When I wake my arms are empty. You are gone. The elders spoke of this before—loss, how we would come to know it if we aged. We are not aged, it’s too soon.
The humans— There is one pair of eyes at the window. Hazel. Despite the gravity in this place, despite the weakness in my sun-deprived limbs, I push myself to standing. I rush the wall, slam a shoulder into it, make that window vibrate. The hazel eyes go wide, and then I’m screaming. Words he won’t understand, about you and sunlight and how we cannot live confined. My throat strains—we are only this vocal when mating. When I quiet, the male human turns away.
We learn the room we have occupied vents to the outside; they bring you back, small and gray and how like a husk even though rounded with child. You are cold when I draw you against me. The humans seal the room and then one wall parts; I can feel their gravity flood out while the scent and heat of our own world rushes in—here come the winds, tonguing sand into every corner, over the food we have not touched.
The humans watch, study—I don’t care. I carry you out of their habitat and toward their strange vineyard. I lay you down amid the sun-drenched rows and press grapes into your skin, crushing juice over your stigma. You bloom, warmth and color starting at your edges, bleeding inward. The humans are still staring when I look up at them. The male presses his hand against the flat of their habitat window.
You are light as air in my arms as we notch into each other. The days are growing shorter, the sunlight fleeting, and soon we will be three. Carrying you both, we go. I know you miss the sky.
We trespass.
If anyone asks (and the judges will), they will say we invented it, that these landscapes do not exist for they are so completely different than the spaces within our own forms. The human body is tightly contained, and yet—
I sink into her consciousness as easily as she breathes, and she is all dark warmth. This deep, light does not pierce skin or muscle. I stretch along her bones, so unlike my bones—hard but not dense, solid and yet hollow. The marrow inside her is hot slush, suffocating, intoxicating. I move down through her arm, where it narrows at wrist and then bursts into palm, into fingers. Here, she is like the valley which nearly splits our world in two—broad and deep and fanning ever outward. Countless turns and twists, channels and ridges, rises and falls.
Her fingers are like nothing I have known, they seem clumsy when compared to my own, yet I am strangely fascinated by every tiny bone, the way the muscles move taut and then slack, the whorl of the prints which sink even to the underside of her skin. Here, there is almost-light, but it’s the dark sweet core of her I move toward.
Back up that arm, pausing in the joint that marks upper from lower. Flinging myself up and up to the shoulder, to the curl of bone which leads inward toward her heart. We have nothing so complicated as hearts, nor ribs which I step down and down. When she inhales, I cling, not yet ready to fall.
Her heart is like a sandfall—blood cascading like sand down miles of canyon, spilling careless at the bottom. I picture the forms it might take were there wind, but inside this body there is only confinement. Blood moves, a hurried river through coils of vein; the only wind is drawn down from high above, into tissue that expands, contracts, tissue that is the color of your throat. I go still at that notion, because if they share this color, what else might we have in common?
I let go and fall.
Free falling—we did this off the canyon rim yesterday and last cycle and five cycles from now. She stretches and I expand to fill all these spaces, budding nubs of flesh, gleaming edge of a rib, and I should pull back, before I lose myself entirely, but I cannot. They will say we invented it, so where’s the harm in dreaming a little longer?
Her belly is full of more coils and I am reminded of what must lurk beneath winter’s ice sheet, of what longs to explode outward as the air warms. She seems near to bursting now—out, out, we want to writhe free, but no—these bodies are contained.
Still, deeper down, deeper inside, there seems no containment—in the heart of her belly, she is as pink as sunrise, warm and wet, and she looks like us, concave from one angle and convex from another. She swells, she is hollow, she waits to be inundated even as this body can inundate itself. Small branching arms, hungry ovoid mouths. If she contains a river, she also contains the immeasurable forms which thrive in river’s flood. One body floods hers and she, she pulls that flood into herself, as if this part of her can drink the way her mouth drinks— That tongue and the curl of lips, a fathomless well I long to fall through.
I lie; this is what they tell me after they have asked (they always ask). I have created a story, so that we might spare the humans. If they are like us deep down, surely they are worth sparing.
The judges look to you for confirmation of the lie, of the story. You don’t care for fictions, knowing only facts: none will be spared, these humans threatened your child, your world, your mate. You stretch your consciousness out and pull the judges inside to do the work that must be done. No sparing, no reprieve. This body will no longer be contained; this marrow will cool.
The outpost goes silent, but the relays still run with incoming messages. Lighted panels still phosphoresce in the night, turning black to gold and blue. We listen to the voices, make shadows in the light. We play a game in the quiet corridors: how will those voices determine every human here is dead?
They will say it was a risk. Traveling to a distant world they had only dusty images and scarce data on. Traveling to a place they didn’t fully believe in. They presumed there would be no indigenous life because their data showed them none. Yes, fossils in the rock record, but that’s all they were, fossils. Evidence of past life, not present. Nothing sentient grew there. They could not believe in creatures like us no matter that their literature told them we existed. Risk is intrinsic in such endeavors. Nothing lost, nothing gained! Humans invented such phrases for these situations.
Risk plus distance divided by isolation equates madness. It crawls into one’s bones nearly the way we’re capable of. One’s brain. (Sweet, soft—don’t distract me from this game.) How much can a human stand, even if they have carted entertainment programs, books, music, and science labs across forty-eight million miles? They have come two by two, male and female, but precisely how much sex will distract one from the utter undeniable truth that they are alone in the black? Saturated walls of silk enveloping an erection is a fleeting, temporary distraction from the indisputable fact that this place is empty, that one is alone, that one will never get back home. One can pummel their blood-hard flesh into anything they like—mouth, hand, skull—try to make a home, but it will never be. Madness.
Perhaps an equipment failure, a burned relay. They can see their own messages are received, but nothing comes back. (You study those panels, noting which light brighten and which go dark as the messages come.) Concern is met with silence. Fear is met with silence. Remote sensors will tell them the outpost is intact—there was no crippling windstorm, no devastating earthquake. Ironic, that name—the scientists here were no longer on earth, remember—this world was never theirs, do not presume to name it—
Yes, names. They will come back to those, too. Mars, the god of war, red and fierce, filled with iron and anger in equal measure. Mars doesn’t give, it only consumes in its rage. They send what they like—landing rovers with optimistic names to trundle through sand, rovers to break apart our rocks and study our past. But what of our present? They never looked for that. Never named that.
What if there were sentient— That voice would be quickly silenced because the thought is irrational. There was no sentient life, they would repeat. It isn’t a possibility given the current planetary conditions. There is no liquid water, it’s not possible. But we were more than possible—they just couldn’t believe it.
They will never contemplate the truth of what took this outpost. In time, they will launch another mission with a hopeful name (Opportunity! Curiosity! Excelsior!), they will land more living beings on our world.
We do not want them here. This will never be a possibility that crosses a human mind. Surely if there were sentient life, it would welcome humanity.
They trespassed, onto a world already claimed, and set their roots into dusty, cracked soil. They coaxed life from the waste—these oblong grapes we feed to each other in the quiet of the outpost amid our game. Their sweetness makes you bloom with color yet.
We mean to leave this place to the wind and the sand, but before we go, you can’t help yourself: your grape-sticky fingers slide over the communications panel. You open that channel and I imagine human faces brightening with relief, delight, when they realize there is a message after all. They were mistaken! Share the news! But the words you speak into the relay are laden with warning, with threat, with pain. No other should come here, you say. No other should dare. Do not let this be your destination.
But years later iridescent lights descend from the sky at their return. We creep to the sand-consumed outpost, you and me and our child, and watch as the humans emerge from their ships. Our child finds a grapevine amid the sand, rips it free.
They trespass.
We trespass.
About the Author
E. Catherine Tobler lives and writes in Colorado. Among others, her fiction has appeared in SciFiction, Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, Talebones, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She is an active member of SFWA and senior editor at Shimmer Magazine.
The Banquet of the Lords of Night
Liz Williams
Severin de Rais hurries through thistledown light, with the dangerous parcel clutched close to his heart, hoping that he won’t turn a corner and come face to face with an Unpriest. He’s already late, and the Isle de Saint Luce is forbidden territory. Yet even in the midst of his terror, de Rais still thinks it’s a pity that he can’t pause and marvel, for the Isle is, by old decree of the Lords of Night, the only place in all Paris where light is permitted at this hour. But de Rais cannot stop to admire the lamps; he’s running out of time, and if an Unpriest should find what he is carrying . . . de Rais does not even dare think about it. A death sentence, surely. He glances with swift unease up at the shattered stump of Notre Dame, imagining it as it might have looked five hundred years before, filled with candles and prayers and light, before the Lords came and brought the darkness with them, conjuring the great shell which covers the world. The shell lies above the churning stormclouds, too high even to be seen, and de Rais drags his quivering attention back to the present. The metal cover of the precious, precarious parcel is sharp against his chest; the unspells which protect it burn his skin. He wonders in a delirious moment if it will rust if the rain touches it; rust and crumble into nothing more than red ash, like old blood.
The growing rain blurs the lamps of the Isle de Saint Luce so that they look like dandelion clocks, their down blown away on the wind. The light makes de Rais squint and peer, but the parcel warms his breast, in spite of the rain. Heat seeps through him like the taste of honey. The world spins briefly to summer, leaving raindrops scattered in the void. De Rais blinks at this first taste of a season he has never seen, and clasps the parcel even more tightly to his chest. Crossing the bridge which bisects the Seine and leads into the Rue Moins Pitie, de Rais pauses reeling for a moment to catch his unsteady breath. The Seine runs fast with rainswell: a mass of branches tumbles in the current, turning the water to bramble and briar. The risk that he is about to take makes de Rais wonder for a moment if it would be wiser simply to drop the parcel in the river and let the torrent carry it back to the sea, but then he turns away. Above de Rais’ head, the curfew bell begins to chime out through the darkness, telling seven o’clock through the gloom. De Rais hurries on towards the Palais.
Behind him, the lights of the Isle are soon lost as he crosses onto the familiar territory of the right bank. De Rais makes his way through dark streets, following his path with meticulously counted steps: along the Quai, down the Tuileries, into the heart of the Lords’ Quarter. Should he deviate from that path, he runs the risk of becoming lost in the maze of the city. Occasionally, he detects the faintest gleam of light upon the wet surface of a wall; neon in a blacked-out basement, a candle flickering in a secret room. And then his fears come true. Hastening around the corner into the Rue de Louvre, de Rais runs right into a group of Unpriests. Their long leather coats rustle against the pavement; their heads swivel from side to side. They are clicking like insects in a termite mound, and de Rais shrinks back against the wall, his heart hammering. But their gaze, concealed behind their black lenses, does not turn his way and in a moment they are gone. Why should they challenge him, after all? He’s only a lowly pastry chef, and he’s not on forbidden ground any more. He’s entitled to be in this quarter, the honor signified by the ribbons on his coat. Breathing a long and tremulous sigh, de Rais continues on his way.
He reaches the kitchens of the Palais shortly afterwards, and his lateness is rewarded by a bellow of rage from the head chef. Mumbling insults and excuses beneath his breath, de Rais sidles through the outskirts of the kitchens to collect his work clothes from the store. He fastens the midnight jacket around himself and adjusts the tall smoke-colored hat in the dim reflection of the mirror. His pinched, pale face seems a picture of guilt, but the parcel remains for now in the pocket of his overcoat. De Rais plans to remove it surreptitiously when things quiet down, and hide it at the bottom of the little bread oven in his own small domain. Stepping around the corner of the table, he picks up the chopping board and begins work.
De Rais is a methodical pastry chef, who believes in preparation and planning. The ingredients for today’s desserts and pastries have been assembled the night before; the last chores performed by de Rais before he made his weary way homewards. On an ordinary day, tonight and tomorrow would follow the same pattern: home to the attic room in the old Latin Quarter; a few hours’ snatched sleep, broken by the sounds from the dingy café downstairs, then back to the Palais early in the morning, with perhaps a stolen hour towards twilight when de Rais can go to the library or snatch a pastis in one of the dreary licensed cafes. But today, things changed. Today, de Rais went to meet the girl: the terrorist, the rebel, the one who gave him the parcel, and perhaps because of that tomorrow will be different too, de Rais thinks with a sudden uplift of his spirits that must surely be noticeable clear across the kitchen. He starts guiltily, and thinks careful, neutral thoughts, but it’s not easy to see the expressions on the faces of those who inhabit the kitchens. The head chef jealously guards the ration of candles; everyone else must work in the cold glow of the ovens or simply by touch. It isn’t as though they haven’t had practice, after all.
Opening the refrigerator, de Rais takes out a container and places it on the table. He opens it carefully, not wanting the essence to escape. The container is full of ice: glassy dark ice from the seas near the southern pole, a place that de Rais knows only from legend. It seems to hold its own glow: it’s almost green, like the stories the old folk tell about dawn. With a sharp scalpel, de Rais touches the edge of the sheet of ice, so that it splits and cracks into a nest of slivers. De Rais arranges the shards of ice in the center of each of the twenty seven sorbet dishes, then reaches back inside the refrigerator for the ingredients of the sauce. He plans a complex, subtle accompaniment to the simple ice: a touch of fragrant Indonesian darkness, gathered close to midnight, redolent of cinnamon and incense and spiced smoke. Placing the darkness in a bowl, he adds a pinch of flavors: twilight from Japan, warm and clouded, with a hint of star anise. Then a touch of evening from the Sinang Delta, water-clear and cool. De Rais stirs all of these elements nine times with an ebony spoon, then pours the swirl of darkness into a silver pan and lights the chilly flame beneath it. He waits, frowning, as a drift of smoke begins to rise from the sauce and then he casts it in a spiral around the little columns of ice and claps his hands imperiously for the serving staff to take it into the dining hall, where the Lords of Night are waiting. The head chef looks up, once, a
s the procession passes by, and gives a single grudging nod of approval.
Having dispensed with the appetizers, the responsibility for the meal passes on to the head chef for a time, while de Rais busies himself with the desserts. He hopes to get the chance to take the parcel from his overcoat pocket and slip it into the oven, but the head chef has got the apprentices out of his fevered way by sending them over to work in de Rais’ corner, a not-uncommon occurrence. Frustrated, de Rais gets on with his own tasks. He prepares fondants of gloom, sorbets of shadows, and sherbets of dusk; each one gathered from the far and unseen corners of the Earth. Then de Rais wipes his weary hands on his apron and steps back to admire his handiwork. Behind him, the booming voice of the head chef says,
“Not bad. Perhaps there’s some promise in you after all.”
De Rais jumps like a tortured hare. Turning, he snaps, “Don’t do that! You startled me.”
“Why?” The head chef thrusts his cadaverous face close to that of de Rais. “Nervous? Been doing something you shouldn’t? Been gobbing in the fondants again?”
De Rais bridles; he’d never dream of doing such a thing and the head chef knows it.
“Get over there, boy, when you’ve finished. I want some help to scrub the floors.”
The head chef’s head jerks in the direction of the apprentices and they scramble after him as he ambles back towards the cold crimson glow of his own territory. Heart pounding, de Rais sidles into the store, retrieves the parcel at last and slides it underneath the iron floor of the little oven. The package is still warm. It seems to radiate its own heat, and de Rais is relieved when at last it’s safely out of sight. Then, he goes to where the head chef is waiting and begins to rinse the stone floor clean of blood. He keeps thinking about the package lying in the oven. Once more he rehearses the plan that has been steeping in his mind ever since the girl gave him the parcel.
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 80 Page 3
