Conmergence: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction

by Maya, Tara

  Conmergence

  by Tara Maya

  Copyright Tara Maya 2010

  Published by Misque Press at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2010, 2012 by Tara Maya

  Cover Design by Tara Maya

  Misque

  Misque Press

  First North American Edition: October 2010.

  Smashwords Edition: July 2012

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real

  persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Smashwords License Statement

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Also by Tara Maya:

  The Unfinished Song:

  Initiate

  Taboo

  Sacrifice

  Root

  Wing (forthcoming)

  Blood (forthcoming)

  Other Books by Tara Maya

  Tara Maya is the author the epic fantasy series, The Unfinished Song. You can read the first book, Initiate, for free. It is available from all online retailers or else write to me and I’ll send you a copy: tara (at) taramayastales.com.

  Acknowledgements

  Hugs for my mom, kisses for my husband and gooby kisses for my kids.

  Big thank-yous to so many others: to all the members of the Online Writing Workshop; to my many other internet writing buddies; to all of you who read and/or comment on my blog; to Michelle Davidson Argyle and Domey Malasarn of The Literary Lab; to Zoe Winters; and to my wonderful editor who knows, among other things, the proper terminology for matters neurological, Kathleen Gresham.

  Introduction

  Ten years ago, I ran away from home. I didn’t actually sleep on the streets when I was homeless. I never made a little newspaper tent or pushed around a shopping cart. If I had no place to flop for the night, I would be too scared to sleep, so I would stay awake all night, ride buses, or hang out under the single yellow light bulb over the back entrance to the public library, as if I just had a book that was urgently overdue and required me to wait all night to return it the very second the library opened at 10 am. Sometimes I stayed at homeless shelters. Mostly I crashed with friends.

  Kids run away from home for many good reasons, but I wasn’t a kid, and my reason was ludicrous. True, my mom and I had a fundamental disagreement. I wanted to write novels for a living, and I was prepared to do whatever I needed to do to achieve my dream, especially if it involved sponging off my mom and writing all day on a glass veranda that opened onto a swimming pool. My mom thought I should stop being such a frickin’ mooch, go get a real job and write as a hobby, like a sane human being. She warned me that if I tried to have a career as a writer, I would probably just end up homeless and penniless, living on the streets. She convinced me to leverage my BA into a credential to do substitute teaching. Every morning, around five AM, I dragged myself to the phone. If it rang, it meant I had to drive to some junior high school and sit through a melee of pubescent mayhem while I wrote by hand in my notebook. If the phone didn’t ring, it meant I could stay home and write on a computer by the backyard pool. Sometimes at 4:56, I took the phone off the hook.

  My mom nagged me to earn a Master’s in Education, so I could enjoy pubescent hormones as a steady career. I’m not good at saying no to my mom, so I kept promising to think about it, all the while secretly promising myself I would publish a breakout novel instead, something that would earn enough money I would be justified in writing full time. I knew it would be hard because in junior high and high school, I’d already written several novels, all awful. Then, in my late teens, I spent another five years writing a 400,000 word fantasy epic, The Games of Dragon Island: Book One of Avatars of the Archons, which I submitted to DAW when I was nineteen. I didn’t know anything about agents. Writing wasn’t a business to me; it wasn’t even an art. It was just an after-effect of being alive. You were alive, so you wrote. If you stopped writing, you would die, and also, the sun would probably go out because you hadn’t sacrificed your heart to it.

  Peter Stampfel returned my doorstop to me with a nice personalized rejection, saying thanks but they weren’t publishing any books with reincarnation at the moment, there were too many Wheel of Time imitators. Again, I was too green to realize how kind it was of him to write me a personal note. (So Peter, on the off chance you ever read this: You rock. And your banjo music rocks. Thanks.) That same year, I didn’t get into college because my grades in high school sucked. Let’s agree it was a despondent moment and move on.

  I did three things. I bummed around Europe for a while, on the pretext of learning French. I attended a Junior College for a semester, earned a 4.0, reapplied to my dream college, and this time was accepted. I also bought the first book in the Wheel of Time series, which I had never read, to see why Peter Stampfel thought my book was imitating it. I didn’t think my book was at all similar, but I did enjoy the book and then the series. There are worse writers to be compared to than Robert Jordan.

  I managed to concentrate enough on college to graduate and only once came close to flunking because I was inspired to write a book during finals. I earned better grades than I did in high school, thanks to the notable absence of math in my curriculum. But college only lasts four, or, um, five years, and then you have to either move on and Become An Adult or else hang around your mom’s house a few more years, pretending to be an adult.

  The more my mother urged me to become a teacher, the more determined I was that I had to become a professional writer, not just someone who wrote for fun. I learned all about agents, queries, royalties, advances. I began to panic about how long it would take to get published and earn real money at it. I felt guiltier and guiltier that I wasn’t working at a real job. Whole days started to go by where I stared at my computer screen, or class full of rowdy students, and wrote nothing. My mind was frozen. The sun had gone out.

  I blamed my mom.

  I knew what would happen. I would give in to the voice of reason and common sense and become a teacher. At first, I would write in the evenings, but gradually, work would overwhelm me or drain me. Queries would be sent and rejected. My inspiration would flag. I’d become depressed and self-doubting. I’d say I would write as soon as I had time. But I would have less and less time. The years would go by, and occasionally I would fiddle with my novel, or dash out a short story. But mostly I would just write the stories in my head and never have the chance to polish them.

  I decided I would rather be homeless and penniless but free to write than to subside into suburban catatonia. I had no money, no car, no career, no house, no plan. Just a dream.

  So I ran away from home to become a writer.

  And yeah, ended up homeless and penniless and living on the streets. So it turns out my mom was right all along.

  #

  Several of these stories have had previous homes in small, mostly free, mostly online magazines. A few extracts from novels have put on Groucho Marx glasses and sneaked in masquerading as novelettes. They have never before been published. However, even the stories that were published are no longer available or are difficult to track down. Honestly, some I myself had even forgotten about until I decided to compile this anthology.

  I ask all readers to let me know if you find any typos or
mistakes, so I can improve future editions.

  Ghosts on Red Strings

  For fifteen years, Osok lived next to the man who had raped her and killed her children.

  Because the banana trees grew so tall, she could not see his house from her porch, though his house, like hers, stood high on stilts. When she could, she pretended his house was not there.

  Today, while she was pounding yams under her house, he passed by on his bicycle. As he was one of the few people in the village with a bicycle, he was very proud of it. He paused in front of her house. He climbed off his bicycle, left it leaning against a tree and approached her.

  "Good day, Nabu Osok," he said with a big grin.

  Her stomach knotted. She hated his smile. What does he have to smile about? she wondered. She did not smile back.

  "Good day, Wabu Wayook," she said.

  "Fine sky today, isn’t it?"

  "It is a sunny day."

  "How are your children?" he asked politely. He did not mean, of course, the ones he had murdered. He meant the three sons she and her new husband had together.

  "They are fine," Osok said. "Fishing, with their father. I hear you are to take a new bride."

  "Yes." He flushed, puffing up a little. "From another village–-from Kalu. She is very young, but she says she loves me."

  Osok grunted. She pounded her pestle in her mortar with hard, loud strokes. It was a big, stone pestle, and she imagined smashing in his head with it.

  "I didn’t see you in the market today," he remarked. "Don’t you want to buy some bananas?"

  All the banana trees dividing their houses belonged to him.

  "Maybe one or two," she said. "But I have nothing to give you in return."

  "I want nothing."

  He went back to his bicycle to take some bananas out of the basket in the back. Osok stared at him, her heart pounding in time with the rhythm of her pestle. Trailing after Wabu Wayook were two tiny ghosts.

  They were the ghosts of her children. Each of them had been tied to him by a string for the past fifteen years, ever since he had hacked off their arms, legs and heads with his banana tree ax. Sometimes they appeared like that, limbless and bleeding, horrible to behold. Sometimes she wanted to scream when she saw them. Today, however, they looked just as they had when they had been alive.

  Her little boy, Tutut, was five. He held a toy boat in his hands, one his wabu, his father, had made for him. Tutut’s father had been killed fifteen years ago too, but not by Wayook. Therefore, Wayook did not have the string to the ghost of Tutut’s father. Wabu Bok, who lived across town and mended fishing nets, had that string.

  Her little girl, Lumu, was only three. Her eyes were big in her small brown face. Whenever she saw Osok, she strained against the red string, holding out her arms to her nabu. Tears spilled down her round cheeks. Sometimes in the night, Osok could hear her baby girl crying from next door, crying for her mother to take her back from Wayook, the murderer, crying to take her home. Today, Lumu was mute, but her eyes pleaded all the same.

  Nabu, Nabu. Take me home. Don’t leave me tied to him.

  Wayook returned with a few bananas.

  "I am ashamed of such ugly bananas," he said.

  "They are fine, ripe and yellow. I have nothing to give you for such fine bananas."

  "I ask nothing."

  Osok did not bother to gesture to the two yams she had set aside. She knew he had seen them. "Take some yams at least."

  "It is not necessary."

  "You will shame me before the ghosts," she said. It was just a phrase, just something people said while bargaining, but Osok was aware of the ghosts watching her as she spoke. They were not the ghosts of her ancestors, as the phrase intended, not ghosts at peace who could bring her fortune. These were ghosts who had seen her shamed before they died. Yes, their deaths had not spared them even that, for Wayook had raped her before he hacked up Tutut and Lumu. He and Bok and the others had made her lift her skirt right in front of her husband and children. Her husband had gone mad then and fought them like a wounded boar. Bok had thrust a fishing spear into her husband’s stomach. At that very moment, Wayook had thrust himself into her, and she had envied her husband.

  "Very well, if you have any yams," shrugged Wayook.

  "Take these, though they not are not so ripe and fine as your bananas," Osok urged, handing him the yams. She returned her attention to her mortar and pestle.

  He took the yams. He did not leave. He stood there grinning nervously. Wayook played with the red strings tied around his left wrist, the strings to her two ghosts.

  "Nabu Osok," he whispered, "Is there anything else you want to trade?"

  She knew what he wanted. He wanted to give her back her ghosts. They were her kin; only she could put them to rest. More than anything, she wanted to take her children back in her arms, burn coconut oil for them, and let them know peace. But there was only one way to redeem the ghosts from a murderer; she must forgive him.

  She avoided his eyes so he would not see the hate there. Never. Never would she forgive him for what he and his kind had done to her and her family and her people. The new queen, in her far away capital where everyone had bicycles, might say that the Day of Blood was over and it was time for peace. But the new queen’s peace did not bring the dead back to life. Osok pissed on such a peace.

  Maybe she had to live next to a rapist and murderer. Maybe she had to buy bananas from him. Maybe she had to watch him grin his stupid grin at her each morning as he passed on his fancy bicycle. But she did not have to forgive him. Ever. That was her one justice.

  Lumu began to wail. Tutut put his arm around his young sister. The two little ghosts huddled together.

  "No, Wabu Wayook, there is nothing else I want to trade," said Osok.

  Wayook forced a grin. "Good day to you, Nabu Osok."

  "Good day."

  Wayook walked back to his bicycle. Tutut and Lumu trailed after him forlornly.

  The two ghosts tied to Osok by red strings, Wayook’s former wife and daughter – whom Osok had bludgeoned to death fifteen years ago with the very pestle she now used to pound yams – sadly watched him peddle back to his house behind the shroud of banana trees.

  Comments on Ghosts on Red Strings

  My priority when I was homeless was naturally to find a good writing group. Oh, yeah, and get job. The thing I had run away from home to avoid. Ah, sweet irony of life, at last I’ve found you! I found a job as a counselor at a homeless shelter for runaways. (And here you thought homelessness was a bad career move.) It was pretty funny, actually. One week I shared a bunk bed with another homeless girl. The next week, I was in charge of giving her blankets. Which reminds me of a story I heard as a kid. In the Middle Ages, there was a Jewish man who lost his house in a pogrom. He gathered what remained of his belongings and boarded a ship to Spain, but the ship was caught in a storm. He managed to survive and clawed his way to shore. He had lost everything he had ever owned, even the clothes on his back. But he found a Jewish community and found a job teaching Hebrew. He soon had a house, a wife, and a library. The moral of the story, my mother told me, was that they can take everything from you except your education. No one can take away what’s in your brain. I’ve written some sf stories in which they can take that away too, but anyway, for me, even in the sci-fi-ish sounding year of 2000, my brain was safe. I had a college education and I wasn’t on crack, so I had a job.

  It was a great job, too. I met arsonists and rapists and one serial killer (that I know of). Lots of inspiration for a writer! I worked the night shift, and while the clients were either asleep or setting fires in the corner of the dorm room, I used the work computer to write and surf the net. That’s how I found the Del Rey Online Writing Workshop, which back then was free. (It’s not run by Del Rey anymore, and it’s not free, but as of this writing, it’s still reasonable and still great: sff (dot) onlinewritingworkshop (dot) com.)

  You may be wondering what any of this has to do with Ghost
s on Red Strings. Well, eventually, I left the homeless shelter to go be a peace activist in a war-torn country, but I remained a member of OWW. And while being a human shield, I wrote Ghosts on Red Strings. I posted it to the workshop, went off to do human-shieldy things, and when I was able to sit again at a computer, I discovered my story had chosen as the Editor’s Choice of the month and won all sorts of blush-inducing remarks from writers and editors I really admired, like Charles Coleman Finlay and Deanna Hoak.

  I had almost no time to work on my novel while I was doing human rights work overseas. I wrote a few short stories. I also kept a journal, which annoyed some of my fellow volunteers. I liked to sit on a pillow on the balcony of our shared house, at level with the tree where leaf-cutter ants were building sticky leaf-ball homes for themselves, two or three balls to a tree, each one about the size of a person’s head. My teammates preferred to smoke downstairs, below the balcony. Once, while I was typing away, click-click-click, on my laptop, they began talking loudly so I would hear.

  "What does she write all the time?"

  "She’s probably writing a tell-all about us."

  Without looking up from my screen, I shouted, "So you better be nice to me!"

  They were right, of course. I did write a book about them, or rather, about my year as a peace worker, based on my journal notes. A year after I left, the book was on its way to publication. However, there were problems with the small press that was due to publish it, and it never came out.

  Ghosts on Red Strings suffered a sad fate as well. Shortly after Ghosts on Red Strings was Editor’s Choice on the writing workshop, I had an offer to publish the story, but I wasn’t able to respond right away, and then September 11 happened, and I had other things on my mind. So I lost that opportunity, which I have always regretted. As a result, the story has never been published before, though it remained dear to me. I am happy to finally publish it here.