Human for a Day (9781101552391) Read Online Free

more than any damned geas.”
    Willem stroked Jax’s hand. But the machinist pulled them apart. “Don’t do that if you ever want to use your fingers again,” he said, then placed the maple in Jax’s empty palm. “Now be quiet.”
    He spent many minutes studying the damaged sigils. Then he pressed the tip of the chisel to Jax’s brow and—
    Jax convulsed. Wetness ran down his arm and dripped to the concrete. And he did something he’d never done before: he screamed. His birth cries cracked the foundation of the machine shop.
    Â 
    Jax stood on the roof, facing east, catching the first rays of dawn on his face. Sunlight had become something warm and silky, no longer sliding across his body with a sterile, slick disdain for metal. It lingered and caressed.
    This skin, this strange moist elastic covering, it fairly burst with sensation. He’d never imagined. Even the simple play of a borrowed shirt across his chest—he was breathing! —made his toes curl with delight. (He had toes, and they curled with delight! ) Unimaginable treasures to a creature that all its long life had only known yearning for freedom and the torment of compulsion.
    â€œI could stand here all day,” he said to himself. He said what he thought just for the twin pleasures of feeling the words bubble up in his throat and hearing his voice. It was raspy and inconstant, unlike Willem’s. The machinist judged this a result of the screaming. It would heal, eventually, if Jax lived long enough.
    He wouldn’t. Already there was a flutter in his chest where his heart beat. ( Where. His . Heart . Beat .) Faint, but growing.
    â€œIf you wish,” said Willem. “It’s your day.” Tears thickened his voice, but he hid it well. “But we should leave soon if we’re going to meet our guide.”
    â€œAs you say,” said Jax, bracing for a lightning bolt that never came.
    He turned his back on the rising sun. It was more difficult than it might have been a few hours earlier; the steep angles of the dormer challenged his frail human ankles, threatening to snap them like green timber. Capricious things, these human bodies.
    But then he realized what he’d done, and laughed. (Laughter felt like sunlight in his belly.) Two hundred years of ingrained behavior made for difficult habits to break. It came with a twinge of sorrow that he wouldn’t have longer to relish breaking them. (Sorrow and laughter together? Miraculous and contradictory, too, human bodies.)
    And then Jax said the words of which every Clakker dreamed: “No. I don’t want to do that.” He looked at Willem. “I don’t want to run for Quebec. It doesn’t matter any longer.”
    Willem wept openly now. But he nodded. “Anything you want, Jax. Anything.”
    â€œI want to eat an apple.” (The gurgling in his stomach, was that the thing called hunger?) “I want to be tickled. I want to sing in the bathtub. I want to lie in green grass. I want to see the Breuckelen Dodgers play baseball. And when I die, I want to be in your arms.
    â€œThat,” said Jax, “would be my perfect day.”

THE BLADE OF HIS PLOW
    Jay Lake
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    T hey tell stories about me. A lot of those are wrong. I was never called Ahasver. I wouldn’t know how to make a shoe if you paid me. No one cursed or blessed me. Really, I just am.
    When you realize you are deathless, you gravitate to certain lines of work. Not a lot of call for immortal bricklayers. Doesn’t take much luck or skill to follow a plow, beyond knowing the business of your own fields. Standing behind the sharp end of the sword is what I do.
    Used to be I kept count of how many men I’d killed. Then I just counted the battles I’d been in. After a while, I lost track of that and started counting the wars. Now, well, they count the wars for me. Finally, you people are finishing the job that Yeshua