A Phoenix First Must Burn Read online

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020

  A Phoenix First Must Burn copyright © 2020 by Patrice Caldwell

  “When Life Hands You a Lemon Fruitbomb” copyright © 2020 by Amerie Mi Marie Nicholson

  “Gilded” copyright © 2020 by Elizabeth Acevedo

  “Wherein Abigail Fields Recalls Her First Death and, Subsequently, Her Best Life” copyright © 2020 by Rebecca Roanhorse

  “The Rules of the Land” copyright © 2020 by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “A Hagiography of Starlight” copyright © 2020 by Sumayyah Daud

  “Melie” copyright © 2020 by Justina Ireland

  “The Goddess Provides” copyright © 2020 by L.L. McKinney

  “Hearts Turned to Ash” copyright © 2020 by Dhonielle Clayton

  Introduction and “Letting the Right One In” copyright © 2020 by Patrice Caldwell

  “Tender-Headed” copyright © 2020 by Danny Lore

  “Kiss the Sun” copyright © 2020 by Ibi Zoboi

  “The Actress” copyright © 2020 by Danielle Paige

  “The Curse of Love” copyright © 2020 by Ashley Woodfolk

  “All the Time in the World” copyright © 2020 by Charlotte Nicole Davis

  “The Witch’s Skin” copyright © 2020 by Karen Strong

  “Sequence” copyright © 2020 by J. Marcelle Corrie

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  Ebook ISBN 9781984835666

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  TO OCTAVIA & TONI.

  THANK YOU.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  INTRODUCTION

  Patrice Caldwell

  WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU A LEMON FRUITBOMB

  Amerie

  GILDED

  Elizabeth Acevedo

  WHEREIN ABIGAIL FIELDS RECALLS HER FIRST DEATH AND, SUBSEQUENTLY, HER BEST LIFE

  Rebecca Roanhorse

  THE RULES OF THE LAND

  Alaya Dawn Johnson

  A HAGIOGRAPHY OF STARLIGHT

  Somaiya Daud

  MELIE

  Justina Ireland

  THE GODDESS PROVIDES

  L.L. McKinney

  HEARTS TURNED TO ASH

  Dhonielle Clayton

  LETTING THE RIGHT ONE IN

  Patrice Caldwell

  TENDER-HEADED

  Danny Lore

  KISS THE SUN

  Ibi Zoboi

  THE ACTRESS

  Danielle Paige

  THE CURSE OF LOVE

  Ashley Woodfolk

  ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

  Charlotte Nicole Davis

  THE WITCH’S SKIN

  Karen Strong

  SEQUENCE

  J. Marcelle Corrie

  A Note from the Editor

  About the Contributors

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  Patrice Caldwell

  When I was fourteen, a family friend gifted me a copy of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed. I still remember that moment. The Black woman on the front cover. The used-paperback smell. The way I held it close like it carried within it the secrets of many universes.

  I devoured it and all of her others. I found myself in her words. And I’m not the only one.

  It seems only fitting that the title of this anthology comes from Butler’s Parable of the Talents, a novel that is ever relevant.

  The full quote is “In order to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix first must burn.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Storytelling is the backbone of my community. It is in my blood.

  My parents raised me on stories of real-life legends like Queen Nzinga of Angola, Harriet Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, and Angela Davis. Growing up in the American South, my world was full of stories, of traditions and superstitions—like eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day for luck or “jumping the broom” on your wedding day. Raised on a diet of Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Star Wars, I preferred creating and exploring fictional universes to living in my real one.

  But whenever I went to the children’s section of the library to discover more tales, the novels featuring characters who looked like me were, more often than not, rooted in pain set amid slavery, sharecropping, or segregation. Those narratives are important, yes. But because they were the only ones offered, I started to wonder, Where is my fantasy, my future? Why don’t Black people exist in speculative worlds?

  Too often media focuses on our suffering. Too often we are portrayed as victims. But in reality, we advocate for and save ourselves long before anyone else does, from heroes my parents taught me of to recent ones like Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the Black women who founded Black Lives Matter.

  Malcolm X said, “The most neglected person in America is the Black Woman.” I believe this is even more true for my fellow queer siblings, and especially for those identifying as trans and as gender nonconforming. We are constantly under attack.

  And yet still we rise from our own ashes.

  We never accept no.

  With each rebirth comes a new strength.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Black women are phoenixes.

  We are given lemons and make lemonade.

  So are the characters featured in this collection of stories.

  These sixteen stories highlight Black culture, folktales, strength, beauty, bravery, resistance, magic, and hope. They will take you from a ship carrying teens who are Earth’s final hope for salvation to the rugged wilderness of New Mexico’s frontier. They will introduce you to a revenge-seeking hairstylist, a sorcerer’s apprentice, and a girl whose heart is turning to ash. And they will transport you to a future where all outcomes can be predicted by the newest tech, even matters of the heart.

  Though some of these stories contain sorrow, they ultimately are full of hope. Sometimes you have to shed who you were to become who you are.

  As my parents used to remind me, Black people have our pain, but our futures are limitless.

  Let us, together, embrace our power.

  Let us create our own worlds.

  Let us thrive.

  And so our story begins . . .

  WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU A LEMON FRUITBOMB

  By Amerie

  When I was ten, the orcs dropped out of a clear summer-blue sky and landed in the middle of Central Park. They were in something that looked like one of our ships, only a lot bigger with a lot less attention to aesthetic. I was at home in Brooklyn, sitting at the kitchen table playing cards with my uncle Junior and Cynthia IV. She wasn’t playing because that capability was broken, and I was just reintroducing myself for the third time in twenty minutes, thanks to her facial recognition being shot. Yet another concession my uncle had
to deal with, her being noncertified preowned AI and whatnot.

  Anyway, on the wall we watched as more of these ships came down all over the world, looking like the latest publicity stunt for some rapper’s album, only they were shooting people with laser guns and their victims didn’t look like extras. They were cabbies and women with shopping bags and kids with hover soles and shawarma-eating pedestrians and police officers and foreign tourists with old-school point-and-shoot camera phones and not one of them was getting up.

  Afterward, Uncle June covered the windows with foil, baked me his famous miniature sweet potato pies, and spent the rest of the day holding me under one arm, as if I were a package he’d sworn to keep safe, which, really, I sort of was.

  After half a week, Uncle June ventured outside every day, patrolling the neighborhood in his Cadillac, riding farther and farther out, searching for anyone who might need help. You can’t keep doing that, I’d say, but we both knew what I was really saying: Keep this up, and one day you won’t come back. But he’d shake his head. Lil Bit, you know I can’t stay up in here while people out there need food, water, a ride, a shoulder. One time I blocked the door. You can’t save the world, Uncle June! And he paused long enough for me to think that maybe I’d gotten through. But then he shrugged. You do what you can, Lil Bit. He grabbed his homemade first aid kit and the plastic containers he’d filled with tap water and nudged me out of the way and didn’t come back all day.

  Not long after that, we got a call from Uncle June’s aunt’s best friend, Judith. She and her prayer circle were having a hard time. They were a handful of old ladies who didn’t have any family (read: protection), and Judith begged Uncle June to come down to Baltimore and help. The orcs hadn’t brought their killing spree down there yet, but there’d been several break-ins. It took him a while, but seeing as there weren’t as many living people to help around the neighborhood, he agreed. I think leaving New York had a lot to do with me, with the promise he made my dad. Dad never would’ve expected me to be in the latest sneakers or have the latest neuralnet upgrade, but Uncle June and I both knew that at the very least, Dad would’ve expected his brother to keep me alive.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  What I do way out here in the boonies of space means the difference between life and death for my uncle. I’ll get something, Uncle June, I promise.

  I’ve just thirty minutes ago finished patrolling the perimeter of Savior One. I sped around in a gleaming pod, blending in as much as a white washing machine amongst a heap of ashes as I swiveled my head to peer through the domed glass of the two-seater, eyes going 360 while my hands itched for my rifle. We’ve been here twenty-six days (more like one and a half Earth months), and forget finding a metropolis or orc city—we haven’t found a single campsite. But we know they’re burrowed somewhere in this watery ghost planet.

  Now I’m sitting in the orc prison, the dim light of a distant red giant seeping through the tiny cell window. I’m glad to have finished my patrol before dark; I much prefer being indoors over being outside, where a swamp the size of an ocean is interrupted only by patches of blood-red grass and black, prickly trees and islands of bushes that look nightmarish under the reddish light of the sun and worse under the bloodlight of the double moons.

  We sit silently at a metal table, Orc #176 cuffed to a chair, watching me as I wait for my neuralnet translation program to load. As usual, the speaker that plays our translations sits between us. Once the program sends a signal from my implant to my cerebral cortex, the light on the speaker turns green and I clear my throat. Fourteen other translators have managed to squeeze out at least a name from their orcs, though nothing else of importance. Yet.

  “Your name?” I say.

  A pause, and from the speaker comes a voice that isn’t my own: “Yan mayun.”

  I think the orc is young. Though it sits, I can tell it stands about six foot five—a bit smaller than the others—and there are no greys threaded through its long, braided hair, but its shoulders are impressively broad; the whites of its red eyes shine a brilliant blue-white instead of yellow, and its grey, folded skin is smooth and supple. A hint of moisture—its viscosity somewhere between snail slime and nutri-gel—shines from a few of its folds. Seeing the aliens off-screen and, like now, in person . . . there’s something a little less orc-ish about them. Something about their eyes.

  Disconcertingly human.

  I ask it another standard question, arguably the most important: “Where are the others?” Wayun go zi?

  Every orc in our custody was captured on Earth and brought with us to this creepy place, and if we’ve learned anything, it’s that their favorite—and usually only—reply is silence. I’ve always had a feeling it knows we’re being watched, studied: it’s observing me, I’m observing it, and the interrogator, via the grain-sized camera on the ceiling, observes the both of us from another room.

  “What is your specialization? . . . Have you or any others worked covertly with any Earth government in the past?”

  It won’t answer and I want to throw my boot into its chest. Instead, I swallow. Take a breath. Gotta stay calm, despite my brain conjuring the image of Uncle June lying dead in the street. “How large is your fleet?”

  Back on Earth, we captured a few of their ships, and it didn’t take long for our engineers to figure out their systems. According to all the alien vessels, their origin was this here planet, six hundred light-years away. Now we’re the ones who’ve dropped in on them, but . . .

  “Where are the others?”

  I run through the list of questions the brass wants us to ask, but question after question, the orc gives me nothing. I continue down the list even as my body shakes and I resist the urge to cry. I feel my chance to save Uncle June slipping through my fingers.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  I set down my tray and take a seat beside Santos.

  Santos and I joined the United Defense League—the international military created in response to the alien crisis—when we were sixteen, but our paths didn’t cross until a year later, when we signed up for Mission Savior. Nearly a third of the soldiers that make up the UDL are teens like us. Child soldiers. No one could decide whether or not that was a good thing. But the way I saw it, tailgates and prom and grad caps in the air weren’t going to be part of my generation’s future anyway.

  Not that Santos ever had any of that in her future; she’s one of those super-smart girls who skipped high school and went straight to MIT.

  I haven’t seen her for a couple of days and she’s got dark circles under her soft, hazel-flecked eyes. Her canned peaches and peanut butter crackers are untouched, but there are about ten Fruitbomb wrappers littering her tray. She’s been hoarding Fruitbombs since the week the orcs touched down on Earth, and up to now has maintained a one-every-few-days rule.

  “OK,” I say, “what’s up?”

  Santos unwraps a pink Fruitbomb and bites into it with all the joy of hurling in a space suit. She whispers, “I don’t want to torture people.”

  “You mean the orcs.”

  “They have nothing in common with the orcs in those ridiculous movies.”

  “First,” I say, “flawed though they may be, those films are classic—”

  “You never even read the books.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  Santos huffs and looks away, and I try to figure out what’s wrong. It could be the predicament we’re in: communication with Earth unexpectedly ceased the millisecond we went through the wormhole. Twenty-six days later, no one on Earth knows what’s happening here, and no one this side of the hole knows what’s going on there.

  But then Santos yawns and I guess her problem’s something closer to home.

  “I told you you shouldn’t have taken that prison detail,” I say, digging into my bowl of UDL Protein Medley 2.

  Between patro
l duty and translating and prison detail, she can’t be sleeping much. Plus, she’s always volunteering to help the technicians and coders with the Earth transmissions, which is how I know about the comms problem in the first place. Santos is doing all she can to increase her chances of getting her mom, sister, and baby cousin into Sanctum.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, “your orc will start talking soon.”

  Santos tosses a furtive glance about the mess hall. “I’ve spoken to a few of them, actually. During prison detail.”

  “One of those things just struck up a conversation?”

  “No. I— The point is, they’re not what you think. They have a rich history, and—”

  “Are you serious?”

  Santos sighs exaggeratedly and slides a slice of peach into her mouth. She’s got full lips and that smooth, dark-brown skin that can make a girl forget herself. A teasin’ sip, what my uncle would call it. Back on Earth when he’d see a woman in a park, one who got no time for nobody, sashayin’ through the city heat like a mirage to a man dyin’ o’ thirst.

  There’d be only the slightest hint of sadness in Uncle June’s voice.

  Thirst is right, I’d say to him before rolling my eyes, because Thirsty June is what my dad used to call him, and my uncle would chuckle and say, Girl, please, and knock his knuckles against my head while continuing to watch the lady walk down the street.

  That was before, when there were NYC streets to walk on.

  “Santos,” I say, “if they felt for us half as much as you do for them, we wouldn’t have needed to cross the galaxy in the first place. Let’s just stick to our objective. The interrogators torture. We translate.”

  There are translation programs for every single language and dialect on Earth, and though I didn’t expect them to figure out how to translate the orcs’ language overnight, it didn’t occur to me that no existing program would work. Turns out only a few of us in the UDL have the brain chemistry that can pair with a program to decode the orc language at all. We watched news feeds, paying close attention to the words the orcs shouted to one another; we watched their mouths move; we observed their body language. All this information was surveyed, diced up into 1s and 0s, and before long a relatively crude translation program was developed.