Cecilia Beaux, Sita and Sarita, c. 1921, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund), 2014.79.1, National Gallery of Art
Can you feel when you’re being watched? Cats can. Stare too long and it’ll burn a hole in their fur. A direct line of sight gives itself away more than an indirect one. Watch from the corner of your eye. You’d be amazed to see what happens there, before it knows to hide. Pay attention to what lives there, in the corners.
“Hold on tightly.”
To what, I wondered.
“With what,” was the reply.
Confused, I looked down at my hands, as if to signal my checking that they were still there. They were.
I turned them over. They obeyed. I flexed and extended my fingers, and they moved so. I clapped my palms together and they… Well, they didn’t clap. They went rather through one another, as shadows crossing.
I reached out, reeling, to steady myself on the elevator wall and felt a conspicuous nothing as first my hand, then my wrist, then my arm, and finally my whole body fell through, taken by gravity’s hand as I tumbled head over heel endlessly down in deep, deep sky.
Nothing satisfies. I stand on the mountain and have no home. I sleep in the valley and have no rest. I hate with the spittle of my mouth and have no strength. I pray for love, but my heart is evil. My blood is poison.
If good gifts have a giver, why does he hide as his gifts fade, as they are smashed, stolen, and defiled?
I can no longer lie to the mountainfolk, who should know full-well that is no peak. Snow-capped though it may be, that is itself no cap. It is, rather, a fool’s horizon, a trick of geometry, and I can abide this delusion no longer. At best, it is foolishness, but I suspect malice, which I intend to obliterate.
When I told Brick to grab a hoe and start scraping, he told me the same thing he said the day I first met him. The sun was high. The grass was green with the first breath of spring. Birds nested just outside the lab windows in a little sky planter. Dr. Morris’ voice was dry and scratchy from the repetitive voicing of boilerplate questions.
“We need someone to work on the engine,” he croaked.
“I happen to be a nuclear engineer,” Brick said.
“Nuclear… physics?” I asked.
“Physics, yes! Nuclear chemistry as well. Capable of engineering.”
I knew him then to be one in whom I must take no risks.
So when I commanded the man to scrape the equivalent of barnacles off the hull of our grounded craft, he looked at me, smiled beatifically, and repeated the principle axiom of our working relationship, “I happen to be a nuclear engineer.”
He read the pamphlet.
Why wait for heat death? What world destruction means for you, and how you can help determine the New Universal Order (NUO) via a completely democratic collaborative effort. Make the world a better place. The next one. This one is trash.
A little recycling logo, the one with three green arrows, one of the four most pervasive remaining religious symbols in the galaxy, repurposed in a fashion that strict Recyclists (a minority of the majorly religious) would certainly find sacrilegious, in which one of the arrows had been turned to point into a garbage can with the slogan “Break the cycle!” The symbol featured next to a smiling man giving one thumb’s way, way up.
“Is this some sort of joke?” Rek asked, handing the pamphlet back to the young woman. The smile had not left her face nor the hope her eyes. Charismatically, so innocently as to be slightly seductive while also evoking the pang of shame in all who detected its suggestive tone, she laughed a clean, round laugh, rolled her eyes as if acknowledging in some inside way the absurdity of the situation, and said in a just-between-us kind of way, “I know, right?”
“Look. Uhh, we’re kind of broke due to recent misfortunes completely outside of our influence, so we can’t, uhh, donate or whatever to your, uhh, cause.” Rek’s empty mouth took on a certain air of inelegance that his full one lacked, as if he were trying to remedy the absence of food, drink, or smoke by filling it instead with “uhs”, “ums”, and “ahs”.
“Oh, we don’t need your money, silly!” She laughed again, giving Shale what he felt to be an overly familiar nudge, though if his cheeks were capable of changing pigment, they might have blushed. “We’re just asking you to get out there and vote.” During this exchange, Nole, who had been openly yawning and looking everywhere but at the young woman, choked on his surprise. His eyes grew wide, wider than usual.
“And who’s we –” Rek began, when Nole, speaking for the first time, and with urgency, pulled Rek’s elbow in a run, shouting, “Don’t care. Let’s go!”
Rek followed.
Shale, the only one to pause and remember his manners, gave an apologetic nod to the girl before himself hauling off. The gestures delighted the girl, who, being momentarily confused and momentarily extant, was subsequently vaporized by a highly charged ion stream.
Through storm he came, in storm he went. The one they call heav’n-sent. Today, we baptize you as he was baptized. We choose you as he was chosen. Thunder echoes atop the hill and down the vale. Epiphany strikes. They come when he calls, an’ no one else. They cannot be bidden. They cannot be broken. Stand, and become men.
The naked, muddy boys had been doing pushups for so long they were like hot, soggy rags. Grass and mud clung to them, ground their way deep into their flesh. Water flogged the nostrils. Hair smacked the neck. They stood.
You have received your whippings. You have received our ways. You have spoken the words. You have broken the bone. Now, receive your shield. Now, today as every day, fight until you receive Helter’s gift.
There is a way that seems right to a man, but really, is all kinds of messed up. Can you change the weather? Can you buy a toenail?
Trynin boarded a ship to the motherland. They put a wrench in his hand. They sailed the currents, together, he and the aerlings, and their song was sung from shore to distant shore. What gains a main, what profits he, the sailor of higher way, who under star and over vale may ride the gusty wave? Who is this man, this windwalker, under whom the kingdoms fly? He is the heir of Landunsun; he is the prince of sky.