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by Scott Andrews

  I was filled with a cold fury that the corn-man should claim my son, that he should think I would accept the loss of my last scrap of humanity. Nothing of heart in that: only fear and greed, which do not need a human heart and blood to exist. And yet I knew I was to blame for this: that my tainted silence was the cause of this, that I was sole responsible both for the withering of the harvest and for the corn-man’s claim on Paletl.

  I could have let him kill Paletl—I could have let the rains come, let the harvest be bountiful and the granaries overflow with corn. I could have let my sin be atoned for.

  But Paletl was my son, and I would not, could not let him die. No mother could.

  I had been silent long enough; now was my time to act.

  On the following morning, I went to the market with the last of Paletl’s cloaks and traded it for an obsidian knife, a parrot, and two hummingbirds.

  I went to the temple with that knife and sacrificed the parrot on the altar, opening its chest in a swift flower of blood and removing the heart as an offering of true power.

  I laid the knife on the limestone altar. The blade was slick with blood that was not mine; its edge was still sharp.

  In the silence of the sanctuary, I prayed to the gods for the death of the corn-man, and for the salvation of my son.

  ~ ~ ~

  I drew wards around the house in the blood of the hummingbirds, to keep the corn-man at bay, and walked the streets looking for him, my knife always thrust in the belt of my tunic.

  It was night when I found him again. Night and a stifling heat, the air as heavy as before the answer to a prayer. I followed his trail through the gardens and the fields, until at last I stood in the shadow of ripe corn stalks. Everything was silence around me.

  “Show yourself,” I said, drunk on my prayers to the gods. I held the hilt of the knife in my hand.

  Nothing but the rustle of wind, the gaze of the moon on me. “I know where you are.”

  “What do you think you will do, Metlicue?” His voice echoed all around me, as if the very corn had spoken his will.

  I clutched the knife-hilt. “What needs to be done.”

  “Nothing needs to be done,” he said. I saw him, then, standing amidst the stalks that had bent around him, framed with his true crown of corn tassels, a king that was not ours anymore. Because of me.

  “You are no longer the corn-man,” I said. “No longer do the rains fall at your command. I come to make things right.”

  “There was another way.” His voice was sad.

  I could not afford to dwell on that other way. “No,” I snapped. “Your innocence is lost, beyond recall, and not even a child’s death will make you regain it.”

  He laughed, without joy. “Perhaps.” He moved closer to me. His eyes bored into mine. “You have made your choice, and I mine.”

  I said nothing. Watched him, watched his eyes, which were dark with the knowledge of what he was, of what I had made him. “There is only one way,” I said.

  And then his full weight was on me. I struggled, managed to throw him off. I reached for my knife, but his hands were going for my throat, already tightening. I heaved, pried the hands off, knowing him to have no true strength. His innocence should have been his shield; he had never had any. My throat was burning. I heaved again, felt him fall.

  I stood over him, drew my knife. “It is over,” I said, watching him.

  “Strike if you must.”

  In that instant before my knife parted the sheaves of corn, I saw what it must mean to be the corn-man, the born fool, innocence wrapped around fifty-two bleeding hearts. To ask, day after day, for rain, until all the leaves had parted and only the core was left. The core that I had tainted with darkness. With the fear of death, and with the fear of partings, with what made us all human. With all that he could never understand: love and lust, fear and wrath, a darkness deeper than all he had ever been meant to know.

  No wonder that in that last moment he did not struggle. No wonder, as I opened his chest in the same movement that had opened mine, I saw him smile and his lips part to reveal teeth the color of ripe corn.

  Inside his chest was his heart, and it was made of red corn grains. It pulsed softly between my fingers as I lifted it free, and I heard overhead the first peals of thunder. No matter the source, blood spilled in the name of the gods is still blood, and he had the blood of fifty-two sacrifices inside him.

  It started raining as he died. My whole being was cold, as it had been since the day of the sacrifice. The only warmth was the beating thing between my hands. I remembered the priests lifting my heart high above me.

  He had been fed my heart to bring him to life. He had partaken of my flesh. The heart between my fingers was dying, its beat more and more sluggish.

  I lifted the heart again, to my mouth. Blood ran down my throat, and it had the salty taste of tears.

  I ate it to the end. It tasted not of flesh but of grains and earth, like a harvest of corn. Of darkness, and fears that were not mine, fears that made it pulse all the way from my throat to my stomach.

  Standing amidst corn stalks, I felt tears run down my cheeks, like trails of blood down the altar of sacrifices. I have made things right again, I thought, but I knew this was beyond amends. The corn-man’s darkness was mine to bear for as long as I lived, a price paid to the gods I had sought to cheat.

  I left the body lying in the fields of stalks and went home under the stormy skies.

  As I opened the door of my house, I heard Paletl’s cries. We would have to move, to leave for another city, before they found the corn-man and someone remembered the knife I had bartered for.

  I took my son in my arms, nursed him against me. His flesh was warm against mine; he snuggled close to me, knowing nothing of pain or of sacrifices. I thought I would weep again. Instead, I was startled to feel my heart, my stolen heart, beat so quickly out of fear for him that I thought it would burst through my chest.

  ~ ~ ~~ ~

  Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a computer engineer. She has been a Writers of the Future winner and a Campbell Award finalist. In addition to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, her fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy and Asimov’s. Her first novel, Servant of the Underworld, was released by Angry Robot/Harper Collins in January 2010.

  THE TINYMAN AND CAROLINE

  Sarah L. Edwards

  NONE BUT THE TINYMEN and the rats ran these dark streets beneath the streets, where the river was piss and planks served for bridges. There was a time when Jabey would have traded a hand for a candle, but he’d been a new runner then, and young. Since then long terrified scrambles in this darkness had taught his feet as no map could do.

  Now he scurried along the ledges built of dredged sewer rubbish. At a side tunnel he turned and paused, blinking against stabs of light: a drain. He clambered up through its broken bars.

  The sun had set while he’d been below—the stabbing light was the glow of a streetlamp. Pressing himself into the shadows of a carriage house, Jabey peered upstreet and down at the dark, massive forms of the istocrats’ castles.

  The west hill, right. He’d never been this close before. From where he stood it was castles all the way up, or so the chatter said, castles built of diamond windows and brownstone flecked with gold, and livedolls hung from the doors instead of knockers.

  Just one pretty was all he needed. One sparkling trinket to buy himself into the clubber chief’s service—and to buy his protection.

  Something rustled behind him, and he spun, certain he’d see Yol Stulbrend’s mutt closing in to tear him into a clutter of tinyman bones. But no, it was only a breeze scuffing newsprint across the cobblestones. Jabey shuddered against the chill and the trembling deep in his belly and slipped along the shadows to the nearest dark-windowed house. The stones jutted out slightly between their mortar, forming ledges just deep enough for the toe of a determined, barefooted tinyman.

  He’d meant to find an opening from the ro
of, but at the second story a muffled snort drew him to a window. At his touch it swung silently open. On a bed lay a man stiff on his back, eyes closed, the whiskers of his mustache draping his face like rats’ tails. Jabey edged past into the hall and drew the door shut behind him.

  A pretty, the hard-eyed kid had said, sneering down at him. Sewer running and pocket picking wasn’t enough, never mind that Jabey made no claims to be a sneak thief. It was a fine pretty he needed to buy into Sloan’s service— “And don’t think there ain’t others trying for the place, runt.”

  Jabey didn’t let himself think about where that place was. Not yet.

  What about jewels? In the safe, likely. Yol’s buddies had long complained of those. Silver? Yol boasted of stealing some rich’s silver teapot, years ago. The kitchen, Jabey guessed. Where’d riches keep their kitchens?

  He wanted to smack himself for this plan—this lack of a plan. Except it was all he had between him and the stingwhip, which Yol’d lay on heavy enough if he got hold of Jabey again, if he didn’t set Kingfisher on him instead.

  He swallowed the doubts and kept going, glancing in the open doorways as he passed. The rooms were filled with furniture and tapestries likely worth his life and more, but he could hardly have budged them, much less taken them below.

  He had to crawl down the stairs, pausing once when he thought he’d heard something creak. It didn’t come again. He kept going, through rooms and doorways and more rooms all full of istocrat trappings, and finally into the kitchen. He climbed up a cabinet and wandered the countertops, opening cupboard doors and peering over into drawers. The plates were china and the tools all iron. He found a big pot he could have slept in comfortably, and behind another door a pantry stacked with jars and slouching burlap sacks, but nothing he’d guess for silver.

  Not that he’d know it if he saw it, eh?

  Brilliance splashed the room, bouncing from the hanging knives in their rack, casting Jabey’s shadow a full threefeet high against the window shutters. He whirled, hands high against the light.

  A girl stood in the doorway with a single wavering candle. Above a high-collared nightie wide blue eyes peered at him. Her mouth opened, closed.

  “Are you an elf?” she said finally. “You look older than me.” Another glance up and down him, over his stubby arms, his shirt and trousers smeared with sewer grime. “But you’re not taller.”

  “Not taller,” he agreed. But not much shorter, which made her. . . three? Four? He couldn’t remember the year he’d stopped growing.

  “I must introduce myself,” she said. “I’m Caroline Elisabeth Morrowbridge.” She set the candle stand on the floor and curtsied.

  “Jabey,” he said. Would she called the coppers? Throw him out herself?

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Name’s Jabey.”

  “And are you an elf, Mr. Jabey?”

  “I don’t think so.” She was hardly big enough to hurt him, but he’d enough on his head; he didn’t need to rough some rich’s little girl.

  “Do you mean you don’t know? You must come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  “I can’t be staying—”

  “Then I should have to call Mr. Gaither to come and show you out.” Caroline crossed her arms. “And he doesn’t like being waked.”

  Jabey gave a last regretful glance around the kitchen, so empty of pretties, and slid off the countertop. He followed her to the staircase, where she blew out the candle and crept slowly up, quite as softly as he had earlier. He remembered the creaking he’d heard.

  She led him into a bedroom, shut the door behind him, and relit the candle.

  “We must be very quiet,” she whispered. “I shall be scolded if anyone hears.” She reached beneath the bed and pulled out a book so broad and thick her arms trembled. Sitting on the flowery rug, she opened it to a page and pointed to a red-cheeked man clutching a nut as big as his head. “That’s an elf.” She looked up at Jabey and twisted her mouth. “I believe you’re too tall for an elf.”

  Jabey snorted. “Never been too tall for anything.”

  She nodded seriously. “I know what you mean. I’m terribly small for my age—I’ll be nine in October.

  “Perhaps you’re a sprite, instead? No, that’s silly, you haven’t any wings—have you? You aren’t hiding them beneath your shirt?”

  “Ain’t hiding nothing,” said Jabey, freshly conscious of the slave collar scars at his neck—conscious, too, of the rips in his trousers and the sewer-filth crusted on his feet. He wondered if there were any folk like that in her book, folk with scars and bruises and mud under their toenails.

  She frowned and turned more pages, muttering to herself. Jabey eyed the window—could he get it open? That latch didn’t look shut.

  Caroline looked up, pouting, and said, “This book isn’t very useful. You don’t match the descriptions of any of the fairy-folk.”

  “What, no tinymen in your book?” he muttered. “None of them that run your messages and keep your sewers running nice? Wouldn’t figure a rich’s book would talk about us.”

  She leaned closer, eyes glowing with reflected candlelight. “I’ve never heard of a tinyman.” Her fingers stretched towards his face.

  “Now, you can’t be telling people about me,” he said, edging away. Towards the window. . . .

  “Of course not,” she said, dropping her hand. “Father would be fearfully angry. He hates elves and brownies and sprites and all those things. He says they aren’t natural, that they’re frauds and foul things a lady shouldn’t think about.

  “But you’re not a fraud—any ninny can see it. I don’t understand why Father should object so. Franny Grace—that’s my nurse, only I’m too old for a nurse now—she had a hat once with a sweet little bird on it. Every time she passed someone on the street, or said hello, the bird would cheep. And Father made her give it to the rubbish man!”

  “Probably was a livedoll,” Jabey said.

  “A what?”

  “From the dark quarter. You know. From the animatists.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Don’t you know the dark quarter?” He flicked his hand to the south. “Where the alleys are all closed in and there’s canvas stretched over the streets. Where the clubbers are. You know?”

  Where poisons bubbled and vapored like the whiskey in Yol’s corn still. Where bastard babies were abandoned, never to grow to adulthood—though they might live that long, if you called it living. Where he hoped to find a place before night’s end, stupid runt that he was.

  She was leaning forward, eyes wide. “Is that where you come from?”

  “I guess so. Yeah.” Every tinyman began in the dark quarter, however quickly he escaped thereafter.

  “I should so like to see it.”

  “Why?” he asked, appalled.

  “I’ve never been to Faerie,” she said. “I’ve read about it, the strange creatures and people there—quite dangerous, marvelous things they have in Faerie.”

  “Dangerous, right,” said Jabey. “Folk like to knock you in chains as talk to you. Or use you up for their gimmickry, if you’re too old to work.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I know to be very polite to everyone I meet, even the ugly people. I know to follow directions and not go where I’m not invited and never eat anything offered me. I’d be quite safe.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  Her lips drew thin. “You’ve come to rob Father, haven’t you?”

  “Hey, now-” Jabey stumbled backward and fell against a chair only five feet from the window clasp.

  “Just because I’m a child doesn’t mean I’m stupid. You fairy-folk are just like magpies, always after pretty baubles. The book said. Well, I’ll get one for you, if you’ll take me to your country.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “A trade. I give you something nice, and you take me to Faerie.”

  “I don’t know the way to Faerie,” he muttered.

  �
��To your country, I mean. Or else I’ll tie you up in my bedclothes and wake the whole house, and they’ll put you in jail!”

  “I can’t take you off with me. There’d be riches sending after me like wasps that got their nest smashed in, and coppers, too. I got enough folk after me now!”

  “Please, Mr. Jabey, take me to see your country. You could return me before tomorrow, couldn’t you, so no one would notice?”

  “Um. . . .”

  “Here, I’ll find you something—I know!” She stood up so fast the candle flickered out, and a moment later she’d crept out the door.

  He backed the last few steps to the window, reached for the clasp, and hesitated. He’d better get out now. Except. . . night was wearing on, and he couldn’t flub this chance with Sloan. Couldn’t. Every time he popped up from below, there’d be roughs looking for him—more than one’d like to lay his hand on a tinyman’s bounty.