Some of the Best From Tor.com, 2013 Edition: A Tor.Com Original

by Various

  She does not tell the sheriff her own tale. She throws the curtains in her tower window wide that night, and waits for a visit from the greenwood.

  That night, another three chests of coin vanish from the castle. The sheriff almost cries as he announces that he will need to collect the vanished money from the villages, before the king arrives from the city with troops hardened by holy war to do his own collecting.

  Sometimes she wonders about that city. It is almost a fable to her, the place where the great chests of coin and wagons of grain trundle to feed the prince and pay the king’s redemption and crusade. She does not—quite—feel deprived; her own town has Roman ruins aplenty, and traveling entertainers, and an ample supply of plain and luxury goods, even if the luxury goods are for the most part unattainable given the small income allotted to her by the sheriff. More often, she finds herself wondering about the lands beyond the city, those fabulous places with their marvelous animals, and glowing art, and cities of gold and silver, and mountains, real mountains, where the snow never melts, where the high peaks are tossed by winds or seem to dance in the fires they give off.

  He went to some of those places, she knows, the one time he truly left the greenwood. His leaving for so long is one of the things that is largely unspoken between them. She might try to go to those lands someday. She can think about that when their current adventure is finally settled.

  Slowly, the adventures start going … badly. The sheriff has begun to learn the outlaws’ tricks; they, in turn, have grown more violent, more deadly, as the sheriff guards his treasures and the collected taxes more carefully. The rich, too, who were once easy pickings, have now hired more guards who do not surrender as easily. Some of the guards and outlaws, she hears, are dead.

  The first time he took her to the greenwood, it was to say farewell to her. She did not know why they had traveled so deeply in the forest; had hoped—assumed, even—that it might be for a question, a proposal, of an altogether different nature. (That had worried her: he might be heir to a small manor, but she knew even then that however much land her father had, due to his lack of coin and her nearly dowerless state, he had wanted to see her wed to a man of greater wealth and even vaster lands.)

  Instead, he told her that he was leaving.

  She wept, fiercely, until it seemed that the trees wept with her.

  She wonders now what might have happened if she had gone with him, that first time.

  She hears of more and more deaths. On both sides. The miller and his son; two strange knights from France, hired for their cheapness—and killed by their incompetence, mutters the sheriff, who immediately institutes a plan to test all newly hired knights for basic weapons aptitude. A few random men-at-arms. Some of the people from a hamlet some miles off, too small to be called a village. Another knight. A wisewoman known for herbs and wisdom. Another miller and his daughter. The prayers of monks and priests fill the air. The nuns no longer leave their convent walls.

  Not him, she thinks. Not him. His men, perhaps, but not him. He robs. He jests. He threatens. He gives. She is the lady in the tower, who steals secrets and sometimes kisses; and he is the archer in the forest; and she loves him, she loves him, she loves him.

  The sheriff orders an end to the tavern songs, requiring the minstrels and singers to instead sing holy songs of the great crusades and the lives of the saints. The tavern keepers smile and nod. But sometimes she still hears fragments drift up to her window, from the houses where the songs of the outlaws are still hummed.

  She sees it when he comes to her window, when he tumbles in, exhausted, hand stained with blood. “Self-defense,” he mutters. “I had sworn never to do it again.”

  “Again.”

  “Or tell you about the first time.”

  She would press, but she has no time. “It’s getting—”

  “I know,” he interrupts. He kisses her, hard—more, she feels, out of need than affection.

  “You must—”

  “I know.” He rises, stretches, looks out the window towards the greenwood. “I would if I could. But the greenwood—”

  “You once said that the greenwood is indifferent to men.”

  “And it is, much of the time,” he agrees. “But that is not the point.”

  “Your manor—”

  “Is lost to me now. You know that.”

  They could argue with the sheriff, with the king, but she knows even better than he how unlikely they are to see a favorable result. And she is certain that that is not his main concern.

  He comes back to her, takes her hands in his. “I am part of it now, the greenwood. You know that.”

  And she does. She kisses him, and drags him to her narrow bed, determined to have at least this one part of the forest behind her strong stone walls, at least this one night. He does not resist.

  In the towns and villages, the songs spread quickly, of the green man and the noble maiden, together despite the sheriff’s orders. Her wool dress itches. She has never felt less noble.

  “He massacred my men,” the sheriff tells her.

  “I don’t believe you,” she tells the sheriff.

  He sighs, rubs his eyes. She notices, for the first time, how utterly tired he looks, realizes that he has barely slept in a month or more. “I know. I know.” He buries his head in his hands. Behind him, the fire crackles, so loudly that she almost jumps. “What if I showed you?”

  “What?”

  “My men are still … clearing up the area. It will take some time. What if I show you what the outlaws have done?”

  “I still won’t believe you.”

  “Perhaps not,” the sheriff agrees. “But you might talk about it anyway. And perhaps—just perhaps—it might start to change the stories, a little.”

  She rides out with the sheriff and one of his knights, a tall dark fellow who has been eyeing her—she suspects he would make an offer of marriage despite her nearly dowerless state if she gave him the slightest bit of encouragement. Which she does not. Her heart is pledged to the woods. To the green man. She looks up at the trees along the rutted road as they pass under them, imagining that they are bowing to her, the lady of his heart. She also looks for him, or for any of his men, but theirs is a small group, and the outlaws—and the woods—let them pass unmolested.

  She cannot resist letting out a small cry when they come upon the scene.

  There must be, she realizes—her stunned mind counting slowly, but completely, the way he taught her—at least a hundred men-at-arms and knights. All dead, most with their armor pushing them into the mud, save for the few bodies that had already been pulled into a pile at the side.

  “They had surrendered,” the sheriff says, quietly.

  “No,” she says, or tries to say, her voice coming out strangled.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” the sheriff says. His weariness and pain is evident, even to her, who wants to hate him, whose skin recoils from his touch.

  She swallows. She knows she does not want to hear this. But she is the lady of the castle and the greenwood, and she must have courage. She must have heart. “And what is the worst?”

  The sheriff’s face turns towards her. “The king,” the sheriff says hoarsely. “And his brother, the prince. They’ll demand—they’re already demanding—retaliation for this. I may be able to hold them to one village, a few peasants, for now. May. Even so, it is an offense that the outlaws will not take lightly. They will take their revenge, of course, on the king and his men, and the king will attack in turn. Make no mistake of that. And this time … this time they will not be content with a few peasants, a few outlaws. They will burn villages.”

  “The greenwood,” she breathes.

  “That, too, if I cannot deliver enough outlaws to satisfy them,” the sheriff agrees. “Though I haven’t much worry for the greenwood. They might try to set it on fire, and parts might burn, but I don’t think it will be destroyed so easily. No. It’s the villages and the crops I’m worried about. We’
ve had to pay so many additional taxes and reparations to the king already that we have no cash, none, for food. I could wall myself up in the castle, perhaps, but I doubt it would be a refuge for long. I could even escape, if necessary, as can my knights. Find another place of employment, or go on crusade, or find a monastery that might take me in for a few coins.” He nods. It has begun to rain, but he does not pull up his cloak, does not try to conceal his face. “A kinder end than my incompetence would justify, I suppose. I am still too fond of life to give myself up entirely to its justice.”

  He sighs. “At least this lot had a moment to try to run away. Not like the other ones, caught and stuck in the mud and water while the outlaws cut them down.”

  She stares ahead at the fallen men, her vision blurring. But it is clear enough to see what the sheriff does not say: that many men in this field were shot in the back.

  She is the lady in the tower, stealing secrets when she can, kisses when she cannot.

  He is the thief in the woods, stealing from the rich when he can, from the poor when he cannot.

  The night sky is lit by a half moon, just enough to show her the dark greenwood from her tower room. She sits by the window, hands utterly still, her skin for once not itching beneath the coarse wool. She thinks of the iron-clad men sinking into the mud, and places her hands around her throat. She remembers his lips on hers, the sound of the trees.

  When they were children, he stole berries from the wood, and brought her the ripest and the sweetest.

  She wonders why she feels so terribly calm.

  “And what if he were not here?” she asks the largest man, the one they both trust.

  “I’d go home,” the hooded man says.

  She takes one of the sheriff’s finest horses from the stable—if she needs to run, she does not want to be caught—and rides for the greenwood, bow and arrows carefully concealed beneath her cloak.

  He is there. For a very long moment she lets herself rest in his arms, lets herself pretend that she is only the lady in the tower and he only an archer, escaped for a summer’s afternoon together. She breathes in the scents of fall, the slight chill that has entered the air. She listens to his heart.

  “Come,” she tells him, and for once, it is she who leads him into the greenwood.

  It is minutes, or hours, or days before he thinks to ask where they are going. The question surprises her. He has always known where they are going, always. Or at least where he is going—which, for a long time now, has been almost the same thing. She is not sure he has ever asked this question, at least not of her. She conjures up a smile, the same sort of smile that once led him to climb up to her tower window, to swing through the great halls of the castle and duel for her hand, to nestle with her beneath the trees in the heart of the greenwood. She remembers the touch of his hands, his legs, his skin.

  “To the heart,” she answers, and he smiles back at her. She blinks, and clutches her bow tightly.

  She stops at a twisted old tree whose roots have climbed up out of the ground and toward other trees—almost ready to strangle them, it seems. She leans against the tree. “I need a moment.”

  He grins at her. “You never used to tire so easily.”

  She cannot think of an answering quip or jest. Instead, she strokes her bow. She can almost feel the greenwood pulsing around her, just the way he described it: almost like a heartbeat, but slower, broader. She breathes in the rich air, stuffy with the scent of fallen leaves. He leans back against another tree, almost as ancient, almost as twisted, grinning his old grin, the one she has seen so infrequently of late. She feels her arms and legs relax. She thinks of everything she owes him. Of how he kept her truest self alive. How she breathes because of him; lives because of him; loves because of him. She feels the greenwood thrum.

  And she raises her bow and shoots him through the heart.

  Copyright © 2013 by Mari Ness

  Art copyright © 2013 by Allen Williams

  Contents

  Title Page

  Begin Reading

  It was during a night in the twelfth lunar month of this year when two strong hands pushed young Tangmoo down into the bed of the Mae Ping River, and by doing so, ironically, fulfilled his only wish. Tangmoo flailed his arms wildly, churning up the swirling water. The whites of his eyes reflected flashes from the fireworks as his smothered cries rose in bubbles to the surface, where they burst in silence: help, help, help, help!

  These filtered cries of alarm were mistaken by a pair of dragonflies fused in flight, their only wish to remain larvaless and so prolong their love dance endlessly, for the dripping of morning dew. So unsettled was the pair that their breaths caught, and for a second, just when the male ejaculated, they separated. Force of habit subsequently incited them to repeat this in all their future climaxes, making their fondest wish actually come true.

  But this was a chance circumstance. The point here is that young Tangmoo screamed, and his lungs filled with water, and please, he did not want to die this way.

  In order to fully grasp the tragedy of this drama, we’ll have to flash back a few days and take a peek at the village of Doi Saket, situated on the exact same river shore. Late one afternoon, about an hour before it was time for his third bowl of rice of the day, the well-bellied weed exterminator Uan1 came running into the temple square. Winded as a consequence of the oversized behind that had given him his name, he stopped to catch his breath, leaning against the enormous stone phallus outside the temple (though not on the temple grounds themselves, since Buddha doesn’t approve of that kind of non-Buddhist folly), before wheezing, “Come see, come see! The first wish has arrived!”

  “Watch out!” cried the malodorous lampshade maker Tao2, whose nickname did not spring from his shell head or his tortoise appearance, but from his extreme robustness, and he nodded toward the phallus.

  In his frenzy, Uan had forgotten all about the general consensus around the ancient fertility symbol. The adulterous rice peeler Somchai3 had once cheated on her husband with three neighbors and a shopkeeper from a nearby village after she had been spotted on the phallic altar, touching herself and wrapped in nothing but silk ribbons. As a penalty, Somchai was buried waist deep in the rice field so that her excess fertility could seep into the crops, and it was decided that the bewitched phallus was never to be touched again, and was only to be greeted by passersby with a brief nod of the head, something that was ardently copied by the villagers and which consequently led to an abundance of oral sex. (There were rumors that the stone was not in fact bewitched at all, but that lustful Somchai suffered from some type of obsessive exhibitionism. Nonsense, of course.)

  Quick as lightning, Uan let go of the stone (but he was too late: in the following year his wife would give birth to triplets) and yelled, “Come to the river, all of you! The first wish is arriving—I’ve seen it with my own eyes!”

  “So soon?” said the well-mannered crab gatherer Kulap, just returning from the rice field with her basket. “I don’t believe it. It’s way too early.”

  Inside his house the generally respected Puu Yaybaan, chief of the village, heard the commotion and came running out the door. “What’s going on?” he shouted, scattering chickens in his wild dash. “What’s all this racket?”

  “Uan says the first wish is here,” Kulap said, crinkling her nose in a way that was all in contrast to her gentle nature. “But I don’t believe it.”

  “Is this true?” the Puu Yaybaan asked.

  “It’s as true as me standing here,” Uan insisted, and indeed, there he stood.

  “Well … so did you retrieve it?” Tao asked, placing his lampshade at his feet.

  “Certainly not,” Uan responded. “I can’t swim, I’m too heavy to stay afloat. Come on, everybody! To the river!”

  The hubbub caused many a window shutter to open, many a cell phone to ring, and many a banana leaf to furl bashfully back into its tree, as curiosity was the one thing that could mobilize all the villagers in unison. And
sure enough, when they arrived at the riverside, they all saw it. A trace of brilliance on the tranquil stream. A floating lily made of plastic and crepe paper. A pearl inside a lotus blossom. The first wish of Loi Krathong.

  The philosophical irrigator Daeng4, named after the blood that covered him when he was born, waded through the shallows saying, “Is it a wish for happiness? A love wish? A last wish? Wishful thinking?”

  The short-spoken restaurant owner Sorn5, named after some curious agricultural mishap that no one remembered, pointed his stone pestle toward the brilliance on the water and said, “If we don’t do something, it’s going to float right past.”

  “Someone needs to go get it!” the Puu Yaybaan cried, shushing the onlookers. Men hesitated on the shore, children waded into the river until their mothers whistled them back, and the scrawny frog catcher Yai6 took off his clothes and dove into the deep green water.7

  “What is it? What’s the first wish?” the people shouted when Yai finally resurfaced and reached the little boat. “Does it have a note inside?”

  Treading water, Yai unfolded the lotus leaves and produced a moist piece of paper. “Wait. I’m having trouble reading it. The words are smudged. But it says”—dramatic pause as the river held its breath in anticipation—“‘I wish for my dying water buffalo to get well —Bovorn S. from San Phak Wan.”’

  “LOI KRATHONG HAS STARTED!” the Puu Yaybaan declared over the PA system, used for announcing all important and unimportant news in the village, and his tinny words were greeted by cheers from the crowds on the riverbank. The cunning monk Sûa8 broke into the traditional Loi Krathong song, soon joined by the village elders clapping their hands and the children splashing one another with water, while miles upstream, in the city of Chiang Mai, thousands upon thousands of wishes were being launched onto the river.