Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  Evelyn looked up from where she was sitting. “I’ve decided I’m not going to be a boat captain, Mom. I’m going to be an astronomer.”

  Her mother’s brows rose slightly. “Well, that’s quite a change from last week. I suppose tomorrow you’ll want to be a doctor, or a model, or a guitar-shredder, or whatever it is musicians are these days. You’re growing up. Why an astronomer?”

  “Because astronomers aren’t afraid of nothing.”

  Her mother smiled tolerantly. “Aren’t afraid of ‘anything’, darling. No matter what you decide to be, you need to use proper grammar.”

  Evelyn eleven nodded quietly. There was no point in trying to correct her mother.

  The grammar might be wrong, but she knew the physics were correct.

  Author’s Notes to My Younger Self: Nothing you do is as important as you believe it to be: act accordingly toward others. At the same time, always act as if you know what you are doing . . . because most people do not. It will make you stand out in a crowd and help you through life.

  The Astronaut’s Four Seasons

  Jane Yolen

  1. Spring in New England

  The astronaut walks gingerly, like a pilot

  on Martian day-leave,

  not sure yet if her feet can carry her

  through the surprise of birth, of spring.

  The grass after snow

  seems too soft to sustain her.

  She raises her face to the sky,

  holding up a hand to a cumulus,

  where bits of bright sun strain through.

  She uses the word she knows

  to call things to her. “Mine!”

  There is laughter all around,

  the sound of ice in drinks,

  birds calling to new mates.

  But no one brings her what she wants.

  She knows, somehow, even this young,

  that she will have to get it herself.

  But she does not yet know the word

  or concept for time.

  2. Summer in the Camper

  She is used to the camper,

  the “cramper” she calls it,

  so different from their farmhouse

  and its sixteen rooms.

  When she first learned math,

  she told everyone that meant

  they got four rooms apiece.

  Her mother told her she was smart.

  Grandpa, who lived with them then,

  added as he often did, “Alec!”

  She chose the attic first, and it became

  her study, her library, the globe room

  and where the family telescope lived.

  But in the cramper they got to explore.

  She is the one who—on serendipity trips,

  finds the best things to put in her diary,

  to save in her camping boxes:

  hidden flowers, leaves like hearts,

  an arrowhead, four Victorian buttons,

  the tracks of animals she identifies

  with her field guide. A fisher cat.

  A flock of turkeys. A bobcat’s large stride.

  She is sure of them all.

  3. Fall in the NASA Station

  The one season in Florida she can stand,

  the air soft, water not too hot,

  and the excitement attending

  each new flight. It is as if the sun

  decides for two months to compromise

  with humans. She wears a sun amulet

  around her neck. Talks to it

  when no one listens. Tells it

  how she, too, is a kind of sun,

  the navigator circling the pilot.

  Numbers have always spoken to her

  in a private tongue. She speaks math.

  In ten days she will have her first flight.

  The space station awaits.

  A bit of a cramper, but then

  she knows how to live in one.

  Just as she knows the numbers

  to get there and back,

  not needing a map or computer,

  though they will both be at her command.

  4. The Astronaut in Winter

  She is too old now to go back in space,

  Her bones brittle, her blood anemic.

  But she has written a final trip

  in her will. She has made her husband,

  made her children promise

  that when she dies, her ashes—

  all that will be left of her seasons—

  will be shot into the sun.

  It is not, as her poet husband thinks,

  a metaphor for her life.

  It is where she already lives.

  She will travel past the clouds

  she wanted to hold in her hand,

  past the cramped space station

  (now only a training base).

  She will pass the nearer planets

  and the moon, now destinations

  on every vacation map.

  And her earthly ashes will plummet

  onto the far side of the sun,

  to be burnished, reconnected,

  welcomed home at last.

  Author’s Notes to My Younger Self: After 113 rejections on my poetry before selling my first poem, I should have told myself: “You’re in this for the long haul, not for the short spurt of adrenaline of publishing. Editors aren’t saying you’re hopeless or stupid. Just that those particular poems don’t resonate with the editor(s). I would have saved myself much anxiety and doubt.

  Afterword

  Susan Forest

  In my late twenties I had the exciting opportunity to leave my work as a teacher and return to university to earn my Masters’ Degree. As a rule-bound, obedient child, I’d made most decisions in my life with an eye to my responsibilities, and my M.A. was a good career decision—but it also afforded me the chance to study drama! One morning in a black box theatre, the professor dimmed the lights for an exercise: in our own space, we were to visualize ourselves at a younger age, then approach that former self to impart a mote of wisdom. Later, our professor said he wasn’t sure why it worked, but it invariably helped actors get in touch with deep emotion.

  Although my experience of this exercise was not traumatically significant, the memory of it has remained with me. The me I visited was a shy girl of eleven in the spring of Grade 6, who’d chosen one particular recess break to roam a bit of vacant field at the far boundary of the school yard, alone. It was the day I vividly remember deciding what I wanted to do with my life. I would become a teacher, and once I was established and stable, take up my career as a writer.

  Funny how things work out.

  Identity and memory.

  There is a poignant moment in the Star Trek television episode, Is There in Truth No Beauty? when Spock allows a Medusan to inhabit his body. The alien, deeply moved by his experience, remarks, “You are so alone. You live out your lives in this shell of flesh. Self-contained, separate. How lonely you are. How . . . terribly . . . lonely.”

  This is a profound human truth.

  No person can ever truly know another. Each of us seeks intimacy in our closest relationships. We study psychology, philosophy, and literature in an attempt to understand what makes human beings tick. The nature of identity—another’s or our own—is a question that can never be answered, though we seek it until the universe goes dark.

  One reason may be: because identity is not static. None of us is the same person today that we were yesterday, or will be, tomorrow.

  Some elements of identity persist. Like that hyper-responsible child of eleven by herself on the playground, I think I shall be rule-bound until the day I die; and though others may find this surprising, I consider myself an introvert. Other elements of identity progress along maturational arcs. I love the self-confidence I’ve developed over the years. Other elements are “seasonal”: in my twent
ies, I could not fathom any reason why I might want to stay home one night a week; a seven-day rehearsal schedule was fine with me. Today? Yeah, not so much. And, when I have lived my life and given of my experience, I hope to transcend the flesh’s drive to rage against the dying of the light, and be content to die.

  But the key is this. Every day, every moment, we grow and change. Every day, every moment, we cross borders between who we were, who we are, and who we will be. Being and becoming. The twenty stories and two poems in this volume drill down into the Medusan’s intimate wonder at the state of being, and the process of continually becoming. They explore new discoveries by young people—and old—of evolving and reinterpreted relationships; of new understandings of our world; and of new understandings of ourselves.

  Memory.

  Identity.

  Seasons.

  —Susan Forest, Calgary, 2021

  Acknowledgements

  Susan Forest

  I would like to thank the members of Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers’ Association, for their support; to Lucas K. Law for inviting me to participate, and whose knowledge and professionalism continue to teach me so much; and finally, to the remarkable authors, whose creative imaginations gave flesh and spirit to this amazing compilation. Thank you.

  Lucas K. Law

  Many thanks go to the following:

  Susan Forest, my co-editor, for her never-ending enthusiasm and continuing guidance for this anthology series;

  The Lim family (June, Brian, Christina) for their continuing kindness toward my parents;

  Leslie Carlyle-Ebert, Alice Spencer, Camelia Horvath, and Kristian Christensen for reminding me that there is a second act (or third act) and future adventures could be as fulfilling as the previous ones, maybe even more;

  Awang Armadajaya bin Awang Mahmud, Tim Howlett, and Sim Kui Hian for a friendship that neither time nor distance can take away—a rare gift not to be taken for granted in our busy world;

  Tim Feist, my partner, for his patience, understanding, and encouragement;

  Samantha M. Beiko and Clare C. Marshall for their generous support whenever I need it;

  Jared D. Shapiro for his sharp attention to the details in this anthology’s interior layout;

  Veronica Annis for her insightful advice on the cover design;

  Tod McCoy (Hydra House Books) for the loving care in formatting the ebook version;

  Candas Jane Dorsey and the authors for giving their unwavering commitment to this anthology;

  Everyone who buys this book and support social causes (please continue to talk about issues such as mental health/mental illness, caregiving/caregivers, affordable housing for all ages, eldercare, and ageing)

  About the Contributors

  Maurice Broaddus is a community organizer and teacher. His work has appeared in magazines like Lightspeed Magazine, Weird Tales, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, Cemetery Dance, Uncanny Magazine, with some of his stories having been collected in The Voices of Martyrs (Rosarium Publishing, 2017) His books include The Knights of Breton Court (urban fantasy trilogy, Angry Robot), Buffalo Soldier (steampunk novella, Tor.com, 2017), Pimp My Airship (steampunk novel, Apex Books, 2019), and The Usual Suspects (middle grade detective novel, Katherine Tegen Books, 2019). As an editor, he’s worked on Dark Faith, Dark Faith: Invocations, Streets of Shadows, People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror, and Apex Magazine. Learn more at MauriceBroaddus.com.

  Vanessa Cardui has been writing songs to celebrate Laksa Media’s new releases since Strangers Among Us in 2016. She is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and storyteller. She has numerous recordings available, including Filk and Cookies (2014) and Patience (2017), featuring songs both whimsical and tragic. She especially enjoys writing on literary, historical, mythological, and mental health topics. One of her songs was an Aurora Award 2019 finalist for best poem/song.

  C.J. Cheung writes science fiction and fantasy stories inspired by his Chinese and Japanese roots but reflecting the diversity of his Canadian upbringing—a unique cross-cultural blend of East and West. A self-proclaimed geek, he managed to wrangle his wife and two sons into board games and Shotokan Karate (not necessarily in that order, and not without injury).

  Joyce Chng lives in Singapore. Their fiction has appeared in Where the Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction & Fantasy, The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, and Accessing The Future. Joyce also co-edited The Sea is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Their recent space opera novels deal with wolf clans (Starfang: Rise of the Clan) and vineyards (Water into Wine) respectively. They also write speculative poetry with recent ones in Rambutan Literary and Uncanny Magazine. Occasionally, they wrangle article editing at Strange Horizons and manages Umbel & Panicle, a poetry journal and ezine about and for plants and botany (which they also founded). Alter-ego J. Damask writes about werewolves in Singapore. You can find them at http://awolfstale.wordpress.com and @jolantru on Twitter. (Pronouns: she/her, they/their).

  Eric Choi is a Hong Kong born writer, editor, and aerospace engineer currently living in Toronto. The first recipient of the Dell Magazines Award for his story “Dedication”, he has also twice won the Aurora Award for his story “Crimson Sky” and for the Chinese themed SF anthology The Dragon and the Stars (DAW) co-edited with Derwin Mak. He was also the co-editor (with Ben Bova) of the hard SF collection Carbide Tipped Pens (Tor). In 2009, he was one of the Top 40 finalists (out of 5,351 applicants) in the Canadian Space Agency’s astronaut recruitment campaign. Please visit his website www.aerospacewriter.ca or follow him on Twitter @AerospaceWriter.

  Candas Jane Dorsey is the internationally-known, award-winning author of novels Black Wine (originally Tor 1997, 1998, re-released Five Rivers 2013) and Paradigm of Earth (2001, 2002, Tor); upcoming mystery series The Adventures of Isabel, What’s the Matter with Mary Jane?, and He Wasn’t There Again Today (2020-2022 ECW); upcoming YA novel The Story of My Life, Ongoing, by CJ Cobb; short story collections Machine Sex and other stories (1988), Dark Earth Dreams (1994), Vanilla and other stories (2000) and ICE and other stories (2018); four poetry books; several anthologies edited/co-edited, and numerous published stories, poems, reviews, and critical essays. She was editor/publisher fourteen years of literary press The Books Collective, including River Books and Tesseract Books. She teaches writing to adults and youth, professional communications at MacEwan University, and speaks widely on SF and other topics. She was founding president of SFCanada and has been president of the Writers Guild of Alberta. She has received a variety of awards and honours for her books and short fiction. In 2005, she was awarded the Province of Alberta Centennial Gold Medal for her artistic achievement and community work, and in 2017, the WGA Golden Pen Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts. She was inducted into the City of Edmonton Arts and Cultural Hall of Fame in 2019. Other awards include the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame (2018), YWCA Woman of the Year Arts and Culture 1988, and an Edmonton Arts Achievement Award 1988. She is also a community activist, advocate, and leader who has won two human rights awards and served on many community boards and committees for working for neighbourhoods, heritage, social planning, and human rights advocacy.

  S.B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma. She is the Hugo and Nebula nominated author of Runtime and co-editor of Escape Pod, with Mur Lafferty. Her short stories have been published at various magazines including Analog, Uncanny, and tor.com, and her short story collection, Contingency Plans For the Apocalypse and Other Situations, is out now from Hachette India. Find her on Twitter @divyastweets or at www.eff-words.com.

  Alan Dean Foster has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of sev
eral New York Times bestsellers and the popular Pip & Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of numerous films, including Transformers, Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and the most recent one, Alien: Covenant. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects.

  Bev Geddes is a school-based speech/language pathologist and author. Her short story, Living in Oz, appeared in the Aurora Award winning anthology, Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts (2016) and was also short-listed for the award, receiving an Honorable Mention in Gardner Dozois, The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection. The Gift was published in the Aurora Award winning anthology, The Sum of Us (2017). Witch of Glencoe was included in Tesseracts 22: Alchemy and Artifacts anthology (2019). When not reading, writing, or running away to her cabin on Lake Winnipeg, she enjoys playing the harp, aided and abetted by a menagerie of cats, dogs, children and chums.

  Maria Haskins is a Swedish-Canadian writer and translator. She was born and grew up in Sweden and debuted as a writer there. Currently, she lives just outside Vancouver on Canada’s west coast with a husband, two kids, and a very large black dog. She writes fantasy, science fiction, and horror, and

  her short fiction has appeared in Fireside, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, PseudoPod, Cast of Wonders, Kaleidotrope, and elsewhere.

  Tyler Keevil was born in Edmonton, grew up in Vancouver, and moved to Wales in his mid-twenties. He is the author of several novels and the story collection, Sealskin (Locarno, 2018). He has received a number of awards for his writing and is a past recipient of the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. His speculative fiction has appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, and has been selected for inclusion in Best British Fantasy (Salt) and Best British Science Fiction (NewCon). He is the director of the MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. His most recent novel is No Good Brother (HarperCollins, 2018).