by Various
The sun dogs present Laika with something she has not had in many forevers. They offer her choice.
If revenge is what she wishes, they will punish the whitecoats for their misdeeds. They will take everything from the humans—sight, hearing, even their smell—and leave them stumbling alone in darkness, scentless nothings not even a sharp-nosed hound could track. The marrow they gnaw from bones will taste like fog. The chirping of birds and mice and the trickle of clear water will go unheard. If they roll in carrion, the smell will drift right off their hairless skins. All Laika has to do is ask.
They can give her freedom, too. She will sing the forever-songs alongside them, endless and happy, bright as the sun that once hung in the sky. Her old body will burst into cinders like a log exploding in a blaze, all flame-crackle and burn smell, and the new one that emerges will be fiery, with great flaming wings to carry her wherever she pleases. Laika will have a pack. Brother is lost to her, but she need never be lonely again. There are new trails to follow, new sights to see and sniff and chase, new worlds she needn’t be afraid of. All she has to do is wish it so and it will be, as sudden as weeds burning.
Or they could simply send her home. Alone, of course, but back in her world, some place the whitecoats will never find her. Dirt between her toes, frost on her whiskers, and all of this nothing more than a terrible nightmare. All Laika has to do is think the thought.
She considers each in its turn, rolling them over inside her head like a crow with a nut. She gnaws at the marrow of them. But what Laika finally chooses is none of these things. Instead, she sends back an old dream: green grass, a warm kitchen smelling of stew and root vegetables, and Brother stretched out beside her, happy and safe on a battered blue blanket.
THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH, THE MADNESS OF MEN
by Brooke Bolander
First published in Nightmare (Nov. 2013), edited by John Joseph Adams
• • • •
THE CREW is drowned, the ship is flayed to ribbons and splinters, and her own arms are a-rotted down to yellowed bone and salt-cured jerky not even the gulls will touch. Cross-legged on her chunk of life-raft, staring at that familiar line of decaying blubber through the spyglass, all Captain Perth can think, over and over again, is: just a little further. Just a little further and things will right themselves, if only I am strong.
Madness tastes like copper and salt, old fish and the rank flavor of your own tongue putrefying between your clenched teeth. It stinks like guano, wet lumber, rancid fat from a beast almost as unnatural as yourself. Sometimes—on the bad days—it smells like the memories of places and people you’ll never get back, gardens and faces you will never see again in all your long, miserable lifetime. Perth chases the whale because it’s all she knows how to do. Perth chases the whale because it was there when all the world was green, and she cannot let go of the cursed thing even to lay down and die. All well and good for the salts to wag their grizzled heads and say oh aye, madness is repeating the same course over and over again and expecting a different port at journey’s end, no doubt about that. It never seems like madness when you’re the one at the helm; if it did, mad people wouldn’t be mad in the first place.
Just a little further. Her finger-bones are curled around the harpoon in a lover’s grip. The seabirds scream and swoop to scoop beakfuls of sloughed flesh and oil from the swells, what’s left of the makeshift sail snapping in the wind above like a ghostly coachman’s quirt. The sun rises and sets and rises and sets and ’round and ’round they go, on and on in the same pathetic, tottering bilge donkey’s circuit. Just a little further, and everything will be as it was before.
But she knows that this is a lie.
• • •
There are as many theories about the whale’s origins as there are rusted harpoons jutting from the creature’s back. The most popular ones say it was revenge that stirred the great flippers back into motion. A podmate butchered, or a calf lost, or half a dozen other silly, sentimental claptraps that sound more like children’s tales than the back-and-forth mess-cabin musings of grog-addled, louse-kissed sailors.
Bilgewater, all of it. Perth knows better. That kind of anger burns up too fast and too easily, and while some have a reserve that goes on smoldering for years or decades or lifetimes, that’s not what this is all about. The whale seems to want nothing more than to quietly fall apart like a slice of old cheese in a puddle. It doesn’t eat maidens; it doesn’t wreck ships. It swims on and on, aimless as bad luck.
Rage can’t keep you going like that, but sadness and old regrets can. Perth has her own theories as to why a body might keep moving long after life and hope have been drained away. Her free hand finds the locket hanging ’round her neck, the chain sunk deep and permanent into the cured flesh. Barnacles have sealed the pendant shut, but she knows the face inside by her dried fig of a heart; she needs no oyster pry to recall that. When she’s at the bottom of the deeps with only the hagfish and the anglers and the bones of barquentines and bowheads to keep her company, she’ll dream of it still.
• • •
The days and nights have long since melted into a solid yellow mass, like a tallow candle left burning too long on a nightstand. Occasionally she sees other ships on the horizon. (And how many ghost stories has she inspired now? she wonders. What do sailors and whalers think when they look out through their own spyglasses and see her squatted on her scrap of drift, grinning ivory and curling at the edges like a sun-dried perch?) But the ships she sees are as unremarkable as seabirds or sunsets, nothing worth wasting memory on.
It takes a great event to differentiate one sunrise from the next. In this case it’s a storm, fiercer and blacker than any Perth’s encountered since the day her ship and her lungs first took on water. A black line of sediment on the horizon that sprouts a crop of thunderheads. Waves that pace and toss their heads with growing restlessness as the afternoon suddenly goes dim. The deep, stifling pause before the first bolt of lightning splits the sky from liver to lights. Wind and rain, buckets and buckets of it, turning the air to water and the water to darts and the whitecaps to jagged, monstrous jaws that could swallow a church steeple whole.
And then the whale. It never strays too far, her prey. Maybe there’s something inside that won’t let it, a hateful little voice hissing you’ve earned this.
It breaches close enough to her raft that she can see the bones of the flippers shining through rents in the flesh, like white faces behind ragged curtains. Up and up and up it climbs, an entire continent of rotten meat, a mountain range of carrion. Slimy things wriggle and squirm in eye sockets the size of hogsheads. Water sluices down from its mottled gray back, pocked and pitted as the moon. Through the storm’s teeth Perth watches as it blots out the sky above her—it seems to go on forever, the shark-gnawed flukes, the belly riddled with streaming caverns—and, for the first time in who knows how long, something akin to an emotion stirs in her chest. A strange kind of happiness, maybe, out here in the maelstrom with the sea and the spume and the horrid awesomeness of the whale.
But it passes, as all distractions do. The whale completes its arc and vanishes into the green-black as quickly as it came. A wash of memories slams into her. She falls to her gristly knees and vomits seawater flecked with bits of stomach lining.
“Don’t leave me,” she says. “Please. Come back.”
• • •
Recollection always comes, whether you want it or not.
Sheaves of letters on paper yellow as sun-rotted silk, scattered for the wind and the waves to rifle when Perth’s hopes swam north and her ship sank south. She kept them in a hatbox beneath her bunk in the captain’s quarters, because she was no stronger in life than she would be in death, and torturing herself with old hurts and wrongdoings had become an addiction more powerful than the opium pipe. The script (firm, no-nonsense, blue ink) had been traced by greasy fingertips so many times only the imprint of the words remained, carved into the pulpy surface like a sailor’s initials wh
ittled into a beam. And then the sea took those as well, and she was left with nothing but the memory of a goodbye, and she knew that this, too, was her doing. Take the medicine you’ve earned, dearie duck. Swallow every last blessed, bitter drop.
• • •
The whale beaches itself on a strip of pockmarked stone and black sand. Dead trees reach up to clutch at the gray sky’s skirts. Bones lay scattered up and down the coast for as far as the eye can track, rolling like a cast die each time a wave rolls inland. They rasp against the underside of Perth’s raft as she pulls ashore, the only bright and polished things in this faded daguerreotype of a landscape. She kicks them aside. Surf the color of driftwood foams around her ankles.
“No,” she says. The noise is less her rotted tongue and vocal cords making recognizable words and more the universe remembering what that might have once sounded like. “Never.”
She takes a swaying step. Another. Invisible strings pull her along the sandbar, staggering the final yards like an old dog finding her sealegs. The bulk of the whale crests before her, bone and barnacle and bare, slippery sinew. Baleen between the jaws like an antiquated harp with all the strings snapped and fraying. Hagfish wriggling slimy sailor’s knots through what’s left of the flesh. When she lays her finger bones against its ruined side she can feel the faint vibrations of their stirring, like the ghost of a long-dead pulse. “Get up, gods damn you. We’re not done yet. We can’t be done.”
A groan comes from somewhere deep inside the beast. It’s the sound of an old ship threatening to break apart, finally strained beyond what oak and iron can endure. Let me die the final death, woman. The bottom aches for my bones. The crabs and the little nibbling fish call out to me. My ancestors sing songs of rest from the silt. Unclench your grip and let go, for both of our sakes. Mercy. Mercy for your soul and mine.
Perth ignores the plea and pushes. Her claws sink elbow-deep into the jellied mass. Twenty able-bodied living men could not move the mountain but beneath the straining gibbet’s wreck of her it shifts, ever so slightly. Somewhere out of sight bone strikes bone and the resistance gives her more leverage. The heels of her boots dig furrows in the wet sand. Every bit of will and concentration she has left bends towards budging the whale from its resting place. And reluctantly, resignedly, with a noise like a sigh and a noise like a sob, it lets itself be shoved towards the water, shedding bits of gristle and blubber as it grates across pumice. The oily waves slowly choke the beast back down, fore to aft.
When the gulls are through cleaning up, there’s nothing to show the beast was ever there, save a deep furrow in the gravel identical to a hundred others up and down the beach. And the bones, of course. It always sheds a few. Perth wonders how many more it has to lose. She wonders, not for the first time, how much longer they can go on like this.
She waits until the whale has a good head start. Then, harpoon in hand, she pushes her raft out into the surf and follows.
Lisa Bolekaja became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “The Saltwater African” in Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars (2013), edited by Nisi Shawl.
Visit her website at lisabolekaja.wordpress.com.
* * *
Short Story: “The Saltwater African” ••••
THE SALTWATER AFRICAN
by Lisa Bolekaja
First published in Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars (2013), edited by Nisi Shawl
• • • •
BOLA OGUN.
Tchula Walker rolled the name on her tongue. It was a thick name. Had weight. Texture. She hadn’t heard a pureblood African name in years. Purebloods fresh off the boat were a risk for slave owners, because they remembered what it was like to be free. The sweetness of it was still fresh as black strap molasses for them, and that sweetness could infect others. There were legendary stories about Africans along the Georgia coast who had escaped their bondage. Stretched out their arms and flew away. But this was Mississippi, and homegrown niggers had clipped wings.
The washerwomen were whispering about the arrival of the Saltwater African, Bola Ogun, that morning when Tchula was rubbing a poultice made of burdock root and comfrey onto her twin sister Celestine’s right hand. Celestine had a boil above her left knuckle that pussed over and stunk to high heaven, seeping yellow, orange, and pinkish-red fluid. Tchula chewed up more pieces of burdock root, fished the moist pieces off her tongue and pressed them onto the infected area before wrapping it with a clean strip of cotton.
Sitting on Tchula’s uneven oak table, Celestine blocked off her nose with a lavender handkerchief that was embroidered with her initials. She made a great show of it to Tchula, fluttering her hand so that the silken cloth was always within eyesight. It was a gift from their owner, Master Lyle Stewart.
The two solidly built washerwomen with sun-scorched indigo skin were heaving large baskets of laundry on top of their heads when they passed by Tchula’s cabin door, clucking their tongues, giddy with excitement.
“He a big man,” one woman said.
“For true. Long time since a big man walked these parts,” the other said, and then they tittered, shushing themselves. Tchula’s tiny splintering cabin was near the main house, and the women didn’t want their laughter stirring up the Stewart household.
Celestine eyed the women outside and wiped her brow with the handkerchief.
“You seen him yet?” she asked.
“No,” Tchula answered.
“You think he knows English?” Celestine asked.
“Dunno,” Tchula said. She stood up from the stool she squatted on and rubbed her hands on her dress.
“That oughta hold you. Try and keep it clean if you can. I have wash to finish.”
“You’re not curious?” Celestine asked.
“A slave is a slave,” Tchula said.
“Not this one. He saltwater. I’m gonna see him. So are you.”
Celestine grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her out of the cabin gingerly, mindful of Tchula’s bad hip and limp.
The sisters went together towards the front of the spacious colonial-style house. Stewart was talking to the owner of Bola Ogun, a flinty-eyed man known as Mr. Harper. Stewart’s slightly receding hairline had turned a splotchy crimson from the heat, and he had a look on his face that let the sisters know he was annoyed with Harper.
“I’m telling you Mr. Stewart, this slave is worth every penny. He was seasoned in Barbados for the last three years. They broke him in real good down there. And he’s a damn fine blacksmith. A skilled slave with a trade, and—” Harper moved over to Bola and slapped his hand on the slave’s arm and chest, “—he’d make a good breeder if you want to stud him.”
“Healthy?” Stewart asked.
“Got his papers right here, sir. He’s a dream investment. I’d keep him myself if I could afford to. If you don’t want him, Mr. Trammel over in Noxubee County wants a gander at him.”
“Trammel? That hump wouldn’t know what to do with a quality slave. Hand over his papers.”
Harper reached into his dingy coat and pulled out a folded paper. Stewart frowned at the soiled condition of the health record, but read it anyway.
Bola stood shackled next to two tired horses and a field hand named Luther. The new arrival was dusty, and streaks of sweat striped his face. His flared nose was pointed on the end, and his eyes were slanted and deep set. His lips were puffy, almost like a woman’s, and his head shaved bald.
“He’s a looker, eh, Tchula? Tall and solid,” Celestine said, sucking in her teeth.
“For true. Seem like he could fly off right now if he didn’t have those chains—”
“What are you two doing here?” Stewart demanded.
“Tchula was helping me with my hand Master Stewart, sir. We’re just passing through, sir. Sorry,” Celestine said, linking her arm with Tchula’s and moving them past the carriage.
Walking past Bola, Tchula smelled the so
ur stench of long travel on him. She kept her head down, but her eyes upon him. His gaze was like a gentle fondling on her cheek, and she shivered as if he had actually touched her. There was a mindfulness about him, something familiar in the way he regarded her. What impressed her most was that he didn’t have the bearing of a slave. His hands and legs were shackled, but his back was straight and his head held high. Unlike her, he was primordial, undiluted and unadulterated.
And then he smiled at her.
Not with teeth, but the curling up of those abundant lips. She found herself licking her own lips, and felt as if he’d made her do that. She tasted invisible blood in her mouth. It was a vulgar display of power on his part, and she felt compelled to smile back at him. Yes, there it is, she thought. She knew his kind well. He was a two-headed man, and she could sense his Vodun strength spilling off in waves. He had recognized her as a two-headed woman, although she veiled this knowledge publicly.
When she and Celestine headed back around towards the kitchen, Tchula knew she would have to talk to the saltwater conjure man and ferret out his mojo. She felt like she had met her match at last.
• • •
Bola stood hitting iron on a fairly new anvil in the smithy barn. It was his first official day, and Stewart had asked for new horse shoes for his entire stable. Luther, the slave who had briefed Bola on the lay of the plantation, worked by his side along with a stocky young teen named Teak who chopped wood and kept the forge fires blazing. Luther wiped his mouth and glanced out of the smithy.
“Here come trouble,” he said.
Bola finished pounding the iron shoe and slid it into a barrel of water. He saw one of the twins making her way to the smithy. This one didn’t limp. She wasn’t the one he wanted to see.
