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- Herausgeber: Metaphorosis Publishing
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
Beautifully written speculative fiction from Metaphorosis. All the stories from the month, plus author biographies, interviews, and story origins Table of Contents The Flight Home – Kaitlin McCloughan The Sound Barrier – Tony Clavelli Whalesong – L. Chan Murder on the Adriana – James Ross Gathering Dust – Meryl Stenhouse
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Metaphorosis
April 2016
edited by B. Morris Allen
ISSN: 2573-136X (online)ISBN: 978-1-64076-063-9 (e-book)
Metaphorosis
Neskowin
Table of Contents
Metaphorosis
April 2016
The Flight Home
It came from Kaitlin McCloughan
A question for Kaitlin McCloughan
About Kaitlin McCloughan
The Sound Barrier
It came from Tony Clavelli
A question for Tony Clavelli
About Tony Clavelli
Whalesong
It came from L. Chan
A question for L. Chan
About L. Chan
Murder on the Adriana
A question for James Ross
About James Ross
aGathering Dust
It came from Meryl Stenhouse
A question for Meryl Stenhouse
About Meryl Stenhouse
Metaphorosis Publishing
Copyright
Landmarks
Title Page
Table of Contents
Body Matter
April 2016
The Flight Home — Kaitlin McCloughanThe Sound Barrier — Tony ClavelliWhalesong — L. ChanMurder on the Adriana — James RossGathering Dust — Meryl Stenhouse
The Flight Home
Kaitlin McCloughan
The bees are as alive as they ever were. They glide through Jianmen village with sun glinting from metal wings, swooping between the faded white lattice of the town’s ornate bridge. The bees, originally programmed only to search for plants to pollinate, are drawn into orbit around an aging farmer hoeing a small plot of land. The farmer doesn’t flinch when the bees crawl up his sleeves and land in his hair. Unlike their long-gone biological brethren, these bees are harmless. One of them buzzes into the farmer’s home and lands on his wife’s hand, causing her to burst into tears.
It’s Carlotta Guo’s 60th birthday, and she wants to go home.
Seven years ago, she heard it was possible. A traveler, the first new face she had seen in at least a decade, marched into Jianmen with impossible tales of resurrected northern railways. He looked like a Chinese local but claimed to have recently come from Moscow. Things were good there, more peaceful and better preserved than Beijing, he said. With the proper bribe for the local army, she could catch a train at the old Mongolian border 300 kilometers north of Jianmen and go all the way to Europe.
Carlotta laughed in the traveler’s face.
But today the idea has her in its talons, gripping her with a longing she thought had frozen and shattered in the years of the long winter. Carlotta is healthy and strong, but she isn’t getting any younger, and the passing of another year has solidified her growing certainty that this is her last chance to see Italy again. Italia. She hasn’t allowed herself to think the name of her homeland for ages. She tosses the bee back into the air. “Vola!” she says, testing her mother tongue awkwardly.
The bees, like Carlotta, were never meant to stay in China forever. They were developed by her husband Yitao’s environmental engineering firm to be shipped to Europe and North America to solve the catastrophe of natural-bee extinction. But then the asteroid hit and North America went radio silent and the long winter came to the rest of the world. Now the bees, like Carlotta, remain in the village, familiar to all but also forever foreign. A non-native species.
Carlotta packs a bag. Jianmen’s shared food supply is bountiful this year and their shelves are full of canned and dried foods. She takes what she can carry, making sure to leave Yitao’s favorites behind. Then she goes to find her husband. He isn’t in the garden anymore, which leaves only one other possibility. He’s working on the bees.
By the time the long winter ended, half the houses in Jianmen stood empty, and Yitao has made one of them into a workshop. Or a hive, Carlotta thinks as she stands quietly in the doorway watching Yitao work. The bees are thick in the air, buzzing in circles around Yitao’s head and creeping up the walls, but he seems oblivious to the disorder as he repairs the wings on a damaged bee. His focused frown whips Carlotta back to Beijing almost forty years ago when she fell hard for this earnest engineer who courted her with the same dedication he applied to his work.
“They’re reproducing,” he says without glancing at her.
“What?”
“The bees. They’re finally self-replicating successfully.” Carlotta has no response. Yitao sets the bee down carefully and looks up. He flinches when he takes in her full backpack and canteen. He knows. Maybe he saw it coming before she did. Carlotta waits to see if he will try to stop her, but of course he only sits frozen at his workbench. She feels that the script calls for her to fling herself into his arms, to cry her farewell tears into his chest. But she imagines his embarrassed look and stiff embrace and can’t convince herself to say what she feels.
He wasn’t always like this. In Beijing he surprised her with flowers and teddy bears and learned to say “I love you!” in Italian. When she first visited his parents in Jianmen, she marveled that her loving fiancé could come from such a gruff and distant father, a hard-working but unemotional mother. Then the long winter came and Yitao’s exuberant smile iced over until he and his father were like twins—stoic, weathered, silent. Still, he was there with her, and in the cold it was enough. When she realized she was going to bring a baby into a world that hadn’t yet warmed, like magic he found the fuel to drive to an abandoned factory and return with a year’s worth of supplies. In her mind his daring act single-handedly brought the thaw. It was enough, back then. Today it isn’t.
“Yitao,” she says. “I have to try to go back.” He looks down at his worktable, his jaw slowly clenching and releasing once. Then he stands and comes to her, the familiar creases of his face an inch from hers.
“Stay here” he says. “Our life is good now. The farming has been very successful for several years. There’s no disease. In Chengdu the flu killed thousands. You don’t even know what happened in Italy.” It sounds like he has rehearsed this.
“I’m sorry,” says Carlotta, but she feels freed by his dispassionate arguments. He’ll be fine without her, farming the land and working on his bees. And maybe she’ll stand once more on the edge of the sea and let the warm mist wash away all the heaviness of all the years.
“It’s not safe,” he says. “You could be killed.”
“I probably will be,” she says, and almost enjoys the moment of shock on his ever-steady face. He tries another tactic.
“What about Little Bao? What if he comes home?” Yitao refers to their son by his childhood diminutive. They both keep doing this, hoping to ignore what their treasured child has become. Carlotta sighs.
“He’s not coming home, Yitao,” she says, and feels the chilled breath of the new winter that has come between them. “I’m sorry. I love you. But I can’t stay here anymore.” She takes a backwards step towards the door.
