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November 7 - November 19, 2023
“It may be an Apache dialect. Rosita’s parents spoke Lipan, ’round when our people had to go culturally incognito for survival.” “Wait, what?”
Stories with titles like “Coyote Person Traps the World’s Sweetest Ballad in a Locket” or “Clever Sisters Escape from Kidnappers and Spend the Winter with a Groundhog Family.”
In my dreams, I tried to sing, but my voice was drowned by the screams of trees. “Why are you shouting?” I asked the forest. “It’s okay. You’re home.”
And that’s when things got tricky, since Nina’s teacher would never accept that Great-Great-Grandma Rosita was born in the 1870s (give or take) and died over 150 years later. But everything Nina knew about her ancestor supported this impossible truth.
However, when the anxious hum of the evening news slipped into her bedroom, carrying prophesies of disease and pain, it seemed more likely that the future would be a place of nightmares.
Animal people. Everyone knew they had left Earth thousands of years ago after the joined era, but considering their prodigious lifespans, Nina had to ask the question.
Before Texas became a state, Nina’s ancestors had lived there, and they didn’t ever leave. Not really. When Federal Indian Removal became the law of the land, and bounties were put on Apache heads, her people resisted. In many ways, they still did.
Did they plan to renovate and reopen the graffiti-painted adobe houses? Or tear it all down to build something new? Only time would tell, and the family was powerless to do anything but wait. That was true of so many things these days.
“Have you visited a doctor about that?” “Of course,” she said. “And if I ever meet one who can help me, you’ll be the first grandchild I visit.”
Honestly, yeah, I did. Earth stuff ages fast in our world, eroded by something in the air. I learned that disappointing lesson as a child, after I found a little toy horse jutting from the muddy ground.
It was a world-shaper, an act that momentarily tweaked the natural laws through willpower alone. On Earth, some humans call it “magic.”
“So quickly?” I asked; I knew that species ebbed and flowed through time. That nothing lasted forever. But the process was usually slow, spanning countless generations—time measured by the erosion of mountains, not weeks or years. “They were slaughtered,” she said. “A human breed known as colonizer killed millions.”
Jess was witty, friendly, and read the same series as Nina; plus, they were the only other ace sophomore she knew.
I asked Mom, ‘Is there a dictionary of Lipan words?’ She thought a bit and then went, ‘Yes, but it’s very incomplete.’ I asked for a copy, and she came through. It wasn’t easy. You can’t find our language in bookstores or libraries. Mom had to reach out to a tribal linguist, and he collected materials for her.
If Grandma was using world-shaping to stay alive, there should be a correlation between the strength of the magnetic interference and her declining health.
“It means I’ll get paid soon. Last I checked, the video had over seventy million views.”
That settled it. Nina’s get-rich-quick plan had failed. Although she’d tried to keep her expectations low, hope had an insidious tendency to grow.
That’s when the reply button changed from yellow to gray, indicating that Team Dave had blocked her account. She wouldn’t have a chance to plead the case for Ami.
Impostor Dave spun around, kicked open the door, and stepped into the gray daylight. “Who’s Mockingbird? I’m Thou Own Dave. ’Scuse me. I got turned around at the vending machines. Where’s the minigolf course? Those are toilets. I can’t hit a golf ball into a toilet. Too easy.”
Earth’s recent transformation was common knowledge. Sea level fluctuations. Increases in the average temperature. Ecological devastation. Explosions in some species (like mosquitoes, which I personally enjoy eating; that said, I respect that they have a scary side as disease spreaders and itchy-lump makers).
And yet, in the logic of old stories, it made a peculiar kind of sense. Both songs and tornadoes were movements of air.
“Whuoa,” Nina said, holding up the toy. “We just trapped a whole tornado.”
I’d dive for an hour, and if I wasn’t near the boundary between worlds, I’d turn around. That was assuming the lake didn’t kill me first.
In her private St0ryte11er video diary over the years, Nina had recorded about twenty-eight different stories, her favorites. The act of recording was a comfort. If—fate forbid—she vanished from the face of the Earth, the stories—in her voice—would persist. In some way.
“I don’t know exactly how the joined era collapsed—Oli says the motivation is a mystery—but a handful of human spirits, claiming to be royalty and gods, declared war on each other. Their peaceful fellows were killed or chased into hiding. That includes animal people, who don’t war. Ultimately, all the pain and bloodshed culminated in this: one originator human emerging victorious. “The King. “The most skilled killer in existence, or so he bragged. And the spoils of his war were simple. He wanted to be the only immortal on Earth. It was the only way to prevent another war. The two worlds should
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But eventually, miraculously, the hurricane swept north, leaving the house behind. I didn’t need to do a single act of world-shaping.
There was a crack of sound, the taste of metal. Instead of pain, I felt numbness spreading through my false body. Blood welling from the hole in my chest. Nina, screaming, tore away from her mother and ran toward me. Grandma, gasping, caught me as I fell. The sun was not yet at its apex, but I saw a halo of light.
“Did you take us to the Reflected World?” Nina asked. “Or is this some kind of afterlife?” “You’re alive,” Oli promised. “This is my home. And while you’re here, it can be yours, too.”
He stalked around the outside house, pausing at the object Richie had dropped. A doll? Why had a grown man been carrying a toy? Paul picked it up, turning it over, noticing the seam around its belly. It was one of those hollow dolls; maybe there was a weapon hidden inside. A knife or a handgun. Once he’d returned back home, Paul cracked open the doll to check.
She needed a good shot for her latest series of stories about the hurricane’s aftermath. It was hosted on her new account, a public one under the name Child of Refuge.
“I have the power to decrease your pain with my money. That’s an incredible trade, don’t you think? There’s half a billion dollars in my bank account.
