{"id":6589,"date":"2023-04-01T11:31:29","date_gmt":"2023-04-01T11:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6589"},"modified":"2023-04-01T11:31:32","modified_gmt":"2023-04-01T11:31:32","slug":"mulberry-and-owl-by-aliette-de-bodard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6589","title":{"rendered":"Mulberry and Owl by Aliette de Bodard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mulberry and Owl<\/em><\/strong> by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny<\/em> #42, September\/October 2021) opens with Thu\u1ef7 in the cabin of the starship looking at a black hole in the centre of a nebula; Thu\u1ef7 is there to talk to an imprisoned imperial enforcer. After a flashback to a time twenty years earlier (about half the subsequent story is an account of Thu\u1ef7\u2019s time with her rebel comrades), we discover that the imperial enforcer is a starship called The Owl and the Moon\u2019s Tongue<\/em>, which has been imprisoned in the black hole as it is no longer needed by the new Empress (she does not want reminders of the enforcer\u2019s atrocities).
We subsequently learn that Thu\u1ef7 wants the Owl<\/em> to give her a copy of the amnesty awarded to a dead comrade so that their family can return home and live in peace; in return, Thu\u1ef7 will repair the Owl<\/em>\u2019s weapons systems. After some negotiation they come to an agreement, and Thu\u1ef7 sees vision of the pardon. Then the Owl<\/em> reveals itself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Something changed, in the mass of light in front of Thu\u1ef7: a slight adjustment, but suddenly she could see the ship\u2014the bulk of the hull, the sharp, sleek shape with bots scuttling over every surface, the thin, ribbed actuator fins near the ion drives at the back\u2014the paintings on her hull, which she\u2019d half-expected to be blood spatters but which were apricot flowers, and calligraphed poems, and a long wending river of stars in the shadow of mountains, a breathtakingly delicate and utterly unexpected work of art. Something moved: a ponderous shift of the bots, drawing Thu\u1ef7\u2019s eyes towards a patch of darkness at the centre of the painting, between two mountains.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the story interweaves an account of Thu\u1ef7\u2019s activities during the rebellion with her work repairing the Owl<\/em>\u2019s weapon system, its \u201cscream\u201d. Then, once Thu\u1ef7 finishes the job (spoiler), the Owl<\/em> double-crosses her:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The Owl<\/em>\u2019s scream. The punishment for rebels, for the disloyal to the empire. For those who had abandoned their friends.
Thu\u1ef7 had chased atonement all the way into that nebula, and on some level she\u2019d known, she\u2019d always known, that she didn\u2019t expect to come out after fixing Owl<\/em>. [. . .] \u201cDo you think it\u2019s worth it? They\u2019ll just dismantle it, after I\u2019m dead.\u201d
\u201cOh, child. You\u2019re the one who saw so much, and so little. It\u2019s my voice. It\u2019s part of me. I\u2019d rather scream once more in all my glory rather than leave it forever unused. It will be worth it. All of it.\u201d
You saw much, and so little.
But on some deep, primal level, she\u2019d seen all of it already.
The pressure was building up and up within her. Her bots popped apart, one by one, like fireworks going off\u2014there was nothing in her ears now but that never ending whistling, that vibration that kept going and going, her bones full to bursting, her eyes and nose and mouth ceaselessly hurting, leaking fluid\u2014and her lungs were shaking too, and it was hard to breathe, and even the liquid that filled her mouth, the blood, salt-tinged one, felt like it was vibrating too\u2014and all of it was as it should be\u2014<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Owl<\/em> then realises that\u2014because of her guilt about her comrades\u2014Thu\u1ef7 will suffer more if she lives. Thu\u1ef7 returns to her ship.
I found this story\u2019s space opera setting, with its Star Wars<\/em>-lite Empresses and rebels, unengaging to start with, and I\u2019m also not a fan of de Bodard\u2019s style over substance writing (too much of the story is spent describing the world this is set in, or Thu\u1ef7\u2019s angst). However, this drew me in more as it went on, and the ending looked like it was going to be a cut above what had come before (the scream sequence starts well).The ending is a cop-out though and, if Owl<\/em> was really more interested in causing suffering to its victims than killing them, it would presumably mutilate them instead (e.g. paralyse and\/or deafen and\/or blind them).
Almost there.
**+ (Average to Good). 7,950 words. Story link<\/a>.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mulberry and Owl by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny #42, September\/October 2021) opens with Thu\u1ef7 in the cabin of the starship looking at a black hole in the centre of a nebula; Thu\u1ef7 is there to talk to an imprisoned imperial enforcer. After a flashback to a time twenty years earlier (about half the subsequent story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1089],"tags":[256,50,1090,1542,1541,7,1540,640,1543,367],"class_list":["post-6589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aliette-de-bodard","tag-2-5","tag-50","tag-aliette-de-bodard","tag-enforcers","tag-imperial-empire","tag-novelette","tag-rebels","tag-starships","tag-survivor-guilt","tag-uncanny"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6589"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6597,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6589\/revisions\/6597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}