The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four

by Jonathan Strahan

  "How are things going?" Merthe asks.

  "I should be the one asking that!" Elgir laughs. "Are you afraid?"

  "No." Surprisingly, it's the truth. He's too wound up to be scared. "Do you still believe what you said in the forest the other day? Do you still think it's such a good idea to swap bodies from time to time? Or has that precious woman's body changed your mind?"

  Elgir laughs. "Oh, yes, I believe it. We are trapped inside these bodies. We've learned since childhood that women do this or that and we never dare to break free of that mold. We're as pitiful as the men and women down South, who only know one way of living, except that we don't have the excuse of ignorance. But hell, it does feel good to sniff my children with this nose again. I'll grant you that." She turns sharply and her children squeal and take off. Obviously, "smelling the children" is a game with them.

  They turn into the square where a dozen men cheer when they see Merthe. Merthe turns around but she nods at him to go. She's got her arms full of toddler.

  "Do your best." Her face looks pinched. Merthe realizes that if he wins, she will lose her hunter.

  He salutes each of the four metallic pillars that mark the Fighting ground. They are made from the remnants of a ship that brought the People here from the sky. Or so the elders say. It seems impossible that people should sail through air. It is true, however, that bodies may only be exchanged within their embrace and only after Fight. Years ago, Merthe and Ita, like all newlyweds, spent some time trying to game the rules and learned that the only result was temporary impotence and a headache that lasted for hours.

  On a whim, he jumps into the Fighting square and seeks out Ita before combat begins. He stares at the judge, dares him to object, and takes Ita to the side.

  "Are you nervous?" he asks.

  She looks at him suspiciously. He sighs, takes her hand and brings the palm to his lips. Her eyes lighten up.

  "It's just a game, Ita."

  "Maybe it is to you. That's why you always lose."

  He lets go of her hand, turns to the crowd. People are coming from villages that he hasn't even been to. He wishes he could confide in Ita, but everything he says will be used against him.

  "I'm worried about Elgir," he blurts. "Who will hunt for her when I'm a woman?"

  Ita smiles. She thinks it's banter. "I think you'll be able to keep her in meat and gravy for a while yet."

  "Really? You would not object?"

  "Are you serious?"

  It's no use. He heads towards his corner and starts preparing.

  Roll of drums; the combatants step up to the judge. Merthe wonders whether he should try to imitate Elgir. Maybe he can just take Ita's hits and try to snatch an advantage when he sees it. Surely, it would be a lot less tiresome that fighting. He is so tired of fighting all the time.

  But then he realizes that this is Fight, not just any fight. His verbal skills do not matter and since combatants must remain silent, Ita's wit cannot hurt him inside the ring. Suddenly, he feels protected by those four pillars. He has a good half hour of silence ahead of him, maybe an hour if he can make the fight last. He yearns for intimacy without the burden of words. And there is nothing more intimate than violence.

  The drums are still and the crowd holds its breath. Ita starts bouncing and jabbing, trying to circle around him and hit him when he blinks. She moves fast—always a good strategy for a woman—and attempts to bring him down with repeated blows.

  Her first hit catches him unawares and he staggers back. No, Elgir's strategy won't work. There is blood in his mouth. He's supposed to hold still, he knows. Maybe feint a bit, watch for patterns and fell her with one decisive blow. Those same muscles that lend force to his blows suck up his energy. Unlike Ita, he cannot jump around forever. He is supposed to preserve his strength, not to commit, strike only when he can win.

  But he is so tired of doing what he's supposed to and maybe Elgir is right and we get caught up in patterns, live life within patterns, pushing ourselves beyond our limits because a man should lift that much, throw that far. And maybe, just maybe, Merthe realizes, we do the opposite and fall pitifully short because we've been told our bodies have less endurance that our wife's.

  Merthe starts bouncing. His feet know the way. Women fight like they dance, his mother taught him, and he was always such a good dancer.

  Ita's rhythm lets up in surprise and he jabs, but she ducks in time and starts bouncing again. He loves her technique and mirrors her as they spin round and round. Merthe is the ugly sibling, echoing heir elder's every move, struggling to copy what can only be born of natural grace.

  Ita doesn't know how to hit a moving target. She hasn't fought with a mobile partner for a long time.

  His breath is labored; she hardly breaks a sweat. She starts sweating; the pain in his chest won't let up. She pants and swerves; his vision clouds but he sees the gap in her defense and punches through.

  She crashes down and he falls right after. For a second, he wonders if she's all right. He put himself in that blow, his loves, his wants, his strengths and weaknesses. He wonders if it was too much for her. But she groans and sits up, spits blood and, of all things, laughs.

  "Well, you got me there."

  "I'm sorry," he says,

  "Oh no, you're not. You won."

  He lies back, head spinning. Yes, he won. His chest still hurts and he wonders how bad it is.

  The bell rings. She crawls up against him, sets her palm against his and they're off into the limbo of joy. Her mind rises up to him. For a second, both of them are in his body and hers hangs, limp, behind. He creeps in, wondering if the beams still hold in this castle which he's left so long ago. Merthe draws a breath which is oh, so sweet. She smells the male sweat of Ita next to her.

  But no. Two women need a hunter and a young androgen needs to learn that being a man isn't so bad. She pushes back into the old body. He regains control and shoves Ita into hers. She was so fond of her female form that it seems a pity to tear her from it. Plus, she made a terrible husband.

  Ita tumbles away from him and he sees disbelief in her eyes.

  "Really?"

  "Really."

  "You're leaving me! You're leaving with her!"

  It takes a moment for him to understand what she's saying. But, of course, she cannot fathom why anyone would want to be a man. The only explanation that she will consider is that Merthe plans to start a new life with Elgir and that he needs a man's body for that.

  "I'm not going with her." He doesn't say he's not leaving, though, because he's not quite sure what he'll do. He can support both women, but he doesn't have the strength for either. He needs time, alone, in silence. He knows just the place for that.

  The judge walks up and hesitates before signaling the end of the transition. The elders squirm, then shrug their shoulders. Merthe has won: he may do as he likes.

  That night, there's scratching at the door of the shed.

  "Does your mother know you're here?" He asks a trembling Serga standing by the doorway.

  "No. I think. I don't think so, she was asleep."

  Merthe lets heir in, moves his quilts to a corner and places a stack of blankets next to the fire for heir to sleep in. Shei stomps heir feet all the way to bed, and Merthe stays awake until the shivering melts into regular breathing and only soft childish hairs peek out from beneath the covers. He'll wake heir before sunrise and make heir go back to bed inside the house. Ita mustn't know that shei's fled to him for comfort after their separation. Merthe may be too confused to know what he wants, just yet, but he doesn't want to hurt Ita. Whether he can live with her or not is a different matter. The End.

  THE CINDERELLA GAME

  Kelly Link

  Kelly Link published her first story, "Water Off a Black Dog's Back", in 1995 and attended the Clarion writers workshop in the same year. A writer of subtle, challenging, sometimes whimsical fantasy, Link has published close to thirty stories which have won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, British SF, a
nd Locus awards, and which have been collected in 4 Stories, Stranger Things Happen, and Magic for Beginners. Link is also an accomplished editor, working on acclaimed small press 'zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. She co-edited The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror with husband Gavin J. Grant and Ellen Datlow. Her most recent book is Pretty Monsters, a collection of stories for young adults.

  One day Peter would have his own secret hideaway just like this one, his stepfather's forbidden room, up in the finished attic: leather couches, stereo system with speakers the size of school lockers, flat screen television, and so many horror movies you'd be able to watch a different one every night of the year. The movie Peter picked turned out to be in a foreign language, but it was still pretty scary and there were werewolves in it.

  "What are you doing?" someone said. Peter spilled popcorn all over the couch.

  His new stepsister Darcy stood in the door that went down to the second floor. Her hair was black and knotted and stringy, and, no surprise, she was wearing one of her dozens of princess dresses. This one had been pink and spangled at one point. Now it looked like something a zombie would wear to a fancy dress party.

  "What are you doing up here?" Peter saw, with fascinated horror, the greasy smears left behind on the leather as he chased popcorn back into the bowl. "Go away. Why aren't you asleep?"

  His stepsister said, "Dad says I'm not allowed to watch scary movies." She'd holstered a fairy wand in the pocket of her princess gown. The battered tiara on her head was missing most of its rhinestones.

  You are a scary movie, Peter thought. "How long have you been standing here?"

  "Not long. Since the werewolf bit the other lady. You were picking your nose."

  It got better and better. "If you're not allowed to watch scary movies, then what are you doing up here?"

  "What are you doing up here?" Darcy said. "We're not supposed to watch television up here without an adult. Why aren't you in bed? Where's Mrs. Daly?"

  "She had to go home. Somebody called and said her husband was in the hospital. Mom hasn't come back yet," Peter said. "So I'm in charge until they get home. She and your dad are still out on their we-won't-go-on-a-honeymoon-we'll just-have-a-mini-honeymoon-every-Monday-night-for-the-rest-of-our-lives special date. Apparently there was a wait at the restaurant, blah blah blah, and so they're going to a later movie. They called and I said that Mrs. Daly was in the bathroom. So just go back to bed, okay?"

  "You're not my babysitter," his stepsister said. "You're only three years older than me."

  "Four and a half years older," he said. "So you have to do what I say. If I told you to go jump in a fire then you'd have to jump. Got it?"

  "I'm not a baby," Darcy said. But she was. She was only eight.

  One of the movie werewolves was roaming through a house, playing hide and seek. There were puddles of blood everywhere. It came into a room where there was a parrot, reached up with a human-like paw, and opened the door of the cage. Peter and Darcy both watched for a minute, and then Peter said, "You are a baby. You have over a hundred stuffed animals. You know all the words to all the songs from The Little Mermaid. My mom told me you still wet the bed."

  "Why are you so mean?" She said it like she was actually curious.

  Peter addressed the werewolves. "How can I explain this so that someone your age will understand? I'm not mean. I'm just honest. It's not like I'm your real brother. We just happen to live in the same house because your father needed someone to do his taxes, and my mother is a certified accountant. The rest of it I don't even pretend to understand." Although he did. Her father was rich. His mother wasn't. "Okay? Now go to bed."

  "No." Darcy did a little dance, as if to demonstrate that she could do whatever she wanted.

  "Fine," he said. "Stay here and watch the werewolf movie then."

  "I don't want to."

  "Then go play princess or whatever it is you're always doing." Darcy had a closet with just princess dresses in it. And tiaras. And fairy wands. And fairy wings.

  "You play with me," she said. "Or I'll tell everyone you pick your nose."

  "Who cares," Peter said. "Go away."

  "I'll pay you."

  "How much?" he said, just out of curiosity.

  "Ten dollars."

  He thought for a minute. Her grandparents had given her a check for her birthday. Little kids never knew what to do with money and as far as he could tell, her father bought her everything she wanted anyway. And she got an allowance. Peter got one now too, of course, but he'd knocked a glass of orange juice over on his laptop and his mom said she was only going to pay for half of what a new one would cost. "Make it fifty."

  "Twenty," Darcy said. She came over and sat on the couch beside him. She smelled awful. A rank, feral smell, like something that lived in a cave. He'd heard his stepfather tell his mother that half the time Darcy only ran the water and then splashed it around with her hands behind a locked door. Make-believe baths, which was funny when you thought about how much she worshipped Ariel from The Little Mermaid. When Darcy really took a bath she left a ring of grime around the tub. He'd seen it with his own eyes.

  Peter said, "What does this involve, exactly?"

  "We could play Three Little Pigs. Or Cinderella. You be the evil stepsister."

  Like everything was already decided. Just to annoy her, Peter said, "For a lousy twenty bucks I get to be whoever I want. I'm Cinderella. You can be the evil stepsister."

  "You can't be Cinderella!"

  "Why not?"

  "Because you're a boy."

  "So what?"

  Darcy seemed to have no answer to this. She examined the hem of her princess dress. Pulled a few remaining sequins off, as if they were scabs. Finally she said, "My dad says I have to be nice to you. Because this is really my house, and you're a guest, even though I didn't invite you to come live here and now you're going to live here all the time and never go away unless you die or get sent away to military school or something."

  "Don't count on it," Peter said, feeling really annoyed now. So that was his stepfather's plan. Or maybe it was his mother, still working out the details of her new, perfect life, worrying that Peter was going to mess things up now that she'd gotten it. He'd gone in and out of three schools in the last two years. It was easy enough to get thrown out of school if you wanted to be. If they sent him away, he'd come right back. "Maybe I like it here."

  Darcy looked at him suspiciously. It wasn't like she was problem free, either. She went to see a therapist every Tuesday to deal with some "abandonment issues" which were apparently due to the fact that her real mother now lived in Hawaii.

  Peter said, "I'm Cinderella. Deal with it."

  His stepsister shrugged. She said, "If I'm the evil stepsister then I get to tell you what to do. First you have to go put the toilet seat down in the bathroom. And I get to hold the remote and you have to go to bed first. And you have to cry a lot. And sing. And make me a peanut butter sandwich with no crusts. And a bowl of chocolate ice cream. And I get your Playstation, because Cinderella doesn't get to have any toys."

  "I've changed my mind," Peter said, when she seemed to have finished. He grinned at her. My what big teeth I have. "I'm going to be the evil Cinderella."

  She bared her teeth right back at him. "Wrong. Cinderella isn't evil. She gets to go to the ball and wear a princess dress. And mice like her."

  "Cinderella might be evil," Peter said, thinking it through, remembering how it went in the Disney movie. Everybody treated Cinderella like she was a pushover. Didn't she sleep in a fireplace? "If her evil stepsister keeps making fun of her and taking away her Playstation, she might burn down the house with everyone in it."

  "That isn't how the story goes. This is stupid," Darcy said. She was beginning to sound less sure of herself, however.

  "This is the new, improved version. No fairy godmother. No prince. No glass slipper. No happy ending. Better run away, Darcy. Because evil Cinderella is coming to get you." Peter stood up. Loomed
over Darcy in what he hoped was a menacing way. The werewolves were howling on the TV.

  Darcy shrank back into the couch. Held up her fairy wand as if it would keep her safe. "No, wait! You have to count to one hundred first. And I'll go hide."

  Peter grabbed the stupid, cheap wand. Pointed it at Darcy's throat. Tapped it on her chest and when she looked down, bounced it off her nose. "I'll count to ten. Unless you want to pay me another ten bucks. Then I'll count higher."

  "I only have five more dollars!" Darcy protested.

  "You got fifty bucks from your grandparents last weekend."

  "Your mom made me put half of it into a savings account."

  "Okay. I'll count to twenty-three." He put the werewolf movie on pause. "One."

  He went into all the bedrooms on the second floor, flicking the light switches on and off. She wasn't under any of the beds. Or in the closets. Or behind the shower curtain in the show-off master bathroom. Or in either of the other two bathrooms on the second floor. He couldn't believe how many bathrooms there were in this house. Back in the dark hallway again he saw something and paused. It was a mirror and he was in it. He paused to look at himself. No Cinderella here. Something dangerous. Something out of place. He felt a low, wild, wolfish delight rise up in him. His mother looked at him sometimes as if she wasn't sure who he was. He wasn't sure, either. He had to look away from what he saw in the face in the mirror.

  Wasn't there some other fairy tale? I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down. He'd like to blow this house down. The first time his mother had brought him over for dinner, she'd said, "Well, what do you think?" In the car, as they came up the driveway. What he'd thought was that it was like television. He'd never seen a house like it except on TV. There had been two forks at dinner and a white cloth napkin he was afraid to use in case he got it dirty. Some kind of vegetable that he didn't even recognize, and macaroni and cheese that didn't taste right. He'd chewed with his mouth open on purpose, and the little girl across the table watched him the whole time.