The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [193]
The man was looking around him nervously, sweating hard, the salp wound, though thermosealed, turning the skin of his leg the color of unripe calloon fruit.
Normally, this area, with its promise of departure, would inspire Safiya with excitement. She had always loved the noise and movement, the scorch of demon's-prick chilis in the air, the hiss and roar of food being cooked for impatient travelers. The haggling, the thick din of debate, the curiously attractive trilling of the sirens and horns on the great trains. Now all she saw was threat.
Beige meringues of filth quivered in the ditches by the roadside. Beggars with stumps pleaded for money or food or regenerative hormone gels. A herd of thuc, painted with slashes of brilliant paint, turned onto the main drag. Acrobats and jugglers fussed and fretted at the clawed feet of the beasts, dared to get close enough to pin banners and pennants on to their plated hides.
There was a sense of arrival. The Festival seemed to be spiraling into the centre of things, both in terms of location and time. There was a feeling of criticality. The smoke and the stir ― the electricity of the moment ― turned the twilight sky into something bewitching, palpable.
At that moment, a dark seam split the heavens.
Safiya looked up to see what resembled a smudged purple underscore on a pale grey page. The leading point of it slowed and smeared and grew. She was put in mind of a sleeping bird at its roost, unfurling great wings in the moments before flight. She had to turn away when the thing's head shifted to show her a flash of too many teeth crammed into a mouth that seemed ill-suited to contain them.
What she hoped were firecrackers began exploding throughout the square abutting Battidarmala station's grand entrance. The energy of the crowd changed. Movement became less sinuous, more arbitrary. People began screaming. Pockets of red mist burst into the sky and hung there in the heat. She was no longer able to keep track of the specter in the sky, or what its smoking eyes were trying to fasten on in the crowd.
"Keranjian mani?Irith cullviridim?Anji?Ordu?"
The words, anger-spiced, pealed from the howls of desperation like something exotic freed from a bottle of vapors. She knew this tongue, but had not heard it spoken on the streets of her city before. "Nobody would dare," she cried.
The man she had rescued was crouched, crabbing his way toward shelter. He was volleying back sentences of Dardarbji over the uncertain heads of the Festival-goers. It was not yet apparent where the danger was coming from. Only that it was coming.
"Huth ninia," he shrieked: There was another.
Then he turned to her. "Barafil tau! Get down!"
A great bronze ripple bent the aspect of the sky. She felt its heat reduce her hair to stubble as it passed overhead. It was spent almost immediately. When she was able to blink moisture back into her eyes, the man was gone and every tree along the Khunds Road was ablaze.
Recommended Reading
THE FOLLOWING LIST of "New Weird" novels and single-author story collections is by no means exhaustive and should be considered a "jumping off" point for readers interested in further exploration. This list includes some material that might be considered "stimuli" to the New Weird rather than New Weird itself. It does not include the small offshoot of what might be termed "space opera" New Weird represented by writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Iain M. Banks. ― THE EDITORS
BARKER, CLIVE
The Books of Blood (vols.