Summer in Orcus

by T. Kingfisher

Her mother loved her so much that she was not allowed to play outside where someone might grab her, nor go away on sleepovers where there might be an accident or suspicious food. She was not allowed to go away to camp, where she might be squashed by a horse or bitten by diseased mosquitoes, and she most certainly was not allowed to go on the Ferris Wheel at the carnival because (her mother said) the people who maintain the machinery are lazy and not very educated and might get drunk and forget to put a bolt back on and the entire thing could come loose at any moment and fall down and kill everyone inside, and they should probably leave the carnival immediately before it happened.

Summer had never had a father, and wasn’t entirely sure what you did with one, and certainly her mother never had anything good to say about the one Summer didn’t have. But she sometimes thought that it would be nice to have a brother or a sister, not because she particularly liked other children but because it would have been nice to have somebody to share the burden of her mother’s love.

She didn’t want to hurt her mother. During good times, her mother baked cookies and sang songs and showed her how to tie her shoes and helped her with her homework when it was hard (and sometimes when it wasn’t, which was a little bit annoying.) She just wanted her mother to love her a little bit less, like a normal person, so that she could go to camp and not have to leave the carnival early.

If you were expelled, your parents had to teach you at home. Summer would never get to leave the house except with her mother. She would never get to be the person she was at school, when her mother wasn’t looking, again. (Summer’s mother, in addition to being wrong about books, would also have been quite surprised to learn that her daughter was a very different person at school than she was at home. This is a common problem among parents.)

“You’re awfully quiet,” said her mother. “What are you thinking about so hard?” Summer looked up guiltily. “Nothing.” “Did something happen at school?” “No.” Summer took a hasty mouthful of mashed potatoes. “So what were you thinking about?” “Um…” Summer knew when she’d taken too long to answer because her mother’s smile got brittle around the edges and the skin under her eyes went funny and tight.

On the other hand, she was eleven years old and her mother still bought safety scissors and had childproof plastic caps on all the electric sockets. She didn’t want her mother not to love her, she just would have liked things to be…different.

1. Don’t worry about things that you cannot fix. 2. Antelope women are not to be trusted. 3. You cannot change essential nature with magic.

In movies, when someone has just made a very dramatic statement, everyone gasps or recoils in horror, so you might think that when Summer heard the bear woman say, "There is a cancer at the heart of the world," she would have done something similar. In real life, though, a very dramatic statement is usually met with awkward silence, and then somebody makes a joke to try to break the silence, and somebody else decides they need a cup of tea.

“I think this is a pun,” said Summer, scowling. She liked puns well enough in their place, but this struck her as the sort of pun that a grown-up would make, expecting a child to find it hysterically funny. It is difficult to walk across an enchanted desert and then be thrust into someone else’s sense of humor.

“You’re supposed to be the best,” he said. “No, I’m not,” said the tracker. “I’m supposed to be good, and flattery won’t help. My great-grandfather was the best, and not even he could track someone across naked rock. That’s the way it is. You like it or you don’t, but you can’t change it.”

She had also been briefly frightened out of her wits. Unless you have ever been really truly terrified, you cannot know how exhausting that is. For a brief period, you are extremely awake and tense and terrified, but afterwards, when all the adrenaline wears off, you feel you could sleep for a week without stopping.

Poets and even ordinary people make much of dew. They point to it on grass and sing its praises on spiderwebs. Words like “silver” and “gossamer” and “a thousand glittering diamonds” are thrown about whenever dew comes up, often by people who should know better. Occasionally, they will even go so far as to speak of “nymph tears sparkling on the grass” or some such. When it has gotten to this stage, they generally need to be sat down and given a stern talking-to, and perhaps a settling cup of tea.

For one horrible moment, Summer felt as if she had gone down to the secret chamber of her heart and found her mother writing on its walls.

For one thing, wolves are not nearly so broad as horses, even very large ones, and for another their bones are arranged differently, and there is nothing that resembles reins. (There is no real reason you couldn’t put a halter on a wolf, provided you don’t mind ending with fewer fingers than when you started.)

“Now,” said the Forester. “Saving a single wondrous thing is better than saving the world. For one thing, it’s more achievable. The world is never content to stay saved.”

“Ah…” said Baba Yaga. “Yes. Quite a skill you have at it, too. A great and terrible magic, but not one that a dragon would think to guard against. Perhaps you should not have that skill at your age, but the world is unfair, and sometimes we must use that unfairness to our advantage.” She rocked back and forth. “It would be a good day for the world if I could not find a child who knew terrible adult things. But I will be a great deal older before that day comes, I think.”