“YOU HAVE TO FIND ways to ground yourself,” Sifa said to us. “Or the visions will take over. You’ll get stuck in all the possibilities and you won’t be able to live a life.”
We answered, “Would it be so bad? To live a thousand different lives instead of your own?”
She narrowed her eyes at us, this woman who was our mother, an oracle, and a stranger all at once. We had ordered the death of her husband; we had suffered the loss of that man ourselves. How odd it was, to be responsible for so much pain, and to have suffered as a direct result of that responsibility, all at once. As our identities melded more and more, we felt more profoundly the contradictions inherent in our being. But there was nothing to be done about it; the contradictions existed, and had to be embraced.
“Whatever made you, made you for a purpose,” she said. “And it wasn’t to become a vessel for other people’s experiences; it was to have your own.”
We shrugged, and that’s when the images came.
We are in the body of a man—short, stocky, and standing before a cart full of books. The smell of dust and pages is in the air, and shelves tower above him. He places a heavy volume on a tray that sticks out from the shelf, and keys in a code on a device he carries. The tray zooms off to the shelf where the book is supposed to go—a story above his head, and to the left.
He sighs, and walks to the end of the aisle to look out the window. The city—which we recognize as Shissa, in Thuvhe—is full of buildings that hover so far above the ground that the iceflower fields beneath it look like mere patches of color amid the snow. The buildings appear to be hanging from the clouds themselves. Across the way is a tiered diamond-shaped structure of glass that glows green at night, lit from within. To its left, a curved mammoth lit up soft white, like the land beneath it.
It is a beautiful place. We know it.
We are not a man anymore. We are a woman, short and shivering in a stiff vest of Shotet armor.
“Why does anyone live in this damn country?” she says to the man next to her. His teeth are chattering audibly.
“Iceflowers,” the man said with a shrug.
She flexes her hands in an attempt to bring feeling back to her fingers.
“Shh,” he says.
Up ahead, a Shotet soldier has her ear pressed to a door. She closes her eyes for a moment, then pulls back, and motions the others forward. They slam a metal cylinder into the door, several times, to force it open. The lock pops off and clatters to the cement floor. Beyond the door is a control room of sorts, like the nav deck of a transport vessel.
A scream pierces the air. We rush forward.
We are standing at a window, one hand pressed to cold glass, the other pulling a curtain back. Above us is the city of Shissa, a cluster of giants that drape over us always. It has been our colorful comfort in the night ever since we were a child. The sky without buildings in it seems bare and empty, so we do not like to travel.
Since we have been staring at them, the buildings do not move, not even in the strongest wind. That is thanks to the Pithar technology that holds them upright, controlled by small towers on the ground, near the iceflower fields. We don’t understand how it works. We are a field worker. The boots—with hooks on the bottom, to catch on ice sheets—are still on our feet from the day’s labor, our shoulders still sore from hauling equipment.
As we watch, the hospital—a bright red cube right above us—shifts.
Shudders.
And drops.
It falls, pulling a gasp from our lungs. Like something dropped into a bucket of water, it seems to move slowly, though that can’t be true. It sends snowflakes up in a faint white streak as it drops. And then it collides with the ground.
We are a child in a hospital bed. Our body is short and slim. Our hair sticks to the back of our neck—it is hot in here. The rails are up on the side of the bed, like we’re some kind of kid, and can’t be trusted not to roll off in our sleep.
The bed jerks beneath us, and we startle, grabbing the rails. Only it’s not the bed that’s moving—it’s the floor. It’s falling out from beneath us. The city slides away, just outside the windows, and we cling to the rails, teeth gritted—
And then we’re screaming—
The Shotet woman—we—tugs at the straps of her armor as we run. We fastened them too tight, and they’re digging into our sides, keeping us from moving as fast as we’d like.
The sound as the building falls is nothing like we have ever heard. The crunching, smashing—the screaming, wailing, gasping—the rush of air around it—it is deafening. We clap our hands over our ears and keep running, toward the transport vessel, toward safety.
We see a dark shape flinging itself off the hospital roof.
Our knees are buried in the snow. The man from before is next to us, shouting something we can’t hear. Our cheeks are hot. Startled, we realize that the Shotet woman’s face is wet with tears.
This is the retribution Lazmet Noavek ordered. But it feels more like horror.
“Come on!” the other soldier is saying. “We have to go!”
But how can we go, when all those people need help?
How can we go on, when so many are lost?
How can we go on?