The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan

  Snow is falling. Big, sticky clumps that melt on her hair, her cheeks. Snow on Christmas. None in Phuket, of course. She wonders what they give you to eat on Christmas Day in a Thai prison. Her mother always makes the Christmas cake. Miranda helps roll out the marzipan in sheets. Her ballet flats skid on the grass.

  She ties the bag, leaves it against the steps. And here is the man in the garden, still standing before the window, looking in.

  He must hear Miranda. Surely he hears her. Her feet upon the frozen grass. But he doesn’t turn around.

  Even seen from the back, he is recognizably a Honeywell. Lanky, yellowhaired; perfectly still, he is somehow perfectly still, perfectly posed to catch the eye. Unnaturally natural. The snow that is making Miranda’s nose run, her cheeks blotchy with cold, rests unmelted upon the bright Honeywell hair, the shoulders of the surprising coat.

  Typical Honeywell behavior, Miranda thinks. A lovers’ quarrel, or else he’s taken offense at something someone said, and is now going to sulk himself handsomely to death in the cold. Her mother has been quite clear about how to behave when a Honeywell is being dramatic when drama isn’t required. Firmness is the key.

  At this last thought of her mother, Miranda has some dramatic feelings of her own. She focuses on the coat, sends the feelings away. It is quite a coat. A costume? Pilfered from some production. Eighteenth century. Beautifully cut. Not a frock coat. A justacorps. Rose damask. Embroidered all over with white silk thread, poppies and roses, and there, where it flares out over the hips, a staghorn beetle on a green leaf. She has come nearer and nearer, cannot stop herself from reaching out to touch the beetle.

  She almost expects her hand to pass right through. (Surely there are ghosts at Honeywell Hall.) But it doesn’t. The coat is real. Miranda pinches the damask between her fingers. Says, “Whatever it is that happened, it isn’t worth freezing to death over. You shouldn’t be out here. You should come inside.”

  The Honeywell in the justacorps turns around then. “I am exactly where I am supposed to be,” he says. “Which is here. Doing precisely what I am supposed to be doing. Which does not include having conversations with little girls. Go away, little girl.”

  Little girl she may be, but Miranda is well armored already against the Honeywell arsenal of tantrums, tempests, ups, downs, charm, strange.

  Above the wide right pocket of the justacorps is a fox stitched in red and gold, its foreleg caught in a trap.

  “I’m Miranda,” she says. And then, because she’s picked up a Honeywell trick or two herself, she says, “My mother’s in jail.”

  The Honeywell looks almost sympathetic for the briefest of moments, then shrugs. Theatrically, of course. Sticks his hands in his pockets. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Everyone’s got problems, that’s all,” Miranda says. “I’m here because Elspeth feels sorry for me. I hate when people feel sorry for me. And I don’t feel sorry for you. I don’t know you. I just don’t think it’s very smart, standing out here because you’re in a mood. But maybe you aren’t very smart. My mother says good-looking people often don’t bother. What’s your name?”

  “If I tell you, will you go away?” the Honeywell says.

  “Yes,” Miranda says. She can go in the kitchen and play with the kittens. Do the dishes and be useful. Have her fortune told. Sit under the tree again with Daniel until it’s well past time to go to sleep. Tomorrow she’ll be sent away home on a bus. By next year Elspeth will have most likely forgotten she has a goddaughter.

  “I’m Fenny,” the Honeywell says. “Now go away. I have things to not do, and not a lot of time to not do them in.”

  “Well,” Miranda says. She pats Fenny on the broad cuff of the sleeve of his lovely coat. She wonders what the lining is. How cold he must be. How stupid he is, standing out here when he is welcome inside. “Merry Christmas. Good night.”

  She reaches out one last time, touches the embroidered fox, its leg caught in the trap. Stem stitch and seed stitch and herringbone. “It’s very fine work, truly,” she says. “But I hope he gets free.”

  “He was stupid to get caught,” Fenny says, “you peculiar and annoying child.” He is already turning back to the window. What does he see through it? When Miranda is finally back inside the drawing room where tipsy Honeywells are all roaring out inappropriate lyrics to carols, pulling Christmas crackers, putting on paper crowns, she looks through the window. The snow has stopped. No one is there.

  BUT ELSPETH HONEYWELL, as it happens, remembers Miranda the next year and the year and the year after that. There are presents for Miranda under the magnificent tree. A ticket to a London musical that she never sees. A makeup kit when she is thirteen.

  The year she is eleven, Daniel gives her a chess set and a box of assorted skeins of silk thread. Under her black tights, Miranda wears a red braided leather anklet that came in an envelope, no letter, from Phuket. The kittens are all grown up and pretend not to know her.

  The year she is twelve, she looks for the mysterious Fenny. He isn’t there. When she asks, no one knows who she means.

  The year she is thirteen, she has champagne for the first time.

  The Christmas she is fourteen, she feels quite grown up. The man in the justacorps was a dream, or some story she made up for herself in order to feel interesting. At fourteen she’s outgrown fairytales, Santa Claus, ghost stories. When Daniel points out that they are standing under the mistletoe, she kisses him once on each cheek. And then sticks her tongue in his ear.

  IT SNOWS AGAIN the Christmas she is fifteen. Snow is predicted, snow falls. Something about the chance of snow makes her think of him again. The man in the snowy garden. There is no man in the garden, of course; there never was. But there is Honeywell Hall, which is enough – and seemingly endless heaps of Honeywell adults behaving as if they were children again.

  It’s exhausting, almost Olympic, the amount of fun Honeywells seem to require. She can’t decide if it’s awful or if it’s wonderful.

  Late in the afternoon the Honeywells are playing charades. No fun, playing with people who do this professionally. Miranda stands at the window, watching the snow fall, looking for something. Birds. A fox. A man in the garden.

  A Honeywell shouts, “Good god, no! Cleopatra came rolled up in a carpet, not in the Sunday supplement!”

  Daniel is up in his room, talking to his father on Skype.

  Miranda moves from window to window, pretending she is not looking for anything in particular. Far down the grounds, she sees something out of place. Someone. She’s out the door in a flash.

  “Going for a walk!” she yells while the door is swinging closed. In case anyone cares.

  She finds the man navigating along the top of the old perimeter wall, stepping stone to stone. Fenny. He knocks a stick against each stone as he goes.

  “You,” he says. “I wondered if I’d see you again.”

  “Miranda,” she says. “I bet you forgot.”

  “No,” he says. “I didn’t. Want to come up?”

  He holds out his hand. She hesitates, and he says, “Suit yourself.”

  “I can get up by myself,” she says, and does. She’s in front of him now. Walks backwards so that she can keep an eye on him.

  “You’re not a Honeywell,” he says.

  “No,” she says. “You are.”

  “Yes,” he says. “Sort of.”

  She stops then, so that he has to stop, too. It isn’t like they could keep on going anyway. There’s a gap in the wall just behind her.

  “I remember when they built this wall,” he says.

  She’s probably misheard him. Or else he’s teasing her. She says, “You must be very old.”

  “Older than you anyway,” he says. He sits down on the wall, so she sits down, too. Honeywell Hall is in front of them. There’s a copse of woods behind. Snow falls lazily, a bit of wind swirling it, tossing it up again.

  “Why do you always wear that coat?” Miranda says. She fidgets a little. He
r bum is getting cold. “You shouldn’t sit on a dirty wall. It’s too nice.” She touches the embroidered beetle, the fox.

  “Someone very. . . special gave it to me,” he says. “I wear it always because it is her wish that I do so.” The way he says it makes Miranda shiver just a little.

  “Right,” she says. “Like my anklet. My mother sent it to me. She’s in prison. She’ll never get out. She’ll be there until she dies.”

  “Like the fox,” he says.

  “Like your fox,” Miranda says. She’s horrified to find that her eyes are watering. Is she crying? It isn’t even a real fox. She doesn’t want to look at the man in the coat, Fenny, to see if he’s noticed, so she jumps down off the wall and begins to walk back toward the house.

  When she’s halfway to the Hall, the drifting snow stops. She looks back; no one sits on the wall.

  THE SNOW STOPS and starts, on and off all day long. When dinner is finished, Honeywells groaning, clutching their bellies, Elspeth has something for Miranda. Elspeth says, wagging the present between two fingers like it’s a special treat, Miranda some stray puppy, “Someone left it on the doorstep for you, Miranda. I wonder who.”

  The wrapping is a sheet of plain white stationery, tied with a bit of green thread. Her name in a scratchy hand. Miranda. Inside is a scrap of rose damask, the embroidered fox, snarling; the mangled leg, the bloodied trap.

  “Let me see, sweet,” Elspeth says, and takes the rose damask from her. “What a strange present! A joke?”

  “I don’t know,” Miranda says. “Maybe.”

  It’s eight o’clock. Honeywell Hall, up on its hill, must shine like a torch. Miranda puts on her coat and walks around the house three times. The snow has all melted. Daniel intercepts her on the final circuit. He’s pimply, knobbly at present, and his nose is too big for his face. She loves him dearly, just like she loves Elspeth. They are always kind to her. “Here,” he says, handing her the bit of damask. “Secret Santa? Secret admirer? Secret code?”

  “Oh, you know,” Miranda says. “Long story. Saving it for my memoirs.”

  “Meanwhile back in there everyone’s pretending it’s 1970 and they’re all sweet sixteen again. Playing Sardines and drinking. It’ll be orgies in all the cupboards, dramatic confessions and attempted murders in the pantry, under the stairs, in the beds and under them all night long. So I took this and snuck out.” Daniel shows her the bottle of Strongbow in his coat pocket. “Let’s go and sit in the Tiger. You can tell me all about school and the agony aunt, I’ll tell you which Tory MP Elspeth’s been seeing on the sly. Then you can sell the story to The Sun.”

  “And use the proceeds to buy us a cold-water flat in Wolverhampton. We’ll live the life,” Miranda says.

  They drink the cider and eat a half-melted Mars bar. They talk and Miranda wonders if Daniel will try to kiss her. If she should try to kiss Daniel. But he doesn’t, she doesn’t – they don’t – and she falls asleep on the mouse-eaten upholstery of the preposterous carcass of the Sunbeam Tiger, her head on Daniel’s shoulder, the trapped fox crumpled in her fist.

  CHRISTMAS AFTER, ELSPETH is in all the papers. The Tory MP’s husband is divorcing her. Elspeth is a co-respondent in the divorce. Meanwhile she has a new thing with a footballer twenty years her junior. It’s the best kind of Christmas story. Journalists everywhere. Elspeth, in the Sunbeam Tiger, picks up Miranda at the station in a wide-brimmed black hat, black jumpsuit, black sunglasses, triumphantly disgraced. In her element.

  Miranda’s aunt almost didn’t let her come this year. But then, if Miranda had stayed, they would have both been miserable. Her aunt has a new boyfriend. Almost as awful as she is. Someone should tell the tabloids.

  “Lovely dress,” Elspeth says, kissing her on the cheek. “You make it?” Miranda is particularly pleased with the hem. “It’s all right.” “I want one just like it,” Elspeth says. “In red. Lower the neckline, raise the hem a bit. You could go into business. Ever think of it?”

  “I’m only sixteen,” Miranda says. “There’s plenty of room for improvement.”

  “Alexander McQueen! Left school when he was sixteen,” Elspeth says.

  “Went off to apprentice on Savile Row. Used to sew human hair into his linings. A kind of spell, I suppose. I have one of his manta dresses somewhere in the Hall. And your mother, she was barely older than you are now.

  Hanging around backstage, stitching sequins and crystals on tulle.” “Where’s Daniel?” Miranda says. She and her mother have been corresponding. Miranda is saving up money. She hasn’t told her aunt yet, but next summer Miranda’s going to Thailand.

  “Back at the house. In a mood. Listening to my old records. The Smiths.” Miranda looks over, studies Elspeth’s face. “That girl broke up with him, didn’t she?”

  “If you mean the one with the ferrets and the unfortunate ankles,” Elspeth says, “yes. What’s her name. It’s a mystery. Not her name, the breakup. He grows three inches in two months, his skin clears up, honestly, Miranda, he’s even better looking than I expected he’d turn out. Heart of gold, that boy, a good brain, too. I can’t think what she was thinking.”

  “Preemptive strike, perhaps,” Miranda says.

  “I wouldn’t know about the breakup except for accidentally overhearing a conversation. Somewhat accidentally,” Elspeth says. “Well, that and the Smiths. He doesn’t talk to me about his love life.”

  “Do you want him to talk to you about his love life?”

  “No,” Elspeth says. “Yes. Maybe? Probably not. Anyway, how about you, Miranda? Do you have one of those, yet? A love life?”

  “I don’t even have ferrets,” Miranda says.

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE, while all the visiting Honeywells and cousins and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and their accountants are out caroling in the village, Elspeth takes Miranda and Daniel aside. She gives them each a joint.

  “It’s not as if I don’t know you’ve been raiding my supply, Daniel,” Elspeth says. “At least this way, I know what you’re up to. If you’re going to break the law, you might as well learn to break it responsibly. Under adult supervision.”

  Daniel rolls his eyes, looks at Miranda. Whatever he sees in her face makes him snort. It’s annoying but true: he really has become quite spectacular looking. Well, it was inevitable. Apparently they drown all the ugly Honeywells at birth.

  “It’s okay, Mirandy,” he says. “I’ll have yours if you don’t want it.” Miranda sticks the joint in her bra. “Thanks, but I’ll hang on to it.”

  “Anyway I’m sure the two of you have lots of catching up to do,” Elspeth says. “I’m off to the pub to kiss the barmaids and make the journos cry.”

  When she’s out the door, Daniel says, “She’s matchmaking, isn’t she?”

  Miranda says, “Or else it’s reverse psychology?”

  Their eyes meet. Courage, Miranda. Daniel tilts his head, looks gleeful. “In which case, I should do this,” he says. He leans forward, puts his hand on Miranda’s chin, tilts it up. “We should do this.”

  He kisses her. His lips are soft and dry. Miranda sucks on the bottom one experimentally. She arranges her arms around his neck, and his hands go down, cup her bum. He opens his mouth and does things with his tongue until she opens her mouth, too. He seems to know how this goes; he and the girl with the ferrets probably did this a lot.

  Miranda wonders if the ferrets were in the cage at the time, or out. How unsettling is it, she wonders, to fool around with ferrets watching you? Their beady button eyes.

  She can feel Daniel’s erection. Oh, God. How embarrassing. She pushes him away. “Sorry,” she groans. “Sorry! Yeah, no, I don’t think we should be doing this. Any of this!”

  “Probably not,” Daniel says. “Probably definitely not. It’s weird, right?” “It’s weird,” Miranda says.

  “But perhaps it wouldn’t be so weird if we smoked a joint first,” Daniel says. His hair is messy. Apparently she did that.

  “Or,” Miranda says, “ma
ybe we could just smoke a joint. And, you know, not complicate things.”

  Halfway through the joint, Daniel says, “It wouldn’t have to complicate everything.” His head is in her lap. She’s curling pieces of his hair around her finger.

  “Yes, it would,” Miranda says. “It really, really would.”

  Later on she says, “I wish it would snow. That would be nice. If it snowed.

  I thought that’s why you lot came here at Christmas. The whole white Christmas thing.”

  “Awful stuff,” Daniel says. “Cold. Slippy. Makes you feel like you’re supposed to be singing or something. In a movie. Or in a snow globe.” “Stuck,” Miranda says. “Trapped.”

  “Stuck,” Daniel says.

  They’re lying, tangled together, on a sofa across from the Christmas tree.

  Occasionally Miranda has to remove Daniel’s hand from somewhere it shouldn’t be. She doesn’t think he’s doing it intentionally. She kisses him behind the ear now and then. “That’s nice,” he says. Pats her bum. She wriggles out from under his hand. Kisses him again. There’s a movie on television, lots of explosions. Zombies. Cameron Diaz unloading groceries in a cottage, all by herself.

  No, that’s another movie entirely, Miranda thinks. Apparently she’s been asleep. Daniel is still sleeping. Why does he have to be so irritatingly goodlooking, even in his sleep? Miranda hates to think what she looks like asleep.

  No wonder the ferret girl dumped him.

  Elspeth must have come back from the pub, because there’s a heap of blankets over the both of them.

  Outside, it’s snowing.

  Miranda puts her hand in the pocket of her dress, feels the piece of damask she has had there all day long. It’s a big pocket. Plenty of room for all kinds of things. Miranda doesn’t want to be one of those designers who only makes pretty things. She wants them to be useful, too. And provoking. She takes the prettiest blanket from the sofa for herself, distributes the other blankets over Daniel so that all of him is covered.