The Spear Cuts Through Water

by Simon Jimenez

“You are a bitter old thing,” the Defect said. And then it entertained Her not a moment further, choosing instead to ruminate some more on the nature of beauty and the joy of counting the blades of grass, and fish. But the empress was successful in reminding the creature that this was all fleeting. It did its best impression of a sigh. When the Defect was first born from the inverted womb in the Shrike Room beside the heat beds, it received, all at once, like a waterfall, the memories of all the tortoises that had come before it, and all that now yet lived. The first few weeks of life were akin to the storms of the abyss as it learned to parse the assault of imagery and sound and sense, to understand the context it had been given and its place in the world. But with enough time it was able to attain an awareness of what it meant to be a tortoise, for all the memories it had been given were those of pain and humiliation, of themselves and of others—and yet there were precious few memories of joy. The cicadas rattled. The frogs skipped. “This is a beautiful morning,” it said. The creature pocketed the memory. The quiet river and the rolling clouds and the tall yellow grass. It pocketed the sweet smell and the light snoring of the small humans who flanked its shell. It pocketed the fiery sun and the green-gray water and the sound of directionless birdsong. Turned it into a memory worth keeping. And it promised itself that one day, when it was safe to, it would share with its ...