The Long List Anthology Volume 7, page 34
She smiled and her smile was the appearance of the sun on a cold day. “All ruses, all guises, all veils part in this world, my love. Rise, child. Come to me.”
Taimur’s heart thundered. He tottered to his feet.
“A wonderful mother, wasn’t she?” said Fatima. “After your father died, the greatest of mothers. What did she say to you when she first revealed the truth?”
Taimur’s legs trembled. His tongue was cotton, but Fatima was waiting. One didn’t make a queen wait.
“Seven,” said Taimur. “I was seven and hiding beneath our old cracked table, furious at my mother. Asim and Qasim, the two neighborhood bastard boys, were making fun of me, saying I was a craven, because I refused to take my clothes off and swim with them in the canal. I told them I had weak lungs and Mother said my body must always be kept warm, but they laughed at me and called me a eunuch. So I ran and hid, and she found me sobbing, my mother. She sat me down and we talked and that was when I really understood why she hid who I truly was from the world.”
Fatima’s ageless eyes were gentle. “Say it.”
Taimur’s cheeks were wet. Were they tears or the sorcerer’s blood?
“Out with it,” said Fatima. “Say your name.”
Taimur opened her mouth. “Tehmina. I am Tehmina.” And she lifted a hand, wiped the moisture from her face, and clasped her mother’s amulet to her chest.
Fatima’s face was a rose of pleasure. “Yes, my love. There is no shame any longer. No fear. No need to hide, for you have done me the most exceptional of favors and you will be repaid in kind.”
“I am a woman,” said Tehmina, words now rushing from her mouth, as if a moment’s pause would bind them. “I was born a woman. But my father was dead and I had not brothers, and Mother, when she was fifteen, was married off to a man nearly twenty years older, and we had this shop but no one to run it. The apothecary was at risk. A dawa-khana run by two-women would wither and fail—but if I were a boy . . .” Tehmina swallowed. “I am so thirsty.”
Fatima rubbed two fingers together and Tehmina held a goblet of cool rosewater sherbet. She lifted it, took a few sips. Fear was leaving her. If the Queen of Red Midnight had wanted her harmed, she would be dead already.
“So she gave me concoctions and a daily medicine to ensure I would not curve. My body would remain flat like a man’s. And her plan worked. I have been a man all these years with no one the wiser. Sometimes”—Tehmina paused to drink— “sometimes I forget it myself: that beyond the dull evenness of my body lies secreted a woman.”
“But there is a bit more to it, my love.” Fatima’s gaze went to the amulet around her neck. “Isn’t there?”
Tehmina glanced down at it. “This? It was my mother’s.”
“What you wear is an ancient scroll of Afrasayab, once a great king of sorcerers. I know not how it came upon your family, but I would venture that it is what perfects the illusion for those around you. It offers you protection. How else could you get M____ here? You should always wear it . . . as you should this ring.” Fatima took off the ring of Solomon and tossed it to Tehmina, who caught it, surprised. “Put this on, my lovely rose, and make a wish.”
“A wish.” Tehmina looked at the ring, at its tarnished ancient sigil of black onyx and two winged women carved around its band, as one looks at a scorpion’s stinger. “Isn’t that how the hidden folk of Peristan and Mount Qaf trap a human? By granting wishes and binding them in evil covenants? No, my queen, I’m better off without the dual-edged blades of wish and magic.”
Fatima nodded. “You might be. But the half-creature of the ring is not. Without a worthy master to restore it, the homunculus will wither and pass on, its ancient magic vanished from the world. I must not take the ring, for if I do I may become a greater specter than I am already.” In her eyes were shadows that slipped past each other. “Fear not, O Tehmina, for my spell has been lifted: The homunculus will weaken no more. It will serve your pleasure, for I know”—she smiled—“you will be a worthy mistress.
“And now, O Tehmina, I give you this: You will be the witness to my story and your words will be sweet and beguiling. You will repair the story of M____ the cobbler of Cairo so the world knows the story behind the story. Let his name be lost, let his legacy not be his contrived caravan of dreams, for there was naught but greed and ignorance that traveled through that desert with him.
“My sweet Tehmina, come nigh. Step close to me. That is right: Put your forehead on mine. Now, my dear sweet blushing rose, make us a wish.”
And, it has reached me, my wonderful hosts, that eyes wide, palms sweating, Tehmina the Trickster stepped forward, and rested her head against the queen’s.
7: THE STORY UNLEASHED
“Such is how,” said Baba Kahani with a flourish of his arms, “my auspicious hosts, my gracious friends, my wonderful goray companions—may the stars forever align above your heads and the planets spin into favorable formations—the Marvelous Tale of Tehmina the Trickster and the Moon-Mad Roses comes to an end.
“Now, a qissa-khwan should boast neither of his tales nor his narrative prowess, but I hope you will agree that it is a worthy story, a valuable mode, a memorable history, and a useful frame to view our delightful world through, is it not?” said Baba Kahani, smiling, and lifted a steaming cup of chai to his ample lips.
Hatim and the others started. Lyssa looked around as if in a dream. Maurice scratched his head. Tolya yawned, stretched his back, and reached for his tea, but the tin cup was empty.
Around them the teahouse bustled and banged, a perpetual motion machine that rolled from dawn to dusk and dark to light. Hatim remembered one particular nihari shop in Old Lahore where supposedly a copper pot had not stopped simmering since 1947. The owners worked in shifts around the clock.
Wonders forgotten everywhere, he thought. Tomorrow we will sit at a flat table and talk about stories. Injustice, corruption, and the making of fiction, but what of wonder? What of ancient, overlooked, tongueless pockets of the world? Miracles wrought in the mundane never told, because the tellers aren’t around anymore.
Such peculiar thoughts, Hatim mused, but then, the night was peculiar.
He glanced at his watch and was startled to see it was only eleven forty-five p.m. How was that even possible?
“But that’s a poor end,” cried Maryanne. “What was Tehmina’s wish? What happened to M____ after that horrible shit he went through, well deserved though it was? How about Fatima? She wasn’t a saint herself, was she! And the girl Mehrunnisa? Why is she such a passive side character?”
Baba Kahani’s eyes glittered. “A slew of questions, my gracious host. Didn’t the Queen of Red Midnight say a story once freed grows its own tail?”
“No, she didn’t,” said Maurice thoughtfully. “She said a story once unleashed grows its own tail. There’s a difference, I think.”
“Perhaps Tehmina’s wish,” continued Baba Kahani, “freed them both and Mehrunnisa and Tehmina had their own happy ending. Perhaps Fatima was satiated and gave up her kingdom and spent the rest of her life in service of her fellow women. Mayhap Tehmina returned home without the ring to her life of duplicity and dissociation—who knows?
“What I do know, my lovely friends,” said Baba Kahani, rising to his feet, “is that it’s getting late and I must be going. Thank you for the tea and cake, most generous of you. I hope you enjoy your visit to our astonishing city.
“And with that I bid you adieu and a marvelous night.”
He bowed, the sequins on his waistcoat catching the light. A glimmer on his left hand, then Baba Kahani straightened. He took off his swollen lips, removed his face, shook open his long oiled hair (it fell in midnight rivulets to the ground) and walked away into the faintly red smog of Lahore.
* * *
Usman T. Malik's fiction has been reprinted in several year's best anthologies includingThe Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy series. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy and the Nebula awards, and has won the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy.
Usman's debut collection Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan has garnered praise from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paul Tremblay, Karen Joy Fowler, and Kelly Link among others, and is available through his website at www.usmanmalik.org. The Hachette India edition will be out in mid-2022.
You can find Usman on Twitter @usmantm & IG @usmantanveermalik.
If You Take My Meaning
By Charlie Jane Anders
Novelette Long List
They woke up stuck together again, still halfway in a shared dream, as the city blared to life around them. The warm air tasted of yeast, from their bodies, and from the bakery downstairs.
Mouth lay on one side of Sophie, with Alyssa on the other, sprawled on top of a pile of blankets and quilted pads. Alyssa couldn’t get used to sleeping in a bedpile out in the open, after spending half her life in a nook—but Sophie insisted that’s how everybody did things here. Sophie herself hadn’t slept in a bedpile for ages, since she went away to school, but it was how she’d been raised.
“I guess it’s almost time to go,” Sophie whispered, with a reluctance that Alyssa could feel in her own core.
“Yeah,” Alyssa muttered. “Can’t keep putting it off.”
Sophie peeled her tendrils off Mouth and Alyssa carefully, so Alyssa felt as if she was waking up a second time. One moment, Alyssa had a second heart inside her heart, an extra stream of chatter running under the surface of her thoughts. And then it was gone, and Alyssa was just one person again. Like the room got colder, even though the shutters were opening to let in the half-light.
Alyssa let out a low involuntary groan. Her bones creaked, and her right arm had gone half-numb from being slept on.
“You don’t have to,” Sophie whispered. “If you don’t…if you’d rather hold off.”
Alyssa didn’t answer, because she didn’t know what to say.
Mouth laughed. “You know Alyssa. Her mind don’t change.” Mouth’s voice was light, but with a faint growl, like she wished Alyssa would change her mind, and stay.
The tendrils grew out of the flat of Sophie’s ribcage, above her breasts, and they were surrounded by an oval of slightly darker skin, with a reddish tint, like a burn that hadn’t healed all the way (just a few inches upward and to the left, Sophie’s shoulder had an actual burn-scar). Someone might mistake the tendrils for strange ornaments, or a family of separate creatures nesting on Sophie’s flesh, until you saw how they grew out of her, and the way she controlled their motion.
Whenever Alyssa’s bare skin made contact with that part of Sophie’s body, she could experience Sophie’s thoughts, or her memories. Whatever Sophie wanted to lay open to her. But when the three of them slept in this pile, Sophie didn’t share anything in particular. Just dream slices, or half-thoughts. Mouth still couldn’t open herself up to the full communication with Sophie most of the time, but she’d taken to the sleep-sharing.
All three of them had their own brand of terrifying dreams, but they’d gotten better at soothing each other through the worst.
“So that’s it.” Mouth was already pulling on her linen shift and coarse muslin pants, and groping for her poncho. “You’re going up that mountain, and the next time we see you, you’ll…you’ll be like Sophie. The two of you will be able to carry on whole conversations, without once making a sound.”
Mouth looked away, but not before Alyssa caught sight of the anxiety on her face. Alyssa could remember when she used to have to guess at what the fuck Mouth was thinking, but that was a long time ago.
Sophie noticed, too, and she sat up, still in her nightclothes. “You don’t ever have to worry about a thing.” Sophie’s voice was so quiet, Alyssa had to lean closer to hear. “No matter what happens, after all we’ve been through, the three of us are in this together.”
“Yeah,” Alyssa said, punching Mouth’s arm with only a couple knuckles. “No amount of alien grafts are going to mess up our situation.”
“Yeah, I know, I know, it’s just…” Mouth laughed and shook her head, like this was a silly thing to worry about. “It’s just, the two of you will have this whole other language. I’ll be able to listen, but not talk. I wish I could go through that whole transformation, but that’s not me. I need to keep what’s in my head inside my head. I just…I want you both to fulfill your potential. I don’t want to be holding the two of you back.”
Alyssa leaned her head on Mouth’s left shoulder, and Sophie’s head rested on the right. “You speak to us in all the ways that matter,” Sophie said.
“It’s true,” Alyssa said. “You already tell us everything we ever need to know.”
Alyssa had grown up with romances, all about princes, duels, secret meetings, courtships, first kisses, and last trysts. She’d have said that real life could never be half as romantic as all those doomed lovers and secret vows…except now, those stories seemed cheap and flimsy, compared to the love she’d found, here in this tiny room.
For a moment, Alyssa wanted to call the whole thing off. Climb the Old Mother later, maybe just go back to bed. But then she shook it off.
She pulled on her boots.
“It’s time.”
• • • •
Alyssa had handled all kinds of rough terrain in her smuggler days. She’d even gone into the night without any protective gear one time. So she figured the Old Mother would be nothing. But by the time she got halfway up, her hamstrings started to throb and her thighs were spasming. Next to her, Mouth spat out little grunts of exhaustion. Only Sophie seemed to be enjoying pulling herself up from handhold to handhold.
“Shit shit shit. How the fuck did you ever get used to climbing this beast?” Alyssa wheezed.
Sophie just rolled her shoulders. And mumbled, “It wasn’t a choice at first.”
Behind them, Xiosphant had gone dark and still, just a valley of craggy shapes without highlights. Except for one light blaring from the top of the Palace, where the Vice Regent could never bring herself to obey the same shutters-up rule that all of her people lived by. Alyssa didn’t want to risk falling, so she only half-turned for an instant, to see the storm damage, still unrepaired. And the piles of debris, where the fighting between the Vice Regent’s forces and the new Uprising had briefly escalated to heavy cannon fire.
Everyone knew Bianca couldn’t last as Vice Regent, but they had no notion whether she would hold on for a few more sleeps, or half a lifetime. Alyssa tried to avoid mentioning her name, even though her face was impossible to avoid, because Sophie still nursed some complicated regrets, and Mouth still felt guilty for helping to lead Bianca down a thorny path. Alyssa was the only one in their little family with clear-cut feelings about the Vice Regent: pure, invigorating hatred.
Alyssa wanted to stop and rest mid-climb, but the cruel slope of the Old Mother included no convenient resting places, especially for three people. And it would be a shitty irony if they almost reached the top, but slipped and fell to their deaths because they wanted to take a breather. The air felt colder and thinner, and Alyssa’s hard-won aplomb was being severely tested.
“My fingers are bleeding,” Mouth groaned. “Why didn’t you mention our fingers would bleed?”
Sophie didn’t answer.
They reached the top, which also formed the outer boundary of nothing. Ahead of Alyssa were no sights, no smells (because her nose got numb) and no sensations (because her skin was wrapped in every warm thing she could find). No sound but a crashing wind, which turned into subtle terrible music after a while.
Alyssa’s mother and uncles had sent her off to the Absolutists’ grammar school back home in Argelo, when she was old enough to walk and read. That was her earliest distinct memory: her mom holding one of her hands and her uncle Grant holding the other, marching her down around the bend in the gravel back road to the front gate where the school convened at regular intervals. That moment rushed back into her head now, as Sophie and Mouth fussed over her and prepared to send her away to another kind of school.
Mouth was pressing a satchel into Alyssa’s hands. “I got as many of those parallelogram cakes as I could fit into a bag. Plus these salt buns, that taste kind of like cactus-pork crisps. And there are a few of your favorite romances tucked in, too.”
“Thank you.” Alyssa wrapped her arms around Mouth’s neck. She couldn’t tell if her eyes stung due to tears or the wind, or both. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t let Sophie take any more foolish risks.”
“I’ll do my best,” Mouth said. “Say hi to the Gelet from me. And tell them…” She paused. “You know what? Just ‘hi’ is plenty.”
Then Sophie was hugging Alyssa. “I can’t get over how brave you are. You’re the first person ever to visit this city, knowing exactly what’s going to happen.”
“Oh shut up.” Alyssa was definitely starting to cry.
“I mean it. Your example is going to inspire a lot more people to go there. I think Mustache Bob is close to being ready.” Sophie choked on the mountain air. “Come back safe. We need you. I love you.”
“I love you too. Both of you.” Alyssa started to say something else, but a massive, dark shell was rising out of the darkness on the far side of the mountain. “Shit. I need to go.”
Alyssa let go of Sophie, clutching the satchel, and gave Mouth one last smile, then turned to face the writhing tentacles of the nearest Gelet. These two slippery ropes of flesh groped the air, reaching out to her.
• • • •
As soon as they swathed Alyssa in woven moss and lifted her in their tentacles, she freaked out. She couldn’t move, couldn’t escape, couldn’t even breathe. Her inner ear could not truck with this rapid descent down a sheer cliff, and somehow she wasn’t ready for this disorientation, even though she’d talked through it with Sophie over and over. Alyssa wanted to yell that she’d changed her mind, this was a mistake, she wanted to go back to her family. But the Gelet would never understand, even if she could make herself heard.
Taimur’s heart thundered. He tottered to his feet.
“A wonderful mother, wasn’t she?” said Fatima. “After your father died, the greatest of mothers. What did she say to you when she first revealed the truth?”
Taimur’s legs trembled. His tongue was cotton, but Fatima was waiting. One didn’t make a queen wait.
“Seven,” said Taimur. “I was seven and hiding beneath our old cracked table, furious at my mother. Asim and Qasim, the two neighborhood bastard boys, were making fun of me, saying I was a craven, because I refused to take my clothes off and swim with them in the canal. I told them I had weak lungs and Mother said my body must always be kept warm, but they laughed at me and called me a eunuch. So I ran and hid, and she found me sobbing, my mother. She sat me down and we talked and that was when I really understood why she hid who I truly was from the world.”
Fatima’s ageless eyes were gentle. “Say it.”
Taimur’s cheeks were wet. Were they tears or the sorcerer’s blood?
“Out with it,” said Fatima. “Say your name.”
Taimur opened her mouth. “Tehmina. I am Tehmina.” And she lifted a hand, wiped the moisture from her face, and clasped her mother’s amulet to her chest.
Fatima’s face was a rose of pleasure. “Yes, my love. There is no shame any longer. No fear. No need to hide, for you have done me the most exceptional of favors and you will be repaid in kind.”
“I am a woman,” said Tehmina, words now rushing from her mouth, as if a moment’s pause would bind them. “I was born a woman. But my father was dead and I had not brothers, and Mother, when she was fifteen, was married off to a man nearly twenty years older, and we had this shop but no one to run it. The apothecary was at risk. A dawa-khana run by two-women would wither and fail—but if I were a boy . . .” Tehmina swallowed. “I am so thirsty.”
Fatima rubbed two fingers together and Tehmina held a goblet of cool rosewater sherbet. She lifted it, took a few sips. Fear was leaving her. If the Queen of Red Midnight had wanted her harmed, she would be dead already.
“So she gave me concoctions and a daily medicine to ensure I would not curve. My body would remain flat like a man’s. And her plan worked. I have been a man all these years with no one the wiser. Sometimes”—Tehmina paused to drink— “sometimes I forget it myself: that beyond the dull evenness of my body lies secreted a woman.”
“But there is a bit more to it, my love.” Fatima’s gaze went to the amulet around her neck. “Isn’t there?”
Tehmina glanced down at it. “This? It was my mother’s.”
“What you wear is an ancient scroll of Afrasayab, once a great king of sorcerers. I know not how it came upon your family, but I would venture that it is what perfects the illusion for those around you. It offers you protection. How else could you get M____ here? You should always wear it . . . as you should this ring.” Fatima took off the ring of Solomon and tossed it to Tehmina, who caught it, surprised. “Put this on, my lovely rose, and make a wish.”
“A wish.” Tehmina looked at the ring, at its tarnished ancient sigil of black onyx and two winged women carved around its band, as one looks at a scorpion’s stinger. “Isn’t that how the hidden folk of Peristan and Mount Qaf trap a human? By granting wishes and binding them in evil covenants? No, my queen, I’m better off without the dual-edged blades of wish and magic.”
Fatima nodded. “You might be. But the half-creature of the ring is not. Without a worthy master to restore it, the homunculus will wither and pass on, its ancient magic vanished from the world. I must not take the ring, for if I do I may become a greater specter than I am already.” In her eyes were shadows that slipped past each other. “Fear not, O Tehmina, for my spell has been lifted: The homunculus will weaken no more. It will serve your pleasure, for I know”—she smiled—“you will be a worthy mistress.
“And now, O Tehmina, I give you this: You will be the witness to my story and your words will be sweet and beguiling. You will repair the story of M____ the cobbler of Cairo so the world knows the story behind the story. Let his name be lost, let his legacy not be his contrived caravan of dreams, for there was naught but greed and ignorance that traveled through that desert with him.
“My sweet Tehmina, come nigh. Step close to me. That is right: Put your forehead on mine. Now, my dear sweet blushing rose, make us a wish.”
And, it has reached me, my wonderful hosts, that eyes wide, palms sweating, Tehmina the Trickster stepped forward, and rested her head against the queen’s.
7: THE STORY UNLEASHED
“Such is how,” said Baba Kahani with a flourish of his arms, “my auspicious hosts, my gracious friends, my wonderful goray companions—may the stars forever align above your heads and the planets spin into favorable formations—the Marvelous Tale of Tehmina the Trickster and the Moon-Mad Roses comes to an end.
“Now, a qissa-khwan should boast neither of his tales nor his narrative prowess, but I hope you will agree that it is a worthy story, a valuable mode, a memorable history, and a useful frame to view our delightful world through, is it not?” said Baba Kahani, smiling, and lifted a steaming cup of chai to his ample lips.
Hatim and the others started. Lyssa looked around as if in a dream. Maurice scratched his head. Tolya yawned, stretched his back, and reached for his tea, but the tin cup was empty.
Around them the teahouse bustled and banged, a perpetual motion machine that rolled from dawn to dusk and dark to light. Hatim remembered one particular nihari shop in Old Lahore where supposedly a copper pot had not stopped simmering since 1947. The owners worked in shifts around the clock.
Wonders forgotten everywhere, he thought. Tomorrow we will sit at a flat table and talk about stories. Injustice, corruption, and the making of fiction, but what of wonder? What of ancient, overlooked, tongueless pockets of the world? Miracles wrought in the mundane never told, because the tellers aren’t around anymore.
Such peculiar thoughts, Hatim mused, but then, the night was peculiar.
He glanced at his watch and was startled to see it was only eleven forty-five p.m. How was that even possible?
“But that’s a poor end,” cried Maryanne. “What was Tehmina’s wish? What happened to M____ after that horrible shit he went through, well deserved though it was? How about Fatima? She wasn’t a saint herself, was she! And the girl Mehrunnisa? Why is she such a passive side character?”
Baba Kahani’s eyes glittered. “A slew of questions, my gracious host. Didn’t the Queen of Red Midnight say a story once freed grows its own tail?”
“No, she didn’t,” said Maurice thoughtfully. “She said a story once unleashed grows its own tail. There’s a difference, I think.”
“Perhaps Tehmina’s wish,” continued Baba Kahani, “freed them both and Mehrunnisa and Tehmina had their own happy ending. Perhaps Fatima was satiated and gave up her kingdom and spent the rest of her life in service of her fellow women. Mayhap Tehmina returned home without the ring to her life of duplicity and dissociation—who knows?
“What I do know, my lovely friends,” said Baba Kahani, rising to his feet, “is that it’s getting late and I must be going. Thank you for the tea and cake, most generous of you. I hope you enjoy your visit to our astonishing city.
“And with that I bid you adieu and a marvelous night.”
He bowed, the sequins on his waistcoat catching the light. A glimmer on his left hand, then Baba Kahani straightened. He took off his swollen lips, removed his face, shook open his long oiled hair (it fell in midnight rivulets to the ground) and walked away into the faintly red smog of Lahore.
* * *
Usman T. Malik's fiction has been reprinted in several year's best anthologies includingThe Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy series. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy and the Nebula awards, and has won the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy.
Usman's debut collection Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan has garnered praise from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paul Tremblay, Karen Joy Fowler, and Kelly Link among others, and is available through his website at www.usmanmalik.org. The Hachette India edition will be out in mid-2022.
You can find Usman on Twitter @usmantm & IG @usmantanveermalik.
If You Take My Meaning
By Charlie Jane Anders
Novelette Long List
They woke up stuck together again, still halfway in a shared dream, as the city blared to life around them. The warm air tasted of yeast, from their bodies, and from the bakery downstairs.
Mouth lay on one side of Sophie, with Alyssa on the other, sprawled on top of a pile of blankets and quilted pads. Alyssa couldn’t get used to sleeping in a bedpile out in the open, after spending half her life in a nook—but Sophie insisted that’s how everybody did things here. Sophie herself hadn’t slept in a bedpile for ages, since she went away to school, but it was how she’d been raised.
“I guess it’s almost time to go,” Sophie whispered, with a reluctance that Alyssa could feel in her own core.
“Yeah,” Alyssa muttered. “Can’t keep putting it off.”
Sophie peeled her tendrils off Mouth and Alyssa carefully, so Alyssa felt as if she was waking up a second time. One moment, Alyssa had a second heart inside her heart, an extra stream of chatter running under the surface of her thoughts. And then it was gone, and Alyssa was just one person again. Like the room got colder, even though the shutters were opening to let in the half-light.
Alyssa let out a low involuntary groan. Her bones creaked, and her right arm had gone half-numb from being slept on.
“You don’t have to,” Sophie whispered. “If you don’t…if you’d rather hold off.”
Alyssa didn’t answer, because she didn’t know what to say.
Mouth laughed. “You know Alyssa. Her mind don’t change.” Mouth’s voice was light, but with a faint growl, like she wished Alyssa would change her mind, and stay.
The tendrils grew out of the flat of Sophie’s ribcage, above her breasts, and they were surrounded by an oval of slightly darker skin, with a reddish tint, like a burn that hadn’t healed all the way (just a few inches upward and to the left, Sophie’s shoulder had an actual burn-scar). Someone might mistake the tendrils for strange ornaments, or a family of separate creatures nesting on Sophie’s flesh, until you saw how they grew out of her, and the way she controlled their motion.
Whenever Alyssa’s bare skin made contact with that part of Sophie’s body, she could experience Sophie’s thoughts, or her memories. Whatever Sophie wanted to lay open to her. But when the three of them slept in this pile, Sophie didn’t share anything in particular. Just dream slices, or half-thoughts. Mouth still couldn’t open herself up to the full communication with Sophie most of the time, but she’d taken to the sleep-sharing.
All three of them had their own brand of terrifying dreams, but they’d gotten better at soothing each other through the worst.
“So that’s it.” Mouth was already pulling on her linen shift and coarse muslin pants, and groping for her poncho. “You’re going up that mountain, and the next time we see you, you’ll…you’ll be like Sophie. The two of you will be able to carry on whole conversations, without once making a sound.”
Mouth looked away, but not before Alyssa caught sight of the anxiety on her face. Alyssa could remember when she used to have to guess at what the fuck Mouth was thinking, but that was a long time ago.
Sophie noticed, too, and she sat up, still in her nightclothes. “You don’t ever have to worry about a thing.” Sophie’s voice was so quiet, Alyssa had to lean closer to hear. “No matter what happens, after all we’ve been through, the three of us are in this together.”
“Yeah,” Alyssa said, punching Mouth’s arm with only a couple knuckles. “No amount of alien grafts are going to mess up our situation.”
“Yeah, I know, I know, it’s just…” Mouth laughed and shook her head, like this was a silly thing to worry about. “It’s just, the two of you will have this whole other language. I’ll be able to listen, but not talk. I wish I could go through that whole transformation, but that’s not me. I need to keep what’s in my head inside my head. I just…I want you both to fulfill your potential. I don’t want to be holding the two of you back.”
Alyssa leaned her head on Mouth’s left shoulder, and Sophie’s head rested on the right. “You speak to us in all the ways that matter,” Sophie said.
“It’s true,” Alyssa said. “You already tell us everything we ever need to know.”
Alyssa had grown up with romances, all about princes, duels, secret meetings, courtships, first kisses, and last trysts. She’d have said that real life could never be half as romantic as all those doomed lovers and secret vows…except now, those stories seemed cheap and flimsy, compared to the love she’d found, here in this tiny room.
For a moment, Alyssa wanted to call the whole thing off. Climb the Old Mother later, maybe just go back to bed. But then she shook it off.
She pulled on her boots.
“It’s time.”
• • • •
Alyssa had handled all kinds of rough terrain in her smuggler days. She’d even gone into the night without any protective gear one time. So she figured the Old Mother would be nothing. But by the time she got halfway up, her hamstrings started to throb and her thighs were spasming. Next to her, Mouth spat out little grunts of exhaustion. Only Sophie seemed to be enjoying pulling herself up from handhold to handhold.
“Shit shit shit. How the fuck did you ever get used to climbing this beast?” Alyssa wheezed.
Sophie just rolled her shoulders. And mumbled, “It wasn’t a choice at first.”
Behind them, Xiosphant had gone dark and still, just a valley of craggy shapes without highlights. Except for one light blaring from the top of the Palace, where the Vice Regent could never bring herself to obey the same shutters-up rule that all of her people lived by. Alyssa didn’t want to risk falling, so she only half-turned for an instant, to see the storm damage, still unrepaired. And the piles of debris, where the fighting between the Vice Regent’s forces and the new Uprising had briefly escalated to heavy cannon fire.
Everyone knew Bianca couldn’t last as Vice Regent, but they had no notion whether she would hold on for a few more sleeps, or half a lifetime. Alyssa tried to avoid mentioning her name, even though her face was impossible to avoid, because Sophie still nursed some complicated regrets, and Mouth still felt guilty for helping to lead Bianca down a thorny path. Alyssa was the only one in their little family with clear-cut feelings about the Vice Regent: pure, invigorating hatred.
Alyssa wanted to stop and rest mid-climb, but the cruel slope of the Old Mother included no convenient resting places, especially for three people. And it would be a shitty irony if they almost reached the top, but slipped and fell to their deaths because they wanted to take a breather. The air felt colder and thinner, and Alyssa’s hard-won aplomb was being severely tested.
“My fingers are bleeding,” Mouth groaned. “Why didn’t you mention our fingers would bleed?”
Sophie didn’t answer.
They reached the top, which also formed the outer boundary of nothing. Ahead of Alyssa were no sights, no smells (because her nose got numb) and no sensations (because her skin was wrapped in every warm thing she could find). No sound but a crashing wind, which turned into subtle terrible music after a while.
Alyssa’s mother and uncles had sent her off to the Absolutists’ grammar school back home in Argelo, when she was old enough to walk and read. That was her earliest distinct memory: her mom holding one of her hands and her uncle Grant holding the other, marching her down around the bend in the gravel back road to the front gate where the school convened at regular intervals. That moment rushed back into her head now, as Sophie and Mouth fussed over her and prepared to send her away to another kind of school.
Mouth was pressing a satchel into Alyssa’s hands. “I got as many of those parallelogram cakes as I could fit into a bag. Plus these salt buns, that taste kind of like cactus-pork crisps. And there are a few of your favorite romances tucked in, too.”
“Thank you.” Alyssa wrapped her arms around Mouth’s neck. She couldn’t tell if her eyes stung due to tears or the wind, or both. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t let Sophie take any more foolish risks.”
“I’ll do my best,” Mouth said. “Say hi to the Gelet from me. And tell them…” She paused. “You know what? Just ‘hi’ is plenty.”
Then Sophie was hugging Alyssa. “I can’t get over how brave you are. You’re the first person ever to visit this city, knowing exactly what’s going to happen.”
“Oh shut up.” Alyssa was definitely starting to cry.
“I mean it. Your example is going to inspire a lot more people to go there. I think Mustache Bob is close to being ready.” Sophie choked on the mountain air. “Come back safe. We need you. I love you.”
“I love you too. Both of you.” Alyssa started to say something else, but a massive, dark shell was rising out of the darkness on the far side of the mountain. “Shit. I need to go.”
Alyssa let go of Sophie, clutching the satchel, and gave Mouth one last smile, then turned to face the writhing tentacles of the nearest Gelet. These two slippery ropes of flesh groped the air, reaching out to her.
• • • •
As soon as they swathed Alyssa in woven moss and lifted her in their tentacles, she freaked out. She couldn’t move, couldn’t escape, couldn’t even breathe. Her inner ear could not truck with this rapid descent down a sheer cliff, and somehow she wasn’t ready for this disorientation, even though she’d talked through it with Sophie over and over. Alyssa wanted to yell that she’d changed her mind, this was a mistake, she wanted to go back to her family. But the Gelet would never understand, even if she could make herself heard.
