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“You’re one of those who has to tune the world out and focus on one thing at a time. We have a word for that down here, women like you. Insiwa. Inside one. It means you live inside your head and to step out of it hurts like a caning.”
A part of each person lay in their past, in their parentage and grandparentage, and if that history was missing, were said people incomplete?
“None of them are harmless, Theo. They are animals, and if it weren’t for us bending them into some kind of shape, they’d live in complete chaos and sin.”
Because I am an anomaly, because they see me as someone holy, they can tolerate my differences.
A scientist, Aster had learned something Giselle had not: decoding the past was like decoding the physical world. The best that could be hoped for was a working model. A reasonable approximation. That was to say, no matter what Aster learned of Lune, there was no piecing together the full mystery of her life. There was no hearing her laugh or feeling her embrace. A ghost is not a person.
Lieutenant paused to consider the Surgeon’s words, head leaned back. “I will allow it if you can promise me constant vigilance against your inner softness. You are the hands of God. You do His work. But I am His head. It’s your nature as a doctor to coddle, but I must be the disciplinarian. In other words, I am the husband, you are the wife.”
Attention shifted from Ainy and Nella to Aster. One
Aster knew these insults weren’t meant for her. She was playing a part. They hurt anyway. They hurt because of the people they were meant to target, and they hurt for all the ways she’d been targeted in the past. With everyone insisting it was true, it was hard to believe she was any good at all.
“That you want to fuck me. Is that what you like? Fucking girlyboys?” She channeled old games of house. She channeled theater. Listen, then repeat. Listen, then repeat. That was all it took to pretend well. What was a person’s self but carefully articulated mimicry?
All that was left were the taunts, and the crack of Scar’s knee, and the past swooping in, an unkindness of ghosts.
opinion. I reckon she went through one of the reform education programs they used to have. Lune was fine, well-spoken. She charmed people. Always knew just what to say.”
“Anything. I’d rather return to a dead planet than spend another day under Sovereign Lieutenant.”
“Why are you doing this? Please tell me so I can understand. What do you want me to apologize for? Being alive? Breathing? I can’t help it that I exist. If my presence hurts you so much, end me. Snap my neck and be done with it.”
The Sovereignty is forever because the Gulf of Sin is forever. We
The king had acquired much wealth through a variety of business endeavors, and he felt entitled to the world and all that was in it simply because much of the world and much of what was in it already belonged to him.
It was a grim sort of tale but one that used to give Aster much comfort. A poison so strong that the mere scent of it leveled an entire castle? Perfection. That the king escaped its power was a fluke of the narrative. She used to think that. But Aster understood now that kings don’t die. Even when they do, they have sons, and those sons have sons, and so on. Was that what Lieutenant meant? The Sovereignty is forever.
“Aye. You gender-malcontent. You otherling,” she said, the fog of anesthesia wearing off. She could see him clearly now. The curl of his lashes. The white flecks of skin over his dry lips. “Me too. I am a boy and a girl and a witch all wrapped into one very strange, flimsy, indecisive body. Do you think my body couldn’t decide what it wanted to be?” “I think it doesn’t matter because we get to decide what our bodies are or are not,” he answered.
Aster sat up, and Theo helped her prop two pillows beneath her head. “Is that so? Then I am magic. I say it, therefore it is true,” she said. “It is true. You are a very rare magic, Aster. Don’t you know that?”
