The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014 (26 page)

Everyone stops what they’re doing. “But this is our home,” someone replies.

“The sea hasn’t breached the stones yet,” another says.

How can I make them see? I can’t show them my dreams, can’t tell them that I am the only child left in my family who hasn’t fallen in love, and I have no intention of falling for the sea.

And then Mother pushes her way through the villagers. She seizes me by the shoulder and hisses into my ear. “Don’t be foolish, girl. Are you so selfish? You haven’t even spoken to the sea. You’ve made no effort.”

Tahrie
, the sea says,
speak with me
.

I close my eyes and taste bitterness on my tongue. “Do you think that love will solve your problems? Tell that to Father.”

I whirl out of her grip and find the path to the shore, because much as I hate to admit it, she is right.

* * *

My grandmother wakes as soon as I set foot on the sand. “Granddaughter,” she says with a smile, “what have you brought me today?”

I spread my hands wide, and wonder if she can see me. “Nothing, I’m sorry. Only my company.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

I sit in the warm sand at her base. Some of the surrounding ground is damp. I’m not sure where to begin, or how much I should tell her. “The sea …” I trail off.

“The sea is fickle, but determined,” Grandmother says. “Remember this.”

I gape.

“You are here to speak with him, are you not?”

“I am, but—”

“Then I will leave you two alone.” Her mouth becomes a fissure, her eyes become merely hollows.

I have waited for you
, the sea says.
Why are you afraid of me?

“I’m not afraid of you,” I say, and find that it’s true. “I want you to go away, to leave my village in peace.”

I won’t leave this place without you. I’ve watched you—the way the sun kisses your hair, the footprints you leave upon the sand. I love you, Tahrie.

I want to claw his words from my mind. “And what of the island?”

The waves slap harder.
A mistake
.

“Did she turn you aside, or did you swallow her?”

A wave crashes into the stones, sending spray into the air.
Both.

Sweat gathers in the small of my back. Now I
am
afraid, and wish I’d listened to Father about my sharp tongue. Water trickles in between my grandmother and grandfather, running in rivulets down the cracks in my grandfather’s face. It drips onto the already-damp spot on the sand.

The cracks—they weren’t there when I was younger, nor was the sea so high. The beginnings of a plan leak into my mind. Stones can change.

“I want to love you,” I tell the sea, “but you are so vast. I’m afraid I can only comprehend you in pieces. If I ask my grandmother to move aside, will you only let a little of yourself past the stones?”

For you, Tahrie, I will.

“Grandmother.” She wakes slowly. “Let the sea past. Please.”

Her mouth presses into a line, but she leans forward.

The sea spills over the top of her in a waterfall. He crashes to the sand, swirling around my ankles, tickling the hairs on my legs.

Like this?

“More.”

He fills the area behind the stones, until his surface brushes my knees.

“That’s far enough.” I lean over and trail my fingers over the sea foam. Ripples spread, and a small school of fish darts away. The sand between my toes stirs with the gentle rocking of the water. There is something seductive in the motion—if I close my eyes and let the sun caress my face, I can pretend there is nothing wrong.

You belong here
, the sea says.
It’s in your blood
.

Grandmother is halfway submerged. Her flowers float in front of me and begin to drift down the line of stones. I turn away, and lift my skirt as I make my way back to dry land. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” I tell the sea.

Do not make me wait too long
, he says.

I swallow, and it feels as though something has lodged in my throat. Before I can stop myself, I’ve pivoted. “Are you lonely?” I’m not sure why I’m asking, or if I even care.

Always.

I have no answer for that, so I find the path and leave the shore.

* * *

“The sea is coming,” I tell the village. My skirt is still heavy and dripping, and I shiver each time a breeze stirs. “He has breached the stones. Look for yourselves if you don’t believe me.”

A few people stop their work and head to the shore.

They return somber-faced, but no one speaks of leaving.

* * *

I return to the sea, day after day, and each time I do, he edges a little closer to the village. He does as I ask, but there is something seething beneath his surface, an invisible riptide. On the third day, the villagers begin to speak of leaving. Mother doesn’t add to these discussions, even when prompted. She merely scowls and picks at the fibers in her skirt.

On the fifth day, she catches me on my way out of the house. Her fingers dig into my arm at the threshold. “Tahrie, what are you doing?”

“Going to see Grandmother.” She’s almost completely submerged now. The rest of my family said their goodbyes to her a long time ago; I have not.

Mother’s eyes narrow. “And what else?”

“What I have to.”

She releases me, so quickly that I stumble. “I knew it. This is our home, and you’re destroying it.”

“We can pick up and move,” I say. “We aren’t stones.”

“Tahrie—”

“I don’t love him,” I say.

Mother’s face goes still. It is only now that I realize how cracked and weathered it is, the line between her brows like a crevice. She reaches out and gently takes a section of my hair. And then, wordlessly, she lifts it in front of my eyes.

It’s white and curly, light as the foam upon the waves.

I back away, my throat dry, and I can’t feel the ground beneath my feet. I run down the path in a haze. When I get to the shore, the sea has surged higher, without my permission.

Grandmother is gone.

* * *

This shouldn’t be happening. I cup my hair with my hands. Half of it is white now, and it lifts into the air with the slightest wind. If I lick the back of my hand, it tastes like salt and seaweed.

I do not love the sea.

I tie a scarf around my head and go outside. The villagers have begun to move inland. They pass me by, sacks slung over their shoulders, bundles in their arms. The water laps at the houses closest to shore. With each wave, the sea invades the village and carries away the silt and the sand.

No one stares at me anymore. It is as if I am not here.

Mother and Father are the only ones who haven’t staked out a spot in the new village, who haven’t begun to move their belongings.

Can you comprehend me yet, Tahrie?
the sea says.
I have been patient.

He has been, I cannot deny it. He hasn’t obeyed my every command, but he is the sea, and I am just a woman. “Wait,” I tell him. “Just a little longer.”

What else would you have me do?

I would have him find another island to love, far away. I would have him talk some sense into Mother. I would have him tell the storm to stay away from my brother.

The blood in my veins feels as cold as seawater. It isn’t love that is changing me—it is desire. I cannot change the sea without also changing myself.

“I’ve come to say goodbye.”

I whirl to find Shuramin behind me. Gray and blue shift beneath his skin. His eyes crackle like lightning.

“No.”

He only smiles at my denial. “It is my choice. Let me be as I am.”

I seize him, hold him in my arms, intending never to let go. A large wave crashes behind me, and the water eats away the ground beneath my feet. “I’ve done everything wrong.”

“You have still saved the village, Tahrie.”

And then my arms are empty, the damp smell of rain lingering in my nostrils.

* * *

I wake in the middle of the night, knowing that something is wrong. Water touches the back of my neck and caresses my fingertips. I sit up as my eyes adjust to the darkness. My brother’s bed, on the other side of the room, floats, knocking into the wall with each swell. The sea has come home.

I have waited long enough, Tahrie.

My blankets are wet, and I have to drag myself from beneath them. “Mother!” I call out. “Father!”

When I wade out of the room, I find my mother in her wicker chair in the corner. She weaves a basket, holding it close to her face so she can see the reeds in the moonlight. She doesn’t seem to notice the water covering her lap or the table floating over where the fire pit used to be.

“We have to go.” I fight against the waves and grab her wrist.

She wrenches away from me. “This is my home. I’m not leaving.”

Father emerges from the shadows and places his hands on her shoulders. “Go, Tahrie,” he says.

“Make her come with us,” I beg him.

He blinks, his eyelids thick and languorous. “I love her,” he says. “I cannot ask her to change.”

Even as he says it, Mother’s hands slow and turn gray. Her mouth becomes a fissure. The rough texture of stone creeps up her neck. “You can stop this, Tahrie. You can marry the sea.”

I touch my palms to the water’s surface. The sea forms hands, pressing wet palms to mine. There’s a subtle pressure, a tugging. Would it be so terrible—to fall into the sea? I imagine sinking into the water, my hair becoming the foam, my body melting away. Leaving Tahrie behind. A sudden dread fills my chest, and I jerk away.

“I am not like Shuramin or Grandmother. I cannot love the sea.”

A wordless roar sounds in my mind. I’ve spoken aloud, with the water nearly to my waist, tugging at my skin and my clothes like hands.

The sea surges and I flee.

* * *

The night is filled with the crash of waves, with the creak and groan of wood as the houses fall apart. I swim toward land, choking on salt, blinking against the water in my eyes. It always seems so far away. By the time I reach it, I can only crawl out of the sea, my arms and legs trembling.

Tahrie
, he says.
Tahrie, Tahrie, Tahrie …

I keep going through the trees, the roots scraping my knees and palms.

By the time the sun rises, I can no longer hear him. My mother is gone. My father, gone. Shuramin is out of my reach. I am still Tahrie, but I am changed.

* * *

I lay three bundles of flowers on the beach, near the trees. I dare not go any closer to the sea. In the year since the sea returned home, all trace of the village has faded away. Any wood that washed ashore was immediately put to use in building new houses, further inland.

I found a man to love. He doesn’t mind that my hair is white as sea foam. He says he loves me as I am, but I find the edges of my tongue have softened.

The waves inhale and exhale, swell and release. I feel their pattern in my blood, in my breathing.

One day you will come to me
, the sea whispers.

“Perhaps,” I say. I cannot say it is impossible; I have lived through too many impossible things. I hesitate before taking out another bundle of flowers and laying it on the sand. “I am sorry for your loneliness.”

And I, for yours.

He is silent, and I can sense that he is waiting—for me to ask to see Grandmother, or Mother, or Father. For me to ask him to push them ashore.

But I turn and leave without another word. The sea is fickle and demanding, but in many ways, he is not unlike a stone.

I would not ask him to change.

Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 5
Copyright
©
2013 by Andrea G. Stewart. All rights reserved.

James Aquilone
is an editor and writer, for fun and for profit. His fiction has appeared in
Flash Fiction Online
,
Weird Tales Magazine
, DarkFuse’s
Horror d’oeuvres
, and
Third Flatiron
, among other publications. His nonfiction has appeared in
SF Signal
,
Den of Geek
,
Shock Totem
, and
Hellnotes
. He has never owned a cellphone and hopes radio dramas make a comeback. He lives in Staten Island, New York, with his wife and small dog. Visit his website at jamesaquilone.com.

Lou J. Berger
lives in Denver with three kids, three Sheltie dogs and a kink-tailed cat with nefarious intent. He’s an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has been professionally published in short form, and is writing his first novel, a non-genre YA book set in 1978’s North Carolina. His website can be found at www.LouJBerger.com.

Steve Cameron
is a Scottish/Australian writer who currently resides in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. When not writing, he teaches English at a local secondary college. Steve maintains a website at www.stevecameron.com.au.

Gio Clairval
is an Italian-born writer and a translator who has lived most of her life in Paris and now commutes between Scotland and her hometown on Lake Como, followed by her pet, a giant pike. She has sold stories to magazines such as
Weird Tales
,
Fantasy Magazine
,
Daily Science Fiction
, and
Postscripts
, among others, as well as numerous anthologies, including
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities
(HarperCollins) and
Caledonia Dreamin’
(Eibonvale Press). Her translations (from French, Italian, Spanish and German) have appeared in the Ann and Jeff Vandermeer anthology
The Weird:
A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
, and elsewhere. A former international Strategic Management Consultant, she holds four master’s degrees in various fields of Psychology and in Organizational Studies, and is currently pursuing an
MFA
in Creative Writing. You can find her at Kosmochlor:.www.gioclairval.blogspot.com/ and on Twitter: @gioclair.

Eric Cline
was born in Independence, Missouri. It was in a thrift store in that city that his mother purchased some children’s science fiction books by “Paul French” (a pseudonym of Isaac Asimov). Eric went on to devour all the books he could find by Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, Del Rey, and L. Ron Hubbard, among other Golden Age authors. Eric holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English. He now works in an office and has been writing evenings and weekends since 2007. His stories have appeared in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Stupefying Stories,
and
Writers of the Future
anthologies.

Eric Leif Davin
is a science fiction historian and the author of
Pioneers of Wonder: Conversations with the Founders of Science Fiction
(Prometheus Books), and
Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965
(Lexington Books). In the future, however, he intends to write more fiction. His debut novel,
The Desperate and the Dead
, was released by Damnation Books in September 2014. A work of historical horror, it features pirates and zombies against the demons of Hell.

Nick DiChario
’s short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies. He has been nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy awards, and his first two novels,
A Small and Remarkable Life
(2006) and
Valley of Day-Glo
(2008), both received nominations for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year.

Kary English
grew up in the snowy Midwest where she avoided siblings and frostbite by reading book after book in a warm corner behind a recliner chair. She blames her one and only high school detention on Douglas Adams, whose
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
made her laugh out loud while reading it behind her geometry textbook. Today, Kary still spends most of her time with her head in the clouds and her nose in a book. To the great relief of her parents, she seems to be making a living at it. Her fiction includes several short stories, a planetary fantasy series available in 2015, and a fantasy saga about a little girl and an orange kitten. A student of
New York Times
bestsellers David Farland and Tracy Hickman, Kary aspires to make her own work detention-worthy. Kary is a Writers of the Future winner whose fiction has appeared in
Daily Science Fiction
, the
Grantville Gazette
’s Universe Annex and
Galaxy’s Edge
.

Tom Gerencer
is a 45-year-old writer of science fiction and fantasy stories who grew up in Maine and moved to West Virginia for the whitewater. He attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop in 1999, then sold several short stories, including “Primordial Chili” and “Demo Mode” to
Science Fiction Age
, “A Taste of Damsel” to
Realms of Fantasy
, and a dozen or so others to magazines and anthologies around the country. He took time off from writing fiction to build a small business, and is now polishing up his first novel. He and his wife Kathy are awaiting the birth of their first child.

Tina Gower
earned a master’s degree in school psychology, raised guide dogs, and eventually decided to train her own two children. She worked as a psychologist for several schools before turning to writing as a profession. Tina has sold stories to
Galaxy’s Edge
,
Writers of the Future
,
Chicken Soup for the Soul
, and a few others that are forthcoming. She is also collaborating with Mike Resnick on a forthcoming Stellar Guild team-up, to be published by Phoenix Pick. She won the Writers of the Future Gold Award as well as the Daphne du Maurier Award, the latter for Excellence in Mystery, Suspense, and Romance for the Futuristic, Fantasy, Paranormal category, for her unpublished novel.

Robert T. Jeschonek
is an award-winning writer whose fiction, comics, essays, and podcasts have been published around the world. He won the grand prize in Pocket Books’ nationwide
Strange New Worlds
contest, and was nominated for the British Fantasy Award. His young adult slipstream novel,
My Favorite Band Does Not Exist
, won the Forward National Literature Award and was named one of
Booklist’s
Top Ten First Novels for Youth. His science fiction thriller,
Day 9
, is a 2013 International Book Award winner. He also won the 2013 Scribe Award for Best Original Novel for his alternate history,
Tannhäuser: Rising Sun, Falling Shadows
. He is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Visit him online at www.thefictioneer.com. You can also find him on Facebook and follow him as @TheFictioneer on Twitter.

Nancy Kress
is the author of thirty-three books, including twenty-six novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won five Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. She has also lost over a dozen of these awards. Most recent works are
After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall
(Tachyon, 2012), a novel of apocalypse, and
Yesterday’s Kin
, about genetic inheritance (Tachyon, 2014). In addition to writing, Kress often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad; in 2008 she was the Picador visiting lecturer at the University of Leipzig. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.

Mercedes Lackey
was born in Chicago, Illinois, on June 24, 1950. The very next day, the Korean War was declared. It is hoped that there is no connection between the two events. In 1985 her first book was published. In 1990 she met artist Larry Dixon at a small science fiction convention in Meridian, Mississippi, on a television interview organized by the convention. They moved to their current home, the “second weirdest house in Oklahoma,” in 1992. She has many pet parrots and “the house is never quiet.” She has over eighty books in print, with four being published in 2014 alone, and some of her foreign editions can be found in Russian, German, Czech, Polish, French, Italian, Turkish, and Japanese. From a collaboration with Dennis Lee, Cody Martin and Veronica Giguere came the Secret World Chronicle (www.secretworldchronicle) a five-book series of which the first four—
Invasion
,
World Divided
,
Revolution
and
Collision
—are available from Baen.

Leena Likitalo
hails from Finland, the land of thousands of lakes and at least as many untold tales. Leena breaks computer games for a living. (Really!) When she’s not working, she writes obsessively. And when she’s not writing, she can be found at the stables riding horses or at the pool playing underwater rugby. She’s a Writers of the Future 2014 winner and Clarion San Diego 2014 graduate. Her fiction has appeared in
Weird Tales
,
Galaxy’s Edge
, and various semi-pro zines. You can visit her online at www.leenalikitalo.com.

Ken Liu
(http://kenliu.name) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
,
Asimov’s Science Fiction
,
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
,
Clarkesworld Magazine
,
Lightspeed
, and
Strange Horizons
, among other places. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts. Ken’s debut novel,
The Grace of Kings
, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, will be published by Saga Press, Simon & Schuster’s new genre fiction imprint, in April 2015. Saga will also publish a collection of his short stories later in the year.

Marina J. Lostetter
’s short original fiction has appeared in venues such as
Lightspeed, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show,
and
Writers of the Future
anthologies. She has also written tie-in work for the Star Citizen and Sargasso Legacy universes. Recently, she has taken over the Artist Spotlight interview column in
Nightmare Magazine
, and is enjoying the opportunity to learn more about visual artists and their processes. Originally from Oregon, Marina now lives in Arkansas with her husband, Alex. She tweets as @MarinaLostetter. Please visit her homepage at www.lostetter.net.

Catherine L. Moore
was one of the true giants of science fiction. She broke into print in 1933 with the classic “Shambleau,” and created the still-popular Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry series, all for
Weird Tales.
She then moved to the science fiction magazines, where she wrote the immortal “Vintage Season,” plus “The Bright Illusion,” “Fruit of Knowledge,” and literally dozens of books and stories in collaboration with her husband, Henry Kuttner. She was Guest of Honor at the 1981 Worldcon. “Happily Ever After” was Moore’s very first published story, an amateur piece submitted to her college magazine, and unavailable for 83 years until its first professional publication in
Galaxy’s Edge
.

Larry Niven
has written fiction at every length, and speculative articles, speeches for high schools and colleges and conventions, television scripts, political action in support of the conquest of space, graphic novels, and a couple of comic book universes. He’s also collaborated with a wide variety of writers. His interests include science fiction conventions; role-playing games, live and computer; American Association for the Advancement of Science meetings and other gatherings of people at the cutting edges of science; comics; filk singing; yoga and other approaches to longevity; hiking; and racquetball. His awards include Hugos for “Neutron Star,” 1966;
Ringworld
, 1970; “Inconstant Moon,” 1971; “The Hole Man,” 1974; and “The Borderland of Sol,” 1975. He won the Nebula for Best Novel with
Ringworld
in 1970, Australia’s Ditmar for
Ringworld
in 1972 and
Protector
in 1974; Japanese awards for
Ringworld
and “Inconstant Moon,” both in 1979; and the San Diego Comic Convention’s Inkpot Award in 1979. He was the Worldcon Guest of Honor in 1993.

K. C. Norton
’s work has appeared in
Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, Writers of the Future
anthologies, and
Lightspee
d
’s “Women Destroy Science Fiction!” special issue. She has studied Mesopotamian economics, Greek history, Viking mythology, Bronze Age shipping networks, underwater archaeology, and writing for children. When she’s not chronicling the struggles of vegetable people, she moonlights as a dog groomer-slash-bartender-slash-librarian. Norton lives in Pennsylvania with a dog who looks like a cow. She has never enslaved produce of any kind.