Nina Kiriki Hoffman gave me a tiny plastic mouse with an ar-ticulated head the first time I met her a few years ago; she had an entire side pocket in her bag filled with the damned things. A fellow editor stole the mouse later on, and when I saw her again a year later the pocket in her bag, alas, was empty.
Her bag of tricks is never empty, though, and she offers a dandy little strange tale, which for some reason I haven't been able to get out of my head. It's simple, straightforward, yet completely evocative of family life.
She's been a Nebula and World Fantasy Award finalist, and has a Bram Stoker Award—more awards should follow, for both her dark fantasy and science fiction.

Between Disappearances
Nina Kiriki Hoffman

We're standing in the living room. This is where I always transit to, and somehow it's where Mom always is when I arrive.
"I can't stay," I say.
"You never stay," says my mother.
"It's not my fault," I say.
So far this is the same conversation we always have, etched deep into our brains. This is your brain on automatic. I wonder which of us will jump off the path first this visit.
"It's not your fault you tripped in that stupid dimensional portal and got a piece of travel rock stuck in your back?" Mom says. "Whose fault is it, then? When are you going to see a doctor and try to get it removed?"
On track so far. I decide to make a run for new territory. "So what's up with Artie?" She'll talk about my brother, won't she? He's the good one. He sticks around. He's never even left town.
Or maybe he did? It's been a while.
I don't know how long I've been gone. Mom looks older. But maybe it's just my vision. I've been to six worlds since the last time I was home, and I stayed on the last one for a year, local time. I got used to talking to people with four eyes in their foreheads and odd numbers of arms. I've forgotten what wrinkled foreheads normally look like.
Mom ignores my gambit. "And what are you wearing? I can see your nipples! They're staring at me! Is that the fashion where you were? Put some clothes on!"
I sigh and go to the hall closet. This is one of those sure conversation stoppers that I have to actually act on, or she'll keep coming back to it. I find a full-length black raincoat and wrap up in it. It's sized to fit someone taller and bigger than me, and it smells like good cologne. I wonder who it belongs to.
"Not that! Take that off! I don't want your otherworld germs messing that up!"
I shrug and take off the coat. Whatever germs I've got—come to think of it, I did have a really bad cold right before this last jump, with a bright purple rash—are already on the coat, but what can you do? Morn grabs the black coat from me, humphs out of the room, and comes back with a ratty terry-cloth bathrobe, which she flings at me. I wrap up in it. It smells like fabric softener. I recognize it. It actually used to be mine.
"So what year is it here?"
"Two thousand thirty-one," she says.
Wow, it's been three years since the last time I was on Earth.
"Whose coat was that?"
"Line's." Her eyes narrow. "He doesn't know about you."
This is new. I glance toward the PixWall, which last time I visited displayed shots of Mom, of me, of Artie, the three of us together and apart at various ages, with various pets, in various places we remember only because we have pix of them. She deleted all the Dad shots before I left, and now I see that I'm not there anymore either.
There are some new people on the wall screen. Artie with his arm around a woman. Artie with a baby in a stomach sling.
Mom with a man. He has lots of bushy silver hair and good teeth. He looks like he sells something.
"In fact," says Mom, "I think you should leave before he gets home from work."
"Whoa, Mom! Are you married again?"
She lifts her chin. For a minute I think she isn't going to answer. "No," she says at last. She sighs. She jumps back a few conversational steps. "You never stay." This time she says it in a tone of finality.
Same words, different conversation. Hmm. "That's right. I never stay." My stomach clenches. "So I guess I can't have my old room back, huh?"
She glances at the floor and her hands twist around each other. "No," she whispers. "Line set up his exercise equipment there."
I am so unready for this development it surprises me. I mean, I've lived in more than thirty different places since the accident, for longer or shorter times, and I manage to find my feet, learn a language, talk disbelieving strangers into putting up with me, develop some skill to support myself, every time. Nobody's even come close to killing me yet.
But now I have no home.
Why should I have a home here? Mom never knows when to expect me. I never stay as long as she wants. Even if I could stay as long as she wanted me to, I wouldn't, because she drives me crazy after a little while.
Maybe it's time she got on with her life.
No home.
"You can stay at Artie's. He got married two years ago. His wife is very nice, and they have a little girl. And a guest room. He'd love to see you, I know. He's still mad I didn't call him last time you were here. I didn't know you'd be gone so long."
"Okay," I whisper.
"I still love you," she says. "I just finally figured out that I can't take care of you anymore."
"Okay."
She calls Artie and drives me over and drops me off.

I have dinner with Artie and his wife and their child. Earth food tastes bland. I remember Artie and I never had anything to talk about while we were growing up. They ask the usual questions. I give the usual answers and show some of the image cubes I got two planets ago and happened to have in my pack for this transit.
There's so little you can hold on to when you never know when you're going to leave. I've learned to let go of almost everything.
Artie herds messages, and his wife makes images. They talk about traveling. I can tell they won't.
That night after my brother and his wife and child have gone to sleep, I huddle on the end of the guest bed. I had a copy of a Hrendah novel in my pack when the travel rock kicked in this time. I take out the book, which is written in acid etchings on treated leaves the size of my forearms. I flip to my place. I am in the middle. A person realizes that the person it has planned its future with cannot love it and that their relationship, though possible and even almost obligatory, would be hollow if they pursued it. If only the first person could change the way the second person views the first person. To trigger just the right shift in views would be art.
I drop the book. It is like other Hrendah books I've read. Something in the Hrendah soul longs to read this story over and over.
I hug my knees and hang my head. I curl as tight as I can.
Something moves in my back. I feel a crackle, a flash of heat. Something drops to the blanket behind me.
After a moment I look.
It shimmers and flashes with darts of colored light. Occlusions hide its center, and rutilations stripe it. I can barely make out the trapped spiral that gives it its power.
I touch the spot on my back where the travel stone melded with me and trapped me into travel, where it has lodged all these years. The skin closed over it after the accident; the travel stone sank into me so no one could even see it.
I feel a wet streak beside my spine. My fingers come away wet and red.
I inch around so that the stone lies in front of me.
Now I can stop traveling. I can stay here, where I already know people, things, food, language, money, writing, telephones, and how to use the bathroom. I can make my home again.
I watch the flashes in the travel stone for a long time. It has carried me to places that Earth people have never reached through normal portals, places where I am the only one like me and the people who live there are fascinated by me or want to kill me. It has taken me to other worlds where there are Earth bases and I can talk to people like the ones I grew up with. It has taken me out of lives where I was happy. The only trigger I've found that works reliably is salt water, so my travel stone has taken me out of lives where I was unhappy, too. A swim in the sea, and I find myself elsewhere, though I never know beforehand where I will go. I rarely return anywhere but home. Every six or eight or ten times the stone brings me back to my mother's living room.
The flashes through the stone's translucent core brighten and strike farther and faster. I sense a hum from the stone, even though it is not vibrating under my skin anymore. I know it is about to switch again.
I stuff the Hrendah novel and what clothes I can into my pack. I stare at the stone for a little while as lights scythe through its clouded depths.
I could just let it go.
But at the last second I grab it.