Kaguya Sci-Fi Contest, grand prize winning story
Illustration: Kurita Taniwaki / Cover Design: Harumi Asano
Magic Ball by The Carrier of Violence and Ruin
Translated by Chell Yoshino and Patricia Akasaka
When Sister Agnes led me into our room, you were reading on your bed surrounded by books and clutter. You looked so settled; I was surprised to learn that you were actually in my year.
”And who are you meant to be? What’s your name?”, you asked without even lifting your head.
Oh great, I thought. Rooming with a grumpy crocodile. Good-bye, happy school days.
But I answered “Elizabeth” and your face suddenly lit up.
“Call me Darcy”. So abrupt.
Your real name was Sarah, but you always got mad at me when I used that name.
The days that followed proved my first impression right.
It was a girls’ boarding school, a rarity in the US back then. Our classmates looked and behaved like little ladies, but Darcy wasn’t one of them. She skipped classes and prayers. Her exploits were wicked and splendid, and her greatest triumphs were her escapes.
I quickly lost count of the times I saw her climbing out from our window to the courtyard.
“Why do you go all the time?”, I asked.
“Baseball”, Darcy answered.
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know? I thought you were from the East?”
Darcy took out a notebook and laid it out. Four bases. A pitcher. A batter. Fielders.
“Is that different from cricket?”, I asked.
“Totally – in baseball, the ball flies so much further.”
I wasn’t really interested. Hitting a ball with a stick? Getting on base? How was that fun? I didn’t like sports anyway. The reason we took gym class was to help keep our physiques, to get ready for marriage. Exercise also had to be “feminine”.
But Darcy pushed. I had a good arm, shr said. I should be the pitcher.
The school equestrian arena became the field. We improvised our riding habits into breeches of a sort. The team Darcy gathered were all regulars of prayer room detention. I didn’t want to play baseball with delinquents, but my protests fell on deaf ears.
It was abysmal at first. We were clueless.
“Are we supposed to run after hitting the ball?”
“Do we have to step on this square thing, Darcy?”
Wielding an oven glove as a catcher’s mitt, Darcy barked.
“You’re running the wrong way, you idiot!”
We got the basics after a few games. And then some girls started watching us, getting excited. They cheered a good hit, an out.
And then something really strange started happening.
The balls I threw disappeared. They went through the batter and then Darcy. Then they vanished.
Balls started appearing in our classrooms, the dining hall. Teachers interrogated us. No-one knew who the culprit could be.
One day, Darcy led me to the arena and said the weirdest thing.
“I was there yesterday, holding my mitt.”
“Alone? Were you practicing?”
“Eliza, this’ll sound odd, but can you throw this ball while thinking about me yesterday?”
“What?”
She didn’t say any more and handed me a ball. There were words on the ball: “A woman can play baseball. And she can play any other sport.”
“But this ball is important to you!”. I protested. “It might disappear, too.”
She just shrugged and said it was ok.
“It’s fine. Just throw it, Eliza.”
Still hesitant, I threw the ball. It disappeared into thin air, just like before.
“Oh no!” I gasped.
I stared into the empty space. You patted my back and handed me another ball. It had the same message on it.
“What’s happening?”
“This one appeared in my mitt yesterday—out of nowhere. And I thought we might try this. The one you threw was the original, the one I keep in the room.”
Darcy told me her hypothesis.
“During our matches, you’re always thinking about other stuff. About dinner, or your homework. That’s where the balls go.
Strangely, that sounded right: The balls flew to the times and places where my thoughts lingered.
“What a trick! We should keep it our secret.”
“Yes, But why is it happening?”
You shrugged.
“Who knows. Maybe you throw too fast.“
Baseball was soon banned. They told us it made our hands rough.
Everyone else was preparing to protest, but I left the school. My mother married again, and my new stepfather wasn’t sure about a girl getting schooling.
Darcy was furious at me for going along with it. She refused to talk to me. But when I was leaving, she ran up to me at the school gate.
We hugged but didn’t exchange words.
“This..”
Her eyes didn’t meet mine.
“it’s for you.”
She hurriedly pushed a book into my hands and sprinted away as if running for home base.
I wept in the coach before even looking at the book. It was called ‘Elizabeth Bennet, or Pride and Prejudice’.
It was appalling. Like a bad joke. You were not at all like him. Mr. Darcy never broke school rules. He wasn’t a native of the prayer room. I couldn’t imagine him playing baseball. And you definitely didn’t like gentle strolls. If you found a garden, you’d look for something to smash.
We kept writing to each other after I moved away. I hid her once when she ran from school.
Later, just as I was on the cusp of my marriage, the world fell apart. States seceded from the Union over slavery. The Civil War broke out. My then-fiance volunteered, and my stepfather was often absent from the house.
Then, that night.
There was a rap on the window. I looked up from my book and heard the same rap again. I opened the window and looked down. There was something in the bushes.
I called the butler. Holding a lantern, we went straight into the yard with the lantern and found the thing cowering, clutching a rifle. I gasped when I saw a face. It was Darcy.
When I dragged her into the porch, I found her belly was wet. Darcy had been shot. I looked at the butler, who nodded and left.
“Volunteered?”, I hissed.
“Yes. As a man. Went up North.”
“Why?”
“Who knows”. She wheezed.
Darcy coughed blood. She didn’t really seem to notice her state at all. Maybe her eyes weren’t working.
“Eliza, you know what? If you have a gun, you can kill a man. If it has a bayonet, you can kill him when he’s next to you.”
“How could you……!?”
“Listen.”
Her eyes flickered with a fierce light as she suddenly grabbed my arm.
“Don’t you think that’s great? With the right tools, we can be a man’s equal! I wish I had better tools. Think about it. Someday there’ll be tools to lengthen our stride like swords and guns allowed us to extend our arms. There should be rules and tools just so different bodies don’t matter. Or …… if we stop feeling our bodies. If every single one of us did that……”
Her grip loosened. I shook my head in silence.
“Baseball”, Darcy said. “I always wanted to do it in a big place, not in that silly riding arena. When I went to the army, we played outside the camp. It was so…”
I said she would be able to do it again and she smiled faintly.
“You know what I mean.”
“Darcy…!”
I hugged her tight as I felt the strength leave her body. The butler, who had returned with the doctor, pulled us apart. Mother came in and fainted with a shrill scream.
And then she popped back to life and went back to school. After graduating from college, she became involved in the suffrage movement. Although our old school did not welcome her back, she formed a women’s only baseball team at another local college and coached for a long time.
I’m reading the newspaper.
The front page has been about women getting the vote for two days now.
Darcy, can you believe it? Women can vote in every state in the US. It took sixty years to do that. I flip the page. This year’s Olympic results. Women are allowed to play in the Olympics in several events. Yesterday in Antwerp a young woman from the U.S. Aileen Riggin competed in diving. It says she won gold.
“Let’s play catch”, I say, taking the grandkids into the yard.
“Careful, Grandma! Can you throw?”
That’s understandable. My husband died soon after the Great War broke out. Darcy worked tirelessly in support of the women in the army. She is gone. Sometimes, I find myself wondering if I am alive or not.
I pull out a pen and write on the slick leather surface of the ball.
“‘A woman can play baseball. And she can play any other sport.’
E.B., August 29, 1920. “
I let the ink dry in the morning light. I wrap the ball in the page from the newspaper. I take my pitching stance and wind my arm over my head. The ball wobbles away from my finger. Then, it is whisked away into the wind. It vanishes.
Fly as far as possible. To you, at our boarding school. Will you forgive me if I run the bases in reverse?
The Carrier of the Violence and Ruin
The Carrier of the Violence and Ruin is a Japanese author of sci-fi novels. He served as the chief judge of “Let me read your naughty novel, please” Award in 2023. One of his works, “The Pianist,” can be read in The Kyoto SF Anthology (Kaguya Books). Also, his Magic Ball, the grand prize winner of the 3rd Kaguya SF Contest (2023), is included in The Baseball SF Masterpieces (Kaguya Books). He has translated Our Lives on Tides by Soham Guha with Terrie Hashimoto.
Patricia Akasaka
Patricia Akasaka is a Japanese writer living in Yorkshire, writing in English and Japanese. In English, she has published speculative fiction on Strange Horizons and Flashback fiction. She is currently exploring language acquisition, the life of languages, and long distance running. When she’s not writing, she is spending most of her time imagining worst case scenarios.
Instagram @Patakasaka
Chell Yoshino
Chell Yoshino (she/they) is a Yorkshire based translator, reader and occasional poet. They translate between English and Japanese – this is their first work in translating fiction.