Endurance by Jay Lake EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Jay Lake
- Language: English
- Genre: Gaslamp Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I SAT AMONG the late autumn-blooming clover amid a sloping gravemeadow and picked at my memories as if they were old scars. Fat, slow,
red-bodied bees bumbled about me as they passed through scattered shafts
of sunlight limning the damp, chilly air. Their indifferent drone was
desultory. Empires would rise and fall, gods pass from bloody birth to fiery
death, every woman who ever lived slip quietly into her final sleep, and still
bees would find their flowers.
That was a lesson for me. I was certain of it. Sick of lessons, I ignored
the thought.
Recollection served my mood little better. As they always have, the
people of my life crowded close in these quiet moments. Federo, locked
inside the bandit-god-king Choybalsan, that haunted look in his eyes at the
last. Septio, the only man I’d then bedded, his neck snapped within the
loving circle of my arms. Shar, the desperate woman who’d lived with my
father into the final days of his ruination. Mistress Danae, whose addled
mind and ravaged body survived as a shadow among the graves. Cities full
of flame and despair, knives in the dark, my fear racing faster than even the
flying of my feet.
“Stop!”
The single word echoed among the silent graves scattered across this
empty hillside. Tiny birds whirred up from the long, golden grass into the
cerulean bell of the sky. My belly twinged as the child within stirred. She
was still so little, this poor god-struck bastard of mine. I placed my hands
upon my abdomen and crooned softly. I don’t know if the ancient ghosts
whose abode this was heard me. Perhaps it didn’t matter. My baby returned
to sleep and took the bitter sting of memories with her.
In time I emerged from my enclosing song and looked about. Inattention
has never been a habit with me, not from my earliest years. Even so, the
unquiet dead were no threat, the nearest possible ambush was hundreds of
paces away downhill, and this place smelled of safety. Most of the bees had
moved on to other stands of clover on their day’s rounds. The pallid
northern sun had climbed higher into the patient vault of the heavens. The
day was as warm as ever it would be at this time of year—almost enough to
make me wish for a hood or a hat, rather than simply sitting bareheaded in
the wind that carried the first sharp-edged tang of winter. The scent of the
clover remained strong, mixed with the dusty-rock odor of the ridgetops.
Even now, I still believe that the High Hills were as timeless a place as
I’d ever known, at least since the never-ending summer amid the rice
paddies of my earliest youth. No ox stood placid and wise to watch over
me. Instead, I watched over myself and my child. These forgotten gravemeadows were safely outside the purview of the several gods who had
made themselves so dangerous to me.
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