Trans-Galactic Bike Ride by Lydia Rogue

Author:Lydia Rogue [Rogue, Lydia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Microcosm Publishing LLC
Published: 2020-10-07T14:42:15+00:00

The Visitmothers

Charlie Jane Anders

Cait walks her creaky old five-speed bicycle up the fumbly narrow path on the steep grade of Toothache Hill. At the top she says the nonsense words you’re supposed to say, somewhere between a prayer and a petition and an invocation, that will make the Visitmothers show up. Nothing happens. (Except the wind gets stronger and colder, and two middle-aged people give up on foraging for stray Pokémon and trudge down into the curvy crinkly streets of the city.) Cait hugs herself and fidgets, and says the whole thing again, trying not to shiver or bite into the words.

The sun goes down. Cait fumbles in the old knapsack bungee-corded to the back of the bicycle for her hoodie, which is fuzzy on the inside and almost reaches bathrobe levels of comfort despite being so old that the logo on the breast is illegible. A smattering of stars shows through the city light pollution, and yet the moon glows so bright it almost throbs, with its surface visible in crisp detail.

The bike wobbles in the wind, so Cait leans it more carefully against a rock. This Raleigh Chopper has been Cait’s constant accompaniment, ever since her sixteenth birthday, and she’s used to seeing the world from atop its seat. She has decorated its spokes with rainbow colors, streamers come out of its handlebars, and the seat is covered with a leopard-print fabric.

Cait is going to have a scary ride home on these streets. City darkness, but still...darkness. She should leave right now, but she’s come all this way, memorized the words, psyched herself up. She doesn’t want to go home with nothing. Not because of her iron willpower or determination or whatever, but because she cannot imagine what she will do if this doesn’t work. She doesn’t have any back-up plan.

So she sits on the crest of Toothache Hill, checking the time on her phone constantly until she risks draining the battery. She sings the entire Purple Rain album to herself from memory. The shouts of drunk people fill the streets, then die down. The wind gets colder.

Finally, somewhere between one and two in the morning, a darkness gathers at the top of Toothache Hill. Not the dark of night, but more like a blindfold made of velvet. Cait’s heart amps up. The Visitmothers have arrived at last.

It’s just like everybody says in the stories Cait has heard late at night after too many drinks at the Too Queer Karaoke Night, or in certain message-board chats. Four Visitmothers descend from the sky but also seem to glide sideways, as if they were on a conveyor belt coming from someplace off to the side of the hill. They each flex five wings (or perhaps they’re legs, or beaks, or something else) from their slender concave bodies, and sometimes the folds and creases on their bodies appear like faces. Pareidolia, probably.

You brought us to visit you, says the Visitmother closest to Cait. You want us to visit change upon you, to answer a question, or to predict.

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