The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (best romance novels of all time TXT) 📗

discussed the finer points of spiritual salvation in Yoruba-inflected Igbo. I itched for something to read.

‘Why are you even here?’

He shrugged, petulant. I just wanted to see you.

I rolled my eyes. He’d only been dead a few days. He’d always been impatient, demanding that I work at his relentless pace no matter how I felt. Now, he couldn’t even wait to be missed before showing up again.

‘Really? So that you can tell me how selfish I am because I’m not sitting inside being the center of everyone’s grief? Or do you also want to remind me that I’m going to destroy our family line if I don’t have a child?’

I realized I sounded like a child myself, but I couldn’t help it. Being in his presence made me feel that I’d gone back in time and was an angry teenager again.

No. His voice had a wistful quality – like someone looking back at the folly of his youth. You were never selfish, you know. I was.

I looked at him sharply; this didn’t sound like him at all. As if reading my thoughts, he smiled.

That’s one thing dying does – it changes you.

He certainly looked dead. His skin was gray and waxy like a mannequin. His shoulders had a stiff quality that made his dark ranger uniform fit him perfectly in a way it had never done in life.

‘Am I to believe that dying has made you a different person?’

Look, he said in that chiding tone I hated, you can’t fault people for their weaknesses. You’ll only be left with bitterness if you do. You have to find a way to let go. That’s what I came to tell you.

I sighed. In death, as in life, he had nothing but easy philosophies for me. They’d made for exciting debates when I was young but served as cold comfort for grief. I wanted to get up and walk away, but I didn’t. I never could.

‘Just leave me alone.’

I turned on my A.I. It synced with the implant at the base of my skull that monitored my neural and physical activity. Reading my increased agitation, it cued the soothing whale songs that worked best to bring my signals within normal range. I leaned back against the tree and closed my eyes as the sounds poured into my aural inputs, imagining what those long-extinct creatures might have looked like.

Above me, the dead man and the weaver birds chirped on.

*

He didn’t show up again until evening, when the second burial was in full swing. By then, the sapling that would biodegrade his pod had joined the other ancestral trees in the front yard. The necessary prayers had been said, the tree’s ritual first watering completed. The time for mourning the loss was over and it was now time to celebrate the life lived. At eighty, the dead man was considered fairly young; he’d been expected to live for at least another twenty years. But in my culture, venerated old age began at sixty – probably a holdover from when most people didn’t live past their fifties.

I watched the revelry from the open window of the guest room. I’d been allowed this short time to myself only after pleading exhaustion from the long journey. It was only a matter of time before I’d be called out to join the dancing.

The music – a blend of ogenes, ichakas, and udus, cut through by the sweet, sharp tones of the aja – stirred something deep inside me. I pressed my hand to the center of my chest where a phantom pain stabbed through me.

It is good to be remembered. That is the true joy of legacy.

The dead man was sitting next to me on the bed, surveying the mass of people dancing and drinking in the yard.

‘Too bad they didn’t remember you half as well when we needed their help.’

When my uncle was arrested, they led him out of the compound in chains to show how serious his crime was. My family – once one of the most prominent in the city – was quietly ostracized. Most of my friends stopped coming over. When relatives and agemates stopped by, it was only to whisper at the door or drop off food and drinks. No one wanted to stay and visit. My own education effectively ended – my uncle had been my teacher, after all. It broke Mama and Papa – my grandparents – to lose one of their sons like that. My grandmother fell ill soon after and my grandfather withdrew to care for her. As for my father? Well… he disappeared too, in his own way.

They all had their own problems; they didn’t owe me anything.

I hissed in contempt, but said nothing. He must have mistaken my silence, because he continued earnestly.

You have to find it in your heart to forgive them. In the end, all that matters are the memories of the people who knew you. Especially your children.

‘And how do you think I’ll remember you?’

He went quiet at that. We both looked through the window toward the empty space where the guardhouse once stood.

I didn’t know.

‘How couldn’t you have known? Every day after our lessons, right there in the guardhouse. What were you doing the whole time? Sleeping?’

I was working, he snapped. Don’t you think I would have done something if I had known? We acted as soon as we found out.

‘And after that, when you stopped talking to me, was that also because you were working?’

Silence.

‘You know, for years I thought it was my fault. I believed that I was the one who destroyed our family. Uncle went to prison, Mama got sick, and you… you couldn’t even look at me. Even after we left, if I didn’t call you, I didn’t hear from you.’

I still remembered those video calls, stilted conversations on birthdays and holidays. In them, he always seemed too tired or too busy to talk properly.

‘I spent years waiting for you… I waited, and I waited, and I waited.’

The tears