Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 4: September 2013 (4 page)

Charlie laughs again and goes off to his truck, whistling. He has a little bounce in his step. He’s still seeing it, almost like it really had happened. Over his shoulder he calls to me, “They’re built like wimps. Or girls. All bone, no muscle. Even you must of seen that,” and his voice is cheerful. It doesn’t have any more anger in it, or hatred, or anything but a kind of friendliness. I hear him whistle some more, until the truck engine starts up and he peels out of the parking lot, laying rubber like a kid.

I unlock my Chevy. But before I get in, I look up at the sky. Which is really stupid because of course I can’t see anything, with all the mist and clouds. No stars.

Maybe Kathy’s husband is right. Maybe they do want to blow us all to smithereens. I don’t think so, but what the hell difference does it ever make what I think? And all at once I’m furious at John, furious mad, as mad as I’ve ever been in my life.

Why does he have to come here, with his bird calls and his politeness? Why can’t they all go someplace else besides here? There must be lots of other places they can go, out of all them bright stars up there behind the clouds. They don’t need to come here, here where I need this job and so that means I need Charlie. He’s a bully, but I want to look at him and see nothing else but a bully. Nothing else but that. That’s all I want to see in Charlie, in the government men—just small-time bullies, nothing special, not a mirror of anything, not a future of anything. Just Charlie. That’s all. I won’t see nothing else.

I won’t.

“I make so little difference,” he says.

Yeah. Sure.

Copyright © 1985 by Nancy Kress

******************************************

Nick T. Chan is a Writers of the Future finalist, and has also sold to
Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show
. I judged this story for Writers of the Future in 2011, and when we started Galaxy’s Edge I knew I wanted to publish it, so I spent half a year tracking Nick down. Why half a year? Because he lives in Australia.

SISTERS

by Nick T. Chan

In the still moments before dawn, when all is as dark as the bottom of the sea, I turn my head from my sister and dream—and in my dream we are not conjoined. We are not fused from breast to stomach. I am not destined to cast spells until Isabella dies. Instead, I walk straight. I do not crab-scuttle with her. Alone and proud, I am with the love of my life. When I wake, I can’t remember his face. All that remains is that Isabella was alive, yet I was alone. They say the dreams of mages are prophetic, but that cannot be, because the only way I will ever be alone is if I murder Isabella.

This morning the dream ends early. I am awakened by something warm in my right hand that wasn’t there before. I open my eyes. It is a parchment scroll. It’s probably from my friend Emily, who has not written to me for months. I wake fully and winter passes through my veins as I realize what the paper’s warmth means. The scroll was created by magic. Emily’s twin Susan was on the verge of death before we fled the Parliament of Mages, so she can’t have had the power to create the letter. It has to be from the Parliament.

I stand, intending to toss the letter into the fireplace. Standing wakes Isabella. She grabs my wrist and my throw falls short. I strive to pick it up as Isabella pulls away. We dance on the spot, revolving spasmodically, and then her greater strength wins. She squats, forcing me to do so too, and picks the letter up.

“It’s magic,” she says. “They must need you to cast a heroic spell.” She pauses and clasps the scroll to her chest. “How many songs will they write about me after I die?”

“None,” I say. A spasm of coughing overtakes me, bright blood flecking my hand, each spot jewel bright. She says the same thing she always does after each one of my fits. “It’s you or me. If you cast a spell like they want, the people will remember my name. If I’m going to die, I want to be remembered.”

And I use my usual retort. “Murder is a sin.”

The coughing intensifies until thick coins of clotted dark red blood coat my hand and darkness claws at the edges of my sight. I cannot breathe or think. Isabella embraces me until it stops.

“Read the letter,” she says. “You keep saying that you’ll find some way to save me, but we both know it’s a lie.” She pauses. “We’re dying. Do we have a week? A day? An
hour
? Please.”

She is right, but casting a spell will accelerate the rate at which Isabella drains my life, forcing me to cast more and more spells. I cough again, and suddenly I am tired. Isabella believes the Parliament is a force for good, while I know better. But it doesn’t matter what I believe, not when my beliefs will lead to both our deaths.

I unfurl the letter. “It’s blank,” Isabella says. “Why would a mage create it?”

I trace my finger across the paper and my fingers tingle. “I have to cast a spell to reveal the words,” I say. “It’s a small spell. It won’t give us much more time.”

“Do it.”

The words flow easily, though it is a year since I have cast one. Isabella pushes a short hiss of air between gritted teeth at each syllable. As soon as the spell is finished, the scuttling tickle within my chest ceases and crow’s feet wrinkles appear on Isabella’s ashen face. Every part of me burns with life.

Flowing script, as black as blood in the moonlight, fills the page. Each letter twitches in a way that makes me uncertain whether it has really moved at all. I read aloud. “The Ever-dying King’s life is ending and the Worm Nil will soon awaken. I have a plan to stop it. The Parliament does not know. I arrive in three hours. Draven.”

My hand shakes as I lower the letter. When the Ever-dying King dies, then there will be chaos. Without him, spells cost the weaker twin exponentially more. The Parliament will be powerless. As corrupt as they are, the alternative is anarchy. And worse, during the time between the death of the King’s current body and the re-birth of his new one, the Worm is unleashed.

Draven
. Emily’s letters wrote of him. All I know is that she fell in love with him. He was going to save her twin Susan, but he failed and broke her heart. “It’s a trap. He can’t destroy the Worm,” I say.

“They’ll remember us forever if we do it,” she says. “I could have a statue in the grand square. Children will be praised for being like me.” She clasps my hands and forces me into a spin around the room, false gaiety in her eyes. “The selfless Isabella, who sacrificed her life for all mankind.”

“No, it can’t be done.” I look away from her. She grabs me by the chin and forces my face back to its natural position, facing her.

“Can’t or won’t?” she says. “And does it matter?”

“It will kill you,” I say. “Take how much that spell hurt and multiply it by a thousand.”

“It will be worth it to be remembered forever,” she says. She snatches the letter away and reads it out loud behind my back, rolling each word around in her mouth as if they were hard-boiled lollies. “Why did you say Draven can’t kill the Worm?” she says. “I don’t remember him.”

“He was Emily’s lover,” I say. “He joined the Parliament after we left. She said they discovered him in some small village. He wouldn’t have had enough time to learn how to cast spells.”

“How can he kill the Worm then?”

“He lies. The Parliament is trying to catch us again.”

Isabella is silent. We watch each other go to the toilet, bathe and menstruate. But Isabella’s head is a locked box. She cares about clothes and makeup and dancing and men and a thousand other irrelevant things. Yet if I think about her death, my heart feels like a pebble dropped down an endless well.

I toss the letter into the fire, half-expecting it to resist the flames and hiss like a snake. It catches fire. Isabella picks up the poker lying in the grate and pushes the letter further into the flames. It is a strange pleasure to watch her flawless face, though she stole her beauty from me. If we do the impossible and kill the Worm Nil, this is how the painters and sculptors will depict her. When we were children, she had a mournful shrunken frog-face. Now men stare at her despite our freakishness. Every day I become more haggard, my skin as tight as
papier-mâché
over my skull, and my hair falls out in fist-sized clumps.

Isabella pushes the last log onto its side so that the fire dies, leaving parchment fragments interspersed among the ashes. “We’re not going to run,” she says. “The Parliament is still scared of you.” I try to move so I can pack our meager belongings. She doesn’t budge. The join between our bodies stretches and I gasp. It must hurt Isabella as well, but her face is stone-still. I strain until the pain becomes too great. She never flinches.

“Don’t you trust me to make the right decision?” she says. No, I do not. Her head is filled with glory, but the dead care not for adulation. They are dust and worms and a statue is no substitute for my sister. I strain again.

The coughs overtake me without warning. When they stop, the front of our dress is covered with thick, gritty blood.

“Do you want to become oathbound if the Parliament catches us?” I say.

“There’s no time to run anymore, Mary,” she says. “I can feel our heart slowing.” The wind whistles through the gaps in our stone shack and the fire grows cold. I cough and the blood is fresh and bright. Dust eddies in rays of sunlight through the window as the sun rises. She looks at the angle of the sun. “He must be here soon.” She drags me outside and scans the sky.

A vast Zeppelin descends from the sky behind Isabella’s back. There is a woman nailed to the front and oh gods, it’s Emily! What happened to her? Then I realize my mistake. She
is
the globe. They have made her oathbound. Emily’s body spreads into a great puffer fish of pale white flesh, making her the figurehead of a living Zeppelin. One of the reasons I left the Parliament was because of the cruelty of their punishments against those who defied them, and now it has happened to Emily.

I sob and the sound alerts Isabella to Emily’s descent. “She’s hollow inside,” she says. “I can see a shadow.” She uses her palm to shade her eyes. “Two people standing side by side. Did Emily ever tell you how Draven and his twin were joined?”

“What has he done to her?” I say, my voice cracking.

“He can’t have,” Isabella says. “Only the senior members of the Parliament can make someone oathbound.”

Tears blind my eyes. “No. Draven must have done it. Emily never defied them.”

I watch Emily’s face as she comes closer, hoping for a smile when she recognizes me. Her face remains blank. Oh, my poor Emily! She lands on the grass with a soft thud. She shudders and then she splits like a quartered orange, granting entry to her insides.

Draven steps out of Emily. Recognition spears through me. He is the literal man of my dreams. Ever since puberty, I have dreamed of him. I never remembered his face after waking, but now he is in front of me. High cheekbones, deep blue eyes and a mouth made to whisper sweet promises. My cheeks flush and our heart beats faster as I meet his gaze. Gods, he is
beautiful
and there is no other word for him.

A thin band of skin attaches Draven to his twin at the hip. The ash-colored twin is so thin sunlight almost passes through it, and it is so withered that it could be either man or woman. Its eyes are closed.

Draven approaches us. His twin mirrors his walk, but it does not open its eyes. When twins are on the verge of dying, they retreat deep inside themselves, clinging to life before the final spell. How could Draven know spells well enough to drain his twin to this degree?

“What have you done to her?” I say, putting contempt into my voice, but at the same time unable to tear my eyes away from him.

He holds his hands up. “I am no friend of the Parliament. Like you, she tried to leave, but they weren’t scared of her. Their punishment sent her insane.” He strokes her cheek, but she doesn’t react. “I couldn’t save her. They didn’t know we were lovers, so when they asked for a mage to take charge of her, I volunteered.” Isabella nods, too eager to believe. It is plausible. I want to believe him. Gods, I want to!

The shock of seeing my dream lover in the flesh has kept me upright, but the adrenaline leaches and I stumble. Draven and his twin spring forward and catch us. The arm that catches me is strong. His other arm supports Isabella. His twin holds us too and its skin is like dried autumn leaves, brittle and ready to crack. I look into his perfect face, but he is looking at Isabella and when I turn my head back to its natural position, she has locked gazes with him.

Draven draws us back to our feet, his hands changing position. His hand stays over Isabella’s waist. The twin holds me upright. After a long, frozen moment, he lets go and enters Emily.

“The Worm Nil will wake within days,” he says. “We have to return to Firewater now.”

“The Ever-dying King was healthy when we left,” I tell him. “I can cast small spells to keep us both alive.”

“You are a long way from Firewater and do not know the news,” he says. “He is dying. He has been dying for months.”

“But he is not dead.”

“Before he lapsed into the sleep before death, he asked the Traders of Sorrows to exchange his pain for another’s sorrow,” he says. “They told him that he could not swap death.”

My last hope disappears. If the current King is dying, then Isabella must supply all the power for the spell. We do not have long to live if I do not cast spells, and the new King will not be born for weeks. Isabella follows Draven, and I do not resist.

The entrance seals behind us. Inside is cramped and Draven almost stands on top of us. Emily’s insides are deep red and waxy at first, but then her walls glow white and become transparent. She rises and my insides churn as our shack and the garden vanish into the distance. Isabella squeezes my hand. She has no fear of heights, but she knows my discomfort. I close my eyes, but I still see Draven in my mind’s eye. Better to open them again, and I do so.