Singing With All My Skin and Bone
Singing With All My Skin and Bone
Sunny Moraine
Also by Sunny Moraine
Labyrinthian
Line and Orbit (with Lisa Soem)
Fall and Rising
Crowflight
Ravenfall
Rookwar
To Rob, always
Singing With All My Skin and Bone, © 2016 Sarah Wanenchak
Cover Artwork © 2016 Marcela Bolivar
Cover Design © 2016 Vince Haig
Interior design, layout, and typesetting by Alligator Tree Graphics
Proofreader: Carolyn Macdonell-Kelly
Publication History
“A Perdition of Salt,” and “The Throat is Deep and the Mouth is Wide” are original to this collection.
“Come My Love and I’ll Tell You a Tale,” originally appeared in Shimmer #24, March 2015.
“Singing With All My Skin and Bone,” originally appeared in Nightmare #24, Sept. 2014.
“Cold As the Moon,” originally appeared in Strange Horizons, Aug. 2014.
“I Tell Thee All, I Can No More,” originally appeared in Clarkesworld #82, July 2013.
“Across the Seam,” originally appeared in Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History, 2015.
“Dispatches From a Hole in the World ,” originally appeared in Nightmare #37: Queers Destroy Horror!, Oct. 2015.
“Event Horizon,” originally appeared in Strange Horizons, Oct.2013.
“The Horse Latitudes,” originally appeared in Ideomancer, Vol. 12, Issue 1, 2013.
“All the Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend,” originally appeared in Murmuration: A Festival of Drone Culture, June 2013.
“Love Letters to Things Lost and Gained,” originally appeared in Uncanny #2, Jan. 2015.
“Memento Mori,” originally appeared in Shadows & Tall Trees #2, Aug. 2011.
“The Cold Death of Papa November,” originally appeared in Three-Lobed Burning Eye #21, Sept. 2011.
“So Sharp That Blood Must Flow,” originally appeared in Lightspeed #45, Feb. 2014.
“Tell Me How All This (And Love Too) Will Ruin Us,” originally appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Nov. 2013.
“Love in the Time of Vivisection,” originally appeared in Shimmer #17, Sept. 2013.
“A Shadow on the Sky,” originally appeared in Mythic Delrium 1.3, Feb. 2015.
“It is Healing, It Is Never Whole,” originally appeared in Apex #75, Aug. 2015.
First Edition - All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Undertow Publications
Pickering, ON Canada
undertowbooks@gmail.com / http://www.undertowbooks.com
CONTENTS
Come My Love and I’ll Tell You a Tale
Singing With All My Skin and Bone
A Perdition of Salt
Cold As the Moon
I Tell Thee All, I Can No More
Across the Seam
Dispatches From a Hole in the World
Event Horizon
The Horse Latitudes
All the Literati Keep An Imaginary Friend
Love Letters to Things Lost and Gained
Memento Mori
The Cold Death of Papa November
So Sharp That Blood Must Flow
Tell Me How All This (And Love Too) Will Ruin Us
Love in the Time of Vivisection
A Shadow on the Sky
It is Healing, It Is Never Whole
The Throat is Deep and the Mouth is Wide
About the Author
Come My Love and I’ll Tell You a Tale
Tell me the story about the light and how it used to fall through the rain in rainbows.
Tell me the story about those times when the rain would come and the world would turn sweet and green and thick with the smell of wet dirt and things gently rotting, when the birds would chuckle with pleasure to themselves at the thought of a wriggling feast fleeing the deeper floods.
Tell me that story, about how once we all had everything we wanted and never lost anything, about how once we slept and dreamed and sometimes we even slept without dreaming, total sleep that wrapped around our minds like a blanket and lulled and coaxed and woke just as softly, turning and sliding an arm around the waist of whoever happened to be beside you.
Tell me the story about lazy Sundays, about dinner at eight, about dressing like dolls and music that wound around us and kept out the world.
Tell me the story about how once there was cold, and snow, and all sound muffled and the world still, and a single one of those laughing birds sang tentative songs that suggested a long journey, a warmer climate, a finite amount of deprivation that only made the blooming of the world sweeter and more welcome.
Tell me about the times before the fires.
When you have told me that story, tell me the story about the time when we cared about false lives, little story lives within other stories, when we had time for such diversions, when we had the heart to care. Tell me about the shifting of flat light and faces and their trials and tribulations, how we suffered vicariously through them because their suffering made the beginnings of our own more bearable. Tell me about what it was like to grow up as an entire planet, to come to understand in our walled garden what everyone else already knew: that we were our own little diverting stories and that not all stories have happy endings. You and I both know they don’t, but tell me about a time when we were still children, and ignorant, and we ran and played and didn’t think about dying.
Sit down beside me in the dust and tell me stories of empire. Tell me stories of glory in war before the war came home. Tell me stories of wars in plays of light, rainbow light without the rain, and tell me all about how exciting it was and how we couldn’t wait to see what happened next, all make-believe at being brave, until something else came along and stole our attention away. Tell me the story about how we really didn’t think too much about it until those awkward family holidays, until looking without looking and then looking away, at scars and half a limb and perfect eyes that still stared and hated us for looking back. Tell me about how no one said anything. Tell me about that guilty silence, and about how we all felt like we were being jerked out of a dream and it was all our fault for having it in the first place.
Tell me stories about the first city falling, the running and the screams, blood-foam and trampling and how we watched it from so far away, so we still felt safe, mostly, but tell me then after that about how the helicopter hit the side of the building and bloomed fire, and then the tanks, and tell me about roadblocks and gunshots and how we didn’t know what had been done so we didn’t know how to keep it from happening to us.
On second thought, no, don’t tell me. I don’t like this story.
But I don’t remember so I have to ask; won’t you hold my hand and tell me about the highway and the curve of the mountain’s back and the crystals of ice in the sky, a frozen rainbow like light that didn’t fall but flew. Tell me about how our hands got so cold they were red and hurting, how we put them wet on each other’s necks and screamed at the contrast.
Tell me about the times before all the houses washed away and you shot a man for a bottle of water, in the middle of a flood you did that, and I laughed because it was so funny how it made no sense but it made all the sense it needed to.
And then, once you’ve told me all of that, you can tell me about the hundreds of people on the roads, hundreds of thousands with bags and packs, with eyes like pits with little lanterns at their bottoms, and you can tell me about useless cell phones dropped and crunching unde
rfoot like autumn leaves. You can tell me about when we had autumn leaves. You can tell me about fields of corn, green and gold, rough leaves that could scratch when they touched you in just the right way. Before all those fields were burning.
You can tell me stories about the dreams I used to have, sleeping curled against you in crude parodies of how we used to do, satire that never set anyone free but which still cut like knives. You can tell me about my dreams of wanting and comfort and plenty, of return, which you always said were pointless, when you told me to stop having them and I told you they were all I had, because then I felt like I didn’t even have you anymore. You can tell me about the flat of your hand and my face and the moment when the two came together. You can tell me about the audacity of eyes devoid of the proper tears. You can tell me about the opening of a frozen space in time, a broken instant that marked the end of everything that came before and everything that came after. You can tell me stories about the real end of a real world.
But you can also tell me stories about everything before that spike of temporal ice. Please tell me stories about back when I had no idea what it looked like when a pregnant woman died. Tell me about when I didn’t know what it looked like when a dog ate a child half-submerged in mud.
Tell me about the times before the camps, before the camps also burned, when we had beds, when we had sheets and their softness, and breezes that smelled like living and air. Tell me about the times before we got our food and our water from men and women in helmets, guns like pointing fingers and so angry, and at what? Can you tell me what they were so angry about? Tell me about when there was a time where no one told us what to do.
Tell me about the times before the stars were so bright.
Tell me about the times before the sun cracked and blackened skin, raised blisters and burst them. Tell me about a kind sun, a sun with which we could have love affairs. A sun we would travel thousands of miles to lie in, to stretch out in like cats, letting it touch every inch of us.
Tell me stories about blue.
Tell me stories about maps, about the discovery of terrain, about the luxury of taking our time. Tell me stories about adventures, about the joy of fine little shivers of imagined danger, about heights and sharp drop-offs that enticed us but which we never had to go near.
After that, tell me a story about the survival of how selfish we were. About how first it made us happy and then later it kept us alive.
But tell me about the first one.
Omit the latter, if you can.
Tell me the story about how that one time you said something funny, and it didn’t matter what it was because it was funny, and I laughed, and you laughed, and no one cared that we were laughing and no one yelled to shut up or hit to make it so, and you put a hand on my belly and said soon, very soon now, and I believed in soon as a concept. Tell me a story about when soon wasn’t something to fear.
Tell me a story about when each second wasn’t a needle’s stab.
Tell me about when there were unbroken windows, about clear reflections, and faces you wanted to see, could admire, could improve. Tell me about polish and painted lips, and watching with half a smile, turning and moving for the sheer pleasure of seeing it so.
Lean against me and touch each of my fingers, one by one—the ones I have left, and the places where the lost ones aren’t anymore—and tell me about before all the stealing, before the smashed storefronts, before we stopped standing in line for needless things.
Tell me a story about all the pretty lies.
Tell me a fairy story, a story with heroes. Tell me a story where virtue equals salvation. Tell me a story about a world where that matters. Tell me a story about being kind, not being weak and getting fucked over every time.
Tell me a story about a time that never happened, a thing we never did, like sharing what we had with the hungry-eyed people, the lantern-eyed people, looking at us like they’d kill us and take it all but then there was the gun so they never did. Tell me a story where we save people and they love us and we smile, yes, we did that and we were good. Tell me a story about how we might be good.
Tell me a story about back when we could be good. When we could pretend. Tell me a story about when never meant something more than until.
Tell me a story about when meat meant just animals.
Tell me a story about when you were whole.
Tell me a story about when there were still things I wouldn’t do.
Please tell me a story about a time when this wasn’t happening, when I wasn’t crouching here by this fire and looking at you, touching all the places where you used to be, my belly empty and my head empty and all my memories running out of me like tears. Give them back to me, every one. I’m begging you, open your mouth and open your eyes and tell me about a time before the knife, before no choices, before being alone and starving and terrified and so numb that terror no longer matters, about no more lights but the stars, tell me about those pretty falling rainbows so I can look at them and not at you while I do what I have to do.
A story about the living taste of you, and about my mouth and your mouth and being consumed, and how greedy we were with each other. A taste that is not this taste and a greed that is not this awful, clawing thing twisting my gut into a devouring maw. An unkind thing. Less than you deserve and so much more than I do. Tell me about when I lived with you and not on you, not on your flesh and on your blood, and both so cold.
Tell me a story.
I need you to tell me a story so I can remember that this is not all there is, parting skin and no fat left and stringy muscle and thin blood, like water, in which I see no light at all. I need you to tell me a story so I don’t die here, die and just keep moving anyway, slow and even all the way to the unhappy end.
I need you to tell me a story that isn’t thicker blood in the dirt and loss that reaches into the heart and claws it out of your body. I need you to tell me a story about life and first breaths and cries that mean a future.
Tell me a story that isn’t this story. I need you to tell it to me like stories still matter. Like they’re more than whispers that die when the fire starts roaring.
I need you to tell me a story so I can put it in me and carry it with me, my own little lantern in the pit of myself, wavering and flickering but still lit, rainbows hiding inside it, on into the darkness without you. Tell me. Tell me all of it, to my teeth and tongue and throat.
Tell it to my belly, my heart. Tell me and I swear I’ll believe you.
Oh my best beloved, tell me the story and I’ll believe in the light again.
Singing With All My Skin and Bone
I’m telling you this so you know: I don’t remember when I started eating myself.
You should remember something like that. It should be a moment, one of those that you carry around forever, a line that you cut across your life to mark before, when everything was one way, and after, when everything was different. I don’t remember discovering it like a secret formula or an equation that explained the universe. I don’t remember discovering it at all. I’m not sure it was discovery. I think maybe it was something that grew, that asserted itself, learning without meaning to learn, like walking or speech. You’re made of things you can take to pieces, and those pieces can be eaten. The truth is that you’re made of meat.
I do remember what I did with it. When I realized there was something to be done. I remember that very well. There’s a world with someone in it, and a world without them. If it happens right in front of you, that’s sort of hard to miss.
I carry these things around with me. I’ve been trying to say them for years, so if you don’t mind.
There are all kinds of things you don’t hear.
*
What you need to understand is that this kind of magic persists because it works. It doesn’t work in large ways, in obvious ways; it’s not showy and it’s not out to impress anyone. This kind of magic is like a path through the night or tunnels beneath an occupied city, s
upply lines for resistance and the movement of agents. This kind of magic is the slender, fragile reclamation of power. When it’s done right no one notices it’s there. I’ve gotten very good at hiding it. But I was very clumsy, then, and even if it worked people saw too much of it, and that blunted its power.
It takes years of practice to know just how to destroy yourself. Just how much to pick away. Just how much to gnaw off. Just how much to cut.
What you need to understand is that I can’t change anything. I couldn’t protect myself then and I can’t now. What you need to understand is that this has never been about anything but the sheer pleasure of survival.
*
Here’s what might have been the moment. It could have been any way, any time, somewhere between the number five and the number nine; it could have happened like this.
There’s a healing scratch; the unevenness of it is pleasant, and the realization that fingernails slide so very neatly under its surface. It takes almost nothing to pull it away, and the blood wells up like liquid garnets, and it’s so pretty, and there’s something that washes over you then like slipping into a warm bath, and your breath comes easier, and you sag against everything.
And it comes to you that there’s power in this, because just as you slip down, you slip sideways, and you see things you didn’t see before. There are bones under the world, and now they’re in front of you, and they rattle and dance. Grasses are deep jungles, streams are mighty rivers, here is the broken ground by a creek, and it’s a massive gorge through which that river flows. Everything small is abruptly enormous and dramatic, and you can lose yourself in it. The sky flips sideways. Gods lurk in the branches and concrete and in all the machines, and polished stones whisper stories from when their melted hearts cooled, and they tell you everything they learned from their shaping rivers. You see everything that might be. You see the filthy, churning story factories. You see the eyes in the storm drains. Fuck your city-beneath-the-city bullshit, your vampire private detectives and your werewolves tending bar, because I’ve seen it.