Forever Magazine
Page 18
There was an ache in her gut that said, No more future, no more chances . Always the future had been there, a sketchbook where she could try out new scenarios. Now experimentation was done; only action was left.
She came to the main road, then retraced the way back past the turnoff to the Flens, past the landscape painting, speeding faster with every mile. As pine trunks flashed by in the darkness, Thea said, “That was the turnoff to the house. You missed it.”
“I know,” Galena said.
The road curved and plunged downwards, into the valley of the stone shapes. Thea said tensely, “Stop, Galena. I can’t leave.”
“Yes, you can,” Galena said. “And I think you’d better, before they’ve brainwashed you completely.”
She pressed down on the gas, wanting to get past the rock formations that loomed in frozen motion over the road. The passenger-side door opened, and Galena heard the pavement rushing past. She reached over to grab Thea’s arm, only to feel it pull away. The loony girl was actually going to jump. Galena braked hard, and the car slewed around on loose gravel. For a moment she had a terrifying out-of-control feeling. Then the car came to rest in the roadway, facing back the way it had come. The headlight beams pointed crookedly into the dust and exhaust. The passenger seat was empty.
Galena left the car door open and walked down the harsh beams of light, searching the shoulders for a sign, her stomach muscles clenched. Then, ahead on the roadway, she saw Thea’s silhouette, walking steadily away from her. She sprinted to catch up.
“Thea!” She grasped the girl’s arm and forced her to turn around. “Are you—” The headlights caught Thea’s eyes and they shone back, bright and preternatural.
Instinctively, Galena stepped back. Then a desperate sense that she was losing overcame her, and she grasped Thea by the shoulders. “Fight them, Thea! Don’t surrender, don’t let them control you. Be yourself.”
A wan smile crossed Thea’s face, too wise and knowing for her young features. “Myself?”
“Yes.” Galena clutched her tight. “The Thea I knew.”
Thea’s voice was maddeningly adult. “The Thea you invented, you mean. I know all about being dominated, Galena.”
Galena loosed her grip, deeply stung. “That’s not true! All I ever wanted was for you to be yourself.”
“Then let me go,” Thea said.
“Not to give up your freedom,” Galena said stubbornly. “Not to become something that’s not even human.”
“The only humanity I lose is the ability to make things ugly.”
“Oh, isn’t that great,” Galena said, bitingly sarcastic. “Why don’t we all join the Dirigo, then, and have a world of people who want nothing but beauty. A world of saints and artists.”
“Why not?” Thea said.
There was a cloud of sparks around her head, like a halo in a medieval painting, but they cast no light on her features. Half to them and half to her Galena said, “Because it wouldn’t be a human world, Thea.”
There was a silence. The rock shapes around them seemed to be listening. “Then I don’t want to be human,” Thea said.
She was leaving her face, retreating back behind those eyes that revealed nothing. When she turned again to walk into the dark, there was no one left to stop.
The shoal of silver slivers that had hung above Thea’s head did not leave with her. They still hung in the air, darting about in school formation.
Galena knew that she too could wear a halo of stars if she only consented. There was a heavy lump inside her gut—her own inhabiting being, eating her away from inside.
“Get out of here!” she shouted at the pinprick lights above her. “Let us be! You’ve got no business trying to make us better than we are.”
Her footsteps sounded heavy and corporeal as she walked back to the car. When she had turned it around she paused with her foot on the brake, caught on a snag of grief. For a moment she rested her forehead on the steering wheel, then shifted blindly into drive.
She had her comebacks ready by the time she got to Williston. When the car dealer’s eyebrows cast aspersions her way, she said, “The Dirigo didn’t want me. I guess they saw I was already alienated enough.”
She would have been ashamed to commit a pun in Chicago, but this was North Dakota.
The sweaty, overly familiar salesman in the seat next to her on the plane found out where she had been and said jocularly, “Did you see any aliens?”
“Not as many as I’ve seen since coming back,” Galena retorted.
As they circled high above the fumes and grime of O’Hare, caught in traffic, she looked down at the barren mess humanity had made of the landscape and imagined it all melting away like one of Thea’s frost paintings.
It would never happen. If humanity were offered salvation on a silver platter, someone would probably just mug the messenger.
She shifted, feeling the bed of nails beneath her.
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Originally published in Bending the Landscape , edited by Stephen Pagel & Nicola Griffith.
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About the Artist and Authors
Forever Magazine | 471 words
Ron Guyatt (ronguyatt.com)
Ron Guyatt is a self-taught artist and professionally-taught graphic designer from Toronto Canada. He attended George Brown College for Design Foundation where he completed with Honors and then followed with his three-year diploma in graphic design at George Brown College.
Inspired by Art Deco, film and science fiction he loves to design posters & create illustrations. His work as been featured in magazines such as Games TM, Level, and Playstation Magazine and worked with clients like EA, Digital Devolver and Bioware.
His Forever cover art is available for purchase as part of his space poster series at: fabledcreative.bigcartel.com/category/space-posters
James Patrick Kelly
James Patrick Kelly made his first sale in 1975, and since has gone on to become one of the most respected and popular writers to enter the field in the last twenty years. Although Kelly has had some success with novels, he has perhaps had more impact to date as a writer of short fiction, and is often ranked among the best short story writers in the business. His story "Think Like a Dinosaur" won him a Hugo Award in 1996, as did his story "10^16 to 1," in 2000. Kelly's first solo novel, Planet of Whispers, came out in 1984. It was followed by Freedom Beach, a mosaic novel written in collaboration with John Kessel, and then by the solo novels, Look Into the Sun and Wildside, as well as the chapbook novella, Burn. His short work has been collected in Think Like a Dinosaur and Strange But Not a Stranger. His most recent book are a series of anthologies co-edited with John Kessel: Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, The Secret History of Science Fiction, Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, and Nebula Awards Showcase 2012. Born in Minneola, New York, Kelly now lives with his family in Nottingham, New Hampshire.
Nina Allan
Nina Allan’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best Horror of the Year #6, Solaris Rising #3, and the Shirley Jackson Award-winning Aickman’s Heirs. Her novella Spin , a science fictional re-imagining of the Arachne myth, won the BSFA Award in 2014, and her story-cycle The Silver Wind was awarded the Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire in the same year. Her debut novel The Race was a finalist for the 2015 BSFA Award, the Kitschies Red Tentacle, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her second novel The Rift will be published by Titan Books in July 2017.
Caroline Ives Gilman
Carolyn Ives Gilman is a museum exhibit developer by day and a science fiction writer by night. Her latest novel is a space exploration adventure, Dark Orbit . Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Interzone, Universe, Full Spectrum, Realms of Fantasy , and others. She has been nominated for the Nebula Award three times and for the Hugo once.
Gilman lives in Washington, D.C., and w
orks at the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution). She is also author of several nonfiction books about North American frontier and Native history.
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About Forever
Forever Magazine | 88 words
Forever Magazine is edited by Neil Clarke and published monthly by Wyrm Publishing. Subscription information is available on our website at forever-magazine.com.
Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine (clarkesworldmagazine.com), Forever Magazine, and Upgraded; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a four-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). His latest anthology, Galactic Empires, was published earlier this year and the second volume in his Best Science Fiction of the Year anthology series will be published by Night Shade Books this month. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.
Thank you for reading Forever Magazine.
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