Red (Sneak Peek) by EJ Koh

  When Sera remembered her childhood,

  she recalled someone telling her: right before you die,

  or she imagined, right after you get your heart broken, you will think of a moment that has no profound meaning at all. You, dying, will try to connect memories to an explanation of how you’ve come to this place, but your brain will set up barriers to protect you from any further pain.

  On this occasion, it was the same.Three days before her mother died, Sera had a question about family. Family had no profound meaning, but she liked to fantasize about Earth and human traditions to escape the realities of Spirit.

  Sera had left the desert pit to meet her instructor at the training grounds. She passed the spring pools, where she didn’t dip her feet because she wasn’t young anymore, and hiked up the stone terraces resting over white sand. That day, the stink of the springs had congealed at the rim of each basin and cooled into a sulfuric jelly that wobbled with the water. The stones were white and the sun was silver—the salt left her teary-eyed through the desert.

  Sera had a question but she should’ve kept her mouth shut.

  Many of the other students had picked up on this rule early. But Sera never did, which meant she often nursed contusions on her face. Though she’d never made a conscious effort to do so before, Sera should’ve ordered her feet to walk back to the mantel and return at the start of Quil’s lesson. Early was never a pursuit more polite than late.

  Instead, she forgot her manners and said to her instructor:

  “We’ve got—what’s the word—parents, too. They’re assigned, assigned by you, but still, they’re like human parents. Except we don’t call them mother or father. We call them keepers.”

  Families, or these units in human societies, were the most marvelous things she’d heard of. Each unit was already picked out, and the humans got stuck with whomever. This meant whoever bore them and whoever was born out of them. It was a lottery, a sweepstake person-toss-up. They’d hoped to get a good draw. That they didn’t dislike the people they met, or were lucky enough not to meet.

  The practice was straight primate.

  Quil, her instructor, fondled his chin. Took that ginormous chin in his hand. Stroked it with fingernails he’d grown out an inch or two, little colorless sheaths that he used to point or beckon. “That’s an interesting point.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes, I mean that’s why we call them keepers,” he said. “So we can pretend to have families even if there’s no function for them. Even if we’re not bound by history, or tied to creation or sustaining race. Even though we don’t believe in individuality or pretend that someone is unique. Unique in a way that binds them to us. Makes us forget that there’s nothing more than the present. The now. So we don’t have to miss it when it’s gone, when everything will be gone,” and he crossed his arms seriously. “Does any of this sound familiar?”

  “Somewhat.” Her tongue felt shriveled in her mouth.

  He looked over her head for the other students who had yet to trickle in, then pivoted towards her, toes peeking out from under his robe.

  His eyes said, I care for you. I condemn you.

  She knew never to trust someone kind with wrinkles in the mean areas: down the mouth, under the nose, between the brows, none around the eyes. Age didn’t make you ugly. Age made you readable.

  “Go to Calle,” he said. “Go to your keeper and call her mother.”

  When she looked at him, she thought she saw his mouth pucker, but his hair, furled by the wind, wound about his face and covered it.

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