The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
“Mum, LISTEN! This is important!”
Mama Nyokabi looks at her daughter hard. “Nyokabi, you may be an adult but you do not shout at me under my roof, ehh?! Remember I still carried you for nine months. Umenisikia?”
Nyokabi restrains herself from throwing something, anything. Deep breaths. “Okay, I just need to know how to find the lady?
Mum?
She’s your cousin, the one who always carries cowrie shells.”
Mama goes back to cleaning the counter, silent for a moment, and then, “Are you talking about mad-ma-Nyasi?”
“Who?”
“Mad-ma-Nyasi. Well, she is named Njeri, after our Maitu; we started calling her Ma-Nyasi because after her daughter died she left the city for up-country, went to live in the grass, and started calling herself a prophetess of God.”
For a moment Kabi’s mother is lost in thought. Does she know? And then she remembers she is in the middle of conversation. “Anyway, why do you want to know about her?”
“I just, I just do. Can I get in touch with her?”
“Ha! Does that woman look like she is reachable? I’m even surprised you remember her. She only comes when she wants to be seen, but that is probably for the best. She carries a bad omen, that one. Anacheza na uchawi.”
The dishes cleared, she wipes her hands and moves away. “Anyway I have a chamaa to go to and I suggest if your plan is still to save enough money to leave this house eventually, that you get to work on time.”
And when the house is empty, Kabi texts in that she is sick, and sits in front of her computer, researching,
Potions to go back in time?
Can you change the past?
Skips articles offered by:
Medium
How to Change the Past Without a Time Machine: The Power Is Real
Psychology Today
How You Can Alter Your Past or Your Future—And Change Your Present Life
The Philosopher’s Magazine
Sorry, Time Travelers: You Can’t Change the Past
Over and over again, unhelpful papers, essays, conspiracy theorists, until she stumbles on,
I take as my point of departure for this paper the thesis of Professor John Mbiti that in African traditional thought a prominent feature of time is the virtual absence of any idea of the future . . . Time is not an ontological entity in its own right, but is composed of actual events which are experienced. Such events may have occurred (past), may be in the process of being experienced (present), or may be certain to occur in the rhythm of nature. The latter are not properly future; they are “inevitable or potential time” (3). Consequently time in African traditional thought is “two dimensional,” having a “long past, a present, and virtually no future.” Actual time is “what is present and what is past and moves ‘backward’ rather than ‘forward’ ”. . .—John Parratt
And more and more she reads until she thinks she knows what she must do, and then she starts to feel tired, so so tired, and she rests her head, closing her eyes, thinking, it is possible, not tomorrow, not after, only yesterday and now. But I dare say the “what if ” cannot always exist in the same realm as the “what is.”
And somewhere on a different side of the city the “what is” is a boy, is a blessing, a blessing moving and breathing and feeling and loving and punching and suffocating and choosing and chasing after what it means to stay alive.
This is how I felt it: for a moment during the night Kabi was not here and I was not fully here either—wherever here is for those who exist after life but before forever—and I cannot remember how or where but we were together. Me in death and her in life met somewhere in the middle of time where the division had not taken place. And maybe this is why on this morning before my body is to be lowered into a casket, she sleeps with a half smile on her face. Baba finds her in my room and gently taps her; there are dark shadows on his face and under his eyes but I do not feel guilt or pain for him. “Kabi, sweetie, we cannot be late. Wake up.”
Half still in sleep, she asks, “Late for what?”
“Today is the burial.”
She yawns and stretches. “What? Which one?”
He clears his throat and repeats himself. “The funeral, mpenzi. We need to get ready to leave.”
The expression on her face shifts, she shakes her head, “No, no burial, he is alive.”
Baba is terrified; does not know what to do when his strong collected daughter loses her reason. “It’s okay, baby, we all, uhh, we all wish he was still alive, uhm, but today . . .” He places his palm at the back of his head, rubbing his neck compulsively. “Today let us give him a proper send-off, ehen?”
“No, Baba, he is alive. I saw him. He was alive.”
He holds her, rubbing her back, “Hush,
Tsi
tsi
tsi,
Hush.
It was a dream, mpenzi. Be strong now, you have to be strong also for your mother.”
Nyokabi’s face turns bitter. “That woman can be strong for herself!”
“Ayii yawah, daughter, don’t say things like that. I know things have been hard but she is grieving.”
“No, she is the reason Baraka was so unhappy. She always looks for a reason to be angry, disappointed.”
“As much as I wish I could blame anyone more than myself, Nyokabi, that is just not true. Your mother’s responses always have a valid justification.”
“That is just her trying to get into your mind. She is always blaming everyone else but herself . . .”
“Nyokabi, enough.”
“And do not think I did not hear her shouting at you. Aren’t you also allowed to be in mourning?! You are a grown man! No one, least of all you, should be taking her shit.”
“I said enough, Nyokabi!” His voice barely raised but firm, “You will not speak of my wife that way in my house, okay? I know you are angry but today is, today is a day for us to come together. Not to fall apart.”
Kabi’s jaw hardens. “You want to talk about coming together but even you, you were a problem. You and Mum both.” She shifts her body up, not making eye contact. “You never let him just be himself, everything that made him him, you had a problem with. You were afraid he would be one of those boys you and the other fathers gossip about, the ones that bring shame”—her voice cracks—“and now somewhere inside of you there is a sense of relief because you never have to find out.”
Whoosh!
Rushing of air, palm-on-cheek.
Baba has never touched Kabi before today. How dare he? She holds her face where it is hot and he gasps at what he has done. “Kabi, baby. I’m sorry.” He moves to hold her tighter but she pulls away. “You just”—he lifts his hands in exasperation—“you’re saying that I wished my son dead. Do you think any parent wishes this for their child? Ehh?”
Kabi does not look at him.
“I would do anything to bring him back, Kabi, believe me—any and every version of him. I didn’t understand him but . . . but God knows I loved him.”
“Just,” she whispers, head down, “he was alive.” Her eyes well up. “I could have saved him but I didn’t.”
Baba stands up. “Darling, we all could have saved him, but none of us knew how.” He walks toward the door. “Get dressed, I expect you ready in thirty minutes.” He sighs. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, mpenzi, but we will get through this. Somehow, we will get through this.”