The Stone Sky

by N. K. Jemisin

He turns and limps toward the northern end of the compound. You follow, after a moment’s exchanged glance with Hoa. There’s another slight rise here, culminating in a flat area that’s clearly been used before for stargazing or just staring at the horizon; you can see much of the surrounding countryside, which still shows shocking amounts of green beneath a relatively recent and still-thin layer of whitening ash.

  But here, though, is something strange: a pile of rubble. You think at first it’s a glass recycling pile; Jija used to keep one of those near the house back in Tirimo, and neighbors would dump their broken glasses and such there for him to use in glassknife hilts. Some of this looks like higher-quality stuff than just glass; maybe someone’s tossed in some unworked semiprecious stone. All jumbled colors, tan and gray and a bit of blue, but rather a lot of red. But there’s a pattern to it, something that makes you pause and tilt your head and try to take in the whole of what you’re seeing. When you do, you notice that the colors and arrangement of stones at the nearer edge of the pile vaguely resemble a mosaic. Boots, if someone had sculpted boots out of pebbles and then knocked them over. Then those would be pants, except there’s the off-white of bone among them and—

  No.

  Fire. Under. Earth.

  No. Your Nassun didn’t do this, she couldn’t have, she—

  She did.

  The young man sighs, reading your face. You’ve forgotten to smile, but even a Guardian would be sobered by this. “Took us a while to realize what we were seeing, too,” he says. “Maybe this is something you understand.” He glances at you hopefully.

  You just shake your head, and the man sighs.

  “Well. It was just before they all left. One morning we hear something like thunder. Go outside and the obelisk—big blue one that had been lurking around for a few weeks, you know how they are—is gone. Then later that day there’s the same loud ch-kow—” He claps his hands as he imitates the sound. You manage not to jump. “And it’s back. And then Schaffa suddenly tells the headwoman he’s got to take the kids away. No explanation for the obelisk stuff. No mention that Nida and Umber—those are the other two, the Guardians who used to run this place with Schaffa—are dead. Umber’s head is staved in. Nida …” He shakes his head. The look on his face is pure revulsion. “The back of her head is … But Schaffa doesn’t say anything. Just takes the kids away. Lot of us are starting to hope he never brings them back.”

  Schaffa. That’s the part you should focus on. That’s what matters, not what was but what is … but you can’t take your eyes off Jija. Burning rust, Jija. Jija.

  I wish I were still flesh, for you. I wish that I were still a tuner, so that I could speak to you through temperatures and pressures and reverberations of the earth. Words are too much, too indelicate, for this conversation. You were fond of Jija, after all, to the degree that your secrets allowed. You thought he loved you—and he did, to the degree that your secrets allowed. It’s just that love and hate aren’t mutually exclusive, as I first learned so very long ago.

  I’m sorry.

  You make yourself say, “Schaffa won’t be coming back.” Because you need to find him and kill him—but even through your fear and horror, reason asserts itself. This strange imitation Fulcrum, which is not the true Fulcrum that he should have brought Nassun to. These children, gathered and not slaughtered. Nassun, openly controlling an obelisk well enough to do this … and yet Schaffa has not killed her. Something’s going on here that you’re not getting.

  “Tell me more about this man,” you say, lifting your chin toward the pile of jumbled jewels. Your ex-husband.

  The young man shrugs in an audible stirring of cloth. “Oh, right, uh. So, his name was Jija Resistant Jekity.” Because the young man is sighing down at the pile of rubble, you don’t think he sees you twitch at the wrongness of the comm name. “New to the comm, a knapper. We got too many men, but we needed a knapper bad, so when he turned up, we basically would’ve taken him in as long as he wasn’t old or sick or obviously crazy. You know?” He shrugs. “The girl seemed all right when they first got here. Wouldn’t know her for one of them, she was so proper and polite. Somebody raised her right.” You smile again. Perfect tight-jawed Guardian smile. “We only knew what she was because Jija had come here, see. Heard the rumors about how roggas could become … un-roggas, I guess. We get a lot of visitors who ask about that.”

  You frown and nearly look away from Jija. Un-roggas?

  “Not that it ever happened.” The young man sighs and adjusts his cane for comfort. “And not that we’d have taken in a kid who used to be one of them, right? What if that kid grew up and had kids who were wrong, too? Got to breed the taint out somehow. Anyway, the girl minded her father well enough until a few weeks ago. Neighbors said they heard him shouting at her one night, and then she moved up here to the compound with the others. You could see how the change sort of … untied Jija. He started talking to himself about how she wasn’t his daughter anymore. Cursing out loud, now and again. Hitting things—walls and such—when he thought you weren’t looking.

  “And the girl, she pulled away. Can’t say I blame her; everybody was on eggshells around him for that while. Always the quiet ones, right? So I saw her hanging around Schaffa more. Like a duckling, always right there in his shadow. Whenever he’d hold still, she’d take his hand. And he—” The young man eyes you warily. “Don’t usually see you lot being affectionate. But he seemed to think the world of her. I hear he nearly killed Jija when the man came at her, actually.”

  The hand that you don’t have twinges again, but it is more tentative this time and not the throb of before. Because … he wouldn’t have had to break Nassun’s hand, would he? No, no, no. You did that to her yourself. And Uche was another broken hand, inflicted by Jija. Schaffa protected her from Jija. Schaffa was affectionate with her, as you struggled to be. And now everything inside you shudders at the thought that follows, and it takes the willpower that has destroyed cities to keep this shudder internal, but …

  But …

  How much more welcome would a Guardian’s conditional, predictable love have been to Nassun, after her parents’ unconditional love had betrayed her again and again?

  You close your eyes for a moment, because you don’t think Guardians cry.

  With an effort, you say, “What is this place?”

  He looks at you in surprise, then glances at Hoa, a ways behind you. “This is the comm of Jekity, Guardian. Though Schaffa and the others—” He gestures around you, at the compound. “They called this part of the comm ‘Found Moon.’”

  Of course they did. And of course Schaffa already knew the secrets of the world that you’ve paid in flesh and blood to learn.

  In your silence, the young man regards you thoughtfully. “I can introduce you to the headwoman. I know she’ll be glad to have Guardians around again. Good help against raiders.”

  You’re looking at Jija again. You see one piece of jewel in the perfect likeness of a pinky finger. You know that pinky finger. You kissed that pinky finger—

  It’s too much, you can’t do this, you’ve got to get a grip, get out of here before you break down any further. “I—I n-need—” Deep breath for calm. “I need some time to consider the situation. Would you go and let your headwoman know I’ll come pay my respects shortly?”

  The young man side-gazes you for a moment, but you know now that it’s not a bad thing if you seem a little off. He’s used to Guardian-style offness. Perhaps because of this, he nods and shuffles back awkwardly. “Can I ask you a question?”

  No. “Yes?”

  He bites his lip. “What’s going on? It feels like … Nothing that’s happening is normal lately. I mean, it’s a Season, but even that feels wrong. Guardians not taking roggas to the Fulcrum. Roggas doing things nobody’s ever heard of them doing.” He chin-points toward the pile of Jija. “Whatever the rust went on up north. Even those things in the sky, the obelisks … It’s all … People are talking. Saying maybe the world’s
not going to go back to normal. Ever.”

  You’re staring at Jija, but you’re thinking of Alabaster. Don’t know why.

  “One person’s normal is another person’s Shattering.” Your face aches from smiling. There is an art to smiling in a way that others will believe, and you’re terrible at it. “Would’ve been nice if we could’ve all had normal, of course, but not enough people wanted to share. So now we all burn.”

  He stares at you for a long, vaguely horrified moment. Then he mumbles something and finally goes away, skirting wide around Hoa. Good riddance.

  You crouch beside Jija. He is beautiful like this, all jewels and colors. He is monstrous like this. Beneath the colors you perceive the crazed every-which-wayness of the magic threads in him. It’s wholly different from what happened to your arm and your breast. He has been smashed apart and rearranged at random, on an infinitesimal level.

  “What have I done?” you ask. “What have I made her?”

  Hoa’s toes have appeared in your peripheral vision. “Strong,” he suggests.

  You shake your head. Nassun was that on her own.

  “Alive.”

  You close your eyes again. It’s the only thing that should matter, that you’ve brought three babies into the world and this one, this precious last one, is still breathing. And yet.

  I made her me. Earth eat us both, I made her into me.

  And maybe that’s why Nassun is still alive. But it’s also, you realize as you stare at what she’s done to Jija, and as you realize you can’t even get revenge on him for Uche because your daughter has done that for you … why you are terrified of her.

  And there it is—the thing you haven’t faced in all this time, the kirkhusa with ash and blood on its muzzle. Jija owed you a debt of pain for your son, but you owe Nassun, in turn. You didn’t save her from Jija. You haven’t been there when she’s needed you, here at the literal end of the world. How dare you presume to protect her? Gray Man and Schaffa; she has found her own, better, protectors. She has found the strength to protect herself.

  You are so very proud of her. And you don’t dare go anywhere near her, ever again.

  Hoa’s heavy, hard hand presses down on your good shoulder. “It isn’t wise for us to stay here.”

  You shake your head. Let the people of this comm come. Let them realize you aren’t a Guardian. Let one of them finally notice how alike you and Nassun look. Let them bring their crossbows and slingshots and—

  Hoa’s hand curves to grip your shoulder, vise-tight. You know it’s coming and still you don’t bother to brace yourself as he drags you into the earth, back north. You keep your eyes open on purpose this time, and the sight doesn’t bother you. The fires within the earth are nothing to what you’re feeling right now, failed mother that you are.

  The two of you emerge from the ground in a quiet part of the encampment, though it’s near a small stand of trees that a lot of people, by the stink, have apparently been using for a pisser. When Hoa lets you go, you start to walk away and then stop again. Your thoughts have gone blank. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Silence from Hoa. Stone eaters don’t bother with unnecessary movement or words, and Hoa has already made his intentions clear. You imagine Nassun talking with Gray Man, and you laugh softly, because he seems more animate and talkative than most of his kind. Good. He’s a good stone eater, for her.

  “I don’t know where to go,” you say. You’ve been sleeping in Lerna’s tent lately, but that isn’t what you mean. Inside you, there’s a clump of emptiness. A raw hole. “I don’t have anything left now.”

  Hoa says, “You have comm and kin. You’ll have a home, once you reach Rennanis. You have your life.”

  Do you really have these things? The dead have no wishes, says stonelore. You think of Tirimo, where you didn’t want to wait for death to come for you, and so you killed the comm. Death is always with you. Death is you.

  Hoa says to your slumped back, “I can’t die.”

  You frown, jarred out of melancholy by this apparent non sequitur. Then you understand: He’s saying you won’t ever lose him. He will not crumble away like Alabaster. You can’t ever be surprised by the pain of Hoa’s loss the way you were with Corundum or Innon or Alabaster or Uche, or now Jija. You can’t hurt Hoa in any way that matters.

  “It’s safe to love you,” you murmur, in startled realization.

  “Yes.”

  Surprisingly, this eases the knot of silence in your chest. Not much, but … but it helps.

  “How do you do it?” you ask. It’s hard to imagine. Not being able to die even when you want to, even as everything you know and care about falters and fails. Having to go on, no matter what. No matter how tired you are.

  “Move forward,” Hoa says.

  “What?”

  “Move. Forward.”

  And then he is gone, into the earth. Nearby, somewhere, if you need him. Right now, though, he’s right: you don’t.

  Can’t think. You’re thirsty, and hungry and tired besides. It stinks in this part of camp. The stump of your arm hurts. Your heart hurts more.

  You take a step, though, toward the camp. And then another. And another.

  Forward.

  2490: Antarctics near eastern coast; unnamed farming comm twenty miles from Jekity City. Initially unknown event caused everyone in the comm to turn to glass. (?? Is this right? Glass, not ice? Find tertiary sources.) Later, headman’s second husband found alive in Jekity City; discovered to be rogga. Under intensive questioning by comm militia, he admitted to somehow doing the deed. Claimed that it was the only way to stop the Jekity volcano from erupting, though no eruption signs were observed. Reports indicate the man’s hands were also stone. Questioning interrupted by a stone eater, who killed seventeen militia members and took rogga into earth; both vanished.

  —Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars

  8

  Nassun underground

  THE WHITE STAIR WINDS DOWNWARD for quite some while. The tunnel walls are close and claustrophobic, but the air somehow isn’t stale. Just being free of the ashfall is novelty enough, but Nassun notices that there’s not much dust, either. That’s weird, isn’t it? All of this is weird.

  “Why isn’t there dust?” Nassun asks as they walk. She speaks in hushed tones at first, but gradually she relaxes—a little. It’s still a deadciv ruin, after all, and she’s heard lots of lorist tales about how dangerous such places can be. “Why do the lights still work? That door we came through back there, why did it still work?”

  “I haven’t a clue, little one.” Schaffa now precedes her down the steps, on the theory that anything dangerous should encounter him first. Nassun can’t see his face, and must gauge his mood by his broad shoulders. (It bothers her that she does this, watching him constantly for shifts of mood or warnings of tension. It is another thing she learned from Jija. She cannot seem to shed it with Schaffa, or anyone else.) He’s tired, she can see, but otherwise well. Satisfied, perhaps, that they have made it here. Wary, of what they might find—but that makes two of them. “With deadciv ruins, sometimes the answer is simply ‘because.’”

  “Do you … remember anything, Schaffa?”

  A shrug, not as nonchalant as it should be. “Some. Flashes. The why, rather than the what.”

  “Then, why? Why do Guardians come here, during a Season? Why don’t they just stay wherever they are, and help the comms they join the way you helped Jekity?”

  The stairs are ever so slightly too wide for Nassun’s stride, even when she keeps to the more narrow inner bend. Periodically she has to stop and put both feet on one step in order to rest, then trot to catch up. He is drumbeat-steady, proceeding without her—but abruptly, just as she asks these questions, they reach a landing within the stairwell. To Nassun’s great relief, Schaffa stops at last, signaling that they can sit down and rest. She’s still soaked with sweat from the frantic scrabble through the grass forest, though it has begun to dry now that she’s moving slower
. The first drink of water from her canteen is sweet, and the floor feels comfortingly cool, though hard. She’s abruptly sleepy. Well, it is night outside, up on the surface where grasshoppers or cicadas now cavort.

  Schaffa rummages in his pack and hands her a slab of dried meat. She sighs and begins the laborious process of gnawing on it. He smiles at her grumpiness, and perhaps to soothe her, he finally answers her question.

  “We leave during Seasons because we have nothing to offer to a comm, little one. I cannot have children, for one thing, which makes me a less than ideal community adoptee. However much I might contribute toward the survival of any comm, its investment in me will return only short-term gains.” He shrugs. “And without orogenes to tend, over time, we Guardians become … difficult to live with.”

  Because the things in their heads make them want magic all the time, she realizes. And although orogenes make enough of the silver to spare, stills don’t. What happens when a Guardian takes silver from a still? Maybe that’s why Guardians leave—so no one will find out.

  “How do you know you can’t have children?” she presses. This is maybe too personal a question, but he has never minded her asking those. “Did you ever try?”

  He’s taking a drink from his canteen. When he lowers it, he looks bemused. “It would be clearer to say that I should not,” he says. “Guardians carry the trait of orogeny.”

  “Oh.” Schaffa’s mother or father must have been an orogene! Or maybe his grandparents? Anyway, the orogeny didn’t come out in him the way it has in Nassun. His mother—she decides arbitrarily that it was his mother, for no particular reason—never needed to train him, or teach him to lie, or break his hand. “Lucky,” she murmurs.

  He’s in the middle of raising the canteen again when he pauses. Something flows over his face. She’s learned to read this look of his in particular, despite the fact that it’s such a rare one. Sometimes he’s forgotten things he wishes he could remember, but right now, he is remembering what he wishes he could forget.