N. Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

So Nassun is almost prepared when Jija’s gaze suddenly shifts to her, sidelong and suspicious. “Why haven’t you cured yourself yet?”

No reasoning. But she tries, because once upon a time, this man was her whole world.

“I might be able to soon. I learned how to make things happen with the silver, and how to take things out of people. I don’t know how orogeny works, or where it comes from, but if it’s something that can be taken out, then—”

“None of the other monsters in that camp have cured themselves. I’ve asked around.” Jija’s pacing has gotten noticeably faster. “They go up there and they don’t get better. They live there with those Guardians, more of them every day, and none of them have been cured! Was it a lie?”

“It isn’t a lie. If I get good enough, I’ll be able to do it.” She understands this instinctively. With enough fine control and the sapphire obelisk’s aid, she will be able to do almost anything. “But—”

“Why aren’t you good enough now? We’ve been here almost a year!”

Because this is hard , she wants to say, but she realizes he does not want to hear it. He does not want to know that the only way to use orogeny and magic to transform a thing is to become an expert in the use of orogeny and magic. She doesn’t answer because there’s no point. She cannot say what he wants to hear. It isn’t fair that he calls orogenes liars and then demands that she lie.

He stops and rounds on her, instantly suspicious of her silence. “You aren’t trying to get better, are you? Tell the truth, Nassun!”

She is so rusting tired.

“I am trying to get better, Daddy,” Nassun replies at last. “I’m trying to become a better orogene.”

Jija steps back, as if she has hit him. “That isn’t why I let you live up there.”

He isn’t letting anything; Schaffa made him. He’s even lying to himself now. But it is the lies he’s telling her—as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life—that really break her heart. He’s said that he loved her, after all, but that obviously isn’t true. He cannot love an orogene, and that is what she is. He cannot be an orogene’s father, and that is why he constantly demands she be something other than what she is.

And she is tired. Tired and done.

“I like being an orogene, Daddy,” she says. His eyes widen. This is a terrible thing that she is saying. It is a terrible thing that she loves herself. “I like making things move, and doing the silver, and falling into the obelisks. I don’t like—”

She is about to say that she hates what she did to Eitz, and she especially hates the way that others treat her now that they know what she is capable of, but she doesn’t get the chance. Jija takes two swift steps forward and the back of his hand swings so fast that she doesn’t even see it before it has knocked her out of the chair.

It’s like that day on the Imperial Road, when she suddenly found herself at the bottom of a hill, in pain. It must have been like this for Uche, she realizes, in another swift epiphany. The world as it should be one moment and completely wrong, completely broken, an instant later.

At least Uche didn’t have time to hate , she thinks, in sorrow.

And then she ices the entire house.

It isn’t a reflex. She’s intentional about it, precise, shaping the torus to fit the dimensions of the house exactly. No one past the walls will be caught in it. She shapes twin cores out of the torus, too, and centers each on herself and her father. She feels cold along the hairs of her skin, the tug of lowered air pressure on her clothing and plaited hair. Jija feels the same thing and he screams , his eyes wide and wild and sightless. The memory of a boy’s cruel, icy death is in his face. By the time Nassun gets to her feet, staring at her father across a floor slick with plates of solid ice and around the fallen-over chair that is now too warped to ever use again, Jija has stumbled back, slipped on the ice, fallen, and slid partially across the floor to bump against the table legs.

There’s no danger. Nassun only manifested the torus for an instant, as a warning against further violence on his part. Jija keeps screaming, though, as Nassun gazes down at her huddled, panicking father. Perhaps she should feel pity, or regret. What she actually feels, however, is cold fury toward her mother. She knows it’s irrational. It is no one’s fault except Jija’s that Jija is too afraid of orogenes to love his own children. Once, however, Nassun could love her father without qualification. Now, she needs someone to blame for the loss of that perfect love. She knows her mother can bear it.

You should have had us with someone stronger , she thinks at Essun, wherever she is.

It takes care to walk across the slick floor without slipping, and Nassun has to jiggle the latch for a few seconds to scrape it open. By the time she does, Jija has stopped screaming behind her, though she can still hear him breathing hard and uttering a little moan with every exhalation. She doesn’t want to look back at him. She makes herself do it anyway, though, because she wants to be a good orogene, and good orogenes cannot afford self-deception.

Jija jerks as if her gaze has the power to burn.

“Bye, Daddy,” she says. He does not reply in words.

And the last tear she shed, as he burned her alive with ice, broke like the Shattering upon the ground. Stone your heart against roggas, for there is nothing but rust in their souls!

WHEN THE SANZED WOMAN IS GONE, I pull you aside. Figuratively speaking.

“The one you call Gray Man doesn’t want to prevent the opening of the Gate,” I say. “I lied.”

You’re so wary of me now. It troubles you, I can see; you want to trust me, even as your very eyes remind you of how I’ve deceived you. But you sigh and say, “Yeah. I thought there might be more to it.”

“He’ll kill you because you can’t be manipulated,” I say, ignoring the irony. “Because if you open the Gate, you would restore the Moon and end the Seasons. What he really wants is someone who will open the Gate for his purposes.”

You understand the players now, if not the totality of the game. You frown. “So which purpose would that be? Transformation? Status quo?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Suppose not.” You rub a hand over your locs, which you’ve retwisted recently. “I guess that’s why he’s trying to get Castrima to kick out all its roggas?”

“Yes. He’ll find a way to make you do what he wants, Essun, if he can. If he can’t… you’re no use to him. Worse. You’re the enemy.”

You sigh with the weariness of the Earth, and do not reply other than to nod and walk away. I am so afraid as I watch you leave.

As you have in other moments of despair, you go to Alabaster.

There’s not much left of him anymore. Since he gave up his legs he spends his days in a drugged stupor, tucked up against Antimony like a pup nursing its mother. Sometimes you don’t ask for lessons when you come to see him. That’s a waste, because you’re pretty sure the only reason he’s forced himself to keep living is so that he can pass on the art of global destruction to you. He’s caught you at it a few times: You’ve woken up curled next to his nest to find him gazing down at you. He doesn’t chide you for it. Probably doesn’t have the strength to chide. You’re grateful.