Outer Alliance Day! (and a bonus scene!)
01 09 09 - 13:21
As is blazingly obvious to pretty much anyone who’s ever read anything about me, I am queer and polyamarous. One of the things I like best about the SF/F community is its inclusiveness; I have met so many people who are like me in so many ways within it.
As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.
Today is Outer Alliance Pride Day! So to celebrate, I thought I would post a scene from short story that is going to be turned into a novel at some point. I wrote it during my first week of Clarion West. All you need to know is that Tithelle is the Saint of the Splendid Bullfrog, and she has been charged by her brother, the Saint of the Counterbalance, to go forth and confront the god who is in the process of hatching out of the Counterbalance that keeps the city of Between balanced on top of a spire above the clouds.
(From "The Saint of the Splendid Bullfrog", by Kris Millering)
It had been long enough since she practiced her former profession that at first Tithelle was afraid she had forgotten something important. Forgetting something important, as she dangled from the rough rope that was secured on the other side of the metal hatch, might kill her.
The wind shoved her back and forth on her slender rope, and she felt the knots in the harness she had made for herself strain. She was not as small as she used to be; sainthood was a comfortable profession and in her case not one that led to the sort of violent exercise she had done in her youth. Her muscles and sinews remembered what to do, but the strength in her arms was lacking.
For the moment, all she needed was gravity, and to trust her harness. She released the catch on the curved metal buckle that the Saint of the Starry Anvil had given her a few hours ago, and slid down a few inches before allowing the buckle to snap closed. The trick was to be patient, on the descent. Gravity must be allowed to have only so much hold on her body, and no more.
Down she went, past the balance point, swaying in the constant buffeting wind. The balance point was massive, many times thicker than a human body, and above her head the sky was entirely blotted out by the rough rock of the underside of Between, sloping down like the outside of a funnel to the balance point. In comparison to the bulk of the city, the balance point was impossibly slender. There was a constant grinding noise coming from where the stone of the city met the darker stone of the spire that supported Between.
That spire was hollow, and there was another metal hatch just below her that would let her inside. The hatch was nearly vertical, with a grab bar on either side and a small ledge beneath meant for resting feet on, and a wheel in the middle that mirrored the one in the hatch that was now two hundred feet above her head.
In a way, her descent was an easy one. She did not have to worry about having miscalculated how much time it would take her to descend and do what needed to be done. She did not have to worry about wakeful children or a housemaid who had been sent to fetch a forgotten slipper. Nobody was going to shoot at her now. She had all the time she needed, a luxury she had not once had in her career as a housebreaker.
Tithelle reached the hatch, the balls of her feet thumping onto metal, and curled one hand around the support bar next to the wheel that would open the spire. She made a loop with her rope around the buckle to secure it, and then tried the wheel. It did not move, but she had not expected it to. She pulled from the bag slung around her a can with a long nipple at the top. She applied penetrating oil to the places where the wheel connected with the door and to the hinges, then braced herself and waited.
Being patient was the hardest part. Three applications of the oil were probably going to be needed, and she counted off heartbeats as she was pushed around by the wind. Beneath her, the spire disappeared into a layer of clouds. Not for the first time, Tithelle wondered what lay below those clouds. Where was Between, strange city balanced far above the earth? She was sure it wasn't anywhere near Samarqand, where she had been born.
When new citizens of Between arrived, it was considered a mercy not to ask where they had come from, for what crimes they had been sentenced, or what their names had been prior to being sent to Between to live out their natural lives as Saints. Still, Tithelle wondered. Saint Eumenida of the Torn Quarto was a beautiful dark woman whose eyes flashed when she was angry, and she was often angry. Tithelle wanted to know from where she had come, what great city she had once called home.
Instead, when she met Eumenida in the street, she murmured pleasantries and inquired politely about how the latest batch of paper and thread were coming along. She cursed herself every time they parted, telling herself that next time, she would smile a little more, ask after Eumenida herself. The bookbinder was relatively newly arrived, surely she would want to talk.
After she returned from this misbegotten adventure, Tithelle decided, she would invite the Saint of the Torn Quarto to her house on Little Ordinance Street. She would get cakes from the monastery down the street. She would serve tea and try to find out more about the woman who made Tithelle's heart beat fast whenever she spoke to her.
It was not a bad life, being a Saint, but it was a little lonely sometimes.
She applied another coat of oil and let herself swing back and forth, back and forth.