The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025 by Nnedi Okorafor

Author:Nnedi Okorafor [Okorafor, Nnedi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780063441514
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 2025-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

On my seventh and final Holly-less night, there was another car parked in my usual spot at the roadside pullout. A figure with a red headlamp sat by the rock formation.

“Hey, friend!” Orion called when I got out of the car. I turned on my own headlamp.

“Are those mine?” I asked, pointing to the binoculars around his neck as I sat down beside him.

“Do you want them back?”

“No, I’m good.”

He held them out for me anyway. I didn’t take them.

“You got a cold?” He gestured at his throat.

“What? I—No.” I laughed. I felt so at home with my new voice that I only noticed the way it had changed if I looked at an old video, and even then, it was with a sort of detachment: Did I ever really sound like that? You must be joking. There must be a mistake. “I’m transgender.”

I expected follow-up questions, but Orion moved on. “How’s your girlfriend?”

“Holly.”

“Right. How’s Holly?”

“She’s fine,” I said, because I could tell that she would be. And then I asked the thing I had come here to ask: “Tell me about your god.”

Orion had a smile like a stock image, or maybe just one particular photo: my father, grayscale and grainy from magnification, hanging above my mother’s bed. She used to kiss her fingertips and then touch the glass of the frame, and the picture was always distorted with a thousand little smudges.

Orion smiled his familiar smile, and he told me the story of a gifted man—a man so gifted that he became sacred. A man who could look at celestial bodies and see the path forward. Such a gift brought acolytes from all over the world, looking for clarity and divine wisdom, and the man who became their god was happy to oblige. He could reassure the broken; he could look at people who were in pain and tell them, with complete certainty, that their suffering was not permanent. He provided hope, something so rare and precious and holy.

The problem was that he was still a man, and he would die, and he needed his gift to live on. The problem was that he needed an heir: someone who carried his blood, and his gift.

He knew the future, but only in broad strokes—he didn’t trade in specificity. He knew his heir would be his son, or maybe his grandson? He knew a lot of blood would be spilled along the way, boys rooted out as they failed to manifest his power of prophecy. His followers trusted him with their bodies, their children, their fate. They reached for him with their fears and their doubts, because he was their god.

When he died, the unworthy fell away like chaff from grain, leaving only the truest of believers. A small circle of those who carried his word, knowing his heir was on the way. It was just a matter of time. Time, and watching the stars.

“He was my father,” Orion said. “Virgo was my son.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I had to.

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