Heiresses of Russ 2012 by Connie Wilkins

Author:Connie Wilkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, short stories, lesbian, speculative fiction, science fiction, feminist, spec fic, sapphic, annual anthology
Publisher: Lethe Press, Inc.

To Follow the Waves

Amal El-Mohtar

Hessa’s legs ached. She knew she ought to stand, stretch them, but only gritted her teeth and glared at the clear lump of quartz on the table before her. To rise now would be to concede defeat—but to lean back, lift her goggles and rub her eyes was, she reasoned, an adequate compromise.

Her braids weighed on her, and she scratched the back of her head, where they pulled tightest above her nape. To receive a commission from Sitt Warda Al-Attrash was a great honour, one that would secure her reputation as a fixed star among Dimashq’s dreamcrafters. She could not afford to fail. Worse, the dream Sitt Warda desired was simple, as dreams went: to be a young woman again, bathing her limbs by moonlight in the Mediterranean with a young man who, judging by her half-spoken, half-murmured description, was not precisely her husband.

But Hessa had never been to the sea.

She had heard it spoken of, naturally, and read hundreds of lines of poetry extolling its many virtues. Yet it held little wonder for her; what pleasure could be found in stinging salt, scratching sand, burning sun reflected from the water’s mirror-surface? Nor did swimming hold any appeal; she had heard pearl divers boast of their exploits, speak of how the blood beat between their eyes until they felt their heads might burst like over-ripe tomatoes, how their lungs ached with the effort for hours afterwards, how sometimes they would feel as if thousands of ants were marching along their skin, and though they scratched until blood bloomed beneath their fingernails, could never reach them.

None of this did anything to endear the idea of the sea to her. And yet, to carve the dream out of the quartz, she had to find its beauty. Sighing, she picked up the dopstick again, tapped the quartz to make sure it was securely fastened, lowered her goggles, and tried again.

•

Hessa’s mother was a mathematician, renowned well beyond the gates of Dimashq for her theorems. Her father was a poet, better-known for his abilities as an artisanal cook than for his verse, though as the latter was full of the scents and flavours of the former, much appreciated all the same. Hessa’s father taught her to contemplate what was pleasing to the senses, while her mother taught her geometry and algebra. She loved both as she loved them, with her whole heart.

Salma Najjar had knocked at the door of the Ghaflan family in the spring of Hessa’s seventh year. She was a small woman, wrinkled as a wasp’s nest, with eyes hard and bright as chips of tourmaline. Her greying hair was knotted and bound in the intricate patterns of a jeweler or gem-cutter—perhaps some combination of the two. Hessa’s parents welcomed her into their home, led her to a divan and offered her tea, but she refused to drink or eat until she had told them her errand.

“I need a child of numbers and letters to learn my trade,” she had said, in the gruff, clipped accent of the Northern cities.

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