Waiting on a Bright Moon: A Tor.com Original Read online

  “What’s your plan?” you ask.

  “You run. Somewhere they cannot find you.”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  You end up on the docking platform, the struts familiar over your head. By this time Suqing’s face is red with exertion, and you crash out of the in-between into the sound and smell of the ordinary world. You catch her as she falls to her knees. “Are you alright?”

  Suqing pushes past the harsh breathing to get to her feet. “I’m fine. Only tired.” She points you towards one of the lightspeed cocoons, marked red-on-grey, massive and industrial. A planetary supply cocoon, in transit. “We’ll take that one.”

  The cocoon seats one, just like the vehicle that brought you here years ago. You repeat, “Suqing, what about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me. Quartermaster Lu needs me. He cannot dispose of me so easily. Not yet.” The cocoon’s navigation panel lights up under her touch, and she enters coordinates. “Please hurry,” she tells you. “Strap in.”

  You glance at the docking platform doors, wide open, and realise it’s only a matter of time before the rebels find you.

  You wanted to decide your own fate. You wanted to fight for it.

  “Take me to a place where there are wide and deep fields,” you say. “A place where grains grow plump and cherry blossom flourishes.”

  “There’s a sparsely populated planet, not a few light-years from here,” Suqing says. “Farmers, dependable folk. They won’t question too much.”

  The safety belts click across your chest and hips with a sober finality. “And you? Will you join me?”

  She comes to your side, forehead finding yours, limbs trembling, breaths ghosting against your skin. “Yes,” she whispers. “I will. I promise. I promise.”

  You don’t want to let her go.

  Suqing takes in a shaking breath, and then the rough steps of her melody surround you: 明月几时有？ 把酒问青天…

  You sing, matching her tone. 人有悲欢离合、月有阴晴圆缺、此事古难全。 Warmth floods around you, the connection that cannot be erased. A song, written in the long ages when your people lived on a single planet, shared the same moon. Yet the sentiment is unchanged.

  Light glows between the two of you. 但愿人长久、千里共婵娟。

  You kiss her face, her lips, her hair. You taste the blood on them. You taste the sweat, the fear, the desperation, the hope. What the future holds, you cannot say. But you have your song. It is all that you have, and you have to pray that it will be enough.

  About the Author

  JY Yang is a lapsed journalist, a former practicing scientist, and a master of hermitry. A queer, non-binary, postcolonial intersectional feminist, they have over two dozen pieces of short fiction published or forthcoming in places including Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. They live in Singapore, edit fiction at Epigram Books, and have a MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2017 by JY Yang

  Art copyright © 2017 by Victo Ngai