Apex Magazine

Issue 88

Alexandria Baisden

Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Abhinav Bhat

Mike Barretta

Edited by Jason Sizemore

Words from the Editor-in-Chief

Jason Sizemore

Welcome to issue 88 – the post-MidAmericon2 issue!

Typically, I don’t consider releasing a zine worthy of the title “Great Feat of Humankind.” But this one time, it should be allowed. I spent five wonderful days at MidAmericon2 meeting dozens upon dozens of our writers and fans. It’s the type of positive reinforcement that only a professional convention can provide.

After the long drive home (10 hours for me), I took a day of recovery before jumping into the awaiting pile of Apex work. And then … I came down with a stomach ailment that knocked me off my feet for nearly a week. This wasn’t the con crud. This was the work of children … my children.

But here it is, September 6th, and the issue is ready for your consumption. We have an interesting table of contents for our fiction readers. Kashmiri author Abhinav Bhat makes his professional debut in an English publication with “The Warrior Boy Who Would Not Suffer.” Southeast Asian and frequent Apex Magazine contributor Benjamin Sriduangkaew returns with “The Prince Who Gave Up Her Empire.” Alexandria Baisden makes her Apex debut with “The Old Man and the Phoenix” (and this is another story that might make your eyes wet). Finally, we reprint “War Dog” by Mike Barretta from the anthology War Stories: New Military Science Fiction (Apex Publications, 2014).

From an editorial prospective, I see this issue’s fiction continuing a thematic conversation started in issue 87. In both, we have stories dealing with gender identity, sacrifice, and the will to fight on.

Andrea Johnson’s feature interview this month is with author Alexandria Baisden. Russell Dickerson interviews cover artist Mélanie Delon. A.C. Wise gives us some “Words for Thought.” Finally, we show that we’re not all death and sadness around the Apex offices, as Michael A. Burstein pens a feature about the 50th anniversary of Star Trek.

Rounding out this month’s content are Bianca Sprigg’s selection of poems: “The Amenities of Heaven” by Marchell Dyon, “Wingless” by Zachary Riddle, “The Mouth of the Cave” by Brandon Marlon, and “The Storm Continues” by Christina Sng.

Don’t forget to listen to Mahvesh Murad’s audio narration of Bhat’s “The Warrior Boy Who Would Not Suffer” in the Apex Magazine podcast.

Until next month!

Jason Sizemore

Editor-in-Chief

The Old Man and the Phoenix

Alexandria Baisden

1,200 words

The old man stared out the window at the sky streaked with burnt oranges and sizzling yellows. A few white stars winked. Magentas hung suspended in the mist. Sherbet, he thought. I bet the dawn tastes like rainbow sherbet. If the old man had a spoon big enough, he would have scooped it all.

“Sherbet,” he rasped.

The phoenix perked up. It was sitting on a perch in the old man’s bedroom at his bedside. It cocked its head, staring at him with a single blue eye. The bird shuffled closer, golden claws scraping against the wood. “What was that?”

The old man cleared his throat. “I would like sherbet served at my funeral.”

“Oh.” It ducked its head. The old man knew the phoenix was terrible at saying goodbyes. “Right. Of course. I will tell your brother.”

“Do not forget.”

“I would never.”

“Good. Good.”

There was a pause. The heart monitor clicked and sighed. A cool breeze tumbled in from the open window, twirling and puffing the old man’s blue curtains. The phoenix’s feathers glowed softly in the shadows, redder than the skin of cherries. It nodded its head to the wooden staff in the corner. A sapphire was jammed on top of it, where silver constellations twinkled within. “What of that?”

The old man scraped out a cough. “Bah,” he said, waving his hand. “Whatever you do, do not give it to my brother. He is an idiot.” His forehead wrinkled in thought. “Give it to Tom.”

“Tom? The baker?”

“Yes.” Another cough. This one cleaved his lungs. The old man jackknifed, gasping into his hands. Tears pricked his eyes. Bucking and heaving, he reached for a glass of water on the nightstand. It was hard to drink because of his trembling hands. Water flowed out, trickling into his mouth and splattering his neck. The phoenix’s wings twitched, as though it desperately wished it had thumbs. The old man sputtered and coughed. Sipped again. Finally, he placed the glass down. “Tom,” he said, “bakes the finest croissants in town. Nice boy. Cats, they love Tom. This is a good sign.”

“Yes.”

His neck was drenched, and yet, his mouth felt bone dry. The air around the bird seemed to shimmer. It seemed to warm the old man’s skin. He closed his eyes.

“I want my ashes scattered over the daffodil field. At night,” he added, peeking out one hazel green eye. “So there are fireflies.”

To the old man’s surprise, tears splashed off the tip of the phoenix’s beak. They plopped onto his quilt, near his fingers. The skin on his hands was tissue paper thin, bones and veins pronounced. He stuffed them under the covers. “Be careful. If you heal me, I will never see my Jeanie.”

The phoenix’s head was low. It said nothing. Only a tiny, pathetic chirp.

The green line of the heart monitor blinked into tiny hills. The bird’s eyes glittered. The old man felt his heart give a slight twist. He smiled, just barely. “Now, now, my friend. There will be no tears. Only singing and dancing.”

At this, his friend fluttered off its perch and onto his bed. Claws scratched and tickled as the phoenix crawled across his stomach. The blankets rustled, and the phoenix’s solid, soft body pressed against him. The old man felt his throat swell up. The phoenix tucked its head beneath his chin. Its feathers smelled of childhood and old sun.

For years, the old man had remembered his youth, longing for the days when he was a kaleidoscope of energy. Days when there were bursts of warriors, magic, and gold. Now, he realized, he would miss peace. He would miss tucking into his green frog slippers every morning. He would miss warm cups of coffee pressed into his hand before dawn. He would miss cinnamon croissants with the phoenix on Tuesdays and Tom’s burly, loud laugh, a gong that reverberated over everything. He would miss the daffodil fields, swaying in the breeze. He would miss the phoenix’s songs.

The old man’s cheeks felt wet. He tasted salt. A seed of fear took root and bloomed in his chest, and quite suddenly, he wished that someone could go with him. “My friend,” the old man whispered. “Should I be afraid?”

The phoenix nuzzled closer into his ribs. “Not at all. I have been above the stars many times.”

“What is it like?” The old man flushed. He felt small. Naïve. He blinked at the ceiling. “When it happens, I mean.”

There was a pause. Then, “Like a gasp,” it said. “There is a light. Small, like an ember, at first … But then it splashes into sunlight that flickers, burns, and then cools into rainbows. After that, I don’t know. I’ve never been able to stay.”

The words flattened his chest like an anvil. Soon, the old man would be with his wife again. He would see his parents for the first time in years. But never again would he see the phoenix.

The old man’s shaking hands came around the phoenix’s body. Its feathers felt like silk. He sucked in a shuddering breath. He felt so weak. So tired. “My dear friend,” he wept, “I will miss you the most.”

The phoenix curled as close to the old man as it could get. It rested its head on the old man’s chest until his sobs stopped quivering his body. Together, they stayed this way, listening to the fear flutter from the old man’s heart.

The sun rose and gleamed through the window, splaying bars of refined gold into the room. Peace fell over the old man like a thick quilt. Then, a gasp. The low, steady flat line of the monitor. A warm, brilliant light. A splash of rainbows.

The phoenix never left his side.

* * *

At the old man’s funeral, there was sherbet ice cream. There were daffodils and puddles of moonlight. The flowers covered the hills and waved in the breeze. The phoenix perched on top of the old man’s staff. Tom, the baker, clutched it with both hands. His eyes were bright with tears.

“It’s warm out,” he said.

“Yes.” The phoenix agreed. “Just like him.”

Tom wiped his face.

The phoenix wondered what the old man had seen beyond the flickering rainbows. It wondered if Jeanie was the first person he ran to. It wondered if heaven had a bakery.

When the old man’s brother tossed his ashes, they puffed out across the rolling, yellow hills in a large cloud. The fireflies blinked like wishing stars. Crickets chorused softly. Tom’s shoulders trembled, and the heartbreak was not just in the phoenix’s chest, but in every corner of its body. It kicked off into the sky, thinking of the old man’s passion and gentleness, thinking of how he wanted no tears, only song and dance. So, the phoenix streaked across the full moon, its scarlet tail streaming behind it like a banner. It dipped close to the daffodils and then twirled across the night air, singing about the old man’s life. It sang about their friendship in a language only spoken by birds, and yet, somehow, the old man’s brother and the baker seemed to understand every word.

The phoenix sang long after Tom and the brother left the field, and the phoenix wondered, deep down, if it sang loud enough, if the old man could somehow still hear it.

Interview with Author Alexandria Baisden

Andrea Johnson

I don’t handle grieving well. I don’t know what to say, or what to do, or if I’m doing any of it right. All of these sticky feelings get bottled up inside me and I don’t know how to process any of them, but I know I need to process them, somehow, before they get permanently stuck. A grief counselor once suggested to me that I write a letter to the person that I was grieving for, and tell them all the wonderful things about our relationship. That ended up not working out very well because all my letter said was how much I missed them and that they hadn’t been in my life long enough and that I felt a portion of my life had simply come crashing to a halt and I didn’t know how to start it up again or if I even wanted it to start up again.

We’ve all heard the phrase “this novel is a love letter to such-and-such,” where the author is using fiction to show how much they love a particular subgenre or style. But what about the phrase “this piece of fiction is a letter”? I’m not talking epistolary fiction, I’m talking character or plot driven stories that function as a letter. Alexandria Baisden’s “The Old Man and the Phoenix” is the perfect example of what I’m talking about. I kept trying to write a letter to my friend who I missed, when I should have been reading a story to him instead. I should have been reading this story. “The Old Man and the Phoenix” helped me process my grief, it made me feel like I wasn’t going through this alone.

Even if this story doesn’t help you process anything, even if you read it for pure entertainment, or from an analytical point of view, there is no escaping how much of an emotional punch Baisden has crammed into such a small word count. If the short story brought tears to your eyes, I’ll warn you now, this interview may as well.

A recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago, Alexandria Baisden’s work has been published in the Kamelian, HelloGiggles, Hair Trigger 38, The Lab Review Blog, and 101 Words. Two of her children’s plays have also been produced at Heartland Community Church. She enjoys puns, anime, coffee, and getting distracted by fluffy animals on the internet. She’s currently working on her fantasy novel, and you can learn more about her work at her website alexandriabaisden.wixsite.com, or by following her on twitter @FireShye.

She was kind enough to answer a number of my questions about how this story came about (this is the part where you’ll cry), her experiences helping other young writers, inspirational words, Owl City songs, the influence of J.K. Rowling on her generation, and more.

APEX MAGAZINE: Who better than a phoenix to counsel someone on the ways of death? But even a phoenix cries at the thought of losing a friend forever. What was going through your mind when you wrote this story?

ALEXANDRIA BAISDEN: I didn’t realize it at the time, but many of the ideas were actually drawn from my grandmother’s death. She passed away from pancreas cancer four years ago, but she said she was ready to die because she missed my grandfather. Whenever any of us would cry, she would cup our faces and tell us no tears. I would lie in bed with her, and she’d hold my hand and trust me with the details of her death – how she wanted her ashes mixed with my grandfather’s, and for their urn to be placed in their garden. Near the end, she told my mom she wished she could go with her because she would miss her.

This actually happens to me a lot – I don’t realize how much real life impacts my fiction until after I’ve written it! It wasn’t until I was talking about it with my mom did I realize how similar the old man’s wishes were to my grandmother’s.

A few things were intentional – my grandmother’s name was Jean, so that’s where I drew the name of the old man’s wife. I wanted to make the old man as human as possible, so while I was writing it, I thought back on the emotions my grandmother went through while wrestling with death: bravery, acceptance, fear and then finally, peace. I tried to think of the simple and beautiful things someone might really miss and expand on that.

AM: I know I should feel bad for the old man, but it’s the phoenix I feel worst for. The phoenix loses everyone it gets close to. Us humans all get through our grief in our own way. How does a phoenix get through the grieving process?

AB: Oh, wow, what a great question! I feel worse for the phoenix too. They’re both heartbroken to lose each other, but the phoenix is the one who has to go on.

My grandmother’s death isn’t as raw anymore, but whenever I’m reminded of her, there is a profound ache in my bones. I think it’s the same for the phoenix. The old man is always going to be tucked into its heart, but it’s so hard. It’s so hard because for the old man, he clings to the hope that when he dies, he’s going to see his wife again. The phoenix doesn’t have that. It can’t die; it can’t be with him again. There’s no quick fix for grief, and I imagine the phoenix to be very human in its loss. I think sometimes, memories of the old man scissor through it, and the loss is crippling, and I think other days, it rests knowing its friend is at peace. The old man has left its mark on the phoenix, but phoenixes have always been symbols of perseverance. At least, they have been to me – that’s why they’re my favorite fantasy creature. I don’t imagine the phoenix to run from its pain. I think it faces it, and perhaps surrounds itself with people the old man loved most. It will always have that friendship in its veins, but it keeps going because it must.

AM: “The Old Man and the Phoenix” is a very short and very effective story. Some of your other published stories and articles are also of the flash length. What advice do you have for writers who are looking to get as much emotional effect as possible in such few words?

AB: Thank you! I think if you’re going into it knowing you want to write a flash fiction, then don’t try to force too much into such a small space. When I worked as an Associate Editor at the Publishing Lab at Columbia, part of the job was researching markets and offering ideas for where students could submit their work. We also offered edits and feedback. The advice I would find myself giving to students over and over was to dive straight into the moment. Many people would dump several pages of backstory into such a tiny piece, and it wasn’t needed. When you only have a few pages, you can only focus on so much!

When I’m writing, I ask myself what’s the most important thing I want to get across and expand on that. It’s usually a simple idea with only a few characters, but their emotions are huge and take up the most space.

AM: I was hoping you could tell us more about how this story came to be. How did your earlier drafts and ideas different from the final result? How long did it take you to get from the idea to the finished story?

AB: The funny thing is, I actually wrote this for Tina Jens’s Advanced Fantasy Writing Workshop class! Her poem was just published in Apex last June. Pretty cool, huh?

My original idea was to write in the POV of a phoenix dying and resurrecting. I was thinking about exploring the emotions and struggles of something with that kind of power. I only wrote a few lines, but I already wasn’t enjoying where it was going. It was flat, and I was bored writing it. I took a break from it for a few days.

There’s this song by Owl City called “I Found Love.” When I listened to an interview with Adam Young, he talked about how the song was about him imagining being at the end of it all, surrounded by his friends and family. How he would be so sad to leave everyone behind, but so excited to see what would come next, and that idea really stuck with me. I think that’s when I started wondering about the old man. I realized it would be more heartbreaking if the phoenix had a close friend who it would never see again. (Sorry, I guess I go straight for the feels!)

Anyway, I was planning to use the evening to write my first draft, but I ended up having a competing deadline at the last minute. It really challenged me to work tight under pressure! I wrote “The Old Man and the Phoenix” in the five hours before dawn. When I was done, I took a shower, ordered a peppermint mocha with two extra shots and dragged myself to class.

I was lucky to have an awesome group of talented people look over this story. I had a critique group in class who helped me come up with the title. We also did an exercise, where we taped our stories to the wall and read our first lines out loud. It was intimidating, but it helps you understand how to catch an editor’s attention right away! My first sentence used to be “the heart monitor clicked and sighed” and the class agreed it wasn’t a strong enough opening. So, I went in and switched some sentences around. I actually read two ‘maybe’ first lines to my roommates later, and they were able to answer which one was stronger right away. It’s truly a great exercise, and first sentences are something I’m more aware of now!

My co-workers and I at the Publishing Lab often read each other’s work and offered feedback on our own stories. In the second draft, the phoenix’s name was revealed, but while I was talking it out at the Lab, we decided the story would be stronger without it – and with the addition of the title, it just seemed more fitting to take it out.

The story used to end right after the old man died, and it was too abrupt. Ms. Tina suggested adding in the funeral and how the phoenix might sing there, and I really loved that idea. So, I went in and added the ending and that was it!

AM: You’re a fiction writing tutor at Columbia College in Chicago. How has tutoring others in their writing helped strengthen your own writing? What writing tips do you give to your students?

AB: I actually just graduated, but tutoring was awesome! The thing about Columbia is that the tutors are trained to use Story Workshop Method. It isn’t a traditional setup where a student might come to you for extra help, but Fiction Writing Tutoring is a class they can take.

Story Workshop Method is a lot of oral storytelling. So, instead of bringing in work, they would brainstorm a story while I was there. My tutees would tell their scenes to me as fully as they could. It wasn’t just summarizing an idea – it was talking about the story in full detail, from the quality of light, spatial relationships and emotions, to sounds, smells and gestures. While they’d describe it to me, I’d just follow my natural curiosity about what was being told. How does Miranda feel when she finds her dad reading her diary? What’s her dad’s reaction to getting caught? What happens next? Most of the time, they’d discover new ideas just from me asking questions. There’s a lot more to Story Workshop Method, from word games, to recall, and even teaching a student to slow down and listen to their voice as they read out loud.

After a while, they’d write their scene in a notebook. When their time was up, they’d read it to me and type the rest for our next class.

Being a tutor has helped me spot what’s working in a story and what isn’t. You automatically shy away from weaknesses you see in other people’s stories. You start to ask yourself if you’re expanding enough on a certain part, if the dialog flows … I even use our old exercises on myself. For example, the old man thinks that the dawn would taste like sherbet. That’s from a game I played with my students. You’re supposed to think of words that don’t normally have any taste, smell, or sound and makeup a sensory detail to go along with it. I literally asked myself what a sunrise might taste like, and my first thought was sherbet.

I touched on this in my other answer, but again, I think the biggest tip I gave students was to go straight to the conflict. I’ve seen gems get buried under heaps of unnecessary backstory and realize the true beginning was on page four. Another thing I always stressed was to not worry about getting it perfect the first time. Especially the first time! Freshmen are usually so afraid to write with someone else in the room, and I totally understand because I’ve been there. It can be intimidating to read your work out loud when you haven’t had the time to go back and edit. They could get frustrated because the first draft wasn’t perfect, but a first draft never is. The important thing was they’d have something to expand on later.

I’m not sure why, but a lot of students seemed to think that once you wrote something, it was set in stone, but it doesn’t have to be! I tried to remind them of that when they felt stuck. You can always go back and rewrite – it’s perfectly fine if things change!

Lastly, I always told my students to be willing to try. I heard this quote from Andy Stanley, and I’ve held onto it ever since: “Direction, not intention, determines your destination.” What that means is, you can wish and hope for something all you want, but if you’re not heading in the direction of your hopes and dreams, you’re never going to get there. Harry Potter didn’t destroy Lord Voldemort by twiddling his thumbs in the Gryffindor Tower. He went out, he failed a few times, but he kept getting back up, and he persevered. It’s the same with writing. If you have dreams to become a published writer, but you’re too afraid to submit your work or even write, then it’s not going to happen. You have to start out by stepping in that direction. I know so many people who won’t submit their work because they’re afraid. You’ll get rejected, everyone does, but don’t lean into the storm clouds because of it. Keep pushing forward and doing your best. Life is too short to just wish for things.

AM: What writers (or specific works) have been most influential on you?

AB: I don’t think anyone is going to be able to escape this answer from Millennials, but J.K. Rowling! The Mirror of Erised chapter left a huge impact on me as a little girl. If you don’t know, the mirror reveals your heart’s deepest desire, and for Harry, it shows him surrounded by his family. After I read it, I darted downstairs and asked my mom, “Why does my heart feel funny?” It was the first time I realized words on a page could make a person feel something, and I decided I wanted to do that too.

I also really love Jodi Picoult. She doesn’t write a lot of fantasy, but I admire her skill of getting emotions onto the page. I enjoy writing about family and relationships with fantasy characters, and I’ve always gobbled up the way she plays with time and POV.

Aimee Bender is another one of my favorites. She has such a lyrical style, and her stories are so dark, odd, and gorgeous. Reading her work has made me unafraid to try new things in my writing. Christopher Moore’s books make me laugh out loud, and I’ve been stalking a lot of Caroline M. Yoachim’s stories lately.

I also just finished The Singular & Extraordinary Tale of Mirror & Goliath by Ishbelle Bee. I loved her characters and the artful way she worded everything – my imagination exploded with all of this color when I read it, so I’ll definitely be reading more of her books in the future.

AM: You recently worked on the pg70pit writing contest. What can you tell us about this project and your involvement? Is it something you’d get involved with again?

AB: I would love to get involved with it again if I have the chance!

What drew me to the contest was how unique it was. Lara Willard explained in her blog post that there was no first page, query or pitch – writers only submitted page 70 of their manuscripts. The idea is that page 70 should be far enough into the story for things to be moving along, and it could “be a better snapshot of the entire book’s style than the first page.” The whole thing was based off of the McLuhan Test, but instead of page 70, they used page 69.

The submissions were divided up by age category. There were many different genres – historical, contemporary, sci-fi, mystery, etc. I only slushed for fantasy in YA and Adult. The writers names were stripped from their entries, using song lyrics as a code name. You can find the rest of the submission details here.

The first readers scored submissions on a scale of 1 to 3. 1 meaning it needed work, 3 meaning, you wanted to read more – and then Lara posted the highest scoring entries onto a playlist on Spotify. She really went out of her way to make it fun for everyone involved, and it was! We had Twitter parties throughout the whole week, posted gifs and encouraged each other. I had a blast doing it!

Afterwards, Lara and the judges narrowed down the winners, and agents were able to request more material. I found out later that some agents requested more from a few of my favorite entries, so that was really exciting!

AM: What can you tell us about your current writing projects?

AB: My passion project is a high-fantasy novel about a cursed kingdom and their fight to reclaim their souls. I’m also working on a short story about the Summer Sky in a relationship with a Star Swallower who’s eating all of her stars. That’s been pretty fun to work on, but also a bit challenging. I have two children’s plays that were produced at Heartland Community Church last Christmas, so I would like to look for markets for those soon. I have quite a few other ideas as well, but I’m trying to take them one at a time!

AM: Thanks Alexandria!

The Amenities of Heaven

Marchell Dyon

The last people travel like the first.

Everywhere we go mirrors the same desolation.

There is no more food.

The water that’s left is all brown

Ever since mushroom clouds imploded it has been this way.

We borrow shoes as we go.

Our feet are covered with the socks of dead men.

A heavy oatmeal-colored sky encases the sun.

The clouds are a maze of vines.

We can never tell if it’s dust or dawn

Another county to scavenge

Another county dammed by silence.

We are grateful for a clearing of green.

We are grateful for a tin roof to block out acid rain.

We are grateful for sleep and then to dream.

We find canned food and water bottles

We decide this is the place to out-live

Another winter of endless frost and ash

Always and forever I remain a religionist woman.

I give thanks for this place and for finding you

Perfect and unblemished in Macy’s window.

You are a flawless artifact of what a man looked like.

Never a mannequin to me always a man

I unfold and rejoin your body to your head.

You smile at me and I smile back.

In this way, I am never alone.

The Prince Who Gave Up Her Empire

Benjamin Sriduangkaew

7,200 words

Terasadh arrived in the world with a force so abrupt that the resin womb holding her split in two, cracking as she took her first breath and cried out from the shock of being alive.

Her aunt, King Nadjana, was the sole witness; she cleared the infant’s throat of birth-fluids and warmed the infant’s breath with her own. For a week the king secluded herself. In that week she fed the newly-made prince with the juice of ripe language-fruits, the milk of wisdom-orchids, and the nectar of doorway birds. Royal birth is a delicate matter, and she would trust no other to anoint her heir.

At the end of seclusion, Nadjana summoned a foreign seer. She said, “Lay out the possibilities that await my heir, as accurately and specifically as you can.”

The seer loosened their eye sockets and drew out each sphere, all twenty-three. The infant prince quieted as the cast was made, baby senses drawn to the cicada pitch of corneas and irises, the gentle choir of eyelashes and optic nerves.

“As many futures await as stars bud and wither in a universe’s span,” the seer said with embroidered mouths, “but we shall speak of the ones that lie closest to your heir. These are the forks we foresee. In one, he will become a just and wise ruler, but while he will die in peace he will not be remembered. A hundred years after he passes, Dajral will be annexed. In the other, he will march on states uncounted, devastating and conquering all that lies before him. Dajral will stand forever. The third and final fork will see him as the last of your dynasty: he will end Dajral itself, and end you.”

The king studied the seer, considering their shifting mouths and opal eyes. “You will tell me of where her fate will diverge, and how.”

The seer did. After, the king folded the seer’s body back into its cage of slow-moving time. She buried the cage deep, twining her name into its hinge and lid, such that none but she might open it.

* * *

Terasadh ul-Samiss, twenty years of age, prince and heir to the empire Dajral. She is hunting.

The beast she rides is steel-bone and hide, its hooves kicking up bleached sand. The desert, they say, is not sediment but ivory ground down by eons: remains of a white giant that Dajral’s founder and first ruler slew. Whether there is truth to the legend Terasadh does not know, but she knows her prey.

At the heart of the desert where six winds cross, there stands a temple of thin-lipped gates and long-throated wells. The prince fights the winds step by step.

She reaches the smallest gate. Here silence falls like a miracle of rain, and for a time Terasadh stands in the quiet. She tethers her mount to a well by hook and shark-rope, smoothing her hand over the beast’s muzzle. It lowers its head, tusks burrowing in the sand for stray shadows to eat.

The small gate comes no higher than Terasadh’s ankle. She kneels before it and speaks in the language of bells she has spent the last five years mastering. Waits.

An eruption of hands. Tapered digits with nails like claws, finer than any pen, the arms as large as palace-pillars. Their color is that of asphyxiation.

Rolling back her robe and sleeve she cuts into the hard meat of her forearm, slices off a thin strip: a bit of flesh, a touch of fat. She places this piece of herself in one of the blue-black palms. The hand withdraws. To bring the sliver of Terasadh to a vast mouth, she imagines, where a tongue — indigo or mauve — licks the still-bloody offering and teeth tar-black crunch down.

On her way back, she encounters a brilliant beast, loping neck to neck with her own. It is sturdy of flank, powerful of legs, and its coat is equal to summer nights. On it is a harness fit for a monarch, shaped precisely for Terasadh, the reins just right in her hand. So exquisite an animal it makes her mount look dull and flat. But she rides on, ignoring the strange beast.

On the second third of her ride, she becomes peculiarly lost, for all that her mastery of the dunes’ topography is second to none. The dunes curve in on themselves; the familiar paths snake and twist. Even the sky, that most absolute of maps, betrays and shifts sidewise. Shadows slip and slide, pooling in cornices and crevices of cloud, spilling wetly over. Even her animal, which has some instinct for homing, circles and turns.

In its confusion, her beast brings her to a house. The roof is laminated paper dipped in woad, and through its thin door Terasadh hears the soothing call of running water. Trained much as any child of Dajral to prize water far above any metal or gem, yet she ignores this house. She presses on, despite the heat that tightens around her throat with the fervor of a noose.

On the last third of her ride, she comes upon an androgyne. Hairless, flesh stone-smooth, eyes the shade of faded bruises. Mouth pitiless and skull soft as fontanelle yet impervious to the winds. Their drape and trousers billow, jellyfish-blue.

She reins her beast to a stop, holds out her hand, and says, “It seems I can’t put it off any longer. Will you come?”

The androgyne nods. When she lifts them on, they sit sidesaddle rather than astride, the way a priest might. They don’t weigh quite like a person of flesh and blood; Terasadh’s beast shifts in mild protest of this dense and unfamiliar heft.

She strokes its flank, a promise of good feed when they’re home. When she turns it around, the sky has righted and the desert’s edge is clear, the path out as close to her as two hands about to touch.

* * *

The palace of Dajral, eons old, house and temple to the dynasty. It is built to the scale of giants; its walls are doorless and full of teeth.

Terasadh returns dusty, sand in the folds of her robes and the creases of her boots, her sweat dried down to salt. The wall ripples around her, turning to gentle water to admit, hardening back to bone and iron once she is through. She stables her beast and gives it the best feed to be had: lightning-marbled venison, cartilage still red with death throes, and syrup ink. Later she will bathe and brush it down; for now she has her guest to attend.

She leads and her guest follows. When she loops a delicate gold chain around their wrists, they do not complain. Terasadh leaves them in an unlocked cage, knowing that — bound by the chain — they will not stray or flee.

The palace ceiling is high, the corridors army-wide in times of peace and narrow in times of siege, the better to bottleneck and defend. As a child Terasadh adored the palace, its eelish rooms that hid her from tutors and parents, its flower-corridors that played with her like a friend. As an adult she’s grown to love it more than she loves any person or creature. The core of Dajral, honey steel and anemone resin. The only one to whom it answers above Terasadh is the king.

She takes time making herself presentable: the monarch is never alone or truly private, and so neither is the prince in proximity to kingly audience. Terasadh casts off the grimed robes, washes and oils herself, puts on the symbols of her title. Every position in the palace, from ruler to mechanic to cook, is its own office with attendant rules and lexicon. Hers is exacting in posture, inflection. Down to the angle of the sword she wears — its tip must point just so, not dragging on the floor as a common soldier’s would, nor lifting higher than the monarch’s.

A court in session exerts its own gravity. Flows inbound and outbound, traffic made whiplash-strict by soldiers in armor as impeccable as Terasadh’s. She enters, is announced by a herald who knows how to ensure attention — royalty may not be accorded any less — but does not disrupt the ongoing presentation of tributes. King Nadjana does not demand as much as some of her predecessors, but to allow her city-lords to keep all their taxes and wealth encourages corruption. And so: a new batch of riding-beasts, their coats slate and their tusks black silver. Second comes a system of abacuses, spinning apart complex polynomials and computing vast sums. On it goes, a parade of the finest each province has to offer, competing to outdo the rest.

Terasadh assumes her place at her king’s side. Nadjana nods at her, exact in angle: superior to lesser, monarch to subject. “News, niece?”

“Majesty. I have what I set out to obtain.”

Her aunt’s gaze remains on the tributes and her expression betrays nothing save desultory interest. But the twitch in her scepter-blade, as much appendage to the king as her arm, says all for those who know what to watch. “I will see it.”

Terasadh allows herself a small smile. “As Her Majesty requires. I’ll prepare them.”

She returns to the cage. The walls have grown blue and angular, ridged with white heels and sapphire knees. The androgyne sits cross-legged on the floor, gold chain grown thick and thorned around their wrists. Their expression is stone.

In the language of bells, Terasadh says, “The giants are called a great many things: chain-breaker, eater of rivers and dreams, folder of a hundred paths. But that’s all a mouthful and seems more description than name, so what shall I call you?”

The giant-sending considers her. “Call me what you like.”

She has a name ready. “Bernamés.” The traitor-queen who gave his people to Dajral, the synonym for defeat and surrender.

“I am not conquered. Neither is the accord which I represent.”

“You aren’t what I expected.”

“My power of speech and cognition has been gestating since I came into contact with you; as it crystallizes, I adapt to suit where I have been given to abide. Had you passed me by in the desert, I would have dissolved like a mirage.” Even their appearance has begun to change: the soft head has become more defined, skin stretching taut over an angular skull. “We can play a slow game, you and I, Prince of Dajral. Or we can be efficient, state what we want, and haggle. In such a way we may have a transaction, conclude it with speed, and I will swiftly depart.”

Terasadh joins the sending on the floor, for all that she ought to make the palace produce a chair, elevate her over the sending. Who is unhuman, less even than an automaton or a thinking ghost: the least of the least. But there will be enough etiquette when the king comes. “You make it all sound so simple. What happens when you return to your —”

“Accord. When I return I will be reabsorbed; as a species we do not waste resources. Not flesh, not water.” Bernamés glances at her, sidewise. “That’s something you ought to understand. Time is another resource, not to be squandered.”

“When you are reabsorbed …” Terasadh’s imagination stutters: the mass of writhing hands, perhaps other organs bolted together, a nest of parts animated by appetite. After all, no one has ever seen a giant whole. “What then; do you retain your thought?”

They gesture at themselves. “What you see is an image, a façade built for the occasion. It is of no more import than a garment, to be put on or discarded as necessary. Foremost we are a race of merchants. Now, shall we proceed?”

“Perhaps I prefer the slow game where we intuit each other’s goals and work at bending the other to accept the price we’re willing to pay.”

“As you wish. I’m not the one with a finite duration.”

“Then I ask only your decorum before the king.”

Bernamés shrugs. “A king, what is that? Less than a dress you put on; less than the measure of a minute and lighter by far than a grain of sand. But I will be polite.”

Nadjana is heralded by the blacking-out of the cage, such that she will be the only light. She enters in full regalia, sheathed in radiance: descendant of the sun, born in desert-blaze. In reality her aunt came into the world much as Terasadh did, with no more heat or fury than any other birth. Despite the process and ceremony subsequent, the muck of parturition equalizes. Menial or monarch, it is all drool and noise.

The palace hatches a miniature throne, pushing it forth in heaving labor. The result is luminescent, fashioned to catch and amplify the king’s brilliance. This is acknowledged with a glance from Nadjana, little else. Nadjana’s indifference to the palace has never sat well with Terasadh, not that it is a prince’s place to criticize.

“Emissary,” Nadjana says. “I hope your journey has been tolerable. Consider yourself our guest.”

“My guestship is immaterial, Majesty. Your desire however is paramount.” To the king, Bernamés sounds different: a note or two higher, voice lilting and sweet as though coming from a different set of cords. Not impossible, Terasadh supposes. Who can guess at the anatomy of a giant-sending, at the arrangement of their parts.

The king motions with her scepter, speaking with it, the vocabulary of gesture and edge essential to the ruler’s lexicon. “There is a predictive set that we wish to verify. This, we believe, lies within the capability range of your accord.”

“So it does, Majesty. Give me the set and I will be my accord’s conduit if you grant us requisite compensation.”

“What will that be, emissary? The crown of Dajral is generous.”

“Our service is unique.” The sending cants their head. “For payment, we would have Prince Terasadh.”

* * *

The trade is out of the question, that much the king agrees. “And yet the creature is right in that the service they peddle can be found nowhere else.” Nadjana locks her hands together. “Despite their great hunger, ever since their defeat they’ve become leery of humankind. Once you could summon them with the tawdriest bait and they’d come most eagerly. These days, even royal flesh barely suffices.”

They are in the nursery where water runs plenty in stone pots and small fountains, the air sweet with lilies-of-marrow and clean infants. Each has two nurses, one to guard and the other to tend. All are Terasadh’s cousins, parentage no less dynastic than her own, fed the same ceremony at birth: a version that tempers potential, limits ambition, and molds personality to allegiance. Once an heir has been chosen, the others must not be permitted to compete or even aspire to do so.

Terasadh likes to think she will do it differently, make the decision later in each child’s life — eight or twelve — when their deftness of mind and body has already been demonstrated. But she understands the wisdom of shaping the royal child from the start.

“The emissary will not settle for any of them,” Nadjana says.

“My liege,” Terasadh murmurs, “I wasn’t thinking of sacrificing babies — my kin every last one — to save myself.”

“They are of less value than you.” Matter-of-fact. “So what will you do?”

“I’ll negotiate with the creature.” She glances at the children. Uniformly grave, as she must have been at that age, consciousness already wheeling toward thought and information even before they learn to walk: ul-Samiss children speak early. It’s not that they inspire softness in her, but she feels an obligation. “The emissary can be reasoned with.”

“Reasoned not likely, but swayed perhaps.” The king takes one of the babies from a nurse and examines it. She is adept with children, handles infants with the same confidence she handles statecraft. “I trust in your persuasive force, niece.”

* * *

Bernamés’ cage has shed the knees and heels, growing in their place a honeycomb of chimes and bells. They are spheres or pyramids, made of zoisite or gleaming clay. Invariably, they are tongueless, blue like the pelt of temporal coyotes. Bernamés lies on their side, cupped in the bed Terasadh has made the palace produce. A dress, red silk, simmers along the length of their limbs and sheathes their torso. “You must understand,” they say as though continuing a conversation, “that I am a door.”

“To what?” Terasadh stands over the bed, hands behind her back. The giant-sending has developed further still: skin deepening to the color of deoxygenated blood, triangles of skin hardening to lavender scales at the shoulders and throat.

“What do you believe we would do to you?”

“Whatever it is would be fatal.”

“And if I assured you that you will be treated with the utmost courtesy, fed and clothed richly? That accord-fragments, shaped to your preference in action and thought, would wait on your every requirement? Time would be slowed for you and you would know no wound or sickness, and it will be as close to forever as humans may attain. Once a year we’ll permit you back into the human world so you may witness the ages advance and history make itself, and it shall be the vantage point of a god.”

She regards the emissary’s back, notes the sinuous curve of spine that was not there before, as if their bones are filling out. “I have duties to my monarch that I must perform, and duties to my subjects likewise. Neither, I fear, shall be feasible from that distance. No matter the largesse of your hospitality.”

Bernamés turns to face her, still prone, head on their arm. Eyelids at half-mast, lashless. “It’s not the unknown that fertilizes the seed of your fear; it is the known danger that there you will be owned, made lesser when from birth you have been trained to supremacy.”

“You know us so well.”

“As the hawk knows the hare. We observe you in all your permutations.” Bernamés pulls upright. Frowns: a crease of cartilage rather than eyebrows. “A culinary fascination, though I’ve never — in this body — tasted what my accord craves. Will you let me? Then you can bargain from a position of some strength.”

Terasadh touches one of the chimes. Softer than she expected, more like fontanelle than it appears. Part of the giant-sending after all, not the palace. “Being eaten alive is hardly a position of strength.”

“Nothing more than a bite and I’ll leave no mark. Or are you so afraid of pain, prince of Dajral?”

Wordlessly she extends her right arm, the same one from which she cut that first slice. Bernamés grasps her elbow, holding Terasadh’s gaze as they bend their mouth to her skin. A brush of lips to begin, then a rasp of tongue. Grainy, far rougher than human, and oddly dry. They lap, pushing at and abrading skin. The sensation plucks the string of her nerves into strange music. Her breath grows thick; her ears fill with drums, and when Bernamés draws blood she feels no pain, only a shuddering intensity.

When Bernamés looks up, mouth rouged sanguine, Terasadh staggers and draws air in harsh ragged gasps. Her palate has flooded with piquant sweetness. On her arm, a small bite: barely visible, as the sending had promised.

“You taste of prophecy,” they say. “A seduction of what could be, written out like fire. Flavors so rich would intoxicate any of us. I see why my accord yearns to have you.”

Terasadh licks the inside of her mouth. The flavor is fading but her head is light, far more than the blood loss warrants. “I will not go to the land of giants.”

“The accord’s realm is nothing like what you imagine.” Bernamés blinks. The whites of their eyes have saturated to azure and their voice slurs. “We’ll compromise; you could start by unchaining me.”

She smiles slightly. “No, but I’ll keep you company.”

A second bed is extended with a partition erected between. Terasadh sleeps with a blade close at hand, mostly for show. Any advantage must be seized, in combat or commerce. She excuses herself from princely duties, relegating them to a pair of uncle-kin: rival siblings, sure to keep one another in check. Occasionally she wonders what would transpire if she chooses to abdicate. Of course some of her cousins are adept and can take her place with some honing and a ceremony of expansion that’d unfetter their intellect, their ambition. Still.

She unreels the sending’s chain, commanding it to length and slack so that Bernamés can be led around the palace like a housebroken coyote. She brings them where the public may not see their prince with this alien creature, who is wide-eyed and inebriated, who breathes her smell with the fixation of first lust. Their attention gives Terasadh a strange thrill: she is used to being offered temptation, not to being tempting — always the one expected to act, not the one acted upon. This is novel, but she is a quick study and has seduced her share of virgins.

When she offers the sending conventional food, they refuse until she feeds them by hand. Bernamés suckles every drop of curry that runs off Terasadh’s thumb; they clean every rivulet of goat milk that trickles down Terasadh’s wrist. No grain of rice escapes this meticulous attention.

In the palace lapidary, Terasadh slops her wine. It spills down a corner of her mouth, warm and bitter-sour. Bernamés, unimpeded by decorum or human code, licks it from her chin. Terasadh sets down her glass, cups the back of their skull. A steady hold. The sending drinks out of her mouth, draining out the wine, their dry rough tongue tickling her gums and incisors.

Their sclera gone blue-black and pupils to pinpricks, they break away.

Her own nerves oscillating like an arrow deep in target, Terasadh says, “Letting you devour me is out of the question, but we might satisfy your appetite another way.”

“Perhaps —” A sharp intake of breath. “Yes, yes.”

A slide, a twist, and the dress goes. Naked, Bernamés is humanlike save that their complexion is perfectly even throughout, like a statue of unblemished iron. They are curious. They explore. Their mouth visits Terasadh’s ankle and knee, hip and navel, the small of her back to the top of her spine. When she touches them in turn she hesitates, unsure of their anatomy — but it corresponds well to what she knows; when she guides them onto her cock, the force of their hunger scatters the butterflies. She has to turn them on their back, put her hand over their mouth. Their keening cry batters at her palm.

The second time, within the cage, under the glare of midday. Bernamés on their hands and knees, pushing back at her, and in climax heaving so hard they nearly throw her off. In orgasm there is something of seismic movements in them, a strength that belies their true genesis. Later they take the length of her cock into their mouth, and though Terasadh is not precisely small they do so with the fluidity of a snake swallowing live prey. Engorged as she is, even that moment’s misgiving — that image — does not stop the climax.

“I will conceive,” Bernamés says over the fruit platter Terasadh’s brought for lunch. They bite into a fresh date.

“Will you?”

“Yes. That’ll suffice as my price and conclude our transaction.”

Terasadh, like any royal, takes her contraceptives with a fanatic’s adherence. But she says only, “When can you examine the prophecy?”

“Immediately.” Their eyes gleam, silver rings in their irises catching the desert light. “I am most ready. You’ve awoken in me an eagerness for existence most fragments do not experience, for you are so delicious and we live for the delight of eating.”

“When most lovers say that of me, they don’t mean it quite so literally.” She draws a copy of the prophecy from the pendant around her neck, shakes it out into a semi-solid cloud of ether and script.

The sending grasps the copy, smoothing it over their arm like a glove. When they peel it off again, the prophecy has transmuted into a bouquet, as though by absurdist sleight-of-hand: jagged flowers, faceted leaves. They open their mouth wide, much too wide, and engulf it whole. There is crunching, of bones shattering under unthinkable pressure.

“They are valid predictive sets,” they say, their throat still working, monstrous, “but ultimately all of them are. Your seer was from the accord—” They make a string of syllables, impossible with a human throat, that thump like distant drums. “And the accord does not lie. But some of the prophecies are less linear than others. In human terms, prince, they would be considered false.”

Her mouth is dry. “Which?”

“All but one.” Bernamés opens a hand and pulls a tattered smoke-flower from it. “This is the set, out of three, that sings truest to the alignment of your path. I have translated it for you.”

But there were only two, she wants to say as the flower falls into her hand, and on it clearly written in Dajral script the prediction that she will be the destruction of her empire and her king. That she will be the last of her dynasty. “If that first seer could lie —”

“They circumvented truth because their shaping allows it. I have been shaped by you and, whatever qualities you perceive within yourself, falsehood isn’t one of them. I am obligated to you; that much you can verify with your king if you like.” The sending shrugs. “And these matters of empire and succession mean less than a garment’s casting-off. What matters, Prince Terasadh, is consuming and taking. What matters is to enjoy.”

The king summons. Terasadh answers to say only that she requires more time, but that the giant-emissary is coming around. Nadjana seems certain that Bernamés will not dissemble. “You named the creature,” the king says. “For all beings of the accord, from the least to the most, to name them is to have command of them.”

Terasadh surreptitiously compares her copy of the prophecies with the original, preserved within her aunt’s chamber in amber and written in the giant-tongue. It is exact.

* * *

The third time, on cold stone, under the gaze of frigid moons. Bernamés sucks Terasadh to a swollen ache and presses her into the tiles, sharp ridges branding mosaics into her back. She will have marks long after, lacerations then scabs. They climb onto her, slick and hot. They hold her wrists in a grip of stone, and ride her until their cunt constricts and they shout a chorus of iron gongs. Before that she is helpless, her body surges and bucks, she comes and comes until their thighs are lustrous with her seed. They clean it up, every drop.

* * *

Terasadh jolts awake inside the cage, stirred by heat and pain-cries.

Night. The window is clasped shut and the darkness is thick, palpable as hide. Still a light from somewhere pierces it. Blade in hand, she pulls aside the partition; takes a small breath, though it is audible only to her. Bernamés, in their seizure of agony, pays her no heed.

She does not, at first, comprehend. Bernamés is gushing not blood but radiance that runs viscous and silver. Their hands have rent the sheets, their legs thrown wide and corded tense, their face affixed into a rictus. “Bernamés,” she says.

Their eyes snap open. “Prince. Soon —” A howl, high and animal, underscored by chimes. They arch. Half of them thrown forward, the other back, as though their body is at war with itself.

Terasadh gradually understands: she has seen this before among the servants and a foreign dignitary who arrived grotesque and gravid, has seen it among the riding-beasts. This alien act, primeval as dying. It requires more help, it requires hands that know nurturing and mending. Knowing neither, she sits and waits and thinks on what constitutes mortality for someone like Bernamés.

She puts the blade aside and draws her gun. Primes the trigger. The bullets have been crafted to kill giant-parts and there is a limited quantity. But Terasadh expects she will require at most two. One for the parent, one for the fetus.

The screaming has slowed to harsh, shallow breathing. The silver radiance has dimmed and Bernamés has subsided, spent and drenched in sweat. In exertion they have the fragrance of baked earth and seared stone. Not unpleasant. Terasadh takes aim.

A hand closes on hers. She looks down into a small, very human face. Nothing of the giant pallor: even in this flawed half-light, she sees skin not unlike her own. And the features — she’s trained to search crowds for the ul-Samiss look, the better to make certain that no cousin or uncle has been indiscreet. This child is not merely the ul-Samiss look, seed thrice removed, but the ul-Samiss mold.

“If you would put her down like a beast whose use has expired, Mother, then first kill me. For I do not wish my first sight in the world to be the destruction of the one who gave me life.” The voice is high as all children’s are, but the enunciation is perfect. The small hand moves Terasadh’s until the gun’s barrel rests against the child’s forehead. “There, she is insensate and will not see. Do it at once, Mother. A single shot is all it takes. Execute her immediately after, so she needs not wake and weep at my demise.”

“What are you?” she asks, soft. Finger on the trigger.

“The flowering of your seed and her engine-womb.” The child blinks. They have long lashes, and their hair seems as black as Terasadh’s own. “If you will not kill me, then quickly name me. In such a way you can trust that I will be bound to your will.”

An offering, a sacrifice of freedom so they may survive. She judges the child to be, in appearance, no older than three. “Murazend.”

The child bows, one hand on their heart. “Murazend it is. Now I beg you for blood, Mother. A drop or two and Father will revive, so vital and mighty is your heart.”

Terasadh recognizes court flattery when she hears it. Nevertheless she accedes with a prick of the blade.

When Bernamés wakes, galvanized by that sip of Terasadh, they pull Murazend close to them and wrap the child in torn, damp sheets. The palace has brightened the cage, giving it the warmth of candlelight. Terasadh studies the child for traces of imperfection, hints of the giant, but she can find none. Unless she has Murazend vivisected, at surface this creature seems of Dajral entirely. Untainted by the otherness of Bernamés, untouched by the grotesquerie of the accord.

It is not that Murazend inspires softness — no newborn alive could be colder, save those carved from marble and quartz — but there is an obligation.

She has them both wait. Terasadh seldom visits the nursery alone, having little need for the society of toddlers and infants. At night each child is taken to their own room adjacent to the nursery proper, but some of the nurses remain to stand guard. No one will refuse her anything, though they will report it to the king. A whim, she tells them, before taking off with small garments, gentle soap, a box of sweets that smell of honey and burnt wings. Nadjana will assume it is Bernamés’ caprice she fulfills, some incomprehensible giant-impulse driving them to take interest in nursery paraphernalia.

Murazend cleans themselves without complaint, washing the silvery vernix from their limbs and hair. They put on the nursery clothes, examining the embroidery and fabric. “This is priceless and must cost more than a month’s meals for an entire household.”

“Not a month’s water. Half a week’s at most, and only for drinking, not cleaning or much else.” Terasadh sets down the sweets and pours three glasses of water, not that Bernamés has ever evinced any thirst. No telling what Murazend requires for sustenance. “Now I command you both. Is Dajral’s doom you claim I will bring related to either of you? Speak clearly and thoroughly, without obfuscation or distortion or falsehood: whether my contact with Bernamés or Murazend — or any part of the accord, or my learning of the language of bells — will precipitate the destruction of the ul-Samiss dynasty, the Dajral Empire, the rule of order as I know it.”

Bernamés, covered in sheets, has one arm around Murazend as though to bestow protection. An aegis of sheer presence as though they are aware of what Terasadh meant to do while they were in labor. “She hasn’t yet come into prescience, prince.”

“I have an intuition — like a coyote’s. A little forward, a little backward. It’s a matter of putting my feet sideways, fast, before time can re-snare me in its tar.” Murazend opens the confectionery box and delicately selects a piece. Sugar-burnt cactus paste, wrapped in thin pastry and garnished with antennae. “I can verify, Father.”

The sending gathers the child closer still. “None of us can truly lie; your king’s seer bent the truth. They pronounced that a foreign influence will lead you astray into a war beyond the desert. But though your future is mist, as that of all humans is, mine and Murazend’s are bound in geometry. This much is clear: whether or not you shatter Dajral has nothing to do with our war.”

“Your war.” Terasadh looks from Bernamés to Murazend.

To which the child says, “The accord didn’t send Father here for you alone, Mother. She was sent to create me, and so at last secure victory over All-Tips-Toward-Balance, the accord which spawned the seer who spoke at your birth. The seer who has been doing their utmost to prevent this sequence of events, to have your aunt kill you in infancy.”

“A war.” Pieces of her cognition lag behind; Terasadh settles with latching onto the specifics — the cruxes of any conflict. “A war over what, and what have I do to with it? Explain to me clearly.”

“The future of the accords are geometry. The most exact kind.” Bernamés draws shapes in the air, isosceles and quadrilaterals. “We can measure the angle of divergence, estimate the distance to and from the endpoint. We inhale theories of what might be, exhale axioms of what will be. Through collective calculations we can affect where we go. But each accord has its own objective.”

“Those objectives don’t agree.”

“Tomorrow cannot be portioned out by treaties, traded like cattle or water or land. One accord must have control total and absolute. Mine and All-Tips-Toward-Balance have long been locked in combat. You are touched by their seer’s prediction and—” Bernamés pauses, straining between their accord’s secrets and Terasadh’s command. “You gave us their prophecy, one that contains the formulae of All-Tips-Toward-Balance. By incorporating them into Murazend’s making I’ve given my accord a weapon.”

“And through all this,” Terasadh says, “I’ve been an unwitting tool. Have been, if you’re to be believed, ever since I came into the world.”

The sending holds up their chain-gilded wrists. “The accords do not exist in relation to humankind. We’re sent forth to trade our services for food; all else is incidental. I have obeyed your purposes,” Bernamés says softly, “and fulfilled your desires.”

Terasadh listens to the palace breathe. It reaches for her in its own affectionate way, subtle touches that it doesn’t quite do around Nadjana: a tile might warm to her hand, pieces of furniture soften to her just right, the little things. It serves faithfully.

“Bernamés,” she says. “Who name-shaped the seer from All-Tips-Toward-Balance?”

“Your elder. Your aunt.”

And the seer had acted against her aunt, had tried to kill Terasadh. The seer that, accord or not, was shaped by Nadjana and reflects her nature.

“I’ll let both of you go,” Terasadh says, “but I’ll bind you to a promise.”

* * *

General Terasadh ul-Samiss, seventy-five. The pride of an army, a conqueror who has rearranged five nations and realigned a thousand maps. She is dying.

It is a wound sustained decades past from Nadjana’s hand. It hurts her intermittently, according to the crossing of certain stars and the slant of certain shadows; it hurts particularly in the presence of any commemoration of the vanquished king. Terasadh’s soldiers thought she would have every portrait and manuscript burned that bears Nadjana’s name or likeness, but she has not done so. She has borne the affliction; bears it now to the last of its throes.

By the side of a river, under the shade of a dancer canopy, the general rests. She is alone, though her war camp is not far. Where she goes, war camps spring up like flowers eager for the sun. They are her shadow, her wet footprints on the sand, and whether or not she wills it, their presence is inevitable.

Her eyes are shut. Age has chiseled grooves into the teak of her skin and scars run shiny along her bared chest, silvered by the light. She listens to the greenness of river water and the determination of herons as they fish. In her old age these are the things she has come to favor. Her younger self would have been amused, scornful, but she doesn’t hold her younger self in high regard. Save in one matter.

At the mouth of the war camp, a maid approaches. She is tall and thickly built, umber of complexion, and there is a certain look to her that startles the guards. It is not her peculiar dress — she is armored in stone shards and basalt drapes — but her countenance. Few would see it without observing the resemblance in the set of this maid’s eyes, the slope of her broad shoulders, the shape of her nose. Even so, when she requests entry, they bar her way until the general’s second arrives to say, “General Terasadh is expecting her.”

The maid passes through the gauntlet of gray spears and black gunpowder, shield-bearing poets and bright-eyed warriors. Coming to the dancer tree, she does not kneel or bow.

“Where is Bernamés?” asks the general.

“Perished fighting.”

Terasadh opens her eyes. “Is that how the accords make battle? I’d imagined it a more mechanical process, like a game on a board. Mannered rules and calculations, very abstract.”

“All war is the same, Mother, no matter the participants or the cause. It is attrition and asymmetry.” Murazend sits, cross-legged, and lifts a basalt fold to show burn scars across a small, pale breast. The scars are blue, hexagonal, as though she’s been branded and then injected with woad. “The accord is unhappy with me for introducing the human strain into our realm and bringing with it the blood and gristle of mortality. But I brought us victory and now I am indispensable, for there are other accords with which we must settle the tally of tomorrow.”

The general looks her child up and down, the construct of her most lasting youthful decision. “You’ve grown.”

“As have you. I didn’t expect to collect you so soon. What are you, Mother, seventy?” Murazend does not wait for confirmation; she lets the basalt fall back in place, clicking a short and abortive threnody. “The accord is not wrong that I brought with me the human strain. You’ve infected us both, myself and Father. We have felt discontent and we have felt apart. Father did not consent to being reabsorbed; instead he fought as a human might. I’ve found myself longing for company, and the accord as a rule does not feel loneliness.”

Terasadh brushes off a stray ballet-leaf. “I fear the fault isn’t mine, little child. At the time I was using contraceptives and my seed shouldn’t have borne fruit, but Bernamés was determined, was he not? I don’t suppose anyone made playmates or lovers for you.”

“I did not inherit all your frailties.” The half-giant unbuckles her belt, lays down her arms: arrows with air-woven shafts and diamond tips, a gun whose grip and barrel blister the air with cold. Under the gun, grass hardens to green rime, soil first to slush then glittering sardonyx. “Why did you part ways with your king?”

“Why did I kill her, you mean?” The general looks down at her fatal scar. Always fresh, always seeping blood. The kinship curse has a way of enduring, and Nadjana’s grudge is potent. “She disowned me as an heir over a disagreement we had in statecraft. Then the palace rebelled against her, which she could not abide. Among other things.”

“Such as letting us go, Mother?”

“Such as that.” Terasadh touches the wound and extends her hand, fingers tipped red. “You must be hungry.”

Murazend does not partake. “I doubt your king’s poison will touch me, but better safe. I’m here and yet not. A portion of me abides in accord-plane, an equilibrium I strive to maintain. The slightest alchemic shift may destabilize.” She passes her hand over the weapons. “You made us a pledge to retrieve you as you lie dying and take you into our country. Why?”

“Bernamés once told me that in the giants’ country I can be cured of all ills and my life extended.”

“I suppose.” The maid gathers up her instruments, arrows and gun disappearing behind her belt. They smooth into her clothes the way pebbles sink into a pond.

“You told me that my empire will fall. Look toward Dajral. What do you see?”

Her offspring does not oblige, keeping her gaze on Terasadh rather than the empire’s direction. “When I departed, it seemed in orderly shape, but your people’s affairs are not mine.”

“All roads of worth lead to Dajral, tribute and commerce and learning. It’s taken some work, but these days it’s in a state with which I am satisfied. A golden age begins. But it will not last; in two or five generations it will unravel.” Terasadh’s face pinches — a spasm knifes through her, radiating from the wound. “Take me to the giants’ country. Out here time will leap and gallop without me, and one day Dajral will fall into crisis as the seer foretold. A courageous magistrate or canny strategist will set forth towards the ruins of giants, and there seek a lost general who sleeps and waits, to rise once more to serve the empire in its time of need.”

Murazend twists her mouth. “You have left a trail of legends and prophetic promise to that effect, no doubt.”

“Most will distort. Some will survive.”

“That is a great deal of faith placed on chance.” Murazend straightens. “But it is not my concern. Once I have done this I’ll be bound to you no longer. I will be free.”

“So run all parent-child bonds. Obligation, transaction.” Terasadh stands, with some difficulty. Her child does not offer a hand. “I’m ready. Shall we go?”

The half-giant maid shakes out her basalt dress, which thins ether-soft and billows out into a veil: over air, over matter, a doorway into somewhere other. “Thus our pact concludes.”

“Not quite yet. But soon enough.” Head held high, the general looks back to her war camp, to the history she is leaving behind.

She faces the gate and disappears from this world.

Wingless

Zachary Riddle

i.

Wings burst from my back when I was ten years old. It was genetic, passed down through

my father’s heritage. Thick, dark feathers grew

from my shoulder.

My classmates pointed. My teacher told me

I was mythology, said I needed a doctor.

My brother called me Crow, asked me when we’d

fly together. My mother, red-eyed, wrapped

my head in cloth, bound my hands and ankles

with duct tape, dragged me to the front yard, and took

a gutknife to my newborn

flesh and feather.

ii.

My brother’s body sank into an ice bath,

his sunburned skin beet red, his round eyes

pinched shut. Grandma ran a cardboard

colored washcloth across

his forehead and twisted

it tightly around his neck. The blisters

on his shoulders seeped thick

yellow that pooled on the water’s

surface. She kneeled by the tub

and a blot of sunset from between

the half-closed curtains made haven on her forearm. When he healed,

we compared the scars on our backs —

his, pale and glossed, and mine, rigid and stitched.

Sponsored Content

The Warrior Boy Who Would Not Suffer

Abhinav Bhat

4,300 words

There is a lot of blood in this world.

A lot of blood.

Even if you don’t include insects.

Which you should.

Why not? Their blood might be paler, bluer, insignificant. But it is still there. Running through tiny mashed up vessels and limbs. Just like mine.

There is a lot of blood in this world.

This is what the tiny boy thought as he lay there in the desert waste, bleeding out slowly from a large gash in his thigh.

Legs crushed, he turned and twisted slowly on the rocky ground, using his hands to drag and pull, iteratively trying to find a comfortable last position. It was important, he reasoned, that he find a comfortable last position. It wouldn’t do, to die, with those small jagged protrusions poking him in the buttocks and back as they were right now.

It wouldn’t do, to die uncomfortable.

He struggled along the ground, wriggling like a caterpillar — a swollen, malformed caterpillar.

You see, the boy had never in his life had enough to eat.

He had always had enough to read.

Spindly little arms, crushed legs, and a hungry, gobbling little thing of a brain.

He knew many things.

He knew pork bellies and tenderloin, and haute coutre and steampunk. He knew the Great Wars, Ibn Taymiyyah, Heinlein, Marilyn Monroe, confirmation bias, Neverland, and Kiruna. He knew the internet revolution, döner kebaps, Christianity, Mario Kart, dialectics, still life, Spinoza, and the Batman. He also knew Shiva, enchiladas, sloppy joes, Godot, pizzas, caviar, fracking, Bernoulli and his theorems, Sun Tzu, and much, much more.

He did not know how to fix his two crushed legs.

In theory, at least, he knew how to stop his wound from bleeding. He had to bind it with a piece of clothing. But the only piece of clothing he had was too small to even cover the wound. And he didn’t want to die naked.

Dying naked would not be appropriate, he reasoned.

He imagined the iced cream as he crawled. Milky-white iced cream with all its ridges and whorls, a portly metal spoon with a thick handle dug stolidly into its centre.

He imagined the hunk of bread with an abundance of meat bursting from within, its soft brownness clashing vividly with the redness of the meat.

He imagined other things he had seen only in pictures. He did not mind imagining things he had seen only in pictures. It cheered him up, knowing there was such beauty somewhere out there in the world, even if he could, and now, would, never himself embrace it.

He dragged himself up against a boulder, shifting his buttocks till he found smoothness in the ground. He gave a sigh of relief. It fell uneasy from his stoic lips.

At least he wouldn’t die uncomfortable. It was important, he reasoned again. What was the next important thing?

Waiting. Waiting was the next important thing. So he would wait. I do not know what it will be like — dying, but it will be slow, and that is true of all happy things. Slow.

And so he felt happy, that it would be slow. And so he smiled — another uneasy smile. All his life, all his smiles had come uneasy to him. As if the lords of birth had instructed him to forswear smiling and every emotion that came with it forever, and now, at the very end, he could not find it in himself to break the contract, even when all contracts were void.

Into his vision came an old man, far on the horizon, drifting into view as if born of the wispy, dancing sands.

How he knew the man was old he knew not, far across the horizon as he walked, yet he knew he was old.

An old baba come in from the waste, the boy almost smiled. His would be the old not of frailty, but of strength and wisdom and ... cruelty. Wise, yet cruel. Willing to take advantage. Perhaps that is what is wisdom. To have others suffer for the pleasure that is your right. Surely his clan-baba had been such wise, too.

And him? What of him? Was he wise, or was he false? All his life, he had only ever desired to be wise, turning away from all he had deemed false. And now, at the end, he knew nothing of wisdom. He would have laughed aloud at the thought, had he known how to laugh, how to truly laugh.

The old man inched forward as the sun across the sky. The boy observed his crawl without feeling.

Perhaps this is what next is. Watching him move-but-not-move. All throughout. Forever caught between horizon and waste. It would be a happy forever. Waiting.

He must have fallen asleep for when he knew next, the old man was standing over him, silently. Easily. Not as one who had crossed the waste from end to end. As surely he had. The sun would dip soon. As would he. And it would all be over. Living. This game they played, his annu had called it.

The old man looked him over as if satisfied, then withdrew paper and pen from inside his dust-coated robes. They were poor robes, of the sort a fakir or a beggar might wear. But there were no fakirs in the waste — it punished any such humility, nor were there any beggars — the waste punished any such want.

“What is your name?” the old man asked.

“I will not tell you.” The boy replied without defiance.

“How many battles did you fight?”

“Many.”

“How many did you kill?”

“Many.”

“How many caught under your rock did you ever show mercy?”

The boy pondered the question. “None.”

For he was as truthful in death as he was in life, though he did not yet know if he was living or dead.

“What do you feel of the navel?”

“The navel is holy of the body. Some say it birthed the universe.”

“What do you feel of the holy books?”

“The holy books are holy. They teach us how to be.”

“What do you feel of the lords above and around and inside us?”

“The lords above and around and inside us are holy. They teach us how to be.”

The answers came quickly, rehearsed. As if the questions of death were known to all the living. Yet none ever made it past.

“You lived a life of apathy. Do you seek more?”

“I do not know.”

“You lived a life of shame. Do you seek more?”

“I do not know.”

“You lived a life of content. Do you seek more?”

“I do not know.”

The old man gave a flicker of a smile as he wrote.

The boy remained silent, waiting for the next question.

“Tell me of redemption,” the old man said.

“Redemption is the love of the lords. It gives us hope,” the boy answered. Then, in a fit of desire that afflicts even the most hardened, he asked, “Am I wise?”

The old man ignored his question.

“You lived a life of folly. Do you seek more?”

“I do not know.”

“You lived a life of vanity. Do you seek more?”

“I do not know.”

“You lived a life of wisdom. Do you seek more?”

“I do n —” The boy suddenly stopped. All came to a still. I do not know, I do not know, his annu came into his mind, whispering. Another voice entered his mind, softer and far more insistent. I am wise, and if I am wise, I am of right, I am of the lords.

“You lived a life of wisdom. Do you seek more?” the old man repeated, as if unaware of the turmoil he had birthed in the boy’s breast.

You are not doomed yet, not yet. You have to know.

“I-I do,” the boy replied, his voice still as could be. I am not doomed yet, not yet. I have to know, what it is to be wise.

The old man began. “You were born in another land, far from here. You were a child of temperance and quiet, yet of life, and in that you were wise. You knew pain and misery and pleasure and love, and in that you were wise. You endured far and much and wide, yet you never let truth fall, and in that you were wise. You rescued kings from kingliness and gods from godliness, and in that you were wise. Millions hung onto your words, yet your words were not for millions, and in that you were wise. Your soul shone with greatness, yet it cast no shadow, and in that you were wise, such wise you were.”

And the boy listened, as one who had thirsted all his life yet did not know that such a thing as water existed. He heard the story of his life, a life he had never lived yet felt acutely all the same. He flew on wings given by the words, he experienced every action, every thought, every emotion the old man spoke of, and his heart could not help but feel the thrill of pride as he looked down from above and saw nations and millions standing below him, his name on their lips, acknowledging him as the wisest of all — their savior, their Great Soul.

And as the old man finished, the boy wept. For he had learned wisdom, and he now knew he was not wise at all. And wise he had desired to be above all else.

“Do you seek more?” the old man said. He waited patiently.

The boy wept. In his mind, he showed himself a picture of snow he had once seen. White, fresh, calm as nothing (dead?). That is what he wanted to be (dead?). Eyes closed, he let himself sink deep into its nothingness.

He opened his eyes. A question had to be answered. The temptation of a world, and it had to be rejected.

“I do not know,” he said.

The old man gave an understanding nod. He continued on.

“What do you feel of the navel?”

“The navel is holy of the body. Some say it birthed the universe.”

“What do you feel of the holy books?”

“The holy books are holy. They teach us how to be.”

“What do you feel of the lords above and around and inside us?”

“The lords above and around and inside us are holy. They teach us how to be.”

The old man stopped writing. “You are owed a question. Ask it of me.”

The boy pondered awhile. “When will you die?”

“I am old. I will die soon.”

“I am young. Yet I will die first.”

The old man gave no answer. He took up his pen again.

“You lived a life of war. Do you seek more?”

“I do not know.”

“You lived a life of envy. Do you seek more?”

“I do not know.”

“You lived a life of love. Do you seek more?”

The boy stopped. There was an itch in his heart, for he now knew wisdom. And in wisdom there was wrapped a kernel of love. Love is required, love is essential. And the kernel was in his heart, and he now knew all he had ever desired in life was love.

I am not doomed yet, not yet, I have to know. And into his mind came the prayer — I am love, and if I am love, I am of right, I am of the lords.

“I do,” the boy said.

So the old man began. “You were born in a nearby land, not far from here. Your mother and father fed you and cared for you, and in that you had love. You had friendship, though much false, yet still much true, and in that you had love. You were the idol of millions, and they cherished you above all else, and in that you had love. You held the heart of a woman all through your life in truth, as she held yours, and in that you had love. You had children who you gave without thought of return, and in that you had love. You had purpose every day of life, and it showed you respect, such as you showed it, and in that you had love, such love you had.”

And the boy listened, this boy, who had felt nothing in life, felt his heart fill and fill over with love, as if it would burst out of his chest to continue beating, for his frail little body could not hope to contain the fervor of love his heart now bled.

And as the old man finished, the boy wept. For he had learned love, and he now knew he had not love at all (never even from his annu; how could he not have been seduced at the first glimpse of love, this empty, empty boy). And love he had desired above all else.

He tried, he tried, to still his tears, but the snow was marred, it was marred all over, and he could find no comfort in it.

“Do you seek more?” the old man asked.

No, no, how could I say no? “No, no, I do not know,” he yelled out loud. The temptation of a universe, and he had it rejected, against every fiber of his being, against every meaning of his mind.

He wept. She had not loved him, ever, she had been as rock.

“Such is the exercise of will,” the old man remarked. “What do you feel of the navel?”

“The navel is holy of the body. Some say it birthed the universe,” the boy answered through his tears.

“What do you feel of the holy books?”

“The holy books are holy. They teach us how to be.”

“What do you feel of the lords above and around and inside us?”

“The lords above and around and inside us are holy. They teach us how to be.”

The old man stopped writing. “You are owed a question. Ask it of me.”

“Y-you trick us, you deceive us with those visions.”

“There is no deception. It is all of truth.”

“How can we resist then?”

“You cannot. It is nature. It is law.”

“Who has yet been able to resist law?”

“None has yet been able to resist law.”

“It is law then, that we live forever?”

“It is law, till it is law no more.”

“I can sense them. The tiny littlest balls of nothing in my mind, legions upon legions of them, falling as strings of pearls of perfect order, in perfect time, giving me these desires where none had ever been before. How do we resist?”

“Our feelings are not ours to control. We are never in control. Our feelings are all ours to control. We are always in control.”

“Enough, please, I beg you, enough! Do not ask me anymore! My answer is no, for each, to everything, my answer is no to all.”

“If your answer be no, then you have to speak the words, at the end of each question. As for stopping, that I cannot do, any more than the sun can wander from its path. I ask, and ask again, till the answer is clear.”

“And the answer is no, I tell you so, that is what I want to answer. Every time that is what I desire, but my desire will not let it do such.”

“To want is not to do. We all want much, yet get what we do.”

Then the boy knew he was lost, and he wept, for in his heart he felt many itches, all clamoring against the other, seeking absolution. And he saw love lead to lust, and lust to pleasure, and pleasure led to anger, and anger to pain, and pain to purpose, and so on and on.

And the old man would lead him to all these stars and he would follow, all that he knew and wished forgotten, as had every one who had come before him. He would follow hungrily, salivating, holding for the tastiest morsel, as an animal with meat flung in its face, following with all its heart and mind and soul.

And so on and on it would go, till he had known everything, things for which there were yet no names, yet things he would know he had always desired in life, every one of them over the other.

And the old man, knowing all this, took up his pen again, then asked him of the last. “You lived a life of truth. Do you seek more?”

And the boy, knowing now he was doomed, answered, “I do,” reciting the prayer in his heart. I am truth, and if I am truth, I am of right, I am of the lords.

The old man began. “You were born far from here, far as could be. As a child, you knew the hearts of others, and your own, and in that you knew truth. You peeled back the layers from the minds of your people, all people, and you revealed to them the meaning of much, and more, and in that you knew truth. You knew the meaning of the lords and of worship, and you enforced it none, and in that you knew truth. You brought the heavens and stars to arm’s reach of man, and laid their secrets bare, and in that you knew truth. You unraveled the laws that brokered the existence of the universe, and transcended them all, and in that you knew truth. You knew all, in as much could be known, and in that you knew truth, such truth you did know.”

And as the old man spoke, the boy could not cry, for he was too struck with wonder. The universe lay open before him, its truth revealed, and for a brief moment he saw all. He saw the oceans and the lands and the skies and the stars, he saw that his annu had loved him, still loved him. He saw himself journey outward with thought and being to the galaxies and the stars, as worlds upon words were revealed in an outward spread of light, a cosmic scripture. And he was here, he was there, he was everywhere, there was nowhere he could not be.

He saw beyond the wastes, beyond the palace, beyond the universe, beyond life itself (yet he could not see beyond the old man, he could not see the lords). He saw beyond every limit and every possibility, beyond what could be, had been, was, and would be. He had the answer to everything, he knew everything (yet he had not the answer to emotion, to control).

And as the old man stopped speaking, the knowledge passed, yet the feeling remained, the feeling of what it felt to know all. For the boy had learned truth, and he now knew he had not truth at all, and truth he had desired above all else.

And he cried and cried, for he did not want to feel such, yet he felt such beyond all feeling.

He struck the ground over and over again with his tiny fists and wept, but it could not cause the earth to lose its mooring and shake, much less change the truth of his heart.

“I cannot help it, oh lords, I cannot help it, it is beyond my grasp! I desire it, I desire it, I desire it all!”

“And all you shall have, you shall have it all, over and over again,” the old man said, smiling in pity.

Then his smile hardened.

“Tell me of redemption.”

“Redemption is false. It is sent by the lords to lull the sinner into seeking it, so the lords may know who the sinners are.” The blasphemy in the words came easy, but the boy bade it be difficult all the same.

“What do you feel of the navel?”

“The navel is false, it is unclean, it is nothing of the body.”

“What do you feel of the holy books?”

“The holy books are false, they betray us.”

“What do you feel of the lords above and around and inside us?”

“The lords above and around and inside us are false, they betray us.”

The boy let the fevered words lapse. The old man did not speak.

They remained in silence.

Twilight had turned the waste golden as the boy turned to look out upon it to distract himself. It feels appropriate, he thought. A golden waste. A comfortable death. Such depth of meaning, such feeling ... He almost laughed, but still he couldn’t. (Perhaps in the next birth the lords would be more favorable ...)

Now, he sensed that the old man’s questions were almost at an end, only the final crescendo left. The ending would be appropriate, his blasphemy had been appropriate, it had all been appropriate.

The old man stirred.

“You lived life. Do you seek more?” he asked simply, finally.

“I do,” the boy answered, the final answer, his tears all spent. In his heart, he was sad, for he had failed. But in the heart within his heart, he was happy, for he had failed, and he wondered if this feeling was true, or a manufacture of his heart. He could not tell what was real and what was his heart any longer, or if there had ever been any difference between the two.

The old man nodded sadly.

“If it be any comfort, I knew you would fall. Those of want always fall.”

“Those of plenty?”

“They fall much before. They are too eager to return.”

“Are we then to live forever? Does the cycle loom eternal?”

“You are as rocks. When thrown, you fall. As do all. As does all. I seek one who when thrown, will soar to the skies.”

“What of our suffering then? Do the lords care?”

“The suffering is not yours alone. The failure is not yours alone,” the old man said, a tremor in his voice. To the boy he now seemed frail and worn, a hunch in his back.

With what seemed like momentous effort, the old man took a step back from the boy.

“You are owed a question,” he said, his final words.

Suddenly, the boy felt his gaze drawn to the waste. A shadow was moving rapidly in the sands, far enough away on the horizon, still visible in the failing light.

The boy felt anxiety close a vice-like grip over his heart. What the creature was, for it was a creature, the boy knew not, but he felt its unsettling reek from across the waste.

The boy looked harder, urgently, and now he could make it out. Lion it was, yet leopard, yet panther too, yet none of them. It was black as the darkness itself, black all over, and it reminded him of death, and evil, and all things foul.

It came at them, this creature, at man and boy, moving as the wind given form, its roar setting the ground shuddering across the distance. It had covered half the length of the waste in bounds of seconds.

The old man stood with his back to the waste and the creature, unaware of the approaching danger.

The boy opened his mouth to shout, to warn the old man, and as he did ...

A look of horror and pain and fear crossed the old man’s face, such as the boy had never seen even through countless churns of battle.

And then it was upon him.

Blood and meat sprayed the boy’s face as the creature devoured the old man whole in what seemed an instant; it bit and tore, and ravaged and ate till the old man was no more, as if he had never been, only ever an apparition come in from the waste.

The boy fell back against the boulder in shock. No sound came from him, as if the scream had caught in his throat at the sight and smell of the creature and now it would curdle inside forever, as would all his other senses.

The creature stalked back and forth in front of the boy, snarling and licking the meat from its chops. Lines of drool and tissue and red ran thick between its jagged, uneven shards of teeth, many of them chipped as if by hammer-blow. Its mane seemed alive, streaked with blood, seething and bristling all over. Its eyes blazed empty with blackness. The boy watched, transfixed, frozen in fear. Somewhere in his mind he knew he was dead, he had nothing to fear, yet deathly fear had taken him.

The ground at the boy’s feet was spattered thick with the blood of the old man, almost a puddle. Pen and paper lay face down in it where they had fallen, where he could not reach them. This was all what remained of the old man, the harbinger of the lords.

The creature spoke, and its voice thrummed through the length of the boy.

“Go back, boy. Life awaits you,” it roared.

The boy then found his voice, he did not quite know how or why, but he found it. And he yelled to the creature, remembering he was owed a question still, “The lords, tell me of the lords! Are they of truth?”

For the face of the creature was now the face of the firmament, and its mane encircled all.

The creature smiled, its smile filling all of earth and sky, the firmament ripping into two as its lips parted to show the galaxies and universes swirling within ...

The sun blew out. Darkness was all.

Are they of truth?

The earth tilted out from under the boy, and as he fell into another birth, from the eternal darkness came the answer.

“I do not know.”

The Mouth of the Cave

Brandon Marlon

A legendary trove slumbers under sandscape,

tempting Muslim and zendik¹ alike:

hopefuls brave distant vistas for Samsama²,

mythic symbol of battlefield heroism.

Advancing upon mundane wilderness,

a Bedouin urchin recites memorized cipher;

magically prompting the cavernous rictus,

he swiftly plunges into craggy depths.

Greeted by an aureate glow of buried riches,

he shields his gawp from splendor:

beyond gem and jewel and coin lies the prize,

its metal glinting with exultant sheen;

forged by the Jewish sons of Bani Qaynuqa,

Samsama once felt Muhammad’s hand.

Carefully the urchin inches toward the sword,

which has never missed a single stroke.

Grasping its antique haft with dusty fingers,

he sees three nails binding blade to hilt.

Abruptly the rictus rumbles and groans,

startling boldness verging on triumph:

now even scorpions and horned vipers scatter

… as dust clouds obscure a gilded trap.

1 Arabic: Unbeliever

2 Arabic: Cleaver; a legendary sword in Islam which passed through the hands of caliphs and poets

Words for Thought

Short Fiction Review

A.C. Wise

Welcome to September’s Words for Thought. The themes echoing through this month’s stories are water, transformation, and family — particularly the relationship between mothers and daughters.

The Night Bazar for Women Becoming Reptiles by Rachael K. Jones in Issue #203 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a story of transformation, specifically of women into reptiles. It’s such a common occurrence that Hester, the story’s protagonist, is an oddity for her inability to change. Hester sells asp eggs at the Night Bazar. These eggs allow other women to transform, and Hester uses the proceeds to buy any kind of eggs she can get her hands on — skink, gecko, iguana, but nothing words. We never learn a specific reason for Hester’s desire to transform, but there’s a sense of restlessness, of fear, a sense that her own skin is stifling. Hester feels the burden of failure — when so many women around her are able to shed their skins and flee into the desert, why can’t she? Jones gives us a world divided into sunside and moonside. Hester, like most people, has a lover in each. Shayna her nighttime lover helps prepare women’s shed skin for salvage, while Marick, her sunside lover, is with the police. He has never touched her, either to cause harm, or sexually, but Hester lives in fear of being exposed for her illegal egg-selling at the Night Bazar. Here is where Jones takes the story beyond a cookie-cutter tale of a woman oppressed by gender roles, living in fear of an abusive man. Rather than betraying Hester, Marick reveals his own desire to change into a reptile, something previously only done by women. This revelation opens up Hester’s world, allowing her to see past the preconceived notions that have kept her locked into her skin. The story touches on women taking control of their own destinies, gender fluidity, shedding prejudices, and characters finding their true self. The way the story itself breaks with expectation mirrors Hester’s journey in the tale, opening up greater depths for the reader to explore. On top of all that, the world building is stunning and the writing lovely, full of evocative images and elegant turns of phrase.

Those Brighter Stars by Mercurio D. Rivera from the August issue of Lightspeed is both a first contact story, and a story about abandoned daughters searching for a connection with their mothers. Ava is a specialist working for the combined forces of NASA and the ESA. It isn’t until later in the story that we learn her specialty; she’s highly empathic, able to read the thoughts of plants and animals, and has had her abilities enhanced through technology in hopes that she’ll be able to communicate with the aliens on their way to Earth. It’s a three-year mission (the length of time it will take the alien ship to reach Earth), one which requires Ava to sequester herself from her family, leaving her daughter in the care of Ava’s father until she returns. Here we see a pattern repeating. Ava herself was abandoned by her mother as a child. Her (mis)diagnosis of autism was too much for her mother to handle, and she left. Even so, Ava is willing to leave her own daughter, pinning her hopes on the aliens’ arrival ushering in a better world for humanity. There’s a kind of naiveté to Ava’s belief, one that is heartbreaking. In the end, there’s a strong sense that Ava is seeking from the aliens the kind of relationship she never had with her mother.

I was confident that I would read a great benevolence, a desire to nurture us, to help humanity maximize its potential. […]The truth is, when I peered into the Needlers’ alien minds I did feel something, something familiar. I sensed an utter, cavernous indifference.

Ava passes up a chance at a relationship with her own daughter in search of a surrogate for a relationship she never had, yet she remains sympathetic as a character. Her choices are portrayed as tragic, rather than cruel. It’s interesting to think of Ava in terms of the real-world choices many women face between their families and their careers, and the way they’re judged for their choices regardless of which way they lean. Rivera presents a balance, and the story doesn’t censure Ava for her faults. Rather, it shows her as human, flawed, and doing the best she can, which is the best any of us can do.

Painted, Grassy Mire by Nicasio Andres Reed from issue #32 of Shimmer is another story of an absent mother, and a story of transformation. Set in Louisiana in 1915, Reed immerses the reader in an atmosphere of sultry, oppressive heat, mosquito-filled swamps, and mud. Winnie is a fisher, like her father. She also takes care of the chickens, gathers their eggs, changes the straw, and notices when they fall prey to the local alligators. At the same time, Winnie is fascinated by the gators, and has an unusual relationship with them. She visits them, respecting their potential for violence, and recognizing them as a force of nature. She doesn’t fear them, exactly, but she isn’t stupid enough to tempt them with her presence for too long, not without giving them something in return. Further complicating things, Winnie’s “abandonment” by her mother is tied to the gators.

She dreamt a hot, wet cathedral stretching darkly into the distance, and a vision of the marsh barred by moon-white teeth. Being carried; gently, gently. The muddy perfume smell of her mother and her tough, scaled legs. Her mother’s voice so low that it rattled in Winnie’s skin.

There’s a restlessness to Winnie’s existence. She is a creature of two worlds on multiple levels, not fitting squarely into any of them. She is caught between the world of humans and dry land, and the world of the swamp and the gators. Her mother is from Proctorville, her father from Batangas. She is the only girl in a village full of men. Winnie has memories of her mother slipping into the water, sinking up to her eyes, and urging Winnie to join her. While she didn’t join her mother then, she still feels the pull of another world of possibility now. In fact, Winnie’s entire existence feels haunted — by her dreams, her memories, a coming storm, the disappearance of the chickens, and her father’s gambling losses, including the loss of a beautiful alligator skin that belonged to her mother. Reed gives the sense of all these things circling Winnie, getting closer, pressing in on her even as she struggles with her own sense of belonging and a desire to shed her skin that is akin to Hester’s in “The Night Bazar for Women Becoming Reptiles.” The similarities between the two stories continue with the idea of a young woman reclaiming her place in the world. Like Jones, Reed does not paint a flat world of women versus men, but a world of subtle shades. Winnie’s father isn’t a saint, but he isn’t a bad man either. In the end, “Painted, Grassy Mire” is a story of sacrifice, giving up one world for another, and while neither may be perfect, ultimately, Winnie finds the place where she belongs.

Floodwater by Kristi deMeester from the August issue of The Dark gives us another take on mothers and daughters. Here, the mother in question isn’t physically absent, but emotionally unavailable throughout the story, which takes place over a few days during a terrible storm and subsequent flood. The seven-year-old narrator is left to her own devices, while occasionally being asked to care for her baby brother. According to her daddy, her momma isn’t feeling well. Something about the rain has upset her mother, and the narrator speculates as to whether this will be like the last time her momma was sad — when she was supposed to get a baby sister, but her parents came back from the hospital without one. There’s something more sinister in this sadness though. Her mother alludes to something inside the rain. The narrator eventually begins to see hints of it — the suggestion of eyes here, the shape of a hand there, and an upturned face drinking in the storm. It’s a tense and eerie story, given extra power by the youth of the narrator, processing adult themes and snatches of conversation to give the reader a chilling picture of the situation.

Daddy told me the baby went into the ground and turned into the flowers in the spring, and so when the flowers came up later that year, I tried to talk to them, but they only ever stared back at me, and I got mad and ripped them out of the ground.

The descriptions are evocative, conveying the terror of something half-seen, but again filtered through an innocent perspective. The narrator is excited at the idea of meeting her sister, and excited at the prospect of her mother re-uniting with her other daughter. Whereas the reader, with a less innocent perspective, can see the true horror in this story.

The Words on My Skin by Caroline M. Yoachim from the July/August issue of Uncanny is another story about the relationship between mothers and daughters. Told at flash length, Yoachim packs a lot into very few words. The story is set in a world where words written on your skin define your personality. The narrator comes from a family of skin writers. As a child, her mother writes words like smart and resilient on her skin. At six years old, she discovers she can write words on herself, and the first one she chooses is fun. As she grows older, the narrator begins adding more words to herself — clever, stealthy, passionate, flirty. There are elements of teenage rebellion versus responsibility, as well as a character learning to be her own person. The mother-daughter relationship is nicely portrayed, and in contrast to the other stories, it is about presence, rather than absence. Yoachim deftly shows the way children can often find their parents’ rules and concerns stifling, even when their parents are only trying to do the best for them. She also shows the way children’s relationships with their parents can change over time, evolving until their concerns are more similar than they ever could have imagined, bringing both sides a greater understanding of each other. A secondary thread through the story is the idea of labels placed on a person by their family, or society as a whole, changing them in literal ways. True to life, there’s a tension between how others see us, and how we see ourselves, and both the labels other people place on us and the labels we place on ourselves can have unintended consequences. “The Words on My Skin” is a story that comes full circle in a satisfying way, and manages a sense of growth for its main character which is not easy to do in such a short space. Yoachim is a master of the flash fiction form, and this story is a perfect example.

War Dog

Mike Barretta

4,600 Words

He slowed for a feathered corpse in the middle of the road. Up above, the local troop of macaques shrieked at a flock of gene-crafted micro-raptors. He rounded the blind curve and jerked the steering wheel back to avoid a washout from last night’s thunderstorm. The truck bounced across broken asphalt, and the steering wheel twisted out of his hands. From the corner of his eye, he saw a man emerging from the woods. He jammed the brakes and his truck left the road, plowing to a stop into the soft red dirt undercut from the crumbling asphalt.

Not a man, but a shroom. The figure staggered, hands outstretched, and pressed its naked body against the side glass. He could see the delicate snowflake tracery of white rhizome fibers under its skin. The shroom’s eyes glinted clear and blue. Its slack mouth drooled. The creature broke away, leaving a moist trail across the car. Its eyes turned skyward and fixed on a power pole draped with broken electrical lines and wild jasmine. It stepped away towards the pole, cast a look over its shoulder at him, almost as if it was still a person, and climbed.

He took his phone from his pocket and dialed 911.

“Gulf Breeze 911, where is your emergency?

“Yes, this is Major William Jackson, 3rd Florida Infantry, Retired. I need to report a shroom on Soundside Drive.”

“Okay,” said the operator. “Are you sure it’s a shroom?”

“Yes, it’s a shroom. I know what one looks like.”

“Of course, Major. Has it fruited yet?”

“No, not yet. It just started climbing.” The former human, infected with a weaponized version of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, clawed its way up the pole with fierce resolve.

“Can you show it to me?”

“Yes, hold on.” He tabbed on the camera feature of the phone and spun it to face the shroom.

“We have your location. Can you vacate the area?”

“I ran off the road. I thought I was avoiding a person, and my truck is stuck.”

“Do you have personal protective equipment?” Her voice took on a new urgency.

“Yes, I do. I think.” He opened up the glove compartment and took out a government-supplied filtered hood. Three of them crowded the glove box.

“Major, we have a hazmat team on the way. We would like you to stay in your car and put on your personal protective gear. I’ve sent out a cellular warning to all citizens in the area. We want you to stay connected and keep us informed of the shroom’s status.”

“I think I can get upwind.”

“Are you sure it’s the only one?”

“No.” It was a good question of the 911 operator to ask. There was rarely just one shroom. Infections typically occurred in clusters.

“Best if you stay in the car.”

“Okay, I can do that.” He leaned forward to get a better view. The shroom had climbed three quarters of the way up the pole. He propped his phone on the dashboard. “Can you still see it?”

“Yes, we can. We don’t want you to worry. The hazmat team will decontaminate your vehicle should the shroom fruit before we get there, but if you have any powered ventilation we would like you to turn it off. Would you like me to pray with you?”

“No, I’ve already prayed, but you could pray for me; I don’t mind listening,” he lied. He behaved with enough piety to not arouse suspicion and used his combat-wounded veteran status to excuse the acts of contempt that he could not hide.

He opened one of the filter hood packages and pulled the battery lanyard. The filter pack hummed. He put it over his head and cinched it down around his neck. The hood fogged around his mouth and nose with every exhalation, but it wasn’t too uncomfortable.

The shroom reached the top of the pole and checked its grip, tightening and loosening its limbs. A mockingbird, unaware of the danger, harried the creature. The shroom shuddered, going through the terminal phase of its design.

Then he remembered his only neighbor, the Dog.

The wind was blowing from the west. If the shroom fruited, its spores would drift over the Dog’s homestead. Even if they didn’t, the decontamination team would fog the area with caustic chemicals.

He decided.

He stepped out of his truck, abandoning its relative safety, and ran farther up the road. He took off his hood to breathe more easily and turned up the narrow dirt path that led to the Dog’s home. Branches whipped at his face, and twice he ducked under immense dewy spans of banana-spider webs. He broke out into a clearing and slowed to catch his breath. It had been a long time since he had run. The emergency hood hummed in his hand.

He had seen the Dog twice before, and they had acknowledged each other at a careful distance. As veterans, they shared the bond of war, but whereas he had emerged from conflict a respected soldier, she had come out as an illegal gene splice, a piece of dangerous biological equipment.

A neat, wood-shingled house sat in the clearing. The Dog stood up in the midst of her garden with a small hand shovel held like a weapon. Leaf mold flecked the velvet gray fur of her arms.

He felt her fear, surprise, and anger. Dogs were focused telepaths by design and imprinted on their handlers at an intense and intimate level, but an unbonded person in close proximity could still feel strong emotional bleed-over. He imagined the Dog deciding whether to kill him or not. In the CSA, the Christian States of America, she was an abomination and regarded as military property to be neutralized by an ordnance disposal team, but he had known about her presence for almost a year and had not reported her. He hoped that that would work in his favor. He could see her muscles tense as she decided the best course of action.

“Shroom,” he said. “You are in the dispersal range.”

<Immune>, he felt. The word filled his head and popped like a soap bubble. Her voice was soft and feminine and un-doglike. Her design was mostly human, so much so that she was inter-fertile with baseline humans, but that held little weight in the CSA. “Still, they’ll decontaminate the whole area. You know what that means.”

<Despair and sadness>, he felt. Hard work had built her hidden homestead in the middle of a blight zone.

“The hazmat team will arrive in a few minutes. Once they secure the scene, they’ll disinfect with an aerial attack.”

She bolted for her house and retrieved a military pack designed for her body. Like a good soldier, she was ready to bug out at a moment’s notice. She surveyed all that she would lose, came to him, and hugged him. Her body, taught and muscular, smelled like warm sun. He could not remember the last time he’d been hugged.

She stepped back.

<Thank you>

“Be safe,” he said.

She ran towards the edge of the woods, and, just before reaching it, dropped to all fours and moved with the grace and power of a cheetah, her spine curling and springing open, covering ground in twelve-foot leaps. She vanished into the brush.

He returned to his truck, winded from the exertion and wet with sweat. He put his hood back on. Military vehicles circled the shroom’s pole. Amber strobes flashed, and men in hazmat suits set up decontamination gear. He looked up in time to see the shroom convulse. Ropey pink antlers burst out of its skull. The shroom swung its head, rattling the antlers and releasing a pink mist of spores that caught the wind and drifted. The shroom shuddered again, and more thick antlers erupted from its back, growing and branching with astonishing fungal speed. The yellow-suited hazmat team finished their setup, and a jet of flame erupted from the fire gun’s nozzle to engulf the shroom. The antlers crisped, turned black, and broke away.

“Did you call this in?” asked the supervising officer.

“Yeah.”

“Good job. Is your hood cinched down tight?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Okay, as soon as we clean up the scene we are decontaminating the area. You know what that means.”

“I do.”

The shroom fell from the pole, hitting the ground with a wet, hissing splat. Broken pieces rolled away, and the team hosed it down with more fire until the thing turned into a pile of ash. They worked the surrounding area with chemicals. Leaves dissolved and dripped under the chemical attack.

“Fruiting bodies visible upon arrival,” said the supervising officer into his radio. “High concentration of spore release. Wind speed is light and variable. I’m recommending immediate chemical decontamination.”

“Roger that,” squawked the radio. “Chopper is on the way.”

“This is going to be inconvenient,” said the major to himself.

* * *

In the hospital isolation ward, he breathed the acrid chemical mist to purge his lungs of any shroom spores that might have infiltrated his lungs. Ventilation fans whirred for a few minutes. He dried himself as best as he could with the paper towels. The sealed door opened.

“Major,” said a nurse. She handed him a paper hospital smock and watched as he dressed. “Would you follow me?”

He followed her, and she drew back a curtain.

“In here, please,” she said.

He sat at the edge of the examining table. The curtain was pulled aside, and the Sisters of Eternal Grace stepped in to pray over him. One of the crones put her bony, knuckled hand on his forehead and tapped him. They rattled their donation can in front of him when they finished. He looked down at the hospital smock.

“I don’t have any pockets.”

The lead sister frowned at him and rattled the can again.

“I don’t ...”

Her face twisted into an uncharitable grimace of disgust.

The doctor entered. “Get out, hags.”

The sisters scowled in unison but turned on their heels and left in a whirl of gray skirts and sensible shoes.

“You know they are going to bill you for that prayer. The VA will cover their costs, but you should be nice to them; they’re connected like the mob,” said the doctor. “Are you feeling okay? You look like shit.”

He coughed. “I’m okay. Does that stuff work?”

“The shower washes off any spores on your skin, but the mist? No, it just scorches your lungs. The spores are encysted. The prayer is the best treatment.”

“Great.”

“I’ve got something for you.” He reached into his lab coat pocket and took out a bottle of pills, migraine medicine.

“Where did you get them?”

“There are ways, and then there are ways. People need things, and I can get them. How do you think I can help so many?”

“I can’t pay for them.”

“I still owe you.”

“That debt was paid a long time ago.”

“That debt can never be paid, but let me try. You need to be careful.”

“About what?”

“The sampler found chimera hair and skin cells on your clothes.”

“I was wearing old clothes from the war.”

“Yeah, you can try that excuse, but the sampler is more sophisticated than that. It’s the best piece of equipment we have in this hospital, and it is hotwired to the DOFF. They’ll be watching you. You know how they love rooting out heretics and atheists.”

“Yes, and Zionists and Papists and Colored.” Every society needed an underclass to absorb injustice and excess force.

“Do you need a ride home?”

“No, I’ll walk. I need the exercise.”

“You also need some clothes. It’s a long walk.”

“We’ve walked farther on less.”

“Yes, we have. You’re good to go. I’ll have the nurse bring you some clothes. The reverend-director of the hospital will want to stop by and pad your bill with another prayer or two.”

“Prayer is the best medicine.”

“I thought that was laughter.”

“Not anymore.”

* * *

Raindrops pummeled the road. He walked into a nightmare landscape of dripping, gray-green slime that coagulated in puddles and ran across the road in sticky, mucosal sheets. The aerial decontamination spray had turned the surrounding woods into a melted, Dalí-esque landscape. The larger trees resembled wilted saguaro, bent and sagging in graceful, boneless curves. Whip-thin branches of heartwood dripped to the ground. The delicate gray bones of small creatures caught in the dissolving spray littered the sticky ground. His truck remained in the washout. With a jack and boards pulled from the bed of the truck, he managed to extricate it from the ditch and drive home.

Inside his home, he wedged a two-by-four into the cleats to bar the door shut. He showered off the slime of the melted forest. As he dressed, the wind shifted with frontal passage, and the house rocked in another direction. The temperature dropped as the cold front engulfed the house. Bizarre weather typified the new normal. He started a fire in the stone fireplace and hung a battered teakettle over it. Thunder boomed. Hailstones pummeled the roof. The ghosts of his family, trapped and framed above the fireplace, regarded him from a world before the I-War and the Second Civil War.

Another roll of thunder shook the house, and he popped two of the doctor’s pain pills to break up the loci of pain that accreted around his Yankee shrapnel whenever the weather turned bad. After a few moments, the white-hot dots of agony abated. He closed his eyes and listened to the crackle of the wood fire and the hiss of boiling water from his kettle.

Someone knocked on the front door. He roused to awareness and fetched his shotgun. He chambered a shell and peered through the glass peephole.

The Dog.

He unbarred the door and held it open. She was soaking wet, shivering in the unseasonal cold.

<Nowhere to go>

Desperate and intimate and voiceless thoughts flowed through his mind like sound. Her camouflage T-shirt clung to her shoulders. Blood oozed from a hailstone cut above her left eye. She wiped rain from her face, and he caught sight of the razor-sharp dew claw on her forearm. If she wanted the house, she could take it from him. He stepped back, swinging the door wider.

“I’ll get you some dry clothes.” He put the gun down and went into a backroom.

<Thank you>

He felt her gratitude and uncertainty follow him.

The Dog knelt in front of the fireplace and held her hands spread-fingered toward the fire. She turned to look over her shoulder. He handed her some old clothes that had belonged to his wife, and a towel. She stripped in front of the fireplace with immodest military efficiency. Soft velvet fur thinned on her breasts and thickened somewhat at the swell of her vulva. She dried herself with the towel and dressed. The remains of her home stained her feet milky green.

<Nothing left>

“I’m sorry. Are you hungry?”

<Yes>

He opened a packet of dehydrated chicken soup and dumped it into the tea kettle.

“It will take a few minutes.”

<Smells good>

He added another log to the fire and stirred the soup mix. Ants boiled from the log and stepped into a miniature hell. They crisped in the embers. The Dog sat on the threadbare couch and curled her legs under her and tucked her hands between her thighs. He was not afraid even though there were strong reasons for baseline humans to fear Dogs. They were stronger and smarter, exotic and dangerous, beautiful, and, above all else, different. She was typical of her kind.

<You have mods?> she asked.

“Yes, I was a soldier once.” Most soldiers of the old USA featured some viral-delivered enhancements. He saw pretty well in low-light conditions, couldn’t run to fat even if he wanted to, and healed a bit faster than before. The processes that modified him had created her from scratch.

<Maybe you’re a Dog>

“Maybe you’re a woman.”

She smiled against the exhaustion that threatened to overwhelm her. Her canines protruded a bit from her lips. He served the soup.

“You’re safe here.”

<I know>

She finished the soup and set the bowl down on the end table.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

<M’ling> She slouched down on the couch and closed her eyes to sleep.

He waited for the fire to burn down to a safe level. He pulled down a comforter from the back of the couch and covered her. He curled on the adjacent sofa and fell asleep.

* * *

Under M’ling’s ministrations, the backyard bloomed with fruit and vegetable and flower. Low-level agents of the Department of Faith Formation intruded several times, but each time she sensed their presence and vanished. At night, when the air cooled, they talked. She told him how a sniper killed her handler in Venezuela, and how she ripped the sniper’s throat out with her teeth. She told him how she battled back from the psychic shock of the loss, her inability to accept another handler, and her escape from the decommissioning facility. In turn, he told her about fighting in Taiwan during the I-War with China, and later in Virginia, during the Second Civil War. They slept together, at first for companionship, and then for something more. At night he stroked the length of her body, soft velvet over hard muscle.

Stories of handlers that slept with their Dogs were ubiquitous in rocket-shattered Taiwanese cities. Contemplating bestiality with manufactured creatures of ethereal beauty was the least of sins in that brief and violent war. Handlers and their Dogs returning from long-range patrols self-segregated at the firebase, and it only added to the mystery and speculation. Once, on a mission, his fire team found a handler carrying the long, lithe frame of his Dog, not over his shoulder, but in his arms like a bridegroom carrying his bride. The handler, agonized with fatigue, refused to let anyone else touch her. He fell to his knees and then collapsed from exhaustion over her body. They convinced him to bury her. Over the grave, the handler cried and murmured gentle words, and when he had finished he said, “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“I can’t. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“You can’t.”

When they looked away the handler shot himself in the head and they dug another grave.

At the time he could not understand the connection, the powerful bond between Dog and handler, each devoted to the other so intimately that the descriptive terms ascribed to the connection were meaningless. It was what made them such a terrifyingly effective weapon system.

Now he thought they worked well together, in a way in which he never expected to do again.

* * *

She stood and looked to him. <They’re here again>

He heard a vehicle pull into his drive. He walked to the front door and waited. A man wearing a modified roman collar, a badge, and a sidearm walked towards his porch. Two other men scanned the area. He opened the door before the man knocked.

“Major Jackson, I am Reverend-Inspector Carlyle.”

“In what capacity are you here today?”

The man looked perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“Are you here as a reverend or as an inspector?”

“Both. Always.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I have traces unexplained by your statements. Where is the abomination?”

“On my front step.”

The reverend-inspector grinned with professional malice and indignation.

“Right. Harboring an abomination is a capital offense.”

“Every offense is a capital offense these days.”

“The purest metal comes from the hottest fires.”

“Clever.”

The reverend-inspector was the worst kind, a thick layer of true believer over a core of bully, the type to shout damnation on the street corners yet never lift a finger in a poorhouse or soup kitchen.

“May I come in?”

He stepped forward and was pushed back.

He moved his hand to draw his sidearm.

“Do you think that you can draw that weapon before I do something about it?”

The reverend-inspector moved his hand away from the weapon. Confusion and genuine fear crossed his face. He was unaccustomed to resistance.

“I have full authority ...”

“Major.”

“What?”

“Major. What you want to say is: Major, I have full authority. You will address me by my military rank. I’ve earned it, and you are not coming in my house without a warrant. This isn’t the United States. Are you a Yankee?”

The reverend-inspector’s face darkened at the insult. “Major, your story to my associates was unconvincing. There were no squatters in the woods. And I found these.” He held up silver dog tags that flashed in the sun. “When I come back it will be with a warrant.”

He stepped onto his porch, and the reverend-inspector stumbled backwards down the two steps.

“If you come back, we will duel over any further insult. Do you accept? I’ll register our intent with the county.”

The inspector flushed red, unprepared for the personal challenge. Duels were rare, but permitted between CSA landowners and military officers.

“I, I ...”

“I thought not. Get off my property.”

The reverend-inspector turned, stalked to his county car, and drove away.

M’ling emerged from the other room and pressed her body against his back. She wrapped her arms around him, and leaned her head on his shoulder.

“He will come back.”

<They always come back>

* * *

He locked his desk drawer and stepped into the hangar. The helicopters inherited from the USA were slotted in their spaces but immobile for a lack of spare parts. All the mechanics he supervised had already left for Friday services, a euphemism for drinking moonshine in the back room of the local roadhouse.

He drove past a chain gang of un-saved and un-white conscripts supervised by mirror-shaded, shotgun-toting deputy-deacons. He stopped at the toll bridge and honked his horn for the attendant to lift the reflector-bedazzled log gate that blocked his way. The attendant came out of the booth and walked away from him.

“Hey, I need to get home,” he yelled to the attendant, but the man entered the tollhouse and closed the door.

“Under new management, Major,” said a voice from behind the driver’s window. His door was wrenched open and a gun pressed against his temple.

He reached for his own gun in the glove box.

“No you don’t, Major. No you don’t. Please step out.”

The pressure from the pistol barrel eased and he unfastened his seatbelt. He stepped out and recognized the highwaymen, a former military unit that did the unchristian work it took to enforce a Christian state. The man with the gun to his head pistol-whipped him, and he dropped to his knees. Two more heavy blows pounded on his head. Stars exploded, but he held to consciousness.

Rough hands grabbed him and dragged him into the surrounding woods. Twisted hemp rope secured him face-down over the hood of a car. They were strong and fast and, like him, ex-military.

“Major, what is good?”

He spit blood out of his mouth. Some of his teeth felt loose.

“I said, what is good?”

A fist punched him in the back of his head, bouncing his face against the hood of the car. ’19 Mustang, he thought. The last year they made them.

“I’ll tell you. Good is that which pleases God, and what pleases God is what I have to do. To the matter at hand: There is an abomination in our midst, and it needs to be purged. Fire has to be fought with fire, an abominable act for an abominable act.”

A knife sliced open the back of his pants and eager hands jerked his trousers down. He breathed in fast, fearful pants.

“Where is the abomination?”

He remained silent.

“When we are done, you know what you must do.”

When they finished taking turns, they cut him free, and he fell to the ground. They left him alone and walked back to their camp behind the tollhouse. Darkness fell, and he pulled himself up and limped to his truck. Warm blood dressed his legs and back.

He drove home naked and broken.

* * *

He did not need to explain.

She knew.

He radiated humiliation and pain.

She reached for him, but he kept walking through the house to the backyard. He stepped into the small pool converted into a fishpond and sat in the water up to his neck. Carp and brim nibbled at him. In time, he went to bed, and she lay next to him, her hand on his chest. Between them, in the still of the night, thought and feeling ebbed and flowed in a gentle tide.

He awoke alone, his throat raw, his insides dirty. In the bathroom, he looked in the mirror and saw a small snowflake tracery of white on his cheek. He drank tepid water until he gagged. She was not in bed and he went in search. The backdoor to the living room lay open to the night. Dark clouds scudded across the full moon. M’ling stood on the steps in the pool that he sat in earlier. She glowed ghostly in the pre-dawn light, a specter worthy of darkest fear. The water lapped at her ankles. Naked and alien, she washed shadowed blood from her forearms and chest and mouth.

The highwaymen did not know what they had unleashed.

Predatory eyeshine regarded him with love. She stepped from the pool and embraced him. Retractable-clawed hands caressed the fibrous cluster at his cheek. Her dew claw rested across his throat. She would do it if he asked.

“No,” he said. “I want every minute.”

* * *

He made arrangements. The doctor visited him and injected him with an expensive antifungal that slowed the progression but could not stop it.

Long ago, the doctor, then a medic, paralyzed with fear over the onslaught of incoming artillery rounds, had curled into an exposed fetal ball in the open battlefield. The major, then a captain, had dragged the doctor into the shelter of the root ball crater of a fallen tree. Anti-personnel shells burst overhead, filling the air with white-hot blades of Yankee metal. They outlasted the fierce barrage and survived the night and spoke no more of it.

The doctor owed him.

“Do this for me and our debt is settled.”

“I will.”

* * *

The thirty-foot-long speedboat rolled under the topside weight of three big outboard engines and six fifty-five gallon drums of fuel on the aft deck. Big men dressed in night camouflage unloaded alcohol, pornography, medicine, and other hard-to-find necessities. The run back to Cuba would take twenty hours, but in less than two they would be beyond the decrepit CSA Coast Guard.

By the light of the half moon, the fungal rhizomes luminesced. The fibers spread across his face and neck and reached for the thoughts in his head. The smuggler crew kept their distance. As she embraced him, his hand drifted to the swell of her belly. He pressed, feeling for a kick, but felt none. Maybe it was too soon.

<It’s your daughter>

“Our daughter.”

She kissed him one last time and boarded the boat.

As the boat receded into the night, sadness attenuated. His connection grew weaker and weaker until he could no longer feel her. He dropped to the wet ground, empty and hollow.

* * *

By unthinking instinct, he selected a dead pine that offered unobstructed access to the wind. Compulsion drove him to the topmost reaches, and he swayed in the amber morning light, rocking to-and-fro in the breeze. He thought his last thoughts of love and war before bizarre biological processes bundled his memories into microscopic spores that erupted from him in a pink haze to be scattered on the winds.

“War Dog” originally appeared in War Stories: New Military Science Fiction edited by Andrew Liptak and Jaym Gates (Apex Book Company, 2014)

The Storm Creatures

Christina Sng

We fly with the storm,

Spinning too fast for them

To catch us.

The fuel feeds us,

Keeps us safe 

From the monsters.

But our world is shrinking,

Our numbers dying.

Collision deaths,

Once a thing of the past

Now commonplace.

We no longer live

Long enough to spawn,

Too many of us 

Swept away into the ether.

But our greatest fear

Is when the storm

Is finally gone.

Where will we disperse to?

How will we live,

With millions of leviathans

Waiting for us

In the lower clouds 

As they have, since

Before the Red Spot existed.

Interview with Lance Parkin, author of The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek

Michael A. Burstein

As the world notes and celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek, many books are coming out to commemorate the 1960s television series. These include novels, histories, and even a guide to the real universe (as noted by Apex Magazine back in July).

One book that deserves our attention is the new “unauthorised” biography, The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek (Aurum Press, $29.99) by British writer Lance Parkin. Parkin is arguably best-known for his Doctor Who novels and his guidebooks to the series, but he also has an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek and its creation.

I have to admit that when I started reading Parkin’s book, I was wondering if the world needed another biography of Gene Roddenberry, even for the fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek. Three years after Roddenberry died, two writers, David Alexander and Joel Engel, each published their own biographies of Roddenberry. Alexander’s was an “authorized” biography, and Engel’s wasn’t, but they seemed to cover Roddenberry’s life and work fairly completely. I read them both when they first came out and thought that I now knew all about Roddenberry.

It turns out that there is much more to know. Parkin seemed to have anticipated my thought about the previous biographies. Very early on in his book, he mentions the existence of both previous biographies, analyzes them, and discusses how they were received. He also provides an explanation as to why the world could use another biography of Roddenberry:

At this point, Star Trek has run longer since Roddenberry’s death than when he was alive. Since Roddenberry’s death, what with cast member biographies and memoirs, “behind-the-scene” books, and documentaries, more information has come out about the man than existed before. Parkin has reviewed an incredible amount of material to understand who Roddenberry was and what made him tick.

Interestingly, Parkin conducted no interviews for his book. But Parkin’s reliance on previously published material rather than interviews is actually a strength of his book, as he is able to draw conclusions about Roddenberry and bring threads together about the man’s life that no one had seen before in quite this way.

Parkin has written the most thorough and enjoyable biography of Roddenberry to date. This is a book that no lover of Star Trek should be without. If you want to know anything about how television worked in the United States in the 1960s, you have to read this book.

Parkin spoke with Apex Magazine and answered some of the questions we had about his journey in exploring the life of Gene Roddenberry.

Apex Magazine: First of all, I presume that you yourself are a fan of Star Trek, else you probably wouldn’t have written this book. Can you describe your own interest in Star Trek? When did you start watching the series?

Lance Parkin: Oh, yes! My experience was pretty typical of most British fans – the original Star Trek was a sort of methadone for when Doctor Who wasn’t on, and I was watching it as a kid in the mid-seventies onwards. I was there on the opening weekend for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (I’d have been eight), I have a bookcase full of Star Trek guidebooks and novels, and so on. Star Trek: The Next Generation peaked when I was at university, and I helped run the society that got tapes sent from the US. We were the first people in Europe to show the first episode of Deep Space Nine, to a room packed with about a hundred people more than the fire safety limit.

AM: Do you have any favorite series or episodes?

LP: I loved The Next Generation and I really enjoyed the first JJ Abrams movie. I’d always liked the original series – this is an understatement – but it was writing the book that forced me to rewatch it all systematically, and I love that show now, appreciate it on all sorts of new levels.

Er, let’s see ... “Darmok” is my favourite episode, I have a soft spot for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, mainly because its eyes are so much bigger than its stomach. It’s ambitious, but also collapses around you as you watch it.

AM: What drew you to write a biography of Gene Roddenberry at this time? Is it just for the fiftieth anniversary, or was there something more?

LP: The anniversary was a nice hook for the publisher, and I was interested in writing about Star Trek and trying to place it in its various contexts. I could see gaps that I thought my book could fill. Roddenberry’s an interesting person, which helps, and everyone who met him has an opinion about him.

AM: What impression did you get of Roddenberry as you were writing the book?

LP: Reading about him, it felt a little like I was getting fragments of the story, and there were a few things that didn’t quite add up. There’s a mythical history of Star Trek, where Roddenberry was a voice in the wilderness and the network didn’t like the show and no one watched it at first. I looked at that and thought “well, hang on, the network ran the show for three years, and if they didn’t like it and no one was watching, why would they do that?” The answer to that leads to some interesting insights into Star Trek, but also the way TV drama was made in the sixties.  

AM: How long did it take you to complete this biography?  Did you find that your previous experience writing books about Doctor Who, Philip Pullman’s trilogy, and Alan Moore helped guide you?

LP: It took about two years. It has the same approach as the Alan Moore book, which is “through his works shall you know him.”

Writers can be pretty boring. We sit around writing, and the only displacement activities really are moaning about the business practices of people we deal with, conducting feuds, egomania and addiction. But 95% of the time, it’s just sitting around tapping at a keyboard. Roddenberry’s work is quite distinctive, even though it’s written for American network TV, which is a notorious production line where the rough edges are smoothed away. So I wanted to draw out echoes of Roddenberry’s life in his work. He’s a writer who has his pet theories and philosophies and likes bringing them to his work. Behind that, there’s the unconscious stuff, so his attitudes to, say, women are specific to his own time and place. And he’s really good at a sort of propulsive, heightened drama, and it’s always thoughtful, but a lot of the time he can’t quite get these big ideas into the format without having characters just make stodgy speeches. And a lot of the time, for my money anyway, his “big ideas” aren’t quite as fascinating as he thinks. A lot of his thoughts about the meaning of life are his own hangups, rather than the lofty universal dilemmas he thinks they are.  

AM: I was interested in seeing you mention both the David Alexander and Joel Engel biographies of Roddenberry that came out in 1994, as I remember buying and reading them. Given that these two books already exist, along with the many other books you mention under Further Reading, what do you feel your book brings to the table that differentiates it from what has already been written?

LP: Those books are great, and what’s great is that they could be about two different people! Alexander’s book is the official one, with access to all the family papers and so on. Engel’s is this gossipy, seedy tell-all. It’s like those Bugs Bunny cartoons with a cartoon angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.

At first, I struggled a little — the first section I wrote, I was taking those two accounts and summarising them and trying to work out which of the two was ‘right’. If my book had been that, it would have been very lukewarm. I changed my approach, tried to take advantage of the fact that twenty-five years have passed since those books were written, that there’s a lot more information out there, now — just about every actor wrote their autobiography. We can see the bigger picture. I actually took my cue from William Shatner, who says that the basis of his performance is to find the most entertaining line reading. Obviously I’m trying to stay faithful to the facts and history and so on, but I wanted my account to be a very readable, entertaining guide to Star Trek, its creators and what was going on around it. Like Star Trek itself, I want it to be colourful and fast-paced, and when you’re done, you’ll hopefully see it covered quite a lot of ground and tackled a few issues.

AM: You note how some people will portray Roddenberry as a saint, while others will portray him as a monster. From your research, do you think that only someone like Roddenberry could have had Star Trek made? What qualities of his made it possible for him to get Star Trek produced?

LP: It’s clearly possible to make Star Trek without Roddenberry — more Star Trek TV episodes and movies have come out since he died than when he lived. But, yeah, there’s an X factor that Roddenberry brings to it. The paradox is that most of the best TV shows have this one person at the heart of them, maintaining the integrity, with a clear vision. It’s what you want from a TV producer, it’s not extraordinary. But Star Trek, like all TV and movies, is also a team effort. Everyone brings something.

The first pilot episode doesn’t have William Shatner, and it’s just not got that zing; you really see what he brings to it as Kirk. Leonard Nimoy’s just great as Spock. The original series benefits immensely from Gene L Coon, who comes along when they’re about eight episodes in, and fine tunes the show, makes McCoy more of a central character, makes sure the episodes start with a bang instead of easing into the action. There are writers, designers, all sorts of people who create these iconic things.

So the answer to your question is that Gene Roddenberry assembles a really good team. After the show is off the air, he tours the Star Trek conventions and the fans give him credit for everything, that everyone else was just dancing to his tune, and he does nothing to disabuse them of the idea that it was this one man band. This annoys just about everyone he ever worked with, and there’s something of a backlash against him.

AM: Have you met anyone involved in the making of Star Trek? If so, do you have any experiences meeting someone that informed the book?

LP: There are a lot of Star Trek books by people with skin in the game and axes to grind. I’m not that person, I’m never going to be that person. The selling point of this book is that I’m not arguing for my place in Star Trek history, I just want to navigate a course through this fifty year, multimedia phenomenon. I concentrate on the show’s creator, but I’m able to bring in things about business decisions and the like that very few people were privy to. I’m able to take a quick look at the tangled issue of who was watching Star Trek when it was first on. It’s quite a subjective book, it’s me writing it, exploring what I find interesting.

AM: Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks to me as if you didn’t interview anyone for this book, but instead relied on primary and secondary sources of articles and previous books. How did you go about verifying and cross-checking what you learned about Roddenberry? I did notice that throughout the book you took great care to emphasize what was verifiable and what might not be.

LP: True, I didn’t interview anyone. I talked to a fair few people and sounded them out, double-checked the odd detail, got some off the record “yes, that sounds about right” things. The fact is, just about everyone who worked on the show has already stated what they remember and how they feel about it for the record.

There were times I wanted to find out, say, what one guest actor thought about a particular decision or whatever, and the answer to that is in a newspaper interview from 1973, or they answered that at a convention in 1997 or whatever. I’ve tried to dig deep for those articles, looked at hundreds of sources. I’m a Star Trek fan, a lot of my friends are Star Trek fans who live and breathe it, and I was able to find things that none of us had seen before, or put two things we had seen together and spot a new and interesting pattern.

AM: Can you provide an example of something beyond what other books and articles about Star Trek and Roddenberry have mentioned?

LP: If we’re looking for a new contribution, there’s a chapter about The Lieutenant, the only other show Roddenberry creates that goes to series. That’s probably a better example of the sort of issues-led, smart show than Star Trek is, and he literally goes from writing the end of The Lieutenant to the pilot episode of Star Trek, and if you watch them both, you can see so many interesting parallels. There are scenes in early Star Trek that are just The Lieutenant, but in space.  

Gene Roddenberry essentially spends the first ten years controlling what’s said about the show, talking to fans, authorising “making of” books, and doing interviews. And a lot of my book is — a lot of Star Trek behind the scenes books are — about taking a Gene Roddenberry statement and deciding whether it’s, well, true. And the more he repeats things, the more he starts to believe those things himself — again, that’s not a thing unique to Roddenberry.

AM: Can you give an example?

LP: Roddenberry always said Star Trek did badly in the ratings. He blamed the network for the timeslot, and he blamed the system used to collect ratings, saying it was skewed towards families, so there was a huge audience out there the network just didn’t know about. Roddenberry has this epic poem version of his role in standing up for quality television. And that’s nonsense. Star Trek does OK in the ratings, but it’s an expensive show. The first time they move the show, they put Ironside in its old slot — Ironside’s a quality show, too, and far more people watch it. The network was right to move Star Trek. But I absolutely think, 100%, that Roddenberry convinced himself that his account was the objective truth.

AM: Forgive me for asking about this, but ... You go into some detail about the incident involving Grace Lee Whitney, who played Yeoman Janice Rand, and the story of "the Executive" who sexually assaulted her right around the time she was let go from the show. How relevant do you feel this particular story is to the biography, given the evidence you yourself present that Roddenberry was not involved?

LP: It was something I wrestled with, definitely. It’s not pleasant to write about. Grace Lee Whitney wrote about her experiences at length in her autobiography, and I tried to do my best to respect her account. That incident is there, ultimately, because it’s a really stark reminder that the 1960s were a different time, that Hollywood was not a safe place for actresses. Roddenberry hires women a lot of the time because he wants to hit on them. He propositions his secretaries. There’s an undercurrent there which we have the words for in 2016 that they didn’t in 1966.  It’s a very masculine world, and Roddenberry is thoroughly part of that. His first feature film is Pretty Maids All in a Row, directed by Roger Vadim, and it’s a comedy about a high school teacher who sleeps with and murders his students.There are places where Star Trek has dated rather better than its creator has, and one of them is that he sees women as sex objects, he’s aware he does, and he’s unapologetic about it. Even in 1987, when he’s writing the TNG guidelines, he’ll describe a character as having “a striptease queen walk.”

AM: One thing I notice you don’t spend too much time on is Roddenberry’s early religious life, with his mother being a "committed Southern Baptist." Roddenberry once talked about how he came to the decision early on that he was an atheist, and you mention how in later life he thought of himself as a humanist. How do you see this aspect of Roddenberry influencing his earlier Star Trek stories?

LP: There should probably be more in the book about his humanism. I mainly concentrate on how it informs The Next Generation, which is an exercise in Roddenberry putting his progressive ideas into action. I’m always a little wary of looking at a writer and saying “this writer was X religion, so believed X.” It’s inevitably far more complicated and personal than that. I think there is something very interesting in that fact that Roddenberry comes from what we would see as a conservative background — his dad’s a policeman and Roddenberry also served with the LAPD — and ends up as this icon of liberalism.

Again, though, I don’t think that’s unique to him. The story of the middle of the twentieth century is one of social mobility, a horror at having the same job or living in the same place as your parents. Roddenberry’s instincts seems to be to rebel against authority generally, not just a religious upbringing: “I’m not going to follow that stupid rule, whoever came up with something so dumb.” At the same time, I think he sees it more in terms of creating new institutions and rules, rather than abandoning rules altogether. Humane interpretation of the law, not anarchy. His solutions all end up as liberal tyrannies — his ideas for police reform boil down to hiring beat cops who you trust to be judge and jury. Starfleet will come in peace, but they’ll do it in a ship that can level a city with one photon torpedo.  

AM: In the last chapter, you go into a lot of detail beyond Roddenberry’s death to discuss how others wrote about him and what his legacy will be. Having learned so much about him to write your book, what do you think his legacy should be?

LP: His legacy is the careers of the people who were inspired by Star Trek. The countless scientists, engineers, computer programmers, astronauts, doctors and teachers who are, at some fundamental level, doing that because they wanted to be Spock when they grew up, or Uhura, or Picard. People who look at the world and see things in terms of solutions, not just endless analysis of the problems.

The whole information revolution was engineered by people who have every Star Trek episode memorized. They saw Kirk’s communicator, or that clipboard thingy, or Spock talking to a computer and didn’t think “that’s hokey,” they thought “OK, let’s build one of those that works.” And I’m typing this answer on a laptop that would be right at home on Kirk’s USS Enterprise, and that’s not a coincidence.

AM: What is your next project?

LP: I try to keep a fiction and nonfiction project going at any one time. The next thing to be released is an audio version of Cold Fusion, a Doctor Who novel I wrote twenty years ago, which was huge fun to adapt, and will feature both the Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy Doctors. I’ve got an original steampunk novel that’s nearly ready. My next nonfiction is in the early stages, but it’ll be a social history. A friend of mine, Brandy Schillace, wrote a book called Death’s Summer Coat about burial and mourning rituals, and I’m jealous of it, so I’m writing a book in a similar vein about another very large topic.

AM: Do you have any final thoughts about this biography? What do you hope your readers will come away with after reading the book?

LP: I think whatever your level of engagement with Star Trek, you’ll find a book that’s an interesting account of the factors that go into making TV and movies, into making a pop cultural phenomenon. Roddenberry led a fascinating life, and there are places where you’ll be cheering him on, and others when you’ll be booing. There will be things in there you haven’t seen, and I hope you’ll see some things you know very well in a new light.

Interview with Cover Artist Mélanie Delon

Russell Dickerson

This month’s Apex Magazine cover artist is Mélanie Delon, whose award-winning fantasy paintings have been featured in many publications worldwide. Delon’s work has been selected for the prestigious Spectrum annual, and she is a regular contributor to Imagine FX magazine.

APEX MAGAZINE: Many of your works feature women with very smooth skin, a perfection of beauty. When you create a piece like “Promised,” how do you approach the challenge of using only the texture to indicate horror? How do you feel the subtlety works over a more overt horror?

MELANIE DELON: I love playing with contrasts, whether it is light, colors, or the theme in this particular example. I made this illustration for Halloween; I wanted to revisit the classical theme of the bride, with subtlety, while avoiding gore. The choice I have made to draw just part of the face as if the character was undead became rapidly obvious to me. I chose to balance and counterbalance the dark side with soft colors and dimmed lighting. The face texture brings a twist to the drawing and dynamism to this composition. I deliberately chose not to use blood which would have been too simple and evident, but rather work a more subtle decomposition that is not obvious but raises interest and questions the viewer.

AM: With your cover piece for this month, “Red Poison,” there’s a mix of the portrait of a beautiful warrior ready for battle, with the fantasy and battle elements around her. Where in the process of creating a piece do you decide if something should be pretty, or textured, or even strict versus loose painting techniques? Do you work with a solid plan, or many changes as you proceed?

MD: I generally start with a basic idea, whether for a sketch or an image, but the concept always evolves with time. Usually, parts that have been worked and textured with more attention are the main pieces of my composition, those that more particularly address the eye and the interest of the viewer. In the case of “Red Poison,” the armor is the key element of the character, placed in the spotlight much more than the rest of the costume. I voluntarily leave the rest of the illustration much less detailed, even blurred at times. It is as much an artistic as a technical choice, those extremely detailed areas are very time consuming, and the blurred parts allow saving precious time.

AM: Some of your works escape the idea of portraiture, indicating a backstory of something that is either about to happen or just did happen. The idea reminds me of Edward Hopper’s work, and a piece like “Impera” gives that exact sense that the viewer doesn’t know the whole story. Do you start with a story in mind, even with your portrait works? At what point do you decide that the viewer shouldn’t know something, and have you ever removed that from a piece as you are working?

MD: I always start an illustration with a preconceived idea of the story, the starting point remains my will to draw a composition, a choice of colors or a feeling I wish to pass along. The story often unfolds by itself, the ideas emerged one after another as the drawing develops. Adding details such as the outlined sculpture on the column is a primary step for me. I love to disperse clues all around the character and the illustration in order to let the viewer imagine his own story, but also discover new details with each new look. I have never felt compelled to erase this type of detail, nor hide anything from the viewer; what is important for me is to give much information regarding the story, but without imposing my view, and instead guide the imagination of the viewer.

AM: Digital artists are often belittled with the idea that they aren’t “real artists,” that the computer does all the work. Being a digital artist myself, I know how much really goes into a piece, and how much talent and hard work it takes. Which of your pieces would you point out to a critic to debunk that idea? Is it worth the time to do so, to try and change someone’s mind?

MD: Changing mentalities takes time and energy, but I believe this evolution will happen over time.

I would rather choose to show the whole creative process of a piece, from the very first paper sketch, then the coloring, the construction of the composition, to end with additional details. Even though an illustration requires two to three weeks of work, it’s the final result that matters the most, along with the choice of the character and the idea, no matter how much time has been spent.

Luckily, whatever the media (concept arts for films, video games, etc.), the choice does not rest on the tool but on the result, and working with Photoshop proves highly beneficial for the client.

AM: In talking about Patreon and Kickstarter with another artist, part of what we discussed was the amount of time and work it takes to keep those going. Creating videos, posting works in progress, and even blogging about their pieces seemed to take more time than their actual art. How well have your Patreon efforts succeeded, and how do you balance your art creation time with promotions? Does the pull of promotion ever impact your work or creativity?

MD: I admit my weaknesses when it comes to promotion and social networks, it’s a real job and I can’t really find the time. I envy artists who manage both creation and communication, as this has become a necessity for a freelance career. I have not managed the perfect balance; I would need 48 hour days to honor my contracts while posting content information on social networks!

Patreon is a very efficient tool providing it is regularly fed. For now, I am trying to propose a tutorial per month, which proves rather difficult when I have a few projects to hand back, but I hope to be able to offer rewards in the months to come!

AM: For me, creating a posterbook or calendar is like picking the best pieces for a portfolio, which itself sometimes makes me feel like I am trying to decide which of my children I love more. When you are creating your calendars and collections, what are things you are considering with your pieces? Are there outside influences, such as fan requests, or the popularity of a piece?

MD: It is effectively a very difficult choice! I always try to propose a mix, and since my preferred illustrations may not be the most popular, I do my best to satisfy everyone. I will for example choose a few recent pieces mixed with older ones to produce a calendar. I also mix themes to please my followers, as some prefer darker subjects, while others like more joyful ones. I also make it a rule to include an unpublished drawing (most often the cover) with each new product, as novelty generally triggers impulse buying!

AM: Thank you for answering my questions, Mélanie.

Want to see more of Mélanie Delon’s beautiful artwork? Head on over to her website at www.melaniedelon.com.

Contributor Bios

Alexandria Baisden is a Hufflepuff who just graduated from Columbia College Chicago. She’s interned for Curbside Splendor Publishing, served as an Associate Editor at the Publishing Lab and slushed for pg70pit. Her work has been published in the Kamelian, HelloGiggles, Hair Trigger 38, The Lab Review Blog, and 101 Words. Two of her children’s plays have also been produced at Heartland Community Church. A fan of puns, coffee, and anime, she spends most of her time writing her fantasy novel and getting distracted by fluffy animals on the internet. This is her first pro-sale.

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.

Marchell Dyon believes magic and spirituality are kissing cousins belonging to the same celestial family. When she isn’t contemplating God and the fantastic, she enjoys the daily bustle of family life. Her fantasy poetry has been published in several fantasy magazines like Strange Horizon, Silver Blade, Eye to the Telescope, Dead Snakes, and Abyss and Apex. She is from Chicago, IL.

Benjanun Sriduangkaew is a bee who dreams of strange cities and beautiful futures. Her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the Heiresses of Russ: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction series. Her first novella, Scale-Bright, was nominated for the British Science Fiction Association award.

Zachary Riddle is a graduate student at Central Michigan University studying creative writing. He works as a graduate assistant at CMU’s writing center, and is the forthcoming editor-in-chief of the international literary magazine Temenos. His work has appeared in Temenos, The Blue Route, and Open Palm Print, among others. He has also co-published a chapbook of poetry, entitled This Labyrinth We Wander, with fellow poet Riley Nisbet and illustrator Amanda Shepard. His dream is to write for television; he won’t quit until this is a reality.

Abhinav Bhat is a writer from Jammu & Kashmir, India. He has jumped without a parachute. A fantasy novel popped out some way down, followed by a few short stories, one of which you are reading. We’ll let you know whether he goes splat or flies. He can be contacted midair at abhinavb2014@email.iimcal.ac.in.

Brandon Marlon is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. He received his B.A. in Drama & English from the University of Toronto and his M.A. in English from the University of Victoria. His poetry was awarded the Harry Hoyt Lacey Prize in Poetry (Fall 2015), and has been published in 120+ publications in Canada, U.S.A., England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Romania, Israel, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Trinidad, & Mexico. www.brandonmarlon.com.

A.C. Wise’s fiction has appeared in Apex, Shimmer, Clarkesworld, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2015, among other places. Her collection of inter-linked short stories, The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again, was published by Lethe Press in October 2015. In addition to her writing, she co-edits Unlikely Story. Find her online atwww.acwise.net and on twitter as @ac_wise.

Mike Barretta is a retired U.S. Naval Aviator who currently works for a defense contractor as a pilot. He holds a Master’s degree in Strategic Planning and International Negotiation from the Naval Post-Graduate School and a Master’s in English from the University of West Florida. His stories have appeared in Baen’s Universe, Redstone, New Scientist, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and various anthologies such as War Stories: New Military Science Fiction, The Year’s Best Military Scifi and Space Opera, and the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide.

Christina Sng is a Rhysling-nominated poet, writer, and artist. Her work has received Honorable Mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and has appeared in numerous venues including Apex Magazine, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, New Myths, and Space and Time. She is the author of several chapbooks and two full-length collections, both slated for late 2016. Visit her at http://christinasng.com.

Michael A. Burstein, winner of the 1997 Campbell Award for Best New Writer, has earned ten Hugo nominations and four Nebula nominations for his short fiction, collected in I Remember the Future. Burstein lives with his wife Nomi and their twin daughters in the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is an elected Town Meeting Member and Library Trustee. When not writing, he edits middle and high school science textbooks. He has two degrees in Physics and attended the Clarion Workshop. More information on Burstein and his work can be found on his webpage, http://www.mabfan.com/.

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.

Born in Paris, France in 1980, Mélanie Delon studied archaeology, art history, and game design before discovering digital painting in 2005. She has been enthralled by it ever since. Using primarily Photoshop and Painter, along with a drawing tablet, she creates stunningly, realistic digital portraits which are both mysterious and emotive.

Her fantasy paintings have featured in many publications worldwide and have won her a variety of awards. Mélanie is an avid science fiction and fantasy reader; her favourite authors include: Philip K. Dick, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Terry Pratchett.

Some of her drawings are inspired by music, others by movies and everyday situations. All of her characters have their own stories – it helps her to give them life. Mélanie’s work has been selected for Spectrum and she is a regular contributor to Imagine FX magazine. She has several art books of her beautiful work published, including a new collection, OPALE.1.

Apex Magazine Issue 89 Preview

Next month Apex Magazine has a special horror themed issue to celebrate Halloween. We have original fiction from Kristi DeMeester (“Damnatio Ad Beastias”) and Samuel Marzioli (“Pagpag”). Our reprint will be “Zayanim” by Adam Roberts, and our poetry selections will be by Andrew Gilstrap and Gary Every. All this and more, next month is Apex Magazine issue 89.

Copyrights and Acknowledgements

“Words from the Editor-in-Chief” Copyright © 2016 by Jason Sizemore

“The Old Man and the Phoenix” Copyright © 2016 by Alexandria Baisden

“Interview with Author Alexandria Baisden” Copyright © 2016 by Andrea Johnson

“The Warrior Boy Who Would Not Suffer” Copyright © 2016 by Abhinav Bhat

“The Prince Who Gave Up Her Empire” Copyright © 2016 by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

“War Dog” Copyright © 2014 by Mike Barretta (Originally published in War Stories: New Military Science Fiction, Apex Publications, 2014)

“The Amenities of Heaven” Copyright © 2016 by Marchell Dyon

“Wingless” Copyright © 2016 by Zachary Riddle

“The Mouth of the Cave” Copyright © 2016 by Brandon Marlon

“The Storm Creatures” Copyright © 2016 by Christina Sng

“Interview with Cover Artist Mélanie Delon” Copyright © 2016 by Russell Dickerson

“Words for Thought” Copyright © 2016 by A.C. Wise

“”Copyright © 2016 by Michael A. Burstein

Cover art copyright Mélanie Delon

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore

Managing Editor—Lesley Conner

Poetry Editor—Bianca Spriggs

Slush Editors—Andrea Johnson, Anna Middleton, Beth Sutherland, Beverly McPherson, Carolyn Charron, Dawn Griffin, Eileen Maksym, Gabrielle Harbowy, Jessica Nelson, Joshua Cowell, Joshua P’ng, Kate Dollarhyde, Lauren Smith, Lia Swope Mitchell, Lindsay Anderson, Lisa Bolekaja, Mandy Johnson-Parker, Mike Baldwin, Rebecca Hurley, Reese Menezes, Samantha Williams, Stephanie Harris, Andrew Tudor, Anna Chapman, Carl Duzett, Carolyn VanEseltine, Dan Schindel, Heather Cale, and Tacoma Tomilson.

Graphic Designer—Justin Stewart

ISSN: 2157-1406

Apex Publications

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