Firebirds Rising

by Sharyn November

  FIREBIRDS RISING

  FIREBIRD

  WHERE FANTASY TAKES FLIGHT™

  WHERE SCIENCE FICTION SOARS™

  FIREBIRDS RISING

  AN ANTHOLOGY OF ORIGINAL SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

  edited by Sharyn November

  FIREBIRD

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Firebird, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006

  Introduction copyright © Sharyn November, 2006

  “Blood Roses” copyright © Francesca Lia Block, 2006

  “What Used to Be Good Still Is” copyright © Emma Bull, 2006

  “Hives” copyright © Kara Dalkey, 2006

  “Cousins” copyright © Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet, 2006

  “Little (Grrl) Lost” copyright © Charles de Lint, 2006

  “Quill” copyright © Carol Emshwiller, 2006

  “Perception” copyright © Alan Dean Foster, 2006

  “The Real Thing” copyright © Alison Goodman, 2006

  “Unwrapping” copyright © Nina Kiriki Hoffman, 2006

  “I’ll Give You My Word” copyright © Diana Wynne Jones, 2006

  “In the House of the Seven Librarians” copyright © Ellen Klages, 2006

  “The House on the Planet” copyright © Tanith Lee, 2006

  “The Wizards of Perfil” copyright © Kelly Link, 2006

  “Jack O’Lantern” copyright © Patricia A. McKillip, 2006

  “Huntress” copyright © Tamora Pierce, 2006

  “Wintermoon Wish” copyright © Sharon Shinn, 2006

  ISBN 978-0-7865-8772-8

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  www.us.penguingroup.com

  To you, the reader

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Huntress by Tamora Pierce

  Unwrapping by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  The Real Thing by Alison Goodman

  Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles de Lint

  I’ll Give You My Word by Diana Wynne Jones

  In the House of the Seven Librarians by Ellen Klages

  Wintermoon Wish by Sharon Shinn

  The Wizards of Perfil by Kelly Link

  Jack o’Lantern by Patricia A. McKillip

  Quill by Carol Emshwiller

  Blood Roses by Francesca Lia Block

  Hives by Kara Dalkey

  Perception by Alan Dean Foster

  The House on the Planet by Tanith Lee

  Cousins by Pamela Dean

  What Used to Be Good Still Is by Emma Bull

  Acknowledgments

  About the Editor

  FIREBIRDS RISING

  INTRODUCTION

  Welcome to Firebirds Rising, also known as “the second Firebird anthology.” I tend to skip introductions, myself—they are usually too pedantic or give too much away—so this one will be brief, and I will not say anything about the stories themselves. No spoilers!

  But every book has a backstory.

  The Firebirds anthology was an experiment: Can I do a representative anthology for this imprint? Is there an audience out there? There was. The success of the first book meant that I was able to do a second one, and for that, I thank you. Firebird, more than most imprints, is driven by its readers. If you’re interested in something, I’ll do my best to find out more about it; if there’s an author you think I should check out, I do. I got a lot of e-mail about Firebirds, and I’m still getting it.

  One of the things people pointed out was the first book’s lack of science fiction. It wasn’t for want of trying; the sf authors I queried didn’t have stories for me. But I didn’t have as many to ask then as I do now—the pool of available writers has grown with the Firebird list itself. Close to one-third of Firebirds Rising is sf. I’d love to shoot for 50 percent next time around.

  Before I edited Firebirds, I wondered how one put together an anthology. Now I know. You start by just asking. I contacted all of the writers I’d published in Firebird and on the Viking list (where the original science fiction and fantasy I edit initially appears, in hardcover), as well as people I wanted to publish.

  I was shocked; everyone said yes. And the stories started coming in.

  Some were practically perfect just as they were; others needed some editing. Still others weren’t right for the collection, which killed me; I hate turning things down when they’re good, but they didn’t fit. I got so many stories for Firebirds Rising that I’ve already begun work on a third collection—and more on that in a moment.

  Once all of the stories were in and edited, and I had bios and notes from the authors, I needed to sequence the book. It reminded me of doing set lists, when I was in a band; what do you start with? what goes in the middle? what should be last? It is not easy, and every editor has a different method. I never expect anyone to read an anthology from beginning to end in one shot—I know I don’t!—but I want it to be possible.

  I can’t wait to hear what you think of Firebirds Rising. My e-mail is firebird@us.penguingroup.com, and I really do read everything everyone sends.

  Speaking of which, remember that third collection I mentioned? It needs a title. Help me out. I’m serious…and I’ll even credit you if you come up with the perfect one.

  Sharyn November

  October 2005

  Tamora Pierce

  HUNTRESS

  My dad left for good when I was ten. My mom kicked him out. “Fine!” he yelled. “I’ve had it with you, your family, and all that screwy New Age goddess crap! I should have left years ago! Now watch—you’ll turn my own daughter against me!” He grabbed his bag and walked out. He didn’t notice I was standing right there.

  I should have said something. Instead I stared at my whatever-many-great-grandmother’s portrait. It hung in front of where my dad had been standing. There was Whatever-grandma in Victorian clothes, laced in tight, with that crescent moon tiara on her head. He was so clueless he didn’t even see Mom’s family was into the goddess stuff back then, before anyone ever said “New Age” with capital letters. But that was my dad.

  After the divorce, he found a girlfriend. They got married and had a kid. Kevin was sweet, but I stopped visiting. They were always joking, asking if Mom and my aunts had sacrificed any cats lately, or did I brew up some potion to get a boyfriend. I told Dad it wasn’t funny, and then that he was
boring my socks off. Finally I just told him I couldn’t come to visit because I had practice. He bought it. Clueless, like I said.

  But when it came to Mom’s family portraits, and her religion, he wasn’t the only one who thought it was just too weird. By the time I was in sixth grade, the friends I brought home were noticing the crescent tiaras and full moon pendants. They’d notice, and they’d ask, and I’d try to explain. I’d make them nervous. Then the jokes and whispers began. In seventh grade, the witch stuff blended in with whispers that I was too weird, even stuck-up, maybe a slut. I didn’t even know where that had come from, but sixth grade had taught me I couldn’t fight any of it. I acted like I couldn’t hear. I would read for lunch and recess, by myself in a corner of some room. I kept my head down. I didn’t even try to make friends. I didn’t see the point. Sooner or later I would have to take them home. There they’d see the portraits, and the jewelry. They’d ask their questions. Back to square one.

  The only good thing about school was track. I’d found out I was good at it in grade school. With a summer of practice and middle-school coaches, no one on our team could catch me by the time the seventh-grade spring meets rolled around. I came in second in the district in all my events but one, and that one I won. Winning was like a taste in my mouth. Everyone I raced against was a possible source of whispers, but I couldn’t hear them if they ran behind me. They’d have to catch me to make their words hurt.

  In eighth grade I won all of my middle-school events at the All-District meet. A bunch of the high-school coaches wanted me to come to their schools, but Mom had other plans. At the last meet of the year, she introduced me to the head coach from Christopher Academy. Christopher was offering a full scholarship, if I wanted it.

  Wanted it? Christopher was one of the top private schools in the city, with one of the top track teams in the country. If I did well there, I could write my college track ticket. Better: nobody in my school could afford it. Nobody. And nobody else was getting a scholarship. My teammates didn’t talk to me, but I heard everything. They would have told the world if they had gotten into the Christopher Academy. It was out of their reach. Christopher kids were like Beverly Hills kids on television, clean and expensive gods and goddesses. Nobody at my school would dare to talk to them. There wouldn’t be any whispers in those expensive hallways.

  When she saw I wanted this school and this chance, Mom went a little nuts. Over the summer, we moved from the old family apartment in the Village—and wasn’t my Aunt Cynthia happy to take it when we left—to a squinched-up little place on the Upper East Side. Mom took a second job, tending bar at night, to cover the new expenses. Our apartment was near the school and near Central Park, where the Christopher runners trained. I could practice with the team and not have to worry about taking the subway home after dark, Mom said, putting her altar up in a corner of her tiny bedroom. I felt guilty. Mom and her sisters were true believers in the family religion. She wasn’t happy with just a medallion, not even a proper hunt-goddess figure, instead of the shrine in our old place, but this was only for four years, I told myself. Maybe the apartment wasn’t so much, but I could have friends, and bring them over, and only have to explain horseshoes over the doorways.

  Anyway, I wasn’t a believer in the family goddess after middle school. If their goddess was so wonderful, why didn’t she fix my life? She protected maidens, right? Wasn’t I a maiden? My dad was right about that much—the worship was screwy.

  After all that, ninth grade still wasn’t exactly a popularity explosion. It was made clear to me that while I had a track scholarship, ninth graders did not show up the upperclassmen. They trained and they waited for their turn, their chance. They ran with the team. If I heard it once during those first weeks, I heard it a dozen times: I belonged to the Christopher team, the Christopher tradition, the Christopher way of doing things. I warmed a bench and kept my mouth shut.

  And there was another problem. Things had changed. I had changed. It wasn’t easy for me to make friends since I’d stopped trying years ago. I still waited for whispers to begin, though months passed without them. It was like I thought the gossip was a weed that would sprout when my back was turned.

  I did make two ninth-grade friends from the track team. We had lunch together, walked home together, sat together on the way to meets. We ran when Coach told us to. We cheered the upperclassmen and held down a leg on the relay team. We raced other ninth graders from other private schools, and we envied the older runners. The seniors weren’t that interesting. Their eyes were locked on the Ivy Leagues. They didn’t draw our attention the way a certain junior did.

  Felix soaked up light in the halls and gave it off again, from his bronze-and-gold gelled hair to his tanned calves. He was so right, so perfect, that no one ever gave him a hard time for the long, single braid he wore just behind one ear. People gave him tokens to wear in it—beads, ribbons, chains—but he didn’t take everything. Just because he wore someone’s token one day didn’t mean he wouldn’t give it back to them the next. He wrote his own rules for the school, too. The staff let him do it most of the time, maybe because the auditorium had his last name over the doorway. It was listed five times on the brass plaque that announced the past headmasters of the school. Felix was what Christopher Academy was about, and his crowd was Christopher Academy, just like track was Christopher Academy.

  He ran, but he didn’t care about it. He’d slide out of boys’ warm-up laps to come over and flirt with his sophomore and junior girls, or his “lionesses,” he called them. The first time I heard him say it, in April of my ninth-grade year, he called it to our coach as we circled the baseball diamond in our section of the park, our feet thudding on wet dirt.

  “What do you think of my lionesses, Coach?” he called, keeping pace with his girlfriends in the middle of the pack. “Let’s take them to the Serengeti, get some blood on them, show them how to hunt.” He fiddled with a strip of camouflage cloth that was wound into his braid, running a finger over a dark spot on it.

  “Ewww, Felix,” cried Han, a Chinese girl who’d been lip-locked with him before practice. “Blood? No, thanks!”

  “Can’t break oaths sworn in blood, sweetness,” he told her, falling back as we ran by. “Isn’t that right, Corey?” he asked, slapping me on the arm.

  He knew who I was. He called me by my last name, like I was any other member of the team, any other rich Christopher kid.

  I forgot to be careful. I forgot that I was new, that I had to be one of the team and earn my place. Trying to outrun the blush that burned my cheeks, I sped up. I cut through his precious lionesses as they jeered at him, telling him he scared me. I stretched my legs until I caught up to the senior girls. They glanced back, saw me and glared. “Back of the pack, freshman,” one of them grumbled.

  So I stopped being sensible. It was only practice. “Afraid you’ll have to work for it?” I asked, and picked up my pace. They weren’t really trying: it was a warm-up. My cheeks burning now because they thought they could get first place handed to them, I trailed the seniors, looking for a way through their bunched-up group. When they closed in tighter, I powered around them in the turn. By the time it dawned on them that they ought to show me who was boss, they couldn’t catch me.

  Stupid, I told myself, slowing after I thudded past the finish, my temper burned off. Stupid when you want friends, stupid when you don’t want to stand out. Stupid when you’re “with the team.”

  Across the field the boys were hooting at the runners. I turned around to see the lionesses, juniors and sophomores together, cut through and around the red-faced seniors. One of them, redheaded Reed, looked back at the seniors and yelled, “You snooze, you lose.”

  Coach glared at me, then walked toward the seniors, clapping her hands. “You thought it was going to be easy, these final meets of the year?” she yelled to the seniors as the lionesses caught up with me. “You’d catch a break because it’s your last year in the high-school leagues? Nobody cares! Younger girl
s are waiting to make their names, and they’ll kick your asses. Two more laps before you quit for the day!”

  “Showin’ them, Corey.” Reed tugged my braid.

  “You rock,” another one said quietly.

  The lionesses collected me after practice. I looked at my two ninth-grade friends, but they shook their heads and grinned. They wanted me to go so I could tell them what it was like the next morning.

  The way the lionesses acted it was no big deal, drinks and french fries at a diner on Madison Avenue, a sour-faced waitress watching as six of us jammed into a corner booth.

  “Why don’t you split up?” she wanted to know. “Make it easier on everybody?”

  The older girls fell silent, staring at her. The air went funny. The waitress looked at them, then threw down the menus and left. The minute her back was turned, they began to laugh and nudge one another. “Shut her up,” Reed said.

  “Like that dealer,” another muttered.

  “Only he ran,” Beauvais, a platinum blonde, whispered. Reed elbowed Beauvais hard. She elbowed back but didn’t say anything more as the waitress—a different waitress—came for our order.

  I don’t even remember if I talked very much, but I was there, with the kids everyone looked at. And the guys showed up, even Felix. I learned then that the guys were lions, to match the lionesses. Felix called them “my Pride,” and said casually, “You should see them hunt.”

  Half of me wanted to stay, but half knew I was supposed to be home fifteen minutes ago. I had to run to be there when Aunt Lucy, who watched me while Mom worked, put dinner on the table. I expected a reaming, but my aunt was so happy I’d been with kids my age she didn’t even yell. I pretended I didn’t see her light a moon candle in thanks while I cleared the table. I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d thought I was going to be a hermit all through high school.