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Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!

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Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!

Home / Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!
Original Fiction Nevertheless She Persisted

Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!

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Published on March 8, 2017

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On International Women’s Day, several of the best writers in SF/F today reveal new stories inspired by the phrase “Nevertheless, she persisted”, raising their voice in response to a phrase originally meant to silence.

The stories publish on Tor.com all throughout the day of March 8th. They are collected here.


Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!*

She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.

…was an epigraph engraved at the bases of statues around the city, meant to dissuade women from fighting monsters. But to Moira, the epigraph inspired. We all fight monsters, she knew. There was no shame in losing.

So despite or because of that epigraph, Moira intended to carry on in the work that had led to her own grandmother’s death, and her mother before, back and back, to the beginning of this world, and into the next. Someone had to hold back the monsters.

Moira left the confines of the gated city. She moved into the hills. She carried only a crystal staff. The city sent up the golems after her, as she knew they would. Many didn’t understand that someone had to fight the monsters. Someone had to persist, or the city would be overwhelmed. She fought the golems, twisting their guts and gouging out their ticking hearts. Snakes and bears and other beasts bred to keep her behind the walls slithered and snapped and snuffled in her path. Moira wrestled them too, and emerged bloody and bitten, but triumphant.

She limped her way to the base of the great mountain that all her female kin had talked of for time immemorial. She climbed and climbed, until her shoes were shredded and her fingers bled, and her arms shook so badly she thought they would fail her. When she pulled herself up onto the great ledge at the top, she saw what remained of her sisters: wizened, mummified visages, scattered bones, discarded shoes, two broken crystal staves. She limped through the detritus of her kin and into the cave where the monsters lay.

The monsters rose from their beds, already armored and bristling for another attack on the city below. They came to extinguish light, and hope. She was here to remind them they wouldn’t do it unchallenged.

Moira raised her staff in her hands and shouted. The monsters yowled and overtook her. She bludgeoned them, snapping and biting like the creatures in the valley, poking at their hearts with her staff until it hit home, ramming through the eye of one of the great giants. They fell together, she and the monster, gazing into one another’s ruined faces.

One less monster to take the city, one less woman to defend it.

“Oh, our faces, radiant sisters,” Moira said, gazing out over the monster’s body at the scattered bones as the monsters snarled in the darkness, readying to tear her to pieces, as they had her kin, “Our faces, so full of light.”

When Moira failed to return, and the monsters crept down from the mountains—one less this year, one less each year, one less, always one less, but never none, never enough—a statue of Moira’s likeness was raised beside her grandmother’s.

Each day, young women visited her statue. They ran their fingers over the inscription at its base. They did so generation after generation, as more statues rose and fell, more monsters came and went, and time moved on, the eternal struggle of light and dark.

The women pressed their hands to the words there until the only script that remained visible of the epigraph on Moira’s statue was a single word:

“persist.”

*see. Sheldon, Racoona. “Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Full of Light.”


Read the next story in Nevertheless, She Persisted

About the Author

Kameron Hurley

Author

Kameron Hurley is the author of the novels God’s War, Infidel, and Rapture a science-fantasy noir series which earned her the Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer and the Kitschies Award for Best Debut Novel. She has won the Hugo Award (twice), and been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Clarke Award, the Locus Award, and the BSFA Award for Best Novel. Her most recent novel is the epic fantasy The Mirror Empire. The sequel, Empire Ascendant, will be out in October 2015. She writes regularly for Locus Magazine and publishes personal essays at kameronhurley.com.
Learn More About Kameron
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HelenS
14 years ago

I always thought Brigid was supposed to be emotionally disturbed due to Diana’s neglect of her (though admittedly that’s what people used to think autism was). But I haven’t read this volume for a long time. It’s one of the ones I can never place due to its generic-sounding title (well, I’m not very good with Aubrey/Maturin titles in general).

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peachy
14 years ago

I’ve always thought that Blue at the Mizzen was an almost perfect ending – for Jack, anyhow, as it concludes his series-long character arc. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that O’Brian didn’t intend that to be the end…

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14 years ago

I’m not sure what to think about this book (look I’ve finally caught up with the re-read! but not for long as someone else is checking them out of the library and I’m hold 2 :( ) I certainly like it more than Wine Dark Sea which was good but not as griping as the rest of them so far. Everything seems to be getting a little rushed? Or is it just me?

We don’t get to spend much time with Sarah and Emily, Brigid, Padeen and Clarissa as they are all rushed off to their various hostelries. We don’t see enough of Jack’s children and their charming nautical phrasing. What happened to poor Martin after being rushed off home from S. America – do we ever find out? Oakes is dead? Diana just suddenly gets back with Stephen right at the end. Jack does wonders in Africa and then rushes back to Ireland. Christine makes a flash in the pan appearance and I can’t get a feel for her yet. And the evil duke (who I was totally wrong about in my last post) just dies and sorts everything out at the end.

Diana – hum. I’ve had postnatal depression and I can relate to the desire to just leave everything behind and forget about the child. But I am surprised that Stephen is so forgiving of her – what has she ever really done for him? Far more criminal to sell up her lovely horses – why would she do that!

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14 years ago

The fleet then sails back in time to intercept a French fleet

I made a double-take on reading this — what, I don’t remember time-travel! How curious if O’Brian had written that sort of novel. What’d keep them from sailing back in time to suppress Napoleon at his start?

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reaeverywhereelse
14 years ago

And the evil duke (who I was totally wrong about in my last post) just dies and sorts everything out at the end.

He doesn’t exactly just die–Stephen and Blaine discuss having him murdered in Chapter 4, Stephen gives Blaine and Lawrence (Jack’s attorney in Reverse of the Medal) a power of attorney to access his funds, and sure enough, by the end of the book, he dies under mysterious circumstances. It’s seems to me moderately clear that Blaine used Stephen’s money to hire it done.

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a-j
14 years ago

I always thought The Wine-Dark Sea would have been an all right place to end with Jack’s marvellous affirmation:

‘…but,’ he said laughing with joy at the thought, ‘I am so happy to be homeward-bound, and I am so happy, so very happy, to be alive.’

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Donald Simmons
14 years ago

I like them taking on the slave trade in this book. Stephen of course believes it’s an abomination, while Jack is on the fence somewhat because Nelson had said that the slave trade was essential for England and Jack’s incapable of thinking that Nelson could be wrong about anything. But after his first encounter with a slave ship he shuts up about it forever.

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14 years ago

Good heavens, Jo. That’s a reason never to go camping again. (Granted, my world is *full* of such reasons….)