The Spear Cuts Through Water

by Simon Jimenez

It was only when word came around that Kaara’s people had returned that her laughter died, and a wound that had never truly healed began to bleed again, for I had heard who was traveling with her. And I knew what must be done.

The boy wept. It was a loud, keening weep that started in the stomach, like some great, ulcerous pain.

There went the prince’s butcher. There went the demon. He winced at the memory of Her twisting him like a wet towel; the way Keema looked at him afterward, like he was a thing to be pitied. You are a monster. You are not deserving of pity.

By a woman, with a knife.

To her, he seemed somehow smaller than before, the demon of her memory now smudged, looking more like the young men she had known in her youth than a Terror’s child.

You are your father’s stain.

Keema watched in silence as Jun put the mask back on, his hands shaking while he did so, like an addict lighting a bowl of duri leaves.

He wanted to show Jun this side of him. He wanted to stand up and reach out and offer Jun his hand and ask him if he would like to dance. But he was afraid, and in fear he could find no words to pull out of his parched throat.

I literally stopped walking omg

This made Keema laugh, which in turn started Jun up laughing too.

“I’ll keep watch,” Keema said. “You’ll keep watch,” Jun repeated, laughing as if he didn’t believe him. But Keema nodded and said it again. “I will keep watch.”

“Fine. At least I know that if you fuck this up you have to disembowel yourself.” “I hope that brings you much comfort as you sleep.” “Oh. It does.” They were both grinning.

Yeah same

revealing to the light his dark eyelashes, his full and parted lips. He wondered what it would be like to run his finger along those lips,

Yes, I told the tortoise. And with each awful bite I gained more access to the One Mind, until the whole network was mine. I saw through the eyes of its brethren and I heard through their ears—and, just that day, I had opened my way into the Defect, tricking the creature into believing its Mother was reaching out to it.

It was dead, its god’s name lost on its withering tongue.

NOO

My time as the Moon is never far from mind. The days of cold milk forests and silver rivers are a sacred hideaway in the isles of my memory. I dream of rare midnight flowers curling open to the night sky, drinking up my radiance, and of lovers in the woods, dewy and flush, breathing in my moonlight through their skin. I was once a great beauty.

There is much of my experience in those days that I cannot translate into human speech. Beauty and terror unutterable to your muscled tongue. Believe me only when I say that the world back then was like that of the ripest berry, swollen and bursting in the teeth.

Luubu gazed at me with a love so infinite it presented as a mad and indecipherable pattern. It was overwhelming and violent in its hunger. And even now it remains hard for me to determine how I feel about the men who had sprung from me—what to do with my deep hatred, and my bottomless love, for them.

He looked away. “That’s fine,” he said, leaving the closet. “That’s…that’s fine.” He glanced back only once, with his reddened eyes.

Jun slipped down to the floor, weeping.

“Oh yes. I completely forgot. There’s one more.”

Fuck NO

And like all of the Second Terror’s victims that day, the last of the Red Peacocks had no choice but to obey.

and he felt a profound vertigo, as if he were looking into the heart of an endless chasm, and it was like he was falling, his breath caught in his throat, until he put his hand on the ground to steady himself, and he realized that all he was looking at was nothing more, and nothing less, than the gaze of Jun’s eyes.

trusted this person with my life. Keema blushed as Jun got up and went somewhere private.

Keema caught Jun looking at him from over the rim of his bowl. He could feel his gaze like a hot breath on his forehead. He smiled. Jun could not help but look at him.

had the urge to hold him. I could not stop staring at him. It felt as though I were in a dream, to be sharing breakfast with him now.

though it was obvious he was not. “Fuck you, not obvious,” Jun muttered.

But you know as well as any guilty party that no one thought stands alone. That there is a city within you, populated by both high- and lowborn beliefs, interjections, prayers, rantings.

“You piece of SHIT!”

“You Red Peacocks are much too merciful.” Jun chuckled.

He pressed gently into Keema’s side; Keema pressed back. They sat together with elbows touching, with lightning on their skin.

Jun walked away laughing. He shouldn’t have worried. He still looked nice to me.

If it helps, Jun says, the fact that you are of the Daware Tribe is the least interesting thing about you. Keema starts laughing. Jun, glad that his words helped, joins him.

And then they are led inside, and it is over, this moment between two souls, as fine a way to spend one’s last ten minutes of peace as there ever was.

You all understand what is being chosen before your eyes, and you wonder if the boy onstage understands that he is deciding between his life and yours—that

And when I look at you, I feel so many things, so much pride and worry and regret, that it is easier to look away. Easier to pretend we are strangers.

“The woman who was Induun’s shadow, soon to become entwined with Jun and Keema’s threads.” Your brothers look at you. “Her name was Shan. Granddaughter of Djove Induun, and daughter of Commander Uhi Araya. And there was only one thing on her mind. One mission.”

who had eyes the color of well-steeped tea,

A spear, he told me, that would cut through any boundary that might one day part us.

“Not the most interesting of ends for the scribes to record as they finish your brief, unsatisfying biography.” “A satisfying biography was never my aim,” she said.

“What a country we will be,” she said, “when we are led by a man who has to ask such a question.”

Sandaled feet squelched into human shit.

Just no

It was as if whatever force had pushed him to the ground had also knocked him underwater. And as the world fell apart at the seams, the trinket seller found within himself a reservoir of holy feeling, and as he in a dopey stagger looked around the smoking chaos for his driver, there came, unbidden from nowhere, a prayer at the end of the threading of his frayed mind—for rescue, from any who might be listening.

We were expecting something with many teeth and evil eyes. We were expecting our sudden death. But what emerged from the Daido gate were but two humans—or so we at first thought. Males, near enough to

our age. One had but one arm. The other wore on his face the tattoo of the Red Peacock.

But we soon saw that these were no mere humans. The air seemed to shake off of them as bloo...

a bone dagger of a boy unearthed

from beneath some old and forgotten boulder.

“How did my daughter die?” It was clear by the break in the young man’s expression that he did not know Araya was his family.

“She died.” Djove repeated this with as much credulity as he had to offer. “The Eternal Mother of Emperors, the Moon Incarnate, the Lady of Night, died.” “She spent the last of Herself, killing the First and Second Terrors.” This was news to him. “And Her body?” “We ate Her, at her request.”

The line of guards did a backstep from them. One of the swords was shaking.