The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-II

by Jonathan Strahan

  "Yours is much more interesting than mine," he told me. "I'd like to meet your mother."

  You never will, I told myself. I liked him, with his spiky hair that stood up although he was always trying to gel it down, the angular bones that made him look graceless, as though his joints were not quite knit together, and his humor. I did not want him, too, to fall hopelessly in love. For goodness' sake, the woman was fifty-four. She was in Italy again, with a British rock star. He was twenty-seven. They had been together for two years. I could tell that she was already beginning to get bored.

  "There's no one like Coleridge," Michael had said. "You'll see."

  I have told you that Kamora was clever. Listen to how clever she was. She said to the Empress, "I will bring you what you ask for, but you must give me a month to find it, and a knapsack filled with bread and cheese and dried apricots, and a jar of honey."

  "Very well," said the Empress. "You shall have all these things, although I will miss you, Kamora. But at the end of that month you will return to me, won't you?"

  "If at the end of that month I have not found someone who amuses you more than I do, then I will return to you, and remain with you as long as you wish," said Kamora.

  The Empress said, "Now I can sleep, because I know you will remain with me forever."

  The next day, Kamora put her knapsack on her back. "I wish you luck, I do," said the head cook. "It can't be easy, spending every night with Her Craziness upstairs. Though why you would want to marry a dragon is beyond me."

  Kamora smiled but did not answer. Then she turned and walked through the palace gates, chewing a dried apricot.

  First, Kamora went to the house of her uncle Alem Das, which was built against the wall that surrounded the palace. She found him sitting on the stone floor, carving a bird for the youngest daughter of the River Dragon. When you wound it with a key, it could sing by itself. "Uncle," she said, "they call me clever, but I know that you are more clever than I am. You talked the horns off Leviathan, and once Bilkis, the sun herself, gave you three of her shining hairs. Who can amuse the Empress more than I can?"

  Alem Das sat and thought. Kamora was his favorite niece, and he did not want to disappoint her. "You might bring her the Laughing Hound, who dances on his hind legs, and rides a donkey, and tells jokes all day long, or the Tree of Tales, whose leaves whisper all the secrets that men do not wish to reveal. But she would eventually tire of these. You, my dear, can sing all the songs that were ever sung. If she tires of a song, you can sing her another. If she is sad, you can comb her hair with the comb I gave you for your fourteenth birthday, and cover her with a blanket, and sit by her until she has fallen asleep. It will be difficult to find anyone as amusing as you are."

  Kamora sighed. "I hoped that you could help me. Oh, uncle," and for the first time she did not sound perfectly confident, "I do love him, you know."

  "I'm not clever enough to help you," said Alem Das, "but I know who is. Kamora, I will tell you a secret. If you climb to the top of Mount Abora, even higher than the Cloud Dragon, you will find the Stone Woman. She is the oldest of all things, and I think she will be able to help you. But you must tell no one where she lives, and allow no one to follow you, because she values her privacy. If it grows dark, take out the tail-feather of the Phoenix, which I gave you for your twelfth birthday. It will light your way up the mountain."

  Kamora said, "But Uncle, why should the Stone Woman help me?"

  "Take this drum," said Alem Das. "I made it from the skin that the Sea Serpent sheds once a year. The Stone Woman is old, and the old always like a present."

  "Thank you, Uncle," said Kamora, kissing him on both cheeks. "There truly is no one in the world as clever as you."

  Kamora walked through the village, chewing a dried apricot. She walked over the hills, to the foot of Mount Abora. At the foot of the mountain, where the climb begins in earnest, she picked a handful of lilies, which grow by the streams that flow down the mountain to become the Alph. She left them at the tomb of the Great Khan, who had given her sugared almonds when she was a girl. Then she began to climb the path up the mountain. Halfway up, Kamora ate her lunch, bread and cheese and dried apricots. She washed her hands in one of the streams, put her knapsack on her back, and continued to climb. Near the top, she stopped to see the Cloud Dragon and tell him the Empress' condition.

  "Well, good luck to you," he said. "If you were anyone else, I would be certain that you would fail, but I've been told that you're almost as clever as your uncle."

  "I will not fail," said Kamora, and she gave him a look that made him break into puffs that flew every which way over the mountain. And this is the woman I'm going to marry, he thought. What have I gotten myself into?

  In his house by the palace wall, Alem Das thought about his niece and smiled. He said to himself, "Sometimes she is too clever, that girl. First she asked for one of the Phoenix's tail-feathers, then for a comb carved from the shell of the Great Turtle. And now I've given her my drum. Does she really think she's tricked me? Oh, Kamora! It's certainly time you got married."

  I'm not sure when we started dating. There was a gradual progression between friend and boyfriend. We were comfortable together, we seemed to fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. But a puzzle that showed what picture? I did not know.

  It was a Friday. I remember because we had just turned back a set of graded papers. I was still taking classes, and for my own class on the Romantics, taught by the same professor for whom I was TAing, I had decided to write a final paper on Coleridge. This will be easy, I thought. Michael and I have talked about him so often.

  I was in my apartment. It was cold. It felt like a cave of ice.

  And suddenly, I was there.

  The Kubla Khan of Coleridge's poem is not the historical Kubla Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty, and Xanadu is not Shangdu. Both are dreams or hallucinations. Indeed, if we examine Coleridge's description of the palace itself, we notice that it does not make sense. Here, the river Alph, fed by the streams that flow down Mount Abora, does something strange: it disappears into a series of fissures in the ground, flowing through them until it comes to an underground lake. Coleridge's identification of this lake as a "sunless sea" or "lifeless ocean" is certainly poetic exaggeration, as my experience will show. The palace itself is situated where the river disappears, so that seen from one side, it seems to sit on the river itself. Seen from the other, it is surrounded by an extensive garden, where the Khan has collected specimens from all the fantastical countries, plants from lost Atlantis and Hyperborea and Thule. The palace is built of stone, and rises out of the stone beneath it, so that an outcropping will suddenly turn into a wall. Although Coleridge describes "caves of ice," this is again a poetic exaggeration. He means that since the palace is built of stone, even in summer the rooms are cold, so cold. I was always cold in that palace, as long as I was there.

  It was empty. There were silk cushions on the floor, embroidered with dragons and orange trees, but no one to sit on them. There were tables inlaid with tulips and gazelles and chessboards, but no one to play. The curtains that hung in the doorways, filtering the sunlight, rose and fell with the breath of the river. But there was no other breath, and no noise other than a ceaseless rushing as the river swept through the caves below. As I walked, my steps sounded hollow, and I knew that the floors hung over rushing water and empty space. As an architectural feat, the Khan's palace is impossible.

  There was water everywhere, in pools where ornamental fish swam, dappled white and orange and black, and basins in which the inhabitants, if there were any, would have washed their hands. The air had the clean, curiously empty smell of sunlight and water.

  "I have looked. There is no one but ourselves."

  He was dressed as you might expect, in breeches and a waistcoat over a linen shirt that seemed too large for him. He had thick brown hair and a thin, inquisitive face, and his hands moved nervously. The young poet, already an addict.

  I was not s
ure how to respond. "Have you been here long?"

  "Several hours, and I confess that I'm beginning to feel hungry. Surely there is a kitchen? Shall we attempt to find it?"

  The kitchen was empty as well, but the pantry was full. We ate sugared almonds, and a sweet cheese studded with raisins, and dried fish that was better than it looked. We drank a wine that tasted like honey.

  "Sabra is a pretty name," he said. "Mine is Samuel, not so pretty, you see, but then I'm not as pretty as you." He wiped the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. "Here we are, Samuel and Sabra, in the palace of the Khan. Where is the Khan, I wonder? Is he out hunting, or in another of his palaces? Perhaps when he returns he will execute us for being here. Have you thought of that, Sabra? We are, after all, trespassers."

  "I don't know," I said. "I don't feel like a trespasser. And anyway, he isn't here now."

  "That is true," he said. "Would you like the last of the almonds? I've never much cared for almonds." He leaned back against a cushion, his hair spread out over an apricot tree in bloom, with a phoenix in its boughs. "Will you sing to me, Sabra? I am tired, and I feel that I have been speaking inanities. There is an instrument, on that table. Can you play it, do you think?"

  "Yes," I said, and picked up the instrument: a dulcimer. While my friends in school were at soccer practice, I was learning to play the dulcimer. It was another of my mother's charming impracticalities.

  "Then sing me something, won't you, pretty Sabra? I'm so tired, and my head aches, I don't know why."

  So I put away the last of the sugared almonds, picked up the dulcimer, and began to sing.

  Kamora could feel blisters forming where her sandals rubbed against her feet, but she climbed steadily. It was late afternoon, and the sun was already sinking into the west, when she reached the summit. The Stone Woman was waiting for her. She was wrapped in a gray shawl and hunched over with age, so that she looked like a part of the mountain itself.

  "Back again, are you? And did you ever find your own true love, the one whose face you saw in my mirror?"

  "I found him, lady who is wiser than the stars," said Kamora. "But now I have to win him."

  "None of your flattery for me, girl," said the Stone Woman. "I know exactly how wise I am. What are you going to give me for my help?"

  Kamora took the drum out of her knapsack.

  The Stone Woman looked at it appreciatively. "Ah, this is better than that other stuff you gave me. Although the tail-feather of the Phoenix, which you gave me for teaching you all the songs that have ever been sung, burns all night long, so I can weave my tapestries. And every morning I use the comb made from the shell of the Great Turtle, which you gave me for showing you the Cloud Dragon in my mirror, and my hair never tangles." She ran one hand over her braid of gray hair, which was so long that it touched the ground. "But this!" She tapped the drum once with her finger, and Kamora heard a reverberation, not only from the drum itself, but from the stones around her, the scrubby cedars, bent by the wind, and even the air. It seemed to echo over the forested slopes of the mountain, and the hills below, on which she could see the tomb of the Great Khan, as white as the rising moon, and the plains stretching away into the distance.

  "What is it?" asked Kamora.

  "Your uncle didn't tell you? That sound is the beat of the world, which governs everything, even the beating of your heart, and on this drum I can play it slower or faster, more sadly or more joyfully. No one can make an instrument like your uncle Alem, but I think this is his masterpiece. No wonder he wanted you to bring it to me. I'm the only one in whose hands it is perfectly safe. Think, girl, what would a man do who could alter the beat of the world? And by getting you to carry it, he saved himself a trip up the mountain! He is a clever man, your uncle. Now, it's dinnertime, and I'm hungry. Have you brought me any food?"

  Kamora took out the honey, of which she knew the Stone Woman was inordinately fond.

  "Good girl. Well, come inside, then, and tell me what you want this time."

  The walls of the Stone Woman's cave were covered with tapestries. On one you could see the creation of the world by Lilit, and her marriage to the Sea Serpent, in which she wore a veil of stars. On another you could see the flood that resulted from their thrashing when they lay together, so that many of the first creatures she had created, the great dragons with horns like Leviathan's and eyes like rubies and emeralds, and the great turtles that carried mountains and even small lakes on their backs, were drowned. The whole history of the world was there, and on a panel that Kamora had not seen before, she saw Mount Abora, and the marriage of the Empress Nasren, the oldest daughter of the River Dragon, to the Great Khan, with the apricot trees on the mountain blooming around them.

  The Stone Woman sat on a cushion and opened the honey-pot. She dipped a wooden spoon into it, tasted the honey, and licked her lips. "Very good, very good. Well, what do you want this time?"

  Kamora knew that it was time to be, not clever, but direct. "The Empress, whose hands move like doves, will not let me marry until I have brought her someone who amuses her more than I do."

  "So that's how it is," said the Stone Woman. "You can't marry your Cloud Dragon until she lets you, and she won't let you until she has found a substitute. You have been too clever, Kamora. When you asked me to teach you all the songs that have ever been sung, so the Empress would choose you as one of her maidens, to serve her and live in the palace, did you consider that she might want to keep you forever? Getting what you wish for isn't always a good thing, you know."

  "If I had not learned all the songs that have ever been sung," said Kamora, "the Cloud Dragon would not have wanted to marry me. And I love him, I can't help loving him, since I saw how he looks at night, when he is a man. Perhaps I should not have looked in your mirror and asked to see my own true love, but when I saw how happy the Empress was with the Great Khan . . ." A tear slid down her cheek, and she wiped it away with her hand.

  "Ah, clever Kamora! So you wanted to love and be loved. You have a heart after all," said the Stone Woman. "Just remember that cleverness is not enough to keep a husband, not even the Cloud Dragon, who is less clever than you are. You must show him your heart as well. I warned him about choosing such a clever wife! But how do you expect me to help you?"

  Kamora said, "I thought about that, when I walked through the thousand rooms of the palace at night with the Empress. What is more amusing than a person who knows all the songs that have ever been sung? Only a person who can create new songs. Only a poet."

  "If you know the answer yourself," said the Stone Woman, "why do you need me?"

  "Because I need you to make me a poet. Not one of those poets who sit in the marketplace, selling rhymes so that soldiers, and anyone with a silver coin, can sing them to the Empress' maidens—out of tune! I need a true poet, who can write what has never been sung before."

  "A poet?" asked the Stone Woman. "And how to you expect me to make you a poet?"

  "In the same way you made the world, Lilit."

  Kamora and the Stone Woman stared at each other. Finally the Stone Woman said, "You are as clever as your uncle. How did you know who I am?"

  Kamora smiled. "Who else would know all the songs that have ever been sung? Who else would keep the Mirror of Truth in a cave on Mount Abora? And when the Great Khan was laid in his tomb, the Empress put honey on his lips so you would kiss them when he entered the land of the dead. Even songs from the making of the world mention how fond you are of honey. You have created the Sea Serpent, the Lion of the Sun who carries Bilkis on his back, and whose walk across the sky warms the earth, the Silver Stag who summons men to the land of the dead . . . Only you can make a poet."

  "Very well," said the Stone Woman. "I will make you a poet, Kamora. But only because I like you. And this is my wedding gift, and the last thing I will do for you. You have had two gifts from me already, and three is enough for anyone." She stood and considered. "But I haven't made a poet for a long time. I wonder if I remember ho
w?"

  Have you seen the stone caves beneath the palace of Kubla Khan, called the Lesser Khan because for all his palaces, he could not match the conquests of his grandfather, the Great Khan? Where the stone is thin, it is translucent, so that the caves are filled with a strange, ghostly light. In the dark water, which is still and no longer rushing, since the river has mingled into the underground lake, there are luminescent fish. When they swim to the surface, they shine like moving stars.

  Samuel took off his breeches and swam in the dark water, in just his shirt. I sat on the bank, striking the dulcimer, thinking of songs that he might like. He floated on his back, his hair spreading around his face like seaweed.

  "There seems to be no time here," he said. "At home, I was expecting a person from Porlock. But here, I feel that no person from Porlock will ever come. Time has stopped, and nothing will ever happen. Except that you will keep singing, Sabra. You will keep singing, won't you? Sing to me about how the Stone Woman made a poet." But I did not finish my song, then.

  Later, we walked in the garden that surrounded the palace.

  "They go on for ten miles," I said.

  "How do you know that?" he asked, but I did not answer. It was hot, even in the shade of the almond trees, and the roses, which had been transported at great expense from Nineveh, were releasing their fragrance into the evening. "I think I could stay here forever," he said. "Forget my damned debts. Forget my . . . marriage. Never write again, never write anything else. I'm no good at it anyway. I never finish anything."

  "That's not what Lilit said, when she made you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Lilit created the poet out of clay. Kamora watched her mold the figure, the height and shape of a man. It was late now. Outside, the moon had risen, and it shone in through the opening of the cave, its pale light meeting the light of the Phoenix's tail-feather. Kamora sat on the floor and watched, but she was so tired that her eyes kept closing, and somehow, between one blink of her eyes and another, the man was complete. He was tall, well-formed, and gray, the color of the clay at the bottom of the river Alph. His mouth was open, as though already speaking a poem.