STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE

a short story collection

Published by !?Interrobang Books
Newton, MA

First eBook edition: July 2014

ISBN-10:0984787062

ISBN-13:978-0-9847870-6-7

All stories copyright 2014 Lisa Janice (LJ) Cohen

Original Cover art by Veris Maya, copyright 2014

http://verismaya.deviantart.com/

"Diversity" has appeared in PEN-ULTIMATE: A SPECULATIVE FICTION ANTHOLOGY

I come from a culture with a long history of living in diaspora and blending into its host society. My grandmother spoke at least four languages. My mother understood several of them, but born in the United States, was only fluent in English. I neither speak nor understand my grandmother's native tongues, other than a few words that have become sprinkled through my everyday experience. So much is lost down the generations. I wanted to explore a little of that sense of loss, but also about what is gained in being open to new cultures and practices. What would it be like to live in diaspora, not just from your culture, but from your planet? Like many of my stories, this one is, in the end, about identity and how we choose to claim it. ~LJ

Diversity

Varna bit back the urge to click her tongue in distress as she studied her tall, barrel-chested boss. His voice, so well suited to vid broadcasts and important speeches to even more important people, felt far too large for her small cubicle. She struggled to keep her throat relaxed and her overvoice silent.

"Your participation is essentially a formality," he said, leaning over her desk and smiling.

Despite her discomfort, it was hard not to smile back. He had a charm that came across as both well-practiced and genuine, almost childlike in its enthusiasm.

"You're not technically part of the diplomatic team and the actual negotiations will take place after the welcoming ceremony. So, what do you think?" he asked.

She clasped her hands under the desk to keep from fidgeting. Varna had worked at the Embassy long enough to know it didn't really matter what she thought. His direct presence here made her assignment to the mission merely seem like a request instead of genetic expediency.

What did she think? Varna clamped her teeth down. After a lifetime of struggling to pass in Human society, she thought this was a massive mistake. But you didn't just say that to Earth's most high ranking inter-planetary Ambassador. Hell, Berwick probably spoke more of her grandparents' native Tuvlun than she did, and he didn't even have the properly shaped palate. She didn't realize she was tapping the tip of her tongue against the high arch of her mouth until the hollow echo of her anxiety filled the room. She snapped her mouth closed before the clicking annoyed him.

"What about my assignments?" She glanced across the piles of perma-paper scattered across her desk.

Berwick raised the bushy eyebrows that framed his steel gray eyes.

Varna's ears thrummed. What a stupid question, but she had to find a way out of this. She wasn't really Tuv, no matter what a gene-scan might show. Her grandparents had turned their back on their native culture in the clearest way they knew—they raised their only son—her father to pursue some bizarre version of a Human life in Tuv skin. As far as she knew, the few other Tuv refugees on earth had done the same. She shook her head. How much harder it must have been for that first generation. At least she could pass, even if most of the time, she felt like she failed at being either Tuv or Human.

"You've been released from Human Resources until further notice."

She shook her head at his unintended irony and swallowed the braying laugh that would betray her Tuv heritage. Tall for an Earth woman, taller even than Berwick, most of Varna's differences remained internal, including the double set of vocal cords that let her voice call out tones her mother complained sounded like a cross between an owl and a cat in heat.

"I'm looking forward to working with you, Varna," Berwick said, glancing at the nameplate on her desk, trying to puzzle out the pronunciation of her last name. She didn't know why she bothered to hold onto that one vestige of her heritage. Everyone mangled it anyway.

"Just use Vee. It's easier than the full formal version." Her nervous laugh filled the small work cubicle. It rang overly loud to her sensitive ears, but it was the best she could do, despite years of speech therapy and coaching. "Even I have trouble sometimes." Her grandfather's lessons echoed in her memory: Put others at ease. Don't call attention to yourself. Fit in. Your job is to dress, walk, and speak like an ordinary Human.

"So how do your pronounce it?" He gave her his best expression of diplomatic curiosity.

Was he really interested? Or did he just need to know she had enough Tuv in her genome to fulfill the Tuvlun envoy's demands? She would have to pay attention to the more subtle tonalities in his voice to tell the difference between Berwick-the-person and Berwick-the-Ambassador. Her Tuvlun senses were very out of practice.

"I'm afraid you don't have the range to hear it exactly the way a Tuv might, sir. This is as close as I can get." She took a breath and let air vibrate the small, thin vocal cords she worked so hard to silence. Her family name emerged as something partly spoken, partly sung, and partly pure vibration she could feel against the sensitive membrane in her ears.

Berwick winced and took a step back.

Heat rushed to Varna's face in a completely Human response to embarrassment. "I'm so sorry, Ambassador!"

He put his hands up and shook his head. "No, not at all. The attaché warned me we would all need auditory filters for the formal meetings. I just didn't think I would need them quite yet."

Looking down at her cluttered desk, she wondered how she could possibly get out of this. She was no diplomat. Unlike her wandering fore-bearers, Varna had barely even left the solar system and her grandparents, native Tuvlun stranded on Earth, rarely spoke about their home. "Sir, I really think. . . . "

"That you're not the woman for the job? That you'll cause a diplomatic incident? That we should choose someone else?"

She dropped her gaze to the floor. Yes, yes, and yes. To all of the above.

"Your supervisors think very highly of you, you know."

Sure. That and a transpass could get her to the moon and back. She lifted her eyes to his face again and swallowed past the lump in her overly long throat. "There are others a lot more qualified. Sir."

He sat at the edge of her desk and leaned in. "So my advisers tell me."

Varna hadn't expected that. Her face heated again and the blood beat against the inner membranes of her ears like the pounding of drums.

"The Tuv will only meet with us if the delegation contains someone who can claim Tuvlun heritage. Fortunately for us, you were already working in my Embassy, with security clearance and the freedom to accompany me in the time window we have." He smiled. "Besides, I have a feeling about you, Varna."

Not that it mattered, but she tried one more time. "Look, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm no diplomat. I'm an assistant to an assistant. . ."

He waved down her objections. "None of us ever do," he said, a far-away look on his face.

Berwick's vulnerability surprised her, though it could just be a diplomatic maneuver. Should she tell him her grandparents got practically thrown out of the Tuv trade guild and off-planet?

"Don't worry, my attaché will get you up to speed. Welcome aboard." He gave her a slight bow and left her office without shaking her hand. She didn't know if that meant anything.

***

They might as well have been on any in-system transport with its small and featureless rooms, and the bland, institutional food. No sense of movement accompanied the terrible dislocation Varna felt. For the most part, she tried to keep to herself in her tiny cabin except for the mandatory meetings and daily briefings.

Slouching low in her chair in the conference room, she listened as the ranking general complained about the newly established Tuv trading base so close to Earth's only major nexus point. Berwick's second-in-command insisted the placement simply allowed for a face to face meeting and that the Tuv didn't pose any military threat.

Besides, allying with the Tuv promised to give Earth access to a whole series of new nexus points. This diplomats believed that alone made the risk worth it even though the Tuv had resisted every offer to trade until now. The same set of facts made the general and his small military contingent twitchy.

Each side presented its best and worst case scenarios, then everyone in the cramped room looked at her as if she had some insider knowledge of the Tuv grand plan. Varna wanted to shrink her too-tall body, silence her too-resonant voice, and hide in her cabin until it was all over.

Berwick barely said more than a few words to her. He had his own team of advisers and seemed to be frowning in concentration whenever she saw him.

She knew it probably irritated the rest of the mission the way it had always irritated her mother, but Varna spent a lot of time humming deep in her throat, to try and soothe her unease. It wasn't easy overriding a childhood where she was taught to hide all outward evidence of her Tuv roots. In a strange way, she felt like she was betraying her grandparents.

Every possible moment, she poured over the ceremony wording to make sense not only of her role, but of the whole formal presentation. Parts of it felt like a debate, other parts like a wedding. The exchange of trade agreements seemed simple, but the heart of the ceremony included the offering of official gifts. The diplomats argued every day over what they should present the Tuv.

They had also prepared a short speech for her to give in Standard and in Tuvlun. Many of the Tuv words didn't make a whole lot of sense even when she had the computer take its best shot at translation. Her grandparents had been the last Tuv to seek asylum on Earth. The language database had to be woefully out of date.

Only a brief announcement warned them they'd docked before the external ports turned transparent again. The nexus point wasn't all that impressive to look at. A series of gantries and scaffolding floated at odd angles to one another, sprouting from a dot in space that Varna's eye skipped over, no matter how hard she tried to look at it. The Tuv had the largest nexus network in this part of the galaxy and they were suddenly willing to share it with Earth. No wonder the Embassy jumped at the opportunity.

Varna stared out at the field of stars beyond the nexus, but she had no way of knowing which was her adopted sun and which might have been her Grandparents' long lost home star.

"What am I doing here?" she asked.

"Remarkable, isn't it?"

Varna yelped in surprise, her overvoice ringing the room. Ambassador Berwick winced and covered his ears.

"I'm so sorry, sir," she said.

"My fault. I didn't mean to startle you." He rubbed at his temples.

After the flurry of activity on their way to the rendezvous, it seemed strange seeing him in a quiet moment and without several men and women at his side. At least one from the diplomatic team and one from the military group flanked him at all times, like an angel and devil on his shoulders. She wondered which was which.

He frowned, patting his pockets. "Here they are." He drew out a set of tiny filters. "We haven't had a chance to fully field-test them. Shall we?"

She looked at him, drawing her eyebrows together as he fitted them to his ears.

"Go on. Say something in Tuvlun."

She took a deep breath and recited one of the lines from her script, watching the Ambassador's face carefully, but he didn't react.

"Excellent," he said, nodding.

Well, at least she could get through her speech without sending her own delegation screaming out of the ceremony.

"For what it's worth, I appreciate your part in this."

He appeared as confident as ever, but his voice had a ringing overtone that betrayed his nerves. She didn't think she would have noticed before spending hours and hours retraining her ears with the Tuvlun language simulators. "Sir?" But he had gone before she had a chance to say anything else.

***

The next time she saw the Ambassador, he stood, dressed in presentation gray and silver, in the entry to the large formal chamber where the Tuv delegation had created a meeting hall. Berwick paused at the edge of the cold, white room, its floor bare but for the red and gold lights that winked in the shape of a curved runway leading to where their Tuv counterparts stood. The rest of the Earth delegation waited at the perimeter, military honor guard and the Ambassador's staff alike. She kept her eyes on Berwick. What was he waiting for? Varna started humming, but cut off the buzzing sound at a shake of his head, wishing she had something to do with her hands.

The room fell silent. Even the Earth delegation stood completely still. Varna still had not looked across the room. What if they wanted someone more obviously Tuv? From what she'd been able to piece together from childhood, her grandparents had been permanently exiled from their homeworld. She never knew why. What if their failure reflected on her? Her spindly arms hung at her sides, wrists poking out from the sleeves. She clicked her tongue rapidly against the roof of her mouth. This was such a mistake.

Berwick met her eyes and smiled. He had such a large presence it seemed wrong that she stood taller than him. When he finally gave her a nod, she stumbled forward on wobbly legs. He walked beside and slightly behind her, holding the box containing the gifts the staff had finally agreed to offer. She wasn't even sure what had ended up in the container. The Ambassador should be the one in front, not her. She struggled not to glance back at him and focused on her feet and on not tripping on the way to the dais.

Forcing her head up, she nearly gasped aloud at her first good look at the waiting delegation. The Tuv representative stepped forward from a group of five others. He looked like her grandfather must have before the years on Earth aged him and stooped his body. Standing nearly seven feet tall, with a long neck and thin oval face, he towered over even her. His round eyes, nearly black, almost all pupil, were as impossible to read as her grandparents' and her father's had been. Dark green robes flowed over a black form-fitting bodysuit that accentuated his lean limbs. She wondered if that's what she looked like to her Human friends and co-workers—a walking, talking scarecrow.

"Daughter of Tuv, be welcome here. I am the Speaker." She recognized the words from her studying. His voice rumbled through her. Her grandmother's voice had sounded like that and she realized how flat, how empty Human voices seemed in comparison. The Speaker turned to Ambassador Berwick and folded his lanky torso into a bow. "She is well chosen." His Standard rang through the room in multiple octaves simultaneously, but all the members of their delegation had filters in place. At least no one winced.

The Speaker clasped his arms together and waited. A long silence fell. Now what? Varna had an almost irresistible urge to say something, say anything to fill the void, but she forced herself to be still. He studied her for several uncomfortable moments before unlacing and relacing his fingers.

The silence stretched out until she practically vibrated with tension. Her hands shook. He was supposed to say something. This was not what she had practiced. Sweat trickled down her back and she glanced back at the Ambassador. He nodded, his face composed. A soft hum rose from the Tuv side of the room. It resonated against her thin second ear drum and she shivered with the collision of the familiar and the strange. She wiped her palms against the soft material of her formal robes.

Just a formality. Just a formality. She looped the ambassador's words over and over in her head in a calming mantra.

A young Tuv girl stepped forward from behind the Speaker, holding a smooth, seamless white box. Varna let her shoulders relax. This had to be the exchange of official gifts. They were back on the script. The girl stroked the box with the slender fingers of her right hand. All the fingers measured the same length, even the thumb. Varna looked down at her own hands, the fingers almost like her mother's. Her own thumbs seemed impossibly squat and clumsy next to the girl's.

The box unfolded itself, revealing three small triangular compartments, each filled with a glass vial. Perfume? Something to drink? What was she supposed to do?

The girl set the open box on a waiting table and drew out one of the vials. The liquid inside swirled a dark purple that was nearly black. "Please, you will hold?" she asked, her Standard awkward and halting. Varna could sense Berwick somewhere behind her. Surely he would intervene if this were dangerous.

Varna reached out and took the vial in her right hand. The crystal caught the light and splashed rainbows against the chamber walls.

The girl reached out and gripped Varna's left forearm. She plucked the stopper from the bottle with her other hand and squeezed a single drop of fluid over their crossed wrists. A shadow the color of dusk rose between them. Varna tried to step back. The girl hissed a warning she couldn't translate and gripped even tighter.

"A gift to awaken Tuv senses," the Speaker said, first in Standard, then in Tuvlun.

Varna relaxed and peered into the darkness. Sheets of color burst into her vision. She blinked furiously, trying to clear her eyes, but the brightness bloomed everywhere, creating her own personal aurora borealis. The room came back into view and the light show faded. The girl nodded, placed the stopper back in the bottle and plucked it from Varna's hand, sliding it back into the box. She chose a second vial, holding it out to Varna. Red liquid shimmered inside.

Varna took a deep breath and nodded as one drop hung from the stopper. It slowly sheeted off to splash on their skin. A humming started at her feet. Her bones thrummed with it and her entire body vibrated. The hairs on her arms fanned out. In the distance, she heard what sounded like tolling bells, one peal overlapping with another and another until the whole room rang. The inside of her mind formed a cathedral. Varna's breathing sped up. Tears welled in her eyes when the last of the echoes faded away.

She barely felt the girl taking the red vial and giving her another. This one glowed a deep night sky blue. Scents she didn't even have words for triggered memories long locked inside. Her father's cologne brought his face into focus. He held her hand with his, impossibly long fingers curled entirely around her small, stunted ones. "When will my fingers grow right, Daddy?" she asked. Other scents crowded out his answer. She smelled her grandmother's special steamed bread, pungent with a spice she could never replicate on Earth after her small store from home ran out.

Tastes bloomed on her tongue: The first time she tried chocolate and gagged on the bitterness. The odd combinations of sweet and spicy she always craved. Each taste burned with a color in her mind, each color rang with a clear tone. Her body felt distant, impossibly large and microscopic at the same time. She fell into the heart of a nexus point, except it blazed with light and swelled larger and larger as she got closer to it.

The bright crash of breaking glass brought time and space rushing back. Varna swayed on trembling legs, her hands empty. Cerulean liquid from the dropped vial pooled at her feet. She stared into a distorted mirror of herself. A Tuv woman looked back. "What. . . how. . ." She wasn't sure what language spilled out. It didn't matter. The words rolled around her mouth. They had shape and texture. She could taste their meaning.

She blinked her blurred vision clear, looked up into the Speaker's deep eyes, and dropped into a well of sadness, of patience measured across lifetimes and by the slow shift of constellations across silent space. He reached his free hand out toward her, hesitantly, the arc of its movement asking for permission, for forgiveness.

Images of her grandparents filled her mind with memories clearer than her Earth-dulled senses had ever captured. Her very Human eyes filled with tears. "Thank you for this gift," Varna said. The Tuv words she used felt right, full of nuance that any Standard form of gratitude would have lacked.

"It is your birthright, daughter of Tuv, too long delayed," the Speaker said. Again, the Tuvlun echoed with additional meanings. Guilt and regret hummed in the air like the lowest string of a harp. Her grandparents were the ones exiled. What would he have to be guilty about?

Ambassador Berwick fidgeted behind her. The whisper of his clothing rasped like sandpaper against her ears. The entire delegation shifted in growing restlessness. Before she could take the box from him and offer their gifts in turn, the Tuv girl snatched up a sliver of glass from the floor at her feet. It winked in her fingers. Varna stared without moving as the girl grabbed her hand again in an unshakeable grip, the sharp glass trapped between them, cutting them both.

Varna gasped. Pale blood, Tuv and partly Tuv, seeped from their joined hands for a moment before the pain blossomed. It was a shared pain. And out of it emerged a third language—not Standard, not Tuvlun, but something deeper than either could have been alone.

A silence larger and colder than space blanketed the room. The blood pounded in her head. Distant shouts reminded her she wasn't alone. She looked up and a ring of security men pressed too close, assembling in a cordon around the Ambassador. She could taste their fear, their desire for weapons locked on the ship under diplomatic seal.

"The sharing is complete," the girl said, her words limned with fatigue and triumph.

Ambassador Berwick stood, the sealed box still in his hands. Tension vibrated across his shoulders. "We have come here in the spirit of peace, Speaker." His words purpled with anxiety and reproach. He did not meet Varna's desperate gaze.

"I swear, she has not been harmed," the Speaker said, meeting Berwick's gaze with his own.

Berwick turned his head to look at Varna. She nodded. It was the truth. The small cut would heal cleanly.

The Ambassador ordered the Earth security to stand down. Practiced discipline dimmed their burnt orange aura as they took parade-rest positions by the chamber door, leaving her and the Tuv girl isolated in the center of the room. The girl bowed and retreated with the rest of the Tuv delegation, until only the Speaker remained.

He studied the Ambassador. "Thank you," the Speaker said. "The nexus maps are downloaded into your ship's mainframe."

Berwick pulled his thick eyebrows into a puzzled frown. The waiting delegation relaxed in a symphony of sighs and rustling fabric.

"This gift honors us all," the Speaker said. Varna tasted his anguish, sharp and pungent on her tongue.

"I don't understand," she whispered.

"You will," the Speaker answered. "Your grandparents did."

"My grandparents?"

The Speaker smiled and bowed to her. "They have returned to us in you."

Something eased in the back of her throat. "They weren't outcasts?"

"No. Never." The truth in his voice filled the room with the scent of baking bread and the lost spices her grandmother had mourned. "They are honored for their choice, as you will be."

Her cut palm tingled where her strange, confused DNA had mixed with that of the Tuv girl, creating something new, something alive with possibility that Varna had no name for in either language.

"Now do you understand?"

When she exhaled, her breath hummed like the buzz of late summer bees. She closed her eyes. "Yes," she whispered. Her grandfather had pushed his son to mimic the culture around him to the point where he couldn't even speak passable Tuvlun. It was never out of shame, but out of duty. Out of sadness. Out of love. So that someday, his granddaughter could return, bringing her shared heritage to their people.

She glanced back at Ambassador Berwick still clutching the delegation's official gifts, confusion and jubilation competing for his expression. "Was it. . . is it worth the cost?" she asked, her voice cracking.

The Speaker opened his palms and his fingers spread out like the spokes of a wheel. "We will not know for many turns, child."

She looked down at her own too human fists. "Why?"

"It has been our way since our fore-bearers touched the stars."

"You ask too much," she said, her heart breaking for her grandparents' sacrifice.

"We ask for your forgiveness."

The room sang with silence. Varna unclenched her hands. The glass splinter tumbled to the floor. "Now what?"

"Daughter of two worlds, you will always have a place of honor here, if you choose to stay." The Speaker took a step closer.

Berwick's indrawn breath was as loud as a shout. "She is a citizen of earth, under the protection of the embassy."

She glanced between the two representatives, one Human, the other Tuv, feeling pulled between them. "Do all of us return? Or are some always lost, children of neither?"

The Speaker averted his face. "We try to be worthy of their sacrifice. And yours."

"You ask too much," she said again, softly, her heart aching for those scattered sisters and brothers.

"The choice is yours," Berwick whispered, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Both men waited as Varna listened to the mixed blood sing in her veins.

*

The image of the plague doctor, dressed in a bird-like mask and a long black cloak has always both fascinated me and terrified me. I can't imagine what a plague victim in the Middle Ages must have thought when one of these fearful men came to call. I've also written a lot of persona poetry, in which I explore concepts and themes by giving them a direct voice. In this case, I wondered what it must be like to be the Angel of Death. What if the Angel was a woman? And what if for one night, she wearied of her work and longed to be like the living?    ~LJ

The Plague Doctor’s Lament

Curiosity and need spurred me to enter the city costumed in the mask and garb of a plague doctor. All week, I had watched men swagger through the gates, their thick robes billowing behind them, their bird-shaped faces hiding their fear and their revulsion. I drifted after them to do my endless work in silence, leaving behind the emptiness of a grief I could not share.

Tonight, I walked the streets as one of them. No one spoke to me. Not the guards at the gate, their mail skirts clanking over thick leather, not the desperate whores eying the brief warmth and scant coin to be earned from those rough men, not the plague doctors doomed to failure. I envied them all: the guards and the whores, the blood-letters and purgers, even the dying and the dead.

I slipped through the quiet city, as dried out as the leaves I crushed beneath my feet. Pinpricks of light pierced the darkness—not stars, but a map of the plague-ridden. I turned away. Tonight, the souls of the dead would have to find their own path.

Tonight, I needed the company of the living.

So many had already fled the city. The wealthy ones who could afford to bribe the guards at the gate, took more than their gold with them. My brethren elsewhere were all busy. Too busy, perhaps, to notice one of their own laying down her crook for a night to take on the form of one of her flock.

The weight of the cloak dragged on my shoulders until I walked as stooped as any old crone scrabbling through the town. Fog rolled in off the harbor, bringing the smell of decay. I could almost believe I was the last living thing who moved in this forsaken place. If I perished in this form, would one of my kin shepherd me from this world?

Odd thoughts from one who was cursed to never die.

My wandering brought me to a silent house where I had already reaped the lost ones—a young wife, a daughter, and two sons. They had followed me easily, their memories streaming behind them like maypole ribbons, as the husband keened.

I entered the dark room I remembered. A large bed frame took up most of the space, a straw mattress with its bedding smoothed on top. The floor was bare, scoured clean of the filthy rushes that had soaked up the vomit and the shit of the dying family. The shutters were open to the night and were I mortal, I would have shivered even under the heavy cloak I wore.

A flicker of brightness drew me closer. The man still lived, though I don’t know why I was surprised. This town’s dead belonged to me and I staggered beneath the weight of every soul I have taken.

A shadow in the corner moved and I walked toward it. He sat on a stool, rocking back and forth, his shirt unlaced, his feet bare, his head bowed. I slipped off the cloak and lifted the bird-mask from my head to stand in front of him in a borrowed body and a borrowed face.

He glanced up and jerked backwards, nearly tumbling from the stool, his eyes wide and wild, shining in the darkness. Death would come for him, and he knew it. They all knew it. Even the ones who welcomed me, feared me.

I knelt in front of him and touched the impossible warmth of his face, feeling him shudder, terror warring with desire. How could I explain that tonight I had come, not to grant him release, but for my own?

*

I still remember where I started this story. I was traveling with my husband and we had a layover in the Atlanta airport. For whatever reason, the image of God as a patient in psychotherapy for his anger management problems appealed to my odd sense of humor. The first draft of what turned into "Thou Shalt Not" was scribbled in a cheap single-subject spiral notebook, along with my todo lists and scraps of poetry. The finished product is fairly close to that draft, which rarely happens in my writing process. I'm not sure what that means.   ~LJ

Thou Shalt Not

At first, the silence was a blessing. After ages of coping with the background noise of a few billion souls, the eternal buzz of their petty blasphemies, hopes, fears, and occasional prayers, he reveled in it. After a while though, the absence of sound itself became a roaring pressure that built to a terrible crescendo.

"Enough!" His shout shattered the emptiness, leaving only an throbbing echo behind.

"You seem angry," she said.

He glowered at the psychiatrist, his eyes barely banked coals. The woman, cool and comfortable in a beige suit, didn't blink. She steepled her fingers, holding them in front of her face.

"May I call you God?" she asked.

God. Lord. Allah. Jehovah. Zeus. Ra. He'd been called them all and more at one time or another.

"Whatever," he said. The shrink got on his nerves. He wanted to imagine her a pillar of salt or ash and had to suppress a flare of guilt. Self control was not his strong suit.

He looked up and met her gaze. She didn't even flinch. For the first time, he noticed one of her eyes was green, the other blue.

"I think today has been a major breakthrough," she said.

Just because he finally broke his silence? He wondered if she knew how close she'd come to being smited. God shrugged.

"Same time tomorrow?"

"Do I have a choice?"

She paused, a half smile on her face. "That's a very interesting question, don't you think? Pehaps we can pick up on it tomorrow."

God growled, deep and low in his throat and her desk wavered, turned to fluid smoke, and vanished. The doctor thinned before disappearing to wherever her desk had gone.

"This is nuts," he said.

***

"So, do you have a choice?" she asked.

The doctor was wearing navy blue today. Pink tinged pearls circled her throat. God looked down at his usual jeans and sandals and back at her. "Are you ever going to loosen up?"

She smiled. "When I ask you a question you don't want to answer, you talk about me."

He shrugged. He was supposed to be the omnipotent one, but she seemed to have all the answers today.

"Tell me about choice," she said.

"What do you want to know?" He knew that answering the proverbial question with a question was another way of evading her. It probably drove her nuts, but she never betrayed her professional calm. One day, he wanted to see her break that perfect control. He started to get angry all over again.

She was waiting behind the burnished and empty desk. As far as he was concerned, she could wait forever.

But there was something about choice. No matter how promising the clay, how beautifully formed the body, how pious the soul, it always turned out the same way. It was something about choice. He tapped long spidery fingers on the soft leather armchair.

"I want to know why talking about choice makes you uncomfortable," she said.

God ignored her and the smug triumph in the set of her shoulders, the slight upturn to the corners of her mouth. She held to the same neutral face that she had shown him through eons of silence, but he was the Lord. He could see through the calm facade. The hell of it was, he could tell that she knew he knew.

He glowered and thunder rumbled across the room.

The doctor sighed and settled back down to wait.

***

His old energy was back. He could barely sit still in the high backed recliner.

"You seem happy this morning," she said.

He wasn't even going to let her habit of restating the obvious get in the way of his good mood.

"I figured it out. You were right. It's about choice," he said, running the words together in his excitement to get them all out.

There was a time he would never admit that the doctor was right. A slight grin cracked her professional countenance.

"I'm ready to try again," God said.

The doctor nodded and her ruby earrings sent drops of blood colored light around the oak paneling of her office.

"It was choice all along. That's where it went wrong every time. If they don't have free will, they can't disobey." He flashed her a triumphant smile, almost able to hear the fanfare of trumpets in it. It would feel absolutely fabulous to gather dust and clay again, to feel a world come to life at his hand. "You've been a great help to me. . . " He trailed off, the energy of the room deflating like a spent helium balloon.

Outwardly, nothing in her posture or expression had changed, but God could feel the irritation and sadness beneath the surface of her patience. Irritation he understood. It was the dominant theme of all these damnable therapy sessions. His irritation. Some days it was like a splinter lodged in a fingertip Other days, the pulse and throb of a migraine behind one eye.

Good, he fumed, let her feel what I feel.

He stood up to go, turning his back on her.

She sighed, the sound smaller than the slightest puff of air on a mid-summer day. He heard it. Of course he heard it and his temper flared, raising the temperature in the room to a flash point.

"I can't help you." Her voice fell like a cooling rain, but God was still steaming. He whirled to face her again.

"Can't or won't?" he demanded. His voice vibrated the desk and set the framed pictures swaying on the walls.

The doctor sighed again. "It's not up to me. It's never been up to me." She shook her head. "I'm sorry."

God slammed the door and stomped into the empty waiting room. "Up to me. Up to me. Damn straight it's up to me." He was the Almighty. The Father Creator. There wasn't anything not up to him. His shoulders slumped. And that was part of the problem, wasn't it?

It was the doctor's ever so reasonable words he heard, but this time it was in his own voice.

He pushed at an overstuffed wing chair, toppling it to the floor, but his heart wasn't really in the destruction. If she were here, she'd ask him why he was punishing the chair.

"I gave them everything. The world, sunsets, opposable thumbs, free will, and they screwed it up again."

"Did they?" she asked.

They were back in her immaculate office. The doctor smoothed her red camisole and buttoned the camel hair jacket.

"Yes. They did," God said, picking an imaginary piece of lint from the fold of his white robe. It had been the golden calf all over again. Oh, it wasn't gold and it wasn't in the shape of a farm animal this time, but that was just a metaphor anyway.

"And?"

"And what?" God glowered at her. "They screwed up. The world ended. End of story."

She cocked her head to the side. That's it? The world ended?”

God folded his arms across his chest.

"Then why are you so upset?" she asked.

"I'm not upset!" God was on his feet staring down at the doctor and her desk. The session clock was smoking.

Silence stretched across the room until God's ears began to ring.

"If you're not upset and the problem with your latest world is taken care of, then why are we still here?"

God dropped his head in his hands. "I don't know!"

"I think you do," she said, her voice no longer ringing with her usual authority or confrontation.

"It's not fair." God felt hot tears track the wrinkles graven in his face.

"You made a promise." Her words sliced into him like a finely honed blade.

"I know," he whispered into his hands. He knew she heard him. What was wrong with him? He couldn't even keep his own word anymore. "If they would only listen," he said.

"And what about you? Did you listen?" She was speaking gently, but it didn't matter how soft the words. They found their mark, striking the heart of his guilt.

He lifted his head and met her gaze. "No," he said.

***

"Insight isn't enough, you do understand that, don't you?"

God nodded. He shouldn't have asked the question.

"You'll know when our work here is finished."

"Yeah, the light bulb has to want to change and all that."

She laughed and something in him eased at the sound.

***

He was early for his appointment. God walked over to the window in the waiting room and rested his forehead against the glass. Outside, static wove random patterns across the horizon. It was a landscape stripped of color or meaning. Lonely. The world was lonely. He was lonely.

All it needed was his breath, his word, and everything would bloom again. There would be purpose again. He would have purpose again. He closed his eyes to the featureless plain. But there would be choice and the chance of betrayal. Again.

He was God. Why did he keep failing? At this rate, he was never going to figure it out. He was surprised the doctor was even willing to keep working with him. She must have the patience of a saint.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"Good." She slipped her hand in his. He looked up, startled. Gone were the severe suits and bound hair. Her gauze tunic mirrored his, in a thousand shades of blue to his green.

"You don't have to figure it out by yourself," she said.

The brightness of his smile burned away the oily fog by the window. "I'm an idiot."

She shrugged. "I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to," he said.

She reached her free hand to touch the window and it dissolved. They were standing in a small patch of clear air speckled with distant stars.

"What happens now?" he asked.

She scooped a handful of fine sand from the ground and let it trickle through her fingers.

"I don't know. Why don't we find out?"

*

Many of my story ideas emerge from time spent listening to NPR on the radio. It's the background to much of my day to day life. Several years ago, I heard an interview with an MIT researcher who was working on a memory project in which he rigged up video cameras to a backpack and recorded his every waking moment. It started me wondering about how memory is made, categorized, and stored within our own brains and how recorded events are all equally weighted in importance, where personal memories are not. What would happen to our sense of self if we were able to record our lives in real time and then access those 'memories' for later?   ~LJ

Persistence of Memory

My handwriting is starting to go. That seems to be a consistent sign of the disease progression. It was much faster this cycle. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll be like a leaky jar and the memories will just spill out of my head as fast as the doctors can pour them back in. At this point, that would be a blessing.

The irony is not lost on me. Until my medical leave, I was the head researcher at MIT's virtual memory project. I invented the algorithms and storage protocols that led to this cutting edge treatment. The doctors warned me it was experimental, that it might not be a cure, but I didn't care.

My work has guaranteed there is no 'forget it' anymore. No 'never mind', no 'it doesn't matter.' Everything matters. And if everything matters equally, does anything really matter anymore? I'm sure given what I know now, I could tweak the search algorithms, I could assign a weight and relative relevancy to each specific moment and event that makes up my life, but that's not the same as knowing what matters. I could swear I told Pendergast that at our last section head meeting, but I can't find a memory of that conversation anywhere, either on the server or in my personal chip. Well, she wouldn't understand anyway.

I used to know what mattered. I used to be able to remember phone numbers and birthdays. Hell, I could tell you the date, what day of the week it was, and even give you the most direct route to the interstate all on my own, without consulting a smart phone. How many people can say that now?

Something fundamental in the science of information technology changed when we broke the terabyte barrier for flash memory. Suddenly anyone could carry around the whole yellow pages on the head of a pin. Along with the contents of every dictionary in every language. And with wifi being broadcast from every storefront and even the cheapest cell phones data enabled, we were finally freed from having to remember anything.

When my lab came up with the v-mem app and the cyber-architecture to support it, it seemed like the next logical step in personal computing technology. Just brain-dump all the things you didn't need to keep in mind and store it at your fingertips instead. For most of the early 21st century, we were doing that anyway. Need a phone number? Fire up your browser. Directions? Email them right to your GPS. Social networking took care of personal reminders—you could even set it up so the computer would automatically choose and send your friends their birthday cards.

Long before my memory had started to hiccup, I had been testing and relying on v-mem. And it was so damned convenient. Seductive, even. The next true revolution in leisure time. Without the tyranny of having to use up precious personal bandwidth remembering what groceries you needed, why not let your phone query your pantry and have the food delivered instead? Then think of how much free time and space you would have to think.

Only it didn't work out that way.

I was in charge of theoreticals. Pendergast headed the implementation and marketing team. When she first suggested that split, I was grateful. She knew how much I would rather bury myself in the lab anyway. And she was much better at managing the grants and interfacing with industry.

Her team was so very clever in the way v-mem was released. The school age kids were easy enough to hook. It wasn't a big step for them anyway, so much of their lives were already in the cloud. To most of them, v-mem was shiny, sexy, the next meme. It was free and the company released a hacker's toolkit. That's all it took for the college kids. Some smart grad-student figured out a way for the big job search engines to directly query the virtual memory database. V-mem could nab you the perfect job—the ideal mesh with your skill set, but only if you were hooked in. Otherwise, someone else got the job. Then it was keyed into universal medical records and spun into a matter of preventing malpractice and tracking drug interactions. From there, it was only a small push to adopt virtual memory markers as unique biometric measures.

The V-mem homepage became the most used web portal, blowing Google and Facebook out of the running by a factor of a hundred. And initially, it looked as if we had been right—virtual memory storage solutions seemed to eliminate information anxiety nearly overnight. If you woke up at 3 am with the nagging feeling that you'd forgotten something, all you had to to was playback the last day's memories and find it again. Arguments were settled, accidents reconstructed. The ultimate in 'instant replay' with the ability to search and sort too. Archivists hailed a new era of research. Who needed trails of correspondence when you could have the actual memories of soon to be important historical figures? And virtual memory seemed to hold the key to solving the problem of memory-killing diseases like Alzheimer's.

At first I didn't notice. Or maybe I did and refused to see it. The names on the tip of my tongue, getting lost on the way to the cafeteria. It was easy to laugh it all off. Just the stereotypical absent minded professor.

And thanks to virtual memory, I have at least a few hours left to question everything I thought I believed in before it all begins to unravel again.

It was hard to see anything wrong with the treatments. After all, how different is it in philosophy from autologous blood or bone marrow donation? Theoretically, someone with Alzheimer's could have their stored memories re-implanted as they slept and wake up with those memories fresh and accessible, at least until they began to fade and needed to be refreshed.

And it worked. Not just theoretically, but actually.

I should know—for the past eight months, I've undergone 12 such treatments.

The nurses are upset at me for refusing to let Laura visit this afternoon. I let them think it's because I want to spare her the pain, but the truth is, we are becoming strangers to one another. Maybe memory isn't the glue we thought it was.The last time she came to see me, she left in tears. Hell of a disease that makes you forget your own wife.

According to the CDC, there is no epidemic of early onset dementia, only that surveillance techniques and better detection have allowed for more accurate diagnosis. They report it as if it's a great gift: early detection increases the chances of early treatment and even the holy grail of remission or cure. There is more money being poured into memory research than all the cancers and AIDS combined. Surely someone else has made the correlation between dementia rates and the rise in the use of virtual memory. I can't be the only one.

I'm sure that just looking at the latest data has alerted the medical staff to my 'escalating fixation' as they like to say it in my medical record. Note to self: remember they are monitoring my memory retention and rate of progression. It's part of what I agreed to when I entered the study.

I understand it so much better now. The problem is memory isn't like a film of your life events, narrated by an impartial observer. Memory is fluid. And it's unreliable. We remember best when emotion is involved and emotionally laden memories are likely to be the most volatile. We remember peak experiences, for good or for ill, and events without any limbic overlay are likely to be forgotten. The virtual memory programs didn't account for our messy, unstructured human brains. They documented everything without any filtering—the sensory bombardment and minutiae of day to day living, placing every word and deed under its merciless lens. How can we not suffocate under the weight of that much remembering?

If I focus on one thing over and over, I can keep it from the end of one cycle to the start of another. One of the last things I remind myself is where I hide this journal. It's the only part of me that isn't susceptible to change. Or maybe it's just the paranoia that seems to be the hallmark of whatever stage I'm in.

Laura can't be in on it. Whatever it is. She loves me.

Twelve times, I've accused her in my own handwriting and twelve times I've struggled to come to terms with it. Something made me suspicious. Only I can't remember what. That's part of what's so suspicious.

Recruitment ads looking for the memory-challenged run on every major channel and through every ISP. Memory loss has replaced erectile dysfunction and herpes as the problem du jour in all the commercials even as faster and more complete virtual memory systems are hyped and released. The very definition of knowing has changed from understanding something to having its storage location and access. I did that. I'm not proud of it.

I know time is running short. The cycles of integration and disintegration are so fast now that I only have a few lucid days where several months ago, I had weeks. There may come a time when the doctors become discouraged and advise us to end the treatments. I wonder what Laura will make of this journal. I wonder what will become of me.

Some clever hacker even figured out how to tap into and broadcast stored memories. It was only a matter of time before he struck a deal with the Reality Channel. Now you get to choose between the already famous and the soon to be famous. See through their eyes. It should have been the ultimate in empathy—the walking a mile in someone's shoes made literal. Instead, what it did was make us all voyeurs of minutia. It's now possible to know more about some perfect stranger than yourself. Be a baseball player for an hour. Or try on the opposite sex. Cheat on your wife, but it's not you so it doesn't count. There are even pay-per-murder channels. They get even higher ratings than the immersion porn. And it's all been brought to you courtesy of yours, truly.

When the memory lapses and the episodes of anxiety pushed me out of the lab, I felt like I was drowning. Laura made me an appointment with her shrink and I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't the large flat screen and memory chip access port. The doctor never even made eye contact. He downloaded my medical history and started pawing through my data. I never went back. That's when Laura found out about this study.

My hands are shaking too much to keep writing. I still feel like me, but I know the signs. The doctors believe that waiting until everything fades completely makes the procedure less likely to work, so tomorrow morning, they'll try to deepen the grooves of my memories. I want to tell them no, that I think my mind has been worn too smooth. I want to tell Laura that forgetting would be the greatest gift she could give me.

According to the informed consent form, the procedure involves no remembered pain. Is that the same thing as no pain at all?

Even after the horror show of the Cassidy trial, the law still relied on virtual memory evidence almost exclusively in criminal proceedings. All the police procedural and forensics shows that had topped the ratings for so long became quaint, dated reruns on late night TV. It didn't kill all the lawyers, but virtual memory did kill the whole concept of trial by jury. Cassidy was one sick fuck and he made a fortune on the movie rights. To this day, the court refuses to recognize the possibility of deliberately altered memory, even after Cassidy released both versions of events.

If it weren't for a few entries in this journal that don't make any sense, I wouldn't give Carl Cassidy a second thought. He was an aberration. The original unreliable narrator. See, we all needed to believe in the sanctity of memory, divorced from our emotions and interpretations. Hell, virtual memory's main selling point was that it was objective. Not like our mutable, fallible human memory. But here's the thing. I flip through the pages of this little book and I recognize my own handwriting. I just have no memory of placing my hand to the paper and forming the loops and lines of these particular words. And I have written the same sentence twelve times already.

I'm sure I've never been married, so who the hell is Laura?

*

Here, again, is a story about identity and choice, set against the backdrop of the myth of the selkie. The power of the ocean has always called to me, from my childhood spent at my grandmother's home on Miami Beach, to learning to sail as an adult and feeling utterly complete and at peace on the deck of a sailboat. Couple that with a genetic heritage that has at least some Celtic roots, and you have "Water Bourne."   ~LJ

Water Bourne

In a room full of strangers, she knew she was the strangest. Born of stray thoughts and discarded memories, she shifted from moment to moment, the raw material of her self captured by each guest’s expectations. Now a fine boned beauty with hair as dark and sleek as seal skin. Now a college co-ed with onyx eyes and a shy smile. Now one of the caterers, laden with trays and barely noticed by the party-goers.

Longing made flesh, she was as powerless to choose her own transformations as the men and women around her their desires. In a way, they all shared her curse. Slipping amongst the revelers, she waited, restless as water, for the one who had conjured her, the one whose need would bind her to a single form for the evening.

Looking up, she lost herself in a tumble of unfamiliar faces. Each, save hers, kept its own shape as she swept through the room, searching. None had the power to hold her gaze.

Sea water splashed across her cheeks. No, not seawater, she realized, tears. How odd, she thought. Only humans cried.

“Are you all right?”

He looked down at her, brows drawn over deep blue eyes the color of the ocean at the horizon line.

I wonder who he sees? she thought, swiping the dampness from her face.

“I—I’m sorry. No. I’m okay. Really.” Her voice tuned to a smoky alto. She clenched her jaw against the pain as bones shifted beneath her skin. “I was supposed to meet someone here.” That was true. That was always true.

He nodded, his gaze never leaving her face. “I hope he was in a car accident.”

“What?” She was certain she’d misheard him.

“Well, he’d better have a damned good reason to abandon such a beautiful woman.”

She smiled. Very smooth. He was why she had been called here tonight.

“I’m Aiden. Aiden Clancy.” He held out his hand. Clean, squared off nails, long fingers, calluses. A capable hand.

“Kelsey Finn.” As she met his grasp, the names and details of her life clung to her like a set of clothes custom made for a new five foot six inch frame. There was the house she grew up in; Scout, her childhood dog; her on-again, off-again boyfriend Peter who stood her up tonight; a job managing a local bookstore. A bittersweet pleasure to know who she was, knowing she would have to strip Kelsey from her like a second skin come sunrise.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

“Just soda water.” Kelsey didn’t drink. Her father and two uncles all died from complications of alcoholism. She looked around the room and shrugged. “Hard to be the only sober one at a party.”

“Good thing you’re not the only one.” He shook his glass. Misshapen ice cubes clinked at the bottom of a nearly empty tumbler. “Tonic, with lime.”

Someone cranked up the stereo. The throb of bass rumbled through her rib cage. He steered her towards the bar, his hand warm in the small of her back. She leaned into its certainty. He would always be Aiden. She wondered what that must feel like.

“Can we go outside?” Now that he’d defined her, she wasn't worried she’d shift again, but the noise and the crush of bodies made her empty stomach roil.

He carried both their drinks and led her out the French doors to a quiet balcony. The beach below was nearly invisible in the darkness of a new moon night, but the sound of the surf settled her heartbeat to its rhythm. “That’s better, thank you.”

He tipped her chin up towards his face. “If you don’t like crowds, why did you come tonight?”

She smiled. “To meet you.”

He nodded, accepting what sounded to Kelsey like a cliched pick-up line with serious consideration.

“Why are you here?” she asked, sorting through the possible stories. Bad break up, best friend wanting to set him up with someone, work obligation.

“You needed me,” he said.

It was so close to the truth that she stiffened, ready to bolt. He molded his hand to the contour of her spine and turned her toward the sea. “Listen,” he said.

The tide was receding, each wave lapping a little less of the shore, leaving foam and shell behind. Just like her, diminished after each transformation. But onus, stronger even than the moon’s pull, brought her back time after time.

“My company offered me a promotion, a big job out in Chicago,” he said, “but I turned them down. I couldn’t live that far from the ocean.”

The hair on the back of her arms fanned out. To live apart from the open water would destroy her. “There’s always Lake Michigan,” Kelsey said. “I went to school in Chicago. Great sailing.” And the memories were there, complete, down to the name of the laser she’d sailed on the college race team.

“It’s not the same,” he said.

“No,” she agreed. The water in the lake lay sluggish, cut off from the teeming vitality of the sea. She would not survive long there.

The doors banged open, bombarding them with distorted music and laughter. A drunk couple spun out onto the balcony, groping one another, the sweet reek of alcohol mingling with their sweat.

Aiden nodded in the direction of the stairs. “I really hate these parties. Walk with me on the beach?”

They slipped out of their shoes, leaving them to mark their spot on the balcony. Aiden rolled up the cuffs of his pants. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her to him. She liked being Kelsey, liked what Aiden saw in her. It didn't always turn out this way, but it always ended in spindrift and early morning fog. She glanced down at this slender body. Is this what she wanted? To be locked into a single form, unchanging? Forever bound by someone else's needs and desires?

A sea breeze blew in across the water, raising goose bumps along her bare arms. For an instant, memories of all her past selves whirled around her like a cyclone. She felt dizzy. The wind snatched at the newly made details of Kelsey's life. They slipped through her like sand through grasping fingers. “No, please,” she cried, but her voice was tossed back to her, just another piece of wreckage. Aiden hugged her closer and turned them as a single unit, using his back to shield her. She clung to him and stopped shivering.

“Do you want to go back?” he asked.

“No.” She held back a sob. No, she didn’t want to go back. Back to what she was, waiting for the next new moon, nameless, formless, adrift. Tears spilled down her cheeks again. What’s happening to me?

Aiden touched the tip of his index finger to her face, brought it to his lips, tasted, swallowed. “Salty.”

She fumbled for something to say, something to distract herself from the sensation of flowing into him. “It’s like sea water. Our blood too. Like we carry our own little oceans inside us.” She was babbling, her words a stream over stones.

“Don’t be afraid,” Aiden said.

“I’m not,” Kelsey said. But she was, her whole body trembling against his. Fear tasted new, like the tears. Another Human thing, a shape she could mimic, but never own. She looked into Aiden’s face and what she saw in him settled her, gave her something familiar. She was his to rescue for the night, so she would be something in need of saving.

The tide struggled to turn. She sensed the forces warring with one another—the pull of gravity, the mass of water draining from the shores of the world into the belly of the ocean. Now the sea held still. Slack tide. By the small hours of the night, the water would surge back to shore, only to slink away at sunrise, taking her with it. Again.

Aiden would be left with the remnants of a lovely dream and a memory of the nice time he had at the beach house. He might reconsider, take the job in Chicago, and learn to find the beauty in a different kind of water. Kelsey would shatter into a thousand droplets, a child’s soap bubble when the surface tension breaks.

Perhaps she could fall in a sudden drenching Midwestern storm or mingle with Aiden’s exhaled breath on a foggy day. She sighed. It would be just as likely for water to learn to drown.

“I’m not my usual self tonight,” Kelsey said. And then she laughed because it was true. Because it was always true.

“Me neither,” he said, his face still in the darkness, no laughter in his voice.

Sea spray splashed her bare feet, stealing what little warmth this body held. “What will you do? I mean, without a job.”

“I have a job,” he said.

“What about Chicago?”

“Tonight, I’m supposed to be here. With you.”

He looked into her eyes, his unblinking, waiting for her to answer his wordless question. She reached up on her toes, lifted her chin, and kissed him, her lips pressing against his with a need that frightened her. His tongue teased her mouth open. He tasted like sea spray and a westerly breeze. The sound of their mingled heartbeats drowned out the pounding of the waves. Water lapped at their legs, sucking the sand from beneath their feet.

How did the tide turn already?

They were twined together on the sand at the tide line. Her hair clung like damp seaweed to the back of her neck. “Aiden, we’re soaked!”

He laughed, pulling her on top of him. “So what?”

The warmth radiating from his body kept Kelsey’s teeth from chattering.

“There is strength in water,” he said.

A ripple of color passed across his face, his eyes glittered like fish scales. His heart beat in time to the thunder of distant surf. She held her breath.

“It only looks as if it yields.” He reached his hand up to cup the round of her cheek. “But in time, everything yields to it.”

Her heartbeat sped up until she couldn’t separate the blood roaring in her ears from the surging sea. His hand was as smooth as sand-weathered shell and she leaned into it.

“Even me,” he said, his voice no longer Aiden's soft baritone, but a deep bass thrum, with the power and terrible patience of the ocean.

There was a time she would have begged him to let her drown, rather than live apart from her home, her kin, his protection. But in her exile, she also found freedom, even as her power to shift was taken from her. Even as he punished her by giving her human cousins the ability to set her shape.

He pulled her head down to his and kissed her slowly. “I was wrong, my sweet selkie. Please forgive me.”

The fierce undertow dragged Kelsey's memories from her, stripping away the remnants of all her temporary lives, until she was a curved shadow against the inky darkness of the sea. She cried out against the loss. The bark of a seal echoed in her ears. Her eyes burned with the pressure of tears she could no longer shed.

"I don't understand. Is this truly what you desire?"

She curled up against his chest and wept.

***

Daylight burned through Kelsey's salt and sand crusted eyelids. “What the hell?” Her tongue felt thick and heavy. Son of a bitch. Peter must have spiked my drink. She knew the hurt would come later. Now she was too angry, too cold. She sat up, looking down at herself. Her shoes were gone, her dress a soggy ruin. The last thing she remembered was arguing with him before stumbling down the balcony stairs to the beach, his laughter harsh in her ears.

“Are you all right?”

Kelsey skittered to her feet, heart racing, and tugged at the hemline of her mini dress. The soft baritone voice didn't belong to Peter. She took a deep breath. The man stood tall, with sandy hair and dark eyebrows crooked over deep blue eyes. He held out a fluffy bath towel in one hand, a steaming travel mug in the other. The scent of coffee made her mouth water.

“I saw you from the house.”

She didn’t meet his gaze, looking up at the balcony where she and Peter had fought last night.

He handed her the towel and mug. She wrapped the towel around her shoulders and shivered as she gulped down the hot coffee.

“Is there someone you’d like to call? You can use my phone.”

His concern burned through the chill and her shame. “No. He’s why I’m here. Like this.”

The silence between them was broken by the tumble of surf and the call of seabirds.

He reached for the empty coffee cup and she shivered as he brushed her hands with his. “I’m Aiden. Aiden Clancy.”

His touch teased a memory of warmth that receded like the waves at low tide. Her name sprang to her lips in automatic reply. “Kelsey Finn.” She was certain she’d never met him before. She looked away from the strong lines of his face and stared at the sea. “Are you always in the habit of rescuing damsels in distress?”

“Only on alternate Thursdays,” Aiden said. His voice was warm and full of secret laughter. “Saturdays I look for mermaids.”

It was Saturday. She held her breath. The beach seemed to stretch for miles, an unbroken ripple of sand at the edge of the world. She felt herself waver, a heat shimmer in the morning sun.

“Kelsey? Is something wrong?” Aiden asked, his brows crooked, his eyes clouded.

She took a deep breath. The sound of her name on his lips felt right. Her heartbeat steadied. She shook her head. No. Everything felt all right now. The sun on her face, the wind tugging at her hair, Aiden smiling at her. A gull wheeled overhead, laughing as she took one single step away from the water and then another.

*

Many of my stories emerge from an image, a concept, or a phrase. This one started when I wondered what would happen if you witnessed a crime involving the Fey. Then my mind leapt to "the Fairy Witness Protection Program" and things progressed from there. And I've always loved this Joni Mitchell song.   ~LJ

The Last Time I Saw Richard

Joni Mitchell's voice on the radio collided with my internal sound track and the coffee soured in my stomach. Sometimes, I think someone out there has a twisted sense of humor. I looked around but I was alone in this desperate coffee shop with Joni's song and memories of Richard I didn't want to relive.

I come here a lot. It’s not fancy or corporate. There aren’t overstuffed sofas or a bewildering array of over-priced drinks illustrated on a hand lettered menu. Instead, I could down endless refills of bun-o-matic coffee and scuff my shoes on the worn linoleum floor.

The last time I saw Richard was fifteen months, six days, and seven hours ago. It had been raining, but the damn fairy glamour held and I didn't get a drop on me. Puck insisted I watch the funeral and I'm still not sure why. Maybe to convince me that my old life was good and truly gone. Even after being around Humans as long as they have, the Fey still don’t 'get' mortality. But they certainly know we do.

I don't know what was harder—watching my own coffin being lowered into the ground, or seeing Richard crying over my grave. Okay. I'm lying. I do know.

Joni finally finished singing about her Richard, old drunk romantics, and dark cafe days with a voice that promised she understood about pain. There was only so much I could take.

When I agreed to testify, I didn't know what the cost was going to be. It's not as if the Fey lied to me, at least not overtly. They did promise me Richard would be safe from reprisals and that I would be under Fey protection.

And, yes, they delivered on their promises.

They just didn't lay out the fine print. I was a law student. I should have known better.

For me, a year and a half ago it was 1974 and I was a second-year at NYU.

"Can I get you anything else?" The man behind the counter looked as bloodshot as I felt.

I slid my cup over and he topped it off. Puck would be here any minute. That's not his true name, but it's what I called him. I figured it was fair. After all, they changed my name.

He would hate this place. I smiled and took a gulp of the hot coffee. The door opened to the sound of bells. Puck, right on schedule.

Even disguised, he was too pretty. The biggest concession Puck made when he traveled to the Human side of the barrier was to wear jeans and a sweatshirt instead of the raw silk he preferred. I knew he did it to make me feel more comfortable.

"Thou art. . ."

I frowned and he started over, forcing himself into modern vernacular.

"You are looking well, Amanda."

I hated the name they had given me.

"Not too bad for an out of work twenty-something," I said.

Richard would be sixty-two now. According to the world’s calendar and my legal birth certificate, I was fifty-nine. Time flies when you’re having fun in Fairy. Just like Rip Van Fucking Winkle.

I should have known better.

"Is that why thou. . . you have summoned me?" Puck frowned, picking an imaginary speck of lint from his jeans.

"I'm going crazy here," I said.

Puck nodded. "Titania shall be pleased to see thee again."

I glared at him. He didn't get it. "We've been over this," I said. Returning to never-never land wasn't an option. "I can’t. . .” I took a deep breath. “I want to go back to school." The words slipped out, almost of their own accord. I hadn't thought about law school since before the trial.

It had lasted the better part of a year and according to Puck, it was one of the speedier Fey proceedings. I guess when you live forever, due process is really due process. I'm not sure I still believed in the law, but I had to do something. Law school, at least, was familiar ground in a world that had turned very strange. Once upon a time, I was an idealist. But that was before I tried to stop what I thought was a couple of punk kids from mugging a little old lady in an alley not far from NYU.

Puck drew his eyebrows together. "There are limits to Titania's generosity."

Generosity. Is that what Puck thought? That Fairy gold for a life was fair trade? I should have walked away. That night in 1974 and now.

Turns out the punk kids were part of a Fey uprising and the old lady was one of the incarnations of Queen Titania herself. Apparently, it's safer for all concerned, Fey and Human, if the Fey divest themselves of power on their side of the doorway. Titania's attackers were taking advantage of that and figured they could knock off the Queen, slip back to Fairy, and take up her mantle before anyone was the wiser.

Just everyone's luck I took a shortcut across Washington Square Park, late again for dinner with Richard.

I never did make it home that night, but I did cause enough of a distraction for Titania to slip away and get help. She just wasn't fast enough to keep me from getting the shit beat out of me first.

The Fey arrested my attackers and took me across to repair the damage. I would have died in that alley otherwise. It was a mixed blessing at best. I became a material witness and fell under the jurisdiction of the Fey court. After the shock of discovering Fairy wasn't, well, a fairy tale, the court was somewhat of a relief. At least it made sense to me when just about everything else of the Fey didn't.

Since the Fey resettled me here four months ago, I haunted the places of my old life. There was no one I knew and no one who knew me. And even if there had been, what could I tell them? I had been there, and I could hardly believe me. At least Washington Square Park and its surroundings were pretty much the same, but that was practically the only thing that felt familiar. Maybe if I was back in school, I could finally be Amanda Silver, inhabit her life, instead of the ghost of a woman who had never really lived.

"She hath offered thee a rare boon, Amanda," Puck said, holding up his water glass to the light. The ice cubes caught the reflection from the window and threw rainbows around the cafe, making the place dangerously otherworldly. I blinked it back to its seedy normal.

"Live as a prisoner in Fairy? Some boon," I muttered.

"Prisoner? Nay, Amanda. Our honored guest."

The Fey really needed to get out more. The thee's and thine's had just about driven me insane. "You know I couldn't stay." Of all the Fey, Puck had spent the most time on this side. That's why they made him my babysitter. The Fey took their promises seriously and they had promised me safety.

Puck reached out with his impossibly graceful fingers and cupped my chin. I stiffened at the unexpected contact and had to force myself not to pull away. "If it is any consolation," he said, "I am sorry."

I did pull away then and turned my head. The last thing I wanted was for Puck to see me cry.

"What you ask is complicated." He drummed his fingers on the counter. "I shall do what I can."

When I looked back over, he was gone, the sound of bells tinkling in the distance.

***

I stayed up almost all night memorizing the information in the dossier that had appeared in my apartment. Amanda Silver, graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. Rather than go right to law school, apparently she, no, I, had spent two years in central Asia in the Peace Corps. I wasn't sure how they did it, but my story would check out, even if they interviewed my supposed supervisors and Peace Corps buddies. Fairy glamour and a risky one at that.

I wished they had sprinkled me with pixie dust or whatever they did and took away my memories, too. But that would have been in violation of some obscure Fey code, given I had singlehandedly saved their Queen. Fey gratitude is a dangerous thing.

I cried then, in the silence of my lonely studio and pulled out the only picture I had of Richard. It had been in my wallet the night of the attack and the Fey had never taken it from me. Maybe they knew I had it, maybe they didn't.

It was a small, square picture of the two of us, cut from a strip taken at a mall photo booth. Richard had his arm resting on my shoulder, and smiling. He had the blond hair and the personality of a golden retriever. Relentlessly optimistic and with a goofy sense of humor. I was staring at the camera as if I was ready to cross examine it. Richard always teased me for hating having my picture taken. I wondered if he'd kept any of me all these years.

I put the photo back in my wallet and took a deep breath. Tomorrow, Amanda Silver was going to start law school.

***

I decided on basic black. Pants and a shirt. The pearl earrings Richard had given me the day he proposed. I was wearing them that night. That and the photo were the only things that connected me to him and to that life.

It was a good thing the Fey were so casual with money. Law books cost a lot more than they did in the 70's. I hefted my backpack, groaning at the weight. That hadn't changed, despite the galloping of technology.

I filed into the auditorium with my fellow students. Some knew each other from undergrad and huddled together in anxious knots. Others were checking out the competition. I wasn't nervous. I had survived first year once. The underpinnings of the law didn't change. I just had thirty-plus years of precedent to catch up on, but that was no different than my classmates.

I slipped into a seat and flipped up the narrow desk. Some things really didn't change. All around me, I heard a cacophony of beeps and rings as students turned their phones to silent. Well, some things did change. Maybe if there had been cell phones then, that night would have turned out differently.

The professor was already talking and I shook my head. I couldn't afford to screw around and no amount of wishing would make things any different. I was lucky to be here at all. I wasn't going to blow it.

"Good morning. I'm Professor Larkin. By the end of this semester, you will all hate me." An uneasy chuckle moved around the room. He smiled broadly as he peered over his glasses at the full auditorium.

"I don't allow computers in my classroom." A groan rose from the assembled. "So you'll have to take notes the old fashioned way." He held up a familiar lined yellow notepad. "They are called legal pads for a reason."

I smiled as my fellow students scrambled for paper. Larkin reminded me of Professor Widener. He was in his seventies when I was his student. He was likely dead many years now. A ball-buster, and even harder on those of us without balls. This go-round at least half the class were women. Yes, some things did change.

"Do you have a pen I could use?" I caught a whiff of soap and light musk as the boy behind me leaned over my shoulder. Not a good start to law school, but I wasn't going to make things harder for him. Maybe once upon a time I would have. Rummaging in my pack, I found a spare pen and handed it up without even looking back.

"Thanks," he whispered.

"No worries," I whispered back.

At the end of class, I gathered my things and headed to the library.

"Hey, hold up! Your pen!" I smiled and stopped, surprised he would take the time to return it. Most people wouldn't. I turned around and the smile died on my lips. He was a football player with blond hair and Richard's brown puppy dog eyes. My heart hammered against my chest and I couldn't swallow.

It wasn't Richard. How could it be? But he had Richard's build and awkward lope. I forced myself to stand there and take the pen from his hand. It wasn't Richard. Richard was teaching law at Georgetown. One of the first things I discovered in 2009 was the internet. But I refused to follow the link to the University webpage. I didn't want to see what he looked like now.

The last time I saw Richard, he was just a few years older than this good looking first year law student, studying me with a bemused expression on his face. I wondered what my own expression looked like.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his eyebrows crooking over those eyes that I remembered too well.

"I'm sorry," I stammered, wanting to be anywhere but here, "for a minute you reminded me of someone." It was pretty lame, but it was the truth.

"That's funny. You too." He smiled and dimples scored his cheeks. Definitely not Richard. My heart slowed its headlong race into the land of freak out. I held out my hand, hoping I wasn't sending out freaky vibes. "Amanda Silver."

"Jonathan. Jonathan Brunner."

The blood drained from my face and I tasted bile and stale coffee in the back of my throat. I backed away from him, nauseated. "I'm sorry, I don't feel. . . "

He reached his arm toward me and I bolted. I ran until the breath burned in my chest. When I stopped running, my eyes were blurred with tears but I didn't need to see to know where I was. Washington Square Park. This was where it all started. Where my life derailed.

I screamed Puck's name until I was hoarse. In the middle of the day, in the middle of a park, I screamed and no one stopped to look at me. New York at its finest. I flopped down on a stone bench and covered my face with my hands.

They must have known. And Puck never said a thing. He just let me waltz in there and come face to face with Richard's son.

Richard's son.

In another universe, he might have been my son.

I thought of the smile and the deep dimples and I sure in hell didn't feel motherly toward him. I wanted to touch the golden hair and kiss the nape of his neck. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend I was in Richard's arms again.

"Puck, damn it, you owe me."

"Art thou unhappy, Amanda?" Puck's smooth voice held real concern and also amusement.

I looked up. He was dressed in black silk, elegant, serene. "You find this funny?" I should have known. Never ask anything of the Fey.

"We thought it would be," he paused, cocked his head, "fitting."

"Fitting." I shook my head. "Fitting." There was no way I could explain to him how crazy, how painful this all was. "Why are you doing this to me?" But I knew. Puck wasn't cruel. The Fey were what they were. As far as they were concerned, they'd done what they could to give me fair recompense.

"The doorway is still open. Now or at any time in thy future."

I nodded. If I gave the word, Puck would take me across with him and while I dined at Titania's table, the world here would spin and age until everyone I had ever known would be dead. It would be simpler that way. Simpler and far less painful.

"Wilt thou come, Amanda?" Puck reached out a delicate hand.

I think he might have cared for me in his distant way, but I wasn't ready to give up on being an ordinary mortal. As hard as living day to day would be, in Fairy, I would be an endless curiosity to the Fey. An eternal child in their eyes.

Puck shrugged, seeing an answer in my silence.

"He could love thee, Amanda," Puck said.

I stared at him. Was that a promise, a possibility, or a threat? Knowing the Fey as I did, probably all three.

I was afraid to say anything that Puck would interpret as acceptance or a request. It would be hard enough walking back to campus and to face Jonathan even without Fey 'help'.

"Please, you've done enough," I said.

Puck lowered his gaze and bowed. Before I could get over my surprise, he was gone and the warm sunshine of a September afternoon poured through trees still holding their summer green. Somewhere in the pattern of leaves and light, the Fey waited. If I knocked, they would open the door, but I didn't expect to see Puck again on this side.

I didn't know what to expect, but my next class was due to start in fifteen minutes.

*

We process the world through our senses. It is well known that people on long-term bed-rest who don't get multi-sensory stimulation, begin to lose the acuity of their senses and this can lead to loss of appetite, lack of social engagement, isolation, and depression. I wondered what would happen to us if we were forced to live in an underground world, devoid of the range of everyday sensations we take for granted. What might happen if someone from that world found a vial of sugar or cinnamon? How would they process such an intense flavor? It might feel like a drug. It might change a life.   ~LJ

Vestigial

Higgledy piggledy, all in a stack.

Sanshi chanted the old rhyme as she worked. The dented wheel of her cart thumped against the pitted floor in counterpoint. Haul them away and don't come back. There was always plenty to haul in Undertown. Trash, waste, corpses.

She slipped on a patch of something slimy and her knee struck the floor. The cart jerked free, slamming against the concrete wall. One mottled arm swung away from the corpse balanced on top. Sanshi swallowed a curse and limped a few tentative steps. Roylen hated when she was late.

She bent down to tuck the arm back on the cart. A small stoppered vial slipped from its clawed fingers and rolled across the floor. Sanchi snatched it up and shoved it in her pocket. Breathing hard, she stared up and down the shadowed corridor.

A familiar tickle ran down the back of her neck, but there was no one there. She returned to the trolley. Whatever was in her pocket would have to wait.

She struggled up the ramp to Roylen's shop and wrestled open the door.

“You're late," Roylen said. He wiped wet hands on his stiff brown apron.

Sanshi ducked her head, watching rivulets of blood trickle toward the grate in the middle of the floor. It was easier than looking Roylen in the face. And when your gums begin to bleed, you're dead, you're dead, you're dead indeed. He wouldn't care what her reasons were.

“Let's see what you've got.”

Sanshi waited.

“This one's worthless.”

“It was like this when I picked it up, Roylen.” She kept her eyes downcast.

“Was there at least anything to salvage?”

“The room was empty as a Zek's promise,” she said, resisting the urge to check her pocket.

“Or an Undertowner's belly,” he said.

Her own growled in response.

“If you want to be paid, bring me something I can recycle.” Roylen grunted with the effort of dumping the body off the cart. “This one isn't fit for feeding rats.” He shoved it toward the drain. “Not that the rats have ever complained.”

Sanshi dragged the cart towards the door.

“Two more. Block M 20. Think you can get them before the worms do?”

She scurried out before he could start carving up the body.

***

After the final bodies were accounted for, Sanshi stumbled to her room. She had scrounged everything in it: the bed, two mismatched chairs, and a table with a missing leg propped up by a stack of boxes. The surface of the bed was smooth. Marcel hadn't slept in it last night. He said he was tired of hauling bodies and working in the dark, but Sanshi thought he was getting tired of her. She bit her lower lip. If he wanted to tumble elsewhere, he was free to go.

She sat on the edge of the bed. The vial poked into her hip. Sanshi pulled it from her pocket and turned it over and over in her hand. Probably just as well Marcel wasn't here this morning.

The vial could be filled with poison. Some poisons made you bleed. Others turned lips and fingernails blue, but the woman hadn't died from either. There were no marks on the body at all. Maybe the woman had just worn out and stopped working like the lights and the spy eyes and so much else in Undertown.

The small glass tube itself was likely worth a fortune. Something scavenged from the Zeks. That someone had put the white powder inside probably meant it was worth even more. The black stopper was smooth and yielding and sealed the contents securely. She held the vial up, peering at the worn label, but the letters had faded into an unreadable smudge. If she wanted to sell it, she had to know what it was. It was worth the risk.

Sanshi got up from the bed and sat cross legged on the hard floor, her back against the door. She inched the stopper from the glass. Her hand shook. A few grains spilled out onto her palm. Sanshi held her breath, but the powder didn't burn. She stared at the sparkling dust in the dimness.

Taking a deep breath, she inhaled the taste of light and warmth. It was like a fire banked at the back of her throat. With trembling hands, she stoppered the vial and set it down by her side. She licked the residue from her skin. Tears sprang to her eyes. Fireworks of sharp and sweet exploded on her tongue and for a moment, she wasn't a rat trapped in the warren of Undertown. She swallowed and swallowed, desperate to spread the sensation throughout her whole body.

The bright glow faded, leaving the room dank and chill. Sanshi groaned. Thrusting her hands under her armpits, she stared at the glass tube on the floor. A Zek drug. It had to be. She could probably eat for a year on what she could get for it. The memory of life sizzling on her tongue and setting her senses ablaze left her weak and aching for another dose.

Her lips tingled. She snatched up the vial, shoved it back into her pocket, and crawled into bed, shivering. Curling into herself, she sobbed for the brief instant of ecstasy and for its loss.

For the first time in her life, Sanshi dreamed in color.

***

One, two

block the flue

three, four

duct tape the door

five, six

launch clock ticks

seven, eight

rockets straight

nine, ten

fire again.

***

Marcel hadn't returned by the time Sanshi had to pick up the trolley. It was a task she'd done every night since she turned twelve. Her feet followed the path worn by other feet, an unbroken line of pickups and deliveries.

It was different tonight. Bile coated the back of her throat and her stomach threatened to spill its contents. The worse she felt, the more she wanted to open the stopper.

Roylen had already started disjointing bodies. His apron was spattered with gore. The smell made her gag. She jerked the trolley over the threshold, desperate to get out of Roylen's abattoir. The door swung shut and Sanshi leaned against the rough concrete wall, panting through her mouth. The scent of death lingered.

The scent of life was waiting for the pull of a stopper. She dug into her pocket until the smooth glass caressed her fingers. Her heart sped up and the memory of something bright and clean burned the stench from her nose. The cravings eased. Her stomach settled. She snatched her hand away from the sealed vial.

All through the night, water slicked down the walls of Undertown leaving slime in its wake. Even the cisterns smelled of decay. Mold oozed around the moss clinging to chinks in the walls beneath the lamps. Trash heaps moldered in dead ends, a thick miasma of piss and rot. Dead bodies waited in dismal rooms.

She'd never thought twice about it before.

Maybe Marcel was right and spending night after night in the company of the dead was making her crazy. As distant as Marcel had grown lately, he was the only person she could trust. If he tried the powder and nothing happened, well, she wouldn't be the first to have lost her mind in Undertown. Not the last either.

It was the longest night she'd ever spent hauling the corpses of Undertown. At least Roylen was happy. They were all fresh, all more valuable in death than they'd been in life. He actually whistled as he paid her, his eyes bright behind blood spattered glasses.

Every muscle in Sanshi's body complained. She ran through the corridors, pushing past the Undertowners spilling from their rooms, their faces waxy in the flickering light, until she reached the safety of her room.

“You okay?”

She whirled. Marcel was sprawled in one of the chairs, balancing it on its rear legs.

“Marcel. Yes. No. I. . .,” she stammered to a stop, not knowing what to tell him. She could smell her own fear like the tang of an old bloodstain.

“Good night?”

Sanshi frowned. Marcel was pointing to the small purse in her hand. It was a wonder she hadn't been robbed on her way home.

“It was a long night,” she said, her voice hoarse, her throat dry.

“Let's celebrate,” Marcel said.

He yanked a dingy cloth from a cracked plate. A pile of protein blocks lay in a heap at the center of the rickety table. Sanshi’s eyes widened. Almost a week's supply.

“Where did you get them all?”

“Oh, here and there.” He grinned. “It doesn't matter. They're mine and I'm sharing with you.”

Sanshi's stomach lurched. Hunger was nothing new. The shudder that ran through her and the shadow of the abattoir that clung to the food was. She studied Marcel, desperate for the comfort of the familiar. His head was spotted with stubble. Whoever he'd spent his time with lately must not have been good with a blade. She met his gaze and he shrugged, smiling.

“Don't be mad, Sanshi. I always come back,” he said, mistaking her silence.

She curled her hand around the vial. “I found something, Marcel.”

His eyes lit up. “Better than food cubes?”

Sanshi nodded, her mouth dry. “Yes.” Her hand slick with sweat, she drew out the glass tube and set it down on the table.

Marcel looked at the tube and then at Sanshi. “What is it?” he asked, reaching toward it.

Sanshi snatched it up, suddenly afraid. She took a deep breath. “Give me your hand.”

He shrugged, scooting his chair closer to her. She pried the stopper off and shook one pinch of bright sand into each of their palms before sealing the vial again.

He sniffed lightly and shrugged.

“Like this,” she said, her breath quickening, the blood pounding in her head. Saliva flooded her mouth. The sparkling grains sang to her. She touched the tip of her tongue to the pile, waiting for her senses to ignite.

Marcel copied her and cried out, falling backwards out of his chair. He scrambled to his feet, his body rigid, his face white.

She closed her eyes and threw her head back, letting the brightness drive away everything but the sharp delight dancing on her tongue and throbbing on her lips.

“Sanshi, Sanshi. . . “

Her eyes snapped open. Marcel was breathing hard, his jaw clenched, sweat beading on his forehead.

She groped toward the fear in Marcel's voice. “Shhh. It's all right. Here. I'm here.” His hands were corpse cold. Wrapping her arms around Marcel, she drew him to her, cradling his head against her chest. She traced the tears that leaked from his eyes and brought her fingertips to her mouth. Marcel gripped her arms. His whole body shook. Sanshi leaned down to kiss him. The powder residue on his lips mingled with his salty tears and sweat. He was the taste of light and dark, sweet and bitter, recklessness and fear. His teeth clamped down on her lower lip drawing blood.

Could she have given him too much? She pulled the blanket from their bed and tucked it around his body. Curling around him on the floor, Sanshi fell asleep dreaming of scents and tastes she had no language for.

***

He was gone when she woke up. Marcel was gone.

***

The glass vial lay beneath the table. She scrabbled after it, squeezed it in her fist, and swung it over her head. Smashing it would only release a cloud of the drug. Maybe it would kill her. Tears stung her eyes. Maybe that would be all right. She slumped onto the bed, her arm falling to her side. Gathering up the blanket, she inhaled Marcel's scent. Under the bright mask of his clever wit was the acrid undertone of terror—a stale, metallic taste that she couldn't swallow away. Everything in the room had its own smell and each smell awoke an image or a memory.

She couldn't live like this.

Let someone else collect the bodies and earn what little coin the work paid. She pushed through the corridors where the walls were gray, the floors were gray, and the averted faces moving past her were gray. Only the powder had color. It blazed in her mind, racing through her like an out of control fire.

Even losing Marcel didn't dampen the craving.

Stumbling into the service corridors, she ran, blind to everything but the need to drive the drug from her body. She kept moving, taking random turns through the twisting tunnels until the breath burned in her throat. The corridor dead ended in deep shadows. She gripped the metal grill set into the wall, welcoming its press against her skin. Her heartbeat slowed. A soft breath of air exhaled through the grill. Sanshi groaned, her knees weak with unexpected desire.

That was the world of the Zeks.

She slid to the floor hugging herself. This was the world of the Undertowners.

The only place the two mixed was in the trash. The Zeks dumped scrap from Over into Undertown middens. The piles dwindled slowly, some from decomposition, some from the scrounging. When one pile was gone, another grew in its place. The sweet scent of rot rose in Sanshi's memory. The middens were where the children played, searching for anything of value or interest that they could purchase protection with. That's were she and Marcel had met, where they had scouted for one another, surviving together.

Now there was nothing for her here. Nothing but a never emptying trolley and the taste of death.

Sanshi pulled herself to her feet and yanked on the grill. The corner pins were rusted through and she worked the metal until her fingers were raw, until she managed to pry one side free. Sanshi hoisted herself into the duct and clawed her way toward the sweet air, not caring what was waiting for her at the other end.

The duct was barely wider than she was. It sloped gently upward and seemed to stretch on for ever. Sanshi took any turn toward air that seemed clearer and stronger. It didn't matter. She wouldn't be coming this way again.

Her legs cramped and her arm muscles burned and still Sanshi climbed. It seemed as if she had lifted her body further than the distance across all of Undertown. If it wasn't for the air, she might have believed that Over was just a vast collection of tunnels that led from nowhere to nowhere.

Light from an intersecting tunnel blazed into a perfect square just above her head. The reflection burned in after images that persisted even after she looked away. The flow of air was much stronger here. Sanshi wormed her way to the opening and craned her head to look, squinting in brightness that brought tears to her eyes. Wedging her legs against the corridor wall, she pushed into the new duct. Its slope was flatter than the tunnel she had left and wide enough for her to sit up. She stopped to catch her breath.

Groping for purchase on the slippery surface, she touched a familiar smoothness. She jerked her hand back. Bones rattled against the hard metal. There was no way of knowing how long the body had lain here at the threshold to Over.

Most of the stories of Over involved death.It was woven into all the rhymes she'd learned as an under-twelve. One replayed itself over and over in her head. General Mack went over the sky/With a hundred thousand men./General Mack went over the sky/and ashes rained down again. Once both Zeks and Undertowners lived Over, but that was a long time ago. Everyone in Undertown knew only Zeks could live Over now. No one exactly knew why. Sanshi shuddered, trapped between the skeleton behind her and a patch of pale brightness ahead.

Slipping her hand in her pocket, she brushed the surface of the glass vial. Its dangerous powder was sealed inside. If she went back, madness would kill her and Roylen would process her body with his usual efficiency. Perhaps someone else would find the drug and the cycle would begin again, but at least Sanshi would be dead and this torment would stop.

She pushed forward, hesitated, and pushed forward again.

There was no going back.

She crawled along the steadily widening corridor until she could stand. She was at a crossroads. Metal corridors connected to form an enormous chamber.

It was brighter here than in all of Undertown. Her eyes watered and a sharp pain pierced her head. Gritting her teeth, Sanshi shaded her eyes with her hand and eased her way to the center of the chamber. There was another metal grill set into the wall in front of her. Sound joined the light and Sanshi froze, an arm-span from the grill. A deep rumble echoed through the metal chamber.

She scurried back to the corridor just before a trolley piled with broken, twisted metal and melted plastic moved past. Easily twice as large as the trolley she shoved across Undertown, this one propelled itself. Sanshi stifled her gasp. Sitting on a seat on top was a man constructed of metal. He was staring straight ahead and steered the trolley down an intersecting tunnel.

Sanshi slid to the floor, shivering. The Zeks dumped their leavings onto Undertown. The moving trolley was filled with Zek trash. Was the mechanical man a Zek or something the Zeks constructed like the duct work and the trolley? Where was the light coming from?

Sanshi pulled out the vial and clutched it close to her chest, feeling her heart pound. Standing up, she edged back into the chamber, listening with her whole body. The only sound was the wheeze of her breath. She crossed to the grill and raised up on her toes to look through.

A landscape of saturated colors nearly blinded her. Her eyes throbbed, watering until her vision wavered. She blinked over and over trying to make sense of the sharp contrasts of hue on hue. Her gaze darted around, unable to settle on any one shape. There were no hallways or straight lines. There was sweet air and movement; tall, thin columns with a mad sprouting of spindly ferns swayed back and forth. All was open space. And no people.

Sanshi closed her eyes, dizzy and nauseous. Her chest burned with the effort of her rapid breathing. Gripping the vial until her knuckles throbbed, she opened her eyes again. She drank in the vista, letting vertigo overtake her. It was worth it.

She didn't know how long she stood pressed against the metal grill, but slowly Sanshi began to separate the thread of one color from another, to isolate one shape from its shadow. There was floor and ceiling, though the floor was a covering of the softest moss and the ceiling arched high overhead. It was more clear space than she'd ever seen before. She tilted her head to look up. A reflection from the ceiling pierced her eye and she squinted, turning away.

Sanshi studied the tube in her hand and held it up to the light. It threw rings of brightness like reverse shadows across the metal floor. The ceiling dazzled with the same kind of reflections. Everything she saw was sealed in glass. Over was like the powder in the vial, only for the eyes rather than the tongue.

The floor vibrated beneath her feet once more. Sanshi darted back into the corridor. A siren blared. She curled into a ball, her hands over her ears. The noise cut off with a suddenness that made her head throb. A group of mechanical men walked into the chamber lugging a hose with them.

“Executive order 2-3-2. Decontamination. Executive order 2-3-2. Decontamination.”

The voice was flat. It echoed through the burnished chamber, sending chills down Sanshi's spine. One of the men attached the hose to a spigot on the wall. The others aimed the nozzle at the place where Sanshi had been touching the grill. A fine mist hung in the air, shimmering for a moment before falling to the ground and disappearing with a hiss.

“Executive order 2-3-2. Decontamination complete. Executive order 2-3-2. Decontamination complete.”

The metal men uncoupled the hose and carried it off back down the corridor. The sound of the atonal voice continued to play in Sanshi's head.

Executive.

Executive.

Exec.

Zek.

The hair on her arms fanned out. She couldn't catch her breath.

***

Little John and Chen fell out—

one did lie and one did shout

one did fly and one did crawl

one dug holes to save us all

one did sink and one did swim

but which one pushed the button in?

***

Sanshi woke up curled on the floor, shivering violently, her body shielding the fragile vial. Familiar hunger gnawed at her belly. Shadows draped over her like a blanket. The searing brightness was gone. She paused at the edge of the chamber to listen for the mechanicals. The Zeks. There was only silence.

The grill was lit from a soft glow that seemed to call to her. Sanshi tiptoed across the vaulted opening and looked out again, squinting to shield her eyes. A round, white light hung in the ceiling. The cacophony of colors was gone, replaced with the soothing softness of gray on black, no less bewildering or beautiful. Over was open and quiet, but dead in the way the Zeks were dead.

“We could live here.” The thought rose, unbidden in her mind. She shivered again. Undertowners in Over? They had always been creatures of the dark, scurrying at the roots of something they didn't even know was above their heads. Sanshi thought of the mechanicals and their decontamination. That was just for her. If they could sense her presence, what would the Zeks do if Undertowners swarmed the landscape inside the dome?

She could bring Marcel here.

For a moment, she let herself imagine a new life for the two of them away from the midden heaps and the endless scavenging. No one would know they were here. Marcel was clever. They could find a way to avoid the Zeks.

Tears burned her eyes. The bright powder had terrified Marcel. She didn't think he could stand to see what waited in Over. Not many Undertowners could. They had lived like beetles for too long.

Slinking back into the duct work, Sanshi found the juncture where the skeleton lay. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness and she sat beside the pile of bones, rolling the glass tube in her hands. Thoughts of the dome and its exposed space sent shivers racing down the back of her neck.

***

And when the air begins to roar

it's like a lion at the door

and when the door is torn in two

there's nothing left that you can do

but crawl beneath the ground and pray

the ash won't get you anyway.

And when your gums begins to bleed

you're dead, you're dead, you're dead indeed.

***

Her palms were bleeding by the time she spilled out of the broken grill. Decay hit her like a physical blow. It was night again in Undertown.

She thought of her room, but Marcel wouldn't be there waiting for her. Roylen had probably already replaced her at the trolley. That's how it was.

Sanshi crept along familiar corridors. The weight of the tunnels pressed down on her.

***

The under-twelves slept in a large room near the main midden heap. Sanshi pushed through the darkness into the dormitory. Muffled crying rose from one corner. The sharp scent of urine was the smell of her childhood.

Bodies huddled together on the floor under thin blankets. Sanshi wove through the sleeping children, pausing to sprinkle a few grains of coarse sand on each set of small lips. Some gasped in their sleep, others moaned. Most sighed and settled.

She found the crying child and let him suckle from her fingertip. He hiccuped twice and fell asleep, his face softening and his fists easing open. Sanshi settled herself around his scrawny frame. His warmth was like a furnace against her belly. She whispered a promise in the darkness.

Tomorrow you'll live over the sky and never fall Under again.

Touching a single grain of the powder to her tongue, Sanshi let herself dream.

*

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Other titles by LJ Cohen:

THE BETWEEN

FUTURE TENSE

DERELICT

TIME AND TITHE (forthcoming)

Edited by LJ Cohen:

PEN-ULTIMATE: A Speculative Fiction Anthology

About the Author

LJ Cohen is the writing persona of Lisa Janice Cohen, poet, novelist, blogger, local food enthusiast, Doctor Who fan, and relentless optimist. Lisa lives just outside of Boston with her family, two dogs (only one of which actually ever listens to her) and the occasional international student. When not doing battle with a stubborn Jack Russell Terrier mix, Lisa can be found working on the next novel, which often looks a lot like daydreaming.

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Homepage: http://www.ljcohen.net/

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Table of Contents

Copyrights

Diversity

The Plague Doctor’s Lament

Thou Shalt Not

Persistence of Memory

Water Bourne

The Last Time I Saw Richard

Vestigial

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About the Author