Scattered Among Strange Worlds by Aliette de Bodard

Author:Aliette de Bodard [de Bodard, Aliette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Far-future, Short Stories, SF, Space Opera, Science Fiction
Publisher: Nine Dragons River
Published: 2012-07-16T21:00:00+00:00

We went to Brittany once, when I was ten — because that was what the French did — left for two weeks in July and drove hours through traffic jams to some sleepy little town smelling of brine and pine needles. I walked among the market stalls, my mouth watering every time I passed the fishmongers’ displays with the fresh, raw fish lined up on ice, their open eyes glistening in the sunlight. The lobsters and crabs were still alive, their shells a healthy, tantalising brown — a food fit for the nobles of the sea. I could imagine how they’d taste — how it would feel to have their legs kicking feebly against my palate in that brief moment before my teeth closed down on them. But then I remembered that we didn’t eat raw flesh, not in the Republic.

Mother retreated into the backyard of the house where she cooked shellfish and haddocks and salmons with a vengeance: the rooms filled with the smell of oil and the curiously bland odor of cooked fish-flesh.

I went to the seaside.

They’d forbidden me, of course, but I slipped away early one morning while they were all sleeping. I crept along the fir-scented paths, past the bunched-up houses with their white paints and grey slate roofs stained with greenish moss. The sky overhead was unbearably blue, the light sharp and unforgiving; not the gentle, shimmering veils I’d seen underwater.

The beach was deserted: I climbed down the stairs from the road, and took off my shoes and socks to stand in warm sand. I stood for a while, where the sea met the shore — breathing in the wetness of the air, my pores expanding to take it all in. There were algae and fragments of broken seashells by my feet, crunching when I stepped over them, and the sand was wet and clinging to my skin. I don’t know what I’d expected — the Dark King, looming out of the deserted surf to snatch me, laughing manically all the while; some squad of twisted, leering merpeople with harpoons, unfolding from Aunt Albane’s nightmarish accounts.

Or perhaps the sea itself, the blessed Abyss gaping out between the waves, its shimmering depths reminding me of my purpose in life, of the past that must not be forgotten, that would be restored someday.

But the sea remained silent. A few families had spread their bags and towels on the sand, and their children were busy digging holes in the dry sand, daring each other to breach their fortresses and castles. No one swam: the water had ceased to be a friendly place, with the rise of the Dark King — what the French had called the Black Catastrophe, spouting excuses about global warming and greedy corporations, as if they knew anything about what had really happened under the sea.

I wanted, more than anything, to immerse myself in the water, to be cleansed by salt and iodine; but there was no telling what might happen.

I walked back home feeling as though a piece of me were missing.

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