The Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  “And, at last, they came to the Land.”

  “They came . . . they came here?” Mowgai said.

  “And the manshonyagger looked down on the rivers and fields, and the fruit trees and the tiny frogs, and of course the people, our ancestors who fled here with the fall of the old world, and it never knew such a Land, and it thought that perhaps the old days were truly gone forever. And it was very tired. And so, with the little girl—who was not at all a little girl, of course, but something not a little like the manshonyagger—whispering in its heart, it laid the boy down, right about here.” And he pointed down to the ground, at his yard, and smiled at our expressions. “And the boy grew up to be a man, among his kind, though there was always, I think, a little bit of him that was also part machine. And he became a salvager, like your mother, Mai, and he spent much of his time out on the blasted plains, and some said he sought his old home, still, but always in vain.

  “You won’t find him in our cemetery, though. He disappeared one day, in old age, and after he had begat two children, a little girl and a little boy. It was on a salvaging expedition out on the plains, and some say he died at the hands of the rogue machines that still lived there, but some say he finally found that which he was looking for, and he went back to his perfect home, and had one last childhood in that town where the past is eternally preserved. But that, I think, is just a story.”

  “But what happened to the robot?” asked Mowgai. “Did it go back?” and there was something lost and sad in his little face. I remember that, so vividly.

  And Elder Simeon shook his head, and smiled, and pointed beyond the house, and he said, “The story says that the manshonyagger, seeing that its young charge was well and sound—and being, as I said, so very tired, too—lay down on the ground, and closed its eyes, and slept. And, some say, is sleeping still.”

  We looked where he pointed, and we saw the angled hills, and their curious contours; and if you squinted, and if you looked hard enough, you could just imagine that they took on a shape, as of a sleeping, buried giant.

  “But . . .” I said.

  “You don’t—” said Mowgai.

  And Elder Simeon smiled again, and shook his head, and said, “But I told you, children. It’s just a story.”

  The days grow short, and the shadows lengthen, and I find myself thinking more and more about the past. Mowgai is gone these many years, but I still miss him. That summer, long ago, we spent days upon days hiking through the curious hills, searching and digging, the way children do. We hoped to find a giant robot, and once, just once, we thought we saw a sudden spark of turquoise light, and the outline of a little girl, not much older than we were, looking down on us, and smiling; but it was, I think, just a trick of the light.

  Some say the giant’s still there, lying asleep, and that one day it will wake, when it is needed. We spent all that summer, and much of the next, looking for the buried giant; but of course, we never found it.

  R.S.A. Garcia’s debut science fiction mystery novel, Lex Talionis received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and the Silver Medal for Best Scifi/ Fantasy/Horror Ebook from the Independent Publishers Awards (IPPY 2015). She has published short fiction in Clarkesworld, Abyss and Apex, SuperSonic Magazine (Spain), and several anthologies. She lives in Trinidad and Tobago with an extended family and too many dogs. You can find out more about her work at rsagarcia.com.

  THE ANCHORITE WAKES

  R.S.A. Garcia

  Sister Nadine’s first true thought is of beauty.

  Father Paul is delivering a sermon on sacrifice in his deep voice, pausing for emphasis every so often, when the bird lands on the ledge of her squint with a silent flutter of wings. It’s smaller than her hand and has the same wavy translucence as the glass in the window across from the altar, opposite her little anchorhold. It tilts its head toward her, and she sees beneath the grayish tinge of its outline, the glowing flow of life within its veins, the pulsing beat of its miniscule heart flashing like a tiny gem.

  Beautiful, she thinks. It is beautiful.

  And wonders why she thinks this.

  The bird hops from one slender foot to another, and for a moment light from the window to her cell that faces the street streams through it. Father Paul’s voice fades and she stares as the bird’s heart turns into a kaleidoscope of colors. A starburst of energy. Then it leaps into the air and flies above the bent heads of the congregation.

  She follows its flight until it swoops down onto the shoulder of a small, dark-skinned girl, her thick hair braided into two plaits that skim a short blue jacket, which matches her worn cotton dress. The bird rests for only a second before darting in front of the girl’s face. Her head is bowed, but she opens her mouth and light flashes as it slips inside. Sister Nadine watches as the palest spark slips down the girl’s throat and disappears.

  The child looks up, looks directly at Sister Nadine as everyone rises to their feet for the hymn. Her right cheek has a dark smudge on it. A bruise.

  Nadine wonders how it got there.

  Sometimes, when Father Paul is ministering to the sick, Sister Nadine leaves her cell to pray at the altar. She is kneeling there when the softest sound comes from the pews behind her and pulls her from her prayers.

  It is the little girl. She recognizes her now. Louisa Simmons. Last child and only daughter of Merle and Brian Simmons. Merle takes in washing and Brian travels the countryside selling household goods like enamel bowls and cheap bedsheets, cocoyea brooms and doormats. They have five other children, all boys, all perfectly normal and uninteresting.

  Louisa is interesting.

  She swings her legs as she watches Nadine rise from the ground and come toward her. She does not drop her eyes out of respect, as most of the townspeople do when Sister Nadine comes into the church. She must know Father Paul is out visiting, and she will not be chastised for being in this holy place with her shoulders exposed by the thin straps of her everyday dress. It’s pink and more faded than her blue church dress. It exposes a dark blotch of a bruise on her right shoulder.

  Nadine sits on one end of the bench and turns her knees toward the girl. Louisa shifts to face her too, head tilted at a strangely familiar angle. Her neat braids sway against her smooth skin, though they are not as long as Nadine’s.

  Beautiful, Nadine thinks.

  “How come you’re outside, Sister Nadine?” Louisa asks.

  “I’m praying,” she says.

  “But you pray in your cell. Everyone comes there to ask you for advice.”

  “You can pray anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you are. Your prayers will be heard.”

  Louisa digests this, her thin legs swinging rhythmically. There is a scar on her left knee.

  Nadine looks at the bruise on her Louisa’s shoulder and an unsettling feeling tremors through her, as though a hot needle is pressed to her forehead. It is gone before she can grasp it.

  “So, you get tired of your cell?”

  Nadine nods. Speaking is tiresome for her. It pulls her painfully from her fasting and prayers, from her hymns and spiritual introspection. But she is the anchoress of the church of St. Nicholas and it is her duty to speak with any who seek her wisdom.

  “I get tired too.” Louisa bows her head, concentrates on her dusty bare feet. “I get tired of my house.”

  Nadine lets her gaze rest on the wooden altar, polished to a caramel glow by one of the best woodworkers in the parish. On it stands the golden circle of their faith, symbol of rebirth and resurrection. It is comforting, thinking of those that will come and go, and come again. Of the unstoppable flow of life and the immutable glow of the divinity it springs from.

  The girl has said something. Nadine turns her head and waits for her to repeat it.

  “You can’t leave the church either, can you?”

  Nadine contemplates this. “I became an anchoress so I would not have to. It is my wish to remain here, to demonstrate my devotion to our faith, and to remove me from the distractions o
f the world, so that I may come into enlightenment and spiritual wisdom.”

  Louisa’s dark eyes do not blink. “No, I mean you can’t leave, even if you want to.”

  Nadine frowns. “Why would you think that?”

  Louisa points to her thick long braids. “I can see your chains.”

  A tiger came to the church once.

  Susanna had brought her middle child, Dennis, to see Sister Nadine because she was at her wits end with him. The tiger, a striped, white beast with metal teeth that glittered like knives, padded up and down the aisle of the church behind them as they knelt to speak to her through the squint. Dennis, a short, round boy with a naughty side, and skin the same hue as the altar, would not meet her eyes while his mother spoke.

  “What am I to do with him, Sister Nadine?” Susanna wailed. She ran the biggest food stall at the market and made the best cowheel soup for miles. Dennis was her only child. Children without siblings were often interesting. Nadine did not yet know why this was so.

  “Every time he has a nightmare, I don’t know what to expect. I’m afraid to sleep most nights. Glen keeps a cutlass by the bed now, just in case.”

  Nadine thought this over, then spoke directly to Dennis.

  “Child, what do you fear?”

  Dennis shrugged and slid a sideways glance at his mother.

  “Look at me,” she commanded softly.

  Dennis looked at her. His eyes were not the usual dark brown. Instead they were a pale green, like the sea that bordered St. Nicholas.

  “What do you fear?”

  “The . . . the dark.”

  Nadine glanced at Susanna. She had a crease between her brows and her mouth was open slightly.

  “You never told me that.”

  Dennis mumbled, “You never asked.”

  Nadine made some suggestions and they left, the tiger following them on padded feet. She did not see it again.

  She did see Dennis one more time. Harvest Day had ended, and she was looking out of her street-facing window, humming a hymn and watching as people drifted by on their way home. The wind was strong enough to slide beneath her heavy hair and it smelled of the salt sea and the spicy remnants of the curried meats Susanna sold at her stall all day.

  Someone waved to her from below the churchyard, down on the street itself. The moon was not out, but she saw Dennis by the light of the tiny golden fireflies that swarmed around him. She watched as he continued on, his parents strolling arm in arm in front of him.

  Susanna never mentioned Dennis again. No one did.

  Sometimes the spider in her cell spoke to her. It was a curious thing, black as pitch with many more legs than eight. They clicked against the stone and reverberated in the base of her skull. Its eyes were red dots as it sat in the middle of a tangled golden web. The web disappeared into the shadows, finer than hair and twisted into ropes of all sizes, some thick as her finger. Every strand grew from the furred belly of the spider.

  “Anchorite Nadine,” it would whisper in the voice of her long-dead sister. “Anchorite Nadine. Have you anything interesting to report?”

  She had no memory of her answers until the first time after she saw beauty.

  “No,” she said softly. “Nothing interesting.”

  The spider pulled on its web, clicking its legs against the stone, and its eyes watched her as she swayed on her knees, hands clasped together, singing.

  There is beauty here too, Nadine thought. Divinity in the web that surrounded the spider. In the lyrical whispers that shivered through her skin. In the trance she entered as she prayed. But it’s faded and small as the spider. Far away and thin as smoke. It’s not as interesting as the beauty she’s found in St. Nicholas.

  Sister Nadine’s second true thought is of warmth.

  Merle Simmons passes a bread to her through the window that faces the pews. It is wrapped in a white cloth embossed with a circle of gold and feels like the sun filtering through the cell onto her back. Long after, she will remember the cool smoothness of the wax candles Merle hands her as well.

  Louisa is with her, as usual. She sits in the pew behind her mother, waiting and watching, thin legs swinging. She smiles at Nadine, and the skin on Nadine’s face stretches as she smiles back, though she does not quite understand why she does this.

  “Blessings, Sister Nadine,” Merle says. She once sang in the choir and has a voice more beautiful than Nadine’s favorite sister. It occurs to Nadine she no longer sings to herself as she carries washing from house to house.

  There is the merest shadow of a bruise on the back of the hand that gave Nadine the candles. Nadine catches her fingers as she tries to pull her hand back through the window. They are warm. Warm as the life-giving bread.

  “Blessings, Merle.” Nadine stares into her soft, dark eyes, but Merle drops her gaze. “Do you seek wisdom today?”

  Louisa stops swinging her legs.

  Silence shivers through the empty church. Father Paul is in the vestry, writing Sunday’s sermon. Nadine can hear the scratching of his pen.

  “Just. Just prayers, Sister Nadine.” Merle turns her head to the side. “Pray for me and the children.”

  Sister Nadine feels the hot needle in her stomach this time, and for longer.

  “If that is what you wish.” She releases Merle’s hand.

  Louisa stares at Sister Nadine over her shoulder as her mother takes her hand and walks away. Her gaze is strange. Knowing. There is the slightest glow to her; a spark centered above her head. Nadine cannot quite see its shape, but she knows it is important. New.

  The Charles boy is an interesting problem. Nadine picked him out the instant she first saw him, as an infant getting water dripped on his head at baptism. Few are quite so present to her. His waving arms and legs were sharp in her vision that first time. She stopped praying to admire the contrast of the pure white of his baptismal clothing against his night dark skin.

  Now, he strides through St. Nicholas, the town’s resident sagaboy, the gold buttons glittering on his khaki Sergeant’s uniform. All the girls would bunch together as he went by and hail him out so they can see the easy smile and flash of white teeth. His hazel eyes trapped a dozen hearts, but he only searches for one amongst the crowd. His steps slow as he passes the town library, every time.

  There’s a familiarity to him. Nadine has seen the same slow pace before, at night, when she looked out at the stars. Stars that were blocked out by two impossibly long legs strolling across the churchyard, stepping over the tall wrought-iron fence as a human does an ant. Vibrations tremored up from the floor where she knelt, straight to the top of her head. The legs were shiny—glittering hard edges under the moonlight. Multicolored lights cast shadows on the ground as they drew closer to her anchorhold. At first, she could see nothing above them, but then her tiny window was filled with a large eye. There was the faintest whirring as the pupil expanded and contracted, a dark hole in a silver pool that focused on her.

  She raised her hands in supplication and began to sing softly.

  The colossus listened for a while. Then her window was suddenly empty, and the night sky twinkled at her. I have a secret, the stars said. You can tell no one.

  She doesn’t. Not for a long time.

  Sister Nadine’s third true thought is of sweetness, and it slips beneath her skin and makes a home.

  Louisa is alone today and she has a small slice of sweetbread wrapped in a paper napkin. She holds it up to Nadine’s squint. Services are over for the day, but Nadine has not closed the shutters. It’s the wrong window to come to, but before Nadine can chide her, Louisa speaks.

  “Blessings, Sister Nadine. I’ve come for wisdom.”

  Nadine accepts the sweetbread. The green, red and yellow of the preserved fruits embedded in it catch her eye like jewels.

  “Please eat it. Susanna made it special for Harvest Day today. I bought the first slice.”

  Nadine studies her through the squint. Her little face is shiny from perspiration and her
tiny spark blinks above her head, on, off, on, off. The bruise around her eye is the angry purple of an eggplant.

  “Please. Just a taste.”

  Nadine looks down at the sweetbread. The fruits wink at her, on, off, on, off. She takes a bite.

  Sweetness floods her mouth. An earthiness anchors it. Textures chase each other as she chews. Soft, jellied, sweet. The crunch of sugar granules baked into the crust. Her head feels warm and light sparkles in her vision as she looks up at Louisa.

  “He won’t stop,” Louisa whispers, words tumbling over each other. “I know it. He hates us. Hates this place. I’m strong, he won’t break me. But my brothers. My mother. Please help us, Sister Nadine. I know you can. I’ve seen your chains. I remember Dennis.”

  The name causes a curious blooming feeling in her chest. Fire stretches fingers down from the crown of her head to the tips of her limbs.

  “Please pray for us,” Louisa says, her dark eyes glimmering with tears. “Pray for real this time. It’s Harvest Day. Pray for real.”

  Nadine’s thoughts feel slow. Muddled with sweetness and warmth, her vision speckled with beautiful lights that flicker past in rapidly changing shapes. They are familiar and new at the same time.

  “You wish for prayers,” she asks, her voice fading in her ears, falling down a deep, dark hole, echoing as it goes.

  “Yes, Sister Nadine.”

  Louisa reaches through the squint and closes her small fingers around Nadine’s. Her palms are cotton-soft and they warm Nadine’s cold hands.

  “Help us. Please help us.”