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The Unraveling

Benjamin Rosenbaum
Chapters (48)
  1. Dedication
  2. Introduction 1
  3. Preface
  4. Epigraph
  5. First Childhood
  6. Chapter 1
  7. Chapter 2
  8. Interlude
  9. Chapter 3
  10. Chapter 4
  11. Chapter 5
  12. Chapter 6
  13. Interlude
  14. Chapter 7
  15. Chapter 8
  16. Chapter 9
  17. Interlude
  18. Chapter 10
  19. Chapter 11
  20. Interlude
  21. Chapter 12
  22. Chapter 13
  23. Chapter 14
  24. Chapter 15
  25. Chapter 16
  26. Interlude
  27. Chapter 17
  28. Interlude
  29. Chapter 18
  30. Chapter 19
  31. Chapter 20
  32. Chapter 21
  33. Interlude
  34. Afterwards
  35. Chapter 22
  36. Chapter 23
  37. Chapter 24
  38. Chapter 25
  39. Introduction 2
  40. Interlude 8
  41. Introduction 3
  42. Appendix 1
  43. Appendix 2
  44. Appendix 3
  45. Appendix 4
  46. Appendix 5
  47. Acknowledgments
  48. About-the-author
Cover

Dedication

To Aviva and Noah: the spoon is in your hand!

To Esther, my delight and my Sheltering.

And to the former denizens of the Maelstrom,

our own little Unraveling.

Introduction 1

BEGIN DOCUMENT

TRANSMISSION

Document Contents

  1. Extent of the Dispersal of Humanity
  2. Excerpt from the Long Conversation
  3. BOOK ONE: FIRST CHILDHOOD
  4. BOOK TWO: AFTERWARDS
  5. DOCUMENT ATTACHMENTS
  6. Planetary Location and Characteristics
  7. Dramatis Personae
  8. Brief Glossary of Planetary Institutions
  9. Life Cycle
  10. The Ages
  11. Acknowledgments

Document prepared, translated, and transmitted during the year 467,341 After Dispersal (standard origin coordinate time)

Preface

Extent of the Dispersal of Humanity

Epigraph

The world runs on pride.

The heart of the world is its economy, and its economy is an economy of the heart. Every encounter is a transaction: a tiny battle, in which something is seized, and something is lost.

The one who loses, who is cast out, we call: Older Sibling.

The one who wins, who nestles in, we call: Younger Sibling.

Across genders (it is so for every Staid, as ze sits quietly at the center of things, composing zirself . . . for every Vail, as ve sallies forth, vir heart full of rage or joy!); across nations; across name registries, social clusters, professions, religions (Kumruist, Tricksterian, Unfeeling, Groon, Ascensionist, Diversionist . . . ); though some revile it, some deny it, some seek to evade it, or at least clothe it in a decorous subtlety, the fact remains: the heartbeat of the world is the heartbeat of struggle.

The heart is the heart of the Sibling. And every contest hearkens back to that first contest, over the love of the Parent, when Younger displaced Older.

—Omolo, student of Melihor, in the second excursus of the ninth work of the third cycle of the Long Conversation

Book One

First Childhood

Chapter 1

1

Fift was almost five, and it wasn’t like zir to be asleep in all of zir bodies. Ze wasn’t a baby anymore; ze was old enough for school, old enough to walk all alone across the habitation, down the spoke to the great and buzzing center of Foo. But ze had been wound up with excitement for days, practically dancing around the house. (Father Miskisk had laughed; Father Smistria had shooed zir out of the supper garden; Father Frill had taken zir to the bathing room to swim back and forth, back and forth, “to calm zir down!”) Just before supper ze’d finally collapsed, twice: in the atrium, and curled up on the tiered balcony. Father Arevio and Father Squell had carried zir, in those two bodies, back to zir room. Ze’d managed to stay awake in zir third body through most of supper, blinking hugely, breathing in through zir nose, and trying to sit up straight as waves of deep blue slumber from zir two sleeping brains washed through zir. By supper’s end, ze couldn’t stand up any longer, and Father Squell carried zir last body to bed.