The Apex Book of World SF

by Mahvesh Murad

  You learned how miracles can hurt.

  You align his bones on the metal tray that goes into the hungry oven. You hold his skull in your hands and rub the sides where his ears once were. You look deep into the sockets where once eyes of dark brown would stare back into you.

  His clavicle passes your fingers. You remember the kisses you planted on his shoulder, when it used to be flesh. You position his ribcage, and you can still hear his heartbeat—a rumble in his chest the first time you lay together after barely surviving an onslaught of skinwalkers, a celebration of life. You remember that heart racing, as it did in your years as young men, when vitality kept you both up until dawn. You remember it beating quietly in his later years, when you were content and your bodies fit perfectly together—the alchemy of flesh you have now lost.

  You deposit every shared memory in his bones, and then load the tray in the oven and slam shut the metal door.

  Behind you, your daughter stands like a shadow, perfect in her apprentice robes. Not a single crease disfigures the contours of her pants and jacket. Not a single stain mars her apron.

  She stares at you. She judges you.

  She is perfection.

  You wish you could leave her and crawl in the oven with your husband.

  Flesh, blood, and gristle do not make a cake easily, yet the Cake Maker has to wield these basic ingredients. Any misstep leads to failure, so you watch closely during your daughter’s examination, but she completes each task with effortless grace.

  She crushes your husband’s bones to flour with conviction.

  Your daughter mixes the dough of blood, fat, and bone flour, and you assist her. You hear your knuckles and fingers pop as you knead the hard dough, but hers move without a sound—fast and agile as they shape the round cakes.

  Your daughter works over the flesh and organs until all you can see is a pale scarlet cream with the faint scent of iron, while you crush the honey crystals that will allow for the spirit to be digested by the gods. You wonder if she is doing this to prove how superior she is to you—to demonstrate how easy it is to lock yourself into a bakery with the dead. You wonder how to explain that you never burnt as brightly as your husband that you don’t need to chase legends and charge into battle.

  You wonder how to tell her that she is your greatest adventure, that you gave her most of the magic you had left.

  Layer by layer, your husband is transformed into a cake. Not a single bit of him is lost. You pull away the skin on top and connect the pieces with threads from his hair. The sun turns the rich shade of lavender and calendula.

  You cover the translucent skin with the dried blood drops you extracted before you placed the body in the purification vat and glazed it with the plasma. Now all that remains is to tell your husband’s story, in the language every Cake Maker knows—the language you’ve now taught your daughter.

  You wonder whether she will blame you for the death of your husband in writing, the way she did when you told her of his death.

  Your stillness killed him. You had to force him to stay, to give up his axe. Now he’s dead in his sleep. Is this what you wanted? Have him all to yourself? You couldn’t let him die out on the road.

  Oh, how she screamed that day—her voice as unforgiving as thunder. Her screaming still reverberates through you. You’re afraid of what she’s going to tell the gods.

  You both write. You cut and bend the dried strips of intestines into runes and you gently push them so they sink into the glazed skin and hold.

  You write his early story. His childhood, his early feats, the mythology of your love. How you got your daughter. She tells the other half of your husband’s myth—how he trained her in every single weapon known to man, how they journeyed the world over to honor the gods.

  Her work doesn’t mention you at all.

  You rest your fingers, throbbing with pain from your manipulations. You have completed the last of your husband’s tale. You have written in the language of meat and bones and satisfied the gods’ hunger. You hope they will nod with approval as their tongues roll around the cooked flesh and swallow your sentences and your tether to life.

  Your daughter swims into focus as she takes her position across the table, your husband between you, and joins you for the spell. He remains the barrier you can’t overcome even in death. As you begin to speak, you’re startled to hear her voice rise with yours. You mutter the incantation and her lips are your reflection, but while you caress the words, coaxing their magic into being, she cuts them into existence, so the veil you will around the cake spills like silk on your end and crusts on hers. The two halves shimmer in blue feylight, entwine into each other, and the deed is done.

  You have said your farewell, better than you did when you first saw him dead. Some dam inside you breaks. Exhaustion wipes away your strength and you feel your age, first in the trembling in your hands, then in the creaking in your knees as you turn your back and measure your steps so you don’t disturb the air—a retreat as slow as young winter frost.

  Outside the Bakery, your breath catches. Your scream is a living thing that squirms inside your throat and digs into the hidden recesses of your lungs. Your tears wash the dry mask from your cheeks.

  Your daughter takes your hand, gently, with the unspoken understanding only shared loss births and you search for her gaze. You search for the flat, dull realization that weighs down the soul. You search for yourself in her eyes, but all you see is your husband—his flame now a wildfire that has swallowed every part of you. She looks at you as a person who has lost the only life she had ever known, pained and furious, and you pat her hand and kiss her forehead, her skin stinging against your lips. When confusion pulls her face together, her features lined with fissures in her protective mask, you shake your head.

  “The gods praise your skill and technique. They praise your steady hand and precision, but they have no use of your hands in the Bakery.” The words roll out with difficulty—a thorn vine you lacerate your whole being with as you force yourself to reject your daughter. Yes, she can follow your path, but what good would that do?

  “You honor me greatly.” Anger tinges her response, but fights in these holy places, father only misfortune, so her voice is low and even. You are relieved to hear sincerity in her fury, desire in her voice to dedicate herself to your calling.

  You want to keep her here, where she won’t leave. Your tongue itches with every lie you can bind her with, spells you’ve learned from gods that are not your own, hollow her out and hold onto her, even if such acts could end your life. You reconsider and instead hold on to her earnest reaction. You have grown to an age where even intent will suffice.

  “It’s not an honor to answer your child’s yearning.” You maintain respectability, keep with the tradition, but still you lean in with all the weight of death tied to you like stones and you whisper. “I have told the story of your father in blood and gristle as I have with many others. As I will continue to tell every story as best as I can, until I myself end in the hands of a Cake Maker. But you can continue writing your father’s story outside the temple where your knife strokes have a meaning.

  “Run. Run toward the mountains and rivers, sword in your hand and bow on your back. Run toward life. That is where you will find your father.”

  Now it is she who is crying. You embrace her, the memory of doing so in her childhood alive inside your bones and she hugs you back as a babe, full of needing and vulnerable. But she is no longer a child—the muscles underneath her robes roll with the might of a river—so you usher her out to a life you have long since traded away.

  Her steps still echo in the room outside the Baking Chamber as you reapply the coating to your face from the tiny, crystal jars. You see yourself: a grey, tired man who touched death more times than he ever touched his husband.

  Your last task is to bring the cake to where the Mouth awaits, its vines and branches shaking, aglow with iridescence. There, the gods will entwine their appendages around your
offering, suck it in, close, and digest. Relief overcomes you and you sigh.

  Yes, it’s been a long day since you and your daughter cut your husband’s body open. You reenter the Baking Chamber and push the cake onto the cart.

  In Her Head, In Her Eyes

  Yukimi Ogawa

  Yukimi Ogawa lives in a small town in Tokyo, where she writes in English but never speaks the language. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, The Book Smugglers, and elsewhere.

  TRILLS OF SILVER, trills of blue.

  She wanted to watch on. She wanted to remember them, wanted to make them her own. But soon, too soon, she was pulled up, back into the air, where she had to fight for breath, fight to be on her feet.

  She hit the hard workshop floor, heavy head first. Though her head was protected, she cried out anyway. Slowly, she raised herself up and tried to glare at them, all of them standing around the stale pot of unused indigo dye in which they had just tried to drown her. Most of them kept laughing at her, but a few seemed to sense her unseen glare, and backed off warily.

  Then, a voice from the entrance to the workshop. “What is going on in here?”

  The bullies scattered instantly at the voice’s calm authority. Everyone knew who commanded that voice, just as everyone knew he was the only person who would dare stand up for the strange new servant. Drenched in old dye, the servant girl shifted and dipped her heavy head, and busied herself squeezing her sleeves. Slowly the owner of the voice walked in, frowning. “Hase. I told you to come or call for me when in trouble. Are you all right?”

  Hase bowed as low as she could, unbalanced with the substantial weight atop her head. “Yes. I appreciate our young master’s concern.”

  The young man—the third noble son of the family of artisan dyers—knelt before her. “Hase,” he said. “You must tell them they’ll be in trouble if they do anything to you. Use my name. Who were they?” He was the only person in the entire house who called her by her real name and not Pot Head.

  “Again, I appreciate my master’s concern,” Hase said, “but in truth, I am fine. And here, my robe—now it’s dyed in indigo and looks pretty!”

  Still kneeling, the young man grinned. “You smiled. At last!”

  Hase hurriedly composed herself and looked down. Suddenly she was aware of how her robe was clinging to her skin, how the blue-black pungent water was running down her dark hair, down her torso, how quickly the warm dye was starting to cool off. “Young master, this is not a place for a noble. I must tidy myself up now.”

  “Yes. Be sure to keep yourself warm.”

  Hase bowed again, watching the young man leave before standing and rushing abruptly to the servants’ quarters in search of solitude and warmth.

  No one knew why Hase wore a pot on her head. No one in the noble house, in the region, had even seen the materials from which the pot was made. It must be some sort of iron, people would whisper marveling at the reflective surface shining brightly as a mirror in the space where her eyes should be. No one had ever seen Hase’s eyes, or anything behind the pot’s smooth countenance—only her nose and mouth were visible below its cold protective edge.

  Since her arrival at the house, of course many had tried to rip the pot from her head, but to no avail. The pot, so closely fitted to Hase’s skull, would not, could not, come off. Yet others tried to crack it open to reveal the girl beneath, but no tool could do it any damage. Eventually, they all gave up.

  The only thing anyone knew about Hase for certain was that she came from The Island—a fabled place, far away from their shores. Even nobles, such as the ones who owned this fine home, were not rich enough to travel to The Island. How pot-covered Hase ended up here, people could only speculate.

  Beyond the metallic pot concealing her head, Hase appeared perfectly plain, which only added to the mystery surrounding her. The people of Hase’s island were rumored to be great beauties, with skin and hair and eyes of all colors: hues of flowers and jewels, of stars and sunsets. Some, it was rumored, even bore patterns on their skin—not tattooed or painted on, but opalescent designs born from the womb. It was common knowledge that everyone from the Island was beautiful, inspiring poetry and art, stories and dreams.

  One only had to look at Hase. She had ordinary skin just like everyone else, without a single shocking color or pattern to be seen. Her hair was thick, beautiful, and dark as a crow’s wing, but perfectly ordinary. So no one in the household, neither noble nor servant, believed her claim as to her birthplace—no one, that is, save the family’s third son.

  A few nights after her arrival at the house, Sai visited Hase’s makeshift cot inside the storehouse. At first she shied away, thinking he had come to take advantage of her. But he waved his hand dismissively and sat down by the door, leaving it fully open. There was no light inside, for no fire was allowed in the storehouse; only moonlight illuminated the room, spilling through the door and reflecting off her potted head.

  Sai gestured toward the moon. “Look at how beautiful the moon is here, without all the lights of the house. Don’t be greedy and keep it all to yourself!”

  Slowly, Hase closed the distance to the door where he was, her thin blanket wrapped tightly around her body. She peered at him cautiously, the starry night reflecting in the cool metal of her gaze. “We have a pond the color of moonlight,” she said quietly.

  “On your island? Where they say everyone is beautiful?”

  “There is no such place where everyone is beautiful. People always try to find the flaws and imperfections in all things. On my island, there are other plain things. As plain as Hase appears here.” She bowed her spherical heavy head and clutched her blanket tighter around her.

  “And the pot…”

  “It has nothing to do with Hase’s island, master.” Hase gave her heavy head a little shake.

  The young man nodded. He looked as though he had more things he wanted to ask, but said no more and looked on at the moon.

  Unlike the younger servants, the adults didn’t quite bully Hase, though no one seemed to like her much. They knew a certain amount of money had been exchanged for her service, enough of a sum to make them believe that she must be from the Island and that she genuinely must want to work under the dye masters. Still, among any of the servants, any kindness toward Hase remained to be seen. For when Hase, dripping with old indigo dye and shivering, finally made her way to the servants’ quarters to ask for towels, she found little sympathy. The elder dye master, Hase’s superior, simply wrinkled her nose and dropped the towels at Hase’s feet. “For once, just have a bath. I can’t let you serve at the meeting tonight in that state, and we can’t spare a hand.”

  “What meeting?”

  “You don’t notice anything, do you?” The woman sighed. “The eldest and the middle brothers’ wives and other relatives are coming to visit.”

  Hase tilted her heavy head to one side in question. “What about the third brother’s wife?”

  “You know he doesn’t have a wife yet.” The dye master snorted. “If he did, we’d all have stopped him before he went into that storehouse your first night to have you.”

  Hase stared blankly at the dye master, smooth impassive metal reflecting the older woman’s sneer, until the dye master shooed her away.

  Hase didn’t have much time to enjoy the bath. Soon the relatives started to arrive, and she was herded along with the other servants, bustling tea and refreshments to the family. All the relatives openly stared at Hase and the smooth pot covering her head, mouths agape at her strangeness. Pot Head, they whispered behind her back, quickly picking up the servants’ name for her. The wives of the first and second brothers took great delight in her peculiar appearance, laughing at her gleaming helmet of metal. The elder wife quickly tired of the game and Hase’s calm, and exclaimed, “Why, I hate her face!”

  “But she doesn’t have a face!” The younger wife laughed even harder than before.

  “I hate that she doesn’t. We are laughing at her and sh
e should be angry, or embarrassed at the very least! Look at her, with her stupid mouth, her tiny nose.” The elder wife gestured rudely at Hase, trying to engage the servant. “The only parts of her face you can see, and she has no reaction.”

  Hase bowed as gracefully as she could in the style of her fellow servants, the movement awkward in many ways. The angle of her neck and back were tilted just wrong, the speed with which she retreated to the more comfortable, upright position to alleviate the weight of her head a little too fast. The jerky movements only fueled the younger wife’s amusement, her laughter renewed with malicious glee.

  “Oh, Pot Head, heavy-head, just try not to get in our way!” The younger wife pushed Hase by the pot on her head, cackling harder still when Hase fell to the wooden floor with a dull thud, potted-head first.

  Slowly, slowly, Hase dragged herself up onto her feet, as she heard the two wives walk away, laughing and laughing.

  Both wives and their husbands were young and relatively newly-wed, and the two women measured themselves against each other in every regard. They compared their wedding gifts and the favor of their new parents-in-law; they compared their best robes, their skills in music and poetry. Every day and every night, the wives would compare their positions, while their men drank sake, the women tea, and a steady barrage of refreshments flew from the kitchens into their mouths.

  All the while, Hase lurked in the background, her domed, impassive head missing not a single detail. From the hallways and the corners of each room, Hase stole glimpses of the fine embroidery of the women’s robes, fascinated by the expensive, exquisite artifacts that shimmered in the wives’ hands.

  One day, the elder wife caught Hase staring at her robe and sneered, her venomous glare focused on Hase’s reflective helmet. Hase shivered, transfixed by the wife’s disdain, unable to look or move away.