Decision Point (ARC) Read online

  am?”

  “You’re Sankofa, the one who sleeps at death’s door,” Edgar

  said. He eyed her as he slowly took a sliced fried plantain.

  Sankofa took a few of the oily slices, too. They were sweet and

  tangy. Edgar seemed to relax when he saw that she enjoyed the

  same food as him.

  “You should get a plate,” Sankofa said. Before Edgar could

  look around, the young woman placed a plate before each of

  them. The girl took all of two plantain slices and the boy loaded

  his plate with plantain and roasted goat meat. Sankofa liked the

  boy.

  “You don’t look as ugly as they say you look,” he said.

  Sankofa laughed. “Really?”

  “No,” he said, biting into some goat meat. “Your outfit

  reminds me of my mom.”

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  “Reminds me of mine, too,” Sankofa said. “That’s why I

  wear it.”

  They ate for a moment.

  “So what’d you get for Christmas?” she asked.

  “We haven’t opened presents yet,” he said, laughing. “It’s

  Christmas Eve.”

  “Oh.” She fixed her eye on the girl. “Ye,” she said.

  The girl jumped at the sound of her name.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Sankofa said.

  “How do I know that?”

  Sankofa frowned, annoyed. “You’re not very good

  company.”

  Edgar leaned forward. “We only hear about you from our

  cousins,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “So is it true? Can you …”

  “Can I what?”

  He glanced at his sister. She had stopped eating and was

  frowning deeply at him.

  “I can,” Sankofa said. “You want to see?”

  The party adults moaned. “This boy is an idiot,” she heard

  one of them hiss. “You don’t tempt the devil!”

  “Charli, make him shut up!” someone else whispered. “He’s

  going to get us all killed.”

  Sankofa glanced at the adults and then looked piercingly at

  the kids before her. She smirked. “Turn off the lights.” The boy

  jumped up, ran, and shut the lights off. She smiled when she

  heard him snatch his arm from his protesting mother and take his

  seat across from her.

  In the past, it had been difficult to control. And there had

  been terrible consequences. But not any longer. Since she’d

  turned thirteen, months ago, she could keep herself from killing

  by accident, as long as she was not in pain. It was like flexing a

  muscle.

  Right there in the darkness, she glowed a dim green. Ye

  whimpered. Sankofa could see tears freely rolling down the girl’s

  cheek. The boy’s eyes were wide and he had an enormous grin

  on his face. “Real life ‘remote control’!” he whispered. “Wow!”

  She relaxed herself and her glow faded and then winked out.

  Someone flipped the lights on.

  “What is this town called?” she asked getting up.

  “Nsawam,” Edgar said.

  “Relax, Ye,” she said. “You won’t see me here again.”

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  Ye wiped the tears from her face, then got up and ran out of

  the room. Sankofa and Edgar looked at each other.

  “So where are you going next?” Edgar asked.

  “Accra,” she said. She smiled, glad that he had not run. She

  hated when that happened. It always made her feel that ache she

  worked so hard to mute.

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know yet. I just have a feeling. But I’ve

  been walking on foot for a month.”

  “You really can’t ride in cars?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s so cool,” he whispered.

  “Not really.”

  “Are you a child of the d—”

  “No,” she snapped. The conversation ended there.

  *

  She left the house an hour later having eaten her fill, taken

  some leftovers, and showered. She’d traded No Orchids for Miss

  Blandish for another paper novel Edgar insisted she read titled

  Mouse Guard. He said he’d gotten it from the trip his family

  recently took to the UK and that it was one of the only paper

  books he owned. She hadn’t wanted to take such a precious item

  from him but he insisted.

  She now wore a brand new blue and white wrapper, matching

  top and headband. She walked with her head up and looked into

  the night with the confidence of a leopard. She liked to imagine

  that she was an Ashanti princess walking the moonlit road

  toward her long lost queendom. If she had to guess, her mother

  would have been proud of the way she chose to carry herself …

  despite it all.

  There were footsteps behind her. She whirled around. It was

  the gateman from the house she’d just left. The one who had

  looked at her as if she were a smear of feces on some child’s

  underwear.

  “Evil witch!” he cried. “Obayifo!” He was sweating and

  weeping. “Kwaku Agya. Do you know this name? Do you

  remember my brother’s name? Does the child of the devil

  remember the names of those it kills?”

  “I know the name,” she said. Sankofa remembered all the

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  names.

  Surprise and then rage rippled across his face. He raised

  something black in his hand.

  Blam!

  Time always slowed for her during these kinds of moments.

  The misty white smoke plumed from the gun’s muzzle. Then the

  bullet, this one golden, short and dented. It flew out of the gun’s

  muzzle followed by a larger plume of white smoke. The bullet

  rotated counter-clockwise as it traveled toward her. She watched

  this as the heat bloomed from her like a round mushroom. During

  times like this, it was near involuntary. From somewhere deep

  within her soul, a primal part of her gave permission. That part

  of her had been on the earth, walking the soils of the lands known

  as Ghana for millennia.

  The night lit up.

  The empty road.

  The trees.

  The houses and huts nearby.

  The eyes of the silent witnesses.

  The gnats, mosquitoes, flies, grasshoppers, beetles, some in

  flight, some not. The hiding, always observing spiders. The birds

  in the trees. The lizards on the walls. And the grasscutter crossing

  the road a few feet away. Washed in light that did not come from

  the moon.

  The corona of soft green light domed out from Sankofa. To

  her, it felt like the shiver of a fever. It left a coppery smell in her

  nose. The bullet exploded feet from her with a gentle pop! The

  molten pieces flew into the flesh of a palm tree beside the road.

  Sankofa shined like a moon who knew it was a sun. The light

  came from her skin. It poured from her, strong and controlled. It

  washed over everything but it was only hungry for the man who

  shot at her. It hadn’t always been this way. In the past, her light’s

  appetite was all-enc
ompassing.

  The man stumbled back. The gun in his hand dropped to the

  ground. Then he dropped, too.

  Sankofa walked up to him, still glowing strong. She knelt

  down, looking into the gateman’s dying eyes. “Your brother’s

  name was Kwaku Samuel Agya and his cancer was so advanced

  that it had eaten away most of his internal organs. I did not cause

  this cancer, gateman. I happened to walk into the village when

  he was ready to die. He asked me to take him. His wife asked me

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  Decision Points

  to take him. His son asked me to take him. His best friend asked

  me to take him.” Tears fell from her eyes as she spoke. Then she

  pushed away the pain in her chest. She muted it. Her tears dried

  into trails of salt as her skin heated. She stood up. “When was the

  last time you spoke to your brother, gateman?”

  His skin crackled and peeled as it burned orange. It

  blackened, flaking off into dust. His entrails spilled out in a hot

  steaming mass when his skin and abdominal flesh burned away.

  Then that burned, too. The muscle and fat from his limps flared

  up and then fell to ash, as well. There was little smoke but the air

  began to smell like burning leaves. As always, a mysterious wind

  came and swept away the ash and soon all that was left was one

  bone. It dried, snapped, splintered, and then cooled. Someone

  would find it.

  She turned away, opened her bag and brought out the jar of

  thick yellow shea butter. She scooped out a dollop. She rubbed

  it in her hands until it softened and melted. Then she rubbed it

  into the skin on her arms, legs, neck, face and belly. She sighed

  as her dry skin absorbed the natural moisturizer. Then she walked

  into the night as if she were her own moon.

  *

  Nnedi Okorafor's books include Lagoon (a British Science

  Fiction Association Award finalist for Best Novel), Who Fears

  Death (a World Fantasy Award winner for Best Novel), Kabu

  Kabu (a Publisher's Weekly Best Book for Fall 2013), Akata

  Witch (an Amazon.com Best Book of the Year), Zahrah the

  Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African

  Literature), and The Shadow Speaker (a CBS Parallax Award

  winner). Her adult novel The Book of Phoenix (prequel to Who

  Fears Death ) was released in May 2015; the New York Times

  called it a “triumph”. Her novella Binti was released in late

  September 2015 and her young adult novel Akata Witch 2:

  Breaking Kola will be released in 2016. Nnedi holds a PhD in

  literature/creative writing and is an associate professor at the

  University at Buffalo, New York (SUNY). She splits her time

  between Buffalo and Chicago with her daughter Anyaugo and

  family. Learn more about Nnedi at Nnedi.com.

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  Next, award winning author Jennifer Brozek takes us to the

  future and a world where families live with the fear of being

  ripped apart by Takers, who choose children and taken them

  away at a certain again. Is that a gift or a curse? No one is

  certain.

  T H E P R I N C E O F A R T E M I S V

  By Jennifer Brozek

  “A princess is a servant to all of her people. She’s supposed to

  care for them and never let them down. Ever,” Lanteri said.

  Hart nodded at his little sister. “What’s the first rule of being

  a princess?”

  “Never, ever abandon your people—for they need you more

  than you know,” she said in a tone so serious that it would have

  indicated satire if it had not come from an eight-year-old’s

  mouth.

  “You’re a very good princess.”

  “I’m trying.” She smiled at her older brother. “But

  sometimes, it’s hard.”

  “I know. As Dad says, ‘Nothing good …’”

  “‘… ever comes easy,’” they both finished together and then

  grinned.

  Lanteri bent over her pixel board and continued to draw her

  idea of the perfect castle. She drew each line slowly, dragging

  the pixel pen over the board. Whenever a line was not exactly as

  she wanted it, she turned the pixel pen over to erase the offending

  pixels, before going back to her masterpiece. She had been

  working on this particular picture for weeks.

  Decision Points

  Hart watched her, envying both her ability to manipulate the

  pixel board and her imagination. He, himself, had never had her

  artistic talent and had not drawn anything since that night five

  years ago … since Toor was Taken. Though only thirteen, Hart

  felt old. He felt like his parents must feel after a long day in the

  fields of harvesting the purpuran flower buds. He hoped that

  Lanteri would never have to feel the way he did right now.

  Especially as the double moons of Artemis V readied themselves

  to rise in their annual double-full arc tonight.

  The opening and closing of the front door signaled the arrival

  of their parents. Neither child moved from their respective places

  in their shared bedroom. The conversation between their parents,

  or argument as it seemed to be, echoed through the small

  Company-provided house.

  “They all look at me like she’s already been Taken,” Hart

  heard his mother say. He could imagine the distressed flush of

  his mother’s face. “We’ve got to do something.”

  “The Company doesn’t give a damn what happens to us. As

  long as the purpuran flowers are harvested and the royal dye is

  made, they don’t care.” In his mind’s eye, Hart could see his

  father’s drawn face and strength failing in his old man’s body.

  “We’ve got to do something. Anything. Stop the purpuran

  shipments. Get their attention.” His mother’s voice had softened

  to the whine of a wounded animal. “I can’t go through this

  again.”

  “Saneri, the last time we tried something like that the

  Company almost starved us to death. The only thing that grows

  on this mudball is the purpuran flower. The Company doesn’t

  care. The empire doesn’t care. The empress herself can’t know

  of this and even if she did, would she care? No. I don’t think so.

  There are no rescuers. No brave guardsmen. No heroic Hedari.

  No stranger SLINGing in from another galaxy who’ll come

  roaring to the rescue. We only have us to depend on. That’s how

  it’s always been.”

  “I can’t go through this again. I can’t lose her.”

  Hart reached over and closed the bedroom door to shut out

  their parents’ pain and worry, and most of all, their helplessness.

  He hoped Lanteri had not heard their parents’ despair but, as all

  hopes were dashed on Artemis V, this one was too.

  “In my world,” Lanteri said without looking up from her

  pixel drawing of a castle in a beautiful sunny landscape, “there

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  are no Takers and no one’s afraid of losing their children.”

  *

  “I’m going to Nori’s,” Lante
ri called as she headed out the

  door.

  “Wait!” Saneri called.

  Hart, sitting at the kitchen table, heard the panic in his

  mother’s voice and hoped Lanteri would not. He also hoped that

  their mother would not ground Lanteri on what might be her last

  day alive.

  Lanteri stopped, turned and gave her mother an impatient

  look. “What?”

  “Uh, don’t forget your coat.”

  “I’m just going next door, Mom.”

  “Don’t you sass me. Go get your coat or you’re not going

  anywhere.”

  Lanteri sighed and stomped back to the bedroom to get her

  coat. Hart listened as their mother paced, then fussed with

  Lanteri’s coat. “You be back before dark. You hear me?”

  “It’s not like it’s gonna get all that dark with the double full

  moon, Mom.”

  Hart smiled at the defiance in his little sister’s voice.

  “Lanteri …” Their mother’s voice had a warning note in it

  that promised pain and punishment if she were not obeyed.

  Another sigh. “Yes, ma’am. Before dark. Can I go now?”

  Lanteri asked.

  There was a pause before their mother’s reluctant answer

  came, “Yes. Ok. Go.”

  Hart knew their mother would not make that kind of fuss

  about him if he wanted to go over to a friend’s house today. It

  made him hurt a little more inside. He waited for his mother to

  come to the kitchen.

  Saneri was wiping at her face when she entered. Seeing her

  son there surprised her. “Hart? What’s wrong?”

  “You look at her as if she’s already been Taken.” His voice

  was flat and full of anger.

  Saneri blinked at her eldest in shock and realization. Shock

  turned to anger in a tightening of her lips. “You don’t know what

  it’s like.”

  “I lost Toor, too. He was my brother. My twin. He was closer

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  to me than you. You act like … like … you’re the only one who

  lost him.”

  The tightened lips turned into a white line while bright

  splotches of red shone on Saneri’s cheeks. “Don’t you dare!”

  “No, don’t you dare!” Hart stood up, his chair falling away

  from him to clatter on the floor. “We all lost him when he was