Category: issue 14

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.