N. Jemisin - The Fifth Season

Schaffa lifts Damaya onto a horse bigger than any she’s ever seen, a big glossy bay with a long neck, and then Schaffa’s in the saddle behind her, tucking the blanket around her legs and shoes so she won’t chafe or get chilblains, and then they are away.

“Don’t look back,” Schaffa advises. “It’s easier that way.” So she doesn’t. Later, she will realize he was right about this, too.

Much later, though, she will wish that she had done it anyway.

* * *

[obscured] the icewhite eyes, the ashblow hair, the filtering nose, the sharpened teeth, the salt-split tongue.

— Tablet Two, “The Incomplete Truth,” verse eight

YOU’RE STILL TRYING TO DECIDE who to be. The self you’ve been lately doesn’t make sense anymore; that woman died with Uche. She’s not useful, unobtrusive as she is, quiet as she is, ordinary as she is. Not when such extraordinary things have happened.

But you still don’t know where Nassun is buried, if Jija bothered to bury her. Until you’ve said farewell to your daughter, you have to remain the mother that she loved.

So you decide not to wait for death to come.

It is coming for you — perhaps not right now, but soon. Even though the big shake from the north missed Tirimo, everyone knows it should have hit. The sessapinae do not lie, or at least not with such jangling, nerve-racking, mind-screaming strength. Everyone from newborns to addled elders sessed that one coming. And by now, with refugees wandering down the road from less fortunate towns and villages — refugees who are all heading southward — the folk of Tirimo will have begun to hear stories. They will have noticed the sulfur on the wind. They will have looked up at the increasingly strange sky, and seen the change there as an ill omen. (It is.) Perhaps the headman, Rask, has finally sent someone over to see about Sume, the town in the next valley over. Most Tirimos have family there; the two towns have been trading goods and people for generations. Comm comes before all else, of course, but as long as nobody’s starving, kin and race can mean something, too. Rask can still afford to be generous, for now. Maybe.

And once the scouts return and report the devastation that you know they’ll find in Sume — and the survivors that you know they won’t find, or at least not in any great number — denial will no longer be possible. That will leave only fear. Frightened people look for scapegoats.

So you make yourself eat, this time carefully not thinking of other times and other meals with Jija and the kids. (Uncontrollable tears would be better than uncontrollable vomiting, but hey, you can’t choose your grief.) Then, letting yourself quietly out through Lerna’s garden door, you go back to your house. No one’s around, outside. They must all be at Rask’s waiting for news or duty assignments.

In the house, one of the storecaches hidden beneath the rugs holds the family’s runny-sack. You sit on the floor in the room where Uche was beaten to death, and there you sort through the sack, taking out anything you won’t need. The set of worn, comfortable travel-clothing for Nassun is too small; you and Jija put this pack together before Uche was born, and you’ve been neglectful in not refreshing it. A brick of dried fruit has molded over in fuzzy white; it might still be edible, but you’re not desperate enough for that. (Yet.) The sack contains papers that prove you and Jija own your house, and other papers showing that you’re current on your quartent taxes and were both registered Tirimo comm and Resistant use-caste members. You leave this, your whole financial and legal existence for the past ten years, in a little discarded pile with the moldy fruit.

The wad of money in a rubber wallet — paper, since there’s so much of it — will be irrelevant once people realize how bad things are, but until then it’s valuable. Good tinder once it’s not. The obsidian skinning knife that Jija insisted upon, and which you’re unlikely to ever use — you have better, natural weapons — you keep. Trade goods, or at least a visual warn-off. Jija’s boots can also be traded, since they’re in good condition. He’ll never wear them again, because soon you will find him, and then you will end him.

You pause. Revise that thought to something that better befits the woman you’ve chosen to be. Better: You will find him and ask him why he did what he did. How he could do it. And you will ask him, most importantly, where your daughter is.

Repacking the runny-sack, you then put it inside one of the crates Jija used for deliveries. No one will think twice of seeing you carry it around town, because until a few days ago you did so often, to help out Jija’s ceramics and tool-knapping business. Eventually it will occur to someone to wonder why you’re filling delivery orders when the headman is probably on the brink of declaring Seasonal Law. But most people will not think of it at first, which is what matters.

As you leave, you pass the spot on the floor where Uche lay for days. Lerna took the body and left the blanket; the blood splatters are not visible. Still, you do not look in that direction.

Your house is one of several in this corner of town, nestled between the southern edge of the wall and the town greenland. You picked the house, back when you and Jija decided to buy it, because it’s isolated on a narrow, tree-shrouded lane. It’s a straight run across the green to the town center, which Jija always liked. That was something you and he always argued about: You didn’t like being around other people more than necessary, while Jija was gregarious and restless, frustrated by silence—

The surge of absolute, grinding, head-pounding rage catches you by surprise. You have to stop in the doorway of your home, bracing your hand against the door frame and sucking in deep breaths so that you don’t start screaming, or perhaps stabbing someone (yourself?) with that damn skinning knife. Or worse, making the temperature drop.

Okay. You were wrong. Nausea isn’t so bad as a response to grief, comparatively speaking.

But you have no time for this, no strength for this, so you focus on other things. Any other things. The wood of the doorsill, beneath your hand. The air, which you notice more now that you’re outside. The sulfur smell doesn’t seem to be getting worse, at least for now, which is perhaps a good thing. You sess that there are no open earth vents nearby — which means this is coming from up north, where the wound is, that great suppurating rip from coast to coast that you know is there even though the travelers along the Imperial Road have only brought rumors of it so far. You hope the sulfur concentration doesn’t get much worse, because if it does people will start to retch and suffocate, and the next time it rains the creek’s fish will die and the soil will sour…

Yes. Better. After a moment you’re able to walk away from the house at last, your veneer of calm back firmly in place.

Not many people are out and about. Rask must have finally declared an official lockdown. During lockdown the comm’s gates are shut — and you guess by the people moving about near one of the wall watchtowers that Rask has taken the preemptive step of putting guards in place. That’s not supposed to happen till a Season is declared; privately you curse Rask’s caution. Hopefully he hasn’t done anything else that will make it harder for you to slip away.

The market is shut down, at least for the time being, so that no one will hoard goods or fix prices. A curfew starts at dusk, and all businesses that aren’t crucial for the protection or supply of the town are required to close. Everyone knows how things are supposed to go. Everyone has assigned duties, but many of these are tasks that can be done indoors: weaving storage baskets, drying and preserving all perishable food in the house, repurposing old clothing and tools. It’s all Imperially efficient and lore-letter, following rules and procedures that are simultaneously meant to be practical and to keep a large group of anxious people busy. Just in case.