Stone Hunger
N. K. Jemisin
Once there was a girl who lived in a beautiful place full of beautiful people who made beautiful things. Then the world broke.
Now the girl is older, and colder, and hungrier. From the shelter of a dead tree, she watches as a city—a rich one, big, with high strong walls and well-guarded gates—winches its roof into place against the falling chill of night. The girl has never seen anything like this city’s roof. She’s watched the city for days, fascinated by its ribcage of metal tracks and the strips of sewn, oiled material they pull along it. They must put out most of their fires when they do this, or they would choke on smoke—but perhaps with the strips in place, the city retains warmth enough to make fires unnecessary.
It will be nice to be warm again. The girl shifts her weight from one fur-wrapped thigh to the other, her only concession to anticipation.
The tree in whose skeletal branches she crouches is above the city, on a high ridge, and it is one of the few still standing. The city has to burn something, after all, and the local ground does not have the flavor of coal-land, sticky veins of pent smoky bitterness lacing through cool bedrock. In the swaths of forest the city-dwellers have taken, even the stumps are gone; nothing wasted. The rest has been left relatively unmolested, though the girl has noted a suspicious absence of deadfall and kindling-wood on the shadowed forest floor below. Perhaps they’ve left this stand of trees as a windbreak, or to keep the ridge stable. Whatever their reasons, the city-dwellers’ forethought works in her favor. They will not see her stalking them, waiting for an opportunity, until it is too late.
And perhaps, if she is lucky—
No. She has never been lucky. The girl closes her eyes again, tasting the land and the city. It is the most distinctive city she has ever encountered. Such a complexity of sweets and meats and bitters and . . . sour.
Hmm.
Perhaps.
The girl settles her back against the trunk of the tree, wraps the tattered blanket from her pack more closely around herself, and sleeps.
Dawn comes as a thinning of the gray sky. There has been no sun for years.
The girl wakes because of hunger: a sharp pang of it, echo of long-ago habit. Once, she ate breakfast in the mornings. Unsated, the pang eventually fades to its usual omnipresent ache.
Hunger is good, though. Hunger will help.
The girl sits up, feeling imminence like an intensifying itch. It’s coming. She climbs down from the tree—easily; handholds were gnawed into the trunk by ground animals in the early years, before that species disappeared—and walks to the edge of the ridge. Dangerous to do this, stand on a ridge with a shake coming, but she needs to scout for an ideal location. Besides; she knows the shake isn’t close. Yet.
There.
The walk down into the valley is more difficult than she expects. There are no paths. She has to half-climb, half-slide down dry runnels in the rock face which are full of loose gravel-sized ash. And she is not at her best after starving for eight days. Her limbs go weak now and again. There will be food in the city, she reminds herself, and moves a little faster.
She makes it to the floor of the valley and crouches behind a cluster of rocks near the half-dried-up river. The city gates are still hundreds of feet away, but there are familiar notches along its walls. Lookouts, perhaps with longviewers; she knows from experience that cities have the resources to make good glass—and good weapons. Any closer and they’ll see her, unless something distracts them.
Once there was a girl who waited. And then, at last, the distraction arrives. A shake.
The epicenter is not nearby. That’s much farther north: yet another reverberation of the rivening that destroyed the world. Doesn’t matter. The girl breathes hard and digs her fingers into the dried riverbed as power rolls toward her. She tastes the vanguard of it sliding along her tongue, leaving a residue to savor, like thick and sticky treats—
(It is not real, what she tastes. She knows this. Her father once spoke of it as the sound of a chorus, or a cacophony; she’s heard others complain of foul smells, painful sensations. For her, it is food. This seems only appropriate.)
—and it is easy—delicious!—to reach further down. To visualize herself opening her mouth and lapping at that sweet flow of natural force. She sighs and relaxes into the rarity of pleasure, unafraid for once, letting her guard down shamelessly and guiding the energy with only the merest brush of her will. A tickle, not a push. A lick.
Around the girl, pebbles rattle. She splays herself against the ground like an insect, fingernails scraping rock, ear pressed hard to the cold and gritty stone.
Stone. Stone.
Stone like gummy fat, like slick warm syrups she vaguely remembers licking from her fingers, stone flowing, pushing, curling, slow and inexorable as toffee. Then this oncoming power, the wave that ripples the stone, stops against the great slab of bedrock that comprises this valley and its surrounding mountains. The wave wants to go around, spend its energy elsewhere, but the girl sucks against this resistance. It takes awhile. On the ground, she writhes in place and smacks her lips and makes a sound: “Ummmah.”
Then the
Oh, the pressure
Once there was a girl who ground her teeth against prrrrrresssure
bursts, the inertia breaks, and the wave of force ripples into the valley. The land seems to inhale, rising and groaning beneath her, and it is hers, it’s hers. She controls it. The girl laughs; she can’t help herself. It feels so good to be full, in one way or another.
A jagged crack steaming with friction opens and widens from where the girl lies to the foot of the ridge on which she spent the previous night. The entire face of the cliff splits off and disintegrates, gathering momentum and strength as it avalanches toward the city’s southern wall. The girl adds force in garnishing dollops, oh-so-carefully. Too much and she will smash the entire valley into rubble, city and all, leaving nothing useful. She does not destroy; she merely damages. But just enough and—
The shake stops.
The girl feels the interference at once. The sweet flow solidifies; something taints its flavor in a way that makes her recoil. Hints of bitter and sharp—
—and vinegar, at last, for certain, she isn’t imagining it this time, vinegar—
—and then all the marvelous power she has claimed dissipates. There is no compensatory force; nothing uses it. It’s simply gone. Someone else has beaten her to the banquet and eaten all the treats. But the girl no longer cares that her plan has failed.
“I found you.” She pushes herself up from the dry riverbed, her hair dripping flecks of ash. She is trembling, not just with hunger anymore, her eyes fixed on the city’s unbroken wall. “I found you.”
The momentum of the shake rolls onward, passing beyond the girl’s reach. Though the ground has stopped moving, the ridge rockslide cannot be stopped: boulders and trees, including the tree that sheltered the girl the night before, break loose and tumble down to slam against the city’s protective wall, probably cracking it. But this is nowhere near the level of damage that the girl had hoped for. How will she get inside? She must get inside, now.
Ah—the gates of the city crank open. A way in. But the city dwellers are angry now. They might kill her, or worse.
She rises, runs. The days without food have left her little strength and poor speed, but fear supplies some fuel. Yet the stones turn against her now, and she stumbles, slips on loose rocks. She knows better than to waste time looking back.