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

by Jonathan Strahan

  A grandfather oaktree grew between the fields, south and north. Pa agreed with Easter. “That big ole thing is in the way, ain’t it? But your brother always used to say, Don’t you never, never cut down that tree, Wilbur. And it do make a nice shady spot to rest, anyway. Why don’t you go set over there for a while, baby child?”

  Easter knew Pa thought she must be worn out and sorry she’d come, just watching him stoop for leaves, whack them off the plant with his knife, and lay them out in the sun. But Easter loved watching him work, loved to follow and listen to him wisely going on about why this, why that.

  Pa, though, put a hand on her back and kind of scootched her on her way over toward the tree, so Easter went. Pa and Señor began to chant some work song in Spanish. Iyá oñió oñí abbé...

  Once in the oaktree’s deep shade, there was a fascinating discovery round the north side of the big trunk. Not to see, or to touch – or know in any way Easter had a name for – but she could feel the exact shape of what hovered in the air. And this whirligig thing’um, right here, was exactly what kept all the angels hereabouts leashed, year after year, to chase away pests, bring up water from deep underground when too little rain fell, or dry the extra drops in thin air when it rained too much. And she could tell somebody had jiggered this thing together who hardly knew what they were doing. It wasn’t but a blown breath or rough touch from being knocked down.

  Seeing how rickety the little angel-engine was, Easter wondered if she couldn’t do better. Pa and Señor did work awful hard every May shoveling dirt to make those hills, and now in August they had to come every day to cut whichever leaves had grown big enough. Seemed like the angels could just do everything...

  “You all right over there, baby girl?” Pa called. Dripping sweat in the glare, he wiped a sleeve across his brow. “Need me to take you back to the house?”

  “I’m all right,” Easter shouted back. “I want to stay, Pa!” She waved, and he stooped down again, cutting leaves. See there? Working so hard! She could help if she just knocked this rickety old thing down, and put it back together better. Right on the point of doing so, she got one sharp pinch from her conscience.

  Every time Easter got ready to do something bad there was a moment beforehand when a little bitty voice – one lonely angel, maybe – would whisper to her. Aw, Easter. You know good and well you shouldn’t. Nearly always she listened to this voice. After today and much too late, she always would.

  But sometimes you just do bad, anyhow.

  Easter picked a scab off her knee and one fat drop welled from the pale tender scar underneath. She dabbed a finger in it, and touched the bloody tip to the ground.

  The angel-engine fell to pieces. Screaming and wild, the angels scattered every which way. Easter called and begged, but she could no more get the angels back in order than she could have grabbed hold of a mighty river’s gush.

  And the tobacco field...!

  Ice frosted the ground, the leaves, the plants, and then melted under sun beating down hotter than summer’s worst. The blazing blue sky went cloudy and dark, and boiling low clouds spat frozen pellets, some so big they drew blood and raised knots. Millions of little noises, little motions, each by itself too small to see or hear, clumped into one thick sound like God’s two hands rubbing together, and just as gusts of wind stroke the green forest top, making the leaves of the trees all flip and tremble, there was a unified rippling from one end of the tobacco field to the other. Not caused by hands, though, nor by the wind – by busy worms, a billion hungry worms. Grayish, from maggot-size to stubby snakes, these worms ate the tobacco leaves with savage appetite. While the worms feasted, dusty cloud after dusty cloud of moths fluttered up from the disappearing leaves, all hail-torn and frostblackened, half and then wholly eaten.

  In the twinkling of an eye, the lush north field was stripped bare. Nothing was left but naked leaf veins poking spinily from upright woody stems – not a shred of green leaf anywhere. But one year’s crop was nothing to the angels’ hunger. They were owed much more for so many years’ hard labor. Amidst the starving angels, Pa and Señor stood dazed in the sudden wasteland of their tobacco field. All the sweet living blood of either this man or the other would just about top off the angels’ thirsty cup.

  Easter screamed. She called for some help to come – any help at all.

  And help did come. A second of time split in half and someone came walking up the break.

  LIKE THE WAY you and Soubrette work on all that book learning together. Same as that. You gotta know your letters, gotta know your numbers, for some things, or you just can’t rightly take part. Say, for instance, you had some rich colored man, and say this fellow was very rich indeed. But let’s say he didn’t know his numbers at all. Couldn’t even count his own fingers up to five. Now, he ain’t a bad man, Easter, and he ain’t stupid either, really. It’s just that nobody ever taught numbering to him. So, one day this rich man takes a notion to head over to the bank, and put his money into markets and bonds, and what have you. Now let me ask you, Easter. What you think gon’ happen to this colored man’s big ole stack of money, once he walks up in that white man’s bank, and gets to talking with the grinning fellow behind the counter? You tell me. I wanna hear what you say.

  Ma’am. The white man’s gonna see that colored man can’t count, Ma’am, and cheat him out of all his money.

  That’s right he is, Easter! And I promise you it ain’t no other outcome! Walk up in that bank just as rich as you please – but you gon’ walk out with no shoes, and owing the shirt on your back! Old Africa magic’s the same way, but worse, Easter, cause it ain’t money we got, me and you – all my babies had – and my own mama, and the grandfather they brung over on the slave ship. It’s life. It’s life and death, not money. Not play-stuff. But, listen here – we don’t know our numbers no more, Easter. See what I’m saying? That oldtime wisdom from over there, what we used to know in the Africa land, is all gone now. And, Easter, you just can’t walk up into the spirits’ bank not knowing your numbers. You rich, girl. You got gold in your pockets, and I know it’s burning a hole. I know cause it burnt me, it burnt your brother. But I pray you listen to me, baby child, when I say – you walk up in that bank, they gon’ take a heap whole lot more than just your money.

  NOTHING MOVED. PA and Señor stood frozen, the angels hovering just before the pounce. Birds in the sky hung there, mid-wingbeat, and even a blade of grass in the breath of the wind leaned motionless, without shivering. Nothing moved. Or just one thing did – a man some long way off, come walking this way toward Easter. He was miles off, or much farther than that, but every step of his approach crossed a strange distance. He bestrode the stillness of the world and stood before her in no time.

  In the kindest voice, he said, “You need some help, baby child?” Trembling, Easter nodded her head.

  He sat right down. “Let us just set here for a while, then” – the man patted the ground beside him – “and make us a deal.”

  He was a white man tanned reddish from too much sun, or he could’ve had something in him maybe – been mixed up with colored or indian. Hair would’ve told the story, but that hid under the gray kepi of a Johnny Reb. He wore that whole uniform in fact, a filthy kerchief of Old Dixie tied around his neck.

  Easter sat. “Can you help my Pa and Señor, Mister? The angels about to eat ’em up!”

  “Oh, don’t you worry none about that!” the man cried, warmly reassuring. “I can help you, Easter, I most certainly can. But” – he turned up a long forefinger, in gentle warning – “not for free.”

  Easter opened her mouth.

  “Ot!” The man interrupted, waving the finger. “Easter, Easter, Easter...” He shook his head sadly. “Now why you wanna hurt my feelings and say you ain’t got no money? Girl, you know I don’t want no trifling little money. You know just what I want.”

  Easter closed her mouth. He wanted blood. He wanted life. And not a little drop or two, either – or the life of some chicke
n, mule, or cow. She glanced at the field of hovering angels. They were owed the precious life of one man, woman, or child. How much would he want to stop them?

  The man held up two fingers. “That’s all. And you get to pick the two. It don’t have to be your Pa and Señor at all. It could be any old body.” He waved a hand outwards to the world at large. “Couple folk you ain’t even met, Easter, somewhere far away. That’d be just fine with me.”

  Easter hardly fixed her mouth to answer before that still small voice spoke up. You can’t do that. Everybody is somebody’s friend, somebody’s Pa, somebody’s baby. It’d be plain dead wrong, Easter. This voice never said one word she didn’t already know, and never said anything but the God’s honest truth. No matter what, Easter wasn’t going against it, ever again.

  The man made a sour little face to himself. “Tell you what then,” he said. “Here’s what we’ll do. Right now, today, I’ll call off the angels, how about that? And then you can pay me what you owe by-and-by. Do you know what the word ‘currency’ means, Easter?”

  Easter shook her head.

  “It means the way you pay. Now, the amount, which is the worth of two lives, stays exactly the same. But you don’t have to pay in blood, in life, if you just change the currency, see? There’s a lot you don’t know right now, Easter, but with some time, you might could learn something useful. So let me help out Señor and your Pa today, and then me and you, we’ll settle up later on after while. Now when you wanna do the settling up?”

  Mostly, Easter had understood the word “later” – a sweet word! She really wouldn’t have minded some advice concerning the rest of what he’d said, but the little voice inside couldn’t tell her things she didn’t already know. Easter was six years old, and double that would make twelve. Surely that was an eternal postponement, nearabout. So far away it could hardly be expected to arrive. “When I’m twelve,” Easter said, feeling tricky and sly.

  “All right,” the man said. He nodded once, sharply, as folks do when the deal is hard but fair. “Let’s shake on it.”

  Though she was just a little girl, and the man all grown up, they shook hands. And the angels mellowed in the field, becoming like those she’d always known, mild and toothless, needing permission even to sweep a dusty floor, much less eat a man alive.

  “I’ll be going now, Easter.” The man waved toward the field, where time stood still. “They’ll all wake up just as soon as I’m gone.” He began to get up.

  Easter grabbed the man’s sleeve. “Wait!” She pointed at the ruins of two families’ livelihood. “What about the tabacky? We need it to live on!”

  The man looked where Easter gestured, the field with no green whatsoever, and thoughtfully pursed his lips. “Well, as you can see, this year’s tabacky is all dead and gone now. ’Tain’t nothing to do about that. But I reckon I could set the angels back where they was, so as next year – and on after that – the tabacky will grow up fine. Want me to do that, Easter?”

  “Yes!”

  The man cocked his head and widened his eyes, taking an attitude of the greatest concern. “Now you show, Easter?” he asked. “Cause that’s extry on what you already owe.”

  So cautioning was his tone, even a wildly desperate little girl must think twice. Easter chewed on her bottom lip. “How much extra?” she said at last.

  The man’s expression went flat and mean. “Triple,” he said. “And triple that again, and might as well take that whole thing right there, and triple it about ten more times.” Now the very nice face came back. “But what you gon’ do, baby girl? You messed up your Pa’s tabacky field. Gotta fix it.” He shrugged in deepest sympathy. “You know how to do that?”

  Easter had to shake her head.

  “Want me to then?”

  Easter hesitated... and then nodded. They shook on it.

  The man snapped his fingers. From all directions came the sounds and sensations of angels flocking back to their old positions. The man stood and brushed off the seat of his gray wool trousers.

  Easter looked up at him. “Who are you, Mister? Your name, I mean.”

  The man smiled down. “How ’bout you just call me the banker,” he said. “Cause – whew, baby girl – you owe me a lot! Now I’ll be seeing you after while, you hear?” The man became his own shadow, and in just the way that a lamp turned up bright makes the darkness sharpen and flee, his shadow thinned out along the ground, raced away, and vanished.

  “¡Madre de Díos!” Señor said, looking around at the field that had been all lush and full-grown a moment ago. He and Pa awakened to a desolation, without one remnant of the season’s crop. With winces, they felt at their heads, all cut and bruised from hailstones. Pa spun around then, to look at Easter, and she burst into tears.

  These tears lasted a while.

  Pa gathered her up in his arms and rushed her back to the house, but neither could Ma’am get any sense from Easter. After many hours she fell asleep, still crying, and woke after nightfall on her mother’s lap. In darkness, Ma’am sat on the porch, rocking in her chair. When she felt Easter move, Ma’am helped her sit up, and said, “Won’t you tell me what happened, baby child?” Easter tried to answer, but horror filled up her mouth and came pouring out as sobs. Just to speak about meeting that strange man was to cry with all the strength in her body. God’s grace had surely kept her safe in that man’s presence, but the power and the glory no longer stood between her and the revelation of something unspeakable. Even the memory was too terrible. Easter had a kind of fit and threw up what little was in her belly. Once more she wept to passing out.

  Ma’am didn’t ask again. She and Pa left the matter alone. A hard, scuffling year followed, without the money from the cigars, and only the very last few coins from the St. Louis gold to get them through.

  He was the Devil, Easter decided, and swallowed the wild tears. She decided to grow wise in her way as Pa was about tobacco, though there was nobody to teach her. The Devil wouldn’t face a fool next time.

  1908

  THE MOB WENT up and down Washington Street, breaking storefront windows, ransacking and setting all the black-owned business on fire. Bunch of white men shot up a barbershop and then dragged out the body of the owner, Scott Burton, to string up from a nearby tree. After that, they headed over to the residential neighborhood called the Badlands, where black folks paid high rent for slum housing. Some 12,000 whites gathered to watch the houses burn.

  – Dad

  1877, August 24

  AT THE CHURCH, the Ladies’ Missionary Society and their daughters began to gather early before service. The morning was gray and muggy, not hot at all, and the scent of roses, as sweet and spoiled as wine, soaked the soft air. “Easter, you go right ahead and cut some for the tables,” Mrs. Toussaint said, while they walked over to the church. “Any that you see, still nice and red.” She and Soubrette carried two big pans of jambalaya rouge. Easter carried the flower vases. Rosebushes taller than a man grew in front of every house on the Drive, and were all heavily blooming with summer’s doomed roses. Yet Easter could only stop here and there and clip one with the scissors Mrs. Toussaint had given her, since most flowers had rotted deeply burgundy or darker, long past their prime.

  With more effort than anybody could calculate, the earth every year brought forth these flowers, and then every year all the roses died. “What’s wrong, Easter?” Soubrette said.

  “Aw, it’s nothing.” Easter squeezed with her good hand, bracing the scissors against the heel of her ruint one. “I’m just thinking, is all.” She put the thorny clipping into a vase and made herself smile.

  At the church there were trestles to set up, wide boards to lay across them, tablecloths, flower vases, an immense supper and many desserts to arrange sensibly. And my goodness, didn’t anybody remember a lifter for the pie...? Girls – you run on back up to the house and bring both of mine...

  She and Soubrette were laying out the serving spoons when Easter saw her parents coming round Rosetree Dr
ive in the wagon. Back when the Mack family had first come to Rosetree, before Easter’s first birthday, all the white folks hadn’t moved to Greenville yet. And in those days Ma’am, Pa, and her brother still had ‘six fat pocketfuls’ of the gold from St. Louis, so they could have bought one of the best houses on the Drive. But they’d decided to live in the backwoods outside of town instead (on account of the old Africa magic, as Easter well knew, although telling the story Ma’am and Pa never gave the reason). Pa unloaded a big pot from the wagon bed, and a stack of clothcovered bread. Ma’am anxiously checked Easter over head to toe – shoes blacked and spotless, dress pressed and stiffly starched, and she laid her palm very lightly against Easter’s hair. “Not troubled at all, are you?” “No, Ma’am.”

  “Don’t really know what’s got me so wrought up,” Ma’am said. “I just felt like I needed to get my eyes on you – see you. But don’t you look nice!” The worry left Ma’am’s face. “And I declare, Octavia can do better by that head than your own mama.” Ma’am fussed a little with the ribbon in Easter’s hair, and then went to help Mrs. Toussaint, slicing the cakes.

  Across the table, Mrs. Freeman said, “I do not care for the look of these clouds.” And Mrs. Freeman frowned, shaking her head at the gray skies. “No, I surely don’t.”

  Won’t a drop fall today , the angels whispered in Easter’s ear. Sure ’nough rain hard tomorrow, though.

  Easter smiled over the table. “Oh, don’t you worry, Mrs. Freeman.” And with supernatural confidence, she said, “It ain’t gon’ rain today.”