Running Close to the Wind

by Alexandra Rowland

“You didn’t like the song? I thought it was a good song. Complimentary, even.” Some of his best work, really. He’d rhymed “strap-on” with “denouement” and had thought himself very clever.

“Swears on his own dick, Captain,” she said, a little reproachful. “Oughta hear a man out when he swears on his own dick, no?”

“This man’s skull is empty like a new bucket,” she had said, pointing right at him. “Write this down: He does not have a single thought in that pretty little head. There is nothing going on in there.”

“All right there, Avra?” Markefa called from the helm. “I’m adjusting to my circumstances,” he called back. “It’s very difficult and I would appreciate it if everyone could feel sorry for me.”

Some may ask if it is better to be loved or feared, and I say: Neither. It is better to be pitied. Then people don’t expect anything of you.”

Avra felt rather queasy. People and spooky, troublesome meat—would he be able to tell which one he was, or did he have to wait to be stabbed about it?

Going to have to sleep with Avra again. Keeps sitting there silently—infuriating of him, knows I like that. Has tricked me into viewing him as fuckable by intentionally being tolerable for more than ten minutes. Intentionally. I resent this. He knows what he’s doing.

“Kid was born in Scuttle Cove,” said Avra. “Has no concept of a normal turtle. Thinks the natural size for a turtle to be is really fucking big. Island-sized.” “Beg pardon?” said Julian. “Turtles,” said Avra insistently, staring harder into the dark. “Huge fuckoff turtles. Sometimes, turtles on top of turtles. Why? Who knows. Presumably they fuck. Old shipwrecks and ghosts on top, then reefs, and then turtles all the way down.” There was a pause. “I think I have fundamentally misunderstood the scale of the turtles,” said Julian.

“They walk in a circle, you know,” Avra said absently to whoever was still standing nearby. “The … turtles?” said Julian. “Like planets, Nagasani says. Orbiting the Isles.” He twirled a finger in the air. “Like a wheel. Big wheel of haunted turtles.” “Why?” Avra considered this deeply. “Why do turtles do things? You have struck upon one of life’s conundrums, Julian. Very sexy of you.”

A country cannot be your friend, especially not the richest country in the world, whose singular goal is to preserve their own wealth and power.

“Good. Good. I trust you to continue with our semi-fictional memoirs. In the meantime, I will go for a walk. I will endeavor to walk as excitingly as possible. Maybe I’ll start a riot or something.” “I won’t fuck you if you start any riots,” called Teveri from the desk, having won their argument and snatched the key from the owner. “I will not start any riots,” Avra said immediately. “I will start zero riots. If I see a riot, maybe I’ll make it stop, actually. I won’t even nod politely on the street to the riots.”

That was the thing about luck. There was no way of proving anything.

“I’m very politely ignoring the furious muttering happening behind me,” said Julian. “I can’t make out what you’re saying, but I can hear Avra hyperventilating, so I assume I’m being objectified.” “No, we’re only being so brave and strong and ethical,” Avra said aloud. “I’m actually so proud of us.”

“An unpicky slut,” Avra said, suddenly choked up. “That’s one of the most beautiful things a person can be.”

“I am a poet, Julian, of course I am crying!” Avra wailed. “A poet’s whole job is to celebrate sluts and cry about beautiful things coming to tragic, untimely ends!” “Ah,” said Julian solemnly. “Of course.”

Julian contemplated the town and the Tits and sipped his coffee. “In operatic terms, the third act would suggest a change or a turn, whether through a shift in perspective, an abrupt but inevitable twist, the introduction of a new factor of significant impact, or the increase of tension.” Avra nodded sagely. “I hear what you’re saying. Change positions, confess a long-held secret fetish, go on a brief spanking detour, and if it feels like you’re going to come, don’t. Got it. Thank you, Julian, that’s so helpful.”

“Remember what we talked about,” Cat had whispered in his ear just before he drew back from the hug. “Which part?” Avra had replied. Cat had booped him on the nose with one fingertip and grinned brilliantly. “Oh, all the things we didn’t say out loud.”

Julian got a rather terrifying light in his eye and straightened his spine. “This is something I feel very strongly about.” And that, of course, was a pure and shining truth. The following diatribe was a glorious disquisition on institutions of power being no better than kings, and how humans by their very nature would mutilate even holy, sacred words if it meant they could gain power and accrue material benefit for themselves, and that while the impulse to conquer and consume was indeed also a part of human nature, and indeed part of the nature of all living beings, there was a moral obligation for all people to interrogate such impulses within themselves, or else risk consuming and exploiting even their fellow humans—

No, probably fucking not! Probably it’s not allowed at all! I would imagine that it certainly wouldn’t be allowed for me—not because I have a soiled past consorting with the people on the losing side—not the wrong people, mind you, simply the people who did not win—but because, Witness Amita, I am troublesome. And troublesome people, as we all know, are not something that institutional power wants to have to deal with. Institutional power wants to crush troublesome people and break their spirits—

I feel, in fact, that they have done much to open my eyes to a broader world of possibility. Abbot Symon used to say, ‘Alas, I have much yet to learn—and hurrah, I have much yet to learn!

“I would not sell it because I would give it away for free to whoever wanted it. I would deliver copies of it to every major university in the world. I would teach it to every fisherman I met. I would make that secret worthless, because as things stand now, its worth comes from its exclusivity. After everything I have said about institutional power, how could I make any other choice?

Sharing knowledge freely and openly is a great act of piety, perhaps the greatest of them all.

“I feel like this is the fundamental difference between the Ministries of Diplomacy and Intelligence,” Avra said pensively. “You eggheads in Diplomacy always think you know what people are like and that you can predict how they’ll behave. On the other hand, Intelligence has seen some shit and knows that it only takes one absolute madman to fuck up your whole day.”

“Does he sound mad to you?” Baltakan said, gesturing toward the door. “He sounds terrifyingly sane to me, apart from the—the content—” “Intelligence knows,” Avra said airily, “that ‘sane’ doesn’t exist. Nobody is sane. Nobody has ever been sane. Sane is fake. Sane is…” He waved to his own face. “One of those things you wear to a masked ball.” “… A mask?” “Yes, thank you, one of those. Behind everybody’s sanity mask is someone who is unalloyed batshit in one way or another. This is the truth of human nature, Baltakan.” He polished off the last dregs of beer. “When I say ‘one absolute madman,’ that’s not somebody less sane, because nobody’s sane. That’s just somebody who’s decided that leaving his mask off gets him where he wants to be, which is usually somewhere really weird that nobody expects him to go.”

“I do,” she said with another sharklike smile. “I was informed of the theme of this competition, and I thought to myself, ‘Layla, you’re an old lady and you’ve lived a good long life, maybe it doesn’t matter as much if you find yourself taking a gamble and sailing closer to the wind than you usually would—maybe you’re old enough now to sail that close to the wind on purpose, just to see what happens, and if you forfeit something big in losing that wager, well! It’s been a good long life, hasn’t it?’

“Give it away,” Teveri whispered, as if they’d never heard the phrase before. “Why?” “Because something like that should never have been secret in the first place,” Julian said softly. “Because it would change the world. Because it’s the right thing to do. Because sharing knowledge freely is a great act of piety in my faith.”

“But having too much money does too. It sucks your soul dry, eventually. Even a sweet-natured and well-intentioned person starts making decisions based on protecting the money rather than helping other people. It becomes a burden—a god that you’re shackled to, one that’s even more difficult to abandon than the others you’ve already turned away from.”

And finally … eternal and undying thanks to Terry Pratchett. I never got to meet him, and that breaks my heart to this day. His books taught me so much about comedy and about how devastatingly, breathtakingly kind it is to be able to openly love the messy, beautiful, deeply imperfect, and yet deeply human experience of being alive, and trying your best, and sort of just doing an okay job at it along the way. His books taught me even more about anger and justice and the grim necessity of engaging in a scrungly, undignified mud-wrestling match against Entropy just for the sake of wresting from its jaws one single scrap of fairness that’s gotten a bit raggedy and smells rank (but take it to a good dry cleaner and maybe they can work a miracle or two for ya). Injustice abounds—the injustice of institutions, of entrenched systems of hegemony, of capitalism itself. Terry Pratchett’s works (and mine, I hope) serve as a reminder of the single most important lesson we have in resisting oppression: The best comedy comes from a place of deep, righteous anger—and as long as you can laugh, there’s still a part of you that’s free.