Fantastic Metropolis

Viola sat up, too. She leaned close to brush bits of twigs and leaves from Emma’s hair with an attitude of intimacy that nearly melted Emma’s insistence. She handed Emma the bright fleecy hat that had come off in their wildest and sweetest of moments, then leaned close again, meaning, Emma was sure, to kiss her. But Viola suddenly reared back. Her breath hissed in sharply; her eyelashes fluttered. She scooted back a few inches, snatched up her sweater, and pulled it quickly over her head. “What silly things are you saying, Emma? You talk like an irresponsible child!”

Viola’s voice was taunting. She took her cloak from the ground and wrapped it tightly around herself. “Until we have exact knowledge of what the fields are and how to map them it’s a certainty that people will behave stupidly and make up every sort of nonsense about them on which to base religions and start wars all over again. Must we have war again, just to make the rare individuals like yourself secure in their sense of reality?”

The tone of Viola’s voice nicked Emma’s heart like a knife so cold it felt hot in her breast. Bitterly she pulled on her pants and wished her hat were any color but red. “Why must there always be a common gaze for perceiving anything that’s represented?” She tugged her flame red socks into place. “Why must the existence of something inexplicable and ineffably different make people want to claim they know what it is?” She felt so angry with Viola she had to bury her fists in her cloak to keep from hitting her. “And why can’t we tolerate private, individual looking, instead of insisting always on The Gaze?”

Viola had no idea what Emma was talking about. Her friends never discussed such things. Maps, to her, were constructs for understanding physical reality. They certainly weren’t territories to be fought over. She said, “I want to be an engineer. More than anything. And yes, more than being a lover, Emma. And keeping quiet about something that is of concern to you—but maybe to no one else in the world—is a price I’m willing to pay.”

Angry, sad, crying, Emma watched Viola finish dressing. When Viola stood quickly, without warning, Emma clutched Viola’s legs in a panic. “Don’t go yet,” she said, openly pleading. “Don’t go. I understand, really I do. But don’t you think it’s at all… wrong?”

Viola looked down at her. It seemed to Emma that she had already, in her heart, gone. “Would it matter, Emma, if I did?”

Emma rushed into her sweater and scrambled to her feet. “Of course it would,” she said. “Of course it would matter.” She blinked to clear her eyes of tears. “Couldn’t you at least think about trying—later, when you’re a master—changing the rules of your guild? Couldn’t you at least think about the negative consequences of your silence?”

Viola kissed Emma’s nose lightly. “Of course I can. And I will. But you just remember, too, that without my guild, I don’t exist. And if I spoke openly about Seams, the rest of the world would say I was crazy, and what good would that do anyone?”

“There’s got to be a way,” Emma said fiercely. “I know there has!”

A silence sprang up between them. It grew charged and heavy. Viola swallowed and cleared her throat. “Before I go back to town, I want to check to see if there’s a Seam in that place now.” Her voice was hoarse and shaky.

Defiantly, Emma took Viola’s arm, making it clear she intended to accompany her.

Viola’s face flamed. She backed hastily away. She was back in the Moment, whatever she might say.

Emma smiled lovingly, in utter sureness of her power. A woman now, she knew her own strength.

Arms linked, breaths steaming in the cold, they set out together—lovers of the Moment—for the Edge.

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“Dance at the Edge” first appeared in Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction (1998), edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel, and is collected in Love’s Body, Dancing in Time (Aqueduct Press, 2004).