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    Apex Magazine: Issue 23
    Apex Magazine: Issue 23
    Apex Magazine: Issue 23
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    Apex Magazine: Issue 23

    By Catherynne M. Valente

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    About this ebook

    Apex Magazine is a monthly science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazine featuring original, mind-bending short fiction from many of the top pros of the field.

    Our April issue begins the first of our new expanded editions. More great content for one great price!

    Eugie Foster returns to the pages of Apex with the Japanese-flavored "Biba Jibun." Michael J. Deluca marks his first appearance with the rather dark fantasy story "The Eater." Relive the horrors of Mike Allen's award-nominated "The Button Bin." Rose Lemberg's poem "Thirteen Principles of Faith", Jennifer Pelland's Nebula Award-nominated story "Ghosts of New York," and the history of the Nebula Awards by Michael A. Burstein round out a robust and hefty issue of Apex Magazine.

    Apex Magazine is edited by award-winning author and editor Catherynne M. Valente.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherApex Book Company
    Release dateApr 2, 2011
    ISBN9781458157669
    Apex Magazine: Issue 23
    Author

    Catherynne M. Valente

    Catherynne M. Valente began September’s adventures in installments on the Web; the project won legions of fans and also the CultureGeek Best Web Fiction of the Decade award. She lives with her husband on an island off the coast of Maine. She has written many novels for adults, but this is her children’s book debut.

    Read more from Catherynne M. Valente

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      Book preview

      Apex Magazine - Catherynne M. Valente

      APEX MAGAZINE

      Issue 23

      April, 2011

      Copyright 2011 Apex Publications

      Smashwords Edition

      COPYRIGHTS & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      The Eater Copyright 2011 by Michael J. Deluca

      Biba Jibun Copyright 2011 by Eugie Foster

      The Button Bin Copyright 2007 by Mike Allen

      Thirteen Principles of Faith Copyright 2011 by Rose Lemberg

      An Introductory Guide to the Nebulas Copyright 2011 by Michael A. Burstein

      Ghosts of New York Copyright 2010 by Jennifer Pelland

      Publisher—Jason Sizemore

      Fiction Editor—Catherynne M. Valente

      Senior Editor—Gill Ainsworth

      Submission Editors—Zakarya Anwar, Ferrett Steinmetz, Martel Sardina, Chris Einhaus, Mari Adkins, George Galuschak, Deanna Knippling, Laura Long, Sarah Olson, Lillian Cohen-Moore, Patrick Tomlinson, Katherine Khorey

      Proofreader—Olga Zelenova

      Cover designed by Justin Stewart

      ISSN: 2157-1406

      Apex Publications

      PO Box 24323

      Lexington, KY 40524

      Please visit us at http://www.apexbookcompany.com

      To subscribe visit http://www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-store/subscriptions/

      Submission Guidelines are listed at the end of the issue.

      Table of Contents

      The Eater

      Michael J. Delcuca

      Biba Jibun

      Eugie Foster

      The Button Bin

      Mike Allen

      Thirteen Principles of Faith

      Rose Lemberg

      An Introductory Guide to the Nebulas

      Michael A. Burstein

      Ghosts of New York

      Jennifer Pelland

      Submission Guidelines

      The Eater

      by Michael J. DeLuca

      The Eater knows things the rest of our tribe can never know.

      On the village common, in the humidity and blazing sun, all the people of my tribe not occupied with sheltering or feeding us assemble to hear and repeat the day's teaching--a new litany of words. Those present will teach those who are not, and our world will grow.

      The Speaker is the oldest person I have ever seen. She is wrinkly and her scalp is bare--though I think she may scrape it to make herself seem older still. The things she knows--the words--she makes herself. Not like the Eater, who walks among us bouncing and gangly like a marsh bird with a broken leg, grey but full of life, showing us those things he may show whose place the Speaker's words will take.

      The shoots of the arm-leg bush abate fever. The forest dog may be friendly alone, but must be avoided when encountered in packs; its flesh is often tough. The snout fish is ugly, but its belly and head taste delicious when cooked with ground fist-nut over coals.

      How much of what we know do we owe to the Eater? Everything, some would say--though my brother Meki, who is wise despite his youth, would answer that only the Speaker's words permit us to use what knowledge the Eater brings. Meki's voice rings out the words confident and clear above the others--he is so wise. I flush with pride to be his sister, and must struggle to keep up. I confess I find the litany harder and harder to attend to.

      The shamblers migrate across our forest in the dry season. They move north to south in bands ranging in number from two to as many as live in our village. Their diet consists primarily of meat. They are stronger and faster than we, their appetites greater. They carry cats' teeth, horns and heavy lopers' bones. It is useless to speak to them.

      It's useless trying to name them, trying--through words--to gain understanding of what they are or what they do: kill. The shamblers exist outside of words. That's not impossible, though some would say so. We did it once.

      We only know this through the Eater.

      I've seen the Eater crawling back to his hut from the darkness, contorting and shuddering. We owe him for that. I've heard the madness that boils on the Eater's tongue when he drinks of the froth from the bone-rattle tree. He is the only one who dares to taste it. I've seen him walk across the village as though he's forgotten in which direction lies the earth and which the sky. He goes into the woods alone. After a time, his body has always returned. But he--the Eater I know or think I know, the laughing Eater with his clever tricks and dances--he stays away for even longer, unable to speak or unwilling, somewhere we can never go or see.

      Never, that is, unless one of us follows him.

      When he runs out of animal skins, dead insects, flowers and food to pass among the crowd as the Speaker names each one, the Eater retreats from the village common at his customary lope, tipped back on his heels like a sapling tossed by storm. I leave off the litany and scramble out between sweat-slippery elbows and knees to the edge of the crowd, keeping one eye on the Eater, another on my brother Meki to be sure he doesn't turn.

      At times I am pained for Meki, to know he is so young. I wish he could have been my father or my father's father rather than my brother, so that he could have lived a part of that generation when everything was new: when things first were given names. Our parents are dead, and our grandparents. It would mean I'd never have known my brother, never been his sister. But living now, when he can at best devise new ways to understand a world already made, it seems my brother's great gift for words goes to waste.

      I want to know what you know, I tell the Eater.

      His lips release breath acrid with a scent I can't place, but his face is open, his eyes laughing. I know what death tastes like--bitter. Birth, too--like salt. If I perform my task with forethought and precaution, the lives of all those in the village are enriched, prolonged, by what I learn. But my life will at best be changeable and brief.

      Your life will be richer, I say, my face warm, --be it with agony or pleasure--than anyone else's, elder, adult, or child. When we die, we may think back and know we have seen and smelled and felt the things of this world--but only the Eater will have tasted them.

      He is walking away, his strides long and loping, between the skin walls and the green bough roofs of our village.

      I chase after him, struggling to keep up. An Eater's life won't always be brief. You teach our people what is safe. Each Eater will know more than the last.

      I think he smiles--in that way the adults do when Meki and I speak of the future, a smile that I have learned means, You are eager, but not yet wise enough to grasp the lesson I could teach. He pinches a heavy leaf-fold of the rain reservoir suspended between one hut and the next, releasing a spout of water that drenches us both as he drinks his fill--enough, I imagine, to drown even the crowd of poisons residing in his belly. As it gushes over me, I close my eyes.

      When I open them, he has gone. Into the woods, if I had to guess--here by the grave-mounds where lie those few remains of the shamblers' victims he has managed to recover. But it's too bright, out where we have cleared the trees, to

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