Category: Fiction

Susan Kaye Quinn

The days were more dear now.

She could give minutes to the snapdragons, pruning their spent blooms and freeing the stems to flower again. Or spend an hour with her glasses and notebook, hoping for a tufted titmouse to report to the lost species trackers.

Or she could stay inside on Shredder and save a person’s life.

She plucked a call from the ether. Shredder’s voice channel gave them privacy, no storage or data mining for the AI, and it dumped as soon as the call was over. But there were hundreds of callers and who she connected to was random, a cosmic lottery no more fair than the Fates spinning the wheel, but there wasn’t a better way. Not yet.

“Smilin’ Charlie’s Energy Pills,” she intoned. “We’ve got what you need to recharge your life! How are you doing to today?”

“I’m . . . okay.” English, so no AI-translator echo on top of their words. The voice was young, but then they all were compared to her.

“I bet you need some recharging! I can set you up with our free starter kit of a month’s worth of energy at no price today. How does that sound?” She wished they were real. She’d sign up herself.

“I . . . I was told to ask for Grandma Maisy.”

“Well, we don’t have any Grandma Maisy here, but I can assure you, I’m fully qualified to take care of you.” The schtick was rough some days, but it was important to delay, so Salomé could validate the call, no voice manipulation or tracing, make sure it was someone desperate for help, not the police. Or worse, the Department of Biological Integrity.

“I was told I should ask twice. For Grandma Maisy.” Hope was leaking out of their young voice like the last breath leaving a body.

“Maisy is a funny name.” Which always brought her a smile, given she’d picked it. “Kinda old-fashioned. How old do you think that name is?”

“Before plastic.” A common-enough saying, but strange enough in context to work as old-school security. Plus, the all-clear had come in from Salomé.

Her shoulders relaxed. “That’s right.” She used her normal voice, the one that didn’t sound like she was selling magic pills, when in fact, she was now free to share the real magic. The kind that worked. “Before plastic. You’re not looking for more energy—you’re looking for a cure. Isn’t that right?”

“Are you Grandma Maisy?”

“I am.” Close enough.

“I’ve got three kids, Maisy. All depending on me. Not all mine, either, but they’ve already lost too much.”

“They can’t afford to lose you too.” She said it strong. People didn’t need to justify it to her, but they always tried. Which was one way to tell they were real. The Bio Integrity thugs always assumed everyone was as slimy and manipulative as they were. She’d been able to spot them 10/10 so far.

“Does it actually work?”

The only real question. “It does. But there are some risks.” She listed them off. Full disclosure. More than you’d get in a clinical trial, which this was, only the illegal kind. A global operation that circumvented the official channels, given they’d been taken over by the sort of people whose politics were responsible for the carnage she was trying to stop. If they got hold of her magic—and it didn’t belong to her, nor did she invent it, but she was holding together the operation to quietly proliferate the hell out of it—the powerful would shut it all down before she could blink. They were all-in on necropolitics, using their power to decide who deserved to die so the rest, including them, could continue to live in the style to which they’d become accustomed. The necropoliticians would take her magic pills, test them on a few unfortunates, then hoard it for themselves, their cronies, sell it to the well-connected and the wealthy. As if they couldn’t buy plastic-free livers any day of the week. Everybody lived in the ubiquitous soup of microplastics, but some people had a bigger lifeboat than others.

She was selling tickets to the biggest lifeboat of all. Or rather, giving them away.

But only to a few, for now: the ones the Fates had selected. She was good at keeping the cops out, but she couldn’t bear to decide which of the normies would live. Too heavy of a burden, on top of everything else. She was glad for the randomness and secrecy of Shredder.

She processed the caller through and handed off the order to Salomé. She was in Colombia, but they had labs on every continent now, and in most countries with populations over 50M. Local shipping was key—avoiding customs meant higher likelihood of the capsules reaching the caller before they expired. It was a miracle the cure worked at all, but a strong secondary miracle had made the bio-active materials transportable in little room-temperature capsules you could slide into a box and send anywhere that shipping reached.

She fielded three more callers before Salomé broke in, the translator’s English heavy over her whispered Spanish. “Sorry to interrupt, but Diego wants to talk.”

“Is there a problem?” Diego was her master biologist, the inventor of the magic cure for plastic liver. He also tracked all the results of their illegal clinical trial.

“He wouldn’t say.”

“Put him through.” She waited while the line clicked over.

“Maisy, hello, how are ya this fine day?” Diego wasn’t his name any more than hers was Maisy, but she knew people who knew people who vouched for his bonafides. That’s how it all started.

“As well as can be expected. Tell me there’s nothing wrong, and I’ll feel better.”

“I have too many capsules.”

“That doesn’t sound like a problem.” She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead because she knew better.

“They’re sitting in the labs. Spoiling, Maisy. You know this.”

“I’m training Salomé. She’ll be ready soon. I’ve got trainee candidates lined up in Brazil and Nigeria, next. And we’ve got . . . .” Fatigue clouded her brain for a moment. “Almost a hundred volunteers on intake now? We’re fielding thousands of calls a day, Diego.”

“It’s not enough. You know this, too.”

“I know this,” she admitted. The weight of it suffocated her, all day and night. Worse when she thought about it.

“We need to go public,” Diego said.

Not this again. “We’re not ready.”

“We are.”

“Bio Integrity will shut us down.”

“Only in America—”

“Which happens to be where I live. Besides, the Ministério da Biologia will do the same in Brazil. The Australian Institute for Population Monitoring will have a field day. I can’t even think about the Russians. Diego . . . .” They’d had this fight so many times, and her energy wasn’t there for it. The fatigue got worse every day. She couldn’t even keep her breakfast down lately, so she skipped it this morning, but that left her empty and weak. “We’re not ready.”

“Maisy, my dear friend . . . .” They had never met, but that didn’t matter. “You are not ready. But we are.”

“That’s not fair.”

“But it is true.”

She balled up her fist, wanting to smash the button to disconnect the call. But even that took too much. Her shoulders slumped. “I’ll think about it.” He didn’t need her permission for anything . . . but he was asking for her blessing. And that chewed her up inside.

“Are you okay?”

“Worse now, thanks for asking.”

“Maisy—”

“I need to go.” She clicked off the call and crumpled head-down on the table. One breath, two. She lay there until she knew that if she didn’t move, everything in her would stiffen. Slowly, she rose. The bed beckoned, and a nap might do her good, but the garden would do her better. She struggled to pull her socks over her ankles, which were swollen to unrecognizable lumps, but at least her loose shoes still fit. Her garden gloves and hat hung by the door, and she’d need those to keep the blazing sun from cooking her too fast. She checked the air quality before she ventured out, not that a slow death by air pollution would matter at this stage. But an asthma attack wouldn’t do her any favors.

She brought a small basket, in case there was any harvesting to be done. Then she shuffled down the sidewalk to the community garden. It wasn’t far, but she had to stop twice to catch her breath. It was a brutal metric. An unforgiving one, impossible to ignore. But she tried.

A few neighbors were at the garden, which was already bursting with the fruits of summer. A micro-utopia. She snagged a kneeler from the front and found a spot alone in the forest of tomato plants. It was well past noon, so one row shaded the next, and down between them, she could dig her hands into the dirt, finding a slow peace in uprooting the weeds that didn’t belong and gently plucking the cherry reds from the vines. If they weren’t quite ripe, they wouldn’t release, but the ones whose time had come, who had reached their peak, let go so easy they almost fell off the vine with the slightest nudge.

Maybe Diego was right. Maybe it was time to let go.

This project was the last of many acts she’d taken to heal the Earth and its beings of all the harms done. If they’d stopped plastic production entirely a decade ago, that still wouldn’t have been enough, and they hadn’t even done that. Instead, the necropoliticians decided that bodies stuffed with microplastics just meant a shorter lifetime for some. Sorry about your luck. The rich were fine, of course, able to swap out for lab-grown livers once theirs became hopelessly scarred. Five years or fifty million breaths: time for a filter change!

The rich got them like clockwork. Some folks in the middle were able to “work for their liver.” But the rest of the world? Couldn’t afford a trip to the doctor much less a lab-grown miracle.

Then Diego and his pills showed up in her circles, and she had another chance to save the world, one life at a time. She didn’t understand all the tech—some combo of plastic-eating single-celled creatures and genetic-mod technology that Diego called an evolvant—but in the end, it was simple. A part of you wasn’t you anymore, but collection of organisms adapted to thrive in the Anthropocene, feasting on the toxins that would kill you otherwise. A biological cyborg. Mutant. But the result was clear: you got your life back. The world had become a chemical soup that eventually drowned everyone, one way or another, but you would be adapted to survive.

Not that it was an easy process, transforming an internal organ, one cell at a time. Sometimes it didn’t work. They screened for age and counter-indicated conditions. Because this was only a cure for those who weren’t too far gone already.

Like her.

Too bad that train had left the station before she could get onboard.

Still, it gave her something useful to do. Like picking cherry tomatoes or tracking the birds. Only this was more powerful. Probably the best thing she’d ever done.

“Devika! Are you okay?” Her friend Ezra rushed through the tomato forest, concern crinkling up that young dark-skinned face.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” She waved him off.

“You don’t look fine.” He got more concerned as he knelt down beside her.

She was quite a sight, a heap of bones and tired, swollen flesh, a smattering of tomatoes in her basket and weed carnage at her feet. “Just sitting in the dirt with the tomatoes. Nothing to see here.”

He scowled. “Let me help you up.”

She wasn’t ready to leave, but Ezra would fuss, and she didn’t have energy for that, either. She gave him her hand, but he bent down with those youthful muscles and practically scooped her out of the soil. She laughed a little as he set her on her feet, but then the dizziness made her wobble.

“That’s it,” he said. “I’m taking you home.”

“Alright.” No sense in fighting it. And with his arm firm at her back, she was steady. Wouldn’t even have to stop to catch her breath.

“You’ve got the liver, don’t you?” Ezra said quietly on the way.

“Well, everyone does.” She wheezed a little. “Why should I be any different?”

“You should try those pills.” He watched the sidewalk for cracks that might be hazardous to her.

His words drew her gaze. “What pills?”

“You haven’t heard? It’s a cure. A real one.”

“Sounds like snake oil to me.” But her heart was thrumming.

He dipped his head and lowered his voice. “They fixed my cousin. Complete reversal. You can’t get the pills from any doctor, but they’re the real deal. I can get them for you.”

“Can you, now?”

His fervent nod settled something deep in her bones. Ezra was quiet until they got to her door. “You want me to come in?”

“Ezra, I’m fine.”

“I’ll get you those pills.” He was very serious now. “You just say the word. And don’t be stubborn, Ms. Patel. I’ve got more stubborn than you. I’ll wear you down.”

She smiled. “Now, that’s a threat.” But she waved him off again. She needed some time alone before she broke the news to him—that even the miracle cure was too late for her. “Give me a minute to rest, then you come back. We’ll have ourselves a chat.”

He nodded his acceptance.

She’d left all her energy at the garden, and without Ezra’s help, it was rough getting to her desk, but she made it.

She’d wanted to wait until they’d built up enough of a network that she could be sure no one could shut it down. Or even better, wait until the necropoliticians were shoved out of power again, at least in her country, because then they could really do something, with the right folks in charge. In the meantime, she’d spent all her effort on getting the pills to whoever they could. But if word of them had spread so far that they were showing up in her own backyard . . . maybe the network had grown big enough. Maybe people like her friend Ezra would see it through.

She mustered her energy and got on Shredder. Direct to Diego.

“Maisy! It’s good to hear from you.” He was surprised.

“Diego, I’ve been trying to stop the bleeding, all this time.”

“What?” His alarm blasted through.

“I’m speaking metaphorically.”

“Oh.”

“When you’re in an emergency, it’s important to stop the bleeding, but at some point, that doesn’t matter. At some point, you have to stop patching up the wounds and take away the butcher knife.”

“I’m not sure I follow.” He sounded worried for her mental health. But that was the only kind she had.

“It’s time to go public.”

“Really? You mean it?”

She really did. “You invented this thing. You built a worldwide network to get it to the people who need it most. You waited and played it smart and now . . . .” The dizziness was making her head spin. “Tell the world, Diego. Tell them what you’ve done.” She propped her head on her hands to keep it from swimming. “What’s your name, sweetie?” Her voice was slurring. She could hear it. “Your real one.”

“Patrick.”

“Nice to meet you, Patrick.” It came out a wheeze. “My name’s Devika.” And then she felt something slipping away. She tried to close the call, but she missed the button on the way down into blackness.

She awoke to the taste of metal and Ezra’s smiling face.

“Hey.” Her throat felt thick, and she coughed.

He helped her with water. “The docs said you might be waking up soon. Glad I was here to see it.”

She patted his hand to show she could hold the glass of water and straw herself. “You brought me to the hospital?” She couldn’t remember a damn thing. But Ezra must have come back for her and brought her in. Not that it would help.

He nodded. A bit of smile snuck onto his face. “I bet you don’t remember much.”

“Ezra, I don’t remember anything.” She was in a hospital bed. The yellow walls of her room were dotted with monitors and their silent blips.

“You could have told me, you know.” His smile got stronger. “That you were Grandma Maisy.”

“Oh. That.” She took another long drink of water. Then she frowned. “Wait, how did you . . . .” Her brain felt like it had been packed with cotton.

“A lot’s happened in the last ten days.”

“Ten what.” She leaned over to set down her glass, and a sharp pinch stabbed her stomach. She winced and cradled her hand to it. “What the—”

“Take it easy.” Ezra was on his feet now, like he might barricade her from getting out of bed. “The doc said it would hurt some as the anesthetic wore off.”

She stared at him, like he was speaking German with the translator off. Then she gingerly poked around her stomach and a staccato of dulled pain raced across her middle. She dug around the tangle of blankets and sheets and hospital gown, not caring if she was flashing poor Ezra with her wrinkly old body, but when she got to skin, she could hardly take it in.

The upside-down “T” of a liver transplant incision splayed across her abdomen, stapled together like a railroad track of flesh. She didn’t believe it until she passed her hand gently over it, the touch bringing the winces of pain a little sharper.

She dropped her gown and looked up. “How?” It was the only word her brain could form.

“Turns out there’s a lot of folks who want Grandma Maisy to have a new liver.” He looked fit to burst with that smile. “’Course, I was the one who told them to keep you out, otherwise you might have some sass about it.”

She just sat there with her mouth hanging open.

He cocked his head. “I know what you really want to know.”

“You do?” She still had not a single thought in her head but wonder.

Ezra settled back in his chair and scratched his chin. “Devika would want to know the tomato harvest is coming quite nicely.”

Some of her senses were coming back to her. “And Grandma Maisy?”

He smirked. “She’d like to know her magic pills are in short supply, but every country on Earth has been forced to fund production to meet the need. The network Grandma Maisy built—it’s too big, too pervasive, too connected everywhere. The first day of protests . . . you’ll have to go back and watch. But the politicians had no choice.”

“Oh.” She eased back to rest on her pillow, ginger with her newly stapled stomach. “You’re saying it worked.”

“I’m saying it worked. And Patrick says hello.” His smile was getting downright infectious.

“Well, all right, then.” She blinked several more times before it truly sunk in. “Maybe now I’ll have time to tend my flowers.” Or count the birds. Or watch this miracle unfold and know that she’d done something good. Something real.

“I’d say you’ve earned your retirement.”

She didn’t know if she was ready for that.

But she was surprised to find the days were even more precious when you suddenly had a lot more of them.

Guillermo G. Mendoza

Hice una manda, ¿sabes?, antes del collar, antes de todo. Le pedí a la Virgencita que nos ayudara con lo del terreno y yo la representaría en el Viacrucis. Pero me tocó ser Jesús. O algo así.

Ese día mamá no quería dejarme sola con las trocas dando vueltas por el pueblo. Sobre todo, por la amenaza. Pensó en llamar a su jefe de allá, de la maquila, y pedir el día, pero al final se fue. «Estaré bien, mami, no te preocupes», le dije en la parada del camión, con el amanecer pálido sobre nosotras. Nos despedimos con un beso, como cualquier otro día. Ni idea de que no volveríamos a vernos. Al menos no en persona, porque al siguiente domingo no regresó. Le pidieron trabajar horas extra el fin de semana. Volvió cuando todo había pasado.

Almorcé dos tazas de café. Las necesitaba. Las camionetas fueron y vinieron por la terracería, alrededor de la casa, toda la noche. Lo hacían a propósito, para robarnos el sueño. Para fastidiarnos y que les vendiéramos la tierra de ito Juan. Pero no lo haríamos. Cuando se fueron, me puse tu sudadera del Cruz Azul y a darle. Desde que te fuiste la usé. Me recordaba que estabas en el norte, viendo por nosotras. Al principio olía a ti, pero con las lavadas pronto olió a ropa nomás. Y ese día te necesitaba más que otros y quería sentirte cerca.

Escombraba el cuarto de los abuelitos y entonces lo hallé. Llevaba semanas dejándolo para luego, porque no podía entrar a la habitación sin llorar. No quería aceptar su ausencia. Pero ya ibas a llegar, para ayudarnos con lo del terreno, ¿y dónde iban a dormir tú y Norma, y Juanito? Levanté todo y barrí y trapeé sin parar de llorar. Cada barrida, cada trapeada, quemaba con cloro mi corazón, me lavaba la pena. Levanté sus cosas una por una, acariciándolas. Y así lo encontré, refundido en una caja llena de fotos viejas: el collar de ita Tonantzin, una figurita de barro añejo con forma de árbol de la vida. Te has de acordar: siempre lo trae puesto en las fotos. Lo sostuve con la palma abierta para verlo bien. Y como que se sentía vivo, como si tuviera en la mano una lagartija. Le tomé una foto y le escribí a mamá: «Mira lo que apareció». Esperaba un audio, una anécdota por respuesta, pero ya ves . . . . No la dejaban usar el celular si estaba trabajando. Me contestó al otro día: «El collar de mamá Tona . . . . Es un amuleto, hija, quédatelo. Te va a proteger». Y eso hice. Lo demás lo doné a la parroquia.

Volví a la iglesia saliendo de la escuela. La parroquia había conseguido que una maestra de teatro viniera de la ciudad por las tardes, para ayudar al grupo juvenil a montar el Viacrucis. Yo me había apuntado, así que atravesé el atrio a la sombra de los ocotes, hasta llegar al salón de usos múltiples del traspatio. Los vi hacer el calentamiento y me apuré.

La maestra nos puso un reto nuevo: improvisar una escena con algo que lleváramos en la bolsa del pantalón. Sin diálogos ni compañeros, sólo yo y lo que llevara. Y lo único que tenía era el collar. Cuando fue mi turno pasé al frente. La maestra aplaudió: corría ya mi tiempo. Tomé el árbol de la vida entre mis manos, como si fuera un pájaro herido. Aplaudió de nuevo, y con ella mis compañeros. El pájaro se convirtió en un bebé —imaginé que era tu hijo Juanito, mi sobrino—y yo lo llevé a mi pecho y lo arrullé con una canción. Otra ronda de aplausos. Me vi arrullando las cenizas de ito Juan. Sentí cómo me brotaban las lágrimas. Aplaudieron una última vez. Las cenizas fueron entonces una semilla de ceiba. Me hinqué, hice como si la plantara en el piso. La regué con mis lágrimas. Luego me levanté con los ojos cerrados, extendiendo los brazos hacia el cielo. Imaginé que un árbol brotaba de la semilla, como si fuera un chorro de agua escupido por una fuente.

Y así pasó, fuera de mi imaginación. La semilla estalló y se hizo una ceiba que llenó todo el salón. La maestra y el grupo lo vieron también. Y todo se detuvo. Silencio, miradas de asombro. Algunos se pusieron de rodillas y empezaron a rezar. No tardó nada en correrse la voz.

Toda la noche le di vueltas a lo de la ceiba. Quería una explicación. Hasta pasé a la iglesia al otro día, antes de clases, para ver si había sido real eso de que apareciera nomás con imaginarlo. ¿Y qué crees? La ceiba todavía estaba ahí, quebrando la loza con sus raíces, rozando el techo con sus ramas. La rodeaba un grupo de rezanderas que, entre murmullos, pasaban las cuentas de sus rosarios. No era un retoño, sino un árbol maduro, con su corteza de piel de lagartija toda llena de espinas y sus ramas colgando hacia abajo, cual manos extendidas hacia las mujeres que le rezaban. Y colgado de una de ellas, como si la ceiba lo alzara del piso, estaba el collar de ita Tonantzin. De la impresión lo había dejado el día anterior. No sé cómo nadie lo halló. Lo agarré y lo tuve de nuevo.

«Cipactli, ¿qué piensas de eso?».

Era el profe de sociales, el mismo que igual te dio clases. Ya sabes quién: playeras del Che todos los días, y gorrita zapatista que nunca se quita. Volví de mi lelera.

«¿Que qué, profe?».

«¿Qué piensas de la expropiación ejidal de 1990? San Miguel Ototipac perdió la mitad de sus tierras comunales para que se construyera el periférico. De eso ha sido toda la clase . . . ».

Al profe siempre le gustó hablar de política en palabras enredadas. Y si me preguntaba a mí era porque yo sabía el tipo de respuestas que le gustaban y cómo decirlas. Me conoces: siempre fui buena para hablar, desde chiquita. Siempre me pusieron a declamar el juramento a la bandera, a recitar poemas el día de las madres y esas cosas. Pero esa mañana no hallé palabras. La lengua se me hizo un nudo y sólo atiné a ver por la ventana, más allá de las canchas y las milpas, hacia el terreno de ito Juan.

El profe esperó.

Escupí una respuesta:

«Que es una mamada».

Igual y de coraje me llevé la mano al collar de ita Tonantzin. Entonces supe qué hacer.

Me fui derechito al acahual de don Ramiro cuando acabaron las clases. Estaba seco seco de tanto químico. Era el lugar perfecto para probar. Puse el collar sobre la tierra, cerré los ojos, e imaginé un jardín crecer sobre el terreno. Cuando los abrí fue como ver uno de esos documentales que ponía la maestra de biología, ¿te acuerdas? Era una de esas escenas donde ves pasar meses en unos cuantos segundos. De la tierra, reseca como piel de culebra, nacieron brotes de plantitas y crecieron en retoños y acabaron hechos una arboleda. Cuando alcé el collar, el jardín no se desvaneció, como tampoco hizo la ceiba allá en la iglesia.

Don Ramiro estuvo muy contento el resto de la semana. Fue a la iglesia, a darle gracias a la Virgencita por el milagro y hasta se echó para atrás con la venta de su parcela que la inmobiliaria insistía en adquirir. Le mandaron a los hombres de las trocas, a disque negociar, pero entonces ya se hablaba de la ceiba—ya sabes: chisme de pueblo—y con lo del terreno, el asunto escaló a milagro. Todo el pueblo estaba metido en la iglesia. Empezó a llegar gente de otros lados. Hasta vino el padre desde la ciudad, a media semana, aunque no le tocara oficiar misa, nomás a ver si era verdad eso que le decían por teléfono. Era tanta la gente que nadie tuvo miedo a los hombres de la inmobiliaria, ni aunque llegaron armados. Que se iba a hacer una capilla, que debía venir el obispo declarar santo el lugar. No se hablaba de otra cosa.

Pero yo pensaba en algo más: el terreno de ito Juan. Ya estaba bardeado y tenía un letrero que decía «Próximamente: Jardines de Gaia. Tu paraíso ecológico». Ya lo habían allanado para empezar a construir. Fui esa misma noche. Logré colarme por las calles sin toparme con las trocas, y escalar el paredón.

Habrías llorado al mirarlo. ¿Te acuerdas del cazahuite que crecía grande en la esquina, donde anidaban las golondrinas? ¿Y del níspero que trepábamos cuando éramos niños? Ya no estaban. Ya no había nada. El tecorral donde vivían las lagartijas, la lomita que se llenaba de hongos con las lluvias, el jacal donde se escondían los cacomixtles . . . Nada. Una extensión siniestra, de arena aplanada a la perfección, era todo lo que iluminaba la luz pálida de los reflectores. Y el muro de concreto alrededor. La parcela de nuestro abuelito destazada en lotes, lista para la obra.

Eché un vistazo a la caseta del velador: la ventana destellaba en azul. Tenía la tele prendida. Caminé hasta el centro del terreno, puse el collar sobre la tierra y dejé volar mi imaginación.

Del suelo emergieron los brotes, las hojitas.

Ni tú ni yo conocimos a ita Tonantzin más que en fotos viejas. Pero a mí me gustaba preguntarle por ella a ito Juan. Que cómo era, que cómo hablaba, que qué hacía.

«Era una mujer muy sabia, mijita, muy buena para las plantas», me contestaba y luego se arrancaba a contarme de su vida. Así supe quién era ella, lo que hacía. Ayudó a nacer a prácticamente todos en el pueblo. Curaba a los necesitados, nomás por buena gente, sin cobrar jamás un solo peso. Y todo con hierbas, piedras y ensalmos, como las curanderas de las leyendas.

Nuestro abuelito la extrañaba mucho. Se lo sentía en la voz cada que me hablaba de ella. Pero nunca se ponía triste, al revés: le brotaba la alegría. Un día le pregunté el motivo. «Es que sigue aquí conmigo, con ustedes, hija. Nunca nos deja». Eso fue lo que me dijo. Estábamos en su terreno, juntando hongos, y pensé que hablaba en sentido figurado, como quien dice que un ser amado vive en su corazón luego de fallecer. Pero no.

La inmobiliaria metió otra vez la maquinaria para limpiar el pedazo de monte que había crecido de la noche a la mañana. Mientras tanto, la gente se apiñonaba afuera del terreno, frente al portón; era el tercer «milagro» en poco más de una semana. El velador juró haberlo visto con sus propios ojos: vegetación creciendo de la nada, árboles alzándose en segundos a alturas de décadas, hierbas del tiempo de las abuelas, que ya casi no se veían, brotando por montones, flores reventando de la nada cual cohetones de fiesta hechos de pétalos. Lo contó todo y renunció para irse de peregrinación a Juquila. Sepa cómo no me vio a mí también, ahí parada, con mi sonrisota en medio de aquella fiesta de plantas. Lo contó todo, pero sólo los del grupo de teatro sabían quién hacía la magia, el milagro o lo que fuera. Claro que lo soltaron, hablaron de la muchachita y del amuleto del árbol de la vida. Pero nadie les hizo caso. Supongo que la gente prefería creer en los poderes de la Virgen y, por mí, mejor.

Al principio importó poco lo que hice. La inmobiliaria aplanó otra vez el terreno en un solo día. Les urgía empezar a construir, porque eso significaría que ya eran dueños de nuestra tierra, que no importaba el litigio. Pero yo estaba dispuesta a usar el collar una y otra vez, las que fueran necesarias. Usaría su magia, porque el terreno era de nuestros abuelitos y querían robarlo. Como habían hecho antes con tantas otras familias del pueblo y hasta con los ejidos comunales de la falda del cerro. Entonces—en realidad, hace no mucho—se aprovecharon de nuestra falta de dinero y de nuestros pleitos, de la tranza del gobierno para hacer el cambio de uso de suelo. Después, llenaron el pueblo de trocas con hombres armados y, así, también se aprovecharon de nuestro miedo. Y ahora ito Juan había muerto y querían quedarse con su terreno. Querían arrebatarnos su tierra, su recuerdo, mas yo no los dejaría.

Volví esa misma noche. Ya acampaba el gentío afuera del portón, guadalupanos con esperanzas de atestiguar el milagro. Los rodeé y seguí el muro, en busca de un lugar oscuro donde poder trepar sin ser vista. Y lo encontré, casi en la esquina. ¿Te acuerdas del ahuehuete del terreno de junto? Ahí mero. Su sombra oscurecía por completo la pared. Fue como si me leyeran la mente lo de teatro: ya estaban ahí, esperándome. Con su ayuda, subir fue mucho más fácil y pronto estuvimos dentro. El nuevo velador debió estar en el baño o algo así, pues no estaba por ninguna parte. Volví a poner el collar en el centro del terreno y otra vez imaginé, esta vez algo más vasto.

Un bosque se alzó del suelo.

A la mañana siguiente llegué tarde a la prepa. Una de las camionetas de la inmobiliaria esperó afuera de la casa hasta bien entrada la mañana. Pensé que no se atreverían a entrar, no con el pueblo tan alborotado, tan despierto por lo de los milagros. De todas formas esperé aún después que se fueran. Cuando por fin salí, vi el rayón sobre el portón: «te vamos a chingar si no le paras». Traté de calmarme. «No van a hacer nada, Cipactli, no van a hacer nada», me decía. Pero me temblaba todo el cuerpo y, cuando me encaminé a la escuela, cualquier ruidito me hacía saltar a esconderme.

Volví esa noche. Y también la siguiente y la siguiente. Las amenazas no pararon. Yo tampoco. No podía dejarles el terreno de nuestros abuelitos. Y ya sabían que era yo, así que dormí en la parroquia para estar segura. Estaba abierta todo el día y toda la noche, porque peregrinos de otros pueblos y hasta de la ciudad venían a ver los milagros. La inmobiliaria trajo más y más hombres armados para mantenerlos fuera del terreno. Se hizo más difícil entrar, pero el grupo de teatro me esperó cada noche y siempre pudimos colarnos entre el gentío y saltar la barda sin ser vistos. Cada mañana aparecía un bosque cubría el terreno. Y para cuando anochecía, lo habían talado de nuevo.

Empecé a quedarme dormida en clase, por las desveladas. No estaba al cien, pero pensaba que ya mero se rendiría la inmobiliaria, pues ya el obispo presionaba allá en la ciudad a la gente de la inmobiliaria y acá en el pueblo, ya se hablaba de hacerle un santuario a la Virgen ahí, en el terreno del abuelo, que daban por santo de tanta maravilla ocurrida los últimos días. Pero también porque, ¿cuánto habría gastado ya la inmobiliaria? No podrían rentar todos esos trascabos y aplanadoras para siempre. Tenían que echarse para atrás, algún día. Eso pensaba aquella última noche, mientras subía la barda con ayuda de un par de compañeros del grupo de teatro.

Salté al otro lado y eché un ojo a la cabina del velador. No había nadie. Afuera del muro, sólo silencio, ni oraciones ni canciones de iglesia, como las noches anteriores. Y no me pareció raro, no sé por qué. Caminé hasta el centro del terreno bajo la luz fantasmagórica de los reflectores. Puse el collar sobre la tierra y entonces oí el griterío: eran mis compañeros, eran advertencias. Demasiado tarde: algo me atravesó por la espalda.

No supe dónde estaba. No sentí frío ni calor. Todo era oscuro y no sentía mi cuerpo. Algo me apretaba por todas partes y no podía moverme o, mejor dicho, no tenía cuerpo que mover. Estuve así no sé cuánto, tratando de entender. Entonces llegaron los susurros, como siseos de serpiente: «Cipactli . . . Ci-pac-tli». Y de alguna forma reconocí esas voces: eran las raíces del níspero, del cazahuite, de los ocotes destazados por los trascabos, la parte subterránea de los hongos que ya no crecerían, las tuzas, las lombrices, las lagartijas, todos los animalitos sepultados en sus madrigueras por las aplanadoras. «Ci-pac-tli», susurraban en una madeja de voces. Después de un rato reconocí entre ellas las voces humanas: nuestras ancestras. Mujeres viejas, antiguas, me llamaban: «Cipactli . . . Ci-pac-tli».

Mis compañeros alcanzaron a escapar, pero a mí me tiraron aquí mismo, en una zanja. El collar se rompió en mi puño, mas ya no lo necesitaba. Las voces y yo alzamos el bosque noche tras noche. Cada mañana, ahí estaba: enorme, frondoso. No se lo pudieron explicar jamás los de la inmobiliaria. Como tampoco pudieron explicar qué hacían ahí mis restos, en la parcela.

El grupo de teatro contó la versión conveniente, la que se ha hecho verdad de tanta repetición: nos escapamos de noche para ver el milagro con nuestros propios ojos. Nos colamos sin ser vistos. Adentro estaban los hombres armados, y nos obligaron a detenernos. No lo hicimos. A ellos los detuvieron, a mí . . . . Me hicieron otras cosas. Quise defenderme y me golpearon. Mis amigos lucharon para zafarse y detenerlos. Luego, disparos. Ellos escaparon; yo no. Y nadie volvió a verme jamás. Los de la inmobiliaria no pudieron probar su inocencia. ¿Qué iban a decir? ¿Que tenían paramilitares en el pueblo? ¿Que una bruja les crecía árboles en el terreno cada noche para que no construyeran?

La gente se puso furiosa. Tantos abusos, tanto miedo . . . . Fui la gota que derramó el vaso. Tomaron el terreno del abuelo y pintaron consignas de protesta en el paredón. Hicieron un plantón frente al palacio municipal. Cerraron autopistas. Hicieron una marcha hasta la capital y tomaron las oficinas de la inmobiliaria. La cosa se fue a los noticieros nacionales. A las autoridades no les quedó de otra más que investigar. Y así dieron con mis restos. Pero eso tú ya lo viste, hermano, ya habías regresado del norte. Ya te tocó ver cómo se fue, por fin, la inmobiliaria.

Sólo me arrepiento de haberme ido así, sin decirle adiós a mamá. Le rompió el corazón identificar mis restos. Cómo quisiera decirle que no me fui, que estoy aquí. Quisiera que pudieras oírme, hermano, cada que vienes al terreno del abuelo. Pero lo sé: sientes el cariño que te hago llegar en el aroma de las flores, en el húmedo de la tierra y en la sombra refrescante de los árboles. Todo eso lo hago para ustedes. Y me gusta cuando juegas con Juanito, mi sobrino, sobre mí. Adoro escucharles la risa, a ti y a mamá. Aun así, cómo quisiera que pudieras escuchar todo esto, como cuando éramos niños y te contaba cuentos para dormirte. Quisiera tener mi voz, hablar con palabras de viento y susurrarte al oído: «Oye, no me fui, no me mataron, hermanito, no de verdad». Decirte que vivo en cada palmo de esta tierra trabajada con tanto amor por el abuelo. Decirte que, como ita Tonantzin y las mujeres antes de ella, me hice una con el suelo.

 

 

La versión en español de “Una con el suelo” fue editada por Laura Martínez-Lara.

Guillermo G. Mendoza

I prayed a manda, you know? Before the necklace, before everything. I asked la Virgencita for help with Abuelito’s land, and I offered to act as her in the Via Crucis procession. But I got to be Jesus. Kinda.

That day Mamá didn’t wanna leave me alone with the company’s trocas roaming town. Not after the threat. She thought of calling her boss at the maquila and asking for a couple days off, but she went in the end. “I’ll be fine, Mami, don’t worry,” I told her at the bus stop, pale sunrise above us. We kissed each other goodbye like any other day. No idea we’d never meet again. At least not in person, because next Sunday she didn’t come back. They asked her to work extra over the weekend. She returned after it was all over.

I drank a couple cups of coffee for breakfast. I needed them. The trucks rattled over the dirt track around the house all night long. They did that on purpose, to snatch away our sleep. To wear us down so we’d sell them Abuelito’s land. But we wouldn’t. Soon they left anyway, so I put on your Cruz Azul hoodie and got to work. I’d used it since you left. It reminded me you were in el norte, looking after us. It smelled of you at first, but that soon faded off. Still, I wore it to feel you close, and that day I needed you with me.

I cleaned Abuelito’s room, and that’s when I found it. I’d put it off for weeks because I always wept as soon as I walked in. Couldn’t take he was gone. But you were about to come back to help us with the lawsuit, and where would you and Norma and Juanito sleep? So I cleaned the mess up and swept and mopped, flooded in tears. Every sway chlorinated my heart, washed away my grief. I took his things one by one, caressed them. And I found it, below a pile of crumbing pics: Abuela Tonantzin’s necklace, a small Tree of Life shaped out of clay. You must remember it: She wears it in every photo, around her neck. I held it, palm open. Its weight was like a mountain. It kinda felt alive in my hand, like I held a lizard or something. Took a pic of it and texted Ma: “Look what sprung up!” I expected a voicemail, an old anecdote for an answer, but you know . . . . They don’t want her on the phone while at work. She texted back next day: “Mamá Tona’s necklace . . . . It’s an amulet, mija. Keep it. It will protect you.” And I did. Everything else we gave away to the parish.

I went back to church after school. The parish managed to get a drama teacher to come from the city in the afternoons, to help the youth group mount the Via Crucis’ procession. I’d signed up, so I walked through the atrium, past the teocotes’ dancing shade, all the way to the utility room in the back. I could see them through the window warming up already, so I hurried.

The teacher set a new challenge: to improvise a scene with stuff we had in our pocket. No dialogue, no partner, just me and whatever I carried. And all I had was the necklace. So when my turn came I stepped forward. The teacher applauded: my time was on. I held the Tree of Life in my hands as if it was a wounded bird. She clapped again, and the drama crew too. The bird became a baby—your son Juanito, my little nephew. I cuddled him, took him to my breast and sang a lullaby. Another round of applause. I found myself swaying abuelito’s ashes, eyes wet. They cheered one last time. His ashes became a ceiba seed. I kneeled and planted it on the ground. I watered it with with my tears. Then I rose with closed eyes, unfolding my arms towards the ceiling, and pictured in my mind a tree rushing out of the seed.

And it did. The ceiba snapped into the room. Like a dream, only it wasn’t. The teacher and the drama crew saw it too. The world stilled, a silence. Then flickers of awe. A few went to their knees and prayed. Word spread right away.

All night I looked for an explanation. I even went back next morning before school, to see if all that about a tree sprouting out my imagination was real. Guess what? It was still there, tiles broken by the roots, branches so high they reached the ceiling, surrounded by a crowd of rezanderas who murmured and counted beads in their rosaries. It was fully grown, bark like a lizard’s skin roughed and thorned, branches hanging low like arms extended towards the praying women. And hung in one of the lower branches, as if the ceiba rose it from the ground, Abuela Tonantzin’s necklace. With all the rush, I’d left it behind the day before. I wonder how no one else found it. Anyway I took it back.

“Cipactli, what are your thoughts on this?”

It was the Social Studies teacher, the same one you took class with. You know him: Che Guevara shirts every single day, zapatista cap he never takes off. I snapped out of my daydream.

“Que qué teacher?”

“What do you think about the ejidos expropriation in 1990? San Miguel Ototipac lost half its common land so the state government could build the capital’s beltway. I was just talking about it.”

The teacher always liked talking politics with tangled words. And I knew the kind of answers he liked to hear. You know I was always good with words. Always the one asked to recite poems on Mother’s Day, to pledge allegiance to the flag out loud for the whole school to follow. But that morning I couldn’t deliver. My tongue knit into a hank and all I could do was stare out the window, beyond the soccer court and the cornfields, towards Abuelo Juan’s plot.

The teacher waited.

I spat out:

“That it sucked.”

I don’t know why I then took my hand to abuela Tonantzin’s necklace and knew what to do.

I went straight to don Ramiro’s wasteland when class was over. It was dry from years of chemical fertilizers. It was the perfect place to try. I set the necklace on the ground, closed my eyes, and imagined a garden growing. When I opened them it was like one of those documentaries the biology teacher used to play, remember? Like one of those scenes where you can see months go by in few seconds. A grove sprouted in the dead land. And when I picked the necklace up, it didn’t vanish either.

Don Ramiro went crazy. He went to church to thank la Virgencita for the miracle, he even turned down his land’s sale. The company even sent its ‘security personnel’ after him, to ‘negotiate.’ But by then the ceiba was the hottest news, and when the news broke about his wasteland turned to grove overnight, the whole town went crazy too. So everyone was at the church, even people from nearby towns. The padre came from the city even though it wasn’t Sunday, just to see if what he’d heard on the phone was true. There was such a big crowd in town that nobody feared the company’s thugs, despite them showing off their guns. Rumor went around about building a chapel at don Ramiro’s and asking the bishop to come declare it holy ground. The miracles of the ceiba and don Ramiro’s land were all you could hear.

But in the meanwhile, there was something else going on at Abuelo Juan’s: they’d finished the wall and raised a signboard saying, “Gaia’s Grove: Your Own Ecological Paradise.” They’d already flattened it to build. So I went there that very night. Had to dodge the trucks, but in the end I snuck in.

You would’ve cried too. Remember the cazahuite tree in the corner, where the swallows nested? And the medlar we climbed as kids? Gone. All of it was. El tecorral where the lizards sunbathed, the knoll the mushrooms crawled over after it rained, the shack where the cacomixtles hid . . . all gone. An eerie extent of flattened sand was all their ghastly lamps displayed. And the concrete wall, all around. Abuelo Juan’s beloved terreno split up into lots, ready to be built upon.

I looked towards the guard’s cabin: the window flashed blue. He had the TV on. I walked to the middle of the plot, put the necklace on the ground, and let my imagination fly.

Saplings came out of the ground.

We didn’t meet Abuelita Tonantzin, you and I. We just had family pics to know her by. So I always asked Abuelo Juan about her. “Abuelito, how was she like?”

“She was a very wise woman, mijita, very good with plants,” he’d say first, and then carry on about her life. That’s how I know who she was, what she did. She helped pretty much everyone in town when in childbirth. She healed those in need. Just for the sake of helping them, never a charge, all with herbs, stones and prayer, like una curandera from legend.

Abuelito really missed her. I felt it in his voice every time he talked about her. But he never got sad, al revés: joy sprang in him. One day I asked him why. “Es que she’s still right here, with me, with us, mija. She never leaves.” We were in his terreno, foraging mushrooms, and I thought he meant it as a metaphor or something. Pero no.

The real estate company brought back the machines to clear the copse of trees grown overnight. Meanwhile, people crowded outside the wall; it was the third ‘miracle’ in less than a week. The night guard swore he’d seen it all: vegetation grew out of nowhere, trees reached heights of decades in seconds, long gone herbs from the time of our abuelas sprouted por montones, buds exploded into flowers like fireworks made of petals. He told it all, then resigned and left for Juquila in pilgrimage. I still don’t know how he didn’t see me standing there in the middle of everything. But only the guys from drama knew who did the magic, the miracle or whatever. Oh, some of them talked all right. About the girl with the Tree of Life amulet. But nobody heard them. I guess people chose to believe in la Virgencita.

Didn’t matter at first. The company flattened it all again. They were eager to build, because that proved they owned our land already despite the lawsuit. But I would use the necklace again. I’d perform its magic, because the land was our abuelitos’ and they were trying to take it from us. Like they’d done before with other families, and even with the community ejidos on the slopes of the hill. Back then, not long ago really, they leveraged our poverty and misunderstandings and took advantage of the government’s corrupción to change the land use permit. Then they crammed our town with armed men in trocas and also harnessed our fear. And now Abuelo Juan was gone, and they tried to steal his land from us. Su tierra which he cared for all his life. But I wouldn’t let them.

So I went back that night. People were camped outside the plot’s main gate already, Guadalupanos trying to witness the miracle. I went around them and followed the wall, looking for a spot dark enough to jump out of sight. And I found it, right in a corner. An ahuehuete grew tall next to the creek, and its shade made the wall pitch black. It was like they read my mind, the guys from drama: they were there, waiting for me in the dark. With their help, everything was easier, and soon we were inside. The new guard must’ve been in the toilet or something, because he was nowhere around. So I set the necklace on the land once again, in the middle of the plot, and I imagined something vaster than before.

And a thick wood emerged.

I was late for school the next day. One of the real estate company’s trocas camped outside our home after sunrise. I thought they wouldn’t dare to break in, not with the whole town roused by the miracles. Still, I waited long after they were gone. When I went out, I saw the message scratched over the gate, saying they would fuck me up if I didn’t stop. I tried to calm myself down. “They won’t do it, Cipactli, they wouldn’t,” I kept telling myself. But my body shook all the way to school, and any rattle of a wheel over the dirt made me jump out of the road and hide.

I went back anyway. That night and the next and the next. Their threats didn’t stop, pero neither did I. I couldn’t stop and leave our abuelito’s land for them to snatch. And they already knew it was me, así que I just slept over at the parish for safety. It stood open now twenty four hours, as pilgrims arrived from neighboring towns for a chance to watch the miracle. The real estate company brought more and more men and guns to keep the crowd outside the wall. Jumping over it got harder, but the drama crew kept showing up, and every time we managed to get in unseen. Each dawn, thick woods covered the plot. And by night it was chopped down again.

I started falling asleep in class. I wouldn’t last much longer, but I thought the company had to give up soon, because the bishop declared Abuelo’s terreno holy ground a couple days after it all began. Some parishioners were even at the capital, lobbying for the realtor to give it back to the community. They wanted to build a sanctuary for la Virgencita there. But there was also the money: how much had the company spent already? They couldn’t rent all those dozers and steamrollers much longer. They had to step back, someday. Those were my thoughts that last time, as I climbed over the wall with the help of a couple guys from drama.

I jumped over and looked at the guard’s cabin. He was nowhere to be seen. Outside the wall, no prayers were sung, no murmurs sounded like the nights before. Somehow I didn’t find that odd. I walked towards the center of the plot, under the ghastly light of the lamps. I put the necklace on the ground, then heard the shouts from my companions. Warnings. All too late: something pierced my back.

I didn’t know where I was. I felt neither cold nor hot. All was dark. Something pressed on me from everywhere, and I couldn’t move. Or rather, I had no body to move. It went on like that for who knows how long. Then the whispers came. Like rustling sounds, like the hissing of a snake, they called me: “Cipactli . . . Ci . . . pac . . . tli . . . ” And somehow, I recognized them. The whispered voices belonged to the medlar, the cazahuite, the teocotes torn apart by the dozers. They were the mushrooms’ underground nerves no longer growing, the gophers and worms and lizards buried alive in their furrows by the steamrollers. “Ci . . . pac . . . tli,” they whispered in entangled voices. After a while I recognized the human ones among them: nuestras ancestras, elder women, called me. “Cipactli . . . Ci . . . pac . . . tli.”

The other guys from drama managed to escape. Me, they left right here in the ditch. The necklace broke in my fist, but I no longer needed it. The voices and I raised the forest night after night. Every morning, there it was: enorme, frondoso. The men running the real estate company chopped it down every time, until we won. They never could never understand what happened. Just like they couldn’t explain what my remains were doing in the plot.

The drama crew told the convenient version of the story, made it true by repetition: we broke into the plot to watch the miracle. The armed men were there. They grabbed the guys, molested me. I defended myself and got beaten down. My friends struggled to protect me. Shots got fired. They managed to escape; I didn’t. And no one saw me again. The company couldn’t prove its innocence. What were they gonna say? That a bruja grew a forest over their stolen plot every night?

El pueblo went mad. The whole town camped around the terreno and painted slogans on the wall. They occupied the city hall and closed down the highways. They marched to the capital and took over the real estate company CEO’s office. It all reached national news, and the federal government had to step in. That’s how they found what was left of my human body. But you already saw that, hermano. You were back, and you saw how the company left for good.

The only thing I regret is leaving like that, without saying adiós to Mamá. Identifying my corpse broke her heart. I wish I could tell her I’m not really gone, que estoy aquí. I wish you could hear me whenever you come here, to abuelo Juan’s land. But I know you feel my love in the flowers’ scent, in the embracing moisture of the ground and the cool shade of the trees. It is all for you. I like it when you play above me with Juanito, mi sobrinito. I like to hear you all laugh. Still, I wish you could hear me, hermano, like you did when we were kids and I told you bedtime stories. I wish I had my voice again, to speak with human words, to whisper in your ear, “Oye, I’m not gone, they didn’t kill me, hermanito, not really.” To tell you I live in every patch of this land Abuelo Juan tilled with so much love. To tell you that, like Abuela Tonantzin and the women before her, I became one with the ground.

 

 

The Spanish version of “One with the Ground” was edited by Laura Martínez-Lara.

Leah Andelsmith

Morning dawns and Lou has exactly nothing left to give. She goes out to the garden anyway because that’s the way she was taught, and she waters as the heavy hose drags behind her and threatens to knock down tomato plants or flatten the sweet potatoes. Between her tee shirt sleeves and leather work gloves are bare brown forearms and dark elbows. Her short Afro is salt and pepper all over, except at the temples, where it has begun to come in white. Her knees creak as she hefts the hose, and she stops for a moment to wipe sweat from her brow. That’s when she notices the mint. The bindweed is wrapped around the stalk.

It has crept up in the night, or yesterday morning when her back was turned, or under the glaring noonday sun when everything else was too lethargic to grow. Stealthily it slid its tendrils up and around the stalk, opening its leaves and mingling them with the mint. It may seem like a dance, but the bindweed will choke the plant and drag it to the ground.

Lou puts down the hose and crouches low to get a closer look. Her heart sinks, seeing how tightly the bindweed is entwined, how hard it will be to untangle the vines. She lifts a mint leaf with her finger, already pale and soft where it should be bright green and strong. Lou feels heavy and tired. She wishes she could go back to the time when she hid her heart in the garden. She should pull out the small pair of scissors that are in her back pocket. She should slip off her work gloves and use her bare fingers to separate plant from weed, to save the former and kill the latter.

Instead, a bumblebee floats past and lands on the squash plant next to her. In no time, it is up to its abdomen in a yellow flower, wriggling and working, its thighs fat with pollen.

She sits back on her heels and looks at the green all around her, seeing the way the plants are unabashed in their abundance. Caressing the tip of the next post with a curling tendril. Reclaiming the paths by spreading across to touch a neighbor. Fanning out their broad leaves to shelter their fruit. Creating a shady interior.

The soft soil hidden under the mulch gives beneath her feet. The leaves rustle in the breeze. Even though she knows she’s alone, Lou looks over each shoulder before laying face down. A bit clumsily, she shimmies so she can put her head between the stalks and peer through the leaves. More bees harvest pollen in this understory, buzzing softly as they fly from one bloom to the next. Lou wriggles further in, all the way to the center. She rests for a moment, catching her breath, not entirely sure why she wanted to crawl under.

Then, in the stillness, a young squash rolls an inch or two towards her as if pushed gently. It jingles, a muted chime coming from the pale green shell.

Lou suddenly remembers the sweet burst of juice from a warm, ripe cherry tomato, and a longing tears at her heart. She touches the squash and it jingles again.

Even though the part of her with the creaking knees says no, the work goes to waste if you pick the fruit unripe, Lou cuts the squash from its stem and hurries it to the kitchen.

“Louise? Louise is that you?” Lou’s father Royal says from his armchair in the living room.

Lou doesn’t answer. She takes out the cutting board and the knife.

“Did you get something from the garden? Let me weigh it.”

Slice. A ring of light green flesh separates from the squash.

Royal—lanky, wiry, dressed in boots and overalls even though he doesn’t work outside much anymore—enters the kitchen with slow and deliberate steps. “You don’t even have the scale out,” he says.

“Let me get it for you,” he adds with a tired, patronizing tone, struggling to bend down to open the cupboard.

Slice. Each time she makes a cut, a soft chime comes from the squash.

“Will you stop? You have to weigh it first,” he says, coming to stare over Lou’s shoulder. “It’s green! You picked it green?! Haven’t I taught you . . . .”

Slice. Another thin portion comes off, and Lou sees a bit of brass through a translucent coating of flesh. She digs her fingers in, her nails filling with squash. She grasps the bell and pulls it out, a short length of string trailing from the brass loop at the top.

She can’t quite breathe.

Jingle, jingle. She remembers sliding underneath a tomato plant.

Jingle, jingle. She remembers her eight-year old fingers scraping away enough dirt to make a cozy hollow for the bell.

Jingle, jingle. A gift she gave the garden, now given back to her.

“What is that bell, Louise?” Royal demanded, his voice getting sharper. “Is this some kind of joke?”

Lou shakes her head, staring down at the bell in her hands. “Yeah. It was a joke, Daddy. Ha, ha.”

“That is not a funny joke. We can’t waste food in this house! You know that.” He’s trying to be stern, but there’s panic in his tone. His endless calculations. The price of the water and fertilizer for that squash wasted. The profit on the sale of it squandered.

Lou finally looks up at him, sees his worry, his fear, as if those men were knocking on the door right now. “It was a joke from Frankie down the road, Daddy. He gave me this squash. It didn’t come from our garden.”

Royal’s shoulders slump as the tension leaves them. He bends down to put the scale away.

“Why didn’t you just say so, Lou?” he says softly, touching her back. Then he shakes his head. “That damn fool Frankie. He never did get his head screwed on straight. Imagine wasting a perfectly good fruit like that.”

Lou walks out to the porch, where she sits clutching the bell until nightfall.

The first year, before Lou was born, the mortgage for Royal and Marie’s farm came through too late to plant. They finally had their land, but they wouldn’t make a profit that year. Having seen other Black farmers tricked in this and all kinds of ways, Royal and Marie had saved up the first year’s mortgage money along with the down payment and tucked it secretly away. They also found the bindweed, which would eat into their profits, and which neither the seller nor the bank had told them about.

Determined to grow something anyway that first year, they started a backyard garden with late season vegetables. Some people have green thumbs. Royal and Marie’s hands were as brown as the soil, spreading richness and fertility wherever they worked. Royal weighed and measured it all, and Marie was a careful canner. They kept just enough to get them through the winter and sold the surplus. It was only a few bushels of collards, but they made a little bit of money.

They cultivated more and more acres of produce each year, but they kept that backyard garden, growing veggies in it that they didn’t grow out in the rows. To eat from. To last them through the winter. To try out new seeds. Royal kept weighing each leaf and ear and fruit, calculating how much would go into canning jars, and later into a deep freezer for the winter.

Royal didn’t spend money on luxuries and didn’t want to be seen buying them. It was never smart to seem like you were doing too well for yourself, because someone would always punish you for getting ahead. But he made an exception one particularly abundant year, when they had made that year’s payment and saved towards next year’s payment too. Five candy canes for the kids, each with a bell tied around it, bought from a traveling peddler on his way out of town. The mint candy was cooling and burning at the same time, sharp and sweet. Lou let it dance and dissolve in her mouth. Ringing the bell, she was full of joy.

The following July, she crawled under a tomato plant, breathing in the herby scent of the foliage, stopping every few inches to eat the tomatoes on the lowest branches. They burst on her tongue, warm and sweet, tangy and savory at once. She buried her jingle bell there next to the main stalk, all the way at the center.

The summer after that, a little horse figurine washed up in the ditch along the road. She shouldn’t have touched it; if it was another child’s, she might have been accused of stealing. But its coat was a beautiful brown, with red undertones, like the living soil itself, and she shoved it into the pocket of her dress before anyone could see her take it. If no one knew about it, she could have something special and not have to share it with her brothers and sisters.

Instead she shared the figurine with the one soul that understood her. The paths in the garden were marked with stones. She started at the corner of the squash patch and counted one, two, three, four, five, turned over that stone and made a depression big enough for the tiny horse. She pictured it in its bed of soil, as safe under its rock as she was tucked in her sheets.

A year later, the bindweed stole one of her buttons. Reached out and pulled it right off her dress. She didn’t see the tendrils curling around the white button as she pressed up against a tomato plant, carefully unwinding and unwrapping that very bindweed from it. She was ten, with newly nimble fingers and an improved attention span, and Royal had entrusted her with this delicate task for the first time.

She didn’t know the bindweed stole her button and was never able to figure out how it came off her dress, much less explain it to her mama. But since she was being a good helper, she didn’t get in much trouble for losing it. Later Marie had even let her select its replacement from the button box. Lou chose one that was bright green and shiny. It didn’t match the other buttons, which were small and white against the fading pink plaid of her cotton dress, but it reminded her of juicy cucumbers and zucchini.

Lou’s younger siblings avoided the garden, but she spent as much time in it as possible. She sought the secret low places that her parents were too big and busy to crawl under. The garden wasn’t work yet then; it was still magic, and Lou still knew how to see the world from its underside. She would lay on her belly under the squash plants, not caring about the prickly stems, and the leaves would fan out above her like parasols. She found caterpillars there, and bindweed silently spreading. Tender green leaves shaped like arrowheads sprouted from a thin vine that wound its way around the squash stems like a garrote.

“Louise,” her father would say, “Pull those weeds, like I told you.” Perspiration on his dark brown forehead would run like stormwater through the deep creases he made by frowning in the sun as he worked. He used a kerchief to mop the salty sweat and keep it from stinging his eyes. He was never happy until he’d weighed the tomatoes, counted the ears of corn, calculated the return on the money he’d spent on seeds and fertilizer.

Lou would lay in the undersides, where the smell of the soil was close. The mineral scent of rock and sand and clay that had been there since the beginning of time. The fungal funk of tiny bodies, vibrant and alive, working the soil from life to death to life again; of insects grazing on organic material and shredding it to bits; of fungi and bacteria hugging plants’ roots and passing them the nutrients they needed to survive. The damp and fragrant decay of every leaf and stem and stalk that had ever perished there, which contained the promise of every seedling that had yet to sprout and flourish. She would close her eyes and breathe and breathe and breathe, drawing in the scent of all her yesterdays and tomorrows. She felt rich then.

“Pull the weeds, Louise,” Royal would say to her feet sticking out from underneath the leaves. “Cut the stem right at the ground.” But often, she would keep her scissors closed beside her and touch the bindweed’s soft leaves as gently as she could, studying their streamlined shape, watching as they gave just so beneath her finger. “It doesn’t matter what I do,” Lou thought at those times. “The bindweed always comes back.”

When she was twelve, she snuck the white pawn from the chess set in the family room. She had won for the first time against her father, gotten her first hint at how it might feel to be grown up. She pushed the piece into the garden soil with the tip of her finger, her face inches away, watching as grains of earth fell in on the rounded top, wanting it to be saved and protected forever.

She didn’t say anything when the piece turned up missing, even helped to look below the furniture and in all the drawers. Royal cut a one-inch slice from the narrow end of a corn cob and squared it off. He let it dry out on the window sill, and they played with that as one of the pawns. Lou loved how the feather-dry piece barely grazed her hand, so light it was liable to blow away.

Marie died soon after that, giving birth to her sixth baby. Royal turned to Lou as the oldest child to be the trustworthy one. To be the hardest worker. To be careful with the placement of every seed, the harvest of each and every fruit. Marie had taken in washing to supplement what they made off of their crops, and they couldn’t make it without that money, so Royal started doing odd jobs—making deliveries, cutting wood, and entrusting more of the farm work to Lou.

Lou put away the magic of the garden the same way she tucked away her grief, protecting all the sharp and delicate corners, swaddling it in warm blankets and old clothes, out of sight. There were no more bells and buttons for the garden. Her gifts were well-cured compost and hose water on hot days.

“The garden can’t be magic anymore, Louise,” she told herself. “You have to help Daddy. Don’t say, ‘because Mama isn’t here.’ Just pretend she’s always been gone. Don’t say, ‘no more time to be in the undersides.’ Just go out and harvest and pull the weeds. You have to, because we can’t lose the land.”

Royal had had a hard enough time getting the mortgage to begin with, and they would snatch the farm from the family in a second if they could. Sometimes the white men came with guns in the dark, and sometimes they came with paperwork in the daylight. The law said one thing about equal treatment, but Royal and Lou had seen Black farmer after Black farmer lose their land. Several cousins. Three neighbors.

So Lou’s father had rules. Every item of produce weighed and recorded to make sure they would be on track that year. No fruit wasted, not a single one, lest that dime be the difference between a full mortgage payment and a short one. Work extra and save every penny for the bad years. Never seem like you’re getting on too poorly, or too well. Keep your head down and stay out of trouble in town. Royal would never have spoken up himself, but it was known among the young freedom fighters that they could get a plate at the back porch after dark, or even sleep warm and covered in the hayloft if they stayed quiet.

Lou came to know it as deeply as Royal did. One payment late or short and they’d take the farm. One step out of line, one petition signed or protest meeting attended, and they would come for you. You sell your produce, pay your mortgage, make your taxes. Live your life walking a tightrope, and maybe you’ll get to keep what you have.

One thing her father learned was to make a will. As a child, Royal’s best friends were two brothers living down the road on their family’s homeplace. The orchards and fields and woods and farmhouse had belonged to the whole family equally, but some real estate investment firm got a distant cousin to sell his share of the land. When the company came to collect, the court put the land up for sale. The family didn’t have the cash to buy it back, but a timber company did.

Better for one person to have it all, to keep it and take care of it, than to split it among scattered children and grandchildren who moved away to the city. Royal didn’t trust the courts any more than his neighbors, but sometimes playing a rigged game is less dangerous than not playing at all.

While Lou stayed and planted seeds and cared for the soil, her younger siblings sprouted and grew up and walked right off the farm. Their lives had grown fat like tomatoes, especially that Francine, who worked in a fancy bank and wore high heels every day. But Royal wanted to make his land stick, so the children that moved away got nothing.

Lou grew up too, but she never left the life she knew and the garden she loved. Someone had to be there for their father who had given them everything. Someone had to make sure they didn’t lose the farm. And so, Lou learned to pick the bindweed. She looked sharply for those tiny arrowhead leaves wrapped around a stalk, untwined it with delicate fingers and snipped it away with a small, sharp pair of scissors.

“We’ll never get rid of this bindweed completely, Louise,” Royal would say. “But if we catch it in time, we can save the plant. And if we keep after it hard enough, we might manage to keep it out of the fields.”

Every day she watched her father pour his love deep into the land as if replenishing the groundwater. Most farmers would till the soil, but Lou and Royal left it alone, only turning what they had to in order to plant. Royal never left any soil uncovered, couldn’t bear to do it any more than he would have let one of his children go without clothing. When there was nothing left to plant, Lou dug her hand into the sack of clover seed they kept dry in the corner of the root cellar.

And the family did hold on to the farm, despite the odds. Once the mortgage was paid off, Lou convinced Royal to let her take on the odd jobs instead. She took on more and more of the farm work too, and took the produce to sell at farmers markets, until she was doing it all herself. Giving and giving. Until her knees began to creak and her back began to ache. And still giving more.

They kept playing chess through the years, sitting down for a game a few times each winter, sometimes Lou winning, sometimes Royal. At some point, Lou started winning every single game. Royal would hoard his pieces and keep them to the back, even forfeiting turns instead of moving a piece he didn’t want to. Or else he would put the king out in front of the other pieces and try to use it to fight.

All these years you played a slow and careful game and you won, Lou wanted to tell him. It’s okay to let go a little. We’re all fine. Eventually, she slipped the game to the furthest corner of the closet and they didn’t play anymore.

Though she said she would stop after her mother died, Lou did entrust something else to the garden’s safekeeping, one last time when she was a teenager. Lou’s favorite cousin, who had grown up right here, right down the road, came back to visit. The kids gathered near the honeysuckle, surrounded by its perfume, picking blossoms and sucking out the sweet, floral nectar just like the bees. The cousin told stories of a world beyond the farm, beyond their town. Places that Lou knew about from books and school but could only dream of visiting.

Cities where more money was spent in a day than her town would see in a decade. Every day walking past hundreds of people you had never seen before and would never see again.

An ocean so big you couldn’t see the end of it. Churning water that felt peaceful. Waves and sand that wore down broken bottles.

The cousin had a piece of sea glass for each of them. Lou’s fingers whispered over the surface her piece, taking in the shape of its curves. To turn something sharp and painful into something smooth and soft and comforting in its beauty seemed to her an impossibility. The family survived by knowing that sharp meant sharp, and you’d better not touch or you’d get hurt. Don’t reach, don’t talk or dream out of turn. Don’t call attention to yourself, don’t make waves.

Her cousin promised them there were other options, but Lou still didn’t think she wanted to leave her family’s land. She’d have to risk losing something she knew she loved, just to find out whether or not there was something better. That didn’t feel like freedom to her. But the dream of strangers and ocean waves was precious, so she planted it in the garden, hoping one day it would bear fruit.

Night falls and Lou is still sitting on the porch. The planks beneath her are soft from years of footfall and warm from the day’s sunlight. She traces the raised grain of the wood with her fingertips and tells herself again that this small porch and all the rest of the farm are truly theirs now, and have been for some time. With some trepidation, she tries to let her heart settle into that knowledge. Not reminding her father of the fact, but knowing it within herself and believing it. It’s like dipping her toe into a deliciously warm bath. Her bones ache to slip all the way in, but she’s scared to let go.

She rolls the jingle bell between fingers and palm, listening to the tiny ball within as it tries to ring out against the muted sides. Every now and then she holds it by the string and shakes it, letting the chimes mix with the starlight.

Jingle, jingle. What now? the bell seems to say. Jingle, jingle. There’s joy for you too, Lou.

The next day, she is picking green peppers and one of them rattles. She drops the basket right there, takes the pepper in her palms and presses her thumbs into the flesh until they burst through with a juicy snap. Flecks of vivid green speckle her shirt, and a bright, vegetal scent fills her nose as she tears the pepper open. Inside is a white chess pawn. Lou brings it into the house, puts it back in the crumbling paperboard box in the back corner of the closet and slips the airy piece of corn cob into her pocket. It makes her feel so light, she doesn’t notice as a sprig of bindweed stuck to her shoe takes the opportunity to stay behind in the closet.

She lies on her side one day, mesmerized by a tiny horse galloping in circles on the leaf of a cucumber plant, trampling yellow and black-spotted cucumber beetles with its hooves. Heart ready to burst, breath caught in her throat. She stays still, still, still as delight spreads over her skin.

The wind rustling in green leaves begins to whisper through Lou’s open window as she drifts off at night. She dreams of the brown, yellow and red earth underneath the garden plants, and she smells the minerals and living decay as she sleeps. Waking, Lou sends her thoughts down into that soil like roots.

When the corn comes ripe, one ear has kernels made of golden glass, shining with the sun underneath its frosted surface. “Did I miss out by staying put?” she asks herself, the glass ear real and heavy in her hand. “Maybe not,” she answers. “Maybe some people don’t have to travel the world to be free.”

The next morning, Lou skips breakfast and sets off for town immediately after watering. The lawyers are coming to the library to do their pro bono work today, and she gets a spot near the front of the line. She has to make sure the farm goes to someone who will keep it and care for it.

When she comes back hours later, Royal is trying to drag the hose from the side of the house to the garden, his brows pressed down tight over his eyes in concentration. He jerks and jerks with one hand, trying to keep hold of the porch railing with the other, his legs spindly beneath him.

Lou begins to trot and then to run, the brim of her straw hat catching the air and flying off onto the dusty road. She reaches him just as he gives one last wild flail, losing hold of the hose and flying backwards. She can’t stop him from falling, but she gets her hands behind his head and cushions it from cracking against the stair, keeping hold of him even as her back explodes in pain.

His skin is hot and dry, not a drop of sweat despite the brilliant noon sun. His face is twisted in confusion, his eyes unable to focus on Lou as she leans over him.

“Someone has to take care of that garden,” he says. Lou shakes her head, a lump rising up in her throat. She swallows it down.

“I know, Daddy, but we don’t water at noon, remember? I watered this morning, and I’ll go out again later.”

“Someone has to—” He tries to get up, but fades immediately.

“Shh, it’s alright. The garden is fine. The tomatoes are perfect this year. Everyone is fine,” she says. “Let’s go upstairs.”

She scoops her arm below his shoulders, pulling him up as he gets his feet beneath him. He is as thin as a beanstalk, as light as an okra seed.

It’s an effort to get upstairs. Lou doesn’t know if she’s dripping sweat or tears, doesn’t know if she’s crying from the pain in her back or the drying leaf that has been substituted for her father’s body.

She helps him into the bed, where he recovers from the heat stroke, but never regains his strength. In moments of delirium he tries to get up, asks her question after question.

“Did you water?”

“Yes, Daddy, I did.”

“Did you count the ears of corn?”

“Yes, Daddy, you can rest now.”

He puts his hand on her shoulder, fixes her eyes with a desperate strength that seems like clarity. “Are we going to make our payment this year? Is there going to be enough?”

“We paid off the mortgage thirty years ago. Do you remember? We went to the bank.”

Lou remembers. She remembers the tears in his eyes, clutching his hat in his hands, so happy he didn’t quite know what to do. But also lost because he didn’t quite know what to do. A man in his early sixties, Royal’s whole life had been making that mortgage payment. He kept asking the loan officer if that was all, if it was really done.

“Daddy, the mortgage is paid. We’re all going to be fine now. It’s okay to rest,” Lou says. Sometimes it’s enough to calm him, and sometimes he worries himself to sleep.

In the weeks since it arrived, the unnoticed sprig of bindweed has tentatively sent out a tiny root tip, seeking the dusty, dirty spaces between the floorboards and feeding on the nutrients in the wood. Its roots have also found a thin pipe and worked their delicate, forceful way through the weak spots to touch the cool water inside.

Now this garden astronaut sends out a shoot from its top, along with a paper-thin leaf of the softest green. The bindweed works its way up and up, climbing the walls, anchoring in door jambs and cracks in the plaster, up to the second floor bedroom of one who is both adversary and friend.

Now that Royal can’t go out anymore, it is the bindweed that cares enough to come to him. Royal has been the life of the garden as much as the leaves and the roots and the soil. For years he worked his love through every stem and blossom. And so the bindweed sees him like it does any other plant: as part of itself.

One morning Royal does not wake. A single vine of bindweed is wrapped around his wrist, bright green and healthy. Though it is too late, Lou gets the scissors anyway and carefully cuts it away.

Lou remembers being a child in the undersides, close to the bindweed. She knew the squash would die if she didn’t pull the bindweed away, but she also knew that the bindweed was hungry too. Maybe she was as prepared for this at ten as she is now.

She clutches her Christmas bell.

Jingle, jingle. Like when we slice a head of cabbage from its stem.

Jingle, jingle. Like when the corn dies back in the fall.

Jingle, jingle. Like when we pull up a pepper plant that the bindweed got.

Lou’s siblings come back for the funeral. They bury Royal next to Marie, in the family plot way out in the corner of the open field by the trees. His will states, “To my dearest Lou, I leave my land. She has loved it as I have.”

Lou’s whole life has been keeping hold of the land he bought. Now she’s in her late sixties, the land is hers, and she doesn’t quite know what to do. Francine and the others sit next to her, hold her hand, offer to let her stay at their places in the city. They mean well, but they don’t really understand.

The day after her siblings leave, Lou finds her white button. She chips a tooth on it in one of the largest okras and spits it clattering back onto the plate. The plain cotton threads from her childhood dress have been replaced with a fine golden cord running a ring through the two holes.

The pink plaid dress is long gone, but the green button is still in the button box. When she handed the dress down, it was cut off and replaced with one that matched better, for the sister who didn’t want to be teased.

A sharp pain shoots from Lou’s hips to her knees as she rises from the table. She hasn’t been able to stand up fully straight since catching her father. Lou returns the white button to the button box and pulls out the green one that she has treasured all these years. With a few quick stitches, she attaches it to her shirt front like a brooch.

Putting her button back on makes her feel more like herself than she has since her mother died more than five decades ago. “All these years, all this work, it hasn’t only been for Daddy. It’s been for the garden itself, too,” she says to herself. “But if I could have it my way, I’d just as soon go back to how it was when I was little. There’s no need to pack this grief away like I did with Mama.”

Lou leaves five letters in the mailbox for the postman to pick up, so her siblings will know she’s gone and not coming back. Then she returns at last to her dearest friend.

The garden is a green jewel in the sunlight. The zucchini have grown to the size of her forearms. The tomatoes are bursting on the vine. The bees float on the sun-thick air, their thighs still fat with pollen. Like she has always done, she will give the garden herself. Her back aches anyway, and she would like to lie down.

She crawls underneath the leaves. The soft soil of the garden fills in every curve and bend of her spine, rising to meet her. It’s like slipping into a hot bath.

She waits there as the bindweed takes over the squash plants, as high summer passes into September. She breathes in the green and the damp of the soil. The earth and plants cover over her body. Roots nestle in her upturned palm. Her flesh shrivels like a raisin. Her body shrinks down to something like an insect’s egg.

Lou’s siblings clear the house and carry out her will. The garden browns and the frost comes while Lou remains, a tiny seed in the soil, hibernating. Incubating.

The frosts subside and the new folks begin to plant. Lou is now amongst the overwintering carrots with her feet down beneath her and the very crown of her head poking above the ground. But she doesn’t wait to be harvested. As soon as the ground warms, she stretches her arms and legs into the soil around her, her fingernails filling with dirt. She pulls herself up and out, her tiny body warming in the early spring sun.

She looks different now, just as the seed looks different from the plant, the plant looks different from the flower, and the flower looks different from the fruit. Her skin is the exact red-brown of the soil and her deep brown eyes shine with a joyful knowing. Her hair is a crown of coils in grey and silver and bright white nestling around her horns, which start behind her ears and spiral back to tapered points, like two feathers in a cap. Her knees are as resilient as they were when she was eight, and her bare feet are cushioned by tough callouses. Her clothes are the brown of dead leaves. In her pocket is a tiny bell, and right in the middle of her shirtfront is a single bright green button the size of a match head, sparkling as it catches the morning light.

“Francine can eat her heart out,” she says, and also, “There’s magic to be done.”

She carves out a burrow for herself in the soil of the garden. Then she visits the newly sprouted seedlings, which reach up to her waist. By day she cups their tender green leaves in her hands and whispers to them. By night she tickles their roots so that they grow out happy and strong. On cloudy days, she touches each leaf with the light in her eyes. When the weather is too dry, she sprinkles tiny handfuls of water near their stalks.

When the plants grow tall, she moves house, camping high in the corn where the stalks meet the growing ears, folding the leaves down around her like tent flaps. She cuts through the skins of cherry tomatoes with sharp pebbles to scoop out the pulp and reaches into squash flowers to get at the nectar, her arms emerging fat with pollen. She picks aphid eggs off the backs of leaves and bursts them between her teeth, relishing the salty, meaty pop. She puts her entire face into kernels of corn, devouring the sweet, sticky flesh.

The bindweed vines are as thick as saplings to her now. She breaks off a sliver of an abandoned snail shell and runs the edge against a rock until it is as sharp as a scythe. She crops the vines to tiny stumps at ground level, then climbs up like a logger in a tree, sawing off chunks of vine to free the plants.

“You never learned how to love, did you?” she asks the bindweed. “You’re just as tender as the plants you live on, and you need this garden just as much as you destroy it.”

She knows that the broken roots of bindweed can sprout new vines, and these she seeks out while they are tiny, stomping them back into the ground. That she still has to do this work doesn’t surprise her, not really. Without the struggle, there is no life. And without life, there is no joy.

In the high heat of summer, she digs a cave into an eggplant growing close to the stalk, forgotten and left to grow gargantuan. The spongy flesh is cool and not too humid, with an astringent scent. The seeds have a tender, nutty crunch, laced through with bitterness. The plumpest ones she saves in her pockets for planting next spring.

Lou watches the girl from the house walk up and down the paths, touching each leaf and flower, pressing her face against the foliage when she thinks no one is looking. The girl turns over tomato leaves, pats the white aphid eggs clustered beneath as lightly as her fingers will allow, then turns the leaves back over again without killing a single one.

Lou chose the new family because she wanted to keep the land in Black hands, and because she knows these folks have more than she and her father did. They have college degrees, and they know how to solicit donations and apply for grants. They have a team to help with the work, not just the one family. They have a plan to feed the community. And now they have the land. Outright. They won’t have to live looking over their shoulder.

When the girl begins to leave small gifts in the garden, Lou holds on to them. The friendship bracelet she made at camp. A single silver earring, shaped like a teardrop. Love letters on loose leaf paper, written and folded and never delivered.

When the grown-ups start leaving gifts, Lou receives those as well. A golden dollar from their first produce sale that spring. Heaped teaspoons of braised collard greens that fill her nose with the sharp scent of vinegar and make her mouth water. Thimbles of strawberry wine, crisp and honeyed on her tongue. Finger-sized loaves of cornbread so freshly-baked that steam wafts out earthy and sweet when Lou breaks them open. Although the new folks don’t ever see her, they sense that there is another pair of brown hands spreading richness and fertility, working the land alongside them.

Lou keeps what the bindweed steals, too. A sticker once worn proudly on a shirt. A lucky penny, lifted out of a pocket. A necklace, its fragile chain broken.

When the garden starts to yellow and brown, Lou returns to her burrow, nibbling on the starchy roots of the dying plants. Using her snail-shell scythe like a pick, she hollows out niches along the earthen walls, carefully placing in them the colorful bracelet curled into a spiral, the love letters lined up like family albums on a shelf, the shiny golden dollar like a little sun, the earring dripping like water. Though she knows they are only borrowed, she cherishes each present, keeping them safe, waiting for the right moment to give them back. The bindweed’s items have their own place in the dark corners at the end of her burrow, where the open space narrows and rejoins the earth. She’ll help the bindweed give those back too, whenever the green garrote decides it’s time.

Jeff Hewitt

The agent assured Tyrel it was a good contract. Eighty-five years wasn’t bad, as far as these things went. Could be worse. They could be sending him to Amarok, or Ragnar, or some other red dwarf gravity hell.

Not that Tyrel had much of a choice. More people arrived at the camp every day: dusty, desperate, dropped by coyotes at the border. He remembered his family’s long slog from California. One way or another, they had to get out. Just like everybody else.

The sponsorship agent told him about Hallex Industries. How they’d been the government’s top orbital vendor for the past thirty years. How, after the Declaration, they were tasked with refugee processing in the Northwest. He told Tyrel about the new seasteads. The state-of-the-art accommodations, just off shore. He told him about the desalination plants, ensuring his loved ones would never go through this again. He did have loved ones, right? People who relied on him?

Tyrel nodded. His wife, their kids, his parents.

The agent smiled, as if their shell-shocked trip through the desert had been serendipitous. What luck, to have an opportunity like this fall into their laps!

But water wars hardly felt like luck to Tyrel.

Then the agent explained the infopacks. Using their patented biomonitors, Hallex would track his dependents’ most important milestones. In-house specialists would produce snapshots of their lives, beaming updates to the ship throughout his journey. Despite the lost years and interstellar distances, it would be like Tyrel had been there all along.

Except, of course, he wouldn’t be. He’d be frozen in cryogenic goo, hurtling toward Epsilon Eridani.

Volunteering for a trillionaire’s interstellar boondoggle wasn’t on Tyrel’s bucket list. Neither was abandoning his family. But what could he do? Martial law had been declared. It was only a matter of time before the camps became funnels for the meat grinder. At least Hallex gave them a chance.

Was he sure he wanted to do this? The agent reminded him this was an all-or-nothing deal.

Tyrel didn’t want to do this. But he felt like he had to. For the kids’ sake.

He nodded.

“Great. Now, just state your name for the scanner, then the names of your dependents. Then we’ll work through the rest.”

Tyrel looked into the battery of lenses. He tried to keep his voice from shaking.

“Tyrel Brand. My parents, Erik Brand and Anya Teagan. My wife . . . .” The tears came. “My wife, Lexi Brand. My son, Jordan. And my daughter, Emery.”

Tyrel had a week to say goodbye.

After the biometrics, the behavioral panels, the skills assessments, and the corporate orientation, they shipped Tyrel to Kiribati. He and a dozen other passing grades stepped onto the Hallex elevator.

The burly guy next to Tyrel nudged him.

“Ever been up before?”

Tyrel shook his head, watching palm trees become dots against the seafoam below. Burly grunted.

“Change your damn life.”

But Tyrel’s life had already changed.

Emi had begged him to stay, clawing the logo on his new jumpsuit as Lexi pulled her away. She screamed as the repurposed troop carrier touched down behind them. Its rotors churned dust across the camp, wind whipping Lexi’s hair.

Jordan stayed back with his grandparents, staring from their tent. He’d been sullen. Quiet. Old enough to hide his grief, but not old enough to face it.

Tyrel kissed his wife. He smoothed her hair, salt stinging his tongue. Maybe there was a time when they would have fought this. Would have faced down war and famine to stay together.

Maybe. But things had changed. She’d wanted to leave after the first attack on the lithium mine, but Tyrel convinced her to stay. It was a good job. They couldn’t let some desert crazies ruin that. Besides, the Guard had been called in. They’d settle things down.

Tyrel had never been more wrong.

Then Emi had screeched, inches from Tyrel’s face. He wiped the tears from Lexi’s cheeks and let go. His parents waved as he slipped into the dust cloud, Emi’s scream still ringing in his ear.

“Look at that.”

Burly again, the blue curve of Earth glinting in his eyes. He pointed to something above them. A fleet of docked ships, their long spines and armored sides like wingless dragonflies against the black of space.

“Crazy.”

Tyrel agreed.

They separated the men from the women. Not that there were many women. But eighty-five years was a long time. If anything went wrong, the Bounty couldn’t handle more cargo. Cargo, in this case, meant people. Hallex Industries’ “beneficiaries.”

Of course, nothing would go wrong. The Hallex people assured them of that.

Cryo-pods lined the walls of the ship, status lights and access ports glowing against sheer metal. A technician explained how they’d fill up with a kind of artificial amniotic fluid, shielding them from acceleration and keeping them alive. Anyone outside the pods during their maser assist wouldn’t make it more than a few seconds.

“So, unless you want to end up an eighty-five-year-old puddle, stay calm, and don’t abort when the chamber fills.”

He walked them through a few scenarios: pod failure, waking up, lock-in. None of which would happen, of course. Then he opened it up to questions.

“Will we dream?” Tyrel heard himself ask.

“We’re, uh . . . not sure, actually.”

The pods maintained a minor level of brain activity. There might be something like dreaming. But it probably wouldn’t be eighty-five years of lucid fantasies. Next question.

Tyrel never thought of himself as much of a dreamer. But he kept feeling like he was about to wake up.

Sometime later, Hallex’s trillionaire founder shook Tyrel’s hand. He’d given a speech, telling them all how important they were, how he hoped to join them, how they’d write brave new histories amongst the stars. Tyrel doubted that.

The next day, a Hallex rep shuffled Tyrel into a media bay. A holo winked on as the door closed.

It was a farewell message. Lexi sat on a grey couch with Emi on her lap, Tyrel’s parents on either side. A spotless kitchen gleamed behind them, hints of an ocean view through its window, an empty cushion where Jordan should be.

“Hi, Tyrel.”

“Daddy!”

“We just wanted to—”

“Come home, Daddy! We got new bedrooms, and—”

“Honey, let Mommy—”

“No!” Emi squeaked. “I want to talk to Daddy!”

Lexi nodded, bouncing Emi on her knee. She distracted her with a pack of gummies.

“We just wanted . . . .” Lexi trailed off, eyes unfocused. “I’m sorry, I—”

She passed Emi to Tyrel’s mom and walked off-screen, hand over her mouth. His dad nodded to the camera. The feed cut out.

Then Tyrel’s cryo-pod was filling with cold, oxygenated fluid. The viscous goo rose past his ankles, his knees, hugging his skin. He knew he didn’t need to hold his breath, but he couldn’t help it.

When he woke up—if he woke up—everything he ever knew would be gone.

When Jordan was younger, Tyrel would take him out past Slab City to ride the dunes. They’d throw their fat-wheeled e-bikes in the truck and park on the wash, riding up and down the hills, watching the Salton Sea recede, sunset after perfect sunset.

That was before the water shortages. Before the crazies started blowing things up.

Tyrel wasn’t sure if he’d dreamt. But after he hacked up the last of the fluid, those memories kept playing in the back of his mind. Like he’d been reliving them for decades.

He struggled to the railing, muscles straining under his weight. According to the technician, they’d done something to keep them toned. It didn’t feel like it.

Where was the tech, anyway?

Pods hissed open as more beneficiaries woke up. A few stayed closed, occupants still blissfully unaware. Burly stretched out a few pods down. He cracked his neck and wrung his hair, globs of cryo goo splatting the floor.

Something was off. But eighty-five years of sleep fogged Tyrel’s brain.

Then it hit him: gravity. They weren’t supposed to have gravity.

The bulkhead door slid open. A woman in black stood beside one of the Hallex captains, hair slicked back, holo tab pulled up in front of her. Neither looked happy.

“If I could have everyone’s attention.” The captain boomed. “There have been some . . . changes you should all be aware of.”

Eighty-five years was a long time. Of course things would change. But Tyrel didn’t expect this.

An orbital ring rotated above the auditorium’s geodesic skylights, ships studding its surface. The Bounty was there, spinning away, hull dwarfed by the ring’s size. Dozens of other stations dotted the void, bathed in pale orange light. A lavender-tinged planet loomed below. Sunrise painted a crescent along its surface. Aurorae rippled its atmosphere.

They’d taken Tyrel and his fellow beneficiaries—“survivors,” people kept whispering—to a processing center. They gave them new jumpsuits. Some black, some red, some a color Tyrel wanted to call teal, but Lexi would call turquoise. New logos graced their chests: Almani, Edict Engineering, Sojourner Orbital. More colors, more logos. Sorting them into groups. Someone gave Tyrel a cup of frothy liquid and made him drink it. Then they herded him and the rest of the survivors into an auditorium.

Burly sat in the front row, spilling over his seat. He scanned the room, smiled when he saw Tyrel.

“Hey. Same team.” Burly pulled on his logo patch. They’d been drafted into something called Ichor Hydro. Light blue.

Tyrel wanted to smile, but he couldn’t. He wanted to wake up back in California, before everything went to shit.

The woman who supervised their transfer walked on stage. Chatter died down as a logo appeared behind the podium. Minimal arabesques surrounded a purple globe, a river carving through it.

“Not what you expected, eh?”

Murmurs rippled through the auditorium, her attempt at humor falling flat.

“My name’s Liya Chaudhary. I’m the presiding chair of the Tiānti Consortium, representing Chakra Subatomics. I’m sure you all . . . .”

Chaudhary paused. She’d clearly prepared for this. But confronted with a thousand hungry faces, she balked.

“Listen. I know this is fucked. We’re not the only system dealing with this. So just bear with me.”

The crowd fidgeted as she got them up to speed.

Hallgier Crow—the founder of Hallex—was dead. Which wasn’t that surprising; not even trillionaires live forever. Twenty years later, his company followed suit. Now, the Consortium had to deal with something called “contract transposition.” Hence all the new jumpsuits.

But the end of Hallex was just the beginning. Thirty-five years after the Bounty’s departure—or sometime between now and yesterday for Tyrel—some genius at Sojourner invented something called a “scalar field drive,” shortening the trip to Eridani to about forty minutes. Add another fifty years, and the desolate ball of ice they were meant to settle had already been colonized. And recolonized. And turned into a research outpost. And then colonized again.

By the end of the presentation, people’s eyes had glazed over. Not from boredom, but something else: something between information overload and disbelief, utter confusion and learned helplessness. It was the same combination that pushed many of them here in the first place. Eighty-five years later, and they were still wondering how it had come to this.

Tyrel felt his temperature rising. He’d sacrificed everything, betting on a better life for his kids. But it turned out to be just that. A bet. With no guarantees.

He’d signed the contract. Did everything he’d been told. He didn’t want “transposition.” He wanted to see his family.

Tyrel stood on his chair.

“What about the infopacks?” He shouted, mind reeling.

What Tyrel meant to say was: What about my wife? My parents? What about Jordan and Emery? But the contract had reduced them to a string of data points he might never see.

Chaudhary blinked, grappling with the question. She checked the podium and it clicked.

“Yes . . . The infopacks. We have a plan for—”

But it was too late. Other survivors leapt to their feet, bellowing questions, pitch rising to riot levels. Chaudhary pulled a mask from her pocket. She slipped it on, signaling someone off-stage.

Only then did Tyrel notice the security drones unfolding around the auditorium. The ventilation kicked on as unorganized groups tried to force their way on stage. Others made for the exits, bodies piling up as they fought to get out.

A riot squad entered from backstage. Tyrel saw Chaudhary point him out as he lost his balance, collapsing to the floor.

But Tyrel felt fine. Whatever they’d spiked the air with told him everything was going to be fine. The only thing that nagged him, that followed him down as he blacked out, was a high-pitched ringing in his ear.

Tyrel shot awake. His stomach ached. Dawn peeked through the windows, crimson light silhouetting the nearest bunks. A few others stirred, getting ready for work.

He’d been on Jal a couple weeks now. But he kept relieving those first chaotic hours: The frenzy on the orbital. Waking up as they landed. Shuffling through the unexpected city, twinkling in Jal’s early summer. The workers’ lodging. Another batch of tests and training.

The dorms were basic. Low-slung warehouses with corrugated siding, stuffed with beds, communal bathrooms, and two kitchens. Tyrel shared his with a hundred-odd Ichor conscripts. He headed to the bathroom, jumpsuit rolled under his arm. His stomach was still adjusting to the planet’s microflora. That frothy drink had prompted a few days of explosive diarrhea. But without it, he wouldn’t have made it a week.

Burly leaned over one of the sinks, tweezing hairs from his beard. He nodded to Tyrel.

“Big day.”

Tyrel nodded back. It was a big day. He squatted over the frigid metal toilet, thoughts vaulting past his work shift. He had his first conciliation tonight.

The Tiānti Conciliation Protocol dealt with the unique problems the survivors posed. Rather than dump eighty-five years of infopacks on them, the content would be released piecemeal. Probably edited too, Tyrel thought. But he’d take what he could get.

Each week, a hundred survivors got their fifteen minutes in a viewing suite, followed by mandatory group therapy. Just enough to keep them sane. To keep some hope alive as they adjusted. Maybe it would help, dealing with this together. Whatever “this” was.

They’d already seen what could happen if they stepped out of line.

After a dissociative shift at Ichor’s water treatment plant, Tyrel and Burly caught the bus into Sheen. The city had an official name. Something in the local pidgin. But everyone called it “Sheen.” Just like they called the planet “Jal,” even though it was listed as “Skadi” when Tyrel signed up.

They all had meanings. Histories. But they meant nothing to Tyrel.

The bus trundled over the dirt road, winding along the bay. Sheen stood at the outlet of a glacial valley, the city sprouting from alien tundra, framed by icy mountains, aurorae dancing overhead. Squat autofabs hunched next to multi-story farm towers. A street grid had formed during Tyrel’s lost decades, the Consortium’s headquarters at its center.

The bus stopped to let a line of construction vehicles pass. Tyrel turned to Burly. He stared across the quiet ocean, past the icebergs that never melted.

“What will you do while we . . . .”

While they did what? Reviewed their family trees?

Burly shrugged, arms crossed over his gut.

“Said I could surf the net. Guess they got something setup.”

His name was Cedro, but Tyrel still called him Burly. He’d gotten to know him down at the plant. They’d both worked in hydraulics, more or less: Tyrel in lithium flashing, Burly in shale. He guessed that was why the algorithm put them with Ichor, the planet’s water and hydrogen monopoly.

Ironic, Tyrel thought. It was water—or the lack thereof—that put them here. But Burly represented an odd minority: the people that signed up with Hallex not for their families, but because they had nothing else.

“Let me know what you find.” Tyrel said.

“También.”

The bus parked in front of a rec center in Hazar, Sheen’s pedestrian district. A Consortium welcoming party stood in formation off the road. Tyrel spotted Chaudhary, checking her watch inside.

A conciliator led Tyrel to some temporary buildings out back. Repurposed containers. The kind that went up and down the planet’s lone elevator across the bay. They passed security guards at each door, eventually entering one of the stacked prefabs.

“Here we are. Brand. Suite eleven.”

She scanned his face and the door opened. A folding chair waited in front of a holo terminal. Soundproofing padded the walls.

“I’ll grab you when you’re done.” The conciliator smiled and walked out.

Tyrel sat. A play button appeared, the old Hallex logo rotating behind it.

Tyrel hesitated. For him, it had only been a few weeks. How many years had they compressed into fifteen minutes? For the first time, he wondered if he wanted to see this at all.

But he pressed play. The Hallex logo expanded, revealing a flat blue seascape, a jagged spire rising from Puget Sound. Some promo for the seastead. Tyrel swept through the corporate fluff. He froze when he saw his wife and kids, back on that grey couch. A date notched the corner of the image, a ticker noting the time since Tyrel had left.

+00:01:03:22:18

Emery sleeps, splayed across Lexi’s chest. Jordan plays a game at the other end of the couch. Light flickers over their faces as they watch something, Jordan pretending not to, Lexi lost in it.

The view shifts to the other side of the room. A live feed shows the Bounty whipping past Saturn, magsails extended.

+00:01:17:04:53

Emery alone on the couch. Maritime clouds fill the windows.

“Hi, Daddy.”

Tyrel balled a hand over his mouth.

“They told me that anytime I want to talk to you, I can just talk, and you’ll get it. Eventually.”

She seemed so much older already. Her eyes had changed. They saw the distance between them, the unbridgeable gulf of time that would forever keep them apart.

“I just wanted to say I miss you. And—”

“Come on, Emi! We’re late.”

+00:02:05:10:39

Surveillance footage shows his parents walking through a park. They stop at a railing to gaze across the wind-swept sound.

+00:02:18:23:51

Lexi on the couch. She puts her hair up, pushes her fingers into the bags under her eyes. She searches for something to say, then shakes her head. “Sorry. This is too weird.”

+00:03:01:08:07

Jordan sits on the coffee table. Bruises mottle his chin, a black ring around one eye.

“I hate it here. I . . . .” His lip quivers as a tear drips down his cheek. He wipes it away. “I can’t believe you did this to us. The only reason I’m doing this stupid video is because the shrink made me. And they track everything, so . . . .”

Still mad, Tyrel thought. Eighty-five years, and he’s still a teenager. Maybe Jordan would always be a teenager to him.

The more Tyrel thought about that, the less he liked it.

The lights in the gymnasium whined, just above the ringing in Tyrel’s ear. The conciliator—the same woman who’d shown him to his suite—scanned their circle of folding chairs. Her eyes landed on Tyrel.

“Mr. Brand. Would you like to share?”

Tyrel shook his head. But he knew she would make him say something.

“It just . . . doesn’t feel real.”

Jordan had gone on: saying he’d never forgive him, that he’d never do another video. Tyrel figured that was just teenage angst. It had to be, right?

Burly and Tyrel waited in line for the bus back to Ichor.

“I didn’t know where to begin. The sites are all different.”

“Makes sense.” Tyrel watched people file onto the next bus. Red jumpsuits. Edict Engineering.

“The whole system’s different. The ‘NL-net.’ Some quantum shit from that lady’s company.” He meant Chaudhary, who’d just flown off. “Like Earth’s just a different time zone.”

Why not? Tyrel thought. Eighty-five years.

The bus left. Another jostled up the road, headlights throwing erratic shadows through the fleshy, blue-black plants that dotted the tundra.

“So, what’s new?

Burly grunted. “Everything. Nothing. New wars. Old people. Another sexy blue alien franchise. Found some articles about us and the Tau Ceti people, though.”

“Really?” Somehow, that surprised Tyrel. Who would miss them?

“Yeah. There’s this charity—”

Suddenly, an Ichor guy bolted from the back of the line. He barreled through a security guard, tumbling, then scrambling into the road. People shouted as he sprinted past, closing on the approaching bus and—

Gravel scraped under the bus’s tires as it braked, followed by a sickly crunch. The man screamed. And kept screaming.

The bus had swerved. But not soon enough to save the would-be suicide’s legs. Guards and conciliators rushed toward him. In the commotion, Tyrel recognized the agonized face as one of the men from his circle.

There are five basic steps to water treatment. The first is coagulation: dispersing charged ions to bind any dissolved particles. Second is flocculation: mixing the water, letting it form “flocs”—clumps of all the crap you don’t want. Next comes sedimentation: letting it all settle to the bottom. Then filtration: a series of molecular membranes sieve out the leftovers. Finally, disinfection: blasting the filtered water with UV light, hopefully killing whatever made it through the other steps.

Especially important on an alien planet, Tyrel thought.

Jal’s short summer had waned once again. The spiky, blue-black anthos bloomed along the roadsides, flower stalks bending under their own weight, purple spores hanging on the air. Ice crept down the mountainsides, lavender snow algae streaking their rocky faces.

Tyrel sighed and descended into the sedimentation pond. Ichor had him and Burly working overtime, processing as much water as possible before the bay froze over. The same thing, every winter. The workload meant the ponds—huge concrete trenches by the bay—got clogged up more than usual. So, they had to empty them out and mop up all the shit. Which humans apparently still did better than machines.

Cheaper, anyway, Tyrel thought. But at least they got overtime. Extra monopoly money. Better than what the Almani guys got.

Not much had changed on Jal. More paved roads. A couple new buildings. Countless accidents, maiming and killing workers. Tyrel had adapted to its eccentric, ten-month cycle: the long shifts at the plant, the rare days off, puttering around Hazar, the cramped lodging. But he felt like he’d aged decades. God knows his family had.

Jordan had followed through on his threat. Tyrel only ever saw him in the background of Lexi’s messages. And then, not even there. Secondhand, Tyrel heard about his son dropping out of school, falling into a gang, then disappearing altogether. Every conciliation, he hoped for news. And every time, he was disappointed.

His parents died a couple years after he’d left. Lung cancer. Probably from toxic dust blown off the Salton Sea. Lexi started messaging more after that, even though she’d moved on. She’d found a job on the seastead, met someone new. Probably would have happened even if Tyrel had stayed.

But Emi . . . Emi was his lifeline. More and more, the conciliations were like conversations with his daughter. It was like she could guess what Tyrel would have said, would have thought. A part of her mind she accessed every time she sat down and talked to him.

Tyrel watched her grow up. From five to twenty-five, in little more than a year. The birthday parties. The first crush. The teenage drama. She got straight A’s, went to Stanford, got engaged, called it off. She was smarter than Tyrel ever was. Smarter than he ever would be.

It took a while, but he’d opened up in therapy. He cried. A lot. Not so much in grief like the others, but in hope. Hope for Emi’s future. Hope that, despite what he’d done, everything would work out. Life on Jal was bearable with that kind of hope.

At sunset, the skies a deep scarlet impossible on Earth, Burly refilled their assigned pond.

“You thought about what you’re going to say?”

Tyrel shrugged, watching the water rise.

“I’ve been thinking about that since we got here.”

There was a charity back on Earth that put Hallex survivors in touch with their descendants, if they could find them. They took applications over the NL-net. But time online wasn’t cheap. And bandwidth limited their messages to text. People like Burly—with contractual access—wised up pretty quick, undercutting official rates.

Of course, the Consortium eventually caught on. Protocols had to be followed.

Burly was good for it, though.

Dear Emery,

Where do I start? How do you write a letter to someone you left behind? All I can say is: I miss you. Watching you grow up has been the proudest I’ve ever felt.

Here on Jal, you’re still in your twenties. But if I do the math . . . . It’s hard to even think about. Eighty-five years, like a blink. Maybe you were always the older, wiser one, trying to get me to stay.

Life on Jal is tough. The sun’s dimmer. Oranger, too. Our orbit’s all lopsided, with long, brutal winters, frost and fleas biting every time you step outside. But the summers are beautiful. Crystal clear rivers gushing into the bay. Auroras in the night sky. I wish you could see the sunsets. Even better than back home.

Hell, maybe you have seen them. Things changed so much while we were under. The people that took over our contracts say we could even go back to Earth, if we pay our dues. But that’s just a pipe dream.

Whatever’s going on back home, I hope you’re making the most of it. That’s all I ever wanted. Whatever pain I caused, I was only trying to do what I thought was right. I wanted you and your brother to have a chance, and didn’t see any other way.

Maybe I was wrong. But I can’t take it back.

I love you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.

—Dad

They rode the bus into Sheen, the road paved with some new synthetic. Workers complained about their pay rates. Someone heard Ichor was paying the women’s camp five more erds an hour. Hazard pay, Burly muttered.

No one took the gossip too seriously. But everyone went quiet when the bus pulled into Hazar. Security guards lined the streets. Drones hovered above the intersections.

By the time they reached the rec center, no one wanted to get out.

People shouted across the gym. Conciliators tried to calm anyone who would listen. Riot police dragged out those who wouldn’t. Eventually, the mood stabilized enough for Chaudhary to address the crowd.

“Connectivity issues.” That was the official line. But the survivors knew they were being taught a lesson: For the black markets popping up across Sheen. For unauthorized use of the NL-net. For the runaways who had set up a village across the bay.

Chaudhary told them that Sojourner and Chakra were working to restore access. In the meantime, they should take this opportunity to work through their frustrations here, in therapy.

That set the crowd off again. A guard nearly knocked Tyrel over, yanking a man out by his jumpsuit, fabric ripping at the seams. Riot shields turned on around the gym.

At moments like these, Tyrel’s ear always rang.

The remaining survivors sat in their circles, drones still patrolling the gymnasium. Tyrel scanned the empty seats, then realized the conciliator was staring at him. She’d asked him something.

“Sorry, what?”

“If you could receive another update from Emery, what would it be?”

Tyrel shrugged. He looked at the other dead-eyed group members, lost in their imaginations. Their own missing memories.

“I’d take anything.”

The conciliator nodded, like she could sympathize.

“What, specifically, would you like to see?”

What did she want to hear? What was the point of pushing him at a moment like this?

“Just her. Living her life.” He finally said. “Making her own choices. Even if they’re bad ones. I mean, it’s more than we can say.” A couple people in his group tuned back in. “Serving out these contracts we never signed, using your fake money in your shitty company stores.”

“Now, when I hear you say that, I hear—”

“You don’t hear anything.” Tyrel blurted, bunching his fists. The whole circle was staring at him now. He noticed the patches they’d made to their suits, unwilling to pay for new ones. “Yeah, you do your job, and you placate, and you act like you understand. But you don’t. Because after these sessions, you go back up to your orbital, while the rest of us freeze down here.”

A few people murmured, nodding. Tyrel stood.

“We do your grunt work, trapped in debt, while you work us to death.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s right.”

Burly looked over from his group. He prodded his neighbors, pointed to Tyrel. The same thing happened in waves across the gym.

“If you could sit down, Mr. Brand, I think we—”

“The only ‘we’ here is the people sitting down!” The ringing in his ear rose with his voice. He stabbed his finger at the conciliator, knowing it wasn’t her fault, but no longer caring. “You drip-feed the infopacks to keep us in line, doling out erds to blow in Hazar . . . .”

A drone started towards him, riot squad trailing.

“The truth is, we’ll never fulfill our contracts. We’ll never go back to Earth, even though we could. We’ll never see—”

A guard grabbed his arm. Tyrel resisted.

“None of this works without us!”

They dragged him from the circle, struggling.

“Without us—”

The drone tapped his neck and everything went black.

They kept him in iso for two days, that first time. It wouldn’t be the last.

As winter set in, word of the “connectivity issues”—and Tyrel’s outburst—spread; first through the dorm, then Ichor, then Almani. Pretty soon, Edict guys were stopping him in the street, telling him they agreed with what he was saying. Tyrel wasn’t sure what he was saying himself.

He and Burly spent their days at a distillery behind the ladies’ barracks, fighting off loneliness and the swarming snow fleas. When they weren’t doing that, they cracked ice and replaced pipes, which exploded during the coldest months. Tyrel kept writing letters to Emi. Not that he could send them.

If people asked, Tyrel gave them a piece of his mind: Pay was a joke. They might as well be slaves. And the Consortium had weaponized the infopacks. What kind of soulless automaton would do that? The only solution was to stop working. General strike.

Tiānti goons grabbed him again in Hamsa—the long month in the middle of winter. But this time, instead of throwing him in iso, they took him up the elevator, then shuttled him back to where this whole nightmare started. An escort led him past the auditorium, into an office the size of their dorm. A window screen covered one wall. Jal hung below, ice reflecting the flickering orange of Eridani.

Liya Chaudhary sat behind a large desk at the far side of the room. Tyrel checked for guards, for drones, for any kind of security. He didn’t see any.

“You’re turning into a bit of a troublemaker.” Chaudhary sighed, eyes still glued to her desk holo.

Tyrel walked over to one of the grey armchairs by her desk, felt the rough, printed upholstery. Chaudhary turned off her holo.

“Please.” She gestured toward the chair.

“What is this?” Tyrel asked.

“Some fabric Almani’s testing. Anthos-derived.”

“I mean: what am I doing here?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

Tyrel snorted. “Yeah. Right.”

He went over to the wall projection, put his hand through the curve of the planet below. Little reflections wrapped around his fingers. Like his whole life was another image. Another infopack.

“Like hell froze over.”

Chaudhary had snuck up behind him.

“What?” Tyrel was tired. Confused. Still cold from the bite of Jal’s lingering winter.

“My old boss described it that way. Jal.”

Tyrel nodded, but then shook his head.

“No. Hell’s something you lost and can’t get back.”

“Hm.” Chaudhary thought about that for a moment. “I’m going to be honest with you, Mr. Brand. We’re at the edge of civilization out here. A single fault could mean ruin. Not just for you and the other workers, but for everyone.”

“That’s the line?”

Chaudhary looked at him like he was a petulant child. Or an embarrassing parent.

“The Sojourner people want to strap you to that piece of shit you came in on and send you to Sirius.”

Tyrel shrugged. “Then what? Do all this again?”

“I don’t think they care about that part. And, frankly, neither do I.”

Tyrel turned to face her. But he didn’t have anything to say. She wasn’t telling him anything new.

Chaudhary smoothed her suit. “Just remember: we can live without you up here. The people on the surface can’t say the same.”

Intimidation by proxy then, Tyrel thought. All those poor souls left to freeze, just because he wouldn’t shut up. But he didn’t believe it for a second. He knew where the water came from.

“That’s it.” Thiba said, leaning in, squinting at the terminal. Tyrel and Burly lingered over her shoulder, clueless.

“Everything?” Tyrel asked.

Thiba nodded, patting the fan-covered box she’d spliced into their network. “Everything in, everything out.”

She looks like Burly, Tyrel thought. Big. Maybe that’s why he likes her. That, and she runs the distillery.

The strike had held through the winter. But the Consortium’s tit-for-tats were getting worse.

At first, it was just the Ichor workers. Then Edict voted to strike, and Tiānti put the whole planet under lockdown. When Almani joined, they tried sealing the farm towers. Of course, it was hard to keep the workers out when they wanted food for the orbitals.

“What about the Hallex archives?”

Thiba tapped in a couple commands, then nodded at the lines on-screen.

“All there.”

Burly clasped her shoulders, grinning.

“Nice work, babe.”

“Quit calling me ‘babe.’”

Thiba tabbed through menus, text strobing. “Looks like you got a message, Ty.”

“What?” Tyrel was still thinking about the archives. It had been months since he’d heard anything from Emi.

“From that charity. Tiānti’s been sitting on it.”

“They would.” Tyrel grumbled.

“Want me to read it?”

Mr. Brand:

On behalf of the Interstellar Migrant Workers Alliance, I’d like to thank you for your letter. You and your compatriots are a beacon of hope for thousands of migrant workers across the IS Free Trade Region.

As is often the case in these matters, tracking your next of kin has proven more complicated than initially assessed. While we were able to locate your daughter, we regret to inform you that she passed away three years ago, in Adelaide, F.O. Our team is now attempting to contact her surviving children.

Our sincerest condolences for your loss. Know that you are not alone, and we will continue searching for your next of kin. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to support you in the meantime.

 

Stay strong,

Shiraz Davani

SVP, Survivor Outreach

IMWA

Something broke inside Tyrel when he read those words. No doubt Emi had lived a long, beautiful life, retiring in what he guessed was Australia. But to him, she still had everything ahead of her.

He couldn’t bring himself to watch the rest of the infopacks, knowing what he knew. Now, all he had was the cause.

With spring around the corner, stored water was running low on the orbitals. And with their reclamators acting up, Tyrel knew they couldn’t last long. He denied Tiānti’s claims of sabotage. The Sojourner survivors had finally joined the strike. Deferred maintenance was just an unfortunate byproduct.

The Consortium still refused to negotiate. But the workers stayed united.

“Shunto.” That’s what the people in Jiyu called it. The spring offensive.

Tyrel watched the town’s children play at the edge of an empty field. Frost crunched beneath their woven boots. Scarves flapped from their necks. No one seemed bothered by the cold in Jiyu—the free city on the other side of the bay.

Oto, Jiyu’s nominal leader, pointed to a poisonous green vein on the mountainside above.

“They started dumping a few weeks ago. Runoff from the new builds by the elevator.”

“They’re desperate.”

“Maybe. But if that leeches into the ground water, we’ll lose the crops. We can’t last another winter without them.”

Tyrel glanced back to the cut-stone houses and open-air markets of Jiyu. Chopped anthos smoked beneath racks of fish, plumes billowing into the steel sky. A young woman ran towards them, waving her arms, shouting something Tyrel couldn’t make out. He still had a hard time understanding the locals.

Would he ever feel at home here? It wasn’t like he could go back; he’d lost his real home before they ever left.

Oto grabbed his arm.

“She says they’re demolishing the dorms.”

They took the town’s fastest boat down the coast. When they got to the Ichor complex, they found security teams battling residents, attempting to clear the dorms. Bunkbeds burned in a line around the building. Mobile autofabbers formed a perimeter on the far side, demolition plows rigged up and ready to go.

Tyrel sprinted into the fray, looking for Burly. Rocks flew through the air, forcing the security teams back. He found Burly fighting off three guards at once, easily throwing two of them to the ground. The final guard drew his stun gun, then froze, recognizing Tyrel.

“Why?” Was all Tyrel could shout. How could this be worth it?

The guard backed away, muttering something into his helmet. The rest followed, survivors chucking ripped-out fixtures after them. Burly wiped the sweat and soot from his face. Blood trickled from a swollen lip.

“Guess that’s all it takes for you, huh?”

Residents crowded around Tyrel, screaming past the autofabbers, throwing whatever they could find at the regrouping security teams. Oto appeared, pulling at his elbow.

“We must go. Find you a place to hide.”

But Tyrel couldn’t go. He’d seen how the residents rallied. How the guards froze when they recognized him.

Tyrel never planned on becoming a leader. But that’s what he was to the survivors. Someone who wouldn’t sit down and take it. He grabbed Oto’s shoulder.

“Tell everyone what’s happening. Everyone. Go!”

Oto frowned, nodded, and ran off.

Tyrel took stock of the remaining Ichor workers. Solemn faces nodded back, ash staining their worn-out uniforms. He turned to Burly.

“What now?”

Burly crooked his arm, holding it out to Tyrel. He smiled.

It took Tyrel a moment to understand. But when he locked arms with Burly, the rest followed suit. They formed a chain around the building, facing the autofabbers. They gazed through the hulking machines, past the wannabe soldiers, beyond the cruelness of Tiānti and the inconceivable expanse that divided their lives. What they saw was more than fair wages, more than lost memories, more than the struggle of the weak versus the strong. What they saw was hope. The hope that only hardship can provide.

They stood that way for some time. A late-season snow began to fall, sizzling over the fires. The sky dimmed. Security guards fidgeted on the other side of their line.

Then Tyrel heard something. A dull but growing roar, like the winter winds that blew in from the bay. The guards wavered, watching the Ichor residents, then furtively glancing towards Sheen.

“Look!” Someone shouted, pointing up the road.

Voices broke through as Tyrel spotted the mob. Hundreds of people in mismatched uniforms marched across the tundra, brandishing homemade weapons and eighty-five years of pent-up rage. Suddenly, a fireball erupted on the other side of the autofabbers. The riot squad scattered as more explosions rocked the line, the mob cheering as they charged.

They didn’t see the machines inching forward, treads chewing through frozen dirt.

The chain faltered as people stepped back, trying to keep their distance. But they held together, watching the plows grind toward them.

They’ll stop, Tyrel reassured himself, sweating from the fires. Some basic, inalterable safety feature. But when he thought of all the workers who’d died over the years, he knew that wasn’t true.

In that moment, Tyrel made the martyr’s choice. He’d lost enough. He wouldn’t yield, no matter what the Consortium threatened him with. Besides, he’d given up his life once already.

The chain broke as the autofabbers closed in, residents forfeiting the dorm. Tyrel didn’t judge them. Someone had to keep fighting. It just wouldn’t be him.

Burly stood by, arm still wrapped in Tyrel’s. The plows loomed, tarnished metal rending the ground.

“Run, Burly.” Tyrel shouted over the noise.

Burly shook his head, smiling. He turned and hugged Tyrel. He slapped him on the back, tears streaking his face. Then Burly cinched Tyrel’s arm, spun him around, and hurled him back toward the dorm.

Tyrel tumbled over the rocky dirt. There was a sound like a giant cracking its knuckles, and everything stopped.

They held the funeral in Jiyu, just outside of town. Looking at the crowd, Tyrel thought all of Sheen had turned out. Unwashed jumpsuits lined the terraced hillside, handmade threads mixed in with frayed corporate monotones. They waited for Tyrel to say a few words.

Did they come for Burly? Or did they come for him? After all, workers died every day on Jal. What made Burly special was that he’d died standing up for something. Standing up for him.

Tyrel stepped up to the altar. A container held Burly’s ashes.

“Burly—” His voice caught in his throat. “Sorry. Cedro. I never called him Cedro. Always ‘Burly.’ Anyone who knew him will know why: he was a big guy. With a low tolerance for bullshit.”

Laughter rumbled through the crowd.

“I met Burly back on Earth. He was the only person that talked to me before we got on those cryo-ships. The only one who seemed to know what he was getting himself into . . . .”

Tyrel glanced back to Thiba. She nodded, tears clinging to her eyes.

“Because Burly didn’t leave anyone behind. He had no one to leave. More than anyone else, we were Burly’s family. You needed something done, and Burly did it. Who wouldn’t, for family? Burly—Cedro—never gave it a second thought. He saved me,” Tyrel’s voice trembled, “without a second thought. And I can’t help wondering: what did I ever do for him? What kind of family was I, dwelling on my old life, pining over people I’ll never see again?”

Tyrel let that settle over the crowd. He saw how they waited. How they nodded.

“What kind of family are we?” He asked. “Most of us left Earth in desperation. We didn’t come here for ourselves. We came for the people we left behind.

“Yet, here we are, on a cold, strange planet, living together, bathing together, trying to remember a time when we had a home . . . when Burly’s home was right here.”

A few industrial coughs echoed from the hillside.

“Burly understood that no matter where you are, you find your family there. Because if you don’t, you truly have nothing.”

A chorus grew among the ranks of onlookers, and Tyrel felt himself letting go. He couldn’t go back to save his wife, his kids, his parents. But he could do this. A kind of penance. For Jordan. For Lexi. For Emi and Burly and all the rest.

“If I learned one thing from Burly, it’s that we are what we’re willing to do for those around us. And what do we do? We toil. We struggle. We’ve built our homes here, and the Consortium acts like they own our lives. They tell us they own this planet. But without us, there is no Jal. We. Are. Jal!”

The crowd roared and Tyrel roared back, adrenaline wiping his mind as talk of revolution poured out of him.

They scattered Burly’s ashes over a field that would soon be cropped. He’d become a part of Jal. Even more than he already was.

Tyrel watched a tiller mix his remains into the soil. A cold, unthinking machine, burying his friend under the frozen dirt. Fitting, he thought.

Teams of survivors headed into Sheen. They tore the beds from their dorms, piled them onto hijacked trucks, and formed a massive pyre at the edge of Jiyu. The Edict chemists handed out the firebombs they’d devised. Revelers tossed them into the jumbled mattresses and frames.

The bonfire lit up the night. Bottles were passed around. People laughed, and danced, and cried.

Tyrel, Thiba, and Oto sat outside a stone hut by the bay, the pale light from Jal’s moons glancing off the stippled black water. They planned. There would be a march, straight into the heart of Sheen. They had to show the Consortium this wasn’t a one-off. Some spasm from being pushed too far at the wrong time.

“No more bombs.” Tyrel said. They could take the high road. He had to believe, with the IMWA and their contacts on the orbitals, that there were people out there who would support them.

“What about security?” Oto asked.

“What about them?”

“They may have orders. Suppress, at any cost.”

Oto had always been the most caring of them, Tyrel thought. Someone people trusted. He was Jal’s heart, as much as Tyrel had become its voice.

“Maybe we can get some to defect.” Thiba said, standing. “I’ll push whoever we have space-side.”

Always the one with the plan. And the brains to back them up. Tyrel already missed how she and Burly would argue. Like two heavyweights circling, testing each other with jabs and feints. Thiba would always win, of course.

She went into the hut, her terminal’s glow the only light inside. Tyrel and Oto gazed into the bonfire, silhouettes flickering as survivors danced past the flames.

“Our spirits are stronger than we are.” Oto muttered.

Tyrel nodded.

“But we’re Tiānti’s most valuable resource.” He glanced toward the glittering bay. “Us, and the water.”

Oto just grunted, unconvinced.

“Ty.” Thiba poked her head through the hut’s arched doorway. “You got a message.”

He actually had two messages. The first was from Chaudhary: a request to meet. Neutral ground in Sheen. As if there was anything neutral on this planet, Tyrel thought. She would get her meeting, and then some.

The second was an update from the IMWA, this time from their CEO:

 

Dear Mr. Brand,

At the Interstellar Migrant Workers Alliance, we strive to lift up those whom the interstellar industrial complex has exploited. That’s why we’re always encouraged—and surprised—by stories like yours.

After tracking your descendants to Federated Oceania, it is my honor to inform you that we’ve located two surviving granddaughters. The eldest, Myra, is a clinician in Melbourne. We hope to arrange a meeting with her soon.

However, I’m reaching out personally because your situation presents a unique opportunity; both for yourself, and for the IMWA. Miraculously, your other granddaughter also resides in the Eridani system. Her employers have confirmed our findings. We’ve sent a contact request, including your information, through their channels.

Her name is Liya Chaudhary . . . .

Tyrel sat, pondering that letter in the quiet darkness of Jiyu, long after the celebration had ended.

The day of the march, Tyrel didn’t give a speech. He didn’t need to: at dawn, thousands crammed the roads into Sheen. The first aurorae of spring faded above them, sky slipping from indigo to pastel.

Tyrel took his time, pulled by the slow tide of the crowd. He’d left Jiyu in the middle of the night, bundled up so he could sit on the hillside, looking at the stars. Thiba had pointed Sol out to him and Burly one night, however many months ago: a tiny dot, barely distinguishable from the rest.

Eighty-five years is a long time, Tyrel thought. But it was also a long way. Far enough to make his old home seem foreign—an infinitesimal speck, shrouded in memories that felt more and more like dreams. He knew they were both more and less than that. But time and distance—and the way they become the same thing as you get older—made a mirage of the sturdiest memories.

People patted Tyrel’s back as they passed. They nodded, smiled, got chants going. Their jumpsuits were patchworks of red and teal, blue and black, pieces stitched together and remade. No color or corporate logo could sort them now.

A few locals whizzed by on their bikes. Teenagers, thrilling the nearest survivors with their youth, their enthusiasm. Tyrel had a flash of Jordan out on the dunes, laughing as sand sprayed from his tires. Maybe, after all this, he’d go back to the Hallex archives. Try to catch whatever he could. The glimpses of his son he’d have to settle for.

As he reached Hazar, he saw the electric fences they’d put up around the farm towers, the Edict fabs, the Consortium cafeterias. A handful of security guards lingered behind the fences, looking miserable. Then Tyrel noticed the helmets littering the ground, the open gates where guards were shedding their armor and joining the march. Survivors embraced them, shaking their hands as they waved them on.

They kept moving, past the rec centers and bathhouses, into Sheen’s industrial core. The chants grew louder as Tyrel approached the city center. The crowd knotted together. People held hands to keep from losing one another.

A cheer erupted up ahead. People pointed to the sky. A banner unfurled from the top floors of the Almani building, just as a passenger drone buzzed past. Fat blue letters read: WE ARE JAL.

The drone taxied above the rooftops, then descended over the Consortium headquarters, its stepped structure anchoring Sheen’s streets. Tyrel jostled through the crowd, heart in his throat. That would be her, he thought. Flying in for their meeting.

Did she know? Would anything change if she did?

Word of Tyrel’s arrival spread as he closed in on the Tiānti building. Rapt faces turned to see him. A path opened, clearing the way. Liberated workers reached out to brush his shoulders. Thousands of voices converged around those three words he’d said at Burly’s funeral:

“We. Are. Jal.”

“We. Are. Jal.”

“We. Are. Jal.”

Tyrel reached the end of the road. Featureless steel walls towered above him. A line of grim-faced security guards hid behind shields at the entrance gate. He waited, listening as the citywide refrain echoed through the streets. The chanting lapsed into wild cheers as the doors shuddered, then opened.

Chaudhary stepped out alone.

Liya Chaudhary. His granddaughter. Tyrel saw it now. The hints of Emi in her lighter features. The hints of Lexi. Of himself. An anthos-shaped pin glinted from her lapel.

Jal’s native flower looked strange on her. A symbol of the resistance. Proof that life—real life, not the corporate slavery that Tiānti forced on them—could thrive on this inhospitable world. Tyrel never thought he’d see it on a Consortium suit.

But she wasn’t just a suit. She was his kin. Like the people behind him. Like the security guards who’d joined the march. Like Oto. Like Thiba. Like Burly, the brother he never had.

Liya nodded, and the closest guards stood down, letting Tyrel through.

She held out her hand. Tyrel hesitated, fighting back tears as he saw the recognition reflected in her eyes. For the first time in nearly a century, Tyrel felt like he’d found his home.

It wasn’t the sight of a long-lost relative that brought him home. Nor the half-forgotten cry of someone left behind. It wasn’t the memories of what he’d missed, but the warmth of those around him.

Silence fell over the streets as Tyrel shook her hand. He glanced back, holding on as Liya tried to pull away. He saw the crowd’s apprehension. Liya Chaudhary was the face of their oppressors. Tyrel understood that. He’d been there with them. Suffered with them. Grieved with them.

They’d endured so much. Swallowed so many empty promises. Could things really change? Could he really make their lives any better?

Tyrel turned to face the survivors. They needed a sign. Something to show them they were in this together, no matter the cost. He slipped his other hand around Liya’s and raised their fists into the air, ears ringing as a triumphant cheer echoed across Jal.

Dan Musgrave

The 𐓏𐓘𐓓𐓘𐓓𐓟1 were a sky people first before we came down to the Earth to begin a new life. One dawn, a week before 𐒻𐒼𐓂2 went into the hospital, we faced east and watched a pillar of white smoke reach up into the stratosphere. The rocket was carrying some of us up to become sky people again. If 𐒻𐒼𐓂 had her way, she would be standing right here in two months watching me make the same trip.

“Woo Woo Woo! Go!” she hollered, as if the rocket needed encouragement. One hand clapped her thigh while the other kept her coffee mug at the ready. The dry foliage in the yard trembled in the roar of the rocket’s launch. 𐒻𐒼𐓂 coughed a few times from all the excitement, but didn’t spill a drop of coffee. “Look at that little thing go, grandson.”

“It’s three times as tall as the house,” I said.

“Not to me it ain’t.”

A small fire burned in a rusted fire pit at our feet. She judged the growing light, then reached back to set her coffee down and grab a few sprigs of cedar from the baggie on her lawn chair.

“I’m gonna send up a message to your momma,” she said. A sliver of sun crested the horizon. “Right up there in Cassiopeia with all the rest of the women who commit the sin of knowing their own worth.”

She tossed the cedar into the humble flame, took the new smoke into her cupped hands and bathed in it. Reached to the sky, welcomed the sun. Once, twice. Four times in total.

I joined in. Mom, I composed in my head, please help. Either convince 𐒻𐒼𐓂 to go or give me the guts to stay.

We stood in silence for a while, smoke from our small fire chasing the rocket’s tail. Eventually, 𐒻𐒼𐓂 shuffled inside. I stayed, mulling talking points to try on her and abandoning them each in turn. Trying not to imagine what I would do with myself if I stayed. How we would survive in a world that was dying.

When I came in, 𐒻𐒼𐓂 was settled in her recliner, coffee mug refilled and steaming, watching a stream of an old tennis match.

The savor of bacon filled the house, all fat and salt and grease. My mouth watered. On the screen, some poor, unranked guy from Western Europe was serving to Rafa Nadal, her all-time favorite. It was old—older than me, even. Something she’d seen live as a kid. She’d seen this match a hundred times already—probably—but everytime I put on something current, she changed the channel. Said they’d ruined the sport with the smart rackets and smart balls and the lift of the body-mod ban. She most liked watching two young, fit, tan men, built from their own effort, panting and sweating. She most liked the past.

“𐒹𐒰𐓏𐒷3, 𐒻𐒼𐓂,” I greeted her as if I’d just come home.

“Bacon on the counter for you,” she said. She lifted her chin and nodded back behind her at the kitchen, eyes glued to the match. A small cough escaped after another sip from the mug. On screen, Rafa fielded the serve and whipped it right back with such vicious English there was no way for no-name to return it. “Toast too, but I’m not gonna butter it for you, spaceman.”

I went and grabbed a plate.

“𐒻𐒼𐓂, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but we have to,” I said through the kitchen pass-through. I loaded my plate, knowing to savor the gift of both her cooking and the bacon. “I have to tell them if we’re going or staying.”

“What’s there to talk about? You’re going. I’m not. ‘S all there is to it.” This said without emotion. Like it was no big deal. I looked down into my plate.

Everything was getting too dry. Too hot. The pinch was coming and every day now the rockets were delivering supplies and crew to the generation ship in low orbit. Passengers, human and not, were next. There was no ‘later’ left anymore, all we had was ‘soon.’ She knew it as well as I did.

Another serve from no-name. Rafa flipped it right back, moving his opponent to the left.

“𐓏𐒻𐓊𐓂𐓇𐓄𐒰4, come. Sit. Don’t think too hard, you’ll pull something. Watch the match with me before you go to work. You’ll never see a more wicked forehand.”

The no-name volleyed, but his sneakers skidded a little too far in the red clay. A matter of inches, though that was enough. It was all over his face that he knew what would happen as soon as he made contact.

I pulled a chair from the coffee table and sat next to the recliner, plate in my lap. “𐒻𐒼𐓂, I can’t go if you don’t.”

“Bullcocky,” she said. “You go to work every day without me. It’s the same as that, just slightly longer.”

On the TV, Rafa fielded the volley, barely breathing hard, and zinged it down the sideline, right at the deadman’s corner at the baseline.

“Please. The 𐓏𐓘𐓓𐓘𐓓𐓟 are making a move to a new country. It’s time to go.”

“Grandson.” She turned to face me. “You’re full of knowledge, maybe even more than me. But I know when you’re talking about something you got from a book.”

The last time we’d made a move to a new country was before 𐒻𐒼𐓂 was born, when we were forced from Kansas down onto a reservation in Oklahoma. Of course I’d had to read about it in a book.

“𐒻𐒼𐓂, the Council declared it.”

Rafa’s opponent raced to catch the ball, but he couldn’t recover fast enough from the skid. He stretched out, flailing mostly.

“Those old coots declare lots of things. S’what they do. Whole point of running for office is so they can go shaking hands, declaring this and that up and down the road all day.”

I looked at the plate in my lap. Her blue-ringed irises were too mirthful, given the topic. I couldn’t meet them. It felt like I was already leaving her. Or maybe that she was leaving me. It was the same either way.

“You’re a good boy,” she said, patting my hand and turning back to the TV. “That’s why you get some of the last of my bacon. So, eat up. You’re too skinny. You’ll need your strength for the launch.”

The neon green ball bounded to a halt. Game, set, match. No-name already had his face buried in a towel.

I pulled the folded infographic from my pocket and put it on the end table next to her seat. Then I piled all my strips of bacon onto my toast, folded it in half, and took a bite, returning my plate to the sink.

“I love you,” I said, planting a greasy kiss on top of her head.

“I know.” She smiled and sipped from her coffee. “Now go tell them 𐓊𐒷5 who’s boss.”

At work, I had to focus primarily on the buffalo, which were an entirely different kind of problem. Or a component of the bigger problem. We could get them on the ship and into their pens, that was easy. Well, it was easy considering it was like trying to push a temperamental car into a too-small parking spot and a wrong move could get you gored or trampled. There were so many ranch hands and cowboys among us, though, we could usually move them around just fine. We could sedate them and secure them in modified crash cushioning to keep them contained for their launch. We knew they could handle the g’s; even monkeys and dogs could do that. That’s how the space program started. The trouble was that for every buffalo who came, we had to leave someone behind.

The spreadsheet in front of me was an inventory of life. Noah’s shopping list, basically. The grasses—indiangrass, big bluestem, little bluestem, and switchgrass—were all collected and planted already. The sacred medicines too—sweetgrass, tobacco, cedar, sage, and 𐓨𐒰^.𐒼𐒰 𐓐𐓂𐓄𐒷6. But the buffalo, deer, Virginia opossum, three species of bats, jackrabbits, raccoons, pocket gophers and their cousins, some dozens of mice species, and the rest of the mammals were harder. Not to mention the reptiles, amphibians, and birds. And the insects—many of which had already gone extinct in the last couple decades—we were having to be creative with, even importing some of our cricket stock from breeders. Every entry I made there was another human name left off the passenger manifest. The floor trembled as another rocket took off from the launch complex further out in the prairie.

“There’s just no good goddamn reason to take full-grown adults,” Nik said. “It’s a waste.”

Nik was Lenape/Pawnee, not 𐓏𐓘𐓓𐓘𐓓𐓟, and he was sourer than an unripe cranberry most of the time and only getting worse with each passing day. But then he did husbandry, not research, so sourness was often useful. He had a place reserved for him and his family as payment for his work, but only them.

“You know the adults can handle the strain best,” Jess said. Her beaded earrings didn’t even sway as she said it. A veterinarian, even-keeled, she had lots of experience staying calm in the face of testy beasts. “This isn’t arbitrary, it’s scientific fact. And more importantly, the 𐓊𐒷 need their elders too.”

“Oh, don’t get me started on that,” Nik scoffed. “Just tradish bullshit.”

Something had changed. Nik was practical, efficient, and rangy, like he was made of jerky. He was an oxford-shirt-tucked-into-Wranglers kind of guy. He knew the logistics of herd management, the storing of feed and all those things that kept thousands of animals alive. He knew the business of ranching to the same degree that I knew how to balance closed ecological systems. I hadn’t seen him so outwardly ruffled before.

“No—” Jess began.

“Yes.” Nik stabbed her direction with an index finger. “We’re not making some kind of statement. We need to save ourselves, not score Native points. This is about survival.”

“Exactly. That’s when we need our ways the most.” Jess raised her voice a tick. It wasn’t quite a shout, but it was as close as I ever heard her get to it. “Giving up all we are in the process? That’s not surviving, it’s just staying alive.”

“But staying alive is pretty goddamn important, ennit? Kinda the bare minimum. You wanna be the one to tell my eight-year-old niece we chose a cow over her?”

“The only reason we’re still here,”—Jess pointed out the window at Oklahoma, at what used to be called Indian Territory—“is we didn’t lose ourselves.”

“Hey,” I said. They both turned to me like they hadn’t noticed I was there. “We’ve already gone over all this. We’ve done the work and run the numbers. It’s too late to change the plan.”

“We’re changing it every time the Okies hit us.” Nik rubbed his chin. “Until we lift off, it’s in flux. We can still do the right thing.”

“Nik—” I said, but he was already in motion. He scooped up his sweat-stained Dekalb hat from the desk and left.

I looked to Jess. “What was that all about?”

“His wife’s family,” she said. “They got denied. No appeals. Now she’s not sure she can leave them.”

“Oh. Just parents?”

“Got two sisters, too. Both married with kids. They were all trying to get in.”

Outside, the rumble of another launch was punctuated by the small cracks of distant gunfire. Both becoming so common I hardly noticed them any more. Everywhere, all around us, everything was combusting.

I got the call from my neighbors that 𐒻𐒼𐓂 had collapsed and gone to the hospital just as I was leaving. She had been out in her garden in the afternoon, probably humming to her plants trying to keep them strong in the intense heat, and started coughing. She didn’t stop until she fell. The neighbors had to call 911 because I wasn’t there for her.

I rushed to the tribal hospital. The yellow ball of the sun was fighting to get through the restless, red clouds of Oklahoma dirt being thrown into the atmosphere. White smoke rose from the fires sweeping through the ranchlands in the distance. I counted the mounds on the hilltop, black silhouettes silent against the sunset. There were eight. Eight more buffalo lost today.

She was lazing in her hospital bed, plastic cup of grape juice in hand, when I got there. Some kind of crime drama played on the TV.

“What’s eating you, 𐓊𐓂𐓇𐓄𐒰7?” She only glanced my way, taking a sip of juice.

“I’m sorry, I rushed over as soon as I heard,” I said. “How are you?”

“Oh fine. Just a little inconvenienced is all.”

“I was worried about you.”

“Well what for?”

“𐒻𐒼𐓂, are you serious?”

“Oh, I just took a spill and now they want me to stick around so they can take pictures of my insides. Probably to use as teaching materials about the ideal female form.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. I hadn’t known what to expect. I scooted a chair next to her and settled in. We watched the cops on the show rough up a few suspects.

“There are rumors they’re going to move up the passenger launches,” I said.

“Thought I was feeling more rumbling in my feet from all those little rockets.”

I wanted to press her about our decision, but the weight of the day hit me all at once. I bowed my head, hands laced behind it. “Okies hit the herd again. Haven’t gotten the details yet, just saw the bodies out in the grass. They didn’t even try to take any of it this time. Just left them up on the hill to rot. They were just—just killing. Not even trying to feed their families or anything. Just killing to do it.”

“They were doing it to hurt us,” she said. “Nothing about survival to it, just plain old spite, 𐓏𐒻𐓊𐓂𐓇𐓄𐒰. Same as it’s always been. Even if they weren’t afraid of us shooting back they would still be trying to get us indirect like that.”

We sat for a time. Let it all simmer and fade into the background.

“They’re going to finalize the passenger list in one week,” I said, making eye contact. Let it hang there between us.

“Is everything ready up there? That was quick. Good for us being ahead of schedule for once.”

“The ship’s been ready,” I said. “Double checked. Triple checked. Collecting all the plants and animals and getting them up there was the main thing. That and letting everyone say goodbye.”

𐒻𐒼𐓂 shook her head. “Why didn’t you just get married? It’s not too late, actually. I bet if you got on them dating apps today you could find a partner before the deadline. Or just go out in the hallway and see which of the staff are available. Don’t have to be perfect, but it’s better than being alone, let me tell you. Got so much going for you, too. PhD, free ticket on a spaceship, good with animals. Whole package.”

“𐒻𐒼𐓂, please.”

I waited for more snark, but she didn’t continue. We knew what each other were thinking anyway. It didn’t need to be released to be heard. Outside her window, night was coming down. She took my hand in hers and I leaned over and let my head rest awkwardly on her shoulder. She smelled like onions and earth.

“I can’t go without you,” I said. There was an emptiness in my stomach, where it seemed like I’d already left her behind by not being there when she fell, and all there was to me was just a hollowed-out-ness.

She let that sit. After a couple minutes, she pointed out the window at the night sky, darkness growing as the evening got deeper. “Remember when we used to stay up late and name as many as we could? Before your momma passed and went up there to join them. She’d say ‘You can’t keep that boy up so late,’ but smiling, not real serious like, cause she liked that you were learning. Now she’s looking down on us and probably even more thankful. Right around there.”

“Up in Cassiopeia,” I said. The wonky ‘w’ constellation was dimmer these days behind the atmospheric haze than it had been, but not unidentifiable.

“Yessir. Trapped up there for boasting about her beauty too much. Her and her daughter, Andromeda. It’s a mean world to us women who have a habit of being a little too honest.”

A steady wail of sirens went out and came back, like waves on the shore, dropping off new patients for the Clinic then heading out to get more. For what, we couldn’t know. So many small emergencies occurring at all times amid the backdrop of the all-encompassing one nobody seemed to be rushing to help.

“She’s up there,” 𐒻𐒼𐓂 whispered. “And I’ll be up there with her soon enough.”

“𐒻𐒼𐓂—”

She patted my back.

“Shhh. We were sky people, isn’t that what you keep telling me? Like I don’t already know? I’m the one taught you that when we pass, we return to it. Flare up, passing the boundary between earth and sky like one of those rockets. We get turned into new stars up there to guide those we left behind. Thing about Cassiopeia is you can still see it from the Centauri system. Did you know that? Bet you didn’t. It’s true. She’ll be with you always. Only from way out there, that angle, Earth and 𐓏𐒻𐓊𐓻𐒼𐓂 𐓨𐒻8, old grandfather sun, will be part of it too.”

I wanted to brush at my eyes, get any tears before they wet her hospital gown. I didn’t want her to know I’d ‘sprung a leak’ as she would put it. But doing so would have given it away too, and so I stayed motionless, staring out the window at the night, leaning against my grandmother’s steadiness.

The poachers kept coming back, harassing us every day, and that kept Nik busy so there’d been no more office arguments since the first. He had been called to try to change the herd’s range away from the boundaries and split off the most valuable individuals to keep them safe for transport.

Ma was one of the chosen buffalo who’d already been moved inside a couple weeks ago. I was in a stall with her, the oldest cow we had, picking and combing brambles out of her hair, when he approached. Two kids at his side. Just one of them was his that I could recognize.

I focused on Ma. She was as close to a matriarch as the herd had, and for that she got a nice clean stall in the barn. Plus, she needed to be in top shape for the transfer to the ship. I escaped the office to come see her whenever the math of the move got to be too much. With 𐒻𐒼𐓂 staying in the hospital, I was escaping here more often. Grooming and petting her, getting huffs and head shakes, the contented tremors that traveled down her flanks. She helped me remember why we were doing all of this.

At its peak, the herd was 2500 head. These days it was about a fifth of that. Drought, heat, and poaching had hit them the hardest. Ma had survived it all for nearly two decades. Sure, during the rutting season, one or two huge bulls were in charge. Different ones every few years, too, as some new challenger in his prime inevitably took over. But the rest of the year? That was Ma’s time to rule. She huffed at Nik.

He put an arm on the top of the stall door, leaned his chin on his forearm, and gave Ma a scratch on the curls of her forehead. I kept on brushing, moving down her flank. “Nik. Herd okay?”

“Gettin’ by,” he said. “They’re real pissy out there. The launches, the Okies. They’re hungry and thirsty too. Really on edge. Like most everyone, I guess. You remember Lucy? This is her cousin Melanie. Say hi, girls.”

“Hi,” I said to them.

“I heard about your grandma,” Nik said. “How is she?”

“Okay,” I said. I wondered who he heard it from.

“Think her situation is going to impact your reservations?” he asked. Tried to be casual about it but he was working his jaw harder than a bull chewing frozen cud.

So that was what he wanted.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Time’s running out.” Nik took his hat in his hands and worked at the bill, folding it mercilessly. “You ever consider just deciding yourself and then making her live with it?”

I set the brush down and patted Ma on the hind end. “Wouldn’t do any good. She’d kick my ass first and then pull strings to get it fixed second. For her, it’s only she stays and I go.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nik nodded. “Be hard to abandon her though. Given the circumstances. That’d be hard, wouldn’t it, Melanie? To leave your granny behind?”

“Uh huh,” the child said.

“Yeah,” Lucy agreed.

Nik looked out the barn door like he was trying to see all the way to Tulsa. The girls split away and looked into the other stalls. Nik didn’t watch them go, just kept staring. “If you give us your spots I’ll leave our land to you.”

“Nik—” I started.

“Got 25 acres that aren’t wasteland. Soil’s not spent yet so we can grow a few things. Not like before, but some. House isn’t in too bad shape, but the frack-quakes are taking a toll. Most importantly, got a good well. A deep one. Water’s cleaner than the bottled stuff.”

“Are you serious right now?” I shook my head, turned back to Ma and started brushing her all over again.

“You just think on it.” He seated his hat back down on his head. “Girls,” he called.

He put one hand on a shoulder of each of the girls. “You could be set up as much as anyone can be to make a go at it down here. And,” he inclined his chin down at the children, “you’d be saving some lives.”

I turned away from him. I didn’t want him to read anything in my face.

The 𐒼𐒰𐒹𐒻𐒼𐒷9 was on all the screens in the hospital that afternoon, making an announcement about the accelerated launch schedule.

“We’ve made a move to a new country before,” he was saying on the broadcast. 𐒻𐒼𐓂 was sleeping, or at least pretending to, in the hospital bed beside me. “Ever since we came to this land, long time ago. Always changing, adapting, growing. We studied the stars in the sky; we knew they never moved backwards and we couldn’t either. So we kept going, no matter what we faced. Few hundred years ago, when the US Government was moving in, pushing us out, we had to make several moves to a new country in a 50 year period. From East Missouri to West. Then to Kansas. When they wanted that, then we moved from Kansas to Indian Territory. To here.”

“Can I come in?” A young doctor peeked around the curtain that gave us privacy from the hall. When she slid it back and joined us, I recognized her from the newsfeeds. One of the Hunka family. She was tall and used to be a bigshot volleyball player at OU. The kind of person that made the whole county proud. Didn’t know she was back and a doctor to boot, though we’d never really run in the same circles. I liked being outside in the dirt, she liked being inside on the hardcourt. She went to practice, I went to the public library and read fantasy novels.

I tried to focus on the broadcast so it wouldn’t seem like I was staring.

“We gave up our old ceremonies then,” the speech continued. “They were for another place and another time. Needed a whole new way of being. New dances. We changed what we did, but it didn’t change who we were. We will be the same even after this. They sent us to this wild barren place they didn’t want (until they did). This place that happened to be packed full of all that oil. And we sold it and they burned it and we made a lot of money, took care of our people. But we hurt our world. We were a part of that. We have that stain on our hands. So, we put those earnings into our future—”

“𐒹𐒰𐓏𐒷.” Dr. Hunka planted herself on a rolling stool that was far too short for her, tablet in her hands. “So, I’m sure they’ve already told you it’s the lungs,” she said. She turned the tablet toward me so I could see the black and white images. I could see the ghost of ribs and the white network of what looked like spiderwebs. Like the charts of constellations. “Same thing we’re all going to get if we stay here, basically. Not that that helps. Sorry.”

She pointed at the ceiling in a circular motion with her stylus. “It’s the air. All the dust and exhaust. Basically, it’s the same as if every breath we took was from a cigarette now. Here, this is scarring and inflammation. Emphysema. She spend a lot of time outdoors still? Yeah, I figured. Bunch of elders do. If it was 20 years ago, or she was 20 years younger, they would put her on a waitlist for a donor at this stage. Nowadays . . . . Can I ask, is she on the passenger list?”

“We are,” I rushed to say. On the TV, the 𐒼𐒰𐒹𐒻𐒼𐒷 was still going on about carrying our history with us into the future. Thanking everyone he could think of as he went. Talking about the need for community at times like this.

“That’s your best bet at this point,” she said. “There will be clean air on the ship. We can’t heal the damage, but it can be managed with acceptable discomfort.”

“Acceptable discomfort? What kind of nonsense is that? And why are you all talking like I’m not sitting right here?” 𐒻𐒼𐓂 sat like a little spark plug, arms crossed, bottom lip pushed out, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

Dr. Hunka apologized.

“That’s better,” 𐒻𐒼𐓂 said. “If you go out with my grandson I will forgive you fully.”

The doctor blushed.

“𐒻𐒼𐓂, c’mon,” I protested.

After that, they discussed 𐒻𐒼𐓂’s health and I stayed out of it. Eventually, Dr. Hunka shook 𐒻𐒼𐓂’s hand. I stood with her and she asked if she could speak to me outside the room. I nodded.

“As I was saying,” she spoke low, “being in the processed air of the ship will at least buy some time. If she stays . . . . Well, it’s advanced. Does she still smoke? She listed that she used to.”

“Not that I know of,” I said. “Didn’t even know she used to.”

“Well, that’s something. But still, every breath she takes will just add to the damage. The particulate, the heat, the dryness, it all adds up. She might have a year or only months. Hard to say. No matter what, it’ll be significantly less if she stays. She should stay here as long as she will. We have decent filtration.”

I nodded. There wasn’t much to say after that, and we both found ourselves looking up at the TV. 𐒼𐒰𐒹𐒻𐒼𐒷 flinched and there were a few cries from offscreen as gatorade bottles and beer cans flew in to clatter on the stage. The camera panned over to show a few lifted pickup trucks idling behind the press. Okies in the beds beneath Confederate flags held signs as they shouted. “Leave Ungrateful Injuns,” one said. “Go back to your RED Planet,” said another. One simply said, “Git!”

“Hey, doc,” I said, whispering because by now 𐒻𐒼𐓂 had to be eavesdropping. “About the ship . . . are you going?”

“Me?” She shook her head.

“Why not?” She was exactly the kind of person the move would need. Educated, athletic, with vital skills. A homegrown celebrity. I knew of a few with questionable tribal affiliation who had made it onto the manifest just by having similar resumés.

“This is my home, you know?” she said, shrugging. “Earth’s like a patient. Sick, but not dead yet.”

The thing about ecology is it’s not any one piece that matters. It’s about the system. About how everything interacts and balances out. For the last 70 or so years, that’s mostly meant figuring out how to reduce the impact of humans on every other living thing around them. And, in most of those cases, it’s been trying to correct previous failed interventions through yet further interventions. A cascade of mistakes. Western science was scrambling to catch up to the Indigenous knowledge that had thrived on the Americas for hundreds of years before the settlers came and tried to wipe it all out.

I could calculate the numbers reasonably well. I could say we need this many buffalo, this many acres of graze, that many rodents, insects, coyotes, foxes. We could expect to cull this many animals each year, leading to this much high quality protein in addition to the aquaponic agriculture and insect yield. I had already done this. We had a team, but since I was the mammal specialist, much of the calculations originated with me. Numbers can be misleading when trying to find the best balance of an entire system, though. Sometimes the right 20 individuals are worth more than 50 random ones.

Ma was one of the right individuals. She was equal to ten younger cows. We needed her. So her final checkup before she was to be finalized and prepped for transport felt like anything but routine.

It helped to keep my mind off the notification I’d gotten an hour earlier from the launch office. The one that said my paperwork had been accepted. My spot reserved. I hadn’t signed anything, but I knew who had.

I stood with Nik and several of the ranch hands and veterinary staff and looked down on Ma and Jess from outside her stall. It was just a checkup, I told myself. A formality.

Jess knelt next to Ma’s prone form panting heavy in the hay. She lifted a bottle and plugged a syringe into it. Drew out the clear liquid, flicked it. Pressed until a stream geysered up from the finger-length needle. Ma’s breathing steadied. It seemed like I could see the coldness of the dose flow through her.

“She’s not as young as she used to be,” Jess said, rising from the straw. “If we want to be sure, we should monitor her for another day or two.”

She pulled the nitrile gloves from her hands, closed the stall door, and leaned back against it.

Nik stepped forward. “You and I both know we don’t need to monitor her, we need to replace her.”

Jess shook her head.

“Can we just admit this is sentimental, if not downright stupid?” he asked.

I clenched and unclenched my hands. It was enough that Nik was bringing kids around trying to manipulate folks, but today his goddamn voice was suddenly too much for me.

“Nik, stop,” Jess said.

“Hell,” he had to go on. “Maybe, and this is just me using my damn brain here, we give her spot to an actual person even.”

It didn’t matter that he was talking about Ma, he was looking sideways at me. Because I hadn’t rushed to accept his offer. Hadn’t responded at all.

“She’s dead weight. Way too much of that in this plan—”

I hit him as hard as I could. He stumbled against the stall but didn’t fall.

Two ranch hands had me before I could make another move. “Shut up, Nik. Just shut up.” I growled. Nik wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.

“Jesus, get a goddamn grip,” Jess yelled, stepping between us.

“Not bad,” he said to me. He stood up, dusted off his hat before putting it on. “Don’t change facts, though.”

Seeing that Nik didn’t want to swing back, the hands let me go.

I pointed. “You check her for rat poison or pesticides or anything? How do we know he isn’t making room for a mess of in-laws?”

It was Jess who hit me then. Open palm slap, then she was up in my face. “Now you shut up.”

Nik stepped forward, put a hand on Jess’s arm gently.

“It’s okay, Jess. We do stupid things when the fear is in us.” He held my gaze but didn’t return my glare. “Say stupid things. Lotta uncertainty to get scared of these days. Hard on everyone. I let it get to me too sometimes. Not proud of that. But he knows I love these damn animals. Even, maybe especially, that old bag in there. Knows I would die for them, ain’t that right?”

I looked down. I’d seen him ride off after poachers more than once. Seen him work through the hottest days, tempting a goring from the testiest of the bulls to get the herd moved. Damn him for being right.

“Lotta goodbyes being said these days,” he kept going. His words landing harder than any counterpunch. “He knows I already signed the papers. Already had to have the hard conversations with the in-laws. Don’t he. Yeah, he knows it. See? Knows the way, in the end, that they had to get stern with my wife, same way I might be getting stern with him right now. They had to make her get her focus right. Get it on the future, not the past. Made her vow to make it as good as possible for our boys. Even if it’s hard. Even if it’s scary. Hold too tight to the past, it’ll just drag you under. Hold you down. He knows all that. Ain’t that right?”

I didn’t know all that. But then I did, too. I shrugged away from everyone and headed out of the barn. I had to get to the hospital.

Instead, I went to the old creekbed where I used to look for turtles and praying mantises as a kid. It was just a dry trough now. I started walking one direction and told myself I would turn around when I hit water or I figured out what to say to 𐒻𐒼𐓂. By dusk, I had had to give up on both objectives. There was no water, just cracked red soil and bleached white bones. No answers, just the pall of a loss that felt not singular, but constant and ongoing. A single message from 𐒻𐒼𐓂 waited for me on my phone when I got back to my car. “Come on over and see me already,” it said.

At the hospital, I passed Doc Hunka on the way to 𐒻𐒼𐓂’s room. We nodded to each other. I wondered if she ever left.

“𐒹𐒰𐓏𐒷, 𐒻𐒼𐓂,” I said when I entered, but the room was empty.

“She’s out back,” Dr. Hunka leaned in the doorway. “Forgot to pass that along when I saw you.”

Outside, in a lawn chair, head leaned back to look up into the sky, 𐒻𐒼𐓂 was sipping another cup of grape juice.

“𐒹𐒰𐓏𐒷, 𐒻𐒼𐓂,” I said again. I fell into the seat next to her.

“Rough day?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She hummed an acknowledgement. Took a swig from her juice and looked up into the sky. Eventually, she took my hand in hers and gave it a squeeze.

I pressed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose. I pulled up a file on my phone. It was a doubles match from an early 2000s Wimbledon. I had been collecting recordings for the trip. “I know you like men’s better,” I said. “But all the forums say this one is a match for the ages.”

“Oh, those Williams sisters!” She slapped her thigh. “They were really something.”

We let the tennis take over. Huddled around a small square light beneath the stars, I didn’t know how to begin, and she apparently didn’t feel the need to, so we didn’t talk. She used to make fun of people who felt the need to occupy silence with empty words. It exhausted her. Me too. I guess I got that from her. Some days we just did this. And after an hour or so, she would get up and say “Good chat.”

There were serves, volleys, slams. It was an incredible show of dominance. The sisters flowed like a dance. Like they were the two hands of a single tennis god. On a particularly good point, 𐒻𐒼𐓂 would snap the fingers of her free hand and whoop so loud I knew that the nurses heard it inside at their station.

At some point in the second set, I gave up being mad and took her hand in mine. It was warm, despite the chill in the air.

Before the match was over, 𐒻𐒼𐓂 leaned over and said, “Your momma would be proud.”

I hung my head.

𐒻𐒼𐓂 patted my hand. “It’ll be okay,” she said.

My breath caught. “I—”

“You can’t stay,” she said. “And I can’t go. It’s same as it always was.”

“But I can’t leave you.” My voice cracked. I couldn’t help but imagine her alone, condition declining. Scared, sad, empty, same as I had been when mom passed away. She would need me like I had needed her.

“I’ll be with you,” she said. “I’ll be closer to you up there than I would be if you were down here. You just gotta have the strength to wait for me.”

She let me have some time to compose myself.

“My spaceman. Know your 𐒻𐒼𐓂 will always look over you, 𐓏𐒻𐓊𐓂𐓇𐓄𐒰. Now, why don’t you put on another good match?”

“Thanks, 𐒻𐒼𐓂.” I bit the inside of my cheek. Then I raised my phone and searched for another classic from the ones I’d collected.

“But before you get it started,”—she leaned in and held her plastic cup up—“go tell that doctor I’m ready for her to slip me more of the merlot she’s got.”

Months later, I stood at one of the observation viewports, a few invaluable sprigs of cedar ready. In the central atrium of the ship, buffalo grazed in the reduced gravity. The calves bounded, testing how high they could frolic while the adults just tried to walk as normally as they could. (Though Ma seemed more like the calves than not, delighted by the reduced load on her joints.) Insects lazed through the air, beating their wings out of habit rather than need. A coyote secreted away a mole it had caught. The ship’s lifeforce was a steady thrum in the soles of my feet and a nagging pressure at the inside of my ears.

Outside, the black of space enveloped the ship. The stars were everywhere, like a handful of coarse white sand spread across a dead TV screen. The yellow glow of the sun pursued us. Mars glowed red, silently stewing, just slightly aft and above our path.

She had told me not to say goodbye. “We don’t say goodbye,” she told me. “Say ‘until next time.’” So that’s what I’d said.

“Now say it like you mean it,” she said.

So I did.

Now, before I get rotated off a wake cycle for a rest period, I come here. This is a 𐓏𐓘𐓓𐓘𐓓𐓟 ship, a 𐒹𐒰^.𐒼𐒷 𐒼𐒷𐒹𐒿𐓂^. 𐓍𐒷 𐓈𐒰 𐓨𐒰^.𐓐𐒷 𐒰𐒼𐒰𐒹𐒰𐓈𐒰10, and so it is unlike anything that has come before. Through a door next to the viewport, there is a room built for the use of sacred smoke. There’s no true sunrise out here, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have messages to send to our ancestors.

I find Cassiopeia. I count her major stars. There are actually 26 in total, all more visible here than they were on Earth, but only five major ones that 𐒻𐒼𐓂 and I had keyed in on.

“Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon,” I name them aloud. Today, there are six. “Hmm.”

I count again, making sure my eyes are not playing tricks on me. That I’m not just seeing what I want to see.

“I’ll be with you,” she’d said. “We’re a sky people. When we pass, we return. So no matter what, I’ll be with you.”

“Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon,” I say. I press my hand to the window. “And you.”

Author’s Note

Language is sovereignty. I am grateful to Reckoning for making it possible to publish the text with Osage (𐓏𐓘𐓓𐓘𐓓𐓟) orthography as originally written. For nonfluent readers, I have included phonetics in the footnotes so you can hear the beauty of language, even as you may not be able to read it. The most fantastical and unbelievable element of this story is that I have written characters decades in the future who speak 𐓏𐓘𐓓𐓘𐓓𐓟 𐒻𐓟 at the same infantile level I do now. This is representative of only my own clumsy competencies. The Osage Language Department and our elders have ensured that ours will be a different linguistic future than depicted here with their incredible dedication and efforts.

---