Tag Archives: The Colored Lens #47 – Spring 2023

We Are Men

Grandfather rubbed his chin with his hand, a stern frown fixed in his bushy brows. “You are off to see the circus.”

Zhiqiang nodded, the serious look on his face mirroring the old man’s. They sat on the terrace. The morning light, filtered through the softly fluttering leaves of a tallow tree, was without order or pattern, wildly chaotic, organic and gorgeous. The boy had struggled to wake wanting to be with the old man before Nainai’s alarm clock chimed. This was their time, when the city was quiet, and they could listen to the birds and talk as men talked.

They sat at a small round “news” table, the surface of which was a flatscreen. Grandfather had found the table discarded beside the road. “We won’t plug it in,” he’d said. So, the screen never projected the esteemed leader’s face, and the boy and his grandfather never listened to the government sanctioned news.

“And what have I taught you?” Grandfather asked.

“My duty is first to my elders, to you and Nainai, and then to Aalee.”

“I am stuck in this chair.” He hit the arm of it with the heel of his palm, “But we are men, are we not?”

In response, the boy rose and went into the house returning with a beer and a large glass of orange juice. Solemnly, he placed Grandfather’s beer on the blank flatscreen, and taking his seat raised his glass of juice. The old man responded with a twitch of a grin and poured a splash of the beer into Zhiqiang’s juice. Then he clinked his bottle against Zhiqiang’s glass. When the man drank, the boy drank.

“You will be going into the old city, no factories, no military targets, still you must be careful.” He looked into his beer as if the reason for men’s need to murder each other was contained in the golden liquid. Across from him, Zhiqiang studied the pulp in his orange juice. “This circus is important to Nainai. She remembers her sister when she sees people walking on stilts.” Grandfather’s eyes momentarily looked confused. “Your great aunt was a crazy woman.”

Zhiqiang nodded.

The alarm clock pinged out a melody. Creaking bed sounds and padding feet sounds drifted out to the where the two sat. Soon Nainai, in her way, which was always to be darting about like a firefly, hustled onto the terrace. “Only seven in the morning and you are drinking beer?”

Grandfather, glancing sideways, winked at Zhiqiang.

Zhiqiang winked back.

Simultaneously, they drank.

As if some unseen balloon had sprung a leak, a long sigh meandered out of Nainai’s mouth. She raised her eyes to the sky never happy with her ancestors. “You could have warned me.”

Aalee rushed out twirling in a circle Nainai’s bright red lipstick on her lips. Zhigiang put his hand over his mouth to stifle his giggle.

“Come, come we will be late,” Nainai was busy picking up things: wrist phone, hearing aid, “where is my earring?” Finding her purse and the earring, she rummaged through her bag mumbling, “Where is the other tag?” then “oh, they were stuck together.”

With her right hand Nainai took one of Zhiqiang’s hands, with her left, Aalee’s.

“No,” said Zhiqiang in a firm voice, a frown in his brow.

“What?” asked Nainai.

Zhiqiang rearranged their hands so that he was in the middle, instead of Nainai, keeping a firm hold on them both.

Silently, Grandfather raised his bottle to the boy.


As the transport tube slid to a stop, Zhiqiang whispered to Aalee, “There will be animals.”

“Really?” Aalee’s eyes were wide. “Maybe marmosets?”

“Maybe tigers.”

“No, you’re only trying to fool me,” but her feet dangling above the floor, swung back and forth faster, and her grin widened.

“Hurry, hurry,” Nainai said, standing. “You don’t want to miss the parade.” She picked up Aalee. Though they were twins, Aalee was much smaller. Zhiqiang smiled up at his sister and took Nainai’s hand to help her exit the tube and climb the steep steps to the street.

They wove through the marketplace filled with people and vendors. In a booth skewered chickens roasted over a small fire; the boy’s stomach gurgled with longing. Next door, a young woman in a white apron topped hot rice cakes with dollops of gooey mango jam, while under a wide awning dumplings floated in a salty broth. Snuggled beneath the branches of an old bent tree sat a drink vender’s table. On top, obedient paper cups stood in neat rows each filled to the brim with sweetened goji berry juice and cold crushed ice, the cups never moving, not an inch, until whisked away by some thirsty customer to be consumed, and the cup crushed and discarded.

“Can we stop? Please.”

“Later, little one,” Nainai said, pulling on his hand.

“But I’m thirsty.”

“Come along, quickly.” Nainai was a tornado blowing through the crowd. Zhiqiang held tight to her hand and ran to keep up with her scurrying feet.

They hustled past a man with a painted face and two laughing girls with tall feathers on their heads, then pushed through the stiff turnstile and into the arena stairwell—so many steps— the noise of the people echoing like they were in a tall concrete cave.

They sat high above the stage where there were still a few empty seats, and the air was blissfully cool. At first, Nainai sat between them. But Zhiqiang wiggled between Nainai and Aalee. Aalee rewarded her protector with a kiss on his cheek.

First came the parade—and tigers. “I didn’t believe you,” Aalee gasped. Once again, her dangling feet swung.

“Whoa…” Zhiqiang pointed as elephants appeared. Behind them men walked on stilts, and others danced throwing their partners into the air. Magicians made people disappear and brought them back in a puff of purple smoke. Next, right in the middle of the show, interrupting everything, a government man in a dull green jumpsuit and brown boots, came on stage.

Boos rumbled through the stadium.

“As a precaution,” the government man raised his hands, “we would like to remind every citizen that you must go to your designated underground location if the sirens sound. I will review these locations now.”

A collective moan filled the arena.

“Red badges should enter the underground tube tunnels at 6th street…”

When the government official finally said, “that concludes my remarks for the evening, enjoy the festival,” the arena reverberated with cheers.

Dancers flitted across the stage on feet that barely touched the ground. Zhiqiang stared, transfixed, his attention unwavering. All was sound and sight, and the feel of Aalee’s hand in his. Six women, clad in tangerine silk, waved like chrysanthemums in the wind, gracefully throwing ribbons of yellow cloth into the air as if these were unfurling stamens or butterflies taking flight. Other dancers appeared, fiery red dragons, stomping their feet and tossing their horned dragon heads to the beat of drums.

The loud piercing cry of a siren shattered the illusion.

Aalee and Zhiqiang covered their ears.

Nainai picked up Aalee, rushing for the stairwell. Zhiqiang, running on the long stadium bench seat, was inches behind her.

BOOM!

The first shell hit the stage. In the stairwell, squeezed against the wall, twice Zhiqiang was almost crushed. Grandfather’s frown appeared in his brow. Below him on the wall of the landing over the heads of the people the number “4” was painted in bright fluorescent orange.

Three more flights.

Another shell, the stairs shook; the lights went out; people stampeded. As Nainai stumbled, Zhiqiang grabbed her arm, pulling her hard toward the corner of the landing where there was room for her to gain her feet. The hands that clutched Aalee, trembled.

“Three more flights. Now!” he shouted, dragging Nainai into a break in the crowd.

In the street their feet trampled dumplings and splashed through spilled soup.

Men with microphones shouted, “Blue tags enter at 4th street! Green tags enter at 12th!”

As they passed the cups of goji juice, the table, pushed by a maddened crowd, skidded toward them. “Watch out!” Zhiqiang ducked. The table hit Nainai’s thighs knocking her down. She scrambled to her feet, picking up a screaming Aalee.

“Zhiqiang!”

“Nainai!” he shouted from under the table.

The crowd divided them. Like the current of a river at flood it carried Nainai along.

“Zhi Zhi,” Aalee called. “Zhi Zhi!” Twice he tried to go after them, and twice he was knocked to the ground. He crawled back under the table to escape the hysterical feet.

A green tag hung from a safety pin pinned to his shirt.

Green tags enter at 12th street.

He reached up and took a cup of juice, miraculously still upright, off the table. So sweet, so cool, so wet.

The crowd thinned . . . quickly he downed the last drop.

There, an opening, behind the man carrying a boy in a leg cast.

Rat . . . tat . . . tat . . .

The deafening sound of thousands of screams filled the air. People fell. A woman on the ground, clutching her leg, looked at him. With a barely perceptible movement, she shook her head, ‘no.’ More shots. She fell backwards, her eyes staring unseeing into his as the line of black boots marched forward. Under the table, the empty cup slipped from Zhiqiang’s hand.

Fiona and the Fairy Queen

Fiona was out in the dawn-lit, dew-decked meadow, calling her cow for the morning milking, when the fairy queen stepped from the forest. She wore spring waters and budding leaves, with her hair tightly curled upon her head and dotted through with delicate, pale flowers. She strode across the meadow towards Fiona, wings folded, a breeze blowing around her. The flowers and grasses bent and swayed to let her pass. The morning sun rose higher with each step she took, wreathing her in gold.

Fiona’s blood ran cold.

A thousand tales told by the elders around the winter fires sparked in her mind: the fairies lured maidens to their deaths, they kept them as servants, they turned them into stone. Fiona knew she should run.

But she couldn’t move.

She lifted a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the piercing sun, wanting to see the fairy queen better. The fae’s beauty bewitched Fiona more than any spell could. Her heartbeat quickened in her chest and her blood thawed, running hot and right to her cheeks.

The fairy drew up in front of her, tall as a sapling with a year’s growth. Stunning. She didn’t look much older than Fiona, who was almost twenty.

“Have you seen a cat?” Her voice was deep and honeyed, with magic layered below the surface. And annoyance just below that.

“A… Cat?”

“Yes.” She crossed her arms and her dragonfly wings flicked in and out. Fiona’s gaze caught on her eyes, the deep brown of late autumn leaves damp from rain.

“What kind of cat?” Fiona finally managed to ask. There were lots of cats in the village, but she couldn’t imagine the fairy looking for any of those.

“A bad cat.”

“Any proper cat is a bad cat.”

The fairy laughed. “What’s your name?”

Fiona narrowed her eyes. “Tell me your name first.”

“Do you really think—” The fairy cocked her head to the side. “—that if I wanted to steal you away from here, I couldn’t come up with a better line than ‘have you seen a cat’? You can call me Zaubi, though.”

“I’m Fiona.” Fiona did a small curtsy, hoping Zaubi didn’t notice the flush on her cheeks. “Perhaps I could help look for your cat?”

“It’s not my cat. It’s one of Freyja’s damned ferals—Bee, she’s calling herself today. I was supposed to be watching Bee while Freyja’s looking for her husband.” Zaubi’s wings flicked.

“So you’re responsible for the cat?”

Her wings folded. “Yes.”

“And you’ve lost the cat?”

A heavy breath. “Yes.”

“Let me help you.” The words slipped out of Fiona, and she immediately wished she could swallow them back. No one offered to help fairies. They took whatever—

Zaubi smiled, warm as the rising summer day. “I’d really appreciate that.”

Before Fiona could convince herself that this was a terrible idea and that she was definitely getting kidnapped and taken away to fairyland, she found herself nodding and mentally running through all the places in the village that a cat might hide. “We have a number of cats hanging around, they keep the rats down. Maybe Bee fell in with them? I’ll go check behind the butcher’s, then down by the river. If all else fails, I’ll check the midden.”

Zaubi lifted her chin. “I’ll come, too.”

The fairy’s body blurred and her form changed. The sparkling dew dress shortened, turning into a linen shift. Her stature diminished and she became human. The flowers tucked into her hair no longer shone with enchanted starlight. She was still absolutely gorgeous, though. Fiona balled her hands into fists, fighting off the sudden image of putting her arm around Zaubi’s waist and brushing the red diamond patterned belt now wrapped there.

“And now for the finishing touch.” Zaubi plucked a strand of hair from Fiona’s head.

“Ouch!”

The fairy touched Fiona’s arm. A feeling like cold stream water rippled through Fiona’s blood, dulling the sharp pain. “I’m sorry.”

“What was that for?” Fiona asked.

Zaubi wrapped the strand of hair around her finger. “A charm. Now everyone in the village will think they know me.”

Fiona nodded. A small voice in her mind mentioning that if everyone thought Zaubi lived there, then Zaubi didn’t need to leave the moment they found her cat. She could stay for the midsummer’s dance coming up—Fiona shook the thoughts away, reminding herself that fairies were tricksters, at best. Even when they weren’t at their worst, they weren’t date material.

Off they went, cat hunting.

The cat wasn’t behind the butcher’s, but he told them to check down at the riverbank since the village cats sometimes clustered there, hoping for scraps from the daily fishers. Zaubi smiled and thanked him graciously.

Fiona licked her lips, toying with the thought of asking Zaubi if she wanted to take a break. They could sit and talk and discuss… Cats. Maybe something else if Fiona could turn the subject…

“To the river?” Zaubi asked.

“The river,” Fiona found herself saying, before she could say anything else.

It was for the best. Fairies were dangerous. No one with a lick of self-preservation would spend their morning trying to figure out how to flirt with one. Fiona motioned Zaubi to the path leading out of the village and towards the river.

“So what’s the party for?”

“Huh?”

“I noticed the pigs hanging in the butcher’s. Seems like a lot for day-to-day life in a small village like this.”

Fiona nodded. “Our midsummer festival starts in two days.”

Zaubi ran her hand along the yellow flowers bobbing along the river path. “That sounds like fun.”

Spinning The Dream

I looked up from my green tea and she was there, standing in the doorway of Marek’s Café with long fair hair plastered to her head by the rain. A puddle formed beneath the hem of her dripping coat as she folded her futile umbrella. Her eyes flickered around the dim light of the café searching, searching.

You might say I was surprised. It isn’t often the woman of your dreams walks into your life.

I mean that literally, I’d never seen her before but I’d been dreaming about her for two weeks. I knew that face, knew how the corners of her mouth creased when she smiled, how she pulled her fingers through her hair and tucked it behind her ears when it fell before her eyes.

She took two paces into the café, pulled the fingers of her left hand through her dripping hair and tucked it behind her ear. Her face turned towards me in the shadowy alcove at the back. Two seconds, then she marched up and stood facing down at me over the table.

“You’re Erica Fallon.”

I nodded. She pulled out the chair and sat. Marek appeared at her shoulder. “Espresso,” she said without looking up. “They say you’re good at finding people.” Her gaze held me with an intensity that might have been intimidating, from anyone else.

I steadied my breathing. “Who have you lost?”

“My brother.”

“When did you last see him.”

“Fifty-seven, but I don’t remember it.”

“Twenty-three years ago.” The sea was where it was supposed to be, the bio-war was at its height. “You must have been very young.”

“They thought six when they found me.”

Marek ghosted silently to the table and placed the small cup before her.

“CM-2057-phi-kappa?” I tapped my phone to pay.

She grimaced and nodded. That was one of the nastier of the weapons deployed in the war, went straight to the brain. Ninety-eight percent of infected adults died. Survivors, mostly kids, suffered total amnesia.

“They found me on a street corner. No idea where I came from, so they gave me a name and put me in an orphanage.”

“So what is it?”

“What?”

“Your name.”

The briefest of smiles flashed across her face, creasing the corners of her mouth. “Rosemary Baker.”

That jarred. It didn’t sound right. “And your brother was with you?”

“No.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

Her fingers stroked the handle of her cup. “Not much. He’s about six years older than me.”

“Does he have a name?”

She sipped her espresso. “Everything else I know is… unreliable, more likely to mislead you, like it has me.”

A brother she couldn’t remember, no evidence he ever existed. Her story was like something from a spin dream.

“I know that look,” she said. “You have a healthy scepticism, Erica. But put aside your preconceptions.” She took out her phone and flipped me five hundred picos. A generous fee. “That’s for trying. Double if you succeed.” She downed the remainder of her coffee.

Family Traditions

Dad takes you to the Tree when you turn twelve years old.

“We’re leaving,” he says as he wakes you, a shadow of a man standing tall over your bed. The world is gray outside your window; the air is frigid, unpleasant. He does not speak as you untangle yourself from your blankets, eyes heavy with sleep. He does not say happy birthday.

“It’s cold,” you try. You are barefoot, dressed only in plaid pajama pants and an off-yellow shirt, but he does not let you change. He only stares—dark eyes, dark, graying hair—before he turns and walks away.

There’s nothing to do but follow.

Down the stairs, past family photos of that all-American dream. A mother with laugh lines, a father with a strong, angular face. Two little boys, glowing and laughing with youth, next to a dog with floppy ears. Turn the corner. You drift through the kitchen, past threadbare, empty sofas and a fireplace, unlit.

The front door is open when you get there, and the wind bites your skin. Dad does not shiver. He is already grabbing the keys to the truck, breezing out the door. The swing hung from the tree in your yard sways piteously back and forth. Wood creaks. Leaves ripple.

You spare a glance back at your home–dim and foreign and weary. Your teeth chatter, and there is something coiled and heavy in your gut. Something that yells at you to turn back, to run, to burrow under blankets and away from the chill. But you are twelve years old, now, you remind yourself. You’re not a little boy anymore.

Dad starts the engine; it sputters before roaring to life. You hurry toward him. The darkness prickles at the back of your neck, and the pavement digs harshly into your bare feet. You shake, as you pull on the handle and haul yourself in.

The truck’s moving before you even shut the door.

Dad does not turn on the radio. Dad does not say anything–still does not say happy birthday–as he peels out down the road. Words are stuck in your throat. The silence weighs down on your shoulders, makes you curl in on yourself, sinking into the musty leather of the seat. If you close your eyes, you can almost hear your mother’s laugh in the rattle of the exhaust system. You can almost see your younger brother’s gap-toothed grin, feel his sticky fingers on your face.

The truck jerks to a stop, and Dad grabs your arm. “Come on,” he says, and you follow.

You always follow, and so you step out, blink your eyes open, and–

There’s the Tree.

It is a goliath of wood, a monster of sickly, brittle leaves. The smell of decay is heavy in the air, and flies buzz gleefully around its trunk. One tries to get in your mouth. Gagging, you stumble back, and something squishes underfoot.

You look down. There is a heart on the ground.

There is a heart on the ground, with twine hooked in its muscle–with red staining the grass. You are frozen, wordless, and as you tear your eyes away, the Tree greets you again. Only this time, you can see the shapes hanging from its boughs, swaying gently with the wind. Dozens, hundreds of hearts.

“Family tradition,” Dad finally says. “My father took me here when I turned twelve. His father took him. On and on–all the men in our family, far back as anyone can remember.”

Your breathing is coming out too fast, too harsh. Blood is soaking into your sock.

“You’re scared,” Dad notes. “But you won’t be. You’re not a little boy anymore.”

Dad unzips his jacket, pulls the collar of his shirt down. And right over his chest, is a jagged, ugly scar–puckered and red. A missing piece, as he pulls out a piece of twine from his pocket.

He clamps a hand on your shoulder and smiles. “It’s time to become a man.”

Lynne Inouye is a young, queer fiction writer who lives in Minnesota. Her work has been previously published in Blue Marble Review and Pyre Magazine, and you can find her on Twitter @liinouye.

The Castaway

The naked man, washed up from the sea, watched Misaki from a crouch on the snow-covered shore. In the gray light of early evening, she thought he looked like Michelangelo’s David, carved from obsidian.

Misaki’s breath steamed from her hike down the rocky shore to the harbor. Beside her, her dog growled.

The man’s breath didn’t frost in the air. His naked black limbs didn’t tremble in the cold wind off the sea. Misaki’s hope of companionship withered.

And Man created android in his own image.

Behind him in the harbor, seawater surged over drowned piers. The derelict remains of the island’s defense platform were no more than a breakwater now. Waves crashed against the slagged framework, revealing no hint of its iceberg-like bulk in the depths.

“Calm, Akira,” whispered Misaki, her gloved hand trembling on the dog’s back. She felt the rumble of Akira’s growl, but wind and surf snatched away the sound.

The android’s eyes held hers. She bowed, a useless gesture. How had he gotten here? The only boats were her yellow kayak, dragged up on the harbor shore, and storm-smashed boats on the rocks behind her. She couldn’t outrun him.

Her dog slipped free, advancing toward him, fangs bared.

“Akira!”

She caught up, pulled off her glove, and grabbed a handful of dark fur. She forced Akira to sit, kneeling beside him in the snow.

The android was only a few arms lengths away. His head tilted slightly, studying the dog, not Misaki. Above high cheekbones, the android’s eyes had internal facets like liquid origami. Snowflakes danced over his dark skin without melting. The skin had no cuts, no bruises, no abrasions of any kind. Misaki’s long hair was going prematurely gray, and she had more scars than she could count. Most were from the past two years, since the Singularity had left her alone on the island.

“Sorry for my dog,” she said. Even as she said it, she realized how futile that was. He had as much in common with her as a submarine had with a shrimp. And was just as dangerous.

“Dog,” he repeated, mimicking her voice exactly.

She shuddered, remembering deceptions during the war. “Yes, this island is our home.”

Maybe he came from the west and only knew Russian. No, he must be networked, fluent in every language. And he certainly wasn’t here by accident. She had a good idea why: the island’s lighthouse. That didn’t bode well.

“Why are you here?” She kneaded her hand in the nape of Akira’s neck, trying to calm him and herself.

The android turned his attention back to her.

Instantly she regretted speaking. He was handsome and powerfully built, a foot taller than her. Her heart was pounding, her mouth dry.

She stood, pulling Akira back, fighting the instinct to run.

He stood as well.

“We won’t bother you,” she said, trying to sound calm.

“You,” he echoed.

An accusation or a question?

“Misaki. And my dog, Akira.” She wondered if he’d been damaged by the recent storm. Could he be offline? A disconnected fragment of the AI hive mind?

She retreated up the shore, head turned to watch him. Her pulse raced as she dragged Akira by the scruff of his neck.

The android followed like a wolf stalking stragglers of a herd. Akira’s head was turned like Misaka’s, growling. Misaki breathed shallow and fast. She fervently wished she hadn’t come down to the shore. But it had been over two years since the Singularity. She’d grown complacent. What could she do now? It wasn’t safe to lead him to her cottage, but was anyplace safe? She couldn’t outrun him, couldn’t hide. Her only hope was that he’d think she was like the birds on the shore: harmless wildlife. She tried not to think about the weapon in the lighthouse, afraid her body language would give her away. The weapon was as likely to get her killed as save her. She’d be like a garter snake attacking a mongoose.

She walked up the shore stooped over, afraid to release her grip on Akira to put her glove back on. The wind was cold on the back of her hand, in contrast to her fingers warm in his long fur. She sang to him, voice threatening to crack. She didn’t dare let go, or the fool dog would get himself killed. The path rose toward her cottage overlooking the harbor.

She’d moved in after the last refugee boats had left and the island was abandoned. At the time she’d been too sick to leave. Afterwards she’d been alone until she found two other left-behinds: Akira and a starving cat, Mao.

And now the android.

She glanced behind. He still followed but wasn’t looking at her. His focus was on the houses up the hill. Most were storm-damaged. After two years, hers was the only one in good shape. She’d replaced windows blown out by storms, cannibalizing other houses. It was a good cottage. It was her cottage. She cursed the android, working swear words into the song she sang Akira.

When she reached the door to her cottage, she unlatched it, pushing Akira inside. She considered darting in after him and locking the door. Pointless. The android could rip it off its hinges as easily as she could close it.

She stepped inside. He followed, and she shivered at the danger of this naked man in her refuge.

The cottage was a single level: one main room, two smaller ones and a bathroom. She had running water from a gravity tank and a system of pipes she’d built. There was a fire pit in the center of the main room, with a wide-flanged stove pipe suspended above.

Mao came over, purring against her leg. Unlike Akira, he didn’t recognize the android as a threat.

“Mao,” she explained. “My cat.”

“My cat,” said the android in her voice.

She could lead him out now, leaving Akira and Mao here. Lure the android to the lighthouse where the weapon was. Destroy him. But if he defeated her, what would happen to Akira and Mao? She wasn’t brave enough. Here, she had the comfort of her companions. Perhaps the android would lose interest and leave.

Mao, still rubbing against her, meowed.

“Are we starving, poor thing?” Her voice shook. She rubbed under the cat’s chin.

She glanced at the android. Behind him, the windows looked out on the harbor. The light had faded enough that she could just make out the beam from the lighthouse sweeping out to sea.

Akira settled onto his bed by the fire pit, watching warily.

“I make a fire every night,” Misaki said to the android. She wondered if he understood anything. Was talking to it good or bad? “I found a wood stove in another house but couldn’t loosen the bolts to take it. An open fire isn’t very efficient. You know all about that, don’t you? Efficiency.”

She watched his handsome face and those liquid origami eyes that she couldn’t read, wishing he were human: kind and gentle. Not a killing machine. She turned away, kneeling by the fire pit. Her shoulders tensed, knowing he was behind her. She brushed the old ashes aside and picked up her knife and a stick, whittling a pile of wood shavings.

In the Shadow of the Perch

While royal blood soaked into the whitewashed planks of the gallows, I ran.

I didn’t bother to pack up my cart. Leaving it in the palace courtyard meant losing my good shovel, ten sacks of fertilizer, and the half dozen mulberry sprouts I’d hauled all the way up here. But hanging around in the aftermath of an assassination would be much worse for me in the long run.

I hurried towards the gate as quick as my weak knees and heavy work boots would allow, waiting to hear cries of “Stop, Master Acton!” or “Seize that gardener!” from behind me. Luckily, the red-cloaked guards hadn’t noticed my exit. Even at the best of times, a worker from the lower boroughs wasn’t worth a second glance from them or any other Perch-dwellers. Now, with the sovereigns dying at their feet, I might as well have been invisible.

Fine by me.

Before I slipped out of the courtyard, I chanced a look back. There, King Phillipe and Crown Prince Rillin Verling were splayed out in the hooked claw shadow of the gallows. Crossbow bolts stuck out from their bodies, and my stomach twisted. Grief and confusion won out over my desire to run. Were they dead? Was the assailant still here? Was the princess the next target?

I scanned the parapets lining the courtyard, searching for unseen villains. Nothing.

Then, a flash of movement to my right, a shadow disappearing into an alley. Was it the killer? Maybe. If I took the main street, I could head them off at the intersection, tackle them, bring them before the Royal Guard, and–

Stop.

I gripped the cold metal of the courtyard gates. I didn’t know who wanted to murder the two most important men in the city, but it wasn’t my responsibility to find out, much less track them down. This wasn’t my world anymore. I’d left the upper borough years ago and returned today for a job. That’s it. And I wasn’t even staying to finish it. Whatever came of this morning, it didn’t concern me. I needed to cut my losses and let the shrikes up here deal with it.

I turned my back on the courtyard and started the long journey down from the Perch.

In a World I Cannot Reach

I find hidden worlds everywhere. Tiny ones in tea cups, spelled out in bloated leaves to weave fortunes. Quiet ones under bridges, whispering riddles and bubbling bargains. Some I discover beneath the thunder of crashing waves, seeping into porous cliff faces. Others are plain as day, staring back at me through reflective glass.

The only one I wanted to find was the one that took you away.

No matter how many worlds I discovered, that one eluded me.

I paced around the ancient oak in rings, just as mom taught me, murmuring the ‘right’ words to coax out hidden depths within the brittle bark. My eyes traced the rotten crack splitting the trunk in a long, vertical fissure. I could imagine stepping through.

Mom had warned us not to enter other worlds. Gazing was safe, but trespasses rarely ended well.

My ringed steps tightened their circuit around the oak, heart fluttering in my chest as browned leaves crunched to dust under my toes. This was surely the world you inhabited now. I whispered the final phrase, hand grazing the rough trunk, thumb curling just inside the deep crack.

Whispers deep within the tree answered back; far deeper than a tree ought to be.

Holding my breath as if ready to plunge into the ocean, I stuck my head into the fissure.

A shiver ran down my spine as if someone dumped a bucket of warm water on my head. Stars rained down like flakes of snow, sparkling tails hissing as they passed my ears. I couldn’t tell if I was too big for this world, or if the stars were just that small.

A golden carp swam by as if the black void were nothing but ink in water. Its tail trailed streams of gold like honey, and a strange buzzing filled the air. The longer I stayed, the stronger the buzzing grew. It grew and grew until the fish itself seemed to vibrate in my wavering vision, my eyes watering as I strained to see more in this world of ink and fallen stars.

Something hot leaked from my eyes, but it was too thick to be tears. The popping in my brain turned to crackling like it was cooking.

Strong hands on my shoulders yanked me out, and I gasped and sputtered, coming up for air I hadn’t realized I needed. Still, my heart beat more from exhilaration than panic.

“What are you doing?”

My brother’s deep voice was laced with more than irritation. Now that you’re gone, there’s always a touch of fear in Samuel’s tone.

“Looking for dad,” I said.

“You aren’t going to find him in a tree.” Samuel reached out to wipe my cheeks. His hands came away red. “You were supposed to be helping me check the traps.” He was trying to hide that he was worried, as if I wouldn’t see. I always let him think he succeeded.

“Better to look there than nowhere,” I muttered.

“One day, you’re going to peek in a crack and fall straight through the center of the world.”

Anger prickled at the back of my scalp, white-hot and indignant. Samuel didn’t have the right to lecture me. He gave up looking into other worlds when you left. I didn’t understand why; he was better than me at finding hidden places, other realms. If I had his help, I’d find you in no time. I think he likes being in charge now.

After promising to do something productive with my day, I climbed our cabin’s steps as Samuel trudged back out into the woods with his bow in hand, quiver slung over his shoulder. Your flannel shirt hung on a nail just inside the door, breeze flapping the red and black checkered sleeve in greeting. I took it down and pulled it on, hugging myself and inhaling pine and cedar, imagining it was your arms embracing me.

The pockets were deep enough to use for pine nut picking. There was a section of the woods to the west where I usually found a decent amount. The fact that the disappearing hut was in that direction was just a happy coincidence.

Months had bled by and I had already searched all the worlds we used to peek into together. None of them held your buttery laugh or your strong, broad frame. I tried to swallow the burning in my throat. The emptiness in my chest cavity grew more cavernous by the day and I feared examining it too closely. Samuel called it denial.

Maybe Nona would have some advice.

For All The Worlds You’ll Make

Three weeks before the biosphere collapsed for good, our best and brightest set out for the stars. It was obvious from the start that you would be among them.

When you moved into our street, you were eleven and the bees had virtually disappeared from their last holdouts in Europe and North America, the ones they tried to reintroduce from captivity unable to cope with the heat. I remember being excited. I had friends online, from our school server and from some of my VSR games, but none in-person. You were shy and never left your mother’s side when you all came over to introduce yourselves, breathing apparatus muffling your words as you stood on our doorstep. Wildfire season had started early.

You told me your name, and I told you mine, and it was several months before I saw you again.

It was a bad year, and your folks wouldn’t let you play outside, even when the haze index was low and you promised to wear your breathing mask. It was online where I got to know you. You joined me in myriad worlds in VSR, and I showed you all the tricks of the trade. Naturally, by now I knew how to bypass the parental controls and get to the good stuff: first-person shooters, medieval battle sims, supercar racing and realistic space battles. I took you raiding across Scandinavia, into zero-G dogfights in Saturn’s ring system, and brawling with kaiju in Tokyo. But you preferred the quieter stuff, where you made things, created your own worlds, and the systems that ran and governed them. I didn’t mind—it was a nice change of pace. You opened up as I helped you construct a fully functional space station that linked a loose cluster of asteroids. You’d been lonely all your life, and hated being shut-in all the time. The curfews were creeping closer and closer towards each other, and the final in-person schools had closed their doors the year before we were both due to start kindergarten. The windows of opportunity where we could go outside were getting smaller and smaller—not that you were allowed, anyway. We devoured 2D media from around the turn of the century, watching kids riding bikes aimlessly around their hometowns, getting into mischief and evading bullies.

We made the best of it. As the UN disbanded, and more and more nations abandoned their climate pledges, we carried on with our grand project. Our virtual space station grew and grew. Soon, I realised that the details were beyond my understanding, and as you grappled with the logistics of hydroponics, atmospheric recycling and life support maintenance, I acted as muscle. Other players, bored and sadistic, were a constant threat. What I lacked in architectural intelligence, I made up for in my abilities as a starfighter. I deterred wave after wave of would-be-trolls until one day I couldn’t. They ripped through my defences like a cavalry charge and blasted our ark into shrapnel.

I was devastated, but you just saw it as an opportunity to rebuild, and build better. Sometimes you took my advice on board, but I could tell that most of the time you’d already thought of it yourself.

That winter, the sea retook most of the Netherlands and continued its advance into South-East Asia. COV-64 was running itself into the ground, but what they were already calling COV-67 was starting to show up in more testing centres around the globe.

When we were fourteen, you finally convinced your parents to let you play outside. Your dad had made you wear a ridiculous filter-hood that made you look like some D-tier superhero. I hardly wore mine anymore. As long as it wasn’t the height of wildfire season, or I didn’t play out too many days in a row, things didn’t get too bad.

You were thinner and paler than your various online avatars, but your voice was the same, and so were the expressions on your face. You got out of breath a lot easier—your stamina bar in the outside world was a lot less forgiving. By the end of the summer, though, you could beat me in a footrace nearly a quarter of the time.

On my fifteenth birthday, the global population hit twelve billion, crammed into the corners of the world that were still hospitable to life. Iceland and Greenland had permanently closed their borders.

Your virtual space station—I’d stopped thinking of it as ours a long time ago—had grown exponentially. It was host to hundreds of semi-sentient NPCs, and other players visited to wander the great atriums and geodesic domes full of plant life, asteroids linked by enclosed walkways that gave unparalleled views of the starscape turning overhead. It was fully self-sufficient, and you had made it all yourself. All I had done was make sure no one else had blown it up again. By now, though, you had a following online, and I had help, commanding a small fleet of defensive fighters that guarded the space around the station fiercely.

School was no different. I’d always been in the top classes in our district, but working with you felt like I’d wandered into the wrong lesson. You were coding AIs before I could even program something as simple as a wildfire sentry drone, and your homework made mine look like an afterthought. Soon, you were transferred to another school server, one that was able to accommodate you, and I was left alone. We still talked after class, and on weekends, but it was clear we were on different paths.

Shortly after the Four Minute Exchange across the Indo-Pakistani border, a loose collective of desperate nations announced the Columbus Project. It didn’t make the front pages, but you were transfixed. It was our only hope, you said; to truly gain a foothold amongst the stars before life on Earth was snuffed out for good. All our eggs were in one basket, and the basket was catching fire.

Other people our age, apparently, were sourcing illegal alcohol and discovering each other. But by the time you were nineteen, you’d caught the attention of the grown-ups at the big table. Your space ark project in VSR, and the experience and insight you could bring, had been enough to get you a ticket. You came online one night to tell me you were leaving in the morning to go work on the Columbus Project.

We met on the hill that overlooked the Financial District, the faint glow of distant fires tinging the undersides of clouds far to the south. Drones peppered the skies above and between the buildings like flies above a carcass. Soon the clouds cleared, and a handful of stars were visible, despite the smog. You pointed out Betelgeuse, Orion’s Belt, Polaris, and Sirius. Alpha Centauri was too faint to pinpoint.

You awkwardly thanked me for everything; for being your friend when you were alone, for helping you with your projects and giving you something to keep going for. I was glad it was too dark for you to see my face.

The next morning you were gone, and you didn’t come back online. Your parents wouldn’t answer the door. Two days later, the bike arrived that I’d bought online to give to you before you left for Florida. The delivery had been delayed.

As further resource wars broke out in the Arabian Caliphate and Siberia, I found myself a job providing end-of-life care. It broke me afresh every day, until eventually, I realised it was breaking me a little less every time. It never stopped tearing me to pieces, not fully, and if it had, I’d have been terrified that a part of me had been lost. But death was everywhere: on the news, in the streets, in the air, in the glow on the horizon, on every unwashed surface, and you grew used to it.

Eventually you returned my messages. You’d been busy, you said. The Columbus Project was nearing completion. The first fleet of generation ships would be launching in a few months’ time, crammed to the brim with scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and the brightest young minds the world had to offer.

There were a few final days where we got to talk. You spoke about the things from your project that they had already implemented in real life, and laughed about the things that they hadn’t. I joked about the possibility of joining as the Project’s private starfighter, in case you ran into any aggressive aliens. I wasn’t joking, not really. You knew I wasn’t. You said you had already asked for me, but you’d been told that there wasn’t room. We both knew what that meant—I wasn’t the kind of person the Project wanted.

We never got to say a definitive goodbye—they kept you busy, and regressivists carried out strikes on the internet and global communications networks that seemed to get more frequent and more prolonged as time passed. But I think you would have known that I was there when your ship lifted off from the Cape. I accessed the public VSR cameras just off to the side of the launch pad, and stood there as the ship and ground let go of one another, fire and smoke swirling around me as if I were standing under a waterfall. As the smoke cleared, I looked up and watched the vapour trail fade, the ship shrinking to a point of light and then disappearing, you disappearing with it.

It was only a matter of weeks before it became clear that you had left just in time.

That night, I assembled the bike that had sat in our garage since the day it had been delivered, and took it out for a ride. I’d ridden bikes in VSR before, and the balance in real life took a little getting used to, but within a few minutes I was flying. I pulled my breathing apparatus down, ignoring the acrid smell of the air, and looked to the side, seeing you for a moment flying beside me.

I wondered whether it was the past I was truly mourning, or the future, but either way, it was you.

Dan Peacock is a science fiction and fantasy writer from the UK, with short stories forthcoming in F&SF and Kaleidotrope. He is also a First Reader for Orion’s Belt. You can find links to all his published stories at danpeacock.neocities.org.