![]() ![]() ![]() But Amaranth, acting on unknown instinct, dug in the scree until she found the thing, looped on a string. The crew had discovered a new holy site-another holy mural! A whole seraph untouched, ripe for the armies of the Faithful!- and this sliver of unknown holystone, soil-shade and unremarkable, would have slipped past radar in the excitement. Mother found it on her last tour, loose in the broken rock of an ancient, airless moon. Each thunk in her hand, which spares the bones of her face, is a balm. She moves slower each time, testing how much risk she can take in the station’s weak gravity. She’s made a game of her mother’s amulet, tossing it and catching it before it hits her between the eyes. But rest won’t come and the ghost of an ache haunts her being. In between the Archbishop and this cell Misery was sent through the doctors and then fed, so her body has been healed and fortified. She lies flat and hyperawake on the reactive glass of the bed, which has molded to her shape but provides exactly none comfort. Misery has no interest in contemplation or holy writing. A single porthole opens onto the star-freckled void, a scoop of the infinite for the anchorex to season their prayer and contemplation with. Walls of holy jade enclose a bed, a simple access panel, a desk, and a hygiene box. Misery’s pad for the night is an anchorex’s cell, a tight little thing in the honeycombed borders of Church headquarters. An extract from Neon Yang’s debut novel, The Genesis of Misery, published by Tor Books on 27 September 2022. ![]()
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