Hi! This is N. K. Jemisin. If you’ve reached this page, you’re following an old link. Sorry; I had to remove these stories because they’re going to be coming out soon in my short story collection, How Long Til Black Future Month. Read them there! (This one’s also available as a podcast at PodCastle.)
by Vylar Kaftan
Even a god has human needs, if he resides in a living body. He must breathe the purest air possible. He must consume fresh food, and sleep on good bedding. And he must excrete. Some priests say that this is not truly the god’s need, since it results from the mortal body he occupies. I say this need is as important to a god as any man, because even gods create things they wish to be rid of.
In this incarnation, Aki prefers a mid-morning session. We meet in our chamber — a narrow aisle, with gold-leaf handholds on each side. I attend him with my box of soft cloths, jintilla oil, and incense. He dismisses his other attendants with a wave. They drift behind tall stone pillars fifty paces away, giving him privacy.
by Vylar Kaftan
I’m sitting cross-legged on a rock in west Texas, somewhere north of El Paso, bleeding into the dirt. The pose feels like a meditation. I’m fascinated with the knife mark on my left thigh, a shallow slash from hip to knee. It’s surrounded by bruise clusters that look like flowers of broken skin. In the silent desert, I hear only the soft clicking of the car cooling down. Then his urine splashes against the rock behind me, and I hear his zipper when he’s done. The night breeze is icy on my back, drying the blood into clots. He did me well, I admit, glancing up at the full desert moon. If my body survived – which it wouldn’t – I would be scarred, possibly disfigured. The welts on my back throb like electricity, and everything – the moon, the desert, the wind—is alive with me.
by Ann Leckie
The Fleet of the Godless came to the waters around Au by chance. It was an odd assortment of the refugees of the world; some had deliberately renounced all gods, some had offended one god in particular. A few were some god’s favorites that another, rival god had cursed. But most were merely the descendants of the original unfortunates and had never lived any other way.
by Ann Leckie
I was out in the woods when the king of Therete and his son came to ask for my sister.
My hunting had been interrupted by a rainshower, and I sat under a tree on the hillside waiting for it to end when I heard horsemen on the road below. I rose, brushing away wet leaves, and quietly made my way forward so I could see. There were nearly a hundred of them, horses in brightly colored trappings, yellow and green and red, riders in gold-colored armor hunched over against the rain. I watched until they disappeared around the curve of the hill and then stood wondering whether I should stay out, and out of the way of whatever would happen when those horsemen reached the gates of the town, or whether I was curious enough to go home and see what they wanted.