by Y. S. Lee
I tried to shove my hands into my mouth, gagging the noise, but it wasn’t coming from my throat, my entire chest vibrating in distress, the only defense my people had, and people were going to die if I didn’t get out -
“Hey, hey kid, come on, I got ya come on.” Strange, hard hands on my back, and I flinched, then the sense of someone shoving us through the crowd, and the flutter of anxious wings near my cheek, smelling of leather and beer, asking “Is she ok she doesn’t look ok.”
Imp, I thought, able to focus on that, the voice was an imp, but there was only a moment of rational thought, only a shred, and then the familiar smell of my own venom made me want to puke, but I choked instead, the bile rising with nowhere to go, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t—.
Please don’t please
“Breathe, girl,” the hard hands ordered, but I couldn’t, my gills were covered, I couldn’t—
“Hey. Hey.” Tili, her smell familiar, grounding—but I recoiled when she tried to touch me, too, throwing myself backward like I was trying to escape, the keen still vibrating in my chest.
“Hey.” The hard-handed voice, trying to protect me, and then Tili speaking over him.
“It’s okay, I’m a friend I know what’s happening hey come on, you idiot, look at me, look at me, can you look at me, okay?”
It took everything I had to lift my head, meeting her stare. Erinyes. Immune to a siren’s song. The reason we’d become friends.
Look at me, come on, no just look at me, damn it, don’t look down look at me
The memory came out like a gasp, like a body blow directly into my chest. “I killed him.”
There was supposed to be a shocked silence, the entire club was supposed to come to a halt and everyone stare at me.
“He grabbed me, and I killed him.”
Tili had been there. Tili knew.
Loud music, and I was in a shit mood, the world pissing me off, my parents pissing me off, me pissing me off, it didn’t matter, I was pissed and too young to be able to do anything about it and throwing myself into the waves of music as hard as I could seemed the only way to deal with it.
“What’s she talking about? Is she tripping?” Imp-wings too close to my ear, voice too high, cutting through the music like ripping cellophane.
He put hands on me and it wasn’t anything anyone hadn’t done before, just jostling and shoving the way you did, when arms and bodies got shoved together in the pit and any other day I would have just moved back, snarl-laughing, but something about him smelled like what had been pissing me off and then he threw his arm around my neck, and I—
Something stabbed me, right in the middle of my palm, and I screamed in outrage, my entire world narrowing to the ice-cold burning down to the bone, Tili’s face coming into too-clear focus, eyes wide and teeth bared, her talon jabbed into the flesh of my palm. “Are you with me now?”
The imp and its companion were happy to leave us alone, after that.
There was a cement block at the top of the stairs, some leftover slab from a half-finished subway station cannibalized god knew how many decades ago, pitted where someone had dug the mosaic tiles out, the holes now filled with generations of cigarette ashes and paper butts. It smelled like tar and piss and desperation, the layers of pastrami and pickles from the deli across the street not quite enough to cover it. The first straggle of commuters walked past us, averting their eyes. Too old to be club kids, too well-dressed to be homeless, they knew something was off about us, but not how much.
Everything ached.
I used to amuse myself by imagining the domed ceiling over the dance floor giving way, of water cascading down through the club, giving it a scrubbing, washing everyone out the emergency exit. Morbid, maybe, but funny as fuck. Maybe it would have felt like this.
“I’d forgotten.”
Tili exhaled, her talons flicking back and forth, snick-snick, snick-snick, making the hastily-bandaged jab in my hand burn with the memory of what that had felt like. “You made yourself forget.”
Tili had been there. Tili had remembered. And never told me. Never said anything to me. Nobody had.
“He just...and nobody asked questions?”
“They thought he was drunk.”
My friend. A better friend than I’d ever known.
“I got you out of there before he hit the floor.”
She pulled a kerchief from her bag, poured half a bottle of water over it, draped it over my neck so the water dripped past my gills. I’d taught her that, for hangovers. And panic attacks. “Who was he?”
“Nobody. Some idiot who didn’t know any better. It’s not like you ever hid what you were.”
Brutal, practical, and lacking any sympathy. Erinyes. She had never hid what she was, either. But people fear Erinyes. They desire sirens—until they realize what we are.
“And we never came back.” I never came back.
I’d told myself I was too busy, I wasn’t in the mood, I didn’t like the music they were playing that night. Told myself I didn’t need to fuck things up any more. Until enough time had gone by that all of that was true. And Tili let me. I didn’t know if I should hug her or punch her.
“I thought you just didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t realize you didn’t remember until weeks later. And then I thought…ok, maybe that’s ok. Maybe that’s for the best.”
Better to forget. What had they told his family? Had he had any? Friends who’d gone clubbing with him, who’d been supposed to watch his back?
I didn’t want to know. I probably wouldn’t ever know. “So why did you drag me here tonight?”
“Because I was wrong.” Tili flexed her fingers, and the glitter on her nails caught the light like mother-of-pearl. “It never went away. You forgot, but it never went away. I could see it, under your skin.”
I had no idea if she was being metaphorical or not.
“It was like...something went out of you, after that.”
I shrugged, pressing against the bandage to see if it hurt. It did. “I stopped being so angry.”
“You stopped being alive,” she corrected me. “You acted like...like nothing mattered, when everything had mattered to you, before. I mean, yeah, we all gotta grow up some time, but growing up’s about picking your battles, not giving up on all of them.”
I hadn’t given up. I just didn’t see the point any more.
“I thought...I thought it was too late, then. To do anything. But when the club announced it was closing, I thought, ‘Get her back here, see what happens. If nothing, hey, we had one last hurrah.’ No harm no foul, right?”
I wanted to be angry with her, knew I should be angry with her, but mostly I was just so tired.
“Did you plan on me having a full-on meltdown in the middle of the club?”
“Please.” She stretched, her muscles uncoiling now that there was nothing left to fight, and I took a sideways glance to appreciate it. “Like you would be the first to have that happen. You might not even be the last, there’s still a couple of hours to go.”
Shit happened at SeaBe’s, under the watery lights and the crashing sound. People hit the floor, and sometimes, they didn’t get up again.
I shuddered, but at the thought of what had happened tonight, or what had happened…back then, or maybe it was just the reminder that SeaBe’s would be gone soon, driven under into rubble, the tidal flow washing over the remains like it’d never been there…
Maybe they’d put a memorial plaque in the mud, a plinth breaking the tidal flow of the river, but silt and algae would cover it, and eventually not even the kelpies would go to visit. And what I’d done would have been buried with it.
“I don’t want to be angry.” I kind of liked my life, not raging at everything that went wrong, every wrong ever done. Not remembering what I’d done.
“Yeah, well, you should be. Life is shit, and people are shit, and the good stuff gets run over and plowed under, and then we’re stuck with overpriced clubs hiring shit ba
nds where there’s no room to dance. And a fucking dress code. And people who think it’s okay to put their hands on you just because you’re a sexy beast.”
I laughed, despite everything. “God, you’re a whiner.”
“Fuck you.”
I pulled the cloth off my neck, and tilted slightly, until my head rested against her bony shoulder, the leather sweat-damp and smelling of beer. “I hate you so much right now.”
Her body shifted, her head resting against mine. We probably looked like two drunk street kids, a couple decades past our expiration date. “I’m okay with that.”
The neon sign of the deli across the street flickered randomly, reflecting in the glass. Last hurrah was almost over. They’d pull her down, let the river flow through her bones, wash it all away.
“River always wins,” I said, my voice sleepy-stoned sounding.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I patted her arm. I’d deal with everything...later. For now, for tonight, I was just going to remember.
About Laura Anne Gilman
Laura Anne Gilman is the Nebula- and Endeavor-award nominated author of “The Devil’s West”, the Locus-bestselling weird western series (SILVER ON THE ROAD, THE COLD EYE, and the forthcoming RED WATERS RISING), as well as the short story collection DARKLY HUMAN, the long-running Cosa Nostradamus urban fantasy multi-series, and the "Vineart War” epic fantasy trilogy. Her short fiction has recently appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Nightmare Magazine, and the anthologies STRANGE CALIFORNIA and LAWLESS LANDS. As L.A. Kornetsky, she wrote the "Gin & Tonic” mystery series.
A former New Yorker, she currently lives outside of Seattle with two cats and many deadlines.
* * *
www.lauraannegilman.net
The Amethyst Deceiver
Shveta Thakrar
The Amethyst Deceiver
The Amethyst Deceiver lifts her cigarette holder up to her lips, angling it to make sure everyone in the underwater ballroom sees the play of light over the silver filigree. She doesn’t actually bother with cigarettes, finding smoking to be a repulsive habit that stains one’s teeth a hideous yellow and leaves one reeking of a chimney’s guts, but appearances matter. So does glamour. Faeries know what they’re about when they show humans what they wish to see—which, of course, has little, if anything, to do with the truth.
Rukmini is as human, as flesh and blood, as this gathering of the self-proclaimed Who’s Who of London glitterati, but to their eyes, she might as well be one of the mythical beings they pursue in vain. They think her half Indian and half Anglo heritage so exotic, so charming. She hates that as much as she hates their thoughtless condescension, but it’s also the thing that allows her to infiltrate their ranks so easily. It’s as if they’ve handed her the password to an American speakeasy; all Rukmini need do is don the elbow-length black satin gloves and form-fitting matching dress that mark a lady of high society. Around her neck goes the requisite two-stranded pearl choker, and twin diamond studs gleam from her earlobes. Fire-engine-red lipstick paints her mouth in a playful, knowing pout.
All in all, a perfect costume—she’s one of them but for her brown skin that makes her “darling” and “quaint” and even “a foreign treat,” something no more human and no more worthy of respect than the elusive harpies and nagas and firebirds they’ve never found, yet classify and expound upon at length in their journal articles. Certainly no threat.
Inside the dress, however, pinned to the wrong side of the collar, is a purple enamel mushroom. It’s a touchstone, a reminder of the job she’s here to do.
Rukmini takes another drag off her cigarette holder, which is filled with rose petal syrup and pungent curdled spidersilk, and glances wistfully around the ballroom. It’s a beauty, all right, built beneath a manmade lake on the outskirts of London and bankrolled by shipping mogul Peter Middleton and his heiress wife Angelica. No expense has been spared. The entire dome is panel upon panel of glass, with ornate metalwork designs of seaweed and starfish and jellyfish separating them. Seashell mosaic pieces dangle from the ceiling like lanterns, and fish swim overhead outside the dome, casting undulating shadows on the floor.
It’s odd for a formal gala to take place in the afternoon, but the Middletons want to capitalize on the gemstone light of the sun filtering through the water to create their own fairytale cove. There isn’t a lot of magic left in the world. Most of it was weakened, its soft edges gone the crispness of burned bread, when Industry came around, but these men and women, these same captains of Industry, are determined to ferret out what little is left, and of course they need the perfect setting to show off their first catch.
Rukmini suppresses a curse.
The caterers have laid out a spread of incredible hors d’oeuvres, of the sort most people will never see in their lives. There are edible sapphires and emeralds from a French chocolatier, which sit before a stone fountain overflowing with frangipani-scented waters. There are tables of flaky pastries both savory and sweet and waiters with platters of tiny cakes and endless carafes of garnet-red wine and sparkling champagne.
Only the main attraction is missing—Supriya, but they’ll bring her out soon, too.
Rukmini’s mouth tightens as she thinks of the Amanita’s need for the forest, the soil, the natural balance she taught Rukmini to fight so hard for, and she has to remind herself to relax. Right now, guests are milling around, ignoring the tinkling piano music in favor of chattering excitedly about the big reveal, but soon they’ll expect her to entertain them. To be a pretty voice in the background, crooning soothing yet sexy things while they hobnob and make their deals and secure their conquests for the night.
She doesn’t much care what other people do in their bedrooms, but the rampant hypocrisy just gets under her skin. On the one hand, sneaking around and breaking up families. On the other, preaching family values and the sanctity of marriage to their constituents and congregations and judging Rukmini’s own father for his “scandalous union”—how dare a well-to-do white man of good breeding wed one of those Indians from the colonies? If he’d wanted some spice, he could have taken her to mistress. But wife?
Rukmini wonders sometimes: Would her brother Pravan have turned out differently if people had refrained from judging others? Would he still be by her side?
But people don’t seem inclined to do that now or ever, any more than this gathering seems inclined to let Supriya go.
Things are meant to be in balance, the way a mushroom colony feeds off a tree in exchange for offering the tree the nutrients it can’t get itself. A cycle that sustains both parties.
Industry, though, is like a fungus that has forgotten balance in its bottomless hunger. No matter how much it takes, it has to have more. It poisoned the forests of the yakshas and the faeries and the waters of the nagas and the nixies and chased them all away—at least the ones who didn’t take ill and die. That was the first lesson Supriya, the Amanita, the Fly Agaric, taught all ten of the children she’d taken under her gilled cap twelve years ago.
Now Rukmini touches her mushroom pin and whispers, “Target located?” The pin is a symbol, yes, but it’s also a tiny closed-circuit radio.
“Yes,” replies a chorus of two. “Right where she should be.”
Her lips curve up in a smile.
After all, how often do a girl and her fellow Mycologians get the chance to steal their favorite mentor back from under the noses of a bunch of millionaires?
The Bleeding Tooth and the Indigo Milkcap are on standby, tidily dressed in waiter’s black and white. They’ve verified Supriya’s location in the green room behind the stage and reported to Rukmini that she is shackled and sickly. The plan is to sneak her out after Rukmini’s second set, when everyone is busy eating. Rukmini seethes, imagining poor Supriya locked up and drying out for lack of earth, but she is careful not to let it show, or to meet the other Mycologians’ gazes as they putter about the ballroom, straightening silverware and puffing up napkin swans.
But of course it’s him. He’s the one who sold Supriya out to these people. It’s a move their father would have made, and pale and blond Pravan—sorry, Peter—had been the one to follow in dear old Father’s footsteps. The memory of their fights, of his resignation, stirs an old sadness in her. Peter might not have donned Industry’s mantle willingly, but he wears it now, and that’s that.
She shoves the feeling away. He gave up his chance for her sympathy when he turned his back on Supriya and the Mycologians. When he turned his back on his heritage. When he turned his back on her.
The event coordinator nudges Rukmini. “It’s time,” she says, leading Rukmini up to the stage, where a man in a suit already sits at the piano. He nods hello. They go over the set list, and Rukmini mentally checks off the songs. Everything as arranged.
Showtime.
She steps in front of the microphone and inspects the audience. The overhead lights have dimmed, and the tastefully arranged white candles on the tastefully decorated white tables flicker, their flames catching the crystals of the chandelier in the center of the ceiling.
Rukmini breathes deep, filling her lungs. Be calm. She isn’t a singer, just playing the role of one. What Supriya has given her is far more subtle—deception, a kind of temporary glamour that lets her pass as she needs to. A month ago, she played the talent agent who booked this gig. This afternoon, it means Rukmini’s pipes rival Marlene Dietrich’s.
Now it’s time to try them out.
Peter doesn’t look alarmed, which means the glamour is working. Good. She hopes it hides the pain in her face, too. The fury.
