Fire of Ennui Read online

  Fire of Ennui

  Evocation: Book 1

  Ivana Skye

  Eta Carinae Press

  Copyright © 2018 by Ivana Skye

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-0-9978544-4-2

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  For the act of leaving

  1

  Nena

  heat enough to melt the snow

  Outside the window there was snow, and inside me there was months’ store of pent-up energy with nowhere at all to go. There was me in my room by that window with nowhere to go. I writhed with boredom on my bed, I flopped most of the way off of it. I was tossing, turning, groaning. I almost wanted to suddenly fall off the bed entirely, just for the brief sense of excitement.

  And yet—this was the beginning of nearly everything. This was the moment that led to moments and moments ahead filled with light and discovery and bright sparks, this is what led from Sifir to Cradle, this is what changed the world.

  Me. So bored that I could neither sit still nor think of any particularly interesting way to move.

  My home city of Ta Ralis spread around me, but the walls of my room held me in. I had nowhere to go, but yet this was the beginning. I was twitching and yet there was nothing to do, even though there technically was—I could have done so many things. I could have visited a library, any library, and read the stories my ancestors recorded. I could learn any bit of knowledge anyone ever knew. But I’d already done that, six months home now, and I’d had more than my fill. Experience was more my style; I preferred to learn from more than just books and talking.

  But also I could have walked out into the snow. I could have skied, I could have hiked, I could have climbed something. I could even have gone back to the gym, as if I hadn’t already won everything there was to win in that regard.

  But none of that would do, none of that was enough. I looked in my mind for anything, anything that would engage me, and all it could tell me was nothing nothing nothing.

  So instead I writhed.

  And instead I found myself living and breathing boredom.

  And instead I let my mind wander back to what had been the most interesting and important moment in the world. Orange lights and the cheer of a crowd. The way the world blurred as I flipped around on the trapeze. Adrenaline and muscle memory and confidence fueled my every moment.

  It was exactly what I had prepared for my entire life.

  There were five parts of the competition and two categories of judgement: athleticism and artistry. And I won both. I danced in the air on trapeze and silks, more than kept my coordination on the high beam, flipped dramatically on the floor, spun effortlessly on the wheel. Altogether, in those things combined, I was the best—in both ways of thinking about it.

  Hardly anyone ever wins both categories in the same year. And if they do, they’re not seventeen. No one manages something so difficult as young as that.

  Except, of course, for me.

  So here I was, just eighteen now, and I’d already months ago done everything I’d wanted in all my life, and I was lying on my bed in early afternoon, and I was bored. And I’ll say exactly what it felt like: it felt like fire. It felt like sparks under my skin, this desire to move and do something. It felt like I would burn up entirely if I stayed still. It was at once flickering and intense, and I was certain it had the capability to destroy me.

  My boredom was fire, I thought to myself. It was fire.

  Before I even went on stage for anything that day that I won—the best day of my life, the end point of everything that had mattered to me—I psyched myself up backstage. Every color was so bright and my heart rang in my ears. That waiting room would go on to become in my memory both a place and a feeling, the walls themselves in retrospect seeming to be more anticipation than walls. Even now, I can think up that room, and feel everything I felt then.

  The competition was in the west, on a peninsula called the Scythe for its shape. Not everyone could make it: my aunt’s wheelchair wasn’t tricked out enough to cross the mountains; the Scythe’s plans for extending its rail system for exactly that reason hadn’t quite gone through yet. So, since she had a synonym and I knew it—and it was an easy one to use, too, a truename like mine—I decided to contact her.

  “Eriye,” I said, the word not reverberating in actuality but still somehow doing so in spirit simply because I knew from experience that she heard me say it, hundreds of miles away. “I’ll be going up soon,” I continued, “I just wanted you to know, since you couldn’t make it.”

  I felt the response as sound, though it didn’t touch the air anywhere near me. “Nena,” she said, hundreds of miles away, and the syllables vibrated deep in me. In my bones, it felt like, although in actuality it was deeper—those syllables vibrated in my soul, by virtue of me having decided that my very self and that name were one and the same. Now that the synonym was invoked, the connection opened, her following words moved through me too. “Thanks for telling me,” she said. “Good luck.”

  I smiled, more than willing to accept the luck. The intensity of the connection—the biggest downside to synonymy, for all that it allowed instantaneous long-distance communication—didn’t bother me at all. If it did, I wouldn’t have been entirely public with my truename.

  But I liked feeling that call to attention, frequently. People could say my name without it affecting me so deeply if they wanted, a connection wouldn’t be opened unless they intended it to be—but still. Anyone, anywhere, who’d heard of me, which was a lot of people at this point, could get me to listen to their words.

  I wasn’t one to close myself off. I never had been.

  And so I told my aunt that I’d tell her how it went, and with a thought of cutting and a flat-handed gesture, I ended the connection. With a slight twinge, I could feel that she’d done the same.

  I was ready, then. And of course, it turned out that I won.

  So I was bored, and as I reminisced to combat the feeling, I thought of that aunt who lived in a different city, a different climate, hundreds of miles away. I had talked to Eriye that day when I’d won, but I hadn’t visited her for perhaps three years.

  I smiled, sitting up at last. I had a plan.

  My backpack, well used from all those years of long travel for circus competitions, was still resting right there against my bed. And I knew my system for packing it like I knew the motions of shaving my face.

  Planning had never been my strong suit, but memorizing a routine was something I could do. And so it took only thirty minutes of stuffing various items into their proper corners for me to be entirely ready, minus the provisions I’d need to pick up on my way out of the city.

  Suddenly the flurry of snow outside my window felt suiting to the moment, like a motivation to go. I wasn’t going to actually contact my aunt ahead of time, of course: I couldn’t risk her telling me not to come, leaving me to my boredom once more. But, it occurred to me in a spark of thought that made my bite my lip, I should probably tell my parents.

  My house was by all means a typical Ta Ralisite house: a low and long cabin with plenty of space for a full extended family. Mine tended to feel a little empty though, as it hadn’t been particularly designed for my mother to marry a man from out of the city who brought none of his family to live with us. I made my way to the central living space, filled with wood carvings and the display copy of the intricate family tree scroll: mo
st of the details coming only from one side of the family, of course, as my father knew very little of his own genealogy compared to the average Ta Ralisite.

  I found my mother curled up in some furs, a book in her hands, the fireplace on. She took one look at me and gave something that at least halfway resembled a frown.

  “Hey, so, I’m leaving,” I said, as if it wasn’t already pretty obvious.

  “Um,” she said, likely in substitute for all the questions she probably wanted to ask: doing what, going where, why.

  “I’m bored here,” I explained. “I’m gonna go visit my aunt. And, yknow, everyone else up there in Mangtena.”

  “You know that’s three hundred miles away, right?”

  “Eh,” I said. “It’ll be a fun trip. I hope.”

  My mother just shook her head, used to me by now. “It’s nice having you back here, you know.”

  She wasn’t trying to convince me to stay; I knew that. Yet I gritted my teeth anyway, annoyed by the slightest hint of something that might prevent me from having a life. Another life. After all, it seemed I’d already had the one.

  “Nena,” she said, not invoking the name, nothing about the way she said it reverberating in my soul.

  I waited for her to say something else: an actual invitation to stay, an admonition of some kind. But it seemed she intended all her meaning to be carried only by the syllables of my name.

  And I didn't know what that meaning was; I never was the best at understanding subtext. So I asked: "what?"

  "Nothing," she responded.

  I frowned. This exact style of interaction was among my greatest weaknesses. A walking handstand was one thing, but following this was near impossible. "Are you sure?" I asked.

  "Well, you're leaving," she responded. I was sure I was supposed to say something back, but that was not the way I was. I was of directness and specificity, focus and certainty; we all were, those of us who would go to Cradle.

  Thankfully, my father walked into the room then, took one look at my pack, and said: "Ah, that's what all the commotion was about." I could hear rustling in some of the other rooms too, surely intrigued grandparents and cousins who weren't quite ready to get themselves directly involved.

  I almost said to him that I was sorry, but I wasn't sorry. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. So instead I said, "Bored here. You know?"

  He laughed and asked, "Getting back into competition?"

  I almost blushed and perhaps certainly bristled, as that was not what I was intending to do, not yet. "Just a visit," I said. "Mom's sister." Even saying it that way made me bite my lip, worrying now that this trip too would bore me. And if I talked about it too much longer, I expected the chances that it would begin to truly sound boring would increase. I needed to leave. Immediately.

  My father nodded, and as he nodded, I said, "If I'm going to have any chances of getting anywhere today, I should leave now."

  And there were objections, or what might have been such, spoken both in words and in the glances I could barely read at all. And despite them, I left.

  There were snow-covered buildings on either side of the street and I walked between them, alone.

  This city, for all that I’d traveled from it, was part of my childhood. I’d seen these very streets come alight with sunrises, pink and orange light catching on the snow. I had watched those on many mornings with my mother, and on one of those mornings I had said while looking at a bird that I wanted to fly, and she had the next day enrolled me in circus classes.

  I did not know, now, if that meant it was my idea. Was the set of events that led to my victory started by my will, or hers? Either way, I had enjoyed the feeling of it, all of it, and yet I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of pride I should feel.

  I closed my eyes and sharply breathed in the cold air, not sure if these were thoughts I should be entertaining and therefore choosing instead to distract myself, if just for a few seconds. I felt the crunch of snow under my feet and when I again opened my eyes, I saw the crowd of the city flowing around me.

  And I turned my head as someone shouted my name without intent and though it did not twinge my soul, it twinged my ears. "Nena," they said. They were a child of some kind, although not necessarily much younger than me.

  They ran up to me as I said, "Yes?"

  "Can I have your autograph?” They asked, eyes wide.

  Of course, I obliged. Why wouldn't I? I stepped up to them and took the parchment they offered—not paper, parchment, they were clearly aiming for a long-lasting souvenir—and painted my name right on with the offered ink. There was no intent of invoking my synonym here either; there would be no point. But I could have, and this child could have, and that possibility was like power and thrummed within me. I liked that feeling, and such was why my name was public.

  I smiled at the child when I was done, but continued walking. There were others who recognized me, I began to notice, saying my name quietly and without intent.

  It could be quite fun to be a living legend.

  And for a second, I lost myself in the momentum of walking forward, a smile on my face, no longer well and truly bored. And that was where I found myself coming to the outfitter, close to the edge of the city.

  This was it, then: the beginning of preparing for the journey I was also now beginning to take, away from Ta Ralis, this time for no reason in particular, not for competition or for training. I did not know what it was for, other than my own entertainment, but maybe that was enough. And maybe it would have to be.

  2

  Cijaya

  a crack just large enough to fall through

  Guess who was doing way, way, worse than Nena there? Hint: it was me.

  I was hanging out at the ocean, standing where the waves were doing their thing. I checked out the patterns they made on the sand—by which I mean that I got super distracted by them, the way they wooshed and swirled, all the complexity, my attention really could be so easily captured by a good visual.

  The other thing I was doing, when I wasn’t getting distracted by wooshes, was yelling. A lot.

  "Graaaaaaaaah!" I shouted as I threw a rock into the sea, overhand, side-hand, whatever-the-fuck-kind-of-hand you use for throwing things hard. Real hard. It splashed big, like kaBOOSH big, and I nodded and felt satisfied. But not satisfied enough to not just pick up another stone and do it all over again.

  See, the thing is, I had enemies. Well, one enemy. Which was enough. I kind of liked visualizing her blood on my hands, see. But don't worry, she deserved that kind of hate—but I’ll get to that later.

  Anyway, that's why I was yelling at the ocean. And gritting my teeth. And imagining punching someone in, like, the heart probably.

  And that's when I heard my name like a set of purposefully discordant chimes deep down. Cijaya….

  I knew that voice. Besides, only exactly one person could be contacting me, because only exactly one person knew my true and synonymous name.

  Zel, my very best friend, my possible only friend, and also a nearby lake. By which I mean, they were the Vitality of a nearby lake, which is a thing that people are. Sometimes. Except they’re not really people in the usual sense, because they don’t have physical bodies, but they’re around all the same, and at least some of them are cool.

  Some used to be human, and stuck around when they died. I wasn’t really sure if Zel was one of those or not, because it seemed a bit sensitive to ask about. Anyway, Vitalities were in some ways the most powerful people or beings or whatever around, even if they couldn’t actually physically do much of anything.

  You okay? the not very intimidating kind-of-powerful-but-not-really lake asked. Well, I mean, I know that's a silly question, given that you were chucking things at stuff and shouting and all, but like, if you wanna talk … I'm here.

  I opened the connection from my end. “Zel,” I said, with a bit of irritation. "I'm fine."

  I was not fine.

  Zel had contacted me by name, which me
ant that all communication from their end via that connection had to be in the same medium as a name—that is, in spoken language. But I could tell they would rather communicate nonverbally right then. I could tell, because they told me as much. I'm making a frowny face right now, they said.

  "You don't have a face," I responded.

  Yeah, but my mental powers are like, seriously amazing, so I can think the full brunt of a frowning face. If you had a conceptual synonym, I could show you.

  "Zel, like no one has a conceptual synonym. Like almost zero people."

  Yeah, I know, but it would be useful. But seriously - you're not okay.

  "Um, clearly I'm absolutely, one hundred percent okay. Obviously."

  Excuse you. You are not.

  “Well, I’m not throwing the rocks into you, am I? So there’s not a problem,” I said.

  I heard them sigh. I wasn’t contacting you because there was a problem, they said. I was just wondering if you wanted to talk.

  “About what?” I asked as I threw another, smaller rock into the ocean. That one, too, made a pretty satisfying splash.

  I’m giving you a look right now. Capitalized. A Look.

  “Seriously, Zel,” I said, my tone softening for a half-second. “You already know everything. I’m just having the same feelings as always. There’s nothing new to say.”

  You’re thinking about her again.

  “And venting,” I said with a shrug.

  By throwing rocks into the ocean.

  “Hey, actually, violence against something that isn’t like, alive, is a pretty healthy coping mechanism. I learned that in a class once. It’s why punching pillows is good for you.”

  Okay, okay, I know, Zel said, almost whining a little. They didn’t say anything else for a good, oh, few seconds after that; I threw another rock into the ocean, trying to only grunt instead of yell, because Zel would hear anything that came out of my mouth in their soul, and I didn’t want to subject them to the full thing. Eventually, though, Zel spoke up again: I’m here, though. Just wanted you to know that.