Yoon Ha Lee - [BCS298 S01] Read online

  Nevertheless, while Essarala’s innate magic as a mer protected her from the crushing depths of the sea, and the variances in pressure, it gave her no such defense from a starship’s acceleration. As the starship blasted off for a destination whose name she didn’t know, she caught only the merest glimpse of her native ocean from above, and the glittering of sunlight on the waters, before she lost consciousness.

  Ssen apologized profusely once they had safely left the world’s gravity well. “I should have expected that you would need more protection,” they said, “and prepared your couch accordingly. I will teach you how to do that yourself, so this incident is not repeated in the future.”

  It wasn’t the only thing Ssen showed her. Essarala learned that Ssen usually took on the task of training new crew, partly because they had infinite patience, but partly because they never slept and could remain vigilant for the inevitable mistakes. She had cause to be glad of both traits, for she always had someone to listen when she despaired of achieving basic competence in her assigned tasks, and Ssen ensured that she would never put the ship in danger.

  From Ssen she learned that the ship had two propulsion systems, one used for short distances and landing on and departing from planets or starbases, and a fancier one that enabled it to travel near the speed of light. “The latter is the domain of the engineer-priests,” Ssen told her, “and unless you choose to become initiated in their mysteries, it will be of no particular concern to you. But you will need to study orbital mechanics, for everyone’s safety.”

  Over the passing days, weeks, months, Essarala grew proficient in putting on the spacesuit that Ssen designed for her and produced using the ship’s matter spinner. She only once forgot to check the oxygen tank, which Ssen lectured her gently about because it was a serious matter. As she grew in proficiency with the ship’s systems and the simple maintenance tasks that Ssen assigned to her, she started taking pride in her work, however simple. She started to sing at her work, songs of the sea to remind her of the home she’d left behind.

  In her leisure hours, she sat by the viewports of the starship and gazed at the stars streaking by. She saw wonders up close, from the dust-forges where stars are born to the hot glow of the accretion disks around black holes. She saw planets of different colors spinning like enchanted beads, and their diadems of moons. And all these visions reminded her of her sister Kiovasa, who had helped her attain her heart’s desire, and the fact that they were now parted; but she was not sorry, not yet.

  Next the starship visited a starbase to restock on supplies. While Essarala wasn’t present for the negotiations, given her lack of expertise, she helped Ssen stow the supplies in the ship’s hold. Despite the labor involved, she enjoyed figuring out how to fit the containers most efficiently into the available space. In the sea, she’d never had to worry about space before, but it was, of course, an ongoing concern in the confines of the ship.

  Afterwards, the captain gave the two of them permission to explore the station while the ship was docked. “You don’t mind my following you?” Essarala asked Ssen, for she wondered if they wanted some time to themself.

  “No one should have to brave a starbase alone on their first visit,” Ssen said. “Of course I don’t mind.” And they took Essarala to the starbase’s zero-gravity gardens with their fantastic floating plants and intoxicatingly perfumed flowers, and clusters of lanterns that changed color according to the designer’s whimsy. After that, Ssen introduced her to other pleasures, from restaurants that served crisp honeyed insects to lounges where people traded poetry new and ancient, from cafes where one could pet small furry aliens who told one’s fortune to monuments where spacers carved the names of those who had been lost to pirates, or radiation, or other hazards.

  Not least of all, Ssen took her to the observation deck of the starbase, where Essarala caught her breath at the sight of the stars all around them, as though everyone lived inside a constellation of splendors. Ssen told her the names of the brightest stars and the peoples who lived on their worlds and visits they had made in times past.

  At the end of these journeys, Ssen took Essarala aside in a quiet lounge, their expression serious. Essarala shivered with dread, for she feared that she’d performed so poorly aboard the ship that they were going to abandon her here. But Ssen hissed in concern when they smelled her fear and bought her a soothing cup of broth.

  “If you ever weary of life on our ship,” Ssen said, “we will find you a new home, or return you to your old one. This starbase, for instance. It’s known for its hospitality, and you could make a life here if you chose, not just with the skills you’ve learned with us, but with your singing.”

  Essarala knew she had a fine voice, like every mer. She hadn’t realized that Ssen had listened to her singing during her chores. “Do you wish for me to leave?” she asked in a small voice after taking a sip of broth.

  “Not at all,” Ssen said, their voice softening. “But you should always live on a ship because you’re there by choice, not because you’re out of options.”

  “I love the ship,” Essarala said. It was true. She loved its metal sleekness and the way it hummed when it accelerated or decelerated. She loved the views of whorled nebulae and globular clusters. She loved the starbase, too, with its vast exterior symmetries and asymmetries; the way it housed a variety of aliens even more diverse than those upon the ship. She could not imagine giving up her shipboard life, not yet.

  And if she dreamt sometimes of her sister’s kind smile, and the sea’s embrace, and the moving constellations of glowing jellyfish or the whale-sages’ vast chorales as they deliberated upon matters judicial, or what it had been like before she’d given up her koi-spotted tail to walk upon two legs—why, that was the price she had to pay, in exchange for this bounty.

  In the years to come, Essarala grew expert in the ways of life upon a ship, until she almost forgot what it had been like to live upon a single planet and no more. The starship visited other starbases, each more wondrous than the last, and paid calls to other worlds as well. By now, Essarala herself helped Ssen orient the ship’s newcomers and occasional guests, and she took great pleasure in sharing her hard-earned knowledge.

  Now at mess she knew all the crew by name, and the captain nodded to her in greeting when they passed each other. She knew the astrogator and her fondness for fruit preserves, and the engineer-priests with their incantations and calculations. She knew the ship’s pilot, the gunner who defended them against pirates, the cook. And they in their turn knew her, and sometimes, in moments of leisure, asked her to sing the songs of her world for them.

  Essarala learned to fly in skysuits in vast and turbulent gas planets, some of which had corrosive atmospheres. She saw twin sunsets over methane seas and meteor showers flung across brilliantine nighttime skies. She walked through forests of towering trees sharded through with crystal and breathed in the fragrance of flowers that bloomed only once a millennium. And she kept her promise, too: for every world she visited, she sang her sister’s name.

  Someday I will go back and tell her of the things I have seen, Essarala thought again and again. But not yet, not yet.

  But Ssen was not done teaching her, as expert as she had become in the starfarer’s life. Now that Essarala had mastered the pragmatic skills she needed to survive, and to contribute to the crew, Ssen sat with her during their spare hours and taught her theory. They started with the simplest principles of mechanics and chemistry, then progressed to special relativity.

  And it was in learning about relativity that Essarala finally understood the price that the witch beneath the waves had exacted from her—or, more accurately, warned her about.

  She looked at the equations, at the time dilation factor that had emerged from such deceptively simple premises: the constant speed of light, the fact that no inertial frame of reference was privileged over any other. In the years that she had spent away from home, decades upon decades had passed for her sister Kiovasa. And mers lived long,
but they were not—quite—immortal.

  Ssen saw Essarala clench her hands in distress and asked why.

  “I must return to my homeworld,” Essarala said. “However long it takes—but sooner is better. For I left unfinished business there, and I did not realize it until now.”

  “It is out of our way,” Ssen said, “but we can petition the captain. Even if we cannot take you there, we may be able to find another ship that can.”

  Indeed, the captain summoned Essarala to their stateroom. They listened attentively as Essarala explained her dilemma. “I will do whatever it takes to get back home,” she said. She feared it was already too late—but that, she would not say aloud, even to the captain who had so generously welcomed her to their crew.

  “It’s true that it’s a long way for us,” the captain said. “But we will make the detour, and we will wait as long as you need. I know what it’s like to be far from family.”

  Essarala bowed her head. “You won’t need to wait,” she said. “I will not be leaving my home again. Thank you. This is a kindness I cannot repay.”

  The captain’s crest stirred in the manner that Essarala had learned, by now, meant sympathy. “You are not the only one who gave up a lot in exchange for the long dream of stars,” they said. “We will miss you; but so does your family, I imagine.”

  “Thank you,” she said again, and left the captain’s stateroom a little easier of heart.

  The captain was as good as their word. They did not head straight back to Essarala’s homeworld, for they had trade contracts and obligations to keep, but they did guide the ship closer and closer to it, in a zigzag path. Essarala pored over the star-maps, dreaming of her return.

  One by one, the other members of the crew, whom Essarala had come to think of as friends over the course of her journey, stopped by to give her small gifts. These included fruit preserves from the astrogator (of course), circuit jewelry from the engineer-priests, petrified wood from a certain extinct forest on a certain museum world, and cubes that spindled out performances by radiant holographic puppets. Even the captain gave her a feather from their crest.

  Last of all came Ssen, teacher and companion. Ssen gave Essarala a bracelet of star-metal carved with the constellations of the night sky as seen from Essarala’s homeworld during that long-ago visit. “I will think of you,” Ssen said, “even if we never see you again.”

  “You have been the best of teachers,” Essarala said, quite overcome. “I will wear this always.”

  Ssen smiled their snakish smile, and that was that.

  All too soon, for her impatience, Essarala strapped herself into her couch for the landing on her homeworld. This time she didn’t require Ssen’s assistance, and this time she didn’t lose consciousness as the ship decelerated. The world came into view, a whorled marble of blue and green and violet and pearly streaks, and her breath hitched at its splendor; the old made new again.

  The ship touched down, and Essarala freed herself from the couch. “I hope it’s not too late,” she said to herself as she and Ssen made their way to the ramp.

  “There is only one way to find out,” Ssen replied. “Go, and be well.”

  Essarala’s feet met the shore, the same one where the ship had landed on its first voyage to this world. This time she wore a spacer’s suit with its magnetic boots. It had served her well in her time aboard the ship.

  She looked over the sea with its ever-crashing waves and the wheeling gulls, then took off the suit. “I won’t be needing this anymore,” she said to Ssen. “You can go ahead and recycle it.”

  Then Essarala waded out into the ocean, and as she did, koi-spotted scales grew to cover her legs and feet. With a last shuddering breath, she reclaimed the heritage that she had set aside in exchange for the stars and dived into the waters. As she did, her legs fused into a proper mer’s tail.

  Essarala hadn’t forgotten her promise to the witch, and besides, the witch might know where—if anywhere—to find her sister. So she swam deep, beyond the colorful coral reefs with their shy darting fishes, beyond the pods of dolphins, until she found the lanternfish that lit the way to the witch’s dwelling. The sea was cold and dark, but it was, after all, no colder and no darker than space.

  “I have returned,” Essarala called out, wondering what she would do if the witch had perished in the interim.

  But witches are not so easily escaped. The worms began to glow, as they had all those years ago, and the witch of the waves emerged. “You have indeed,” she said. This time Essarala could see her face more clearly, and it was not so dissimilar from her own.

  “You gave me my heart’s desire,” Essarala said. “You said you would name your price once I returned. Well, here I am.”

  “Indeed,” the witch said. “I am ready to summon my death. It will take its time coming; but it will come all the same. When it arrives, you will take my place as witch beneath the waves. For you, too, have tasted life among the stars, and you have the wisdom that your journeys have given you.”

  It was a hard price, but not an unfair one. “Understood,” Essarala said. “I have a question for you, if you are willing to answer it.”

  “Ask.”

  Essarala steeled herself for the answer she didn’t want to hear. “What became of my sister Kiovasa? Where can I find her?”

  “She is old and ailing,” the witch answered, and Essarala’s heart almost burst with relief. “You will find her by the rock where the two of you spent so many hours gazing at the stars. She has never forgotten you. But you should hurry. She doesn’t have much time left.”

  “Thank you,” Essarala said. And then she shot upward through the waters, swimming with all her might toward the rock. It would be terrible if she had come all this way only to be too late after all.

  At last she broke the ocean’s surface in an explosion of glittering water and rainbows. “Kiovasa!” she cried when she saw her sister lying upon the rock.

  Mers do not age as humans do, but they age nonetheless. Streaks of shell-white had appeared in Kiovasa’s hair, and the stripes of her tail were so faint they were almost invisible. But her face lit when she saw Essarala. “You’ve returned,” she murmured. “You look the same as you did the day you left.”

  “It is a magic of the stars,” Essarala said, “which I will explain to you if you wish.” She swam up to the rock and took a seat next to her sister. They hugged each other fiercely. Essarala added, “I will not leave you again.”

  “But your dream of traveling among the stars,” Kiovasa said. “I would not take you away from that—”

  Essarala grasped Kiovasa’s hands, then craned her neck back to look at the afternoon sky. “You haven’t,” she said.

  Kiovasa shook her head, bemused. “I don’t understand.”

  “What I did not know before I left,” Essarala said, “is that every planet is traveling through space, and every star, and every galaxy, and more beyond, in a great celestial dance. I wanted to visit other worlds, and so I have. But now that I understand the motions of celestial bodies, I don’t need to leave home in order to journey through the universe.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kiovasa said again, “but I look forward to learning, in the time that remains to me.”

  © Copyright 2020 Yoon Ha Lee