Category: issue 14

Elara moved through the settlement with a careful quiet that was almost second nature, the worn soles of her boots tracing familiar paths across the rippling surface of the Great Wanderer’s back. Evening light pooled in low hollows, settling into a dusk somewhere between bruised purple and the rich ochre of the land-creature’s living skin.

Before you open your eyes, you know you're not home. The weighted blanket gave it away, wrapped around your body like a tortilla, turning you into a breakfast fucking burrito on that cold, cold early morning. The weather — that was the next sign. You know, it's never really cold in Bahia, so where the hell are you now, shivering, curled up like a kitten on the hardest mattress you ever laid on (so different from the one in your bedroom)? If you pretend you're still unconscious, maybe you'll convince your brain you are just dreaming, and it'll take you back to the place where you belong.

It was just past midnight, and the only life present in the sorcerer’s sanctum was the cat who called it home. The real master of the domain, one might believe.

They said afterward that the first fishermen who’d gone down to the beach that morning had found her, but when the people from the village hurried to see what the tide had carried in, no one claimed to be the person who’d discovered her. It was as if the woman’s gigantic body had been there for days already, and the population of Punta de Piedra had only just realized she was there.

I drifted over the top of Diver’s Cliff in my spacesuit and considered going for a swim. That’s what we called giving up on Sapphire Alpha: going for a swim.

“Careful, mortal.” The voice was disembodied, high and sweet as a nightingale’s call, commandingly stern as a priest’s sermon. “You dare step into the abode of a van-yakshini?”

The railcar rumbled as it descended into the sewer levels of the fortress city, Aguiyi. The cramped railcar smelled strongly of bleach and grease. Hazard and Safety Commission workers filled the available seats, bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, with even more of them in faded green coveralls standing in the aisle, hands clutched around a steel beam on the railcar’s ceiling. A dingy speaker somewhere in the car broadcast the mayor’s morning address. Elections were coming up, and many of the cleaners in the car were in heated political debate.

Check your skin at the door.

The goat was there again, legs tucked, waiting outside the station.

Chief Adewale always said his wheelchair was faster than most people’s legs, and he had seventy-two years of evidence to back it up. Every morning, while Ibadan’s streets clattered awake with danfo horns, roasted plantain smoke, and market women shouting “Oya, bring your money here!”, Adewale positioned himself at the top of Oke Bola slope and called out to the neighborhood children.