The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,145

do you want?”

You consider. I listen to the slow ongoing roar of the volcano, down here in the deep. Then you say, “I want the world to be better.”

I have never regretted more my inability to leap into the air and whoop for joy.

Instead, I transit to you, with one hand proffered. “Then let’s go make it better.”

You look amused. It’s you. It’s truly you. “Just like that?”

“It might take some time.”

“I don’t think I’m very patient.” But you take my hand.

Don’t be patient. Don’t ever be. This is the way a new world begins.

“Neither am I,” I say. “So let’s get to it.”

Acknowledgments

Whew. That took a bit, didn’t it?

The Stone Sky marks more than just the end of another trilogy, for me. For a variety of reasons, the period in which I wrote this book has turned out to be a time of tremendous change in my life. Among other things, I quit my day job and became a full-time writer in July of 2016. Now, I liked my day job, where I got to help people make healthy decisions—or at least survive long enough to do so—at one of the most crucial transition points of adult life. I do still help people, I think, as a writer, or at least that’s the impression I get from those of you who’ve sent letters or online messages telling me how much my writing has touched you. But in my day job, the work was more direct, as were its agonies and rewards. I miss it a lot.

Oh, don’t get me wrong; this was a good and necessary life transition to make. My writing career has exploded in all the best ways, and after all, I love being a writer, too. But it’s my nature to reflect in times of change, and to acknowledge both what was lost as well as what was gained.

This change was facilitated by a Patreon (artist crowdfunding) campaign that I began in May of 2016. And on a more somber note … this Patreon funding is also what allowed me to focus wholly on my mother during the final days of her life, in late 2016 and early 2017. I don’t often talk about personal things in public, but you can perhaps see how the Broken Earth trilogy is my attempt to wrestle with motherhood, among other things. Mom had a difficult last few years. I think (so many of my novels’ underpinnings become clear in retrospect) that on some level I suspected her death was coming; maybe I was trying to prepare myself. Still wasn’t ready when it happened … but then, no one ever is.

So I’m grateful to everyone—my family, my friends, my agent, my Patrons, the folks at Orbit, including my new editor, my former coworkers, the staff of the hospice, everyone—who helped me through this.

And this is why I’ve worked so hard to get The Stone Sky out on time, despite travel and hospitalizations and stress and all the thousand bureaucratic indignities of life after a parent’s death. I definitely haven’t been in the best place while working on this book, but I can say this much: Where there is pain in this book, it is real pain; where there is anger, it is real anger; where there is love, it is real love. You’ve been taking this journey with me, and you’re always going to get the best of what I’ve got. That’s what my mother would want.

APPENDIX 1

A catalog of Fifth Seasons that have been recorded prior to and since the founding of the Sanzed Equatorial Affiliation, from most recent to oldest

Choking Season: 2714–2719 Imperial. Proximate cause: volcanic eruption. Location: the Antarctics near Deveteris. The eruption of Mount Akok blanketed a five-hundred-mile radius with fine ash clouds that solidified in lungs and mucous membranes. Five years without sunlight, although the northern hemisphere was not affected as much (only two years).

Acid Season: 2322–2329 Imperial. Proximate cause: plus-ten-level shake. Location: unknown; far ocean. A sudden plate shift birthed a chain of volcanoes in the path of a major jet stream. This jet stream became acidified, flowing toward the western coast and eventually around most of the Stillness. Most coastal comms perished in the initial tsunami; the rest failed or were forced to relocate when their fleets and port facilities corroded and the fishing dried up. Atmospheric occlusion by clouds lasted seven years; coastal pH levels remained untenable for many years more.

Boiling Season: 1842–1845 Imperial. Proximate cause: hot spot eruption beneath a great