Those mortals who worshipped the Goddess of Earth claimed ownership of the corpse of the World Tree. By the time of Shahar’s death, they had excavated and preserved enough of its trunk to house a small city, which began to call itself World. They lived in the Tree and on it, said their prayers at the skeleton of its roots, dedicated their sons and daughters to its broken branches. Fires, and fire-godlings, were not allowed in this city. They lit their chambers at night with pieces of Sky.
The Aeternat … well. It was not eternal. But that, too, is a matter for other tales.
So many tales, really. They are sure to be exciting. A shame that I will get to hear none of them.
I? Oh, yes.
When Shahar exhaled her last breath I awakened, midwifed into existence by her mortality. My first act was to turn in space and time and kiss Deka awake, beside me. Then I called to my En, and it shot across realities and blazed into joyous, welcoming life somewhere far, far beyond the realms of the Three. It would be the seed-star of a new realm. Our realm. It sent out great arcing plumes of fire, silly little ball of gas, and I petted it silent and promised it worlds to warm just as soon as I’d taken care of other business.
Then we found Shahar, and gathered her up, and took her with us. She was, to say the least, surprised. But not displeased. We are together now, the three of us, for the rest of forever. I will never be alone again.
My name is not Sieh, and I am no longer a trickster. I will think of a new name and calling, eventually — or some one of you, my children, will name me. Make of me, of us, whatever you wish. We are yours until time ends, and perhaps a little beyond.
And we will all create such wonderful new things, you and we, out here beyond the many skies.
Maroland, the: Smallest continent, which once existed to the east of the islands; site of the first Arameri palace. Destroyed by Nahadoth.
Mnasat: The third ranking of godlings; godlings born of godlings. Generally weaker than godlings born of the Three.
Mortal realm: The universe, created by the Three.
Nahadoth: One of the Three. The Nightlord.
Nemmer: A niwwah godling who lives in Shadow. The Lady of Secrets.
Nimaro Reservation: A protectorate of the Arameri, established after the Maroland’s destruction.
Niwwah: The first ranking of godlings, born of the Three; the Balancers. More stable but sometimes less powerful than the elontid.
Nobles’ Consortium: Ruling political body of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
Nsana: A niwwah godling; the Dreammaster.
Order of Itempas: The priesthood dedicated to Bright Itempas. In addition to spiritual guidance, also responsible for law and order, education, public health, and welfare. Also known as the Itempan Order.
Order-Keepers: Acolytes (priests-in-training) of the Order of Itempas, responsible for maintenance of public order.
Pilgrim: Worshippers of the Gray Lady who journey to Shadow to pray at the World Tree.
Previt: One of the higher rankings for priests in the Order of Itempas.
Promenade, the: Northernmost edge of Gateway Park in East Shadow.
Pymexe: (masculine; feminine is pymoxe ) Heir to one of the three ruling positions in the Teman Triadice. Not hereditary; Triadic heirs are chosen at an early age, after a rigorous selection process involving official examinations and interviews.
Ramina Arameri: A fullblood; half brother of Remath Arameri.
Remath Arameri: Current head of the Arameri family; mother of Shahar and Dekarta.
Salon: Headquarters for the Nobles’ Consortium.
Script: A series of sigils, used by scriveners to produce complex or sequential magical effects.
Scrivener: A scholar of the gods’ written language.
Semisigil: A modern version of the Arameri blood sigil, modified to remove anachronistic scripts.
Senm: Southernmost and largest continent of the world.
Senmite: The Amn language, used as a common tongue for all the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
Shadow: The city beneath Sky.
Shahar Arameri: Current heir of the Arameri Family. Also high priestess of Itempas at the time of the Gods’ War. Matriarch of the Arameri family.
Sieh: A godling, also called the Trickster. Eldest of all the godlings.
Sigil: An ideograph of the gods’ language, used by scriveners to imitate the magic of the gods.
Sky: The palace of the Arameri family.
Sky-in-Shadow: Official name for the palace of the Arameri and the city beneath it.
Teman Protectorate, the: A Senmite kingdom.
Time of the Three: Before the Gods’ War.
True sigil: An Arameri blood sigil in the traditional style.
T’vril Arameri: A former head of the Arameri family.
Usein Darr: A Darren warrior; heir to the Baron Darr.
Wesha: West Shadow.
White Hall: The Order of Itempas’s houses of worship, education, and justice.
World Tree, the: An evergreen tree estimated to be 125,000 feet in height, created by the Gray Lady. Sacred to worshippers of the Lady.
Wrath Arameri: Captain of the White Guard in Sky.
Yeine: One of the Three. The current Goddess of Earth, Mistress of Twilight and Dawn.
Acknowledgments
Going to keep it short this time. This is the longest novel I’ve ever written, after all, and I’m plum tuckered out.
I need to thank you.
Seriously. That’s not just pretentious “I’d like to thank all the little people” bullshit. A writer is a writer whether she’s read or not, but no writer can have a career in this business unless she satisfies her readers. And really, even that’s not enough, not in these days of the long tail and a quarter-million new titles published per year in the United States alone. A writer needs readers who will find other readers, and grab them by the arm, and say to them, Read this book right now. She needs readers who will post reviews on retailer sites and argue with other readers over their ratings; readers who will select her work for their monthly book club meetings and discuss it over tea and cake; readers who will Tweet about the book’s surprises; readers who’ll put the book on a literature syllabus. She even needs people who’ll rant that they hate the book — because those kinds of strong reactions make people curious.
The opposite of liking is not disliking, after all. The opposite of liking is apathy.
All new writers have Something to Prove — me more than most, maybe. But because so many of you have been anything but apathetic, I know I’ve done a good job. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
extras
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about the author
N. K. Jemisin is a career counselor, political blogger, and would-be gourmand living in New York City. She’s been writing since the age of ten, although her early works will never see the light of day. Visit nkjemisin.com
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short story
Not the End
By N. K. Jemisin
The fire had gone out again, I noticed as I came upstairs from my basement art studio. The whole first floor was already cold. It was the damned chimney damper, I was sure. The thing had been dodgy since that time Cingo had tried to repair it himself. Must’ve jammed entirely; we were lucky the whole house wasn’t full of smoke.
I stopped at the top of the stairs, catching my breath and feeling annoyed. Not at the snuffed fire. My daughter, and the man who passed for my son-in-law, did not get cold; their room was on the first floor, but I doubted they would even notice. I wasn’t even annoyed at Cingo, because he was fifty years dead and it was a testament even to his inept repairs that they’d lasted this long. Nor was I annoyed at myself, given that sentimentality had kept me from getting Cingo’s folly fixed in all this time. My irritation had no focus, other than perhaps the cold, which made my hands ache more than u
sual, or the climb up the basement stairs, which had left me breathless. Back when I’d lived in Shadow, I could’ve climbed a dozen flights of steps in a day and barely felt them. But that had been a long, long, long time ago. Lifetimes.
Maybe that was the problem: I was just too damned old.
I didn’t feel like going to bed. Silence from the room down the hall. I was the only one awake in the house. Impossible not to feel lonely at such an hour, with even the air gone quiet and still. It was right and proper to sleep; my restlessness profaned the cycles that Lady Yeine had woven throughout the mortal realm. But I didn’t much care if I profaned anything of hers, all things considered.
Finally I wandered toward the back porch and stepped outside, though it was even colder on the porch and I wore nothing but a tatty old nightgown and housecoat. A few minutes wouldn’t kill me, and Glee wasn’t around to glower disapprovingly. I folded my arms and tucked in my hands, and tilted my face up to the moonlight that I could feel as the most delicate of pressures against my skin. Even after all these years, I still wasn’t used to seeing nothing when I looked up.
And even after all these years, I still always glanced toward the muckbins, eventually. Habit. But this time I froze as I felt something contrast the ambient predawn stillness. Something more still, and heavy, and solid as a boulder that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the middle of my backyard. No, not a boulder; a mountain. Bigger. Incomprehensibly immense — yet contained, perfectly so, within the comparatively tiny space between my porch and the muckbin gate.
Terrifying. Impossible. Familiar. I drew in a long, careful breath, and was proud that it did not shake.
“May I assume,” I said softly, out of respect for the stillness, “that your presence means there’s been some relaxing of the rules?”
For a moment there was only silence in response. I wondered, of course, if I’d been wrong. One does get funny notions after a certain age. At least if I was hallucinating, though, there was no one around to catch me at it.
Then he spoke. Same voice, even and soft, tenor. “Not so much a relaxation as …” I imagined, rather than heard, the infinite sift of his thoughts, choosing among a million languages and a thousand suitable phrases, of which a dozen were all equally appropriate for the moment. “… a reordering of priorities.”
I nodded. Put my hands on the porch railing, lightly, so he wouldn’t realize I needed it to stand. Just resting my hands. “All that business with the Maelstrom, then? They tell me you acquitted yourself well.”
“Sufficiently.” I could not help smiling at his perfectionism. He was closer now. Not on the porch yet, still on the ground below, probably on the cobble path that led to my garden terraces. I had not heard his feet move. Which meant …
“I am free now,” he said, in the same moment that I guessed it. “Permanently.”
I nodded. “After only a century and change. Congratulations.”
“It was not my doing. But I am grateful, nevertheless.” He moved closer again, right in front of where I stood at the railing. I could feel him looking up at me. Studying me, perhaps remembering the beauty I had once been. “I feared I would not see you again.”
At this I could not help a single laugh, which sounded more harsh than it should have in the still air. “And here I feared you would. You couldn’t just appear at my deathbed, could you? That would’ve been nice and romantic — fulfilling a last wish, saying good-bye to an old flame. No, now I’ve got to live on for however damned long, creaky and half toothless …” I shook my head. “Demons.”
“Ephemerality is meaningless, Oree.” Gods, gods, his voice. I had forgotten how nice it sounded, my name, when he spoke it. “You remain the same in all essential ways.”
“But I’m not the same. You’re not the same. My name is Desola now, remember? Oree Shoth is long dead.” My hands had tightened on the railing. I forced them to relax. “Ephemerality is meaningless except to us mortals. Being mortal for a hundred years should’ve taught you that.”
He smiled. I had forgotten that, too. The way I’d always been able to feel him. “It did. But I do not change.”
I sighed and lifted my hands to blow on them. At least I had an excuse for shaking the way I was, in all this damned cold.
He moved again. I heard him this time, his footsteps heavy and sure on the cobbles. Then on the porch steps. Then on the porch itself, hollow, measured thuds along the old wood. Then he was beside me, right there, and my whole left side tingled at the warmth of his presence. I felt warmer all over, in fact, as though I stood beside a chimney. A tall, breathing chimney that gazed at me like I was the only person in the world who mattered.
I let out a deep sigh, and it was shaky this time. “I got married, you know. A local man. We were together almost forty years.” Unnecessarily, I added, “That’s a long time, for mortals.”
In fact, Cingo had been with me long enough to notice that I was not aging — not at the rate I should have, anyhow. By the end he’d been making jokes about trophy wives, and I’d finally remembered that my father had been the same, young-looking even when he was old. And I had begun to mourn early, because by then I’d known I would have to move to a new town, give up everything and start over yet again, as soon as Cingo died. Couldn’t have people asking questions or making gossip. I still had nightmares about T’vril Arameri coming to get me — though that was foolish because he was decades dead, too, and his descendants had done a thorough job of stomping all over his grave. My secrets had probably died with him. Probably.
Cingo had come with me to this town, helped me pick out a new house. Fixed the damn chimney, however badly. And then he’d died, commanding me to find someone else so I wouldn’t be lonely. I hadn’t obeyed.
My companion nodded. “You were happy with him. Good.”
“As happy as anyone can be after forty years of marriage.” But I had been very happy. Cingo had been just what I’d needed, steady and reliable. I’d just wished he’d lived longer. I sighed again, inadvertently relaxing in the warmth, which made me feel boneless and sleepy. Perhaps that was why I said what I meant, instead of what was tactful. “I knew better than to wait for you.”
I’d meant it to hurt, but he gave no sign that it did. “That was a wise decision.” A pause. Everything he did had meaning. “You’ve had no husband since, Glee mentioned.”
As bad as her father, that girl, both of them forever meddling in people’s lives and expecting them not to mind. Then I scowled, hearing the implication underneath his words. Everything he said had more than one meaning. “No. And that had nothing to do with you. I just didn’t want to outlive another man, pretend to be something other than what I was … Darkness and daylight, you’re still a bastard, aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer, because his silence was answer enough. As was his presence, even though I was sure it couldn’t mean what I feared it meant. (Hoped it meant? No no no.) But I knew him, I knew him, and it was not his nature to act without purpose. He had done so occasionally back then, but that was only because he’d been broken. Symptoms of a greater malaise. Now he was whole, and he was here, and I needed to figure out why.
I could’ve just asked him. He would’ve told me. But I was not the bold girl I had been. With age comes caution, and perhaps cowardice. I changed the subject. “Did Glee know you were planning this?”
“We never discussed it.”
I nodded. No answer was its own answer. “She’s recovered well, if you’re wondering. Her magic is still weak, but physically, she’s almost as good as she was before the coma.” I stretched my shoulders, unable to keep myself from basking in the warmth. “That man of hers is a piece of work, but he’ll walk through all the hells for her.”
I heard the faint movement of his shrug. “He is a child of Nahadoth. That will make him … difficult.” I did not imagine the sour note that entered his tone. It made me smile that he liked our daughter’s choice no better than I did.
“You would know.”
Which made the next question hard to avoid. “Speaking of Nahadoth … and Yeine, I suppose …”
His voice grew as matte-soft as the predawn air for a moment. “We mourn our son. We repair the damage done by the Maelstrom. We contemplate the full complexity of existence, now that its shape has been revealed to us.” He paused. “Nahadoth does not forgive me, and Yeine does not trust me. It is possible this cycle will not repeat in the expected permutation.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said, and meant it. However incomprehensible his words, I had heard the pain in them. He was a family man at heart. “But if the Nightlord and Gray Lady still aren’t keen on you, then why —” Ah, but he had said. Priorities. The Maelstrom running amok. Loss and horror. For some things, terrible things, even an estranged lover was better than none. But being tolerated, even needed, was not the same thing as being welcomed home. “Well. Sorry.”
He shrugged. I wondered what he was wearing. It sounded creaky, like leather, though it smelled only of his usual (I had never forgotten that) dry-spice-hot-metal scent.