This is Cast of Wonders, the young adult fiction podcast featuring stories of the fantastic. Welcome. Episode 624. I'm Catherine Inskip, your editor and host. Every year, Cast of Wonders highlights some of our favourite episodes from the previous year. It's a great chance for us to take a bit of a breather and let you, our listeners, catch up on any missed back episodes with new commentary from a different member of the crew.
Our story for today is My Mother's Voice and the Shadow by A.W. Prehandita, which was first published as Cast of Wonders 606 in September 2024. Anselma Prihandita is a college writing instructor and PhD candidate in rhetoric and composition, with scholarly and personal interests in decolonial and transnational writing.
Her most favourite job, however, is writing speculative fiction with hints of heartbreak and the personal political. She splits her time between the US West Coast, where she currently teaches and studies, and Indonesia. where she grew up and where her home remains. She attended the Odyssey Workshop in 2023 with their Fresh Voices Scholarship and the Clarion Workshop in 2024 with their Octavia Butler Scholarship.
Her stories are published or forthcoming in Correo Magazine, Ghoulish Tales, Mysterion and Fusion Fragment, among others. This story is narrated by Omega Francis. Omega Francis is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago and is a holder of a bachelor's degree in communication studies and an MFA in creative writing from the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus.
Omega works as a copy editor and writer, and her writing has been published in Harness Magazine, Outlish Magazine, SPED, UWI Today, UWI STAN Magazine, Intersect.ANU, and SX Salon. This story comes with a content warning for colonialism and generational trauma. And now, we've a tale to tell.
My Mother's Voice and the Shadow by A.W. P. Handita. I pressed my palm onto my chest and said, Marie. I pointed at my mother, took a deep breath, and braved her abyssal eyes, asking, and you what is your name mother i shouldn't have been in her room but my father was away and i was a curious child i stood in quiet repetition and waited to know her
she towered over me shadow-like in the dark but by a sliver of moonlight i could see the empty crooked smile on her lips it made me shiver it always did it looked like the painted simp of a porcelain doll with eyes too wide and skin too white except my mother's skin was dark and wrinkly like shrunken leather her pitch-block eyes were an equate emptiness a starless midnight sky to fall into
with no thoughts to catch you only darkness my mother was mute and feeble-minded or so my father said i would have believed him until the end of my days had the shadow not shown me otherwise When I was a child, father would sit me on his lap as he worked at his desk. I was small enough that his arms could sneak around me and reconvene at the site of his surgery. A book, usually at least half a century old.
in some stage of disrepair he'd hold an archival knife in one hand making precise cuts along the binding as the other hand held the book open this is called a de-spining he'd say I used to think it of violent process, and unraveling made more complete. But he said, this is what bookmending is. I enjoyed the reassembling process much better. I never told him that, though.
he wouldn't have liked to hear it. I could always tell there were things he wouldn't approve of. His eyes would turn especially wintry if I came too close to my mother's room. Mother herself always bowed her head around him and never said a word when he locked her in her room. So I learned to walk in straight lines. I followed all the signs to silence. This meant never knowing my mother.
When I was 18, toward the end of my apprenticeship, two men walked through the shop's door and announced, the university library is looking for a bookmender. Father perked up. The gentleman's gazes hopped between me and him. resting on my girlish face then his wrinkly one my small frame and his drooping posture my weakly folded hands and his gnarly calluses but above all they squinted at our eyeglasses
both wire-framed and square, but his was twice as thick as mine. Would you lend us your daughter, Mr. Sullivan? One of the gentlemen said. She's old enough for a job, isn't she? I could feel father deflate. but he pressed a hand to the small of my back, pushing gently. They gave me a room in a dormitory and an office in the basement of the university library. The office smelled like ancient stone and earth when I first arrived.
but soon it took on the familiar aroma of wilted peaches and fresh parchment, pungeon chemicals and metallic ink. There were no windows or sunlight, but I brought in a congregation of gas lamps to illuminate my desk. Light was abundant, shadows were never a problem. And yet, this was where I saw the shadow for the first time. I was working on an especially dusty tomb, trade and exploration at the dawn of the century.
hunching so close over it that my eyeglasses almost touched the yellowing vellum as i was sweeping the gutter deep in concentration a faint rustle jarred near loot something flitted at the corner of my eye along the serifs at the hanging end of a tee a darkness was dancing i seized the lever of the gas lamp at my desk turning it all the way up the shadow didn't disappear
instead it grew like a tiny fire being fed more wool stretching itself from the t to an adjacent h i tried to swallow but my breath stopped like a painful rock in my throat What was this? I didn't know, but it didn't belong here and I was cleaning the book. The edge of my archival knife glinted coldly when I picked it up.
I brought it to the shadow like a scalpel to a tumour. The knife's point caught its tail and, for a long breath, we battled down the spine of an S. I pulled. The shadow stretched.
it clung to my knife and what was once a tiny squiggle was now an endless thread following on i raised my arm high the shadow had a smudgy edge but was solid enough to be called a thread i picked up a pair of scissors and laid them flush on the page over the s on which the shadow had taken note and then sniffed the shadow loosened high limply off the knife's metal edge
still looking very much real my will tilted as i stared at it the knife clattered to the floor and brought the shadow with it i stared it wiggled it was an enigma a wrongness a piece of darkness from out of nowhere that shouldn't have been possible i rushed out of my office up the winding stairs and toward the cathedral of books above under the light from the library's stained glass windows
I looked down and watched my hands tremble, sweat glistening like morning dew. Once, after a rare bedtime fairy tale, I too had asked the question that all children asked their parents at some point. Father, is magic real? He sighed, and I nearly regretted deviating from the usual newspaper articles. Vanish all thoughts of that, he said. I did not send you to school to be a fabulous.
but father i protested yes he talked about a professor researching magic he had read that article as he tucked me in and i remembered quite curiously how his voice took on a strange echo and his eyes a faint glaze like i was holding on to a faded dream but he shook himself and glared at me his colors heightened did you not listen he hissed the university expelled him for dealing with barbarian magic
It wasn't an invitation to research magic, that's beneath them apparently. Years later, as I chased after the shadow, I wondered if father would look at me with the same admonition as he had that night.
or would it be instead a glimmer of an old fascination when i returned to my office the shadow was gone but at times i would see it dancing at the corner of my eye along the spine of a book on a shelf upon a detailed illustration of the human skull and once behind the bust of an ancient king from the furthest east It never stayed longer than a few seconds except once when I saw it flitting on the front page of a newspaper. King sends five more ships across the world to depart this weekend.
It turned to me from the apex of the A in a cross, but disappeared before I could seize the people. Soon, I started carrying my archival knife and scissors and watched out for the shadow. It felt like a quiet hunt, a battle. Father knew everything about books and had demanded no less from me.
but never had our craft knowledge mention anything about shadows that could unravel from a page like a loose yarn in unfinished knitting. But I didn't dare tell my father. The shadow was the music and it didn't appear for him. He'd say I was seeing things that weren't there. He called me a fabulist. One night, a delicate tomb kept me working late. The library was already deserted when I made my way out.
My steps echoed on the stone floor, and despite the lantern on the walls, there was only impenetrable darkness shrouding the peaks of the library's arches.
Eight moonlight filtered through the tall windows too powerless to fight the deep black. The main gallery had a gigantic painting decorating one of its walls. A gilded frame alone was thicker than my body on the right side of the painting was a ship upon a wave at a ship's bow a man with a telescope pointed toward a land in the distance an academy a scholar
explorers crowding him while the darkening land gathered a group of deformed creatures who looked human except for the fact that they were shadow skinned and crowding like reptiles with arms that were too long lips too thick body hair too wild like monkeys the plaque under the painting proclaimed jacob alexander blackwell the invention of knowledge 1605 oil on canvas
I stopped dead as I realized the shadows in the land weren't brushed oil on canvas. It was this shadow. Wriggling and taunting me. Every inch of black in the painting swirled into the shapes of disconnected body parts. a finger two fingers a curled up hand an ear half torn a split lip a mouth contorting into a screen i stifled my own screen
I wicked my knife out and plunged it into one of the finger-shaped shadows. I pulled and the shadow rose with me. Out, damn you. Out and away, you oversized dust. The shadow stretched. I took a step back on another.
it followed the finger became two fingers then three then a whole hand then an arm i tried to drop my knight but i couldn't i was a prisoner pulling at their chain desperate to get away but unable to let go a black arm then a shoulder a neck a whole head with bulging eyes wrong wrong wrong it couldn't be here this shouldn't be happening i looked away and squeezed my eyes shut
vainly wishing this were a nightmare I could wake up from. When it ended and I next dared to look, there was a human on the floor, or at least a human-shaped shadow, a near-human. It lay with its spine twisted around, its head lolling back so I could see its screaming face. While previously it had looked like solid smoke, it was now glossy black and lumpy like charred flesh.
Fade steam rose from it, as if it was sublimating into the air itself, dissipating slowly. Its screaming mouth slackened into a smile, becoming the painted symbol of a porcelain doll, empty and crooked.
unnatural my stomach dropped in icy recognition no this wasn't possible the shadow human didn't vote the shadow human didn't speak the shadow human looked and felt like something i knew but i couldn't wouldn't say it out loud instead i ran like the darkness itself was chasing me here was the memory i didn't want to voice sometimes it felt like mother was a shadow that lurked inside our house she rarely left her room father wouldn't let her she'd get lost he said
He even insisted on delivering meals to her role rather than letting her out to dine with us. But I had grown up seeing mothers walking hand in hand with their children on the street, sharing ice cream and reading books together. and I thought perhaps if I could just spend more time with my own mother she'd stop staring at me with an empty smile and empty eyes and come to do those things with me. When I was eight years old I waited until father was asleep.
then i stood on a chair to grab the key hidden atop the kitchen cabinet i unlocked mother's door a candle in my hand mother i whispered no movement i tiptoed toward the bed she had her blanket drawn over her head maybe she was cold i thought i shook her no answer i clutched the edge of the blanket and pulled on the face staring back at me was contorted in a screen
tongue curling to the back of the throat eyes bulging wide the skin was glossy black like oxidized blood but lumpy like flesh that had melted and charred in a fire I dropped my candle and screamed, scrambled away until my back hit the wall. I raised my arms for protection. Monster! Monster! Father came running, his face red and contorted in a furious scowl.
He yanked mother up, tugged at my ear until I slunk back to the bed still screaming. He slapped me on my cheek. That shut me up. Look at her, he yelled. What monster? mother was back like mother with her empty smile and emptier eyes she felt wrong but no more wrong than usual and certainly didn't look like a burnt shadow you were sleepwalking and had a nightmare
Father decreed. For the next two years, he always locked my bedroom door at night until he was certain my curiosity had been scrubbed clean. But I never forgot that night. I knew how she looked. I knew how it looked. The horror. the sense of wrongness that raised my hackles. These were unmistakable and unforgettable. The weekend after I'd pulled the shadow human out of the painting, I visited home and snuck into Mother's room.
when father was out for errands it felt really like a repeat of my childhood misadventure but this time my racing heartbeat had nothing to do with father's prohibitions mother what are you she cocked her head i repeated the question she shuffled on her feet her eyes darted back and forth and for once they didn't look so empty mother were you a shadow
She looked like she'd been waiting for that question forever. For now, she let out a breath that sounded like relief. She grabbed my hand and pulled me towards father's workshop. We both hesitated at the door.
he wasn't supposed to enter when he was away but she yagged the door open and stepped inside and i followed she stopped by the window and bent down pulled out a loose floorboard and looked at me shaking i crouched beside her and peered into the hole on the floor a pile of books lay inside i picked them up one by one with a frong father loved books always proudly displayed them on the shelves
why were these here i read their titles and the more i read the wider my eyes grew sorcerers of the farthest east methods and methodology for the qualitative study of the arcane vengeful magic affects desires and persistence in the farthest east new perspectives on farthest east anthropology the fabulous film the imperial geese studying barbaric magic from a safe distance
Father despised talks of magic, when before I could grapple with the implications of this finding, a rattling of keys floated from the front door. I snatched a f***ing slow boy.
but before i could slam it back in place mother gripped my wrist with one hand and grabbed a book from the board thrusting it to my chest we fled the workshop just in time and that night i locked the door of my childhood bedroom and huddled close to the candle on my nightstand clutching that book carefully with hands cold like ice i brought the book toward the candlelight it was called the life of a tribeswoman in the farthest east
by carl edmund smith i ran a trembling finger over the leather cover it was a biography as the title indicated the words slipped past me like translucent rapids as i leafed through it At the end of the first chapter, there was a full-page illustration of the tribe's woman that was a book subject. She looked vaguely like mother, the way every hand-drawn portrait looked vaguely like its model.
but the book was dated a century ago. The tribeswoman in the book should have been long dead. As a child, I knew there was one event guaranteed to light up father's eyes. Every Friday evening, He would gather with his gentlemen in France, serious-looking men, who came carrying briefcases and piles of books. Their pens danced as they discussed, debated, and scribbled on their manuscripts. This is the Independent Scholars Research Group.
father said proudly each of them aspired to write books or publish in the same journals that professors of the university wrote in father never ended up publishing anything but he spent long hours locked in his workshop i conduct inquiries for my own satisfaction he told me when i asked about it much as i admired academy not everything is palatable to them that doesn't mean i ever gave up on my curiosities His quiet voice sounded proud and grudging. I just did it in the dark behind closed doors.
Why was my mother's likeness in a book about a woman from the farthest east we died long ago? Surely she couldn't be her. The book discussed the tribe's woman's life in great detail. but it didn't explain its ties with my mother. Perhaps the other books noble could explain this riddle. I didn't want to risk being found out by father, so I spent long hours scoring library catalogues looking for the titles I saw.
I couldn't find it. A librarian looked at me in irritation when I asked him about the books. I know you're just a bookmender, he said snidely, but I thought you'd be slightly more scholarly minded. magic was just a fantasy those barbaric tribes convinced themselves was real nothing about it deserves scholarly merit there we removed those books from the shelves long ago
There was a room in one abandoned corner of the university's basement, a level under my own office. Sometimes, when I ran out of fresh materials, I'd peel further boards from the covers of some unused books. I had limited budgets after all. i never quite paid attention to the contents of those books but perhaps yes there they were untouched at the very back of the room piled on the floor into towers as tall as myself
A collection of books on ancient exotic magic. And I recognize some of the titles. I sag into them. By the end of the month, I must have spent dozens of hours in that abandoned room. but it didn't take me long to realize how out of fashion Father's East magic had become in the modern scholarly tradition, compared to how vibrant the field used to be.
Current scholars said fascination for the fantastic was unscientific at best, but more than that, it suggested an overly intimate closeness to the barbarian souls, to their magic. Look too much into their tricks and you might fall in love, a critique said. It was best to study these people with a healthy sense of distance to remain a full-headed outsider and uphold objectivity.
My literature review gave me one theory that could explain the shadows I saw and mother. It felt both obvious and silly. Magic. These barbarians on the other side of the world they wield magic the way we wield science. But while we develop science for the advancement of our society, they use magic simply to survive.
to cling to a life that is traditional and quaint and while sometimes idyllic also often monstrous in its embodiment of the arcane manon de saint maur sorcerers of the farthest east page 12. Following modern-day Saint Mark's assertion that the ancient tribes of the farthest east used magic simply survived, I would like to bring attention to what I call persistent magic.
a form of magic used by these tribes to imprint traces of their lives even past their physical deaths. Persistent magic can be observed, for example, in what is now widely known as the Unfailing Blood Incident.
in which soldiers from the crown's third exhibition to the farthest east upon winning a battle against a local tribe had severe difficulties cleaning the blood of native warriors from their skin and earphones other manifestations of persistence magic include lingering voices of detonators corpses that never rot a seemingly animating relief of a deceased elder and perhaps an advanced form of the magic
apparitions of the dead substantive enough for one to hold their hands and hear their voices this was how tribes of the proudest east clung to existence even after their de facto death one might even see such magic as their second chance at life archibald wellington vengeful magic affects desires and persistence in the father's speech page thirty four
It was a convenient answer, but I had no way of proving its truth. The next time I visited Mother, I read those passages to her in a whisper. Mother, are you magic? I asked awkwardly, doubtfully. My eyes darted at a door, even though I knew Father wasn't home. At first, I didn't think she would answer, didn't even think she understood the question, but then she stretched out her hand and laid it down my chest, opened my heart.
mother are the things i read true her mouth open but nothing came out except for a giggling sound that vaguely had the rising inflection of a question Her hand pressed on my chest more fully. It was like she was asking me, what does your heart tell you? My heart told me nothing. Memory only and arrhythmia that came from disquietude.
I sought instead for more detail, more expertise. Later that month, the university invited a professor with expertise in the farthest east to give an open lecture. I decided to attend, hoping I could ask him a question. The auditorium was already filled to the brim when I got there. On the stage next to the lectern, there was another raised platform with something covered in a white cloth. The room crackled in excitement, the chatter echoing.
against the sweeping dome above ladies and gentlemen the master of ceremonies boomed the room quietly today we have the privilege to listen to one of academia's most luminous minds professor johannes bilheimer who will regale us with reports from the crown's seventh expedition to the farthest east for which he served as principal anthropologist please join me in welcoming professor bilheimer
the rue erupted in applause bill heimer bowed and waved the talk was about the tribe in the farthest east with whom the krong's explorers made first contact in the expedition bill heimer led There was this one tribesman, the chieftain, that Bill Heimer spoke about at great length. In some sort of skirmish, a battle, the crown won, of course, they had guns. Guns brought peace and cooperation.
and with those came knowledge of all things exotic, which people like Bilheimer brought home to us, making the kingdom more luminous. This was an old tale. I didn't need to listen to know how it went. Bill Hyman didn't mention magic at all. It was only when he descended his podium that my attention returned. The room worked itself to an electric rumble as he approached the thing covered in white cloth.
and for you ladies and gentlemen he said i have brought a gift an artifact from my expedition here under this covering is the urn that the chieftain guarded which his fellow tribesmen entrusted to us for safe keeping here lie the ashes of seven generations of an ancient tribe which i and the university are honored to pursue he pulled a white covering with the flare i gasped it was even the size of a teenage child and trapped around it intersposed with it was a misshapen shadow man
with skin charred black and cracking, burned pink flesh and dried blood. The man's head jutted out from the urn's neck like a corpse to bid for its burial vessel. squeeze so tight its eyes bulge out their sockets its shadow-like legs sprouted out near the base twisting at painful angles where they hit the floor one arm burst out of the burns handle
fingers blooming like a wilting, padavorous flower. My hands flew to my mouth, containing my scream before it could rain out. Around me, the audience went into raptures, the evil oblivious. They couldn't see the shadow. I shook in my seat as Bildheimer launched into another paraphrase on tribes' burial rites and the chieftain's heroics in guarding the ill.
bile rose in my belly as i realized the charred shadow man protruding from the villain was probably the chieftain himself at the end of the lecture a member of the audience shouted a question professor will you write a book about this Oh, most definitely, Pilheimer said. I envision an account as detailed as that in Carl Edmund Smith's magnum opus, the life of the tribes who went in the farthest east. But, he raised a finger dramatically.
Mine will be even better, for I am not merely tracing the life of one tribe member. I am capturing the entire tribe. An uproarous applause. I heard the world as realization dawned on me. Johannes Bilheimer brought home the knowledge of a tribe. The Iren was a piece of that knowledge, and capturing it had meant killing the chieftain, protecting it.
and now the chieftain was there entangled with the aim as if he was a shadow of the knowledge it presented carl edmund smith captured the life of a tribeswoman in a biography whose copy now lay on my desk The tribeswoman looked like my mother. Might as well be my mother. Was my mother. My mother had looked and felt like the shadows I pulled from a book and a painting. Smith's book was knowledge.
my mother its shadow there is a dark side to every knowledge the body's burned for its sake and somehow i knew this was true i looked at the charred shadow of the chieftain trapped in his own and i knew this was true I ran out of the lecture hall before Bill Heimer could finish. Night had fallen when I reached home. The house was too quiet. Father must be away. He wasn't expecting me after all. I hesitated.
i had planned to speak with him but on second thought maybe it was best if i talked to my mother first no matter how ultimately in the dark interior of the house father's bookshelves looked like sleeping giants everything flickered and swayed under the unsteady light of my lap my hand was shaking the door to my mother's room swung open quietly
she didn't have the blanking troll over her head the face was clearly visible the twisted scream and charred flesh weren't there it was the usual empty crooked porcelain doll smile wrong but not quite the stuff of nightmares. Mother, I know the truth now, I said. She moved slowly to a sitting position. I sat in a chair facing her. My hand felt leaden as I flipped through the pages of the biography.
mother i held up the portrait at the end of chapter one i know this is you she stared at me but her eyes didn't seem so empty any more persistence magic i continued That's why you're still here. It's magic to keep a trace of your life even after your death. The shadows. They are traces of lies. And they cling to. To knowledge produced at their expense. Mother cocked her head.
then nodded father pulled you out of the book didn't he but i knew the answer even before mother nodded father hadn't as much as admitted it i just couldn't put it all together the academy not Everything is palatable to them. Doesn't mean I ever gave up on my curiosities. I just did it in the dark behind closed doors. The long hours father spent locked in his workshop. It was for research.
an unsanctioned form of research and inquiry on magic. Standing on the shoulders of scholars who've worked in the fabulous taint, he must have found a way to trace persistence magic. materialized the traces of soles that it preserved, and stitched the sewed pieces the way he bound a tattered book back together. So strong the magic was, and so thorough his stitching,
that it all resulted in something human enough to walk around and bear a child. My mother was a shadow from a book, and my father had pulled her out and made me. Why can't you speak, mother? I choked out. she gestured her eyes up hand to the throat finger pointed out toward the closed door of byla's workshop in a slashing motion had a cut off your voice she hesitated
She pointed at the book, then made a beckoning gesture repeatedly, like she was pulling many shadows out of the book. She made a back and forth, weavy gesture like stitching, then put her hands together.
she touched her throat and shook her head i voiced my tentative translation he pulled the pieces of you out of the book then stitched you back together but he didn't put your voice back she nodded why would he do that i demanded but i knew the answer it was plain to see no matter how repulsive her mid-miss served him perfectly she was his private curiosity but she was also a form of magic
formerly scorned by the university where he wanted so much to belong but if he locked her up and took her voice no one would know her except him no one would know her not even me All this time being motherless, this was his fault. I could have actually known my mother, could have had a friend in her, could have had someone sing me a lullaby. But instead, he deliberately cut out her voice and caged her.
How could he do that? Her eyes only rebuffed in unshed tears. I'll speak with him, I will, Slyfeet. Alas, where your voice is. She threw her arms around me and shook her head. she clutched her throat then waved her hand i frowned she repeated the gesture then i remembered how the shadow thread and shadow human began to dissipate in thin air moments after i pulled them out
as if they didn't have enough soul to hold on to this will. Their voice is gone, I said. She nodded. I need him to explain. She gripped me tighter and shook her head that she can't live like this forever. she opened her mouth but no words came out only a gurgling she pressed her hand onto my chest emphatically you are more important she seemed to say but
She shook me and held me in her vice-like grip, refusing to let go. The sounds of protests in her throat grew more insistent, her face scrunched up in fear and desperation. She began to cry until her flushed face glistened with tears. I didn't understand her reaction, but her sob swallowed us into foreboding thumps that thronged everything else.
the university expelled the professor for dealing with barbarian magic father pointed out to me once nothing about magic uses scholarly merit dear the librarian told me But here was my father with his dream of belonging to the university with his precious independent scholars research group, nonetheless conducting an inquiry on magic in secret.
What would he lose if anyone ever found out what he'd done? Everything, I realized. He'd lose his peers. He'd lose what little claim to scholarly status he'd cobbled together for himself.
he'd done the unthinkable locking up the mother of his own child for her entire existence just to preserve his dignity what other unthinkables would he do you are more important mother had gestured with sinking fear i finally understood all right i whisper i will talk to him i promise i thought long and hard about why father did what he did
It felt like I never knew him after all, or my mother, or even myself. For a long while, my world felt like a churning hurricane, and my tears, the rain drops in it. But I never ended up confronting father. neither mother nor i could risk it not right now and in retrospect she was right whether and why did what she did was no longer the most important thing he shouldn't matter shouldn't be the center of our world
I visited mother as often as I could, still in the sneaky way I had practiced in childhood. One day, I would have enough to take her away, but for now, she had to sleep. We followed once again, all of the signs to silence. careful not to poke by this honestness. But even in our silence, we never let things fall back to the waiting room. Our rage and sorrow burn the quiet tree.
but we burned nonetheless and out of the flames we forged a different kind of revenge one that sought not for mutual destruction but instead a remaking a repair maybe one day we would make him pay But for now, there was something more Egypt. On my first visit after the conversation about her origin, mother looked like she was waiting for me.
We stared at each other for a long time and I found myself all choked up. I pressed my palm onto my chest. My, I said, I put my right fist on my left shoulder. Name. I put my indus finger on my lips and moved it forward. Is. Then a flurry of gestures and a teardrop. Four fingers of my right hand to the palm of my left. M. Two thumbs touching at an angle. A. Two fingers working together. R. Both index fingers pressed together held up. I.
Three fingers sideways with the other palm eyes back drop. E. My name is Marie. Your name is... I broke down into socks. the little girl who snuck into the locked bedroom didn't know how to name the pain of never knowing her mother but i knew it was spelled like regret and lonely silence i'm sorry i can't bring it back
I can teach you how to sign or how to write. I don't know how to bring your voice back. I'm sorry. Mother smiled. It didn't look empty. She laid her palm on her wound and brought it to my chest, over my heart. then she touched her throat and touched me again you are my child you are my voice now at the library i started collecting every biography of people from the farthest east
I reckoned a biography was a detailed account of a person's life, more detailed than a painting or a random book. Perhaps that was why Mother looked more human-like than other shadows I'd say. Through long nights, I bent over the biographies with my archival knife in one hand and resolved in the other. I was made in my father's image, his knowledge and his method, but I knew better now.
My father could see the shadows because he looked too closely. I could see because I was my mother's child, a shadow born. And soon, more of us would walk this stairway to voices ringing clear as we always did.
i pulled shadows out of books those traces of souls clinging to the dark side of knowledge often they would come in small incoherent pieces like unfinished sentences the tip of a nose an ear half the thinking part of my brain a mouth with an incomplete voice waiting to be formed i traced and pulled every fragment of every soul laying them out for stitching and carefully intently
With every piece accounted for, I began the reassembling process. This is what bookmending is. What does it mean to decolonise knowledge and education? How do we write injustices that are generations deep? Where do you start when the starting points are nowhere near enough, when even the smallest action risks being perceived as a threat to those who are comfortable in their established place?
And having opened with that first question, is decolonisation even the correct word, the correct approach? It's easy to get lost in semantics as an academic. Easier still to take refuge in the crowd and just claim to have no time and no need for such things. The former isn't far from the truth given the pressures of research, teaching and administrative service.
and the latter is an easy excuse in the so-called hard sciences. It becomes a choice to say otherwise. A choice that no one in the academy will bat an eyelid at if you don't make it. I chose this story as a staff pick for several reasons. First, because it's a call to action, to recognise the cost of the past and the present, to inspect and challenge our assumptions about the things we know.
It takes work and time to unpick our thinking to make room for other views. It's also a reminder that our victims owe their oppressors nothing. As the protagonist and her mother create their own healing and deepen their own understanding, they centre their needs, not the father's or the establishment. So often we place a burden of understanding.
on the people we discriminate against they must learn our rules earn our respect do the work of explaining and justifying our differences and commonalities Pushing back against this tendency isn't a condemnation of human curiosity, but rather a validation of it, so long as it is paired with humility rather than entitlement, and a willingness to do our own work. Lastly though,
I just love this piece for its magic and wonder. How the protagonist discovers new truths in her world and herself in the process. Join us again soon. We love bringing you the best audio fiction week after week, but we can't do it without your support. Your donations pay our authors, our narrators, our servers and our staff.
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Join the discussion on the EA Discord and visit us on Blue Sky at castofwonders.org. Come say hello. Cast of Wonders is brought to you by Editor Catherine Inskip, Assistant Editor Alicia Caporasso, Associate Editors Rebecca Ahn, Tanya Adolit, Amy Brennan, Kapia Cobb, Becca Miles, Ray Oh, Samuel Poots, Emma Smales, Janice Sudell, Rin Yee. Our editorial assistant is Amy Brennan and our audio producer is Jeremy Carter.
Cast of Wonders is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International License. That means you can download or listen to the episode on any device you like, but you can't change it or sell it. Our theme music is Appeal to Heavens by Alexey Nov, available from Promo DJ or his Facebook page. Thank you for listening.