How Long 'til Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin

Author:N. K. Jemisin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2018-11-26T16:00:00+00:00

“Give me a child,” Dihya whispered to the pool.

The little spheres churned at the sound of her voice. Near the center of the pool, something stirred, and after a moment a tendril rose—several dozen of the spheres linked together in a delicate-looking chain. It was beautiful; a string of translucent pearls winking in the pale light. When it was the length of Dihya’s arm, it turned and began to sway toward her.

Taking a deep breath, Dihya reached out to it.

The tendril whipped around her hand at once. She braced herself for pain, but there was none, just the peculiar touch of something moist and gelatinous and surprisingly warm. The tendril wound about her palm several times, several of the spheres separating off to track their way down her fingers before returning to the mass. One of them moved down her arm a ways, leaving a damp trail, before it, too, hastened back to rejoin the tendril. Examining? Judging? There was no way to tell.

She summoned up all the yearning within herself, all the ache of all the years of loneliness and unfulfillment, and said again, “Give me a child.”

The tendril released her. It withdrew into the pool, and suddenly the roiling mass of spheres grew still. The dark spots faded, vanished. Dihya frowned at this until she realized that the spheres were melding back into one another. After a few moments, the pool was as she had first seen it—still, silent. Waiting.

Yes.

She got to her feet and undressed. Kneeling on her garments, she bowed to the eastern sky and prayed for God to find her worthy, to take away her fear, to show her the true way. Then, trying to hold the peace of the prayer in her heart, she steeled herself and stepped into the pool.

Liquid surrounded her, like warm oil. A step brought her in up to her knees; another step and the liquid surrounded her thighs and tickled her labia; a third step and the ground dropped away beneath her feet alarmingly. She cried out in spite of herself, but the drop was not far, just a foot or two. She was up to her chin in the white pool now, deeper than she’d meant to go.

But submission to God was the way of faith.

So she closed her eyes and prayed again as the liquid began to shift around her, tickling and touching, sensual against her skin. She shivered in pleasure and took it as a sign of God’s approval. And when the moment came, when she felt something enter her body and go up and up until it touched her very womb, she cried out again. But this time her cry was the ecstasy of the exalted, of those who receive the reward for their faith after long waiting. God was great, His purpose had been revealed, and now at last Dihya and her sisters could be saved.

Now at last, Illiyin could become the paradise for which it had been named.

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