The Apex Book of World SF Read online

  I ran out of the cave. The sun had sunk low into the horizon, giving the world a red tint. I had been asleep for far longer than I had thought. I could not hear my mother, my brothers, or the dogs. I crossed the swamp and crept through the bushes. By the time I reached the ot’cwe, darkness had fallen. A small fire flickered under the tree in front of the hut. My parents sat beside it like prisoners, their backs to me. Baa still had the vunduk, and held it as though it was a real weapon. Okec, Okot, and an ajwaka in a costume of bird feathers, stood around them. I climbed up a tree, silent as a cat, and curled up in the branches to hide.

  “She’s our sister,” Okec was saying. “We can’t harm her, but every girl has to get married. Why delay her happiness when a wealthy suitor is interested?”

  “There are other girls in the village,” Maa said.

  “We are the poorest,” Okec said. “We don’t even own chickens.”

  “Work for your wealth if you want to marry,” Baa said.

  “You squandered our wealth,” Okec said through his teeth. “You must make amends by giving us Akidi. Where is she?”

  “Even if I knew,” Baa said, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “I won’t stop looking for her,” Okot said. “I’ll marry her, whether you like it or not.”

  He walked away. The ajwaka said something to my parents in such a low voice that I did not catch it, then followed Okot. My brother jeered, hissed insults, and went away, too. After a while, my parents begun to roast maize. They worked in silence. I stayed in the tree for a long time, watching them, until I felt it safe to climb down. They did not notice me until I had crept right up to them.

  “Baa,” I whispered. “I found it.”

  They turned to me. Their faces were bruised from a beating.

  “Akidi,” Maa cried.

  They hugged me tightly.

  “The sap.” I wrung myself out of their grasp. “It’s in the Leper’s Rock.” I showed Baa the stain, which still glowed on my finger.

  “The Leper’s Rock?” Baa’s eyes turned white in terror. “You were there?”

  “Oh, my daughter.” Maa’s tears shone in the lights of the fire.

  “Nothing happened to me,” I said.

  That night, I dreamt that my father’s bruka took me to the stars, where I became a princess in a world whose sky was red like blood. My finger with the sap stain glowed while I was awake to give this world day. When I awoke, the stain had peeled skin off my finger, leaving a scar that I still have to this day.

  My parents had sat up through the night, Maa armed with a machete, Baa with the vunduk, ready to defend me, but my brothers had not attacked.

  “We shall hide in the Leper’s Rock,” Baa said.

  They must have reached that decision while I slept. Maybe Baa also knew that, being a god, the spirits would not harm him or his wife. We set off before dawn. Baa took some of his creations, and I carried his tools and other materials in a sack. I wanted him to take the bruka, but it was too big and heavy. Maa packed a basket of food that she had secretly taken from the gardens during the night. At the swamp, Baa built a papyrus raft. We rowed to the other side just as light broke.

  We hesitated at the cave, where a strong red glow spilled out. Was it spirits?

  Maa took several steps away, her face tight with fear. “Let’s wait a little,” she said. “It’s still dark.”

  Baa grinned at her, then crawled into the cave. I wanted to follow him, but Maa grabbed my arms and made me stay with her. We sat on a boulder and waited. Baa took such a long time I feared the red light had eaten him. The sun rose. The red light weakened until it went out completely. Still, Baa had not returned.

  “Baa!” I called, alarmed.

  He crawled out, smiling, and brushed dirt off his knees and palms.

  “There are no spirits,” he said. “The light came from the sap. It seeps out of the rock and people think it is blood. It shines at night and goes out at sunrise. I’ll call it the leper’s blood.”

  I looked at the scar on my finger and thought of the red world in my dream. Had the Leper’s Rock fallen from there? I did not tell my parents about the dream.

  We settled in the cave, in a spot as far from the breast as possible, though it had stopped bleeding. By the time it started again, just before sunset, the pool had dried up.

  Baa went to work at once. He made gloves that enabled him to touch the sap without it pricking him. I prayed that the leper’s blood did not turn out to be useless. I wanted it to make the bruka work so we could escape from my brothers, but this made me think of the world in my dream. The blood red sky suspended over a land without vegetation or soil, without living things as I knew it, but full of black, mortar-shaped rocks. I suddenly did not want to go to that world.

  Maybe Baa could create something else, like the cooking stone that used the power of the sun rather than firewood. I hated collecting firewood. I had to walk with other unmarried girls far from the village. The snakes did not scare us, nor did the monkeys or elephants. These were merely animals.

  We did not fear obibi, for we knew they were mythical, but we dreaded the warabu. These were evil spirits in the shape of humans, with albino skin and black hair that was long and straight like a lion’s mane. They kidnapped people and put them in black ropes of a strange material, which was harder than rock, and took them across the great desert to work as slaves in the land of the dead.

  If Baa made a stove that cooked without firewood, he would become wealthy, for every homestead would want to own such a stove. With such wealth, my brothers would not force me to get married.

  Baa did not want to make the stove. It would take a long time to bring him wealth. But if he had a super weapon, no one would dare touch me, so he concentrated on the vunduk. He worked fervently for the next three days. On the fourth, as he tried to make the vunduk shoot fireballs, he accidentally created something that worked. He moulded clay into an orange shape the size of my fist, mixed it with leper’s blood, and put it out in the sun to absorb heat, but the ball was harmless. Instead of fire, it gave off the sunlight it had absorbed. The longer Baa left it in the sun, the brighter it shone.

  Baa groaned in disappointment, though the ball could be a valuable source of light in every household. Back then we relied on kitchen fires and the moon for lighting. He called it the sunball.

  “It’s a step forward,” I told him. “You made a ball that can trap the light of the sun. Don’t give up. Now make one that can trap its heat.”

  That night we went to the mainland for firewood and food. We dug up wild roots and collected fruits. We stole hares from traps. As we returned to the swamp, we thought we heard someone following us. We hoped it was only our imagination, but the next day we heard shouting from across the swamp. People were singing and chanting. I could make out Okec’s voice, and that of Okot, but the ajwaka’s voice rang clear above that of everyone else as he led them through a ritual.

  “He is preparing to enter the home of spirits,” Baa said.

  Spies had seen us during the night and now Okot and my brothers knew where we were hiding. They could not attack us at once, for they still believed there were spirits on the Leper’s Rock.

  We crept back into the cave. My parents did not know what to do. In a short while the ajwaka would finish the ritual and the men would row rafts to attack us. My brothers would then force me to marry that old devil.

  “I know what to do,” I said.

  Before they could stop me, I put seven sunballs in a goatskin bag to mask their light, then I crept out of the cave. The ajwaka had finished the ritual. The papyrus hid them from my view but I could hear oars as the men rowed in silence. I could smell their fear. I took a deep breath and went underwater, where I released the balls, one at a time. They sank to the bottom, right in the path of the rafts, and sent seven red beams jetting out of the papyrus. I silently crept out of the water.

  “Demons!” the ajwaka screamed. “Go back! Go back!”

  I clamp
ed my hands on my mouth to stifle laughter. Their oars splashed frantically as they scrambled back to the other bank. Then I heard running. I finally laughed aloud. Even today, I laugh every time I picture men running from lights.

  “They’ll come back,” Baa said. “Okot has enough wealth to hire Olal.”

  Olal was a famous sorcerer. Some claimed he was a god who lived among mortals. They said he could raise the dead, and that he once caused the sun to stand still because he did not want to travel after dark. If Olal came, red lights would not frighten him. Baa had two days to make the vunduk work, because it would take messengers a day to reach Olal and another to return with him.

  Baa did not sleep for those two days. On the third day, when he pulled the string on his vunduk, it spat out a ball of flame as big as my head. The fireball fell in the swamp and, rather than frizzle out in the water, it rolled about as though it was a rat looking for an escape hole. The papyrus it touched dried up and burst into flame. By the time it lost its energy, half the swamp was on fire.

  “People will stop calling you a madman,” Maa said, watching the flames.

  “You are a god.” I said it aloud for the first time, and Baa laughed at me. His laughter sounded as though he was singing in a strange language. It reassured me of his divinity. Normal people did not have such beautiful, musical laughs.

  “If I’m a god, then what are you?” he said, and laughed harder, but it turned into a coughing fit.

  “Do you use magic?” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  “Then how did you make this thing to trap the heat of the sun?”

  He laughed and coughed. “How did the first woman learn how to cook?” he said. “How did the first farmer know how to plant? How did the first butcher know how to skin goats?”

  I thought about that. Maybe in the future, making fire-spitting weapons would be an everyday activity. But knowing how to put the fire of the sun in clay was not the same thing as knowing how to skin a goat. If he did not use magic, then he had special powers of his own, and that was proof that he was a god.

  The fire died, leaving a black waste on the water, and revealing to us a turtle-man on the other side. He had a long, green beard that dangled over his chest, and hair that stood on his head like green flames. For a moment, I feared the fire had destroyed the home of a spirit, and now this spirit stood on the other side of the swamp, glaring at us. Surely that turtle’s shell, that green beard and green hair could not belong to an ordinary man.

  “Olal.” Baa’s voice was hoarse, as though with thirst. Other people stood in the far distance behind Olal, hiding in the bushes and behind trees. I could only guess they were my brothers and Okot.

  “Burn them!” Maa said.

  Baa pulled the string of the vunduk. His hands trembled. He could not release it. Setting the swamp ablaze had been easy, but taking a life was something even gods hesitated to do.

  “Are you Ojoka the madman?” Olal shouted at Baa.

  “I’m not a madman,” Baa shouted back.

  “Did you burn the swamp?” Olal said.

  “Yes,” Baa said. “And I’ll burn you, too if you don’t leave us alone.”

  “Do you know me?”

  “Yes. You are Olal.”

  “So you should know better than to threaten me. I can kill you even if you are in the protection of spirits. But if you hand over the girl, we can settle—”

  He did not finish speaking, because Baa released the string and a fireball flew over the water. Olal gaped at it for several heartbeats, then he stepped away shortly before it landed right where he had been standing. The fireball danced on the ground, drying up the wet green grass and setting it all ablaze.

  Olal waved a bull’s tail at the fire. Maybe he was casting spells to put it out, but the ball of flame seemed to grow in intensity, and it sped faster from here to there, and the bush came alive with terror. Grasshoppers jumped away, frogs ducked into the water, rats scampered from their holes, and birds flapped away in panic. Okot and my brothers fled. Even Olal, seeing he could not fight the fire, dropped his wand and took flight.

  Well, that is how Baa earned his place among the gods. Okot dropped all his plans of marrying me. He gave Baa three hundred head of cattle in apology, and he lived the rest of his life with the torment of a lost manhood. Baa became famous and wealthy from his creations. His other two wives and his sons begged on their knees for mercy. He forgave them. I do not have to tell you all this, but if you are good children, I’ll tell you of all my escapades in his house, especially my adventures in the bruka. I can tell you a story every night until you grow as old as I am. Just pray that the jok grants me a long life to tell it all.

  Black Tea

  Samuel Marolla

  Translated by Andrew Tanzi

  Samuel Marolla lives in Milan, Italy and writes both fiction and comics. He is also the co-founder of Acheron Books, publishing Italian speculative fiction in English translations.

  THE MAN WALKED through the shadows, over crimson carpets, past the mesmerizing patterns plastered on the walls. The air was sultry with no windows or other apertures, just a never-ending progression of forking, dead-end hallways, scattered with dust-laden mirrors, stairs leading nowhere, vaulted arches groaning under concrete masses. The wallpaper concealed other doors leading to cubbyholes and more empty rooms. Dark shelves held up old trinkets thick with dust. The plank ceiling was moldy. Sunlight had been foreign to this place for years.

  He looked down at himself, touching his clothes that clung to him like a second skin. He was wearing an Elite Maintenance waistcoat suit, a white T-shirt, baggy dark-blue cotton pants, and work boots. He couldn’t remember his own name but he had a nagging feeling in his mind—a glimmer of consciousness dimmed by that still air in those dull, vacant hallways. Who was he? Where was he? And why?

  He rummaged through his pockets and found a folded, squared notepad sheet with the Elite Maintenance heading at the top. Right in the middle, large capital words ground onto the sheet with a red marker:

  DON’T TRUST THE OLD LADY!

  SHE WANTS TO KILL YOU!

  The man stood there staring at the words, his hands damp and trembling. What-the-fuck was going on here? An electric fever flamed up in his temples as he considered everything over again. He was some sort of special-maintenance technician. He and his team had been sent to do a job but then everything became a haze, names and faces dissolved into a greyish light, a shroud of sleep and forgetfulness.

  What the hell was this place?

  He walked on trying to understand and remember. A house—a large, empty house—with nobody living in it, its halls full of carpets and old drop-lamps exuding a hazy, murky, pestilent light; the walls plastered with old, damp, rotting paper with baroque patterns, dirty blue on a beige background, etched with alien, narcotic patterns, and in the air there was this stale, closed, sick smell. Hall after hall but no windows, no way out.

  Countless twists and hallways later, he came to a wooden door with a colored glass panel. He could just see a vague shape beyond that opaque glass. A presence.

  Nicola. His name was Nicola. Yes, Nicola was his name, and he worked for the waterworks. They were meant to do some maintenance along the Martesana waterway along the cycling path close to a Rom encampment, where a few isolated houses had sprouted up like weird mushrooms amidst neglected, yet luxurious greenery invaded by Milan’s July mosquitoes. There were four of them—that much he could remember. The rest had been swallowed up in a vortex of unreality.

  He opened the door and on the other side he found a room, a small room thickly furnished with antiques: dark wooden wardrobes and highboys, a different kind of wallpaper even more morbid and hypnotic with its labyrinthine twists and turns, and a round table covered with a white lace cloth. From the ceiling hung a drop-lamp larger than the others. Once again, no doors or windows on the outside, no way out.

  Sitting at the table, facing the door Nicola had come through, was an old lady knitti
ng away with needle and thimble, both held masterfully in her tiny wrinkled hands. Her deftness was mechanical and nerve-wrecking as she sat there bent over her ball of pretty emerald yarn. She ignored him—in fact, she didn’t seem to notice him. She hunched over, working intently, her white hair done up in a fine bun, her body small and frail and dressed in a brown woolen robe.

  Nicola took a few steps forward and swallowed—his throat was burning up. “Excuse me, Madam…”

  The old lady looked up. Her feeble, perspiring face glistened like a wax mask. Her eager blue eyes had thick dark bags underneath. The skin on her cheekbones fell in heavy arches like the skin on the face of certain lurchers. She had an earthy olive complexion. Her familiar, unctuous expression was reminiscent of a cherished old aunty you hadn’t met in ages.

  “Poor dear, are you lost?” she asked with a buttery voice as she paused her knitting. She smiled sweetly.

  “I…I don’t think I feel too good, and…”

  “Have a seat then—have a seat! You’re tired and perspiring…I’ll be right back.” she said as she got up slowly, moving aside her wooden chair, laying on the table the unfinished sweater with her needle and thimble.

  Almost overcome by some hypnotic command, Nicola drew up the chair (but he didn’t remember seeing it when he came into the room) and sat down. He leaned against the table, exhausted, his arms crossed, his head resting on them. Just a few seconds.

  Just (don’t trust the old lady)

  a few seconds’ rest.

  He was so tired.

  Details were coming back to him now but in flashes—grey flashes. The Rom encampment to the right, a sudden Polaroid in his memory. The still, dark green waters of the Martesana to the left. Tall vegetation all around and in the background the chimneys of old factories, and a large, dark-grey mushroom-shaped tower—perhaps an old water tank. He and three other men, each wearing an Elite Maintenance vest, were walking through the high bushes, complaining about the heat, the thorns, the mosquitoes. Five o’clock on a scorching and murky August afternoon. A Polaroid of a dilapidated house, hardly visible on the horizon, behind a field of unharvested rotten corn. A piercing whistle ripped through the ice-blue sky.