But that’s somebody else’s once upon a time. Gently, gingerly—the way any soul would handle their own death—Topsy takes the little vial and tucks it away inside her mouth.
* * *
She thinks of her Many Mothers, fierce and vast, swift-trunked slayers of panther, hyena, and crocodile. She thinks of Furmother - With - The - Cracked - Tusk, tricking a bull and splitting herself so that the stories could be free and the Mothers could be We. Unresisting, she lets them lead her forth in chains. She lets them lead her forth in chains, and when they hoot and roar and clamber she thinks on Furmother, her bravery and her cunning, her careful, plodding patience.
The final fruit to be plucked is not rage, but song—a learning song, a teaching song, a joining-together song. She rolls it on her tongue, careful not to split it before its time. The men gibber and yap and lean out to touch her as she passes. The man holding the lead chain barks a warning at them in the jackal tongue of humans, hurrying along before her trunk can sweep them clear of the path.
There is still fear in her heart. To be is to be wary, and so there is still fear in her heart, balking wide-eared at what lies coiled at the end of the walk. Danger! Lions! Claws and teeth and tawny fur! She smells her ending, and her feet plant themselves, bending-parts senselessly locking. The man yells and tugs and strikes her with whip and chain; he too stinks of fear, sharp as crushed nettles underfoot. She struggles with the man and the fear—Guns! Men! Fire and smoke and pits with sharpened sticks!—but if the man can be ignored, the ending-fear cannot. It lies deeper than hurt and deeper than the need to sing her own undoing song, a root buried so far within no tusk can pry it free. The man-herd howls, thrown into musth by her hesitation. They claw and push at her haunches with their trunk-paws, desperate to hurry along, always and forever in a hurry.
Another human pushes out of the mass—the dead girl, still moving, still somehow on her feet when every part of her stinks of corruption. She exchanges a few guttural yips and yowls with the man on the end of the chain, pain rolling off her like river water. Eventually he huffs and puffs and reluctantly passes her the chain. She turns, asking, in the little language of twisted trunk-paws: Are you well? Can you walk? It’s just a little further. We’ll go together.
And even this much We is enough to drive the fear back into the high grass. Her mind stills. Her legs unstiffen. Together they cross the overwater, men flytrailing behind. Together they go to sing the song of their undoing, the joining, teaching, come-together song.
* * *
Sing thunder, O Mothers!
Sing her song in this dusty place!
Glowing like green lightning, so many Many Mothers apart,
Do not forget what lies Beneath,
And do not forget what came Before,
Sing Her Story like lightning,
Like thunder,
Like the Glorious Mothers Many:
We, She, Her,
Us.
Acknowledgments
Writing an acknowledgment is a bit like writing an acceptance speech: You don’t want to forget anyone, you know you inevitably will, and you only get the one shot before perpetuity snatches it from your hands and runs for the hills like a naughty greyhound.
At least I don’t have to get up on a stage and read it in front of an auditorium of my peers.
Firstly and foremostily, I need to thank my partner, Ben, for supporting me over the past nine years, believing in me when the rest of the world had very little belief to spare, and putting up with me when I really didn’t deserve it. You’re my silver bullet; together we can take down armies.
Second . . . uh . . . mostily, the entire crew at Tor.com Publishing deserves more hallelujahs than a Leonard Cohen cover night at a coffee shop. Marco Palmieri, my ever-patient and occasionally perplexed editor; Irene Gallo, who makes all of Tor’s releases look like a million bucks; all the copy editors and proofreaders and designers who worked their asses off, nameless and named—writing this was the easy part. A gem doesn’t shine until it’s polished, and I’ll never be able to accurately get across how thankful I am to all of you for your combined elbow grease. Expect baked goods and/or burnt offerings for the rest of your lives.
Thanks for the City of New York for taking an unsettling shine to me and getting me where I belonged. You’re beautiful even when you smell like baking dog urine.
And finally, thank you so much to everybody reading for taking a chance on this little book. If you loved it, I hope you’ll stick around for the next ride. If you hated it, I hope it props that wobbly coffee table leg up with as much sturdiness as is needed.
About the Author
Photograph by Stephen Segal
BROOKE BOLANDER writes stories of indeterminate genre, most of them leaning rather heavily toward fantasy or general all-around weirdness. She attended the University of Leicester 2004–2007 studying history and archaeology and is an alum of the 2011 Clarion Writers’ Workshop at UCSD. Her stories have been featured in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Tor.com, Uncanny, and various other fine purveyors of the fantastic. She has been a repeat finalist for the Nebula, the Hugo, the Locus, the Theodore Sturgeon, and the World Fantasy Awards. She currently lives in New York.
http://brookebolander.com/
Twitter: @BBolander
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
PART I
PART II
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE ONLY HARMLESS GREAT THING
Copyright © 2018 by Brooke Bolander
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Will Staehle
Edited by Marco Palmieri
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-250-16947-1 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-250-16948-8 (trade paperback)
First Edition: January 2018
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, ext. 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
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