Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History by Ken Liu, Tananarive Due, Victor LaValle, Nnedi Okorafor, Sofia Samatar, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Thoraiya Dyer Page B

different angle and there was Todd on a hill looking down upon us.
    Amber, I called. Amber! Run! Save yourself!
    The whispering in my head grew louder. I saw the white man approach, an albino gorilla burning with murderous intent. There was nowhere we could run; Todd and the White Gorilla were tactical geniuses, cutting off our paths of flight.
    I wondered if Mr. Washington would give us a twin homegoing full of lavish food and celebration.
    My skin warmed and I figured since my death was upon me, I’d shut off my mind and give in to the creeping pleasures of the world around me.
    Just as I decided my time lay at an end, the water parted and up in the sky rose that diamond island, the land of the water-women. Scores of them – brown and nude and river-slicked – floated down to us. Two of them caressed Amber. I locked eyes with a woe and she whispered my name. Tall and skinny with a sharp, gaunt face. She bounce-walked and after a few steps her movements nearly resembled floating. The woe put her arm around me, softly touching my chest. With my eyes, I searched her naked body for gills, but soon I gave in and began softly kissing her neck and kneading her soft wet flesh, growing more aggressive with the increasing intensity of her breaths and her moans. Together they sounded like a new language.
    There was that pop again. Another pop, itself a language I no longer cared to understand. I placed my tongue gently into my water-woman’s mouth. We were melting into one being. Pop. She shuddered and I felt a hot wetness at the side of my lover’s body. I gasped. My heart felt as if it had shifted and now beat in the center of my body, somewhere near the back. My water-woman went limp in my arms, her head flopping to the side, her skin turning cold and scaly and silvery and blue beneath the crack of moonlight that spilled from behind the cloud cover.
    I looked at the blood and chunks of flesh that covered my skin and my clothes. Some of the water-women ran and dove back into the river. I scanned the water’s edge for Amber. He held a water-woman in his arms and another stood behind him rubbing his back. The one in front took hold of his hand and led him deeper into the water.
    I ducked from the flurry of bullets I expected to buzz by our ears like mosquitoes. Todd and the White Gorilla stalked toward me. I crouched to the ground with my hands covering my head. When they were upon me, they stopped and hovered. I watched their work boots, afraid to look into their faces.
    Todd and the White Gorilla stepped over me, mumbling apologies. They stumbled toward the river and its bounty of naked women.
    As grateful as I was for their mesmerism, it also saddened me. That was to be my fate, my thoughtless death march to a land under the water.
    I rose to my feet and ran to water’s edge where Amber stood. I snatched at him and held him down. He screamed and cried, cursing and threatening me with great violence. I knew it was just a matter of endurance. When the island sank back into the depths of the river, he’d regain a certain sanity. His water-women didn’t fight – that is not how they did things. They blew kisses and walked out into the river until their heads were fully submerged.
    As for Todd and the White Gorilla, water-women gazed into their eyes, laughing playful laughs and twisting their naked hips. It was a beautiful invitation to a drowning and they accepted, holding tight to the women as they led them to the bottom of the river.
    For Amber, the sinking of the island was the worst part; he twisted, thrashed, and screamed. But when it was over, when that island was again tucked beneath gentle currents, Amber grew calm and docile. He lay on his back atop the wet soil with his hands on his face.
    Take me home, he said. I need to go home.
    I looked off into the distance at the glowing town and I realized that Amber and I would never again be allowed there. He moved his hands from his face and it was as blank and innocent as