The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

  As you finally manage to push your way between the stacks, Rask starts out of a snore and blinks up at you, already beginning to scowl at whoever has disturbed him. Then he thinks, because he’s a levelheaded fellow and that’s why Tirimo elected him, and you see in his face the moment when you go from being Jija’s wife to Uche’s mother to rogga’s mother to, oh Earth, rogga, too.

  That’s good. Makes things easier.

  “I’m not going to hurt anyone,” you say quickly, before he can recoil or scream or whatever he has tensed to do. And to your own surprise, at these words Rask blinks and thinks again, and the panic recedes from his face. He sits up, leaning his back against a wooden wall, and regards you for a long, thoughtful moment.

  “You didn’t come here just to tell me that, I assume,” he says.

  You lick your lips and try to hunker down in a crouch. It’s awkward because there’s not much room. You have to brace your butt against a shelf, and your knees encroach more than you like on Rask’s space. He half-smiles at your obvious discomfort, then his smile fades as he remembers what you are, and then he frowns to himself as if both reactions annoy him.

  You say, “Do you know where Jija might have gone?”

  Rask’s face twitches. He’s old enough to be your father, just, but he’s the least paternal man you’ve ever met. You’ve always wanted to sit down somewhere and have a beer with him, even though that doesn’t fit the ordinary, meek camouflage you’ve built around yourself. Most of the people in town think of him that way, despite the fact that as far as you know he doesn’t drink. The look that comes into his face in this moment, however, makes you think for the first time that he would make a good father, if he ever had children.

  “So that’s it,” he says. His voice is gravelly with sleep. “He kill the kid? That’s what people think, but Lerna said he wasn’t sure.”

  You nod. You couldn’t say the word yes to Lerna, either.

  Rask’s eyes search your face. “And the kid was…?”

  You nod again, and Rask sighs. He does not, you note, ask whether you are anything.

  “Nobody saw which way Jija went,” he says, shifting to draw his knees up and rest one arm on them. “People have been talking about the—the killing—because it’s easier than talking about—” He lifts and drops his hands in a helpless gesture. “Lots of gossip, I mean, and a lot of it’s more mud than stone. Some people saw Jija load up your horse cart and go off with Nassun—”

  Your thoughts stutter. “With Nassun?”

  “Yeah, with her. Why—” Then Rask understands. “Oh, shit, she’s one, too?”

  You try not to start shaking. You do clench your fists in an effort to prevent this, and the earth far below you feels momentarily closer, the air immediately around you cooler, before you contain your desperation and joy and horror and fury.

  “I didn’t know she was alive,” is all you say, after what feels like a very long moment.

  “Oh.” Rask blinks, and that compassionate look returns. “Well, yeah. She was when they left, anyway. Nobody knew anything was wrong, or thought anything of it. Most people figured it was just a father trying to teach his firstborn the business, or keep a bored child out of trouble, the usual. Then that shit up north happened, and everybody forgot about it till Lerna said he’d found you and… and your boy.” He pauses here, jaw flexing once. “Never would’ve figured Jija for the type. He hit you?”

  You shake your head. “Never.” It might have been easier to bear, somehow, if Jija had been violent beforehand. Then you could have blamed yourself for poor judgment or complacency, and not just for the sin of reproducing.

  Rask takes a deep, slow breath. “Shit. Just… shit.” He shakes his head, rubs a hand over the gray fuzz of his hair. He’s not a born-gray, like Lerna and others with ashblow hair; you remember when his hair was brown. “You going after him?” His gaze flickers away and back. It is not quite hope, but you understand what he is too tactful to say. Please leave town as soon as possible.

  You nod, happy to oblige. “I need you to give me a gate pass.”

  “Done.” He pauses. “You know you can’t come back.”

  “I know.” You make yourself smile. “I don’t really want to.”

  “Don’t blame you.” He sighs, then shifts again, uncomfortable. “My… my sister…”

  You didn’t know Rask had a sister. Then you understand. “What happened to her?”

  He shrugs. “The usual. We lived in Sume, then. Somebody realized what she was, told a bunch of other somebodies, and they came and took her in the night. I don’t remember much about it. I was only six. My folks moved here with me after that.” His mouth twitches, not really smiling. “S’why I never wanted kids, myself.”

  You smile, too. “I didn’t, either.” Jija had, though.

  “Rusting Earth.” He closes his eyes for a moment, then abruptly gets to his feet. You do, too, since otherwise your face will be entirely too close to his stained old trousers. “I’ll walk you to the gate, if you’re going now.”

  This surprises you. “I’m going now. But you don’t have to.” You’re not sure this is a good idea, really. It might draw more attention than you want. But Rask shakes his head, his jaw set and grim.

  “I do. Come on.”

  “Rask—”

  He looks at you, and this time you are the one who winces. This isn’t about you anymore. The mob that took his sister from him wouldn’t have dared to do so if he’d been a man at the time.

  Or maybe they’d have just killed him, too.

  He carries the crate as you walk down Seven Seasons, the town’s main street, all the way up to Main Gate. You’re twitchy, trying to look confident and relaxed even though you feel anything but. It would not have been your choice to walk this route, through all these people. Rask draws all the attention at first, as people wave or call out to him or come over to ask him if there’s any news… but then they notice you. People stop waving. They stop approaching and start—at a distance, in twos and threes—watching. And occasionally following. There’s nothing to this except the usual small-town nosiness, at least on the surface. But you see these knots of people also whispering, and you feel them staring, and that sets all your nerves a-jangle in the worst way.

  Rask hails the gate guards as you approach. A dozen or so Strongbacks who are probably miners and farmers under ordinary circumstances are there, just milling about in front of the gate with no real organization. Two are up in the crow’s nests built atop the wall, where they can overlook the gate; two are standing near the gate’s eyeholes at ground level. The rest are just there, looking bored or talking or joking with one another. Rask probably chose them for their ability to intimidate, because all of them are Sanzed-big and look like they can handle themselves even without the glassknives and crossbows they carry.

  The one who steps forward to greet Rask is actually the smallest of them—a man you know, though you don’t remember his name. His children have been in your classes at the town creche. He remembers you, too, you see, when his eyes fix on you and narrow.

  Rask stops and sets the crate down, opening it and handing you the runny-sack. “Karra,” he says to the man you know. “Everything okay here?”

  “Was till now,” Karra says, not taking his eyes off you. The way he’s looking at you makes your skin tighten. A couple of the other Strongbacks are watching, too, glancing from Karra to Rask and back, ready to follow someone’s lead. One woman is openly glaring at you, but the rest seem content to glance at you and away in quick slashes.

  “Good to hear,” Rask says. You see him frown a little, perhaps as he reads the same signals you’re picking up on. “Tell your people to open the gate for a minute, will you?”

  Karra doesn’t take his eyes off you. “Think that’s a good idea, Rask?”

  Rask scowls and steps sharply up to Karra, getting right in his face. He’s not a big man, Rask—he’s an Innovator, not a Strongback, not that it really matters anymore—and
right now he doesn’t need to be. “Yeah,” Rask says, his voice so low and tight that Karra focuses on him at last with a stiffening of surprise. “I do. Open the gate, if you don’t mind. If you’re not too rusting busy.”

  You think of a line from stonelore, Structures, verse three. The body fades. A leader who lasts relies on more.

  Karra’s jaw flexes, but after a moment he nods. You try to look absorbed in shrugging on the runny-sack. The straps are loose. Jija was the last one to try it on.

  Karra and the other gate-minders get moving, working on the system of pulleys that helps to winch the gate open. Most of Tirimo’s wall is made of wood. It’s not a wealthy comm with the resources to import good stone or hire the number of masons needed, although they’re doing better than poorly managed comms, or newcomms that don’t even have a wall yet. The gate, though, is stone, because a gate is the weakest point of every comm wall. They only need to open it a little for you, and after a few slow, grinding moments and calls from those hauling to those spotting for approaching intruders, they stop.

  Rask turns to you, plainly uncomfortable. “Sorry about—about Jija,” he says. Not about Uche, but maybe that’s for the best. You need to keep your head clear. “About all of it, shit. Hope you find the bastard.”

  You only shake your head. Your throat is tight. Tirimo has been your home for ten years. You only started to think of it as such—home—around the time of Uche’s birth, but that’s more than you ever expected to do. You remember chasing Uche across the green after he first learned to run. You remember Jija helping Nassun build a kite and fly it, badly; the kite’s remmants are still in a tree somewhere on the eastern side of town.

  But it is not as hard to leave as you thought it would be. Not now, with your former neighbors’ stares sliding over your skin like rancid oil.

  “Thanks,” you mutter, meaning for it to cover many things, because Rask didn’t have to help you. He has damaged himself by doing so. The gate-minders respect him less now, and they’ll talk. Soon everyone will know he’s a rogga-lover, which is dangerous. Headmen can’t afford that kind of weakness when a Season’s coming on. But for the moment what matters most to you is this moment of public decency, which is a kindness and an honor you never expected to receive. You aren’t sure how to react to it.

  He nods, uncomfortable as well, and turns away as you start toward the gap in the gate. Perhaps he does not see Karra nod to another of the gate-minders; perhaps he does not see the latter woman quickly shoulder her weapon and orient it on you. Perhaps, you will think later, Rask would have stopped the woman, or somehow prevented everything to come, if he had seen.

  You see her, though, mostly out of the periphery of your vision. Then everything happens too fast to think. And because you don’t think, because you’ve been trying not to think and this means you’re out of the habit, because thinking means you will remember that your family is dead and everything that meant happiness is now a lie and thinking of that will make you break and start screaming and screaming and screaming

  and because once upon a time and in another life you learned to respond to sudden threats in a very particular way, you

  reach for the air around you and pull and

  brace your feet against the earth beneath you and anchor and narrow and

  when the woman fires the crossbow, the bolt blurs toward you. Just before the bolt hits, it bursts into a million glittering, frozen flecks.

  (Naughty, naughty, chides a voice in your head. The voice of your conscience, deep and male. You forget this thought almost the instant it occurs. That voice is from another life.)

  Life. You look at the woman who just tried to kill you.

  “What the—Shit!” Karra stares at you, as if stunned by your failure to fall down dead. He crouches, hands balled into fists, nearly jumping up and down in his agitation. “Shoot her again! Kill her! Shoot, Earth damn it, before—”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Rask, finally noticing what’s happening, turns back. It’s too late.

  Down below your feet and everyone else’s, a shake begins.

  It’s hard to tell, at first. There is no warning jangle of sesuna, as there would be if the movement of the earth came from the earth. That’s why people like these fear people like you, because you’re beyond sense and preparation. You’re a surprise, like a sudden toothache, like a heart attack. The vibration of what you’re doing rises, fast, to become a rumble of tension that can be perceived with ears and feet and skin if not sessapinae, but by this point it’s too late.

  Karra frowns, looking at the ground beneath his feet. Crossbow Woman pauses in the middle of loading another bolt, eyes widening as she stares at the shivering string of her weapon.

  You stand surrounded by swirling flecks of snow and disintegrated crossbow bolt. Around your feet, there is a two-foot circle of frost riming the packed earth. Your locks waft gently in the rising breeze.

  “You can’t.” Rask whispers the words, his eyes widening at the look on your face. (You don’t know what you look like right now, but it must be bad.) He shakes his head as if denial will stop this, taking a step back and then another. “Essun.”

  “You killed him,” you say to Rask. This is not a rational thing. You mean you-plural, even though you’re speaking to you-specific. Rask didn’t try to kill you, had nothing to do with Uche, but the attempt on your life has triggered something raw and furious and cold. You cowards. You animals, who look at a child and see prey. Jija’s the one to blame for Uche, some part of you knows that—but Jija grew up here in Tirimo. The kind of hate that can make a man murder his own son? It came from everyone around you.

  Rask inhales. “Essun—”

  And then the valley floor splits open.

  The initial jolt of this is violent enough to knock everyone standing to the ground and sway every house in Tirimo. Then those houses judder and rattle as the jolt smooths into a steady, ongoing vibration. Saider’s Cart-Repair Shop is the first to collapse, the old wooden frame of the building sliding sideways off its foundation. There are screams from inside, and one woman manages to run out before the door frame crumples inward. On the eastern edge of town, closest to the mountain ridges that frame the valley, a rockslide begins. A portion of the eastern comm wall and three houses are buried beneath a sudden grinding slurry of mud and trees and rocks. Far below the ground, where no one but you can detect, the clay walls of the underground aquifer that supplies the village wells are breached. The aquifer begins to drain. They will not realize for weeks that you killed the town in this moment, but they will remember when the wells run dry.

  Those who survive the next few moments will, anyhow. From your feet, the circle of frost and swirling snow begins to expand. Rapidly.

  It catches Rask first. He tries to run as the edge of your torus rolls toward him, but he’s simply too close. It catches him in mid-lunge, glazing his feet and solidifying his legs and eating its way up his spine until, in the span of a breath, he falls to the ground stone-stiff, his flesh turning as gray as his hair. The next to be consumed by the circle is Karra, who’s still screaming for someone to kill you. The shout dies in his throat as he falls, flash-frozen, the last of his warm breath hissing out through clenched teeth and frosting the ground as you steal the heat from it.

  You aren’t just inflicting death on your fellow villagers, of course. A bird perched on a nearby fence falls over frozen, too. The grass crisps, the ground grows hard, and the air hisses and howls as moisture and density is snatched from its substance… but no one has ever mourned earthworms.

  Fast. The air swirls briskly all down Seven Seasons now, making the trees rustle and anyone nearby cry out in alarm as they realize what’s happening. The ground hasn’t stopped moving. You sway with the ground, but because you know its rhythms, it is easy for you to shift your balance with it. You do this without thinking, because there is only room left in you for one thought.

  These people killed Uche. Their hate, their fear, their un
provoked violence. They.

  (He.)

  Killed your son.

  (Jija killed your son.)

  People run out into the streets, screaming and wondering why there was no warning, and you kill any of them who are stupid or panicked enough to come near.

  Jija. They are Jija. The whole rusting town is Jija.

  Two things save the comm, however, or at least most of it. The first is that most of the buildings don’t collapse. Tirimo might be too poor to build with stone, but most of its builders are ethical and well paid enough to use only techniques that stonelore recommends: the hanging frame, the center beam. Second, the fault line of the valley—which you’re currently peeling apart with a thought—is actually a few miles to the west. Because of these things, most of Tirimo will survive this, at least until the wells die.

  Because of these things. And because of the terrified, bouncing scream of a little boy as his father runs out of a madly swaying building.

  You pivot toward the sound instantly, habitually, orienting on the source with a mother’s ears. The man clutches the boy with both arms. He doesn’t even have a runny-sack; the first and only thing he took the time to grab was his son. The boy looks nothing like Uche. But you stare as the child bounces and reaches back toward the house for something the man has left behind (favorite toy? the boy’s mother?), and suddenly, finally, you think.