The unbalancing, p.19
The Unbalancing, page 19
“I am here!” I shouted, to Semberí, to myself, to the goddess Bird. “I am here! I am here!!!!”
Behind Semberí’s egret I saw, for the moment, the spread of other, greater wings, their brilliance filling the sky. The egret screamed, its voice like a bell that shook my bones, “Begin again!”
The seed detached from the ghost egret’s swirling body, and arcing, it fell into my outstretched hands.
The pain of holding it was like holding the sea, like holding a history of immense pain and defiant joy which was not mine but which was now welded to me—not my destiny, not something I was coerced to, not something to which I had been born, predetermined to victory—no, this was my choice. It was my choice to find my center at last, past all failures and fear and missed chances. It was my choice to wait here, just like Semberí had waited once for their star. It had been my choice to catch the seed, and to hold it in my hands out of love. But I could not hold it as I was. It was too much, too vast, and I needed—I needed to match myself to this work.
I am here.
My mind exploded, expanded like wings, embracing the hill, and my broken trees, and the vortex of water below. A new deepname of purest blue ignited in my mind like a beacon, a promise. Sem. My other deepnames, too, activated, until I held my full configuration, the Royal House of one, one, and two syllables. Easily, as if I had been singing, I formed a protective triangle around my body, and over the sapphire seed in my hands.
Semberí coalesced before me in their human form. There was barely anything left of them now. A mere hint of a presence. A vapor. “Don’t tell Ranra,” they whispered hoarsely. “You love her. I don’t. She reminds me too much of Ladder. Like him, she is named after ravens and crows . . .”
Even after this great deed and all but gone, they kept to their pettiness. To their pain.
To themself.
“Semberí.”
“Keep this a secret from her for a thousand years, until our people are strong again, until a new star is reborn from the seed—”
“Come with me,” I said. “Please.”
“I cannot. I will dissipate in a moment—but you must go on.” There was fear in their voice, and resignation, and a little bit of pride.
I said, “I will help you.” This new conviction of mine felt strange, but I did not question it.
After a moment, almost imperceptibly, the ghost nodded.
I breathed. The Royal House expanded in my mind, and easily, so easily, I spun the ghost. They were almost gone, so thin was their substance, but I spun them into a cord of blue vapor, just like Dorod had given me for my token. I could not thread the seed, but I wove the vapor-thread around it like they taught me, into a frame that held the star-seed lovingly in place. That done, I secured the new necklace around my neck. I put the sapphire seed against my bare skin, where it nestled, neither warm nor cold, neither agitated nor calm. A promise, a new story, which I did not yet understand. And perhaps I did not need to.
My new configuration still extended, I ran down the hill like I was flying.
Ranra
Pluck everything, and especially Erígra Lilún, for whom I risked not just my own life, but the lives of others, the lives of all the children and adults who waited for me to steer them away from the dying island of Geu. Dorod had offered to wait for Lilún instead of me, but I sent them on. Those who remained with me did so by choice, wanting to aid me, or out of necessity. I stood on the pier among our discarded treasures, fuming at Lilún, at myself.
The crowd was gone. In the end, we managed to fit everyone who came to the harbor, Those who could sail away did so, either on one of the great ships or on boats big and small. So many of the people refused to believe that the islands were done for, and found shelter where they could, hoping to wait this out. A few more people came, and I found space for them by tossing out some food. It wasn’t the best decision, but it was mine.
I kept thinking that I should go look for my mother. Again and again she had refused me. I sent a friend—even now—but they came back empty-handed and wouldn’t even look at me. I had failed even in this. Like others, she believed I was lying, or betraying the isles by running away instead of hunkering down to weather the danger.
As I waited, pacing the pier, a cat ran through the deserted harbor and bumped into my feet. It was Gogor, bedraggled, with singed whiskers. I bent to pet him, but he screamed at me, showing a mouthful of teeth.
I said, “I will take you.” It was folly, but what else did I have? Add a cat to my tally of failures . . .
Gogor emitted a series of plaintive miaows, and three other cats darted toward us through the debris of the harbor. A striped gray one, thinner and jumpier-looking even than Gogor, and two kittens. I waved them toward the ship, and they dashed past me. My people eyed me, but I shrugged. I had thrown out books, pieces of art, even food. If the weight of these cats was going to drown us, so be it.
We waited. The hill was not that far, and certainly Lilún would not wander around gathering quince and composing poems? I became so angry and so desperate I pulled on my deepnames and amplified my voice to shout my lover’s name at the top of my lungs.
Shortly after that, Lilún appeared, running toward me. My breath caught despite all my anger. There was something Birdlike about Lilún, their bleached hair still tightly braided, their eyes alight. Their clothes billowed around them like plumage.
They ran up to me. They looked radiant. Bird’s bloody beak radiant. Lilún’s magic was engaged, and I saw that they now wielded the Royal House.
“You waited for me!” they exclaimed.
“I will never leave you behind.” I said, quite grumpily. “But what in Bird’s name happened on that hill?”
Lilún beamed at me. “I have the seed.”
“You and your plucking trees.”
We clasped each other fiercely, briefly, then rushed onboard. In a short while, we launched.
My elated mood did not last. Though the erams still fought with the sea, I saw multiple vortices opening up, the roiling of the wave exposing rocks I had never seen before. I saw the lava flowing from the Mother coming closer, devouring all in its path, heard the shrill cries of birds and the rumbling of earth and wave.
My Warlord’s Triangle engaged, I steered the ship forward. It was animated by both magic and mechanics, and it was strong and responsive to my will, and in any other hour I would have been soaring. Now, I clenched my teeth so tightly I thought my jaw would crack. Tossed by the storm, the grand ship Dorod had built moved away from the pier among the devastation on land and sea. My people, those powerful enough to help in this endeavor, engaged their deepnames on the deck, helping stabilize our course. We were far behind the other ships still, but pulling farther and farther away from land.
Lilún
I felt the moment the star died as an abrupt cessation of sound. Color was leeched from water and land, and only the stark black-and-white images remained, then they, too, froze. The whole world stopped. I could not move a finger. I could not breathe.
Then, just as abruptly, everything rushed back. I looked at our islands, our homeland, beloved for so long. The mountain, unleashed from its tether, was not just erupting—it was breaking apart, cleaved in two by an enormous force, and death spilled from it in a liquid river of red. A humongous scream issued forth from the land, and the island of Geu, my land, my heart, began to sink.
Above the islands I now saw Bird. Each person who died would be visited by Bird, but only the strongest of the living could see her. I had never been able to see her before, but now, with the Royal House, I could. Each dying person saw Bird as their own shape—a cormorant, an owl, a sparrow. The goddess was far enough now that I could only guess at the shapes she took as she came for the dying and the dead. A mountain eagle. A gull. An osprey. Another gull.
I saw more and more Bird shapes as the sea rushed in. The land broke apart, boiling, twisting, screaming, sinking. I could no longer distinguish Bird’s shapes, nor was she singular now. She swooped down, all at once, a hundred times, a thousand times, a rain of uncountable Bird shapes coming and coming and coming for my people—until the air was full of Birds, the air sang with her plumage, falling and rising again with their souls. Under my feet, the ship shook, tossed by a violent storm.
By my side, Ranra stifled a scream.
She had just lost her mother, and the mountain, and the star. We all lost so much, too much to absorb yet—but my fathers could still be on some ship, and I had Semberí and the seed right here with me. And I had Ranra. I had to offer her my hope.
I reached over and put a hand on her arm. I expected her to shrug me off, to snarl, but she did not.
I said, “It’s time to look.”
“Pluck you,” she said.
We stood silently, looking out. I thought I saw ghosts in the water, their hands of foam and vapor reaching out toward the ship, then one by one they were licked by the wave. Perhaps it was just my eyes tricking me.
“We must continue,” I said. “For them and for us, to wrench meaning out of this. We must survive.”
“What if I do not want to survive?” Ranra cried. “The land is lost and all it held. So many people. We failed. I failed.”
“This is a story. But there is more than one way to tell it.” It had always been hard for me to look people in the eye, but now I held Ranra’s gaze. I saw her pain and attended to it. “We failed in many ways, yes. We failed, but we did the work.” I was not strong or brave enough to heal the star, but I could reach Ranra. “And now we must continue. We must do the work again, to help those alive, to remember those who did not make it, to build a new home for the children. To plant the seed.”
“This is not the time for poetry,” she snarled, but I thought that despite her despair, she heard me.
“It is never the time for poetry, and it is always the time,” I said. “We must begin again.”
Ranra
Wordlessly, I turned away from the isles and faced east, toward the open and turbulent sea. We were catching up with Dorod and the other erams. My dying land was behind. I could only look forward now.
I stretched my arms outward, and with all my might that had failed and failed us again, and all the new might I had taken, I formed a structure of light above my head. The Warlord’s Triangle was a closed system. I was alone, connected to nobody, not even to Lilún. This felt right.
I spun the triangle of power above my head, faster and faster, overlaying the images I created with great precision and determination, finally fully grasping the extent of my will.
My people’s survival. Only this.
Terein did not think the ships could survive the death of the star, but I was not Terein. My will was as vast and deep as the sea, my will was more powerful than any storm, my will extended from horizon to horizon, unbroken, triumphant. I cast it upon the turbulence of the sea, made structures that lit up the wave with hundreds of threads of light. I did not know exactly what I was doing as I invented this new geometry, and my head was breaking into a thousand pieces, but none of it mattered.
And then I was not alone. By my side, Lilún too had spread their arms and engaged their new Royal House, mimicking my actions. Upon all the ships and the surviving boats, the named strong who had the power of three and two syllables all called on their configurations now, spreading their arms wide like a hundred Birds, not connecting, but creating structures of their own and casting them upon the waves. A sound, like a wordless song, an exhalation, arose from all the ships, from all of us, and kept rising—a keening, a litany, a farewell. A beginning.
What we built was different than before. No more a structure that empowered me and only me, this was a freely woven net we all made, each of us alone and together, now cast upon the unconquerable wave.
Behind us, the islands were sinking. Vortices gaped open to swallow the land and all it held. Living birds cried shrilly as they circled above their lost homes.
But where we passed, the sea was pacified.
None of it was done perfectly. Survivals never were. Later there would be a lifetime in which to grieve, to blame myself for all the failures and the deaths. But that future did not exist yet. Ahead of us lay the vastness of water that separated our Sinking Lands from the core of the landmass—all the unknown and dangerous expanses of the wave. Beyond it somewhere, almost due east and a bit to the north, lay that treacherous, desolate marsh of the Coast, and all its losses and triumphs, its heartbreaks and its stories.
Our arms outstretched, our magics engaged, we steered ourselves toward that future.
Acknowledgments
Several years ago, editor Li Chua accepted my poem “Ranra’s Unbalancing” for Strange Horizons, one of the oldest and most venerable online SFF publications. The following year, “Ranra’s Unbalancing” won the Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll in the poetry category. Like many of my poems, this one just came to me. In it, Ranra addresses an unnamed person who cares a lot about quince. “Shut up about the quince,” she says, but clearly that does not happen.
I kept thinking about the poem, and about its people and its lost land. I promised myself I would write about them one day, but it took a global pandemic and a sudden, tragic passing of a dear friend for this book to become a reality. My friend Corey loved Ranra, and they hoped to read this book one day. I'm sorry I could not finish it sooner. I am not sorry that the book exists. It is a book about endings and failures and at the same time about community, its strengths and its fault lines. I hope this book resonates with you. I hope to write many more. To all who are reading this book and recognize themselves in the ichidi variations, this is for you—no matter if you're out, or questioning, or unsure. Who you are is important.
This work would not be possible without my chosen family of queers at the virtual pub and elsewhere (you know who you are), and all the trans and/or nonbinary and/or queer authors who inspired me, and who shared the joys and the sorrows and the ridiculous moments of the writing journey. Thank you. Many thanks to my spouse Bogi Takács and my child Mati, who are my favorite people to huddle with during a pandemic. Bogi is an incredible reader, and eir support and encouragement helped this book to exist. I hope you seek out eir work.
Many thanks to my publishing team—my intrepid editor Jaymee Goh, as well as the senior editor Jill Roberts, and the publisher Jacob Weisman of Tachyon Publications; my agent Mary C. Moore; the meticulous copyeditor Anne Zanoni; and the graphic designer Elizabeth Story—for your tireless work on this book. Any remaining comma splices are entirely my fault.
Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge my appreciation to three ginger cats who inspired Gogor: the Tachyon office cat Zeppo, whose side does have a swirl; the Wonder Fair store cat Dave, who on many occasions helped me select stationery and pens to work on this book; and finally, the nameless nomad who is claimed by many households, but is very much their own cat about town.
About the Author
R. B. Lemberg is a queer, bigender fantasist, poet, and professor. R. B. was born in L’viv, Ukraine, and also lived in subarctic Russia and Israel before migrating to the United States. R. B.’s Birdverse novella The Four Profound Weaves (Tachyon, 2020) was a finalist for the Nebula, Ignyte, Locus, and World Fantasy awards, as well as an Otherwise Award honoree. R. B. is also a Le Guin Feminist Fellow. R. B.’s poetry memoir Everything Thaws was published by Ben Yehuda Press in 2022. Their stories and poems have appeared in Lightspeed Magazine’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction!, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, We Are Here: Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2020, Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology, and many other venues. R. B. lives in Lawrence, Kansas, with their spouse and fellow author Bogi Takács, their child, Mati, and all the cumulative books and fountain pens. You can find R.B. on Twitter at @rb_lemberg, on Patreon at http://patreon.com/rblemberg, and at their websites rblemberg.net and birdverse.net.
The Unbalancing (epub), The Unbalancing
