Uncanny Magazine Issue 26: JanuaryFebruary 2019 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Uncanny Magazine
Published: 2018-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Marissa Lingen is among the top science fiction and fantasy writers in the world who were named after fruit. She has many opinions on Moomintrolls. She has been known to cross international borders in search of rare tisanes. Her personal relationships with bodies of water are intense though eccentric. She lives atop the oldest bedrock in the US with two large men and one small dog, where she writes, if not daily, frequently.

Dustdaughter

by Inda Lauryn

“What’s your name, girl?”

“Dust.”

“Dust! What kinda people named they child Dust!”

She sat in thought a moment, recalling what her wayfaring aunt she rarely saw told her to say whenever someone questioned her name, if she could remember it all.

“It’s short for Dustdaughter…”

“That’s a heavy name for a child.”

“My daddy said it’s a heavy life.”

“Your daddy ain’t got much hope for the future then. What that say about him when his future in his child.”

The woman had a hard look and a hard voice, but Dust liked the way her hair made a pile of snakes atop her head. The smell of whatever she stirred in the pot on top of the wood stove competed with the scent of an incense stick burning on the small table next to Dust in the living room. It all smelled like outside in the small wood house.

The tall, creek-mud-colored woman stuck the wooden spoon in the pot, turned away from the stove, and sauntered over to the couch, swaying in a way Dust’s mother told her a lady should never move her hips. Hips draw unwanted attention and make men do bad things “coz they knew a bad woman when they saw one.”

But the woman casually stuck the red stick of incense between her teeth and sat down beside Dust. Dust felt like she was being examined like a cow before slaughter. Or maybe just milking. The woman’s face was unreadable, mostly because Dust refused to look at it, taught never to look an adult in the eye along with other things like never climb trees or never sit with her legs open. So unbecoming of a young lady. But maybe her mother had given up on her being a lady, which was why she was here?

“So you’ll be nine tomorrow.” The woman sat back with a heavy sigh like she’d just exhaled the drag of a cigarette, the incense now casually between her thumb and pointer on the right hand relaxed on top of the knee crossed over the other leg. She looked out into a memory Dust could not see. “At least I was 17. They worked hard to protect us as children then, for as long as they could. But life ain’t get no better. I had seventeen years. Then I had to decide. They don’t let a child be a child no more. Tell you it’s a blessing then realize how much it cost. Want the child to pay for being here. Like it’s her fault…”

She drifted further into the memory while Dust waited for her to return.

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