N. Jemisin - The Awakened Kingdom

Remember waaaaay back at the beginning of the story when I told you about EXISTENCE and MAELSTROM and NOTHINGNESS? And I told you the nothingness is the scariest part because at least if existence kills you there is something, and at least if the Maelstrom kills you there was something, but if the nothing gets you then it is like you never were in the first place?

Oh, I forgot that part. Sorry! OK, if the nothing kills you then you become nothing. You go away, from whereness and whatness and thenness. You stop being. You never were. Nobody will even get the griefs, because there was never anything to remember. Understand?

I don’t know why not. I explained it fine.

Anyway, that is what is in Ia . He is negation; not just the end of something but the never-was of it. That was how he’d made the bad thing I’d done in the market go away; he made it never-be. He looked at me and suddenly I saw beneath the mortal shell he wore, and the fuzzy outline of him that had warned me against looking further. Now he let me see past the shell, and all the nothing of him was right there . Waiting. So scary that even the mortals nearby stumbled and looked around and started walking wider circles around us, with big scared looks on their faces. They could feel the scary, same as me, even if they could not see the scary of him or know what it meant. They could feel that the scary was super really extra mad.

“Mortals indeed die often, relatively speaking,” he said. I was shaking. I was so scared. “So do godlings. So many, really, that I’ve forgotten.”

I made my voice very small, and myself—the me that was me, not just the me he could see—small, too. “I didn’t mean I was going to kill anybody,” I said. “Um, anybody else , I mean. I was just asking!”

“Some questions are dangerous, Sibling. It’s time you learned that.”

Oh. Oh. So scared. “H-how will I know which ones I shouldn’t ask if I don’t ask them?”

“That comes with wisdom. Which you can gain anywhere else , with no one the worse off for your fumblings as you grow.”

“That’s not true!” I said. And then I stopped and clapped my hands over my mouth because, um. I hadn’t meant to say that. I hadn’t wanted to get in trouble again.

Ia is very scary, but Ia is also very wise, because Ia is really old. So he sort of squinched his eyes at me, and I knew that he knew something about me I didn’t know. “Hmm.”

“Huh?”

Ia didn’t say anything. But right then he took hold of the world and folded it and pulled me along without bothering to ask if I wanted to go. I was so scared that I didn’t complain, because I didn’t want to be nothinged. The place we went to was a between-place. When the world is folded and we are not here or there but both, that is between. I saw the market and another place, gray and stony, overlapping. Ia stopped us there, where it was suddenly quiet because mortals cannot be between, and where we could talk like gods without doing any damage.

“What isn’t true?” he asked. I didn’t think he was mad anymore. He seemed thoughtful instead, and when he folded his arms to listen I thought maybe he was really listening now, and not just trying to get rid of me.

So I took a deep breath and said everything the best way I could. “I can’t learn wisdom anywhere else,” I said, because suddenly I didn’t just want to stay in the mortal realm, I needed to. I knew it the way mortals with teeth know how to bite. “This place is, is… it’s right. I can feel it making me better even now! And, and I know you don’t want me to be here, even Naha told me not to come, but—but I have to stay. If I go back—” Suddenly I was unhappy. My eyes tried to get wet again, but I didn’t let them because I didn’t want him to think I was doing the meltdown thing again. It was really hard not to cry, though. I bit my lip instead. I hurt all over! It was worse than being scared.

Ia lifted one yellow eyebrow. “Go on.”

“I was supposed to be Sieh. But I’m not Sieh. And I tried to be Sieh, except Sieh is dead so I mean I wanted to be the space that was Sieh but I didn’t fit .” I was babbling, still trying not to cry. “And everybody knows there needs to be a Sieh, the planets and suns keep calling for him, it’s all wrong without him, but I’m not the one, see? I asked Papa Tempa and he said I should be myself and that the Three are happy with me but I know it’s not completely true. They have grief over him, and I’m not enough to make it go away. He was so special, and I’m… just… me.”

There weren’t any other words I knew that would explain it, not even in our language. So I just stood there, looking at the blurred ground and wishing I could go to the wall of torn stars and cry where nobody would see me.

But Ia got really quiet for a moment. I didn’t know why. He said, “You embody some aspect of mortality, then.”

“Maybe?” I could only shrug. “Doesn’t everybody?”

“Some of us predate mortality, Sibling. Our natures are those of existence itself—or things beyond existence.” Yeah, like nothing . Ia was probably one of the really old ones, from back when the Three first learned how to make children. Like Sieh had been.

“Very well,” Ia said, after a long time that felt longer. “You may remain.”

“Really?” I caught my breath and bounced a little, excited. “You mean it?”

“Provided,” he said, and he was all sharp and just a little mad again, “that you take the greatest of care never to cause harm to any mortal.”

“I won’t! I promise I’ll never hurt—”

He flicked his hand. “You cannot promise that. You don’t know yourself yet; you may be unable to help it. And there is danger in any interaction between gods and mortals, for both parties. This is not a safe realm, Sibling. But beyond that, I must insist that you try to avoid harm.”

I tried to stand really tall, which was how I knew mortals showed each other they really meant a thing, but it didn’t work because I was shaped like a little girl and he was twice as big. “I promise to try ,” I said. “I’ll try hard! I don’t want to ever hurt mortals like I did before.”

“If you do,” said Ia, scary again, “you will answer for it, to more than just me. Do you understand?” After I nodded hard, Ia unfolded the world so that we finally stood firmly in the gray place.

The gray place was a thing mortals called a HOUSE, which is what they used to keep their flesh safe and dry and comfortable. Some mortals carried their houses around with them, or made new ones wherever they slept, but human-mortals made places that stayed. (Sometimes they moved around, though, and swapped houses between them.) This house was bigger than the ones around it, and it had lots of space inside and a wide flat thing on top. The wide flat thing was meant to keep rain outside, but someone had also put furniture and a frame and drapes on it, so maybe it was also for living, too. The frame and drapes made a shady place underneath, and in this shady place were two mortals, who looked at us in surprise. I was surprised, too, so I asked Ia without words where we were and why.

“We are in the house of Fahno dau she Miu tai wer Tellomi kanna Enulai,” Ia said aloud. “Someone you will need to know, if you mean to stay here.”

In the mortals’ language her name meant that Fahno was the daughter of Miu and of the clan Tellomi, and she was also part of some group of people called enulai. I didn’t know what a clan or an enulai was—maybe like niwwah and elontid and mnasat, which were the different kinds of godlings? Maybe a family, like all us gods? If so, I liked that she was a daughter. I was a daughter, too! Maybe we could be friends.