The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 12

by Jonathan Strahan

  It was meant to be a reassurance, but it backfired—the trip from the closet to the bathroom took seven turns each way, so soap was hard to come by. Papa would be angry if I came home painted.

  “Catch two matching fish and win a prize!” a carnie called. He was an odd assemblage of parts, with one small brown arm and one bulky white one. His legs were slightly different lengths, and his ceramic face was crisscrossed with scratch marks. He held out a long pole with a tiny net on the end, a net barely big enough to hold a single fish.

  “Don’t they all match?” I leaned over the tub of water to study the orange fish. They buzzed quietly and some mechanism propelled them forward and sent out streams of bubbles behind them.

  The man dipped the net into the water and caught one of the fish. He flipped open a panel on its belly, and revealed a number—four. “The fish are numbered one through ten, and you’ll get to pick three. Any two of ’em match and you win!”

  I eyed the prizes—an assortment of miniature animals, mostly cats, all with tiny golden keys. Keys so small that even I could turn them, so there’d be no need to wait each night for the maker to wind them up.

  “Take these buttons in trade?”

  The man laughed. “No, but if you didn’t buy any tickets I’ll let you work for a play—a turn for a turn, as they say.”

  Unlike Papa, he could see how tight I was wound, and he put me to work hauling boxes from his platform to a car on the far end of the train. The work was satisfying, and it let me gawk at the rest of the carnival. When I was done, he handed me the net. “Any three fish that catch your fancy. Good luck!”

  The net was long and hard to handle, but I dipped it into the water. It came up empty and dripping. Fishing was not as easy as the man had made it look. I tried again, and this time brought up a fish that whirred loudly as it came out of the water. The man pushed in a pin to stop the gears and flipped open a panel to reveal the number 8.

  My next two fish were numbered 3 and 4.

  “Do any of them match?” I handed back the net, frowning and studying the pool. There were easily a hundred fish. “I guess with so many they must.”

  “You have to look closer at the fish.” A freckle-faced kid climbed up onto the platform. He scooped up a fish, checked the number on the bottom, then studied the pond. “This one’s a six, so I just have to find a match.”

  With a smooth practiced motion he dipped the net back in, and pulled out another fish. He showed me the number on the bottom—another six.

  “How did you—”

  “One of the 6s has a busted tail, swims in circles.”

  “But the other one, what if you’d gotten something else?”

  “This one has a chip of paint missing.”

  “I’m Zee.”

  “Endivale,” he said, but added quickly, “You can call me Vale. Hey Pops, okay if I take my free turns to show Zee around?”

  The man running the fish game studied us for a minute, then nodded.

  Vale took my hand, “Come on, you gotta hear the nightingale sing, she’s amazing.”

  So off we went. The nightingale turned out to be a woman with brown-feathered wings that matched her dark skin. Vale wasn’t lying. She sang beautifully, any song that the crowd shouted to her.

  For twelve turns we explored the carnival—we watched the acrobats, and lost the ring-toss game, and rode on the backs of the dancing bears. Then Vale had to stop, because he didn’t have so many turns as me.

  “You seem to know everyone at the carnival,” I said, when we sat down on the edge of an empty platform. “Do you know my mother? She’s very distinctive—a woman with eight spider legs.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard of her—Lady Arachna, right? She’s Carnival Four.”

  “Carnival Four?”

  Vale gestured down at the platform below us. “You can’t see it with the platforms folded down, but the train cars are numbered so they stay matched up. All the cars in this train are marked nine, so we’re Carnival Nine. Pops and I are here because they had an empty platform for him to run his game. My other dad is at Carnival Two because he’s an acrobat, and Nine already has more acrobats than we really need.”

  “So you never see him?”

  “There’s only one track through here, but the trains run the whole house, with cities along the route where we stop and entertain folks. Some places there are clusters of tracks where the trains pass each other, or turn around. I’ve seen him a couple times.”

  We talked a bit more, and he snuck me in to see the bearded lady and a snake man whose skin was covered in iridescent green scales. The carnival was amazing, and I never wanted to leave, but I could feel the tension leaving my spring. I only had a few turns left, barely enough to get home. “I have to go.”

  “I’m almost out of turns anyway.”

  I hopped down from the platform. Vale put his hand on my shoulder. “I lied about some of the fish looking different. There’s no missing paint or broken tails. The fish have more than one number, depending on which way you open the panels. Don’t tell Pops I told you.”

  Something passed between us then, in that moment where he trusted me. Somehow it meant more than all the marvels I’d seen. It didn’t even occur to me to get angry that the game was rigged until I was more than halfway home.

  “You didn’t untangle the thread,” Papa said when I came in.

  The multicolored jumble of thread was on the table where I’d left it.

  “I had so much energy, and the train brought the carnival—”

  “Go to bed, Zee. We’re out of turns.”

  I SPENT MY days untangling threads and learned to sew scraps of fabric into clothes. On my 200th day, Papa took me into town and we swapped out my child-sized limbs for adult ones, and repainted my face. Trains came and went, but I never had enough extra turns to visit the carnival. Then one morning Papa came back from the city early, pulling a wheeled cart. “What happened?”

  “Granny and Gramps wound all the way down.”

  “But the maker can wind them again tonight, and—”

  Papa shook his head. “No, there comes a time when our bodies cannot hold the turns. We all get our thousand days, give or take a few. Then we wind down for the last time. It is the way of things.”

  I knew we didn’t go on forever, because some of my friends were made of parts from the Closet City recycling center. The recycling center melted down old parts to make new ones. So, I knew. But at the same time I’d never known anyone who was broken down for parts before. Granny had painted my face and Gramps always told the best stories about the maker.

  “I wish I could have visited them before they wound down.”

  “I didn’t know they’d go today. They were only in their early 900s.”

  “Are you going to take them to the recycling center?”

  He shook his head. “The recycling center is well stocked, but the carnivals are often hurting for parts. When the next train comes, we’ll take them there.”

  I knew it wasn’t right to be excited on the day that Granny and Gramps died, but while I waited to wind down and sleep, I couldn’t help but imagine all the marvels we would see.

  THE NEXT TRAIN turned out to be number nine. I was a little disappointed because I’d already seen most of Carnival Nine, but then I remembered Vale and how he’d shared the secret trick with the fish. I didn’t see him as I followed Papa to the platform at the front of the train, or while we laid Granny and Gramps out on the red-painted wood. One of the carnival mechanics knelt next to Granny, and Papa leaned over and whispered, “I’m going to stay to watch them disassembled, but you don’t have to. You did your turns helping me pull the cart to get them here.”

  The mechanic peeled away the fabric that covered Granny’s torso and unscrewed her metal chest plate. I wanted to remember her whole, not in tiny pieces. I squeezed Papa’s hand, then let go and walked along the length of the carnival.

  Vale found me about halfway down the train. He had swapped ou
t his childhood limbs too, and when they repainted his face they’d gotten rid of his freckles. His hair was darker now, which suited him. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry about your grandparents.”

  “How did you—”

  He shrugged. “Pops saw you come in. He said I could have some turns off, if you want to watch the acrobats.”

  There was a mischievous gleam in his eyes when he said it, and it sounded like a grand adventure. Vale took me to a huge green-and-white striped tent next to the train tracks and we held hands and watched as acrobats walked tightropes and leapt between swings suspended high above the ground.

  I loved the show, but halfway through Vale stopped watching.

  “Seen this show too many times?” I asked.

  “No. Well, yeah, but mostly it reminds me of my dad. Pops is great, but we don’t always get along so well. He wants me to take over the fish someday, but I hate that the whole thing is a cheat.”

  I wouldn’t have minded staying for the rest of the show, but I didn’t want him to be sad. We snuck out and headed back to the train. “Can you switch carnivals?”

  “I’m not built to be an acrobat like Dad. My parts aren’t that good. Really all I’m built for is running a game, and if I’m going to do that, I might as well stay here.”

  “You could leave the carnival and stay in Closet City,” I said, suddenly aware that we were still holding hands. “It’s... Well, it’s terribly boring actually.”

  He laughed. It was getting late and he was nearly out of turns. “I was thinking I might come up with a different game, one that’s hard, but doesn’t involve any cheats.”

  I couldn’t quite keep the disappointment off my face. I almost wished I hadn’t said anything about Closet City being boring, but it was the complete truth. “Yeah, I guess it’d be hard to give up the adventure of the carnival to stay in a place like this.”

  He pulled me closer and spoke softly in my ear, “Why don’t you come with me when the carnival moves on?”

  Papa could take care of himself, and I was old enough to go. I told him on our walk home, and the next morning I packed up my things and said goodbye. It was a sudden shift, an abrupt departure, but Papa understood that I had always been restless. He loved me enough to let me go. When the carnival moved on, I went with it. With Vale.

  FIVE TRAINS WERE at the grand junction when we arrived, and Vale helped me find Carnival Four so that I could look for my mother. He would have stayed, but Carnival Two was at the junction as well, and I told him to go and visit with his dad. Vale and I would have plenty of time together later, and I wanted some time alone with my mother. I hadn’t seen her since I was new.

  She was easy to find, her train car clearly labeled ‘the amazing spider-woman,’ with pictures of her painted large on the side of the car. I knocked on the door and she slid it open, staring down at me and tapping one of her forelegs. “Yes?”

  My gears whirred tight in my chest. She didn’t recognize me, and why would she? My limbs were different, my face was repainted. She had left a child, and I was a woman now. “I’m Zee. I came with Carnival Nine, and I wanted... well, to see you, I guess.”

  “Oh, my daughter, Zee.” Her foreleg went still, and she tilted her head, studying me. “What is it you do with Carnival Nine?”

  “Vale is teaching me to run one of the games,” I admitted, knowing that it was one of the lowest jobs in the carnival. Being an acrobat or a performer required more skill, but the games were mostly con jobs. Nearly anyone could do it, with enough practice.

  Mother didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched long and awkward between us.

  “Papa is still in Closet City,” I told her, more to fill the silence than anything. “We lost Granny and Gramps, a few weeks back.” I tried to think of more news from Closet City, but since mother had stayed with the train she probably wouldn’t know most of the people I’d grown up with. It was a strange feeling, my strong desire to bond with someone who was a complete stranger. In my mind, the meeting had gone differently. She had loved me simply because I was her daughter, and we’d had an instant connection.

  “I’m sorry to hear they’ve wound down.” She paused for a moment. “Look, I’m really not the maternal sort—it’s why Lars took you to Closet City to raise you. I’m—well—I’m not very nice. I’m selfish. I like to use my turns for myself, and I never spared a lot of turns for my relationship with Lars. Certainly I never had enough for you.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I wanted to be angry with her, but she was a stranger, she’d never really been a part of my life. That was how things were and I was used to it. Mostly I was disappointed. Sad that my dreams about reuniting with my mother had died. We talked a little longer about nothing of importance, and then I went back to Carnival Nine, home to Vale. I vowed that I wouldn’t be like my mother. I was blessed with a lot of turns, and I would use them for more than just myself.

  THE TRAIN TOOK us in slow circles, stopping to perform at the cities. I settled into the routine of carnival life—collapsing the walls of our train car to make our platform, setting up the dart game that Vale designed, packing everything away again when it was time to move along. The days blurred one into the next, obscuring the passage of time. Then one day I realized that I was over 400 days old, which meant that I had been with the carnival longer than I’d lived in Closet City.

  I wasn’t old yet, but I was no longer young.

  “You sure you’re ready to do this?” Vale took me to the front car where all the parts were.

  I nodded. Our train’s next stop was the maker’s workbench; this was the right time for us to make our child.

  He started picking through the gears, laying out everything we’d need to build a child. “My half-sister has these great pincers, like lobster claws—”

  “I thought maybe he could look more like us.” Carnies came with a wide variety of parts, which was fun for shows, but the more outlandish ones all reminded me of my mother. “Hands would be more versatile if we ever settle down in a city. What if he doesn’t want to be a performer?”

  Vale frowned. “He could change his parts, I suppose. But what happened to your sense of adventure?”

  When I’d lived in Closet City, the carnival had been exciting for the brief time it had stayed. But being a part of the carnival—well, the obligations of life and livelihood sucked away the wonder. It was the novelty that had drawn me here, and half a lifetime later the novelty had worn away. But I couldn’t bring myself to say so to Vale.

  “So if he wants pincers when he’s older, he can swap out his limbs that way too.” I kept my voice calm, but worry gnawed at me. We had agreed on building a boy, but we hadn’t talked much about the details. I rummaged through the pile until I found an arm, dark-skinned like the nightingale lady, but smaller, child-sized. It didn’t have a match, but there was another that was only slightly paler. Would anyone notice? Probably someone had already taken the other half of each set. “What about these?”

  “Okay.” He was less enthusiastic now, and I felt bad that I’d shot down his first suggestion so quickly. I looked for parts that would be a compromise, interesting enough for him, but nothing as extreme as my mother’s spider legs. Nothing that would evoke memories of a woman who thought it’d be a waste of turns to raise me.

  We worked quietly for a while, the silence awkward. Finally he pulled out a face, an ordinary shape but painted with streaks of black and white. He held it up. I hated it, but it was only paint. Paint could easily be removed and redone, later. It was less work than swapping out parts. The structure of the face underneath was good. I nodded. It broke the tension.

  “Dad said there might be a place for us at Carnival Two, working the show with the dancing bears.” He kept his gaze firmly on our son, focusing his attention on attaching the black-and-white streaked head to the still-empty torso. “It’d be a step up from running a dart game, a better position for our son.”

  Thinking about our son w
orking a show at the carnival made me remember my own childhood. I had always wanted adventure, but now dancing bears seemed more dangerous than glamorous. Life on the tracks was harder, even for me with all my turns. Carnival folk almost never made it to a thousand days. Their springs gave out when people were in their 800s, sometimes even sooner. “I want what’s best for him.”

  Vale took my hand and smiled. “Me too.”

  The train took us to the maker’s bench, and we laid out our son’s body, chest open. Tonight the maker would give him a mainspring and wind him for the very first time.

  “Should we name him now, or after we’ve gotten to know him?” My parents had waited to name me until my second day, because they wanted to be sure the name would fit.

  “It’s good luck to name him before he goes to the maker. He’ll get a better spring that way,” Vale answered. “What about Matts? That was my grandad’s name.”

  I thought about my Grandad, and all the stories he’d told about the maker. “My grandad was Ettan. What about Mattan? We could still call him Matts for short.”

  Vale nodded, slowly, his spring winding down. “I like that.”

  THE MAKER GAVE me forty-three turns the day that I met my child. My darling Mattan got only four. Something was wrong with his mainspring. I was definitely no mechanic, but I could hear it, a strained and creaking noise like metal bending to its breaking point. What could you do with four turns? How could I teach him the world if that was all he had to work with?

  I picked up my son and carried him to meet Vale. My mind churned with worry for my son’s future and guilt at having more than my share of turns, but at the same time I was grateful to be wound up enough for everything that needed to be done. I saved Mattan a turn of walking by using an extra one of mine to carry him, and he could see the world that way. Light from the ceiling reflected off the white stripes across his face, and I admired the contrast against the black. I had been too hasty in condemning Vale’s choice, it was unusual, but striking.