Free Balzac's War: A Tale of Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer Page B

murderous invasions of the muttie and the funny, incursions from flesh dogs and meerkats alike. She projected her mother and her father and her friends—willow-wisp Sandra and Bunadeo and Gilligny, the only one who might have sympathized with her decision to leave. The rhythm tightened, constricted her throat, and she realized, for the first time, that she had entered the unknown for good, that she could not go home, that she probably could not find her way home The salty taste of tears touched her tongue. Would they look for her? She didn’t know, but she didn’t know they wouldn’t find her. They didn’t dare lose a fisher craft looking for her.
    The rhythm rose in her ears, and she let her hand slide from the saylber’s fin, broke the contact, and broke, too, the feeling of loss.
    The saylber wiggled its fin.
    She resisted for several minutes, then, with a sigh, placed her hand once more on its sail. This time, the communication came in clearer, less choppy.
    [Glad not of metal dragon. We would have had to bring you into the sea and the sea into you. I am Emerald-Waters-Shift-with-Shadows.]
    “I am Jessible.”
    [Now that we are named, we may converse as true people. We may share.]
    Images splashed against her skull, seeking purchase—of deep space and the black between worlds and the darkness between minds and –
    “Stop!” She screamed, clamping her hands to the sides of her head. “Stop!”
    The saylber trembled, drifted away from the boat, its fin flashing orange, red, blue, red, orange. Jessible tried to think of familiar things: the smells of her crèche mother’s toad pie, tangy and dry, the feel of sand against her calloused feet when she danced for the solstice festival, the taste of a boy’s tongue in her mouth after the festival, in a darkness that hid them both.
    The saylber wriggled its triangular sail.
    She put her hand on the smooth skin, reluctant.
    “You hurt me.”
    [Am sorry. We talk differently. I remember now. We have long memories, but we forget so much. We forget even our world before we were brought to this world. When we gather, we gather to remember. Let me tell you. Let me tell you of the metal dragons and why we fear them so. Shall I show you? Show you.]
    And the saylber did show her, so that she felt as if she were falling through a wormhole in her own mind. She saw the metal dragon spuming through space, sparking, imploding. Many of them. She saw whole ships filled with water and saylbers disintegrate. It was almost too much for her mind to hold…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer has had books published in over twenty languages and his short fiction has appeared in many year’s best anthologies. Novels include Finch, Shriek , and City of Saints & Madmen . Nonfiction includes Booklife: Strategies & Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer, Monstrous Creatures: Essays, Articles, and Reviews , and The Steampunk Bible . Solo and with his wife Ann VanderMeer, editor of Weird Tales, VanderMeer has edited several influential anthologies, including Leviathan vols. 1-3, The New Weird, Steampunk, The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases , and the forthcoming The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities . He reviews books for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post , and others. A frequent guest at conferences and conventions, VanderMeer has lectured at MIT and the Library of Congress while also running writing workshops all over the world. He also serves as the assistant director to the Shared Worlds SF/Fantasy teen writing camp. Visit www.jeffvandermeer.com for more information.