Clarkesworld Anthology 2012

by Wyrm Publishing

  I hadn’t, but if there was ever a wasted land, this was it.

  “How much of that world we have forgotten,” Enah said, and shook his head. I understood why people crowded around him like a prophet: he promised beautiful things, and kept them in mind of how strange he was, how little they knew.

  I followed him to the fence around the property, where he went out by the gate and faced the crowd. The mob watched, ready to burn me, but I felt safe in Enah’s shadow. A girl guided through a lions’ den.

  “Those of you who’d see the river run,” he called. “Come at midnight to the highest part of the bank. We’ll gather there and begin: with your own hands and your native rock, we’ll build tanks and dams and bund walls. Little by little, the water will rise. We will name the first wall ‘Jaime’.” He turned, faced our house, and seemed to speak straight to Papa. “And the water will rise.”

  He looked at me, and I ran back inside.

  Papa must have heard him through the walls. He was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, and his face — what I could see of it — was red.

  He looked to me, eyes dry and veined. “If they gather I’ll have François and my boys cleave them apart,” he said. “It’s not right that they should try to take the river. There was no law here so our family made the law. May you never have to make such a decision.”

  We were both silent for a while, and I said, “Hyacinths don’t grow on clay.”

  Papa’s eyes bugged. “What is this?” he demanded. “What sort of nonsense have they put in your head? Hyacinths!” He stood. “I’ve raised a beautiful girl on this land, and by God I’ll leave my wealth for her when I die. Wealth is all you can ask for in a God-forsaken place like this.”

  I bit my teeth. My mind was full of blood and flowers, and the back of my tongue was dry. Papa glared for a minute, then the heat went out of him.

  “Apologize to me, Lena,” he said. “I’m only trying to protect you.”

  I’d lived long enough that I knew there’d be no peace in the household until I did.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded. For a while he stared out the window, into the distance, his dogs at his ankles.

  “Water,” he said.

  I went into the kitchen.

  I pulled a quart down from the cupboard, and felt the clean weight of it. Wealth, here, sucked out of the dirty riverbed.

  I brought it back to the office, and Papa drank like a man thirsty since the days of the Flood. I watched the water disappear into his body.

  He set it down and looked at me.

  “Lena,” he said. “Drink up and go to bed. Keep your eyes closed. I’m going to roust the boys.”

  I went into my room and closed my eyes, and imagined blood sprayed across the riverbed. Papa went out to the pumps, and I could hear his voice, and then the rasp of stones sharpening machetes. I counted my breaths. Fifty, eighty, and the guards began to speak to each other, binding their resolve in boasts and quiet banter.

  Then, I snuck outside.

  The sky was dark, and the electric lamps from the pumpyard didn’t cast light as far as the door. The riverbanks reared high above me to either side.

  I thought, What happens if the water rises?

  But then, that wasn’t the right question.

  What happens if the water never rises?

  The ground cracks. Skin cracks. Bones crack.

  On my birthdays I was allowed the extravagant gift of a bath. When Mama was alive, she’d sit at the side of the tub and wash my back. My entire body felt light, then. I think buoyant is the word — a word I had little use for. I wanted the river to roll down from wherever it was hiding, to catch me, carry me away. I wanted buoyancy.

  I ran for the bank.

  Not far from my door a figure stood up from the shadow of my fence. I stopped quick and saw François, silhouetted against the wide white light of the moon.

  “François,” I said. My voice cracked. I wondered: if he hacked off my head, how long would my blood stain the riverbed? Would Enah bring the waters and wash it away?

  François offered his left hand. In his right, his machete gleamed.

  I took a step back, but I gathered my courage and looked toward the high part of the bank. I kept my eyes on the gathering lights there as I said, “Are you going to tell Papa, or just cleave me?”

  François was silent for a moment. Then, “I said that my parents would not be proud of what I do,” he said. “Lena, I am not proud. God is not proud. I hardly know him, even when I want to pray.”

  I swallowed. In all the years Papa had paid him, he had never called me by name. “I don’t have anyone to pray to,” I said.

  He offered his left hand. Again, I hesitated.

  “François,” I said. “What will happen if the water rises?”

  “Life will return to the river valley,” he said. “And if I’m lucky, I will never again cleave off anyone’s head.”

  My heart raced. “So you want the water to rise?”

  He offered his left hand.

  I stepped forward, this time. Close enough to see that his eyes were rimmed with salt, like the blood on Mogul’s nose.

  Our blood will crack. Our tears will crack.

  I ran forward and wrapped my hand in his.

  His hand closed around mine, larger than mine, warmer, strong. “Your father will have us hunted,” he said. “If you’re afraid, you shouldn’t come.”

  I was afraid. Of him, of the guards, of the villagers, of the flood. Of Papa, of Papa’s dogs, of being cut off from the pumps. Of dying like Mogul. Of dying like Jaime. But I went up on my toes and kissed François on the cheek, and he accepted it like a man made of stone.

  Then he said, “Come,” and we walked up the bank. Toward the lights, where the wind scattered Enah’s lilacs, and I imagined hyacinths on the breeze.

  About the Author

  An Owomoyela (pronounce it “On”) is a neutrois author with a background in web development, linguistics, and weaving chain maille out of stainless steel fencing wire, whose fiction has appeared in a number of venues including Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and a pair of Year’s Bests. An’s interests range from watershed management and desertification to gender studies and nonstandard pronouns, with a plethora of stops in-between. Se graduated from the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2008, and doesn’t plan to stop learning as long as se can help it.

  You Were She Who Abode

  E. Catherine Tobler

  Cardee Findar dreams, but she’s wide awake.

  She’s in the warzone, ashen walls rising around her in broken lines, but buttercream paint seeps through the gray. The pale yellow carries with it the scent of spring, a slice of blue sky, the slow curl of white curtains into a sunlit room. This place is far away; the ground shakes underfoot, rattling ash over paint, and she’s running, running with her heart in her throat and her hands wrapped around her rifle. Rifle pressed into breast the way Lottie should be. Seven strides to the alley—seven strides and she’s in, in and sliding down into the shadows. Her gaze latches on to Ginger across the street in another alley. Ginger prefers gunfire to silence; it tells them exactly where the enemy is.

  “Mama?”

  Cardee pushes the small voice in her head away. That voice is as distant as that calm yellow room. Ginger is in the here and now: Ginger and Bret and Stills, and the goddamned little shadow they’re chasing. Children in warzones aren’t a surprise, not now, but the first time she’d seen one, Cardee recoiled. They’re often lures, she knows; the urge to follow the small ones and haul them out of the wreckage is hard-wired. She wants to carry them somewhere safer. She doesn’t know where that might be.

  Ginger breaks position to follow the kid into the tangle of narrow streets hung with paper lanterns from a long ago celebration. Blue, green, and—

  “Gin—“

  Cardee swallows the rest of her protest and at Bret’s snapped curse, runs. Runs across the street into the alley Ginger had
occupied. Of the child, she has the impression of ratty clothes, bare feet, and knows the latter are the deal breaker for Ginger.

  The first child they’d rescued had ruined feet from walking through the debris; Ginger spent days applying salve to them, only to have the doc tell them the feet couldn’t be saved. It makes the others harder—that kid hadn’t been a lure, he just needed out. He only planted hope inside Ginger when it came to every other kid.

  The hardware store still stands, windows unbroken in their frames. Cardee draws up short, listens for Ginger. There is a sharp hiss and the thunder of retreating boots. She shoulders her way into the store, amid stripped shelves. Binned nails, hammers, and planks of wood stand in one corner but—

  A slamming door erupts into flame a second later. The air is sharp with flying nails and hammers and Cardee drops to the floor, rolling until she’s under the nearest shelf. The shelf buckles with a second explosion and is shredded away with a third. Blood splatters the concrete floor amid the burning refuse, as if dripping from Cardee’s own face, but she can’t make sense of it.

  “Mama.”

  She gives in to the voice. “I know, baby.”

  Cardee slides the warm cloth over Lottie’s temple, removing the haze of blood. Small brown face, so like her own. Wide black eyes blink up at her, tight sepia curls framing smooth apple cheeks. Cardee leans in to look at the wound.

  “J-James d-dared me t-to jump,” Lottie whispers, anguished.

  “Just a little scrape.” Cardee drops a kiss on Lottie’s forehead, reaches past her for the wipes and dermal sealer. She’s seen worse on the battlefield, but not worse on her daughter and though she forces a smile, the injury bothers her. Bothers her in a way she can’t quantify—

  Nails, there were nails—

  Cardee grits her teeth together, steadies her hands. This is now, not then, and Lottie flinches at the antiseptic wipe and then the cool flow of sealer.

  “Green b-bandage?”

  “You like all that green, don’t you?” But Cardee doesn’t protest her daughter’s choice. She presses the bandage over the wound, even though it’s not needed with the sealer already there.

  “All that green, Mama.” Lottie’s smile ripples and through a haze of smoke, looks green in the corners. Cardee runs her thumb across it as Lottie lifts a hand to touch Cardee’s own temple where green lights pulse.

  “Findar.”

  That’s her name. She knows it’s her name, because she remembers stealing it from Ross. He thought he gave it to her on the lakeshore with the trees dipping low into the water and all their friends gathered close, but ten years on, she still feels like she stole it. Wood violets, wild roses, my black-eyed girls.

  “Findar!”

  Her fingers come away from the sky bloodied; they are snatched from her, tied against her side and she’s flying, airborne through the debris, away from Ginger and the small figure they were chasing. Cardee opens her mouth to tell Ginger the kid is there, just there beyond that pile of debris, and there’s another explosion. The world rocks and green sky tips then vanishes altogether as gloved hands draw her inside a warm, dark space, and she hears the chop-chop-chop of angel wings, as they arc high into the sky thirteen klicks from base.

  Thirteen nails, doc says and drops the last into the basin. It falls with a clink, a fleck of blood, and Cardee sees faces in the red: Ross and the priest and if she closes her eyes she can feel Ross’s palm against hers. Palmers’ kiss was holy she had told him, but now there’s only the chatter of doc and his team and when these voices change, Cardee can’t latch onto why. The light takes on a clear quality, the smoke of the hotspot gone, and the bite of the stitcher is almost sweet as it crawls over her bare scalp. It tickles; the sensation tells her she’s alive.

  The stitcher tiptoes over scalp while doc settles the VET into its place against the ruin of her hippocampus and he’s talking all the while, words that slide over Cardee’s consciousness and away. She knows he’s watching a screen while he talks, to see what her brain does with each word. Volatile, he calls the device. Like it might explode the way the hardware store did—

  Ragged clothing and bare feet. Oh, bare feet. Cardee can feel the soft curve of Lottie’s toes against her chin.

  Emotive transistor, doc says and his fingers are cool against her temple though warmth seems to sink into her skin, into her bones. Her left eye blossoms with sudden heat, the sting of salt.

  Do that again, doc bids her.

  Cardee doesn’t know what he means, but she thinks about Lottie’s toes, small and brown and sweet like sugar, and the salt stings her again as doc praises her. Good, good, he says, and Cardee swallows a sob. The green light floods his palm then fades as Cardee quiets. It won’t be perfect, he says, but—

  —what is in this world, Ross says and his mouth moves over Cardee’s and she smiles, knowing neither one of them really wants perfection. They have always been a jumble and she’s content to stay that way. The idea that he would marry her when she means to serve their country is what sinks its hooks into her. That he would stay, no matter where they or she went, and when they go to the lakeshore all those years later and she tells him about the child, there is a quiet wonder in his eyes.

  He is barefoot, jean cuffs rolled up and wet, and he tangles wild roses into Cardee’s hair. They’re pink like his tongue and later she presses these roses into a book which will sit on a shelf beside a box full of letters with different postmarks, all the places she has been. The book will sit until Lottie pulls it down at age three and scatters the flat, dried bundle everywhere. A year later, they still find bits of roses in the corners.

  “Made it just the way you like,” Ross says, and leads Cardee to the corner where he’s placed her favorite chair with its worn arms and the quilt her grandmother pieced together. A tablet rests on the table beside an electric kettle which she knows holds Earl Grey. He helps her into the chair and she’s slow, like she can’t remember how to move, but the VET remembers for her, guiding her into the chair’s familiar hold.

  A ring peeks out from Ross’s shirt collar as he moves, three strands of Irish gold braided together. His grandmother’s, but now hers, given to him so it couldn’t be taken even if her finger did feel bare without it. A thing to come back to he had joked, and as it slips free now he tucks it away before she can touch it. His brow creases. Don’t worry about that now, he tells her.

  Ross’s hands are tentative as he settles her feet on the ottoman, as he pulls up the quilt and then reaches for her cup. The cup is sunrise orange and the tea floods it in a brown, steaming rush. Cardee draws in a breath and watches as Ross’s face is erased. The room seems to fold itself away under the rising steam and she’s in an alley again, watching a small, barefoot figure flit through the debris.

  That was then, she tells herself, and tries to pull the walls of her room upright. Plaster and buttercream and not ash, but there’s only stone and choking smoke in this place. Stills presses a new magazine into her hand and she slots it into her rifle before running, running after Ginger through the debris, after the small barefoot form.

  This is before, she knows. Before the hardware store. Three days? No—three months, months and this is the first kid, the one doc won’t be able to save.

  Images shutter like an old film reel through her mind, guided by the VET in her temple. That was then but it’s also now, and Cardee follows Ginger over fallen stones that used to be walls that used to be houses that used to be homes.

  There is a tall figure in a far door lifting a gun. Cardee lifts hers first and the figure crumples with a shriek, doesn’t move. Ginger is twelve steps from the kid, the boy, and Cardee knows she herself is twenty-five steps from the figure she shot down.

  She will walk those steps, check the body, take the gun. She will. She already has.

  Twenty-seven steps from the second figure who emerges behind the first, a young man in enemy colors, and he lifts his gun. Cardee takes him down too; he falls to his knees as if in p
rayer, then topples over.

  Ginger tackles the boy, wrestles him to the ground and pins his arms behind him. Where are the others, she demands—where! And he says he doesn’t know—but he does and these kids just don’t want to go, don’t want to leave these streets that are home, home even though war has claimed them. Home, smeared into his cheeks and his bare, bloodied feet. Ginger hefts the boy, throws him over her shoulder, and they’re out, running as shells rain from the sky.

  Cardee turns circles in wet grass. Don’t worry about getting wet, she tells Lottie, and they’re out, running as the rain pours from the summer sky. Lottie shrieks, like she might melt under the rain because she’s so sweet, but Cardee holds her hand and feels her daughter relax. The shriek turns to a laugh and Lottie is no longer worried about her dress, because it will dry on the laundry line when the sun comes out again. She twirls and Cardee watches those toes as they mash into the mud. Hot cocoa later, she thinks, but it’s already been later, that cocoa long drunk.

  This is memory, Cardee tells herself, and pulls hard, hard enough to lift the walls of her room back into place. This was now. Her room, where nine year old Lottie now sits, bundled on the ottoman. Lottie watches everything and Cardee watches back. Lottie is taller than she remembers, all long arms and legs, her hair longer and worn pulled up on the top of her head with a mass of bright green and blue ribbons. A clumsy knot, her father’s work.

  “Mama?”

  Cardee offers her hand for holding. The hand Lottie offers is larger than Cardee remembers, long slim fingers. Palm to palm they sit until Lottie makes a sound, a sound like she wants to cry but is too old for such things now. Lottie curls into her mother’s lap, the way a nut curls into its shell, and she’s crying. Don’t w-worry about getting w-wet.

  There was rain, Cardee thinks, rain like nails, and she lifts a hand to feel the line of her skull, whole now but still shorn, wrapped under a bright cloth. Lottie shudders and Cardee hauls her closer.

  “It’s okay, baby. It helps mama remember.”