is a bend in the track. There is a bend in the track."

"Does that meanâ€”"

"There is a bend in the track."

Anna put a hand on Grandma’s arm and shook her head.

Grandma bowed to her friend’s experience. "Thank you," she said.

The train-god, through Jun, said "Yesssss …" and it trailed away into the distance as the god went away again.

Jun stood for a moment, trembling like a horse that has run a hard race, then let out his breath in a long sigh. When he opened his eyes, they were only human dark.

"Can you tell me what it meant by there is a bend in the track?" asked Grandma.

Jun took out a cloth and wiped his head. "It’s hard to say," he said. "Probably there’s really a bend, but repeating it like that …" He shook his head. "They fixate on odd things. That was the Mariposa. It’s not the clearest of the trains. Leviathan was better, but Leviathan has stopped speaking. The other trains say that it’s waiting for something."

This was alarming, but also nothing to do with Grandma Harken. She made a mental note to order more coffee, though, in case the trains were planning to run mad.

They left the station. Jun came with them, not sweating now, shivering as if it were midnight in the desert instead of noon. Anna sent another grandchild to get him tea and put a blanket around his shoulders herself.

"Worth it?" she asked Grandma.

"I hope so," said Grandma. "Thank you, Jun."

The girl with bones made of cholla ribs said, "Who are the used-up people?"

"Hohokam," said Grandma, which was a thing she hadn’t known she knew until she said it. "The ones who built all the canals. That’s what their name means, the used-up ones. Our enchanter’s squatting in some ruins, I guess."

"Do you think he’s Hohokam, then?" asked Anna.

"Not unless he’s a thousand years old," said Grandma. "Which I can’t rule out entirely. I’ll be going. Jun, thank you, and you too, Anna." Her eyes slid over the cholla-bone girl and she nodded once and took her leave.

§

She rode back to Tomas’s stable with her mind full of shards, like a shattered clay pot. The Hohokam were all jumbled up with the trains and the folded world and the girl and the mockingbird.

Well, no matter. Things would sort themselves out. She’d know what she had to know when she needed it.

"Or I’ll get caught with my pants around my ankles," she said to the mule’s ears, "and I’ll die with a stupid expression on my face. I suppose that counts as getting sorted out, though."

The mule flicked her ears, but did not comment.

"I suppose I better try not to die," she said after a little while. "That girl of Anna’s is gonna need some teaching."

She tried to think about what she could teach anyone, let alone a girl who was already part of the desert, and the thought was overwhelming. She hadn’t been all that good with her own baby, and Eva had been as good and placid and easy a child as any born.

It was late when she reached the stable. A light burned in the window, though, and after a moment the door slammed, and one of Tomas’s sons came out to meet her.

"You didn’t have to stay up," she said. "I might’ve been gone days."

"We would have stayed up for you, Abuela Harken," said Tomas’s son. He looped the mule’s reins over his hand and led her into her stall.

There was nothing much to say to kindness, particularly when you suspect that it’s because you’re old. Grandma walked the rest of the way, to the house with its back like the desert.

"At least I’ll get one more night in my own bed," she said. "With my own Spook-cat on the pillow. Can’t ask for more than that."

§

In the end she got two more nights. The garden was wreathed in beans and the little green husks of tomatillos were beginning to dangle from the sprawling plants. They needed staking. If Grandma Harken had known beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was going to die tomorrow, she would still have staked up the tomatillos and harvested the beans.

She had two ripe tomatoes and she ate them both, on bread with salt, and they were perfect.

On the morning of the second day, she got up before dawn. She petted Spook-cat, which first alarmed, and then delighted him. She strapped water bottles to herself like a bandolier and filled her pockets with sage and cigarettes; she put on her good boots and wrote a note for her daughter that said "I love you," and then she closed the garden gate behind her and walked into the desert.

The pre-dawn air was sharp and gray and seamless. There were no mockingbirds to light her way. Still, here, she didn’t need them. This was a landscape she knew as well as she knew her own name.

The folds in the world that had gone out from the mockingbird’s wings had settled now, a paper ball crumpled and then smoothed out again. There were still small ridges here and there. Grandma Harken could see them if she lookedâ€”the shadow of a palo verde tree that fell a handspan too short, a place where, for an instant, there were two moons in the sky. But these were small things.

She reached the train tracks as the sun came up. It dyed the rails rose and chrome. Grandma Harken stood, thoughtful, and took a long drink of water.

"All right," she muttered to herself. "All right. If I were a train …"

It was dangerous to walk on train tracks now. A train could appear out of nowhere, skipping from one world to the next, and give you only a bare moment of warning.

Still, it was no more dangerous than anything else. She cleared her throat and spoke to the rails: "The Mother of Trains knows my name."

There was no overt acknowledgement. She hadn’t expected one. She stepped up onto the rails and began to walk between them. Her boots made a satisfying clomping sound on the railroad ties.

The desert heated rapidly. She passed saguaro standing tall, arms raised, filled with woodpecker holes. A thrasher called from the top of one, and she had to shade her eyes and see if it was actually a mockingbird.

There were no shadows on the tracks. The saguaros folded their arms to prevent it, and they were the only thing tall enough to cast a shadow here.

She walked until the sky was turquoise hard, until she had emptied one water bottle and begun another. Then she shaded her eyes and looked ahead, and there were five saguaros standing together, and a hill beyond them, crusted with stones.

Grandma Harken nodded to herself.

The tracks did bend there, an abrupt turn that no train that was not a god could have navigated. The metal rails held together, but the wooden ties were twisted up as if they were made of dough and not creosote-soaked wood.

There is a bend in the tracks.

"Quite a bend, too," she said aloud.

A coyote trotted by, ears alert. It glanced at her, interested, and flicked its brush.

"Don’t you start," she added.

The coyote grinned, that being the natural expression of coyotes. It trotted on.

She walked back and forth along the bend, and absolutely nothing happened.

"Huh," she said. She’d been hoping … well, nothing was ever easy.

She went back a third time.

The coyote was back. Its eyes were the coldest thing in the desert.

She couldn’t see any edges. The shadows on the hill were clean and crisp.

The coyote was circling her.

I’m not looking to die just yet. Go find some other meat.

She knew that coyotes couldn’t hear thoughts, but sometimes she thought they could smell them. It winked at her, and then it passed on the far side of the tracks and vanished completely.

Grandma Harken grunted.

"I’ll be damned," she said aloud.

Well. The enchanterâ€”whatever or whoever he wasâ€”had folded up the world here, folded it so hard that it doubled back on itself, so that something on the far side vanished completely from view. The tracks had pulled away from the fold, like skin sloughing away from a burn.

The trains run in three worlds. We will not speak of the fourth.

Dammit, Anna.

Suppose the enchanter had folded all three worlds around him, to keep the trains away, and was living in the fourth world?

"Blessed Saint Anthony …"

The coyote reappeared on the far side of the hill. It trotted up to the tracks and sat down, tongue lolling, God’s dog amused at something.

Waiting to see how I do, I suppose.

She studied the hill carefully. It looked like any other small hillside in a desert, not large enough to be a mesa, merely a rise in the landscape, dotted with mesquite and teddy-bear cholla. An ocotillo spread a hundred fantastical arms near the base, where there might be a small seep of some sort. Ocotillo liked more water than other plants, when they could get it.

If there was water here, the Hohokam might have built near it. If there were a people better at using water in the desert, Grandma had never heard of it.

The hill had nothing that looked like ruins, though, not even two square stones beside each other. Not a temple mound norâ€”

Her eyes narrowed. The coyote tilted its head.

On a rock above the ocotillo, there was a pale splotch. She ambled over to it, and there it was, pecked out of the surface, a round-bodied lizard.

"So they were here," she murmured. Her eyes tracked over the petroglyphsâ€”a human, a set of concentric circles, another lizard, bigger than the last one. A human upside down, which generally meant "dead."

The coyote had stopped grinning and was watching her intently.

"Don’t suppose you can tell me anything," said Grandma Harken.

"What’ll you give me?" replied the coyote.

"I’ve got sage and cigarettes."

The coyote scratched pensively at one ear. "Let’s see the cigarettes."

Grandma Harken took one out and laid it on a stone, then stepped back.

The coyote sniffed at it, unimpressed. "Poor stuff."

"You eat sheep afterbirths," said Grandma.

"Yes, but only the quality ones," said the coyote, and grinned again.

"I should know better than to try and deal with coyotes," muttered Grandma Harken.

"You should." The coyote licked up the cigarette and held it dangling in its mouth. "Look! I’m a human. Do this. Do that. Stand here. Don’t eat that." It cackled at its own cleverness.

Grandma Harken shook her head and turned back to the railroad tracks.

"Go underneath," called the coyote after her, and when she turned her head back toward it, it was gone.

§

Go underneath. She turned the words over in her mind. Go underneath.

Coyotes were liars, of course. Worse than ravens. But this one had taken the tobacco.

She walked along the track, into the sharp bend. The rails buckled, and the gaps between the ties were deeper than they should have been. And yet the hillside was seamless, not even a shadow out of place.

Almost perfect, she thought. No one would ever notice, if not for the trains.

She stood at the farthest point of the bend, a foot on each tie. The world dropped away underneath the rails.

Go underneath.

The gap should have been too narrow for a grown human to fit, but one of the ties was twisted out of the way, on the end nearest the ruins. And she was made of bone and sinew and wire, and was no longer young.

She wiped sweat from her palms, grabbed the metal railâ€”it was hot from the sun and burned her handsâ€”and swung herself down through the gap, and into the next world.

Immediately everything changed.

The hillside was no longer a small rise but a large one, cleft in two, with a narrow stone defile between them. Petroglyphs marked the stones on either side, layered over each other into incoherence.

Grandma Harken took out her water bottle and spilled a little over her smarting palms.

She turned her head and the tracks were gone. That was going to make getting out … interesting.

"Oh well," she muttered. "If I were sensible, I’d still be at home with my tomatoes." She started forward into the defile.

There was a dragon in the sand.

It was thirty yards long, thick bodied, with a blunt wedge of head. Its scales were dusty black and mottled orange.

Grandma knew Gila monsters well enough and did not fear them, but the largest one that she had ever seen was smaller than the smallest claw on this one’s foot.

"Oh," she said aloud. "Oh, my."

She heard herself say it and hated her voice for sounding like an old woman. But even Saint Anthony, who wrestled demons in the desert, might have been taken aback by the size of this one.

The dragon’s eyes were glossy, beetle shell black, and they were fixed on her.

She swallowed hard.

"Give me water," said the Gila dragon, in a voice like sand hissing over the desert floor.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," said Grandma Harken, but she sounded more like herself in her ears.

"They are not here," said the dragon, "or I would ask them for water."

And it laughed, then, a little choking hiss, and it seemed to Grandma that it was the sound of a creature in pain, not a monster on the edge of devouring a victim.

Not that that won’t change in very short order, mind you …

Grandma Harken unfastened one of her water bottles. She suspected that she was going to die very shortly, but there were rules. If she lived long enough to talk to the cholla-bone girl again, she would tell her this one.

When someone in the desert asks you for water, you give it to them.

The Gila dragon’s mouth cracked open and a long blue-violet tongue slithered out towards Grandma.

She upended the water bottle over it.

The dragon swallowed, and then there was a crack like thunder.

She hadn’t noticed the shackles on the dragon’s leg. They were the same dusty black color as the scales.

There were three of them. Two still held, and the third had broken and fallen away. The skin underneath was raw and clear fluid oozed from beneath the scales.

"Give me water," whispered the dragon.

She gave it the next water bottle to drink.

The second shackle broke. She could not see where the chain was anchored. To hold a beast that size, they must have been bolted to the center of the earth itself.

"Give me water," said the dragon a third time.

One shackle left. And when it breaks, it could lunge forward and devour me. It wouldn’t even need the poison. One bite ought to do it.

Only a fool would set such a monster free.

"Please," said the Gila dragon.

Grandma Harken cursed herself for a fool and poured the last of her water out over the dragon’s tongue.

§

The crack that followed was louder than the others and split the air like lightning, like the sound of mountains splitting.

In the silence that followed, she heard the tiny metallic clunk of the shackle falling to the ground.

The dragon looked down at its freed leg. That would have been the moment to run, but Grandma Harken thought perhaps she should just sit down. Her heart was hammering in a way that she didn’t like, and her vision pulsed in time to her heartbeat.

It’d be entirely too stupid, to drop dead of a heart attack out here in the desert before the beast lays a claw on me.

It lifted its great mottled head. It was a low, flat beast, for all its size, so it did not tower over her. She looked into its eye and saw her face reflected back.

"Thank you," said the dragon. And waited, like a penitent awaiting absolution.

Grandma licked her lips. "Weren’t nothing," she said.

It moved then. She fell back against the canyon wall and watched it go by. It was like a train-god passing, long and dark, and then it was past and the bright blunt tail was vanishing around the curve of the defile. She heard the sound of its scales scraping the stone, and then, much too quickly for something so large, it was gone.

Stepped out the world, she thought, back into one of the other ones. I hope it doesn’t get hung up on the rails.

She slid down until she was sitting and put her forehead on her knees. There had been a time, when she was young and immortal, when beasts like that were part of her world and she could have danced in the tracks that they left in the sand.

She felt old and mortal now.

She had a few sips of water left in one of the bottles. When the pulsing sparks in her eyes faded, she drank one of the last sips.

She got up.

There was a scale on the ground before her. Not a large one, a little smaller than her palm. She picked it up, and it was warm and felt like leather. She put it in her pocket, because something the desert gives you an answer, and it is your job to find the question.

She had to keep one hand on the stone wall as she walked. She could feel chisel marks under her fingers. The way was mostly natural, but someone had smoothed down the stone a little, long ago.

Grandma Harken followed the turn in the wall and there it was.

It was adobe and it was old. The roof had fallen in on one side and the tops of the walls had the slumped-pottery look of weathered clay.

It was not a large building. The entire structure was not much larger than Grandma’s house, though it had been at least three stories tall before the roof fell. If she tilted her head back, she could see the remains of shattered floors sticking out from the high, broken wall.

The world was folded so tightly around it that the desert sun had turned the hazy gray-green color of the sky before a storm.

There was trash around the outside. Bird bones and rotting scraps of fruit made a scattered midden, although she could not smell anything. A few flat weeds crawled across the ground and despite everything, Grandma Harken felt a gardener’s urge to pull them.

Not the time. Although if I don’t die in the next few hours, I’ll get them before I leave.

The opening to the ruins was a narrow rectangle of darkness. She watched it for a long time before she approached it.

She had taken only a step or two forward when someone came out.

He was young, perhaps in his late teens, and clad in the same strange, feathered skin that Marguerite had been. By that, she thought he was likely a victim. He had a dark crest and his cheeks were stained brilliant scarlet.

Roadrunner, thought Grandma Harken.

He saw her.

His mouth fell open in surpriseâ€”she saw a glint of silver in his tongueâ€”and he said something frantic in O’odham.

Grandma could understand about twenty words of O’odham if the other person spoke very slowly and clearly, which he hadn’t.

Probably warning me off. He’s not the enchanter, anyhow. Poor kid must have gotten caught like Marguerite.

He does like turning people into birds, doesn’t he?

From inside the ruin came another voice, thick and rumbling. She could not tell what it said, either, but the roadrunner-boy put his hands to his mouth and grimaced.

"It’s all right," she said. She’d never had much of a plan anyway, and apparently stealth wasn’t part of it.

Whether he understood her words or her tone, she didn’t know. He took her arm, his eyes apologetic. She followed him inside.

It took a long moment for her eyes to adjust. The gray-green light through the broken ceiling did little to illuminate the shadows.

It was colder inside the ruin than it should have been.

"Ah, hell," said Marguerite, somewhere off to her left. "I told you to stay away."

"I’m bad at that," said Grandma cheerfully, as she tried to pierce the darkness.

There were broken pots in the corners, and a few intact ones, draped with old flower sacks and coarse-cured hides. It smelled rank. Whoever lived here was a poor housekeeper.

At the far end, something moved.

She heard the thick, rumbling voice again. This time, it spoke English.

"Where do you come from, old woman?" asked the voice. "And why are you sniffing around what is mine?"

Her first thought was that it was a bear.

Her second was that bears generally had better manners, and certainly kept themselves cleaner.

It was a man, more or less. He was huge and hairy and his head was sunk down between his shoulders. He sat on a throne, like a king, but the throne was made of broken stones and rabbit skins and there were flies crawling in and out of it.

He did not belong in the desert. He stank of cold and forests and distance, of magic from another place and another time. More than that, he stank of powerâ€”his own power, wrapped up in that bear-like hide, not a power that could give itself to a place and be given back in return.

There were things that could come to the desert and learn to live with it, like the trains, but this was not one of them.

"You’re not from around here," said Grandma Harken to the cold-king.

He made a noise like bubbles breaking in glue, and maybe that was laughter.

"I have been driven out," he said. "Someone found the soul I had hidden in a duck egg. It takes time to grow it back."

"Seems a fragile sort of place for a soul," said Grandma Harken. "Better than a chicken egg, but not by much."

"I shall wrap it in a snake next time," said the cold-king. "I have learned."

Marguerite and the roadrunner boy shifted in the corner. Grandma spared them a look and saw that Marguerite had put her arms around the boy for comfort.

Well, and now I know why she wasn’t entirely keen on curse-breaking. Had nothing much to do with flying after all.

She had no idea what she was going to do, butit seemed like she should probably start doing it.

"I’ll ask politely," said Grandma Harken. "Let these people go and stop twisting up the world hereabouts. The land doesn’t like it." She considered this, and then added, "Please."

"I do not care what the land likes," said the cold-king. "This is a dreadful land."

"Then why’d you come here at all?"

§

The cold-king stretched. "I did not choose. I hid myself in the seeds of a thistle and when I woke again, I had crossed an ocean and was rolling and rolling across the hills of this terrible, dry place. But soon I shall be done growing back, and until then, my old enemies will not find me."

Grandma Harken sighed. She had never thought it was going to be easy. "Well," she said, planting her feet, "I’m afraid you’ve made a new one."

The cold-king flung out his arm and power raged through the ruined building. Marguerite cried out and the roadrunner-boy spoke a short, sharp curse.

The cold-king’s power struck Grandma Harken and would have knocked her down, but she let it spin her around instead. She’d been a dancer in her youth, the wild kind, so she spun like a top and landed, breathless, on her feet.

Well, this is going to end badly, she thought.

Her right hip let it be known that it was not up for any more of that.

She reached down and pulled out her kitchen knife. It had seemed very large when cutting tomatoes in her kitchen. Now it was a small bright wedge against the bulk of the cold-king.

He laughed his bubbling laugh again. "Pretty," he said.

The next blow came sideways and there was no spinning with it. It slammed her into the ruined adobe wall. Her head struck it and spawned a universe of stars across her vision. The knife went skittering across the floor.

She slid down the wall and into a jumble of shattered pots. One dug into her back, in the same place that the ladle had, and for a moment Grandma wondered if she was still in her chair on the porch, watching a glowing bird fly across the garden.

Was that a dream? The dragon and the train and …

She remembered the cholla-bone girl’s face. No, she had not been a dream. Her mouth was full of blood.

"No!" cried Marguerite. The mockingbird-woman lunged across the floor, her orange eyes shining in the dark. She caught the cold-king’s arm and tugged at it, fierce and ineffectual. "Stop! She’s old! She can’t hurt you!"

Shows what you know, thought Grandma, vague and indignant. She didn’t think she could stand up, but she wasn’t done yet. She’d hurt that bastard plenty.

She would … she would …

She had no idea what she was going to do.

She had lost her knife. She put her hand in her pocket, looking for something elseâ€”a weapon, a seed, she didn’t know whatâ€”and found something smooth and leathery under her fingers.

The cold-king flicked Marguerite off as if she were a fly. She landed on her shoulder, and the roadrunner-boy ran to her and crouched over her, fierce and futile.

Grandma Harken pulled the leathery thing out of her pocket. It was the scale from the dragon.

The cold-king turned his head, snorting. "What is that?" he said, sounding surprised, and it occurred to Grandma for the first time that he might not know that she had freed the monster.

He lifted his hand. She could not flee, and she could not dodge, and she was already against the wall. The next blow would likely kill her, for her bones were no longer as strong as they had been.

For lack of anything better to do, she put the scale in her mouth and bit down hard. The musty reptile taste mixed with the salt of blood, a thin, acrid stew.

There was another crack of thunder, like the sound of the shackles breaking, and something struck the wall of the old adobe.

The cold-king turned, startled. Pebbles rattled from the ceiling.

It occurred to Grandma Harken that she should probably get up before the ceiling came down.

She rolled sideways, slowly, onto her knees. She did not seem to be dead yet.

The wall shuddered under another impact. There were cracks in the wall now, running in all directions.

She stood up. Her back felt like an open wound.

The wall fell.

Through the gap came sunlight, thin and hazy as it was in this place. She saw the blunt wedge of the Gila dragon’s head, and then it drew back and slammed forward like a hammer.

The cold-king blinked in the sudden light. His face was fish-belly white under the coat of hair.

She looked around for something to throw at himâ€”it didn’t have to be large, just a distraction, anything to buy the dragon another few momentsâ€”and then the roadrunner-boy charged.

The sound he made was half-human, half-bird.

The cold-king slapped at the air, and another wave of power washed over them, but differently.

The roadrunner-boy fell down and was a roadrunner. Marguerite’s cry became the harsh scold of a mockingbird. And Grandma Harken, who had been hunched over, searching for a weapon, dropped back to all fours, her body twisting into a shape at once forgotten and familiar.

Her ribs heaved. Her ears were as long as her arms. Two sickle horns rose up on her brow. Her fur was white with age, but her legs quivered with the memory of speed.

Well. Well. It’s been a long time.

She would have laughed then, but jackrabbits don’t.

The cold-king stared at her. "You were supposed to be a bird," he said, sounding baffled. For a moment he sounded less like a monster and more like a man. "They’re always birds."

The dragon hit the wall again and it fell down and took part of the roof with it.

Grandma stamped. She couldn’t help it. She had no other way to shout a warning. The roadrunner ran for the open doorway, and the mockingbird fluttered, dodging falling stone.

The cold-king spun around as masonry struck him, and the Gila dragon reached in and closed its jaws over him.

Grandma winced.

The poison of a Gila monster is greatly exaggerated. The bite is not. It clamped down on the cold-king and no power on earth could have freed him.

The cold-king sagged like a puppet with its strings cut. There was no blood at all.

Grandma stamped again, because the deathless do not die so easily. From the doorway, the roadrunner and the mockingbird looked in.

The body heaved. Around the edge of the dragon’s teeth, the flesh gaped open and something fell out.

It was a hare, but it looked unfinished. It was hairless, though its eyes were open. It staggered as it tried to walk, and its legs wobbled.

Until I finish growing back, the cold-king had said.

Not quite finished, then, thought Grandma, and launched herself at the hare.

She was old but her claws were still sharp. She struck the hare hard and rolled it over, biting at its throat.

Its flesh was soft and spongy, slick with fluid. She could not get purchase on it. It did not fight back but squirmed against her, trying to escape, leave a trail of slime like a slug over her paws.

It wiggled a little way free and the mockingbird struck at its eyes. Grandma ignored the screaming of old bones and grappled with it again, kicking for its belly.

Her claws found purchase at last, and tore into the swollen skin. Again, there was no blood. The hare’s body went limp and something feathered fought its way free from the open belly.

She did not know what kind of bird it wasâ€”some sort of water fowl, with a harlequin mask of green and cream over its face. She struck at it, tearing strips from its wing, but it was in the air before she could bring it down.

It made it nearly to the open doorway and the mockingbird slammed into its head.

Marguerite, in bird form, was barely a third the size of the fowl, but she fought like a creature possessed, battering the creature’s face with its wings, keeping it out of the air. The fowl hissed like a snake, trying to get into the canyon and more open air.

Grandma dragged herself forward. If she leapt, she could knock it out of the airâ€”if she could even leap. It did not seem likely. Kicking the hare open had done things to her hips that would be a long time healing.

The roadrunner slammed into the fowl’s back, driving its long beak into the fowl’s neck. It went limp.

And is that all?

No. It never is, is it?

Its bill opened and the neck worked as if the corpse were vomiting. A serpent with tiny, poisonous eyes slithered free, tail whipping as it fled.

The roadrunner pounced before it had gotten three feet away. Of all the prey in the desert, it was snakes that they loved the most. It seized the beast behind the head and whipped it back and forth against the canyon wall.

Grandma sat back on her haunches, tense and trembling, waiting for the next form.

The snake’s body split open and a white egg flew out.

It traced a pale arc in the air, glistening. The roadrunner dropped the snake. The mockingbird flung herself into the air after it. The ancient horned jackrabbit lunged forward.

And the coyote with cold-moon eyes caught it neatly out of the air and swallowed it in two bites.

"What?" it said, licking its lips. "Were you going to eat that?"

§

The air shivered. The folds fell away as three worlds snapped back into place. The sky was blue and hard instead of hazy green. Grandma was an old woman sitting on the side of a hill, with her legs tucked up beneath her. Marguerite fell heavily out of the air and the roadrunner boy helped her up.

"Well," said Grandma. "Well. How about that?"

The coyote sat down, looking pleased with itself, which is the natural state of coyotes.

Marguerite’s skin and eyes were brown, no longer gray and white. She reached into her mouth and pried the silver cuff out of her tongue. Her young companion, no longer feathered, spat blood. He was older than Grandma had thought. It was his wounded eyes that made him look so young.

His name was John, Marguerite told her. (Privately Grandma suspected that was nothing like his name, but she wouldn’t have given her real name to the cold-king either.) He had been captured not long after Marguerite. His people were to the south and east. "I’ll see him home," she said, looking at Grandma, as if she expected her to argue.

It did not matter in the least to Grandma, so long as she didn’t have to deal with it. "Go into town and talk to Tomas," suggested Grandma. "Tell him I sent you. He’ll loan you a mule."

They nodded together and stood, leaning against each other, the only two people in the desert who knew what it was like to be tongue-cut birds.

John spoke to Marguerite, and she translated. "Is the old man gone?"

"Don’t know," said Grandma. "Things like that don’t die easy. But I’ve never heard of anything coming back alive from inside a coyote."

The coyote looked, if possible, even more pleased. "My stomach is very dreadful," it said. "I eat carrion and dung, when I can get it."

"I don’t think it’ll be back for awhile, at least," said Grandma. "And if it is, you and John will know how to defeat him. You’ll need a different third, though. I’m too old for this."

"Thank you," said Marguerite, and "Thank you," said John, pronouncing the words slowly and carefully.

"Weren’t nothing," said Grandma, which was a lie and a half.

After they were gone, Grandma fell backward and just breathed for awhile. The shadows were growing very long. A whole day could not have passed in the ruins of the used-up people, but perhaps time had folded a little oddly too.

She heard the tracks sing, as if there was a train somewhere nearby, but it did not pass this way after all. That was just as well. She did not think she could deal with a god just now.

"Are you dead?" asked the coyote with interest.

"Don’t get your hopes up," snapped Grandma. "I ain’t dying just yet," and that may or may not have been a lie. She wasn’t quite sure.

"Then you had better get up," said the coyote. "And I will walk a little way home with you, just in case you die along the way."

It took her a long time going home. The coyote walked her nearly all the way, keeping up a string of nonsense, and since she refused to show weakness in front of a coyote, she walked faster than she might have otherwise.

She refilled her water bottle at the last wash, and drank deeply. When she lowered the bottle, the coyote was gone.

"All right, then," she said. Not being grateful, because you never show gratitude to a coyote. But not being ungrateful, either. Just in case.

She walked until she saw the fence around her garden, and then she stood and looked and thought that perhaps she hadn’t lied to the coyote about dying after all.

She went the last little way and opened the gate.

The cholla-bone girl sat on the back steps, carefully petting Spook-cat. She looked up at Grandma, her face very serious.

"My great-grandmother sent me," she said.

"I know," said Grandma wearily. She leaned against the gate-post.

"She says you’re supposed to teach me," said the girl.

Grandma was silent. Wondering what an old jackalope wife could teach to a girl with bones made of cholla ribs. Wondering if there was anything she knew worth learning, after all.

She thought of the lessons in the desert, and thought that this girl probably knew them all already. They would have been written on the inside of her skin since the day before she was born.

Still, there was one thing she had worth passing on.

"Come on," said Grandma, pushing herself away from the fence. "We’ll clean out the back room for you. But first, I’ll teach you how to make a really good tomato sandwich."

In the Far Future, Billy Experiences the Most Powerful Drug Known to Man

Greg Leunig

They call it the "pleasure center" of the brain and

Billy’s is flooded with norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin.

This is the chemical equivalent of the robot hiker

programmed last month to hike Everest in two hours,

climbing directly up the mountain, piston-legs driving

ice-pick heels, arms gyrating, all the news networks broadcasting

with a techno overlay. One hour, fifty-six minutes later and more

fissile fuel than you like to think, and the robot hiker is

frozen solid, dead, about a hundred feet from the peak.

He is born for this, Billy is, born to be near a happiness

just over the next horizon. Born to freeze solid just before he reaches it.

This happiness is all he thinks about. Fusion Man comics sit unread

on his desktop. He lays in bed texting. Flood after drought after

flood after drought hits his pleasure center.

He sinks slowly into the forming-foam and

envisions himself gone, envisions on his bed a Billy-shaped crater.

Somewhere far away, an errant electron leaps improbably into

the wrong location, and one of the power plant’s particle generators

hiccups, experiences temporary quantum failure.

Billy’s house loses power and he is plunged into utter darkness

and he does not care. His phone is still lit for one thing, and anyway

she illuminates his inner vision with her cold light, her smile

alternately freezing and thawing his poor, stuttering heart.

Greg Leunig is an all-over-living ocean-lover currently residing in Kansas City. His day job at Sungevity involves trying to help people go solar, aka saving the world. Favorite pastimes include petting other people’s dogs and drinking tea. His fiction has been published at Daily Science Fiction, Read Short Fiction, Shimmer, and others. His poetry has been published at Strange Horizons and has been nominated for a Rhysling Award.

Riding Atlas

Ferrett Steinmetz

5,000 Words

They were naked, now, on a dirty mattress.

"Neither of you have eaten or drunk anything for twenty-four hours?" Ryan asked, hauling equipment into the room: sloshing plastic buckets, packs of hypodermic needles, coils of tubing, straps. "And no drugs in your system? This is a pure trip. Just two bloods commingling. Any impurities stop Atlas from getting inside you."

Stewart didn’t answer. He was too distracted by all the naked couples. The attic’s flooring was covered with bodies, lying belly to swollen belly on bedbug-blackened box-springs. Their arms were thrust out above their heads, ears resting on their biceps; they clasped hands like lovers, their circulatory systems knitted into a single bloodstream.

Stewart felt his arms itch where the needles would be inserted, anticipation and fear churning into a sour mix in his gut. But Tina was ready, as she always was for things like this. She’d dragged him here, telling him they had to do this now, before they outlawed consanguination just like they’d outlawed LSD.

She stared up at Ryan with adoration as he strung the wiring above them with efficient motions. Her breath came in excited hitches.

Even though his girlfriend was dry-humping Ryan with her eyes, Stewart took satisfaction in the way Ryan refused to look back. Ryan had wanted to take her to Atlas, but Tina had insisted her boyfriend should be her first time. And Stewart had gone along with it â€” because if he didn’t, Ryan would.

Once you’d exchanged the most vital bodily fluid, Stewart thought, sex was almost an afterthought. That must be why the consanguinated had so much of it. But Tina kept insisting this wasn’t about sex — it was about hooking into a greater consciousness.

Stewart couldn’t bear to watch Tina watching Ryan, so instead Stewart turned away to watch the other veiners. Plastic tubes sprouted from the arteries at the crooks of their elbows, in the hollows of their necks, at the backs of their legs. The tubes arced up above them to rest on wire hangers. The corkscrew tubes, threaded with crimson, looked like some bizarre moonshiner’s still.

The tubes twitched with every heartbeat, ferrying blood between the bodies. Thick needles rooted in desiccated flesh. Erratic bursts of staticky whale song-sounds blared down from speakers bungee-corded to the ceiling. Some made love slowly, thrusting their hips in time to the beat. Almost all the women were in the early stages of pregnancy. But most, girl or boy, just lay there naked and insensate with ecstasy.

Stewart found it hard to look away. Before Tina had taken his virginity in Roeville Cemetery, he’d never seen a naked person in the flesh, let alone a room of them. Each couple’s skin was mottled with hives; bruises pooled across their backs with each breath, darkening into blue-black splotches.

Light glimmered in the depths of those splotches. Streaming nebulae floated into view, glowing in translucent neon â€”

Stewart pulled away. Tina gasped, reaching out to touch the wonderment, but Ryan stopped her with a tolerant smile.

Stewart knew Atlas made you trip, but — you had to get hooked up first, didn’t you? He had no experience with hallucinations. He shook his head, yet the sight remained: the veiners had patches of space drifting across their backs and shoulders, flecked with stars, like lights viewed through deep ocean waves…

"I said," Ryan repeated, directing all his irritation at Stewart, "Did you take any drugs before you came here?"

"I’ve never even done pot."

"Good. Cleanliness is vital. Give me your cell phones."

"What if there’s an emergency?"

"There aren’t any. Not while you’re here."

Stupid control freak, Stewart thought, reaching under the mattress to hand over his cell phone. He’d stashed his, hoping Ryan wouldn’t notice. Tina had, predictably, trusted in Ryan, as she trusted in everyone, and left hers in her pocket.

Ryan had been dealing pot out of the back of the Jiffy Lube not long before his rebirth as Greensdale’s local lord of blood. Now, Ryan had abandoned his Nirvana jean jacket for a sleeveless white shirt that highlighted his sanguine marks — the crusted hole punched into his neck, his arterial line’s plastic valve neatly gauze-bandaged around his left arm. He’d chopped off his mullet, replacing it with an ascetic’s buzzcut to highlight his new-found spirituality. Stewart wondered how long that would last.

"I’ll give it back when you’re done." Ryan placed the cell into a locked metal box. "And I apologize for the vulgarity, my friends, but there is the issue of compensation."

"Take it. It’s all there." Stewart gestured towards his pants heaped in the corner. And it was all there; his summer job’s savings. His first semester in college would now be ramen noodles and Wonder Bread.

"No," said Ryan. "I want you to hand it to me. As a token of willingness on your spiritual journey."

Stewart swallowed a groan as he fished his wallet out â€” but his irritation vanished once he saw Tina’s smile. She focused all her affection on him; even in this filthy, abandoned mansion, it was still a thrill to see her naked.

Ryan counted it out, then shoved the bills into his pocket. "I take cost only," he said. "My goal is to knit the world together. If I could hook the president into the Chinese head of state, we’d have world peace within a week. Would that I could give this to you both as a gift â€” but alas, hooking up’s spendy these days now that they’ve restricted sales of medical equipment. Do you know what lancets are going for on eBay now?

"No matter. Lie down like the others: bellies touching, arm out where I can put in the shunt."

As he pressed his skin against hers, Stewart was embarrassed to find his erect penis pressing into Tina’s belly. Even here, he still wanted her. He was so terrified of the day she’d leave him that his whole body ached to get inside her every chance he got.

Yet while he felt humiliated, getting a boner in front of Ryan, Tina got off on it, riding the excitement of the coming trip. She ground her hips against him.

A calloused hand pulled her away. "None of that," Ryan barked, tugging a seatbelt strap over Stewart’s arm, pulling him tight to the mattress.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Stewart cried, struggling â€” but Ryan trapped his legs swiftly, fastening buckles to clasps drilled into the floor.

"You might hurt yourself if you move, chum." He bound Tina to the mattress. "These are arteries we’re dealing with; you freak out, start yanking tubes, you might bleed to death. You can breed after you’ve learned how to star-surf. But the first time in? Everyone’s strapped."

You’re just jealous because we’re doing it together, Stewart thought, wriggling, but he was held fast. Tina had just enough play in her bonds to take his free hand in hers. Stewart strained at the bonds for real, ready to tell Ryan exactly what he thought, but Tina shushed him.

"This is for us," Tina reassured him. "For us. Let it happen, Stewart." And she craned her neck as far as the restraints would allow to kiss him. Ryan hauled dripping tubing and needles out of a bucket full of bleach, then ripped open a blood-bag with his teeth.

"Wait," Stewart said, feeling the panic start to take. "Shouldn’t you see if we’re compatible blood types?"

"That stuff’s overhyped. A little Benadryl gets A into B, no problems." He shoved a pink pill into each of their mouths. Then he flicked the moisture off a tube, wrapped his lips around one end, dropped the other end into the blood-bag, which leaked all over the floor. He sucked bright plasma up to the top, putting his thumb over the tip to keep it from slipping back down, then clamped it at both ends. Blood dribbled from his mouth.

"Also, as long as we’re debunking Hollywood legends," he said, "You need a lot of air in your system to kill you. A couple of cc’s bubbling inside you? No sweat. What they don’t tell you, however, is the first arterial stick hurts like a bitch. The walls of the arteries are wrapped in muscle. You gotta go deep to hit an artery."

He wiped a bleach-covered rag across Stewart’s arm, then took out a huge needle and a spool of thin wire. Ryan knelt down to look Stewart in the eye.

"A lot of guys cry when I stick it in," he said. "There’s no shame in it."

"Just do it," Stewart said, gritting his teeth. And after the pain subsided, he noted the blood that had squirted from his arm had joined a hundred other dried blood-sprays on the ceiling. He pointed this out to Tina as she screamed, too.

§

After the implantation, Stewart was grateful for the straps. His whole body had been reduced to three wounds, three spikes lodged in tender skin: the needle wedged up underneath his collarbone and into an artery, the metal wire threaded through the gash in his left arm, the sharp throb of the large-bore needle jammed underneath the tendons in his calf.

The three wounds pulsed like new organs, obscenely sensitive. He could feel the thin twinge as the wire coat hangers swayed above them, the almost imperceptible movement like a yank at the back of his hair. He felt the heat of hives swelling around the needle tips as his body fought the contaminants. Every millimeter of irritated flesh around the needles made the needle’s foreignness apparent to Stewart, marking a precise outline of what had been done to him.

And he felt the strange coldness of his girlfriend’s blood flowing into him; each push down the tube swelled his neck, flooded his veins full of her.

Why had he ever thought they were compatible?

Tina kept her eyes closed, squeezing his hand tight; each squeeze travelled up his arm to jitter the needles. Her quickened heartbeat felt like fingers drumming on his skin. He held his breath, trying to slow his heart, but with every heartbeat she let out a choked moan, helpless to fend him off.

He wanted to reassure her everything would be all right, but their veins carried the truth: they were unsuitable, out of sync. They always had been, ever since he’d been just another shy AV kid setting up lights for the Greensdale High production of Bye Bye Birdie.

And now they were going to pay the price. This would be the ultimate breakup, a slow death by torture.

Why had she pulled him down from the rafters? She was the star, beautiful and popular, the most artistic girl in the whole school. He wanted to ask her what about him had caught her eye, especially when all the jocks kept asking her out, but she always laughed it off. "You’re such a dear," she said.

She didn’t understand: without a reason for her staying, he’d always wonder when she might leave.

So he never complained when she treated him like a fix-up project, whisking him off to foreign films and poetry slams and shadowy alcoves in cemeteries because she saw something in him that needed to be filled up with experience.

He’d liked that. He’d liked being hers. Until now.

Now all their differences were made physical: his heartbeat was like him, slow and stolid, resistant to change. And hers was flighty and erratic, unable to settle into a healthy rhythm. Their bodies were battling each other. He could taste her terror on his tongue.

That atonal music blared in his ear, unpredictable squawks and silences.

The only thing that kept Stewart from yanking his shunts out was, as Ryan had predicted, the straps. They bound him tight. He would have howled for freedom, but it would have pissed off Tina, and he knew Ryan would not let them out anyway.

It would be like this until Sunday evening. Thirty hours from now. He’d even lied to his Mom and Dad, told them he’d headed up to Sacamore for the weekend to attend a Broadway play. There would be no rescue, just he and Tina slowly destroying each other.

Thirty hours. Thirty hours to die at a madman’s hands.

§

Ryan came by to give them educational talks. When he did, he laid his palm on their shoulders in an almost-hug, pressing his exposed skin against theirs, crouching in so close Stewart could smell his breath, like saliva and nail polish.

"This music you hear is Tachycardia." He spoke in hushed tones, as though he was giving them a beautiful gift. "Musicians attempting to emulate Atlas’s voice."

Stewart wished they’d turn it off. It didn’t sound like music, but some inorganic machine struggling vainly towards life.

Ryan waved up at the speakers. "That is the finest sound system I could afford — the beauty of Tachycardia’s orchestrations is that mere humans cannot hear eighty percent of it. These speakers broadcast ultrasonic sounds and subsonic bass that we register only on a cellular level. But the speakers sound them nonetheless."

"Why?" Stewart croaked. The needle scraped against his larynx.

Ryan chuckled, shaking his head. Tina also chuckled, the first vocalization she’d made since they had been strapped in, and Stewart felt a jealous pang. Even now, Ryan was breaking their bond, sliding in between them at the moment of death. He wondered whether Tina could feel his hatred pounding inside her brain.

"To remind us of how very small we are, of course." He had a father’s indulgence of Stewart’s ignorance, which rankled him, but then Ryan added: "You’ll understand once you feel Him in your veins."

"Who’s Him?" Stewart’s throat gummed up the words.

"Atlas, naturally. Did you forget?"

Stewart had forgotten. Then again, he’d only come to stop Tina from consanguinating with Ryan. All her talk of hooking into some mythical beast was just Tina being mystical again - the way she warded away ghosts by refusing to speak Macbeth’s name in the theater or smudged burnt sage on her wrists for strength before a performance.

This far in, though, he wondered who was crazy.

"You’ll see," said Ryan, hugging him tightly. "You’ll see."

§

By the time the sun had risen far enough to shine through the slats of the drawn blinds — and how long was that? Stewart had no idea — they had settled into a tolerable rhythm. He still felt the deep sensitivity of the three wounds, the hives that engulfed his torso, the bedbug bites, and that goddamned Tachycardia music was driving him to distraction â€” but Tina had opened her eyes.

"Look at me," she insisted. "Look at me."

Stewart had no other choice; Ryan had, naturally, placed him to face the window, putting his back to the other consanguinated and leaving him isolated. Tina could, if she wanted, lift up her head to look over Stewart’s face and see what everyone else was doing. He couldn’t. Moving his neck would just drive the needle in deeper.

She reached over with her free hand, the one on top, where Ryan had mercifully allowed them to hold hands. She interlaced her fingers with his.

"Together," she said. Her eyes had never seemed so beautiful.

He lost himself in her, and as he matched her breathing, their heartbeats began to circle each other like boxers — not together, not yet, but at least aware of each other.

Ryan wondered what it was like for the pregnant couples, their babies’ heartbeats tossed about like a shell in the surf. It didn’t matter. He and Tina were consanguinated now.

Now they shared blood, Stewart understood that being bonded meant learning new habits; it was like learning to walk with four legs instead of two. Being together was not enough. They would have to learn how to die as one.

Because this was still killing them.

His mouth was dry. His body itched like an anthill. He looked at Tina’s face, trying to see if she had black bruises filled with stars, but she had nothing but red welts and he wasn’t sure whether he had seen that anyway.

Had Ryan drugged them? He could have. Stewart hadn’t seen what went into that bucket. But he’d seen things before that.

Could it be an aerosol LSD? Such things existed, right?

Tina shivered in goose-pimpling spasms, reacting to something he had pumped into her.

I’m sorry, he mouthed, his tongue so parched it stuck to the roof of his mouth.

"Don’t apologize," she told him. "It’s you. Your essence."

How could he ever have wanted Ryan to share this with her? This glorious unraveling? The enlightenment of bare survival, left with only one human to live with? There was no romance in this, no more than there was romance in clinging to a board after a shipwreck, but romance was not the same as intimacy. This experience was them, and only them.

He didn’t wonder why she’d chosen him, now. Those thoughts were useless, luxuries of a better time.

His world had narrowed to Tina. Her world had narrowed to him. If they died before Sunday, at least they had that.

§

"Everyone hates the bedbugs at first," Ryan said. "But you’ll love them, once you’ve ridden Atlas."

Stewart found that hard to believe. They scuttled underneath his ribs. He couldn’t feel them feasting, but he felt the sores breaking open as they dropped off.

Ryan brushed his hand across Stewart’s back. Stewart heard the soft patter of carapaces falling to the floor.

"We keep them for two reasons," Ryan said. "First off, they go through what you’re going through. Do you know how they breed?"

"Nuh." Stewart’s tongue felt like cardboard.

"The females have no vaginas. The males stab the females with hypodermic genitalia, ejaculating into their body cavity." He pushed his index finger through the closed fingers of his fist, miming the action. "Don’t you see? They, too, achieve life through their wounds."

Ryan was hushed with wonder. Tina cooed in appreciation.

"It’s a beauty that exists nowhere else. But that’s not why we tolerate them."

"Whuh then?" Stewart asked.

"Because they’re life, of course," said Ryan, as if the answer couldn’t be more obvious.

§

The squawking music-groans stopped. Ryan came out with iced canisters of Gatorade. Tina closed her eyes, delirious. She mouthed someone’s name, over and over, two syllables. Was she calling out to Ryan? Hard to tell; the light was fading into dusk and he had problems focusing.

He swallowed back envy. His girlfriend wanted Ryan; hell, he wanted Ryan. He didn’t want to need the bastard, but the Gatorade’s smell was life itself. How long had it been since he’d had water? Two days? Three?

He was dependent on this Jiffy Lube madman for survival. He suppressed a surge of obscene gratitude, furious.

Stewart could hear nothing but the sloshing as Ryan walked the plastic cooler around to each couple, then moist slurping sounds as Ryan fed them. There were whispers, back slaps, attaboys.

Then Ryan stood behind him. For a moment, Stewart thought Ryan would stand there just long enough to give him hope, then drag the Gatorade away.

Instead, Ryan knelt down to give him a shoulder massage.

Stewart cringed, terrified Ryan would jitter the needle in his neck, but Ryan’s hands were trained; he knew just where to touch. Stewart felt like a plant being tended in some exquisite garden.

"Ah, Stewart," Ryan whispered. "Who knew I’d still find you here?"

Stewart wondered where else he could have gone. Ryan unspooled a tube, placed it between Stewart’s lips. Stewart sucked hard. A trickle of sweet fluid coated his throat.

It was the most delicious moisture ever.

"I was certain you’d back out," Ryan said. "I told Tina, he’s just another unenlightened bag of flesh; he’ll leave, or start screaming in the bonds the second I get him in. He’ll tell the newspapers how horrible we all are, all without ever riding Atlas. But she told me, no, he’s got depth, he just needs a chance. And you’ve stayed, my friend. You proved me wrong. And soon, you will ride."

He plucked the tube out.

"Not too much." Ryan pressed Stewart’s head down. "Don’t want you to throw up. Just enough to keep you alive long enough to entice Him. He’ll come."

He moved the tube over to Tina, who still muttered the same word repeatedly. And as Ryan fed her, Stewart realized what she was saying:

Atlas. Atlas. Atlas.

"She wants wisdom so badly," Ryan murmured, ruffling her hair. "And as she rides Atlas, she’ll drag you beyond the edge of the universe. You’re a lucky man, Stewart, to have a woman who sees so much."

In a past time, that might have made Stewart feel insignificant. But here, with their bodies so interlocked for this journey, it felt like the purest truth Stewart had ever heard.

§

The slatted light had crept away from them, taking Stewart’s sense of time with it.

Their heartbeats had, finally, synced up — but they did not beat together. Tina’s heart had developed an erratic, stomping pattern that would have killed her if it had beaten alone. But like a dancing partner, Stewart’s heartbeat had adopted a fluttering counter-beat, a syncopated cadence that pushed when Tina pulled.

It was a music they created with their own bodies, so elaborate it took hours to fathom, a progression uniquely suited to carry blood through two people. A perfect art.

Stewart kept forgetting the straps were there. He tried to pull her chest against his, to bring her heart closer to his, and was continually surprised to feel restraint. He supposed this was delirium, but he didn’t care; they were together, strapped in for survival.

His body wept with sores; his eyelids stuck together. But he didn’t need to see Tina; he felt her, and her presence within him made his own presence starkly apparent.

Except.

Except there was something else within them.

He wouldn’t have been aware of it, hours ago. But now that he felt his own body so clearly, felt the fragile ecosystem of himself breaking down, he felt the faintest tip of something invading them from the inside. They had conjoined their own circulatory systems to become one entity, working in unison â€” and now they had stabilized, reaching a form of critical mass, something else reached out to intertwine with them.

He opened his eyes, stickily; lightless pools blossomed across Tina’s cheeks.

"Atlas," Tina said, rapturous, then coughed herself insensate.

The Gatorade, Stewart thought. He drugged the Gatorade. But he didn’t believe that. This feeling was anchored in flesh.

Her heartbeat shifted, making room for the third. So did Stewart’s. It grew inside them, a shadow on an X-ray. And when Atlas’ first pulse thrummed through them hours later it was like giving birth, a huge beast squeezing through them, shoving their organs against their ribs.

Tina flung back her head and screamed, as did Stewart, and he realized everyone else in the room was howling as Atlas’ first pulse swept them away from their bodies, out of the room, into the depths of space.

He couldn’t time it, Stewart thought â€” Ryan couldn’t time us all together —

He was torn from his eyes.

§

Stewart was tumbling, a stone hurled through empty space. The cold frosted his eyes, sucked the wind from his lungs, jammed his throat with icicles. Blackness drowned him.

This was the space between stars.

He flexed his hands and felt nothing; there was not a breath of air, not a mote of dust, not a droplet of fluid. He hurtled through emptiness, on the way to more emptiness. Distant smudges of diffuse illumination â€” galaxies? — whirled around him.

That was fine. This was just a bad trip, was all. Stewart had read about those. It was awful, this surety that he’d be here for decades, flying from nothing to nothing. But eventually he’d wake up next to Tina.

Stewart counted to a hundred.

He counted to a thousand.

He got to sixty thousand, four hundred, and fifty-three before he felt the seams of his sanity starting to stretch.

You couldn’t count to sixty thousand and not wake up, could you? Had Sunday night passed? Must have. Maybe the whole week had passed.

Maybe he was dead.

He tried to scream, trying to wake up wake up wake up, but his muscles were stiff as frozen hamburger. His eyes, flecked with snowflakes, remained fixed upon the murky star-blurs that whirled around him.

Was this what happened to all good little boys who strapped themselves in for Atlas? Did they all die? Or did they go insane, drawing inside their heads like a turtle inside its shell?

He tried to listen to his heartbeat, to feel Tina synced with him — but time had died within him, and his chest had been hollowed to hold its corpse. His body was as silent as a gravestone.

What a gift my whole world was, he thought. So much earth and wind and water. A wealth of existence, and he’d squandered it all. Now he was caught between whirling light and dead blackness and though he kept counting, the numbers never ran out.

A truth crept inside him: there was no Tina, not really. Compared to this nothingness, Tina was a discarded fraction, a rounding error â€” just like those smudges. Each star in that distant galaxy was a grain of sand floating in a sea, and he was a smaller grain drifting in that water hoping to touch the sand, but it was better to think the sand was an illusion, matter was an illusion, life was an illusion.

The truth was the void. Everything shrank to nothing before that.

He counted more, and by the time he got to a hundred thousand he forgot Tina’s kisses. Five hundred thousand repetitions scooped out his memories of sunlight. A million vacuumed away his name. Ten million, and just before Stewart’s mind popped like an air-stuffed vein, he noticed the shine behind the stars.

It was no more than a faint shimmer. But his cracked lips mouthed the name: Atlas.

It was not aware of him, no more than Stewart would have been aware of a single blood cell. Yet it was alive, and he was engulfed within it.

Thank you thank you thank you, Stewart thought, feeling something near him after endless revolutions, flooding him with remembrance â€” and as he beamed waves of worship at Atlas, he zoomed closer, except that couldn’t be happening but oh God he was melting into the light, hooking into its lustrous consciousness —

And he was Atlas.

Its body’s hazy caverns were continually torn apart by the gravitational well of stars that passed through it, scattershot with a trillion self-repairing wounds. It rode the stars out of some long-ebbing inertia, absorbing the dead nebulae and burst stars and shattered planets into its body, more of a pulsating gas than a creature.

It had no conscious thought, no intellect â€” but Stewart was seized with triumph nonetheless. It was enough for life to exist, spread so far against such a darkness.

He settled into its body’s aeon-slow pulse. Its organs retreated from each other with the inevitability of tectonic plates, forming puckered, encircling ridges. Atlas was swelling, engulfing …

… dividing.

It’s winning, Stewart thought in a paroxysm of joy, seeing the beauty of reproduction, the fierce fight to fill the universe with consciousness. It would scavenge enough mass to split apart, and then there would be two beasts to fight the darkness.

He slid down the glimmering trails of Atlas’ sensory organs, sifting through blank seas to find his way back to Tina. He saw the planets — specks of rock, fearfully clustered together for warmth around a guttering match. Everything Stewart knew was a thin film on a dust mote. The galaxy did not hold life; it held emptiness, loneliness, so much that if he had been able to see it all, it would have filled his brain like cold sea water rolling into a drowning man’s lungs.

But here, bobbing fitfully in a sea of coincidental forces, was a sliver of life. It wasn’t Tina who was amazing — it was the fact that she could create more Tinas, that we could expand and devour like Atlas, a single atom doubling within the void, and doubling, and doubling, and doubling…

§

His heart seized up, a hard punch to the chest. It had been separated, beating for one instead of two, and it stumbled like a horse tripped in mid-gallop. Stewart opened his eyes to see Ryan, a tube in one hand, monitoring him. Next to him, Tina convulsed on the floor, her heart reaching out to his.

He carried the truth of existence inside him, a glacial coldness. But that terrible absence made this world so magnificent. Tears streamed from his eyes as Ryan hugged him tight, called him brother.

Stewart pressed his face against Ryan’s shoulder, smelling Ryan’s million scents; the universe was nothing but gaps, but here was another human being, so precious. So close.

He never wanted to be separated from anyone again.

Tina, shivering, crawled over to join him.

"Did you see?" she asked, beaming with delight. "Did you see what we need to do?"

He nodded, so grateful for the gift she’d given him. She kissed him, and the fetid breath on her lips was the growth of organic matter, everything between and inside them a miracle made new. Soon they would make love, all of them, determined to be like Atlas.

One by one, the other consanguinated made their way to their new brethren in the corner and hugged them, exulting in the feel of soft skin underneath their hands, ready to copulate and breed and fill that void. This was all the understanding that existed.

This flesh. This blood.

Originally published in issue 22 of Three-Lobed Burning Eye Magazine, 2012

Ferrett Steinmetz’s debut urban fantasy Flex features a bureaucracy-obsessed magician who is in love with the DMV, a goth videogamemancer who tries not to go all Grand Theft Auto on people, and one of the weirder magic systems yet devised. He was nominated for the Nebula in 2012, for which he remains moderately stoked, and lives in Cleveland with his very clever wife, a small black dog of indeterminate origin, and a friendly ghost.

He Tweeters at @ferretthimself, and blogs entirely too much about puns, politics, and polyamory at www.theferrett.com. (Or, if your work has blocked his site, try it mirrored at theferrett.livejournal.com.)

An Exploration of Racism in Heart of Darkness

Lucy A. Snyder

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad tells the story (via an unnamed narrator) of sailor Charles Marlow’s time as captain of an ivory-hauling steamboat along the Congo River. The 1899 novel, rooted in Conrad’s own experiences as a merchant sailor on the Congo, vividly portrays the horrors of Belgian colonial rule over and exploitation of Africa. Many aspects of the book are nothing short of brilliant. Consequently, it has been a widely-taught classic that has influenced a host of literary writers and speculative fiction authors such as Michael Bishop, James Blish, Ian MacDonald, and Robert Silverberg, just to name a few.

In 1975, author Chinua Achebe analyzed Conrad’s portrayal of Africans in the book and accused Conrad and his novel of racism:

Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as "the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality. (Achebe 1785)

The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked. (Achebe 1789)

Many critics reacted strongly to Achebe’s condemnation and rose to Conrad’s defense. Conrad’s supporters (like supporters of H.P. Lovecraft, whose work is more frequently criticized as racist) often assert that he and his book were products of their time and thus shouldn’t be judged in the unforgiving light of modern racial morality.

British and European culture was undoubtedly far more virulently racist than it is today, and to expect a white writer educated in that culture to fail to hold some type of racial bias is no more plausible than to expect a writer living and working next to an oil refinery to not smell a bit like petroleum. It’s difficult to notice an everyday, background evil if everyone presents it as normal. Heart of Darkness is a fictionalized chronicle of what the protagonist (and author) recognized as a horrific time in human history and is a vivid critique of it. However, Conrad’s narrator relates the atrocities committed against the people of Africa without ever fully conveying the ultimate bitter truth of colonialism: that those inhuman horrors were made possible because even people who did not directly profit from Africa’s exploitation (and who otherwise might have protested or worked against it) bought into racist political and nationalist narratives.

Can a book portray racism through the eyes of a racist character without itself being racist? That question concerns me as a writer; I’ve watched enough other white writers attempt to handle race and handle it badly to know that it’s a subject I need to explore and remain mindful of.

So I started reading Heart of Darkness looking for signs that the novel is (or is not) inherently racist. And what I found was a narrative in which practically nobody (African or European) is portrayed in a positive light. Marlow objectifies the few female European characters, and through that objectification, Conrad uses them mostly as symbols instead of portraying them as real people:

She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. (Conrad 74)

It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over. (Conrad 77)

Theyâ€” the women, I meanâ€” are out of itâ€” should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse. (Conrad 121)

The single female African character is likewise symbolically objectified:

She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul. (Conrad 137)

The passage above seems entirely positive at first glance with descriptors like "magnificent" and "superb", but it’s objectification nonetheless. And it’s similar to the most positive type of portrayal that the male African characters receive; they’re presented as part of a beautiful, savage landscape that’s being despoiled:

They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masksâ€” these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. (Conrad 78)

However, Conrad description of the African men’s "faces like grotesque masks" lumps them in with all the other distasteful, ugly things Marlow sees in the Congo. And that thread of inhuman grotesquery carries through in the other superficially sympathetic portrayals of African men:

Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails. … They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea. All their meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. (Conrad 80)

They were dying slowlyâ€” it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, â€” nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. … The black bones reclined at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. The man seemed young â€”almost a boyâ€” but you know with them it’s hard to tell. (Conrad 82)

In the passage above, Conrad describes the "unhappy savages" as one might describe animals, particularly when he describes their rags wagging like tails, as though they were dogs. Nothing in that passage would lead a reader to believe that the Africans Marlow has encountered are essentially human. In the following sentences, Marlow experiences a fit of basic decency and gives the dying young man a biscuit to eat (again, as he might feed a starving dog back on familiar European streets).

And that moment of slight kindness highlights the protagonist’s lazy racism: he documents the blatant injustices that are clear to his privileged European eyes, but he never thinks to try to do anything of substance to help the Africans he sees suffering around him. He never even thinks to make sure that the native crewmembers working in service to his captaincy have anything to eat on their journey down the Congo (Conrad 111). In fact, if the Africans in question are out of sight, and not of personal use to him, they and their fates are pretty much out of mind and of less importance than the loss of pack animals:

In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire. (Conrad 102)

Marlow thinks of Africans as part of the land, but never as the rightful masters of it. He notices native people when they suffer in large groups; individuals who suffer are largely beneath his notice and beyond his sympathy. He describes a murdered African much as another narrator might describe a road kill opossum:

Was looking after the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can’t say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. (Conrad 86)

The solitary instance in which Marlow declares the African crew working aboard his steamboat to be humans like himself:

Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity. (Conrad 113)

… is almost immediately negated by a back-handed compliment that compares them to ghoulish animals:

It’s really easier to face bereavement, dishonor, and the perdition of one’s soulâ€” than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps too had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. (Conrad 113)

Marlow first praises the utility of his African crew:

We had enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellowsâ€” cannibalsâ€” in their place. They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them. (Conrad 104)

But he then spends passages minimizing their abilities in general â€” "They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences" (Conrad 112) â€”and those of his unnamed helmsman in particular:

An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe, and educated by my poor predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings, wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought all the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a minute. (Conrad 116)

Prior to this passage, the reader has been treated to a variety of portrayals of arrogant, entitled, corrupt European men of little skill and even less wisdom. So why is the nameless helmsman presented as the "most unstable kind of fool" in the book? Presumably because he is black.

After the helmsman dies in a skirmish, Marlow claims to mourn him while simultaneously declaring him to be of almost no worth:

I missed my late helmsman awfully,â€” I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. (Conrad 124)

And after that, we find out that instead of giving him a proper burial (or even giving him over to the starving "cannibal" crew so they’d finally have something to eat) Marlow simply chucks his body overboard and remarks that he was anxious to take the wheel. (Conrad 125)

Given all of the objectification and minimization in the narrative, it’s pretty clear that Marlow is a passively racist protagonist documenting an aggressively racist world. But does that make the novel itself racist? And should we as readers take Marlow as a reliable narrator in all this?

I believe that Conrad ultimately intended for Marlow to be taken as a reliable narrator. On one hand, Conrad’s framing of the novel via the unnamed narrator â€” rather than simply telling Marlow’s story directly by using him as a first-person protagonist â€” does seem imply that Conrad had a certain uneasiness with the material and didn’t want to imply that Marlow was his fictional mouthpiece. But on the other hand, Conrad never took the opportunity to use his unnamed narrator (or any other character) to mitigate his protagonist’s racism. Nobody in the novel questions or challenges Marlow’s fundamental experience. There are no Africans behaving as intelligent, civilized characters despite Marlow’s low opinion of them. We get Marlow’s racist worldview without any cues that we the readers should consider any other view of Africa and its people.

And that lack of mitigation, that lack of alternate viewpoints in the novel, lends weight to Achebe’s accusation. Glossing over the more uncomfortable aspects of this or any other classic novel does it a disservice. The book remains brilliant, and can surely withstand an honest discussion of its flaws.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness". The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. New York: New American Library, 1963. Print.

"SFE: The Science Fiction Encyclopedia." Authors : Conrad, Joseph : SFE : Science Fiction Encyclopedia. Gollancz, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/conrad_joseph.

Lucy A. Snyder is a four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning writer who wrote the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess. She also authored the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide and the story collections While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger.

Her writing has been translated into French, Russian, Italian, Czech, and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Steampunk World, In the Court of the Yellow King, Shadows Over Main Street, Qualia Nous, Seize the Night, and Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 5.

She lives in Columbus, Ohio and is a mentor in Seton Hill University’s MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. She also writes a column for Horror World. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.

Paper Tigers (Novel Excerpt)

Damien Angelica Walters

Back cover copy:

In this haunting and hypnotizing novel, a young woman loses everything—half of her body, her fiancé, and possibly her unborn child—to a terrible apartment fire. While recovering from the trauma, she discovers a photo album inhabited by a predatory ghost who promises to make her whole again, all while slowly consuming her from the inside out.

Blurbs:

"Paper Tigers gathers the best from every childhood scary storyâ€”creepy antiques, haunted houses, seemingly friendly ghostsâ€”and repackages them with the worst and most isolating of adult fears. Walters’ prose is vivid and gripping, luring you in, feeding you images that will leave you comforted by the light of your bedside nightstand; horror nostalgia at its finest."

â€”Rebecca Jones-Howe, author of Vile Men

"With Paper Tigers, Damien Angelica Walters has created a hauntingly elegant portrait of loneliness and longing for healing. But where she confronts real terror is in answering the question of what it costs the wounded to be whole again. This book is at once as beautiful and frightening as a scar on smooth skin or a scream with perfect pitch."

â€”Bracken MacLeod, author of Mountain Home and Stranded

"Damien Angelica Walters pulls you into the heart of her characters and traps you there until you’re not sure if the story is haunting you, or you’re haunting it. Wonderfully creepy and heartwarming, fear and sadness alternate and blend throughout in a story that’s packed with atmosphere. Keep the lights on and the tissues close."

â€”Sarah Read, editor of Pantheon Magazine

CHAPTER 1

The soles of Alison’s shoes marked each limping step away from her front door. She tugged the scarf on her head, pulling the fabric down to cover most of her forehead, and shoved her gloved hands deep in the pockets of her jacket. A woman’s voice, high-pitched and nasal, broke the 3 a.m. stillness.

"Get outta here!"

Alison froze, a rabbit in disaster’s headlights. Ten feet away, a man stumbled from a house with his shoes untied and the tails of his shirt flapping around his hips. The door slammed behind him, and he let out a string of mumbled curses. Alison tucked her chin toward her chest, willing herself into an insignificant shape, another shadow in the night, and only when the man crossed the street and disappeared did she move again.

Once she reached the street sign at the corner, marking the point of no return, her steps quickened. Her first rule: if one tiny sliver of shoe went past the edge of the sign she had to go on and, of course, tonight it had. Her second rule: she couldn’t alter her steps approaching the sign to prevent such an occurrence.

She paused. If she turned left, she’d pass by the elementary school, and although it used to be her favorite route, she hadn’t been that way in months. Not since the night she’d stumbled upon a few teenagers lingering in the playground. If she’d seen them first, she never would’ve entered the playground and she never would’ve heard their words. Alison blinked twice, forcing the memory away. Decision made, she turned right.

She passed more houses, all nestled next to each other. Narrow brick boxes, some with painted screens covering the basement windows, others with awnings over windows and doors, and all with a marble stoop, a Baltimore trademark.

The original residents of Hampden, a triangular shaped area in northwestern Baltimore, were mostly millworkers. Now, artists, college students, and families took their place.

The late September air held a promise of rain underneath the scent of old exhaust. Alison turned onto 36th Street and a quick gust of wind ruffled the scarf covering her head. Shops and restaurants with darkened windows lined both sides. Traffic lights cast arcs of red, yellow, and green on the asphalt. An empty plastic bag spiraled on the pavement and bounced across the street. Alison peered into the windows and saw cloth-covered tables in one, shelves of handmade jewelry in another, and racks of women’s shoes in the next, teasing her with their proximity, taunting with their inaccessibility. When she neared the last store at the end of the block, her pace slowed and she smiled. The skin on her right cheek twisted and tugged, turning the side of her face into something closer to a grimace than a grin.

A small hand-lettered sign in the corner of the window read Elena’s Antiquesin careful print. Antiques, maybe. Junk, definitely. Until a month ago, the building housed an art gallery. Not the sort with champagne openings for brilliant young artists selling work for six figures, but the type featuring art heavy with barbed wire and faces contorted in misery and torment. All prices negotiable, of course.

The streetlamps cast a pale glow on the items on display: an old tricycle with faded plastic streamers hanging from the handle grips, a lamp with a multicolored glass shade, several small stone dragon statues, a hand mirror with a gilded handle, the reflective side facing away, and a photo album with a worn, ash grey cover. A large split in the leather ran from one corner down to the center, and the bloated shape of the page edges gave proof of the photos within.

Over the past three weeks the shop had filled up with old furniture and other odds and ends, but the sign and the items in the front window were new additions. She bent close to the glass, turning slightly to see everything with her one good eye. A quick succession of footsteps heading in her direction pierced the silence. She exhaled and stood, leaving behind a circle of breathy fog on the window. The steps drew closer.

A short, round woman with a bright scarf wrapped around her hair emerged from the shadows. Alison backed away from the window, blinking in disbelief and dismay. 3 a.m. on a weeknight was normally safe; she never ran into anyone. And twice in one night? She hunched her shoulders.

The woman unlocked the door, turned, and jingled a large ring of keys in her hand.

"You want come in?" she asked.

"No thank you," Alison said, angling her face away from the glare of the streetlamps.

"Is okay."

She glanced at the photo album. She could call her mother tomorrow and ask her to pick it up. But what if someone else bought it? A ridiculous thought. But what if?

"Aren’t you closed? It’s the middle of the night."

"Sometime close, sometime open. If you want something, I let you come in anyway."

Alison worried her lower lip between her teeth. The woman gave the keys another shake. Why was she so willing to open her door, so unconcerned at this time of the morning?

Alison whirled around, moving away from the store. Red flared inside her, a deep shade of crimson shot through with scarlet, and she tightened her hands into fists, hating the way the right curled in, misshapen and smaller than the left. The red swirled in and around, twisting her every cell into a grim reminder of what she had, what she remembered, and what she lost. Her vision blurred.

Go away, Monstergirl, a voice said.

How she wished she didn’t know that voice so well. The voice, sharp of teeth and cruel with contempt, bit down hard. The woman remained at the door, her eyes narrowed.

Alison closed the distance between them with several short steps that helped hide her ungainly walk, ignoring the ache in her right hip.

"The photo album in the window. I want." She cleared her throat. "I’d like to buy it. Please."

"Okay, you come in."

The woman held the door open with one hand and gestured with the other. Alison paused, her mouth dry. How long since she’d been inside any building other than her house or the hospital? She couldn’t even bring herself to cross the threshold of the house in which she’d grown up, in spite of her mother’s assurances that she’d taken down all the old photographs.

Her mother’s words came to mind: Babygirl, you have to try.

Alison kept her chin down and when the woman turned on the lights, she turned her face away.

Leave, leave, leave. She hasn’t seen you yet, a voice said, not the voice of the red, but of the sharpest yellow. Alison swallowed hard. Shoved the voice away.

The walls still retained the previous tenant’s paint, a steely shade of grey, complete with unpatched gouges in the plaster. Some of the ceiling tiles in the long, rectangular space had been replaced, but others, stained and bowed in the middle, hung from the framework. A fluorescent tube near the window flickered.

"You want look around some, is okay," the woman said as she headed to a counter in the corner, her scarf, a vibrant fuchsia with dark flowery swirls, bobbing up and down the entire way. "I here for little while."

"Thank you," Alison said.

She nudged the hand mirror in the window out of the way, and grabbed the photo album. It slipped from her grasp, sliding back with a heavy thud and a puff of dust. She cast a glance toward the counter, but the woman (maybe Elena?) muttered to herself and crouched down, leaving only a curve of her scarf visible. Alison wrapped her

old scars, old hurts

gloved fingers around each side of the album, breathing in the passage of time and a hint of tobacco as she pulled it free and held it close against her chest.

Despite the bright lights, the shop called out with a siren’s song, and after another check to make sure maybe-Elena wasn’t watching, she let her feet answer the call. The smell of old boxes, yellowed paper curling at the edges, and unwanted clothing hung in the air, musty and thick. And beneath, a trace of artificial rose, reminiscent of the squares of decorative soap her grandmother had kept in a porcelain tray in the bathroom. From a large bookcase set against the far wall, she removed a volume of Poe’s works, but a dark stain covered more than half the pages and rendered the text illegible.

She traced a set of initialsâ€”JSJâ€”carved into one corner of the desk, and her fingers left three trails behind in the fine layer of dust covering the scuffed mahogany. A brass-handled drawer gave a tiny squeal of protest, and the carved legs ended with well-worn lion’s feet. The sort of desk designed for a master wordsmith’s time and tales. Alison’s own poetry, all random, chaotic outpourings of battered emotions, did not warrant such a masterpiece.

If a writer didn’t purchase the desk, Alison hoped a teacher would. The kind of teacher students gave gifts to; the kind of teacher students remembered long after they left the classroom. She could almost see a stack of test papers on one corner, an open lesson plan in the other, a collection of pens off to the side. She closed the drawer a little harder than she intended, picked up the photo album, and made for the counter.

"How much please?" she asked, keeping her chin down.

"Five dollar."

When she handed the money over, their fingertips touched, glove against skin, and she held her breath. Maybe-Elena said something low, something soft and not in English, but Alison recognized the tone. Oh yes, she did. Yellow raced in, a huge wave (so young, so ugly) crashing down, too fast and too hard to hold still, and she stumbled back, grabbing the album, refusing to lift her gaze, refusing to see everything she hatedâ€”fearedâ€”in maybe-Elena’s eyes. Without another word, she fled back into the safe anonymity of the shadows, her heart a steady beat of hurt.

§

It took three tries before Alison could hold the key still enough to slide it into the lock. She rushed in, flipped the dead-bolt latch, and stood with her back against the door, the album clutched to her chest.

Red and Yellow, two of the Muses of Disfigurement accompanying Alison on her journey through the land of scars, still fought within her. She envisioned them as women in flowing robes, their faces hidden behind swathes of fabric. Red carried anger in her fists; Yellow bore the weight of pity upon her shoulders. Both had voices far too strong and sharp to ignore. Both were bound to Alison with unbreakable chains stronger than steel.

Alison’s eyelids fluttered shut and she willed herself to a blank slate. Emptiness flowed in, leaving her still, silent, and colorlessâ€”the absence of self, the absence of everything. Her pulse slowed, and her breathing turned even.

She slipped off her gloves (plain thin gloves, not the hateful pressure garments meant to tame the scars into submission), shifting the weight of the album from side to side. The spaces where pinkie and ring fingers on her right hand should be cried out with a familiar phantom itch, familiar enough to ignore. As she kicked off her shoes, her hip gave a small thank you. The reinforced heel of the right shoe kept her hips properly aligned and turned her limping gait into something less awkward, but like braces on teeth, the forcing of crooked into straight held a price.

She shrugged out of her jacket and sat on the end of the sofa, closest to the light, with the album on her lap. She’d done it. She’d gone into the store and braved the woman’s stares. Sure, she’d hightailed it out of the shop, but that was okay. She’d faced a stranger. That had to mean something.

Baby steps, babygirl. Baby steps.

Tracing her fingers along the cover, she imagined the feel of the old leather. Rough, yet smooth, perhaps cool to the touch. The tip of her forefinger caught on one jagged edge of the long split, hard enough to leave a small mark, a raised line of white against the pinkish skin glove of scar tissue, but not sharp enough to draw blood.

She opened the album, smiling at the scent of tobacco. They never smelled the same. Another odd smell conjured images of old furniture and empty animal cages.

Faint smears of indigo marred the stiff, heavy paper of the first page. Traces of old ink? She tilted the page. Yes, definitely. Old words too faded to read, but still there nonetheless. She angled the album a little further, almost able to make out the handwritten words. An inscription? The name of a family? One line stood out at the bottom, a little darker than the rest, the handwriting old-fashioned and spidery. Not a name, though. Too many words for a name. She held the album even higher, and the words came into focus. Alison read them twice to make sure.

A paper tiger to swallow you whole.

A snippet of poetry perhaps. Oddly compelling.

"Here there be paper tigers," she said and turned the page.

The yellowed paper crackled and a small corner crumbled off into her hand. The first page contained one photo, a sepia-toned, somber faced man in a dark suit, a dark stain obscuring the bottom half of the picture. Alison traced the man’s face with her finger, willing it to memory. Dark hair, bushy moustache, stern eyes, small spectacles balanced on a strong nose, thin lips pressed into a narrow line.

"George, I think. You look like a George."

A bachelor with a penchant for strong drink. A banker or a businessman. The fantasy spilled out and took shape. His voice deep and raspy, yet eloquent. Educated. A haze of pipe smoke floated around his head, illuminated by the glow of candlelight. A journal, ornate script on its pages, lay open on the table. The sharp bite of liquor. Brandy.

"A good year. Only the best," he said, lifting his glass in a toast. "Only the best."

A predatory smile and quick shift of the eyes. He slammed his fist down. Glass shattered and liquor pooled onto the journal, blurring the ink. Blood seeped between his fingers and mixed with the alcohol and the ink.

Alison pulled her hand back from the page and the images drifted away. The tips of her fingers tingled again, the disconnect between brain and dead nerve endings teasing her with the memory of sensation. She dropped her hand onto the sofa, and her breath caught in her throat. Smooth fabric played beneath her skin, soft and real and warm, not phantom. She pushed harder; the sensation melted away, leaving her with the familiar nothingness and tears burning in her left eye. But she knew she felt it.

The red coiled tight. Liar, it said. Fool.

It wasn’t the first time it had happened, nor would it be the last. It could happen for years, her doctor had said. When she asked how many years, he’d glanced away. Obviously, more than two. Then he resumed his pep talk about living in the here and now. Easy to say, and even easier to do, for a man with all ten fingers, two eyes, a full head of hair, and unscarred skin.

A dull, uncomfortable ache nestled in the pit of her stomach.

Let me out, Monstergirl, Red said.

She closed her eyes, counted to five, and let it all go. Nothing more than spilled milk. Not worth the tears. Not worth the hope.

She grabbed the next page in the photo album. A triangular piece of the paper ripped, disintegrated to parchment confetti between her fingers, and spiraled down to the sofa. She slid her finger under the opposite corner of the page and lifted. The corner split; she gave a small growl.

Flipping the album on its side, she fanned the page edges with her fingernail. A brittle yet musical rustle danced up, but all the pages, save the first, held fast together despite no visible sign of water damage darkening the thick paper. She tried sliding her finger between two pages. They wouldn’t budge. At least George’s photo, his face, made the album interesting enough to keep. Behind the spectacles, his eyes gleamed with an intense light, like the look of a caged animal with dusky stripes pacing past the walls of its prison, waiting for a chance to be free.

Or to attack.

CHAPTER 2

Three quick little raps of knuckles against wood announced her mother’s arrival, and Alison closed her laptop before opening the door. Her mother bustled through, wrapped in a comforting cloud of gardenias, all smiles and shopping bags. She set down the latter before she pressed her lips to Alison’s unscarred left cheek.

"Wait until you see the sweater I bought you," she said, stepping back. "It might convince you to change out of your pajamas once in a while."

"Please. You don’t have to buy me something every time you step foot in the mall," Alison said. "And my pajamas are perfectly fine. You’re the one who bought them for me anyway."

"Hush. I can buy my daughter a present if I want to. Are you sure I bought those?"

"Yes, I’m sure. Remember? I asked you to after I saw them online."

"Hmm," she muttered. "Monkey pajamas. What every well-dressed twenty-four-year-old woman is wearing these days." She glanced over at the laptop. "How are your friends?"

"They’re fine," Alison said.

A shred of guilt wormed its way in, turning the words bitter. For a few months after her release from the hospital, she belonged to an online forum for survivors, but once her friends started discussing their reintroduction to society, she deleted her account and all the subsequent emails. And in the year since then, she’d avoided any website that even hinted at human interaction.

They never spoke of the other friends, the old friends and coworkers

pushed away

long gone.

Her mother stopped in the middle of the living room and sniffed. "What is that smell?"

"What smell?"

"It’s dreadful. Can’t you smell it?"

"I can only smell your perfume. Too much, like always." She let out a fake cough, hiding a smile behind her hand.

"Hush."

Her mother pointed at the album. "It’s that, I think." She fanned the air in front of her face. "Oh, Alison, it’s horrible. It smells like dead, wet leaves. How can you stand it?"

Alison shrugged. "It doesn’t smell that bad to me. A little musty, but it’s old. I bought it last night."

"Last night?"

"Well, technically this morning, but yes, I got it from a new shop on 36th Street, one of those places with a handful of antiques and a lot of junk. This was in the window."

Her mother stopped with her hand in mid-air. "You went in the shop?"

"I did."

"Oh babygirl, I’m so proud of you," she said, taking Alison’s hands in hers.

"It was no big deal. I was out walking, and the woman was going in. She saw me looking at the album and said I could come in. She wasn’t open, though. There weren’t any other customers, I mean. Just me."

"But you went in?"

"Yes, I did." Tears glittered in her mother’s eyes. Alison gave her hand a small squeeze. "It doesn’t mean I’m going to go out in the middle of the day. I wanted the album."

"But it’s a step in the right direction. The next time you go out will be easier and soonâ€”"

"Enough, okay?"

"Okay. Well, show it to me."

"You don’t even like them."

"I’ve never said that. I just think it’s morbid. All those dead strangers. Of all the things you could possibly collect…"

Alison rolled her eyes but flipped the front cover open. "You’ve said that too, more than once. What can I say? I like them. This one isn’t much, though. The pages are all stuck together. You can only see one picture."

Her mother fanned the air again. "From the smell, I can believe it. It’s like someone dipped it in manure and rolled it in mud."

"It’s not that bad."

"Sorry dear, but it is. I think you have so many of them you’ve become immune. I wish you would collect something…more aromatic."

"Like perfume? Sorry, you have the market on that one. Do you want something to drink? I can make some tea."

"Tea would be wonderful, but I canâ€”"

"Nope, you stay put. I’m not crippled."

In the kitchen, Alison filled the teapot and set it on the burner before she turned the knob, hiding the tiny blue flames from her sight. She normally used the microwave to make tea for herself but it made her mother happy when she used the stove. Another check mark on her "Alison is making progress sheet."

Alison clenched her jaw. It was hard enough to make progress; knowing her mother was always taking notes made it harder still.

"Mom, are you hungry?" she called out. "If you want, I can make something."

Her mother came into the kitchen and fetched the sugar bowl. "No, I’m fine. I had a little something before I came over."

"You couldn’t sit and wait, could you?"

"Oh you know me. I get itchy feet when someone else is in the kitchen. Maybe I’ll come over next Sunday and make you dinner."

"You don’t have to do that. Why don’t you come over, and I’ll make you dinner."

"But I like doing things for you."

Of course she did, but did she have to try so damn hard? Alison wasn’t going to shatter into pieces. She’d made it this far, hadn’t she? She held her tongue, said only, "I know you do."

"I’ve been thinking. I can add a cell phone to my plan at any time and since you go out walking now, I’d like to get you one."

"I don’t want one. I’m fine with the phone here."

"But what if something happens? What if you fall?â€”"

"Mom. Please? If I decide I want one, I’ll let you know."

Her mother held up both hands. "Okay, okay." Her nose wrinkled. "You’re not really going to keep that album, are you?"

"Sure, why not? I might be able to get the pages unstuck and get to the other photos."

"I think you should throw it away. The man in the picture is horrible."

Alison turned away so her mother wouldn’t see her smile. "It’s just an old photo, and he’s just an old dead guy. He’s perfectly harmless."

"Still, it’s unsettling. Please, don’t keep this one."

Alison turned back. "Okay, fine. I’ll throw it out."

The tea kettle rang out with a high-pitched whistle, and they jumped in unison.

§

After her mother left, Alison took a butter knife into the living room and sat on the floor beside the coffee table. She slid the blade between two of the photo album’s back pages and wiggled it from side to side, wincing at the sound of tearing paper and pulling it out when it met resistance.

She flipped it to George’s photo. Despite her odd daydream of broken glass in a slammed fist, his gaze held only a middle-aged man, dark of eyes and hair, from a forgotten time, his name lost everywhere but her own imagination. Nothing visible anchored the photo in place, and the edge of one corner bent out. She tapped the knife against her palm, set it aside, and slid her finger under the tiny separation. The paper crackled in protest, but the photo stayed intact. When the edge came up a little more, she poked and prodded the opposite corner until it lifted as well. The third corner wouldn’t budge, so she traced the edge of her fingernail around the last one, and with a tiny, brittle creak, it gave way. As her fingertip slipped under the picture, a white crack appeared at the edge, breaking through the sepia tones in the shape of a lightning bolt. She pulled her hand back, and two drops of blood dripped onto George’s shoulder.

"Damn," she muttered. "Sorry, George."

She cleaned off the blood from the photo with her thumb, leaving behind a small smear. Crimson welled from the small gash on her finger, a wet mouth within scarred lips, and she pressed her thumb on the cut, longing for the sharp sting. This wound would scab over and gift her construct of ruined flesh with yet another mark. As if she didn’t have enough.

Yellow rushed in, sunshine bright belying the ugliness it contained. It spoke of Monstergirls and broken things, useless fingers (and not quite enough because two little finger-piggies went away and never came home) and fractured images in a mirror, wrapping her in a blanket of familiar hurt. She closed her eyes, and tried to find the nothing-place, but the scars crisscrossing her palms and fingers and the back of her right hand didn’t care about closed eyes.

They all stare at the Monstergirl. They stare and point and make faces because you’re the sideshow freak, and they can’t resist the horror. Come, give up a tear or two, you poor, poor thing. So young, so trapped in your unmistakable destruction. Save your prayers, your hopes, swallow everything you ever thought you wanted. This is all you have now. Take it, choke it down, drown in itâ€”

A heady scent of tobacco pushed through the voice, and her eyes snapped open. A grey wisp of ribbon-thin smoke hung in the air. Then it vanished. She held out one hand, touching the space where the smoke had been.

She wiped the blood smear again. Tingles raced up and down her thumb and she hissed in a breath. Under the pins and needles, the exterior of the photo changed from a dull pressure to rough against her skin, not the slick, slippery feel of a new photograph, but parchment, textured and warm. She traced the outline of George’s face; when she slid her thumb from the picture to the surrounding paper, a cool heat like icemelt on a hot pavement radiated from its pebbled surface. Spreading her fingers wide, she set her hand down, half-covering George’s photo, half on the paper, but the coldhotcold touched only her thumb. The rest of her skin remained an insensate landscape of alternately ridged and smooth scars. The tingle intensified, a creeping, insectile buzz beneath the skin. She blinked and the sensation ceased, like the phantom smoke. With a sigh, she stuck her finger in her mouth, tasting the metallic tang of blood.

A paper cut from a paper tiger.

Publisher’s Note: The version presented is from the ARC and may differ from published edition.

Damien Angelica Walters’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in various anthologies and magazines, including The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015, Year’s Best Weird Fiction: Volume One, Cassilda’s Song, The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu: New Lovecraftian Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, and Apex Magazine. She was a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award for "The Floating Girls: A Documentary," originally published in Jamais Vu. Sing Me Your Scars, a collection of short fiction, was released in 2015 from Apex Publications. Find her on Twitter @DamienAWalters or on the web at http://damienangelicawalters.com.

Kutraya’s Skies

Dave Creek

7,900 words

Shadoua arrived early at his home, just after midnight in the full planetless darkness Kutraya’s farside enjoyed, a darkness he was all too aware of on this night. Only a farside astronomer such as myself could have discovered this danger, he thought. Little comfort, but perhaps some small consolation.

Normally he wouldn’t be home until after Seyel’s brilliance caused the wise, eternal stars to hide behind the curtain of dawn. As he entered the sleeping chambers of their modest apartment near the observatory, he saw that his true-mate Alaria slept quietly. Her world is about to change, he thought. That’s true of everyone in the world, but for her the change will come before anyone else.

Except me.

As he undressed, Shadoua admired the smooth rise of Alaria’s crest of bone at the top of her head, her chin which jutted forward at such a pleasing angle. As he slipped into bed with her, she stirred, momentarily startled, but calmed at his touch on her neck where her soft smooth green skin gave way to her beautiful tan fur. "You’re home early," she said.

Shadoua embraced Alaria as she snuggled against him. In his excitement, his penis began to emerge from its protective sheath, but he willed his body not to enter reproductive mode, as he knew Alaria would, as well. "I couldn’t work anymore tonight."

Alaria turned her face toward him. "You sound worried."

Shadoua ran red-furred fingers across his true-mate’s pleasingly pointed ears. "I am."

"Something I need to know about — ?"

"Something the whole world needs to know about. Especially since I’ve never loved you more."

"And especially since you have a one-mate about to give birth."

"Yes. That, as well. And I know you wish to have a one-mate soon, as well. So let me tell you."

After he told her, he held her tightly with his upper arms even as his lower arms left their sheaths and caressed her as well, their strength kept in check as they could only be with the one he loved as they reached out for the only comfort they could provide one another, no matter how fleeting.

§

Raytier was having a light lunch in her commonage, which was devoted to the study of science, Kutraya’s capital of Arsek. She was still unused to working in such close proximity to others — as many as ten to fifteen other scientists in the admittedly broad and open area filled with spectrophotometers, mass spectrometers, odor analyzers, and with plenty of computers and display boards. I don’t know how farsiders manage it, she thought. This is bad enough, but to actually live in a city as they do — I don’t know whether I could stand it.

Even Arsek was a settlement of nearly a thousand nearsiders, much too densely packed for comfort as far as Raytier was concerned. But that’s part of the job, she thought.

A glance out a wide window that gave a live view of the gas giant Gisreth provided a bit of relief. Gisreth was an unmoving presence in the nearside sky, its wide, convoluted bands of methane and ammonia barely visible in the midday darkness. Kutrayan orbital missions were exploring the planet more closely, but their crews never discovered enough to satisfy her.

Raytier’s comm buzzed. Looking at the ID, she realized, It’s Shadoua. Must be something interesting. He usually doesn’t call in the middle of his work night. Though they’d met in person only at scientific conferences, Shadoua kept up a brisk phone and text correspondence with her on issues both astronomical and political.

Raytier punched the comm and her farside friend’s image appeared before her. "Shadoua, it’s so good to hear from you. But — are you at home?"

"Yes. I had to … tell Alaria first. Before I told anyone else what I’ve found."

"It sounds serious."

Shadoua said, "Two comets have collided out in the system. Their normal orbits have been altered. One will eventually strike Gisreth."

"Which will absorb it as it does all the other comets it attracts. It’s a common enough sight. But — the other one?"

"You’ve guessed it. It’s actually going to pass us here on Kutraya once without any harm. But it’ll make a close pass around Gisreth, go into an elliptical orbit, and come back again."

Raytier ran a white-furred hand across the top of her crest. She said, "And that’s when it’ll hit?"

"Yes."

"You’re sure?"

Shadoua’s image stood with his hands folded in front of him and the tips of his ears dipped downward. "You know I’m not one to brag. But I also acknowledge my own skills. Yes, I’m sure."

"And it’s big enough to do considerable damage?"

"We’d see major shock waves throughout the world’s crust. Tsunamis. Firestorms."

"Could we destroy it while it’s still heading away from us?"

"Possibly. But the largest pieces would maintain their orbit and strike anyway. It might actually make matters worse, spread the destruction over a wider portion of the world."

"So we have to divert it."

"Which means quick work — I’d suggest developing several booster engines that use the comet’s own materials as fuel. If we can land them there and increase its speed, it’ll still loop around Gisreth, but on a path that misses us."

Raytier said, "That’s my kind of work. I’ll need all the help you can give me figuring out the orbital mechanics."

"I’ll come to your side of the world as quickly as I can. But you know the engineering and science won’t be the biggest challenges. Those will be in the World Council."

"You’re being cynical, Shadoua. The future of the whole world’s at stake."

"Both Alaria and I want children."

"Your one-mate is about to give you a child."

"Not if this comet strikes. And Alaria hasn’t yet found a one-mate. While my hope eventually is to find a two-mate and three-mate."

"I’ve never been one for children, myself. True-mates have been enough for me. But I understand what this means to you."

Shadoua said, "Even our most opportunistic politicians will eventually realize this isn’t a political issue — that they’ll have to work together if we’re going to survive." But I know all too well, Shadoua thought, how political realities can hover over you, unspoken, unseen, then burst forth and take away everything you’ve worked for.

§

A day later, Shadoua gave Alaria a passionate embrace as he left their home. She told him, "Tell Trenori I hope I can find a one-mate and, later, a two-mate as dedicated as she is."

"I will," Shadoua said. Soon he arrived at Trenori’s commonage, a grouping of simple homes in which nearly a hundred Kutrayans specialized in caring for children. Trenori greeted him warmly, with a clasping of upper arms and a slight bow. Shadoua felt himself beaming with pride at the sight of her swelling belly.

"Come inside for a drink," Trenori said.

"I can’t," he told her, outlining the danger from the comet.

Trenori rubbed the back of her crest of bone, a nervous gesture. "What’ll happen if you can’t destroy that comet?"

"Unfortunately, that’s up to the Council."

"I so want this child for you. And I know Alaria is eager for a one-mate as well."

"She sends her best — and admires your dedication."

A final handclasp, and Shadoua left Trenori and her commonage behind. He took the next flight to farside and accompanied Raytier to the Council. Seyel rose through clear skies toward its midday rendezvous with Gisreth, which stood in its accustomed place in the heavens half in shadow, half resplendent in crimson and golden bands. At least, Shadoua thought, the need for nearsiders to take their eclipse nap should keep the debate short.

The Council stood within a natural amphitheater overlooking the settlement of Arsek. Councilors mingled around, and Shadoua caught snatches of conversation, everything from gently prodding for political insights to compliments on one another’s fur. Nerves led him to brush a hand down one arm, then the other, making sure his own fur beneath his short sleeves was straight. This isn’t the time for wrong impressions, he thought.

Shadoua said to Raytier as they sat within the observers’ section, "You look tired."

"Just adapting to the time change. I’m often up overnight anyway, but I’m used to being in darkness then."

World Sovereign Farasor called for quiet and summarized Shadoua’s findings, as photos of the colliding comets were projected behind him.

Afterward, debate began and the amphitheater quickly reverberated with Councilors’ loud voices:

"If we delay, everyone in the world could die!"

"There are things more important than mere survival!"

"This is no better a theory than a multi-colored could come up with." Hearing that last phrase, Shadoua made a mental note to touch up the color of his crest where a thin line insisted upon coming in white instead of red. Talk about wrong impressions, he thought.

The Councilors continued:

"How do we trust this Shadoua?"

"Our own Raytier vouches for his findings."

"How can we spend such money based on images on a screen?"

Shadoua, his anger building, felt his lower arms stirring at his sides, felt his ripping teeth straining to expose themselves. Ancient drives made it difficult to suppress those urges, but he sat as calmly as he could, contenting himself with a low growl, otherwise resisting the temptation to go on all sixes and tackle his opponents. He watched the many speakers trying to take control of the main podium and asked Raytier, "Not a political issue?"

"You should acknowledge your worth as a political savant, as well."

"What needs to be acknowledged is the legitimate danger to the world. And I didn’t come here to be insulted. Especially not to be compared to a multi-colored."

Shadoua saw Raytier hesitate before she said, "I abhor their prejudices. And I’d hoped you didn’t share them." Kutrayans whose fur was of more than one color were considered by many to be genetically inferior to the majority whose fur was of a single hue.

"I know the science doesn’t back up those kinds of feelings," Shadoua said. "But people are comfortable around their own kind."

Raytier looked pained. "Let’s not talk about that anymore. Those Councilors are looking toward next year’s election, not anything else."

Shadoua said, "There won’t be an election next year if they don’t act."

Sovereign Farasor turned his back on the Councilors and raised his arms toward the gas giant Gisreth, as if in supplication. Shadoua leaned toward Raytier and asked, "Is the Sovereign really paying homage to Gisreth?"

Raytier said, "He’s a true nearsider, no more a believer than I am. But he’s primarily a politician, and he needs the support of those who do believe."

"By which you mean he’s appealing to farsider ignorance — to religion instead of science."

Raytier indicated the many politicians vying for attention, who were only now drawing quiet at the sight of Sovereign Farasor’s silent appeal. "Look at the loudest of them, the ones appealing primarily to emotion, no matter what your evidence shows. Who are they?"

Shadoua’s ears stood straight up in exasperation. "I can’t deny they’re mostly from farside. But your nearside Sovereign is making an equally reprehensible appeal to cynicism."

Sovereign Farasor turned toward the Council. "My friends. We may not agree on where to place our faith. For many of us, especially here on nearside, the scientific evidence alone is clear and sufficient. Others, including many of our farside friends, want a signal from Father Gisreth. After all, it is He who stands in our skies as a constant protector. It is He who provides us with our notions of morality and family."

That’s literally true, Shadoua thought. But how many are aware that our notions of one-mates and two-mates and beyond derive from the need to maintain genetic diversity against the mutations Gisreth’s magnetic radiation causes?

Farasor pointed toward the observers’ section. "We have here possibly our top farside scientist," he said. Shadoua was aware of becoming the focus of attention of everyone in the amphitheater.

Sovereign Farasor continued, "Imagine the signs — a scientist brings us the most precise scientific evidence of the danger ahead of us. Yet he is a farside scientist — one who also understands the stars, which are best seen on that side of our world. One who understands how they speak to us."

The worst part, Shadoua thought, is that he may be right. Thoughts I believed I’d banned since childhood return at the most inopportune moments, when I need my objectivity more than ever. He could even look up toward the gas giant Gisreth and feel that it was peering down at him. Father Gisreth knows I’d never reveal a bit of that to Raytier.

Farasor turned his attention back toward the assembled Councilors, imploring them for their vote to provide the money Shadoua and Raytier needed for the space mission that would save the world. As he sat, a quieter debate began. The vote will come at any moment, Shadoua thought. Here is the turning point for our civilization — for our species.

Raytier told Shadoua, "I know what it took for you just to sit there quietly."

"I wanted to stand up and shout that I’m not one of those stereotypical farsiders who worships the stars."

"I know you’re not. But you understand them. And we have to work with them. We have to be better than them, and better than any of my nearsider colleagues, too. We have the facts. We know the consequences."

"If we don’t succeed in this," Shadoua said, "the entire world will know the consequences."

§

Later that day, Raytier brought Shadoua into her workspace, shooed away several hovering colleagues, and blocked incoming calls on the comm. She served a hot herbal drink they both enjoyed as they stood at a large window overlooking the capital — apartment buildings that housed dozens of people at a time, the council amphitheater they’d just left, the more soothing sight of the wooded areas beyond.

The sun, Seyel, had disappeared behind Gisreth minutes earlier. The gas giant itself was a waning crescent that soon would be completely in shadow and bring the darkest part of the day here on nearside.

Raytier showed Shadoua a small telescope in one corner. "Like to do a little planet-gazing before we talk? It can be relaxing."

"I won’t relax until those comets are past," Shadoua said. "Besides, we should settle a few things quickly. I suppose you’ll want to take a nap soon." Nearsiders were accustomed to intermittent sleep cycles, given the daily interlude of darkness during the daily eclipse and the bright face of Gisreth shining throughout the night.

"I can put it off until later," Raytier said.

"Very well, then. First of all, I can’t believe we got the Councilors’ support."

"We got their money. They can withdraw their support at any moment." Just as you might withdraw your support from me, my friend, if you knew the secret I’ve kept from you all these years.

Shadoua ran a hand across the hidden line of white that would otherwise mar the tuft of red hair covering his crest. "All the more reason to hurry."

"So, we should figure out how to save the world."

"Given its trajectory," Shadoua said, "We’ll have to catch up to the second comet on its first pass. Waiting for it to come around Gisreth will be too late."

"Any spacecraft that does that will need its own boosters. I’ve seen your numbers — that comet will just miss reaching Gisreth’s escape velocity. All we’ve ever achieved is a close orbital velocity."

"I can supply the hard numbers that will result in the rendezvous. That lets you get a grasp on the engineering."

Raytier said, "The political fight isn’t over yet, either. But we can’t let ourselves get distracted."

"The religious arguments against us are nonsensical. Their side won’t endure."

"Don’t underestimate them. We’ve got to stay ahead of them in our planning. I’ve got other engineers at Arsek Spaceport already looking at a way to mount extra boosters onto an exploratory shuttle."

"One was already scheduled to go?" Shadoua asked.

"There’s a mission already orbiting Gisreth. We keep a rescue flight ready in case of an emergency. I suppose it’s still a rescue flight — just for the whole world, now."

"Which means the rescue flight itself won’t have a backup."

"That’s right," Raytier said. "But if they get in trouble, there won’t be a world worth returning to, anyway."

§

Only days before the rescue mission was to launch, Shadoua was watching the mating of the giant booster rockets to the shuttle that would take part in the rescue mission. The craft was a standard exploratory cruiser, the Akhir, named after a great peacemaker of many years past. Raytier was supervising that effort, but when she saw him, she approached him and said, "I’d like you to be part of the crew aboard this shuttle."

The fur on Shadoua’s back raised. "I’m not an explorer, except through my telescopes over on farside. I’m certainly not an adventurer. Why me?"

"You know the mathematics involved, and the orbital mechanics. Landing those booster engines is vital, and it’s all got to be done by remote. The crew can’t land on the comet, and it can’t just trust to the computers — the world can’t."

"I can be in Project Command the entire mission if you need me."

"And what if there’s a problem with the radio?" Raytier asked. "The comet eclipses the ship, perhaps. No, I won’t take the chance."

Shadoua felt his ears begin to sag, and immediately perked them up again. "I’d rather not do this. But you’re right. Will you be going?"

Raytier smiled. "My job is essentially done once the ship lifts off. I’d be dead weight. I’m the one who’ll be in Project Command during the mission."

"I’ll be glad to hear your voice. But — I’d like to return home to see Alaria before I go."

"We can arrange that."

"And — I’d like you to go with me."

Raytier folded her hands in front of her. "This should be your time together."

"And we’ll have that. But you and I — we’ve known each other for so long and you’ve never met her. I want you to know one another."

Raytier said, "We can only stay a day or so. But we could use the travel time to discuss details of the mission without distractions."

"Thank you, Raytier. I suppose without faith in Father Gisreth, we’ll have to find it within ourselves."

§

During the flight to Kutraya’s farside, Raytier marveled at just how nervous she felt watching Gisreth slowly fall beneath the world’s horizon. She told Shadoua, "I know it’s completely irrational. I’ve never worshipped "Father Gisreth" or had the slightest faith in anything except knowledge — but I have to admit the thought of an ‘empty’ sky unnerves me."

Shadoua smiled. "Perhaps you can understand how I feel coming to nearside. Certainly I know all the gravitational relationships between the planet and our world. But every time I look upward and see Gisreth looming in the sky, something within me wonders what’s holding it up, and suspects it’s about to fall on me."

After the better part of a day, the plane landed in Shadoua’s hometown of Beyarna. When they arrived at his home on the outskirts of the city — countless people packed into a single settlement even more densely than her research building! — Raytier stood quietly as Shadoua’s true-mate Alaria embraced him. To Raytier’s surprise, Alaria grabbed her into a tight hug, as well. "Shadoua has told me so much about you," Alaria said. "Do come inside. I’ve a late supper ready. Shadoua told me yesterday neither of you had eaten for a couple days. I do hope you enjoy farside cuisine."

Raytier said, "Recent events have made me more adventurous. I’m willing to try most anything."

Shadoua spoke up: "You’re more adventurous? I’m the one who’s shooting off into space." But his smile set the mood as they settled in around a table filled with sunleaf salad, grilled blueroot, and roast gorzon.

Afterwards, Raytier leaned back in her chair and told Alaria, "I can’t recall when I’ve had such an excellent meal. Both my stomachs are full — I can go two or three days now."

"Thank you. I felt I had to fix something special. You’re helping Shadoua so much, and it’s going to take both of you to save our world. It makes me feel as if we’re family."

Raytier felt a twinge of guilt: If I say one particular word, you may not feel the same way, she thought. But she told Alaria and Shadoua, "Thank you. I don’t have much in the way of family, and that means a lot to me."

Shadoua said, "I know your work has been so important to you. You should slow down, get to know someone outside work."

Raytier turned to Alaria and said, "The world is in danger and he’s worried about my love life."

"And I’m right to be," Shadoua said, "since apparently you’re not."

"There was someone last year. You must remember Eladar, my true-mate for a time."

"I do. But that didn’t seem to last long."

That’s because he heard that particular word, Raytier thought.

Alaria said, "I’m sure everything happens in its own time." She stood and embraced Shadoua. "I’m an early riser, so I’m heading on to bed. Besides, I’m sure you both have plenty to talk about."

Shadoua watched his true-mate leave, then said to Raytier, "Why don’t we go out back? I’d like to show you something there."

They stepped out beneath that "empty sky" that Raytier had feared. As she had anticipated, the lack of Gisreth’s comforting presence casting light across the landscape was unnerving, somehow wrong. An irrational part of herself wondered if the gas giant had somehow been eliminated forever from the firmament.

Once she accepted its absence, however, Raytier began to see the sky’s own beauty, which Gisreth mostly obscured nearside. Shadoua’s home stood far away from the city of Beyarna’s lights, allowing the stars themselves to shine with an intensity she’d never experienced. And there are so many of them, she thought. Scientifically, subjectively, I knew how many stars I should be able to see here on farside, but to see them sprawled out across the heavens as if an omnipotent painter had laid them out across a canvas — it’s breathtaking.

Shadoua pulled a small telescope on a rolling stand over to Raytier’s position. "I have something to show you." A few adjustments as Shadoua looked through the eyepiece, and he motioned Raytier over.

"I think I know what I’m about to see," Raytier said.

"As I expected. But you should still look."

Raytier leaned over and looked through the eyepiece. Seyel’s light illuminated the comet so that it stood out before the more detailed starfield the telescope revealed. A brilliant white at its center, it grew dimmer and "fuzzier" toward its edges. "So that’s our enemy," Raytier said.

"The second comet," Shadoua said, then leaned over and made an adjustment to the telescope. "And here’s the comet that will actually approach first — the one that’s going to fall into Gisreth."

Raytier looked into the eyepiece again. "Its angle doesn’t look much different from the other one."

"Just enough to make all the difference," Shadoua said. "I realize that a lot of nearside scientists wonder why farside astronomers even exist. ‘There’s nothing there,’ they say. I know they’re wrong."

"Forgive me," Raytier said. "In my younger days I probably said it a couple of times myself. But no more."

"Don’t get me wrong," Shadoua said. "I imagine viewing Gisreth is marvelous, too, especially from orbit. But Gisreth is real to us. It’s a world just as Kutraya is, and we understand a lot about it." He indicated the vast starfield. "Out there is mystery. Oh, we understand a lot about the other planets and the stars and their movements — quite a few things about their composition and lifespan — but there’s so much more we don’t know."

"Such as — are other people out there?"

"And how much of what we understand about life is universal? Is life inevitably based on carbon? Do lifeforms elsewhere pass on their genetic heritage through a triple helix? Do they all have fur?"

Raytier said, "Perhaps some of those things apply some places, but not others. I’ve even heard speculation that life could exist upon a planet, rather than a moon."

"I suppose it could. But without such a world always overhead beckoning, would such beings even be drawn to travel into space?"

"Once we divert the comet, the universe opens up to us."

"Of course, if we don’t divert the comet, none of this means anything. Unless some of those other beings arrive later to view the remains of our civilization."

§

Shadoua was awakened early the next morning by a pounding at his door. Even Alaria, the early riser, wasn’t up yet, though she was just awake enough to mutter, "Who could that be?" Shadoua motioned for her to stay in bed as he dressed quickly and went to the door.

A familiar figure stood there, rotund, dark-furred. "Niaghos," Shadoua said. He was a Councilor who represented Shadoua’s province.

"Forgive my intrusion so early, Shadoua, but we live in difficult times."

"Come inside. What’s so important? Has someone died? Is some sort of political crisis going on?"

They sat as Niaghos said, "Died? No, not yet. Political crisis? Certainly. And you’re the cause."

"I am? How?"

"With your blasphemous idea of a mission to go after this comet."

"A comet that threatens to kill us all!"

"And which Father Gisreth himself is guiding toward us. Don’t you understand? How many times have we seen such gifts fall into Gisreth himself? Surely this one will also be harmless."

Another voice said from behind Niaghos, "Can we take that chance?"

Niaghos turned and said, "You must be Raytier."

"I am."

"I’m sorry if I woke you."

"I’m a typical nearsider — we nap a lot, given that so little of our day is spent in darkness."

"And you’re the one who’s put these ideas into our friend Shadoua’s head."

Shadoua spoke up: "I made the initial discovery. I went to her."

Niaghos kept his gaze on Raytier, telling her, "All the same, you’ve not tried to sway him from this dangerous path."

"You must forgive me. I’m not spiritual. Besides, if we’re wrong, what can happen? The comet flies by harmlessly, leaving you alive to brag of the rightness of your theories."

"I have no wish to brag. I only want to avoid angering Father Gisreth." Raytier didn’t respond, and Niaghos continued: "I understand that He is only a symbol for the underlying truths of the universe. I’m not a fool, neither am I uneducated or naive. I’m only concerned that you may be be working with forces far more powerful than mere worldly intelligences are meant to understand."

Shadoua said, "I respect the old beliefs, Niaghos, perhaps more than you realize. But the forces we’re working with are as natural as Seyelshine and the wind on our face. Marvelous, sometimes more powerful than we can imagine, but not supernatural."

Niaghos said, "Now it is you who must forgive me. This injures my soul, Shadoua, but I came here hoping to convince you away from this awful path. It seems I cannot. So, in fairness, I tell you I will be back on nearside soon, and I will do everything I can to halt this disgraceful venture, whether in the Council or the launch site or on the streets."

"Serve your conscience as you see fit," Shadoua said, "and Raytier and I will serve ours the same way."

Niaghos told Raytier, "I wish we had met differently." To Shadoua, he said, "I believe the better of our opinions will triumph."

"That’s odd," Shadoua said. "I believe the same thing."

§

Raytier, back on nearside at Arsek Spaceport, watched glumly as a crowd of protesters chanted their rage at the spacecraft that would, this day, be launched with the purpose of saving their world.

But none of these idiots care, Raytier thought. They’d rather fall back upon their pre-scientific beliefs that may have served us well as a primitive people, but threaten our very existence now.

The metal fence surrounding the launch pad didn’t seem tall enough or strong enough to be sufficiently secure to Raytier, but the massed security personnel trying to push the protesters farther back looked to be making headway without resorting to violent measures. In their upper arms they held stunner rifles, and kept their lower arms sheathed. But she couldn’t help but notice that most of them also had more lethal weaponry strapped to their backs, weapons their lower arms could grab in an instant. Raytier thought, This spaceport was once a place for explorers, and they were acclaimed and admired. We never anticipated facing a serious threat of violence here.

Raytier forced her attention away from such unpleasantness and returned it to the spacecraft standing beneath Gisreth’s full midnight brightness. The Akhir would carry four people, including Shadoua, into an orbit parallel to the threatening comet. It was capable of spending many days around Gisreth and of altering its orbit many times during its exploratory missions. And it featured all the modifications that Raytier had designed for its next, most crucial mission.

The tall boosters attached to either side would allow it to catch up to the second comet as it whipped around Gisreth in its elliptical orbit. This spacecraft’s going to need every bit of maneuvering ability it possesses to rendezvous with the comet, Raytier thought. It’ll almost have to break free of Gisreth’s orbit to approach it at all. Then there’s the small matter of landing these rockets on it.

A voice behind her said, "I suppose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be." It was Shadoua, who approached wearing the spacesuit that would activate to press firmly on his stomach and legs during the high-gravity maneuvers of liftoff and comet rendezvous.

"Captain Direl’s as good as we have," Raytier said. "And I’ll be in touch with you the entire trip."

"You’ll be busy back here fighting off Niaghos and his followers. I think I may have the easier task."

"This ship is taking off today. After that, they can yell and demonstrate all they want." Raytier embraced her friend. "Do well, but stay safe. It’s almost enough to make me ask Father Gisreth to look after you."

Shadoua smiled. "We’ll be close enough. I’ll make sure we put in a good word for ourselves."

A volley of stunner fire behind them, and Raytier turned to see a mass of protesters charging the guards. Without thought, she ran toward the confrontation, barely aware of Shadoua’s shouts of concern.

Another blast of stunner fire, and more protesters fell. But many of the security guards found themselves with their backs against the metal fence, sections of which actually bend inward slightly from the pressure.

As she ran, Raytier went to all sixes even as her lower arms unsheathed themselves, hard fists forming, and her ripping teeth emerged. A couple of the protesters were struggling with the guards, trying to wrest their stunner rifles from them. A broad section of fence buckled and several protesters stepped across it or jumped over it.

Raytier tackled the first person who’d made it through the fence, her upper hands grasping him by the shoulders as her auxiliaries punched him repeatedly in the torso. The protester slumped to the ground. Raytier went bipedal again and stood over him, resisting the primitive urge to bite into his neck.

More shots from the guards — Lethal ones, Raytier realized, ducking. But they were warning shots only, with the ones aimed at the protesters remaining stun shots only. More of the protesters who had breached the gate collapsed all around her. Most of the rest hesitated, then began running away from the spaceport. The guards didn’t pursue them, but detained the few who stayed behind.

A touch on her shoulder, and Raytier turned, teeth bared. "It’s me!" Shadoua said, and Raytier forced herself to calm.

"I’m sorry," she said. "It’s just…"

"I know. Our primitive side touches all of us one time or another."

Raytier consciously sheathed her lower arms and within the next moment her ripping teeth retracted of their own accord. "Let’s move away from here as quickly as we can," she told Shadoua. "We have much more civilized work to do."

By the time Seyel was close to rising, Raytier’s emotional outburst had subsided and she watched from the safety of the sprawling command bunker as the spaceship meant to rescue the world lifted off. The ship’s fiery launch banished what remained of the early morning darkness as Raytier stepped outside and watched the rocket’s exhaust disperse within a cool breeze. She continued watching as Gisreth became a thin crescent, then returned to the bunker to await the Akhir’s approach to the comet.

§

Shadoua thought he knew what to expect when the Akhir’s main engines cut off, and he dreaded it. He’d hesitated eating anything that morning, fearing he’d throw up the contents of both stomachs once weightlessness arrived.

The actual sensation, though disconcerting at first, was actually pleasant. With his body still restrained by his tight harness, he didn’t have as much sensation of floating as he’d assumed he would. When Captain Direl said they could leave their seats, Shadoua did so tentatively, even as he watched the other four crewmembers, experienced space travelers all, eagerly release their harnesses and float free.

He caught a glimpse out the nearest viewport and grabbed the backs of seats and handholds on equipment to get there, however clumsily. Kutraya stood beneath them, sunlight glinting off the surface of the Lucerian Ocean, clouds a pure white covering much of the land. He looked back the way they’d come and saw that they were swiftly leaving Gisreth behind. Even as a farsider, I find that somehow disturbing, he thought. But — patience — he’ll be back soon enough.

The Akhir was to make a single circuit of Kutraya, using its gravitational pull to whip itself away from the world and toward the gas giant, presumably in a course just ahead of and parallel to the comet’s path.

Captain Direl’s voice interrupted Shadoua’s thoughts. "All crew, prepare to double-check all ship’s systems. I want everything in order before the insertion into the comet’s path."

Time to get to work, Shadoua thought. I’ve got to make Raytier proud of me.

Before it seemed possible, the Akhir was crossing into Kutraya’s nightside, and their preparations became all the more frenetic, especially since now they could see the second comet, the one that was bearing down on their home. The first one, which would strike Gisreth, was taking a different path, one not yet visible from their current position. By the time the ship swung around toward daylight again, the second comet’s image filled the rear viewscreens even at the lowest magnification. It’s as if it’s abandoned all plans of striking our world and is, instead, consciously bearing down on Akhir!

§

Raytier, in Project Command, was surprised to hear that Councilor Niaghos had arrived and was demanding to see her. She found him waiting in an unused room. It was bare, windowless, and musty, and Niaghos was standing there, arms folded, facial features set. "Raytier, you must cancel this project immediately and rely upon Father Gisreth to protect us."

"It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? The Akhir is right in front of the comet and ready to begin diverting it."

"My constituents have been watching both comets approach and are terrified. They’re demanding answers."

Raytier said, "And I’m providing the best ones I know. You may not accept this, but I respect your faith. Mine, however, lies elsewhere."

"In your science that turns us away from real truths. My constituents demand to know why the government has not built shelters for them, or spacecraft that could take them to safety."

"There’s no shelter from this. Earthquakes, floods, firestorms — there’s nowhere to hide. Besides, how could we build shelters for billions of people? Or spaceships to take them anywhere? And where would they go?"

"So your science doesn’t have as many answers as you claim."

"I thought you were trusting in Father Gisreth to protect the world."

Niaghos said, "That was before your blasphemous spaceship proclaimed a lack of faith in Him. That is the reason the comet is bearing down upon us."

Raytier turned toward the door. "I don’t have to listen to any more of this. I’m going back to the real work of saving us."

"You’d better stop and listen to me."

Reluctantly, Raytier stopped and turned back toward the Counselor. "What is it?"

"I know your secret," Niaghos said. "And if you don’t turn that spaceship around and bring it back to Kutraya, I’ll reveal it for all to hear."

Raytier held her breath at Niaghos’ words. She knew what he must be threatening to reveal. How did he find out? she wondered, thinking of all the consequences of her carefully guarded secret getting out. I’ll lose my job. All my friends, maybe even Shadoua — all gone.

She considered her response for only a moment, and as she told Niaghos of her decision, she felt a peacefulness washing over her that she hadn’t experienced in years.

§

Captain Direl’s voice came over the ship’s comm: "Shadoua, please come to the cockpit."

Shadoua wondered what could be so important — he’d not even been to the cockpit this entire mission. He pulled himself along within the cramped confines of the ship and entered the cockpit.

Captain Direl was alone. "Close the door behind you," he said.

Shadoua did, then maneuvered himself into the co-pilot’s seat. He found himself staring at the immensity of Gisreth. With the Akhir making a close approach around the gas giant, it dominated the view, its illumination overwhelming any glimpse of the stars. Shadoua was able to perceive its largest bands of ammonia and methane slowly moving against one another, their edges undulating against one another, and how some borders even braided together.

Captain Direl spoke up: "An amazing view, isn’t it?"

"I’ve seldom seen it at all, living on farside. And I’ve only viewed it through a telescope a couple of times. To be this close, to see this much detail…."

"It’s almost like a living thing, isn’t it?"

"And I can tell this isn’t why you called me up here," Shadoua said.

"You’re right. I’ve just received a message from Project Command. Raytier just resigned from the mission and is headed home."

"Headed home? Why?"

"Politics. It turns out she’s a multi-colored. A former lover of hers — Eladar was his name — revealed her secret to the Council."

Shadoua felt the hair on his crest rise. "I can’t believe that!" As many times as we’ve spoken from one side of the world to the other, as closely as we’ve worked together on this rescue mission — and I never suspected.

Captain Direl asked, "Are you all right?"

"I’m…fine. Just getting used to the idea."

"I have to ask — which idea? That Raytier is off the project, or that she’s a so-called multi-colored?"

"Oh, the, uh — that she’s off the project, of course."

Direl looked at him with a skeptical eye, but said, "I’m glad to hear that. After all, you’re a scientist. You have no reason to believe this nonsense about the color of a person’s fur. Keeping people out of jobs, sometimes even assaulting or killing them — it’s shameful."

Except — it’s a genetic deviation, a sign of other problems that can’t be seen. Can we trust the engineering work she performed for this mission? Can we trust her even to want this mission to succeed?

"Shadoua — are you sure you’re well? You look like you received quite a shock."

"Yes. I’m sorry. I really should get back to work." But when Shadoua left the cockpit, he didn’t immediately rejoin his colleagues who were preparing the spacecraft for the rendezvous with the comet; instead, he shut himself up for a time in his personal bunk, a space so small he could barely float free.

§

Raytier stood outside the back door of her home, moments before Seyel was to set, and watched as the first comet bore down upon the gas giant Gisreth. Its long tail of gas and dust made the comet easily visible even without a telescope. Despite the immense speeds involved, she was struck by how slowly the comet seemed to approach the planet — it gave the impression of being unwilling to be drawn in to Gisreth as so many others had been.

Though not an uncommon event, such comet strikes were rare enough that Raytier had never witnessed one as it happened. She savored the anticipation in the last moments before the comet gave in to the inevitable and allowed itself to plunge into Gisreth — a crimson fireball probably the size of Kutraya itself bloomed languidly, almost seductively, from the planet. Raytier heard a scream from several houses away, then other voices, more muffled, urging that person to remain calm. Don’t worry about Father Gisreth, Raytier thought. He’s taken much bigger punches.

Kutraya wouldn’t survive, though. And the second comet will be on its way within moments.

It’s all up to Shadoua and everyone else aboard Ahkir.

Raytier heard muffled steps behind her, and turned to see two people approaching. Silhouetted against Seyel’s dying rays, she couldn’t make out whether she recognized them, but their purposeful strides told her this was not a random encounter.

Before she could react, one intruder grabbed her upper arms as the other advanced toward her unlocked door. Raytier struggled, but the grip against her upper arms only tightened, and the intruder’s lower arms held hers in check, not even able to unsheath. "We’ll do this quietly and quickly," the intruder holding her said as he pushed her into her home. "No reason to draw this out as you did the buildup to your blasphemous space mission."

Raytier shouted, "Get out of my house!"

The other intruder slapped her on the side of her head, and she fell to the floor. The first one told her, "I said ‘quietly.’" He motioned to the other. "Follow through on ‘quickly.’" The first intruder leaned down next to her and said, "Take comfort in the fact that your suffering is alleviating that of Father Gisreth."

The filthy rag they stuffed into her mouth kept her from screaming as the first blows rained down upon her and the first intruder pulled out a razor-sharp blade and bent over her.

§

Shadoua approached Raytier’s house one night three days later. He wasn’t concerned about the lateness of the hour, knowing of nearsiders habits of napping, especially with Gisreth shining nearly full as midnight approached.

His joy over the success of the rescue mission remained tempered by concern for her. She won’t answer when I call, he thought. I’m told no one in her commonage has seen her.

Local security forces had told him they’d checked in on her and everything was fine, but Shadoua didn’t trust that report.

I heard a frightening tone in their voices, even over the comm line, he thought. As if it didn’t matter whether anything had happened to her.

It’s the same tone I heard in my own voice when I told Captain Direl I was ‘getting used to’ the revelation that Raytier’s a multi-colored.

Shadoua walked up to Raytier’s door and knocked, waited. No response. He knocked louder. Finally he heard movement inside. A weak voice spoke from behind the door: "Please go away."

"Raytier — it’s Shadoua."

"I know. Why would you want to speak to someone like me?"

"I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I was wrong to feel the way I did."

"I wish I could believe you."

"Let me in. I’ll convince you. I’m…worried about you."

A moment passed, and the door opened on her darkened house. Raytier wore a hooded robe that covered her entire body except for part of her face. Shadoua took a step forward and Raytier took two steps backward. "There’s no reason to be afraid of me," Shadoua said.

"Then — you don’t know what happened?"

Shadoua fought to keep anger from flaring: "I know that I went on a space mission when I didn’t want to. I know I helped save the world. We couldn’t have done it without you, but I did my part, too, and I think that gives me the right to an answer — what’s going on here?"

Raytier lowered her hood and pulled the robe down to expose her shoulders. "Oh, dear Father Gisreth," Shadoua said at the sight, a phrase from his more faithful youth he uttered without thinking.

Raytier’s face, the side of her head, and even parts of her crest were heavily bruised. The tips of her ears hung down forlornly. And where her white fur was supposed to begin at her neck, there was only bare green skin, which was marred by many small but deep cuts in the first stages of healing.

"They shaved off all of your —"

"Yes. They beat me and stripped me and shaved my entire body."

"Who did this?" Shadoua asked.

"They didn’t say. But I’d suspect they’re some of Niaghos’ followers."

"I don’t agree with the man’s views, but I have a hard time believing he’d order something like this."

"I don’t say he ordered it," Raytier said. "But he may have some overzealous followers."

"I can’t imagine the shame…"

"Could it be worse than the shame I suffered all these years, knowing I was a multi-colored, knowing I’d never be able to advance as I knew I could…"

"I have to apologize, "Shadoua said. "I’ve seen who it is who makes such statements. I have no wish to be associated with them."

"We saved the world. Nothing else matters."

"They want to honor me before the Council. I’ll refuse unless you can stand there with me."

Raytier laughed, rolled up her sleeves to show her naked arms, hitched up her robe to show her naked legs. "Is this who will appear before the Council? No, they will not embrace me."

"I won’t accept the honor unless they do embrace you."

"Thank you, Shadoua. That, I will accept," Raytier said as she took Shadoua’s hands in hers. Shadoua kept himself from flinching, despite the unnaturally warm feel of smooth unfurred skin and a sense that this was inappropriately intimate, a type of touching he should share only with his true-mate whenever he caressed her smooth face.

Originally appeared in The Human Equations (Hydra Publications, 2014), a collection by Dave Creek

Photo by Tim Waggoner

Dave Creek is the author of a novel, Some Distant Shore, and the short story collections A Glimpse of Splendor and The Human Equations. He’s also published a series of novellas, including The Silent Sentinels and A Crowd of Stars, with The Fallen Sun forthcoming. He’s also a regular contributor to Analog Science Fiction and Fact, where many of his short stories first appeared. He’s also contributed stories to several anthologies. Find out more about Dave’s work at www.davecreek.net, on Facebook at Fans of Dave Creek, and on Twitter, @DaveCreek. In the "real world," Dave is a retired television news producer. Dave lives in Louisville with his wife Dana, son Andy, and two sleepy cats — Hedwig and Hemingway.

Interview with Cover Artist Matt Davis

Russell Dickerson

This month’s cover artist is Matt Davis, a self-described "monkey on a rock floating through space that sometimes dreams of being a writer and artist." When not writing about weird occult adventures in the quiet valley he calls home, along with his family and their small menagerie of pets, he moonlights as a freelance artist and cover designer.

APEX MAGAZINE: Your surreal art for this month’s Apex Magazine cover, "It Gazes Back," gives an interesting twist on reality. As the creator, what ideas or emotions are you looking to create, to get out of your head and into the art? Do you think the possible perceptions that the viewers might have are similar?

Matt Davis: This is what I get for trying to be clever, right? The title came after the image; it’s a play on Nietzsche’s warning about gazing too long into the abyss. After a while it starts gazing back. It felt fitting and better than admitting to my occasional predilection for giving people televisions for heads. But really, I suppose, it holds close to that warning and our fascination as a people, as a culture, to gaze too long into abysses.

AM: Your pieces vary from intricately detailed works to softer, more open pieces. How does that difference evolve as you are working? Does adding textures or individual pieces ever change the original idea?

MD: There’s an obsession with abstract minimalism that I’ve always harbored, that I wish I were better at expressing. One can go and work layers of detail and symbolism into a piece, and it can be beautiful, but there’s a deeper, more satisfying trick to conveying depths and layers of symbolism simply, succinctly, by digging for the subconscious of the viewer and evoking perceptions that way. A lot of my work begins with an idea or, more accurately, a feeling I wish to evoke, some kind of concept. There are many roads to get there.

AM: Your DeviantArt site has a number of digital coloring pieces based on comic art. Does working within the confines of previously created art limit your ideas? Do you approach comic coloring differently than your other works?

MD: I’ve loved comics since I was a little kid, they’re a pretty intrinsic piece of my personality, and coloring comic art is such a hugely different beast than graphic design, cover art, or anything else I do. I think that’s why I enjoy it so much. Working within a given confine, a certain constraint, but working with pure color and expression to bring another artist’s work to life, to the next level and create a more compelling visual experience. There’s also a feeling of collaboration that appeals to me, talents and art coming together to be greater.

AM: On your Twitter and DeviantArt accounts, you’ve been asked or have covered those wanting you to work either for free or exposure. With so much attention on the topic right now, how do you approach customers who, to put it nicely, are hesitant to pay for your work? Some have said that creators overall should discuss their rates openly online, what is your opinion on that?

MD: There was an article lately penned by a pretty popular and successful concept and graphic artist that struck a chord with me (https://medium.com/@noahbradley) that, summed up, basically stated that a client’s willingness to pay is in direct correlation with their respect for the artist whose services they wish to procure. That made a lot of sense to me. At the same time, I think rates should be a mostly open subject, but they should also be realistic. A lot of would-be clients are hesitant to approach an artist because truth be told many artists have unbelievably high prices based off unrealistic standards.

AM: With a project like your Tarot set, how do you approach the differences and similarities between the cards, in viewing them as an overall set? As you were working on the project, did you feel a need to either match or even purposely avoid similarities to other tarot decks?

MD: I really didn’t know what I was tackling when I decided to start that Tarot deck. I’ve always loved the Tarot, its imagery and the way it can shape belief, all the varied interpretations and perceptions people around the world have of it. It’s a massive undertaking to design a deck, all the symbolism and metaphor that has to be folded into every image, all the history. A very big part of it most definitely was to make it original, an extension of my personal view of the world and interpretation and symbolism. Someday, maybe, I’ll dive back into it and finish off the Minor Arcana. Maybe.

You can see more of Davis’ work at rockandhillstudio.daportfolio.com, including information to contact him about commissions. His new book RED SKY BLUES, featuring interior art by Will Kirkby, can now be found on Amazon. Along with his other gallery at greydevil13.deviantart.com, you can follow him on Twitter at @greydevil13.

Matt Davis is just a monkey on a rock floating through space that sometimes dreams of being a writer and artist. When not writing about weird occult adventures in the quiet valley he calls home, along with his family and their small menagerie of pets, he moonlights as a freelance artist and cover designer. You can see Matt’s work at rockandhillstudio.daportfolio.com and find his contact info there if you’re interested in contacting him about commissions. His new book RED SKY BLUES, featuring interior art by Will Kirkby, can now be found on Amazon.

Photo by John Urbancik

Russell Dickerson has been a published illustrator and designer since the previous millennium, creating works for many genre publications and authors. He has also written many articles for various organizations in that time, including Apex, and his work can be found on his website at www.darkstormcreative.com.

Apex Magazine Issue 81 Preview

Next month in Apex Magazine, we will have original fiction by Benjanun Sriduangkaew ("The Beast at the End of the Universe"), Betsy Phillips ("The Four Gardens of Fate"), and Daniel Rosen ("Anabaptist"). Our poetry is by Heather Morris, Mike Jewett, Crystal Lynne Hilbert, and Laurel Dixon. The reprint will be a novelette by Nick Mamatas ("On the Occasion of My Retirement"). Cover art will be by David Demaret. Look for this and more in Apex Magazine issue 81, coming in February, 2016.

Copyrights and Acknowledgments

“Words from the Editor-in-Chief” Copyright © 2016 by Jason Sizemore
“Razorback” Copyright © 2016 by Ursula Vernon
“Bones of the World” Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer Hykes
“Automaton” Copyright © 2016 by Bianca Spriggs
“Interview with Ursula Vernon” Copyright © 2016 by Andrea Johnson
“Interview with Chikodili Emelumadu” Copyright © 2016 by Andrea Johnson
“Interview with Lettie Prell” Copyright © 2016 by Andrea Johnson
“RX-200 Series: It’s Everything You Need” Copyright © 2015 by Samson Stormcrow Hayes
“Soursop” Copyright © 2016 by Chikodili Emelumadu
“Maxwell’s Demon” Copyright © 2016 by Annie Neugebauer
“That Lucky Old Sun” Copyright © 2016 by Carrie Cuinn
“Various Kinds of Wolves” Copyright © 2016 by J.J. Hunter
“The Open Hearted” Copyright © 2016 by Lettie Prell
“The Doctor’s Assistant” Copyright © 2016 by Anton Rose
“The Upside of the Cataclysmic Meteor” Copyright © 2016 by Zebulon Huset
“The Tomato Thief” Copyright © 2016 by Ursula Vernon
“In the Far Future, Billy Experiences the Most Powerful Drug Known to Mana” Copyright © 2016 by Greg Leunig
“An Exploration of Racism in Heart of Darkness” Copyright © 2016 by Lucy A. Snyder
“Paper Tigers (Excerpt)” Copyright © 2016 by Damien Angelica Walters (Dark House Press, February 2016)
“Riding Atlas” Copyright © 2012 by Ferrett Steinmetz (Originally published in Three-lobed Burning Eye Magazine, Issue 22, 2012.)
“Kutraya’s Skies” Copyright © 2014 by Dave Creek (Originally published in The Human Equations (Hydra Publications, 2014), a collection by Dave Creek.)
“Interview with Matt Davis” Copyright © 2016 by Russell Dickerson

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore
Managing Editor—Lesley Conner
Poetry Editor—Bianca Spriggs
Assistant Editor—Hannah Ruth Krieger

Slush Editors—Amanda Parker, Andrea Johnson, Beth Sutherland, Beverly McPherson, Carolyn Charron, Dawn Griffin, Eileen Maksym, Eliyanna Kaiser, Gabrielle Harbowy, Jessica Nelson, Joshua P’ng, Joshua Colwell, Kelle Dhein, Kendall Pletcher, Lindsay Anderson, Lauren Smith, Lia Mitchell, Lisa Cox, Lisa Bolekaja, Mike Baldwin, Rebecca Hurley, Reese Menezes, Rodney Carlstrom, Tacoma Tomilson, Tae Thompson, and Zachary Tringali.

Graphic Designer—Justin Stewart

ISSN: 2157-1406

Apex Publications
PO Box 24323
Lexington, KY 40524

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