The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

  This is the thing that’s been in her mind for the past two weeks, ever since that day at school. If her parents loved her, they would not have locked her in the barn. They would not have called this man. Mother would not have said those terrible things.

  “Why can’t they—” she blurts, before she realizes he has said this on purpose. To see if why can’t they just hide me and keep me here is something she’s been thinking—and now he knows the truth. Damaya’s hands clench on the cape where she’s holding it closed around herself, but Schaffa merely nods.

  “First because they have another child, and anyone caught harboring an unregistered orogene is ejected from their comm as a minimum punishment.” Damaya knows this, though she resents the knowledge. Parents who cared about her would risk, wouldn’t they? “Your parents could not have wanted to lose their home, their livelihood, and custody of both their children. They chose to keep something rather than lose everything. But the greatest danger lies in what you are, Dama. You can no more hide that than you can the fact that you are female, or your clever young mind.” She blushes, unsure if this is praise. He smiles so she knows it is.

  He continues: “Every time the earth moves, you will hear its call. In every moment of danger you will reach, instinctively, for the nearest source of warmth and movement. The ability to do this is, to you, as fists are to a strong man. When a threat is imminent, of course you’ll do what you must to protect yourself. And when you do, people will die.”

  Damaya flinches. Schaffa smiles again, as kindly as always. And then Damaya thinks about that day.

  It was after lunch, in the play-yard. She had eaten her bean roll while sitting by the pond with Limi and Shantare as she usually did while the other children played or threw food at each other. Some of the other kids were huddled in a corner of the yard, scratching in the dirt and muttering to each other; they had a geomestry test that afternoon. And then Zab had come over to the three of them, though he’d looked at Damaya in particular as he said, “Let me cheat off you.”

  Limi giggled. She thought Zab liked Damaya. Damaya didn’t like him, though, because he was awful—always picking on Damaya, calling her names, poking her until she yelled at him to stop and got in trouble with their teacher for doing it. So she said to Zab, “I’m not getting in trouble for you.”

  He’d said: “You won’t, if you do it right. Just move your paper over—”

  “No,” she’d said again. “I’m not going to do it right. I’m not going to do it at all. Go away.” She’d turned back to Shantare, who had been talking before Zab interrupted.

  Next thing Damaya knew, she was on the ground. Zab had shoved her off the rock using both hands. She tumbled head over heels literally, landing on her back. Later—she’d had two weeks in the barn to think about it—she would recall the look of shock on his face, as if he hadn’t realized she would go over so easily. But at the time, all she had known was that she was on the ground. The muddy ground. Her whole back was cold and wet and foul, everything smelled of fermenting bog and crushed grass, it was in her hair and this was her best uniform and Mother was going to be furious and she was furious and so she’d grabbed the air and—

  Damaya shivers. People will die. Schaffa nods as if he has heard this thought.

  “You’re firemountain-glass, Dama.” He says this very softly. “You’re a gift of the earth—but Father Earth hates us, never forget, and his gifts are neither free nor safe. If we pick you up, hone you to sharpness, treat you with the care and respect you deserve, then you become valuable. But if we just leave you lying about, you’ll cut to the bone the first person who blunders across you. Or worse—you’ll shatter, and hurt many.”

  Damaya remembers the look on Zab’s face. The air had gone cold for only an instant, billowing around her like a burst balloon. That was enough to make a crust of ice on the grass beneath her, and to make the sweatdrops go solid on Zab’s skin. They’d stopped and jerked and stared at each other.

  She remembers his face. You almost killed me, she had seen there.

  Schaffa, watching her closely, has never stopped smiling.

  “It isn’t your fault,” he says. “Most of what they say about orogenes isn’t true. There’s nothing you did to be born like this, nothing your parents did. Don’t be angry with them, or with yourself.”

  She begins to cry, because he’s right. All of it, everything he says, it’s right. She hates Mother for putting her in here, she’s hated Father and Chaga for letting Mother do it, she hates herself for being born as she is and disappointing them all. And now Schaffa knows just how weak and terrible she is.

  “Shh,” he says, standing and coming over to her. He kneels and takes her hands; she starts crying harder. But Schaffa squeezes her hands sharply, enough to hurt, and she starts and draws breath and blinks at him through the blur. “You mustn’t, little one. Your mother will return soon. Never cry where they can see you.”

  “Wh-what?”

  He looks so sad—for Damaya?—as he reaches up and cups her cheek. “It isn’t safe.”

  She has no idea what this means.

  Regardless, she stops. Once she’s wiped her cheeks, he thumbs away a tear that she’s missed, then nods after a quick inspection. “Your mother will probably be able to tell, but that should do for everyone else.”

  The barn door creaks and Mother is back, this time with Father in tow. Father’s jaw is tight, and he doesn’t look at Damaya even though he hasn’t seen her since Mother put her in the barn. Both of them focus on Schaffa, who stands and moves a little in front of Damaya, nodding thanks as he accepts the folded blanket and twine-wrapped parcel that Mother gives him.

  “We’ve watered your horse,” Father says, stiffly. “You want provender to carry?”

  “No need,” says Schaffa. “If we make good time, we should reach Brevard just after nightfall.”

  Father frowns. “A hard ride.”

  “Yes. But in Brevard, no one from this village will get the fine idea to come seek us out along the road, and make their farewells to Damaya in a ruder fashion.”

  It takes a moment for Damaya to understand, and then she realizes: People from Palela want to kill Damaya. But that’s wrong, isn’t it? They can’t really, can they? She thinks of all the people she knows. The teachers from creche. The other children. The old ladies at the roadhouse who used to be friends with Muh before she died.

  Father thinks this, too; she can see that in his face, and he frowns and opens his mouth to say what she’s thinking: They wouldn’t do something like that. But he stops before the words leave his mouth. He glances at Damaya, once and with his face full of anguish, before remembering to look away again.

  “Here you are,” Schaffa says to Damaya, holding out the blanket. It’s Muh’s. She stares at it, then looks at Mother, but Mother won’t look back.

  It isn’t safe to cry. Even when she pulls off Schaffa’s cloak and he wraps the blanket around her instead, familiar-fusty and scratchy and perfect, she keeps her face completely still. Schaffa’s eyes flick to hers; he nods, just a little, in approval. Then he takes her hand and leads her toward the barn door.

  Mother and Father follow, but they don’t say anything. Damaya doesn’t say anything. She does glance at the house once, catching a glimpse of someone through a gap in the curtains before the curtains flick shut. Chaga, her big brother, who taught her how to read and how to ride a donkey and how to skip rocks on a pond. He doesn’t even wave goodbye… but this is not because he hates her. She sees that, now.

  Schaffa lifts Damaya onto a horse bigger than any she’s ever seen, a big glossy bay with a long neck, and then Schaffa’s in the saddle behind her, tucking the blanket around her legs and shoes so she won’t chafe or get chilblains, and then they are away.

  “Don’t look back,” Schaffa advises. “It’s easier that way.” So she doesn’t. Later, she will realize he was right about this, too.

  Much later, though, she will wish that she had done it anyway.
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br />   * * *

  [obscured] the icewhite eyes, the ashblow hair, the filtering nose, the sharpened teeth, the salt-split tongue.

  —Tablet Two, “The Incomplete Truth,” verse eight

  3

  you’re on your way

  YOU’RE STILL TRYING TO DECIDE who to be. The self you’ve been lately doesn’t make sense anymore; that woman died with Uche. She’s not useful, unobtrusive as she is, quiet as she is, ordinary as she is. Not when such extraordinary things have happened.

  But you still don’t know where Nassun is buried, if Jija bothered to bury her. Until you’ve said farewell to your daughter, you have to remain the mother that she loved.

  So you decide not to wait for death to come.

  It is coming for you—perhaps not right now, but soon. Even though the big shake from the north missed Tirimo, everyone knows it should have hit. The sessapinae do not lie, or at least not with such jangling, nerve-racking, mind-screaming strength. Everyone from newborns to addled elders sessed that one coming. And by now, with refugees wandering down the road from less fortunate towns and villages—refugees who are all heading southward—the folk of Tirimo will have begun to hear stories. They will have noticed the sulfur on the wind. They will have looked up at the increasingly strange sky, and seen the change there as an ill omen. (It is.) Perhaps the headman, Rask, has finally sent someone over to see about Sume, the town in the next valley over. Most Tirimos have family there; the two towns have been trading goods and people for generations. Comm comes before all else, of course, but as long as nobody’s starving, kin and race can mean something, too. Rask can still afford to be generous, for now. Maybe.

  And once the scouts return and report the devastation that you know they’ll find in Sume—and the survivors that you know they won’t find, or at least not in any great number—denial will no longer be possible. That will leave only fear. Frightened people look for scapegoats.

  So you make yourself eat, this time carefully not thinking of other times and other meals with Jija and the kids. (Uncontrollable tears would be better than uncontrollable vomiting, but hey, you can’t choose your grief.) Then, letting yourself quietly out through Lerna’s garden door, you go back to your house. No one’s around, outside. They must all be at Rask’s waiting for news or duty assignments.

  In the house, one of the storecaches hidden beneath the rugs holds the family’s runny-sack. You sit on the floor in the room where Uche was beaten to death, and there you sort through the sack, taking out anything you won’t need. The set of worn, comfortable travel-clothing for Nassun is too small; you and Jija put this pack together before Uche was born, and you’ve been neglectful in not refreshing it. A brick of dried fruit has molded over in fuzzy white; it might still be edible, but you’re not desperate enough for that. (Yet.) The sack contains papers that prove you and Jija own your house, and other papers showing that you’re current on your quartent taxes and were both registered Tirimo comm and Resistant use-caste members. You leave this, your whole financial and legal existence for the past ten years, in a little discarded pile with the moldy fruit.

  The wad of money in a rubber wallet—paper, since there’s so much of it—will be irrelevant once people realize how bad things are, but until then it’s valuable. Good tinder once it’s not. The obsidian skinning knife that Jija insisted upon, and which you’re unlikely to ever use—you have better, natural weapons—you keep. Trade goods, or at least a visual warn-off. Jija’s boots can also be traded, since they’re in good condition. He’ll never wear them again, because soon you will find him, and then you will end him.

  You pause. Revise that thought to something that better befits the woman you’ve chosen to be. Better: You will find him and ask him why he did what he did. How he could do it. And you will ask him, most importantly, where your daughter is.

  Repacking the runny-sack, you then put it inside one of the crates Jija used for deliveries. No one will think twice of seeing you carry it around town, because until a few days ago you did so often, to help out Jija’s ceramics and tool-knapping business. Eventually it will occur to someone to wonder why you’re filling delivery orders when the headman is probably on the brink of declaring Seasonal Law. But most people will not think of it at first, which is what matters.

  As you leave, you pass the spot on the floor where Uche lay for days. Lerna took the body and left the blanket; the blood splatters are not visible. Still, you do not look in that direction.

  Your house is one of several in this corner of town, nestled between the southern edge of the wall and the town greenland. You picked the house, back when you and Jija decided to buy it, because it’s isolated on a narrow, tree-shrouded lane. It’s a straight run across the green to the town center, which Jija always liked. That was something you and he always argued about: You didn’t like being around other people more than necessary, while Jija was gregarious and restless, frustrated by silence—

  The surge of absolute, grinding, head-pounding rage catches you by surprise. You have to stop in the doorway of your home, bracing your hand against the door frame and sucking in deep breaths so that you don’t start screaming, or perhaps stabbing someone (yourself?) with that damn skinning knife. Or worse, making the temperature drop.

  Okay. You were wrong. Nausea isn’t so bad as a response to grief, comparatively speaking.

  But you have no time for this, no strength for this, so you focus on other things. Any other things. The wood of the doorsill, beneath your hand. The air, which you notice more now that you’re outside. The sulfur smell doesn’t seem to be getting worse, at least for now, which is perhaps a good thing. You sess that there are no open earth vents nearby—which means this is coming from up north, where the wound is, that great suppurating rip from coast to coast that you know is there even though the travelers along the Imperial Road have only brought rumors of it so far. You hope the sulfur concentration doesn’t get much worse, because if it does people will start to retch and suffocate, and the next time it rains the creek’s fish will die and the soil will sour…

  Yes. Better. After a moment you’re able to walk away from the house at last, your veneer of calm back firmly in place.

  Not many people are out and about. Rask must have finally declared an official lockdown. During lockdown the comm’s gates are shut—and you guess by the people moving about near one of the wall watchtowers that Rask has taken the preemptive step of putting guards in place. That’s not supposed to happen till a Season is declared; privately you curse Rask’s caution. Hopefully he hasn’t done anything else that will make it harder for you to slip away.

  The market is shut down, at least for the time being, so that no one will hoard goods or fix prices. A curfew starts at dusk, and all businesses that aren’t crucial for the protection or supply of the town are required to close. Everyone knows how things are supposed to go. Everyone has assigned duties, but many of these are tasks that can be done indoors: weaving storage baskets, drying and preserving all perishable food in the house, repurposing old clothing and tools. It’s all Imperially efficient and lore-letter, following rules and procedures that are simultaneously meant to be practical and to keep a large group of anxious people busy. Just in case.

  Still, as you walk the path around the green’s edge—during lockdown no one walks on it, not because of any rule but because such times remind them that the green is cropland to be and not just a pretty patch of clover and wildflowers—you spy a few other Tirimo denizens out and about. Strongbacks, mostly. One group is building the paddock and shed that will segregate a corner of the green for livestock. It’s hard work, building something, and the people doing it are too engrossed in the task to pay much heed to a lone woman carrying a crate. A few faces you vaguely recognize as you walk, people you’ve seen before at the market or via Jija’s business. You catch a few glances from them, too, but these are fleeting. They know your face enough that you are Not Stranger. For now, they’re too busy to remember that you may also
be rogga’s mother.

  Or to wonder from which parent your dead rogga child might have inherited his curse.

  In the town center there are more people about. Here you blend in, walking at the same pace as everyone else, nodding if nodded to, trying to think about nothing so that your face falls into bored, disengaged lines. It’s busy around the headman’s office, block captains and caste spokespeople coming in to report what lockdown duties have been completed before heading back out to organize more. Others mill about, clearly hoping for word on what’s happened in Sume and elsewhere—but even here, no one cares about you. And why should they? The air stinks of broken earth and everything past a twenty-mile radius has been shattered by a shake greater than any living person has ever known. People have more important matters to concern them.

  That can change quickly, though. You don’t relax.

  Rask’s office is actually a small house nestled between the stilted grain-caches and the carriageworks. As you stand on tiptoe to see above the crowd, you’re unsurprised to see Oyamar, Rask’s second, standing on its porch and talking with two men and a woman who are wearing more mortar and mud than clothing. Shoring up the well, probably; that’s one of the things stonelore advises in the event of a shake, and which Imperial lockdown procedure encourages, too. If Oyamar is here, then Rask is elsewhere either working or—knowing Rask—sleeping, after having worn himself out in the three days since the event. He won’t be at home because people can find him too easily there. But because Lerna talks too much, you know where Rask hides when he doesn’t want to be disturbed.

  Tirimo’s library is an embarrassment. The only reason they have one is that some previous headwoman’s husband’s grandfather raised a stink and wrote letters to the quartent governor until finally the governor funded a library to shut him up. Few people have used it since the old man died, but although there are always motions to shut it down at the all-comm meetings, those motions never get quite enough votes to proceed. So it lingers: a ratty old shack not much bigger than the den of your house, packed nearly full with shelves of books and scrolls. A thin child could walk between the shelves without contorting; you’re neither thin nor a child, so you have to slip in sideways and sort of crabwalk. Bringing the crate is out of the question: You set it down just inside the door. But that doesn’t matter, because there’s no one here to peek inside it—except Rask, who’s curled up on a tiny pallet at the back of the shack, where the shortest shelf leaves a space just wide enough for his body.