Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 (77 page)

Clarkesworld Magazine

Issue 71

Table of Contents

Mantis Wives

by Kij Johnson

Honey Bear

by Sofia Samatar

Fade to White

by Catherynne M. Valente

The Spell of History: Magic Systems and Real-World Zeitgeists

by Jeff Seymour

In a Carapace of Light: A Conversation with China Miéville

by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Another Word: Plausibility and Truth

by Daniel Abraham

Editor's Desk: Finding the Good in a Dark Day

by Neil Clarke

Space Journey

Art by Martin Faragasso

© Clarkesworld Magazine, 2012
www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

Mantis Wives

Kij Johnson

“As for the insects, their lives are sustained only by intricate processes of fantastic horror.” —John Wyndham.

Eventually, the mantis women discovered that killing their husbands was not inseparable from the getting of young. Before this, a wife devoured her lover piece by piece during the act of coition: the head (and its shining eyes going dim as she ate); the long green prothorax; the forelegs crisp as straws; the bitter wings. She left for last the metathorax and its pumping legs, the abdomen, and finally the phallus. Mantis women needed nutrients for their pregnancies; their lovers offered this as well as their seed.

It was believed that mantis men would resist their deaths if permitted to choose the manner of their mating; but the women learned to turn elsewhere for nutrients after draining their husbands’ members, and yet the men lingered. And so their ladies continued to kill them, but slowly, in the fashioning of difficult arts. What else could there be between them?

The Bitter Edge:
A wife may cut through her husband’s exoskeletal plates, each layer a different pattern, so that to look at a man is to see shining, hard brocade. At the deepest level are visible pieces of his core, the hint of internal parts bleeding out. He may suggest shapes.

The Eccentric Curve of His Thoughts
: A wife may drill the tiniest hole into her lover’s head and insert a fine hair. She presses carefully, striving for specific results: a seizure, a novel pheromone burst, a dance that ends in self-castration. If she replaces the hair with a wasp’s narrow syringing stinger, she may blow air bubbles into his head and then he will react unpredictably. There is otherwise little he may do that will surprise her, or himself.

What is the art of the men, that they remain to die at the hands of their wives? What is the art of the wives, that they kill?

The Strength of Weight
: Removing his wings, she leads him into the paths of ants.

Unready Jewels
: A mantis wife may walk with her husband across the trunks of pines, until they come to a trail of sap and ascend to an insect-clustered wound. Staying to the side, she presses him down until his legs stick fast. He may grow restless as the sap sheathes his body and wings. His eyes may not dim for some time. Smaller insects may cluster upon his honeyed body like ornaments.

A mantis woman does not know why the men crave death, but she does not ask. Does she fear resistance? Does she hope for it? She has forgotten the ancient reasons for her acts, but in any case her art is more important.

The Oubliette
: Or a wife may take not his life but his senses: plucking the antennae from his forehead; scouring with dust his clustered shining eyes; cracking apart his mandibles to scrape out the lining of his mouth and throat; plucking the sensing hairs from his foremost legs; excising the auditory thoracic organ; biting free the wings.

A mantis woman is not cruel. She gives her husband what he seeks. Who knows what poems he fashions in the darkness of a senseless life?

The Scent of Violets:
They mate many times, until one dies.

Two Stones Grind Together
: A wife collects with her forelegs small brightly colored poisonous insects, places them upon bitter green leaves, and encourages her husband to eat them. He is sometimes reluctant after the first taste but she speaks to him, or else he calms himself and eats.

He may foam at the mouth and anus, or grow paralyzed and fall from a branch. In extreme cases, he may stagger along the ground until he is seen by a bird and swallowed, and then even the bird may die.

A mantis has no veins; what passes for blood flows freely within its protective shell. It does have a heart.

The Desolate Junk-land
: Or a mantis wife may lay her husband gently upon a soft bed and bring to him cool drinks and silver dishes filled with sweetmeats. She may offer him crossword puzzles and pornography; may kneel at his feet and tell him stories of mantis men who are heroes; may dance in veils before him.

He tears off his own legs before she begins. It is unclear whether The Desolate Junk-land is her art, or his.

Shame’s Uniformity:
A wife may return to the First Art and, in a variant, devour her husband, but from the abdomen forward. Of all the arts this is hardest. There is no hair, no ant’s bite, no sap, no intervening instrument. He asks her questions until the end. He may doubt her motives, or she may.

The Paper-folder. Lichens’ Dance. The Ambition of Aphids. Civil Wars. The Secret History of Cumulus. The Lost Eyes Found. Sedges. The Unbeaked Sparrow.

There are as many arts as there are husbands and wives.

The Cruel Web:
Perhaps they wish to love each other, but they cannot see a way to exist that does not involve the barb, the sticking sap, the bitter taste of poison. The Cruel Web can be performed only in the brambles of woods, and only when there has been no recent rain and the spider’s webs have grown thick. Wife and husband walk together. Webs catch and cling to their carapaces, their legs, their half-opened wings. They tear free, but the webs collect. Their glowing eyes grow veiled. Their curious antennae come to a tangled halt. Their pheromones become confused; their legs struggle against the gathering web. The spiders wait.

She is larger than he and stronger, but they often fall together.

How to Live:
A mantis may dream of something else. This also may be a trap.

About the Author

Kij Johnson
is the author of three novels and a number of short stories, a three-time winner of the Nebula Award (including in 2010, for her
Clarkesworld
story, “Spar”), and a winner of the World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Crawford, and
Asimov’s
Reader Awards. Currently she splits her time between Seattle and Kansas.

Honey Bear

Sofia Samatar

We’ve decided to take a trip, to see the ocean. I want Honey to see it while she’s still a child. That way, it’ll be magical. I tell her about it in the car: how big it is, and green, like a sky you can wade in.

“Even you?” she asks.

“Even me.”

I duck my head to her hair. She smells fresh, but not sweet at all, like parsley or tea. She’s wearing a little white dress. It’s almost too short. She pushes her bare toes against the seat in front of her, knuckling it like a cat.

“Can you not do that, Hon?” says Dave.

“Sorry, Dad.”

She says “Dad” now. She used to say “Da-Da.”

Dave grips the wheel. I can see the tension in his shoulders. Threads of gray wink softly in his dark curls. He still wears his hair long, covering his ears, and I think he’s secretly a little bit vain about it. A little bit proud of still having all his hair. I think there’s something in this, something valuable, something he could use to get back. You don’t cling to personal vanities if you’ve given up all hope of a normal life. At least, I don’t think you do.

“Shit,” he says.

“Sweetheart…”

He doesn’t apologize for swearing in front of Honey. The highway’s blocked by a clearance area, gloved hands waving us around. He turns the car so sharply the bags in the passenger seat beside him almost fall off the cooler. In the back seat, I lean into Honey Bear.

“It’s okay,” I tell Dave.

“No, Karen, it is not okay. The temp in the cooler is going to last until exactly four o’clock. At four o’clock, we need a fridge, which means we need a hotel. If we are five minutes late, it is not going to be okay.”

“It looks like a pretty short detour.”

“It is impossible for you to see how long it is.”

“I’m just thinking, it doesn’t look like they’ve got that much to clear.”

“Fine, you can think that. Think what you want. But don’t tell me the detour’s not long, or give me any other information you don’t actually have, okay?”

He’s driving faster. I rest my cheek on the top of Honey’s head. The clearance area rolls by outside the window. Cranes, loading trucks, figures in orange jumpsuits. Some of the slick has dried: they’re peeling it up in transparent sheets, like plate glass.

Honey presses a fingertip to the window. “Poo-poo,” she says softly.

I tell her about the time I spent a weekend at the beach. My best friend got so sunburned, her back blistered.

We play the clapping game, “A Sailor Went to Sea-Sea-Sea.” It’s our favorite.

Dave drives too fast, but we don’t get stopped, and we reach the hotel in time. I take my meds, and we put the extra in the hotel fridge. Dave’s shirt is dark with sweat, and I wish he’d relax, but he goes straight out to buy ice, and stores it in the freezer so we can fill the cooler tomorrow. Then he takes a shower and lies on the bed and watches the news. I sit on the floor with Honey, looking at books. I read to her every evening before bed; I’ve never missed a night. Right now, we’re reading
The Meadow Fairies
by Dorothy Elizabeth Clark.

This is something I’ve looked forward to my whole adult life: reading the books I loved as a child with a child of my own. Honey adores
The Meadow Fairies.
She snuggles up to me and traces the pretty winged children with her finger. Daffodil, poppy, pink. When I first brought the book home, and Dave saw us reading it, he asked what the point was, since Honey would never see those flowers. I laughed because I’d never seen them either. “It’s about fairies,” I told him, “not botany.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a poppy in my life.

Smiling, though half-asleep,
The Poppy Fairy passes,
Scarlet, like the sunrise,
Among the meadow grasses.

Honey chants the words with me. She’s so smart, she learns so fast. She can pick up anything that rhymes in minutes. Her hair glints in the lamplight. There’s the mysterious, slightly abrasive smell of hotel sheets, a particular hotel darkness between the blinds.

“I love this place,” says Honey. “Can we stay here?”

“It’s an adventure,” I tell her. “Just wait till tomorrow.”

On the news, helicopters hover over the sea. It’s far away, the Pacific. There’s been a huge dump there, over thirty square miles of slick. The effects on marine life are not yet known.

“Will it be fairyland?” Honey asks suddenly.

“What, sweetie?”

“Will it be fairyland, when I’m grown up?”

“Yes,” I tell her. My firmest tone.

“Will you be there?”

No hesitation. “Yes.”

The camera zooms in on the slick-white sea.

By the time I’ve given Honey Bear a drink and put her to bed, Dave’s eyes are closed. I turn off the TV and the lights and get into bed. Like Honey, I love the hotel. I love the hard, tight sheets and the unfamiliar shapes that emerge around me once I’ve gotten used to the dark. It’s been ages since I slept away from home. The last time was long before Honey. Dave and I visited some college friends in Oregon. They couldn’t believe we’d driven all that way. We posed in their driveway, leaning on the car and making the victory sign.

I want the Dave from that photo. That deep suntan, that wide grin.

Maybe he’ll come back to me here, away from home and our neighbors, the Simkos. He spends far too much time at their place.

For a moment, I think he’s back already.

Then he starts shaking. He does it every night. He’s crying in his sleep.

“Ready for the beach?”

“Yes!”

We drive through town to a parking lot dusted with sand. When I step out of the car the warm sea air rolls over me in waves. There’s something lively in it, something electric.

Honey jumps up and down. “Is that it? Is that it?”

“You got it, Honey Bear.”

The beach is deserted. Far to the left, an empty boardwalk whitens in the sun. I kick off my sandals and scoop them up in my hand. The gray sand sticks to my feet. We lumber down to a spot a few yards from some boulders, lugging bags and towels.