Any Way the Wind Blows

by Seanan McGuire

everything about it is familiar, and nothing about it is familiar, and I am so very far away from home.

There are only so many wonders you can see before you start thinking longingly of your own bed in your own room in your own home, of the pillows battered into the shape of your head, the mattress that knows every curve of your body better than a lover ever could, the heater that rattles in that way that turned into white noise years ago, unremarkable, soothing, memorable only in its absence.

My current helmsman is a green-skinned nymph from a parallel where the gods of the Greeks never faded from power.

Not that they called them “myths,” since, y’know, when you’re one of the eleven million families whose Solstice dinners Zeus is required to drop in on, the situation isn’t very mythical anymore.

We once found a parallel where the pigeons had somehow turned carnivorous and bloodthirsty.

I am so tired of this shit.

These are facts about the universe in which we live: First, it’s basically a sheet of baklava that hasn’t been cut. Layer upon layer of reality, all resting lightly atop one another,

Worlds that aren’t watched have a tendency to blink into nothingness and be forgotten, filling the belly of some cosmic terror,

If one world opens a window on another, they view themselves as peaceful explorers. If a world has a window opened on it, they view the people on the other side as hostile invaders. Aren’t humans fun?

we can’t tell when things are missing unless we know what’s supposed to be there.

“Captain on the deck,” I call, voice pitched high and carrying. They ignore me. “Captain on the deck and carrying her dissection kit,” I call, and they snap to attention,

a letter from the queen granting me permission to raise the dead whenever I want to,

“Lightning.” I close my eyes for a moment. The swear isn’t big enough. I need real profanity for this. “Lightning and equipment failure.”

We try to minimize interaction with the people native to the various parallels, for reasons ranging from “everyone has a different local flu” to “we find them vaguely unsettling.”