A master of southern gothic horror, Cherie Priest has seen her career skyrocket in the past few years. Her first book (Tor) titled Four and Twenty Blackbirds has been a critical and commercial success. The second book of her "Eden Moore" trilogy, Wings to the Kingdom, was just released--with the third slated for 2007. She also has a limited edition novella available from Subterranean Press titled Dreadful Skin and she appears in the Apex featured writer anthology Aegri Somnia. A popular blogger, you can find her daily musings at cmpriest.livejournal.com.

Baku's hand shook.

In it, he held a pinch of wasabi, preparing to leave it as a peaked green dollop beside a damp pile of flesh-colored ginger. But something stopped him from finishing the dish. He hesitated, even though his fellow chef slapped the kitchen bell once, twice, a third time--and his own orders were backing up.

The waitress flashed Baku a frown.

Some small fact was wiggling around in his expansive memory. Some ancient recollection was fighting its way forward. In the back of his sinuses, he felt a tickle of sulfur. The kitchen in Sonada's smelled like soy sauce, and sizzling oil, and frying rice; but Baku also detected rotten eggs.

He smeared the glob of gritty paste onto the rectangular plate before him, and he pushed the neatly-sliced sushi rolls up into the pick-up window. The hot yellow smell grew stronger in his nose, but he could work through it. All it took was a little concentration.

He reached for his knives. The next slip in the queue called for a California roll, a tuna roll, and a salmon roll. Seaweed. Rice. Fish meat, in slick, soft slabs. He wrapped it all expertly, without thinking. He sliced the rolls without crushing them and slid them onto the plate.

That's why Sonada's kept Baku, despite his age. He told them he was seventy, but that was a lie by eight years--an untruth offered because his employers were afraid he was too old to work. But American Social Security wasn't enough, and the work at the restaurant wasn't so hard. The hours were not so long. The other men who cut the fish were young, but they treated him with respect. He was from their parents' homeland, after all.

The other workers were all born Americans. They didn't have to take the test or say the pledge, one hand over their hearts.

Baku didn't hold it against them, and the others didn't hold his original nationality against him. They might have, if they'd known the uniform he'd once worn. They might have looked at him differently, these young citizens, if they'd known how frantically he'd fired, and how he'd aimed for all the bright blue eyes.

There it was again. The sulfur. Baku had tripped over a G.I.'s body as he staggered towards the beach at Cape Esperance, but he hadn't thought much of it. He'd been preoccupied at the time--thinking only of meeting the secret transport that would take him the hell out of Guadalcanal. The Emperor had declared the island a lost cause, and an evacuation had been arranged.

It had happened under cover of night. The transport had been a crushing rush of thirteen thousand brown-eyed men clamoring for the military ferry. The night had reeked of gunpowder, and body odor, and sulfur, and blood.

Baku thought again of the last dead American he'd seen on Guadalcanal, the man's immobile body just beginning to stink in the sunset. If someone had told him, back in 1942, that in sixty years he'd be serving the dead American's grandchildren sushi rolls ... Baku would have never believed it.

He looked at the next slip of lined white and green paper.

Shrimp rolls. More tuna.

Concentrate.

He breathed in the clean, sparse scent of the seafood--so faint it was almost undetectable. If it smelled like more than salt and the ocean, then it was going rotten. There were guidelines, of course, about how cold it must be kept and how it must be stored--but the old chef didn't need to watch any thermometers or check any dates. He knew when the meat was good. He knew what it would taste like, lying on top of the rice, and dipped lightly in a small puddle of soy sauce.

One order after another, he prepared them. His knives flashed, and his fingers pulled the sticky rice into bundles. His indefatigable wrists jerked and lurched from counter to bowl to chopping block to plate.

Eventually, with enough repetition and enough concentration, the remembered eggy nastiness left his head.

When his shift was over, he removed his apron and washed his knives. This was a small ritual that he indulged in each night. It was a closing habit, like a bedtime story he might tell himself after the supper rush.

He dried the knives each in turn, slipping them into a cloth pouch that he rolled up and carried home. The knives belonged to him, and they were a condition of his employment. They were good knives, made of German steel by a company that had folded ages before. And Baku would work with no others.

At home that night, he lay in bed and tried to remember what had brought on the flashback. Usually there was some concrete reason--an old military uniform, a glimpse of ribbon that looked like a war medal, or a Memorial Day parade.

What had brought back the island?

At home in bed, it was safe to speculate. At home, in the small apartment with the threadbare curtains and the clean kitchen, it was all right to let his mind wander.