I was once told a story about a Maa community that lived in Laikipia in pre-colonial times. They were very fierce, feared by the other communities around them, and they were closely related to the Maasai. However, when the British arrived during the colonial conquest, they were massacred to extinction. This story affected me in many ways, especially given that I could only find little written information related to it. As a result, this made me ask questions about whether there were tribes which were entirely lost during this period, but more so, it made me ask what happens to the survivors of genocides, and how that affects their descendants down the line. I’m not sure I was quite successful in finding an answer to that question, but it did give rise to my story.

What was the most difficult part of writing this story, and what came easiest?

The most difficult part of writing this was trying to understand what tone to use. While I felt that the story always contained grief, it was hard to write about collective grief in a way that didn’t seem abstract or too expository.

The easiest part was the narrator and the writing of place, what she sees and how she interprets it.

What authors or stories have most influenced your work? Are there themes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?

The authors who have most influenced my work are Gabriel García Márquez, Ted Chiang, Lesley Nneka Arimah, and Ken Liu. Through them, I was able to fall in love with speculative fiction and magical realism and understand how to weave those aspects into fiction.

I always find myself returning to the theme of identity in my writing. However, this is not necessarily a conscious thing, and perhaps as I experience life more, different themes will emerge in my writing.

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about this story?

No. However, I am hoping that it will motivate readers to seek out histories which may have been erased by colonial domination. They may not be written anywhere, but hopefully they still survive through songs or stories that only a handful of people know.

What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

Right now, I’ve started work on a novel titled Other Time, Other Life. It is mostly about the experiences of exile and how exile makes one feel as if they occupy two planes of existence, a past we cannot reach and a present in a different country that doesn’t fully explain us. At least this is my hope for the novel; I’ll see how it develops.

In addition, I’m also working on more speculative fiction short stories still dealing in some way with lost histories and memories.

You can say I immigrated to Canada, but I think in the context of this essay, it might be more accurate to say I translated myself in Canada. Now I’m trying to translate myself back to reclaim the me who has been stalled in time and reconcile her with the me who has kept moving on foreign land. Sometimes I imagine immigration, translation, as the migration of realms, where the self I left behind in China remains, 4 years old, stalled in time, tugging on the back of the hoodie of the me now, 25 years old, still aging, still walking among people and in places that have become home—yet home has two definitions for me, where I’m desperately clutching onto a fading memory.

Over time, my fluency in Mandarin has been decreasing, and I find myself translating words from English to Mandarin exactly as they are and sometimes with English grammar, but that means what I’m trying to express becomes something very different or does not offer the correct context I intended. I used to think in Mandarin when I was a child, but now I have to translate my English thoughts to Mandarin, and then sometimes back to English to see if they make sense, before translating them back once more into Mandarin before speaking. An uprooting, I suppose, is what it feels like.

I’ve always envied those who can speak multiple languages, and more importantly, those who can think in multiple languages. Sometimes I find my mind resistant to my mother tongue, choosing to speak in English as a first choice, and something I’ve been thinking about is how the comforting lull of “knowing” or “being fluent” in a language might make us inflexible.

On the Consumption of Language and Culture

Growing up, I always viewed language as a form of communication, an act of exchanging thoughts and emotions. But over time, what I discovered is that language is deeply connected to culture, its values, and its beliefs. Language and its cultural touchstones and implications change how we experience stories, how we understand them, how they are told, how they are created. It is important to note, though, the difference between learning a language to understand its people and learning a language to take advantage of them—a topic for another time.

I think changing language comes with a change in culture, values, beliefs, or at least it influences these factors. To understand something culturally specific in a language outside of our mother tongue can drastically change the meaning or tone of a word or phrase, shift its importance, or perhaps diminish the weight of the words and their value. I find we tend to make associations and assumptions between what is unfamiliar and what we find familiar, even when there is no connection.

For example, referencing grandparents in Chinese, for me, would be nǎinai and yéye (paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather), and wàipó and wàigōng (maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather). The differentiation is an important factor, but it also holds respect and intimacy. But to call our grandparents in English, in Canadian culture, “paternal so and so or maternal so and so,” feels distant and overly categorical.

Further on the translation of words from one language to another: that there are certain words in one language that are omitted in another says volumes about the origin of the language, along with how they are used in a specific language, and I think these subtleties are lost when translated or forced into English, because we then think about them in the context of English and its history and culture. That’s not to say that writing, among other mediums, should not be translated, but more so that there is merit in introducing words in their native language when writing about culture in English; sometimes it can serve as a mental reset, a reminder that we are not in a culture that is Anglophone, or even western, within a story world, or to better help us understand terms, names, and such for which English may not have a fitting enough word.

I think it’s similar for the significance of names, and how translated names might not hold the same tone, meaning, implications when translated. I contemplate the way people shun names that aren’t easy enough for them to pronounce and might be reluctant to learn their pronunciations given this.

I suppose these are just a few reasons why I occasionally struggle when deciding what I want to keep in Chinese in my writing and what I want to translate, and with what I keep, whether I should keep the accents on the letters or not, because they make a difference in what the pinyin refers to in relation to its connected Chinese character.

On Accents and Tones

On a different definition of accent . . .

Something I’ve been discussing with my spouse recently is the way accents vary, and why the natural tones of some languages seem to conflict with the natural tones of another—about how someone who is a native Mandarin speaker might sound gentle in their mother tongue but harsh when trying to speak in English. And it reminds me of the dying dialect of Fúzhōuhuà—what my parents and grandparents speak, along with older relatives but also the younger ones who had been taught. To many, conversing in the dialect sounds like fighting, but in our cultural context, it is as passionate as it is aggressive, and as gentle as it is harsh, as pained and sorrowful as it is joyous and rambunctious. But when its tones are translated into an English cultural context, it might be misunderstood as only aggressive.

Which brings me to how some movies, rather than casting actors and actresses from the culture and place the movie is set in—and sometimes even when they cast those who are from the movie setting—might bring in famous American faces. And rather than having them speak in the setting’s native language, they might use accented English to correspond to the culture instead. Yet, just as the tones of different languages might clash, I think this holds true for accented English in films, where the vibrancy and beauty of a culture’s native language is lost because it is forced to conform to the shape of English words, along with its tones and restrictions.

There is also pushback on the use of subtitles. We saw this with the first Avatar movie, with the native tongue of the Na’vi, so it was altered in the second movie where accented English was used instead. But we have also seen successes in including constructed languages with subtitles in the form of Game of Thrones. for example High Valyrian and the language of the White Walkers, Skroth, both of which would sound very different if presented as accented English, and our experience of the languages would not be the same.

And perhaps that is why some shy away from high fantasy with constructed languages, just as people might shy away from actual languages and cultures outside their own. There is a certain, and persistent, resistance; a fear. Willing or unwilling, the reality of being flexible with a culture outside of our own is one that many of us, particularly those marginalized, have experienced throughout history. Perhaps all we want is for those on the other side to extend a hand, to join us, even for a moment, so we can understand each other, and the way we might mourn and grieve what we have lost in trade for the comfort they held onto so tightly.

To have accented English as a replacement for different languages may increase accessibility to a wider audience, but it also makes the original language additionally foreign and intensifies the feeling of “otherness.”

Growing up, I watched a lot of shows from various cultures, but all of them were dubbed in English, and it made me think that was just how things were, that everything was supposed to be in English while I was in Canada. But when I discovered the same versions of those shows in their original language with subtitles, though the subtitles might not always be great, the experience seemed far more authentic, the tones more dynamic, natural, unstilted; rather than an act that draws too much attention to its unnaturalness.

A lot of film adaptions, particularly those most popular in the realm of fantasy, include English as the dominant common tongue. But in secondary-world fantasy, this need not be the case. Yet there is a default of using English in fantasy because it’s much easier than creating a new language. Of course, creating a language, just as learning a language, is hard.

But reading and thinking in English has very different cultural and societal implications, expectations, and attachments that might not be true for everyone. Presenting fantasy worlds in English can further alienate other cultures, particularly when there are opportunities to include original languages, or to develop new secondary-world cultures detached from the history of the western world. Though not secondary world fantasy, an example would be The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, where the Heptapods experience the past, present, and future through their language.

And I suppose a lot of it does come down to capitalism, profit, convenience, and accessibility as well; but it is also fueled by what is perceived to be desired by the masses.

Art is adjusted to serve the audience.

But I believe that trends and what audiences seek to consume are things we have power and influence over, no matter how impossible or fantastical it might seem. Perhaps we can see these changes reflected in which media, authors, and artists receive more support.

Anime, Korean Dramas, International Films, Subtitles, and Global Appeal

On the past, and current, pushback of subtitles: though it persists, I think there is a market for and growth in the acceptance of subtitles, and a greater global desire to embrace diversity and experience cultures in their natural context. Examples might be anime and Korean dramas, as well as films from around the world, presented in their native language and released on big screens around North America.

Accented English seems less common in terms of sci-fi movies where technology solves language barriers. An example is the headsets that translate foreign languages into one’s mother tongue in The Wandering Earth 2.

More on the aversion of subtitles: I think many of those around me are used to growing up with subtitles, particularly individuals like my parents, with their translators in hand. Everywhere they go in Canada, what floats in front of their eyes becomes subtitles. And perhaps if we saw subtitles as a method of understanding, rather than an obstacle to avoid or overcome, they might not seem like an inconvenience.

Fantasy and Foreignness

For some, the idea of fantasy might be connected to the idea of foreignness, to “otherness,” and it makes me wonder if some of those who shy away from fantasy are also those who might shy away from engaging with cultures outside their own.

Particularly in terms of fantasy languages, given the differences in grammar constructions, the weight and order of sentences and presentation of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and such, along with local dialect and idioms, I think the idea of being lost in translation holds true for created fantasy beings and species as well. What does it mean to think in a language? To pick up what is unique to that language? How much effort are we willing to put into understanding what is difficult for us to wrap our heads around?

Growing up, for the years I was an ESL learner, like my parents, I had to use dictionaries to search up words while learning to read and write in English. But there seems to be a refusal to do this when it comes to fantasy glossaries or searching up cultural references and words. One way of thinking about this is that we are choosing to enter another’s world, not bringing their world into our own. It is difficult, but I think understanding one another is difficult. The effort we put into understanding rather than forcing others to understand us makes all the difference.

For most, the language of magic is something wondrous, curious, one that people are willing to explore. I hope that someday everyone might have a greater desire and willingness to learn other languages, and to learn about other cultures, with the same curiosity they have for magic—even if it is difficult. I believe it will help to connect us, and perhaps we will come to better understand one another along the way.

The Act of Translating Fantasy

Just as languages are lost in translation, I feel like much of the magic and wonder of fantasy and the world that lives within our minds also become somewhat lost in translation, in the act of bringing it into reality. To take the vibrancy of the worlds, the intricacies and novelties of the beings that live within, their society, culture, language, and force it all into our own language, the confines of our own world, much of it becomes lost. And the uniqueness of each culture, what makes it so different from the others, is sometimes lost in translation.

Yet in the act of translation, those things become human, become connection, similarities, feelings of empathy and relatability. And I hope, as with fantastical worlds, we can also come to connect with each other, as humans, without losing what also makes us different—where we don’t forget where we came from, and we better understand who we have become; and hopefully it all translates into the future we are striving for, no matter how fantastical it might seem.

I walk into Old Town. In a curio shop on the promenade, an old man sells paintings, deras, kikois, and ornaments. Tuk-tuks move swiftly along the cabro paving, passing the teapot sculpture at the round-about. Pushcarts lumber beside the street restaurants and past the old buildings covered by vines. A radio plays “Malaika,” the song rising like a wisp of steam. Shouts of children playing football near the sea reach me. I buy a ticket to Fort Jesus and the seller tells me I am lucky because it is the day of secession.

The Coast Province is seceding from Kenya to form a new country. The fort’s history plaque is being replaced; two men drill the new plaque onto the wall with fervour. They acknowledge me with a nod as I stop to look. Now the plaque traces, with an ancestry tree diagram, the history of the secession movement since the coastal strip was handed over to Kenya from the Sultanate in 1963 until today—the day of freedom.

“Naweza kuelezea historia vizuri,” a tour guide tells me, but I ignore him. I climb up to the crenelation. Pigeons take flight when I reach the top. I watch the water. Fishermen paddle along the creek. Two people swim across, and the English Point Marina gleams in the afternoon light.

My name is Nairuko, and I am about to become a horrible person.

2

When I say it like that, it makes me doubt if I’ll be able to do what’s required of me. It’s something all laibons must go through, like my Papa did. But he’s not here to witness my initiation. He took his own life when I was eighteen years old, five years ago.

I’m waiting for my friend Rahma; we’re going to attend the secession announcement in Diani. She is a journalist and was involved in drafting the Coast Province’s new constitution. She supports the secession movement. The movement gained momentum when offshore oil and gas reserves were found here ten years ago and most of the revenue kept going to the central government in Nairobi.

A text comes in from Rahma. I’m here.

I walk towards Burhani Gardens, where we’re supposed to meet. The street is lined with posters of the movement’s leader, Faisal Mazrui, an Islamic lawyer. His family have been prominent people here since the days of the Sultan. Faisal’s wife died in a gas explosion when she was in the market. The Kenyan government said it will not recognize the secession and promised war, while also levelling charges of treason against Faisal Mazrui and his new cabinet.

I find Rahma seated, drinking from a bottle of water. She is facing the sky, and her throat bulges with each gulp. Below the bench, the hem of her blue buibui caresses the ground.

She’s the only friend I’ve made since my father died. I feel closer to her than to my elder brother. She’s my neighbour. I met her in my first week here, on the rooftop of our apartment building. That day, as I watched the sunset, I looked to my left and saw her, through hanging clothes fluttering in the evening breeze, smoking a cigarette. She looked like a chimney, and at the same time, unburdened. When she noticed me, she asked, “Do you smoke?” I lied, took a puff, and started coughing. She was older than me, more assured of herself; there was no trace of malice in her voice—even in her laughter afterwards when she realised I’d lied. It was as if, by offering me her cigarette, she was offering me friendship, a place in her life. Since then, we’ve travelled together to Watamu and taken a boat ride through the mangrove forest in Mida Creek. And last November, when we went to her hometown in Lamu for the cultural festival, her parents made us biryani, mahamri, and samosas.

“Rahma!”

Her eyes light up when she sees me, and her dimples show as she smiles. She rises and hugs me.

“Twende?” she asks. I nod and we flag down a tuk-tuk to take us to Likoni ferry.

The ferry we get into is old, rusty, and creaks with each movement forward. I lean on the rails and look out at sea. I notice the city reflected in the water. I imagine that the other city mirrors the one we are in, except that everything happens in the opposite. Cars drive backwards, gravity acts up, and people walk on the sky. In it, time moves backwards too, and I see my father, still alive and carrying me on his shoulders in our garden at home.

He died with so many secrets, and I’m only now finding them out. I’m a laibon, like he was. There are only nine of us from my tribe. After my father died, the council performed a ritual so that my father’s ability could be transferred to my elder brother, but it didn’t go as planned. It landed on me instead.

That day, I was walking to my bedroom, reading slides on Sans Papier protests in France for my Sociology class, when suddenly I found myself in an apartment in Paris with the Eiffel Tower outside the window. It was winter, snow was falling. I thought it was a dream until my Aunt Sianto—she’s a laibon too—found me an hour later. She wrapped a shuka around me and told me my father’s spirit had chosen me.

“I should have known Sironka would choose you,” Aunt Sianto said. “But why burden his beloved daughter?”

I was confused. I didn’t understand what she was saying. “Close your eyes,” she said, and she recited something softly to herself. The next moment, I was at home.

“Auntie, what just happened?” I’d asked her in disbelief. “How did I? How did we—”

“My child, I cannot explain now,” she said. “I promised your father you would finish your education.” And on the day of my graduation from university, Aunt Sianto came chauffeured in a sleek black car. She walked towards me, with all her elegance and mystery, as I took photographs in my gown, and whispered, “You are ready now.”

3

Ripples caused by our ferry’s arrival make the city in the water wobble, and I lose the vision of my father. We find another tuk-tuk to where they are announcing the secession results. The results mean more to Rahma than they do to me. The council of laibons posted me here to observe how a place disintegrates. It’s the first assignment a new laibon gets, so that they are used to seeing war and suffering. The council has, for years, known when a place will descend into war. “When countries start buying weapons, training soldiers, and politicians throw around ultimatums, that’s how you know,” Aunt Sianto told me.

I don’t know how I will feel when the war does start.

The centre for the announcement is a memorial, built on the site of the former market where the explosion happened. The memorial is made up of one hundred and three white marble statues with wings as if ascending into heaven. It’s breathtaking. I’ve passed here a few times with Rahma when we are going to nightclubs in Diani. The statues are made in the likeness of those who died. I don’t like looking at the statues of children because they remind me of how vulnerable I felt when I was a child and Papa left for work. Beside the statues are inscriptions in Arabic of their names and year of birth in the Hegira. Even though the bodies are not buried here, it has the mournfulness of a graveyard.

Today it’s different, however; everyone is in a celebratory mood. People are wearing the yellow scarves of the secession party over kanzus and buibuis. They’ve come from Lamu, Pate, Malindi, Kilifi, and many like Rahma and I, from Mombasa. We shove past a man blowing a whistle as we struggle to get to the front. When Faisal Mazrui appears, everyone cheers. He is wearing an embroidered kofia; his greying hair pokes through a little, giving him a dignified aura. He is flanked by two men and two women. The results are announced. Ninety-two per cent voted for independence. Faisal starts to speak, his Swahili rich with poetry and wisdom. He says the new country of Nazira will not waste money on a grand independence ceremony. “Kutoka siku ya leo, ni sisi tutakao amua mwelekeo wetu.” At the end of his speech, the Kenyan flag is lowered and replaced by a yellow, blue, and white flag.

4

Rahma wants to celebrate and so we go to Forty Thieves because we know the DJ. We get in and I immediately take three shots of tequila. Rahma gets a table near a few tourists. When we sit together, she with her shisha and me with my cocktails, we are lightbulbs—men hover around us like moths. They buy us drinks, more shisha, and food. It’s not that we can’t afford it, but it makes us feel good. I am a different person now. I didn’t use to drink or go to nightclubs. Even in university, I was always left studying. I had to be the best student because that is what I felt I owed my father’s memory. Nowadays, I can’t lie, I like enjoying myself.

The DJ plays Afrobeats. He’s an Italian called Giovanni. He’s our friend, and he knows what we like to hear when we come. Rahma and I stand up to dance. The men who bought us drinks stand up with us, but we don’t want any of them. We hold onto each other, our arms locked. I drop my body down low and someone cheers. I let go of Rahma a little and she pirouettes. I slide across the dancefloor towards her. The disco lights explode, and it feels like stars are falling on us. Louder and louder the music plays. I see a boy I might like and give Rahma a signal: a light touch on her shoulder. He approaches me with a smile, his eyes the colour of rain at night. I press my body against him and move my waist. He looks beautiful, but I turn away from him in case the alcohol wears off in the middle of my dancing and I find out he is not.

When Giovanni finishes his set, he hands over to another DJ and walks to our table, where Rahma is now seated. I know that’s my cue. “I’m coming back,” I lie to the boy. Rahma and I like Giovanni. He’s a sixty-year-old man. He tells us stories of Naples and he treats us as if we were his daughters. He’s childless, so perhaps this makes sense.

The three of us walk out and sit on the beach. The sea is dark, nightfall lending it colour. A dhow is moored in the distance. Near the sea, I feel free; my spirit imitates the waves and I forget myself.

“Will you two leave if there is a war?” Rahma asks suddenly. Giovanni and I turn to her in surprise. “Would you leave because you are from somewhere else?”

“I would never leave you, Rahma,” I tell her.

“This is my home,” Giovanni says. “I have lived here for more than twenty-five years.”

Rahma scoops a handful of sand but doesn’t hold it into a fist; the sand falls through her fingers as if in an hourglass. “I hope there won’t be one like they are saying.”

“You know, Rahma, when I was your age, I was a stadium announcer in Stadio San Paolo. Dios, Diego Maradona played for us.” His gestures morph into his words as he relives his past. He has told us this story before, but we still like it. “‘Di-e-go!’ I would shout when he scored.” His arms sweep out. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but his arms seem to touch the sea. “And thousands of people would scream ‘Ma-ra-do-na!’” His gaze fixes on us, and we know what he wants.

“Di-e-go!”

“Ma-ra-do-na!” Rahma and I reply, like the Naples fans of his memory.

“Di-e-go!”

“Ma-ra-do-na!” We fall into laughter and our voices roar, echoing against the water.

I will miss feeling this free.

We sit watching the waves move calmly against the shore. Behind us, the nightclub explodes into cheer. It starts to drizzle, but the sky is clear—no grey or white clouds; but we don’t move. There is no one else around the beach: it’s just us three, the moon, the stars, and the sea.

5

The mothers in the apartment building are preparing lunch and the delicious smell of chapati and pilau wafts into my room. “Kwaheri.” Rahma’s voice descends the stairs with her footsteps. She always says this to the children running up and down the steps when she’s leaving, although they hardly ever reply.

I look at myself in the mirror. My Afro looks like it belongs in a black and white photograph from the sixties. Papa always told me to look at myself in the mirror when I was not sure of who I was.

“Ru.” He called me Ru. “Ru, look at yourself in the mirror and remember who you are,” he would say. I suppose he thought it was something profound, but he only ended up sounding like Mufasa from The Lion King. I understood what he meant, however. He meant Ru, you’re my daughter, you’re Papa’s little girl.

Today, I’m unsure of myself. It’s my initiation day. This means I’ll be a laibon for the rest of my life. I have to do it whether I like it or not. Honestly, I don’t know what else I would have done either way. I have never really figured out my true passion. I once wanted to be a singer, a jazz musician. But I feel like I was born too late. I know everyone says this, but for me it’s true. I feel nostalgia for times when I did not exist. I should have been a young, marcelled singer in the Jazz Age.

I hear a knock and open the door. It’s my Aunt Sianto. She is Papa’s elder cousin, and she is tall and thin. She has an air of authority about her, and whenever she speaks, her voice always leaves no room for questioning. She runs the export and import company the first laibons to teleport formed a hundred years ago, after almost all the members of our tribe were massacred by the British, and she is chairperson of the council of nine laibons. After my father died, there were eight laibons left. I’ll be the ninth.

I’m a little hungover from the nightclub yesterday, and I hope she doesn’t notice. I brushed my teeth, but I can’t be sure; nothing gets past Aunt Sianto.

“Child,” she calls me, but her voice is dry, without affection. I’ve heard the other laibons say that before my Papa died, he was the only one with laughter and secret stories.

“Auntie!” I hug her and ask if she wants tea.

“We’re late,” she replies. She notices my blue jeans and white T-shirt. “Nairuko, you need to change. Didn’t you get the clothes I sent?”

I did get the clothes, but I found them boring. I reluctantly walk back and put on the ceremony outfit she sent. It’s a navy-blue trouser suit and a crisp shirt sown in shuka patterns. It’s something Aunt Sianto would wear, but not me. I hold my Afro with a band around the middle and it forms an hourglass; this way I look more stylish.

Aunt Sianto and I hold hands. She shows me a photograph of where we are going and asks me to visualize it properly. It’s not like I have never teleported on my own before, but Aunt Sianto doesn’t trust anyone to do the right thing without her guidance. I close my eyes. Every time I teleport, I feel like I’ve died and then come back to life somewhere else. It’s like my cells disintegrate and then rearrange when I emerge where I want to go. The coastal humidity disappears and is replaced by clean, crispy mountain air. We emerge on a hill’s meadow overlooking a dry riverbed. I feel a chilly wind on my face, and I see the snowy peaks of Mt. Kenya in the distance. Below the hill are antelopes and giraffes.

We are in Laikipia. The hill we stand on was where my tribe, the Ilaikipia, made their last stand against the British. We used to be pastoralists before colonisation. The British, while building the Uganda Railway, passed across our lands. They were signing treaties with other tribes to get land for the railway and settlers. Our tribe’s laibons, back then, possessed the ability to foretell the future, and they had foreseen that we could only win if we secured guns. My tribe’s warriors ambushed a caravan and stole their weapons. The fighting which ensued was merciless. The British commanders vowed that none of us would live. They hired our enemy tribes and promised them our wealth. In the five-year resistance, we lost men, women, and children. When some saw that all hope was lost, they went into exile and assimilated into different tribes. We call them the lost descendants because they were never heard of again. The last village to fall was situated here. The laibons had performed one last ritual and begged the spirits for a way out. When the enemy forces came, they led my people to the top of this hill’s cliff and ordered them to jump or be shot. Mothers jumped with their children, and men jumped with their wives. Some opted to be shot. Imagine thousands of lives lost like that! The nine laibons jumped together; instead of falling to their deaths, they emerged in the town at the centre of the railway line, Nairobi.

The meadow transformed after the genocide. Nine geysers appeared, and odourless white fog emerged from them. The fog is the voices of our ancestors. Anyone who comes here feels immense suffering and misery, and a pull to jump off the cliff.

When Aunt Sianto and I make it to the circle of laibons, I feel a great horror engulf my heart. I hear the screams, and my head starts to spin. I stumble and Aunt Sianto places her arm around my waist.

“It’s okay; I know how you feel,” she says.

They bring a chair. One of them swirls a mixture in a calabash. It looks like ochre, but he adds tattoo ink into it. I feel the pull of death as if the voices are eating the essence of my spirit.

“Which design, Nairuko?” a clear voice breaks through the screams of horror.

Through the pain, I fumble through pictures on my phone and show him the tattoo design I want. “This one.” The tattoo is to be drawn on my left wrist. My design is like henna. It’s a floral tendril that leads up from my fingers to the top of my wrist, like Rihanna’s. Rahma’s mother drew it on me first; she is a henna tattoo artist for weddings.

Aunt Sianto purses her lips as if she is asking, “Is that really your choice?”

The tattoo is history traced on the body; it means a laibon has come here, heard the screams of their ancestors, and knows what it means to survive when people you love die. Yet it is also a sign of survivor’s guilt, the guilt laibons must carry all their lives, as if it were a curse. To learn to live with guilt, to numb emotion when worlds are falling apart, is instrumental to our work.

The idea of the tattoo was founded by the first laibons to teleport. They realised they could no longer foretell the future when they emerged at the train station in Nairobi; instead, their ability had been replaced. And they felt immense guilt. Why hadn’t they died? Why had the spirits chosen to give them the power to save only themselves? They had lost children, husbands, and wives, and some fell into deep grief. The leader of the council at the time conducted a ritual of remembrance in which they all tattooed themselves to represent what they had been through, their unique identities, and the history which held them together. One could choose whichever tattoo they liked, and it was used in the diaries and history books they wrote of themselves thereafter. Most laibons chose tattoos of things which held meaning to them: the face of a loved one, beaded cherished ornaments, a staff they used while herding cattle, or the stars, arranged as a downward-facing calabash, as they were on the night our first ancestor descended from them with his cattle.

The tattoo is forming on my left wrist. I watch him through a fuzziness as he applies it with an ancient magical thorn.

“Breathe in Nairuko, allow the sorrow of our ancestors to pass through you,” Aunt Sianto says. I take a deep breath. “Now, breathe out. Release the sorrow.”

I feel the noises of grief from the geysers disappear slowly, and the taste of blood in my mouth reduces.

When the tattoo is finally drawn, Aunt Sianto looks at me, and the other laibons start to chant. They shake their shoulders in rhythm to the chant and move closer to me.

“Nairuko, this will hurt,” she says. I don’t understand what she means.

She takes a knife and slashes across the inside of my wrist, on the space where the tattoo ends. I scream. My blood drips to the ground. The nine geysers erupt, turning the air around us misty.

“This connects you to our ancestors forever. It connects you to our suffering,” Aunt Sianto says. She treats the cut with antiseptic and bandages it. “Stand.”

I feel fearless when I rise. We all go to the cliff where we are supposed to jump. Aunt Sianto says she will go last, after me. The other laibons jump and then teleport, disappearing in mid-air until it’s only Aunt Sianto and me on the cliff. “You shouldn’t drink too much, child,” she says.

My cheeks heat up in embarrassment. Of course, she noticed.

“One more thing. You should be careful with your friend. The one I saw going down the stairs,” she says as she turns to face me, her voice soft and low, with the tone of a worried mother.

“Who? Rahma? What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s not a good idea as a laibon to make close connections in places you’re working.”

“So, I can’t have friends?” I ask Aunt Sianto, surprised at her suggestion.

Aunt Sianto places her palm on my shoulder. “What I mean is, because you’re sworn to secrecy about being a laibon, you’re not able to be your true self with her. Would she still be your friend if she knew who you really are? And what if she—”

“If she what, Auntie?”

“It would be wise if you listened to me,” Aunt Sianto says, then adds that she will send some books to me about laibon history for me to read. “Now, jump!”

When I jump off, I see the white imprint of the moon below thin strips of cloud. Before I hit the ground, I appear in my apartment.

6

I don’t know how to feel today. I have been indoors for days. When I close my eyes, sometimes, I hear the sorrow I felt at my ancestor’s site.

I’m reading the books about laibon history Aunt Sianto sent, and about our company’s business model for the last one hundred years. They are written in Ilaikipia, and because I don’t speak it a lot, I’m reading the books more slowly than usual. The books say there are three rules to teleportation: a laibon must visualize the place they are going properly, a laibon cannot teleport with another living thing, and a laibon cannot teleport with something heavier than their body weight.

Rahma calls on me after work. I put my books away and turn on the television before opening the door. She comes in and lays on my couch, her legs spread out in weariness.

“I haven’t seen you in days. How are you? Are you still working? What work is it that you do remotely?”

“Do you want a glass of water? Or juice? I have juice.” I’m not prepared to answer her questions, so I walk to the kitchen to get her something to drink.

From the news, the Kenyan government declines to recognize the sovereignty of the coast province and considers the secession a call to war. They give Faisal Mazrui’s government one week to surrender itself to authorities; if not, they will launch an invasion.

“It’s because of the oil and gas,” Rahma says as she drinks. “They don’t care about us.”

“Rahma, tusiongee kuhusu habari za vita, tell me how your day was,” I say.

“Ok. We had a training on—” she pauses when she notices my tattoo. “You got henna? When?”

“No, it’s a tattoo,” I tell her, but I don’t elaborate, because I don’t want to lie to Rahma.

“When? Let me see,” she comes closer to touch my arm. I quickly raise it for her to see from where she is. “What happened to your wrist?” she asks when she sees the bandage.

“I cut myself while cooking.”

“If you cut yourself like that, maybe you should not be cooking at all,” she says, and we both laugh. “Lakini, you’ve been quiet na your moods look low. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I reply while nodding. It’s hard for me to keep things from Rahma. In the past few months, Rahma has been like my sister. I wish I could tell her who I am and why I am here, but what will she think of me when I say, “I am here to watch your city burn and not help.” Aunt Sianto’s warning rings in my head, and I think to myself that maybe I was foolish to have befriended her in the first place, and that I should have stayed alone throughout my time here.

7

When Rahma leaves, I go back to my reading. The laibons, on reaching Nairobi in 1905, didn’t have much. To survive, they stole money by teleporting into colonial bank vaults. After some time, they established a small export and import business dealing in rare valuable goods. During the Second World War, they expanded their business internationally, branching out into profiting from conflicts.

I skip through pages and pages of history and stop at the section with my father. The books detail that his first assignments were in the early nineties. He assisted the TPLF in covertly acquiring arms for the overthrow of the Derg. His service was, however, distinguished in the late nineties when he worked in the Congo Desk. Papa directed the sale of diamonds and other valuable minerals like cobalt and coltan from the Eastern region, despite warring rebels and government soldiers. In his final years, he was working with the Syrian Government on acquiring chemical weapons during the Arab Spring. He had been on leave from Aleppo when he died.

There is a section on laibons, marriages, and relationships. It says often we have trouble maintaining relationships because of the guilt acquired while working in war-torn areas and the amount of time we spend at work. For me, I’m not sure if I want to be married. I’ve liked boys before, but I’ve never loved anyone. I’ve never truly felt I could inconvenience myself for a boy.

What about the children? Do they love their children? I wonder, but there are no sections about this.

I would like to believe Papa loved my brother and me. My mother had left him a long time ago for reasons I never fully grasped. Therefore, we lived in Karen, the three of us. Papa was often away in different countries, and whenever he came back, he smelt of fantasy worlds. He would relieve our househelp from her duties. Then he would make us a recent dish he had learnt from the country he was working in and play with us in the garden. I remember his laughter. He didn’t laugh a lot, but when he did, he did so with his head leaned back, and his laughter left rings of warmth hanging in the air. He took me on hiking trips, an activity he and I liked to do. We hiked up Ngong’ hills, Aberdare ranges, and Mt. Kenya. Papa liked silence, and when we were together, although we didn’t speak much, he would ask me about my performance in school, about my brother, who he didn’t get along with very well, and about my sprinting, if my starting off the blocks was getting better. But I loved the silences the hikes gave us because of how comfortable and safe I felt in his presence.

Still, I wonder how I never noticed in my years with him how his silence hid how withdrawn he was, how he was retreating further and further into himself. I know that he loved ruins. I often wandered into his study secretly. There were photographs hung around the walls of places in various states of destruction. Some showed bombed city buildings with bullet holes, some were of cities which had long been abandoned due to a natural calamity, and others were sites of fallen civilizations preserved in a state of ruin. I didn’t understand why my father forbade my brother and me from going into his study, and yet all he had were photographs of ruins and books. I would try on his coat from the dresser and walk around with it to feel his presence enveloping me. Now I realise that perhaps being in his study meant being in his heart—a beating heart, full of life and yet surrounded by ruins.

He is survived by Ru. I close the book when I see my name.

8

On the day before the Kenyan army invades, I walk to the supermarket to get supplies. Long lines stretch outside; everyone seems to be stocking up for the coming war. The new government said it would not be standing down. It has raised an army to fight. It recruits people in mosques, colleges, and public squares. Nazira bila ukoloni wa Kenya! This phrase is plastered across the city and repeated on the radios. A newspaper in a stall shows a photograph of young people enlisting in the army in droves—Jisajili, the headline reads. On the back page is a story about foreign countries sending planes for the evacuation of their citizens and another about several people from the interior of Kenya moving back to their ancestral homes to escape the incoming conflict. I go to the aisle with rice and then get some meat and spices for Rahma, as she has been busy putting out statements for the party.

Outside, on the balconies of various apartments, the flag of Nazira flutters in the wind. On stalls along the road, people speak with exuberance. Despite their excitement, I see fear in their eyes, hear worry in their voices, and sense that they will be so tired and weary for years and years, even after the war. I don’t know how to explain it, but maybe it’s one of the things I’m here to learn: that death is never far from the thoughts of those faced with imminent war. I realise too that they will fight two wars. The physical one that is coming; and after it, they will fight another war in their memory.

It reminds me of something Aunt Sianto said to me: “Do you know why laibons profit from war? Why we still do so after all these years?” I hadn’t answered her. “It’s not because of revenge, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s because of trauma, passed-down trauma. Our ancestors’ memories live with us, and we are afraid of extermination. The only way to protect the tribe is with money, a lot of it; and now with our gift, laibons are good at working in war zones. In many ways, laibons are still at the war we lost a hundred years ago, and we are standing on the edge of that cliff, powerless, while the rest of the tribe is being slaughtered. Only now, it’s a war within us, with our memory, and we must do what we can to win.” It does make sense. Our tribe, from the surviving nine laibons, now has about one hundred and fifty people. Everyone is a millionaire because of the work we do, even the children, because trusts are set up in their name when they are born. There is a clause in the company’s articles which states that each descendant of the nine laibons gets a share of the company’s profits. Profits, like our ability, are reserved for the survival of our tribe.

My conscience is not as clouded as it was before my initiation. My tribe is right to always look out for itself and only itself. Where was everyone when thousands of my ancestors were killed? Even after independence, the Kenyan leaders did not requisition our land. Instead, the colonizer’s descendants continue to live there and claim it as their own. We only have ourselves, and our ancestors to protect us.

When I go back to the apartment, I find Rahma and our dear friend Giovanni. He has two large suitcases. His shoulders are drooped and instead of looking at Rahma when he speaks to her, he stares at the ground, crestfallen. They are seated on the entrance steps. “I’m leaving,” he says to me. “I’m going to Nairobi. I’ll come back when peace returns. If it doesn’t, I’ll go back to Naples.”

Rahma and I take him to the railway station. We move with him past the security check and into the waiting area. There are so many people around. The intercom sounds: Abiria wa gari ya moshi ya kuelekea Nairobi . . . Giovanni rises.

“I’ll miss you two,” he says through teary eyes. At the turnstile, he turns and smiles at us. “I’ll miss how happy we used to be together. I’ll miss that so much.”

On the way back, Rahma is silent. She shakes her head and then looks at me. “That night on the beach, Giovanni said he would never leave here. Now look,” she says. “Why are you staying, Nairuko? You could leave. You should leave.”

“I love living here, Rahma. I have found a home here, and I would never leave you.” She doesn’t say anything, and I doubt I have convinced her. We complete the journey in silence, and I feel my heart growing heavy with the weight of my lie, as if I am dragging along an iron ball. “Come stay with me tonight. I’ll cook and we’ll spend the night talking.”

9

At dawn, the invasion begins with airstrikes. It’s a shrill sound, like a frightening scream, followed by the crackling of fighter jets. Rahma leaps from the couch. “It’s happening, they are bombing us! It’s happening!” She goes to the window and opens the curtains. Black fumes and fire rise in the distance. I rush to her and hug her. She cries into my shoulders.

I don’t know what to tell her. I know I am not scared. If an airstrike were to hit our apartment building, I would be safe. But what about her? I am suddenly burdened by deep guilt; it creeps up from my toes into my stomach, and I hold Rahma tighter. Now that the war is here, my embrace of her feels like I’m holding onto something that is withering. Yet when I ask myself if I would ever abandon her, my heart answers that it wouldn’t.

In the afternoon, when the bombs stop dropping, we walk out. The airstrikes were targeted at strategic military points. In the news, they report airport runways and army naval ships along the four coastline towns were destroyed.

As we walk, we notice an apartment building close to ours that was hit. The building has fallen into the road and covered the roadside stalls where Rahma and I sometimes buy vegetables. Men are struggling to get through the rubble. Some people are trapped inside, and their shouts pierce through. We hear sirens and see an ambulance and a fire truck parked along the road with a hose and ladders.

“Tusaidie,” a man pleads with us. Rahma immediately joins them. The lifeless body of a child, a young boy, is pulled from the rubble, and I suddenly freeze. I feel my stomach constrict. How is the world like this? Are these the places I’m supposed to work? Who will I be if I am a laibon for the rest of my life?

A man shouts at me after lifting rocks with a crowbar, “What is wrong with you? Help us!” But I don’t move. I can’t move.

10

The days fold into each other as the airstrikes continue. Now, however, they give a sixty-second warning. They announce which building will be bombed and we have sixty seconds. Sixty seconds to leave and hide in makeshift bunkers constructed to avoid the airstrikes. Rahma goes out to collect people’s stories to send to news networks around the world, highlighting the atrocities of the invading Kenyan army. The coast has a right to independence in the same way each state has a right to determine its destiny, she writes.

The government here has refused to surrender. The UN Security Council passed a declaration deploying peacekeeping forces at designated safe zones. These are schools and hospitals. We see them in their blue helmets as they drive, patrolling the safe zones. Every day, I see people fleeing to the south, into a new refugee camp in Tanzania. It’s a wondrous sight, a long line of people and cars flowing non-stop, like a river flowing to the ocean.

On the ground, the army invades from two fronts. From the North in Lamu, and from the West in Malindi. They plan to take Mombasa last to end the siege. Rahma’s parents now live under occupation.

11

It’s raining and the electricity is out. Outside, the football field overlooking my apartment has turned into muddy sand. Rivulets of water cut across it, branching into forks like a river delta. Crows land and peck at surfacing insects. There’s no sound of children playing on the staircase anymore, nor the sound of mothers cooking and playing music. The city has acquired the feeling of a ghost town and the quality of ruins, like the photographs in Papa’s study.

Suddenly, I hear a knock at the door.

I am startled, but when I open it, I see Aunt Sianto.

“How are you?” she asks me when she comes in.

“I don’t know,” I reply. She sits down and looks at me. “There is so much sadness, Auntie. I don’t think I can handle it. And to think I will be working in places like these. Auntie, I can’t. I want to help some people. Yesterday—”

“Help? Help who? Is this about Rahma? I warned you about making close connections. We don’t help people. Did anyone help our tribe all those years ago? Remember how much we’ve suffered.” Aunt Sianto’s face turns into a frown as she speaks, and her voice rises.

“No, it’s not about anyone. My heart feels so heavy, it’s as if I’m—”

“It’s guilt, child. All laibons live with it, you know that. You’ll get used to it.”

“How did Papa die, Auntie?”

“You already know that, my child.”

“No, I mean, why?”

She hesitates and takes a deep breath. “Your assignment is almost over. You will finish when the city has fallen. It is the last step of your initiation.” She moves to the door, opens it slightly and then stops.

“Sironka—your Papa, he was depressed. He lived with it for years.” She turns to me; her face is now tender, and her wrinkles are clear through the light from the door. I realise how much Aunt Sianto hides about herself and her feelings towards people she cares for. “Sometimes, there’s a limit of how much guilt we can take. Your Papa was a good man, and he saw too much suffering and grief he felt responsible for. But we are laibons. He knew that, and maybe his heart couldn’t bear it. He wouldn’t have done what he did unless he felt he didn’t have a choice. You’ll turn out differently. I promise I’ll watch over you more.”

12

Our internet access is cut off. Rahma and I are walking to a hospital where civilian casualties are. I have decided to help her with her work, even though Aunt Sianto warned me from being close to her. I don’t know what will happen to me if she finds out, if the rest of the council of laibons finds out. But every day I worry about her going out to work as the city is being destroyed. I fear for her life, and I’m going to try and keep her safe.

My top is blotted with sweat; it’s a hot, humid day and we are wearing yellow press vests over our clothes. On my wrist down to my fingers, I have covered my tattoo with a white bandage to forget the history traced on my body. Some part of the tattoo is still showing, but I try not to look at it—not to think about it.

“We have to find a way to tell the world,” Rahma says. She is carrying a notebook and a camera; I, her microphone and headsets. “Thank you for being here. You are part of us, part of me.” I don’t say anything.

We arrive at the hospital and find long queues. A man at the entrance argues with the receptionist. He is holding his daughter. Blood drips from his hand. When I look closer, I realise the blood is his daughter’s. She has a cut on her head.

“I need to see a doctor.”

“Tafadhali, keti chini. Everyone else is waiting.”

“My daughter. Please—” He starts to cry. I’ve never seen a grown man cry before, and I think of my father’s sadness.

An elderly woman rises from her seat. “My insulin,” she complains, holding up her walking stick. The rest of the patients simply look at her. Every time I look at someone, I feel as if I cannot endure their grief, the grief they transmit to me through their eyes.

In the wards, we find patients lying on beds and the floor. We ask some of them if we can take their pictures. There are so many of them with gunshot wounds and shrapnel lodged in their bodies. A doctor pulls out a stethoscope and checks on a patient. Another in a frayed white coat carries a drip to the farthest end of the room. Rahma sits on the ground. She breaks down, crying. “This is so painful. The suffering!”

Suddenly, we hear the airstrike siren.

“It can’t be this hospital. It’s a safe zone. They would never bomb the hospital,” Rahma says. But we see people running past us.

A nurse screams at us, “Run! Run outside!”

“It’s this hospital, Rahma.” I pull her up.

We run. As we run, Rahma is struck by something blunt. I place my arm around her shoulders and assist her to run. But there are too many people.

We run and run but we are not close to the exit.

“I’m scared,” Rahma says. “I’m so scared.”

Our sixty seconds are almost up.

“Rahma, I’m sorry,” I say.

The bomb pierces through the roof of the hospital. I visualize the garden at home where Papa and I played. The air heats up. “Rahma, I’m so sorry.” I reveal myself to her before she is engulfed by flames. I emerge lying on the earth and grass of our garden. My hand is stretched out towards an invisible Rahma and hot tears burn my cheeks.

I feel so empty. So hollow.

On the first day, the UFO said, “Let there be a big bang!” And there was a very Big Bang. But the new universe was without substance: a swirling mass of chaotic energy masquerading as gazillions of tiny little itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny discrete particles. And the UFO grew tired of watching worlds collide in perfectly random and utterly meaningless disorder.

On the second day, the UFO said, “Let decision makers have opinions!” And every discrete particle in the universe suddenly developed well-considered opinions on every subject that was knowable, even those they knew little or nothing about. All these multifarious newfangled opinions carried little or no weight with anyone, least of all the universe itself. The UFO continued to decide everything, despite what any individual discrete particle might think or feel about it. “You can’t beat City Hall!” the UFO cried in the wilderness wherein it had established its mobile headquarters and temporary home base.

On the third day the UFO said, “Let decision makers have goals!” And every discrete particle in the universe developed a set of realistic goals to accompany their formerly quite meaningless opinions. Only those goals that matched universal prerogatives were allowed naturally. “Go with the flow, never against!” the UFO maintained with great personal satisfaction, which, alas, was extremely short-lived in terms of intertemporal durability.

On the fourth day, the UFO said, “Let decision makers have dreams!” And every discrete particle in the universe began to imagine things that were not real, things that might yet be, but which were still not in existence at the time of dreaming. “Every dream must be based at least in part on some vital aspect of physical reality, or it is an abomination in the face of me!” the UFO declared. Where would the universe be in terms of incipient sapient species control issues otherwise?

On the fifth day, the UFO said, “Let decision makers try to be heroes and end up slaves!” This move was stone cold, but inevitable, given the logic of universal creation as conceived and implemented by the UFO. The greatest sacrifices inevitably produce the best results, but can never be sustained on a permanent or even a long-term basis. Heroism must have its day, but also a night of rest to follow. Otherwise heroism degenerates into that greatest of all herculean sacrifices known as debt peonage. But slavish serfdom can end just as heroism does, with personal accolades, downtown parades, fireworks, parties, celebrations, religious and philosophical treatises, even military triumphs. Manumission provides a brand-new start in the phenomenological process formerly known as eternal life.

On the sixth day, the UFO said, “Let decision makers have unlimited aspirations, wants, needs, desires, and wholly holy irrational expectations!” And every discrete particle in the universe was imbued with a secret longing to reconnect, to become one with the universe—the hard way, if necessary. The easy way out (of necessity) was to let go of material things in that lowest of all levels, the physical universe of time and space, and ascend into higher dimensionalities of conscious awareness wherever and whenever these are found.

The hard way was to go all out with great fortitude and deliberation and conquer the world, the solar system, the galaxy, the local group, with the ultimate intention to subsume the entire universe within one’s own being, just as the ancient gods once did. Mainly to fill their dance cards on those special occasions when old families get together to reminisce about old times, old places, and old multiverses. Immortality is a long row to hoe and requires great attention to detail, if one wishes to avoid the fetal onset of fatal ennui.

Later that day the UFO added (just to be clear), “Let rational expectations be infinite in scope, yet always prove a chimera, unless the universe is in a fit and proper mood to change its mind!” This was exceeding cruel and heartless, and from a purely analytical point of view, pointless as well, given that universal creation guidelines are intended to allow this sort of thing as a standard design feature anyway. At least in dreams, if not in the day-to-day tumbledown tumbleweed actualities of most physical realities and unrealities.

On the seventh day, the UFO tried to get some rest after a job well done, but was inundated by a vast multitude of prayers, salutations, and sacrifices. Mainly from disgruntled former employees and needy greedy seedy free-range and emotionally detached or disturbed discrete particles, whose numbers are legion, since none of their unlimited longings can ever be fulfilled in anything remotely resembling real time. “I must be strong,” the UFO said, “and resist any and all unnecessary temptations until the last trumpet sounds.”

A host of discrete particles begged the UFO for more quality time and personal attention. They wanted to know if free will or predestination ruled the universe. And their anonymous and perfunctory, if not always very discreet, lives.

“Free will is an illusion,” the UFO said. “As is predestination. Life is what you make of it. So make of it what you will.”

The vast host of unattached discrete particles were shocked into a dismal form of uneasy alliance.

“That should teach them,” the UFO said.

And the multitude cried out again that sexual selection was an unnecessary provocation in the unsynchronous phases of their solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short, and otherwise humdrum and meaningless existences.

“Says who?”

The desperate multitude maintained further that sex created a great cloud of morbid anxiety and irreducible uncertainty, in terms of deciding once and for all time who should be on top.

“Very interesting.” And the UFO smiled for the first time in its long, eventful, and unrecorded history. “I go both ways on that issue.”

Plausible deniability has its own distinctive and undeniable advantages.

Precise knife beats, a funeral march
For the tomatoes you chop in our kitchen.
We picked the paint together, I remember—

(“Yellow.
To make it seem bigger.”)

How quaint.

The beach is off-limits for conversation
(Is that how you planned to treat everything I loved?)
So, let’s talk about how this borrowed shirt once bore
My scent, beneath three spin cycles or more,
You’ve finished this race, yet you refuse to win.
(You hate tomatoes, and you never learnt how to swim.)

Peel their spring-kissed skin the way I did
Blame it on habit, or a presence
In your too-big sunlit tightlipped kitchen.
You heard me coming for miles
Your lover with sea-claimed smiles
Besotted.
Your bad miracle.
Your faithful little hen.

They’ll never hold me down
Headstones. Safe hells.
All the King’s horses and All the King’s men.

I comb your hair and undo the knots
And try kissing your neck until the trembling stops
And your hair drips saltwater over your shoulders like rain.
Put the knife down, let’s try again.

Like this: Fall asleep. Leave the blanket behind.
And wake up soaked to the bone tomorrow.
Wave-washed. Sea-kissed.
Open your damn mouth and swallow.

(This unchanging ruthless tidal love
Grave-held, omen-struck, despite. Despite.)
Will rise, fishnetted.
To be adored,
Be whetted.

Only true lovers know
Horror is overrated.

Thanks! So pleased to share this weird little tale with all of you!

“Children of Earth” came out of a workshop prompt, which is very rare for me.

The full backstory starts with Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s weekly blog and short stories at kriswrites.com, which were (and continue to be) a formative influence. She’s married to another fantastic author, Dean Wesley Smith, and they co-own WMG Publishing.

Back in 2021, I backed one of their (frequent and stunningly successful) Kickstarters. It was in support of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, and the backing reward I chose was a workshop called “How to Write a Pulphouse Story.” The short answer to the question posed by that workshop, for those who haven’t read the magazine, is to lean into the bizarre and don’t hit the brakes. It’s an (invitation only) place for stories that don’t colour between the lines.

Something I always love about doing workshops with Dean is the way he brings together eye-opening, challenging, and inspiring insights. You don’t often get told to do less editing and rewriting and more wildly chaotic and unplanned “writing into the dark.” Terrifying. Thrilling. Fun, as Dean likes to emphasize.

So, I was looking at the workshop as a chance to maybe get a few more short stories written, maybe learn a few things, maybe even have some fun (not something I’m good at, but I digress). I’m stubborn, so I kind-of ignored the initial prompts and just went ahead with drafting the openings to a couple of concepts I’d been kicking around for a while. Neither really panned out . . . and in addition to being stubborn, weird, and bad at fun, I’m terribly competitive, so for the last assignment, I buckled down and actually tried to write something that would get a reaction.

Something bizarre. Something that wouldn’t quite colour between the lines. Genre-blending. Uncomfortable. Hmmm . . .

The result was an odd blend of body-horror, humour, and eco-anxiety with a side of romance thrown in as a challenge to myself to raise the bar and make it even weirder and more uncomfortable. So, uh, enjoy?

What was the most difficult part of writing this story, and what came easiest?

I was really conscious of trying not to censor, self-edit, revise, plan ahead, or even slow down and think too much while I was drafting. This was almost a freewriting exercise. Dean really emphasized pushing boundaries, “writing into the dark,” and being true to the story in the workshop/not editing the life out of it, so I was trying to put those learnings into practice without letting myself filter or fear the outcome too much.

The most difficult part was not getting scared and not trying to plan ahead. I’d get these ideas about where the story could go next as I was typing, and I’d sort-of have to shove them aside so they wouldn’t take on gravity and pull the arc of the story away from the characters and the moment. I got to the end, saved the file, and emailed the attachment out to Dean. I type “clean” as a general rule, but it absolutely went out with some typos and one or two hilarious mistakes. With apologies to Arley, some of those mistakes stuck around even into subsequent submissions!

Oh, and the whole romance angle was hard for me, too. I remember putting that in deliberately, as practice. I have this intention to write more romance/get better at writing romance, but it always seems faintly absurd. I don’t know if that comes through in the stories or not, but since part of the challenge with this assignment was to write without self-censoring or giving into taboos, fears, etc., I leaned into it. Maybe it says something that, when I do write a rom-com, it’s about a basement-dwelling gremlin-girl, body-horror, and toenail cryptids.

All that makes it sound like drafting this story was like peeling my own skin, but it was actually pretty easy. I think it was done in a single sitting, maybe a couple of hours long, and other than having to make a conscious effort not to distract myself by trying too hard, it all just kind of flowed. As may be obvious, I had a lot of thoughts about eco-anxiety and aspirational Millennial lifestyle envy to spill (lol).

I feel like a lot of my evolution as a writer has been (/continues to be) about realizing/accepting creative work can be play and doesn’t have to be painful to have value and meaning. I absorbed waaaay too much Protestant work ethic at an impressionable age and am still deprogramming. I wish all my writer kin less sweating blood (unless they’re enjoying it) and more grace and joy in their creative process.

What authors or stories have most influenced your work? Are there themes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?

This is another question where I could just go on endlessly. I inhaled Lewis, Tolkien, L’Engle at a young age. Adored Redwall; spent an embarrassing amount of time rampaging across playgrounds roaring the battle cries of small, bloodthirsty woodland creatures. Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising Sequence also made a strong impression.

I’ve always been a little too interested in the intersection of fantasy and horror, the places where the nightmares break through. But, like L’Engle and Diana Wynne Jones, I can’t help mixing genres, writing science fantasy that sometimes leans more sci-fi and sometimes more dark fantasy.

Holly Black’s The Modern Faerie Tales were a revelation. I adore everything Brenna Yovanoff touches. Laini Taylor and Christelle Dabos are both inspirations. Kelley Armstrong’s The Darkest Powers series helped form my sense of what was possible in YA (in terms of walking the edge of horror in fantasy) for my first series, and her Cainsville series was a major influence for what will be my next series. I was reading the brilliant The Market of Monster series by another Canadian author, Rebecca Schaeffer, just before I wrote “Children of Earth,” so my main character’s name is in homage (or just outright stolen from her book, depending on your perspective). Outside of speculative fiction, I love Louise Penny, Laurie R. King, Sandhya Menon.

I also see a lot of anime/manga influence in my work, probably due to mainlining an inadvisable amount at a formative age. And, weirdly, a splash of Disney. I wouldn’t be shocked to find musicals somewhere in the mix. Influences are fascinating (and terrifying). I can see traces of so many different stories, including some that I wouldn’t have thought made a strong impression. At the same time, I don’t think I actually write or tell stories like any of the authors I admire. If anything, there are books like Dhonielle Clayton’s genius The Belles that I wish had made more of an obvious influence.

In terms of themes, I keep circling back to eco-everything and (mostly) girls/women who don’t fit in or struggle with the expectations of their society—and aren’t terribly interested in correcting that. Also monsters. So many monsters, often with a liminal element.

My first series was set in an alternate future where the climate apocalypse comes with a side of monsters. It follows a haunted girl who has to figure out how to take back even the ability to want or choose or own her own desires from a world that’s taken the very ability to feel and question from her, before she can rise up and fight monsters, and so on. So, uh, not the most veiled commentary, lol. But most of what I’ve written since then has been more a shift in tone (lighter, funnier, grosser, less angsty), rather than in content (still trying to solve the dystopian capitalist hellscape . . .)

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about this story?

There’s definitely some poking fun at eco-friendly lifestyles going on in this piece. But I’m all about holding corporations and governments accountable, not pointing the finger at Millennials doing their best to buy local. While elitism, overconsumption, and greenwashing are legitimate problems, let she who has never drooled over an eye-wateringly expensive Merino top cast the first stone.

What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I’m getting ready to launch a new series loosely inspired by Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and The Fiddlers of Tomnahurich for fans of Supernatural, Kelley Armstrong’s Cainsville, Seanan McGuire’s Toby Daye, Lilith Saintcrow’s Gallow & Ragged, and Holly Black’s The Modern Faerie Tales. An aspiring musician ends up babysitting a washed-up rockstar on a road trip from hell when she gets him blamed for a string of strange murders in the area. If that’s not bad enough, she’s in debt to the fae—and if she doesn’t perform, they’ll show up to collect. Twisty, unexpected, and dripping with angsty vibes. Fun fact: switching to the male POV really upped the romance quotient! Readers can actually find an early, gloriously voice-y (though mildly spoiler-y) version of this story from the female POV in “A Song of Dark Things” in Unknown Realms: A Fiction-Atlas Anthology.

I also have a ghost story for kids (upper middle grade/teen) waiting for some love, inspired by an actual place I visited as a teen with a basement that was just open to the side of the mountain. Like, it just didn’t end. I . . . was not brave enough to explore. Anyway, it’s about this boy who has to escape the haunted cave off of his basement by learning to really listen to the trapped souls in it, including, at the end, his own grandfather. He ends up confronting this intergenerational legacy of toxic masculinity, racism, etc. while also confronting some of the true history of the area . . . It’s pretty cool, probably the most action-packed thing I’ve ever written, but there’s this weird gap in publishing where no one is actually putting out books for younger teens, and I need to either age it down or up, or make up my mind to release it independently and try to get it into the hands of kids on my own. Maybe a Kickstarter or something when I have time (lol).

Finally, I always have more short fiction on the go. I’m really excited about my first audio production, an upcoming Twilight Zone-esque piece inspired by my (brief and unproductive) time in Hollywood North. It’s my most “straight horror” story so far. Usually, I go in for more gothic weirdness or humour. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to say which horror podcast has picked it up, but I’ll have a link to it at kawiggins.com as soon as the news goes public.

When she’d committed to living zero-waste for a year, she’d promised herself she wouldn’t be one of those bougie millennials buying sculpted glass jars and clean, Nordic-looking-wood-everything to support the lifestyle. No, she was going legit. Pure. Capitalism wasn’t going to benefit from her efforts to renew the planet.

But the toe had broken her. And it was worth a couple hundred bucks to incinerate it in an appropriately eco-friendly fashion. Though the advertising didn’t call it incinerating, of course. It was a “countertop appliance designed to speed-compost household waste with no mess, no fuss, and no odour.”

Did she believe the ad copy? Hardly. It’d probably be stinky, loud, dirty, and would leer accusingly at her across her open-plan living space with its one glowing eye that doubled as a magic button for everything she could ever need the space-age convenience to do, because heaven forbid they design machines with actual control panels these days.

Mirella paused at the final step of the online order form, chewing over her options. The breadmaker-sized unit would undoubtedly come with its own set of waste-generating challenges. Plastic film, packing peanuts, even cardboard. Although, as far as the cardboard went, she could probably cut it up small and practice using the composter to dispose of it as a trial run before taking on the toe.

She’d tried flushing the clippings at first, reasoning that they were just another type of biological waste, and it wasn’t as if she was going to start collecting all the other types for in-home composting. That was probably illegal, anyway. Hazardous waste, or something. Wasn’t that how they got plagues and dysentery and all sorts of old-fashioned or other-country-type diseases, back in the day?

But that was before Mirella had read an article on how some mineral or something in human hair was great for house plants, and had had the bright idea of tucking nail clippings, as well as snarls of hair, into the dirt like a twisted Halloween version of those cute little plastic stakes from the dollar store where you were supposed to write the plant’s name in calligraphy or some shit. Not that she shopped at dollar stores. That would be very wrong.

Anyway, she hadn’t realized she’d had a problem until the leaves on her test plant had started getting a little too silky and the petals had unfurled around keratinous hearts. She’d pulled on her ethically-harvested natural latex gloves and yanked the poor thing out by the roots, cramming it headfirst into the steel pail she used as a temporary compostables receptacle before emptying it into the biweekly pickup bins outside. After a moment’s consideration, she’d upended the pot and shaken all the remaining soil into the pail as well.

When the pot had been well scrubbed with an organic coconut-shell-fibre-and-wire brush and her pulse had settled back to its usual serene pace, Mirella was even able to chuckle at her overactive imagination. Poor plant. All the same, she’d stick to flushing all biological waste in future. Circular in-home economies were all well and good, but clearly she’d crossed some kind of mental barrier and should back away slowly.

Mirella dreamed of toenail-lined sewage pipes and flowers unfurling to display eyeballs and ears and tiny little baby hands waving at her, and woke with a dull sense of dread. It worsened when she realized she’d neglected to wash out the little glass-and-tin box she carried her lunches in over the weekend, and the remnants of Friday’s organic, locally grown and sustainably harvested meal were gently growing local, presumably organic, and clearly wildly sustainable green-and-white fuzz.

She ignored it in favour of coffee—not locally grown, unfortunately, but purchased from some kind of collective that ensured farmers got paid and didn’t clear more rainforest to grow the beans or use pesticides. At least, that’s what they’d claimed at the refillery, where they’d smiled indulgently at her stained yogurt container, and gingerly slid scoops of beetle-shiny beans in. The customer waiting behind her had been less gentle in her judgment.

Mirella had smiled with tight lips and clenched teeth all through the lecture on the dangers of chemical-leeching plastics making her stupid, infertile, and fat. She’d nodded, eyed the aesthetically pleasing display of glass-and-cork and ceramic coffee storage containers, one with a hand-lettered card announcing the name of a pottery studio that matched the one emblazoned across the lecturing woman’s allegedly-ocean-reclaimed-plastic tote bag, and brightly thanked the now-ranting woman for sharing her knowledge, before taking her plastic-encased beans and running. Maybe she’d go back to refilling at the local grocery’s bulk section. The selection was limited, and probably not organic, much less ethical, whatever the signs claimed.

Mirella sighed and knocked a puck of gently steaming grounds into her compostables pail. The toenails recoiled in pain. All three of them.

She could have sworn she’d buried those suspicious-looking flowers at the bottom of the pail under a full pot’s worth of dirt, but now the gently curved pinkish nails they’d grown were attached to scraps of flesh. Presumably complete with tendons and nerve endings buried somewhere in the dirt, given the flinch.

Mirella might’ve yelped, or screamed, or sworn, but she caught sight of her neighbour through the small, above-sink window in her kitchen. He was just returning from a jog in his heat-molded algae, ethically harvested wool and recycled pop bottle runners, looking sweaty but perfect in the kind of merino athletic gear that was well beyond Mirella’s budget. A passing conversation last fall had led to her growing awareness of the importance—no, the imperative—of committing to a sustainable lifestyle. Which she had done. Was doing. However . . .

She looked down in despair. They shared a bin for compost pickup. It was the highlight of her week, politely fighting over who would deliver it to the curb, then wheeling the hip-high bin back to his laneway unit, where she could peek in the windows and pretend she, too, lived in an Instagram-worthy snap of eco-friendly domestic bliss instead of a dank half-basement. But now what? She could hardly sully their shared bin with her nightmarish leavings. And what if he saw? He might come loping out on those long, impeccably clad legs with a late addition of coffee grounds or the faded and limp leavings of post-soup-stock vegetable trimmings, only to be confronted with a crop of toes waggling back at him.

No, she couldn’t bear it. He’d never look at her the same way. If he ever looked at her.

That was when she’d thought up the compost heap. It’d been brilliant, really. How better to bask in his attention than a joint project? And when he’d bowed out only a day after helping her mark and measure the patch of yard for the heap, she’d understood, she really had. He had important work to do. Planet-saving work, something with research and complicated plans and lots of travel, carefully offset with carbon credits when he couldn’t walk, cycle, or take public transit, of course.

So she’d ferreted out a series of free video explainers, sourced and hauled the materials home, and knocked up a backyard compost heap. She’d emptied her now-ripe-and-wriggly compostables pail into the bottom and covered it in the prescribed layers of green and brown material, careful to bury the evidence from view. Down at the bottom, it’d surely suffocate. Whatever it was.

That had been two weeks ago. Mirella shuddered at the thought of what else hid just beneath the surface. She’d only spotted one toe, but the others couldn’t be far behind. Whispering up an apology to Mother Earth, or whoever interceded on behalf of reluctant polluters, she went back a few steps and clicked the overnight delivery option on the home composter. It would be a little worse for the planet, but much, much better for her peace of mind, and her chances of domestic bliss with Mr. Eco-Everything.

In the meantime, she’d just have to stake out the compost heap.

“Gardening?” her neighbour asked, taking in her thrifted straw hat, the undyed (and, as yet, uncreased) organic cotton gloves clutched in one hand, and her rusted steel trowel.

She nodded, speechless. Then she spotted the pail in his hands.

“Let me,” she managed, stuttering a little on that first L, tripping over a rake in her hurry to place herself between him and the compost heap.

He blinked, tightening his grip. The pail gleamed, the outside beaten copper, undoubtedly from some far-away women’s collective or artisanal workshop, free of drips or stains. Mirella grimaced at the dirt under her nails—not from gardening; she’d just been afraid to cut them and now didn’t have a brush with long enough bristles to clean underneath—but held out her hands anyway, in what she hoped was a charming manner.

“It’s no trouble,” she said.

Her neighbour chewed his lip, a little flushed, his gaze flickering from the compost heap to her and back.

“Actually,” he said, his perfect voice just on the edge of breathless. “Actually, I think I forgot—”

“What have you got there, Jason?” a woman’s voice trilled, too bright.

Mirella backed against the compost heap and sat with a thump. It was the local artisanal pottery lecturer from the zero waste refillery. Of course it was.

“Karen,” Jason said with relief, turning away from Mirella and her buzzing, stinking seat. He nearly jogged over and leaned in, as if for a kiss.

Karen leaned away. “Don’t let me stop you.” She eyed the pail clutched in his white-nailed, tendon-ridged hands.

Mirella closed her eyes. Then she hopped up from her seat. “Let me get that for you. No, it’s no trouble at all—”

She brushed past Jason’s objections, shouldering Karen to one side, and seized the pail. He didn’t let go. If anything, he pulled it closer, cuddling it like a small animal or a favourite toy. Mirella came with it, her pulse racing at the proximity, the heat of his body, the clean scent of—

She wrinkled her nose. She knew that smell. He’d left his compostables pail too long without emptying it and it had started growing fungus or mold or whatever happened when you let food scraps sit long enough to not only rot but generate completely new organisms, complete with rainbow-hued fur. Was that what this was about? He was embarrassed it had taken him—Mr. Perfect Eco Saint—too long to empty his compost pail, and the results were toxic to anyone within a ten-foot radius? He’d been travelling recently; it’s not like anyone would blame him.

“It’s okay,” Mirella murmured so Karen wouldn’t hear. “I know. I get it. Just leave it with me.”

Jason blanched, his handsome features going a sickly pale green, eyes widening, dampening. He looked like he was about to cry. Then his gaze shifted, focusing on something past her shoulder. His expression smoothed to genial blandness. “No, no. I’ve got it.”

He stepped back, turning on his heel, clearly intending to break Mirella’s hold. She wasn’t expecting it. Off-balance, she staggered, her weight falling to one side, both arms firmly locked around the spotless copper pail Jason clutched. She pulled him off balance, their legs tangling, eyes widening, breaths merging in a startled shout subsumed into a wordless burst of air as elbows and hips and ribs collided with the earth.

And, at the same moment, a slight but audible pop; then a roiling wave of noxious fumes sent Mirella rolling away from what might otherwise have been a thoroughly enjoyable entanglement.

On hands and knees she coughed, eyes watering. In the periphery of her vision, Jason stiffened, moaned, and went limp.

“What is that?” came Karen’s strident voice. Then, a moment later. “That’s not what I think it is. Jason?”

His arms lifted as if in wordless plea, faltered, and folded to cover his face. “This isn’t a good time, Karen.”

She sniffed. “When is? Look, I’m a busy woman. I have goals. And I can’t have my brand sullied by whatever this is. You can keep your weird little hobbies to yourself.”

Jason nodded without uncovering his face. “Yes, a hobby,” he said tonelessly.

Karen’s muttering about closet creeps and unproductive use of time receded into the distance. Mirella crawled a couple feet before attempting her feet.

“Sorry,” she said, staring at the peeling paint on the side of the building to avoid facing Jason. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I’ll move,” he said quickly. “You’ll never have to see me again. And it’s not—it’s really not what it looks like, okay? Like Karen said, just a hobby. You don’t need to call the police—”

Police? Mirella swung around in surprise. She left her mouth hanging open, despite the truly horrifying taste of the fumes. Slimy, rotten scraps were smeared across Jason’s chest. It was foul-looking and smelling, but nothing criminal. Sure, he shouldn’t have bought more kale than he could finish. She suspected that larger chunk was a beef bone, and everyone knew feedlots were bad for the environment, but he’d probably sourced it from one of those grass-fed, free-range, carbon-sequestering herds or whatever. And, while those baby carrots looked a little pale, they were probably still edible—

One moved. Bent and wriggled. Mirella took a step forward. Then another, ignoring the stench to examine the offending scrap. A thick, pinkish-pale, shell-like arc, capped with a translucent whitish strip and set into a stubby, mottled—

“Where did you get that?” she demanded, her gut churning.

Jason followed her stare, groaned, and covered his face again.

Mirella crouched down. Reached. Hesitated. He’d been in the compost pile. The toe she’d spotted hadn’t been the first after all. But why had he taken it inside? And, if he’d wanted it for something, why was it in his compostables pail and headed back to the heap?

The big toe flexed again, inching out from under a strip of banana peel. The others, smaller, rocked and wriggled sleepily like a litter of kittens waking from a nap. Mirella gasped at the wiry dark hairs dusting their knuckles. Or whatever it was you called the bendy bits of toes. Her hair was a pale brown, mousy-ash and near-invisible against her skin. And she most certainly did not grow hair on her toes. At least, not that much.

“Where did you get that?” she asked again in a whisper.

“It’s moving again, isn’t it,” Jason moaned. He peeked between his fingers at her. “Would you believe it’s a hobby? I, um. I make tiny marionettes out of vegetable scraps. Lifelike, isn’t it?”

The toe flexed again, dragging itself fully out from under the banana peel. Was that bone at the end? Why didn’t it bleed?

“Oh, um. That one’s animatronic,” he gulped, fingers fluttering above the toe as if afraid to touch it.

Mirella went and found her now crumpled and grass-stained gloves and handed them to him. He nodded his thanks, tucked as much of his long fingers as would fit inside their protection, and gingerly lifted the offending digit. It flexed with noticeable irritation.

“There’s something you should see.” Mirella took a deep breath. Then she doubled over, coughing.

“Sorry,” Jason muttered. “I didn’t want to—I mean, I meant to—”

“Seriously, just get over here.” Eyes watering, she grabbed his arm and dragged him, food scraps and animate digits peeling off with every step, to the compost heap.

She grimaced, one hand on the lid. He’d never see her the same way. If she did this, she was outing herself as possibly the most disgusting person on the planet. Her toenail clippings were so gross they’d straight-up come back to life after being buried. Reanimated toes. Who knew what was next? Would they regenerate a full zombie-copy of her, or just keep spreading until they took over the planet in endless, wriggling pink fields?

“I should . . . I should go,” Jason said, tugging against her grip, a clone of what could only be his big toe squirming in one hand. “I need to wash. And pack. If there are any countries you’d like to visit in the future, just let me know and I’ll steer clear.”

“You don’t need to go.” And, staring right up into his beautiful, shame-filled eyes, Mirella flung up the lid covering the compost heap.

A burst of flies heralded the start of their domestic bliss. After he’d gotten over the shock and disgust, Jason had gently nestled his toes, one by one, between hers and covered them in the scraps they’d gathered together from his shirt, trousers, and the trampled yard. He’d closed the lid gently and tried to kiss her before remembering a shower was in order.

She moved into the laneway house that night and never left, keeping her dark and dingy semi-underground suite for the children’s sake. It turned out the two most disgusting people on the planet were 100% compatible in biologically and emotionally fascinating ways. The toes proliferated. But they also collaborated. And, in the cozy, dark heat of the backyard compost heap, they merged to grow something beautiful.

Jason joked about naming the first one Karen.

Mirella sent the automatic composter back.

With quiet flair the Jubjub watched
the Bandersnatch decay.
Thru mimsy wobe and tainted tove
she snicker-snacked her prey.

It wasn’t for the lack of mome
or frabjous-like revenge.
The Jubjub’s foe, the Bandersnatch
had borogoved her frenge.

And thus, because the brillig brat
Internalized her gyre
the Jubjub waited uffishly
as slithy tulge expire.

CY: When I have a chance to talk to people about this part of the field there is always someone who’s surprised that we’re dependent on subscriptions. This is why we frequently see subscription drives and annual Kickstarters–some of us may sell advertising, but it’s not nearly enough to cover the costs of publishing, even with an all-volunteer staff!

AS: I have a column over at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and my latest entry is about the lifespan of magazines. I used the idea of landing on a Hugo ballot going back to 2000—so, over two decades—as a metric, and did some research to see how many of those mags are still around. The number of notable, beloved magazines that have closed is higher than you think, and includes such as Daily Science Fiction, Future SF Digest, and Fireside.

CY: When you and I first talked about working together we were still lamenting the loss of Shimmer! We’ve both seen the sausage being made for a long time now—you at Locus, and me at Lightspeed—so we knew what we were up against. New markets open and close every year, and readers have to be selective in where they spend their money. No one can be expected to subscribe to everything. And like most in our field, we make our content free to read online–we just make people wait for it! Our subscribers get it all at once at the beginning of the month.

AS: This is a very volatile industry, and so much about it is harder than people think. But the joys include discovering authors; and seeing folks Tweet about their acceptances is both fulfilling and inspiring. It’s a strange, unique ecology, where authors and editors and publishers coexist to create something wonderful. And then the reader picks it up, and they add their own perspectives and context to the pieces they read, ultimately building worlds and narratives in their imagination that are as amazing as they are individual. This stuff is actually pretty magical.

CY: Very few of us go into this thinking we’re going to make money at it. We do it because we love genre literature, and the short form in particular, and want to see more of it in the world. For some it remains a very expensive hobby—Fred Coppersmith has published Kaleidotrope out of his own pocket for more than a decade, which is a testament to his love and dedication to the readers and writers in this field.

AS: Whether Fantasy or somewhere else, I encourage you to support the life of your favorite venues, which in turn helps authors by making sure they have places that will showcase their work. Vote in awards, such as the Locus Poll & Survey, signal boost or tell friends about pieces that really worked for you, and if you can, subscribe, or purchase issues.

• • • •

In this issue’s short fiction, we have “Children of Earth” by K.A. Wiggins, and “Nairuko” by Dennis Mugaa; flash fiction “Trading With Monsters” by Miguel O. Mitchell, and Keech Ballard’s “The UFO’s New Clothes”; in poetry, “The Frumious Jubjub” by C.H. Lindsay and “Sleeping With the Fishes” by Shreejita Majumder. Plus essay “What Language Do You Think In: On Being Lost in Translation” by Linghun author Ai Jiang. Enjoy!

Rule #1: Get a good night’s sleep before you cast your protection circle. If you nod off even once, the last thing you’ll ever see is sharp teeth.

Rule #2: Decide on exactly what you want to trade. Haggling weakens the protection circle and, well, refer to Rule #1.

Rule #3: If you’re dealing with a hungry monster, you may have to agree on a limb deal, so decide which arm is not your favorite beforehand, and bring a second wizard to remove the limb, cauterize the stump, and, of course, keep up the protection circle because you’ll be unconscious from the pain. And please don’t trade a leg, no matter what the monster offers. They never want just the leg.

Rule #4: After the monster agrees to the trade, slide your offered object out of the protection circle with a stick or broom, not your hands, or the monster will understandably assume that you’re throwing in your hands as a bonus.

Rule #5: Wait for the monster to leave the area before you get what you came for. And by leave, I mean, at least ten miles away, not invisible, hiding in a pocket dimension, merged with stone, burrowed underground, or looking like your mother with impressive canines.

Rule #6: After you acquire your trade and are safely home, make a huge offering to the gods for letting you get away with trading with a monster, because that’s a really stupid thing to do.