TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 61, November 2020

FROM THE EDITORS Editorial, November 2020 Arley Sorg and Christie Yant

FICTION And This is How to Stay Alive Shingai Njeri Kagunda An Introduction Reina Hardy To Look Forward Osahon Ize-Iyamu Love Laws and a Locked Heart Tamoha Sengupta

POETRY things i love about my werewolf girlfriend May Chong The Secret Ingredient is Always the Same Sarah Grey

NONFICTION Interview: SL Huang Arley Sorg

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Shingai Njeri Kagunda Osahon Ize-Iyamu

MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard Subscriptions and Ebooks Stay Connected About the Fantasy Team

© 2020 Fantasy Magazine Cover by Alexandra Petruk/Adobe Stock Image https://www.fantasy-magazine.com Published by Adamant Press.

Editorial, November 2020 Arley Sorg and Christie Yant | 679 words

Fantasy Magazine is back! Nearly four years since its last issue, we’re resuming with Issue #61, co-edited by Christie Yant and Arley Sorg.

• • • •

CY: One of the questions we’ve been asked most frequently is “Why now?” With everything going on in the world and in our lives, it seems an unlikely time to start a project like this one. We’re lucky to be living in a boom time for short fiction, with so many wonderful venues publishing fantastic stories. But we both had a feeling that there was room for more, and we were both itching to create something and find new talent.

AS: Everyone asks “why now” and to me, on the market side, it’s not about “now” because we always need more venues for quality fiction. The only way the question makes sense is on the personal side, to which the only answer is, everything fell into place now, and that’s “why now.”

CY: It really did! That lightbulb moment when we realized that we needed to do this together was pure serendipity. Arley, it was your idea to do strictly anonymous submissions; no back door, no name recognition, and what a great idea it was!

AS: Anonymous submissions inevitably show your reading biases. For some markets this would result in predictable ToCs. In our case, we both read such a great variety of material, we enjoy a range of voices and topics, so we have this possibility of publishing a broader range of creative works. For us, it means the story is everything, and the chances of someone previously unpublished selling to us is entirely on the merits of the story.

CY: It was clearly the right decision, as our first Table of Contents goes to show! It will be interesting to see what a “Fantasy Magazine story” turns out to be over time. It was so exciting to finally see the names attached to the stories after we had selected them for the first issue and discover that we had done precisely what we set out to do: find stories from a variety of perspectives and lived experiences. And that’s exactly what drew us to this in the first place: the thrill of finding a new name, a new voice, a new story, or an old story told in a new way. Equally exciting is doing this in partnership with you!

AS: I keep expecting an email from you or John saying, “Just kidding,” or, “We decided this isn’t going to work after all!” I’m beyond excited to be doing this, I feel grateful that I can do this with you, and I am so glad that everything came together the way it did. I love being able to have an impact in the field, and I’ve been doing things to help change the field quietly, behind the scenes, in my own ways, for a long time. To take this step and become a coeditor for this magazine – it’s just absolutely amazing.

• • • •

In this issue we have Shingai Njeri Kagunda’s heartbreaking tale of a time-skipping sister told with a dash of poetry, “And This Is How to Stay Alive”; a surreal tale of perspective, “An Introduction” by Reina Hardy; May Chong’s wildly fun and sensual werewolf fantasy poem, “things i love about my werewolf girlfriend”; “The Secret Ingredient is Always the Same,” by Sarah Grey, a poem of heartbreak, survival, and friendship; Osahon Ize-Iyamu brings us a story of personal truth and potential in “To Look Forward”; Tamoha Sengupta gives a brief, vivid account of young love and pure rebellion in “Love Laws and a Locked Heart”; and we have an interview with Burning Roses author S.L. Huang. This relaunch would not have been possible without the help and support of Wendy Wagner. Thank you, Wendy! Enjoy!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Arley Sorg is an associate editor at Locus Magazine, where he’s been on staff since 2014. He joined the Lightspeed family in 2014 to work on the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue, starting as a slush reader. He eventually worked his way up to associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare. He also reviews books for Locus, Lightspeed, and Cascadia Subduction Zone and is an interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and, in non-pandemic times, usually writes in local coffee shops. He is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate. Christie Yant writes and edits science fiction and fantasy on the central coast of California, where she lives with a dancer, an editor, a dog, and four cats. She worked as an assistant editor for Lightspeed Magazine from its launch in 2010 through 2015, and, in 2014 she edited the Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue of Lightspeed, which won the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. In 2019 she co-edited (with Hugh Howey and Gary Whitta) Resist: Tales From a Future Worth Fighting Against, an anthology benefitting the ACLU, and co-edited The Dystopia Triptych series of anthologies (with Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams). She is also a consulting editor for Tor.com’s line of novellas, and her own fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines including Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 (Horton), Armored, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9, and Wired.com, and has received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Science Fiction (Dozois) and Best Horror of the Year (Datlow).

And This is How to Stay Alive Shingai Njeri Kagunda | 5410 words

Baraka Kabi finds my body swinging. I watch my sister press her back against the wall and slide to the ground. My mother shouts, “Kabi! Nyokabi!” No response. “Why are you not answering? Can you bring that brother of yours!” My sister is paralyzed, she cannot speak, she cannot move, except for the shivers that take hold of her spine and reverberate through the rest of her without permission. She is thinking No, no, no, no, no. But the word is not passing her lips which only open and close soundlessly. Mum is coming down the stairs. Pata – pata- pata. Slippers hitting the wooden floorboards in regular succession. In this space between life and after, everything is somehow felt more viscerally. Mum is not quiet like Kabi. Mum screams, “My child. . . Woiiiiii woiiii woiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Mwana wakwa. What have you done?” She tugs, unties the knot, and wails as I fall limp to the ground. She puts her ear on my heart. “Kabi. Call an ambulance! Kabi- I hear his life; it is not gone, quick, Kabi quick.” Kabi does not move; cannot move. She is telling herself to stand, telling her feet to work but there is miscommunication between her mind and the rest of her. Mum screams at her to no avail. Mum does not want to leave my body. She feels if she is not touching me, the life will finish and the cold will seep in. Death is always cold. She wraps me in a shuka. It does not make sense but she drags my body down the hall to the table where she left her phone. “Ngai Mwathani, save my child.” She begs, “You are here; save my child.” She calls an ambulance. They are coming— telling her to remain calm. She screams at them, “Is it your child hovering between life and death? Do not; do not tell me to stay calm!” She calls my father. When she hears his voice she is incoherent but he understands he must come.

• • • •

The hospital walls are stark white. There are pictures hanging on one wall, taken over sixty years ago, before our country’s independence. White missionary nurses smiling into the lens, holding little black children; some with their ribs sticking out. This is what fascinates Kabi— she cannot stop staring at the black and white photos. The doctor comes to the waiting room area and Kabi looks away. She knows it in her spirit; she cannot feel me. It is not until my mother begins to wail that the absence beats the breath out of her. Kabi feels dizzy. The ground comes up to meet her and dad is holding mum so he does not catch Kabi in time. The doctor keeps saying, “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so sorry.” For Kabi, the sounds fade but just before they do, somewhere in her subconscious she thinks she will find me in the darkness. Yes, she is coming to look for me. But I am not there.

• • • •

Funerals are for the living, not the dead. Grief captures lovers and beloved in waves; constricting lungs, restricting airflow, and then when and only when it is willing to go does it go. Kabi tries to hold back tears— to be responsible oldest daughter. Visitors stream in and out. She serves them tea; microwaves the samosas and mandazis that aunty made then transitions into polite hostess. “Yes, God’s timing is best. No, as you can imagine we are not okay but we will be. Yes, we are so grateful you have come to show your support. No, mum is not able to come downstairs. She is feeling a bit low but I am sure she will be fine. Yes, I will make sure to feed her the bone marrow soup. I know it is good for strength. No, we have not lost faith.” But sometimes; sometimes she is in the middle of a handshake, or a hug, or a sentence when grief takes her captive; binding her sound,

squeezing her lungs,

drawing her breath.

She holds herself. She runs to the bathroom or her room or anywhere there are no eyes and she screams silently without letting the words out. . .

her own private little world out.

Nyokabi “Wasted tears.” The lady, one of mum’s cousins: second? Or third? Clicks and shakes her head. How long has she been standing there? I open my mouth, shut. Open again, silence; can only lick my wounds and move away. There is really nothing to say after that dismissal. I shift, angling my body away from her, lifting my half open silver notebook off the bathroom counter. The bathroom door, slightly ajar, is calling me to the space between its bark and the wall. I will not beg for sympathy. The pen drops and I swear I see a spark as it hits the ground. Can you see sound? “Shit.” The word slips out before I realize who I am in the room with. I pick up the pen and attempt to squeeze past her body which is covering the space I saw as my escape route. A sucking in of teeth. “Kabi, wait!” I turn my head slightly back. She asks, “What does gone mean for you?” I am confused by the question; have no time for old woman foolishery. Already there is Tata Shi shouting my name in the kitchen. “Yes?” I answer because I must be Responsible Oldest Daughter Always in that order. No time for my grief, no time for mama’s cousin, second? Or third? To sit with and dismiss my grief. The first ‘yes’ was not heard so I shout again, hearing my voice transverse rooms. “Yes Tata?” And the response: “Chai inaisha, kuna maziwa mahali?” How to leave politely, because respect; to mumble under my breath something about going to make tea for the guests. “You have not answered my question.” I sigh, in a hurry to leave, “What was the question?” “Gone, child— these terms that talk circles around death: gone, no longer with us, passed away, passed on— what do you think they mean?” “NYOKABI?” Tata is sounding irritated now, she is trying not to but you can always tell when she is. “COMING!” I scream back, and to the woman in front of me, “Gone is. . . not here.” “Aha, you see but not here does not mean not anywhere.” This woman is talking madness now. I mumble, “Nimeitwa na Tata Shi, I have to attend to the guests now.” She smiles. “I know you are trying to dismiss me Kairetu but here, take this.” She slips a little bottle into my hand just as I widen the door to leave. She says, “a little remedy for sleep. There are dark circles around your eyes.” I slip the bottle into the pocket of my skirt and run to the kitchen, no time to look or to ask, no time to wonder or to wander, no time to be anywhere or to be anything but the Responsible Oldest. . . only? Daughter.

Baraka This is how to not think about dying when you are alive: look at colours, every colour, attach them to memory. The sky in July is blue into grey like the Bahari on certain days. Remember the time the whole family took a trip to Mombasa, and Kabi and you swam in the ocean until even the waves were tired. Kabi insisted that you could not go to Mombasa and not eat authentic coast-erean food, so even though everyone else was lazy and dad had paid for full-board at White Sands Hotel, the whole family packed themselves into his blue Toyota and drove to the closest, tiny, dusty Swahili restaurant you could find. It smelled like incense, Viazi Karai, and Biryani. Are these the smells of authentic coast-erean food? This is how to not think about dying when you are alive: take note of smell, like the first time you burned your skin and smelled it. The charring flesh did not feel like death; in fact it reminded you of mum’s burned pilau; attach feeling to memory. “Tutafanya nini na mtoto yako?” dad never shouted, but he didn’t need to. “What do you mean? Did I make him by myself? He is your son as well.” Mum was chopping vegetables for Kachumbari. “Yes, but you allowed him to be too soft.” Her hand, still holding the knife, stopped mid- air, its descent interrupted, and she turned around to face him, her eyes watery and red from the sting of the onions. “Too soft? Ken? Too soft? Did you see him? Have you seen your son? The fight he was involved in today. . . he can barely see through one eye. How is that softness?” Baba looked away, mum’s loudness overcompensating for his soft-spoken articulation. “Lakini Mama Kabi, why was he wearing that thing to school?” She dropped the knife. “Have you asked him? When was the last time you even talked to him Ken? Ehe? ” Quick breaths. “We went to the church meeting for fathers and sons. I spend time with him.” “Ken, you talk to everyone else about him, and you talk at him but you never talk to him. Maybe if you were here more. . .” “Don’t tell me what I do and do not do in my own house Mama Nyokabi. Do I not take care of the needs of this house? Nani analipa school fees hapa? You will not make so it looks like I do not take my responsibilities seriously. If there is a problem with that boy it is not because of me!” Smoke started rising from the sufuria. You reacted, pushing yourself from behind the door, forgetting you were not supposed to be in such close vicinity to this conversation. “Mum, chakula chinaungua!” She rushed to the stove, turned off the gas, and then realized you were in the room, looked down, ashamed that they were caught gossiping. The smell of burned pilau. This is how to not think of dying when you are alive. Move your body; like the first time you punched Ian in the face. Whoosh! Fist moving in slow motion, blood rushing through your veins, knuckles-connecting-to- jaw-line, adrenaline taking over: alive,alive,alive,alive,alive. This is how to be alive. This is how to not think about dying when you’re alive. Of-course this was right after Ian had called you shoga for wearing eyeliner to school and then said, “Ama huelewi? Do you want me to say it in English so you understand F-A- “Go fuck yourself!” you screamed and punched simultaneously. And of-course this singular punch was right before Ian punched you back and did not stop punching you back over and over and over but God-knows you kicked and you moved, and you were alive.

Nyokabi On the night before the funeral, I am exhausted but I cannot sleep. There is shouting upstairs. I close my eyes as if that will block my ears from hearing the sound. A door is banged. I hear footsteps shuffling down the stairway. I should go and check if everything is okay but I do not want to. I cover my head with my pillow and count one to ten times a hundred but I still cannot sleep. I switch on my phone: so many missed calls, and “are you okay?” texts. I see past them, my mind stuck on a thought. Could I have known?

• • • •

Google

How to know when someone is suicidal

Offered list by WebMD:

Excessive sadness or moodiness

Hopelessness

Sleep problems

Withdrawal. . .

Things I have now, things everyone has at some point. I can hear them whispering in the hallway. The main lights are off so they do not know I am in his room. Mum has been looking for every opportunity to pick a fight with anyone and everyone since Baraka. . . I switch on the bedside lamp, look around the room, and feel the need to clean, to purge, to burn, everything reminds me of him. I notice the skirt I left on the dark brown carpet, tufts fraying in the corner of the fabric, a bottle peeking out—bluish with dark liquid and I remember the old lady; mum’s cousin, twice removed, or thrice? What have I to lose? I pick at the skirt, unfolding its fabric until I get to the bottle stuck in the pocket. It is a strange little thing, heavier than it should be. I try and decipher the inscrutable handwriting on the white label. One teaspoon? I think it says, but can’t be too sure. I open the lid, sniff it, and wrinkle my nose. The scent is thick, bitter; touching the sense that is in-between taste and smell. All I can think is I am so very exhausted and I do not want to wake up tomorrow. Can I skip time? I throw my head back, taking down a gulp. Its consistency is thick like honey but it burns like pili-pili. At first, nothing. I close the lid and drop the bottle. I should have known, probably nothing more than a crazy lady’s herbs. Could I have known? I should have known. I should have bloody known. I punch the pillow and fall into it, exhausted.

Time And this is how it went. On this day that Baraka came home from school with a dark eye and a face that told a thousand different versions of the same story, on this day that mama Kabi burned pilau on the stove, on this day I begin again. They wake up on different sides of the same house with different versions of time past. Kabi, with her head a little heavy, feeling somewhat detached from her body, hears singing in the shower and thinks she is imagining it. Her bed, her covers, her furniture. “Who moved me to my room?” Smells wafting from the kitchen and mum is shouting, “Baraka! You’re going to be late for school, get out of the shower!” Has she finally gone mad? Hearing voices. . . a coping mechanism? Two minutes later the door is pushed in and there he is with a towel around his waist, hair wet, and the boyish lanky frame barely dried off. “Sheesh Kabi, you look like you’ve seen a ghost! It’s just eyeliner, what do you think?” She cannot move and she thinks this is familiar, searching her mind for memory, and then she thinks this is a dream. Closing her eyes she whispers, “not real, not real, not real, not real,” “Kabi, you’re freaking me out. Are you okay? Kabi?” He smells like cocoa butter. A scent she would recognize a kilometre away, attached to him like water to plants on early mornings. She opens her eyes and he is still there, an orange hue finding its way through the window sill, refracting off his skin where the sun made a love pact with melanin, beautiful light dancing, and she makes a noise that is somewhere between a gasp and a scream. “Muuuuuuummmmmmmmmmm! Kabi is acting weird!” “Baraka stop disturbing your sister and get ready for school, if the bus leaves you ni shauri yako. I am not going to interrupt my morning to drop you!” He walks towards the mirror in Kabi’s room and poses, “Sis, don’t make this a big deal okay. I know you said not to touch your stuff but I don’t know, I’ve been feeling kinda weird lately, like low, you know? I just thought trying something different with my look today would make me feel better.” She croaks, “Baraka?” He looks at her, eyes big and brown, outlined by the black kohl, more precious than anything she has ever encountered and she wants to run to him but she is scared she will reach for him and grab air, scared that he is not really there. So instead she stays still and says, “I love you.” Hoping the words will become tangible things that will keep this moment in continuum. He laughs. Their ‘I love you’s’ are present but more unsaid than said. “I guess the new look does make me more likeable.” “BARAKA, if I have to call you one more time!” “Yoh, gotta go, mum’s about to break something, or someone.” When he reaches the doorway he turns around, “But just so you know nakupenda pia.” and then he is gone. Okay, she thinks, looks at her phone, notices I am different from what she expected. The thoughts running through her mind, okay, she thinks, hopes? Maybe Baraka dying was just a nightmare? And this is what’s real but no, too many days went by. She collects herself and moves, taking the steps down two by two; she almost trips, steadies herself on the railing and reaches the last step just in time to catch the conversation taking place in the kitchen. “Not in my house!” “Ayii mum, it’s not that big a deal!” Mama Kabi, never one to consider her words before they come out says, “What will you be wearing next? Ehh? Lipstick? Dresses? If God wanted me to have another girl he would not have put that soldier hanging between your legs.” Baraka is mortified, “Muuum!” “What? It is the truth.” She sees her daughter lurking. “Nyokabi, can you talk to this brother of yours. I do not understand what behaviour he is trying.” —And how small this detail is in the scheme of everything. Does she know he was dead?! Will be dead? But how can she know?— “Sometimes I swear God gave me children to punish me. Mwathani, what did I do wrong?! Eeh?! Why do you want my blood pressure to finish?” Baraka did not expect her reaction to be positive but he expected. . . well, he does not know what he expected, just not this, not the overwhelming despair this reaction brings up inside of him; if he had just slipped by unnoticed—but he didn’t slip by unnoticed and they are here now and he knows with his mother it is a battle of the will so he tries to reflect strong will on his face but his eyes are glistening. “Wipe it off.” “But. . .” “Now!” Nyokabi takes the chance to intervene. “Mum maybe. . .” “Stay out of this, Nyokabi!” Kabi works her jaw, measuring her words. “So you only want me to speak when I am on your side.” Their mother gives her a look and she goes silent. When he is gone, the black liner sufficiently cleared off his face, another tube stubbornly and comfortably tucked into his pocket, saved for the bathrooms at school, the unfinished conversation hangs in the air between the glances traded back and forth. “Usiniangalia hivo, I do it for his own good.” Mama Kabi looks at her daughter about to add something but changes her mind, busies herself with clearing dishes, signalling she is done with the conversation. Kabi thinks of the words to tell her, to explain what is happening, but they do not come. How to say, —your son will die by his own hand and I know this because I found his body hanging from the ceiling in the future— Something clicks. “Mum there is a lady; your second or third cousin, I can’t remember her name but she has long dreadlocks and big arms.” She is distracted. “What are you talking about? Kwanza don’t you also need to go to work Kabi?” “Mum, LISTEN! This is important!” Mama Nyokabi looks at her daughter hard. “Nyokabi, you may be an adult but you do not shout at me under my roof, ehh?! Remember I still carried you for nine months. Umenisikia?” Nyokabi restrains herself from throwing something, anything. Deep breaths. “Okay, I just need to know how to find the lady? Mum? She’s your cousin, the one who always carries cowrie shells.” Mama goes back to cleaning the counter, silent for a moment and then, “Are you talking about mad-ma-Nyasi?” “Who?” “Mad-ma-Nyasi. Well, she is named Njeri, after our Maitu; we started calling her Ma- Nyasi because after her daughter died she left the city for up country, went to live in the grass, and started calling herself a prophetess of God.” For a moment Kabi’s mother is lost in thought. Does she know? And then she remembers she is in the middle of conversation, “Anyway, why do you want to know about her?” “I just, I just do. Can I get in touch with her?” “Ha! Does that woman look like she is reachable? I’m even surprised you remember her. She only comes when she wants to be seen but that is probably for the best. She carries a bad omen, that one. Anacheza na uchawi.” The dishes cleared, she wipes her hands and moves away. “Anyway I have a chamaa to go to and I suggest if your plan is still to save enough money to leave this house eventually, that you get to work on time.” And when the house is empty, Kabi texts in that she is sick, and sits in front of her computer, researching, Google

Potions to go back in time?

Can you change the past?

Skips Articles offered by: Medium

How To Change The Past Without a Time Machine: The Power Is Real

Psychology Today

How You Can Alter Your Past Or Your Future – And Change Your Present Life

The Philosopher’s Magazine

Sorry, Time Travellers: You Can’t Change the Past Over and over again, unhelpful papers, essays, conspiracy theorists until she stumbles on,

Time in Traditional African Thought

I take as my point of departure for this paper the thesis of Professor John Mbiti that in African traditional thought a prominent feature of time is the virtual absence of any idea of the future. . . Time is not an ontological entity in its own right, but is composed of actual events which are experienced. Such events may have occurred (past), may be in the process of being experienced (present), or may be certain to occur in the rhythm of nature. The latter are not properly future; they are ‘inevitable or potential time’ (3). Consequently time in African traditional thought is ‘two dimensional’, having a ‘long past, a present, and virtually no future’. Actual time is ‘what is present and what is past and moves “backward” rather than “forward”. . . -John Parratt And more and more she reads until she thinks she knows what she must do, and then she starts to feel tired, so so tired and she rests her head, closing her eyes, thinking, it is possible, not tomorrow, not after, only yesterday and now. But I dare say the ‘what if’ cannot always exist in the same realm as the ‘what is.’ And somewhere on a different side of the city the ‘what is’ is a boy, is a blessing, a blessing moving and breathing and feeling and loving and punching and suffocating and choosing and chasing after what it means to stay alive.

Baraka This is how I felt it: for a moment during the night Kabi was not here and I was not fully here either—wherever here is for those who exist after life but before forever— and I cannot remember how or where but we were together. Me in death and her in life met somewhere in the middle of time where the division had not taken place. And maybe this is why on this morning before my body is to be lowered into a casket, she sleeps with a half-smile on her face. Baba finds her in my room and gently taps her; there are dark shadows on his face and under his eyes but I do not feel guilt or pain for him. “Kabi, sweetie, we cannot be late. Wake up.” Half still in sleep, she asks, “Late for what?” “Today is the burial.” She yawns and stretches. “What? Which one?” He clears his throat and repeats himself, “The funeral mpenzi. We need to get ready to leave.” The expression on her face shifts, she shakes her head, “No, no burial, he is alive.” Baba is terrified; does not know what to do when his strong collected daughter loses her reason. “It’s okay baby, we all, uhh, we all wish he was still alive, uhm, but today,” he places his palm at the back of his head, rubbing his neck compulsively, “Today let us give him a proper send-off, ehen?” “No baba, he is alive. I saw him. He was alive.” He holds her, rubbing her back, “Hush, Tsi tsi tsi,

Hush.

It was a dream mpenzi. Be strong now, you have to be strong also for your mother.” Nyokabi’s face turns bitter. “That woman can be strong for herself!” “Ayii yawah, daughter, don’t say things like that. I know things have been hard but she is grieving.” “No, she is the reason Baraka was so unhappy. She always looks for a reason to be angry, disappointed.” “As much as I wish I could blame anyone more than myself Nyokabi, that is just not true. Your mother’s responses always have a valid justification.” “That is just her trying to get into your mind. She is always blaming everyone else but herself. . .” “Nyokabi, enough.” “And do not think I did not hear her shouting at you. Aren’t you also allowed to be in mourning?! You are a grown man! No one, least of all you, should be taking her shit.” “I said enough, Nyokabi!” his voice barely raised but firm, “You will not speak of my wife that way in my house okay? I know you are angry but today is, today is a day for us to come together. Not to fall apart.” Kabi’s jaw hardens. “You want to talk about coming together but even you, you were a problem. You and mum both.” She shifts her body up, not making eye contact. “You never let him just be himself, everything that made him him, you had a problem with. You were afraid he would be one of those boys you and the other fathers gossip about, the ones that bring shame—” her voice cracks, “and now somewhere inside of you there is a sense of relief because you never have to find out.” Whoosh! Rushing of air, palm-on-cheek. Baba has never touched Kabi before today. How dare he? She holds her face where it is hot and he gasps at what he has done, “Kabi baby. I’m sorry.” He moves to hold her tighter but she pulls away. “You just,” He lifts his hands in exasperation, “You’re saying that I wished my son dead. Do you think any parent wishes this for their child? ehh?” Kabi does not look at him. “I would do anything to bring him back, Kabi, believe me— any and every version of him. I didn’t understand him but. . . but God knows I loved him.” “Just,” she whispers, head down, “he was alive.” Her eyes well up. “I could have saved him but I didn’t.” Baba stands up. “Darling, we all could have saved him, but none of us knew how.” He walks toward the door. “Get dressed, I expect you ready in thirty minutes.” He sighs. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now mpenzi but we will get through this. Somehow, we will get through this.” When he is no longer in the room, Kabi drops to the floor, on her hands and knees, frantically searching until she finds it. As she tips her head back, her hand stops mid-way and she rethinks her decision. Bringing the bottle back down, she dresses in her black trousers and cotton shirt and places the bottle discreetly in the corner of her pocket. She fiddles with it all the way to the service.

Nyokabi: Eulogy “Baraka used to say that one of the reasons we are here is for here and now. He advocated for fully living in the present moment and I. . .” Can’t finish. The tears closing my throat come out in a sob on stage in front of this collection of friends and strangers. I’ve been better about holding my tears, keeping them for when I am alone but, “I just, I just can’t talk about the here and now without talking about yesterday.” There is mucus running from my nose and I feel the weight of this grief will bring me to the ground. It is not pretty. I look at mum and she does not look at me. Her eyes are hidden behind dark shades and even though I can’t see them, I feel her gaze elsewhere. My hands are shaking almost as much as my voice. I can’t talk. “I can’t talk about the here and now without talking about the absence that exists in tomorrow.” Yesterday tomorrow, yesterday tomorrow, yesterday tomorrow. I close my eyes and he is there behind my lids in the darkness, I see him, and I curse him and I want to say, “How dare you make me write your eulogy?” But instead I say pretty words, “God’s timing and Baraka means blessing and I” Can’t finish. And suddenly there are arms around me and I think it is him but I open my eyes and it is Baba and I fall into him and I stop pretending that I have the energy to be strong and I wail into his shirt and he takes the half open silver notebook in my hand and reads on my behalf and I am led to a chair to sit and I close my eyes and I count to ten times one hundred, fiddling with the bottle in my pocket, and I remind myself how to breathe and I open my eyes and wish I didn’t have to so I draw it up to my lips and swallow. It is more than halfway gone; let me go with it. This time I can save him, I know I can. This time he will stay alive.

Baraka

This is how to not think about being alive when you are dead. Do not watch the living. Do not attach memory to feeling. Do not attach memory to feeling but of the things that reminded you what it means to be alive:

Music. Sound and rhythm interrupting silence taught you how to move; you learned, even the most basic beat, ta tadata ta-ta

ta tarata ta-ta,

ta-tarata-ta-da. Do not attach memory to feeling but remember the time Kabi surprised you with your first Blankets and Wine concert tickets and on that day in the middle of April when the clouds threatened to interrupt every outdoor plan, you prayed.

And you didn’t pray to be different and you didn’t pray to be better and you didn’t pray to be other and all you prayed is that it wouldn’t rain and all you prayed is that you would get to listen to Sauti Sol play. And sometimes prayers are like music, and sometimes someone listens and is moved, and this time the sun unpredicted teased its way out of hiding and this time the grass was greener on this side and this time you stood with Kabi out under the still partly cloudy sky and sang Lazizi word for word at the top of your lungs and this time you let the music carry you and you took Kabi by the hand and she said, just this once, and you laughed, and you danced until even the ground was tired of holding you up. Do not attach memory to feeling, do not watch the living but as you watch her swallow the liquid that burns her tongue, you think, she is coming to find me, somewhere between life and after, in the middle of time, she is coming to find me.

Time And this is how it went. On this day when Kabi first became paralyzed with a grief she had never thought possible, on this day when Mama Nyokabi screamed at a paramedic on the phone and screamed at God for more of me, on this day when Baraka decided to die, I begin again. They both wake up with different memories of time passing. The clock: a tool tick-tocking its way into later vibrates and Kabi opens her eyes. He is singing in the shower and now she knows she is not imagining. “Baraka!” ©2020 by Shingai Njeri Kagunda.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shingai Njeri Kagunda is an Afrofuturist freedom dreamer, Swahili sea lover, and Femme Storyteller among other things, hailing from Nairobi, Kenya. She is currently pursuing a Literary Arts MFA at Brown University. Shingai’s short story “Holding Onto Water” was longlisted for the Nommo Awards 2020 & her flash fiction “Remember Tomorrow in Seasons” was shortlisted for the Fractured Lit Prize 2020. She has been selected as a candidate for the Clarion UCSD Class of 2020/2021. #clarionghostclass. She is also the co-founder of Voodoonauts: an afrofuturist workshop for black writers.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight An Introduction Reina Hardy | 595 words

Much pain comes from the inability to understand metaphor, so let us state up front that there is no magic door. There are also no magic keys, mirrors, picture frames, or postage stamps. We hope this does not upset you. Remember, there are magic doors everywhere. We see we are speaking too plainly. Let us begin again. We welcome you to class. We are speaking, of course, as a collective to a collective, although you are experiencing this lesson as a singularity. That’s not our problem. If you are experiencing this lesson in French, please do not take our use of “vous” as a sign of respect. Whether you are hearing this lesson from one of those damn birds or reading it on the fifty- seventh page of some unprepossessing paperback, we accord you nothing but the respect you deserve. Also, forgive our wording. We find it awkward to speak as a collective. We think we come off as arrogant sometimes. It’s because in truth we have only human hearts, and we cannot speak slow as stones, bright as moving water. But who else is there to show you anything? Moving on. If you are experiencing this lesson, class has already begun and you are already late. Sit down, wherever you are. If you are sitting down already, stand up and pace a little. If you are sitting down and driving, pull over, press your head against the wheel and breathe deeply. There are better explanations for everything, for the birds that leave the ground and cross like green stars against telephone wires, for the glass winking at you from the gravel, for the words on the sweat-wrinkled scrap of paper, and for these words, however they have come to you. As always, it is your choice to listen, there are no doors. You have not opened, or crossed onto, or fallen backwards into anything irrevocable, you have not traveled from anywhere to anywhere. There is no other where. You can go back any time. Or you can stay in this moment, with these words, appearing in cursive gleams on the skin of the hotel pool, buzzing softly from the low end of the radio, coming in compulsive clatter from the tips of your own fingers onto the screen. You will join the class. You will walk the quiet roads, and see the distant lights. You will hear star-thoughts and speak honestly with mud. You will rarely be rich, or have fashionable clothes. You will ride the bus with people who do not seem sane, and you will not seem sane. You will go years without adequate health insurance, and you will not understand what anyone in the health insurance industry is talking about. You will read what the trees write bluely in the clouds. This class is ongoing. You have already purchased the text. If you are having trouble opening it, we urge you to go to the theater, any theater, there are a lot more theaters around than people think. Sit in the theater and look where you are asked to look. Look at the thing, and look at the thing it represents. See the thing, and see the thing the thing represents. See them both at the same time. Then look for the thing that represents the thing that represents the thing. If you don’t understand, go back again. We cannot teach anyone unclear on this point. There is no magic door. You are already in the only place you are ever going to be. You may now turn to the first chapter. ©2020 by Reina Hardy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Reina Hardy is a playwright. Her plays, which usually contain magic and sometimes contain science, have been seen across the country, and in the UK and Australia. She’s a Michener Fellow, winner of the KCACTF TYA Prize, and the recipient of an Interact 20/20 Commission. She can make things happen with her mind. For more: www.reinahardy.com. To Look Forward Osahon Ize-Iyamu | 5099 words

We are the ones who dare, back and forth; our hair whipping over, our hearts full of joy. Our bodies burn bright and clean and crisp, glistening when we reach the sun. A healthy tan has coated our skin, our foreheads drip with sweat, our palms firm and slick. We are: over and over again, up in the air; not known to each other, but known to the sky. Mid-jump, mid- action, mid-reaction, mid-air; always there, on rusted swings, on creaking chains, on hot-sun days, back and forth and over, once again.

• • • •

Mariam has thrown her brown swing bench over the faded blue bars that make the swing set, and she sits higher than us all. Her chains are roped around the bars like a prison, but she swings faster than everyone and her face looks free. She’s bragged to have swung so far and jumped so high that she’s gone off her seat and into the sun. Inside the sun, she was coated thick with an iridescence that didn’t allow her to burn—what you get from transcending time and talent and skill. Mariam didn’t burn, she glistened, feeling around the ball of flames before she broke out into a dance. Her internal clock was ticking, and she knew it would not be long before her luminance faded and she would be nothing—no time, no talent, no skill, so therefore burnt to a crisp. She knew she had to savor her few minutes in the sun, stepping over the bones of swingers like her who’d outstayed their minutes, who’d spent too much time. The sun is a vast amount of golden treasure, a land that never ends, and oh, Mariam wanted to see it all. She wanted to stick her fingerprints into the core that is as soft as a calm heart’s beating and sharp as hard, well-steeped tea. She wanted to spin around sunspots, daring the whips of danger from flares and ultraviolet rays that came her way. But no time, no time, and only when she felt the heat did Mariam’s eyes widen, and so she dove down right back to earth, iridescence almost out, imagination still free. Mariam tells us her stories. She looks older now that she’s been to the sun, more experienced. She looks freer, too free, eyes not on earth but on what lies over and what lies under. It’s clear she wants to live in the sun: in her every breath, by her heart’s beating. By that look in her eye, you would know. She takes her brothers to our park in Ring Road, our spot at the back of school, where swings lie. Her brothers are small and thin, with eyes glued to their phones and not to the sky. Her brothers are: six, mean, pulling my hair, biting my skin. Mariam’s brothers hate the swing. They go too far and crash and burn and I laugh at them for failing, but then they all look at me. The whole family—balls, I know Mariam must be cross with me, but I just couldn’t help myself. Her brothers suck. They should fail. They did, and immediately after they start crying. Snot runs down their noses and their knees are bruised and Mariam makes them not snitch to her overprotective mother by downloading a new puzzle game on their phones. Mariam does it all. Mariam has reached the sun. Her brothers will never follow her to the sun—Mariam tells me, at her home, when she’s put the twins in their rooms and we’re riding our bikes. My bike is a hot pink BMX and hers is frail and blue, always shaking like a chihuahua. Our bikes will never be swings, will never be: as easy as back and forth to us, over and over again, towards the sun, but still—we like the exhilaration once more, hearts pounding, full of thrill, palms firm but slick. She says it with a sadness, that to the sun will she go alone, not with her family, her loves. Mariam must sever all her ties with earth, never call and go the distance. Mariam is swinging towards a destination, a future figured out, all while I can’t even answer my mother when she holds the Senior school form that asks: science or social science, science or art, one or the other, but ultimately science or social science. And then there’s art, but I could never do that, because ultimately those are for people with wind between their fingers and stories that are special. Sometimes, I think Mariam has forgotten about me in her adventures. I wonder to myself if I am just her soap dispenser, her coat rack, her hand towel. Good for use, in this case; then, when unneeded, forever in a state of disuse.

• • • •

“Science or art or social science?” My mother asked me for the first time a month ago, suddenly, when I entered the car. It was after I’d just finished swinging at our school’s playground and I felt so out of place. It was just after a bad French revision class at school and after accidentally tripping on the broken staircase near art class, falling to the ground, which made everyone notice me. It was after my friends told me stories of their adventures while we were all on swings and I had none of my own to tell and no legacies to keep. My mother waited for an answer, and in response, my iridescence died. Small as it was, it went away for the moment, and I was left with only the cold that comes right after a rain. “Well?” She asked, looking at me from the driver’s seat while fear filled within me. It was too soon and too great an ask. I’d been ignoring the signs of Junior school graduation all this time, but now my mother had brought it to the surface. She’d brought the glaring question to light. Science or art or social science? I can imagine myself in all of these worlds. I pass all the classes, I ace all their subjects, I know them all. Science: where I can join Mariam and Funke in their knowledge, and I can do research and laboratory work, excelling in the knowledge of this world. Social science: where I can pass, and I could begin to understand the economics of the world, the opportunity costs and hard choices. Art: where I can try to join Ebuka in his wildness and creativity, where I can try to listen to the stories of the earth, but what else can it offer me, when I can’t do anything creative or special? These choices: they make my life, my future. What I will learn, where I will go. How does one decide? How does one even grow up? I don’t know. I can’t.

• • • • Ebuka is a grandmaster showman; stunts mid air, kisses to the crowd. Who will watch him do his death-defying sequences at the back of school when he’s supposed to be in class; or at the smallest park on the busiest road? Nobody. Except us, while we swing still, while Ebuka goes high and throws himself into a pose mid-air, landing crooked but not bad enough to fall. While Ebuka stands on top of a creaking swing, and up and up he goes. His clothes are always stained with dust and dirt and mud and blood, but with that glowing smile of his, you could never tell. Ebuka has caged his power inside jars and gels; rubbed his talents on his palms and thrown said shine into his hair. His afro runs wild but with a calculated practicality, hairstyles that make all the boys in my set go “ooh” and “ah” where he goes. Ebuka has knelt several times: in the principal’s office, in the auditorium, and in the halls. He has been threatened with suspension for skipping classes, for hair that grows too long. He has been: humiliated, insulted, despised, spat on. They can stay pissed. His iridescence enters him through his hair, nice and slick, and then all through his body. When he swings and laughs and dares all with his radiant hair, his brightness can’t contain him and so he explodes into pieces. He’s gore then dust then light, like the sun, and then Ebuka travels. His arms have gone to the north, legs to the south, teeth to the west. The dust that is his arms has waved to us from Antarctica, like a holiday postcard, and his teeth dust have bitten into doughnuts in America. When his power fades, all his dust properties collect together, as if gathered into a pile by a broom, as though pulled like iron to a magnet, and he becomes a whole Ebuka again. Ebuka says swinging is not the endgame, just the practice stage. He has eyes on acrobatics, the Olympics, the dance halls of the century, while his father has eyes on Ebuka becoming the CEO of Ginta Corporation, all in due time. I have visited Ebuka’s sleek yellow house and big fertile compound and heard the strain in Ebuka’s and his father’s voices when they both discuss the future at the dining room table. They have different dreams, clashing perspectives. One day, Ebuka will swing and we will not know he has made an agreement with the wind. He will jump off the set and tumble once more and collect into dust. He will gain an ocean’s worth of iridescence, like he plans to do already, and he will begin to ​explode at will. He will join a circus, or a stadium, or a symposium, and he will dance his heart away. Whether I will see him again is completely up to him. If Ebuka goes away, I am not sure how many will miss him. His father will begin to prep Felicity, his sister, to take over Ginta Corporation, all the way in Abuja. His father will talk about how Ebuka was just a pipe dream, that with those awful grades of his he could never take over, and now that the boy is gone the smoke can clear from his eyes. A teacher will shout of Ebuka as a “troublemaker!” in Maths class many days after, and they will give a long speech about how the boy destroyed his own destiny with his decisions, career choices, carried away his own future. They will say Ebuka has run off with cultists, and he will be found in the market with a tire on his head someday. They will tell me that I should rejoice that he has disappeared before his influence could reach me: good girl, marvelous student, best in everything but still not sure if she’s science or social science, art or science. I will, undoubtedly, crush my pencil in frustration when I hear all of this.

• • • •

“Science or art or social science?” My mother asked me again two weeks ago, when I was laughing in my room and listening to rock music on my headphones. When I was feeling free and airy for the first time, and I had done well on my English Junior WAEC exam, feeling light and comfortable without the weight of hard choices. She burst in with that form and my iridescence faded almost immediately. My stomach crumbled, and my face sighed, and soon enough I was back to feeling helpless and confused. “I’m not sure,” I confessed, and my mother looked at me like she didn’t know what the word meant. Not sure? How could I be not sure when my friends were so passionate and decisive and bright? How could I be not sure when my friends wanted to be engineers and astronomers and botanists and businessmen (because she only listened to Ebuka’s father, and not the light in his eyes when he exploded and danced)—how could I, of all people, be not sure? She’d met the group. She knew their “stories”. My mother told me that my story, too, would be something great, that I too would have roaring adventures and mass legacies to keep, if I decided on the right career and the right option and the right choice. So: she said once again—science or social science, art or science, and I could only shake my head, and beg her for more time.

• • • •

There was a day when I swung alone. When Ebuka was at dance practice and Mariam and Funke went to the library, and I was by myself, doing nothing, which made my chest hurt. And alone, the only thing I could listen to was silence, and the world looked weary and weighted, pained and full of decisions that I just couldn’t make. Our friendship exists entirely in transitionary periods; in waiting for our dreams. In waiting for our escape. In trying to decide. I am the only one plagued entirely by indecision —no dreams, no discussions, no futures at my fingertips. Our friendship exists in me escaping from myself by retreating into my comfort zone, where decisions can’t hurt me, where my childhood won’t slip out from under me. Where I can stay and no one will notice me because ​I have no stories and I’m not special. My iridescence stills my confusion for a while and clouds my head and fills me with my joy. I have to swing, move just enough not to fall because if I stop, the world will crash upon me. And then I’ll be left wondering: Where do I fit in other than listening? Where are my dreams; what are my goals? Where do I lie; where will I go? And as graduation comes, when will I know?

• • • •

Funke is not always with us, and she is not in our school. She is in the park, swinging still, not trying to go high but just creaking low enough that you can’t even tell when she’s begun moving. She has one earring in her ear and she speaks in whispers, in too-often abashed tongues. In her school, Funke is invisible. She has never gotten a report card, a score back on her tests, an invitation to a party, a text from a friend. She has felt through her skin and through her hair and she is sure she’s not a ghost. Not when her heart beats and the sun burns bright and crisp on her skin. Who is she? What’s her story? What she’s told me has been in whispers, has been low but sharp. She has been told that she is nothing by her aunts when she broke a plate; nonexistent, a mistake. She has been bullied, hair pulled out, bitten at the skin. She has been through it, over and over, once again: called a waste of money, a waste of time. Funke has broken down at every simple conversation, down payments of please forgive me rushing out her mouth. She has broken a plate once more and gone outside to fetch a shovel, as if to dig her grave. She has hidden in her cupboards so ants can crawl over her, so she can feel real. I have tried to push her on the swing, but all she does is fall. Is fall. Is fall, but she gets up again. Her strength is in her muscles, in being able to get back up; in being here. We have tried to make her swing high, to make her see the sun, to make her evaporate in the air, but that is not her goal. Her back and forth is that she is alive, and in the wind. She hasn’t told me what she wants to be, what she wants to do, where she wants to go, but she never seems unsure. I hear the creaking of the swing in her silence, followed by the whispers in her voice. I used to fear that she wasn’t dreaming, that she wasn’t free, that she was bound by all the pain. I used to hope that if she didn’t know her future, then she and I would be the same, and I wouldn’t be alone, but that wasn’t the case. I tried to listen to what she says, the plans she journals in her sketchbook, but I know now that those are not my words to see or hear. I like to think now that she keeps her power in her voice, then she speaks low, and then a shower of drizzle comes down and the earth rumbles. It always rains when she’s here: wet and clean and warm. The rain gets more ambitious each time: with thunder roaring, the soil bellowing. When it pours, she closes her eyes, smiles, and stretches out her hands, like ​she’s gone to a different place. She is not here in spirit, her imagination somewhere else. She has swung just enough for her luminance to grant her mind freedom to travel, and very rarely does she come back to the present, live in this moment. I think her iridescence goes low and travels through her voice and goes down to her feet and out through her soles and into the earth, where it glows in response, joyful in radiance, filling the soil with fertilization. She throws seeds into the ground every month, like a person feeding breadcrumbs to birds, and days later plants spring up like little magical things. I think she has her own strength, and skill, and light, but I don’t think it’s one to tell. Her disassociation is different. I think her swinging can be what it wants to be, so I will push her no more. I will just be here. I sit next to her, and under my breath, I say to myself: science or social science, art or science. Over my head, I look to the sun, then to the sky, and in my indecision, the whole world around me seems to shrug. • • • •

“Science or art or social science?” My mum came into my room a day ago, suddenly and with force, like the fore-bearer of bad news. It was just after such a long day of helping Ebuka film dance videos and talk through his future plans and all I wanted to do next was sleep. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?” I asked, and she hesitated. I fell into my bed, but she stayed ominously by the door, her hands clutching that form. That form. That life-changing form. “Graduation is coming, I hope you know,” she said, matter of fact, and I nodded slowly. We both looked at each other, as if processing what that information meant to each other’s lives, as though she was trying to determine what type of daughter I would be, based on my choice of career, my lustrous future, her promising retirement from my success. I looked at her, and her expectations of me added to the growing weight of my anxiety, my discomfort and indecision, and I sighed in relief as my mother gave off a long angry grunt and stormed out the door.

• • • •

I like the way the wind catches me when I swing, nonexistent hands that almost position me so that I may never fall. On hot-sun days, most of my time with these people is spent in silence, until one person speaks. When one person talks, we listen, then we fall in line. Back and forth is how my mind goes, is how our minds go, here and somewhere else. I have not seen the clear image of where exactly I’m supposed to be; I could be anywhere, but my parents say that everywhere is nowhere, and I need a specific place. I don’t think I could swing faster than my current pace: I’ve been moving at this speed since I was six. I’ve never gone too high, because my mother said going high is for hooligans, never gone too far, because my mother said being a magician was of the devil, never tried height and speed all together. I’ve been comfortable, too comfortable, and my iridescence has been just enough to heat me up during the harmattan season, to fill me with more joy than anxiety, more light than darkness. My iridescence has just been enough to let me avoid the future than dream bigger, to see the sun, to do better. Is this enough?

• • • •

Graduation day was today, all around the school, and on the car ride there my mother swerved in and out of traffic like she was dancing with death. The rush of drivers and hawkers and danfos on a hot Saturday in mid-July overwhelmed me. My time out of Junior school all slapped me at once, rushed towards me in ridiculous, unanswerable questions. Had I spent my freedom well? Always going at the same pace. Always seeing others fly. Listening to others’ stories. I sat next to my swing buddies and we lounged out in the sun on dirty plastic chairs while the Senior school students rested in cool canopies and fresh wooden seats. The Senior school students were full of tears and we Juniors were playing games, cracking jokes, bound to see each other again. Our graduation was rushed and trivialized, done fast and quick to make way for Senior students. But I won awards. I won prizes the way rainfall falls onto my fingertips: constantly dripping into my hand, before spilling out to the floor. Best student, in Agric, in English, in Mathematics, in Business Studies. The attention unnerved me. Cameras flashed around me that I tried to avoid, then sweaty cameramen were even quicker to throw me their bill and ask my mother to pay. My sister’s physics teacher said she hoped to see me in science, and I gave a vague answer. My brother’s old accounts teacher asked if he would see me in social science and I just shrugged. The literature teacher told me I would be a valuable asset and I felt a lump in my throat. When my mother asked for my class decision in the car, I begged her to wait for tomorrow, and my mother locked the doors and screamed at me all the drive home.

• • • •

We are the ones misunderstood, pushed away, broken, bound to go to another place. The ones still pushing: back and forth and over; our hairs flipping, our hearts conflicted. The whole world has shown itself and more, and yet, we are still on rusted benches, on creaking chains, on hot-sun days, palms slick with luminance but firm, still swinging once again. Two hours and thirty minutes later, after graduation, at home without light, I biked my way to the park. The gang all had the same idea, and I saw them swinging in their graduation gowns. Funke is different from us today because her outfit is white and red while ours is blue and black. I wonder if we will still be here, swinging once again, in the next three years to come. I fear I will freeze up with college decisions: go abroad, stay home; and​ then I will never make a decision again. I fear that my friends will pick up and leave once more, forever, and without their lives and their stories, I will be forever in a state of disuse. I fear the future. I don’t want tomorrow. “Science or art or social science?” I ask, at the same pace. I want to be sure of my friends’ decisions. “Science. I want to do astronomy,” Mariam says. “Art. I might do a business class but—art,” Ebuka replies. “Science. Botany,” Funke whispers. “All figured out, huh?” I say to myself, and for the first time ever, my pace slows. “What should we do this vacation?” I ask, mostly to distract myself. “Us? I want to start off this holiday in a big way,” Mariam speaks and others nod, her voice fast over the wind building up around her as she goes higher and higher. “This is the start of such a new thing, and we just have three more years to go. It’s time to fly while I still can.” Before I can even say anything, object to their plans that exclude me, they’ve already begun moving. Mariam has been building up her iridescence for a month and now swings into the sun again. She lifts up like the storm when the wind rises, glows around her edges, an outline of perfection. She is the rubber band held in one hand and shot across the room. She is the catapult, flung away till she’s just a speck in the galaxy, a cloud over earth. She is the shade: her outstretched body flying in the direction of the sun, covering us from the heat, giving us warmth, giving us light. She is the boomerang, bound to be back again. Ebuka has tumbled and separated, disassociated, and he is Ebuka no more. He is: not here, not here, but back again, if there ever existed two planes of existence. He will wave to us from Siberia and smile through white teeth in Fiji, and collect once more to be Ebuka again. Funke has filled the sky with rain, the ground tumbling, a plant growing. She, too, is here no more, and even if I snapped my fingers I wouldn’t reach her. When the rain stops, I may say hello to her in this reality, and she may whisper in response, swinging low to build up luminance once again. I sit next to her while rain goes down on my legs and into my eyes and into my hands, like water to drink, then out again. All together, Mariam’s sun shines brighter, glorious and beautiful. Ebuka’s wind dances with leaves and dust and dandelions, whipping close to me. Funke’s rain falls around me: wet and clean and warm, like I am being washed away. All together, as one, as nature unknown to each other, my friends have made the world something beautiful, magic: the place I want to live in, love in, cry in. My friends—together, creating something amazing, but without me. I am left alone. I am left to wonder, to watch, to listen, to look up. But is that such a bad thing? Where do I fit in? What is the nature of my iridescence: where does it lie, where does it go? Where do I break? And I think I’ve always known all along where I’m meant to be. I am at my current pace, still, though I almost feel slower, like the wind is stopping me. I feel alone, that I will sit here forever in all my indecisions and non-adventures; that I will become a statue of lost time and old years, because of what I’ve heard from my teachers, because of what I’ve been told by my mother, because of what is expected of me. Is this enough? My power still glows, small as it is, but—am I doing this right? Is this how I want to live my life, just stuck? I bite my teeth and press my legs together, all through the rain. I pray and pray and pray in my head and hold on tighter to the rusted chain. I shift the weight my butt has made in the swing bench and feel so very different. Then I push myself all the way back, then move forward. I fall, tumbling, face first into land, bruising my knee. I curse under my breath. Then I get back up again, and back onto the swing. I lift myself, my legs, my breath, then charge into the sky. My heart beats faster when the wind breaks and I am out of my current pace, out of my comfort zone. I feel a thrill once again, something I’ve heard in stories but never for myself. My iridescence glows so bright I fear that I will catch aflame. I fear that I will never stop shining and everyone will notice me and I’ll go too far out my comfort zone, which will make my mother shout at me, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s a good thing to steal the spotlight, like my friends do. Maybe it’s a good thing to go out of my comfort zone, to swing a different way, to shine. Maybe it’s my time, now. Maybe. My graduation hat sweeps off into the air and I am launched into the sky, burned into the wind. I go higher than I ever thought possible and ​I choose what I’ve always known: art and my swing finally breaks under me. My iridescence can’t hold me. Art: because there’s nothing wrong with my role as a listener, and I can still have power, and I can still have a voice. Art: because the world is still a blank canvas for my own stories to tell, my own legacies to keep, now that I’m freed from the comfort holding me. Art: for the histories of me and others and you, and the literature of stories. Art: because even though my mother will rage, even though she will cry and ask me why and come knocking on my door and come begging for a reasonable decision, for a story that she likes, this is what I want. This what I desire. This is what I need to do: to listen to the word of others, to build off it, to build stories. My iridescence leaves me breathless, and I don’t know where to go. Where am I supposed to be, now that I’ve realized what I want to do? I still don’t know so much, like where I will fly off to after secondary school, or what my summer will be like without my friends. So I just fall to the floor, graduation gown caked with mud, and then I just lie there awhile, staring at the sky. I see Mariam wave at me from the sun. I wave back. But I don’t need to make all my decisions now. I don’t need to become a statue of old time and lost years based on all the world needs from me. On the floor, and in the rain, I am here, in this moment, and I could never be anywhere else. On this earth, in this city, in this place. Where my iridescence lies, where my indecision breaks. I don’t need an escape. Back and forth, over and through it, once again, this is where I need to be.

©2020 by Osahon Ize-Iyamu.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Osahon Ize-Iyamu is a Nigerian writer of speculative fiction. He is a graduate of the Alpha Young Writers Workshop and is a current attendee of the IWP Summer Institute pre-program. He has been published (or has work forthcoming) in magazines such as Clarkesworld, The Dark, FIYAH, and Strange Horizons. You can find him online @osahon4545.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight Love Laws and a Locked Heart Tamoha Sengupta | 1078 words

Princess Nivedita is one year old when a wizard named Yash locks her heart and steals the key. Nobody finds out who Yash is, for they never see him. The King calls for help in carving another key, but none of the keys fit. Nivedita becomes the Princess with the Locked Heart.

• • • •

Nivedita is six years old when the lead archer of the King’s army, Amanat, lets her hold his bow. She runs her fingers over the taut string. “Teach me,” she says. Her voice is flat, but her eyes are burning. Amanat’s smile falters. “I would have to ask His Highness, Princess.” “Then do it.” Nivedita has never asked for anything, and so the King gives his permission, though his advisors tell him not to. “Let her be happy,” he says, but his mouth droops in concern. His worry doesn’t last long.

• • • •

By the time Nivedita is nine, she has surpassed Amanat in her archery skills. Even the advisors are impressed. “Make her the head of the unit.” “She’s a child,” the King says. “She has a locked heart. Her emotions are repressed. She’ll be easy to control. She’s perfect.” This time the King heeds their advice.

• • • •

At age eleven, Nivedita leads a group of archers into a war against the neighbouring kingdom. She is fierce and unstoppable, and never misses a mark. “I killed seventeen today, Your Highness.” “Fifty.” “One hundred and fourteen.” The count always increases.

• • • • When Nivedita is twelve, the King fathers a son. The King keeps him under high security and puts Nivedita in charge. She stands guard over his crib, her lips pressed tight, her eyes alert. Sometimes, the King lets her hold him. The baby prince giggles and reaches for the curly locks of her hair, but she doesn’t let him touch those. She keeps looking down at him till his giggles turn into cries, till someone takes him away to calm him down.

• • • •

At fourteen, Nivedita has her first kiss. She’s riding her horse at the edge of the forest, as she sometimes does, to hear the nightingales sing. It is there that she meets Ananya, a girl from the village who has come to pick flowers. Two weeks later, Ananya leans forward and gently touches her lips to Nivedita’s. The color on Ananya’s cheeks deepens as she pulls back, and for the first time in her life, Nivedita’s grip on her bow loosens slightly.

• • • •

A week before Nivedita’s fifteenth birthday, they are discovered. A castle guard spots them together and informs the King. “Punish them,” some of the advisors say. “But the princess doesn’t know what’s right and what’s not.” “The other girl does.” In the end, the King gathers all the people in his Kingdom. Everyone watches as a noose is put around Ananya’s neck. “It’s not your fault,” the King says to Nivedita. “You have a locked heart. You are easily swayed. But I will teach you right from wrong.” His hands are hard on her shoulders, holding her in place. Ananya’s eyes lock with Nivedita. “Please,” Ananya mouths. “Please,” Nivedita pleads for the first time in her life, though she doesn’t know what she’s asking. “Please.” At the last moment, the King gives the order to stop. He tells the guards to throw Ananya into the dungeons and turns to his daughter. “Will you do anything if I keep her alive?” Yes. She wants Ananya alive. That is what she was pleading for, she thinks. She stands up straighter. “Anything, Your Highness.”

• • • •

At sixteen, her first suitor comes. “You will marry a man,” the King tells her. Nivedita thinks of Ananya, of kisses in the shadows of trees. She thinks of Ananya still alive. Her heart is a painful stone in her chest, but it’s easy to tamp down the feelings. She will hold up her end of the deal. She nods. And then one day, Yash arrives to ask for her hand. “I’ll give you your heart’s key,” he says, holding it out to her. “But you must marry me. Make me king.” Nivedita stares at the glistening object. She thinks of Ananya. She imagines herself with an open heart. A rage rises in her as she stares at the sneering man in front of her. “Give it to me,” she says, her voice hoarse from lack of use. “Keep me alive and keep us married. The key will dissolve otherwise.” Yash laughs. Nivedita stands up. She remembers the look in Ananya’s eyes before she was taken away. She remembers her loyalty to the King, her easily gained obedience. She doesn’t even realize that she’s released her arrow until he falls to the ground. “Told you,” he manages to gasp before he stops moving. The key in his hand dissolves. For a long moment, Nivedita stands still, staring at his body. She hears the sounds of her brother laughing somewhere nearby. She writes a note, renouncing her right to the throne. Then she turns away and leaves the room.

• • • •

Nivedita is a few hours shy of seventeen when she finishes making the key for her heart. She remembers its shape. She carves it in the secret shadows of the forest, shaping one of her arrows with memories of the moments she shared with Ananya. On a new moon night, she finally unlocks her heart.

• • • •

Nivedita is seventeen and a few seconds old when she realizes that she loves Ananya and there is nothing wrong in that. Taking her bow and arrows, she rides away on her horse. For the first time in her life, she cries. The tears still stream down her face as she throws away the key, into the river she passes. The buried emotions break free and she screams into the night, howling under the invisible moon. But now she can’t stop. She has one job still left to do.

• • • •

Nivedita is seventeen and an hour old when she breaks into the castle she once called home. In the distance, she can hear shouts and running feet, and she wonders what lies they are going to provide for Yash’s death. Whatever the case may be, she doesn’t care. She steps into the dungeons where they’ve kept Ananya. As she catches sight of the first guard, she pulls out an arrow. This time her heart is open, and she’s not going to stop until she gets the one she loves. ©2020 by Tamoha Sengupta.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tamoha Sengupta lives in India. She is a cyber security analyst by day and a speculative fiction writer (and daydreamer) at other times. She loves playing table tennis, watching anime, and spends hours just staring at her unfinished stories. Her fiction has appeared in The Arcanist, Apparition Lit, Daily Science Fiction, Abyss & Apex, and elsewhere. You can find her on twitter @sengupta_tamoha. things i love about my werewolf girlfriend May Chong | 159 words

©2020 by May Chong

ABOUT THE AUTHOR May Chong (@maysays) is a Malaysian poet, speculative writer and 2019 Rhysling Award nominee. Her work has been published in various regional and international venues, including Strange Horizons, Anathema Magazine, Apparition Literary, Eye to the Telescope, and LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction. May enjoys writing for the stage as well as the page, and was a finalist at the first Malaysia National Poetry Slam in 2018. When she’s not at the keyboard or behind the microphone, she enjoys birdwatching, long walks around catching Pokémon, good cheese, great stories, and terrible, terrible puns. The Secret Ingredient is Always the Same Sarah Grey | 406 words

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sarah Grey’s poetry has appeared in Liminality, Eye to the Telescope, Dreams & Nightmares, Polu Texni, and Star*Line. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Lightspeed, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Flash Fiction Online, Daily Science Fiction, and Flytrap, and have twice received an Honorable Mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction. She lives with her family in California, believes life is better on roller skates, and travels whenever the world’s not on fire. She can be found on the web at sarahgrey.net, and on Twitter at @catsprobably.

Interview: SL Huang Arley Sorg | 2397 words

SL Huang is a Hugo-winning and Amazon-bestselling author who justifies her MIT degree by using it to write eccentric mathematical superhero fiction. She is the author of the Cas Russell series from Tor Books, starting with Zero Sum Game, and her short fiction has sold to Analog, Nature, and more. She is a Hollywood stuntwoman and firearms expert, with credits including “Battlestar Galactica.” Her recent work includes novella Burning Roses.

• • • •

What kinds of books did you grow up reading? What stands out in your memory as important to you?

I grew up reading anything and everything I could get my hands on, from classic literature to the back of the cereal box. One thing that stands out most was how important the public library was for me as a kid. I would spend hours there, reading and ordering stacks and stacks of books in from other branches. It allowed me to basically never stop reading . . . I walked into a lot of lamp posts.

How did reading become writing for you?

One never became the other! I’ve been doing both for as long as I can remember.

Your “breaking in” story is a little unusual— you were initially self-published, gained some traction in short fiction markets, and then sold Zero Sum Game to Tor. Can you talk a little about how things came together for you?

It involved a lot of demon sacrifice. More seriously, I don’t recommend trying to self-publish first if you want to eventually end up with a publisher—it is the most ass-backward way to do it, and a lot, lot harder than if you query agents from the beginning. It all sort of happened upside down for me, and none of it would have been possible without my agent, Russ Galen, who is shockingly good at making improbable things happen. To be honest, I think my career has gone down the way it did because I never intended to be any sort of full-time author. And now I am, and it sort of happened without me meaning to, and I’m still not sure what happens after this. One thing I do know, though, is that I don’t really believe in the idea of “breaking in.” Everything’s small steps, the way I see it—some, like a novel publication, larger than others, but everything sort of accumulates, and eventually there’s something other people look at and say, hey, that’s a career-shaped thing. But it’s never felt like that from the inside, for me. I did a bunch of small, individual things, separately, and they’ve sort of lumped together over time. There’ve been a lot of setbacks, too—it’s never just smooth forward-going-only. Things lump up and fall down and then lump up some more and, if you’re lucky, you get more of the accumulation than the other thing. There, that’s some writer wisdom right there.

You work in a variety of lengths, from short fiction to novelettes, to the Burning Roses novella, to your Cas Russell novels. Does your approach vary depending on the length of the piece? Do different lengths have different challenges?

Hmm, I never really think of it that way—I do write different lengths differently, but I always know going in how big an idea is, so it’s not like I make a choice or a plan. I’m not the type of writer who plans, anyway; I just sort of know the shape of the thing and I can tell going in how big a shape that is. Short fiction—up to novelette-ish length—I usually write all in one go, or almost all. It’s usually a one-bite-sized thing in my head already, and I drop the whole thing out onto the page. I don’t write a lot of short fiction, and when I do, it’s usually been stewing and percolating through the brain-meats for a while, and then all falls out at once. The difference with long fiction, for me, is that I can’t hold it in my head all at once, which is highly annoying. And I can’t write it all at once, either. So it’s a lot longer process, with a lot more messiness to it, and I try to do different things so I can hold strands of it in my mind at the same time and make sure they’re working—and then fix them if they aren’t. I know all this is way different for different writers. I’m naturally a long-form writer, in the sense that that’s the shape ideas usually come along in. Shorts aren’t natural for me, but when they do bubble up, the getting-them-down part is fast. So I write very few shorts, but I write them much quicker—in terms of wordcount speed—than I do novels. Most of the shorts I’ve written I’ve done in a day, and if I could do novel wordcount that fast I’d be drafting two books a month! Alas! Novels, sadly, take me many, many times longer and there’s a lot more rewriting and taking apart and putting back together.

In terms of craft, are there elements which you struggle with – and how do you meet or overcome those challenges?

I set my computer on fire and defenestrate it, then drink a lot of whiskey and watch nine seasons of any TV show with more explosions than sense. I don’t recommend my approach to craft challenges. For one thing, it goes through a lot of laptops.

You worked on the Serial Box audio series The Vela, which was collaborative. Are there things about that experience that carried over into your own writing projects afterwards?

Not really, to be honest! The Serial Box workflow was well-engineered for the collaboration, but for me, not a lot of it has translated to writing alone. I kind of wish it did! I do feel like I learned a lot about collaborating, though, and that’s something I want to do more of when I can.

You recently had Burning Roses come out. Back in 2016 you wrote an essay for Lightspeed about assimilation and a reluctance to write Chinese characters. Burning Roses takes on Red Riding Hood and the Chinese archer of legend, Hou Yi. Is this book emblematic of a shift in the way you feel about assimilation and centering Chinese people in narratives? Will there be more Chinese or Chinese-American protagonists? Or is it more about writing the character which best fits the narrative?

No, there’s been no fundamental shift for me. If anything, I’ve become stronger in feeling resistance to the notion that I “should” write Chinese characters, or write Chinese characters in a certain way, or be Chinese diaspora in a certain way. I think, back when I wrote that essay, I felt a lot of guilt over my family’s assimilation process—and I want to be clear for people who haven’t read the essay that I wasn’t happy about my family’s decision to assimilate and erase; it left me confused and lacking, and with a lot of gaps and self-doubt. I haven’t shifted to thinking I should or need to write more Chinese characters and Chinese stories, though—instead I’ve become more secure that anything I write is authentically from a Chinese-American author, because I am a Chinese-American author. Ironically, that has made me feel more free to write stories linked to my culture when I want to. Funny how that happens. Additionally, I think the current societal moment is putting a lot of pressure on writers of color to delve into our ethnic identities and cultural pain, much more so than when I wrote that essay, and I don’t hold with that as something we have any obligation to pursue. In general, I want to write culturally-heavy stories about Chinese themes when I want to—and I also want to not do that when I don’t want to. Burning Roses is one of the times I’ve wanted to. Like my own identity, I hope it’s a well- rounded creation: Chinese, yes, but also many other things as well.

Are there ways in which this book was uncomfortable or challenging to write?

Burning Roses features some themes of abuse, and I did have to come up for air from them every so often and take a break from writing it. One theme I wanted to grapple with is the idea that abuse is so easy to villainize from the outside, and to draw bright lines—but from the inside, abusers are often simultaneously people we deeply love. That can be an extremely complicated and painful dichotomy. I wanted to dig into that a bit, because I think our tendency in media is to show abusers as people who appear easy to leave behind. When a man is beating his wife and children every night, that’s an instantly-categorizable villain we’ve seen a thousand times. But I think flattening the portrayals to solely that does a disservice to people trapped and trying to navigate these abusive cycles, and how difficult and tangled it can be to break away. To be clear, the book does not try to draw sympathy for abusers—but rather, for people who struggle with how to walk away, and the complicated scars that result. I also wanted to show women with abuse in their pasts who are undeniably powerful, intelligent, three- dimensional . . . where a history and trauma that cut deeply is only one part of a complex and multifaceted character.

What is really important or special to you about Burning Roses; what do you want readers to know about it, beyond the blurbs?

It’s fun! That might sound strange after I just talked about writing abuse into it, but this actually springboards off what I was saying with that answer—the characters might be working through pain and regret, but at the top level, this is a story of action and adventure. We’ve got Red Riding Hood as a recovering assassin and expert rifle markswoman on a quest with Hou Yi, archer of legend who literally shot suns out of the sky, and they’re bickering and making fun of each other in between going up against flaming creatures the size of a house and trying not to die. Oh! And it’s jam-packed with fairy tales. I hope people have fun with the scavenger hunt of how many I’ve included!

I really enjoyed the relationship between Hou Yi and Rosa. I also like the way the relationship is used to move the narrative forward, and the recontextualizing of the characters for the reader as well as the two characters involved. It seems intricate and layered. Did this come naturally? Was it carefully planned? Or was it forged through revisions and rewrites?

No, it came pretty naturally. Two middle-aged women snarking at each other but also having a friendship with the force of family—that’s very much my wheelhouse. And thank you! I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it. I love their friendship so much.

What was your vision for the relationship between the two women – what do you hope comes through for the reader?

There’s a dearth of portrayals of female friendship in fiction. There’s also a dearth of older women in fiction. I don’t know if I want readers to come away with a particular impression of this friendship—I’m very much in favor of my readers experiencing the book how they like—but I do hope the book can help be one more story in a narrative gap that desperately needs more. Obviously, Rosa and Hou Yi aren’t meant to represent every female friendship or every older woman. We need so many more. But I hope they can be seen as a solid contribution.

For me, I saw themes of family of different kinds, of the various connections which give our lives meaning. Looking at your body of work to date, do you feel like you gravitate towards certain themes or concepts? Does it vary dramatically from story to story? Or do you feel like what is important to you in a story has changed over the years?

Yes, I definitely gravitate toward certain themes. More than a few! I’ll leave it to readers to hunt down all of them, but one repeating motif I’m quite happy to brand with is that I seem to have a penchant for writing queer women who shoot at things. That’s fine with me!

Looking at your short fiction, is there a story which stands out for you as important, which you really want people to read, and why?

My Hugo-winning story, “As the Last I May Know,” is, in my opinion, the best story I’ve ever written—and to the degree that any of my writing is important, it’s the most important one. There’s a lot in there that I’m still struggling to understand. Although I will also give a shout out to the importance of escapism. For example, Zero Sum Game and its sequel thrillers aren’t short fiction, but people tell me those books do things like lift their mood, turn a bad day into a good one, make them smile. Those are my favorite reader letters, and I think that’s pretty important, too.

What else do you have coming up which you’d like readers to know about?

I’m thinking about getting a pet lemon tree. I figure it’s like a cat but without the allergies attached.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Arley Sorg is an associate editor at Locus Magazine, where he’s been on staff since 2014. He joined the Lightspeed family in 2014 to work on the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue, starting as a slush reader. He eventually worked his way up to associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare. He also reviews books for Locus, Lightspeed, and Cascadia Subduction Zone and is an interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and, in non-pandemic times, usually writes in local coffee shops. He is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

Author Spotlight: Shingai Njeri Kagunda Arley Sorg | 1540 words

For me, this is such an emotionally effective piece. It hits hard, and it keeps hitting. What, for you, is the key to writing a piece that resonates on an emotional level?

Hmm, I would say empathy and vulnerability. One of my favourite things is the idea of empathy as an aesthetic. To be a good storyteller in my opinion, is to be open to world views outside your own; this creates room for you to love your wholly human characters even when you don’t agree with them. The vulnerability part, I think, is the willingness to put the hard parts of yourself on the page. I cried while writing parts of this story because I was drawing from my own grief. And to be that honest about all the feelings you are processing is hard work, especially when you don’t have the answers, just the questions that become the story.

What was the inspiration for this story – where did inspiration start and how did the story develop?

This story was in conversation with multiple different things happening in my world at the time I began thinking through it. Around 2017-2019 there seemed to be a dramatic increase in suicide attempts (or maybe there was just more visibility around them), especially among gendered males and more so in art spaces in Nairobi. There felt like there was such a heavy disconnect when it came to conversations around mental health between our generation and our parents/elders. The other thing I was thinking through was the misconceptions around queerness in conservative spaces back home. But I also knew that this is not a story anyone else should tell for us but us. Lastly, I was in a season of multilayered grief and loss, working through my own relationship to death as I struggled with my mental health. I feel like I resonated heavily with Nyokabi and projected a lot of my own experiences/thought process onto her. A lot of my work is based on a rejection of linear conceptualization of time and is in opposition to the chosen one trope which comes across as exceptionalism—an idea I abhor. So all these things combined and became Nyokabi’s and Baraka’s and Time’s journey.

This story tackles some very tricky but important issues. Was it difficult to write, in terms of content or messaging; was there a process of wondering if you wanted to address these things? Or are these the kinds of topics which you tend to be drawn to write about?

It wasn’t as difficult to write as it was to revise. You’re right in that so much of this is sensitive, and the story is very Kenyan with its whole chweest. My first audience being those back home made it so I had no desire to center anything other than a Kenyan experience. That said, queerness and mental health still carry heavy taboos, so yes, there was a moment of asking if we are ready to have some of these conversations in public. Though, I must say I am grateful because my work is able to be what it is only because it builds off of work that has come before me and conversations that are already happening around me. At this moment, I want to draw attention to the work around repeal-162 in Kenya, which is a collective movement that challenged the penal codes that criminalizes sexual conduct between two consenting adults of the same sex. I also just love the stories and essays Binyavanga Wainaina left with us before he died. It is important to know that my work does not exist in a vacuum and that this is just one story. It doesn’t try to represent all mental health; it doesn’t stand in for all grief stories, or all versions of queerness, or all Kenyan experience. And I want it to stand in conversation with all the other ways of being.

Utilizing Time as a point of view gives this piece an unexpected dimension, making it more dynamic. What was the thought process behind having Time as a witness, instead of solely utilizing the dual viewpoints of Nyokabi and Baraka? What effect do you hope to create for the reader?

Ha. I am merely a vessel and time told me she wanted a voice in this story, so who am I to refuse? Lol. My own personal politic is that I reject Western notions of ‘time management’ which attempt to control, utilize, and dictate time. That’s very capitalist perspective. Hence the adage “time is money.” I was thinking through if I truly lived with an understanding of John Mbiti’s conceptualization of African time, it meant understanding that time is not a thing that controls us or that we can control, but an active participant that carries us through our story. I am hoping readers will be left reevaluating their relationship to time in a way that eases some of the immediate intensity of loss.

One side of this story, for me, is about grief. But there’s this other side, a related side, which is about love, and the many ways people experience it or demonstrate it. This line stands out for me: “Their ‘I love you’s’ are present but more unsaid than said;” it informs the overwhelming emotions Nyokabi experiences, and stands in relationship to the ways in which the other members of the family express and experience love. Some of this is subtle and delicately drawn. What is important for you in these depictions of family?

Whew. It’s funny because I was so sure that I was only going to write black joy stories in my lifetime and here I ended up writing a black grief story. However, as I have been learning, emotions aren’t linear and/or binary. Joy can coexist with devastating loss. It was incredibly important for me that Baraka’s life and loves took up as much space as, if not more than, his death. That their story, even with the conflict in the interworking of the family unit, still reflected their deep love for each other. I have a soft spot for Mama Nyokabi (Noni). I also think Baba Nyokabi (Ken) is trying his absolute hardest, but grief really has a way of turning us into versions of ourselves that we do not recognize. There are so many layers in the ways we are taught to love as black people and, specifically in this story, as African ex-colonized people. Where there is an internalized idea of what success is, of what being a man is, of what being a woman is, of what being a parent is or a ‘responsible child,’ of the sacrifices parents make for their children to have a “better” future. I really love Jamaica Kincaid’s “GIRL” because it shows in one way a parent who seems to be shaming her daughter, but who is actually just saying, for me to have survived this world in my skin, I had to move in a particular way, and if you don’t want the world to beat you to the ground then you are also going to have to move in that particular way. Which just brings us back to empathy. I pray there is always room for empathy and vulnerability.

What do you love most about this story, and what do you hope the reader gets from it?

So many things. I loved writing the scenes in Mombasa. The Bahari is my favourite place on Earth, so anytime I get to write the Swahili Seas into story I take the opportunity. I also resonate with Kabi’s googling literally everything and the way her anxiety presents itself. I really really love Mad-ma Nyasi. She’s so cool and always talking in circles in a way you have to work really hard to catch up with her, like an African fairy godmother. I hope the readers get something that resonates with their spirit. What that thing is I don’t know, but I am very excited by the possibility of different people bringing different experiences to their interpretation of this story.

What else are you working on, what do you have coming up for new fans of your work?

Cool thing! This story is part of a novella! So hopefully that will eventually be published and the readers can get to see more of Ma-Nyasi (Njeri) and dive a little deeper into Nyokabi and Baraka’s history. I am also currently working on my thesis project, which is a novel that centers a travelling word inspired by black prophetics across the diaspora. I also co-run Voodoonauts (a free Afrofuturist workshop for black SFF writers) with three wonderful writers: Yvette Ndlovu, H.D Hunter, and L.P. Kindred. We are working on different programming in collaboration with other more mainstream organizations like Clarion West, and, possibly in the works, we are curating a black SFF anthology. So many wonderful storytelling things to look forward to.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Arley Sorg is an associate editor at Locus Magazine, where he’s been on staff since 2014. He joined the Lightspeed family in 2014 to work on the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue, starting as a slush reader. He eventually worked his way up to associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare. He also reviews books for Locus, Lightspeed, and Cascadia Subduction Zone and is an interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and, in non-pandemic times, usually writes in local coffee shops. He is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate. Author Spotlight: Osahon Ize-Iyamu Christie Yant | 1584 words

Welcome, Osahon! We’re so happy to feature your beautiful story “To Look Forward” in the first issue of this new epoch of Fantasy Magazine. Your characters meet on the playground—a setting that they have outgrown—to escape the pressures from family, peer bullying, and neglect as they fight to find and keep their sense of self. It’s a perfect setting for the tension between childhood and adulthood to play out. Can you tell us how this story came about?

Thank you so much for this spotlight Christie! I’m really happy that this story found such a perfect home. I really wanted to play around with the idea of childhood imaginations being burdened with adult expectations, and I’m glad the swings managed to reflect that idea (as well as being the perfect metaphor). This story came about in many different ways—the first is that I wanted to write about a type of friendship that was built around each character being so engrossed in their own imaginations and journeys that they have no time for anyone else. In first-person stories I feel like we often get the main character’s story and then small glimpses (if we’re lucky) into the life of the side characters. What I like about “To Look Forward” in this aspect is that (much like the main character’s role as a listener) it gives everybody a voice of who they are meant to be. It’s definitely one of my favorite stories for that reason: everyone gets to be so well-rounded. The second way this story came about is through personal childhood experience. I swung on a lot of swing sets and played in a lot of playgrounds when I was younger, and I was always trying to see how high I could go each time, until one day I literally broke the swing under me. I love mining childhood nostalgia like this in my fiction because I had a lot of imaginative experiences growing up, and this story is kind of a love letter to one of those moments. The third reason this story came to me is because I really wanted to write a Shimmer story in late 2017/early 2018 (when Shimmer magazine was still in active publication). I was obsessed with the notion of what makes a story Shimmery and “To Look Forward” was one of my many attempts. Two of my biggest inspirations for this story actually came from Shimmer stories—I’d describe “To Look Forward” as a cross between “Hare’s Breath” by Maria Haskins and “Dandelion” by John Shade.

Your story is a poignant exploration of youth, power, potential, and the impossible choice of pleasing others or pleasing ourselves. This is a theme you’ve explored before—I recently read “Be a Thunder, Release a Roar” published by Robot Dinosaur, wherein your protagonist is struggling with many of the same issues, but in a different way. What draws you back to those themes? A great question. I think one of the most complex issues about living in a collectivist society (which is the case for many African countries) is that you’re constantly taught that everything you do affects everyone, and all your choices must be made to respect/consider others in your family. I think this is pretty much a double edged sword—yes we should definitely take into account our family members and other people around us when we make some choices, but a lot of times this idea robs us of our own sense of choice and can be weaponized against us. As a result, we shrink into ourselves, or we live unhappy lives just to please others around us, to prevent ourselves from “shaming” our families, and I think one of the goals in my stories is to always show that your own happiness/autonomy is important. It is worth it. And you should seek it at all costs. There’s a quote by Sunny Moraine in their Uncanny Magazine story “Your Slaughterhouse, Your Killing Floor” which says: “Freedom tastes like blood. So be a Fucking Vampire.” I also think both “To Look Forward” and “Be a Dinosaur” explore (and what I’m exploring in some other stories I’m writing as well) is how school systems in this day and age have become intimidating and oppressive all over in the world. In Nigeria, where “To Look Forward” takes place, students are forced to pick between art, social science, or science to study at a young age. I’ve always felt this system makes young children jump into intense courses before they realize what their true passions are, and as a result they become greatly overwhelmed. “To Look Forward” is as much an exploration of freedom as it is a critique of education, and I wanted it to be a wake-up call to how stifling this educational system can be.

You sold your first story when you were just fourteen years old, and pursued your own iridescence all the way from Nigeria to Pennsylvania to attend the Alpha Workshop for young writers. What was that journey like? Do you have any advice for other young writers?

I did! I sold my first story to The Dark in early 2017, and that was definitely an amazing feeling. Alpha was a dream come true for me as well; I applied on a whim last minute based off one of Daniel Jose Older’s promotion tweets for the workshop, and it was one of the best experiences of my life and for my writing career. It definitely gave me the wings to write my weird stories and to flesh out the stories of my heart. I met some of my favorite people there and I had the opportunity to read some of the most imaginative and beautiful fiction from my classmates (go check out the work of Wenmimareba Klobah Collins, Kit Pyne-Jaeger, and Kay Harlan, just to name a few). I would definitely encourage anyone to apply if they’re able —it is worth the experience and I can never forget it. And the two stories I wrote there, “Who Has Never Loved a Gentle House” and “Flags Flying Before a Fall,” have now been published in Strange Horizons! My advice to other young writers is basically to not be afraid to write whatever the hell you want. The only way to grow and expand the limits of what a genre can do is by trying it out for yourself, and I think it’s worth writing even the most nonsensical stories just to see what they can accomplish. Be inventive. Be a vampire. Don’t limit yourself. Everything that I thought was too weird and too strange has been appreciated in some form or another, and your work will be valued as well. Go for it!

This year the pandemic has changed every aspect of our lives, from the way we communicate, to how we attend and teach school, to how we buy groceries. Some people have felt like they had to put their creative mind on hold; others have found that it has given them more to write about. How has it affected you and your own creativity?

I think the pandemic has actually made me more of a horror writer. I usually write fantasy for the most part, but this period has definitely brought out my horror side. I’ve written a lot of horror stories and drafts, and I think that’s been my way of handling the situation: to focus on the scares I can control. I also do think the pandemic has affected and maybe changed my writing style a little bit—I have definitely found myself to be more finicky over my work than usual. These are uncertain times, and I think the best we can all do is to stay as safe as possible and try to get through it. There’s no real solution to creating words in a pandemic. It’s one day at a time these days.

In just three short years you’ve amassed an impressive list of publications, so I have no doubt that we can expect to see more from you soon. What are you working on, what do you have coming up, and what should we be looking forward to seeing from you?

Thank you for this spotlight! I suspect that by the time this interview is out I may have a horror story available from The Dark magazine about a Nigerian mothers’ WhatsApp group chat that goes horribly wrong (involving some creepy chain messages as well) called “Forwarded as Received”. Look out for that! I’m always working on a million things at once, but currently the newest contenders in my Word doc right now are: my novelette about the formation of a cult featuring someone who may or may not be Tarzan (don’t tell Disney), a science fiction story written partly in JAMB past questions, a story about a sentient bubble trying to become a famous Nollywood actor, an epic fantasy story written in pidgin English about betting on rams, one musical short story, and a magical school novel I’m still tinkering about with. My brain is in many different worlds at the moment.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Christie Yant writes and edits science fiction and fantasy on the central coast of California, where she lives with a dancer, an editor, a dog, and four cats. She worked as an assistant editor for Lightspeed Magazine from its launch in 2010 through 2015, and, in 2014 she edited the Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue of Lightspeed, which won the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. In 2019 she co-edited (with Hugh Howey and Gary Whitta) Resist: Tales From a Future Worth Fighting Against, an anthology benefitting the ACLU, and co-edited The Dystopia Triptych series of anthologies (with Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams). She is also a consulting editor for Tor.com’s line of novellas, and her own fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines including Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 (Horton), Armored, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9, and Wired.com, and has received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Science Fiction (Dozois) and Best Horror of the Year (Datlow).

Coming Attractions Fantasy Staff | 97 words

Coming up in the December issue of Fantasy Magazine… We have original fiction from C.E. McGill (“Things to Bring, Things to Burn, Things Best Left Behind”) and Kurt Hunt (“An Indefinite Number of Birds”), along with flash fiction by Aynjel Kaye (“If These Walls Whispered What Would We Hear?”) and Kristiana Willsey (“Tiny House Living”). We also have poetry by Kerry C. Byrne (“Things Might Be Different if We All Lived Underwater”) and Maria Zoccola (“like the gator loves the snake”), plus an essay by Meg Elison (“All the King’s Women”). Thanks for reading! Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard The Editors

We already offer ebook subscriptions as a way of supporting the magazines, but we wanted to add an additional option to allow folks to support us, thus we’ve launched a Patreon (patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams).

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If you enjoy reading Fantasy, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Fantasy store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Fantasy more than 45 stories a year, plus assorted nonfiction. The cost is just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! Visit fantasy-magazine.com/subscribe to learn more, including about third-party subscription options. We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors, and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Fantasy ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! Buying a Bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. Buying either of the half-year Bundles saves you $3 (so you’re basically getting one issue for free), or if you spring for the Year One Bundle, you’ll save $11 off the cover price. So if you need to catch up on Fantasy, that’s a great way to do so. Visit fantasy-magazine.com/store for more information. Stay Connected The Editors

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