while the black stars burn

by kucy a snyder

  The blond boy didn’t budge. “Maybe we should take those eggs and smash them.”

  Everyone fell silent. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was sure the boys could hear it. Her spinweb trembled against her belly as though it had understood the threat.

  Adira’s thoughts raced. What could she say now? This bully was either a predator or fancied himself as one. She remembered what her father told her about wolves: Don’t run, or they’ll think you’re prey. Don’t show fear.

  “Well.” Adira spoke slowly, trying to seem calm, trying to still her heart and steady her voice. “You could do that. But if you think we stink now? Imagine what the inside of a broken egg smells like. Even we can’t stand it.”

  She gazed up into the blond boy’s eyes and let her smile go mad. “If you break the eggs, the stink will be on you forever. And Mama Silklegs will know you killed her babies. She will sniff you out and find you in your bed at night when you’re asleep. She’ll inject you with a poison to paralyze you, but you’ll still feel everything. She’ll cut a hole in your belly and pull your intestines out and eat them like noodles while you’re still alive. And you’ll want to scream and scream, but you won’t be able to. She’ll take her time, and it will take you hours to die. But when she’s done, you’ll be good and dead and your own mother won’t recognize what’s left of you.”

  Everyone stared at her, horrified.

  “You’re lying,” the boy stammered.

  “You sure?” She smiled wider.

  Blanching, the boy stepped back and joined his comrades, clearing the cobblestone path to the apothecary’s. Adira pulled Moshe forward and they marched on.

  “That was a good lie,” Moshe whispered when they were out of earshot.

  “What makes you think I was lying?” she whispered back, feeling elated that her bluff had worked.

  “But Mama Silklegs is dead!”

  She stared down at him. “Do you think death would stop her from avenging her children’s murder?”

  Her baby spinweb kicked inside its shell.

  Moshe shivered. “But Mama was kind and gentle. She’d never hurt anyone like you said she would.”

  “Maybe not like that,” Adira admitted. “She was kind and gentle. With us. But do you remember the bandits who kicked in the door and tried to carry mother away?”

  Moshe nodded uncertainly. “Mama chased them off?”

  She shook her head. “She ate them. Swallowed them down like goats. We told you they ran so you wouldn’t have bad dreams.”

  *

  When they got home from the apothecary, Adira gave her father the tin of powdered flowers.

  “Did you and Moshe mind your eggs?” he asked.

  “Of course.” She unbuttoned her coat to show him.

  His eyes widened. “What has happened to it?”

  She looked down. The egg had turned a deep scarlet, red as roses and blood.

  “I—I don’t know,” she replied. “It didn’t get so much as a bump.”

  “Did it get too hot, maybe?” Her father put his ear to the top of the shell and listened for several minutes.

  “The baby is moving fine,” he finally said. “I have never seen an egg turn this color, but I certainly have not seen everything in the world. Take care of it, and I’ll take care of your mother, and we’ll both hope for the best.”

  *

  It took her father most of the evening to brew the elixir. Adira had high hopes when he brought it into the sickroom, but even after he got a whole teaspoon down her mother’s throat, nothing happened.

  “Well.” Disappointment was plain on his face. “Don’t lose hope, child. Sometimes it can take the elixir a while to work. I’ll give it to her every few hours; in the meantime, keep watch and let me know if her breathing changes.”

  Adira spent most of the next three days in her mother’s sickroom, alternately singing songs to her mother and silently petting the scarlet egg, hoping both of them would be all right.

  On the fourth day, the egg nearly jerked out of her hands when the baby gave a very strong kick. And the shell had cracked!

  “Father! Father, come quick, I think it’s hatching!”

  Her father and Moshe and Dalia rushed into the room.

  “Mine’s not hatching; when does mine hatch?” Moshe complained.

  The baby spinweb kicked again, and a hairy crimson leg poked through a fracture in the shell.

  “Help it come out,” her father encouraged. “Carefully!”

  Adira began to pull bits of loose shell and tough membrane away, and the baby spinweb kicked mightily with all eight legs until the hole was big enough to struggle through. The newly-hatched spinweb was damp, but his fur was soft as dandelion fluff and so very bright, a much braver red than any dye she had seen. His four eyes were the brilliant blue of a cloudless winter sky.

  From the corner of her eye, Adira saw her mother stir on the bed.

  “Guardian...” her mother whispered. Her crackling voice was filled with awe.

  “My lord!” her father breathed. “He is a guardian! Our family has not seen one in over a century.”

  “A guardian?” Adira wondered aloud. “Will he make a different kind of web?”

  The baby touched her face with one long leg, and she met his gaze. A strange warm buzzing filled her mind, and for a moment she was dizzy.

  No webs. I only...protect. You protect. We save family.

  Just as Adira realized she was hearing the hatchling’s voice inside her own head, a quick succession of prophetic images flashed through her own mind, images of the royal guards kicking in the door just as the bandits had, of her unarmed father falling beneath vicious sword blows, her mother weeping over Moshe’s bloodied corpse. And most of all, fire, fire everywhere, and the spinwebs wailing as flaming roof beams rained down upon them.

  The prince will bring terror, the guardian said, his voice stronger and clearer in her mind.

  “Why? Why would he do that?” The images he’d put in her mind were so terrible she wanted to vomit.

  Hatred. It has hatched in the town. They need someone to blame for the troubles the prince is causing, and he has chosen us. I saw the boys’ minds, saw the foulness their parents and priests are teaching them, and I knew I had to alter myself. You and I can stop the future I have glimpsed.

  “How?” It was hard to talk, hard to breathe. “How can we stop it?”

  Distantly, she heard her little brother ask, “Why’s she saying that?” only to be shushed by their father.

  You can change, too. There is time before the prince’s mind-poison spreads so much that the townsfolk abandon their own religion’s teachings and turn to violence against us. We will both become warriors for our peoples before that happens. If you are willing.

  In her mind, she saw herself traveling to a kingdom in the south where strong men and women rode proudly atop mighty armored spinwebs. She saw herself training her body and mind, learning to fight with her hands and a sword and a lance atop her scarlet spinweb. But most of all, she saw herself sitting with an old priestess, learning to use words and her wit to douse the fire of an angry opponent’s violence. It was a vision she liked better than any of her own daydreams.

  Not spinwebs, he corrected. We spin no webs. We hunt those who are violent, and we protect those who are peaceful. We are Akavishim.

  “Akavishim,” she repeated, and she heard her parents gasp.

  What do I call you? she asked.

  Brother Firebelly, he replied. I am yours.

  “And I am yours.”

  The Strange Architecture of the Heart

  Mira watched her husband Jeffrey draw invisible signs in the air in front of the couch. He’d been planted there for hours; she couldn’t tell if he was coding or gold farming. His blue sensory visor was tight across his eyes and ears. She couldn’t hear the music, or whatever he was listening to, but clearly it was loud enough to drown out the thunderous crack of the bomb exploding down the street.

&nbs
p; She hesitated, then stepped forward and tapped him gently on his left shoulder. His whole body jerked in surprise, and he hit the button on the side of his visor to turn the digital lenses transparent.

  “What’s up?” He gazed up at her through his smudged glasses, looking annoyed and disoriented.

  “Another one got through the shields. Down the street. It took out the United Dairy Farmers store.” The Hand of God southern apocalyptic cult had been blown to microscopic ash in a government anti-terrorism raid, but their cloaked Khishchnik satellite was still in high orbit somewhere, periodically sending honeybee-sized fusion bomb drones down to random northern cities. It was the most senseless of senseless violence, but nobody in charge seemed able to stop it. Or they didn’t have the political will to stop it. Either way, experts guessed that the satellite was packing more than ten thousand drones.

  “Oh, jeez.” He blinked, his eyes focusing on her a bit more. “Anybody hurt?”

  “Four killed, they’re saying. A woman and her two little boys. And the store clerk.” Mira felt sick picturing them all lying there in pieces in the rubble. She hoped they hadn’t suffered. The boys’ father had to be beside himself with grief. She didn’t know him or his dead family, but she could imagine what he was going through.

  “Damn.” An expression of sympathy attempted to crawl across her husband’s face, but it died past his lips. “Well, when it comes, it comes.”

  He lifted his hand to tap the button and shut her out again, but she reached out and put her hand on his. Her heart quickened in her chest; she was too nervous to say I miss you. Please make love to me, so instead she stammered, “I’m scared. Could you come upstairs with me for a while?”

  It wasn’t a lie. The drones scared the shit out of her. They killed her father. They killed her girlfriend Amy. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do to protect herself or anyone else, except move down south. Which meant leaving everyone they knew and everything they’d worked for and becoming refugees. All the Southern cities were bursting with people and housing was so expensive that they’d be broke in a matter of months even if she found decent work on top of Jeffrey’s job. It felt like they’d be trading the possibility of a quick death with the certainty of slow starvation.

  “Please?” she said.

  Jeffrey opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, going silent for two or three seconds. In those fleeting moment she imagined that they went upstairs, hand-in-hand, and he lay down with her to cuddle, and soon they were kissing, and then they were having sex for the first time in five years.

  And then she imagined that she got pregnant, and she didn’t miscarry like last time. She imagined she gave birth to a healthy baby who had his blue eyes and her curly brown hair, and she imagined she finally had a family. She imagined what it would be like to feel the weight of her baby’s warm head in the palm of her hand. She imagined what it would be like to have a toddler grab her legs and say “I wuv you, Mama!” She imagined no longer having to sneak off and cry in the women’s restroom when the young secretaries announced their pregnancies at her office.

  “I really need to work,” he said. The same thing he’d said every night since she miscarried. He’d seemingly convinced himself that if he just stayed busy enough, he’d never have to face his own grief over losing their child.

  She felt all her fragile imaginings crumple into nothing.

  “Please?” she whispered.

  “There’s a 30% bonus if I can get this deployed by midnight.” He looked puzzled, then frowned in concern toward the kitchen. “Is Rachel malfunctioning?”

  Heat rose in her face. “No. I just…wanted to be with you….”

  His expression was blank, distant. “I’m really busy. Sorry.”

  The sudden spike of anger felt like battery acid in her chest. But she made herself smile. “Fine.”

  She turned away and went into the kitchen, where Rachel was kneading bread and humming Christmas carols. Just ever-so-slightly off key, sometimes; it was part of her naturalistic programming.

  Rachel was a Juno 2500 Personal Assistant Android. She’d been Amy’s, purchased via the proceeds of a large National Science Foundation grant awarded to Amy’s lab. Rachel started as a gene sequencing slave, but soon she was upgraded to work as Amy’s personal assistant at conferences and was quite well-received at poster sessions.

  Amy brought Rachel with her when she visited three years before. Jeffrey didn’t care that his wife had a girlfriend; he probably wouldn’t have cared if she had a boyfriend, either, but at the time that felt like a step too far to Mira. Mira took Amy upstairs and they made love while Rachel made them all dinner. Afterward, Amy decided to go to the store to find a kind of Riesling she liked.

  A honeybee drone hit her on the way home; there wasn’t anything left of her to bury.

  Mira spent weeks lost in a fog of depression; when she emerged, she realized that Rachel was still puttering around their townhome. Apparently, nobody from Amy’s university had come looking for Rachel or had even asked about her; everyone assumed she had been vaporized along with her mistress.

  Furthermore, Jeffrey had changed Rachel’s serial number records in the national database and had programmed her with additional behaviors and skill sets. Mira discovered this when, after one of her crying jags, Rachel gently hugged her and oh-so-politely asked if cunnilingus might take her mind off things.

  As it turned out, it did.

  Since then, Mira had used a big chunk of the money she’d been saving for adoption search fees to swap out Rachel’s decorative genitalia with a fully functional package modeled on that of a male porn star whose movies Mira intended to never see.

  “Rachel,” Mira said.

  The lovely android stopped kneading the dough and turned, smiling expectantly. A millisecond later her face took on a perfect expression of concern. “You look so sad! What’s the matter?”

  “I’d like you to take me upstairs and fuck me unconscious.”

  “Okay, but…I think your blood sugar is low. You should eat something. I can make you a snack?” Rachel wiped her hands off on her apron.

  The android was equipped with a multitude of bioscanners and was never wrong about such things. “Okay. Fix me whatever.”

  Rachel carefully set the dough aside in a glass pan, draped it with a damp tea towel, and made a perfect, tiny peanut butter sandwich and poured her a half-glass of milk to go with it. Mira dutifully ate it.

  “Do you feel better?” Rachel asked.

  “I do, thank you. Now, please take me upstairs....”

  *

  Afterward, Mira fell into a hard sleep on Rachel’s soft, lifelike bosom. Unlike Jeffrey, Rachel would not have a bad dream at 3am, slip out of bed and go work on the couch. Unlike Jeffrey, Rachel would not start perspiring in the middle of the night and fill Mira’s ears with trickling sweat. Unlike Jeffrey, Rachel could never get her pregnant.

  Mira woke and quietly began to weep.

  Rachel stirred. “There, there. What’s the matter?”

  “I want a baby,” Mira confessed. She felt like a loser saying it out loud. Here she was, nearly forty, a damnable cliché of a woman with a ticking biological clock. And she was in no position to have a child, not physically, not logistically, not in any way. It took a village to raise a child, she knew, and had no village. She didn’t even know their neighbors’ names. Worst of all, she couldn’t talk herself out of her heart’s desire. “I want a baby so badly and I can’t have one. Jeff won’t help me….”

  “I would be glad to help you care for a child,” Rachel said.

  “I’d need Jeff to fuck me at least once,” Mira replied bitterly.

  “You could get artificial insemination.” Rachel sounded slappably cheerful. “Or you could adopt.”

  “All of which require money. Which I…have spent on other things.” Her shoulders sagged at the admission. The one thing I want most in the world, and I just don’t want it badly enough to actually do anything about
it. Loser.

  “Like what?” Rachel chirped.

  “Like you. Your upgrades, anyhow.”

  “Oh.” The lovely android paused. “What about a boyfriend?”

  “What about one?”

  “A boyfriend could get you pregnant at low or no cost!”

  “Rachel, baby, if I could get myself a boyfriend, I’d be with him this very minute.”

  *

  The next night, Rachel went out to go grocery shopping and was gone for so long that Mira began to fear that she’d been stolen. The tracking software on her phone said the android was about four blocks away from where she should be. In a nightclub, of all places. Had she been kidnapped? Mira didn’t know if she should call the police or just keep waiting. She paced while Jeffrey did his technological pantomimes on the couch, oblivious.

  But then Rachel came through the front door, half-carrying a guy who was pawing at her breasts. The curve of his strong jaw reminded her of Jeffrey. He was somewhere in his mid-20s, and his tight black tee shirt showed off his gym-buffed arms and chest, muscles as flashy as any peacock’s tail. But he was so drunk that Mira doubted he could stand on his own. She wrinkled her nose at the stink of beer and dance club sweat.

  “What’s this about?” she asked Rachel.

  “I brought him for you!” Rachel beamed. “He’s a perfect complement to your genetics!”

  “Uh.” Mira watched the guy twist Mira’s nipples like he was trying to tune an old-fashioned radio. “That’s...very thoughtful of you, but...no.”

  “Why not?” Rachel frowned, clearly perplexed.

  “Baby, look at him...he’s fifteen years younger than me and sloppy drunk.”

  The young man lifted his head from Rachel’s chest and ogled Mira with bloodshot eyes. “Ahmna drunk, juss alil tipsy.”

  “If you’re worried about his performance, he’s had an erection for over an hour.”

  “I’m...sure he has.” Mira bit her lip, trying to figure out how she could gracefully get the young man out of her house.