Everything Thaws (2023)
Geometries of Belonging (2022)
The Unbalancing (2022)
The Four Profound Weaves (2020)
Marginalia to Stone Bird (2016)
As Editor:
An Alphabet of Embers (2016)
Here, We Cross: a collection of queer and genderfluid poetry from Stone Telling 1 – 7 (2012)
The Yoke of Stars
Copyright © 2024 by R. B. Lemberg
This is a work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the author and the publisher.
Interior and cover design by Elizabeth Story
Tachyon Publications LLC
1459 18th Street #139
San Francisco, CA 94107
415.285.5615
www.tachyonpublications.com
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Series editor: Jacob Weisman
Editor: Jaymee Goh
Print ISBN: 978-1-61696-418-4
Digital ISBN: 978-1-61696-419-1
Printed in the United States by Versa Press, Inc.
First Edition: 2024
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For the exiles and the translators
I. Downward
In the beginning, Bird brought us the stars.
There were twelve of them, each of different color—twelve triumphant stars that sang in the tail of the goddess as she descended toward the newborn land. Down there, in the scorching heart of the desert, the first guardians sang and danced as the goddess swooped closer, and Bird danced with them, and one by one the stars fell down from her tail. Each guardian caught a falling star, and later they planted the stars in their many homelands. From these buried stars, magic was born: deepnames shining like seeds of light in the earth, and in people’s minds. And these great buried stars have guarded the land since then; they guard it even now.
It’s a common story, I think. I learned it here, in the desert. But there is more than one way to tell about the Birdcoming. Each tradition is different—some very different.
Here is the story I learned long ago. I, Stone Orphan of the siltway people, translate it now into your language.
