io9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEED’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Learning Letters” by Carrie Vaughn. You can read the story below or listen to the podcast on LIGHTSPEED’s website. Enjoy!
Enid sat on the front porch of Haven’s clinic with a half a dozen books, some paper, and a small chalkboard. Three days a week, when she was in town, she taught reading to Haven’s children who wanted to learn. The last two weeks, Rose was the only kid who came to the lessons.
Her household’s daughter, Rose, eight years old, stared at her while wearing a resentful frown that begged to be allowed to do anything else at all in the whole world but this. She had apples to pick, chickens to chase, mending to do, and a million other things to learn. She was only here because Olive made her, because it would hurt Enid’s feelings if Rose didn’t sit here and suffer.
They stared at one another, at an impasse. Difficult, teaching someone who didn’t want to learn.
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“This is important,” Enid said, wanting her entreaty to be its own argument.
“But why do we have to do this every day.” A complaint, not a question.
“It’s not every day.” Enid couldn’t keep the frustration out of her voice. “Because you have to practice if you want to get good at it.”
The glare deepened, offense at the suggestion that Rose wanted to get good at this. She was a quiet girl, generally calm and polite. But it sometimes made her a wall, impossible to cajole or argue with.
This is our tool to save the world, Enid wanted to explain. Reading was the only reason people had saved anything at all, from before the Fall. She didn’t say it because she knew the counter argument: we have all we need, and there are a million things to learn more important than reading, to keep us all alive.
Enid wanted to save reading, and was beginning to doubt that she could. Investigators needed to read and write, to keep records and study their cases. But everyone else? Debatable.
“I’m sorry,” Rose said finally in a small voice.
That melted Enid. “Oh sweetheart, don’t be. We’re both a bit frustrated. We’ll work it out.”
Rose tried on a smile and nodded.
“Enid! Enid, you’re needed!” The shout came up the road, someone running toward the clinic.
Some days Enid would leap at the call—yes, of course, she would help with anything. This day, she was tired and not particularly looking forward to learning what this was about. Did they need her as another resident of Haven, or did they need an investigator? Or did they need her, specifically, because this problem, whatever it was, fit her specialty as an investigator. She hadn’t meant to develop a specialty. She hadn’t wanted to become an expert in death; it had just happened. It had been necessary, whether she liked it or not. Like learning to read.
Rose perked up at the call. “Can I come with you?”
Ah, now she was interested. “Let’s see what it’s about, first.”
Enid rose to meet the man. Alin, twenty-five, had a broad strong frame; he was a young farmer who worked the lands belonging to Red Sunrise household. He must have run the whole way.
“What is it?” Enid asked.
He pointed back. “There’s a stranger come.”
This shouldn’t have been a problem that needed her. Strangers came all the time, folk from the wild or traveling from some distant part of the Coast Road. Why the panic? “Something special about this stranger?”
“Yeah,” he said, trying and failing to catch his breath. “Yeah! They flew! They flew here, Enid!”
Enid had read about airplanes.
She speculated that somewhere in the world must still have working airplanes, or gliders, or something. Maybe not the big fuel-guzzling monsters from before the Fall, but something small. Wouldn’t surprise her to learn airplanes still flew, somewhere. They’d just never come here before.
Well, now one had.
Enid fetched her staff and brown tunic, in case she needed the authority of an investigator, and started to follow Alin out to the pasture where he said the craft had landed.
“Can I come?” Rose begged, hanging on Enid’s arm.
“I think you’d better not, till I’ve looked at things first.”
Rose made a complaining whine, and Enid felt the littlest start of a stab in her heart. What if Rose wanted to become an investigator? Why did that fill her with so much foreboding? She wanted better for her girl. Not a life filled with intractable problems.
Enid hugged her close, and Rose’s arms tightened around her, just right. “Run home and see what chores need doing and I’ll bring back the gossip, bien?”
“Okay.” She ran off.
Alin trotted off, and Enid jogged to keep up. They reached the pasture in maybe half an hour, and Enid stared at what she saw there.
The craft had landed in a field cropped by sheep or goats that had moved on. Its wheels had left tracks of crushed grass behind it; it must have rolled for a couple hundred yards before coming to a stop. It had an enclosed cabin, longer than a typical car. Wheels underneath connected by struts. And wings, straight out like a child holding up her arms when she ran, just to feel the air run over them. Metal barrels were anchored to the struts under the wings.
Colored mostly white with some trim painted in red, it was bright, easy to see. The wings were flat, stretched on either side—not completely straight, they had a teardrop curve to the cross section, part of the physics that allowed for flight to happen. Or so Enid had read. The craft’s tail brought to mind the way birds flexed and spread their feathers when they landed. An artificial bird. Enid had seen pictures but this was immediate, an undeniable presence.
“Did you see it land?” she asked Alin.
“Yeah. Never heard anything like it. Scattered the goats all over. It sailed over, smooth as a boat on water. Then touched the ground, bounced a little, and here it is. Hasn’t moved since and I came to get you.”
None of them had ever heard a fuel-driven internal combustion engine before. Auntie Kath, the last of them who remembered, who recorded the early days of Haven in a series of journals, hadn’t written much about the sound of engines, but she had written about what to her had seemed an uncanny silence when they all went still.
“You didn’t stay and talk to the driver?”
“Was scared to,” he admitted. “What else might they have in there?”
On one hand she was thrilled—to be present for events like this was half the reason she’d become an investigator. The sense of discovery was profound. On another hand . . . what did it mean? She felt it couldn’t be good, or Alin wouldn’t have come get her.
Through the windows at the front of the craft, a figure was visible. A shadow, moving, adjusting something. Then he waved. A normal man, it seemed. A head on lanky shoulders, two arms. Nothing to be scared of. Enid waved back, and Alin gave an uncertain growl.
Others of Alin’s household had gathered on the path above the pasture to watch. They hefted rakes and scythes, and this made Enid grouchy.
“There’s no need for that, I think,” she said, touching a wrist to lower the would-be weapon.
“But what do they want?”
“I’ll find out, won’t I?” Why Enid should speak to the stranger instead of someone else wasn’t entirely clear to her. As was often the case, she was the person standing in the place of the job that needed doing.
She had dealt with murderers and wild folk—who were not the same thing, she pointed out whenever she could. All the murderers she had ever met were Coast Road folk. Those on the Coast Road liked to think well of themselves, but murder still happened, and it was a basic truth she’d thought a lot about over the years. Sometimes people lashed out, and most of them carried tools that could also be weapons. No need for the strange, foreign technology Alin was afraid of.
The man was now exiting the craft. A door swung open, legs reached for the ground.
“Be careful!” Alin urged.
“Tell you what, you can run back to town if anything bad happens.”
“That seems . . . not useful.”
Enid smiled wryly and shrugged. It was what they had. Alin bounced on his feet a little as if ready to run. Enid was thinking that this man wouldn’t have landed his plane in the open for all to see and then stepped out of it alone if he’d meant them harm.
He waited. He was about her age, his skin deep tan, his beard trimmed. He was smiling, his eyes alight. Tall, well fed, and that told her something about where he’d come from. That was what she most wanted to know: where had he come from? Some place that still refined oil, and why would they?
He had a long metal shaft slung over one shoulder, tucked under his arm. She’d read about this as well. A rifle, an old-style weapon using gun powder and projectiles. Well, he wasn’t pointing at anyone yet, was he? She had an idea that this would be like dealing with coyotes; stay confident, don’t show fear. Pretend you were bigger and stronger. She approached with a studied lack of concern.
He raised a hand, a universal signal, and she stopped. He didn’t have a mean face; his expression was open, and he wore a smile. But she wasn’t sure she could judge a stranger from so far afield by his expression. He was well put together in tough trousers and a leather jacket, sturdy Source: Gizmodo