N. Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

His nostrils flare. The pain of the stoning seems to have faded, though he’s drenched with sweat and still breathing hard. But then something in his expression shifts, too, and a moment later he slumps, to the degree that he is able.

“I let him die,” he murmurs, looking away. “Of course you don’t trust me.”

“No, Alabaster. The Guardians killed Innon.”

He half smiles. “Him, too.”

Then you know. Ten years and it’s like no time has passed at all. “No,” you say again. But this is softer. Strengthless. He’s said he wouldn’t forgive you for Corundum… but perhaps you’re not the only one he doesn’t forgive.

A long silence passes.

“All right,” he says at last. His voice is very soft. “I’ll tell you.”

“What?”

“Where I’ve been for the past ten years.” He glances up at Antimony, who still looms over both of you. “What this is all about.”

“She isn’t ready,” the stone eater says. You jump at her voice.

Alabaster tries to shrug, winces as something twinges somewhere on his body, sighs. “Neither was I.”

Antimony stares down at both of you. It’s not really that different from the way she’s been staring at you since you came back, but it feels more pent. Maybe that’s just projection. But then, suddenly, she vanishes. You see it happen this time. Her form blurs, becoming insubstantial, translucent. Then she drops into the ground as if a hole has opened beneath her feet. Gone.

Alabaster sighs. “Come sit beside me,” he says.

You frown immediately. “Why?”

“So we can have sex again. Why the rust do you think?”

You loved him once. You probably still do. With a sigh you get up and move to the wall. Gingerly, though his back is unburned, you prop yourself for comfort, then rest a hand against his back to hold him up, the way Antimony so often does.

Alabaster’s silent for a moment, and then he says, “Thank you.”

Then… he tells you everything.

Breathe not the fine ashfall. Drink not the red water. Walk not long upon warm soil.

BECAUSE YOU ARE ESSUN, I should not need to remind you that all Nassun knew before Found Moon was Tirimo, and the ash-darkening world of the road during a Fifth Season. You know your daughter, don’t you? So it should be obvious therefore that Found Moon becomes something she never believed she had before: a true home.

It is not a newcomm. At its core is the village of Jekity, which was a city before the Choking Season some hundred years before. During that Season, Mount Akok blanketed the Antarctics with ash—but that is not what nearly killed Jekity, since the city had vast stores and sturdy wood-and-slate walls at the time. Jekity the city died because of human errors, compounded: A child lighting a lantern spilled oil, which set off a fire that swept the western end of the comm and burned a third of it before people managed to get it under control. The comm’s headman died in the fire, and when three qualified candidates stepped forward to take his place, factionalism and infighting meant that the burned section of the wall didn’t get rebuilt quickly enough. A tibbit-run—small, furred animals that swarm like ants when food is scarce enough—swept into the comm and took care of anyone too slow to get off the ground… and the comm’s ground-level storecaches. The survivors lasted for a time on what was left, then starved. By the time the sky cleared five years later, less than five thousand souls remained of the hundred thousand who’d begun the Season.

The Jekity of now is even smaller. The poor, unskilled repairs made to the wall during Choking are still in place, and while the stores have been elevated and replenished sufficiently to meet Imperial standards, this is only on paper: The comm has done a bad job of rotating old, spoiled stores out and laying in new. Strangers have rarely asked to join Jekity over the years. Even by Antarctic standards, the comm is seen as ill-fated. Its young people usually leave to talk or marry their way into other, growing communities where jobs are more plentiful and the memory of suffering does not linger. When Schaffa found this sleepy terrace-farming comm ten years before, and convinced the then-headwoman Maite to allow him to set up a special Guardian facility within the comm’s walls, she hoped that it was the beginning of a turnaround for her home. Guardians are a healthy addition to any community, aren’t they? And indeed, there are now three Guardians in Jekity including Schaffa, along with nine children of varying ages. There were ten, but when one of the children caused a brief but powerful earthshake amid a temper tantrum one evening, the child vanished. Maite did not ask questions. It’s good to know the Guardians are doing their jobs.

Nassun and her father do not know this as they move into the comm, though others will eventually tell them. The healers—an elderly doctor and a forest herbalist—spend seven days getting Jija out of danger, because he develops a fever not long after the surgery on his wound. Nassun tends him the whole while. When it becomes clear that he’ll survive, however, Schaffa introduces them to Maite, who’s delighted to learn that Jija is a stoneknapper. The comm has not had one for several decades, so they’ve been sending orders to knappers in the comm of Deveteris, twenty miles away. There’s an old, empty house in the comm with an attached kiln, and while a forge would’ve been more useful, Jija tells her he can make it work. Maite gives it a month to be sure, and listens when her people tell her that Jija is polite and friendly and sensible. He’s physically hearty, too, since he’s recovering from that wound like a proper Resistant, and since he managed to survive the road with no companion but a little girl. Everyone notices how well behaved and devoted his daughter is, too—not at all what anyone would expect of a rogga. Thus, at the end of the month, Jija receives the name Jija Resistant Jekity . They induct him with a ceremony that most of the comm has never seen before, so long has it been since anyone new joined the comm. Maite herself had to look up the details of the ceremony in an old lore-book. Then they throw a party, which is very nice. Jija tells them he’s honored.

Nassun remains just Nassun . No one calls her Nassun Resistant Tirimo, though she still introduces herself that way upon meeting new people. Schaffa’s interest in her is simply too obvious. But she causes no trouble, so the people of Jekity are as friendly toward her as they are toward Jija, if in a slightly more guarded fashion.

It is the other orogene children who unashamedly embrace Nassun for everything she is.

The oldest of them is a Coaster boy named Eitz, who speaks with a strange choppy accent that Nassun thinks of as exotic. He’s eighteen, tall, long-faced, and if there is a perpetual shadow in his expression, it does nothing to mar his beauty in Nassun’s eyes. He’s the one who welcomes Nassun on the first day after it becomes clear that Jija will live. “Found Moon is our community,” he says in a deep voice that makes Nassun’s heart race, leading her to the small compound that Schaffa’s people have built over near Jekity’s weakest wall. It’s up a hill. He leads her toward a pair of gates that swing open as they approach. “Yumenes had the Fulcrum, and Jekity has this: A place where you can be yourself, and always be safe. Schaffa and the other Guardians are here for us, too, remember. This is ours.”

Found Moon has walls of its own, shaped from the shafts of columnar rock that dominate this area—but these are uniformly sized and perfectly even in conformation. Nassun doesn’t even have to sess them to realize they have been raised by orogeny. Within the compound are a handful of small buildings, a few new but most parts of old Jekity left abandoned as the comm’s population dwindled. Whatever those used to be, they have since been refurbished into a house for the Guardians, a mess hall, a wide tiled practice area, several ground-level storesheds, and a dormitory for the children.