“Shatter the Earth” Cassandra Palmer 10 Karen Chance
Yeah. I scratched something that had imbedded itself near my hairline, and a couple bits of rubble fell out and hit the white tiled floor, making little clattering sounds. The attendant didn’t say anything, so I didn’t, either. I guessed we were both going to agree that hadn’t happened.
It was funny how you couldn’t tell now, I thought, staring. Like you couldn’t tell if a lot of the bodies around Vlad’s city of the dead were male or female, after a while. They just turned into corpses, blackened and split open, with ropes of trailing entrails festooned with maggots and dripping with unknown liquids. Mothers, fathers, lovers, friends; they were all the same in death, rotting under a cheerful blue sky . ..
Somebody had told me that war was a lot of serious tedium interspersed with moments of sheer terror, however. Which I thought described my job perfectly.
…liberated my new cat. Who looked in disbelief at my bed, which was round and so oversized that they needed a new designation for it. Orgy-sized maybe, because it could have fit ten, maybe twelve in a pinch.
You got it, I gritted out, after half a freaking hour. I had been awake for going on a day, under less than ideal conditions. My body ached, my brain was fried, and my eyes actually burned. I was going to sleep right now, damn it! Only I didn’t. I tossed and turned and tried every conceivable position. I plumped my pillow, changed it out for a different one, and then pounded that one into submission, too, before giving up and going back to the first one again. I put on a sleep mask. I took off a sleep mask, because I had black out curtains that my vamp bodyguards almost always kept closed even when they weren’t in here. I didn’t need a sleep mask, goddamnit! The problem was, I didn’t know what I needed.
Somebody had told me that warm milk helped insomnia. It sounded nasty, but I was willing to give it a try. Right now, I was willing to try anything. Of course, that required that I play the fun and exciting game of Hunt the Milk, which was no mean feat. The penthouse’s kitchen had been designed to feed a horde, with three fridges—two regular ones and a shorty under the counter—a standalone freezer, two wine coolers, another wine cooler that was used only for beer, and God knew what else. I didn’t, because I couldn’t find half of it! And what I could find, I often didn’t want
Tami, my friend and self-appointed life manager, and I had sat around one night shortly after we moved in playing “guess the item” with a couple drawers full of weird, one-use-only gadgets. We’d managed to correctly identify an avocado slicer, a carrot peeler, a pair of herb scissors, a strawberry stem remover (okay, we cheated with Google on that one) and a vertical egg cooker. Plus some stuff that even the search engine of the gods hadn’t been able to help us out with. Tami’s go-to greeting for visitors to the kitchen these days was to drag them over to the mystery item drawer and try to make them identify something.
I didn’t have an answer for her. It was one of a whole host of things I didn’t know, because this job didn’t get easier as you went along, like I’d expected. It actually seemed to be getting harder, which was a problem since I was already giving a hundred and fifty percent. Literally. I turned around and went back to bed.
Only you can’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” She leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. “Everybody wants a piece of you, all the time, but you can’t give it to them. They’ll take and take, until there’s nothing left. That’s how people are—”
I seriously contemplating just sleeping where I lay. The bed had one of those down-filled mattresses that grabs your ass like it’s trying to get handsy, and then draws you down into enveloping softness.
I groaned and put a hand to my head, where it felt like I had the mother of all hangovers. And the grandmother and great-grandmother as well, I thought, trying to take stock.
Now, if you please.” Damn it, Gertie! I thought. But I stomped over anyway. “What?” “Pear?” She offered me one. I looked at it blankly. It was fat and yellow, with a blushing bottom. It was a nice pear. It also made no sense at all. “What?” “Yes, I have an apple,” Gertie said, and jerked me inside. “What are you doing?” I demanded, because this was bizarre, even for her. But she just shushed me and turned me toward the crack in the door. It was still open maybe a quarter of the way, giving us a sliver of a view, although why we needed one, I didn’t know. I needed to get back—“Watch,” Gertie said, and ate pear. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I watched anyway. Don’t argue with teacher, I thought. Only I didn’t know what I was supposed to be watching. The little girls were the easiest to see, still facing their wall. Or most of them were. One was playing with a doll she’d smuggled out, hidden in a fold of her dress, and another had squatted down to examine a fat green caterpillar. But most of the rest were dutifully reciting something, I didn’t know what, because it was in some other language. “A test,” Gertie said, her voice low. “For what?” “To see if they can age a flower.” I looked back at her. “How? They don’t have access to the Pythian power yet.” “No, they don’t,” she agreed. “The question is, can any of them get its attention?”
Or a fight, I thought, catching sight of the rest of the courtyard. “I told you I needed to get out there!” I said to Gertie, as my acolyte faced off with her own mother. I started forward, but Gertie pulled me back, and she was surprisingly strong for an old woman
Why London had what was essentially a petri dish of plague running through the city was beyond me, but it wasn’t my main concern
He’d come back for me, all right, but to capture not to kill. He’d started grafting souls onto his body, like adding apps onto a phone, and I was supposed to be his next upgrade. There to add to his power, but with none of my own, and no say in what mine was used for. Or any way to stop the process or even to die and make the torture end.
Throughout history, the number three has been fundamental to how we understand the world. The space we inhabit is measured in length, width, and height. Time is measured in past, present, and future.” He paused, and I just sat there, expectant. Until I realized that he was smiling slightly. “What?” I asked. “What are you waiting for?” “For the rest—” I stopped, realizing that I had unconsciously been waiting—for another example. I frowned. “The third instance would be body, mind, and spirit,” he continued, “which is how we understand ourselves. But the fact that you knew—instinctively—that there was a third example indicates how our minds classify things…People have always seen the world in threes. Look at religion: Christianity is fundamentally based on the Trinity—the father, son and holy spirit. The magi gave Christ three gifts, the devil tempted him three times, and he rose from the dead after three days. Even the Christian universe is traditionally seen as having three expressions: the upper world of heaven, the middle world of Earth, and the underworld of hell…The Greeks were also particularly fond of the number: there were three Fates, three Graces, three Gorgons and three Furies. There were three brothers who ruled over three realms: Zeus, Hades and Poseidon. Artemis…is often seen as a triple goddess, a unity of the divine huntress, the Moon goddess and the goddess of the underworld… the rest of the world’s religions follow a similar pattern: the Sumerian Goddess Inanna is remembered for having spent three days and nights in the underworld. There are three main gods in Hinduism: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. Yggdrasil, the sacred tree of life in the Norse religion, has three roots under which are three sacred wells——not to mention how often the number shows up in the world’s imagery. The triskelion, a three-legged spiral, can be found on items dating back more than six thousand years. The Borromean rings are a centuries-old symbol of unity made up of three interlacing circles. The Valknut rune of Odin——consisting of three interlocking triangles, stood for his power. Even the old superstition of not walking underneath a ladder stems from an ancient Egyptian belief that one should not “break a triangle’. The geometry of the number three was seen as being complete and perfect, and therefore not to be disturbed—”
“When shall we three meet again?” he quoted. “In thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.”
Seanan McGuire “Imaginary Numbers”
Everybody hurts and is hurt, in a grand cycle of being alive. But minimizing the damage . . . that matters.
In math, something is either true or it’s not. Something either works or it doesn’t. If something works and it feels like that shouldn’t be possible, it’s not the math that’s wrong: it’s your model of the universe. Mathematics is the art of refining our understanding of reality itself, like a sculptor trimming down a brick of marble until it frees the beautiful image inside.
How can anyone who truly loves numbers be irredeemable?
Life is complicated. The equations balance, in the end, but they can be so damn cold on the way to getting there.
I could feel the endless loops of recursive numbers trying to intrude on my thoughts, to pull me down into the comforting safety of pure mathematics, where I could be safe and comfortable and—most of all—protected. The numbers would protect me even as the world ate me alive
Five years. I’d lost five years with my family, and no matter how much they’d tried to keep me updated, I’d always known there would be things they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, explain to me until I was feeling well enough to come home. Things like Annie discovering she could pull fire out of the air. Big things. Things that changed everything around them, like any new variable introduced to a formerly stable equation.
The change stung. Elsie and I had never been particularly close—not like Artie and me, or Annie and me; the nerds of our generation, closing ranks against the people who didn’t understand—but she’d never looked at me like I was someone she needed to protect before
Being weird is, like, ninety percent of my day,” said Annie. She raised both hands, palms once again turned upward
He’d been dreaming of real roots, a home he could design and defend, since he was a little boy. After he met Evie and realized it was time to settle down, he’d set about making his dreams a reality. A house, isolated from the nearest human communities, big enough to host not only his immediate family, but every other living relative and maybe a dozen extras. Outbuildings and barns and fences and floodlights. Everything your average small militia needs to feel like they’re not going to be crushed under the heel of “the Man,” only in this case the militia was more like a wildlife conservation convention, and “the Man” was the Covenant of St. George.
You’re family, silly. You don’t thank us for welcoming you home. You thank us for letting you settle in before we put you on the chore rotation.”
Houses designed by eccentric cryptozoologists who grew up with a traveling carnival are rare, and they all have one trait in common: they’re idiosyncratic at best, and seriously weird at worst. The family compound fell into the “seriously weird” category. The front door opened, not on a foyer or stairway or other reasonable architectural choice, but on the mudroom connected to the kitchen, on the theory that the kitchen had a lot of flat, relatively sterile surfaces, and most people would either need hot water or food when they got to the house, depending on how injured they were. And as a theory it wasn’t wrong. It was just strange
Trust the numbers. The numbers don’t lie. Even if everything else in the world is trying to deceive you, the numbers will always, always tell the truth.” —Angela Baker
I would have thought he was handsome no matter what he looked like, because I really was in love with his mind—his weird, sweet, comforting mind—but Artie’s brain knew how to process human faces and I was inside his head and that meant that for right now, I could do the same thing. And he had a nice face, sweet and open and expressive. I spared a moment’s resentment for the fact that I belonged to a species that didn’t get to enjoy faces like his, because we simply didn’t see them. It wasn’t fair.
Then I usually think that no dimension is awful enough to deserve us, and I’m glad to at least be in a world where the Internet exists. Telepaths would never have invented the Internet.
I was broken. I made them keep you away because I was broken, and I was trying to put myself back together without any sort of map or instruction manual, and I knew if you saw me—if you, specifically, saw me—and turned away because I was too broken to care about anymore, I’d give up. I’d stop trying to repair myself.
Some people are good at music. Some people are good at sports. Some people are good at both. People are people, and every person has their own strengths and weaknesses. Biology is just one aspect of the greater whole.” —Jane Harrington-Price
Annie had been icing her knuckles, jaw set in the stubborn thrust that meant she had looked at the world, considered her options, and decided everyone else was in the wrong
Aunt Jane drove the sort of solid, sensible, mid-sized minivan beloved by soccer moms and field biologists the world over. She could pack literally hundreds of pounds of specimens into that thing, concealing them all in brightly colored plastic tubs labeled things like “PTA supplies” and “recycling.” I’ve seen her get pulled over, produce a plate of fresh peppermint brownies seemingly out of thin air, and charm the police into waving her on her way. She calls it her “weaponized white woman” routine, and it’s a calculated ruse she’s taken everywhere from cryptid extraction runs to political protests, where she spends a lot of time putting herself between the authorities and anyone she deems to be more vulnerable. Which is everyone.
My Aunt Jane loves me. I sometimes think she doesn’t want to, but there’s no questioning her affection. I’m part of her family. More importantly, I’m her reclusive son’s best friend. And none of that matters, because she grew up surrounded by people who not only knew what cuckoos were, they knew precisely why we shouldn’t be—couldn’t be—trusted. We’re natural predators who prefer the simplicity of a hunt where everyone involved is sapient. We destroy things for fun. She wasn’t the Price sibling who’d married a cuckoo’s daughter and been forced to admit that maybe there was more to us than a knife in the dark and a mind twisting inward on itself. She could love and fear and hate me all at the same time.
Nobody gets to pick where they’re born or who they’re born to, but everybody gets to pick their family. Make good choices with yours.” —Alice Healy
Life happens. So does death. The trick is putting as much time as possible between the two.”
There’s nothing like a cryptozoologist when there’s something to be taken apart. It’s basically Christmas morning for them, and when they have the opportunity to wallow in it, they really wallow. Evie and Kevin would be joining them once they were sure I was There’s nothing like a cryptozoologist when there’s something to be taken apart. It’s basically Christmas morning for them, and when they have the opportunity to wallow in it, they really wallow. Evie and Kevin would be joining them once they were sure I was safely in for the night. I could hear Kevin thinking distantly of all the tests he wanted to run on the dead cuckoo’s tissues
I think ‘a lot’ may be the most charitable description of this family,” said James, with a dour chuckle. “When Annie informed me that I was being adopted, I thought she was being fanciful. And then she got me back here, and I found myself with a bedroom, a space on the chore chart, and an offer of a new identity if I wanted to actually become a Price, rather than carrying my father’s name around with me all the time. I’m still mulling that last one over. It’s tempting.”
Mom says that when Kevin and Evie got married, Grandma Alice actually tried to break up the wedding. I don’t mean ‘disrupt’—although she did that, too—I mean break. She didn’t like cuckoos, which is understandable. We’re hard to like.” She still didn’t like most cuckoos or trust them as far as she could throw them. As a species, we’re dangerous.
Annie and Verity are way better superheroes than I am. They actually work for what they can do. When we were kids, Verity was never around, because she was always going to another dance lesson. And Annie spent half her time on the balance beam or the trapeze rig. I’m a freak of nature. They’re amazing.”
Never go anywhere unprepared, unarmed, or unaccompanied. The difference between success and suicide is often a matter of prior planning.” —Evelyn Baker
Didn’t think I’d ever have a family. Didn’t think I’d ever want one. It’s funny, how much a person can change without even noticing what’s happening.” —Frances Brown
Math is the underpinning force of the universe. That’s something people don’t always understand when I try to explain it to them, and it’s so basic—so primal and perfect—that I don’t have the words to make it any clearer. How do you explain air to a bird, or water to a fish? There’s no explaining things that simply are. That’s how I feel about math. Math is everywhere. Math is everything. Even the seemingly effortless, uncomplicated things like walking and breathing and, yes, telepathy, they’re all math.The other cuckoo’s mental shields were made of instinctive equations, so tightly knotted together that they seemed like a single continuous piece. They weren’t, though. An equation that large would be clumsy, awkward . . . slow. Her shields were fast and adaptive because they were built like a living thing, with numbers in the place of single cells. Where there’s an equation, there’s an answer. I cocked my head in imitation of her earlier gesture, picking at the wall until it all came into sudden, perfect focus. I wrapped the answer to her equations in a soft shell of my intentions and lobbed it at the shields. They went down all at once, a cascade of falling defenses. The whole process had taken only a few seconds. Back in the real world, outside our minds, the other cuckoo gasped, hand clutching at her swollen belly. The last of the shields fell. I looked at her levelly.
“No matter how much we learn, there’s always something we don’t know. A map labeled ‘here be monsters’ is better than one that reads ‘we have no idea.’” —Thomas Price
According to Mom, cuckoos are biologically more like really big wasps than they are like monkeys—hominids but not primates, in other words. So, yeah, there was probably an evolutionary stage way back in Sarah’s family tree where she would have gone through molts. But I tried not to think about that too hard
When all else fails, orange soda and toast. Even at two in the morning, orange soda and toast. They can cure many ills, and if they can’t fix the problem, at least you won’t be hungry and groggy anymore
Sometimes I hate being right. I walked over and sat down across from her at the table, deciding to skip my toast for now. Toast is for people who don’t feel like they’re about to throw up. “It’s a biology thing. It means the growth stage insects go through between molts. It’s metamorphic—they tend to change shapes and stuff—but I don’t really understand it”
We come from a family of biologists. One way or another, we’ve been exposed to more science lessons than those poor kids on the Magic School Bus. But you know what I’ve never studied voluntarily? Bugs.” Elsie shook her head. “I don’t like bugs. They’re weird and they’re creepy and they have too many legs. They skitter. I am not a skittery person.
Being a Price means spending your life preparing for an emergency you hope won’t ever come. Elsie and I aren’t as physical as our cousins—we can’t be, not when our blood tends to make people fall in love with us—but that doesn’t mean we got out of the basic training. I grabbed clothes and yanked them on before picking up the bug-out bag that leaned against my desk and slinging it over my shoulder. Inside I had medical supplies, rope, a flashlight, batteries, water, a compass—all the low-tech answers to low-tech problems. Well, most of the low-tech answers.
“Friends don’t hold their friends at gunpoint.” “What the fuck is this, an episode of Mr. Rogers? Grab him!”
Thankfully, while we all come from the Spider-Man school of combat—the bad guys can’t hit you if they’re too busy trying to figure out what the hell you’re talking about—my parents had always been very clear that there was a time and a place for helping your enemies improve. The middle of combat was neither of those things.
Annie’s smile was more like a snarl. In that moment, it was easy to see why she was Sam’s perfect girl, even if I would have sooner gotten involved with a live wolverine even if we hadn’t been related. She was way too scary for me.
It’s not paranoia when you find an actual cuckoo in your living room.
“Your sister should be done patching up the hole in your dad by now. Oh, and did you know my dad’s bi?” “I did not know that and I did not want to know that and why do you know that?” She shrugged. “He made a pass at your dad when he started bleeding.”
WhEN I WAS A kid, I’d thought everyone had a barn filled with taxidermy and weird, wonderful tools, like a mad scientist’s lab crossed with a veterinarian’s office.
“Yes, because you’re not twice my age, related to me, and capable of making me stupid with lust just by flexing a bicep.” Annie holstered her gun and moved to help Sam strap Heloise down. “Okay, maybe that last one applies, but it’s not creepy because you’re not my uncle.”
even when you’re talking to people you’re probably about to kill. Maybe especially when you’re talking to people you’re probably about to kill. That way they get to the afterlife with an accurate idea of what took them out.”
Her hand moved in a complicated pattern, and she was suddenly holding an actual fireball. It flickered orange and red and blue, looking strangely like a pom-pom from her cheerleading days, if the pom-poms had been actively terrifying.
We’ve never been chill,” she continued, still filing. “Chill doesn’t save anybody. We like saving people. The ones who can be saved, anyway. Some of them were always beyond salvation.” She blew on her nails. “Those ones, we bury in the woods.”
You heard me.” His eyes flashed white again. “Everyone knows about you. The Prices. The Healys. You were the first people to figure out that we existed, and keep knowing that we existed, even when we tried to make you forget. It’s because of you that this world has turned dangerous for us.” He paused to chuckle, darkly. “Well. Because of you, and because of video surveillance. We can change a mind, but we can’t change a camera. Another few years and this whole world is going to be like London. Too filmed to risk. Still, we might have held out a few more decades if it weren’t for you people screwing everything up for us. So I’m asking you, how much do you know? I need to know where to start.”
“People feel smart when they tell you ‘Frankenstein’ was the doctor, not the monster. They’re wrong. Frankenstein—Dr. Frankenstein—was always the monster. That’s the whole point. Sometimes evil is so damn beautiful it hurts.” —Martin Baker
“Everything is math,” he blurted. I blinked. So did everyone else. “That’s what my mother always says,” said Aunt Evie. “She says the universe is numerical in nature, so the better a mathematician someone is, the closer they draw to the divine. It’s why she became an accountant. For her, that was like joining the priesthood.”
Exactly. Everything is math, and everything is made of math, and if you can manipulate the numbers, you can change the world. Literally change the world. You need to know the right equations, or you need the raw power to punch your way to the correct answer without taking the steps in the middle. But if you can accomplish one of those two things, there’s nothing you can’t do.”
Yes,” said Mark again. “But the equations are . . . they’re huge. They’re resource-intensive in a way that almost always results in the death of the person who completes them, and those are the ones we still have. There are pieces of the math missing. Whole sections that were wiped clean when our ancestors were put into exile
We know the original equations were beautiful and subtle and kind,” said Mark. “We know that when our ancestors were exiled, Johrlar survived. We know the equations could be performed over and over and over again.” “Yeah, because they were being performed by a whole bunch of people,” said Elsie. Everyone turned to look at her. She glanced up from her nails and shrugged. “What? You know I’m right. Look, you’re talking about math that’s so big that it kills people. Well, that’s what research teams are for. That’s what think tanks are for. If you have a spell that’s so resource-intensive it uses a sorcerer up, you get a whole bunch of sorcerers to come and cast it. If you have an equation that’s so resource-intensive it melts brains, you get a whole bunch of smart people to think about different pieces of it at the same time, so nobody’s brain gets melted. The equations aren’t meant to be a solo voyage. No big. Why are you telling us all this?”
found another way. A cruder way. It’s like a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. The equations we have, the ones we’ve developed, require a Queen to resolve them. Once she finishes her final morph and enters her fourth instar, she can do the math. She can find the right answers. And she can rip a hole in the fabric between dimensions, allowing us to move on.”
the ones who oppose us, we’re weird to the ones who stand with us, we’re heroes to the ones who depend on us. But there’s one thing that tends to get left out of the conversation, treated as less important than the need to keep fighting and keep winning until the war is over: We’re scientists. Mom and Uncle Kevin even more than Elsie and me. They’re the direct descendants of Thomas and Alice Price. They were raised to believe that the world can make sense, if they just try hard enough and refuse to stop poking at its soft bits. The cuckoos have been one of the greatest mysteries our family has ever encountered. We’d tried for years to learn more about their biology, without taking apart one of the two cuckoos we considered part of the family. To have one walk into our home and just start talking was, well . . .It was no wonder this was going so slowly. The people who would normally have hurried things along—the people we instinctively still listened to, thanks to their age and our familial relationship—were too enthralled by the potential to learn something to focus on what actually mattered.
If she survives the process, she’s not going to be a god, she’s going to be a Queen,” said Mark. “She’ll have the strength to do the math and put enough power behind it to blow this dimension to pieces. She’s going to smash this world like an eggshell. She’s going to open the way for the cuckoos to go somewhere else. If you don’t stop her, she’s going to destroy everything she’s ever cared about, and she’s going to destroy you in the process.”
There are losses we don’t move past, no matter how hard we try. Some wounds, once inflicted, bleed forever underneath the skin. All we can do is learn to live with them.” —Jonathan Healy
“You know, I gotta say, I’m really impressed with how terrible you people are,” said Mark. “I’ve been listening to Ingrid talk about her daughter the princess, and how she was going to make her a Queen and use her to destroy the world, for years. She never mentioned that the people raising her were genuinely awful. You hate us because we’re the competition, right?” “We hate you because you’re dangerous predators who murder innocent people and make things worse for absolutely everyone, but thanks for playing.”
“Sort of are,” said Elsie. “Sort of turned yourself into one when you decided that a bad haircut and a pair of yoga pants meant you could pretend to be our cousin without getting in trouble for it. Because your friend is right: we’re not good people. We can’t afford to be. We’re one side of a three-sided war, and you’re the enemy.”
My parents are going to kill me,” said Antimony. “Actual murder. Let’s really enjoy this little rescue mission, because it’s the last one I’m ever going to go on.” She was sitting in the middle, one leg slung over Sam’s to make the footwell less crowded. Sam snorted. “Your parents are going to be arguing about how they’re supposed to handle this until the sun comes up. We’ll be home and making waffles by then.”
“I know this is only confusing because I can’t read your mind, but your parents aren’t actually going to kill you, are they?” asked Mark. “If they are, I say again, absolutely terrible people. How you got a reputation for being the good guys, I may never know.” “We have a good propaganda arm,” I said. “You mentioned your parents before. I thought all cuckoos killed their parents when they hit puberty.”
You know how I don’t want to destroy the world and head off to terrorize a fresh dimension with the rest of my merry band of predators? Well, Cici is why. She’s my little sister. Cecilia. She’s a holy terror. Smart and funny and awful. Really, really awful. She might be as terrible as you. It’s hard for me to measure.”
I woke up in the middle of the night with the knowledge and laws of my entire species filling my head, crowding out everything else, making it almost impossible for me to breathe. I was fifteen. Cici was four. I thought she’d probably scream and wake our parents, so I knew I had to kill her first if I wanted it to be easy. It mattered that it be easy. I didn’t want to upset her. That’s probably when I should have realized something was wrong, when I was thinking ‘I don’t want to upset my sister’ and ‘I’m going to murder her’ at the same time, but I was fifteen and I was being eaten alive by memories that weren’t mine, so I think I did okay, all things considered. I got a knife. I went to her room
I helped Ingrid, who, please remember, is Sarah’s biological mother, lure her away from you. I’m not saying I didn’t. She knows where I live. She knows where my family lives. I have no real desire to be at war with you—you are all terrible, terrifying people—but I wasn’t going to risk Cici’s life because your cousin was somehow more important than she is. She’s not. I did what I was told, I escaped as soon as I could, and now I’m helping you. Be grateful for that part. I could have told Ingrid about the hum. I could have sided with my hive against humanity. I’m not, because I love my sister. Take the fucking win.”
Breathe, baby, breathe. You breathe and you keep on breathing. That’s the only thing I’m going to ask of you today. You just keep on breathing.” —Enid Healy
Or maybe this was like a holodeck in Star Trek, and I could start calling people out of my memories of them, using them for company, for stability, for a way to keep myself from doing what the cuckoos wanted from me. Because if there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that doing what the cuckoos wanted wasn’t going to end well. Not for anyone.
Math, though . . . math never changed. Math always meant exactly what it said, no more and no less, and refused to be written for anyone. Math was always math. If I turned myself into numbers, I would be a wholly unique equation, something so much bigger and wilder and harder to define than “Sarah.” I looked at the screen again. I put my fingers on the keys
normally I wouldn’t bother you while you were undermining the fabric of the universe with mathematics, but you do understand that this is bad, right? Numbers shouldn’t be sufficient to change the laws of physics. They should sit quietly and think about what they’ve done until it’s time for someone to figure out the tip
There’s a moment where everything comes together, where the numbers add up and everything is perfect, and nothing hurts. That’s the best moment of them all. A person could spend their whole life chasing after it, and never feel their time was wasted.” —Angela Baker
I had been so foolish. I had been so stupid. This was . . . this was everything. The equation sang to me, bright and beguiling, begging to be completed. Begging to be carried out into the world and allowed to come to sweet fruition. All I had to do was wake up. All I had to do was open my eyes, and the work—the great work, the work that I had been moving toward since the moment of my birth, the work that had always been destined to be mine—would finally begin
When it’s a choice between saving your family and saving the world, I can’t tell you what to decide. I can only tell you that, no matter what you choose, part of you will always know that you were wrong.” —Alexander Healy
You know, sometimes I wonder what our family looks like from the outside.”
Dad both leapt to their feet, Mom’s hands suddenly bristling with knives, Dad producing a handgun from somewhere inside his jacket. I couldn’t see what Elsie was doing, but I had no doubt that it was impressive, possibly involving the weaponization of a grilled cheese panini.
Some prices are far too dear. And yet we pay them anyway.” —Jonathan Healy
Not dying at all would have been better—way better—but I guess I always knew that we couldn’t win forever. That’s not how the universe works. Sooner or later everyone has to lose. Even the good guys.
Annie!” I shouted. “I need you over here!” A gun went off. “Little busy!” she shouted back. “Don’t care!” We had a lot of code phrases for moments like this one, where we needed to communicate without tipping our hands.
No one with a larynx enjoys being punched in the throat. That’s just science.
I might be able to turn the tide from “probably fatal” to “eh, you’ll walk away from it.” Any combat you can walk away from is a good combat, regardless of what’s been done to the other guy.
But that’s what people are, really. We’re equations that have grown large enough and complex enough to have opinions about the world. To want to change it.
When working complex math, there are factors that can be used to cancel things out
any of the professors I’ve ever talked to would roll their eyes and scoff at the idea of explaining things that way, but it works, it works, it takes the weight out of the final figures, and I needed to cancel as much of this world-breaking equation as I possibly could.
No one’s ever really lost. Sometimes we don’t know where they are, exactly, but that just means it’s time for us to go out and find them.” —Alice HealyI didn’t even need to check to know that I was tied in place. There was no other way I could have stayed upright—and family protocols are very clear. When you have someone captive and you want them to stay that way, you damn well tie them up. We were in some kind of classroom.
FOLLOW THE LADY
I was always voted the least likely of my generation to fall in love or settle down—and that includes my cousin Artie the incubus, who seems destined to die alone in the basement of his parents’ house, thanks to a near-pathological fear of getting close to any girl he’s not related to
Sometimes being a cryptozoologist is even more complicated than it ought to be.
We lost Grandpa. Not to death, which would have been understandable and ordinary and something we might have been able to collectively get over. No, I mean we lost him, through a hole in the wall of the world that swallowed him down in the middle of the night while Grandma Alice was pregnant with my Aunt Jane, whose impending arrival was the only thing that prevented Grandma from immediately jumping into the hole and going after him. As soon as she’d recovered from labor, she’d dumped both her children on our Aunt Laura, yet another in the string of aunts, uncles, and cousins who aren’t actually biologically related to us.
Buckley Township, Michigan, is one of those places that gets talked about in hushed tones whenever there’s a census, a place where people die young and weirdly.
The laws of physics are not invited to a lot of sylph parties, nor would they attend if they were.
The laws of physics are not invited to a lot of sylph parties, nor would they attend if they were.
No one in our family is in poor physical condition. We’ve been lucky when it comes to illnesses and injuries, and all of us, even Alex, have chosen extracurricular activities that keep us in excellent physical shape. And then there is my grandmother. She’s been moving between dimensions for decades, trying to locate her missing husband, doing a lot of God-knows-what to keep her stomach full and her guns loaded during that time—and honestly, I don’t think she puts a priority on food.
Whatever function of her dimensional wanderings kept her young, it also left her occasionally bewildered about her own life and family, unable to keep straight whether something had happened to my sister or her mother. It made our relatively rare family dinners exciting.
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An interesting read that shows the power of words and regardless of where you are in life the transformation the right book can create
As I read this article I tried to figure out which of my books 📚 would get the golden ticket if o had to pick just one. I can’t do it. When I was little I had an early hard cover edition of Little Women which unfortunately got destroyed when I did something nice for someone and it came back to bite me on the ass. And there is Madeline L’engles A Wrinkle in Time, which was one of my husband’s favorites as well and which I read to my girls as I tried to process his death and somehow reading that book to our children helped me. I don’t know how much they remember of the story, but I know they remember the cuddles and the fact I was reading. Then there is the Great Alta trilogy by Jane Yolen, which inspired me so much, and introduced me to the power and joy that can only come from a trilogy.
I don’t know whether you will consider this necessarily a “book”, but the graphic novels of Elfquest–they had just been rereleased for their 20th anniversary and I was on a trip with my best friends family to Hilton Head, and after being so engrossed in Nora Roberts’ Public Secrets (which is another of my influences as life changing) that I spent the whole day at the beach on my stomach which led to a seriously bad burn which led to my father, who was not a fan of me going on the trip in the first place said that was it I was coming home and he sent me a plane ticket. The trip to the airport was a long one and my back was about 6 shades darker then a lobster(and I was in a lot of pain and the trip back home from the car ride to the airplane seat 💺 I was about ready to throw in the towel and was an exercise in mind over matter and how ( there is nothing to be done but let time pass and eventually you heal) and the only thing left in the car was my friend’s little brother’s graphic novel. They wouldn’t let me take it home (I was on page 87 and myom met me at the gate of the airport and she wasn’t able to find what I was talking about so I made her stop at the waldenbooks on the way home so I could read the end of story which of course, ironically, is finishing with the final quest this year and which I try to reread every 5 to 7 years.
And then I think of the eye opening Kushiel’s trilogy by Jacqueline Carey that opened a whole new world of series and books and a new world and genre of books and a great group of people…
[Top]Wisdom that just might be what you need when you need it…
sometime wisdom comes from the strangest places, but it might be exactly what we need to hear, even if it’s just said in a slightly different from the way its been said before!
“You are a human being and your greatest power is your will, or your ability to reason and make your own choices. It’s what commands all other aspects of your life. This power is the only thing that cannot be controlled or taken away from you by anyone, and it is what separates you from the other animals in this world. Don’t forget that you possess this power, and don’t squander it…you can decide what experiences mean to you and you can choose how you’ll react to them. Nobody can take that away from you, not even the gods themselves, says Epictetus earlier on in book one:
I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment? “Tell me the secret which you possess.” I will not, for this is in my power. “But I will put you in chains.” Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower.” —-from lifehacker.com
To be honest, this was something I needed to hear once more. I have been trying as hard as possible to force a situation to work, and rather than realizing that I am the only one who can change. I cannot change them or what they will do, but I can change my behavior. It may not be much but it also reminded to let go and let g-d take over. I’m not trying to convert anyone or make anyone change their positions or beliefs, but the truth is that we have to make informed decisions but sometimes events are outside our sphere of influence–and that is why we sometimes have to give it over to someone whose sphere is MUCH bigger than mine…I will let YOU decide who that may be!
So, what happened…
Well Irma came and went and boy did she make an impression on all of us. Central Florida is a complete mess. Insurance companies are already citing deductibles and act of God loopholes. Fema says they will help but that is not all that easy. They haven’t set the amount they will give us yet. A little like the world has ended and your check is in the mail. Everything is still a little nuts… And they are saying power will be restored by the 22nd… But we have survived and rebuilding is what we do. We Floridians rebuilt after Andrew, Charlie, and we will rebuild from Irma. Today my kids went back to school and that is a sign of the fact that life goes on here, despite flooding and downed trees… Shortages will eventually be resolved and waters will recede
[Top]Seanan Mcguire talks about writing and life, a great sweepstakes opportunity and a mea culpa!
So, I may be quiet for a bit…I am in Florida and may lose (well that’s a big question) my home, my life, my books, or just my power and internet…Hopefully I will escape this storm with minor damage, although given the insanity going on around me I may need therapy for PTSD, just kidding kind of…
But back to the important part…There is a giveaway for all of the October Daye series and a bunch of wisdom
http://www.unboundworlds.com/2017/09/seanan-mcguire-learned-october-plus-sweeps/
A Quote to Remind us all of the Power of Words… Especially When it Comes to Those we Love
“What is that old children’s rhyme, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’? Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It’s more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yetoutwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time.”” Laurell K Hamilton, A Shiver of Light Book 9 of the Merry Gentry Series
[Top]Bound Volume 2 by Amy Lane Book Review– How Cory wins the day!
Bound, Volume 2
Little Goddess
Paranormal Romance
DSP Publications; 2 edition
e book
https://www.amazon.com/Bound-Vol-Little-Goddess-Book-ebook/dp/B018ZTKYUI/ref=pd_sim_351_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=7EZ5EG8V84CEHFZ6GWMK
2nd Edition
Little Goddess: Book Three
Vol. 2
Cory’s newly bound family is starting to find its footing, which is a good thing because danger after danger threatens, and Green can't be there nearly as often as he’s needed. As Cory learns to face the challenges of ruling the hill alone, she’s also juggling a ménage relationship with three lovers—with mixed results.
But with each new challenge, one lesson becomes crystal clear: she can’t be queen without each of the men who look to her, and the people she loves aren’t safe unless she takes on that queendom with all of the intelligence and courage in her formidable heart.
But sometimes even intelligence, courage, and steadily increasing magic aren’t enough to do the job, and suddenly the role of Cory’s lovers becomes more crucial than ever. Nobody is strong enough to succeed in every task, and Cory finds that the most painful lesson she and her lovers can learn is not just how to deal with failure. Cory needs to learn that one woman is only so powerful, and she needs to choose wisely who sits outside her circle of family, and who is bound eternally in her heart.