Frere-Jones shrugged.
“You know, the grains wanted me to kill Haoquin when he was young, because of his dangerous ideas,” Chakatie said. “But I refused to do it. Despite what you may believe, we anchors can still ignore some of the grains’ programmed demands.”
Frere-Jones knew Chakatie was playing her. Her mother-in-law had probably known exactly what she was doing when she gave Frere-Jones the medicine for Alexnya. With so many anchors killed, Chakatie’s children would be able to go to those lands and become master-anchors in their own right.
“I can still kill a lot more anchors, including you, before I’m taken down,” Frere-Jones said. “What do you propose to avoid that?”
“Right now you have leverage with the grains,” Chakatie said. “They don’t want you to kill hundreds of new anchors when they arrive here. So offer them a bargain. Let the day-fellow girl become this land’s new anchor. The remaining anchors in the area—meaning my family—won’t oppose her.”
Frere-Jones looked at her hands. The pistol could easily cut Chakatie in two, but she really didn’t want to kill her mother-in-law. “What do I get out of that?”
“Haoquin had some interesting ideas about the grains’ use of memories. This might be your only chance to see if what he said could come true.”
~ ~ ~
The day Haoquin died, Frere-Jones and Colton had stood side by side in the cemetery as Chakatie and the other anchors shoveled dirt onto her lifemate’s body.
Frere-Jones could still feel the grains in Haoquin’s body. Worse, she could feel them already working to isolate many of Haoquin’s memories. The grains didn’t want his heretical beliefs contaminating the land, so they were locking those memories away. They would never share those memories with anyone, most of all her.
Frere-Jones hugged her son tight. She knew the grains would do the same to her memories when she died. But if she had her way, they’d not be able to use her son. She’d free him one way or another.
And then, maybe, she’d see if Haoquin’s plan could work. The plan he’d been too kindly to actually put into action.
~ ~ ~
They stood in the cemetery where Haoquin and the other anchors of this land were buried. Alexnya and her family stood on one side of the graves while Chakatie stood on the other. The rest of Chakatie’s family patrolled the boundaries of Frere-Jones’s land, keeping away the other anchors until this ceremony was completed.
Frere-Jones reached out to her land’s grains, the laser pistol still in her right hand. The grains shivered and shook, resonating in shock at both what Frere-Jones had done and the dead anchors she’d killed.
Frere-Jones, detaching herself from the grains, walked over to Alexnya and her family. “Good luck to you,” she told Alexnya. “You can trust Chakatie’s advice. I suggest you listen to her.”
Alexnya looked overwhelmed, as if just realizing the life she’d stumbled into. Her family could stay only a few more days before they’d have to travel on. But aside from suggesting Alexnya trust Chakatie, there was no other advice Frere-Jones could give. Alexnya would have to sort through the lands’ memories on her own and determine which, if any, could be trusted.
Frere-Jones laughed to herself, knowing whose memories Alexnya would soon be experiencing.
“How can you say our daughter should trust that. . . woman?” Jun asked, outrage almost pouring out of her lips as she glared at Chakatie. “From what you’ve told me, she caused all this.”
“Chakatie didn’t trap your daughter,” Frere-Jones said. “If anyone did, it was me, by being so stubborn that the grains sought out a new anchor.”
“But she took advantage of all this. She played everyone. She. . .”
“Must I really listen to this right before I die?” Frere-Jones asked.
Jun fell silent. She bowed slightly in a mix of respect and mocking.
After speaking with Chakatie, and asking her mother-in-law to pass a final message to Colton, Frere-Jones reached out to hold Alexnya’s hand. Together they accessed the grains.
“Do as we’ve agreed,” Frere-Jones told the grains. “Chakatie will ensure I hold up my end.”
“Do it,” Alexnya ordered, added her voice as the land’s new anchor.
The grains screamed but, unable to see any other option, they complied. Across the land they deleted the memories of every anchor who’d lived before Frere-Jones. The memories flared and shrieked, as if begging Frere-Jones and Alexnya to save them. But then they were gone.
Except for Haoquin’s. Frere-Jones dropped the laser pistol and fell to her knees as Haoquin’s memories flooded into her. All the memories the grains had copied from his life. All of him.
So many memories. Memories of everything Haoquin had felt and seen and thought and experienced worked their way into Frere-Jones’s being. Her mind could barely contain all of him.
As Frere-Jones shook and spasmed on the cold ground, she looked across the new-spring grass. She could taste the grass. Could feel it growing and reaching for the sun.
Haoquin was within her. They now shared one life.
“I missed you Fre,” Haoquin whispered. Or maybe Frere-Jones said it to herself. Either way, she smiled.
“Life here was worth it,” they whispered to each other. “Too short, yes. But knowing you made it worthwhile.”
Frere-Jones and Haoquin saw Chakatie walk up to their body and pick up the laser pistol. Chakatie wiped at her eyes as she nodded, then she shot them in the head.
~ ~ ~
Alexnya stands silently over Frere-Jones’s burned body. The grains are still convulsing, still in chaos, but Frere-Jones’s death has calmed them.
Chakatie holds the laser pistol in both hands. Alexnya feels Chakatie’s grains powering up her body. A moment later powerful claws rip apart the pistol.
Chakatie throws the broken technology to the ground in disgust. “Your mother is right, you know,” she says. “I did manipulate all this. I knew Frere-Jones and my son would cause sparks. But I didn’t know all this would happen. I swear on the grains I didn’t know.”
Alexnya isn’t sure if she can trust Chakatie. Frere-Jones said to trust the anchor, but how can she truly know?
Yet Alexnya also understands that once her parents are forced to resume their travels, Chakatie and her family will be the only one for hundreds of leagues around who might support her.
Alexnya wants to scream at this situation. To curse at not knowing what to do. But before she does, she feels a gentle caress in her mind. She tastes memories—memories from Frere-Jones and Haoquin. She sees all the good things Chakatie has done. How Chakatie once cried over a family like hers.
“I think I’ll trust you,” Alexnya finally says. “Did you really. . . cry over a day-fellow family once?”
Chakatie nods, then waves for Alexnya’s parents to follow her to the sod-house to prepare an evening meal for everyone.
Alexnya stays behind and digs the grave for Frere-Jones’s body, the grains powering up her body so the shovel digs faster and deeper than she ever could have done before. She places Frere-Jones in the hole and covers her with fresh soil.
As Alexnya stands over the grave, she feels the grains churning in Frere-Jones body. Feels the grains already beginning to spread the memories of Frere-Jones and Haoquin across the land.
“Thank you, Fre,” Alexnya says, bowing to the grave. She then runs to the sod-house to spend time with her family before they’re forced to flee.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jason Sanford is an award-winning author of short stories, essays, and articles and an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Jason has published more than a dozen of his short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which once devoted a special issue to his fiction. His fiction has also been published in Asimov’s, Analog, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Year’s Best SF, Bless Your Mechanical Heart, and other places. Jason is a Nebula Award finalist and three-time winner of the Interzone Readers’ Poll. Hi
s stories have also been named to the Locus Recommended Reading Lists along with being translated into a number of languages including Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, and Czech. Jason’s website is www.jasonsanford.com.
TORTOISE CARAVAN
Marek Hlavaty
Marek Hlavaty is a passionate illustrator who has been working as a freelance 2D artist since 2002, including illustrations, in-game and animation backgrounds, covers, and visualizations. Most of his artwork is in the game-developing and publishing industries. He believes that good painting should pull your mind into another world. View more of his work online in his gallery at DeviantArt or on his website at www.prasart.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine
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“The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery," Copyright © 2016 by Catherynne M. Valente
“Unearthly Landscape by a Lady,” Copyright © 2015 by Rebecca Campbell
“The Night Bazaar for Women Becoming Reptiles,” Copyright © 2016 by Rachael K. Jones
“The Three Dancers of Gizari,” Copyright © 2016 by Tamara Vardomskaya
“Geometries of Belonging,” Copyright © 2015 by Rose Lemberg
“Laws of Night and Silk,” Copyright © 2016 by Seth Dickinson
“Fire in the Haze,” Copyright © 2016 by Mishell Baker
“In Skander, for a Boy,” Copyright © 2016 by Chaz Brenchley
“The Delusive Cartographer,” Copyright © 2015 by Rich Larson
“The Mama Mmiri,” Copyright © 2016 by Walter Dinjos
“Mortal Eyes,” Copyright © 2016 by Ann Chatham
“The Sweetest Skill,” Copyright © 2016 by Tony Pi
“Told by an Idiot,” Copyright © 2016 by K.J. Parker
“Foxfire, Foxfire,” Copyright © 2016 by Yoon Ha Lee
“A Salvaging of Ghosts,” Copyright © 2016 by Aliette de Bodard
“Blood Grains Speak Through Memories,” Copyright © 2016 by Jason Sanford
“Tortoise Caravan” Copyright © Marek Hlavaty
The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year Eight Page 39
