Silt almost blinds us, the water gushing away, and it’s all I can do to fasten my pods to the smooth shale of the tower’s base. The shale slopes down toward the depths to disappear in the muddy sea floor.
Tenebrey clings frantically while I struggle to face the current. With a groan, I thicken my forepods to keep hold of the shale.
Shale! Strong stone—I can’t dig through this. What a fool I’ve been. Mother said nothing of such things.
Tenebrey’s terror shocks through me as her antennae wind desperately around mine. The water roars! Follow the current and she’ll be too deep, easy prey for molesharks.
I’m blind myself now, silt stinging my eyes. We huddle against my tower. Fighting to pull my antennae free, pods throbbing, I ease us forward against the current. She must trust me fully now or all is lost.
My antennae whip forward, over the silt-scoured stone. A small fissure in the shale to my right. And this is builder’s wisdom: small cracks beget larger ones. My forepods take hold and we slant along until the crack widens. A few steps further, my antennae touch mud.
Narrowing my hindpods, I finally begin to dig.
The water turns black with silt, too dark to see. Arching my carapace, blowing the air from my spiracles, I thrust my abdomen down into the mud. A beautiful agony as abdominal scales flare like barbs, pushing deep.
“I can’t hold on,” Tenebrey wails.
“I’ve got you.” One of my forepods cups her carapace and I pull her down, forcing her into the mire where she begins to squirm and twist until she’s wedged in the mud next to my abdomen.
Tenebrey clings to my abdomen and begins to stroke the underside. By the Pastel Trench of Giants, the feeling is indescribable. My abdomen spasms, I feel the rending, and in a blinding rush of pain I lurch free, leaving my abdomen and all the stored food Trockit and I could gather.
“Finally!” Tenebrey’s shout ripples with exultation. The last thing I hear as her carapace hunkers down and fastens her to the bottom.
A last, longing stroke from her antennae, a parting touch that hints of loneliness and joy. Four years she’ll stay there; our children will be born when the tide again floods the plain.
Until then the young hes will dwell within her newly formed ab-dome, a city in miniature sculpted in chitin and dreams. They’ll feed off our stored reserves, and she’ll teach them, as my own mother, Winil, taught me, of the Cycle of Fours. Perhaps I’ll see my young when the moons converge and the tiny hes scuttle for the safety of the gleaming cities, beacons of light fair bright as the moons.
Weightless in the currents, the bud of my new abdomen already sprouting between my hindpods, I let the water spin me to the surface. A builder, I, to ride the wave of dawn until my abdomen heals. Skimming the froth of waves on my back, steering with my hindpods while my forepods spread to catch the wind, I begin to search.
It’s such a twist of sensation, for upsee has become downsee, and I, once a he, am now a fledgling hae.
Four moons, four gods, let the currents sustain me. The rising sun pinks the waters and the clouds on the horizon promise a new day.
Soon I’ll find my way to Carnak. Spires I’ve built, yet perhaps there is something more to life than working mere stone. A poet I’ll become, a builder of words and wisdom, fat and sassy on my back to sing the praises of Tenebrey, mother to the end, of Enerous the beautiful shadow upon the moon, and sulky Trockit whose flavor still haunts my mind.
Oh, grand and glorious morning,
my pods throb with yearning
for the time when four moons converge,
wild the flood tides surge,
drawing deep shes and shaes above,
the ovigonopods of love.
Copyright © 2001 Joe Murphy
*
Joe lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, with his amazingly artistic wife Veleta. With her at his side, he’s managed to publish almost thirty stories. They’ve been married for twenty-nine years and he couldn’t have done it without her. For more about him, see his Web site. Joe’s previous story in Strange Horizons was “The Calcium Efflux Conspiracy.”
Gavin Schnitzler is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Tufts University’s School of Medicine.
Water, Green River, Daybreak
By Sarah Prineas
10/8/01
Marfa Petrovna Kopelnikova’s cat, white as a ghost and about as substantial, got up from her place on the windowsill and began grooming herself with long swipes of her tongue.
“Company coming, is it, Katzy?” Marfa went to the stove and put the kettle on. A moment later, she heard a knock at the door. The white cat and the old woman exchanged a look. Marfa shrugged and went to answer the door; Katzy returned to her ablutions.
Marfa had been expecting a visitor. Her landlord, Mr. Salvador, had warned her yesterday that he would be sending someone to meet her, a young man. She would look him over before Mr. Salvador rented him a room. The landlords and caretakers of the other crumbling apartment buildings on the ugliest block in Miami Beach thought Mr. Salvador was old-fashioned for having a witch on the premises. The others installed conduction rods and convection coils on their roofs to deal with the elemental bolts that struck the buildings during the storms of late summer and early fall. But Mr. Salvador’s aunt practiced Santeria down in Little Havana; he knew a thing or two about magic. So he didn’t begrudge Marfa the tiny apartment at the top of the building, just so long as she kept the magical influences flowing steadily and used her powers to protect the building during the storm season.
Marfa opened the door just as the prospective tenant was raising his hand to knock again. The young man was clearly expecting someone taller, but he quickly lowered his gaze to meet Marfa’s bright blue eyes.
Marfa examined him: he was tall, thin, and tense, with untidy black hair and wary dark eyes. There was something else as well, the slightest coruscating aura of elemental magic, not quite enough to be visible, but not quite a trick of the eyes, either. Definitely not harmless, Marfa decided, but not an immediate danger.
“Come in, you,” she said, standing aside. During the last storm, Marfa had placed a magical ward on the threshold to keep uninvited people out. The young man hesitated, and then flinched slightly as he stepped through the doorway, as if he’d felt a tingle from the ward. Marfa looked at him more carefully; he should have felt nothing.
“I’m Marfa Petrovna Kopelnikova,” she said. “You talked to Mr. Salvador about the apartment, yes?” The boy nodded, looking around the room. Marfa watched his wandering gaze, noticing what he noticed. His eyes skipped over the worn furniture; lingered on the skeins of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling in the kitchenette; gave the cat two or three long seconds, which she returned; and returned to Marfa’s lined face.
“You’re Michael Damson, yes?” Marfa asked. He nodded. “Come and sit down at the table, we’ll have a talk, drink some tea.” Obediently, he followed her further into the room, sat where he was directed. From the corner of her eye, as she readied the teapot and mixed the herbs for tea, Marfa watched Katzy, to see what her opinion of the young man would be. The cat was often more sensitive than her mistress. But Katzy had returned to her place on the windowsill, ignoring the stranger in her territory. A suspended judgment.
Marfa set two cups on the table. He hadn’t spoken yet, she realized. “Not much to say for yourself, huh?” she prompted. The young man shrugged and gave a half-smile. “You want the apartment, you got to talk to me,” she insisted. “Tell me about yourself; what do you do?”
He cleared his throat and refused to meet her eyes. “I’m a musician,” he mumbled. Marfa asked him what instrument he played. “Guitar.”
A loud thump from the bathroom interrupted Marfa before she could ask the next, obvious question: electric guitar with a loud amplifier? Or quiet classical guitar? A second thump followed close after the first.
“What was that?” The young man’s glance darted toward the bathroom door.
“Ah, domovoi,” Marfa answered.
Her visitor stared at her warily. “I guess you want me to ask you what a domovoi is.”
“It’s no secret, boy. Domovoi is a house spirit, protector. I got so many domoviki wanting to move in here I have to beat the walls with a broom to get them to leave.” Marfa sipped her tea and watched him.
“Mr. Salvador said you were a witch.” His face looked doubtful. “Can you do magic? Can you cure sickness?”
“Heh,” she chuckled. “Most of the ‘magic’ cures involve salt and pepper, or a raw egg, or a pinch of tobacco, all mixed up with a cup of vodka. Now, that would make anyone feel better, eh?”