Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

by Phoebe Wagner

  Imran’s mother returned, several scarves draped over her forearm. “Perhaps that’s an idea. You, at least, could magically get away.

  “Make him hold his wrists together.”

  “She—she wants to bind you,” Rosalie told Laurie. “Perhaps if you cooperate they’ll treat us more humanely?”

  While the son and mother trussed Laurie—tightly at every joint, even when he moaned at their touch on his swelling hands—they discussed how to handle setting Rosalie free. At the last it was decided simply to put him in the house where he couldn’t see her leave.

  “Tell them they can’t separate us! It’s my duty to protect you,” Laurie insisted as he was carried away.

  “They say it’s their religion!” Rosalie lied. “I can’t talk them out of it!”

  With her brother safely disposed of she followed the man who had subdued him to the road. The embers in the steam bicycle’s fire box needed hardly any coaxing. By nightfall she was in Mkoan, once more with Amrita; by moonrise they were in a boat being winched back aboard Nyanza.

  §

  Nyanza’s return to Unguja, the Zanzibar archipelago’s largest island, went much more quietly than her journey out. The persistent kaskazi filled her sails.

  As courtesy dictated, Amrita and Rosalie came to the Sheikhas’ cabin when again invited. Late and cool as the hour was they sipped warm chocolate seasoned with rare cubeb rather than partaking of the customary sherbet.

  Amrita accepted a second cup. “What was the result of your divination, if I may inquire?” she asked. Her empty hand fell with seeming casualness on Rosalie’s white-robed thigh. Rosalie let it lie there. It did her no harm.

  “You most certainly may, for we obtained our results using your friend’s gift.” Ghuza pulled the tortoise pendant from the folds of her embroidered tunic. “We are to seek the will of the people.” Which Rosalie knew, on Pemba, was in favor of palms over petroleum.

  With a sigh she resigned herself to explaining this loss to Mam’selle. As Laurie had unintentionally demonstrated, things might have gone much, much worse.

  Amrita was standing, tugging at Rosalie’s sleeve, so she stood with her. Together they retired to the deck. The brisk breeze gave Amrita an excuse to tuck a shoulder under Rosalie’s arm. For now this appeared to content her. As the silver moon slipped into the sea they passed Prison Island, Laurie’s ultimate destiny. One day she would take Maman there for a visit.

  The Herbalist

  Maura Lydon

  The shop smells musty with plants; leaves and flowers hang in bunches from low rafters while living plants grow in haphazard pots along the walls. At first there is no sign of human life, though a feeling of watchfulness comes from the vine growing around the archway of the door. Several white blotches on the leaves look more like half-lidded eyes than the piebald markings of a silent weed.

  There is a counter and an account book hidden behind a pot of tall-leaved purple flowers, which quiver as the herbalist pushes through them. “Can I help you?” He emerges from the flowers like a spirit, one hand dusty with dirt and the other holding several fresh green leaves. His face is pale, but it is the pale gold of paper exposed to sunlight, not the sickly white of someone hidden away in a cave. “Do you need any herbs?”

  You hesitate, glance at the door. You’d only come to gawk; the simple question throws something out of balance. The window’s thickness between observer and observed. You look ridiculous in your paint-spattered shirt and pants, not because the clothes are out of place but because you are. You would have been more comfortable in a school uniform; like armor, it makes you anonymous. Untouchable. Instead there is this—the herbalist, unobtainably at home in this jungle of a shop, waiting for an answer you do not have.

  “Pesto,” you blurt out, remembering a conversation over pasta and green sauce. Your father and the cook, fresh ingredients, and you more interested in the latest headline from the Times: OVER ONE HUNDRED DEAD IN LATEST GAS EXPLOSION.

  The herbalist raises one eyebrow, an expression made curious by the smooth slant to his eyes. “Basil?” he asks, not judgmental. Interested. You must be blushing by now; in the back, a section of plants rustle, enjoying your embarrassment. You nod.

  His smile is a hundred attempts to reassure. You step closer to the half-hidden counter and stare fixedly at the little plant he’s rescued from the shade of a fountaining succulent. “This little one will need repotting soon, but she’ll do just fine for a sauce or two.” He spins the pressed-paper pot idly in both hands, the leaves shaking at every half-turn.

  “Great,” you say, and know your accent gives you away. Not part of this place, this shop or this neighborhood or the people who live here. Not part of anything bigger, just this: you, in a costume that should have been comfortable but is instead embarrassing. “How much?”

  At this he laughs, and you pretend to melt down into the floor. At the very least you lose a few inches of height. All you want is to get out of here, with or without the little plant. “No, it’s fine, it’s fine,” the herbalist says, but he’s still laughing at you. What’s worse is that you can’t think of what you’ve said or done to provoke it. “Here, look.”

  He retreats into the back of the shop, shoving the arm of a larger plant out of his way, and you reach out to hook one finger over the edge of the baby basil’s pot, feeling rough, hardened paper and soft dirt and the tickling edge of a lower leaf. You tug the little plant closer, and out of the cacophony of smells in this place you catch a whiff of something familiar. Basil, recognizable from the pesto last night. Looking at the wide, curling leaves, you feel a protectiveness creep through your chest. Ridiculous, for a houseplant. Your father would laugh.

  The herbalist returns carrying a five-gallon pot and a basil plant at least a hundred times the size of yours. He sets it down on the counter with a huff, brushing his fingers over the plant almost like petting a dog. You look from the plant to him, and back, wondering what this has to do with the price of your baby basil.

  “Look,” he says again, tapping several discreet purple flowers at the top of the basil. “Each of these flowers will produce up to twenty seeds, which I can save and grow. But for basil, you don’t need to worry about seedlings, because all you have to do is cut a branch and stick it in a jar of water for a few weeks.” He separated out a stem of the mother plant and mimed cutting it with fingers for scissors. “The cutting will grow roots, and you can plant it. That’s how I grew your plant. And even if I cut off every single branch from this big one, it would all grow back and I’d be up at least fifty basil plants.”

  You look down at your little one, embarrassment giving way to interest. The herbalist has a way of explaining things that include you in the conversation. It feels . . . different. Still, you aren’t about to open your mouth just to stick your foot in. When the silence starts stretching like taffy, he sighs.

  “There’s no point in my charging for the plant. Why, I should be paying you to take it off my hands.”

  You clear your throat. You hadn’t thought the stories about this neighborhood were true, not all of them. How can someone afford to keep a shop as full as this one open if he gives away product? It doesn’t make sense. And then, looking at your plant, you think of a flaw. “The pot?” you ask, eager to find holes in this place. In this plan.

  “Recycled paper,” the herbalist says. You hear him shrug. On the edges of your vision, he pushes the mother basil out of the way and rests his arms on the counter. “Made from a mold in the lab down the street. You could go check it out, if you wanted.” He sounds eager, happy. Surely he’s figured out where you’re from by now. Why doesn’t he send you away, back to where you belong?

  The funny thing is that you don’t want to go.

  “At least find a pot for your plant before you go,” he says, and you almost look up at that, expecting him to offer one. Instead he continues, “Marie runs a pottery shop in the blue house on the corner. She’d be happy to let you look for a pot. Might gi
ve you one of her rejects. Or, if you prefer, you can buy a glazed pot from her.” The laughter is back in his voice, but you can almost believe it’s not aimed at you, with how gentle he’s being.

  You tell yourself that there was no point in coming if you didn’t plan to be brave, and you look up. The herbalist smiles, and you spot a smear of dirt on his shirt. A silly thing to notice, you tell yourself, but it feels real. The opposite of your paint-smeared jeans, the blue handprint on your shoulder. Purposeful ruining of good clothes for aesthetic, not the worn preservation of something kept useful its whole life. “Thanks,” you say. If you cannot manage bravery, you can at least pretend.

  “Come back soon,” he says, and he means it. That startles a smile out of you, and your leaving, the basil plant cradled in both hands, doesn’t feel as much like a retreat as you thought it would. Through the glass on the front door, you can see the sun shining.

  Sunharvest Triptych

  Sara Norja

  I. Sea-wind

  Even after heartbreak

  Helsinki in the sunlight catches the corners

  of my mouth, tugs them up. The city

  is brimming with possibility

  even now, even without

  her. I stare sightless

  at the sea, throat heavy.

  Sometimes my breath

  catches in memory.

  That’s when I come here:

  where the wind turbines

  rotate, sluggish creatures,

  on the rocky islets

  before the city.

  I follow their movement,

  let it lull me, let the wind

  knot my hair into tangles

  I want to stay seabound

  but it’s time for the harvest

  to begin, the summerlong sunharvest

  much-awaited after winter’s darkness

  and I must make my pilgrimage,

  kohta on jo kiire—

  II. The journey

  Thighs shaking, I scale the final slope

  through the central parkforest

  to the sunfields.

  Citybike

  steady under me, its spokes

  whir like those wind turbines,

  propelled forward by my effort

  and the sunpowered motor.

  Its frame glints sunflower yellow

  brighter than my tarnished spirit.

  Yet who can remain heartbroken

  when summer is here?

  When the whole land awakens,

  when we bless the solar panels

  the fieldfuls, the rooftopfuls,

  the stained-glass-windowfuls of them:

  the harvesters of energy

  to sustain us in winter’s dark months

  when the sun barely greets us.

  Now she’s blazing

  in benediction.

  Half the city’s here

  at the ceremony. Sometimes

  we all go a bit wild afterwards,

  giddy on the day’s length,

  and yes, we’re all drinking

  sparkling things, we’re dancing

  and singing hei aurinko älä mee pois.

  In all that hustle and rush of bodies

  you take my hand,

  your touch a smooth lake-stone

  on a summer night.

  “Tuutsä meille? Olis sauna.”

  I go with you in gladness.

  III. Harvesting the sun

  Evening falls, darkness doesn’t.

  Helsinki’s a-glittering, sunset winking

  off the panels on every house

  as we bundle into the rooftop sauna,

  you me and a whole bunch of your friends.

  Someone calls: “Saaks heittää lisää löylyä?”

  The steam hisses on hot stones:

  the sound of happiness

  small but immeasurably meaningful.

  The heat enfolds me

  laughter grounds me

  and I can breathe again.

  In the half-dark

  I harvest the sunlight

  lying in wait, after all,

  within me

  A Catalogue of Sunlight at the End of the World

  A. C. Wise

  June 21, 2232 - Svalbard

  The twenty-first of June, the Summer Solstice, the longest day and the shortest night. That means less here at the top of the world where, in this season, we have sunlight twenty-four hours a day. But it seemed like an appropriate day to start this project nonetheless.

  In just over a week, the generation ship Arber will depart on its journey. The docking clamps will release, and it will go sailing off into space to find the future of humanity. This is my parting gift, a catalogue of sunlight from the world left behind.

  Of course the sun will still be there, getting farther away as they travel, but it won’t be the same. The people on that ship— those ships, leaving from all points above the globe—will never again see sunlight the way it looks here and now. They won’t see the sky bruise purple and hushed gold or the violent shades of lavender, rose, and flame as the sun creeps toward the horizon. They’ll never see the way this sun sparkles off water in a fast-moving brook or dapples the ground beneath a canopy of leaves. It won’t pry its way through their blinds in the morning, or slip under doors and through all the cracks sealed up against its intrusion. They won’t know the persistence of it, the sheer amount of it. They’ll only know its loss.

  Maybe the Arber’s children, or their children’s children will see starlight on the dust of some distant world, watch it pool in the craters of their first new footsteps and call it the sun. But not the ones leaving. The ones who grew up under its light. This is my gift to them. A little something to take with them into the cold and the dark.

  Today, the light is pure. There isn’t a cloud in the sky to cut it, no breeze to stir it off our skins. All the shadows are sharp-edged. There’s so much of it, it’s easy to forget it’s there. Ubiquitous sun. It gets over everything and under everything and inside it. Today, the light of the sun has almost no color at all, but if you squint just right, you can prism it, see the rainbow fractures flaring away from it. That is the sun here today, children. The sun you’re leaving behind. There has never been another just like it, and there never will be again.

  There. That part is for the future. This part is for the present and the past. For you and me, Mila.

  Kathe came to see me today and asked me one more time to go with them. There’s room, she said. You could stay with me, Linde, Ivan, and the kids until we figure things out. She didn’t mention Thomas.

  Kathe has pull. It comes with being Head of Resource Management, Northern Division. She could make it happen, our girl. That’s what she does, after all. She manages resources. If she says there’s room for me, then there’s room. She could probably get me the nicest berth on the ship, if I asked.

  Space travel is for the young, I told her. It’s no place for an old man like me. Besides, this is my home. I like it here. This is where I belong.

  But your children, she said. Your grandchildren.

  Her eyes. It’s hard to look at them sometimes. They remind me so much of you. I think she knew she’d already lost the fight.

  What’s the point of space? It’s just another place to be without you. I have my kettle here. I have my woolen socks and my favorite mug. I have a library full of books and music. I’ve even adopted a cat. Or it’s adopted me. A little grey kitten I’ve named Predator X. They won’t have cats in space. They’ll have genetic material, of course, but it’s hard to cuddle a test tube on a cold winter’s night and be comforted by its purr.

  §

  May 23, 2171 - Prince Edward Island

  To hell with separating past and future. This is my catalogue, and I’ll tell it how I choose and to who I choose, and I choose you, Mila.

  Obviously May 23, 2171 isn’t today’s date, and I’m not on Prince Edward Island. It’s when and where we were married. The sunlight o
n that day deserves to be memorialized.

  It was golden in the way sunlight never is outside of photographs and memories. It caught in your hair, turning those fly-away strands you could never get to behave—even on that day—into individual threads of crystal. It was sunlight in its ideal form, its most romantic form. They say it’s lucky to have rain on your wedding day, but I think that’s just something to make people feel better when their bouquets and tuxedoes and cakes and dozen white doves are all soggy and miserable.

  We were married on the beach, on the dunes, with the waves in the background and wild sea grass running everywhere around us. Those dunes are gone now. In another few years, the whole island will be gone, lost to rising sea levels like New Orleans and Florida, London and Venice. So many cities swallowed whole. But back then, it was beautiful.

  Lupines and red sand—those stick out in my mind. You insisted on traveling back to your family’s home because your grandmother wasn’t well enough to travel, and you wanted her to give you away. I didn’t have any people of my own left, so one place was as good as another to me. You were all the family I wanted and needed back then. Now that my life is coming full circle, I’m finding that’s true once again.

  The day I proposed to you was the day I stole the Gibraltar Campion from the seed vault. Silene tomentosa, your favorite flower. The first time I saw you, you were looking at a 3-D projection of it, part of the vault’s new finding aid. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was your program. You were also the one who got rare and endangered flowers added to the vault along with staple crops. You said beautiful things should be saved as well as useful ones, and besides bees and pollination and flowers—even rare and temperamental ones—are part of our ecosystem, too.