Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 (5 page)

Tina Gower won first place in a 2012
Writers of the Future
quarterly contest. This is her second professional fiction sale.
LATE-BREAKING NEWS
: On April 14, 17 days before this issue went live, Tina won the $5,000 Gold Prize at the 2013
Writers of the Future
ceremony

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TODAY I AM NOBODY

by Tina Gower

I am Amber when I see him again. I wake with auburn hair and green eyes, freckles across my skin, and decide to be Amber. The name fits the face in the mirror, and all day I do Amber things. Amber would love picking daisies in the meadow behind the reservation. Amber would wear her hair in two French braids. Amber would have a boyfriend with blond hair and one unruly lock that covers his left eye. When I see him, that perfect boy for Amber, I want him.

He works in the village, on the dusty grimy road that leads from the reservation to the back of the tannery. I am able to watch him scraping a hide for sale because he does not know Amber. He knew Rose. When I was Rose, I had olive skin with black hair. The roses were budding and I put one in my hair.

“How long will you be in town?” he had asked.

“Only until the roses bloom,” I said. Truthfully, I didn’t know then how quickly I would shed and change and become a new girl. The shaman didn’t tell me how the medicine would work.

The corners of the boy’s mouth twitched and his smile fell flat. “That’s too bad. I like dark-skinned brunettes. Everyone in town is blond.”

Amber doesn’t have dark skin, so today I only watch while the young man (who is perfect for Amber) hangs the skins to dry. I hear wagon wheels squeak into the village with supplies from the East. The traders bring tea and preserves, waxes for candles when the long nights come. One trader hands a package of sweets to a girl my age. Her name is Nola. She will always be Nola, poor thing. The other girls do not recognize me anymore, although they knew me once.

***

I walk home and cut through the glen. My hand skims along the wild grains and I pick one to chew absently. When I reach my tent by the creek, my pots and pans are scattered, my food supply is shredded and strewn along the bank.

I’m cleaning the mess when I hear the grumble of a bear. He swipes his paw at me before I see him, and I fall to the ground. The gravel smashes into my elbows and knees. The smell of pine and dust brings me to my senses. He swings at me again, and his paw leaves a scrape down my leg.

The injury burns. My breath is frozen in my chest and my palms are damp with sweat. I clutch a cast iron skillet and, with no other weapon, throw it at his head. While he rubs his face with a paw, I scamper and trip my way to the tallest pine and climb. He paces below.

My skin tingles and I feel an itch. The sensation multiplies until it’s like a thousand insects burrowing into me. My skin peels. A wave of nausea crashes into me like the river against the rocks a few feet away. The change is happening too quickly. I hug the trunk, panting. A clump of Amber’s hair falls to the bear. He bats at it and sniffs. Pieces of Amber melt away. When Amber is gone, the bear is gone, too.

I crawl back to the ruined tent and look in my mirror. A crack runs down the middle, but I can still see my new face in the reflection. I’m still pale, but my freckles are gone and I have blond hair.

The shaman’s medicine doesn’t work. I’m only half tribe and half white. Maybe I should never have agreed to the medicine. I don’t fit in either world.

I stay at my campground on the reservation for the next few days. A blond will not do. The tanner sees too many blonds. “Everyone in town is blond,” he told Rose. I spend the time cleaning the mess from the bear.

***

Today I am Mia. My skin looks like porcelain and my eyelids look swollen. I have straight black hair. I run to the village to watch the young man in the tannery. Mia should have a boyfriend who works at the tannery, but he doesn’t look at her. I am not Rose.

“Can I help you, Miss?” He asks.

“My name is Mia.”

“Can I help you, Mia?” His eyes never leave the saddle he is brushing.

“No,” I say, because I know now I’m not who he is looking for today.

I leave a rose for him at the table. The last one of the season. I watch him from a safe spot outside the window. He never touches the rose. I go back the next day and the next, but the rose doesn’t move from its spot. It wilts and dries. One day it is gone.

***

The bear comes to me in a dream and when he lifts his face I see the shaman. Her grey hair blends into the white patch of hair on the bear’s neck and it is as if she is holding the bear up for me to see.

“I’ve brought you a bear,” she says.

“I don’t need a bear. I need friends, people to talk to. I’m lonely, and your medicine does not work.”

She moves around me to light a fire and the bear flops to the ground like a pile of the tanner’s skins. “Animal medicine takes a long time to work.”

The wood smokes for a minute before the first flames lick the chilly night air. The pines that surround the campsite glow, but the forest beyond remains black.

“I asked for someone to love me and accept me. I didn’t ask for animal medicine,” I say.

My voice sounds muffled. My lips feel smashed against my teeth. I’m confused to find I’m talking into my arm. I rise and blink in the darkness of my tent. Outside the campfire smokes as if a fire was lit and died hours ago.

***

Today I am Abigail. My skin is so dark it’s black. My hair is also black, but curly and coarse. The tanner notices Abigail. His eyes follow me around the tannery, but his shoulders are tense, his lips are turned down in a frown. I finger a design on a small leather bag for sale. It is of a rose.

“Put that down.” His hand is gripping a hammer so tight his knuckles are white. “That is not for you. Put that down.”

He stomps towards me and I fumble the bag back to the display and run to the reservation. My heart beats so hard my throat hurts. My fingers feel numb where I held the bag meant for me. No, I remember, now. The tanner is correct; it’s not for me. It’s for Rose.

***

Today I am nobody.

I do nothing. I sit and let the sounds of the creek drown out my thoughts. The leaves fall and regrow many times while I am nobody, doing nothing things. Every morning I am not Rose I am nobody. Some days I do not even check my mirror, searching for her.

***

The roses are in bloom today, and I gather a few supplies to trade in town. Wild herbs and berries overflow in my baskets. The tanner is selling his hides two booths down from me. He stops for a moment to pick through my selection, and finds a few herbs to his liking. The sun streams through his blond hair, and I see one strand of silver. When he smiles I expect to feel warmth, but there is none. I wonder as he walks away who I am today. I never looked in the mirror.

***

Today, I am Amber again. If I can be Amber then I can be Rose. I’m excited to discover this, and I dance around my camp. Maybe the medicine is working. Maybe I can force my body to change like I did with the bear. Maybe I can find a way to stay Rose.

I make plans.

***

“Girl of many faces,” the shaman called me. I walk the line between worlds. I schooled in the village, and the girls complimented me for my hand at mixing herbs to make pleasing scents, but no one bought them. In the reservation the women relied on me to plant the seeds for the next harvest, but criticized me for not planting in rows. Liked by all and loved by none. I was invisible in my efforts and visible only in my failures. So I became whatever people wanted me to be, and still nobody loved me. The shaman promised me the attention I deserved.

“You try to please everyone and you please no one, not even yourself,” she said, and handed me a mirror. “The animal spirits have chosen to heal you and retrieve a lost part of your soul.”

Then the day came when the people of the reservation moved to the South to follow the seasons. The shaman said I should stay behind and wait for my spirit animal’s medicine.

The day after they left, I awoke to see Rose. Her hair shone a rich black-cocoa, not like my dull light brown. Her figure curved like a road that moves with the land, not like my straight narrow lines that short-cut to the ground.

I thought the spirit animals had made me into the woman I was meant to be. I thought the medicine had worked. But then I became sick: my skin peeled, my hair fell, and the part of me I thought of as “Rose”—the part of me I would learn to be—wilted away.

***

Today I am finally Rose.

My hands tremble. This makes the basket quiver and the herbs shake. To be Rose, I jumped from a cliff by the river. After a dozen times and a dozen girls, fear of the height no longer changed me. I had to find a new danger. I fought a wolf, a badger, and thieves along the road. In the end, nothing scared me more than never being Rose again. She crept into me in my sleep.

I look in the broken mirror to be sure, but it’s true. I am finally Rose.

I head straight to town, herb basket in hand. I do not stop until I’m at the tannery.

He brushes the skin of an animal and sees Rose.

“Hello,” he says, smiling. “Can I help you?”

I smile and take a breath. I can finally give him back his Rose. I try to remember Rose. How did she smile? How did she hold her body? How did she speak? Was it soft or loud?

“I am Rose,” I say.

He frowns. “Do I know you?”

The answer catches on my tongue. He looks at me, his forehead wrinkles, his eyelids lower to slits. He doesn’t recognize Rose.

“I’m sorry, your name doesn’t sound familiar,” he says. “Do you have a request to place? I’m afraid I don’t have any orders for Rose.”

For the first time I notice the lines on his face around his mouth. When I come into town he is always here.

I nod, my voice deserting me. I want to hide and not be Rose. The tanner doesn’t know Rose anymore.

He doesn’t know me. He
never
knew me.

***

When I arrive the camp is a mess. The bear has returned and shredded my tent beyond repair.

That night I sleep in the rain, huddled under a few gathered branches. The tanner is gone to me, so I wonder who I am supposed to be. I plant herbs for the harvest and find no pleasure in it. I gather a few seasonal plants to make tea and find no pleasure in that either.

The only thing that brings me pleasure is watching the rain drain into the river, and speculating where it leads. I’m soaked in water. I’m connected to the water and the water to the river and the river to the ocean, and I feel relief to be part of something.

***

Today I am me. I do not know my hair color or the tone of my skin.

I’ve always wanted to see the ocean, so I pack. I’ve wanted to see the leaves turn in the valleys below the mountain. I’m planning things I’ve never planned before because I didn’t know my life was my own. I feel whole; the animal medicine is working.

I stop by the tannery on my way out of town and leave a gift.

I peek through the window before turning away, and I see him glance in the broken mirror. I wonder who he will see. What animal will the spirits bring to the tanner?

The road out of town is damp from a mist of rain over the night. I walk until my feet are tired, and then I rest. I stare into the sky, finding shapes in the clouds. I see a rabbit. When I look again it’s a dog, then a cow with horns, and, last, a bear. I fall asleep gazing at the clouds, assured that when I wake, no matter what shape or color I wear, I will still be me.

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Original (First) Publication
Copyright © 2013 by Tina Gower

Catherine Lucille Moore made her professional debut with the classic “Shambleau” in 1933, created Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry, and alone and in tandem with husband Henry Kuttner produced a series of classic stories that are still being read and reprinted.

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HAPPILY EVER AFTER

by C. L. Moore

Cinderella and the Prince were married with a great ceremony. No one had approved from the first, and now more often than not there was a gleam of I-told-you-so behind the King’s spectacles, and the Queen’s three chins quivered with bitter satisfaction as her predictions were realized one by one. For Cinderella and the Prince were not happy. No one had really expected them to be. You cannot pluck a kitchen girl from the cinders and set a crown on her head and let it go at that; small feet are not the only prerequisite of a princess.

To tell the truth, the step-sisters had played a large part in what happened. Cinderella never realized it, but if Darmar and Igraine, with their hauteur and their high-nosed, high-bred faces, had not led her out of the cinders and disdainfully acknowledged her as sister, the Prince might have never done what he did. But after he had made that rash proclamation about the slipper he had to carry it out, particularly with the herald bawling the news to the very doorstep at the time. And then, of course, she was quite charming.

For a while, to do her justice, he was not sorry. Nothing could have been more bewitching than the Princess Cinderella in her billowing skirts, with the gold crown on her head. She had some secret difficulty in keeping it there, and used to practice before the mirror at night, but she never learned to manage the thing with true dignity. Once, when she bent to pick up a dropped handkerchief, it fell off and rolled across the floor. Now, a princess born would never have stooped for the handkerchief in the first place. Poor Cinderella blushed to her ears, and the ladies-in-waiting tittered among themselves.

There were other things. She had a healthy appetite, and the delicacies of the royal table were far insufficient to her needs. She ate and ate until the court stared, and yet she was never satisfied. Her pretty fingers hesitated among the forks, and her full-throated laughter rang almost strident above the polite titters of the court. Once she had laughed so hard that her stays split, to the immense embarrassment of everyone concerned. And sometimes, sitting still in the audience hall, the chill of its shadows penetrated to her warm bourgeois blood, and her mind turned longingly to the cinders and the lentils boiling on the crane above the fire.

She who had never had an idle moment before suddenly found herself plunged into a vast
ennui
—nothing to do but preen before the mirror and walk the garden paths, her crown tilted at a precarious angle, while hawk-eyes on every side waited for her least mistake as a signal for lifted brows.

One afternoon Cinderella disappeared. For hours they searched. It was the Prince himself who found her at last. Far off in a corner of the castle was an old tower room where odds and ends of things were kept—seven-league boots somewhat run down at the heels, a cloak of darkness with threadbare seams, magic mirrors with cracked faces, and miscellaneous charms that somehow didn’t seem to work very well any more. Under the window stood a spinning wheel that had once spun gold out of straw. The treadle had cracked years ago, it creaked when it moved, and here in the dusty attic it had stood for years. Cinderella had found it, and here she sat in the dusty sunlight under the window, spinning and spinning gold. The shadows were full of it, and all about her slippers shining masses gleamed in the muted sunlight. The famous small foot trundled happily away at the protesting treadle, the curly head bent over the wheel and shining gold ran out between her fingers as she worked. The crown titled over her eyes at its most rakish angle.

“Cinderella!” The Prince’s voice was harsh.

She started guiltily, and the crown fell from her curls and rolled across the dusty floor. “Cinderella—spinning in the attic! Look at that crown!”

Blushing, she retrieved the crown and balanced it on her head.

“Oh, I’m sorry—” she cried. “I–I didn’t mean—”

“There is nothing for you to say, Cinderella. For all I know I may find you scrubbing floors tomorrow. Have you no sense of values? You are a princess, don’t you understand? A princess! There’s dust on your nose!—Now don’t cry! Princesses never cry. Here—stop—Cinderella!”

“Yes,” meekly.

“Stay here till I can find someone to dust you off. If you should be seen like this—now
don’t
cry!”

The Prince went out hastily.

Cinderella sat under the window in silence, with magic heaped about her feet. Slowly all the gold slid out between her fingers until they were empty. Her eyes began to brim. She hid her face behind her hands and wept. The attic was still but for the Princess sitting and weeping with her gold crown on her head; and the tears flashed out between her fingers.

Presently behind her hands a light began to shine. Startled, she lifted her wet face. The attic was radiant, and in the midst of the light her Fairy Godmother stood.

“Cinderella, child, why do you weep?”

It was the same question she had asked in the kitchen at home, long ago.

“Because they scold me,” sobbed the Princess. “Because I’m miserable! Oh, Godmother, Godmother, take me home!”

The Fairy smiled, and the radiance brightened until Cinderella’s eyes were blinded with light. She put up her hands to shut it out. There was a deep silence.

After a while, when the quiet had become unendurable, she uncovered her eyes. It was dark—warmly dark. She sat before the kitchen fire again, snug in the cinders.

“Why—why—” Cinderella dug her fists into her eyes, and then, somehow, was yawning, stretching like a kitten. No crown trembled precariously on her ruffled curls. She yawned again, luxuriantly, sniffing the boiling lentils that swung above the fire. She laughed a happy little gurgle deep in her throat, and settled down among the warm cinders.