Read “Have You Eaten? Part 1: Daneka’s Birthday” here!

Read “Have You Eaten? Part 2: Dinner with Peter” here!

Read “Have You Eaten? Part 3: Morrow’s Comfort” here!

In a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey, a fractured group of undesirables work together to nurture and nourish each other while navigating a dangerous world that would just as soon see them dead. Still—inch by inch, meal by meal—they build their own future. Have you eaten?

The Abbott’s Risotto

Oil—enough
½ onion, chopped, for every 3 people eating
1 clove garlic for every 3 people eating
1 handful of rice for every person eating *rinse once
1 splash wine or juice of 1 lemon
1½ cups broth for every handful of rice

Add in: Meat, vegetables, mushrooms

1. Heat oil. Soften & brown onions and garlic.
2. Add oil. Add rice, stir until edges go clear.
3. Add wine, stir until liquid is gone.
4. Add a little broth. Stir until liquid is gone. Repeat until all broth is gone.
5. Add whatever you like.

Harper walks behind everyone else as they make their way down East Wacker Drive in what used to be the Loop. The four of them are in the center of the street, not trying to hide their approach. Not looking to make anyone nervous, Morrow had said when they entered the city. Not looking to make anyone pissed, Quan had replied.

Harper hadn’t said anything. They don’t say anything now either. They just hang back, half a block behind everyone else, hood up, raising a hand in acknowledgment whenever Fen glances nervously over her shoulder at them. Fen’s still worried that Harper’s going to disappear, leave the group, strike off on their own. It’s an understandable worry, but Harper wishes Fen would just sit with that worry for half a day instead of constantly bleeding it out onto every surface she touches.

The blacktop is still cracked from the time a tank rolled through the neighborhood. Harper looks down at the zagging splits in the street, remembers the sound of treads. The road here wasn’t made to support that kind of weight, but nobody cared then and nobody’s left here to care now. Harper didn’t even care, not at the time, even though they loved these roads. It was hard to care about anything but the ten minutes that had just happened and the ten minutes that were on the way. Still, that tank should have fallen through the asphalt, through Lower Wacker, down onto the now-submerged Riverwalk. Should have cracked the pavement straight through.

The other three are loud up ahead. Loud on purpose—that’s what they all agreed on. No sneaking, no surprises. Treat the Rosemary Patch like a bear den, that’s the smart approach so it’s what they’re doing. Quan and Fen are bickering, an are-we-there-yet back-and-forth that has a smile in it on both sides. Morrow’s got their hands deep in their pockets, just listening, but their bigness is loud and for once they’re not trying to hide it.

The buildings that line one side of the street get a little taller. They’re almost to Stetson Avenue now. Harper looks up into the empty eye sockets where rows of glass windows used to be. The piercing whistles of lookouts echo up the block, twee-twee-twee-twee. Fen’s chin snaps up at the sound.

Harper sighs and runs a palm across the patchwork stubble on their scalp. “Here we go.”

The group’s strategy of being obvious pays dividends. As they approach the remains of Columbus Plaza, four figures melt out of the shadowy mouth of one of the buildings. Nobody Harper recognizes—they’re kids, practically, all wearing red rags around their biceps, all making faces to make it clear that they know how to kick ass. They’re skinny but in a growing-too-fast way, not in a starving way, and they all have all their hair. Harper figures there’s probably a good number of adults standing just out of sight, letting these cubs get some experience. It’s a promising sign.

“Stop there,” one of the kids yells, a scrawny Black kid with a tight fade and a missing front tooth. The kid’s got a scowl that would stop a tank in its tracks.

“No problem,” Fen calls. She holds her hands out at her sides. Quan and Morrow do the same. Harper’s instructions echo through everyone’s mind: Everyone stay relaxed. Don’t look tense. If you’re calm, they’re calm.

One of the other kids—tall, white, weedy, blonde hair that’s falling into her eyes—has a big stick that she bonks against the blacktop. It’s genuinely a little menacing. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re looking for the Rosemary Patch,” Morrow says. They’re doing the worst job of looking calm. They’re thinking about what’ll happen if these kids decide they want a fight. Dreading the possibility of combat with children. The tension radiates off them in sick shivers.

The scrawny kid with the fade looks behind him, back into the building he came out of. The blonde shoves him and hisses something that sounds like “Don’t look, dipshit.”

“It ain’t here.” This from the smallest of the kids, who wears a ball cap that’s too big for his head. “You’re in the wrong place. Turn around.”

Fen takes a slow step forward, her hands still out at her sides. “I think it is here, actually. We’re here to see, um.” She hesitates long enough that Harper takes half a step forward, but then she sticks the landing. “We’re here to see The Abbott.”

The kids lose their composure immediately. They’re grabbing each other and talking over each other, gesturing at the same building the one kid had looked into. After a few seconds of this, an adult figure strides out of the shadows with the loping impatience of a chaperone who needs to impose order.

Harper’s eyes track the well-muscled neck, the broad bony shoulders, the long swinging arms. They tug their hood down over their eyes just a little further.

“Fuck’s sake. Everyone downstairs, we’re going over security protocols again in the morning. And Devon? Don’t let me hear you calling anyone else a dipshit.”

The blonde kid crosses her arms. “What if he’s being a dipshit?”

Fen interrupts. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“You can call me PJ. Because that’s my name.”

Harper bites their lips to keep from smiling, mutters to themself, “That stupid fucking joke.”

Fen holds out a hand to shake. “PJ, I’m Fen.” The wind is catching on the hollowed-out buildings, making the street loud. The two of them talk, trading introductions and explanations and code words. PJ leans around Fen to get a look at Harper but doesn’t seem to recognize them.

“Alright,” PJ says in a voice loud enough to carry up the block. “Come on down.”

She leads their group across the old six-lane street, toward the river. Fen hangs back, waiting for Harper to catch up.

“Looks like we’re in business,” she says. Her eyes are sparking with anxiety.

“Looks like. You scared of heights?”

Fen cocks her head. “Not really. Why?”

Harper lifts their chin toward the railing on the edge of the street. Fen watches as PJ, the four kids, Quan and Morrow approach. PJ crouches down and adjusts something at Devon’s waist.

And then Devon dives over the edge of the overpass.

Fen doesn’t make a sound. Her eyes go hard and sharp. She looks from PJ to Morrow to Quan to Harper, her nostrils flaring, her breath still.

Harper holds up a hand like they’re trying to steady a spooking horse. “It’s okay. Nothing’s happening. That’s just how we get to where we’re going.”

Fen gives a little shiver, rolls her shoulders. “I don’t like this.”

“You just don’t like surprises,” Harper says. “But you’re gonna like this. I promise. Unless you’re scared of heights, and then you might never speak to me again.”

When Fen peers over the edge of the overpass, she isn’t scared by the drop from Wacker to Lower Wacker. “And you’re sure it’s safe?”

“When have I ever lied to you?”

“Never. But . . . you also haven’t said that it’s safe, so I don’t think you’d count it as a lie, would you?”

Harper grins. “Well. You won’t die, anyway.” While PJ is clipping the rest of the kids to their lines and sending them down, Harper tells her about the hidden street beneath Lower Wacker where the Rosemary Patch used to be located. “You’re not going that far, though. There’s an old service tunnel that goes from Lower Wacker into the old auto pound. You’ll be walking a few blocks to get there. Don’t worry. PJ will get you there.”

Fen leans far over the railing to look down at the street below. “How come we didn’t just go straight there? Why do we have to go underneath everything?”

“Chicago used to be monitored by drones. One hundred percent of the time,” Harper says. “These days, who knows. Better not to risk leading anyone to home base.”

Morrow gives a joyful shout as they slip over the edge of the railing, a loose length of cord in their hands. Quan goes soon after, silent and trembling with nerves. Fen gives Harper a small, loose salute, then turns toward PJ.

“My turn?”

PJ gives her a warm smile. “You’ll do great.”

“Where do I clip in?”

“You don’t,” PJ replies. “The kids wear harnesses. We don’t have enough for adults.”

“Is it safe?”

“If you don’t want to take the line down, you can walk”—she points into the distance—“that way, until you come to the part of Wacker that collapsed onto Lower. It makes a kind of ramp down. It looks dangerous, but the kids play on it all the time, so you’ll probably be safe to scramble down.”

Fen frowns. “What made it collapse?”

“Tank. This street’s not made to support that kind of weight.”

Harper jolts. “When did they come through again?”

They’re still far enough away, their face still shadowed enough by their hood, that when PJ gives them a curious glance, she doesn’t recognize them. Still, Harper is thankful when Fen recovers PJ’s full attention by asking about how to hold the line without tearing up her palms. Harper stays quiet after that, waiting for Fen to drop over the edge before stepping forward.

PJ peers at them, her eyes searching. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name. Fen said you were with her group, but— Hang on.” Her face hardens and before Harper can dodge, PJ’s hand has darted out to snatch their hood away. “You,” she breathes.

Harper gives her a wary smile. “Hey babe.”

PJ’s arm twitches like she wants to slap Harper across the mouth, but no blow comes, which is how Harper knows she hasn’t forgiven them yet. “The fuck are you doing here?” She bites out the words like a cold wind.

“I’m with Fen and them. Traveling together. We’re looking for—”

“For Daneka, right. Fen said. So. You and Fen are together.”

“Not—” Harper sighs. They’d somehow forgotten PJ’s weapons-grade jealousy. “Just traveling together. Nothing else. Will you let me go down so we can see The Abbott? The others are waiting for me down there.”

PJ shakes her head. “Fuck no. Nobody down there wants to see you.”

Harper rocks back on their heels. “Hey now,” they murmur.

After a moment, PJ twists her neck, rolls her eyes, drops the anger from between her molars. “Sorry. That was mean and it’s not true. But, Harp—you can’t just come rolling back in after what you did. You left without saying goodbye to anyone. You hurt a lot of people. You have to know that.”

“I know. And I’m prepared to talk to The Abbott about it.” Harper reaches out and touches PJ’s upper arm, lets their fingers drift down to her elbow. They don’t acknowledge the fact that the “lot of people” they hurt included PJ. Was probably mostly PJ. “Trust me. I can handle myself on this one.”

“You can handle yourself on anything,” PJ grumbles. And then she gives a sharp tug on the line that’s knotted around the handrail. When it holds strong, she gives it to Harper. “You better not leave without saying goodbye this time. I mean it. I’ll kick your ass.”

Harper loops the end of the line around each of their thighs, then grip the slack in both hands. They swing one leg over the rail, then lean back to kiss PJ on the cheek. “Thanks, babe.”

Before they can so much as grin at her, PJ plants her palms on their shoulders and gives them a hard shove. Harper tumbles off the edge of the overpass with a long-buried whoop of freedom.

When their feet touch the asphalt of Lower Wacker, the others are already standing in a cluster nearby, talking softly. Harper approaches, grinning, ready to rib Quan for his nerves—but when they get close, the group parts, and Harper’s grin falls away.

The Abbott is here. She’s as short as the scrawny kids who’d been standing guard, as broad as a barrel, and as old as the city itself. She aims her dark, creased face up at Harper and measures them with a cool, steady gaze.

“So. You’re back.”

Quan looks up at Morrow, openly perplexed. “Back? Harper’s from—”

“Here,” Harper interrupts. “I’m from here. And yeah, Abbott, I’m back. Me and some friends, who I see you’ve already met.”

PJ drops to the pavement behind Harper. “We gotta move,” she says. “We’ve all been here too long already. Abbott, I thought you were going to wait for us at the Patch?”

“A little mouse told me I’d want to come see the visitors for myself,” The Abbott says. She reaches out a hand and, without looking, rests it on the head of the kid in the too-large baseball cap. “He never met you while you were here, Harper, but he still knew you on sight. You’re something of a scary story among the children.”

PJ steps forward, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand. “Please. We seriously have to go. Can you and Harper talk on the way there?”

Harper flinches—when they lived here, that would have earned anyone a sharp rebuke from The Abbott, but it doesn’t come. The Abbott simply nods. “Thank you for keeping us on time. Lead the way. Harper, you’ll keep me company in the back of the group. I walk slower these days anyway.”

The Abbott waits while PJ herds the group toward the service tunnel. She stands still until Harper sighs and holds out an arm. “You need someone to lean on?”

“I don’t need it, but I’ll take it anyway,” The Abbott says. She loops her arm through Harper’s and pats them on the forearm like they’re a sturdy horse. “I’ve missed you.”

“You haven’t.”

“I have!” The Abbott lets out a raspy laugh. “Now, tell me why you’re back. I heard it from your friends, but I want to hear it from you.”

Harper explains. They tell her about Daneka, about her disappearance and the messages they’ve been getting from someone who seems to be Daneka but isn’t. They fill her in about Peter, then about Peter and Morrow getting together and falling apart, then about their little group’s journey across the border from Wisconsin into Illinois. They tell her about Fen, who relies on them almost as much as they rely on her.

“This Bouchard,” The Abbott says thoughtfully. “Who you stayed with in Wisconsin. Is he part of our family?”

Harper thinks for a moment. “Don’t know. But his wife—I think you’d like her. I convinced her to convince him to get back to work by telling her how much the state cops would hate it if a bunch of queers made it into Illinois. She laughed so hard I thought she was gonna choke.”

“So you’re hoping to see Daneka here.”

“Fen is. Personally, I think it’s too much of a long shot. But—”

The Abbott clicks her tongue. “You’re a pessimist. I don’t know why. You were raised better than that.” Then she purses her lips and whistles once, high and sharp. The group ahead stops and waits until Harper and The Abbott have caught up to them. “Alright, children,” she says, addressing the new arrivals more than the actual kids. “In a minute, we’re going to arrive at the Patch. Our visitors are going to earn the right to stay with us by making dinner. Enough for all ten of us.”

Fen glances at Harper with obvious surprise. Harper shakes their head and shrugs. Neither of them offered this to The Abbott—she’s simply setting her terms.

“Excuse me,” Quan asks, his voice as careful as it gets. “How long can we stay?”

The Abbott grins. “That’ll depend on how much I like dinner, won’t it?”

She leads them into the Rosemary Patch, and Quan, Fen, and Morrow gawk at the sheer scale of the underground community that sprawls throughout the old impound garage. Sturdy little houses line the walls, built out of the shed skin of the city: old street signs, sheets of corrugated metal, tiles pried up from the lobbies of abandoned skyscrapers. Clusters of adults sit out in the common area, processing food or studying playing cards or watching the children who chase each other across the building. The air is a little sharp with the smell of old motor oil and too-close bodies, but overpowering those smells is the smoke of cookfires and the unmistakable aroma of baking bread.

PJ jogs forward and leans close to Harper, murmuring in their ear. “You haven’t been here since the bakery started up. The new moms run it. Fresh babies and fresh loaves. Bet you wish you never left.”

Fen hears and interrupts, and Harper can’t decide whether to be irritated or relieved. “Harper, you used to live here?”

“We talked about this already,” Quan says. Fen gives him an irritated frown and he spreads his palms. “It’s not my fault you were too busy flirting with PJ to listen. Harper’s from here.”

“I don’t want to get into it,” Harper says. “Peej, can you show us where we’re cooking tonight?”

PJ leads them to a small communal kitchen between two of the makeshift houses. It’s open, looking out into the common area, covered by a low overhang. Plywood is propped up on cinderblocks to form a U-shaped countertop, and bins below that counter hold plates and dented pots. Along the back wall, staples fill bins made of thick plastic with heavy screw-on lids: flour, rice, onions, cassava. 

PJ points to a corner with a hotplate. Underneath it is a row of water jugs and a basin of assorted cooking implements. “This is the only spot that’s available. Everywhere else is reserved for the night. You should have gotten here earlier if you wanted a better setup.”

Morrow peers into the basin. “These are all broken. Look,” they add, holding up a wooden cooking spoon that’s held together in the center with duct tape. “What happened here?”

“Probably Jaan, practicing their drumming,” she says. Then she adds, “That’s my kid. They love music.” She doesn’t look at Harper when she says it, and the not-looking is as loud as the words themselves.

“It’s fine. We can cook with broken stuff,” Harper says. “Thanks for showing us.”

PJ nods. “No problem. Just hand me your packs and I’ll get out of your hair.”

Quan balks. “Our packs?”

“I’m going to search your shit,” PJ replies lightly. “Don’t worry. You’ll get everything back.”

Quan grips the straps of his backpack with white knuckles. “I don’t want—”

“You don’t want to argue on this one,” Harper murmurs to him.

“The fuck I don’t,” Quan insists. “What’s she looking for?”

PJ gives Quan a carnivorous grin. “I don’t know, Quan. Trackers. Guns. Palmsets with fake videos of my friends, maybe.”

Quan’s mouth opens, then snaps shut as he looks at Morrow. “You told her?”

“I told the Abbott,” Harper interjects.

“There hasn’t been time for The Abbott to—”

Harper laughs. “Never assume she hasn’t done whatever she might take a mind to do, Quan. Trust me on that one.”

“Okay, but we aren’t the ones who made the videos of Daneka,” Morrow points out.

PJ raises her eyebrows. “Then you shouldn’t need to worry about what I’ll find in your bags. I’ll plug your palmsets in, too. You must be carrying a bunch of dead batteries by now.”

The four of them hand over their packs—Quan reluctant, Morrow and Fen resigned, Harper almost relieved. PJ thumbs the empty carabiner that hangs from Harper’s backpack strap. “No keys?”

“Nowhere to save keys for,” Harper says. “You have a kid?”

PJ can’t restrain a small, soft smile. “Yeah. They kick ass. Too smart for their own good, and they’re a little thief too. They remind me a lot of you. You’ll like them. If you want to meet them, I mean.”

It takes Harper a moment to find breath, and then another moment to find words. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”

And then PJ is gone, and The Abbott is gone, and the kids who’d been standing guard are gone, and it’s just the four of them, alone again in a strange kitchen.

Fen steps in close to Harper. “Do you want me to handle making dinner? I don’t mind.”

Harper shakes their head. “You don’t know how to do this.”

Quan looks up from where he’s rummaging through the broken cooking implements. “What? Of course she does. And she has the recipe box.”

Harper turns to Fen. They take a deep breath and fold their arms across their chest, and in that moment, it’s as if no time at all has passed since they left the squat. The light that falls through the street-level grate above dapples Harper’s shoulders, and the muggy river air hangs around the two of them like the falling wings of dusk, and Harper is just as irritated with Fen as they were on the path behind the houses in the neighborhood where they became family to each other.

“You’re gonna make me say this?”

Fen visibly braces herself. “Yes. Unless there’s something you think you can’t say to me.”

“Fine. You don’t have a recipe in your box that can handle this situation, Fen. You aren’t prepared here. Every recipe you know how to cook calls for eggs or butter or meat.”

Morrow speaks up. “Not the—”

“Don’t say not the vegan ones. Those are worse. You think we’re getting handed chia seeds down here? Applesauce? Corn? The point is, we’re not cooking with the kind of resources you’re used to.”

“But if everyone works together, we can figure out—”

“Everyone’s not going to work together, Morrow,” Harper cuts in. “Not with us.”

Fen looks around at the vast expanse of the underground garage. It’s filled with the hum of life. “They seriously don’t have any of that stuff down here? Eggs, I mean? For all these people?”

Harper laughs. “I’m not saying they don’t have it. They probably do. But they’re not going to give us any of it to cook with. Do you understand? They’re not going to give us the things that make it easy to make something tasty. We’re being tested right now. And that’s why you’re not cut out to make this dinner.”

Fen bristles. “Because, what, I can’t cook when it’s tough? I didn’t see you complaining when—”

“No,” Harper interrupts. “Stop. You’re not hearing me.” They step close and put their hands on Fen’s shoulders, try to make their face kind and their voice kinder. “You can’t do this because you’ve only ever cooked for people who like you, Fen. People who will work with you to help you do a good job for them. And this isn’t that situation. You’ll hate how it feels to make dinner for people who are hoping you’ll fuck it up. It’ll hurt your heart. So let me do it this time, okay? I’m good at this.”

Fen blinks hard. “I didn’t know you knew how to cook,” she says softly.

Harper pulls her into a tight, brief hug. “You never asked.”

Fen joins Morrow and Quan beneath the lip of the overhang, and the three watch as Harper takes stock of what’s in the kitchen. It’s not much—the staples that are available to everyone in the community are foundational. “How the hell am I gonna turn this into dinner?” they mutter to themself.

Fen clears her throat. “Can we help?”

Harper shakes their head. “I know what I want to make. I just have to figure out how to make it into something worth eating. The Abbott’s probably told everyone not to help us, even if we can trade for ingredients.”

They turn to see a knot of young children, none of them older than eight, staring at Morrow. One of them breaks bravely loose from his friends and approaches the communal kitchen. He stands a couple of feet away and waits for Morrow to notice him. Finally, he just starts talking. “Hey excuse me I’m sorry but are you a giant?”

Morrow turns, laughing. It’s a freer noise than they’ve made in a long time. “Yes,” they reply, “I am a giant! A giant monster!” On the last word, Morrow holds their hands high overhead, growls, and trots toward the kids, who run away shrieking in open delight.

A game crystallizes effortlessly, the way games so often do with children that age. The children retreat and then, once Morrow’s back is turned, they race forward again. Morrow lets them get a little closer each time before turning around and letting out a roar, giving the kids an opportunity to flee. Fen is half collapsed with laughter; Quan rolls his eyes, but he can’t hide a small smile.

Harper smiles too, because they’ve found the solution to their problem. “Hey, Morrow.”

“I think you mean hey monster,” Morrow replies, grinning so hugely that they’re almost unrecognizable.

“Sure. Monster. Can you send the kids on a mission?”

Morrow flips the game effortlessly. The kids are thrilled to be given jobs—by a giant, no less—and vanish into the Rosemary Patch with absolute determination. While they’re gone, Harper rummages around in the bins. They pull out three good onions and a wrinkled half-head of garlic, and take mercy on Fen by asking her to dice them up. They measure out rice with their hands—ten big handfuls for ten people, plus an extra two handfuls just in case. They use a jug of water to give the rice a single rinse, dumping the starchy rinsewater into a big jar, which they’ll give to The Abbott since she likes using rice water to wash her face. She’ll think they forgot, and they’ll show her they didn’t, and the fact of their remembering will be a better gift than the rice water, they think. They hope.

Then they fill a huge pot with clean water and set it on the hotplate, bringing it to a boil, hoping something will appear that they can put into it.

By the time the water is bubbling, two of the kids are back. One of them—an Asian kid with two stubby pigtails—has bulging trouser pockets. “I got it,” they gasp.

“What’d you get?” Morrow asks, squatting down low to look the kid in the eyes.

They pull out two fistfuls of what looks like shards of tree bark. “Mushrooms!”

Morrow cups their hands for the kid to dump their prize into. “. . . Are you sure these are mushrooms?”

“Yeah! My mom dries ’em. They smell.” The kid points, wrinkling his nose.

Morrow sniffs the dark brown pile of mushrooms before mirroring the kid’s expression. “Those sure are mushrooms,” they agree. “Harp, can you use these?”

“These are perfect,” Harper says, leaning across the plywood counter to take the mushrooms. As they drop them into the boiling water, they call over their shoulder. “Thanks, kid. What’s your name?”

“Jaan!”

Harper doesn’t turn around until they hear the sound of small feet running away. Then, hoping Jaan is gone, they cautiously glance over their shoulder to see Morrow deep in serious conversation with the other child who’d come with Jaan. He looks like a miniature version of the kid with the fade who’d stopped them up on the street, and he’s got something small cupped in his palm.

“You’re sure it’s okay with your dad if we use this?” Morrow asks softly.

The kid shakes his head. “But he won’t know I took it. He has a big jar and this is only a few of them.”

Morrow nods and points the kid toward Harper. The kid approaches and reveals his offering: five, fragrant, salt-crusted preserved anchovies.

“Holy shit,” Harper breathes. “Thank you. This is—wow.”

The kid looks up at Harper with wide, shy eyes. “Can I see your head? I heard it got burned off when you left.”

Harper crouches down to take the fish, and bends their neck to show the kid the scars that map their scalp. “It was the year before I left, actually. When the old Rosemary Patch got raided and burned down.”

The kid reaches up to touch the scars without asking, and Harper flinches, both at the sudden touch and at the knowledge that their head is going to smell like fish for days. But they don’t move away. They let the kid feel the history of the Rosemary Patch that’s etched into their skin.

“Did it hurt?” the kid asks.

“Like hell. But it was worth it to help people. It usually is. You know, the way you helped us today,” Harper says.

The kid snatches his hand back. “I gotta go.” He runs off.

“You overplayed it,” Quan drawls. “Too didactic.”

“Where’d you learn didactic?” Harper retorts.

Fen pushes a sheet pan of chopped onions and garlic across the plywood. “Anything else I can help with?”

Harper shakes their head and drops the salted anchovies into the steaming water along with the mushrooms. They stir, waiting for the flesh of the fish to melt. “Unless you can find some oil.”

“I thought nobody here was going to give us anything,” Fen says, more than a bit tartly.

“They’re not giving us anything. Not voluntarily,” Harper replies. “The kids are stealing for us.”

Fen balks. “What? We can’t steal from these people, we’re their guests—”

“See? This is why I said you wouldn’t be able to make this dinner. You’re their guest, so you can’t steal from them. It’s different for me. I’m from here. I can be awful.” Harper gives her a look that they know makes them look like The Abbott. “Morrow, any other little thieves coming back to us?”

Morrow lifts their chin at a tiny figure that’s weaving through the common area, clutching a jar. “Looks like one more.”

The kid is as small and round as an apricot. She races up and nearly smacks into Morrow headlong before pressing the jar into their hands. “If anyone asks, I didn’t do it,” she says breathlessly before disappearing, her tiny head bobbing with every step she takes as she races away into the depths of the garage.

Morrow holds the jar up to their eyes and squints. “I . . . don’t know what this is,” they say slowly.

Quan bends to peer into the jar. “Nope. No clue.”

Fen plucks it from Morrow’s hand and holds it up to the thin light that streams through the holes in the garage roof. “The label just says ‘candle.’”

“No fucking way.” Harper snatches the jar away from Fen. “Fen, I’m so sorry. I was an asshole to you earlier and I was wrong.”

“What?”

Harper opens the jar and takes a deep sniff of the contents. “This is beef tallow. It’s fat. I can cook with this. I shouldn’t have yelled at you about needing butter because the relief I feel in this moment is enormous.”

Quan puts his hands on his hips and cocks his head to one side. “This is the most I’ve ever heard Harper talk.”

Harper gives Quan the finger and turns to the hotplate. They move the steaming cooking pot, which smells fishy and pungent from the anchovies and the mushrooms, to the side, and replace it with a different, wider-mouthed pot. They use a cracked wooden spoon to scoop a little beef tallow into the pot and wait for it to melt down. When it’s hot, they drop in the onions and garlic. After a few minutes the kitchen area is alive with the smell of ingredients becoming food.

The Abbott comes by to look in on Harper’s progress. Her eyes move from the jar to the steaming pot of broth. “Mmmm. I see.”

“Not taking notes at this time,” Harper says. “If you want to criticize, you’ll have to pick up a spoon and start cooking.”

The Abbott purses her lips in what might be either a reproach or a smile. Before she moves off, she presses a hand to Morrow’s arm and leans in close to them. “You and I should talk more. I’ve been hearing a lot about you from the children. Have you ever considered . . .”

Her voice fades out of hearing as she tugs Morrow off a ways giving them her pitch for whatever it is she wants them to do. Harper stirs the onions and garlic. They’re soft now, and just starting to brown, and Harper whispers the next steps to themself. “More fat, then the rice, stir until it changes.” They drop another scoop of beef tallow into the pot, let it melt, pour in the rice. They stir the rice over the heat, watching for the moment it becomes translucent at the edges. “Hey, Fen? Can you find me a ladle that will actually hold water?”

Fen ducks under the plywood and starts rummaging through the bin of kitchen implements. She holds up three different ladles, one of which is inexplicably slotted. The other two are badly cracked. Desperate, she pulls other bins out from under the counter and opens them. She clangs pots and pans together in her haste as she digs beneath them, hoping to find a dropped ladle.

“What the hell? Hey—hey, Harper!” She jolts up behind Harper with a bottle in her hand. “I found booze. Do you want some?”

Harper rounds on her with the piping hot irritation they reserve for moments when they’re interrupted mid-task. “Do I want? Some booze? Are you fucking—”

Fen raises an eyebrow. “For your recipe,” she says coolly. “Thought it might come in handy. But what do I know about cooking?”

Harper drops their cracked wooden spoon into the pot and clasp Fen by the shoulders. They press their forehead against hers briefly, then kiss her on the cheek. “I’m awful. Thank you, yes, I want this.” They take the bottle from her and open it, give it a smell, and grimace. “Not booze. Vinegar. Still useful, though. Thank you, I love you, go find me a ladle.”

Fen continues searching as Harper eyes the rice. It’s turning translucent at the edges. “Wine,” they whisper to themself, “then broth.” They eye the vinegar. It’s a deep golden color—it was wine once, they figure. They splash a little into the pot, then a little more, and that’s when Fen pops up next to them with a ladle.

They grab it with the hand that isn’t stirring. It has a perfectly intact bowl—but only two inches of handle remain. “This is basically a mug,” they mutter, but it’ll have to do, and they use it to scoop some broth into the rice just in time.

“So,” Fen says as Harper stirs. “Seems like this place is really home for you.”

“Mm.”

Quan leans almost all the way across the plywood. “Seems like you’re. You know. From here.”

“Mmm.”

Morrow comes walking back up, their arms spread wide, children dangling from each one. The Abbott is nowhere in sight. “Yeah, hey, so, you used to live at the Patch. Seems like you might want to tell us some stuff about that?”

“No,” Harper replies. “I want to finish making dinner.”

Fen touches the back of Harper’s heel with the toe of her boot. “What still needs doing? Can I help?”

Steam rises up from the pot, billowing around their face. “No. I’m just going to add broth and then stir until the rice soaks it up, then do that same thing again. And again, and again. And again. Until it’s done.” They let out a laugh that isn’t a laugh, not really. It’s more like a sigh with a stutter in it. “Suits this place.”

Morrow shakes off one of the children. The kid falls with a thump and a bright laugh. “Why?”

“Because that’s what it’s like living here. You just do the thing that needs doing, over and over, until you die.”

The Abbott approaches again, from across the common space. Her steps are slow and stately, perhaps a little stiff. Her eyes are locked on Harper, but she stops next to Fen. “I’ve made a decision,” she says. “I’m not going to wait until after dinner to discuss Daneka with you.”

“What? You never change your mind,” Harper says distractedly, ladling more broth into the pot.

The Abbott nods. “I’m changing it this time. Because I think you all will want make your plans tonight, rather than tomorrow.”

This catches Harper’s full attention. “Tonight? No, we need a place to sleep, please—Grand-Mère, you can’t—”

“Stop. And listen,” The Abbott says, in the voice of someone who is used to teaching children and adults how to behave. “I said you will want to make your plans tonight. You’re making me dinner, Harper, I’m not putting you out before dawn.”

Quan snorts. “Might want to taste the dinner before you decide.”

“Come over here and say that,” Harper offers.

“PJ went through your bags and didn’t find anything unexpected,” The Abbott says. “So I’m going to give you what Daneka gave me, so you can go and find her tomorrow.”

The air inside the Rosemary Patch goes still and silent. Harper drops the ladle and it strikes the floor with the clang of some enormous, dark bell. Morrow lifts their hands to the back of their neck and laces their fingers together, looking at the ground in an unconscious echo of the way Peter had tried to protect himself from their fists. Quan looks at Fen with wide, worried eyes. Fen covers her mouth with both hands, then says, “What?”

From an inside pocket of her coat, The Abbott produces two envelopes. “She was here two weeks ago,” she says. “She said you left her a note on a recipe card, saying to come here. I don’t know how she found us, but she did.”

“We talked about it for years,” Fen whispers. “We thought you were a myth, but—but we talked about coming here, trying to find you.”

“She did. But she said she was being followed. That’s why I didn’t send you all away when you told me about Peter—he’s already on his way. Bounty hunter, supposedly. Probably started tracking you all the way back at that house you were squatting in. PJ will handle him when he arrives. Thank you for doing him a bad turn, Morrow. I know you wish you hadn’t, but I’m glad someone did.”

Morrow doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Behind Harper, the rice is beginning to sizzle.

Fen sways on her feet. “So Daneka’s not here. I— She’s not here? But she’s alive?”

The Abbott nods. “As of the time I last saw her, she’s alive, yes. She moved on three days after she got here. But she left these in my care.” She holds up one envelope, then lowers it to the countertop. “That one is for all of you. And this one,” she says, holding up the second envelope, “is just for you, Fen. She said you’d come. She thought everyone would probably come with you, but she said that if they didn’t, you still would. She cares for you a great deal, you know?”

Fen swallows hard, glances at Quan briefly before taking the envelope. “Thank you,” she whispers.

Harper takes a halting step toward the first envelope. Then they stop, turn around, swear down at the pot on the stove. They grab the ladle off the floor, add two quick scoops of broth to the pot, and stir hard and fast, scraping up the rice that’s browned on the bottom of the pot. “Fuck fuck fuck,” they whisper.

“Don’t worry about it so much,” The Abbott says. “All you have to do is keep going, and you’ll get there.”

Harper doesn’t acknowledge her. They just keep stirring. They know she was talking about the risotto, which she taught Harper to make when they were as young as the little thieves they’d employed to gather ingredients. They also know that she was talking about Daneka. And about coming home, and about growing up, and about everything else they’ve ever done and will ever do.

“This shit is why I left,” they growl. “Advice. Envelopes. Burnt fucking rice.”

Fen comes back around the counter and looks over their shoulder. “It’s not burnt. It’s just fond.”

“What?” Harper snaps.

“It’s just fond. The stuff that sticks to the bottom of the pot and turns brown. It’s fond. That’s where all the flavor is.”

Harper keeps stirring. “We’d better hope it’s a good flavor.”

“It will be,” Fen says, walking away, wanting to give Harper the space she knows they need to go through whatever it is they’re going through. Fen’s never come home to anywhere before. She doesn’t know what it’s like. But it looks like it hurts, and she knows Harper doesn’t like to be seen when they’re hurting.

Still. She pauses, touches the envelope that’s meant for the whole group. “You don’t have to come with me and Quan when we go find her. I don’t expect you to, I mean. I don’t think Morrow is coming,” she adds, looking over her shoulder at the place where Morrow and The Abbott are deep into another quiet, serious conversation. “I think they’re going to stay, probably. It’s okay if you want to stay too.”

Harper pauses in their stirring, which has become too frenetic anyway, too intense. They wipe their forehead on their wrist and look at Fen, really look at her, and their face is an open wound. They’re a cracked ladle, and all the love and pain and exhaustion in them is leaking out, and they can’t stand for it to splash onto Fen but there’s no way to keep that from happening right now so they let it happen. “You don’t sound scared.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean. Normally, when you ask me if I’m staying or going, you sound scared.”

Fen nods. She’s looking down at the risotto, which is nearly done, so that she doesn’t have to look at Harper. “The thing is. I figure it’s probably okay either way. You left this place, and then you came back, and it’s obvious that it’s still home for you. Even if you don’t want to talk about it—”

“I don’t mind talking about it with you. If you want to know, I’ll tell you.” They tip the big pot over the smaller one, pouring the last of the broth into the risotto along with the plump, rehydrated mushrooms.

“Either way,” Fen says firmly. “If you and Morrow decide to stay here, and I go off with Quan to find Daneka, that doesn’t mean we’ll never see you two again. It doesn’t mean you’ll forget about us. About me,” she amends. “I trust you not to forget about me.”

“And you’ve figured out that you don’t need me. Right? No, don’t—it’s not a bad thing,” they say before Fen can protest. “I just mean that for a long time, back at the squat, you didn’t trust yourself. You thought you needed me for backup. Right? And now,” they continue, not waiting for her to agree, “you know that you can do things on your own. So you’re not as scared of what’ll happen if I’m not there.” They turn off the heat and give the risotto a final stir.

Fen has her arms folded tight across her chest. “I don’t just want you around because I’m scared. Is that what you think?”

Harper taps the spoon against the edge of the pot. “I don’t think that’s the only reason you’ve wanted me around in the past. But I think it was in the mix. And now, I think you want me around because you want me around.”

Fen nods. “You really haven’t made your decision, have you? I’ve never seen you take this long to figure out what you want.”

Harper lets out a low, dry laugh. It’s a laugh that Fen’s never heard before. She thinks it might be their realest laugh. “Fen. You’ve been watching me try to figure out what I want since the day we met. You just didn’t know until now what I was trying to decide on.”

A group of children are gathering on the other side of the common area. The four guards, and the three thieves, and a handful of others. Fen points to them. “I think your risotto is going to have to feed more mouths than we thought.”

“You still don’t know? What choice I’ve been making?”

Fen shakes her head.

Harper eyes the growing mass of children. Jaan is near the front. “The way I see it, I’ve been looking at two options. There’s eating dinner with you and Quan and Morrow and Daneka, or there’s everything else in the world.”

“And you picked us?”

“Every time.”

The two of them stand side by side. Fen watches the children. Harper watches the risotto. They don’t look at each other, and they don’t touch each other, and they don’t speak. Their hearts beat at the same speed. They feel it together—the pain and fear and hunger of the months they’ve shared, the emptiness of the years that came before they knew each other, the echoing expanse of the future and all the hell that might be in it. Harper inhales, and a moment later Fen exhales, and neither of them has ever been so unalone.

Harper breaks the silence first. “This risotto’s gonna get cold fast. Not that the kids’ll care, but still. It deserves to be eaten hot.”

Fen nods. “Sounds good. I’ll go find bowls.”

Harper’s Risotto

Serves 10

18 cups water
4 tbsp beef tallow, divided into two parts
3 onions, chopped
6 cloves garlic
12 handfuls of rice *rinse once
2 splashes vinegar
1 cup dried mushrooms
5 salt-cured anchovies

Add mushrooms, anchovies, and water into the big pot. Boil until mushrooms are reconstituted and anchovies have more or less melted away.

1. Heat tallow. Soften & brown onions and garlic.
2. Add oil. Add rice, stir until edges go clear.
3. Add vinegar, stir until liquid is gone.
4. Add a little broth. Stir until liquid is gone. Repeat until all broth is gone.
5. Add whatever you like.

“Have You Eaten?” copyright © 2024 by Sarah Gailey
Art copyright © 2024 by Shing Yin Khor
Photography copyright © 2024 by Sarah Gailey

The post Have You Eaten? Part 4: Harper’s Homecoming appeared first on Reactor.

Fen’s Mom’s Chicken Pot Pie

Crust (2 batches)
2½ cups flour
Pinch of salt
1 cup butter
6 tablespoons water

Filling
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 onion, diced; or 1 can pearl onions, drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
4 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tsp chopped fresh sage
Pepper
1 bag mixed frozen peas & carrots
2 chicken breasts, roasted and shredded
Salt

Instructions

Make the Crust

1. Combine the flour and the salt. Add the butter and mix with your hands until small crumbs are formed.  

2. Add in water 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing with your hands to form dough. 

3. Chill for 1 hour. 

4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. While it’s heating, divide the dough in half. Roll out each half separately. Set one aside, and place the other in a floured and buttered pie pan. Poke the bottom several times with a fork to release steam during cooking.

5. Bake blind for 15 minutes.  


Make the Filling

1. In a nonstick skillet over medium heat, sauté the celery and chopped onion if using. Salt to taste. When vegetables have just begun to soften, set aside.

2. In the same skillet, heat the butter over medium heat until it stops bubbling. Add the flour and whisk thoroughly until there are no lumps. Stir until golden brown.

3. Add the chicken broth to the pan. Whisk thoroughly until well-combined. Add the onion powder, garlic powder, sage, and plenty of black pepper. *Do not salt at this stage; since the broth will be thickened into gravy, the risk of oversalting is high.
4. Add the cooked vegetables, the frozen vegetables, and the pearl onions if using. Stir to combine.
5. Simmer until the sauce thickens into a gravy.
6. Remove from the heat and stir in the shredded chicken.

7. Pour the filling into the blind-baked crust. Top with the rolled-out unbaked crust. Cut slits in the top to vent steam. Bake until golden and flaky on top, 35–45 minutes.


Optional: Instead of pie crust, bake under a layer of biscuits. Double the filling recipe to fill a 9×13-inch pan.

It’s Daneka’s birthday, so everyone in the squat is being quiet and trying not to make eye contact with each other. The problem is that everyone’s known for weeks that Fen is worried about Daneka. At first they all rolled their eyes at Fen—people go missing all the time, and worrying over that is as useless as paper money. Then they tried to get her to snap out of it, because Fen’s the one who makes decisions and plans, and her anxiety over Daneka has been occupying her mind so thoroughly that she hasn’t been deciding or planning anything.

Now, after weeks with no Daneka and no word from her either, everyone in the squat privately shares Fen’s suspicion that something bad has probably happened to their friend. Nobody wants to be the first to say something, though, so they’re all finding reasons to be on their palmsets, reasons to look out the window, reasons to attend to their least-favorite chores.

Fen isn’t making it easy for anyone to speak up, anyway. She’s not talking about her feelings. Four months ago, she overheard Quan calling her a “neurotic clinger.” Quan didn’t know she could hear him—she had just walked into the room and was standing right behind him, like in that movie everyone in the squat makes fun of but hasn’t seen. He said it in a mean way, even though he’s not a mean person, except when he sort of is. And she wasn’t supposed to hear, but she did.

She sort of melted off into her bedroom after that. When Morrow checked in on Fen later she made all the right noises about understanding that she needs to manage her anxiety and Quan’s mastery of incisive languagebut still, damn, it must have stung to hear. Since then, Fen’s been “managing her anxiety” by quietly vibrating, crying when she thinks nobody can hear her, and saying nothing about her feelings to anyone, ever.

Her silence isn’t keeping her secret, though. The housemates know each other even better than they know hunger, and they all recognize the signs of Fen’s worry. Her lips are ragged from chewing. She keeps asking thinly anonymized questions like, Do you think people have responsibility to each other? and, How would you handle it if a friend suddenly grew really distant? Every time anyone catches a glimpse of her palmset, she’s looking at Daneka’s profile, refreshing over and over again, her eyes locked on the location status that hasn’t updated in a month.

At first, Harper told her that some people thrive on independence in relationships. At first, Morrow told her that it probably had nothing to do with her. At first, Quan told her that she could talk to him if she was freaking out about something, but she responded with a patently forced smile and said that she was fine, and then Quan spent the rest of the day asking Harper and Morrow if he’d done anything to upset her because he still didn’t know she’d heard the thing he’d said about her in the first place.

And now it’s Daneka’s birthday, and Daneka still hasn’t come home or answered anyone’s private messages, and everyone is just as worried as Fen’s been for weeks but nobody wants to say so because that would mean admitting that Fen was right all along, and then they’d have to try to figure out what to do.

Fen is usually the one who figures out what to do.

Around noon, a patrol car passes the squat. Quan watches it through a gap in the boards that cover the windows. Once the car has passed out of sight, he lets out a short sharp sigh, slaps his thighs with both palms, and shoots to his feet. His square jaw is set, his thick brows furrowed, his slim fingers balled into fists. “Okay,” he says. “Where the fuck’s Fen?”

“Kitchen,” Harper answers from the floor, where they’re using their fingers to fill a gouge in the laminate with a mixture of sawdust and wood glue. Their dark scalp-stubble grows in continent-like patches around old burn scars on their scalp. The scars are from their life in Old Chicago, which no one in the squat makes the mistake of asking about. Harper isn’t a leader in the same way Fen is, but they could be if they were less irritable about other people needing things and making noises about it. “Step careful. Glue’s drying.”

Quan obeys, tiptoeing past the collection of cushions and camp chairs that Harper’s stacked against the wall to make room for this needlessly intense project. He makes his way to the kitchen and finds that Harper was right: there’s Fen, red-eyed and purse-mouthed, clutching a potato and staring into the nearly bare cupboard.

“You freaking out or what?” Quan asks, looking into the cupboard too so Fen won’t feel like her tears are being noticed.

“No,” she answers, her voice too wobbly to stick the landing. She twists her neck to wipe her nose on the shoulder of her cardigan. The movement makes one tight-coiled curl fall across her forehead. “A little worried that they might finally turn off the electricity this month.”

“Any reason to think that might happen, or are you getting upset over nothing?”

“Probably the second one,” Fen answers, not too defensively. “It’s just. You know. At some point the developers that own this block are gonna remember that this house exists, and we should have a plan for what to do when that happens.” She closes her eyes, takes a long slow breath. “But we’ll deal with it when we get there. What about you? How’s your day so far?”

Quan lets out a dry laugh. “Not great. I’m worried about Daneka.”

Those last four words strike Fen like a match. She explodes with relief. “Oh my god, me too. Where the hell is she? Wait, I mean—no,” she stammers, her face crumpling as she tries and fails to reel her words back, to reconfigure herself into whatever well-managed anxiety is supposed to look like. “It’s fine that she’s gone. I’ve just been wondering why she hasn’t come home, I guess? But it’s fine that she hasn’t.”

Quan opens the refrigerator and pulls out a celery bunch that’s as limp as yarn. “No, like, I’m worried too. She’s been gone for a month, that’s not normal. And she hasn’t messaged you at all?”

“Not at all,” Fen replies. “I haven’t been messaging her that much or anything, just a couple of ‘thinking of you’ taps. She did a thumbs-up react but I don’t know what that means, and—”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” Quan whacks the listless celery against the quartz counter, which is still marked at the edges with wax crayon where the flippers who abandoned this house had planned to cut it. “I think we should call a house meeting.”

Morrow comes thudding down the hall, their heavy boots loud on the gray laminate. Morrow’s body takes up space—they’re built like a fridge, if a fridge could work out—but their voice hides in the back of their throat. “Are, um. Are you guys talking about Daneka?”

“Shoes, asshole,” Harper yells from the living room.

Morrow sits down on the floor immediately and starts undoing their laces. “Sorry. Did someone hear from her?”

“I can’t hear you,” Quan says. “Nobody can fuckin’ hear you.”

“Quan’s worried,” Fen adds. “About Daneka.”

Morrow exchanges a significant glance with Quan. “Okay, well, I mean. It’s just that. You know. I think Quan’s right to be worried. It’s weird that we haven’t heard from Daneka, and—”

“I’ve heard from her,” Harper calls, looking up from their work on the floor. “Thumbs-up react on my last message.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Fen says, earning raised eyebrows from Harper. “You know what? I’m just gonna call her.” She pulls her palmset out of her back pocket and unfolds it, hesitates briefly, looks up, realizes everyone is watching her and she can’t change her mind now—and dials.

The tritone sound of the call going through cycles twelve times before the call drops.

“That’s fine,” Fen says weakly. “I’ll message. She’s probably away from her palmset, she’ll see when she gets back to it.” She swipes out a message, saying the words as she traces them across one quadrant of the screen. “Should . . . we . . . expect . . . you . . . for . . . dinner. There.” She folds her palmset back up before tossing it onto the counter and turning to her housemates. “I’m making chicken pot pie. It’s her favorite. If she shows up, we can have a birthday party. If not, we’ll just eat it without her.”

Morrow grabs the counter and uses it to pull themself upright. They stare at Fen, their dark eyes wide with disbelief. “Wait, for real? You know how to make chicken pot pie?”

“No she doesn’t,” Quan snaps. “When’s the last time you think Fen got her hands on meat? Be serious.”

Fen ignores him, pulling a scratched wooden box off the top of the fridge and answering Morrow without acknowledging Quan at all. “I stole my mom’s recipe box when my folks kicked me out. I know how to make all her recipes.”

“Nice,” Harper says. They jog to the kitchen and dip a rag into the washwater basin, then start scrubbing gluey sawdust off their thumb. “Where d’you think Daneka is?”

“That’s not any of our business,” Fen answers, reaching deeper into the cupboard than she probably needs to.

“Is too,” Harper replies, scowling.

Fen goes still, her head between the shelves. “Really?”

“Course.” Harper runs a hand over their scalp. They sigh. “She’s part of our family. Fuck’s sake, she lives here. And yeah, she drops off the map from time to time. But that’s a few days at a stretch. She’s usually sending videos and posting stuff. And messaging us. Anyone gotten any actual messages?” They wait for everyone else’s headshakes to confirm before continuing. “So.”

And then Morrow whispers the thing nobody’s wanted to say, the thing Fen’s been thinking for twenty-eight days. “What if . . . she got picked up?”

“We’d know,” Quan says immediately.

“How?” Harper’s bony shoulders snap up around their ears. “How would we know, Quan? You think they still let people make phone calls?”

“What about the thumbs-up reacts?”

“Those don’t mean anything,” Harper snaps. “When’s the last time you saw Daneka go quiet on socials?”

Everyone stops to think. “Last time she got picked up,” Quan finally admits. “She was waiting at a drop-off point for a delivery for the three of us—me and her and Fen, I mean.” He nods to Fen, who finally extracts herself from the cupboard, her face drawn. Back before Fen and Quan and Daneka met Harper and Morrow, the three of them had been their own little trio. Moving from place to place, following rumors about reliable, affordable hormones and welcoming communities. “The seller was an undercover. He snatched Daneka for like a week. She didn’t post or message the whole time.”

“Did she send reacts?”

“Hearts,” Fen whispers, remembering. “She told us later that the cop took her phone so he could go through her messages and contacts and stuff.”

“So. Thumbs-up reacts don’t mean shit,” Harper confirms.

Morrow steps on the loose toe of one sock, his eyes fixed on the floor. “Okay, but also, she came home after she got picked up that time, right? So she’ll probably come home this time, too.”

It’s Fen and Quan’s turn to exchange a loaded glance. “That was in Santa Cruz,” Quan says slowly.

Morrow, who lived their whole life just up the freeway in Redding, hoists themself up to sit on the counter. The quartz creaks under their weight. “Is it bad there?”

“Nah,” Quan says. “They’ll pick you up for indecency or gender impersonation or whatever, but they don’t process you most of the time. They just take your money if you have any. It’s . . . it’s not like here,” he finishes, his eyes on his hands, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

Everyone startles when Fen drops the entire potato bin onto the counter. Her eyes are dry, her scar-notched brows set. “Daneka will be here,” she announces.

This is the Fen they’ve all been missing. This is her determined face, the one she wears when she’s deciding to create reality from scratch. It’s the face she wore when she and Quan and Daneka first met Morrow—Fen decided they’d all live together, even though Morrow had just tried to mug them. It’s the face she wore when they broke into this squat through the front door and found Harper breaking into it through the back door. And it’s the face she wears as she informs the other three housemates present that she will be making a birthday dinner, that Daneka will show up to eat it, and that they’re all going to help in the meantime.

“You,” she says, pointing at a startled Morrow. “Sort these potatoes.”

Morrow eyes the potato bin dubiously. “By . . . size?”

“By sprouts. We can probably eat all of these since none of them are green, but the ones with really long sprouts might not be good. Look into my eyes, Morrow,” she says, and she waits for their big dark eyes to meet hers. “We aren’t risking it with any rotten food today. Okay? I mean it. Not for Daneka’s birthday.”

Morrow nods and picks up a potato with one huge, gentle hand.

“And you,” Fen says, wheeling on Quan and brandishing the sagging celery stalks he’d idly removed from the refrigerator a few minutes before. “Figure this out.”

Harper stands on the other side of the kitchen counter, their arms folded. “Guess the boss is back.”

Fen regards them with bristling determination. “You’re coming shopping with me.”

The two of them go out through the back door and cross the crunchy brown grass of the back lawn. Harper boosts Fen over the gate in the back fence, which is white vinyl stamped to look like wood and doesn’t open from the inside. Once Fen is on the other side, she thumbs the code into the keypad and eases the gate open.

“Should fix that thing,” Harper says as they pass through the gate onto the community path, their eyes flicking down to the busted keypad on the inside of the fence. It looks like someone took a hammer to it.

“Good luck,” Fen replies. “Sorry, that sounded bitchy. I really mean it. You’re good with electronics.”

Harper snorts. “Sure. Hey, do you think—”

“I don’t want to talk about Daneka,” Fen interrupts.

“I wasn’t going to ask about Daneka. I was going to ask if you think that’s fennel or dill,” Harper says, pointing at a frondy green that’s growing a couple of feet off the path. This trail was a jackpot find they discovered a couple of weeks after settling into the squat: a poorly maintained ribbon of asphalt that stretches behind two miles of houses, terrible for jogging or riding a bicycle but perfect for foraging, especially when it comes to plants that like to jump fences from hobby gardens out into the world.

Fen rubs a frond, then lifts her fingers to her nose. “Fennel,” she says, grinning. “What do you think, take the bulb or just cut a couple stalks?”

“Stalks,” Harper answers, pulling a box cutter out of their back pocket. They trim off a couple of stalks of fennel. The licorice smell perfumes the air around them. “And you’re lying.”

“What?”

“You’re lying. You want to talk about Daneka.” Harper waits while Fen pulls a crumpled plastic grocery bag out of one pocket, then drops the fennel stalks into it.

Fen starts walking. Her strides are long, her pace quick—Harper has to move fast to keep up. “I’m just worried about her, is all.”

“Pissed at her, more like. Hang on. Mint.” They stoop to rip up a few fistfuls of the mint that grows in patches all along the trail, then use the blade of their box cutter to dig out a hank of it with the roots intact. “I read that if you plant this stuff in your yard, it’ll grow everywhere. We can replace that crusty lawn.”

“You think we’re going to stay in the squat long enough for it to matter?”

“Been six months already,” Harper says. “Might stay.”

“Sure,” Fen says, her eyes darting to either end of the trail. “The thing is, okay, I’m not pissed at Daneka. I’m just—if she’s not missing, then yeah, I’d feel some kind of way about it. But I’m not pissed yet, because we don’t know if she’s missing or just being an inconsiderate asshole. If she’s missing, I don’t want to be pissed at her, I want to be worried. But I’d rather be pissed.”

Harper shrugs. “Could be both. Missing and an asshole.”

“Don’t. Don’t joke like that.” Fen stalks ahead for a few minutes, until they reach a spot where they’d found wild onions once. She tucks her pants into her socks before stepping off the trail to slowly pace in a circle through the grass, looking for the tall green stalks of an allium. “I don’t know what we do if she doesn’t come home. Do we go try to find her? Get her out?”

“No,” Harper says immediately. “Too dangerous.”

Fen stoops and tears out a fistful of grass, runs her hand along the dirt. “Maybe just me and Quan,” she mutters. “If you and Morrow don’t give a shit.”

“We give a shit. But you two getting yourselves snatched won’t help Daneka. There,” they say suddenly, pointing to a spot just behind Fen.

The onions are puny, their tops scraggly, but Fen still beams with triumph. “See?” she says, brandishing the onions. “It’s gonna be great. We’re already most of the way there.”

They visit the overgrown rosemary hedge, waving away half-drunk bees to snap off a few stems. They harvest a couple of handfuls of pealike seed pods from a thatch of bolted arugula, stepping over the papery white flowers that litter the path around it. Fen crows at the sight of what looks like garlic or maybe a shallot and digs it up, only to find a snotty hunk of black rot where the papery bulb should be. As she’s swearing and wiping her hands on her jeans, though, Harper spots another, and this one turns out to only be half-rotted.

“Yes yes yes,” Fen whispers, slicing the rot away with Harper’s box cutter.

Harper eyes the rot that’s falling away. “That gonna be good?”

“Not even a risky one,” Fen confirms. “We’ve eaten way worse.”

“What else do you need?”

“Um.” Fen pauses, closes her eyes. “Carrots. Flour. Butter. We have salt, right?”

Harper thinks. “Yeah, Morrow grabbed a bunch of packets last time we got burgers. How much flour? Would cornstarch work instead?”

“Maybe? Oh, and we need chicken.”

They both laugh. “I’ll grab the first one I see,” Harper says.

They walk the rest of the path and they don’t find carrots, just a lot more mint, some marjoram, and a stray cat that puffs up his tail at them. As they head home, Fen slows her pace. “Harp, are you mad at me?”

“Nah. But I should be.”

Fen nods. She trusts Harper because of answers like this one. “How come?”

Harper stops walking, waits for Fen to turn and face them. They take a deep breath and fold their arms across their chest. The sun falls in gold dapples across their freckled shoulders. They regard Fen irritably, the way they always do when they’re figuring out how to say a thing that they think should go without saying. “Because,” they say at last, “you dropped us.”

“I—what?”

“You dropped us. You’re the one in charge. You make the decisions, you boss everyone around, you decide what the day’s gonna look like. But you got worried about Daneka, so you stopped. Where do you think Morrow went today?”

Fen shrugs. “Out?”

“They went to the coffee shop,” Harper snaps, jutting their head forward. “To see that barista they keep flirting with. Because you weren’t paying attention enough to notice that Morrow hasn’t clocked how the coffee shop is a cop joint, so you didn’t tell them not to go.”

“You could have told them not to go,” Fen mutters.

Harper narrows their eyes. “I did. But Morrow doesn’t listen to me the way they listen to you. Which you know. But you’ve been in your feelings, so you decided someone else could handle the shit you usually handle, and now we gotta figure out if Morrow got followed home by a uniform.”

 Fen shook her head. “I’m not in charge of—”

“The fuck you’re not. Take responsibility for your vibe, Fen. Either we can count on you or we can’t. Which is it?”

The two of them glare at each other. A cricket starts to sing the late afternoon down into dusk. Fen breaks first, huffing out a sigh as she looks away.

“I’ll think about it,” she says at last.

Harper nods. “I know.”

When they get back to the house, the potatoes are lined up on the counter, in order from one with no sprouts to one with four-inch-long ones. The celery is floating in a bowl of water, looking significantly sturdier than it had just an hour before. Morrow and Quan are hovering over the sink.

“Hey kids,” Harper says, dropping the now-full bag of produce onto the counter. “Whaddaya got there?”

Morrow turns around, grinning and holding up what looks like a wad of white gum. “Butter!”

Fen’s jaw drops. “You’re joking. Where did you get butter?!”

“They made it,” Quan says. He sounds like he doesn’t believe the words he’s saying.

“I learned how when I was a kid,” Morrow explains, dropping their tiny palmful of butter onto a plate on the counter. “It’s easy. You, um.” Their ears are going red from the combined attention of the other three. “You just put some cream in a jar and shake it a thousand times, then pull out the solid stuff and wash it in cold water. Is this gonna be enough?”

Harper picks up an old peanut butter jar that has a couple of inches of cloudy liquid in it. “Ew.”

“That’s buttermilk, save it,” Fen says quickly. “Morrow, where the fuck did you get cream?”

“The guy at the coffee shop down the road. Me and Quan ran over there after I finished sorting the potatoes. Dude only charged us a dollar for a pretty decent pour. I thought, maybe we could invite coffee shop guy over sometime and—”

“We won’t be doing that,” Quan says frankly, “but hey. How do you like that, Fen? Butter?”

Everyone turns to Fen. She’s holding the plate of butter, her eyes welling with tears. “I like it,” she whispers. “Thank you, Morrow.”

“I helped,” Quan mutters.

Fen’s palmset, still sitting where she left it on the counter an hour and a half earlier, chimes.

Everyone freezes. Morrow reaches for the palmset but Harper slaps their hand away.

Quan puts a hand on Fen’s shoulder. “Do you want to look at it?”

Fen shakes her head, then nods, then shakes her head again. “Do you still have the cornstarch in the bathroom? From when you were doing liberty spikes in your hair?”

“Uh, yeah.” Quan blinks a few times. “Do you need it?”

Fen picks up a potato, not looking at Quan at all. “Yeah. Can you grab it?”

“I guess.” He heads down the long hall to the bathroom on the other end of the house, looking over his shoulder at her every few steps.

Once he’s out of sight, she pounces on the palmset. There’s a message from Daneka.

I’ll do my best!

“What does that mean?” Fen whispers to herself.

Harper leans closer. “What’s it say?”

“Nothing.” Fen folds the palmset shut.

“Well. What do you mean, though? What’s nothing? Was it from Daneka?” Morrow wipes their buttery hands on their jeans and reaches one long arm across the counter for the palmset again.

“Yes.” Fen jams the handset into her pocket. Her eyes flick up toward the hall, where Quan is returning with a crumpled bag of cornstarch. “But it wasn’t anything. Who wants to wash all this marjoram?”

For the next hour, Fen steers the four of them through a recipe. Quan and Morrow work together to clean all the vegetables. By the time that’s done, Fen’s got water boiling on the hotplate. She boils all the usable potatoes, then uses the potato water to reconstitute some chicken powder into a cloudy broth. Harper pulls the celery out of its bowl of water to discover that it’s more or less revitalized; they chop that and the fennel stalks while Fen dices the wild onion and garlic they found.

Quan is playing lo-fi beats on his palmset, and Morrow is mumbling lyrics to go with the beats, and they’re all laughing hard enough that they almost don’t hear it when Fen’s palmset chimes again. She tosses the garlic and wild onion into a skillet on the hotplate before pulling it out of her pocket and unfolding it.

Remind me where we’re meeting?

Harper looks over her shoulder. “Fuck,” they whisper.

“What’s up?” Quan looks up from the playlist he’s curating. “Fen? You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Fen says. Her voice is perfectly flat. She folds the palmset back into her pocket, then takes up the wooden spoon next to the skillet and gives the onion a stir. “Harper, can you throw the celery in here for me? Quan, Morrow, go pack your stuff and charge your palmsets. Use the rapid charger in the living room.”

Morrow furrows their brow. “Didn’t you say the rapid charger is a fire hazard? Or is it—”

“She’s right. We gotta go. Hurry,” Harper says. “We should pack too,” they add in an urgent whisper after Quan and Morrow have gone.

“In a minute,” Fen replies. “I want to finish this.”

“Fen—”

“In a minute,” she says again, her voice steady and certain the way it was before Daneka went missing. The way it’s always been. “Carrots?”

“We didn’t find carrots,” Harper reminds her softly. “You want the fennel, though?”

Fen closes her eyes tight, bows her head. Lets out a teakettle hiss of curses. When she looks back up and meets Harper’s eyes, her gaze is flat. “Will we stay together? Do you want to stay with us, I mean? You don’t have to.”

Harper draws her into a tight hug. “I don’t know. Let’s figure that out in the morning, yeah? Right now, I’m gonna go pack up my stuff and charge my palmset. Want me to get yours too?”

Fen nods. “I want to finish cooking this for Daneka. Just in case.”

Harper taps the recipe box on the counter as they leave the kitchen. “Don’t forget this.”

After Harper disappears into the living room with both their palmsets, Fen lets herself cry. Just for a few seconds. A couple of sobs, a spill of hot tears, that’s all.

Then she adds the chopped fennel stalks to the skillet. When the fennel is bright green, she pours the chicken broth into the pan and lets it boil for a few minutes. It’s already thickening a little thanks to the potato starch in the water, but she adds some of Quan’s cornstarch too, stirring fast until it makes a thick gravy. She adds marjoram and rosemary since she doesn’t have any sage. She smashes the potatoes, stirs in chicken powder and Morrow’s butter, adds a few salt-and-pepper combo packets from Morrow’s stash.

“Okay,” she whispers to herself as she lets the potatoes heat just a little longer, to get any last water out. “Finish it. Move on. Work to do.”

She can hear Quan and Harper trying to figure out how to fit her sweaters into her backpack. They won’t figure it out on their own, she knows, because they don’t know how to roll sweaters up tiny. She’ll go help them in a minute, but first, she scoops mashed potatoes into a paper bowl and uses the back of a spoon to spread them in an even layer. She pours vegetables and thick gravy on top, then covers those with another even layer of mashed potatoes. With the back of the spoon, she smooths the top down, then carves lines into the center of the layer to look like the slits in the top of a piecrust.

Quan comes into the kitchen, his backpack rising up over his shoulders like a turtle’s shell, and eyes the steaming bowl on the counter. “It’s smaller than I thought it’d be,” he says. “Good thing there’s only three of us. Are there clean spoons?”

Fen’s eyes snap up to him. Her face is blazing with barely restrained fury. “Don’t fucking touch it,” she says in a low, dangerous voice. “This is for Daneka.”

He frowns at her. “Chill. Daneka’s not here. Are you telling me we’re not going to eat this just because she got—”

“She’s going to be here,” Fen says. “And she’s going to be hungry when she gets home. We’ll eat on the road. Get moving.”

Quan looks like he’s about to protest, but then Morrow comes into the kitchen and smiles down at the bowl on the counter. “Daneka’s gonna love it,” they murmur. “Good job, Fen.”

“Are you serious?” Quan snaps. “You don’t want to eat it either?”

Morrow looks at him with open bewilderment. “It’s Daneka’s birthday. We’ll figure something else out.”

The four of them are out of the house five minutes later.Harper turns the lights off and locks the back door. Morrow boosts Quan over the back fence to let them out through the gate.

Fen is about to ease the back gate shut, but she hesitates, her eyes locked on the dark house. She tells herself that she’s trying to remember if she left anything behind, even as she mentally runs through the list of items that she already knows she’s carrying on her back.

“Fen?” Quan whisper-yells from the darkness down the path.

The edge of the pressed vinyl creaks in her grip. She rises up on her toes, trying to see inside.

“Hey,” Harper hisses. “We gotta move.”

A light goes on inside the house.

Fen closes the gate. “Coming.”

Fen’s “Chicken” Pot Pie

Crust (2 batches)
6 potatoes
3 tablespoons butter
Chicken bouillon powder
Salt and pepper packets

Filling
2 handfuls arugula seed pods, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 fennel stalks, chopped
3 wild onions, diced
2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed w/ ⅓ cup water to form a slurry
4 cups chicken broth
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon chopped fresh marjoram/rosemary
Pepper

Instructions

Make the “Crust”

1. Boil the potatoes. Drain, reserving the potato water.
2. Smash the cooked potatoes until smooth.
3. Add butter, chicken bouillon powder, salt, and pepper to taste.

Make the filling

1. Add chicken powder to the potato water to make broth
2. In a nonstick skillet over medium heat, sauté the celery, onion, and garlic. Add the fennel and sauté until bright green.
3. Add the chicken broth to the pan. Add herbs. Simmer 3–5 minutes.
4. Add cornstarch slurry and whisk thoroughly to thicken.

Assemble

5. Line a bowl with a thick layer of mashed potatoes. Add filling, then top with mashed potatoes and sculpt into a crust shape. Optional, if there’s time (there’s not): toast the mashed potatoes on top with a hand torch.

“Have You Eaten?” copyright © 2024 by Sarah Gailey
Art copyright © 2024 by Shing Yin Khor
Photography copyright © 2024 by Sarah Gailey

The post Have You Eaten? Part 1: Daneka’s Birthday appeared first on Reactor.

In a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey, a fractured group of undesirables work together to nurture and nourish each other while navigating a dangerous world that would just as soon see them dead. Still—inch by inch, meal by meal—they build their own future. Have you eaten?

Fen’s Dad’s Soup

2 bay leaves
6–8 peppercorns
3–5 allspice berries
10 cups water; or 10 cups beef broth & omit bouillon
4 tablespoons beef base or 2 bouillon cubes 
½ head cabbage, shredded
1 cup celery, chopped
2 onions, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 pound sliced sausage
2 chicken breasts, cubed
1 cup ham, cubed
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 cup dry white wine
3 large dill pickles, chopped
2 tablespoons capers
¾ cup black olives, sliced
2 cans stewed tomatoes
Salt
Pepper
Optional: Dill and sour cream.

Instructions

1. Tie the bay leaves, peppercorns, and allspice berries up in a square of cheesecloth to form a sachet. Alternatively, put them into a tea infuser. In a very large pot, combine the water, spice sachet, beef base, cabbage, and celery. Boil for 30 minutes.  
2. While the water boils, in a very large skillet, sauté the onions and carrots.
3. When the onions start to brown, add the sausage, chicken, and ham to the pan. The sausage will release some fat, which will fry the chicken and ham. If omitting sausage, add oil or butter to the pan and cook until the chicken and ham are brown on all sides.
4. Add the contents of the skillet to the cooking pot. Add tomato paste to the skillet and stir until it starts to brown; then, add the white wine and dill pickles to the skillet. Stir to loosen all fond from the bottom of the pan, then transfer contents of the skillet to the cooking pot.
5. Add capers, olives, and stewed tomatoes to the cooking pot. Simmer 5–10 minutes until heated through.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with dill and sour cream. 

Iowa is quiet at night, not that anyone in the back of the pickup would know. The engine is so loud that they can barely hear their own thoughts. But that’s fine, because none of them particularly want to tune in to that frequency anyway. The noise is a mercy, in its way.

All four of them—Fen, Quan, Harper, and Morrow—are wedged into the space next to the strapped-tight ATV in the truck bed. They’ve been rattling around back there like coins in a can since the middle of Colorado, where they managed to get picked up for the clearance price of all the pills in Morrow’s pockets. The guy driving the truck didn’t even look at their faces before opening the tailgate and ushering them in. He didn’t look when he slammed the tailgate shut either. Fen was lucky not to lose a finger.

That unlooking was its own kind of courtesy—the gift of anonymity, generously granted to four nobodies in exchange for a palmful of loose capsules.

“Quan. Hey. Hey, Quan.” Morrow is folded nearly in half to fit in their corner of the truck bed, closest to the cab. They’re nudging a zoned-out Quan with one sharp elbow.

“Wha?” Quan sounds disoriented, like he’s just woken up.

Morrow bends down to lean close to Quan’s ear. “What did I give that guy?”

“What did you—do you mean the pills?”

“Yeah, I didn’t check. Did you see what I handed him?”

Quan leans away, gives Morrow an incredulous look. “No. How do you not know what pills were in your pocket?”

Morrow shrugs, leans around Quan to try to get Harper’s attention. “Harp?”

Harper shakes their head, points to their ear. Even if they were open to conversation, which they usually aren’t, the thunder of the truck’s engine is loud enough to wash out any possibility of conversation.

Morrow doesn’t bother trying to get Fen’s attention. She’s crammed tight into the opposite corner from them. Her back is against the tailgate, and a scarf is up over her face to filter the worst of the exhaust coming from the tailpipe beneath her seat. Her eyes are closed and her skin is a worrying shade of green.

Just as Quan’s eyes start glazing over again, the truck slows. The stink of exhaust thickens without the wind of movement to whisk it away. Harper and Morrow pull their shirts up over their noses and mouths; Quan just coughs.

There’s nothing here to stop for, but the truck pulls onto the shoulder anyway. The semiautomatic bleat of the rumble strip jolts them all alert. They glance at each other, worry passing between them as fast as an extreme heat warning pinging every palmset in a hundred-mile area. None of them know why the driver would choose to stop in this lonely place.

The engine cuts off. Wildflowers grow next to the highway, bottle caps scattered in the dirt they’re growing out of. The golden pre-dusk light makes the broken glass on the highway shoulder glow. A fallow field stretches as far as any of them can see; on the other side of the highway, a blanket of soybeans extends all the way to the horizon. A door opens, then slams shut again. A lone cicada whines nearby; other than that, there’s no sound louder than footsteps on gravel as the driver makes his way around the side of the truck.

The tailgate drops open. Fen nearly falls out but catches herself just in time. She drops her head into her hands and sits there, catching her breath.

The driver’s hat, a faded blue ballcap with a dark rectangle on the front where a patch has been ripped off, shades his face so his eyes aren’t visible. He clears his throat and spits into the wildflowers. “You’ll want to get out and walk from here,” he says. “State line’s in a couple miles, and the State Border Patrol in Illinois started doing agricultural inspections on all vehicles entering the state last year. Depending who’s running the booth, could mean trouble for some kinds of people.”

“We’re trying to get to Chicago,” Harper says as they scramble past Fen and out of the truck bed. It’s a five-foot drop to the ground. The driver doesn’t help them down.

Morrow nudges Quan again. “That’s in Illinois, right?” they whisper.

Quan doesn’t answer. He pauses at the edge of the tailgate, looking at the driver, who has his face turned toward the soybeans. “Do you know how we can get there without running into State BP?”

The driver responds with silence. He waits while Morrow helps ease a gray-faced Fen to the edge of the dropped tailgate. Once the two of them drop to the asphalt, he slams the tailgate shut again. He hesitates for just a moment before turning his back on all four of them.

“Go through Wisconsin. There’s just one guy working the inspection station up there, name of Bouchard. He never gives anyone trouble.”

By the time Harper reaches the “you” in “thank you,” the driver’s-side door is already slamming shut again.

Fen stumbles into the fallow field as the truck vanishes down the long, straight stretch of road toward Illinois.

“Fen. You okay?” Harper stoops to pick up their bag and Fen’s.

Fen holds up a hand, then crouches, spasms, heaves. She stays hunched over for a long minute before straightening. “I’m fine,” she calls hoarsely. “Just carsick. Anyone have a charge on their palmset? I’m down to two percent.”

“I didn’t find a charging pad in the back of the truck, no,” Quan says in a tone that could be a joke or could be a rebuke.

Harper gives him a gentle shove on the shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. We can figure out where to plug in tomorrow. Right now, we need a place to sleep. Storm’s coming.”

 “Not for a while, though, right?” Morrow looks up at the thick bank of clouds on the horizon, doubtful.

Harper doesn’t answer him. “Fen, you ready?”

Fen nods and half straightens. Together, the four of them start across the field. They pick their way across the grass, pants tucked into socks, bones jellified from the hours of travel. It doesn’t take long for the road to vanish behind them. After a couple of minutes of walking, Fen looks better enough that Harper stops shooting worried glances at her.

Quan spots an abandoned-looking shack in the middle of a bald patch in the field. The windows are missing and there are holes in the roof that you can see right through, but the night is warm and a roof’s a roof, holes or none.

Harper starts by knocking on the front door. Loud, firm knocks. Cop knocks. They try three times before deciding nobody’s home. The front door isn’t locked, and there’s a palpable emptiness to the house when the four of them walk inside.

They make a lot of noise as they enter, pitching their voices loud like they’re warning off bears. They split into pairs and sweep quickly through the house. There’s not much territory to cover—one main room the size of the truck they rode here in, with a bed pushed into the far corner; a simple kitchen along one wall with a woodburning stove and a pump sink; a water closet that doesn’t merit more than a quick peek to confirm that nobody’s hiding inside.

Fen and Harper confer. “We should check outside too, but I don’t think anyone’s been in this place for a long time,” Fen says, sweeping a layer of sandy dust off the single skinny, buckled shelf above the sink.

“Gotta plug some of the holes in the walls. Wind’s already picking up,” Harper says, nodding to a gap between the boards where the pink light of the sunset peeks through. “Who wants which job?”

Fen volunteers to check outside. Her face visibly falls when Quan volunteers to walk the perimeter with her. He has his palmset and charging cable in his hand, like he’s hoping there might be a power outlet on the outside of the house. Morrow and Harper stay inside, using an old broom handle to tug a pile of rags out from under the bed to plug the gaps in the walls.

 Quan starts in on Fen the second they’re outside. “Why don’t you want to talk to me? Did I do something?” He steps around a haphazard stack of logs, pauses, turns around, and cups his hands around his mouth. “Hey, there’s a woodpile!”

“Thanks,” Harper yells from inside.

Fen pretends not to hear him. “Did you notice the updates on Daneka’s Fotoset?” She pulls out her palmset. The screen is dim and grayscale to save power. She rotates the palmset in her hand until it opens the photo-sharing app. Daneka’s latest update is right there: a picture of a butterfly, captioned

Just livin’ life to the fullest!

Quan glances at it, then looks quickly away. “Daneka didn’t post that.”

“No shit.” Fen nudges an old aluminum bucket with one foot. It tips over with a hollow thunk. “It’s been stuff like that every day. I just can’t figure out if it’s a bot takeover or if someone’s running the account.”

“The bots and the Feds train on the same material. Impossible to tell them apart based on voice, but I guess we’ll know which one it is if Daneka starts messaging you links to ‘investment opportunities.’” He rounds the corner of the house, then stops, tilts his head. “Hey, when we were inside, did you see a back door into the house?”

Fen follows his gaze. He’s looking at a narrow door set into the eastern wall of the house. She thinks for a moment, then answers firmly. “No. Definitely not.”

They approach warily. Fen raps on the door hard—it’s not as loud as Harper’s knock, but it’s loud enough that they hear Morrow yell “What was that?”from inside the house. After a few seconds pass without any other response, Fen glances at Quan. He nods and reaches past her for the doorknob.

The door sticks the first two times Quan pulls on it. On the third tug, he yanks it hard, and it opens with a sick, paint-stuck pop.

“It’s a canning pantry,” Fen says, peering inside at the spiderwebbed shelves that line the walls. A single broken bulb hangs from the ceiling; glass crunches underfoot as the two of them squeeze inside.

They both jump at a pounding on the wall. Morrow’s soft voice follows, barely muffled.  “Hey, who the fuck is in the walls?”

Quan sticks an arm through some cobwebs to smack a fist into the wall. “It’s just us,” he yells back. “We found a pantry!”

Morrow pauses. When they speak again, it sounds like they’re pressed right up against the other side of the wall. “Anything good in there?”

“Electricity,” Quan says, pointing to the broken bulb overhead. “Might be an outlet in here. Fen, can we use your palmset’s flashlight mode?”

“No,” she snaps. “It’ll kill the battery.”

“Which you’ll be able to recharge if we find an outlet,” Quan drawls with exaggerated patience. When Fen doesn’t immediately pull out her palmset, he snaps his fingers at her a few times. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Fen opens her mouth like she’s about to protest, but then she closes it again, shakes her head, pulls out her palmset. “Fuck you,” she mutters as she thumbs it into flashlight mode.

“You’re saying that because you know I’m right,” Quan replies. He drops into a low squat, then gets on his hands and knees to look under the shelves. “I think I see something back here.”

“An outlet?”

“You know what would help me figure that out is if you pointed that flashlight somewhere useful.”

Fen stoops to direct the light under the shelf. It lands on a tiny can, half buried in dust. “Don’t think you can plug into that,” she says.

Quan shoves his arm under the shelf. “There’s more back there,” he grunts. “I can feel something else. I can almost reach—if I just . . .” He strains for a moment, then pulls his hand out from the darkness, holding the tiny can and a small glass jar.

The light from Fen’s palmset starts to dim. “Shit,” she says, “let’s check the rest of this place out, quick. I’m almost out of charge.”

In the sixty seconds before Fen’s palmset dies, they find a few more dust-covered jars, and a wall outlet that’s so blackened with scorch marks that even Quan isn’t willing to risk plugging into it. They gather everything they’ve found and bring it inside, where most of the gaps in the walls are plugged with rags and a fire is already burning in the woodstove.

“Huh. Well. This is . . . I don’t want to say useless,” Harper says, looking over what they’ve found. “But I would have hoped for more actual food.”

Morrow squats down in front of the row of jars. “I don’t know. I love pickles. I haven’t had them in so long.” They examine a second, smaller jar, full of dark liquid. “I think this is olives? And that’s gotta be sauerkraut,” they add, nodding to a jar packed with dense white shreds.

“And this tiny one is tomato paste,” Fen finishes, prodding the tiny dusty can Quan rescued from beneath the shelves. “Plus, of course, we always have our beloved ewed tomat.” The “ewed tomat” can with the half-ripped-off label has been in Quan’s backpack for a little more than a year. It’s a little dented, but not enough to worry about—Fen has explained to Morrow a hundred times that unless her index finger can fit into the dent, it’s not dangerous.

Quan stands at the pump sink, working the foot lever until the faucet spits out brown water. He lets it run until the water is clear, then washes his hands. “I say we open all the jars, toss everything together, and call it a salad.”

“I can add these,” Morrow says suddenly, rummaging through their bag and coming up with a paper package. “A lady outside that scary gas station in Wyoming was selling them. I think they’re like homemade Slim Jims.” They open the package to reveal a row of wrinkled, finger-length sausages.

Fen stares at the sausages, lets out a sigh. “Harp, wanna go forage with me? Maybe there’s something we can add to all this.”

“I saw a shit-ton of wild dill out there,” Morrow chimes in.

“And I have pepper,” a new voice adds.

The four of them jump, wheel around to face the hole in the wall where a rag has been pulled free. A pair of pale eyes stares in at them. “What the fuck,” Quan snaps, just as Harper says, “Who are you?” and Fen lets out a startled “Who?!”

Morrow doesn’t speak. They simply straighten out of their perpetual slouch and square their shoulders, filling the little space and reminding the other three of what Morrow is like when they’re not working to stay small and quiet and gentle.

The stranger outside doesn’t move an inch, which is smart. “I don’t want any trouble,” he says in an easy voice. “I just thought maybe we could share a roof for the night? A storm’s coming in, and it isn’t going to be pretty out here in an hour or so.”

Everyone looks at Fen, because Fen’s a soft touch. She’s chewing on her lip. Then everyone looks at Harper, because Harper’s a tough row. They’re frowning. Just then, a gust of wind rattles the shack hard enough to knock dust loose from the rafters. “We gotta,” Harper whispers.

“Come on in,” Fen says to the stranger, “but if you fuck around, you’ll find out. Clear?”

“As a bell,” the stranger says. He comes around to the front door and opens it slow, peeking around the doorframe and glancing around before stepping in and dropping a heavy-looking duffel onto the floor. His eyes pause on Morrow, and he gives a slight nod. “Thanks for the hospitality. I’m glad you’ve got that woodstove going, it’s getting cold outside. Like I said, I’ve got peppercorns. Couple other things too, if you’re in need or looking to trade.”

He has a soft accent, something that sounds like it comes from miles and miles of cornfields. He’s scrawny, short, and thin as a whistle, with hair the color of nothing. He crosses the room right away, pulling a rag out of his pocket and shoving it into the gap he’d pulled it out of in the first place.

When he lifts his hand to shove the rag into that hole in the wall, Quan lets out a soft gasp. Fen’s the only one to hear it. She follows his gaze to the stranger’s hands and gives Harper a nudge. Harper sees it too, and kicks Morrow’s ankle, signaling with her eyes.

The stranger has a bracelet of runes tattooed on his wrist.

“My name’s Peter,” the stranger says. “Like I said, I’ve got peppercorns, and bouillon, and some juniper berries too. All dried. And a few bay leaves, and—you won’t believe me, but I’ll show you—a can of SPAM.” He says this last part with a little laugh.

“I haven’t had SPAM since I was a kid,” Quan murmurs.

Harper cuts him a sharp glance, then returns their attention to Peter. “Sure, show us. What are you doing with all those spices?”

“I collect ’em on the road,” he answers, unzipping his duffel. The runes are still on clear display. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Makes it easier to get folks on board for a little temporary cohabitation,” he adds, aiming a wink over his shoulder.

“I’m gonna grab some of that dill outside before the storm lands on us,” Harper says. “Morrow, come with?”

Morrow nods. The two of them step outside, walk a few paces, and begin a whispered conference.

“Okay, which runes mean what?” Harper hisses. “You’re into all that spooky shit, right?”

Morrow’s eyes go wide with didn’t-study panic. “I mean, I’m into some spooky shit, but I don’t know anything about runes. I don’t touch that stuff on account of. You know.” They nod back toward the shack.

“Right. That’s the problem. How can we tell?”

They stop and stare at each other, glancing back at the shack, both trying to figure out how they can determine what Peter’s tattoo means to him. It could be that he believes in magic—or it could be that he believes in the inherent superiority of an imaginary master race. There’s no safe way to ask Are you a pagan or are you a white supremacist? but for everyone’s sake, they need to find out, and they need to find out fast.

By the time they get back to the shack, each clutching a fistful of dill, Fen is already cooking. She’s squatting on the floor over the pried-loose shelf from the wall, dicing pickles with an unfamiliar hunting knife while Quan unwraps the foil from a bouillon cube. A collapsible pot of water is steaming on top of the woodstove.

“What are we making?” Harper asks, her eyes fixed on the hunting knife.

Fen glances up, her eyes darting to Peter before returning to the pickles she’s chopping. “I remembered a recipe from the box that should work okay, now that we have Peter’s help. It’s a soup my dad used to make when any of us were sick. I’m making a half-recipe because his recipe makes enough to feed, like, ten people. He called it pickle soup,” she adds. Her voice stretches a little tighter as she stares down at the knife in her hand. “But it has another name I can’t remember right now. A Russian name. Peter, do you know anything about Russian food?”

“’Fraid not,” Peter says mildly, popping the lid off the can of tomato paste. “But I’m sure it’ll be delicious, whatever it is.”

Morrow shows Fen the dill they collected. “Will this help?”

“It’s perfect,” Fen says with a tense smile. “Give it a rinse, will you?”

“I’ll get it,” Peter says, rising to his feet and holding out his hands. He passes close to Quan on his way to the sink. “Scuse me.”

Quan shifts his weight forward, dropping the bouillon cube into the pot. “No worries. Can I grab those spices out of your bag?”

“Help yourself. Oh, and if anyone needs to charge a palmset, I’ve got a crank charger in there too,” Peter replies, not looking back. He keeps his eyes trained on the dill in the sink as he rinses it. It’s a clear signal: You can look through my shit, I won’t stop you.

Quan darts to the duffel and unzips it. “Are the spices in jars or what?” he calls over his shoulder, already searching through Peter’s things.

“Ziptop bags. Can’t miss them, they’re all the way at the bottom,” Peter says, still washing the dill, even though it has to be clean by now. “Just pull them all out and we can see what’s useful.”

Fen holds up the ripped, water-rippled recipe card up to the firelight from the woodstove. “Looks like we need peppercorns, allspice berries, and bay leaves. They can go right into the pot. Oh, and is there celery salt?”

“Yeah,” Quan says. “He has all that stuff. Plus this thing,” he adds, lifting out a small, matte-black cube with a folding hand crank on one side and two power outlets on top.

As Quan stands, Peter slowly turns around with the dill. His gaze is perfectly steady. “Did you find anything else that could be of use?”

Quan shakes his head once. “Nope. This is all we need, right, Fen?”

Fen stares hard at Quan. “You read the recipe card. You know as well as I do.”

“Then we’re good to go,” Quan says briskly. He crosses the room and drops the spices next to Fen’s makeshift cutting board, then grabs his palmset and charger and plugs in to the black cube.

“I’ll take the first shift,” Morrow says, dropping to the ground beside Quan. They have Fen’s palmset and plug it in next to Quan’s. Then they unfold the hand crank and start turning it hard and fast, waiting for the charging symbol to appear on the two palmsets.

“I was going to—” Quan starts, but then he catches a glimpse of Morrow’s dark, determined expression and changes his mind. “Thanks,” he says instead.

Everything moves briskly from there. Morrow charges the palmsets. Harper watches the pot on the stove as the bouillon cube dissolves and the spices simmer it into a fragrant broth. Fen inspects the wrinkly black olives by the firelight, making sure they’re not growing any fuzz before she slices them up. Peter shows them all how to use his hunting knife to cube the Spam without taking it out of its metal tin, while Quan discovers a flat length of cast iron under the woodstove.

“Is this a griddle?” he asks, holding it up and prodding at the lip around the edge. “It looks like—”

“That’s perfect!” Fen cries out when she sees it.

Quan looks startled, but hands over the griddle with a slow smile. “Does this mean you forgive me for whatever I did that made you stop talking to me?”

Fen pulls away, puts the griddle on top of the woodstove beside the pot. “No.”

“Wait, why not? Fen, c’mon. Quit being so—”

“So what?” Fen whips around on him, her voice taut.

Harper raises an eyebrow at Quan. “I wouldn’t,” they warn.

Across the room, Peter sits on the edge of the narrow bed, watching the four of them. The little shack is too small for him to pretend not to hear the exchange, but he has the good grace not to try to intervene.

Quan throws his hands into the air. “I’m sick of this,” he says. “Fen keeps acting like I took a shit in her backpack, and all I’ve done this whole time is—”

“Is be a huge asshole,” Morrow murmurs.

Quan freezes. If Fen or Harper had said this, it would be Quan’s cue to get into the thick of a fight. But Morrow—gentle, kind Morrow, with their cauliflower ears and scar-hatched knuckles—never says fighting words.

“What did I do?” Quan asks. The question has an edge on it, but not much of one.

Morrow shifts their shoulders. They don’t break their rhythm on the hand crank. “You just get mean for no reason sometimes. Like earlier today, when you called me a gorilla. That was mean.”

“I just meant—you know, you’re tall and strong and stuff,” Quan says, his voice faltering as he looks to Harper and Fen for backup and doesn’t find any. “That’s all.”

Morrow huffs out a barely there laugh. “Okay,” they say. “If that’s who you wanna be.”

Quan swallows hard. Harper and Fen look at each other, then at the floor. Morrow keeps cranking the charger until Quan’s phone lets out a chime.

“I want to charge mine next,” Harper says. They go to their backpack, and Morrow unplugs Quan’s palmset and hands it over, and the movement breaks the surface tension on the bubble of their fight just enough for the meal they’re preparing to come back into focus.

Peter clears his throat from the corner. “That griddle should be hot by now.”

The cubed Spam goes onto the griddle. Peter slices the sausage into rounds right over it, each tiny coin dropping onto the hot iron with an immediate sizzle.

“This would be better if we had onions.” Fen sighs.

“Be better if we had a big leather sofa,” Peter replies with a grin. “But here we are.”

The tomato paste slides out of its tiny dusty can onto the griddle, and Fen uses a spoon to stir it until it starts to stick to the metal. Then she calls to Harper, who’s deep in quiet conversation with Quan near the bed. “Harp, can you bring me those pickles?”

Harper looks up sharply. “Morrow, can you get it?”

Fen’s palmset chimes. “Perfect timing. Fen, you’re all charged up.” Morrow steps away from the charger and brings Fen the shelf-turned-cutting board with the chopped pickles and olives on it.

Fen slides the pickles onto the skillet, leaving the olives. She splashes some broth from the pot onto the hot metal, too. The moisture loosens the caramelizing tomato paste just enough for Fen to scrape up all the bits that are sticking to the cast iron.

“Shit,” Fen says, looking from the griddle to the cooking pot.

“What’s the matter?” Morrow asks.

“I need to put all this stuff,” she says, gesturing to the rapidly drying mixture of meat and tomato paste and pickles, “into there.” She points to the pot. “But if I pick up the griddle, it’ll burn the fuck out of my hands.”

Peter steps forward. “I’ve got it,” he says. He strips off his denim jacket.

Fen’s eyes are on the food, but Harper, Morrow, and Quan’s eyes all lock onto Peter’s bare arms as he uses his jacket to shield his hands and picks up the hot griddle, tipping the contents into the pot. The only tattoos visible on Peter are the bracelet of runes and a generic compass rose on one bicep. There’s nothing obvious there, nothing that speaks to what danger he might represent.

“What’s next?” Peter asks.

Fen consults the recipe card. “Gotta let this simmer for a few minutes, then rinse off some of that sauerkraut and add it in. We could probably get away with not rinsing it,” she adds, “but . . . it might be real funky.”

Peter opens the sauerkraut and gives it a whiff. “Could go either way. Your palmset’s going off,” he adds, looking to the lit-up screen on the floor.

Fen has the cutting board in her hands again, is about to slide the chopped olives into the pot. “Morrow, can you grab it?”

“Oh fuck,” Morrow whispers when they’ve got the screen in front of them.

“What?” Fen asks, dropping the olives into the pot.

“It’s a voice message from Daneka.”

The room freezes. Peter doesn’t seem to notice. He lifts the sauerkraut jar. “What do y’all think? Should I rinse this?” When nobody answers, he looks up and his face drops. His eyes flick to his duffel bag. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Quan says quickly. He crosses the room to look at the screen in Morrow’s hand.

Fen wipes olive brine onto her jeans. “We got a message from a friend.”

Peter glances at his bag again, even less subtly this time. He takes a few steps back from the sink, looks ready to bolt. “A local friend?”

“A friend from back home,” Harper says. “Fen, do you want to listen to it?”

Fen shakes her head. “I’m almost done cooking.” She sounds tense.

“Fen,” Quan says, reaching for her arm.

She jerks away from his touch. “Don’t. Fine. We can listen to it.” She looks down at her palmset, swallows hard, and presses the notification.

Hey, it’s me! Just wanted to know if you’re still up for a birthday dinner. Let me know what the plan is and how everyone’s doing. Love you!

It’s Daneka’s voice – her unmistakable chainsmoker rasp — but something sounds wrong. They can all hear it.

Fen slips her palmset into her pocket. She turns and uses a fork to add some sauerkraut into the pot. “This would be better with onions,” she says again. Her voice has all the color squeezed out of it.

“That wasn’t her.” Quan strides briskly across the room, headed nowhere at all, then turns on his heel to stare hard at his friends. “Right? That definitely wasn’t her.”

Harper sits on the edge of the bed. “We can’t know.”

Quan lets out a short, sharp laugh. “That sounded like a robot. It was definitely a fake! C’mon, Harp—”

“It was real,” Peter interrupts. “I used to code artificial-speech software. They don’t transition between similar sounds that smoothly. You heard when she said ‘wanted to know’? The ‘d’ in ‘wanted’ flowed right into the ‘t’ in ‘to.’ That’s a human-speech thing. Really hard to smooth out virtually.”

Morrow wheels around to face him. “Who did you write code for?”

His shoulders are tight, his face blank. “The company’s closed now. They got bought out during the last big market crash.”

“What company?” Harper demands.

He swallows hard. Takes a few slow steps toward his bag, then uses a foot to flip it over. There’s a faded logo on the side, barely visible in the flickering light from the fire in the woodstove. The twisting double-S logo of the multimedia conglomerate that used to dominate the digital newsletter marketplace. “We developed an integrated voice-to-text service.”

“You mean proprietary,” Harper says. “So you worked for the company everyone worked for. Why were you so squirrely about it just now? What, are you not a ‘champion of free speech’?” All the venom in her voice pools at the end of the sentence.

“I don’t agree with everything they—”

“Dinner’s ready,” Fen interrupts. “Peter, can I use your jacket again?”

He brings his jacket to the woodstove and uses it to pull the cooking pot off the heat. The soup is still bubbling as he carries it to the middle of the room. Harper sets down a couple of rags, and Peter sets the pot on top of them. Morrow passes out spoons.

The five of them sit on the floor around the pot. Fen’s eyes are dull as she stares into the soup she’s made them. Harper is staring at Peter’s wrist.

“What did you say this soup is called?” Peter asks.

“That part of the recipe card is stained,” Fen replies. “I couldn’t read it.”

Quan coughs. “I remember. You mentioned it once, back when we first met. You called it solyanka.” He says it slow, his lips working to fit a memory of Fen’s mouth.

Fen looks up at him, surprised. “You remember stuff from all the way back then?”

A small smile ghosts across Quan’s face, but he doesn’t meet Fen’s eyes. “I remember everything you say.”

Fen hesitates. “Quan, I—”

“I’m sorry for being a dick,” Quan interrupts. “I’m gonna try to do that less. Might take me a little trying, though. But I am gonna try. I love you guys.”

Harper sniffs loudly. “Love you too. Dick.”

Morrow tastes the soup, burns their mouth. “Ow. Fuck. Ow. Where’s the dill?” they ask, their voice distorted by pain.

Fen glances behind her. “I forgot—”

“I’ll grab it.” Peter pushes himself to his feet, walks to the sink. Harper’s eyes track him. The hunting knife and cutting board are still in the sink. He reaches past them, grabs the very clean dill, brings it back, and hands it to Morrow.

“Thanks.” Morrow tears off a fistful of feathery green fronds, drops them into the pot.

“It’d be better with onions,” Fen says, blowing on a spoonful of soup straight from the pot. “But it’s not bad. That company you worked for—they’re based in Chicago, right?”

“Yeah, that’s where I’m coming from,” Peter says. He leans forward to dip his spoon into the pot. “How come?”

Fen looks up at him, pins him with her eyes. “That’s where we’re going. Do you still know anyone there?”

He thinks for a moment. “Depends who you want to meet. Why Chicago? There’s not much left of it.”

“Always wanted to go. Bright lights,” Fen says. “Big city.”

Peter nods. “I don’t know anyone there. But I know people on the way. Got a buddy who can get us across the state border to Wisconsin and put us up for a night or two, if that’s the route you want to take.”

Harper raises their eyebrows at Fen. Fen nods, then frowns at Morrow. Morrow nods, then nudges Quan. Quan takes a long sip of soup, clears his throat, and nods.

“Sounds good,” Fen says to Peter. “We’ll make our plan in the morning.”

The five of them eat the rest of their dinner in silence. Outside, the wind howls across the fallow field, yanking at the rags in the walls, whipping the petals off the wildflowers that grow on the side of the road.

Fen’s Solyanka  

2 bay leaves
6–8 peppercorns
3–5 allspice berries
1 shake celery salt
5 cups water
1 bouillon cubes
2 cups sauerkraut, drained but not rinsed
1 pound sliced sausage
1 can Spam, cubed
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
3 6 large dill pickles, chopped
¾ cup black olives, sliced
1 can ewed tomat
Salt
Pepper
Optional: dill, chopped

Instructions

1. In a very large pot, combine the water, spices, and beef base. Boil for 30 minutes.  
2. Add the sausage and Spam to the pan. The sausage will release some fat, which will fry the Spam.
3. Add tomato paste to the skillet and stir until it starts to brown; then, add the dill pickles and a little broth to the skillet. Stir to loosen all fond from the bottom of the pan, then transfer contents of the skillet to the cooking pot.
4. Add olives and ewed tomat to the cooking pot. Simmer 5–10 minutes until heated through. 
5. Serve with dill. 

“Have You Eaten?” copyright © 2024 by Sarah Gailey
Art copyright © 2024 by Shing Yin Khor
Photography copyright © 2024 by Sarah Gailey

The post Have You Eaten? Part 2: Dinner with Peter appeared first on Reactor.

Read “Have You Eaten? Part 2: Dinner with Peter” here!

In a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey, a fractured group of undesirables work together to nurture and nourish each other while navigating a dangerous world that would just as soon see them dead. Still—inch by inch, meal by meal—they build their own future. Have you eaten?

Author’s note: This story contains fictional depictions of intimate partner violence.

Fen’s Sister’s Gnocchi

350 g butternut squash
1 egg
2–3 cups flour
Salt
Pepper

1. Cut the squash in half. Rub it all over with oil. Place it face down on a baking sheet and roast at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.
2. Remove the squash from the oven and let it cool completely, about 1 hour.
3. Remove the peel and mash the squash into a smooth paste. Form the paste into a mound and form a well in the center.
4. Crack 1 egg into the well. Stir with fingers to combine.
5. Add flour in batches, working the flour in until a sticky, firm dough forms. Add a big pinch of salt and a healthy amount of pepper with the first batch of flour.
6. Knead for 1–2 minutes.
7. Form into a ball and rest for 20 minutes.
8. Cut the ball into eight equal parts. Roll each part out into a snake the width of your thumb. Cut each snake into 1-inch sections using a knife or pasta cutter.
9. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Add the gnocchi in batches, stirring gently once to prevent sticking. Once the gnocchi bob to the top of the water, remove/drain and serve.
10. Optional: Fry after boiling to get a crisp exterior.

Suggested lemon ricotta sauce: Combine the zest of 1 lemon, 1 cup ricotta, lots of black pepper, and about 1 ladleful of pasta water. Stir to combine. Consistency should be thick and smooth.

The old farmhouse has thin walls, so everyone in the kitchen knows it when Peter and Morrow go from fucking to fighting. The soft thumps and creaks from upstairs are interrupted by the sound of Morrow asking a question over and over, at increasing volume, and then there’s a crash that is unmistakably the sound of a body hitting a wall. And then another crash, that is unmistakably the sound of the same body hitting the wall again.

Quan is the first one to move. He and Harper and Fen have been processing oranges all morning for Missus Bouchard. They’ve been seated at the kitchen table—Quan slicing off thin curls of peel, Harper pulling off the white pith, Fen smashing the oranges through a wide-mesh strainer and into a huge pot in her lap. Quan still has the paring knife in his hand as he gets to his feet and heads for the stairs at the sound of the second impact.

Fen is next. She sets the pot on the table, careful even in her haste—that pot of pulp is their days’ rent—and by the third time they hear the body hit the wall, she and Quan are halfway up the stairs.

Harper doesn’t follow right away, because Fen is already on the way, and they don’t want to move until they know there’s a real problem. They finish pulling pith off the orange in their hand, adding it to the pile of foamy white discard on the scarred wooden kitchen table. They listen as, upstairs, Quan and Fen burst into Peter and Morrow’s bedroom. They don’t stand up until they hear Fen’s voice shouting a clear, high “What the fuck?!”

At the sound of that, Harper sets down their orange and makes for the stairs. They take their time. With each step they ascend, they hear the voices upstairs rise. Everyone is talking over each other. Harper can make out “explain” and “are you really” and “don’t fucking move” and “Daneka.”

They stand in the bedroom doorway and take in the scene. Morrow is in their underwear, breathing like a street-loose bull. Peter is curled at Morrow’s feet, naked, head tucked, hands clasped protectively over the back of his neck. Quan and Fen are standing near the bed, peering down at an unfamiliar white palmset.

Harper leans against the doorframe. “S’goin’ on?”

Morrow looks up. Their face is alight with rage. “He’s not who he says he is.”

“I never said I didn’t know her,” Peter says. The words come out muffled, thick with pain. “Babe, please. If you’ll just let me explain—”

Morrow’s body twists with liquid speed. They drive their heel hard into the back of Peter’s thigh, and the bone-deep thump of the impact shakes the air in the room. “We’ve been here for a fucking month,” Morrow says. They usually keep their voice small. It is not small now. “And you never thought to mention that you know Daneka? Never occurred to you?”

Harper straightens, their brows drawing together. “Wait. He knows Daneka?”

Fen is still staring down at the palmset. “Seems like.”

They kick out again, but Peter has curled himself up tighter, and the blow doesn’t land as hard this time. “You didn’t think you should tell us? Not once when we’ve been sitting around talking about how worried we are? Not once when you were inside of me?”

“Morrow, maybe you don’t want to—” Quan says, but Fen puts a hand on his shoulder and he falls silent.

Morrow squats down and grasps a fistful of Peter’s hair, wrenching his head back. “You remember what Fen said when we first met you?”

Peter looks up at Morrow the way a broke-neck deer on the side of the road looks at the receding taillights of the truck that put it there. Blood coats his lips and chin. “Wh—?”

“She said that if you fuck around,” Morrow growls, “you’ll find out.”

The hand that isn’t clenched around Peter’s hair forms a fist. The fist is the size of a brick. The fist is the weight of a brick. The fist is as hard as a brick. Peter closes his eyes, tries to twist out of Morrow’s grip as they draw the fist back, but there’s nowhere to go.

The blow lands with killing force. Fen and Quan and Harper feel it in their teeth and all of them wonder at the same time whether they’ve just watched a man die. But then Morrow pulls the fist back again, and Peter sucks in a breath of whistling pain, and they know that—at least for now—he’s alive.

 Before Morrow can strike Peter again, Harper is out of the doorway and in the room. They step in close enough to press the front of their thigh against the bloody plane of Morrow’s knuckles. “Don’t,” they say. So Morrow doesn’t.

Harper and Quan grab Peter by the underarms and haul him to his feet. “Fen, you got Morrow?”

“On it.”

“We’ll be right back.” Harper says. They and Quan drag Peter down the stairs without stopping to let him get his feet under him. After a minute, the front door of the old farmhouse slams.

Fen looks at Morrow, trying to decide what kind of help they might need. She’d said “on it” when what she’d really meant was “you go ahead and handle what you’re handling, you can trust that I’ll handle things up here.” But she doesn’t know what handling things up here actually means.

“Is all his stuff in his bag?” Fen finally asks. Morrow shakes their head, points to a pile of clothes in one corner. Fen shoves the clothes into the now-familiar duffel, then opens the window and peers down at the naked, bleeding man in the front yard. “Catch,” she calls, and then she drops the bag out the window. She doesn’t wait to see if it falls on top of him.

As she turns around, Morrow is pulling on a shirt. “Sorry you had to see that,” they say softly.

Fen doesn’t say that it’s okay, because she knows Morrow’s not okay. And she doesn’t say that she’s surprised Morrow let Peter live, because that would only make them feel worse about letting out the violence they work so hard to contain. She doesn’t say that she can’t believe what she saw on Peter’s palmset, because she doesn’t want to remind Morrow of the thing that made them let their fury loose in the first place.

So she shoves her hands into her pockets and asks, “You hungry?”

Morrow looks up at her and their face is raw and their eyes are shining and she can see all the way down the deep dark tunnel that shame has drilled through them. “Yeah,” they say. They’re obviously lying, but that doesn’t matter. As long as they’re answering at all. As long as they’re still here.

“It’s almost time for lunch. Come downstairs. I’m gonna make something cool.”

Quan and Harper are waiting for them in the kitchen. They’re back to peeling oranges, and the bright fog of citrus oil is overwhelming. It smells like a day in the sun. Morrow flinches a little, then breathes in deep through their nose. They linger in the kitchen door, filling the frame, watching Quan strip curls off an orange with that tiny paring knife. “How’d Missus Bouchard get oranges all the way up here this time of year?” they ask at last.

“I guess her husband seized them at the border crossing,” Quan answers. He doesn’t add a barb—gentleness is something he’s been trying on lately, with mixed success, but it’s a relief that he’s managing it right now.

“Yeah, he pulled the truck out of line right before he got sick,” Fen adds. “Missus Bouchard told me this morning. She said State BP was so tied up with trying to deny his sick leave that they didn’t notice the seized oranges never ended up anywhere.”

Harper snorts. “I believe her exact words were, ‘If they want the fucking oranges they can come try me.’”

Morrow’s face twitches in the same place a smile would go.

They take over for Fen at the strainer, smashing the peeled oranges with a wooden spoon. Their movements are methodical, rhythmic. The work needs doing, and they need to do it until they’re back in their own body, their own mind. Their own promises to themself.

This is how the four of them—five, including Peter—have been earning their keep at the Bouchard farm for the past month. They’ve doing odd jobs in exchange for permission to sleep in the old farmhouse on the Bouchard property, biding their time while they wait for Bouchard himself to recover from the SARS-15 that’s currently keeping him bedbound. Once he’s well enough to get back to work at the border crossing, they’ll be able to get into Illinois safely.

To Chicago. Maybe, if everything goes right, to Daneka.

Fen and Quan are thinking about Daneka right now. About her face in that video on Peter’s palmset. Harper didn’t see it, and they’re waiting to hear about it so they can understand what happened upstairs. Morrow isn’t thinking about anything. They can’t, not after what just happened upstairs. Their skull is filled with soft white static, like the pith that cushions the wet flesh of an orange.

Fen consults a recipe card from her family recipe box. She cleans the counter thoroughly, scrubbing it down with soap and hot water twice over. Then, when she’s satisfied that the counter is ready, she pulls a pan out of the oven. It has the leftover half of a roasted butternut squash on it. The other half was dinner the night before, shared between the five of them along with a few eggs from Missus Bouchard’s chickens. This half has been sitting in the oven waiting to get used for something.

Fen knows what she wants to do with it now. She uses a spoon to scrape the peel away from the flesh of the roasted squash, then crushes it into paste with her hands. She scoops the paste right onto the clean kitchen counter, shapes it into a hill, and makes a divot in the center of the pile.

“Morrow, can you give me a hand?” She holds up her palms, which are coated in sticky orange squash. “I’m all gross.”

Morrow looks up at her with empty eyes. “Sure. What do you need?”

At Fen’s instruction, Morrow pulls out the last of Missus Bouchard’s eggs and cracks it into the well in the middle of the crushed squash. She mixes the egg and the squash with her hands. The mixture makes a shockingly awful wet noise that draws a cackle out of Quan and a skeptical frown out of Harper.

Then Fen asks Morrow to grab the flour. Missus Bouchard gave a full sack of good white flour to Harper as payment for a full day of fence repair, and they’ve got half the sack left. It looks to be made from an old version of the Wisconsin state flag, from back before the state took the e pluribus unum seal off and replaced it with a second, larger badger.

Morrow stares down at the deep blue fabric blankly until Fen says their name. She has them add a fistful of flour to the heap of goo in front of her. Just a fistful. Then another, and then another, slowly. At first Fen uses her fingers to gently stir, mixing the flour in; then her hands begin to knead as the combination forms a thick dough that pulls away from the surface beneath it. Soon enough, the dough in front of Fen has turned into a smooth orange ball.

Morrow is watching her hands, the dough, the nearly clean counter. Some of the blankness is melting away from their face. “That was cool,” they murmur.

Fen smacks the taut surface of the dough with her palm. “Gotta let it sit for twenty minutes. Then I’ll need your help again.”

“Twenty minutes,” Harper says, not looking up from the half-cleaned orange in their hands, “seems like exactly the right amount of time to talk about what happened upstairs.”

Fen draws a slow breath. Quan puts down his paring knife. Morrow’s shoulders slump. Harper looks to each of them with hard, patient eyes.

Morrow speaks first. “I don’t know how to explain the video.”

“How did you even see the video?” Quan asks. “Weren’t you two right in the middle of—”

“His palmset was on the nightstand. I saw Daneka’s name come up on a notification,” Morrow says. They’re speaking like there’s a candle in front of their lips that mustn’t go out. The others lean forward to hear. “I grabbed it and looked. He tried to stop me, but he— That was a mistake. You know?”

Harper nods. They understand mistakes like this one better than anyone. “Did you see the whole thing?”

Morrow shrugs. “It was a video. I saw it, but he was trying to explain and get the palmset away, so I didn’t really get to watch all the way through. Quan and Fen did, though, I think.”

“Sort of,” Quan says. “But I didn’t understand what I was seeing.”

Fen’s got her arms folded tight across her chest. She’s chewing on the inside of her cheek. She drops her chin to her chest and her dark curls, longish now and dry from travel, fall over her eyes. Her deliberation lasts long enough to fill the kitchen with a low hum of tension.

Quan snaps first. “For fuck’s sake. What?”

Fen looks up at him, eyes narrowed. “I’m thinking.”

“Obviously.”

“I’m thinking about whether the thing I wanna say is a bad idea. For Morrow.”

Morrow’s brow tightens. “For me?”

“I don’t want this to make things harder for you.”

Harper cracks a knuckle against the table. “I think,” they say, “Morrow can handle themself.”

“I know that,” Fen says. “We all know that. I’m more worried about—” And then she stops herself, because she doesn’t know how to say what she’s worried about. It’s the tight coil of violence that lives in the center of Morrow, it’s the whipcrack of their fist, it’s the way they stop feeling pain when it’s someone else’s turn.

Morrow’s shoulders draw down toward their sternum and their eyes find a spot on the floor. “I promise I won’t hurt any of you,” they whisper. “No matter what you saw on that palmset. I wouldn’t. I won’t.”

Quan rubs his forehead with the heel of one hand. His eyes have gone glossy. “Fen’s not afraid of you. Nobody here is afraid of you. It’s just—”

“I don’t want to make it harder,” Fen says again. “But. Okay.” She untucks one arm from across her chest and reaches into her back pocket. When her hand reappears, she’s got the white palmset between her index and middle fingers. “I kept this.”

Harper rises and crosses the kitchen. Their movements are slow, their knees soft, their footfalls quiet. They slowly put their body between Morrow and Fen before taking the palmset out of Fen’s hand. Their back is still toward Morrow when they say, “I don’t know if Morrow wants to see this.”

“I do,” Morrow says quickly. “I want to see her.”

Quan drums his fingers on the table. “Morrow is fine. You two need to calm down.”

The way Harper turns to face Quan has just as much danger in it as the fist Morrow made an hour before. “You want me more calm than I am now?”

“I’m not fine,” Morrow cuts in. “But that’s okay. I want to see the video. The video isn’t the thing that made me—um.” They swallow hard. “That made me upset. I don’t think it’ll make me upset again now.”

Harper approaches the table and stands next to Quan. Morrow moves to stand next to them. They rest their palms flat on the surface of the table. Their knuckles are swelling; a deep red bruise is forming on the biggest knuckle of their right hand. Fen winds up behind Quan’s chair. She tugs on his hair and he swats her hand away.

The video is one of many in a long series of messages from Daneka to Peter. There are no responses from Peter in the chat. All of Daneka’s messages are videos, going back about a month.

“What was the date when we met Peter?” Fen asks softly.

“Not sure,” Quan replies.

Morrow sniffs. “It was about a month ago. But I’m not sure if it was before or after that first message from Daneka.”

They play through the videos, and it quickly becomes clear that they’re all the same video. Kind of. In each one, Daneka stands in a field, squinting into bright sunlight, shading her eyes with the flat of her hand. Her auburn curls toss wildly in a strong wind. There are flowers behind her, yellow and white ones, and some trees in the middle distance. She turns slowly to reveal a massive, shining lake that stretches to the horizon. As she’s turning, she speaks, her voice cigarette-raspy and wind distorted but still as musical as always. “You guys wouldn’t believe how beautiful it is here! I found the most amazing queer community. We have our own little farm and a communal kitchen that Fen’s gonna love! Come soon? I miss you!”

Then she blows a kiss into the camera, and the video is over.

The four of them watch each video. The first one doesn’t have the kiss—it just cuts off after “I miss you.” In the second one, Daneka just says “amazing community,” but in the third one, the word queer comes back in. Sometimes the flowers change color. Sometimes it seems to be later in the day, sometimes earlier. The second-to-last video is where the line about the communal kitchen appears.

Harper blows out a slow breath. “So.”

“We’re fucked,” Quan says. “Should have let Morrow kill him.”

Fen scrubs her hands across her upper arms. “We’re not fucked yet.”

Quan twists in his chair to look at her. “Explain how. That guy is clearly working with someone who wants to fuck us over somehow, and who has the ability to make this quality of deepfake. Peter knows who we are, and he knows where we are, and he knows where we’re going. Show me a gap we can slip out of. Tell me what I’m missing here.”

“Right,” Fen says. “That dough’s been resting long enough. Morrow, want to help me get lunch going?”

Quan throws his hands into the air. “Great. Yeah, go cook. I’ll just sit here and wait for sirens.”

Fen walks into the kitchen. Her lips are tight. She grabs the big kitchen knife and uses it to cut the ball of dough into eight sections, never letting the blade come into contact with the countertop. “I just need to think.”

“What’s there to think about? We need to leave. I’m going to go pack. Harp, want me to pack up your stuff too?”

“Not yet,” Harper replies, their eyes fixed on Fen. “I want us to have a plan first.”

“I need a minute to think,” Fen says again.

Harper’s reply is low. “I heard you the first time. I’m not rushing you. Don’t let Quan get in your head.”

“He’s not in my head.”

Harper doesn’t say anything to that. They don’t need to.

Fen gives Morrow an are you helping or not look, and Morrow comes to the kitchen. Fen sprinkles flour across the countertop, then demonstrates how to roll each section of dough into a long snake. The width of the snake is halfway between Morrow’s massive thumb and Fen’s slender one. “Gentle hands,” Fen says. “The squash makes the dough break easier.”

Morrow’s hands are gentle. They’re as gentle as a kid holding an egg, as gentle as a cat pawing at a cobweb. They don’t break the dough. Fen leaves them to the work of rolling out the sections while she fills a tall pot with water.

“I think we do need to leave,” she says slowly. “But I don’t think it’s an emergency.”

At the kitchen table, Harper has taken up Quan’s paring knife and is methodically peeling oranges. “Why not?”

“Because whoever Peter was working with—if they’re after us, they already know where we are, right? It’s not like he can go bring them any new information.”

“But now they know that we know that they know.” Harper pauses, mouthing the sentence to themself again to make sure they’ve gotten it right. “They aren’t spying on us in secret anymore.”

“So there’s no reason not to just come scoop us up directly,” Morrow murmurs. “I’m done with these, Fen.”

Fen looks over the lengths of dough and smiles. “These are perfect.” She hands Morrow the big knife, handle-first, and shows them how to cut the dough into inch-long sections. “It’s good for them to be kind of pinched down at the edges like that. I don’t think they’re going to come scoop us up from here. They wouldn’t raid this place.” She doesn’t pause between these two sentences, and it takes both Harper and Morrow a moment to realize that they’re not connected.

“Because Bouchard’s a statie?” Harper considers this. “I don’t know.”

Morrow frowns down at the dough as they cut it. “He’s a state border cop. Border cops and regular cops don’t protect each other the same way they protect themselves.”

“We don’t know that Peter’s working with state cops. Could be feds,” Harper offers.

Fen leans her elbows on the kitchen counter and buries her face in her hands. “We can’t know. And if we don’t know what’s coming, then we can’t stay here. But if we run—if we don’t get to Chicago . . . Fuck. That’s where I told Daneka we’d be. We’ll miss her if we don’t find a way into the state and this is our best bet.”

“I’m done with these,” Morrow says again, gesturing to the neat piles of miniature pillows on the counter.

Harper drops the last peeled orange into the pile on the table. “Perfect timing. Morrow, you come pull pith off these things. I gotta go.”

Fen lifts her head out of her hands. “You’re leaving?”

Harper grabs their jacket off the back of a kitchen chair. “Not leaving-leaving. Just heading over to the New House to talk to Missus Bouchard.”

“About what?”

They pull the jacket on. “To tell her we’re almost done prepping her fruit for marmalade. And to ask after her husband. Maybe he’s ready to go back to work. Maybe he’s picking up a shift tomorrow.”

“There’s no way,” Fen says warily. “She’d have said something if he was better.”

Harper shrugs. “S’polite to ask. Morrow, finish off these oranges so I can bring Missus Bouchard over to pick up her pot of goo. And Fen?”

Fen waits.

“Don’t worry,” Harper says. It’s almost soft, the way they say it. “I’m not leaving you alone. Not yet.”

And then they’re gone.

Morrow sits at the dining table and starts picking pith off the oranges with quick, careful fingers. Behind Fen, the water on the stove starts to boil. She heaves a hard, sharp sigh. 

“I’m sorry,” Morrow says after a few minutes.

Fen drops two handfuls of gnocchi into the boiling water. “For what?”

“For being scary. Don’t say I wasn’t, I know I was.”

Fen nods down into the pot as she gives the water a gentle stir. “You were. But it’s okay. You were keeping us safe.”

They’re quiet for a long time. Then, so softly Fen almost doesn’t hear it at all, they murmur, “I don’t want to be a guard dog.”

Quan comes stomping down the stairs before Fen can reply. “There’s blood all over the floor in that bedroom. We got time for me to clean it up before we go?”

“Plenty of time,” Fen says. She and Quan negotiate around each other in the kitchen—the sink is too close to the stove, and there’s not quite room for her to watch the pot while Quan rummages for cleaning supplies. When Quan straightens, a rag in one hand and an unlabeled spray bottle in the other, he and Fen are only a couple of inches apart.

 He studies her face for a moment. “Are we fighting?”

“No,” Fen says firmly. Then she lets herself smile. “We’re just figuring things out. All of us. Me and Harper are working on a plan. It’s gonna be okay.”

“You’re sure?” Quan studies Fen’s eyes, her forehead, her mouth. “Is Harper leaving?”

“They said they’re not. I believe them.”

“If they leave . . . will you go with them?”

Fen blinks rapidly. “If Harper leaves, I don’t think they’d want anyone to come with them. But they’re not leaving, so it doesn’t matter, right?”

“Sure. And we’re not fighting?”

It pulls a little smile out of Fen, finally, Quan asking this again. “We’re not fighting.”

“Good.” Quan kisses Fen on the forehead once, quickly and lightly, and then he’s gone, long strides carrying him out of the kitchen.

Fen blinks at the space where Quan was standing a moment before. She turns wide eyes toward Morrow. “Did you—?”

Morrow stares back, their brows nearly touching their hairline. “I saw. Are you two . . . ?”

“No,” Fen replies. “Not that I know of. Maybe—no. Right?”

Morrow doesn’t have an answer for her. 

In the pot, the gnocchi are starting to bob to the surface. Fen thinks of Daneka’s hair in the video, the way it tossed in the wind. She heats a pan on the other burner, drops a knob of butter from Missus Bouchard’s huge ornery cow onto the heat, and waits for it to melt and sizzle. She thinks of Daneka’s eyes in the video. Once the butter starts turning golden, she scoops the cooked gnocchi out of the pot with a slotted spoon and drops them into the butter to fry. She thinks of the shine of that vast lake. She puts more gnocchi into the pot, and works in batches to boil and fry them.

She thinks of Quan’s lips on her forehead, and she smiles down into the sizzling pan.

As the house fills with the smell of browning butter, Morrow pulls the pith off oranges, and Quan scrubs the floorboards, and Harper charms an answer out of Missus Bouchard. The sun outside is high and bright. It shines on the old farmhouse, and the big new one on the other side of the property, and the milking shed and the chicken coop and the feed shed, and somewhere out there, it shines on Peter, too.

Fen sprinkles salt a pile of toasted, butter-glossy gnocchi.  “Come get a plate,” she calls. She knows the only people who can hear her are Morrow and Quan, but part of her is calling out to Daneka, wherever she is. Part of her is making a plate for Daneka. Part of her is cooking for Daneka, every time she cooks. Every meal.

She doesn’t wait for anyone to come running before she grabs a fork. The bite she takes is too hot.

She closes her eyes and lets it burn her tongue.

Fen and Morrow’s Gnocchi

Half of a butternut squash
1 egg
2–3 cups flour
Salt
Pepper

1. Place the half-squash face down on a baking sheet. Rub it all over with butter. Roast at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.
2. Remove the squash from the oven and let it cool completely.
3. Remove the peel and mash the squash into a smooth paste. Form the paste into a mound and form a well in the center.
4. Crack 1 egg into the well. Stir with fingers to combine.
5. Add flour in batches, working the flour in until a sticky, firm dough forms.
6. Knead for 1–2 minutes.
7. Form into a ball and rest for 20 minutes. *This is the perfect amount of time for a hard conversation.
8. Cut the ball into eight equal parts. Roll each part out into a snake the width of someone’s thumb. Cut each snake into 1-inch sections using a knife or pasta cutter.
9. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Add the gnocchi in batches, stirring gently once to prevent sticking. Once the gnocchi bob to the top of the water, remove.
10. Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Once the butter starts to brown, fry gnocchi in batches.
11. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and eat piping hot.

“Have You Eaten?” copyright © 2024 by Sarah Gailey
Art copyright © 2024 by Shing Yin Khor
Photography copyright © 2024 by Sarah Gailey

The post Have You Eaten? Part 3: Morrow’s Comfort appeared first on Reactor.

“That girl’s got more wrong notions than a barn owl’s got mean looks.”

Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her—a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.

Chapter 1

As Esther breathed in the sweet, musty smell of the horse blankets in the back of the Librarians’ wagon, she chewed on the I-told-you-so feeling that had overwhelmed her ever since her father had told her with the news about Beatriz. She’d known that none of it would come to any good. She’d told Beatriz as much. Tried to tell her, anyway.

But Beatriz never did listen. She always was stubborn, as stubborn as a hot day, the kind that comes too long before a storm breaks, and so she hanged. She swung by her neck while Esther’s father, Victor Augustus, made a speech about the dangers of deviance. Silas Whitmour had stood a few feet behind the podium with his fists clenched in his pockets. His lips had been pressed together tight, his eyes on Esther.

Not on Beatriz. He wouldn’t hardly look at Beatriz at all.

His eyes were on Esther, who had lied to her father and told him she’d make the whole thing right.

The Head Librarian didn’t find Esther Augustus until they were two whole days outside of Valor, Arizona. She swore so loud and colorful that it snapped Esther right out of the Beatriz-dream she’d been having, and by the time Esther was sitting upright, the Head Librarian’s revolver was pointed right at her face.

“Don’t shoot me,” Esther said, her voice raspy. Her mouth tasted foul from two days without only the bottle of water she’d brought, two days without a toothbrush and without food. “Please,” she added, because her mother had raised her right and because manners seemed like a good idea when a gun was involved.

“Give me a single good reason.” The Head Librarian’s badge glittered in the early-morning sun. It was a hammered copper star with three columns etched into it— one for virtue, one for knowledge, and one for patriotism. It shone as bright as Beatriz’s eyes had.

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Esther wasn’t sure if the Head Librarian was asking for a single good reason to shoot or a single good reason not to, but she decided to play her only card.

“My name is Esther Augustus,” she said. “My father is Victor Augustus. He’s—he’s the Superintendent of the Lower Southwest Territory,” she added uncertainly.

The Head Librarian surely knew who Victor Augustus was, but her face didn’t change at the sound of his name. Her square jaw was set just the same as it had been, her flinty gray eyes were just as furious, and her finger was still awfully close to the trigger of her six-shooter.

“Leda!” The Head Librarian didn’t yell, but her voice carried all the same. After a few seconds, Esther heard unhurried footsteps crunching toward the wagon. The Head Librarian didn’t take her eyes off Esther as those footsteps approached, her gaze matching the unblinking eye that was the barrel of her gun. All three of those eyes watched Esther Augustus, and she watched them back, too dehydrated to sweat and unable to draw a full breath.

“Damn it, Bet, if you can’t start dealing with scorpions on your own, I’ll—oh.” A second woman appeared next to the Head Librarian. Bet, Leda had called her. The two women couldn’t have looked more different. Leda was tall and wide where Bet was somewhere between wiry and scrawny. She was pale where Bet was brown, her skin smooth where Bet’s was scarred. Leda’s eyes were gentle. At least, they were. Until they landed on Esther’s little nest among the saddle blankets and dry goods, that is. When she saw Esther’s hiding place, those gentle eyes flashed hard, then went wary and darting.

“Now, Leda,” Bet growled, her eyes still on Esther like a snake watching an approaching ankle, “didn’t I ask you to check this wagon when we left town?”

Leda didn’t answer, but her face told the story well enough: asked to do the task, didn’t feel like doing it, said it was done to move things along.

“Please don’t shoot me,” Esther said, coughing as the words hit her dry throat. “I don’t mean any harm, it’s just—”

“It’s just that you’re running away,” Bet intoned flatly. “You’re running away to join the Librarians.”

“Well, I’m not… I’m not running away from anything,” Esther stammered, the lie loose on her tongue. “I’m running to something.”

“Give the girl some water,” Leda muttered to Bet. “She’s delirious.”

“She’s Victor Augustus’s daughter,” Bet replied. Leda’s eyes got big as she looked back to Esther.

Those eyes were canaries, Esther realized—they sang everything that passed through Leda’s head, loud and clear enough for anyone to catch. “Shit,” she hissed. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Does your father know where you are right now?” Bet asked. Esther hesitated, then shook her head. Bet mirrored the movement. “No? Stupid to tell me so,” she said. “If he doesn’t know you’re here, there’s not a chance of a consequence for me if I shoot you dead and dump your body in the desert.” She sighed, lowering the revolver, and Esther took in a full breath at long last. “Get out of that wagon before you sweat fear-stink all over my horse blankets. Leda, this water is coming out of your supply.” With that, Bet walked away and out of sight.

Esther slid out of the wagon on weak legs, her feet slipping in the gravel. She’d worn her most practical shoes, but she could already tell they wouldn’t keep her upright on the trails the Librarians rode.

Not that good shoes should be her immediate concern, she thought. She couldn’t rightly say that this wasn’t going according to plan, since there hadn’t been much of a plan in the first place, but it certainly wasn’t going the way she’d hoped it might. She couldn’t think of why a Head Librarian would need to carry a revolver instead of a rifle. A rifle would do just fine for whatever might be in the desert, whatever might come across the horizon to make a woman nervous. A revolver was too close-up for a woman to carry, her father’d always said. A revolver was a man’s weapon, made to end an argument.

A Librarian, Esther thought, shouldn’t ever have need of arguing. That was the whole point.

A strong, callused hand caught her by the elbow before she could stumble again. It was Leda holding a canteen. Esther would have sworn she could smell the water inside of it. She drank too gratefully, and that strong hand slapped her on the back hard to make her cough up the water she inhaled.

“You don’t want to lie to Bet, you understand?” Leda whispered, her mouth close enough to Esther’s ear to stir the hair near her temples.

“I wouldn’t,” Esther replied. She decided not to remember the last time Beatriz had been that close to her ear, the things they’d whispered to each other then.

“I mean it,” Leda said. “She’ll know if you lie, and if you do, you can forget about her letting you stay.”

Esther nodded, her heart pounding. If she played this thing wrong, she had no idea what might happen. Maybe Bet would take her home to face her father’s wrath. Maybe Bet would turn her loose in the scrubland to wander, lost and alone. Maybe Bet would pull that iron out again, and maybe this time, she’d use it.

But, Esther reminded herself, that was only if she screwed up.

If she did everything right, on the other hand? Well, then she might just get to become a Librarian.

A full canteen of water later, Esther was sitting on a rock across from Leda and Bet, and she was lying harder than she ever had before.

“I’ve always wanted to be a Librarian,” she said, looking Bet right in the face, making her eyes wide and earnest the way she did whenever she talked to the Superintendent about the importance of the flag and the troops and the border. Her long hair was matted with sweat in spite of the tight braid she’d bound it in before climbing into the back of the wagon, and she felt like something that had gotten stuck on the tread of a tank, but none of that would matter if she could make herself shine with earnest dedication to the cause. “Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of joining an Honorable Brigade of Morally Upright Women, doing Rewarding Work Supporting a Bright Future for—”

“—the Nation’s Children,” Bet finished flatly. “You memorized the posters.”

“I hate those things,” Leda muttered, and Bet shot her a sharp look.

“Of course I memorized them,” Esther said. If she didn’t blink for long enough, she could get her eyes to water a little, so she’d look like she was overcome by passion for the Librarians’ work. She clasped her hands together in front of her and let her shoulders rise. “I had one of the recruitment posters hung over my bed since I was a little girl. I love everything about Librarians.”

“What’s the part that appeals most?” Bet asked.

“I just admire the work you do so much,” she gasped, and there it was: her eyes were burning and she knew they’d take on a real shine soon. “Helping to further the spread of correct education is so important. If it weren’t for the Librarians, no one would have up-to-date Approved Materials to read and watch and listen to. My father always said”—Bet made a soft sound at this, and Esther reminded herself not to bring up her father again for a little while—“he always said that when boredom takes hold, that’s when people get up to trouble. So, I figure that if it weren’t for the Librarians, people would probably be coming up with dangerous new materials all the time.” She looked down at her feet and gave a soft sniff. “I just want to help. I want to be part of something that’s bigger than I am. I want to be a Librarian.”

Esther flushed a little with pride. Surely that little speech had done the job.

When she looked back up, Bet didn’t seem impressed. “That was a fine performance,” she said, running her finger across the thick, cruel scar that cut through her left eyebrow. “I don’t doubt you put a hell of a lot of effort into it. Would you like to try a different tactic, though? Telling the truth, maybe.”

Esther glanced at Leda, who gave her an “I told you so” smile. Her heart pounded hard and fast and high in her chest. That had been her best angle, the speech she’d been practicing for those two overheated days under a pile of saddle blankets.

She stared at Bet, aware that the longer she waited, the more it would be obvious that she was trying to come up with a lie. She closed her eyes and gave her head a little shake.

“Alright,” she said. “The truth is, my father was gonna try to marry me off. To a man I don’t—I don’t love him, I don’t even know him, and I couldn’t stand it. The idea of becoming his wife, after—” She stopped short, because she couldn’t talk about what had happened, not without giving everything away. And she couldn’t tell the Librarians all of it. If she did, they’d never let her become one of them. They were some of the most dedicated civil servants on the State payroll— they’d report her for sure.

Bet’s eyes flashed. “After what?”

Esther swallowed painfully. Careful, now. “My best friend,” she said. “She was engaged to him before, but she just… she was executed for possession of Unapproved Materials. Some kind of pamphlet about Utah. I didn’t know,” she added hastily, and it was true. She hadn’t known. Beatriz hadn’t seen fit to share the Unapproved Materials with her. Hadn’t trusted her enough, maybe, or wanted to protect her. No reason could make it less bitter, though, knowing that Beatriz had kept such a huge secret. “I didn’t know she had them, or I would have tried to stop her. I would have tried to make it right. I think she was going to tell me, the night before she… the night before she was caught. She said she wanted to tell me something, but.…” Esther trailed off, because there was nothing good could come of her talking too much about Beatriz. She returned to the better part of that detail, the part she thought would make them like her more. “I never knew she had Unapproved Materials, I swear it. I would have done something if I’d known.”

Leda coughed into her fist. Again, Bet shot her a look. “You alright over there?” Bet asked.

“Just fine,” Leda said. “Dusty out here, is all.”

“So, your friend died,” Bet said. “Happens to the best of us. You oughta pick your friends better, maybe.”

Rage flared suddenly in Esther’s chest and throat, pounded hot in her temples. “There’s no such thing as a better friend than Beatriz, you have no damn idea what you’re—” She stopped herself. That wasn’t the way to do this. She forced herself to exhale. “You’re right,” she said, straining to sound calm. “I suppose I should have seen it sooner. I should have been more careful.”

Bet leaned her elbows on her knees, stared intensely at Esther. That outburst had caught her attention, it seemed. Damn. “So, she hanged,” Bet said, her voice suddenly soft. “And you ran off.” Esther nodded. It was close enough to true. Bet continued, speaking low and gentle, and as she did, Esther found herself leaning forward, too. “You couldn’t stay there anymore, is that right? You didn’t want to marry that boy, and you didn’t want to stay there if Beatriz wasn’t going to be there?”

Her words drew something up out of a deep and locked-up place in Esther’s belly, something unplanned and uncareful. “It’s not just that I didn’t want to stay there,” she said, the words coming slow. “I couldn’t stay there. It was too dangerous for everyone.”

“Why was it dangerous?” Bet whispered, her gaze intent. Over her shoulder, Leda had gone very still, but everything that wasn’t Bet’s eyes seemed far-off as the horizon.

“Because Beatriz died and they were gonna marry me to someone important,” Esther said. “I would have had so much power to spread my poison to so many people. So, I thought that if I joined the Librarians… no matter what happens to me, at least I’d be able to do some good before the bad finds me.”

“Like it found Beatriz?” Bet asked, nodding.

“’Course it found Beatriz.” Esther’s cheeks were hot again, and it wasn’t until she felt a splash on her knee that she realized the heat was from tears, a steady spill of them. She went on whispering to Bet, unable to stop herself, unable to hold back the confession. “We knew it’d find us. People like us, we draw the bad in. There’s no good end, not for us. We knew better, we read all the stories—read them too much, probably. We knew that the bad would find us if we didn’t…” She trailed off, because there was no word for the thing Esther knew she should have done.

She’d talked to Beatriz about it a thousand times, with their legs knocking together as they sat on a porch swing or with their backs in the grass by the creek outside town, or with Beatriz’s sweat still stinging her lips. We have to fix it, they’d agreed over and over again. We have to be better. We can’t do this anymore. The last time they’d had that conversation, a week before Beatriz died, Esther had said, I don’t feel that way about you anymore. A desperate attempt to rescue them both. Saying it had felt like dying, although not as much like dying as the fate she’d feared would come for them.

It was the worst lie she’d ever told, and it hadn’t even been enough to save Beatriz.

She struggled to find a way to explain this to Bet, a way to explain how she and Beatriz had brought it all on themselves. “It wasn’t that we should’ve known better,” she said at last. “We did know better. I knew better. But I didn’t fix it in time, and so Beatriz got hurt. Who knows who else I would have hurt if I hadn’t left town?” More tears fell onto her thighs as she thought of her father, her fiancé, her future children. How many people would she have brought down with her if she’d stayed? “There’s something inside me that’s wrong,” she said, “but I thought if I joined the Librarians, maybe I could wash it out. I could learn how to be better from y’all, and then maybe… maybe I wouldn’t have to hurt anyone, after all.”

There was a long silence then, punctuated only by Esther’s wet sniffs. Her vision was blurred with hot, relentless tears, tears that she hadn’t let herself shed at the hanging. Tears for Beatriz, and tears for herself, too, because the thing she had to do felt so huge and so hard. She would have to dig out the broken part of herself, the part that had made her kiss Beatriz that first time and then every time that came after. She would have to dig it out, and she would have to kill it, and she would have to kill the small secret part of her that loved the broken thing, that had loved the way it felt to tuck Beatriz’s hair behind her ears and lick the hollow of her neck and watch her sleep.

Neither of those parts of her could survive, if she was going to keep herself from meeting the tragic end that she knew was promised to people like her.

“I think I understand,” Bet said. “You wanted to come and join the Librarians, because we’re chaste, and morally upright, and we’re loyal to the State no matter what. And because we don’t give in to deviant urges. You wanted to come and join us because you wanted to learn how to be like us. Do I have that right?”

Esther nodded, gasping. “Yes,” she said. “Please. Please teach me how to be like you.” She looked up, wiping her eyes, letting herself have the smallest splinter of hope that Bet wouldn’t report her for what she’d confessed. That hope dissolved when she saw the grim set of Bet’s jaw. “Please,” she whispered one more time, fear tart under her tongue because she knew this was it, this was her last worst hope and this woman who could turn her in to the reaper was looking at her with precisely zero mercy. “I know I’m not supposed to be like this. I want to be like you.”

Bet shook her head, then turned away from Esther, her chest hitching. When she turned back, a small, rueful smile was breaking through the grim line of her mouth. She laughed, a laugh she was obviously trying hard but failing to suppress. She reached a hand out to one side, and for one awful moment, Esther was sure that she was waiting for Leda to hand over her revolver— but then, instead of a gun, Leda put her palm over Bet’s, and their fingers laced together.

“Well, Esther,” Bet said, that irrepressible laugh trying hard to shake her voice, her thumb tracing the back of Leda’s. “Well. I’ve got good news for you, and I’ve got bad news.”

Excerpted from Upright Women Wanted, copyright © 2020 by Sarah Gailey.

The post Read the First Chapter From Sarah Gailey’s Upright Women Wanted appeared first on Reactor.

Ivy Gamble is a liar.

When a gruesome murder is discovered at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, where her estranged twin sister teaches Theoretical Magic, reluctant detective Ivy Gamble is pulled into the world of untold power and dangerous secrets. She will have to find a murderer and reclaim her sister—without losing herself.

Sarah Gailey’s Magic For Liars is available June 4th from Tor Books. Read chapter 3 below, or head back to the beginning with the prologue!

CHAPTER THREE

I never wanted to be magic.

That was Tabitha’s thing, not mine, and sometimes you just have to be fine with things the way they are. And I was fine with it.

“Liquid lunch?” The bartender cocked an eyebrow at me as he placed a dark, sweating bottle in front of me next to a chilled glass.

“Part of a balanced breakfast,” I replied mildly, decanting my beer into the glass. He gave me an easy smile, a you’re-funny smile that he probably used on everyone. Affirmation and illusion, bound up tighter than two snakes in the same egg.

But then, maybe he didn’t give that smile to everyone. Maybe he actually thought I was okay, for a lunchtime customer. Maybe I was just being a cynical asshole.

“I’m actually having kind of a terrible day, if I’m honest.” I said it quietly, half hoping he wouldn’t hear. Giving him a chance to ignore me. I leaned my elbows against the long reclaimed-wood bar. This wasn’t my usual bar—the place was new in the neighborhood, eminently forgettable in the grand scheme of gentrification. This bartender didn’t know my face, wouldn’t recognize me. Didn’t have to be nice to me now, or ever again. I’d come here telling myself I just wanted to exist while I drank my breakfast and digested everything that had come with the morning. I’d wanted to hide. But then the bartender gave me that you’re-clever smile, and I realized I had to tell someone. Just to have it all out in the world, somewhere other than my own head.

The bartender didn’t say anything. Maybe he hadn’t heard me at all. I studied the decor as if I didn’t care either way. Tiny pots with tinier succulents, weird art accents hanging above the bottles behind the bar. I couldn’t tell if I’d been there for happy hour before, or if I’d just been to a thousand places exactly like it. Places like that were springing up around Oakland by the score back then, every one a marker of the way the city was changing. It felt all-at-once, even though it had been brewing for years. Decades. Across the bay, San Francisco bled money like an unzipped artery. Those who had been privileged enough to have their buckets out to catch the spray drove back over the water to Oakland— from The City to The Town. They bumped aside people who had been living in these neighborhoods for generations, and they tore down storefronts, and they built brunch pubs with wood reclaimed from the houses they were remodeling.

It was shitty and it was destructive and it was perfect, because I could slip onto a barstool and pretend I had a place to go. Just for a few hours at a time. Something familiar. Bars with driftwood behind the bottles instead of mirrors.

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Magic for Liars

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“Tell me about it?” The bartender was in front of me again, holding a bucket of limes. He started slicing them, looking back and forth between me and the knife.

“Shouldn’t your barback be doing that?” I asked, watching him slowly quarter a lime.

“He’s too hungover to function,” the bartender said, rolling his eyes. “So what’s up with your day?”

I took a pull of my stout—it was thick as a milkshake, and it hit my belly like a hug. “Well,” I said. “I got mugged.”

“Sucks,” he replied, and I tipped my drink toward him in a cheers-to-sucks gesture.

“And then this woman came into my office. She wants to hire me for a case. A big one. It’ll mean hiring someone to handle all the other active cases I’ve got going.” The other active cases were small potatoes—two disability claims, three cheating spouses, one spouse who wasn’t cheating after all but whose husband couldn’t believe that she had really taken up pottery. She was pretty good at it too. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to hire help; when the workload got too intense, I occasionally subcontracted to other, less-established outfits in the area. I’d return the favor for them someday, if they ever needed someone to do a little heavy lifting. My remote assistant would arrange the logistics—the subcontractors, the paperwork, the payments, the letters to clients. No problem.

“Sure,” the bartender said, and bless him, he didn’t care enough to ask a single clarifying question. He didn’t want to know who I was, where I worked. He just wanted some noise to make the limes less boring. It was perfect.

“So, the woman who was in the office this morning. She’s the headmaster at the school where my sister teaches.”

“Headmaster? Shit.”

“It’s a private school. Some kids board there, some don’t. It’s down by Sunol, in the hills. The Osthorne Academy for Young Mages.”

He nodded, didn’t flinch at the word “mages.” I tapped my fingers on the table, one-two-three-four. This guy wasn’t half listening to me. I wasn’t anybody to him—just some freelancer drinking beer in the middle of the day and watching him cut a few dozen limes.

So I told him. I told him everything that I knew about the case, and about Osthorne. Halfway through the story, he looked up at me, opened his mouth to say something. Closed it again and went back to the limes, but a stillness had entered his movements—he was listening now, trying to decide if I was crazy. I took a long, slow sip of my beer, made a project of setting my glass down exactly within the condensation ring it’d left on the table.

“But magic isn’t real,” he said after a moment.

“Isn’t it?”

“It—of course not. I would have heard of it. Everyone would have heard of it.” His eyes were laughing now, waiting for the punch line. He had paused with the tip of the knife in the rind of a runty lime, and he waited for me to answer before pushing it the rest of the way through.

I tried to feel like I was talking to a friend, like this was a real conversation that wouldn’t just turn into a weird story he told at the end of his shift. I tried not to feel temporary. Just for a few seconds. But trying not to feel something isn’t the same as not feeling it, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I was alone again.

That’s how life goes. People don’t stick.

“Haven’t you heard of it, though?”

He shook his head, used the knife’s edge to scrape lime pulp off the edge of his cutting board. “But that’s different. That’s like… fiction. Or magicians. Illusionists. Or whatever.”

“It’s not quite like that.” I needed him to believe me. Not that it mattered. I would never see him again. Let him think I was crazy. It didn’t matter. “But it is real. There are people—a lot of people—who can do magic. Real magic. My sister is one of them. So’s that woman who was in my office this morning. They’re mages. They do magic.” I looked at him, tried to beam understanding into his brain. “They are magic.” I wasn’t sure what I was saying anymore—the look on his face was making me lose track of things. He didn’t believe me. This was it: he was going to give me a tight smile and walk away and later he would tell his friends about the lunatic who came into his bar to talk about magic.

But then he didn’t walk away. He looked at me, and he didn’t say anything, and I realized that he was waiting.

I took another drink, tried to get my thoughts in order. Forward. “So. There was a death on campus, in the school library.”

“Your sister’s school.”

“Yeah. It’s—she works there. We don’t talk.”

He nodded, and I couldn’t tell if he believed me or had decided to just go with it. I couldn’t tell which would be better. “And she’s a… a witch?”

“A mage,” I answered. “We don’t call them witches. Or wizards—they hate that.”

“Are you one too?”

“Nope. Not me.”

“Why not?”

It wasn’t like a punch to the gut, not anymore. Not after so many years. More like a sneeze the day after too many sit-ups, or the seat belt tightening after a too-fast stop, or a sudden wave of nausea at the tail end of a hangover.

I shrugged. “Who knows?” I took a long, hard pull of my drink. When I set the glass down it clinked against the table too loudly. “I’m not magic. I’m just… not. And she is. She went to a magic school and I went to… to regular school.”

He wiped his hands on a towel—he was already halfway through the limes—and opened a fresh beer, the same one I’d been drinking. He set it in front of me, and I didn’t pretend to hesitate before taking a sip right from the bottle. “She went to Oxthorne?”

“Osthorne, and no,” I answered, grateful to get away from the why-not-you. “She went to a place called Headley. It was a boarding school up near Portland. Prestigious as hell. I think she was glad to get away from home.” Home had been Woodland, near Sacramento, small and hot and stucco, strip malls and air-conditioned minivans. We had both hated it in that way some kids are just required to hate their hometowns, spent all of our time fantasizing about how we’d get out of there. And then she did. And then, a couple of years later, so did I.

“So you guys aren’t close?”

I frowned. “I don’t talk to her if I can help it. And most of the time I can help it.”

“Okay,” he said, and I could see him deciding to give me a reprieve. “So how does it work? Magic.”

I shook my head, relieved. “Fuck if I know. I guess you have to be magic to understand it. Every time I tried to ask Tabitha when we were kids, she would make an analogy that’s like… ‘imagine if your heartbeat was a cloud and you could make it rain whenever you had a nightmare,’ or ‘imagine you’re a candle, and your wick is made of glass,’ or something. I’m no good at koans.”

“Well, what’s it look like?” He was in a groove, having fun, getting me to spin him a story. He wanted me to tell him about this. Not that it mattered if a bartender wanted to talk to me—just, it was nice, realizing that he might be disappointed if I left.

“Anything.” I pointed at one of the lime slices. “If I was a mage, I could probably make that blossom, or like… turn orange, or grow a fish tail.”

“Who’s magic?”

“What do you mean? Lots of people are—”

“Who that I’ve heard of? Who’s the most famous magic person in history?”

“Winston Churchill.” I didn’t miss a beat, and felt oddly proud of myself for it.

“No, really.”

“Really,” I answered over the top of my beer bottle. “He was a racist murderous fuck, but he was magic as all get-out.”

The bartender gave me a skeptical eyebrow. “But if he was magic, why didn’t he—I don’t know. Strike Hitler with lightning or something?”

“Reasons, probably?” I shrugged. “Tabitha could tell you, but the explanation would involve a whole set of theories and committees and treaties you’ve never heard of, and by the end of the explanation you’d be so bored you’d be gouging your own eyes out to stay awake. Trust me, it’s not interesting.”

“Okay.” He chewed on his lip. He was trying to think of a way to keep this thing from losing steam. “Okay. So. How do you know if you’re magic, then?”

I thought about it, picking at the label on my beer bottle. “I guess you just… you do magic, and then you know. Lots of kids keep their magic a secret, because they know they’re not supposed to be able to do things. Like, Tabitha found out when she was little, because she kept changing another girl’s markers into butter.”

He squinted at the lime in his hand. “What?”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “I mean, there were other things too, but this was the first obvious one. She didn’t like this other girl because I guess the other girl wouldn’t share stickers? So she turned all the girl’s markers into butter.” I shook my head. “The teacher figured out what was going on and sent a note home, and my parents came into the school, and the teacher said that Tabitha was magic. She said that Tabby had probably been doing stuff like this for years, but that most magic kids don’t get caught until they have a mage for a teacher. So anyway, she gave my mom and dad a pamphlet and the number of a special tutor who could help Tabitha out. And then…” I fluttered my fingers. “That was that. So I guess that’s how you find out. You just do magic, and then someone tells you that you’re magic.”

“So your parents know about it.”

Again, that little snag in my gut. “Dad does. Mom did, before she died. It’s okay,” I said, preemptively answering the oh-god-what-land-mine-have-I-stepped-on panic in his face. “I mean, it’s not okay, but it’s fine. It was a long time ago.”

The bartender looked at me with way too much sincerity. “I’m sorry,” he said, and I wanted to spit because I hate that. I hate it when people say that.

“It’s fine, really. It happened when I was in high school. Tabitha was at Headley and I was at home.” I anticipated the questions he was waiting to ask, the questions everyone always asks. The questions that I stopped wanting to answer the moment they became questions I could answer. The questions that made me into a person who didn’t ever talk about my past. “It was cancer. In her stomach. Or at least, I guess that’s where it started.”

That’s all he needed to know.

He didn’t need to know about how we hadn’t realized anything was wrong for a while, when she was just tired. And then she started to have pain in her neck, and she went to the doctor and they found cancer. It was everywhere by then. It was fast. She was sick for a month, and then she stopped treatment, and then she died a month later. He didn’t need to know that part. “It was sad, or whatever. But it was a long time ago. I’m okay. Everyone’s okay.”

Well. Sort of okay. I had almost failed out of high school— graduated by the grace of an iron-fisted guidance counselor who just wanted to get a diploma in my hands and get me out, for Mom’s sake. For the sake of her memory. The day top-of-her-class Tabitha had come home from Headley for the funeral, her eyes de-puffed with the help of some charm she’d learned in the dorms there, I’d said hello without hugging her. After that, the only time I hugged her was for Dad and his camera, and even then, the camera hadn’t been pointed at us for five years or so. And Dad didn’t notice the time passing because he’d lost the person he had planned his entire life around.

But other than that, everyone was okay.

The bartender sliced the last lime, grabbed the empty bucket. “I’ll be right back, okay?” He pointed at me and smiled. “I’ve got lemons to do, too.”

I smiled back and gave him a thumbs-up. As soon as he was out of sight, I downed what was left of my beer and slid off the barstool. I tucked a few bills under the empty bottle—enough to cover the bill, plus a decent tip. I walked out fast, furious at myself. I’d said too much. He’d gotten that look on his face, that pity look. I was supposed to disappear in that bar. Another round, and he’d be asking my name, giving me advice. Acting like he knew me.

I walked back to my office, just off the edge of sober and just past angry. Just drunk enough to dig into my pocket for my phone, open a social media app I never used. In my dad’s profile picture, he was standing on a beach with his arm around a woman I didn’t recognize.

I scrolled back through his pictures, through a few rounds of barbecues and birthday dinners with friends I’d never met. I kept going, back through years of posts until I found a photo with Tabitha and me both in it. In the photo, Tabitha had her arms wrapped around me. We were smiling in front of a Christmas tree—it was a for-the-camera smile, a for-Dad smile. He took a picture of us every year, because when we were little Mom had taken a picture every year. Until one year she wasn’t there anymore, and we were all looking at each other in front of the Christmas tree, wondering how we were supposed to celebrate her favorite holiday.

In the picture we wore coordinating sweaters, reindeer and snowflakes and little knit x’s. It was from a few years before we stopped talking altogether—Tabitha’s bangs attested to that—but in the shot, my short black hair was already threaded with premature strands of gray. My scattering of freckles was cut through with the first few fine lines, laughter around the eyes and frown between the brows. We shared a sharp nose—nothing you’d call “aquiline,” but certainly nothing you’d call “pert,” either. She was a little slimmer than me. You could already see the wages of a PI’s life on my body and in the lines of my face: too much booze, too many late-night stakeouts with fast-food wrappers littering the floor of the car. No cigarettes—I’d quit the second I left home, since I’d only been smoking them to piss Dad off—but I looked like a smoker. I looked tired.

Tabitha shone in the photo, like she did in every photo. Her long hair—used to be plain old “dark brown,” but after she came back from school it was something else, something richer like chestnut or umber or ocher—hung in soft waves, and her large brown eyes were the same as mine but more somehow, more sparkling, more alive. Better. Not a freckle on her, and the only lines were laugh lines, and there were exactly the right amount of them. She was using all the tricks that used to drive me to it’s-not-fair shouting back when we were teenagers. Back when the worst thing in my life was Tabitha, and the fact that she had come home from magic school knowing how to erase the hated freckles—but wouldn’t do mine.

And now I was going to try to solve a murder at a place that was full of kids like that. Kids who were just like the person my sister had become while she was gone. I was going to take the case—I’d been trying to tell myself that I was conflicted about it, but really I was just getting ready to swallow a lot of bad medicine in order to do the job.

Because I had to do this job. It was good money, but more than that, it was a murder case. It was real detective work, something more than just some paunchy forty-nine-year-old accountant revving his secretary’s engine in the Ramada near the freeway. I’d been following paunchy accountants for the better part of fourteen years. It’s what I was good at.

But this? A real murder case? This was the kind of thing that private detectives didn’t do anymore. It was what had made me get my PI license in the first place—the possibility that I might get to do something big and real, something nobody else could do. I didn’t know the first thing about solving a murder, but this was my chance to find out if I could really do it. If I could be a real detective, instead of a halfway-there failure. If this part of my life could be different from all the other parts, all the parts where I was only ever almost enough.

I won’t try to pinpoint the first lie I told myself over the course of this case. That’s not a useful thread to pull on. The point is, I really thought I was going to do things right this time. I wasn’t going to fuck it up and lose everything. That’s what I told myself as I stared at the old picture of me and Tabitha.

This time was going to be different. This time was going to be better. This time, I was going to be enough.

Excerpted from Magic for Liars, copyright © 2019 by Sarah Gailey.

The post Magic for Liars: Chapter 3 appeared first on Reactor.

Ivy Gamble is a liar.

When a gruesome murder is discovered at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, where her estranged twin sister teaches Theoretical Magic, reluctant detective Ivy Gamble is pulled into the world of untold power and dangerous secrets. She will have to find a murderer and reclaim her sister—without losing herself.

Sarah Gailey’s Magic For Liars is available June 4th from Tor Books. Read chapters 1 and 2 below, and stay tuned for additional chapters soon!

CHAPTER ONE

It might take a little while to get there, but I’ll tell you everything, and I’ll tell you the truth. As best I can. I used to lie, but when I tell you the story, you’ll understand why I had to lie. You’ll understand that I didn’t have a choice.

I just wanted to do my job.

No, I said I would tell you the truth. Of course I had a choice. We all have choices, don’t we? And if I tell myself that I didn’t have a choice, I’m no better than an adulterer who misses his daughter’s dance recital because he’s shacking up in some shitty hotel with his wife’s sister. He tells himself that he doesn’t have a choice too. But we know better than that. He has choices. He chooses to tell the first lie, and then he chooses to tell every other lie that comes after that. He chooses to buy a burner phone to send pictures of his cock to his mistress, and he chooses to tell his wife that he has a business trip, and he chooses to pull cash out of an ATM to pay for the room. He tells himself that all of his choices are inevitable, and he tells himself that he isn’t lying.

But when I hand his wife an envelope full of photographs and an invoice for services rendered, her world is turned upside down, because he chose. If I try to pretend I didn’t have a choice, I’m not any different from the liars whose lives I ruin, and that’s not who I am. I’m nothing like them. My job is to pursue the truth.

So, the truth: it’s not that I didn’t have a choice. I did. I had a thousand choices.

I was so close to making the right one.

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Magic for Liars

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Magic for Liars

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The man who stood between me and the door to my office was trembling-thin, his restless eyes sunken with desperation, holding a knife out like an offering. It was warm for January, but he was shaking in the morning air. He wasn’t going to follow through, I thought. Too scared. But then he licked his dry lips with a dry tongue, and I knew that his fear and my fear were not the same kind of fear. He’d do what he thought he needed to do.

Nobody decides to become the kind of person who will stab a stranger in order to get at what’s inside her pockets. That’s a choice life makes for you.

“Okay,” I said, reaching into my tote. I hated my hand for shaking. “Alright, I’ll give you what I’ve got.” I rummaged past my wallet, past my camera, past the telephoto lens in its padded case. I pulled out a slim money clip, peeled off the cash, handed it to him.

He could have demanded more. He could have taken my whole bag. But instead, he took the cash, finally looking me in the eyes.

“Sorry,” he said, and then he made to run past me, up the stairs that led from my basement-level office to the sidewalk. He was close enough that I could smell his breath. It was oddly sweet, fruity. Like the gum me and my sister Tabitha used to steal from the drugstore when we were kids—the kind that always lost its flavor after ten seconds of chewing. Looking back, I can’t figure out why we ever thought it was even worth taking.

The man pelted up the stairs. One of his feet kicked out behind him, and he slipped. “Shit shit shit,” I said, rearing back, trying to dodge him before he fell into me. He flailed and caught himself on my shoulder with a closed fist, knocking the wind out of me.

“Jesus fucking Christ, just go.” I said it with more fear than venom, but it worked. He bolted, dropping his knife behind him with a clatter. I listened to him running down the sidewalk upstairs, his irregular footfalls echoing between the warehouses. I listened until I was sure that he was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

Bad things just happen sometimes. That’s what I’ve always told myself, and it’s what I told myself then: I could have bled out right there in the stairs leading down to my office, and not a soul would have known why it happened because there was no “why.” No use dwelling on it: it would have been the end of me, sudden and senseless. I clenched my jaw and pushed away the thought of how long it would have taken before someone found me—before someone wondered what had happened to me. I pushed away the question of who would have noticed I was gone.

I didn’t have time for an existential crisis. It didn’t have to be a big deal. People get mugged all the time. I wasn’t special just because it was my morning to lose some cash. I didn’t have time to be freaked out about it. I had shit to do.

I just wanted to go to work.

I made my way down the remainder of the steps toward the door that hid in the shadowy alcove at the bottom of the stairs. I nudged a Gatorade bottle with my toe. The man had been sleeping in my doorway. He couldn’t have seen it by the dim light of
the streetlamps at night, but my name was written across the solid metal of the door in flaking black letters:

IVY GAMBLE, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
MEETINGS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

I hadn’t gotten the words touched up since I’d first rented the place. I always figured I’d let them fall away until nothing was left but a shadow of the letters. I didn’t think I needed to be easy to find—if someone didn’t know where my office was, that meant they weren’t a client yet. Besides, walk-ins weren’t exactly my bread and butter then. The dead bolt locked automatically when the reinforced steel swung shut. That door was made to withstand even the most determined of visitors.

I didn’t run my fingers across the letters. If I’d known what would change before the next time I walked down those stairs, though? Well, I wouldn’t have run my fingers across the letters then, either. I probably wouldn’t have given them a second glance. I’ve never been good at recognizing what moments are important. What things I should hang on to while I’ve got them.

I stood on my toes to tap at the lightbulb that hung above the door with a still-shaking hand. The filaments rattled. Dead. On nights when that bulb was lit, nobody slept outside the door, which meant that nobody got surprised coming down the stairs in the morning.

I bit my lip and tapped at the lightbulb again. I took a deep breath, tried to find something in me to focus on. Imagine you’re a candle, and your wick is made of glass. I gave the bulb a hard stare. I tapped it one more time.

It flickered to life. My heart skipped a beat—but then the bulb died again with a sound like a fly smacking into a set of venetian blinds and went dead, a trace of smoke graying the inside of the glass.

I shook my head, angry at myself for hoping. It hadn’t been worth a shot. I thought I had outgrown kid stuff like that. Stupid. I stooped to pick up the little knife from where it lay just in front of the door, squinting at what looked like blood on the blade.

“Shit,” I said for the fourth time in as many minutes. As I opened the heavy steel door, a white arc of pain lanced through my shoulder. I looked down, letting the door swing shut behind me. There was a fresh vent in my sleeve. Blood was welling up under it fast—he must have had the knife in his hand when he caught himself on me. I pulled off my ruined jacket, dropping it— and the bloodstained knife—on the empty desk in the waiting area of the office. It fell with a heavy thump, and I remembered my phone in the pocket, the call I was already late for. Sure enough, there were already two pissy texts from the client. I dialed his number with one hand, leaving streaks of stairway grime on the screen, then clamped the phone between my ear and my good shoulder as I headed for the bathroom.

I listened to the ringing on the other end of the line and turned on the hot water tap as far as it would go, attempting to scald the god-knows-what off my palms, trying not to think about the water bill. Or any of the other bills. The cheap pink liquid soap I stocked in the office wasn’t doing anything to cut the shit on my hands, which was somehow slippery and sticky at the same time. My shoulder bled freely as I lathered again and again.

“Sorry I’m late, Glen,” I said when he picked up. My voice prob-ably shook with leftover adrenaline, probably betrayed how much my shoulder was starting to hurt. Fortunately, Glen wasn’t the kind of person who would give a shit whether or not I was okay. He immediately started railing about his brother, who he was sure was stealing from their aunt and who I had found was, in fact, just visiting her on the regular like a good nephew. I put Glen on speaker so he could rant while I peeled off my shirt with wet hands, wincing at the burning in my shoulder. I stood there in my camisole, wadded up the shirt and pressed it to the wound. The bleeding was slow but the pain was a steady strobe.

“I hope you don’t think I’m going to pay for this shit,” Glen was saying, and I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds. I allowed myself just a few heartbeats of bitterness at how unfair it was, that I had to deal with Glen and look for my long-neglected first aid kit at the same time. I was going to take just a moment of self-pity before going into my patient I’ve provided you a service and you were well aware of my fee schedule routine—but then I heard the unmistakable sound of the front door to my office opening.

I froze for a gut-clenched second before hanging up on Glen. I let my blood-soaked shirt drop to the floor, shoved my phone into my bra so it wouldn’t vibrate against the sink when he called back. I heard the office door close, and a fresh flood of adrenaline burned through me.

Someone was in the office with me.

No one had an appointment. No one should have been able to get inside at all. That door locked automatically when it closed, and I knew it had closed. I knew it, I had heard it click shut behind me. This wouldn’t be the first break-in attempt, but it was the first time someone had tried it while I was in the office. I pressed my ear to the door, carefully gripped the knob without letting it rattle in my fingers. The lock on the door was busted, but at least I could try to hold it shut if they decided to look around.

“I’m here to see Ms. Gamble.” A woman’s voice, clear and steady. What the fuck? I could hear her footsteps as she walked across the little waiting area. I winced, remembering my jacket and the bloodstained knife on the abandoned admin desk. She murmured something that sounded like “Oh dear.” My phone buzzed against my armpit, but Glen and his yelling would just have to wait.

“Once you’ve finished treating your wound, you can come out of the bathroom, Ms. Gamble. I don’t care that you’re in your camisole. We have business to discuss.”

I straightened so fast that something in my back gave a pop. My head throbbed. I stared at the white-painted wood of the door as I realized who was waiting for me out there. This was not good.

This was not good at all.

The shitty waiting-room couch creaked. She was serious—she was going to wait for me. I rushed through cleaning up the slice in my shoulder, wadding up wet paper towels and scrubbing blood off my arm, half ignoring and half savoring how much it hurt. The bandage I hastily taped over the wound soaked through with blood within a few seconds. I would say I considered getting stitches, but it’d be a lie. I’d let my arm fall off before setting foot inside a fucking hospital.

I checked myself in the mirror—not a welcome sight. I pulled my phone out of my bra, ran a hand through my hair. There was only so much I could do to make myself look less like a wreck, and I kept the once-over as brief as possible. I like mirrors about as much as I like hospitals.

I opened the door and strode out with much more confidence than a person who has just been caught hiding in a bathroom should have been able to muster. I’ve always been good at faking that much, at least. The short, dark-haired woman standing in the front office regarded me coolly.

“Good morning, Ms. Gamble.”

“You can call me Ivy, Miss…?” The woman’s handshake was firm, but not crushing. It was the handshake of a woman who felt no need to prove herself.

“Marion Torres,” she replied. The woman peered at my face, then nodded, having seen there whatever it was she was searching for. I could guess what it was. It was a face I couldn’t seem to get away from. Shit.

“Ms. Torres,” I replied in my most authoritative, this-is-my-house voice. “Would you like to step into my office?” I led Torres to the narrow door just beyond the empty admin desk, flipping the light on as I entered. I opened a top drawer of my desk, sweeping a stack of photographs into it—fresh shots of a client’s wife and her tennis instructor making choices together. Nothing anyone should see, especially not as a first impression. Although, I thought, if this woman was who I thought she was, I didn’t want to impress her anyway.

Torres sat straight-backed in the client chair. It was a battered green armchair with a low back, chosen to make clients feel comfortable but not in charge. I remember being proud of myself for the strategy I put into picking that chair. That was a big thing I solved, the question of what kind of chair I should make desperate people sit in before they asked for my help.

Light streamed into the office through a narrow, wire-reinforced casement window behind my desk. The sunlight caught the threads of silver in Torres’s pin-straight black bob. I felt the sliver of camaraderie that I always experienced in the presence of other salt-and-pepper women, but it evaporated fast enough. Torres stared intently at the fine motes of dust that danced in the sunlight. As I watched, the dust motes shifted to form a face that was an awful lot like mine.

I swallowed around rising irritation. I would not yell at this woman.

“You don’t look exactly like her,” Torres said. “I thought you would. The face is the same, but—”

“We’re not that kind of twins,” I replied. I crossed behind my desk and pulled the shutters over the window closed, rendering the dust motes—and the familiar face—invisible. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Torres said. “She’s one of our best teachers, you know.”

I settled into my swivel chair, folding my hands on top of my desk blotter. All business. “So you’re from the academy.”

Torres smiled, a warm, toothy grin that immediately made me feel welcome. Damn, she’s good, I thought—making me feel welcome in my own office. I pushed the comfort away and held it at arm’s length. No thanks, not interested.

“I am indeed,” she said. “I’m the headmaster at Osthorne Academy.”

“Not headmistress?” I asked before I could stop myself. I cringed internally as Torres’s smile cooled by a few degrees.

“Yes. Please do not attempt to be cute about my title. There are more interesting things to be done with words. We spend most of our students’ freshman year teaching them that words have power, and we don’t waste that power if we can help it.”

I felt a familiar principal’s-office twist in my stomach, and had to remind myself again that this was my office. “Understood.”

We sat in silence for a moment; Torres seemed content to wait for me to ask why she was there. I couldn’t think of a good way to ask without being rude, and this woman didn’t strike me as someone who would brook poor manners. Distant shouts sounded from outside—friendly but loud, almost certainly kids skipping school to smoke weed behind the warehouses. They’d sit with their backs against the cement walls, scraping out the insides of cheap cigars and leaving behind piles of tobacco and Tootsie Pop wrappers.

Torres cleared her throat. I decided to accept defeat.

“What can I do for you, Ms. Torres?”

Torres reached into her handbag and pulled out a photograph. It was a staff photo, taken in front of a mottled blue backdrop; the kind of photo I might have seen in the front few pages of my own high school yearbook. A twenty-five-cent word sprang unbidden into my mind: “noctilucent.” The word described the glow of a cat’s eyes at night, but it also seemed right for the woman in the photograph. She was a moonbeam turned flesh, pale with white-blond hair and wide-set light green eyes. Beautiful was not an appropriate word; she looked otherworldly. She looked impossible.

“That,” Torres said after allowing me to stare for an embarrassingly long time, “is Sylvia Capley. She taught health and wellness at Osthorne. Five months ago, she was murdered in the library. I need you to find out who killed her.”

Direct. More direct than I was prepared for. I blinked down at the photo. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” The words came automatically. “But isn’t this a matter for the police? You—um. Mages. Don’t you have police?”

Torres pursed her lips, looking up at the shuttered window. “We do. But they—hm.” She hesitated.

I didn’t push her for more. I knew from experience that it was far more effective to let a client sit with the silence—to let them decide for themselves to fill it. I’ve always been good at letting silence put down roots.

“I don’t agree with their findings,” Torres finally finished. “I’d like a second opinion.”

“My opinion?” I said, flashing Torres the skepticals. “I don’t do murder investigations.” I said it as if it were a choice, rather than a simple fact of the law and my poor marketing. I was sure that there were some people out there who were still hiring PIs to solve murders, but none of them had ever come knocking at my basement door. I wanted her to think it was a choice, though.

“You come highly recommended,” Torres replied, dry as kindling. “And you know about us. You’ve got the right eye, to see the things that the investigators missed because they were too busy looking for obvious answers to see this for what it was. This was murder.”

“And what are the obvious answers?”

Torres pulled a business card from the space between naught and nothing. I bit back annoyance again. She wasn’t doing it to antagonize me. Probably. She handed me the card, and, to my credit, I only hesitated for a couple of seconds before letting the paper touch my skin. A breathtakingly high number was written on the back in a headmaster’s irreproachable penmanship. “That’s the amount of retainer I’m willing to pay. Up front, in cash.”

It’s not that there was a catch in her voice, not exactly. But I could hear her keeping herself steady. I kept my eyes on her business card, counting zeroes. “Why are you so invested in this? If the magic-cops said it wasn’t murder—”

“It was murder,” she interrupted, her voice clapping the conversation shut like a jewelry box I wasn’t supposed to reach for. I looked up at her, startled, and she pursed her lips before continuing in a calmer tone. “Sylvia was a dear friend of mine. I knew her well, and I am certain that she didn’t die the way they say she did. Courier a contract to the address on the front of the card if you’re willing to take the job. I’d like to see you in my office on Friday morning.”

And before I could ask anything else—before I could come up with the next question or the sly rebuttal or the little joke that would keep her there, talking, explaining everything, telling me what the “obvious answers” were supposed to be—Marion Torres had vanished. I sat heavily in my chair, staring at the place where she had been, trying to swallow the old anger. It was just like these people to drop a line like that and then poof. If they would only stay vanished, my life would be a hell of a lot simpler.

I reread the number Torres had written down. I ran my thumb over the grooves her pen had left in the thick paper. I listened to my cell phone vibrating—Glen calling again to yell at me. I breathed deep, tasting the dust in the air. The dust that Torres had rearranged into the shape of my sister’s face. It was the first time I’d seen that face in years. It was a face I hadn’t thought I’d ever see again.

I pressed one corner of the business card into the meat of my palm, deciding whether or not to take the case. I stared at the way the paper dented my skin, and I pretended that I had a choice.

Excerpted from Magic for Liars, copyright © 2019 by Sarah Gailey.

The post Magic for Liars: Chapters 1 and 2 appeared first on Reactor.

Ivy Gamble is a liar.

When a gruesome murder is discovered at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, where her estranged twin sister teaches Theoretical Magic, reluctant detective Ivy Gamble is pulled into the world of untold power and dangerous secrets. She will have to find a murderer and reclaim her sister—without losing herself.

Sarah Gailey’s Magic For Liars is available June 4th from Tor Books. Read the prologue below, and stay tuned for additional chapters soon!

PROLOGUE

The library at Osthorne Academy for Young Mages was silent save for the whisper of the books in the Theoretical Magic section. Honeyed sun poured through two tall windows onto rows of empty study tables, which still gleamed with the freshness of summer cleaning. It was a small library—each section took up only a row or two of tall metal shelves—but it was big enough to hide in. Sunlight from the windows along one wall of the library spilled between the shelves, casting long shadows. None of the students had come to linger, not in the first week of school—they’d dashed in and then out again, looking for friends or for classes they’d never been to before. Now they were all downstairs at the welcome-back dinner, an all-staff-all-students meal that marked the end of the first week of classes. They’d joke there about house-elves and pumpkin juice—or at least the freshmen would. By the time they were sophomores, that vein of humor was worn beyond use.

Mrs. Webb was not at the welcome-back dinner, and neither was Dylan DeCambray. One was hunting the other, a familiar pastime for both of them. Dylan was hiding in the stacks— specifically, in the Poison and Theoretical Poison section. He had tucked himself into the shadow of a returns cart, his legs cramping as he listened to Mrs. Webb’s measured footfalls in the next section over: Electricity, Theoretical Electricity, Electrical Manipulations.

“Mr. DeCambray, let’s not have another year like this. You’re a senior now. I’d have expected you to be more mature than you were as a freshman.” Her voice was thick with age. The condemnation of immaturity might have moved another student to self-immolation, but Dylan had a higher purpose. He would never let an authority figure stand in the way of that purpose, no matter the depths of their misunderstanding.

The Prophecy.

Mrs. Webb rounded the shelves into the Poison section. She moved slowly, deliberately—she’d often told students that hurrying was a fool’s errand. If you need to hurry, her oft-repeated saying went, you’re already too late. The early-evening shadows cast by the drooping sun should have deepened Mrs. Webb’s wrinkles, but, as she turned, the golden haze that made it into the stacks hit her profile just right, illuminating the young woman she once had been. In that moment, only white hair, sculpted as always into a perfect bouffant, belied her eighty-six years. A few more steps, and her face was in shadow once more. Mrs. Webb was just a short distance from the returns cart, close enough for Dylan to inhale the faint powdery smell of her perfume.

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Dylan took a deep breath, then cupped his hands and blew into them. He waved them in front of himself, a mime smearing grease across the inside of his invisible box. Mrs. Webb walked a few feet in front of him. Her sensible black clogs brushed across the industrial gray carpet tiles with a steady, rhythmic shush-shush-shush. She peered around the returns cart over the top of her red horn-rimmed glasses, looking straight into Dylan’s face. He could have counted the black freckles that dotted her dark brown skin. She hardly had to stoop to be at eye level with seventeen-year-old Dylan; when he stood at his full six-foot height, he towered over the tiny woman.

He held his breath as she straightened and continued stalking between the shelves of the Poison section. His concealment charm had held. Mrs. Webb had looked right at Dylan, and she had not seen a pale, stretched-out seventeen-year-old with unruly brown hair and the hollow, hungry face of summer growth spurts. She had seen nothing but a few cobwebs and a row of books about the uses of arsenic.

“Mr. DeCambray, honestly,” she called out again, her voice weary with exasperation. “I don’t know what you’re thinking you’re going to find in here, but I can assure you that there are no mysteries to be solved, no conspiracies to be unraveled. Whether or not you’re the—oh, hush,” she snapped at the books in the restricted Theoretical Magic section. But their whispering didn’t stop—if anything, it increased, the books murmuring to each other like a scandalized congregation of origami Presbyterians.

Mrs. Webb paused at the end of the Poison section, looking toward the Theoretical Magic section again. “Mr. DeCambray, please. Just come down to dinner. This is foolishness.” She rounded the end of the shelves, and the murmurs of the books grew loud enough that Dylan couldn’t quite make out what she was saying anymore. But that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that she was no longer between him and the library exit.

Dylan rose and made for the door, victorious: he had dodged her. He could make his way back to the dinner, and when she came to the dining hall to admit defeat, he could say he’d been there all along. It was a good way to start the year. This was going to be his year, Dylan thought. He eased the library door open, slipping his narrow frame through and closing it without so much as a silencing charm to cover the snuck sound of the latch. Triumph.

Dylan’s shoes squeaked on the linoleum of the hallway as he ran. His too-long legs tangled, and he was about to catch himself midstride, about to make it to the end of the hall and the stairs that led down to the mess—but he skidded to a stop.

A scream echoed through the corridor.

Crap. His heart was pounding wildly—was this it? Was it finally time? Dylan DeCambray was torn between terror and elation. It’s happening, it’s really happening—he pelted back toward the library, toward the sound of Mrs. Webb screaming over and over again. He knocked over a chair or two on his way to the section where the screaming was coming from—the chairs weren’t really in his way, but the moment felt so urgent that it seemed wrong to leave things undisturbed. A small voice inside him whispered, Now, now, it’s happening now.

He pulled up short at the Theoretical Magic section, gasping for breath, his hands braced on the shelves at the end of the row. His foot crunched a sheet of copy paper that read “Reorganization in Progress: Do Not Enter Without Protective Equipment.” The wards were down. The books, which had been whispering so insistently when Dylan left the library, had gone silent. They seemed to stare at the tableau in the center of the section.

Dylan stared too. Then his brain caught up to what his eyes were seeing. He turned, still clutching one of the shelves, and vomited. When he thought he could stand it, he tried to straighten—but then he saw what was in the aisle, and his empty stomach clenched, and he heaved again.

In the middle of the section, Mrs. Webb stood with the sun at her back. One hand clutched her cardigan closed over her throat; the other held an old, crooked birch wand high over her head, amplifying the sound of her screams to an inhuman volume. Her voice didn’t break or cease—the screaming filled the school like a strobing siren.

She took a step backward, mouth open, still screaming, when she saw Dylan. Her shoes sank with a sick sucking sound into the soaked industrial carpet, which had turned so red as to look nearly black. Every time Dylan allowed his eyes to fall below her knees, he tasted fear-bitter bile rising in the back of his throat.

It was next to her feet.

At first Dylan had taken it to be two very slim bodies, facing away from each other. There were two fanning sprays of white-blond hair; there were two wide, pale green eyes staring up at the shelves out of two familiar profiles. But, as Dylan had noticed just before his stomach had twisted for the second time, there were only two long-fingered hands. Two total.

The woman on the floor had been cut in half, right down the middle, and laid out like a book with a broken spine. Her blood had soaked into the carpet and spread far enough to touch both bookshelves, a moat between Mrs. Webb and Dylan DeCambray. As Mrs. Webb’s voice finally began to crack with the strain of screaming, the books in the middle of the Theoretical Magic section of the library at Osthorne Academy for Young Mages began to whisper once more.

Excerpted from Magic for Liars, copyright © 2019 by Sarah Gailey.

The post Magic for Liars: Prologue appeared first on Reactor.

Over time, the Objective Truth can come to feel completely inaccessible, lost to all the people who’ve divided it into pieces and swallowed those pieces and digested them into stories and gossip and history. The prospect of trying to unravel it all to find out what really happened can feel like an insurmountable obstacle.

But author Mallory O’Meara is an unstoppable force.

Milicent Patrick created the Creature from the 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon. This statement should not be controversial. Creature from the Black Lagoon is a classic monster movie, famous and successful, and the titular Creature is a marvel of design, living in the strange intersection between practical effects, costuming, and makeup. Someone created that Creature, and the identity of that creator should be an objective fact, the answer to a Jeopardy question, a Horror trivia-night staple—but a coordinated campaign, waged by an insecure and ego-driven man, all but erased Milicent’s name from the history of the Creature. That man received the credit for the design and creation of the Creature; Milicent faded into obscurity, and from there, she faded further, until all that was left of her legacy was a handful of memories scattered among those who knew her.

Until now.

The Lady from the Black Lagoon is Milicent Patrick’s biography, written by Mallory O’Meara. It’s also a memoir of O’Meara’s own experiences in the film industry, and it’s also an indictment of the way women are treated, in the film industry and throughout the world. The Lady from the Black Lagoon is honest, vulnerable, and searingly compassionate. Make no mistake: O’Meara’s open subjectivity is not only a strength—it’s downright revolutionary.

From the very start of The Lady from the Black Lagoon, O’Meara makes no secret of her lifelong admiration for Milicent Patrick. The book chronicles O’Meara’s search for the Objective Truth of Milicent’s life story—a truth that is highly disputed and incredibly difficult to track down. O’Meara is transparent about how the search for the truth about Milicent feels. She shares disappointment with the reader, and admiration. She shares uncertainty and trepidation and hope. And throughout The Lady from the Black Lagoon, she does something I’ve never seen in a biography of a woman: she openly and explicitly respects and believes her subject.

Milicent Patrick created the Creature from Creature; this is an objective, provable truth. But she got attention for it, and that attention made the wrong man feel insecure, and so he buried her and blacklisted her. As O’Meara documents, people today believe the story that man spun, in spite of ample evidence that he is a liar (and an asshole. Like, a huge asshole. Sorry…no, I’m not: he’s terrible).

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The Lady From the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick

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O’Meara doesn’t believe the story that man spun. She believes Milicent, and because of that, she digs into Milicent’s life and story. She searches out documentation, and she talks to people who have answers, and she reports her findings. In some places, she finds that Milicent was dishonest; with sympathy and with empathy, she explores the reasons behind those lies. In other places, she finds that Milicent was truthful, and she defends that truth with concrete evidence. O’Meara also exposes the liminal truths of Milicent’s life, the truths that exist in the space between fact and memory and legend — for example, Milicent’s claim to have been the first female animator at Disney, which isn’t quite true and isn’t quite a lie, either. In her exploration of this and of so many other areas of Milicent’s life, O’Meara treats her subject as human, respecting the way that memory and personal myth can blur the facts of one’s history.

Because O’Meara approached Milicent’s story from a perspective of good faith, The Lady from the Black Lagoon is staggeringly kind. I have never seen a woman’s life examined with such kindness, which (it bears saying) is not and has never been the opposite of truth. O’Meara holds space for Milicent’s brilliance and for her failures, presenting her strengths alongside her weaknesses. This biography is factual and emotional, honest in every way that honesty can apply to a life.

Difficult as it can be to define what is true, there’s one fact of which I have no doubt: The Lady from the Black Lagoon is a marvel.

Author’s note: I know Mallory O’Meara personally. Normally, I would say that makes me too subjective to write about her book. But then I read her book, and I realized that writing with care doesn’t mean writing with dishonesty. I could write a whole other piece on how that entire mindset is broken and objective analysis doesn’t exist, but that’s for another time.

The Lady from the Black Lagoon is available from Hanover Square Press.

Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. They are a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to their work here. They tweet @gaileyfrey. Their American Hippo novella series—River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow—is available from Tor.com, and their upcoming novel Magic For Liars publishes June 2019.

The post Revolutionary Honesty: Mallory O’Meara’s The Lady from the Black Lagoon appeared first on Reactor.

(Michael Bay was 21 years old when Top Gun came out in theaters. His directorial debut came just nine years later, with the movie Bad Boys, which was also a Bruckheimer/Simpson picture. In the interim, Bay had time for over 42,000 screenings of Top Gun. It explains a lot. It explains Armageddon, which usually defies understanding. I’m not here today to talk about Michael Bay, but it was important to me that you all read that number. Anyway: Top Gun.)

Top Gun is a heartfelt, moving film about one man’s risky dalliance with heterosexuality. Lieutenant Tom “Maverick” Cruise is introduced to the audience as a glistening, patriotic risk-taker. He just wants to be the best Plane Guy he can be. His ambitious Airplane Moves get him all the way to the TOPGUN program, a school for only the coolest plane guys. Everything is going great for Maverick… until the night before classes begin. He arrives at Miramar, where the TOPGUN program is located, as ominous music plays in the background—Maverick, the score informs us, is on the highway to the danger zone.

That very evening, Maverick’s sassy straight friend, Lieutenant j.g. Goose “Goose” Goose, brings him to a straight bar for an evening of exploration. Goose exhorts the tentative Maverick to “have carnal knowledge—of a lady this time—on the premises.”

Maverick is understandably reluctant to engage in behavior as risky and unnatural as picking up a woman at a bar, but alcohol lowers his inhibitions enough that he sings the song “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” a heterosexual anthem about the death of affection in a long-term relationship. The woman rebuffs his advances, but that doesn’t matter. Maverick has tasted the forbidden fruit that is heterosexuality, and he wants more.

Maverick spends the remainder of Top Gun doing two things: practicing Cool Airplane Moves and experimenting with heterosexual behavior. The Cool Airplane Moves speak for themselves: this is the blatant-Navy-recruitment part of the film, and it’s all about sweaty guys Using Lingo and going fyooom. Meanwhile, the sections of the film that take place on the ground follow Maverick’s struggle with the urge to blatantly disrespect a woman into having sex with him.

Throughout the film, Maverick’s colleagues do their best to steer him away from this dark and dangerous path. Notably, Val “Iceman” Kilmer tries to intercede, repeatedly telling Maverick that he and his risky behavior are dangerous. Iceman is the best Plane Guy at TOPGUN, and it is from this position of authority that he offers counsel: “You never, never leave your wingman, Maverick.”

Although Iceman is adamant throughout the film that Maverick needs to shape up, his advice isn’t enough to keep Maverick from succumbing to heterosexual temptation. By the time Iceman delivers his stand-by-your-man speech, it’s too late: Maverick is already in a relationship with Charlie, the flight instructor he tried to seduce on his excursion to the straight bar at the beginning of the movie. (Charlie is played by Kelly McGillis, whose brave portrayal of heterosexuality is both honest and touching.)

The relationship is a predatory one—Charlie is in a position of institutional authority over Maverick, and acknowledges as much throughout the film—and thus must be kept a secret. Charlie and Maverick are only able to engage in heterosexual behavior in the straight bars that Goose and his visiting wife like to haunt, lawless clubs where women shout for piano-playing men to ‘take them to bed or lose them forever.’ Poor Maverick is so drawn in by the freewheeling atmosphere of his new underground lifestyle that he completely ignores the dangerous power dynamic inherent in his relationship with Charlie, going so far as to abandon his wingman during a healthful game of sweaty, shirtless beach volleyball to pursue her. The wholesomeness of this scene is underlined by the score, which here features the Kenny Loggins song Playing With the Boys. Even Goose—the so-called ‘friend’ who initially encourages Maverick to try out the straight lifestyle—begs Maverick not to stop playing with the boys…but this is a lesson Maverick must learn for himself.

He continues to experiment with heterosexuality, until finally, he’s forced to reevaluate his life and choices. Goose meets a tragic end during a scene where some very cool Airplane Moves go very wrong, and in that moment, the only definitely-heterosexual character in the film is gone. Although Goose’s death is accidental and unrelated to his lifestyle, it cannot be denied that his demise represents a heterosexual tragedy. Without his influence, Maverick struggles to find direction—in his career and in his relationship with Charlie.

Maverick spends the final act of the film engaging with this struggle. His chief instructor, Viper, tells him not to waste too much time mourning the loss of Goose. “You fly jets long enough,” he tells Maverick, “something like this happens.” He is, of course, obliquely informing Maverick that Goose’s death should not have been surprising: the lifestyle he led was a risky one, and to mourn him too dearly would be a mistake.

This advice seems to come within a few hours of Goose’s death, and in the days that follow, Maverick grapples with what to do next. He packs up Goose’s things and delivers them to his dead friend’s widow, witnessing her grief firsthand. In the wake of this, even as he wrestles with his future at TOPGUN, he ends his relationship with Charlie. In the scene where he breaks up with her and threatens to leave the TOPGUN program, he drinks ice water—a choice that indicates his acceptance of Iceman’s principles.

In the end, Maverick graduates from the TOPGUN program and is immediately deployed to active duty. He participates in some Airplane Fighting alongside Iceman, and the two function as a team, winning the battle. They’re a good Plane Team, and when the explosions are over, Iceman expresses immense relief at the prodigal Maverick’s return. “You can be my wingman any time,” Iceman says, welcoming Maverick back into the fold and demonstrating forgiveness of his comrade’s reckless experimentation with heterosexuality. Maverick gratefully accepts this amnesty, and finalizes his commitment to abandoning Goose’s path by hurling his old friend’s dog tags into the sea.

Viewers of Top Gun may think that they can rest at this point of the film—but of course, no summer blockbuster can resist a stinger scene. Just before the credits roll, Maverick returns to the TOPGUN program as an instructor, a decision which reunites him with Charlie. In this, the film offers a nuanced portrayal of the ongoing struggle one must endure when resisting the persistent draw of heterosexual behavior. One can only hope that, when faced with temptation, Maverick will stick to his Top Guns.

(I could have written an essay about how Top Gun is fascist propaganda. It’s all there: a might-makes-right mentality, military fetishism, brotherhood-and-citizenship-through-combat, disdain for the validity of other nations’ sovereign borders, faceless aggressors who must die at all costs, the romanticization of the disregard for diplomatic regulations in favor of heroism which supports nationalistic goals… I could go on for a while. The problem is that, while Top Gun was an immensely successful tool of naval recruitment, it’s an abysmal failure of a propaganda film. It lacks awareness of the social contexts that make it possible for a movie like this one to become a classic of queer cinema, and because this movie doesn’t know how to engage with those contexts and communities, it can’t function as a tool to reinforce the social rules it wants to. Sorry, Top Gun. I know you tried to promote fascist ideals of the nobility of war—but instead, you promoted glistening boys playing volleyball and showering together. Personally, I can’t think of a better example of failing upward. Reader… it takes my breath away.)

Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. They are a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to their work here. They tweet @gaileyfrey. Their American Hippo novella series—River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow—is available from Tor.com, and their upcoming novel Magic For Liars publishes June 2019.

The post Highway to the Danger Zone: The Heterosexual Tragedy of Top Gun appeared first on Reactor.

I was jealous of their flower crowns, of course. I was also jealous of the easy way they talked about going in-depth on planning color schemes for each chapter they wrote, and the Pinterest boards they referenced for their character aesthetics. I was jealous of the way their worldbuilding all seemed to start from the ground up, because that seemed to me to be a whole other level of professional-writer-ness. My worldbuilding has always leached out from my character development—I write how a character moves, and their movement defines the world they live in. The women on this panel were talking about writing thousands of words about the world their characters inhabited, all before they put a single line of dialogue on a page. They were clearly worldbuilding masters. I was in awe.

It only took seven words for my awe to become fear. One of the writers leaned forward and grabbed her mic. She looked down along the table, her flower crown tipped at a jaunty, devil-may-care angle. Her lips brushed the mic, and her voice was a little distorted by her enthusiasm, and she said “Okay, but can we talk about maps?”

Every other woman on the panel lost her shit. They were so excited. “Oh my god, I spend hours plotting mountain ranges. Do you guys know how complicated it is to figure out the biomes that surround a desert?!” They were squealing and laughing and sharing their own personal recipes for charting landscapes as part of their worldbuilding, and I was horrified. It had never occurred to me to draw a map. I had written a story that wasn’t an epic, high-fantasy journey across nations. Why would I draw a map? Maps are for bigger stories, right? How does one go about drawing a map? I stayed up that night googling cartography. My search was not fruitful. I tucked that particular insecurity into the part of my brain where I catalogue all my shortcomings as a writer, and I did my best to forget about it.

Imagine, then, my abject horror when my River Of Teeth editor, Justin Landon, sent me the following message: “oh hey, btw, do you have a rough map you’ve done for RoT?”

I said no, and he asked me to put something together. I hedged heavily, hoping that if I said “I will probably do a bad job” enough times, my editor might say “oh, ha ha, just kidding, I would never make you do something this hard! Please, go enjoy a cocktail.”

Reader, he made me do a map. I gritted my teeth, grabbed a piece of paper and an existing map of Louisiana, and braced myself for despair. You’ll never believe what happened next.

I had so much fun.

Here’s the map I eventually sent in.

Since I was assured that some kind of legitimate person would put together a good map, I sent something with a lot of Gailey flavor. Which is to say, it was ridiculous. Here are some process notes so you can see how they redacted some of that Gailey flavor to make the map palatable to people who somehow don’t find fjords hilarious.

First, Tor.com map artist Tim Paul removed some of my classic dad jokes:

Next up: a zoom/enhance on my exquisitely rendered feral hippopotamus:

Then, Tim redacted my painstaking onomatopoetic guidelines from my riverboat illustrations:

Also redacted were my restaurant reviews, which got replaced with something “accurate”:

Tim didn’t just redact my silliness, though! Where I just marked “fiddly bits,” they actually added in all the fiddly bits.

And they kept the most important detail of all (and the thing I was most certain would get me a stern note from my editor about taking things seriously):

For all the fun I had drawing my map, it taught me a lot about my story. I altered a couple of major plot details when I realized that, geographically speaking, the things I’d written were impossible. I came to better understand the scale of the story I was telling, and the scope of the impact my characters would have on the world around them. Drawing the map taught me things about my own book—things I would never have understood without facing down the challenge of the fiddly bits of coastline.

I’m incredibly grateful to Tor.com for having someone other than me put together the final map. Look at how legitimate the real thing is! You can tell that, unlike me, the artist put more time and effort into getting the coastline accurate than they did googling “how to draw a steamboat” and “do steamboats go ‘toot toot’ or ‘honk honk’?” But even with my google- and compass rose-related challenges, I’m glad that my editor pushed me to endure this cartographic ordeal. Without it, I would have been working with an incomplete view of the world I built, and River of Teeth would be weaker for it.

I don’t think I’ll ever be passionate enough about mapmaking to earn myself a flower-crown; but as the saying goes, a strong story is its own flower-crown.

River of Teeth and its sequel, Taste of Marrow are available from Tor.com Publishing—there’s also an omnibus edition, American Hippo.
Originally published in April 2017.

Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. They are a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to their work here. They tweet @gaileyfrey. Their American Hippo novella series—River of Teethand Taste of Marrow—is available from Tor.com, and their upcoming novel Magic For Liars publishes June 2019.

The post Hippos, Worldbuilding, and Amateur Map-Making appeared first on Reactor.

Every year of my life since I can remember, I’ve read at least one hundred books. This year, I’ve managed half of that. I can blame part of that on writing, and I can blame part of it on edits, critiques, and the abject hell that is moving—but if I’m honest, it’s just been a hard year. It’s been a hard year for everyone I know; the world is a hard place to be right now, and the small personal struggles we all face feel unbearably magnified. For so many of us, 2018 has been a year of loss and grief: we’ve lost jobs, pets, friendships, relationships, health, family members, children, and a good measure of hope.

It’s been a hard year, and I haven’t been reading as much as I usually do. When I have been reading, I’ve been gravitating toward books that are kind to their audience, that treat the reader like a partner rather than an adversary.

Here are some of the books that helped me to navigate this impossible year:

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
Elephants, radiation, injustice, rage.

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In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

This novelette is gorgeous, heartbreaking, and completely overwhelming. I read it on a train on my way to the airport, on my way to fly home from a speaking engagement at a college near my hometown. For the duration of that train ride, this book completely absorbed me. The trip to my hometown and the event at the college left me all crumpled up; the prose in The Only Harmless Great Thing left me wrung out, line-dried, and pressed smooth. After I finished reading it, I thought in poems for the rest of the day. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since, and I don’t intend to.

Fortitude Smashed by Taylor Brooke
Love, lust, fate, vulnerability.

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After scientists stumbled across an anomalous human hormone present during moments of emotional intimacy, further research created the ability to harness the direction of living energy and pinpoint when two lines will merge. Personalized chips are now implanted beneath the thumbnails of every infant, where glowing numbers count down to the moment they will meet their soul mate.

Fate is now a calculation.

But loving someone isn’t.

When Shannon Wurther, the youngest detective in Southern California, finds himself face-to-face with Aiden Maar, the reckless art thief Shannon’s precinct has been chasing for months, they are both stunned. Their Camellia Clocks have timed out, and the men are left with a choice—love one another or defy fate.

Very shortly after I heard about Fortitude Smashed, I got into a car accident. I read this book with a heat pack on my neck, between the kinds of phone calls you make in the week or two that follow a wreck. I used chapters of this book as incentives to make myself deal with those logistics, and it worked: Fortitude Smashed is so good that it made calling my insurance company seem worthwhile. The premise is sweet, and the story itself is even sweeter. I love books about people who are trying their best, and about people who want more than anything to understand each other, and about people who are growing the entire time you know them. Brooke delivers all of that here, and it’s perfectly lovely.

Anger Is A Gift by Mark Oshiro
Grief, tenacity, courage, community.

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Anger Is A Gift

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Six years ago, Moss Jefferies’ father was murdered by an Oakland police officer. Along with losing a parent, the media’s vilification of his father and lack of accountability has left Moss with near crippling panic attacks.

Now, in his sophomore year of high school, Moss and his fellow classmates find themselves increasingly treated like criminals by their own school. New rules. Random locker searches. Constant intimidation and Oakland Police Department stationed in their halls. Despite their youth, the students decide to organize and push back against the administration.

When tensions hit a fever pitch and tragedy strikes, Moss must face a difficult choice: give in to fear and hate or realize that anger can actually be a gift.

I read this book in the middle of three weeks of travel: Pennsylvania, New York, Utah, Montana. I was exhausted and gripped by the kind of anxiety that comes from seeing too many people all in a row. That whole time, I hadn’t been able to read or write at all, and I was afraid that I’d forgotten how to do it. Then I read Anger is a Gift, and I remembered how to sink into a story. I remembered why I love to read. I cried on the plane from New York to Utah, immersed in the deep generational grief of Oshiro’s characters. This is a book that welcomes anger and sorrow and hope, all at once, and that doesn’t draw any divisions between which one of those emotions a person is allowed to feel.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson
Anxiety, restlessness, defensiveness, exile.

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We Have Always Lived In The Castle

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Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods—until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiosity and hostility of the villagers. Their days pass in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears. Only Merricat can see the danger, and she must act swiftly to keep Constance from his grasp.

This does not need to be said but I will say it regardless: Shirley Jackson’s prose is unparalleled. We Have Always Lived In The Castle is haunting and lovely and builds to an ending that is, for the point-of-view character, a happy one. This book understands the relationship between fear, self-protection, and isolation. Ultimately, the main characters find the safety they’ve been yearning for, even if they find it in absolute solitude. After a year spent in a new state, grieving lost things, I found We Have Always Lived In The Castle immensely comforting; here is a book that understands the moments in which ‘alone’ is the safest place one can be.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Obsession, depression, understanding, empathy.

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H is for Hawk

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When Helen Macdonald’s father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer—Helen had been captivated by hawks since childhood—she’d never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk’s fierce and feral temperament mirrored her own. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel, and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T.H. White’s chronicle The Goshawk to begin her challenging endeavor. Projecting herself “in the hawk’s wild mind to tame her” tested the limits of Macdonald’s humanity and changed her life.

H is for Hawk lived in my to-read pile for far too long. When I finally read it, there was something oceanic about it, something tidal and irresistible. I had planned to go out and buy myself a glass of champagne to mark the finalization of my divorce, but instead I stayed in with this fundamentally perfect book. This is a memoir wrought in gorgeous prose; even more than that, it’s a study in grief and obsession, and the way a new self can crystallize out of both of those things. H is for Hawk told me that grief is a tunnel you swim through, not a well you dive into. It left me feeling like there was enough air in the room, after all.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Tenacity, cunning, ruthlessness, survival.

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Spinning Silver

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Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders… but her father isn’t a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife’s dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty—until Miryem steps in. Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers’ pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed—and finds herself more than up to the task. When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold.

But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it’s worth—especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand.

I read Spinning Silver while sleeping on a couch in Los Angeles, waiting for everything I owned to arrive. I didn’t have a bed for two weeks, because the moving company sent all of my possessions to a nightmare dimension, but it was alright, because I had this book. Spinning Silver is lush and chilling and completely absorbing. The characters in it are fierce; they’re unwilling to buckle under impossible pressure. They carve themselves a place in the world, they make demands, and even when they’re afraid, they act with immense courage. I could have kept on reading this book forever.

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
Friendship, joy, trust, potential.

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Nimona

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Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren’t the heroes everyone thinks they are.

But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona’s powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.

I read Nimona while sitting in a comfortable chair in my new apartment, with a dog at my feet and loved ones nearby. I read it in one sitting, and then I turned back to the start and I read it again. It is sweet, honest, and heartfelt. Nimona wades through sorrow and loneliness, and it fights injustice and complacency, and it celebrates hope and joy. It’s fun as hell. Ultimately, it doesn’t flinch away from a deep examination of the ways people can hurt each other—and the ways people can recover, even when things seem beyond repair. Nimona is about destroying terrible things, and building beautiful things, and often, the beautiful things the characters build are relationships. I read Nimona, and I looked at the year I’d been through, and I knew that no matter how terrible things had been, there was beauty there, too. And there will be more of that in the year to come.

Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. They are a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to their work here. They tweet @gaileyfrey. Their American Hippo novella series—River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow—is available from Tor.com, and their upcoming novel Magic For Liars publishes June 2019.

The post 7 Books That Helped Me Survive 2018 appeared first on Reactor.

We’re thrilled to share Sarah Gailey’s “Bread and Milk and Salt,” originally published in Robots Vs. Fairies (Saga Press, 2018).

The first time I met the boy, I was a duck.

He was throwing bread to other ducks, although they were proper ducks, stupid and single-minded. He was throwing bread to them on the grass and not looking at the man and the woman who were arguing a few feet away. His hair was fine and there were shadows beneath his eyes and he wore a puffy little jacket that was too heavy for the season, and the tip of his nose was red and his cheeks were wet and I wanted him for myself.

I waddled over to him, picked up a piece of bread in my beak, and did a dance. I was considering luring him away and replacing his heart with a mushroom, and then sending him back to his parents so they could see the rot blossom in him. He laughed at my duck-dance, and I did an improbable cartwheel for him, hoping he would toddle toward me. If I got him close enough to the edge of the duck pond, I could pull him under the water and drown him and weave mosses into his hair.

But he didn’t follow. He stood there, near the still-shouting man and the silent, shivering woman, and he watched me, and he kept throwing bread even as I slid under the surface of the water. I waited, but no little face appeared at the edge of the pond to see where I had gone; no chubby fingers broke the surface tension.

When I poked my head out from under a lily pad, the proper ducks were shoving their beaks into the grass to get the last of the bread, and the man and the boy were gone, and the woman was sitting in the grass with her arms wrapped around her knees and a hollowed-out kind of face. I would have taken her, but there wouldn’t have been any sport in it. She was desperate to be taken, to vanish under the water and breathe deeply until silt settled in the bottoms of her lungs.

Besides. I wanted the boy.

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The next time I met the boy, I was a cat.

To say that I “met” him is perhaps misleading, as it implies that I was not waiting outside of his window. It implies that I had not followed his hollowed-out mother home and waited outside of his window every night for a year. It is perhaps dishonest to say that I “met” the boy that night.

I am perhaps dishonest.

He set a bowl of milk on his windowsill. I still don’t know if he did it because he’d spotted me lurking, or if he did it because he’d heard that milk is a good gift for the faerie folk. Do children still hear those things? It doesn’t matter. I was a cat, a spotted cat with a long tail and bulbous green eyes, and he put out milk for me.

I leapt onto his windowsill next to the precariously-balanced, brimming bowl, and I lapped at the milk while he watched. His eyes were bright and curious, and I considered filling his eye sockets with gold so that his parents would have to chisel through his skull in order to pay off their house.

I peered into his bedroom. There was a narrow bed, rumpled, and there were socks on the floor. A row of jars sat on his desk, each one a prison for a different jewel-bright beetle. They scrabbled at the sides of the glass. The boy followed the direction of my gaze. “That’s my collection,” he whispered.

I watched as one beetle attempted to scale the side of her jar; she overbalanced, toppled onto her back. Her legs waved in the air, searching for purchase and finding none. The boy smiled.

“I like them,” he said. “They’re so cool.”

I looked away from the beetles, staring at the boy in his bedroom with his narrow bed and his socks. I ignored the sounds of beetles crying out for freedom and grass and decaying things and air. They scratched at their glass, and I drank milk, and the boy watched me.

“My name’s Peter,” the boy said. “What’s yours?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I lied, and he did not look surprised that I had spoken.

He reached out tentative fingers to touch my fur. A static spark leapt between us and he started, knocking the bowl of milk over. It clattered, splashed milk as high as his knees. Somewhere deep inside the house, the woman’s voice called out, and the creak of her barefooted tread moved toward his bedroom.

“You have to go,” he whispered, his voice urgent. “Please.”

“Okay,” I said. He stared at me as the rumble came closer. “Good luck, Peter.”

I leapt down into the dark garden as his bedroom door opened and listened to their voices. She spoke to him softly, and he answered in whispers. I didn’t leave until her hand emerged, white as dandelion fluff in the moonlight, and pulled his window shut.

The third time I met the boy, I was a deer.

I’d wandered. I wasn’t made to linger, and it hurt my soul to wait for him. I amused myself elsewhere. I turned into a woman and led a little girl into the woods to find strawberries, and left her there for a day and a night before sending her back with red-stained cheeks and a dress made of lichen. I was a mouse in a cobbler’s house for a month, thinning the soles of every shoe he made until he started using iron nails and I had to leave. As a moth, I whispered into the ear of a banker while he slept, and when he woke, he was holding his wife’s kidney in his clenched fist.

Small diversions.

I was a deer the night I came back for him. White, dappled with brown, to catch his attention. I wanted him to climb out of his window and follow me into the hills. I wanted to plant marigolds in his mouth and sew his eyes shut with thread made from spider’s silk. I wandered up to his window, and it was open, and there was a salt rock there.

Clever boy. He’d been reading up. I licked at the rock with a forked pink tongue.

“Is that what your real tongue looks like?” he murmured from behind me. I jumped. I hadn’t expected to see him outside, and he’d crept up so quietly.

“No,” I said. “It’s just how I like it to look when I’m a deer. When did you get so tall?”

“What do you really look like?” he asked.

I flicked my tongue at the salt rock again. “What do you really look like?” I asked.

Peter cocked his head at me like a crow. “I look like this,” he said, gesturing to himself. I snorted.

“I’ve been waiting for you for so long. Years,” he said. “I almost thought I made you up.” I looked up at him and my eyes iridesced in the moonlight and he stared.

“Come with me,” I said.

“Show me what you’re really like,” he said.

I shoved my wet black deer-nose into his palm. He hesitated, then ran his hand across my head. My fur was as soft as butter that night. He caressed my face, brushed the underside of my chin. I turned my face into his hand and breathed in the smell of his skin, his pulse. I closed my teeth around the pad of flesh at the base of his thumb and sank them in, biting down deep and hard and fast.

“What the fuck—” he cried out, but before he could pull his hand away, I flicked my tongue out and tasted his blood.

“That’s what I’m really like,” I said, my voice low and rough. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and I licked his blood from my muzzle. It burned going down—iron—but it was enough to bind us. He would run from me, but he would never be able to escape me altogether. Not now.

He cradled his hand against his chest.

“I have to go,” he whispered.

I watched him walk inside, and I felt the burning in my belly, and I knew that he was mine.

Every time I came back to the boy Peter, he was a little different. When I was a toad drinking milk out of a saucer in his palm, he had hair on his chin and a pimple on his nose. When I was a dove pecking at breadcrumbs on his bedside table, he was a twitchy, stretched-out thing, eyeing the door and wiping sweat from his palms. When I was a kangaroo-mouse nibbling at rock salt on the hood of his car, he was a weaving drunk in a black suit with tears streaming down his face.

“It’s my house now, you know,” he said as he walked from the car to the front door. “The old bastard’s dead. You can come inside, and you don’t have to hide or anything.” He held the door open, leaning against the frame, staring down at me.

“You don’t have to live there,” I said. “You could come with me. I know a place in the forest where there’s a bed made from soft mosses and a bower made from dew. You could come with me and live there and eat berries that will make you immortal.” His vertebrae would hang from the tree branches like wind chimes, and the caterpillars would string their cocoons from his ribs in the summertime. “Come with me.”

“Tell me what you are.”

“Come with me.”

“Show me what you really look like,” he said.

“Come with me, and I will,” I replied.

He looked at me for a long time, and then he took a step toward me, and I was sure that he was going to follow me. But then he leaned over and vomited onto the front porch of the house that was now his, and then the door slammed in my face, and I was left outside with my salt.

“You can take any form you want, right?”

His fingertip traced patterns in the milk that was spilled across his kitchen counter. I was a huge snake, black with a rainbow sheen across my scales like oil on water.

“I suppose so,” I replied, sliding through a puddle on my belly. I was getting fat and slow on the boy’s bribes. He held his fingers out and passively stroked my back as I slipped past.

“Why aren’t you ever a person?” he asked.

“What kind of a person would I be?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Like . . . a person. A regular person.”

“Like this?” I took the form of his mother, and he flinched. Then I took the form of a woman I’d known once, a woman who had also left out bread and milk and salt. Bright eyes and big curls and a body like honeyed wine. I flicked a forked tongue at him, my deer-tongue, and his answering laugh was strange.

“Yes, like that. Just like that.” He laughed that strange laugh again, and I turned back into a snake. “Why don’t you ever look like yourself?” he asked.

“Why don’t you?” I answered. He rested his hand in my path, and I slid over it. He frowned.

“I do look like myself, though,” he said. “I look like myself all the time.”

“So do I,” I said. He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I’ve been researching you. Did you know that? I’ve been reading, and I know what you are now. I know what you look like.”

“Do you now?” I drawled. His hands were warm under my belly and I was sleepy from the milk and the heat. He moved me, set me down. Paper rasped beneath me.

“You look like that,” he whispered. The page he’d set me upon featured a watercolor of a child with butterfly wings and fat, smiling cheeks. She was sitting on a red and white toadstool.

“Aha,” I said, curling into coils. “Aren’t you clever.”

“You can show me,” he said. “I’m a safe person for you to show. I promise.”

He traced my coils with a fingertip, and I curled them tight-tight-tighter, until I was no bigger than the toadstool in the drawing. But I couldn’t make my snake-self smaller than his fingertip.

“Come inside,” he said.

It had been two years. I had stayed away long enough to forget the reasons I was staying away. My memory is a short one, and he had been putting out bread, and milk, and salt, and the smell of them was so strong, and I was so hungry. And my belly still ached where his blood had seared me.

I was bound. And I am what I am. So I followed.

“I have something to show you,” he said. “It’s the culmination of my work.” He led me into his childhood bedroom—the same desk was there, but instead of jars, it was taken up by a large glass tank and an elaborate maze. I was a chinchilla that day, too big for the maze, the right size for the tank. I perched on his hand and nibbled at a bread crust and looked with noctilucent green eyes.

“Watch,” he said, and he reached into the tank with the hand that wasn’t holding me. When he opened his palm in front of my eyes, a large brown cockroach straddled his life line, its antennae waving.

“You’re still . . . collecting?” I asked, watching the cockroach smell the air. She almost certainly smelled me. Chinchilla-me, and the real me underneath.

“Oh, yes,” he replied. “Well. Yes and no. This is part of my research.”

The cockroach took a tentative step forward. Peter tipped his hand toward the maze, and the roach fell in.

“Watch,” Peter said again, moving me to his shoulder. I looked into his ear—he’d started growing a few hairs in there.

“You’re so strange,” I said, and his cheek plumped as he grinned.

“Watch,” he whispered a final time, so I watched.

He picked up a little cube from the corner of the desk and began twiddling his thumbs over the top of it. As he did, the cockroach spun in a slow, deliberate circle. “Do you see?” he said, and I didn’t see, so he showed me. He slid his thumbs across the top of the cube, and the cockroach navigated the maze with all the speed and accuracy of—

“A robot?” I asked. It was a word I’d heard several times from several people over the years I’d been gone; a word the boy Peter had used when he whispered to me about his secrets and dreams.

“Not quite,” he said, swallowing a laugh.

“I don’t understand.” I finished my bread and licked my fingers clean.

“I installed receivers in her rear brain,” he said. “I can control where she goes.” He turned and looked at me, so close that he was mostly eye. “How many brains do you have?”

I started to jump from his shoulder, but his hand was there in my way. “I’d like to go now,” I said.

“Why? Did I say something wrong?”

His hand was in my way, no matter where I turned. Unless I turned toward his face, and then his mouth loomed close, too close. “I just . . . I need to go,” I said. “Please let me go.”

“Tell me why,” he demanded. “I can’t fix it if I don’t know what I did.”

I turned into the woman, making myself too heavy for his shoulder to support. He fell backwards and I leapt up, standing over him. “You turned that creature into a toy,” I said.

“So what?” he asked, still sitting on the floor, staring up at me with his mouth half open. Staring at my skin. “How is that different from what you do?” I didn’t know how to answer, and he took my silence as an answer. “That’s right,” he said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I’ve been reading. All these years. I know what your kind does. You turn people into toys, don’t you? Why is that better than me steering a stupid bug around?”

I took a step away from him, toward the window. It was closed, but I could open it with my human hands and then jump out of it as a rabbit or a sparrow. “It’s different,” I said. “I don’t turn humans into toys. I just let them do what they already wanted to do. You’re—you don’t even know what you are!” My voice was shaking. I rested a hand on the windowsill and then flinched away as my skin sizzled. I looked down—the sill was an inch-deep with iron shavings.

“What am I, then?” He stood up and moved towards me. “What am I?”

I changed, a different form with every breath. Him as a little boy. Him on the cusp of manhood. Him on the night of his father’s funeral. Him now. “You claim to be you,” I spat. “Just you. But what are you? Are you a fat little boy whose parents don’t love him enough to stop fighting? Or are you a youth who can’t escape home? Or are you a man whose father died before you could make him love you—”

I was still in his shape, speaking with his voice, when he slapped me hard across the mouth, knocking me-him to the floor. My head struck the corner of his desk, rattling the maze and the roach inside of it, and I saw stars, and I lost control.

I lost control.

“Oh my god,” he whispered. I blinked hard and realized my mistake.

I was me.

No disguises, no glamours, no fur or scales or feathers. Just me. Nothing like the little watercolor girl sitting on the toadstool. Wings, yes, but not like a butterfly’s wings at all. More like . . . leaves, I suppose. Like leaves when the beetles have been at them, but beautiful. Fine-veined and translucent and shimmering even in the low light of his house. Strong, supple, quick. Flashing.

I am thankful for the pain that brightened the inside of my head in the moments after I fell, because it dampens the memory. His hand on the back of my neck. His knee at the base of my spine. His fists at the place where my wings met my shoulders.

The noise they made when he tore them off.

I tried to change my shape to protect myself. When I wasn’t in my true form, my wings were hidden, and in that terrible moment when his weight was on top of me and the tearing hadn’t begun I thought that maybe I could escape by shifting. I went back to the woman-shape, because it was what I had most recently been before I was him, and it was all wrong, and it hurt, and my wings hurt—

And then he was laughing.

“I didn’t think,” he said, panting with exertion, “that it would be so easy.”

I screamed.

“They’re beautiful,” he said. He shook my wings—my beautiful, strong wings—and braced a hand on the desk to pull himself to his feet.

I screamed.

“Wow,” he breathed, running his fingertips over the delicate frills at the top of one wing. “Just . . . wow.”

I screamed.

He put my wings into a cabinet with an iron door, and he locked the iron door and wore the iron key around his throat.

The first night, I stayed on the floor of the maze-room, and I screamed.

The second night, I slept. The pain was unbearable. When I woke, I screamed.

The third night, my voice was gone, and I tried to kill him.

“Would you like some clothes?” he asked, his hand gripping my woman-wrist so tightly that I felt the flesh threatening to break. I tried to change—tried to become a mouse, or a viper, or a spider, anything—but I couldn’t. My wings were there—right there in front of him, on the table where he’d been studying them. But they were dead things. I would never get them back, and I’d never again have access to the power within them.

My magic was gone. I couldn’t change myself. The knife I had stolen from his kitchen fell from my hand, clattering to the floor near his feet.

“Death first,” I spat.

“What’s the problem?” he asked. “You were never using your wings anyway. You were always hiding them, pretending to be some kind of animal. Isn’t this what you wanted?”

He tossed me aside and I didn’t fall to the ground, because his bed was there. The cotton of his quilt was so soft against the skin of this woman-body I was stuck in. He stood a few feet away, considering me, and for the first time I wondered what precisely it was that he wanted me for.

“You might fit into some of my mother’s old things, if I still have them around,” he said. He walked out the door without a backwards glance, and I screamed into his pillows. Every time I inhaled, I breathed in the smell of his hair, and I had to scream again to rid myself of it.

I tried so many times, but everything I did was too obvious, and I was too weak. I tried to strangle him in his sleep, but my fingers were made for weaving arteries together into necklaces, and he woke before I interrupted his breath. I tried to poison him with a kiss, but it didn’t work.

“Well,” he said, his lips less than a breath away from mine, “I guess that’s another power you’ve lost.”

“No,” I said, “it’s impossible.”

“I’m not dead, am I?” he asked. He pushed me away, just a few inches, and he smiled. “Looks like you can kiss me all you’d like.”

He stared at my lips while he said it, and I lunged for him with my teeth bared. He shoved me away. “Maybe later,” he called over his shoulder. He walked through the door and locked it behind him, and I was trapped once more.

He didn’t need to lock the door, not strictly speaking. We were bound. Without my magic, I couldn’t have stretched the confines of that binding for more than a day.

I would always have to come back to him.

I slept in his bed. I lived as his wife. I did not enter his lab, with the maze and the cockroach and, from what he told me, the increasingly larger creatures. I did not touch the iron door of the cabinet that held my wings. I ate the bread and the milk and the salt that he brought to me, and I tried to kill him again and again and each time I failed.

He made me new wings out of metal and glass. He brought them to me and said that they’d be better than my old ones—more efficient. He said he’d been working through prototypes, and that these ones were ready for something called “beta testing.” He said the surgery to attach them would only take a day or so. I leapt at him and almost succeeded in clawing his eyes out.

It was nice to see the livid red wounds across his face for the week that followed. They healed slowly.

Not as slowly as the place on my back where my wings had been, of course. That took much longer—my skin was looking for an absent frame of bone and gossamer to hang itself on. The right side was a patchy web of scars by the time two months had passed, but the left bled and wept and oozed pus for another four before I realized the boy’s mistake.

Before I realized my opportunity.

I had taken to staring at myself in the mirror when he was gone. It was an oddity—before my magic was gone, I hadn’t been able to see myself in mirrors. Something to do with the silver in the backing, I’m sure. I had seen my reflection rippling in pools of water, and I had seen it bulbous and distorted in the fear-dilated pupils of thousands of humans—but never in mirrors. Never so flat and cold and perfect.

The day I realized Peter’s mistake, I was looking at my legs in the full-length mirror in his bedroom. My bedroom. He wanted me to call it “ours,” but I didn’t like the way the word felt in my mouth. I did like my woman-legs, although they were too long and too thick and only had the one joint. I liked the fine layer of down that covered them, and I liked the way the ankles could go in all kinds of directions. I liked the way the toes at the ends of my woman-feet could curl up tight like snails, or stretch out wide like pine needles.

I was looking at my woman-legs in the mirror, and I turned around to examine the way the flesh on the thighs dimpled, and my back caught my eye. It all fell together in my mind in an instant.

How could I have been so stupid? But, then again, how would I have known?

I twisted my neck around and reached with my short, single-jointed arms, and I couldn’t reach it. But I could see it in the mirror. The weeping, welted place where my left wing had been, the skin mottled with red. The sore on my shoulder, and the failing scars that attempted to form there.

And then, just a few inches below it: a lump beneath the skin, where a spur of wing remained.

It’s a good thing the woman-body made so much blood.

I didn’t want to go into the lab—I didn’t like the way all the creatures persisted in asking me to help them, didn’t like looking at them in their cages. Didn’t like seeing the sketches of my wings that covered the walls. Didn’t like seeing the attempts he’d made to re-create them with plastic and fiberglass.

But there were tools in the lab, steel tools, and I had the beginnings of a plan.

“Please,” a mouse with a rectangular lump under the skin of its back begged. “Please, it hurts, please.” Its nose twitched and it scrabbled at the sides of its cage like a beetle in a jar.

“I’ll do it if you tell me where he keeps the tools,” I answered.

The mouse stood on my woman-shoulder, the door to its cage hanging open, the voices of its fellows raised in a chorus of pain and fear and desperation. “In there,” it said, pointing its nose toward a tall cupboard with frosted glass doors. I opened the cupboard and saw that the mouse had spoken truly: rows of tools, metal and plastic and sharp and blunted and every one specific. I held the little creature in my hand and his heartbeat fluttered against my palm.

“Those are all the ones he uses when he puts the pain on our backs and makes us fly,” he whispered. “They’ll work for whatever you need. They’re worse than anything.”

“Is it frightening, when he makes you fly?” I asked.

I could feel the leap in his little mouse-chest. “Please,” he said.

“Of course,” I answered. I twisted my woman-wrist and snapped his neck, and his dying breath was a sigh of relief.

I dropped his body to the floor, where he landed with a soft paff. Then I thought better, and I picked him up, returning him to his cage and locking the door. His fellows huddled in the corners, burrowed into sawdust. They stayed far from the stench of his freedom.

I did it in the bathtub. I stopped up the drain so that I would know how much blood I’d lost, and I tied up the shower curtain so that it wouldn’t stain, and I reached behind myself with fists full of tools. A sharp tool, and a long tool, and a tool for grabbing, and a tool for burning. It wasn’t as hard as I had expected it to be—I had enough experience with pulling things out of humans, had nimble enough fingers.

I wouldn’t have expected the pain, but the boy Peter had ripped the other wing out without even using tools at all. So it really wasn’t so bad.

I reached into myself with the tool for grabbing as blood pooled around my feet. It was warm and soft and reminded me of more comfortable times, and I was thankful for it. I grit my teeth as I rooted around, cried out as the tips of the tool for grabbing found the spur. I clenched my fist, and I yelled a guttural, animal yell, and I pulled.

An eruption of white fire. A gout of burning blood spilling over my spine and buttocks. And there, right there in my hand, a two-inch long piece of wing. All that was left. Not bound behind iron, not hidden away in a collection.

Mine.

I wept with pain. I wept with relief. I wept with joy.

I did not let go of the tool, even as I unstopped the drain and ran water and washed myself, letting soap sting the wound in my back. I did not let it go as I dried myself. I did not let it go until it was time to bury it in the earth of the boy Peter’s weedy little flower garden. I had to force my fingers to straighten. I tucked the spur of wing into my cheek, sucking the woman-blood off of it, and buried the tool for grabbing with a whisper of thanks.

Before Peter came home, I walked back into his lab with my piece of wing poking at the soft flesh of my cheek. I opened the door and stood just inside, my hand resting on the doorknob.

Squeaks. Squeaks and chirps and even a high, steady scream from the rabbit.

“What are you saying?” I whispered, my voice wavering around the spur in my mouth. “What do you want?”

The squeaking intensified, rose to a fever pitch, and I smiled as the incomprehensible cacophony crashed over me.

I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

It had worked.

“How’s your back doing?” The boy Peter asked that night as he climbed into his bed. Into my bed.

“Better, I think,” I answered, and my voice was almost normal. I had been practicing all day, learning how to speak around the piece of wing in my mouth.

“Good,” he said. He kissed me on my empty cheek, and then he rolled over and he closed his eyes and his breathing slowed and he was asleep.

He was asleep.

And I was awake.

I waited, waited, waited. I waited until he was deep asleep, so deep that a pinch on the plumpest part of his cheek wouldn’t wake him. And then I swung a leg over his hip, and I settled my weight onto the bones of his pelvis. I felt his hips underneath me and I waited for two breaths. If he woke up, I wouldn’t need to make an excuse. He would assume, and it would be over fast enough, and I could try again another night.

Two breaths.

He didn’t wake.

I toyed with the spur in my cheek. It was sharp at both ends, broad in the middle. Too big to swallow whole. I shifted it with my tongue until it was between my broad, flat-bottomed woman-teeth. I breathed in once, filling my mouth with the smell of old blood and wet bone, and then I bit down.

It tasted like me and like blood. It burned my tongue, and I bit down again and it burned my cheek. I chewed, chewed until it was a fiery paste, and then I swallowed, and I felt it. Underneath the lingering pain of the blood.

I felt the magic.

It flooded me, bright and brief as lightning, and there was so little time that I didn’t even have time to think, and I did it in that moment, and it was perfect.

I changed.

The boy Peter’s eyes flashed open. He looked at me, first through the veil of sleep and then through the veil of terror. I grinned down at him.

“What the fuck?!” He struggled to sit up, but I clenched my new thighs, pinning him. He wriggled, caught, and it wasn’t until I rested a thick-knuckled hand on his chest that he stilled. “What the fuck?” he whispered again.

“Yes, Peter,” I whispered back in my new voice. In his voice. “What the fuck.”

“But—how did you—you’re –“

“Don’t you like it?” I asked. I leaned down until our noses touched, and then I kissed him. He kept his eyes open, panic clenching his pupils. “Oh, come on, Peter,” I said, my lips moving against his so that he would feel his own voice humming across his teeth. “What’s the matter?”

“But—you can’t –“

“You’re right,” I said. “I can’t. Not anymore. That was the last time. That was the last of my magic.” I kissed him again, brushing his Peter-lips with my Peter-tongue, and he flinched violently away.

“Go away,” he said, but his voice was weak and I knew that he knew better.

“Never,” I whispered, and I rolled off of him. As I closed my eyes I smiled, because I knew that he would not sleep that night.

He might never sleep again.

I had never looked into mirrors before the boy Peter ripped my wings off.

Now, every morning was a mirror.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said when he woke to find me perched on my side of the bed.

“Like what?” I asked. “Show me. What does my face look like right now?”

“Stop it,” he said when I climbed into the bathtub alongside him.

“Stop what?” I asked. “What am I doing?”

He hit me once, a closed fist and a slow, weak push of knuckles into my nose. It wouldn’t have hurt, but I leaned into him to make sure. He looked at his hand, and he looked at my face—at his own face—with blood coming out of it, and he whitened.

“I didn’t mean to –“ he started to say, and I wiped at the blood so that it smeared across my face.

“I didn’t mean to punch you,” I said. He bit his lip and I grinned. “I didn’t mean to make your nose bleed,” I continued in his voice, saying it the exact way I’d heard him say a thousand things. “I didn’t mean to hurt you like that. You just made me so mad.” I licked my lip where my blood was dripping, and the burn was worth it. “You made me so mad,” I said, “and I lost control.”

“Stop it,” the boy Peter said, and I laughed, and I kissed him, and when he shoved me away my blood was on his teeth.

He couldn’t look at me, but I wouldn’t let him look away. I would never let him look away. That night, with dried blood still flaking off my lips, I pressed my cheek to his. He flinched and tried to roll over.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered into his ear, my lips stirring his hair that was my hair that was his hair. “You wanted to see my true form, boy. Peter-boy.” He shook a little, maybe crying, and I grinned against his neck. “It’s only fair that you should see yours, too.”

I had not a scrap of magic left in me, it’s true. The boy Peter wept in our bed next to the perfect image of himself, who he could never escape, and from whom he could never look away—and it felt so good. It felt so perfect, to know that he would be constantly faced with the self that he had tried so hard to bury in accomplishments and explanations and excuses. In that moment, as I pressed my lips against his sob-clenched throat, I realized that there are more kinds of magic than the spark that had been stored in my little spur of bone and gossamer. That night he began a slow descent into darkness, and I felt a satisfaction deeper than that of a belly full of bread or a fistful of salt

“Goodnight, Peter,” I said. I let my head fall back onto my pillow, and that night, I slept the dreamless sleep of victory.

“Bread and Milk and Salt” © 2018 by Sarah Gailey
Reprinted from Robots vs. Fairies, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe.

The post Bread and Milk and Salt appeared first on Reactor.

Is the villain the leader who starts the movement? The demagogue who decides to rally the tiny cruelties that live within the hearts of people who think of themselves as good? Is it the person who blows on the embers of hatred until they finally catch and erupt into an all-consuming flame?

Or is it the person who finds themself in a position of power, and chooses not to put the fire out? Is the villain the person who chooses to sit before that fire, warming their hands?

Dolores Umbridge has surely never thought of herself as evil. Evil people never do. They think of themselves as working for the betterment of the world they live in. Dolores Umbridge lives in a world that is populated by all sorts of people—werewolves and merpeople and muggles and wizards.

And she knows in her heart that it would be a better world if some of those people—the lesser people, the less important people—served people like her. Or died. Either one will do. Either way, they must be broken.

It would be a better world, she tells herself, for everyone.

And so she will work tirelessly—her shoulder to the wheel, her nights sleepless—until she has made her world the best world that it can possibly be.

We trust, often, that those in positions of power will use their power more for good than for evil. We trust in our systems: that those who do use power for evil will be removed, punished, pushed out by a common desire for good.

But then, we forget, don’t we? We forget that not everyone agrees on the definition of “good.” We might think of “good” as “everyone equal, everyone friends” while others think of “good” as “those people gone.”

We trust that the kinds of people who disagree with us—the kinds of people who would see those who are different from them dead, or destitute, or deserted—will be removed from positions of power. Because we think that surely they won’t be allowed.

But then we arrive at school one day and we look at the staff roster and there they are, smiling down at us, certain of their purpose.

And at first, we do not feel fear. At first, we rest assured that they will not be allowed to use their power to hurt people.

At first, we are comfortable.

Dolores Umbridge, sitting at her desk late at night, lit only by the light of a single lamp. Everyone else has gone home.

But she is sitting at her desk, drafting groundbreaking legislation. Language that has never been used before. Language that will change the lives of thousands of people. Language that will change the world.

Language that says that anyone who has succumbed to lycanthropy may not hold a full-time job.

Dolores Umbridge, pushing her law through until it passes.

Dolores Umbridge, changing the world.

When do we feel the first shiver of doubt?

Is it when the legislation is drafted that says that Those People won’t be allowed to hold jobs? Is it when the person who drafted that legislation smiles at us in the hall, because we aren’t one of Those People?

Is it when we see fear in the faces of Those People? Is it when we make the decision to look away from that fear, because we aren’t one of Those People?

Is it when we see the person who drafted that legislation take a child into a closed office for discipline? Is it when that child leaves the office with shame written across their face and blood dripping from their clenched fist?

When do we question whether or not the system will work to stop the person in power from doing evil things? When do we begin to doubt that it can?

She attends a trial, and she has her first taste of real power. Real, true power. This isn’t the power commanded by a woman at her desk, by a woman attempting to trade favors to get a suggestion written into law. This is the power of a judge, watching a single person in chains tremble with terror. This is the power of command.

This is the power of fear.

This is a woman finding her calling.

Imagine looking out into a sea of young faces. Children, these—some as young as eleven, some as old as seventeen, but children. All certainly children.

Imagine looking at those faces and knowing that you have the power, in your interactions with those children, to make them feel fear or safety. Imagine knowing that you can teach them to guard themselves—or, you can leave them vulnerable. Imagine looking at those children and thinking, “Some of these, I will allow to die. Some, I will teach to kill.”

Imagine looking into those faces and thinking, “These, I must teach to hate.”

It’s not easy to lead.

Hogwarts has an immense impact on the culture of the wizarding world, no mistake can be made about that. And Dolores Umbridge is given an enormous opportunity—a tremendous one, really—to shape that impact.

And shape it she does.

Everything is going well at first. She’s working hard, banishing curricula that would harm the good and bright and pure future of her world. She’s teaching children discipline, and silence, and the importance of obedience in thought and word and deed. She’s promoted to High Inquisitor, and her grip feels so firm.

But then, damn. It slips, just a little, and that’s all it takes. The children organize, and they rebel. They have the nerve to call themselves an army. Child soldiers, that’s what they are, child soldiers in the war on order. She does what she can to shove them back into the molds she’s made for them, but they keep slipping out from under her, even when she gets Dumbledore out of the way and puts the full weight of her authority behind her efforts to make them obey.

And then, disaster. They succeed. They are victorious.

This, Umbridge learns, is what happens when you let your fist loosen for even a moment. This is the price of mercy.

We trust that the system will stand strong against evil. We hope that it will break before it allows us to bleed.

But sometimes, it doesn’t break. Sometimes, it doesn’t even crack.

Sometimes, it just… bends.

Dolores Umbridge finds herself overwhelmed by an embarrassment of riches. The Hogwarts thing didn’t go so well—she’s still shaking the dust from her shoes on that one. Trying to ignore the jokes about her humiliation, about how she was run out of the school, attacked by centaurs. About how she couldn’t shape their young minds enough to keep them from defeating her. Half-breeds and children.

She’s not going to let that get to her, though, because she’s back at the ministry doing her dream job. Doing important work.

Registering the Muggle-Borns.

Making a list, checking it twice. Making sure everyone who isn’t a pureblood wizard keeps their eyes on the ground. Writing informative pamphlets to make sure that everyone knows the truth—not the factual truth, not always that, but the deeper truth. The truth about how the world is, and about how it should be. The truth about the importance of Umbridge’s work. The truth about the Ministry’s purpose.

Order.

Purity. Above all else, blood-purity.

Dolores Umbridge, changing the world. And she knows she’s right about how to do it, not just because it’s in her heart but because it’s on the nameplate on her desk. She is in charge, asked to do this important work by the Ministry of Magic itself. And why would she be in power, if not because she sees the way that things ought to be, and isn’t afraid to take difficult steps to make it better?

Why wouldn’t she be in power, if not because she is right?

She shaped young minds. She didn’t count on how successful she would be at shaping them.

She taught them how to rebel.

That was her first mistake: every time her grip tightened, they learned a way to slip between her fingers. Every time she put up another wall, they learned to dig a deeper tunnel.

She taught them how to plan, how to organize, how to hide.

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Most important of all: she taught them that evil can stand behind a podium, or can sit behind a large desk with paperwork on it. She taught them that evil can hold a scepter, or a wand, or a teacup. She taught them that evil can look innocuous. She taught them to question the people who look safe, who say that they are safe. Who say that they have your best interests at heart. Who say that they are inevitable, that they are a force for change, that they know best. She taught them that evil can wield institutional authority. She taught them that no evil is too powerful to be defeated.

Because of her, they learned to resist.

Evil is the demagogue at the rally, whipping his followers into a bloodthirsty frenzy.

Evil is the secret meetings, where the password is “purity” and questions are forbidden.

Evil is the ruthless figurehead, hungry for power, blood on her hands.

Evil is the people who look away, who trust, who obey.

Above all, evil is the thing that we fight.

Originally published in November 2016 as part of the Women of Harry Potter series of essays.

Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. They are a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to their work here. They tweet @gaileyfrey. Their debut novella, River of Teeth, and its sequel Taste of Marrow, are available from Tor.com.

The post Evil in a Teacup: Fighting the Institutional Authority of Dolores Umbridge appeared first on Reactor.

(Oh, did you think Jan de Bont was safe from this essay series? Did you think I wouldn’t come after the director of Speed 2: Cruise Control? Did you think that just because he also directed Speed 1: It’s Actually Just Called Speed, I wouldn’t force a too-small hand-knit sweater of literary analysis over the narrow shoulders of one of his summer blockbusters? Welcome to Hell, where the essays are long and the tornadoes are feminists. The only way out is through. Let’s do this. Twister.)

Twister opens with a classic horror movie trope: the scary basement. The Thornton family (mom, dad, 5-year-old Jo, and Toby the Very Brave Dog) go down into a storm cellar to flee the great roaring beast that is the F5 tornado. Pa Thornton engages with heteronormative standards of patriarchal responsibility by trying to hold the cellar door shut against the monster—but his mortal arms shockingly fail to outclass a tornado that will later be described as “the finger of god,” and he disappears into the sky. Toby becomes the man of the house. Jo Thornton is traumatized so deeply by the loss of her father that she develops an obsession with monster-hunting.

32-year-old Jo (Helen “Laura Dern” Hunt) is the matriarch of a band of storm-chasers. She’s loud, dominant, smart, resourceful, and separated from her husband, Bill Harding (Bill “Bill Paxton” Paxton). Bill shows up just before Jo and her weather weirdos head into the field to lasso themselves a real live tornado. Bill is hoping to finalize his divorce from Jo so that he can pursue a life of upper-middle-class domesticity with his fiancee, Melissa (Jami Gertz). His efforts are temporarily derailed when Jo reveals that she has given birth to the large metal child she and Bill designed together: Dorothy, a tool designed to collect data on the formation and behavior of tornadoes. Bill and Jo coo over Dorothy, temporarily abandoning Melissa.

Melissa is distinctly not a weirdo; she’s nice. Her hair is nice, her clothes are nice, her smile is nice. As a reproductive therapist, Melissa is heavily invested in the nuclear family structure; her life is dedicated to helping married couples make babies. This, perhaps, explains why she displays such profound discomfort at the attempts of the storm-chasers to fold her into their found family.

Melissa’s struggle with the storm-chasers is central to her identity. Dusty Davis (Philip Seymour “holy shit that’s Philip Seymour Hoffman” Hoffman) literally holds her hand as he gives her food, water, and a concise explanation of the world she’s entering—and her unease grows more apparent with every moment. She’s not uncomfortable with the food (steak, eggs, coffee, mashed potatoes with gravy, none of which should be unfamiliar to her). She’s also not uncomfortable with the influx of information—as a doctor, she’s certainly intelligent enough to cope with the pared-down meteorology-for-dummies download Dusty offers her. It isn’t even Dusty’s description of the deadly vortex at the foot of a tornado; Melissa is a reproductive therapist and it surely takes more than the phrase “suck zone” to throw her off-balance. No, Melissa’s discomfort is with the relationships themselves: she is being offered familial care by strangers. She views this care with suspicion and, in some instances, very real fear. This is not the kind of family unit she understands.

This is the kind of family unit that can survive tornadoes.

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This is the kind of family unit that is not threatened by the monster—the kind of family unit in which everyone takes up the slack where they see it, where no one person is in charge of holding the cellar door shut. In this family, everyone works together and cares for each other. Each person’s function is defined according to their strengths, rather than according to their roles within a contemporary social definition of what an American family should look like. Sometimes Jo drives, and sometimes Bill drives, and their baby is a grant-funded tool of climate science.

This is the future tornadoes want.

Melissa finally takes her exit from this mutually-supportive hellscape at a drive-in theatre, after the monster that is an F4 disrupts the movie-theatre-makeouts of countless concupiscent teens. The tornado talks through the last act of The Shining (you know, the part where Shelley Duvall endures the destruction of her nuclear family at the hands of an unstoppable force). Melissa watches as Jo triages a head wound in the middle of a goddamn tornado, and decides she’s had enough: She won’t build a life with Bill, after all. The tornadoes have won, and Melissa’s vision of domesticity and family is defeated.

But monster is not yet sated. It still has a bone to pick with heteronormative family values, and it heads directly for Aunt Meg.

Jo may act as a matriarchal leader to her flock of weirdos, but Aunt Meg (Lois Smith) is the closest thing the storm-chasers have to a mother. Late in the first act of the film, Meg welcomes this strange band of lost children into her home with all the readiness of the soccer mom in a commercial for Pizza Bagels. (Note: I’ve been advised that ‘Pizza Bagels’ could be lower-case, but I respect the institution of Pizza Bagels enough to capitalize their name and I’ll stand by that.) She makes food and encourages camaraderie and cares for wounds and attends to needs.

Aunt Meg is a maternal nurturer par excellence. For this reason, the monster that is the F4 tornado cannot abide her. It descends upon Meg without warning, destroying her home and nearly killing her. The storm-chasers manage to save her, getting her to safety just before her house—the very symbol of her role as a domestic sanctuary—folds in on itself.

Aunt Meg thus becomes a displaced homemaker. The nomadic family that is Jo’s crew cares for Meg in her moment of trauma, and the viewer is not left with any doubt of the further care they’ll offer her—because in this kind of a family, one’s value is not based on one’s ability to perform a prescribed role. Aunt Meg will no longer be able to open her home to host this brood of wayward researchers, but because she is not defined by her ability to serve and nurture them, she is not failing in her responsibility to the group. They value her intrinsically, and will ensure her ongoing welfare. Thus, a final vestige of heteronormative, patriarchal family structure has been destroyed—Meg will live on in a new, mutually-supportive dynamic.

Victory: Tornado.

If at this point the viewer retains even a shadow of a doubt that the tornadoes are here to undermine the concept of the modern-traditional American family household, Jan de Bont has a lampshade handy. He hangs it on a scene in which Jo and Bill drive their tornado-chasing truck through a house, vividly destroying yet another haven of doily-clad nuclear-family-values with their rugged science buggy on their way to Do Science as an egalitarian team.

They wind up on a farm, fleeing an F5—truly, the megashark of tornadoes. It’s big and it’s pissed off and it’s got a lust for the destruction of heteronormativity. Bill and Jo’s relationship has been spending the entire movie angling toward a romantic dynamic: the tornado smells blood in the water. It pursues them relentlessly.

Bill and Jo flee, passing through the barn from Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Barnyard Pals before finding a safe shed. They tie themselves to a utility pipe, because, you know, any pipe in a storm. They somehow manage not to have their eardrums exploded by the howling demon that passes over them; the tornado lifts them bodily from the ground, but they cling to the earth and each other, and they survive. They kiss, promising the viewer that they’ve lived through this attack on heteronormativity and survived to tell the tale. Maybe it’ll all be okay, the viewer is allowed to think. Maybe they’ll settle down, start a research lab, renew their vows, have a non-metal baby, and show the tornadoes who has really won the day.

But then, like a hand shooting up from the loose earth of a fresh-turned grave, Jo looks into Bill’s eyes and announces that she’ll be running the lab. The horror isn’t over — the monster has won. The only home left standing is full of knives; the only family that has survived this day unscathed is the one Jo has built. Heteronormative family structures are over, destroyed by antipatriarchal tornadoes.

Vincent Price laughs as the credits roll.

A final note: Twister is Jurassic Park AU fanfic. I’ll die on this hill, see if I don’t. They’re both Michael Crichton projects brought to life at the benevolent mercy of Industrial Light & Magic. Sam Neill and Bill Paxton are the same fucking guy, and if you can tell me the difference between Laura Dern and Helen Hunt without looking one of them up, I’ll eat a mail crate’s worth of ball-peen hammers. Dusty Davis is what you get if you hit Tim Murphy with a growth ray and give him a quarter of a quaalude twenty minutes before you let him out of the house. Cary Elwes doesn’t bring the well-oiled screen presence of Jeff Goldblum, but he does his best and that’s all any of us can ask from anyone. “What if Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant were storm chasers?” Michael Crichton asked the wide-ruled pages of his padlocked Lisa Frank diary, and Twister was the result. The only thing left to say to that is ‘thank you.’

Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. They are a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to their work here. They tweet @gaileyfrey. Their debut novella, River of Teeth, and its sequel Taste of Marrow, are available from Tor.com.

The post The Future Tornadoes Want: Twister appeared first on Reactor.

(There’s a lot of material here, reader. I’m dismayed to inform you that, despite what many literary wanks would like to tell you about the shallow nature of genre cinema, Armageddon is embarrassingly ripe for analysis. Let’s drill down (sorry) to the bottom of the longest montage ever made. Here we go. Armageddon.)

Armageddon is a film composed of two neatly dovetailed love letters to toxic patriarchs. Neither can be called the primary narrative, any more than one of the four cold-opens of the picture can be called a ‘beginning.’ Grace Stamper (Liv Tyler) learns to appreciate her abusive father, Harry (Bruce Willis); her story unfurls in unwavering parallel to the story of the American military industrial complex saving the whole world. Well, the whole world except for Paris. Sorry, Paris.

Armageddon desperately wants the viewer to see Harry Stamper as the hero of the story, because in this parable of international diplomacy, Harry Stamper embodies America. All he wants to do is drill for oil, isolate his daughter from any support networks outside of the ones over which he has direct control, and kill any man who tries to form a meaningful peer relationship with her. In the scene which introduces the dynamic between Grace and her father—a scene in which he repeatedly fires a shotgun at her boyfriend, A.J. (Ben Affleck)—Harry asserts that he has repeatedly asked Grace to call him “Dad.” The camera lingers on his soulful eyes, and the viewer is reminded that he is Sympathetic. He wants what’s best for his daughter, the camera explains. It just happens that what’s best for her is the complete sublimation of her personal agency. Is that so much to ask?

Meanwhile, in Outer Space Problems, an asteroid is headed toward Earth. The asteroid is comparable in size to several different countries that America has bombed, but it is described as Texan, lest we forget who is most important in this film. Life as we know it will be destroyed if the asteroid is allowed to fulfill its diabolical plan to smack Earth real good.

America must save the day.

The answer, of course, is nuclear. The asteroid threat justifies the existence of the American Military Industrial Complex the way nothing else ever could. “Thank goodness we have nuclear bombs,” shouts Michael Bay over the half-eaten remains of a Thanksgiving dinner you wish you had found an excuse to miss, “because what if there was an asteroid?!”

Because this movie is science fiction, NASA is well-funded enough to save the day. The United States Government is competent and useful, the movie tells us, and so NASA and the military work together seamlessly to train Harry Stamper’s team of oil rig roughnecks. This demonstration of American ingenuity harmonizes with the film’s attempt to convince the viewer that Stamper is smart and useful—that his overt displays of hypermasculine aggression are important facets of his unique leadership style. Just as America needs to maintain a large munitions stockpile in order to free the world from the asteroid menace, Harry Stamper needs to shout a lot in order to push his rag-tag team of ne’er-do-wells to feats of heroism. It’s just necessary.

Midway through the endless training montage that makes up the second act of this film, poor purehearted Steve Buscemi utters the line “in part, we all feel like a bunch of daddies here.” (I am here compelled to note that Buscemi was lured to this film with the false promise that his character, Rockhound, would not be a vaguely pedophilic dirtbag). In these eleven words, Rockhound efficiently summarizes the primary thesis of the film. Most explicitly, he highlights the social isolation to which Grace has been subject throughout her life. She was raised on an oil rig among men who work for her possessive, overbearing father; she lacks a community of peers, because the men who have helped raise her all see themselves as father figures. The sole exception to this rule is, of course, Ben Affleck — the Ferdinand to her Miranda, the only nonpaternal figure in her life, with whom she has fallen in love.

But that’s not all Rockhound is getting at. The phrase “we all feel like a bunch of daddies here” is rich with nuance. Rockhound is, per the film’s insistence, a supergenius; we know this because he solves a Rubik’s cube, like, real fast. Thus, it only makes sense that his words would carry layers of intention that run beyond “please stop trying to lock your adult daughter in an oil-rig tower.” He’s telling Harry Stamper to chill out for God’s sake, yes—but he is also speaking to the deeper importance of the work that the oil-riggers-cum-astronauts are carrying out. They are become daddies to the world, protective fathers who will sacrifice their lives should the need arise. They are protective patriots, serving their country and, by extension, enabling their country to serve the globe. Per that complementarian model of patriarchal duty, all the America they represent asks in return for their sacrifice is the willing submission of the world it’s leading.

(If ever you should doubt my devotion to you, reader, please remember that I have now performed for your enjoyment a deep dive on the phrase “we all feel like a bunch of daddies.” The lord is tallying my sins and the weight of my soul grows with every passing hour, etc.)

As anyone who has studied narrative is aware, the Training Montage portion of the film must give way to the Space Explosions section. This movement could easily have slipped into an accidental indictment of the tightly-controlled Dad’s-in-charge reality of Grace Stamper’s life. As the oil riggers destroy a Russian space station and jump ravines in low-to-moderate gravity, the viewer is treated to several intercut shots of Grace languishing at Mission Control, draped across tables and waiting for her daddies to return from the sea of space. When she’s asked why she hasn’t left Mission Control to go somewhere more comforting, she chokes out the truest line of the film: “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

If not for the expert craftsmanship of the Father Knows Best theme of the film, this scene would read as a condemnation of the abusive isolation of women by dangerously controlling patriarchs. Fear not; the viewer is at no risk of such an apprehension. As often as one sees Liv Tyler gazing woefully into the middle distance, one is also treated to shots of the world watching America’s attempt to save the day. In parallel with an achingly Rockwellian representation of the America We Need To Protect—pickup trucks and barbershops and churches—eyes across the globe are on the Space Dads. In case this montage of global desperation for successful American intervention isn’t convincing enough, the viewer is treated to the following newscaster exposition:

“While the consciousness of the planet is unified, focused on the NASA mission taking place right now in the vast ocean of space, we’re now in the final hours of the mission as the Freedom and Independence prepare to slingshot around the moon.”

The international focus on America’s heroism is reflected in miniature by a small family, composed of a mother and her young son. These two characters are given a subplot that is coherent only if one recognizes the thesis of the film as “Dads! Forgive them!” The boy is the child of one of the hero oil-riggers, Chick (Will Patton). Chick breaks a court order in an attempt to give the boy a space shuttle toy before the big mission. The mother tells her son that the man with the space shuttle toy is just a salesman—but when the boy recognizes that salesman as one of the heroes who has gone to space to save the world, she decides to tell him the truth. “That man’s not a salesman,” she says, in a move that certainly won’t psychologically scar the boy for years to come. “That’s your daddy.”

The boy learns the identity of his father; simultaneously, the President of the United States of America delivers a global address. He tells the world that “all of our combined modern technologies and imaginations—even the wars that we’ve fought—have provided us the tools to wage this terrible battle.” Speaking to countries that the United States has bombed, economically disenfranchised, sabotaged, and colonized, the President says: wasn’t it all worth it, since you’re not going to die from the impact of a huge fucking asteroid?

That country’s not an international aggressor, the President explains. That’s your daddy.

At the end of the film, America succeeds. Grace Stamper shares a tearful, oddly high-res farewell with her hero father, telling him that “everything good that I have inside of me, I have from you,” a statement that is backed up by zero evidence presented throughout the film. The asteroid gets blown up. Everyone is saved, except Paris. Sorry, Paris. All the nations of the world rejoice, because America the hero-Dad came through.

It’s all worth it, Armageddon tells us, as the credits roll over sepia-toned photos of Grace and A.J’s wedding-slash-astronaut-memorial. All those times your father shouted at you, manipulated your elections, disobeyed the restraining order, turned away your refugees, tried to shoot your boyfriend, bombed your civilians—it was all worth it, because he saved you. Be thankful for the dad you’ve got, the movie insists. He just might die a hero.

A final point of order: The animal cracker scene. There’s no getting around it. Why? Why does it exist? To convince us that Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck are engaging in heterosexual mating rituals, so we should root for their relationship? As a justification for an Aerosmith song? To make us feel ambivalent about whether we should let an asteroid deliver us into the sweet release of the abyss? Life is a rich tapestry of mysteries and horrors, and some things defy explanation. People wrote, storyboarded, lit, framed, costumed, directed, edited, and approved that scene, and they did it on purpose. All is chaos. No matter how many daddies we send into the void of space, we will never be delivered from this particular vector of suffering.

Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. They are a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to their work here. They tweet @gaileyfrey. Their debut novella, River of Teeth, and its sequel Taste of Marrow, are available from Tor.com.

The post Space Dads for America: Armageddon appeared first on Reactor.

I mean, one could make that argument. Look, reader, I’ll be honest with you: I spend a lot of time fielding the opinions of people who think that genre media and pop culture can’t sustain deep analysis, and I’m feeling very salty about it. People love to corner me at social and professional events to explain why genre fiction just doesn’t merit the kind of thought that real literature deserves. The people who do this seem unaware that a dedicated enough individual could write a thesis on the latent symbolism in a fistful of room-temperature ham salad. So this is my answer to those people: a series of essays focusing on needlessly in-depth literary analysis of a few selected modern classics of genre cinema. You think it’s impossible to find depth of meaning in popular media? Well strap in, kids. We’re riding this little red wagon directly to Hell, and we’re starting with Zemeckis.

Through the character of Dr. Ernest Menville, Zemeckis presents the viewer with a vision of Adam rattling the locked gates of Eden. Menville is introduced to the viewer as a man with a truly winning penchant for the color beige. He has all the personality of a packet of silica gel: bland, unobtrusive, deeply thirsty. He’s simultaneously desperate for affirmation and terrified of being noticed (it’s, like, duality, man…). As suits someone with this specific species of internal conflict, Menville has developed a career in lieu of a personality. He’s a celebrated plastic surgeon, one of the best in a business that thrives on vanity, beauty, and hubristic control over the human form. In his attempts to conquer the limitations of science—a theme that is italicized, underlined, and circled in red pen by the film’s repeated references to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—Menville seeks to emulate God-as-Creator. He’s a kid wearing his dad’s suit to the dinner table, using oversized vocabulary words in hopes of earning eye contact from a father who will never truly approve of him.

Unfortunately for Ernest Menville, the God of Death Becomes Her went out for cigarettes a few days ago and isn’t checking his pager. Naturally it follows that when actress Madeline Ashton (as portrayed by Meryl Streep) offers Menville an instant of affirmation, he comes running. He abandons his fiancée, Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn, who does a swell job in Act One of convincing us that her character isn’t as stunning as Goldie Fucking Hawn). The depth of his insecurity makes him a breathtakingly easy mark for Ashton’s predation.

Over the course of this first act of the film, Madeline Ashton and Helen Sharp are established as a Greek Chorus. Their actions direct the viewer’s focus: both characters view Menville with simultaneous desire and disdain. The desire is purely covetous: he is an avatar of triumph. Menville becomes a trophy; caught between the two women, he suffers the fallout of their competition without ever understanding that he’s merely a prize, not a person.

Thus, Ashton’s flirtation is her finishing move, delivered solely to exploit Menville’s weakness—a narrative maneuver which dovetails neatly with the film’s aniconic rebuke of vanity. The text of the film preaches that we mustn’t demean crosses by applying gold leaf to them; by folding like a discount lawn chair at the first sign of attention from a lovely film star, Menville plays out a tidy parable of moral failure. He winds up in a hateful, broken marriage, sexually rejected and intellectually stagnant, finding comfort only in the loving embrace of alcohol. Such, the film posits, are the wages of using betrayal to medicate insecurity.

Who, then, can be surprised at Menville’s reaction to the apparent miracle of his wife’s undeath? When she’s diagnosed as immortal following his inept attempt to murder her, Menville shifts with rapturous precision: from panic, to acceptance, to a deeply misplaced sense of fulfillment. Ernest’s analysis of Ashton’s semi-resurrection is as follows:

“You’re a sign. You’re an omen, a burning bush! […] We’re being told that we belong together. And I’m being called. I’m being challenged. Don’t you see, Madeline? It’s a miracle!”

The entire thesis of Menville’s character is thus delivered, in a scene in which he ignores the trauma his wife has endured. The fact that she was sealed into a body bag and shunted to the morgue is secondary—a signpost only. What Madeline has been through is itself unimportant; what matters is that God the Absentee Father has finally sent Ernest a birthday card. With the volume all the way up, one can just make out Zemeckis’ Hestonian howl in the background of this scene: Vanity! Rank vanity!

For truly, what can be more vain than Menville’s insistence that he’s been singled out as God’s Special Smartest Boy? In this moment, the viewer cannot help but recall the scene in which Madeline accomplishes immortality—a scene that prominently features not a burning bush, but a checkbook. In such a context, Menville’s invocation of a barefoot Moses reads as straw-grasping folly. It’s the kind of pathetic that merits a marrow-deep “yikes.”

These scenes serve as a marvelous framing for Ernest’s moment of truth: the scene in which the jilted Helen Sharp survives a shotgun blast to the midsection (then rises, perforated, to be pissed off about it) is more than just an opportunity for Industrial Light and Magic to twirl their batons. That moment is the Icarian fall from altitude that must follow such a vainglorious pronouncement as “I, Ernest Menville, proud bearer of this truly heinous moustache, have been called by God.” Ernest realizes that his wife’s miraculous semi-resurrection isn’t unique; it’s made suddenly and undeniably clear to him that he isn’t special or worthy. God isn’t coming home for Ernest’s birthday party after all, and he’s forced at last to reckon with his own scorching mediocrity.

The remainder of the film focuses on Ernest’s attempts to escape his ex-fiancée, his wife, and the leader of the immortality cult (as played by a young, mostly-nude Isabella Rossellini, to whom we shall return shortly). He flees as though he is being passionately pursued—a delusion borne of his ardent wish for anyone in the world to find him important. His flight leads him to a climactic confrontation on a rooftop in which he unfurls the full and glorious peacock-tail of his vanity. In this moment, Menville rejects eternal life—and in so doing, the opportunity to survive what appears to be a fatal fall—solely to spite Ashton and Sharp. “You’re on your own,” he announces, as though he is indispensable. Perhaps in that moment, he believes such a thing to be true.

Although this instant of rebellion may seem to transcend the base vanity indicted by the primary plot of the film, the end of the movie delivers a tragic Neitzchean blow to Menville’s journey. He survives his fall, crashing through a stained-glass reproduction of The Creation of Adam in a lovely bit of “this will need to go in the essay” symbolism. The remainder of his days are summarized in the final scene of the film, in which the viewer gets to hear the epilogue of Ernest’s life as narrated by his eulogist.

Ernest, the priest insists in an efficient rejection of Calvinist ethics, attained eternal life through his works on Earth. He founded some charitable causes, and he started a family, and he joined A.A., which is totally something that’s appropriate to disclose to the mourners at someone’s funeral. He had children and grandchildren, and he had a community, and he started hiking, and—the priest asks—isn’t all of that the truest form of immortality?

Zemeckis’ framing of this scene answers that question for the viewer. The pews at the funeral are about one-quarter full—a poorer turnout than the nightmarishly bad play that opens the movie. Throughout the scene, the immortal Greek Chorus formed by Helen Sharp and Madeline Ashton heckle the proceedings. The two of them may be corporeally unsound, but at least they’re alive; Ernest Menville is dead. He continued his quest for attention and validation, turning to community and family instead of the two women least likely to ever truly love and respect him. But in the end, regardless of the words of the man in the white collar, Ernest’s life is anything but eternal. Maintain hope or abandon it, Zemeckis posits in this film—it doesn’t matter either way. Ultimately, man’s search for the palpable approval of a patriarchal God is a futile one.

A final (and important) point: as mentioned above, a young Isabella Rossellini plays a supporting role in this film as the serpentine, glamorous, mostly-nude purveyor of an immortality potion. I am led to understand that she used a body double, but it doesn’t really matter if that’s Isabella Rossellini’s real butt or not. She’s awesome. Something something temptation at the foot of the tree of knowledge of good and evil versus temptation at the foot of the tree of life. Seriously, she’s naked for like 90% of her screentime if you don’t count big necklaces, and she’s over-the-top evil for 95% of her screentime, and she’s Isabella Fucking Rossellini for 100% of her screentime.

Regardless of our mortal striving, not one of us is worthy of that.

Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. They are a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to their work here. They tweet @gaileyfrey. Their debut novella, River of Teeth, and its sequel Taste of Marrow, are available from Tor.com.

The post Vanity, Patriarchy, and Futility: Death Becomes Her appeared first on Reactor.

Winslow’s Problem

Winslow Remington Houndstooth had a problem.

The problem was Ruby.

She wouldn’t get up. She was lying there with her head in the mud and making the most piteous noises Houndstooth had ever heard, and she simply wouldn’t stand.

This was an especially bad problem for three reasons.

Reason One.

Ruby was a hippopotamus, and when a hippopotamus doesn’t want to get up, there is not a soul alive or dead in the great green state of Georgia who can make her get up. Winslow Remington Houndstooth, by his own account (and perhaps one or two others), was the greatest hopper in the South or anywhere else. But not even he could make a hippopotamus get up and go without her express permission.

Reason Two.

Houndstooth was not a hippopotamus, and therefore he was not equipped to run faster and farther than the men who would soon be chasing him. He was a very fit man—any number of conquests scattered in his wake could have attested to that—but he was not fit enough to run fast and far while carrying a Bellerman High-Quality No-Lock Ultrafine Safe’s worth of gold ingots in a large sack over his shoulder.

Reason Three.

Ruby didn’t care about reasons.

The hippo looked at Houndstooth with one doleful eye. She was hip-deep in the wallow outside Barley McMorrow’s mansion. Her head rested on the edge of the wallow, and she wouldn’t budge. She usually responded to his presence by heaving herself upright, and if that didn’t work, the phrase “let’s go” was always more than enough to get her going—but not this time. She’d been put and she intended to stay that way.

“C’mon, Roo,” Houndstooth murmured, stroking her nose with one blood-spattered hand. “Get up for me. We have to go.”

Ruby didn’t shift.

“Ruby,” Houndstooth repeated, giving the hippo a sharp tap between the nostrils. “We’ve got to go.”

Ruby didn’t blink.

“Bloody stubborn—move!” Houndstooth shouted into Ruby’s face as loudly as he dared.

Ruby did not care for shouting.

In response, she opened her mouth and let out what was, for her, a soft groan. The bellow roused the attention of the sleeping guard on the front porch of McMorrow’s mansion.

“Hello down there,” the guard shouted, taking a few steps toward the wallow. “Help you?”

Houndstooth glared at Ruby. “We’re just fine,” he called up casually, trying to spread some Georgia over his Blackpool accent. “My girl here took a fancy to y’all’s waller, and I can’t make ’er git.”

The guard hesitated, staring at the two of them. Houndstooth cursed himself—his accents were never accurate, and he was certain that he’d put too much Tennessee into his voice.

“Is that a Cambridge Black?”

“Fuck me twice in a row,” Houndstooth spat under his breath. Then, a little louder: “Oh, no, of course not—she’s just got into that there dark clay, is all. Real slob, this’n.” There, he thought, that’s a better accent.

But the guard came closer, stepping down onto the broad green lawn that stretched between Ruby’s wallow and the mansion. “I’m nearly sure—I saw a Cambridge Black when I was just a pup, and she looks just like one! I thought they all died when that fire—”

Houndstooth didn’t listen any further than that. He didn’t need to.

He’d been made.

“Ruby,” he whispered, “you need to get up now, love, or we’ll both be lake bacon.” With one hand, he loosed the leather straps that sheathed his two best knives; with the other, he tightened his grip on the sack of gold. Ruby gave him another grumble, her mouth gaping. Houndstooth dropped his sack into her saddlebag, the sound of ten thousand dollars in gold making a satisfying thud against the leather. He used his free hand to press on Ruby’s nose, trying to make her close her mouth. “You’r’nt gonna want to come too much closer, now,” he drawled loudly at the approaching guard. “She done went and got herself a bad case of hop-mites.”

There was a noise from inside—shouts. Damn, Houndstooth thought, they’ve found the bodies. He thought he’d hidden them better than that, but he couldn’t have accounted for all the blood trails.

The guard hesitated. “Where are you from, friend?” he asked, and Houndstooth laughed.

“Oh, here and there,” he said. He laughed again, trying to cover the growing shouts of alarm coming from inside of the mansion—but the guard went very still. As Houndstooth watched, the man’s gaze turned from him to Ruby, and back again.

Then, the guard turned tail and ran back up to the house, kicking up divots of grass behind him.

Ah, Shit

“You gull-blighted beast,” Houndstooth hissed at Ruby. “Get up, we have to go, now!” There was no question, none at all, that the guard had figured out who he was looking at. Winslow Remington Houndstooth, creator of the best and rarest breed of hippo in the United States of America, notorious outlaw, handsomest heartbreaker in the American South—

Ruby bellowed, opening her jaws to their full 180-degree breadth.

She left her mouth open wide.

Houndstooth reached up to try to grab her nose and yank it down, but she pulled her entire head up at the last second and his hand landed on one of her long, curving lower tusks. She bellowed again, and this time, Houndstooth looked.

“Oh, no,” he said softly. “Oh, Ruby, no.”

Ruby’s Dentition

Ruby had a lot of teeth.

Being a Cambridge Black meant that she was different from other hippos in many ways. She was sleek—not thin by any stretch of the imagination, but more bullet-shaped than her peers. She was black as night, black as ink, black as a shadow. She was quiet when she wanted to be. She was faster than a secret spreading through a church picnic.

But her teeth were hippo teeth, plain and simple. She had the requisite number of molars to back up her bite, which was more than strong enough to turn a man’s femur to pulp. She had eight incisors, two long and two short on the top and bottom of her mouth. The long ones jutted forward like extended swords: her fighting incisors.

All of these were in excellent condition. Houndstooth, like any hopper worth his resin, brushed and polished all of Ruby’s ivory once a week whether she needed it or not. Her teeth gleamed white in the Atlanta sun, immaculate. Perfect.

Except for two.

Her tusks—the long, curving sabers that arced up out of her lower jaw to boldly dare anyone, man or bull, to come near her with anything less than an attitude of worship—were cracked.

“Ruby, no,” Houndstooth repeated, gingerly running his hands along her lower tusks. A meandering gray line ran up the length of each one. “How did this happen?”

Ruby slowly, finally closed her mouth. She looked at Houndstooth and flipped an ear back and forth.

“Okay,” Houndstooth said. “Okay, I see. I know it hurts, Roo.” He stroked her nose as gently as he could. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the doors of McMorrow’s mansion fly open. Men flew down the steps of the veranda and onto the lawn, drawing pistols to aim at Ruby and Houndstooth. “Roo, love, if you can just manage for one more day,” he cooed into her ear. “Just one more day, and I’ll take you to see Dr. Bantou. We’ll get you fixed up, sweet.”

Ruby sighed heavily. Then, the enormous midnight bulk of her shifted, and she began to rise.

Houndstooth reached up as she was standing, wrapping his hand around the pommel of the kneeling saddle that was strapped to her back by a harness of mesh and webbing. He held his gray Stetson onto his head with his free hand and flung himself up into the saddle. The moment his knees met leather, he whipped his hat off and used it to slap Ruby’s behind with just enough force for her to flick her tail at him. She took off like a cannonball, and before McMorrow’s men could get a shot fired, Ruby and Houndstooth had disappeared into the waters of the Peachtree Lagoon.

Ruby’s Romance

Ruby loved Dr. Bantou with a passion, and Dr. Bantou loved her right back.

Houndstooth and the doctor had a slightly different relationship.

“Mite-bitten huckster,” Houndstooth muttered under his breath.

“What has this cruel, neglectful man been doing to you?” Dr. Bantou crooned into Ruby’s open mouth. He tucked a large, glistening bunch of grapes into Ruby’s cheek as he gripped each of her molars in turn, looking for a loose tooth to yell at Houndstooth about.

Houndstooth drew himself up with a lofty indignance that would have made his mother deeply proud. “I have been doing precisely what you told me to do the last time you extorted me for a fortune,” he sniffed. “Anything that’s wrong with her is your fault, I shouldn’t doubt.”

Dr. Bantou showed absolutely no sign of having heard a word Houndstooth said. He squeezed a melon slice over Ruby’s gullet, then ran his juice-soaked hands over her gums and tongue. “And I’ll wager he hasn’t been feeding you enough, either,” Dr. Bantou said conspiratorially. Ruby made a pleased noise in the back of her vast throat, and Dr. Bantou chuckled, dropping a pomelo onto her tongue. He withdrew himself from within biting distance and patted Ruby’s nose. She immediately dropped her teeth shut with a snap, sending various fruit juices spattering across Dr. Bantou’s long leather apron.

“Well,” Dr. Bantou said, turning around and wiping his hands across his front. “She’s in acceptable condition, other than the cracked tusks.”

“I know that,” Houndstooth snapped. “I take damned excellent care of her.”

Dr. Bantou raised an eyebrow. “So excellent that you didn’t notice those tusks for . . . what, a week?”

Houndstooth didn’t mean to lose eye contact with the dentist, but he did. Just for a second. It was enough.

“Mmm, that’s what I thought,” Bantou drawled.

“I was on a job,” Houndstooth snapped. “I was helping a friend to whom I owed a favor and my honor—something I’m sure you’d know nothing about.”

“Well, whatever you were doing, you left her someplace too small and too boring,” Bantou said. “She’s been biting at boulders. Did you put her in a quarry somewhere? By herself, I gather?” Houndstooth clenched his jaw. Dr. Bantou’s face remained placid. When he spoke, his voice carried the authority of a man who has had the upper hand all along. “They’re bad, Houndstooth. I’ll need to pull them out.”

Houndstooth felt all of the blood drain from his face. “No,” he breathed. “No, you can’t. There must be some other way. Ruby’s tusks, they’re—they’re her pride and joy, Bantou.” He knew he sounded like a lunatic, but it was true. When Ruby basked with her mouth wide, the sun glinting off her beautiful white tusks, every other hippo that saw her would dip its nose below the surface of the water. Her tusks were beautiful, strong, fearsome. “What are our other options?”

Bantou clicked his tongue. “You won’t like it,” he said. “Better to just pull them out.”

“What’s the other option?” Houndstooth asked. His heart was racing. He kept looking at Ruby, who was merrily crunching on a watermelon. He tried to imagine her without her tusks, and tears welled up in his eyes.

“You won’t like it,” Dr. Bantou repeated. A broad grin spread across his face. “You won’t like it at all.”

“Let me guess,” Houndstooth said. “It’ll cost me?”

“Oh, yes.” Bantou was still smiling. “And then some.”

“How much?” Houndstooth asked.

Bantou’s smile slid into a frown that was thoughtful, but no less smug. “Do you know, it’s the strangest thing,” he said. He studied his cuticles. “I heard a rumor this morning.”

“How much will it cost me, you hop-shitted hunk of swamp grease?” Houndstooth spat. Bantou didn’t flinch.

“It was the most curious rumor about a theft,” he said. “Barley McMorrow’s estate, I think it was. Have you ever heard of it?”

In the water, Ruby grumbled in pain. Houndstooth pinched the bridge of his nose. “I see.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Bantou, his smile returning. “I’d imagine you do.”

Dr. Bantou Was a Scoundrel a Charlatan a No-Good Son of a Right

Four days later, Houndstooth returned to pick up Ruby from Dr. Bantou’s infirmary. The infirmary was a broad loop of marsh, divided into individual paddocks to prevent recovering hippos from taking out their discomfort on one another.

Bantou wasted no time with insincere pleasantries. “She’s doing very well,” he assured Houndstooth the moment he approached the marsh. “The procedure went entirely according to plan. As routine as can be.”

“Where is she?” Houndstooth demanded.

“I’ll have my payment first, thank you,” Dr. Bantou replied, stretching out a languid arm and opening his palm expectantly.

Grumbling, Houndstooth fished around in the sack he was carrying. It was a large sack—too large by far for its contents. Houndstooth had to reach his entire arm into the sack before his hand wrapped around his quarry.

He withdrew a single gold ingot from the sack and clutched it tight. “Haven’t you taken enough already?” he asked. Bantou didn’t respond—he simply kept his hand out and steady. After a long, tense minute, Houndstooth dropped the ingot into Bantou’s palm.

“Thank you,” Bantou said with a cold smile. Then he let out a sharp whistle, and Ruby rose smoothly out of the water directly in front of them both. “Ruby, my lovely girl,” he cooed, withdrawing an apple from his pocket, “show Mr. Houndstooth what we’ve done.”

She opened her mouth for the apple, revealing her restored tusks. Houndstooth gasped involuntarily.

“They’re beautiful,” he murmured in spite of himself.

“I know,” Bantou said, running a hand over his work. It was true—they were beautiful. Bantou had filled the cracks in her tusks using a fine cement, his own recipe. Then, to protect them, he’d affixed to each tusk a thin, supple sheath of pure, polished gold.

It had taken a lot of gold to do the job, though.

Almost the entirety of one Bellerman High-Quality No-Lock Ultrafine Safe’s worth, to be precise.

“It’s my finest work, for my favorite patient,” Bantou said, smiling at Ruby. When he smiled at her, he was almost handsome, Houndstooth thought. The thought evaporated when Bantou turned to glare at him. “While I was working on her, I noticed something else,” Bantou said. “You’ve been neglecting her flossing.”

Houndstooth let his fingers play across the hilt of one of his knives as the dentist lectured him about tartar buildup. But then he looked back at Ruby, who was happier than he’d seen her in months, and he sighed. He settled in to listen to the dentist prattle on about Ruby’s gums. For Ruby’s tusks, I’ll let you live, he thought. For now.

In the water, Ruby let her mouth hang open, the sun glinting off her new tusks. A tiny marsh bird landed between her fighting incisors, inspecting her mouth for morsels it might enjoy. It pecked once at her tongue, and Houndstooth caught a familiar glint in his old friend’s eye.

Before the bird could notice its own reflection in the polished gold of her tusks, Ruby’s teeth snapped shut. Bantou startled—his foot slipped on the muddy edge of the paddock, and he only just caught himself in time to keep from falling into the cloudy water. As he yanked his leg up out of the muck, cursing his ruined boot, a single white feather floated down to land on the brim of his hat.

Houndstooth smiled. She’d been worth every ingot.

Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Gailey
Art copyright © 2018 by Goñi Montes

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The post Worth Her Weight in Gold appeared first on Reactor.

Who wants to hear the story of the date I witnessed between Wolf Girl and James Spader's Lonely Doppleganger?

I HOPE IT'S YOU

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

A fella sits at the adjacent table. I do a double-take, because I'm like 98% certain that it's James Spader, but the 2% wins. It ain't him. pic.twitter.com/PoPxydotyM

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

Finally, a PERSON storms in and FLUMPS across from him. My overall impression is: BEDRAGGLED YOUTHSOME LADY.

But she's not just any BYL.

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

NJS: [adjusts tie] Oh, uh, um, a rave? Like, uh, at a club?

BYL: Yeah, but it was like weird. Whatever

NJS: …what's that you're wearing?

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

"A onesie?" NJS asked, like a fool. "Like, what babies wear?"

"Yeah," she said, "except it has paws!"

And then she showed him the paws

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

I was kind of rooting for Not James Spader

BUT THEN

WOLF GIRL SAW THE MENU

AND THINGS TOOK A TURN

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

"You eat pork?" Not James Spader said, aghast.

There are a lot of reasons for him to be upset about this.

None of those are the reason.

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

At this point, the obviously eavesdropping waitress and obviously eavesdropping me exchanged a glance like pic.twitter.com/22QmoQjtMC

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

"Yeah," he said, "Pigs mostly subsist on a diet of cats. And cats eat rats, which is disgusting. You wouldn't eat a rat, would you?"

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

Wolf Girl said no: "My fake ID got confiscated at the rave."

"No worries," Not James Spader replied. "I can get you in at my ex-wifes bar."

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

Eavesdropping Waitress brought me a big glass of free champagne and said

"so… do pigs really eat cats?"

reader
I didn't have an answer

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

Hugo and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. She is a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to her work here. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Her debut novella, River of Teeth, and its sequel Taste of Marrow, are available from Tor.com.

The post A Bizarre Date I Witnessed Between Wolf Girl and James Spader’s Lonely Doppelganger appeared first on Reactor.

First, I harvest the stars. People think that you’re only supposed to harvest the ripest stars—the ones that are near to bursting out of their skins, hanging loose off their nebulae—but actually, those stars only make up about half of the crush. I also grab a few unripe ones, the ones that are still cool enough to grab with bare fingers. They warm up when they’re in the basket alongside the fully-ripe stars, but not all the way, and their slight bitterness adds complexity to the press that you can’t get from just aging. To get a really good sense of terroir, I also let a few comets and loose moons drop in with the crush. People won’t tell you to do this, because they want you to think you’re just drinking stars, but honestly… the wine that comes from people who think like that is crap. It’s three-dollar-a-bottle crap and I don’t think you should drink it. That’s my opinion.

Once I’ve got a full harvest, I wash the stars. I usually do this by blowing gently on them. This is a slightly controversial alternative to the newer, more sterile methods favored by the larger galactic wineries, but I find that a little stardust remaining in the press doesn’t hurt anything. Besides, the radiation the stars emit helps to take care of any lingering bacteriological, fungiform, or parasitic infestations. A soft breath is all it takes to dislodge large, unsightly sediment that will cause clogging and flavor issues during the pressing and aging processes. Too harsh of a breath, of course, and the stars cool. This will result in a bitter press if you’re not careful, and is, in my opinion, the reason so much large-press star-wine has sugar added to it between aging and bottling. But then, I’m a traditionalist.

Once the stars are clean, they go into a sterile metal bucket. It doesn’t have to be anything special—you can probably get one at your local hardware store! With wine, as with people, it’s what’s inside the container that counts most.

Next, the pressing. I would say that this is the most important part of making star-wine, but truly, it’s just the hardest part. It’s hard because it’s not complex, and it’s not intricate, and it’s not delicate. You can’t be taught how to press stars well, not by studying and not through an apprenticeship and certainly not by watching. The only way to get the hang of pressing stars is by doing it wrong a thousand times over before you get it right. You have to learn it for yourself. It’s frustrating, but if you’re really dedicated to making good star-wine, you’ll put in the work! It’s worth it.

Most people start by wishing too small. They wish for world peace, or for an end to hunger, and the stars don’t budge. Think about it: If wishes like that could break the skin on a star, they wouldn’t survive to a ripeness suitable for drinking! The stars seem so delicate at peak ripeness that it’s easy for even a veteran harvester to forget that they’ve weathered a lot in their centuries of growth. They’ve heard a lot of wishes—they’ve grown fat and juicy with them—and you’re not going to get them to burst open with a small wish like the first one that popped into your head. The toughest part is that when the stars are still burning, they can still soak in the wishes and sweeten further. If you get it wrong too many times, they’ll start to either cool or rot. I recommend practicing on very small batches while you figure it out.

Everyone has their own methods, but I find that the trick is to wish for something so big as to be impossible. Something you wouldn’t dare to wish for unless you meant to break the stars open. So, an end to hunger and poverty won’t do the job. A wish for peace and goodwill between peoples isn’t going to work either. You’ve got to wish for something that puts a strain on the star and makes it finally, finally split. You’ll have to find the ones that work for you, obviously, but try to think of the things that nothing could ever make happen, and wish for those things. I wish that I could hear him laugh like he did when he was a child, or I wish that I could have fixed things before the end, or I wish that the dark, alone place inside of me could be reached by sunlight. Whatever wish you use, it should be the kind of wish you can only make once. It should leave you feeling husked and hollow and broken.

Once you find the right wish, the skins on the stars will split, and the juice will immediately start running into your press. This is the fun part—my favorite part, really. This is the part where you reach in with both hands and squeeze the cores out of the stars. This part is tiring, and the sensation of the stars bursting between your fingers is reminiscent of reaching into a mouth to pluck out a tongue, or trying to catch a snake as it slides through your garden. There’s no going back once you’ve caught it. There’s no going back once you’ve done it. Now, I always leave a healthy number of skins in with the cores and juice during the fermentation process—like I said, I’m a traditionalist! But if you want a darker batch of star-wine with a less complex flavor, you can strain the skins out. Why you would do something like that, I can’t imagine, but hey, to each their own. The result of your pressing is called the “must.”

Add honey. Some people add sugar, and those people are charlatans who would be better off working at a soda fountain than making star-wine. I use honey from bats that gather pollen from my own nebulae, which is how it’s been done for a long time—but if you don’t tend your own nebulae, or if there’s an eclipse going on at the time of your harvest, or if your bats aren’t producing well, store-bought is fine. I usually add just enough honey to make the must smell like summer, but if you want to make a stronger batch of star-wine, add enough honey to make the must smell like regret.

Don’t worry about yeast. It’s taken care of.

Next, you’ll want to transfer the must into a container to age. This container will impart complexity and depth to the flavor of your star-wine. I like to use oak barrels, but some people prefer pine. Loosely cover the mouth of the barrel with a lightweight cloth woven from the first hairs that fell from your daughter’s head when she was a baby. You might be tempted to use a rubber band or adhesive to hold the cloth in place, but don’t do it! If you’re brewing properly, the cloth will stay put of its own free will. You can always taste when someone has tried to secure the cloth with tools instead of promises—it’s a great way to sour your whole batch, and then you’ll have to start over.

I don’t recommend tasting your star-wine until the first time you cry without knowing why. Some people like to taste sooner, but they end up adjusting the flavor (almost always adding more honey) instead of letting the brew sweeten with time. Be patient! Trust the stars. Ignore the sounds you hear coming from inside the container. Don’t worry if the metal starts to glow and deform—it won’t melt all the way. Do not lift the cloth until it’s time.

You’ll know that your star-wine is ready to bottle when it tastes like power and magnitude and terror. Strain out any particulates, but don’t throw out the muck! I reserve the stuff that I strain out and use it to fertilize my nebulae. The roots really thrive when they’ve got moons to draw nutrients from (plus, the smell of fermented starskins acts as a handy pest repellent). I print my labels at home, because the copy shop has gotten too expensive by half and I might as well use that fancy printer. Microsoft Word has some great templates for printing labels. Make sure to wash your bottles thoroughly and seal the corks tighter than you think you have to; otherwise, when you apply the lead seal to your corks, you’ll get a lot of steam that can crack the glass and is extremely toxic to inhale. You’ll want to let the star-wine mature for at least three years inside the bottle before you drink it, so that it doesn’t turn you into something other than what you are intended to be. Store the bottles in a moonlit place.

It’s a time-consuming and difficult hobby, but once you’ve got the hang of making your own star-wine, you won’t ever want to drink store-bought again! Don’t be scared to give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is that you lose everything you love and everything you are, and what hobby isn’t like that?

Originally published in May 2017.

Hugo and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. She is a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to her work here. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Her debut novella, River of Teeth, and its sequel Taste of Marrow, are available from Tor.com.

The post The Delicate Art of Asterculture appeared first on Reactor.

Raise your left hand in the air and keep it there.

Did you do it? If so, you are extraordinary. A strange woman just told you to do something, and you listened. On a historic scale, that’s not just different. That’s revolutionary.

There are a lot of people in the world who wish you hadn’t done it. People who don’t like me personally, because I’m the kind of woman who gets up in the front of the room and starts telling people what to do. People who don’t like me in theory, because of what I represent to them. People who you know. People who are participating in a cultural narrative that is woven into the fabric of our society.

I’m not mad at these people, even though some of them have threatened my life. Even though some of them have threatened my family. Even though some of them have said they’d like to come to my home and shoot me in the head rather than see me continue standing up at the front of rooms, telling people what to do. I’m not mad at them, and I’m not scared of them. Because I recognize what they really are.

They’re terrified.

Of course they’re terrified. For millennia, Western society has insisted that female voices—just that, our voices—are a threat. We’re afraid of wolves, and we’re afraid of bears, and we’re afraid of women.

Pictured above is Odysseus, the titular hero of Homer’s Odyssey. In this picture, he’s resisting the call of the Sirens. The Sirens, for those who don’t know, were cursed women. In some versions of the myth, they failed to find Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, when she was kidnapped by Hades, the god of the underworld. As punishment, they were imprisoned on islands and trapped in horrible chimeric half-bird forms.

For the women who became Sirens, the curse was being marooned on islands, trapped for eternity. For the men who dared to sail too near, the real curse was the Sirens’ voices. Those voices were a curse because they could lure any sailor that heard them to the Siren’s islands, where the sailors would inevitably shipwreck and drown. Odysseus was set to sail past those islands, but he had a plan. He commanded his sailors to plug their ears with beeswax and cotton, and told them to lash him to the mast and not release him no matter what. He didn’t have any earplugs in for himself: he wanted to hear the singing and see if he could resist it. But when he heard the Siren song, Odysseus—a hero on a literally epic scale—was tempted. He was so tempted, in fact, that the only thing that kept him from commanding his sailors to change course and sail to their deaths was their inability to hear his commands.

This story is a great summary of the cultural fear of female voices. In a society where men hold power, the most powerful thing a woman can do is to have influence over men. The idea of a member of an oppressed class influencing the powerful is fundamentally threatening to the existing order of society, because it puts some degree of power into the hands of those oppressed people. So, when the Sirens sing and Odysseus can’t resist being drawn in by their song, the reader sees an epic hero displaying a rare weakness: these women are so potent and dangerous that they can bring down a figure as powerful as Odysseus.

This is just one example of a significant theme in Greek mythology. Sirens appear in several different stories from Greek myth, and those stories all reflect and reinforce our societal terror of the influence of women on powerful men.

Starting in the fourth century A.D., Siren mythos began to be subsumed by Christian writers and became a tool of allegory.

Saint Isidore of Seville, who was an archbishop for thirty years and who is often called the last father of the Christian church, wrote about Sirens. His etemologae, which was intended to be a collection of all human knowledge, supposes that the Siren mythos is actually an exaggerated accounting of Sicilian prostitutes. Saint Isidore wrote that those women presented such temptation to travelers that they would bankrupt them, causing their innocent victims to ‘drown’ in the pleasures of the flesh.

Christian art through the renaissance period uses Sirens as metaphor for temptation and ruin. These Sirens are often depicted as human-fish hybrids (hence our contemporary conflation of mermaids and Sirens). During the Renaissance, the Jesuit writer Cornelius a Lapide described all women as Siren-like temptations when he said: “with her voice she enchants, with her beauty she deprives of reason—voice and sight alike deal destruction and death.”

Initially, Siren mythos reflected an existing fear of the female potential to tempt and ruin powerful men. But over the course of centuries, their story grew into a tool to reinforce that fear. Sirens grow from a few sisters stranded on an island by a curse, to a working class of Sicilian prostitutes, to all women. When Lapide wrote that ‘voice and sight alike deal destruction and death’, he was speaking into a fear that stretches all the way back to Eden narratives—a fear that listening to a woman is a mortal error.

In 1837, a man by the name of Hans Christian Andersen attempted to defang the developing Siren narrative by writing a story called Den lille havfrue…

…which you may know better as “The Little Mermaid.” The original story, as our buddy Hans wrote it, is a Christian fairy tale about a virtuous Siren. His story is about an unnamed young mermaid who wants nothing in the world so much as a human soul, so that when she dies, that soul can live forever in the Kingdom of God.

She goes to a sea witch who gives her a potion that will grant her legs, allowing her to go up onto land and seduce herself a prince. The deal is simple: if she marries the prince, she’ll get a portion of his soul for herself, and she’ll be practically human. All she has to give up in exchange is her tongue and her voice. At the end of this original story, she doesn’t get her prince—he’s going to marry someone else, and she’s going to turn into seafoam. Her sisters—Sirens always have sisters—make their own enormous sacrifices to the sea witch in order to get the little mermaid a knife. She’s supposed to use that knife to kill the prince, which would let her turn back into a mermaid and rejoin her family. But because she is virtuous, she says ‘no thanks,’ and she dies, and she turns into seafoam.

Her reward for this enormous display of virtue? She’s trapped in purgatory for three hundred years, with the promise that at the end of that time, if she’s performed enough good deeds, she’ll get a soul and go to heaven.

Note that the overarching theme of this classic children’s tale isn’t love. Marriage is a factor, but it’s secondary—it’s a means to an end. What the little mermaid really wants—what she sacrifices everything to get—is a soul.

And the way for her to get that soul?

Silence.

She has to give up her voice, and she has to endure agonizing pain, and she has to reject the company of her sisters. All this just to get to purgatory, where she has to undergo additional purification in order to have a soul. Her existing identity as a woman who wants things and can speak to that want is a moral obstacle to be overcome; her only shot at redemption comes to her via silence and death.

This isn’t a new concept. Two hundred years before Hans Christian Andersen redeemed a Siren by cutting out her tongue, a guy named Thomas Wilson wrote the first English text about rhetoric. In it, he asks: “What becometh a woman best, and first of all? Silence. What seconde? Silence. What third? Silence. What fourth? Silence. Yea, if a man should ask me til dowmes day, I would stil crie, silence, silence, without the whiche no woman hath any good gift..”

But the explicit demand for female silence isn’t an old concept, either. Women in contemporary media face an overwhelming demand for our silence.

One can trace explicit objections to female voices through to the Golden Age of radio. During that era, radio personalities were overwhelmingly male, and the voices of women were considered unbroadcastable. Women who tried to break into radio were criticized as shrill and grating; their voices were high and breathy at the time because they were required by the society they lived in to wear corsets and, later, tight girdles. Those undergarments kept them from being able to speak from their diaphragms, and the result was a voice which we currently affiliate with a young Queen Elizabeth: slightly breathless, high and airy. Those women’s voices were criticised as lacking gravity. In reality, they were lacking in air, because the culture of the day demanded that they suffocate. Medical professionals insisted that corsetry was necessary for female health—which left women with a choice between silence and survival.

Today, women are more present in broadcasting—but they’re still subject to consistent criticism focusing on the way their voices sound, and not because they’re shrill. Instead, the primary focus of contemporary criticism of women in broadcasting is their use of something called glottal fry. Glottal fry, which is sometimes known as vocal fry, is a distortion of the voice which generally stems from an attempt to speak in a lower register without adequate breath support. Glottal fry has come to be closely affiliated with stereotypes of vapid, thoughtless women, when in reality, it’s a vocal tic that reflects a woman’s attempt to speak in a voice that is deeper, and thus more masculine, and thus—per the strictures of our society—inherently more authoritative.

It doesn’t matter if we’re speaking in our natural registers or trying to reach for the registers demanded of us: Women in roles which focus on speech simply can’t win. This was summarized most concisely by The Daily Express, which, in 1928, described female radio voices as universally unbearable by saying: “her high notes are sharp, and resemble the filing of steel, while her low notes often sound like groans.”

This same discomfort with female speech extends into online spaces, where an entire culture of harassment against women has become an embedded part of the experience of being a woman in a position of high visibility. These harassment campaigns are global and insidious. They target women who disobey Thomas Wilson’s edict about female silence, and include explicit threats of violence, rape, and murder.

They target women ranging from actresses like Leslie Jones, who starred in Ghostbusters and dared to go on a publicity tour, to politicians like Jo Cox, a British Labor Party MP who was shot and stabbed to death in response to her advocacy for Syrian refugees, to feminist media critics like Anita Sarkeesian. Notably, Sarkeesian had to cancel an October 2014 speaking engagement due to the volume of threats leveled against her and the University at which she was supposed to speak. These threats included the usual promises of rape, murder, and violence—but they extended into threats of mass murder and terrorism. One of these threats promised that “a Montreal Massacre style attack [would] be carried out against the attendees, as well as the students and staff at the nearby Women’s Center”.

The historic and contemporary demand for female silence stems directly from fear of what women’s voices can do. If women can speak to each other and to the world at large, the ideas of women threaten to influence and shape society from the top down in the same way that men’s voices have for centuries. This fear—the fear that women will influence men, and the fear that they will influence culture on social and political levels—is pervasive, and leads directly to violence.

So what’s the solution?

This. This right here. I’m doing something that for centuries women have been told not to do: I’m using my voice. And you? You’re doing something that for centuries has been considered anathema.

You’re listening.

Keep doing that. No matter who you are, no matter what you believe, regardless of your gender identity: listen. Keep listening. Listen even when it’s uncomfortable. Listen even when it makes you question the things you assume to be true about your life and the world you live in. Find ways to amplify the voices of women who are speaking. And if you’re a woman who has been afraid to speak?

You have two options. You can be silent. You can let that history of fear and violence shut you up. You can give in to those people who would prefer to see people like me in the ground. It won’t make them change the way they treat people who look and sound like you, and it won’t make you feel any less scared, but it’s an option.

Or. You can do what I’m doing right now. You can be everything that those scared people don’t want you to be. You can be outspoken, and opinionated, and confident. You can use your mind and your voice to change the way that people think, so that there’s less fear, and less hatred, and less violence, and less murder. You can be exactly as powerful as they fear, and you can use that power to make the world safer for other women who are afraid to speak.

You can be a Siren.

Your voice has power.

Use it.

Hugo and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. She is a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to her work here. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Her debut novella, River of Teeth, and its sequel Taste of Marrow, are available from Tor.com.

The post Fear of the Female Voice appeared first on Reactor.

Who wants to hear the story of the date I witnessed between Wolf Girl and James Spader's Lonely Doppleganger?

I HOPE IT'S YOU

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

A fella sits at the adjacent table. I do a double-take, because I'm like 98% certain that it's James Spader, but the 2% wins. It ain't him. pic.twitter.com/PoPxydotyM

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

Finally, a PERSON storms in and FLUMPS across from him. My overall impression is: BEDRAGGLED YOUTHSOME LADY.

But she's not just any BYL.

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

NJS: [adjusts tie] Oh, uh, um, a rave? Like, uh, at a club?

BYL: Yeah, but it was like weird. Whatever

NJS: …what's that you're wearing?

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

"A onesie?" NJS asked, like a fool. "Like, what babies wear?"

"Yeah," she said, "except it has paws!"

And then she showed him the paws

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

I was kind of rooting for Not James Spader

BUT THEN

WOLF GIRL SAW THE MENU

AND THINGS TOOK A TURN

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

"You eat pork?" Not James Spader said, aghast.

There are a lot of reasons for him to be upset about this.

None of those are the reason.

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

At this point, the obviously eavesdropping waitress and obviously eavesdropping me exchanged a glance like pic.twitter.com/22QmoQjtMC

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

"Yeah," he said, "Pigs mostly subsist on a diet of cats. And cats eat rats, which is disgusting. You wouldn't eat a rat, would you?"

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

Wolf Girl said no: "My fake ID got confiscated at the rave."

"No worries," Not James Spader replied. "I can get you in at my ex-wifes bar."

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

Eavesdropping Waitress brought me a big glass of free champagne and said

"so… do pigs really eat cats?"

reader
I didn't have an answer

— Sarah Gailey (@gaileyfrey) October 26, 2017

Hugo and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. She is a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to her work here. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Her debut novella, River of Teeth, and its sequel Taste of Marrow, are available from Tor.com.

The post The Date I Witnessed Between Wolf Girl and James Spader’s Lonely Doppelganger appeared first on Reactor.

That is the movie I was expecting.

That is not the movie I saw.

I told a lot of people that I was going to watch Blade Runner for the first time, because I know that people have opinions about Blade Runner. All of them gave me a few watery opinions to keep in mind going in—nothing that would spoil me, but things that would help me understand what they assured me would be a Very Strange Film.

None of them told me the right things, though. So, in case you are like me and have been living in a cave and have never seen Blade Runner before and are considering watching it, I will tell you a little about it.

There are cops, and there are little people.

There is a whole class of slaves. It is illegal for them to escape slavery. The cops are supposed to murder the slaves if they escape, because there is a risk that they will start to think they’re people. But the cops know that the slaves are not people, so it’s okay to murder them. The greatest danger, the thing the cops are supposed to prevent, is that the slaves will try to assimilate into the society that relies on their labor.

Assimilation is designed to be impossible. There are tests. Impossible tests with impossible questions and impossible answers. The tests measure empathy. It is not about having enough empathy, but about having empathy for the correct things. If you do not have enough empathy for the correct things, you will be murdered by a cop who does have empathy for the correct things.

In Blade Runner, an absurdly young Harrison Ford is a hard-boiled, world-weary kind of man named Deckard, and he is given a choice. He can be exactly as small as everyone is, or he can catch some escaped slaves for the police. He decides to catch the escaped slaves.

Except that ‘catch’ means ‘retire,’ and ‘retire’ means ‘murder.’

Deckard feels that he has no choice in this matter. He says it himself, and the person giving him the choice confirms that he is correct: no choice. But of course, there is always a choice. Certainly, the escaped slaves who he is chasing see that there is a choice. He can be power or he can be vulnerable to power. He chooses power. And power means murder.

The first such murder we witness is that of a woman who escaped slavery and came to Earth. She has found herself a job. It’s a degrading job, a job that even the hard-boiled, world-weary Deckard flinches away from watching. But it’s a job. She is participating in society. She is working. She’s doing the things that she has to do in order to be a part of the world that she risked everything to reach.

Deckard comes to her workplace. He finds her there, and he knows what she is, and she runs away from him because she knows what cops do to women like her. He chases her through the street and corners her. He aims his gun at her through a crowd of people. He squints. He takes a second too long to decide whether to shoot. She runs again.

(Nobody tells you about that part, when you tell them you’re about to watch Blade Runner for the first time. They tell you about all the different versions, and they tell you about the ambiguity of the ending, and they tell you about the fact that all the effects are practical effects. But nobody tells you about the part where a cop aims a loaded firearm into a crowd of people and tries to decide whether it’s worth risking their lives in order to murder an escaped slave.)

She runs, and then he corners her again, and then he shoots her. He shoots her in the back while she’s running away from him, running from death with so much panic that she crashes right through a shopfront window. Glass rains down around her, and she is dead. Not a dead person, of course. Because, as we have been told, she is not a person—they are not people. But she is dead, and when death happens in public, people will come to look. A small crowd begins to gather.

And then a police vehicle hovers overhead, and the police vehicle repeats the same two words over and over, in the same tone the crossing signal uses to prompt those who can’t see the walk sign: Move on, move on, move on.

So the crowd moves on. The story moves on. And Deckard moves on.

He still has work to do. One down. The rest to go.

He murders other escaped slaves before the end of the film. He finds where they are hiding, and he murders them.

It is important, in the world of the film, to remember that the things he is murdering are not people. That it is their own fault for seeking free lives. That the cops are just doing their jobs.

It is important to remember to have empathy for the right things.

There is one escaped slave who Deckard does not murder. She asks him if he thinks she could escape to the North, and he says no. Whether that is true or not, we as the audience do not get to find out, because she does not escape. She does not escape because he decides to keep her. He is asked to murder her, and instead he decides to keep her for his own.

(Nobody warns you about that part when you tell them you’re about to watch Blade Runner for the first time. They tell you to watch for the origami, and they tell you that you won’t believe the cast, and they tell you about the celebrities who have been asked to take the Voight-Kampff test. But nobody warns you about the part where a cop convinces a slave that she cannot escape unless he is allowed to keep her. Nobody warns you about that part.)

Blade Runner does not ask us to sympathize with Deckard. At least, not in the version I watched, which was the Final Cut. I am told that there are other cuts which were deemed more palatable to theatre audiences at the time of release. Those cuts, I am told, reframe the man who chases a terrified escaped slave through the streets of a futuristic Los Angeles and then puts bullets into her back. They allow us to believe that he is a good guy doing a hard but necessary job, and that the hard but necessary job is hard because he is good. They allow us to believe that it is possible to be a good guy while doing that kind of a job.

This is a thing that it is very tempting to believe. It is a thing that we are accustomed to believing. It is as familiar as coming home.

Most people told me the same thing, when I said that I was going to come out of my cave and watch Blade Runner for the first time. When they were giving me their watery opinions so I’d be prepared for what I was about to see, they all said: “It’s a Very Strange Movie.”

They weren’t wrong. Not exactly. Not in the thing that they meant, which is that it is bizarre. They weren’t wrong about that. It is bizarre. The movie itself is ambiguous and nuanced and asks a lot of the audience. Asks too much of the audience, if you agree with the studio executives who released the original, theatrical cut. It is baffling and beautiful and terrible and tempting. It’s Surrealist Science Fiction Pulp Noir—it has to be weird and unsettling. That’s the genre.

But I would not call the world of Blade Runner strange, because it’s the opposite of strange. It’s familiar. If you subtract the flying cars and the jets of flame shooting out of the top of Los Angeles buildings, it’s not a far-off place. It’s fortunes earned off the backs of slaves, and deciding who gets to count as human. It’s impossible tests with impossible questions and impossible answers. It’s having empathy for the right things if you know what’s good for you. It’s death for those who seek freedom.

It’s a cop shooting a fleeing woman in the middle of the street, and a world where the city is subject to repeated klaxon call: move on, move on, move on.

It’s not so very strange to me.

Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. She is a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to her work here. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Her debut novella, River of Teeth, and its sequel Taste of Marrow, are available from Tor.com.

The post This Future Looks Familiar: Watching Blade Runner in 2017 appeared first on Reactor.

Crete is a fleet in space, under attack, housing the last of an under-equipped race of people, all of whom are desperate to survive, all of whom depend on the ability of an exhausted group of pilots to defend them from the vacuum of space and the predators that live there.

Crete is a heavily armed underground bunker in a district that has been erased from textbooks and maps and oral history and a people’s understanding of their nation’s geography.

Crete is a damaged shuttle, aswim with radiation, a fragile little poison pill attempting to re-enter an atmosphere that will destroy it.

Crete is not an island. Crete is a prison.

And Icarus knows someone who can help him escape.

 * * *

There are two kinds of hubris.

(If I’m honest, there are a thousand kinds of hubris, but as far as rhetorical devices go, I think this is a good one.)

There are two kinds of hubris. The first is the kind of hubris that comes from a lifetime of being told that you, you and no one else, you are the smartest and the best. You know how to do things better than anyone else does. You are so smart that you can and should set aside certain ethical considerations in order to pursue your craft. You are so smart that it’s okay for you to shake your fist at the sky. It’s okay for you to imprison a minotaur. It will be fine. Don’t worry. You will be safe from lightning. The gods will forgive you, because you are You, and you are the best.

This hubris and the punishment it receives are narratively balanced. We recognize this movement early in its introduction: some people are so preoccupied with whether or not they can, they don’t stop to think if they should. Those people get eaten by dinosaurs. They get run out of town by villagers with torches and pitchforks. Their creations lay eggs in their brains. There is justice.

This is the hubris of Daedalus. Daedalus the inventor. The creator. The father of all mad scientists.

The father of a hopeful boy.

 There is another kind of hubris.

It’s the hubris of trust.

You know the taste of this hubris if you have ever followed someone who thinks themself beyond the reach of the God’s wrath. It’s the hubris of hoping that you will be held faultless, just because you are not the one shaking your fist at the sky. You are not yet a participant; you are passive. You are along for the ride.

And if you happen to push the boundaries a little further than those who pushed them to begin with, well, you cannot be held responsible, can you? After all, it is the nature of man to push a little harder, to reach a little farther. The unsteadiness of the floor you dance on is the fault of the foundation, not the fault of your shoes. And surely not the fault of your feet.

There is an inevitability to this hubris. You are following who you must. You are doing what you must. You have no choice but to indulge in this hubris. It is the only way.

This is the hubris of Kara Thrace. This is the hubris of Katniss Everdeen. This is the hubris of Jean Grey. 

This is the hubris of Icarus.

[Note: some spoilers below for the character arcs of Kara Thrace (BSG), Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games), and Jean Grey/Dark Phoenix (X-Men)]

The secret to getting off Crete is to pick someone to trust: find a Daedalus, and let them strap wings to your back.

Kara Thrace picks Laura Roslin. She chooses someone to trust, and with that, her fate is decided. She flies to Caprica to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo. She begins her ascent. Every choice she makes after her decision to return to Caprica is another wingbeat—every moment of survival on Caprica, every reckless maneuver as the Pegasus CAG, every extramarital moment she shares with Lee Adama.

Every frenetic wingbeat is inevitable, and she rises higher, higher, highest before she falls.

Hubris.

The secret to getting off Crete is to abandon hope that you will ever be free at all.

Katniss begins making this choice when she is a Theseus, chosen to enter a labyrinth of death as both entertainment and tribute. But after she escapes the labyrinth of the Hunger Games arena, she is still trapped on the dystopian island of the broken nation that controls her every move. Her only hope of escape is District Thirteen—but it is a prison of its own, and once she is there, she comes to understand that her hope was false. She must let go of any hope that escaping the labyrinth means escaping the island. She must divest herself of the notion that she will ever live in a place that isn’t a prison.

Once she manages to rid herself of hope, she can lift her arms for the application of wax and feathers. She can become a tool of propaganda, a tightly controlled figurehead with decorative wings. She can make the hard choices that allow her to further her cause. Once she is through with hope, she can look directly into the sun.

And from there, she can become an executioner. The time comes for her to serve her final purpose, and she is ready. Her wings are firmly attached as she nocks her final arrow, intended for President Snow. She ignores the instructions of her Daedalus. She aims her arrow for Alma Coin’s heart, and she flies grimly sunward.

Hubris.

The secret to getting off Crete is that you won’t get off Crete alive, and you will not be the only one broken by your failure.

Jean Grey’s flight is great and terrible. She flies into the sun of Phoenix Force power with an inevitable kind of abandon; her upward spiral is defined by necessity and sacrifice. To save a shuttle full of her comrades, she sacrifices herself, becoming a husk and a host for the Phoenix Force. But her sacrifice isn’t a clean one, and the power that fills her duplicate form is tainted by evil.

Her uncontrollable fall begins. In the end, her plummet to the sea consumes a star. An entire star, destroyed by her descent. A sun, blotted out by her wingtips.

Tragedy on two unfathomable scales. Jean Grey, the Dark Phoenix, undoes an entire star system’s worth of lives. Daedalus, the hope-filled father, must watch his son die before that son ever tastes freedom.

Loss beyond measure.

Hubris.

 * * *

The one who flies too high, we know, will fall. If she beats her wings, she will wind up in the sea. But she is trapped. She is trapped on an island that is not an island.

And the sky is so wide, and the sun is so far away. The sky is so wide, and Daedalus says that it will be alright. The sky is so wide, and the wings are right there.

There are two kinds of hubris.

There are two kinds of hope.

And the sky is so wide.

If she could only fly.

Hugo and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. She is a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to her work here. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Her debut novella, River of Teeth, is now available from Tor.com.

The post The Hubris of Icarus: Women Who Fly Into the Sun appeared first on Reactor.

Songs are sung of their exploits, many with a haunting refrain: “And not a soul escaped alive.”

In the aftermath of the Harriet catastrophe, that crew has scattered to the winds. Some hunt the missing lovers they refuse to believe have died. Others band together to protect a precious infant and a peaceful future. All of them struggle with who they’ve become after a long life of theft, murder, deception, and general disinterest in the strictures of the law.

Sarah Gailey’s hippo mayhem continues in Taste of Marrow, the sequel to rollicking adventure River of Teeth. Available September 12th from Tor.com Publishing.

Chapter One

Ysabel would not stop crying. She spasmed with grating, earsplitting screams every few seconds. Her face, knotted and purple, jerked every time Adelia tried to maneuver her nipple toward the baby’s mouth.

“Maybe she doesn’t like you,” Hero said mildly.

“Babies don’t have opinions,” Adelia replied through gritted teeth.

“Nobody told her that,” Hero muttered. They turned their attention back to the kneeling saddle on the ground in front of them, and continued working grease into the leather of the pommel.

“Ysa,” Adelia murmured in a pained singsong. “Ysa, mija, please just—there.” She winced, triumphant, as the screaming stopped and the baby latched at last. “You see? All she needed was—ah!” She cried out in pain as the baby startled at nothing in particular and pulled away from her breast without letting go of the nipple. Her cry made Ysabel startle again, and the baby’s face began to scrunch in preparation for another piercing wail.

“Good luck with that,” Hero said. They eased themself upright, grimacing, and braced their hands on their lower back for a cautious stretch. They walked into the trees, away from Adelia and the screaming baby, without waiting to hear a response.

Hero knew that they’d need to start a fire soon, before dusk turned to dark. They’d wait until Ysabel had stopped eating—the sound of wood splintering was sure to startle the baby again. In the meantime, they made their way through the scrubby, moss-hung trees to the murky little pocket of the Catahoula where Adelia’s hippos, Zahra and Stasia, were dozing. Hero squatted to wash their grease-smeared hands in the warm water, watching the surface of the pond for ripples more out of habit than worry. They watched the scum that floated away from their skin in the water and an idea drifted through their mind: a system to send rafts of nitroglycerin floating to waterlocked targets—but how to prevent a trailing wick from getting waterlogged? A remote detonator, or a system of watertight tubes that could protect a lit fuse, or perhaps a flaming dart shot across water, or perhaps…

They let their hands trail in the water for a while as they mentally troubleshot the concept. Hero couldn’t remember the last time they’d allowed their attention to wander so close to the water’s edge. But this was a safe place for them to let the ideas blossom. It was a pleasant, secluded little spot off the banks of the lake that Hero and Adelia had chosen to set up camp, well away from the Mississippi and the marshes and far from the reach of the ferals in the Gulf. Hero missed their Abigail—they’d been borrowing Stasia, and it just wasn’t the same. But otherwise, it was a fine camp. They were surrounded by scrubby brush and gangly trees; it was out-of-the-way enough that no one was drawn to them by the sound of the baby crying. Hero wondered how far Ysabel’s wails carried, and they allowed themself a moment of satisfaction at Adelia’s struggle. Serves her right, they thought, ripping up a fistful of marsh grass to scrub their palms. Still, they couldn’t help wishing that the baby was a little less of a squaller.

But not for Adelia’s sake. It was just because Hero had to be stuck in the company of the little creature all day and all night, and their sanity was suffering from the constant barrage of noise.

Hero started to stand, but a flash of pain above their navel knocked them back and they sat hard. They yanked the hem of their shirt up and pressed a wet hand to the fat rope of scar tissue there, feeling for the unbroken skin. There—there was the scar, and they looked down at their hand and confirmed that no blood filled the creases in their palm. “It’s okay,” they whispered to themself. “It’s okay. It’s just a phantom pain. You’re fine.”

They sat there on the pebbly sand with their palm braced against their belly. They were fine. But the “fine” was so new—this was the first day that Hero could truly say they felt healed, and even that was tentative, raw. The wound was relatively fresh, in more ways than one. It was the wound that Adelia had given to Hero just a few weeks before Ysabel’s birth.

Hero took a slow, deep breath and took their hand away from their stomach, letting their hem fall back into place. In the distance, the baby had stopped screaming. A clutch of ducks drifted silently by on the water—a welcome signal that the ferals, who would have eaten anything that moved too slowly back on the Harriet, hadn’t made it to the Catahoula yet. The night was almost peaceful now. Hero closed their eyes and tried to remember their last time they’d felt almost-peaceful—the day that a handsome man rode up to their door astride a pitch-black hippo and asked if they’d like to join him for one last job.

They’d said yes at the time. They would have said yes again in a heartbeat.

But Hero hadn’t seen Winslow Houndstooth since the night before Adelia’s knife had made that scar on their belly. Since her knife had nearly killed them.

Hero fidgeted with the third button down on their shirt. They wouldn’t unbutton it to feel the scar there—the twin of the one on their stomach. It hasn’t disappeared since the last time you looked at it, they told themself irritably. But it bothered them, and they fidgeted in earnest as they went over the questions they’d been asking every day since they’d woken up.

It didn’t make any sense.

Hero liked things that made sense. They liked diagrams and switches and sensible arrangements of wires. They liked dosages and measurements and titrations. Adelia was… a thicket. A tangle of intentions and motivations that Hero really could have done without.

But they had to figure it out. Adelia could have killed Hero so easily—but instead, her knives had struck the only places on Hero’s body that could look mortal without actually killing them. Hero knew the exact amount of coral snake venom required to make a person quietly suffocate due to paralysis, and Adelia knew exactly where to aim her weapons. Both of them had too much experience to make stupid mistakes that would let a target walk away.

Hero knew that they’d been allowed to live intentionally. They just didn’t know why.

Hero had woken up with no idea where they were, and there was Adelia, changing the bandage on their abdomen with steady hands and intent focus. Hero had tried to startle away from the woman who had stabbed them, but a white-hot stripe of pain had flattened them before they could move. It took them weeks to recover—weeks of Adelia’s focused attention and care. Whenever Hero tried to ask why Adelia hadn’t killed them, she pursed her lips and changed the subject.

And then Ysabel had come, and there hadn’t been room to keep asking. And Hero had kept on healing, had kept on slowly recovering. They’d helped with the baby here and there, although they didn’t know much of anything about babies and didn’t care to learn. And the pain in their belly had faded.

Hero dug their hands into the coarse sand and watched the still surface of the water. The pain in their belly had faded, and Adelia had recovered from Ysabel’s birth. It was time to leave. They knew it—had been thinking about it all day. They would tell Adelia that night, after the baby was asleep. It was settled. Hero would be gone by daybreak.

But where? Home? Back to their little house with its little pond, to be alone for the rest of their lives?

Because, if Hero was honest with themself, that was why they’d stayed with Adelia for so long. It was easy to focus on the wound in their belly and Ysabel’s birth and the work of finding food and starting fires and staying two steps ahead of the law. It was easier for Hero to do all of that than it was for them to think about going home, sitting alone on the front porch, and looking at the empty rocking chair that Houndstooth should have been in. It was easier for Hero to do that than it was for them to wonder why it was that they’d survived the collapse of the Harriet dam, while Houndstooth—

No. No, they thought, slamming a door in their mind. Don’t think about that. They turned their mind back to the problem of why Adelia hadn’t killed them, and then realized how closely that question fit with the question they weren’t going to think about. Something else, anything else.

They looked at the water, and gripped fistfuls of sand, and thought about how to keep a lit fuse dry. A sense of calm washed over them as they considered waxes and weights, how to keep the fuse from attracting fish, the problem of seepage, the problem of oxygen. And what if the fuse itself was on fire? Could they make it burn so hot that the water wouldn’t matter?

They were drawing calculations in the sand, calculating how many grams of gunpowder an inch of cotton wick could support—but then a scream cut through the muggy night air. Hero was used to screams cutting through all manner of night air at this point; sleeping a few feet away from a newborn baby will have that effect on a person. But this scream didn’t sound at all like Ysabel.

It almost sounded like… Adelia.

Hero scrambled to their feet and pelted back toward the campsite. They slipped on a patch of loose scree, their leg shooting out behind them, but they caught themself and continued without breaking stride. Another scream—this one from Ysabel—and shouts, more than one person. “Shitshitshitshitshit,” Hero chanted under their breath as they ran. They held one arm in front of their face to guard their eyes from twigs; with the other hand, they reached down to unstrap their fat-bladed kukri—usually reserved for utility, but it would do the job that needed to be done, whatever that job might be.

Except that it wasn’t there. They groped at their hip even as they had a vision of the knife, sheathed, on the ground next to the kneeling saddle they’d been polishing. They would have sworn, but they were already swearing. “Shitshitshit.”

Hero burst into the little clearing where they’d left Adelia and Ysabel not fifteen minutes before. There was a resonant thunk next to their head—they looked, and saw the handle of a knife sticking out of a tree trunk less than a foot from their face. They pulled up short, their breath frozen in their throat.

Five men surrounded Adelia in a wide circle. Kerchiefs were tied over their faces, and their hats were pulled low, leaving only their eyes exposed. Adelia’s outstretched right hand gripped the butt of Hero’s kukri, and she turned in a slow circle, keeping the men at a distance and stepping around the empty sheath at her feet. In her left arm, a swaddled Ysabel whimpered steadily.

Hero’s heart pounded in their chest so hard that it hurt. The odds in this situation were decidedly not in their favor. They weren’t a fighter. They did poisons and explosives, the weapons of a thinking person. They had tolerable skill with a knife, theoretically, but against five people? They didn’t stand a chance.

“Alright now, that’s enough,” one of the men said. “We ain’t gonna hurtcha none, just—” Adelia swiped at him with Hero’s kukri and he jumped back with a shout.

You don’t have to fight, a small, reasonable voice whispered inside of Hero’s mind. You could just walk away from this. Hero had been with Adelia for nearly two months. Adelia was more than recovered from Ysabel’s birth. You don’t owe her anything, the reasonable voice said. You don’t have to get involved in this at all.

“I don’t see why we can’t hurt her a little bit,” another of the men said. Blood seeped from a cut on his thigh. “Just knock her out, boss.”

Hero took a slow, quiet step backward. They were good at being quiet—they could melt into the brush and no one would ever have to know that they’d been there at all.

“You knock her out, if you’re so damn smart.”

“Fuck that, she already cut me. You do it.”

Hero took another step back. You don’t owe her anything, the small voice whispered again.

“Jesus Christ, you two,” a third man growled. “It’s a woman and a baby.” He shook his head at his colleagues, then lunged.

“No!” Hero heard the shout before they realized it was their own voice, and then they were running. They yanked the knife from the tree trunk with a back-wrenching tug, and then they were fighting.

It was exactly as awful as they’d feared. The men all looked the same, and even though Hero was certain they’d counted five before, it seemed like they were everywhere at once. Hero punched one of them in the gut, and another took his place right away. A fist connected with Hero’s eye and everything went white, and then hot blood was getting into their eyes and they couldn’t see anything. Hands grabbed at Hero’s arms, and their pulse pounded in their ears, and they were being dragged away from Adelia. Ysabel was screaming. Adelia was cursing. Hero lashed out blindly behind themself with the knife and felt it catch on fabric and a man’s voice near their ear said agh hey watch it. They lashed out again, and the knife caught on fabric again, and then they pushed.

The blade sank in with almost no resistance at all. The man who had said watch it made a sound like he was confused, or maybe startled. The grip on Hero’s arms slackened, and they yanked themself free, wiping blood from their eyes with one sleeve. There was a meaty thud behind them, but they didn’t stop to look, couldn’t stop to look, because Adelia was shouting and the men were grabbing at Ysabel and the trees were shaking—

Wait, what? But before Hero could fully register their own confusion, the treeline exploded in a shower of leaves and loose moss, and three thousand pounds of damp, grey, furious hippopotamus thundered into the clearing. Zahra scattered the bedrolls under her close-set feet, barreling toward Adelia with all the momentum of a coal train. She knocked two of the masked men aside with a brutal shoulder check—one of them landed next to Hero with a splintering thud and didn’t get up again.

Zahra’s jaws gaped wide, revealing her cruelly sharp teeth, and she snapped at the remaining two men. The one farthest from the hippo turned to bolt and knocked hard into Adelia. The two of them fell in a tangle of limbs. The man’s companion yanked him up by the arm and they both ran. One of the men Zahra had knocked over scrambled to his feet and followed them. Zahra started to charge after them, kicking up dry grass, but Adelia whistled sharply and the hippo trotted to a reluctant stop. She stood snorting at the place in the treeline where the men had disappeared, the vast grey expanse of her trunk heaving like a bellows.

“Adelia,” Hero shouted, running to where she sat in the patchy grass of the clearing. “Adelia, are you alright? Where did he get you?” Adelia’s breath was ragged, and she was clutching at the grass by her thighs with both fists. When she looked up at Hero, her face was clenched in naked agony. “Show me,” Hero said, kneeling next to Adelia, not touching her but holding their hands a few inches from her shoulders as if they could shake the injury away.

But Adelia was shaking her head and tears were brimming in her eyes.

“Show me,” Hero whispered. “I can help.”

And then Hero realized that they could hear Zahra’s huffing breaths, and they could hear the singing insects that were starting to come out as the sun went down. They could hear the groans of the man they’d stabbed. They could hear the crackle of dry grass under their own knees.

They could hear things they hadn’t heard since Ysabel was born. For the first time in six weeks, it was quiet.

Hero stood up and scanned the entire clearing. “Adelia,” they said, trying to keep their voice calm. “Where’s Ysabel?”

Even as they said it—even before Adelia’s anguished, furious scream split the night open—Hero knew the answer.

Ysabel was gone.

Excerpted from Taste of Marrow, copyright © 2017 by Sarah Gailey.

The post Taste of Marrow appeared first on Reactor.

This is the fun, fast-paced alternate vision of America you never knew you needed, packed with a diverse cast, romance, betrayal, and of course, man-eating hippo mayhem. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge. Available now, River of Teeth is the first in a duology from Tor.com publishing—its sequel, Taste of Marrow, publishes September 12th.

Chapter One

Winslow Remington Houndstooth was not a hero.

There was nothing within him that cried out for justice or fame. He did not wear a white hat—he preferred his grey one, which didn’t show the bloodstains. He could have been a hero, had he been properly motivated, but there were more pressing matters at hand. There were fortunes to be snatched from the hands of fate. There were hors d’oeuvres like the fine-boned young man in front of him, ripe for the plucking. There was swift vengeance to be inflicted on those who would interfere with his ambitions. There was Ruby.

Winslow Houndstooth didn’t take the job to be a hero.

He took it for the money, and he took it for revenge.

The scarred wooden table in front of him was covered in the accouterments of The Deal. The two-page contract, signed and initialed in his cramped handwriting. The receipt for disbursement of funds. A set of five photographs that had been culled from several dozen files: his team, selected after hours of arduous negotiation. There was a round-faced woman, her hair set in a crown of braids; an ink-dark, fine-boned rogue; a hatchet-nosed man with a fussy moustache; and a stone-faced woman with a tattoo coiling up her neck. The latter two were concessions he was already braced to regret. And finally—never last, only ever finally—there was Hounds-tooth himself. The photo didn’t do him justice—he noted that the part in his hair was off-center by at least two centimeters—but he was wearing his finest cravat in the picture, so he’d call it a wash.

And then of course, there was the fat sack of money.

He counted out the thick gold coins, his eyes flicking to the photo of the hatchet-nosed man once every few seconds, and he waited. Now that the negotiations were over—now that his rate and his team had been established, and the money had changed hands—the small talk would begin. It was always the same with these government types. They were deeply confused by the juxtaposition of his vague accent and his eyes. His country’s accent. His parent’s eyes.

“So, where are you from?”

Ah, yes. There it was. They could begin the requisite dialogue about where he was from and where he was from. Houndstooth didn’t look up from the coins.

“Blackpool.” He could have made his tone frostier, but being in the presence of such a lovely stack of hard money warmed him like a milky cup of Earl Grey.

When the agent didn’t immediately respond, Hounds-tooth paused in his counting, placing a mental finger next to the number “four thousand.”

The agent was staring at him with such blue eyes. Such attentive eyes. “You don’t sound British,” the agent said quietly. Houndstooth found himself intrigued by the catch in the young man’s voice.

“Yes, well,” Winslow Houndstooth replied with a crocodile grin. “I suppose my accent’s almost gone by now. I’ve been in Georgia for some time. I came to the States to be a hopper, and once I tasted my first Georgia peach”—he reached across the table to touch the agent’s arm, scattering the photos—“it was just too sweet for me to leave.”

The federal agent’s cheeks reddened, and Hounds-tooth’s smile grew. He didn’t move his hand.

“I do so love the peaches down here.”

Winslow Houndstooth left the federal agent’s office an hour and forty-seven minutes later, smoothing his hair with an elaborately carved comb. He eased the door shut behind him with a small smile.

That young man would need to take a nap for the rest of the afternoon.

The sack of gold coins was heavy, and he divided it evenly into each of Ruby’s saddlebags. She could have carried the weight on one side easily—eight thousand dollars in U.S. government gold would hardly wind her—but it pleased him to know that he was flanked by four thousand dollars on each side.

He swung himself into the kneeling saddle on Ruby’s back. She grunted at him.

Ruby had settled her bulk deep into the water-filled trench next to the hitching post. She wasn’t made for long periods standing on land, although her breed could do it for longer than most. The Cambridge Black hippopotamus was the finest breed in the United States: sleeker, faster, and deadlier than any other hippo on the water. Ruby wasn’t bred for meat; she was a hopper’s hippo, meant for herding her slower, grazing cousins.

Ruby was onyx-black and lustrous; she looked like a shadowy, lithe version of a standard hippo. She stood five feet tall at the shoulder, about the height of a standard Carolina Marsh Tacky—although horses, Tackies included, were rare ever since the Marsh Expansion Project had rendered their thin legs a liability on the muddy, pocked roads. Her barrel chest swung low to the ground over short legs, perfect for propelling her through marshy waters when her rider needed to round up wayward hippos on the ranch. She grumbled on land, but could carry Houndstooth up to ten miles overland between dips in the water—another marker of her superior breeding (her cousins could only do six miles, and that only under duress). Fortunately, she was rarely out of the water that long.

“I know, girlie. I shouldn’t have left you out here by yourself for so long. But you know I just can’t resist blue-eyed boys.” Houndstooth patted Ruby’s flank and she let out a little rumble, standing under him and dripping freely for a few moments. She lifted her broad, flat nose briefly and yawned wide. Her jaw swung open by nearly 180 degrees, revealing her wickedly sharp, gold-plated tusks. They gleamed in the late-afternoon sun. She snapped her mouth shut and lowered her head until her nose nearly brushed the ground as she prepared to head home.

“Yes, alright, I know. Let’s go home, Rubes, and you can keep your judgments to yourself. We need to pack up.”

Houndstooth swayed with her rolling gait as she began to trot. He rubbed a loving hand over her leathery, hairless, blue-black flank, feeling the muscles shifting under the skin. Ruby was sleeker than most hippos, but not by much. Though her livestock cousins had been bred for marbling, her sub-Saharan ancestors carried little excess fat. Their rotund shape belied merciless speed and agility, and Ruby was the apex of those ancient ideals: bred for maneuverability, fearlessness, and above all, stealth. She was dangerous in the water: no gulls dared to plague the marshes she wallowed in, and if one was so foolish as to try to rest on her back, it would quickly be reduced to a cautionary tale for other gulls to tell their children.

“Eight thousand dollars, Ruby. We’ll be able to buy our own little patch of marshland, maybe get you a bull.” Ruby huffed, her nostrils—set squarely on top of her nearly rectangular snout—flaring with impatience. Her round ears didn’t turn toward the sound of his voice, but they flapped irritably. Houndstooth chuckled. “Of course I’m joking. You’re past breeding age anyway, Ruby-roo.”

It was another thirty minutes to the marshside tavern where Houndstooth had a room. It would have been forty by horseback, but Ruby’s trot was quicker than a horse’s, even with her frequent detours to dip back into the river.

Houndstooth knew when he’d picked her out that she’d grow up to be more temperamental than a slower hop would have been, but her agility had made her spirited temperament worthwhile.

She’d saved his life enough times that he figured she’d earned the right to her opinions.

When they got back to the tavern, Houndstooth unlatched the kneeling saddle and the saddlebags from Ruby’s harness and set her loose in the marsh. “I’ll see you in the morning, Ruby. We’ll head out around dawn, alright?” She waited, already half-submerged in the water, for him to rub her snout. Her ears twitched back and forth, impatient, and she blew a bubble at him. He laughed, earning a long, slow blink of her slanting, hooded eyes. “Okay, alright, I know. You’ve got places to be, grass to eat.” Houndstooth crouched and put a hand on either side of her broad snout.

“You’re my girl, Ruby-roo,” he cooed, rubbing her whiskers. “And you’re the best gull-damned hippo there is.”

With that, Ruby sank into the water and was gone.

Houndstooth propped his feet on a chair as he watched Nadine work the room. She was in her element: sliding full mugs of beer down the gleaming bar, promising to arm wrestle drunk patrons, letting customers buy her shots of whiskey to share with them (she always poured herself iced tea and pocketed the cash). He loved to see her efficiency. He’d told her many times that she would make an excellent hopper, but she always said she preferred to herd malodorous beasts that paid in cash.

She dropped off a steaming mug of Earl Grey—brewed from his own personal supply—and straightened his hat. “Where’ve you been, Winslow? Out with some new girl?”

He winked at her, and she tapped the brim of his hat to set it back askance.

“Ah, some new boy. Green eyes or brown on this one?”

“Blue,” he said, toasting her. “Blue as the Gulf, and twice as hot.”

He pulled out a silk handkerchief and bent to polish a scuff on his left boot. His timing was fortuitous. As he bent down, the door to the tavern burst inward and a man nearly the size of Ruby barreled inside.

“What jack-livered apple-bearded son of a horse’s ass,” the man bellowed, “let a fucking hippo loose in a private marsh?”

Houndstooth did not remove his boots from the chair as he waved his silk handkerchief over his head. “Yoo-hoo,” he said in a high falsetto, before dropping his voice down to its usual baritone. “I believe I’m the jack-livered apple-bearded son of a horse’s ass you’re looking for.” With the hand not holding the square of paisley silk, he unbuttoned his pin-striped jacket. “What would you like to say to me about my Ruby?”

“That’s your hippo?” the man said, crossing the now-silent room in a few sweeping strides. As he came closer, Houndstooth did a quick calculation. He added the bristling beard to the muscles straining at a flannel shirt and the shedding flakes of marsh grass, and he came to the obvious conclusion: marshjack. The man, it was safe to assume, spent his days scything marsh grasses to send to inland ranches. His accent was unplaceable, a combination of tight-jawed California vowels and loose Southern consonants. Houndstooth decided that he must have come South during the boom and taken up marshjacking after the bust. “That tar-skinned brass-toothed dog-eating monster out there is yours?” The man looked down at Houndstooth, who was still in his chair. “Who the hell let you on a hopper ranch, anyway? I’d like to have a word with the damn fool what thought to let you—”

“Dog-eating, did you say?”

“That’s right, you yellow-bellied bastard,” the man growled. “That monster of yours done et my Petunia.”

“And what,” Houndstooth inquired, easing his feet off their perch, “was your Petunia doing in that private marsh? Certainly not helping you hunt ducks on private property, I would hope?”

Everyone in the bar was watching them, speechless. Nadine leaned forward over the bar—the private marsh in question was her property, and so were the ducks that swam in it. The ducks she raised from eggs and sold at the market in order to pay the taxes on her bar.

“That ain’t none of your business, you slick fuck,” the marshjack spat. “What’s your business is that my Petunia’s dead because of your painted-up hippo bitch.”

He swung his arm. Houndstooth registered the glint of metal.

What happened next happened very quickly indeed.

Houndstooth dropped forward out of his chair and into a crouch, and the knife sailed over his head.

The marshjack’s momentum carried him forward and he stumbled, his leg brushing Houndstooth’s shoulder as he put out a hand to catch himself before he could hit the ground.

Houndstooth straightened, fitted his right fist neatly into his left hand, and used his full weight to drop the point of his elbow onto the back of the marshjack’s skull.

There was a crack like a branch snapping. The assembled crowd in the tavern made a collective “ooh,” and the marshjack fell onto his face. By the time he managed to roll over onto his back, Houndstooth was standing over him. He twirled the marshjack’s long, ivory-handled knife in his hand as the marshjack’s eyes eased open.

“Well, old chap,” Houndstooth said in a carrying voice. “Seems you tripped and dropped your knife.” He flipped the knife in the air and caught it without taking his eyes off the marshjack. “Not to worry, I’ve caught it for you.” He tossed it again; caught it again. The marshjack’s eyes followed the spinning blade.

Houndstooth crouched over him. “Now, here are some things you ought to know. One: Ruby is not painted. She’s a Cambridge Black hippo, and I’d guess that’s why she was able to sneak up on your dear departed Petunia. Bred for stealth, you see, but she can be territorial. I’m not surprised that she ‘et’ Petunia, if the dog was in her waters.” He tossed the knife from hand to hand as he spoke, almost lazily. “Two: Her tusks are plated in gold, not brass. It’s my gold. I took it, chum, from the type of men who like to steal ducks. So you see, it is my business why you were in that marsh, because my Ruby-roo can always use more accessories.” The marshjack tried to track the knife, but one of his pupils was dilating and he seemed to be struggling to follow the movement.

“And number three, my dear man.” Houndstooth reached down and gripped the bridge of the marshjack’s nose between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. The marshjack’s eyes stayed on the knife, which was now twirling baton-like between the fingers of Houndstooth’s right hand. “I thought you’d want to know that they don’t let me on hopper ranches. Not anymore.” His voice dropped to an intimate murmur as the knife flashed in his hand. “But I’ll be happy to address your concerns myself.”

In one fluid motion, Houndstooth inserted the knife into the marshjack’s left nostril and slit it open. Before the marshjack could so much as choke on his own blood, his right nostril had been similarly vented.

Winslow Houndstooth straightened and wiped the blade of the knife clean on his handkerchief. He dropped the square of ruined silk onto the marshjack’s face just as the man raised his hands to clutch at his filleted nose.

“I’ll help you clean up the sawdust tonight, Nadine. Sorry about the mess.” Houndstooth stepped over the marshjack and shot his cuffs, raising his voice over the marshjack’s moans. “Oh, and I’ll be paying out my room this evening. I’ve got a business trip to go on and I think I’ll be a while.”

Nadine set two glasses on the bar and poured a measure of whiskey into each as the bar patrons slowly began to converse again.

“Where ya headed, Winslow?”

He took a photo out of his breast pocket. The hatchet-nosed man glared up from it, his wispy moustache abristle. “The Mississippi River, sweet Nadine.” He tossed the marshjack’s fine ivory-handled knife in the air; it flipped end-over-end five and a half times before dropping, point-down, through the hatchet-nosed man’s left eye. Houndstooth clinked his glass against Nadines. They each downed their whiskey, and Houndstooth gave Nadine a wink and a grin to go with the burn in both their throats. “And what a fine river it is.”

Chapter Two

Nobody ever suspects the fat lady.

Regina Archambault walked through the market with her parasol over her shoulder, plucking ripe coinpurses from pockets like fragrant plums from the orchard. Her hat was canted at a saucy angle over her crown of braids. Many of her marks recognized her, the visitor they’d sat next to at church or at a fete. They greeted her by name—and then their gazes slid off her like condensation down the side of a glass.

And she helped herself to whatever she deemed that they didn’t have a use for. Rings, watches, wallets, purses—the peacock feather from the back of a particularly lovely bonnet. They never seemed to suspect that a woman whose dresses were custom-made to fit over her broad body would have nimble fingers. That she would be able to slip past them without drawing attention.

“Archie! Oh, Archie, you dropped your handkerchief!” A young gentleman in a beautifully felted bowler hat ran after her with a flutter of pink clutched in his outstretched hand.

“Now, Aaron,” she said, archly but in low enough tones that they would not be overheard. “You know full well that is not my ‘andkerchief. I did see one just like it for sale in the general store, though.” Aaron flushed, and he smoothed his downy moustache with a nervous forefinger. Archie stepped with him into the entrance of an alleyway, where they could be away from prying eyes.

“Well, Archie—that is, Miss Archambault—that is—I just supposed that I might –”

Archie reached out her hand and took the handkerchief. “Aaron, mon amour—you know we must’n’t let anyone see us together like this. Why, think how they’d talk.” Her fingers rested on his for a moment as she took the little scrap of pink from him.

He leaned toward her. “Archie, I have to talk to you about our plan, I think my parents suspect something, and I won’t be able to get away tonight after all.”

His father, the stern patriarch of the wealthiest family in New Orleans, certainly did suspect something—he suspected quite a bit, if he’d read the anonymous letter Archie had sent him. She pressed the pink handkerchief to her lips and summoned tears to her eyes—just enough to brim prettily. “Oh, mon ciel étoilé, but I must go first thing tomorrow! And you must come with me, and we must buy the tickets this evening! I suppose—you’ll just have to give the money for the train tickets to me, and I’ll buy them, and I’ll—I’ll ‘ide one in the knot in our tree, for you to collect when you can join me. You will join me, won’t you, mon amour? You… you remember the tree I’m talking about?” She dabbed delicately at her eyes with the handkerchief and fluttered her lashes at him.

“Oh, yes, Archie, I—I remember. How could I forget where we–” If he was any pinker he’d be a petunia. He pulled an envelope from his vest pocket and pressed it into her hands, looking over both of his shoulders as he did so. “Here’s the money for the train, and… I’ll see you at the station, then?”

Archie pressed the handkerchief to her eyes again, so he wouldn’t see her roll them at his hamfisted attempt at stealth. “A kiss, Aaron. For luck.” She kissed him hard—a better kiss than the boy would likely ever get again in his life. She kissed him thoroughly enough that he wouldn’t notice her fingers dancing through his pockets.

“I’ll see you at the train station in two days, my love.”

She waved her handkerchief at him as he crept out of the alley, and she tucked the fat envelope of cash into her reticule. The poor little overripe peach of a boy—she marvelled at the way he walked, with the confidence of someone who’s never been hungry or cold or heartbroken before in his life. When he was out of sight, she examined his pocketwatch. A fine piece—it would fetch a fine price. Just fine.

She straightened her wide-brimmed straw hat and left the alley, gathering her skirts around her. She turned down a side street, away from the crowd, and walked to a broad old dirt road. A dog ran between two of the pecan trees ahead of her. Other than him, she was alone, and she walked down the middle of the road, parasol dangling from her wrist, holding her skirts up with one fist and her hat down with the other.

As she walked through the pecan trees to the marsh dock, the hidden pockets in her overskirt thumped against her leg.

As she scanned the water for Rosa’s white ears, Archie whistled—a tune she’d heard from a busker in the marketplace. She couldn’t remember the words—something about a hopper and a debutante—but the melody was catchy.

A stream of bubbles moved across the surface of the water. Aha.

“Rooo-saaa,” Archie sang in her lilting alto. “I seeee youuu!”

A white blur erupted halfway out of the water and rushed the dock. Archie swept her hat off, spread her arms and set her legs in a wide stance as the three-thousand-pound albino hippo splashed toward her at full speed.

“Bonjour, ma belle fille!” Archie cried. “Mon petit oeuf douce, ’ave you been having fun while maman was at the market?”

Rosa skidded to a stop a few inches in front of the dock. Archie tapped a long finger against the hippo’s broad white nose.

“You, ma cherie, need to get sneakier. You’re too easy to spot!”

Rosa shoved her snout against Archie’s drooping skirts. “Yes, fine, ’ere—” Archie unclasped her skirts and pulled them off, revealing close-fitting red pinstriped riding breeches underneath. “—I got you a pastry, cherie. I know that cruel veterinarian says you shouldn’t, but we don’t ’ave to tell ’im about this, do we?”

Archie pulled a slightly squashed turnover from the pocket of her skirt and held it out to Rosa’s nose. The hippo’s pink eyes remained unfocused, but she turned unhesitatingly toward the smell of the tart. Her mouth swung open, and Archie dropped the turnover onto her tongue.

“Aren’t you scared she’ll bite you?”

Archie whipped around, startling the sallow, bone-thin boy behind her so much he nearly fell off the dock. She grabbed his arm and hauled him away from the edge of the planks.

“Of course I’m not scared,” she said, still gripping the boy’s arm. “I’ve ’ad Rosa since she was just a petit ’op. She would no sooner bite me than she would join the Paris Opera. Sneaky little urchins who follow me, on the other ’and—” She smiled and brought her face close to the boy’s face, close enough that she could have bitten the brim of his cap. “She eats them up without a thought.”

The boy swallowed hard but was not foolish enough to wriggle out of her grip. “Please, ma’am, you are Miss Regina Archambault, aren’t you? They told me to look for the, uh, the—”

“The fat Frenchwoman with the albino ’ippopotamus?” Archie deadpanned.

“Uh, yes, miss. I—I have a letter for you. Please don’t feed me to your hippo, ma’am, I didn’t mean to sneak—”

He raised a trembling hand with an envelope in it. Her name was written on the outside in familiar, spiky lettering. Archie released his arm.

“Well, then, that is something else altogether.” She grabbed the letter. “Would you like to pet a ’ippo, boy?” He looked nervously at Rosa’s tusks. “She will not eat you. Not unless I tell’er to. Just make a lot of noise as you walk up, so you don’t startle’er—’er eyes, they are not so good.”

The boy glanced between Archie and the pink-eyed hippo. “I’ve never heard of a blind white hippo before.”

“Well,” Archie said, “the ’opper that bred ’er was going to kill ’er when ’e saw. ‘What use is a blind ’ippo?’ ’e
said. But I knew better—she is the finest ’ippo in all the world.”

The boy stared at Rosa, awe plain on his face. “Her name’s Rosa?”

Archie ran her thumb under the seal on the envelope. “Oui. Let ’er smell your ’and, then you can scratch behind ’er ears.”

As the boy approached the beast, tentatively placing a small hand against her snout, Archie read through the letter.

“Well, well,” she whispered to herself. “Winslow, you old connard,” she said, not looking up from the letter. She murmured to herself as she read it through again. “Ferals… eight thousand… a full year? Non, that can’t be—oh, oui, I see now…” She turned to the boy, who was staring at Rosa’s tusks with rapt fascination as he rubbed her nose. She looked him over, taking in his dull, patchy hair and his anemic complexion. She wondered if he slept in the streets, or if he hadn’t escaped the orphanage yet.

“Miss Archa-Archim—”

“Call me Archie.”

“Miss Archie? You said you had her since she was just a hop, right?”

“Oui,” Archie replied. The boy was looking up at her with shining eyes, one hand resting on Rosa’s nose.

Archie lowered her voice conspiratorially, just to watch his face light up. “Hoppers, you see, we apprentice for years—then we choose a hop, when the time comes. We sleep beside them, we feed them, we sing to them. We’re with them every moment of their lives, from the time the cord is cut to the moment they’re fitted with a harness.”

The boy’s eyes were wide. “So that’s why you’re not scared of her?”

Archie laughed so heartily that the boy began to look sheepish. “I’m sorry, boy, it’s just—I couldn’t imagine being less frightened of sweet Rosa.” Rosa, hearing her name, yawned wide, showing off her teeth. The boy stared into Rosa’s massive mouth, his face aglow with awe.

“How do you get her teeth so white?”

Archie smiled. “I brush them. Would you like to see?”

The boy nodded, reaching out a now-fearless finger to touch one of Rosa’s gleaming tusks.

“I’ll show you, if you run a little errand for me. I need a telegram sent to a Mr. Winslow Houndstooth. Can you remember that?” She told him the message she wanted sent to Houndstooth, and she gave him a coin to get her a map of the Mississippi River.

“Be back here in two hours, and I will show you ’ow I brush her teeth. Hell, I’ll even let you ’elp me pack up ’er saddlebags.”

The boy put a hand on top of his cap, as though afraid it would fly off in the wake of his excitement. “Oh, boy, Miss Archie, I’ll be back faster’n you can spit!”

He ran down the dock, his feet flying up behind him. Archie smiled, and turned back to Rosa, who was waiting patiently to see if another turnover would be forthcoming.

“Well, cherie,” Archie said, folding her laden skirts over her arm. “It would appear that Winslow is calling in our old debt. I suppose I could argue that I owe ’im nothing after what ’appened in Atlanta—but what’s a favor between friends, oui? ’E’s got a job for us, my Rosa. How would you like to be a rich ’ippo?”

Rosa grunted, lowering herself further into the marsh. Archie pushed her skirts into a half-full saddlebag, then slipped off her shoes and sat on the dock, dangling her feet in the water. She rubbed a wet foot over Rosa’s half-submerged nose. “Eight thousand dollars. Just think, Rosa. Think of the pastries I’ll buy for you.”

Chapter Three

Hero Shackleby did not read the letter when it arrived.

They didn’t read the second letter either.

They read the third, but only because it was hand-delivered.

Hero sat in their rocking chair, watching the tar-black hippo with the gold-plated tusks amble up the road. It would stop in front of their house, to be sure. Hero didn’t look up from the sweet tea they were stirring as the hippo came to a stop at the bottom of the front steps.

“You can pop her in the pond with Abigail. Gate’s around the side there.”

The man on top of the hippo didn’t respond, but dismmounted and walked around the side of the house. Hero listened as Abigail greeted her new pondmate, as the man in the peacock-blue cravat cooed to—ah, yes. “Ruby,” he called her. Abigail was a Standard Grey—not too far off from a meat hippo, but considerably smarter. She would be friendly to Ruby. She was friendly to everyone. Hospitable, Hero thought.

Hero stirred the iced tea, tasted it. Not quite there yet.

Ruby’s rider came back around to the bottom of the front steps. He put his boot on the first step, then stopped, his chin tilted toward Hero’s face. “Might I join you?”

“S’why I’ve got a second rocking chair,” Hero said, assessing the man out of the corner of their eye. He was tall, immaculately dressed. He had cheekbones that sliced right through the thick, golden afternoon sunlight. He walked up the steps deliberately, watching Hero. Watching Hero’s pistols.

“Don’t worry,” Hero said. “I won’t shoot you. Sweet tea?”

“You haven’t been reading my letters,” the man said.

“You’re English. Lancaster?”

“Blackpool. You haven’t been reading my letters.”

“And you haven’t accepted my hospitality,” Hero said, gesturing to the unoccupied rocking chair and the sweet tea sweating on the porch rail in front of it. “Please, won’t you sit?”

The man sat. He looked like he wanted to sit on the edge of the rocking chair, but it was canted so that he had to sit all the way back. He held his hat in his hands. “My name is Winslow Houndstooth. I got your name from the federal agent who gave me this.” He dug into his pocket and held out a thick gold coin with an eagle on it. “He said you’d want this job.”

Hero sipped at their sweet tea, ignoring the proffered coin. “Hot this summer. They said it would be cooler, but I’d say it’s a sight hotter than it was this time last year.”

Houndstooth tapped the coin against the arm of his rocking chair. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to this part of Louisiana before. Rode here all the way from New Orleans. And that after the steamship ride along the Gulf.”

“Your Ruby must be tired as a hog after a boil.”

“She seemed happy to get into the water. Your Abigail looked damn bored in that pond, though. I bet she’d like the work.” He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Hero.

“I’m retired.” They considered Houndstooth over the rim of their glass. “But I’m glad you came to tell me about this ‘job’ in person. Like a gentleman.”

Houndstooth’s eyes found Hero’s. “Shackleby. That’s an honest name. Are you an honest person?”

Hero smiled, close-lipped. “I’m not a liar. Ask me anything and I’ll tell you the truth.”

“Is that sweet tea poisoned?”

Hero’s smile broke into a broad grin. “I thought you’d never ask.” They picked up the second glass of sweet tea from the porch rail, took a sip, and set it back down. “See? I’m just fine.”

Houndstooth didn’t touch the glass.

“Abigail is bored,” Hero said after a moment. “She’s not used to living in one place, to having her own pond all to herself. She loves it. Has her own little dentist-bird.” Hero leaned their head back against the rocking chair and fanned themself with the letter. “But she’s bored. I haven’t saddled her up in months. It’s just been the two of us, all alone, plus the milkman once a week. And I don’t even drink milk.”

“Hero.” He seemed to be rolling their name across his tongue. Hero caught themself staring and looked away. “Hero, I’m supposed to get you to accept this job. I accepted this job with the understanding that I would have a demolitions expert on board.”

Hero sipped their sweet tea and watched Hounds-tooth fiddle with his hat. “I’ll need some convincing. So. Convince me.” They tried not to blink while they said it, knowing that it sounded for all the world like a line. Houndstooth’s eyes snapped up, and he swallowed hard. Hero rubbed a tapered forefinger through the condensation on the outside of the pitcher of sweet tea.

“Well,” Houndstooth said in a low voice. “There’s the money. Eight thousand dollars. Gold, not bonds.”

“Hmm.” Hero ran their finger down the side of their throat, letting the cool water cut through the heat of the afternoon.

“Then there’s the job itself,” Houndstooth said. “Clearing the feral hippos out of the Mississippi. You’d live up to your name, if we managed it. We’d be heroes, Hero.”

“Mmmhm.” Hero leaned back in the rocking chair and crossed their legs, right over left. It would be something, tobe a hero. A decent way to end a career that had gone on too long. Better than simply fading off the scene, like they’d planned. They tapped their nails on the arm of the rocking chair, one-two-three-four.

“And then, of course, there’s the team. It would be you and me—” He paused for a moment. “—Archie the Con, Cal Hotchkiss, and Adelia Reyes.”

Hero sat forward at this last name. “Adelia Reyes? I thought I heard she was—”

“Yes,” Houndstooth interrupted. “But she’ll still do the job. She never turns down a job.”

“Well.” Hero sat back, folding their hands in their lap. “It sounds like you’ve got quite a team already. Without me. So why would you need me, Winslow Houndstooth? Why do you want to pull me out of the retirement I’ve been so thoroughly enjoying?”

Houndstooth stood and turned on his heel, leaning his back against the porch rail. His hand rested next to the untouched sweet tea, which had begun foaming softly. He looked down at Hero, his gaze unwavering.

“Because,” he murmured. “I think you want it.”

Hero was thankful that their skin was dark enough to conceal the hot flush that was climbing their neck.

“I think you’ve only been retired for a year, and already, you’d poison a stranger just to break up the monotony.” Houndstooth knocked the sweet tea off the porch rail. It hissed as it ate through a rosebush. He leaned for.ward, still holding the porch rail. “I think you’d enjoy working this job a lot more thoroughly than you’ve enjoyed sitting in that rocking chair.”

Hero looked at Houndstooth’s burning eyes. “Is that what you think?” they asked, and sipped their sweet tea to relieve their suddenly dry mouth.

“Yes. That’s what I think. That,” he said, tilting his head to one side, “and I’ve got some things I need blown up. From what I hear, you’re the one to do it.”

Hero set their glass down and stood, clapping their hands decisively. “Well, then.” They walked inside, and emerged a few moments later wearing a battered leather Stetson and clutching a large, bulging duffel.

Houndstooth laughed. “I thought it would take more convincing than that!”

Hero walked toward Houndstooth until their boots touched. The laughter on Houndstooth’s lips died. They were nearly the same height, and their noses were less than an inch apart. Hero could smell the sweet iced tea on their own breath.

“Ask. I know you’re wondering. If we’re going to work together, you may as well ask.”

Houndstooth swallowed. “I…” He paused, looking down at Hero’s mouth, then looked back at their eyes. “How did you drink the poison? Without it killing you.”

Hero blinked. That wasn’t the question they had anticipated. “I’m immune. Small doses. Every day.”

Houndstooth smiled. “Well. That’s the only question I need the answer to.” He sat back down and unfurled a map of the Harriet on the table between them. “Shall we plan a route? I think we should be able to get into the marshes by midmorning, and then we can collect Cal before meeting up with the rest of the crew. . . .”

Hero let themself smile as they sat across from Houndstooth and began studying the map. This would be more fun than retirement.

Excerpted from River of Teeth © 2017 by Sarah Gailey

The post Get Caught in Hippo Mayhem with River of Teeth, Chapters 1-3 appeared first on Reactor.

Searched for, endlessly, tirelessly, by a mother who wants to love and protect her from what she is, and what others would use her for.

A change of name. A change of identity, from child to threat. Shaped by forces vaster than anyone’s understanding, into something new and different and wonderful and terrible.

Married to a man who might be a monster, but who is always the hero of his own story. Guided to him over and over by a fate she’s stopped resisting.

Escape, but not really. Life as a prisoner, but not really that, either. Life marked by a connection she didn’t choose—a connection that chose her.

A connection she can’t escape.

River Song is not a Persephone analog. She can’t be. If she was, the Doctor would be a Pluto figure, a Hades figure, and that would require a whole other column to justify. A column about what death is and means, and who heroes truly are, and what it means to be able to see the scope and breadth of time itself.

But there are so many parallels that it’s difficult not to see her as a Persephone figure. When the Silence takes her, she is drawn into a world that is not for her, against her will and to the abject horror of her mother. She is drawn into a world that wants her for its own purposes, one that sees her as a resource to be used and then discarded. In this Hell, she is consumed by the Silence—forced into a symbiotic spacesuit, forced to do things outside of her control. Forced to witness death and consumption. She’s told that this is her new life: a life of serving forces that are not greater than her, but that hold her captive nonetheless.

Trapped.

River Song is not a Persephone analog. Not unless Amy Pond is a Demeter analog. Not unless Amy Pond is a mother who promises to protect her child no matter what, who promises that her beloved daughter will never be alone. Who fails her. Who cannot ever undo the damage wrought by that failure.

Yes, Amy Pond birthed something god-like and swore to protect it no matter what. And yes: River Song has a mother who will tear the universe itself apart to find her, who would sacrifice everything to protect her.

But she is not Persephone. She will never be Persephone.

After the young Goddesses journey into death, she comes back to her mother with a new name. She is changed from Kore—simply girl, nothing more than girl—to Persephone, Bringer of Destruction. She must return to her prison, and she does it knowing that it’s her duty, that it’s right and necessary. She goes back and waits, biding her time until she can escape again.

River Song is not Melody Pond anymore, not after the life she’s barrelled through. Her Hell is the Silence that took her. It’s Stormhold, the prison to which she must always return, from which she must always escape. But more than either of those, the greatest Hell of them all is the way she’s been marked by her childhood. There is no way for her to deny the fact that she’s been altered by the things that have happened to her. The Hell she must return to so often is the one that keeps making her try to kill the man she truly loves: the inside of a spacesuit, a raised arm, a loaded gun. The knowledge that she can’t change everything. The understanding that she can’t save him, or herself, forever.

There is no rescue adequate to save her from that Hell. There is no way for her to escape it fully. The only thing that she can do is try to live—so she tries to enjoy the spring and summer and long autumn of her life, before the winter of murder comes upon her once again.

She cannot prevent the darkness from taking her. But she can enjoy the sun while it shines on her.

Is Persephone coerced into eating the pomegranate seeds that keep her in Hell each Winter? Or does she choose them happily, to be nearer to the man she once hated and mistrusted but has since grown to love?

Does River Song choose the Doctor, or does time choose him for her?

She is like Persephone in so many ways. She’s the product of her mother’s failed attempt to protect her. Born into power, taken by those who want her for that power and for who she’s connected to and for what she is. Marked forever by a kidnapping. Unable to escape the consequences; forced to return again and again to the darkness that took her once and won’t let her go. Married to a man by fate, or by choice, or by time, or by love.

If she is not a Persephone—as I choose to believe—then she eats the pomegranate seeds without coercion. She isn’t tricked into staying; she longs to stay. She chooses the life that keeps her connected to The Doctor. She devours him, and she looks for more. Not because she is starving, but because she loves the flavor.

Because she loves him.

She loves the adventure. She loves the journey. Like Persephone, she knows that winter and death are coming for her, but she rushes at them headlong, because she knows that the path she’ll travel to get there is one to be savored.

To me, River Song will never be Persephone, because River Song chooses. Again and again, she chooses. She turns her face toward the death and darkness. She smiles, and says Hello, Sweetie.

And she walks into Hell with her head held high.

Hugo and Campbell award finalist Sarah Gailey is an internationally-published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has recently appeared in Mashable, the Boston Globe, and Fireside Fiction. She is a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. You can find links to her work here. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Her debut novella, River of Teeth, is now available from Tor.com.

The post River Song in Hades appeared first on Reactor.

Right?

He’s the guy the story is all about, after all. He’s the Boy Who Lived. He has the scar and the prophecy. He has the sidekicks and the invisibility cloak. He has the mentor. He has the tragic backstory. He faces down the villain.

Harry is the hero. It’s his face on the covers of the books. They’re called Harry Potter and the… for a reason.

Right?

Ron is a sidekick. You can’t deny it. He can’t even deny it. He trips over things and he makes faces and he provides Harry with a Normal Friend. He explains things but doesn’t always get them right. He supports. He humanizes. He gripes sometimes but other times, he’s there. He’s there when Harry needs him, mostly. He holds the team together until he goes off in a snit to explore his options, and when he does, Harry spirals for a while until he comes back.

Ron is a symbiote. He doesn’t get his own story that’s separate from Harry, not really. And sometimes he hates it, but also, he knows that it’s all there is for him. When he’s not with Harry or near Harry, his edges start to fade and people start calling him by the wrong name and he finds himself in a state of hibernation, not-quite-frozen but unable to really move until Harry comes back.

We aren’t discussing Ron right now. He’ll wait. He’ll be there when it’s time for us to get to him. He’ll be there once he’s needed.

He always is.

Hermione, though.

What are you, Hermione?

Are you a heroine? Or are you a sidekick?

Here’s the thing with Hermione: she’s always there. She’s always performing the ceaseless emotional labor that Harry and Ron require. She does the heavy emotional lifting so that Harry can continue to Hero all over the place and Ron can continue to sidekick. She is always there, even when she’s angry, even when she’s being horribly mistreated. She’s loyal to a fault, unwavering, unflinching. She’s patient.

That’s sidekick behavior.

But then.

When Harry’s not there, Hermione is busy. She’s not waiting for him. She decided at some point that it wasn’t Harry’s story, it was everyone’s story, and she acts accordingly. She’s not along for the ride.

This is something that the Harry Potter fan community has been discussing for years: Hermione drives the story because she has her own story. No one in their right mind would trust 13-year-old Harry Potter with a Time Turner, but Hermione gets one and she deserves it. She dates a celebrity, and she outsmarts Rita Skeeter, and she does those things in the background of Harry’s story. She convinces Harry to be a figurehead in the fight against Voldemort, and she creates Dumbledore’s Army. She schedules the DA meetings, she creates the consequences for DA defectors, she creates the galleons that allow the DA to communicate in code. She researches horcruxes and how to destroy them. She rereads all of Hogwarts: A History. She shows up with the tools and the knowledge and prevents Harry and Ron from standing around looking perplexed while the world ends around them. She saves everyone’s bacon all the time by being smarter and better-prepared than anyone else. Those two boys would be dead a thousand times over without her intervention.

She gets her own story, if you know how to look for it. She has her own narrative that’s completely separate from Harry’s. But does that make her a hero?

Harry is the hero, right? He stands in opposition to Voldemort. He’s suffered loss at the hands of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Unimaginable loss.

Except.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermione does too. She makes the same sacrifice that Harry did—losing her parents—but instead of losing them to the Avada Kedavra curse, she loses them to her own wand. She erases their memories of her. She hides them in Australia, tucks them away to make sure that they aren’t tortured for information. To make sure they aren’t tortured the same way she’s tortured later in the book.

But everyone has lost people. Everyone has missing relatives, dead brothers, inaccessible parents.

That doesn’t make someone into The Hero. Everyone’s the hero of their own story, but not everyone gets to be the hero of this story. Too many people have died in the Harry Potter universe for loss alone to bestow heroism. Too many people have lost everything. Have sacrificed everything.

Sidekicks can suffer, too.

So, what are you, Hermione?

Does anyone in the Harry Potter universe stand in more direct opposition to Voldemort than Hermione Granger does?

Voldemort stands for oppression. He stands for the fundamental superiority of blood-purity. He stands for status, not achievement. He stands for alignment, not friendship. He stands for fealty, not loyalty. He stands for a wizard’s foot on the neck of a house-elf. He stands for the sacrifice of one’s humanity in pursuit of one’s ambition.

Hermione Granger is his antithesis. She’s a muggle-born witch who arrives at Hogwarts prepared to dominate magic. She’s enormously ambitious, but consistently seeks to elevate others when she could easily let them fail. She walks beside Harry even when doing so means putting up with relentless scorn from the people who waver between hating him and worshiping him—even when that scorn is piled on top of the blood-status slurs she weathers continuously throughout the series. She stands up against a centuries-long institution of interspecies slavery, even when doing so means that everyone she cares about will laugh at her. She skips her final year of school in order to help Harry and Ron find the horcruxes, even though it could mean losing every opportunity she’s spent the previous six years working for. She chooses her causes over her ambitions every time, and she swallows the consequences because they’re worth it to her.

What is Hermione?

She’s relatable. She’s an overachiever who consistently stands in the shadow of The Hero. She pursues victory without ever receiving credit. She accomplishes and innovates constantly without recognition. She is expected to have the answers, and to provide emotional support, and to weather the foibles of others with maturity and grace. She is shouted at for daring to have her own pursuits and interests. She is shouted down for disagreeing with the person who has designated himself In Charge. She is never allowed to be tired or sad because everyone always needs something from her. She must be the best at all times, and she must never demand a reward for her efforts. She is a cypher for every ass-busting girl who has been shunted to the side of the stage while a man who yells at everyone receives a medal from the mentor who’s never seen fit to so much as meet with her.

Hermione is where women and people of color and especially, too often, women of color so frequently find themselves: pushed to the side and asked for patience.

To Harry, she is a sidekick.

To us, she is a heroine.

Top image by Frida Lundqvist.
This article was originally published in September 2016 as part of the Hugo-nominated Women of Harry Potter series.

Sarah Gailey’s fiction has appeared in Mothership Zeta and Fireside Fiction; her nonfiction has been published by Mashable and Fantasy Literature Magazine. You can see pictures of her puppy and get updates on her work by clicking here. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Watch for her debut novella, River of Teeth, from Tor.com in 2017.

The post Women of Harry Potter: Hermione Granger is More than a Sidekick appeared first on Reactor.

But none of these mercenaries would be quite as bad-ass without their trusty hippo steeds.

So we want to introduce you to the hippos at the heart of Sarah’s alternate history adventure, and asked Sarah herself to provide the stats on each–from size to breed to quirky traits and middle names–to accompany these original illustrations by Gregory Manchess!

Meet Ruby, Rosa, Abigail, Betsy, Zahra, and Stasia, the hippos at the heart of the River of Teeth duology (which continues with Taste of Marrow this September)!

Developed by the breeding program at Houndstooth Ranch, this breed all but died out in a tragic fire. Ruby is the last specimen of the breed and an exemplar of the breed’s profile. Bred for stealth and combat, the Cambridge Black hippo moves through the water silently and strikes at enemies with minimal bluster. While many hippos in their natural habitats approach combat with a great deal of fanfare, the Cambridge Black opts for sudden, efficient movements and relies more on the element of surprise than brute strength.

An albino variation of a Houston Grey, Rosa is of a rare breed developed for loyalty and courage. Intended to be a household breed, the Houston Grey fell quickly out of popularity when it was discovered that it is impossible to fully house-train a hippopotamus.

Abigail is a Standard Grey. The original American Hippopotamus. Standard Greys aren’t usually much for combat, and tend to be docile, if stubborn. More intelligent than their counterparts, fiercely loyal, and easy to underestimate.

An “heirloom” breed developed more for show than for functional purposes, the Tuscan Brown is a deep, lustrous mahogany when well-cared-for. Unfortunately, in the hands of an inexperienced Hopper, a Tuscan Brown can fade to a dull mud-puddle brown. This breed scars easily when exposed to lake combat or even rough waters. Best suited to private ponds with well-tended, delicate grasses planted in shaded areas. Excellent at learning show tricks such as ‘roll-over’, ‘smile,’ and ‘dance’.

Same as Abigail, Zahra is a Standard Grey. The original American Hippopotamus. Standard Greys aren’t usually much for combat, and tend to be docile, if stubborn. More intelligent than their counterparts, fiercely loyal, and easy to underestimate.

The Arnesian Brown is a workhorse breed. Patient but ruthlessly intelligent, these hippos are excellent partners to Hoppers but should never be left to their own devices for too long, lest they grow bored and find ways to keep themselves occupied.

The post Meet the Hippos From Sarah Gailey’s River of Teeth appeared first on Reactor.

First, I harvest the stars. People think that you’re only supposed to harvest the ripest stars—the ones that are near to bursting out of their skins, hanging loose off their nebulae—but actually, those stars only make up about half of the crush. I also grab a few unripe ones, the ones that are still cool enough to grab with bare fingers. They warm up when they’re in the basket alongside the fully-ripe stars, but not all the way, and their slight bitterness adds complexity to the press that you can’t get from just aging. To get a really good sense of terroir, I also let a few comets and loose moons drop in with the crush. People won’t tell you to do this, because they want you to think you’re just drinking stars, but honestly… the wine that comes from people who think like that is crap. It’s three-dollar-a-bottle crap and I don’t think you should drink it. That’s my opinion.

Once I’ve got a full harvest, I wash the stars. I usually do this by blowing gently on them. This is a slightly controversial alternative to the newer, more sterile methods favored by the larger galactic wineries, but I find that a little stardust remaining in the press doesn’t hurt anything. Besides, the radiation the stars emit helps to take care of any lingering bacteriological, fungiform, or parasitic infestations. A soft breath is all it takes to dislodge large, unsightly sediment that will cause clogging and flavor issues during the pressing and aging processes. Too harsh of a breath, of course, and the stars cool. This will result in a bitter press if you’re not careful, and is, in my opinion, the reason so much large-press star-wine has sugar added to it between aging and bottling. But then, I’m a traditionalist.

Once the stars are clean, they go into a sterile metal bucket. It doesn’t have to be anything special—you can probably get one at your local hardware store! With wine, as with people, it’s what’s inside the container that counts most.

Next, the pressing. I would say that this is the most important part of making star-wine, but truly, it’s just the hardest part. It’s hard because it’s not complex, and it’s not intricate, and it’s not delicate. You can’t be taught how to press stars well, not by studying and not through an apprenticeship and certainly not by watching. The only way to get the hang of pressing stars is by doing it wrong a thousand times over before you get it right. You have to learn it for yourself. It’s frustrating, but if you’re really dedicated to making good star-wine, you’ll put in the work! It’s worth it.

Most people start by wishing too small. They wish for world peace, or for an end to hunger, and the stars don’t budge. Think about it: If wishes like that could break the skin on a star, they wouldn’t survive to a ripeness suitable for drinking! The stars seem so delicate at peak ripeness that it’s easy for even a veteran harvester to forget that they’ve weathered a lot in their centuries of growth. They’ve heard a lot of wishes—they’ve grown fat and juicy with them—and you’re not going to get them to burst open with a small wish like the first one that popped into your head. The toughest part is that when the stars are still burning, they can still soak in the wishes and sweeten further. If you get it wrong too many times, they’ll start to either cool or rot. I recommend practicing on very small batches while you figure it out.

Everyone has their own methods, but I find that the trick is to wish for something so big as to be impossible. Something you wouldn’t dare to wish for unless you meant to break the stars open. So, an end to hunger and poverty won’t do the job. A wish for peace and goodwill between peoples isn’t going to work either. You’ve got to wish for something that puts a strain on the star and makes it finally, finally split. You’ll have to find the ones that work for you, obviously, but try to think of the things that nothing could ever make happen, and wish for those things. I wish that I could hear him laugh like he did when he was a child, or I wish that I could have fixed things before the end, or I wish that the dark, alone place inside of me could be reached by sunlight. Whatever wish you use, it should be the kind of wish you can only make once. It should leave you feeling husked and hollow and broken.

Once you find the right wish, the skins on the stars will split, and the juice will immediately start running into your press. This is the fun part—my favorite part, really. This is the part where you reach in with both hands and squeeze the cores out of the stars. This part is tiring, and the sensation of the stars bursting between your fingers is reminiscent of reaching into a mouth to pluck out a tongue, or trying to catch a snake as it slides through your garden. There’s no going back once you’ve caught it. There’s no going back once you’ve done it. Now, I always leave a healthy number of skins in with the cores and juice during the fermentation process—like I said, I’m a traditionalist! But if you want a darker batch of star-wine with a less complex flavor, you can strain the skins out. Why you would do something like that, I can’t imagine, but hey, to each their own. The result of your pressing is called the “must.”

Add honey. Some people add sugar, and those people are charlatans who would be better off working at a soda fountain than making star-wine. I use honey from bats that gather pollen from my own nebulae, which is how it’s been done for a long time—but if you don’t tend your own nebulae, or if there’s an eclipse going on at the time of your harvest, or if your bats aren’t producing well, store-bought is fine. I usually add just enough honey to make the must smell like summer, but if you want to make a stronger batch of star-wine, add enough honey to make the must smell like regret.

Don’t worry about yeast. It’s taken care of.

Next, you’ll want to transfer the must into a container to age. This container will impart complexity and depth to the flavor of your star-wine. I like to use oak barrels, but some people prefer pine. Loosely cover the mouth of the barrel with a lightweight cloth woven from the first hairs that fell from your daughter’s head when she was a baby. You might be tempted to use a rubber band or adhesive to hold the cloth in place, but don’t do it! If you’re brewing properly, the cloth will stay put of its own free will. You can always taste when someone has tried to secure the cloth with tools instead of promises—it’s a great way to sour your whole batch, and then you’ll have to start over.

I don’t recommend tasting your star-wine until the first time you cry without knowing why. Some people like to taste sooner, but they end up adjusting the flavor (almost always adding more honey) instead of letting the brew sweeten with time. Be patient! Trust the stars. Ignore the sounds you hear coming from inside the container. Don’t worry if the metal starts to glow and deform—it won’t melt all the way. Do not lift the cloth until it’s time.

You’ll know that your star-wine is ready to bottle when it tastes like power and magnitude and terror. Strain out any particulates, but don’t throw out the muck! I reserve the stuff that I strain out and use it to fertilize my nebulae. The roots really thrive when they’ve got moons to draw nutrients from (plus, the smell of fermented starskins acts as a handy pest repellent). I print my labels at home, because the copy shop has gotten too expensive by half and I might as well use that fancy printer. Microsoft Word has some great templates for printing labels. Make sure to wash your bottles thoroughly and seal the corks tighter than you think you have to; otherwise, when you apply the lead seal to your corks, you’ll get a lot of steam that can crack the glass and is extremely toxic to inhale. You’ll want to let the star-wine mature for at least three years inside the bottle before you drink it, so that it doesn’t turn you into something other than what you are intended to be. Store the bottles in a moonlit place.

It’s a time-consuming and difficult hobby, but once you’ve got the hang of making your own star-wine, you won’t ever want to drink store-bought again! Don’t be scared to give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is that you lose everything you love and everything you are, and what hobby isn’t like that?

Sarah Gailey’s fiction has appeared in Mothership Zeta and Fireside Fiction; her nonfiction has been published by Mashable and Fantasy Literature Magazine. You can see pictures of her puppy and get updates on her work by clicking here. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Watch for her debut novella, River of Teeth, from Tor.com in May of 2017.

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