by Linda Nagata
The silver was behind him and I could not make out his features in any detail, but I thought his skin was pale. Certainly his eyes were dark, and his clothing too. Tiny silver sparkles danced about his eyes and in the dark spaces between his fingers. Horror touched me, for they were exactly like the silver sparkles that had hovered around Jolly in the seconds before he was taken. For a wild moment I wondered if this could be Jolly, grown into a man, for there was something hauntingly familiar about this stranger, as if I had known him before, in some other time, or some other life.
But he was not Jolly.
My heart beat faster, remembering a fear my mind had long forgotten. I started to rise.
He spoke then, in my own language, though it was not his native tongue. His voice was low, crisp, his words a distorted echo of my own thoughts: “I have come for your brother, Jolly. Command him to come forth now.”
I froze, half crouched upon the wall, the fine hairs of my neck standing on end just as Moki’s had. Jolly … ? I could not think who this man might be, to ask after my brother. I could not think how to answer. Moki stirred, and I picked him up, cradling him close to my chest. “He’s gone.” It was all I could find to say.
“Lately gone?” the stranger inquired. Though he spoke softly, there was menace in his voice and the motes that danced about his hands grew brighter, so that a silver storm seemed ready to ignite around him … but surely that was impossible? If the motes were true silver, he should have already been consumed.
Perhaps it was the hour, or the dreadful sense of familiarity he stirred in me, but I felt the world shift, a crack in the boundaries of the possible opening the way for forbidden things to slip into the world. “Do I speak to a bogy?” I whispered. “Or a ghost?”
His teeth flashed white as he grinned. “Not a bogy,” he said, stepping closer to the wall. “But a ghost all right, dressed in flesh. Now tell me, girl, where is Jolly? Why does he hide from me? He should know that I am his father now.”
I rose to my feet, Moki clutched in one arm, and my savant in the other. I didn’t know who this stranger was or how he had come to Temple Huacho, but I did not like his tone or his manner. I didn’t like his cruel, taunting questions. And most of all, I didn’t like the strange, hot fear brewing in my chest. “Your manners are very poor,” I said, in the best imitation of my mother I could muster. “But if you would know, Jolly isn’t here.”
“Not here?” He cocked his head to one side, so that some trace of reflected light illuminated his face. I could just make out his thin, dark brows and his graceful cheeks above a goatee of black beard, though there was no mustache. Perhaps the truth of what I said showed on my face for he turned half away, looking dejected. “So he is lost again.”
He made as if to leave by the same road he had come despite the sea of silver that filled all the vale. “Wait!” I stepped along the wall to follow after him. “Who are you? Why have you come asking after my brother?”
He looked back over his shoulder, his face once again a mask of darkness. “Will you come find out?” He held his hand out to me.
Some traitorous part of me was tempted. “Come where?”
He nodded downslope. I followed his gaze, to see the silver washing up the path where he had walked only a minute before, moving toward him in a swift tide. Moki whined and wriggled in my arms so that I had to stoop to put him down. He jumped off the wall and disappeared toward the temple. “You must come inside,” I said. “Quickly. Come in through the gate before the silver reaches it.”
“It’s too late, I think.” He raised his arm to the silver, and the shimmering motes that danced about his hand brightened again. Then the silver rushed to him. Never had I seen it move so quickly. It flowed like water released from a dam, sweeping across the grass to wash past his calves, his hips, rising up around him in a great halo of gleaming light that revealed his cold smile, but only for a moment. The silver rushed over his body, sheathing him in a second skin just as it had done to Jolly long ago, but he was still alive under that terrible armor, because his shape reached for me, and I thought I heard his voice, speaking in a lower octave than before, so low it was barely audible. It was as if the world itself were speaking, Come find out.
“Jubilee!”
It was my mother, shouting from the temple. The sound of her voice broke whatever trance had held me on the wall. The silver was only a few feet away and rising fast. I stumbled back, forgetting for a moment where I stood so that I half fell, half jumped off the wall. It was six feet down on the uphill side and I hit hard. Pain lanced my ankle. I hissed and glanced over my shoulder to see silver pouring over the wall where I had just been, and flowing unimpeded through the open gate.
“Run!” my mother screamed. “Hurry! Hurry!”
She was racing down the hill to meet me. I could not bear that. I could not bear to think of her being taken by the silver. So I broke for the temple, ignoring the pain in my ankle and running hard. She met me and we ran together for the courtyard, illuminated by crossing lines of paper lanterns. Liam was there and he swung the gate shut as we entered. It closed with a sigh and a click, making a perfect seal.
In the courtyard the air was sweet with the scent of the guardian kobolds that were spawned each day in our well, living out their single night of existence in the ground or in the temple walls. Their vapor protected us. It had a mechanism about it, that would not let the silver pass. I breathed it in gratefully, my heart beating hard.
But my mother was furious. “What were you doing out there? Did you fall asleep on the wall? Didn’t you see the silver rising? Jubilee, you could be dead.”
“But there was—” I stopped as tears started in her eyes. Tears? But there was nothing to cry over. I was safe inside the temple.
Then Liam touched my arm. “We have had news of your father.” He said it in a voice hardly more than a whisper. “He was taken by the silver this evening, outside Temple Nathé on the highway from Xahiclan.”
“No.” I shook my head. I would not believe it, but my mother nodded and the tears spilled from her eyes so I knew it must be true. She held me, and we cried together, until Liam finally made us go inside.
I sat up with my mother all that night. She was a silhouette beside her bedroom window, listening to the glassy tinkle of the fountain in the courtyard. I sat in the rocking chair. The runners whispered against the floor as I rocked myself in a slow, even rhythm. “I nursed you in that chair,” she said, without turning her head.
“You nursed each one of us.”
Starlight glimmered in her eyes. I caught the soft exhalation of her sigh. “Lie down on the bed, Jubilee. Try to sleep.”
I lay down, but sleep did not come. My mind would not rest. The same questions kept returning to me, over and over again: How had my father come to be on the road at dusk? Who was the stranger beyond the wall? Why had he given himself to the silver on the same night my father was taken? And why had he asked about my brother as if he were still alive?
Jolly should know that I am his father now.
It wasn’t possible to survive the silver. Was it?
Was the legend of Fiaccomo real?
By dawn all these mysteries had become one in my mind. Somehow the stranger had caused my father’s death. I was sure of it. And maybe he had caused Jolly’s too, and perhaps … it wasn’t over yet? Should I tell my mother what I had seen?
Or what I thought I had seen. When I tried to put it into words it sounded absurd. My mother would certainly say I’d been asleep on the wall, that I’d been dreaming, but it had been no dream.
Real then. It had been real and reality leaves tracks—but where to look for them? Where else but in the experience of others? I would visit the market, and inquire.
With this resolution made, I sat up. My mother turned from her post in the window. Behind her the sky was just beginning to lighten. “Jubilee,” she whispered, fear carried in a high overnote.
I went to her, and I took her hands. “Mama?�
�
“Jubilee, don’t—”
Don’t go. I knew that was what she wanted to say. Don’t go wayfaring. Stay home. Stay away from the silver. Be safe. Don’t make me sit this vigil for you. But she did not say it. She kissed my forehead and told me instead, “Wake your brothers and sisters. All but the baby. Send them to me.”
I nodded. My mother was wise.
We hope you enjoyed this sample of Memory, by Linda Nagata. Please visit BookViewCafe.com to purchase the ebook.
Books by Linda Nagata
Stories of the Puzzle Lands
The Dread Hammer - Book 1: a tale of love, war, murder, marriage, and fate
Hepen the Watcher - Book 2: a tale of exile, rebellion, fidelity, and fire
The Nanotech Succession is a collection of four stand-alone novels set in a shared science-fiction story world, beginning in the present day and reaching into the far future. Following the timeline of the story world the books are:
Tech-Heaven
The Bohr Maker (winner of the 1996 Locus Award for Best First Novel)
Deception Well
Vast
Other Story Worlds
Goddesses & Other Stories (a short-fiction collection including the 2000 Nebula Award winner for Best Novella)
Limit of Vision
Memory
Skye-Object 3270a (young adult)
About the Author
Linda Nagata grew up in a rented beach house on the north shore of Oahu. She graduated from the University of Hawaii with a degree in zoology and worked for a time at Haleakala National Park on the island of Maui. She has been a writer, a mom, a programmer of database-driven websites, and lately a publisher and book designer. She is the author of multiple novels and short stories including The Bohr Maker, winner of the Locus Award for best first novel, and the novella “Goddesses,” the first online publication to receive a Nebula award. She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui.
Find her online at:
MythicIsland.com
twitter.com/LindaNagata
facebook.com/Linda.Nagata.author
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Sample Chapters: Memory
Books by Linda Nagata
About the Author
About Book View Cafe
