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

by Jonathan Strahan

  "Look," she said. "Zach's entertainingly crazy. Everybody loves him. But he's craz-az-azy. Like last summer, he said that he could tell if it was going to rain by how many times he dropped stuff." She grinned. "Besides, he looks like a girl."

  "And he's into unicorns." I thought about how I'd felt when I thought he was about to kiss me. "Maybe I like girly."

  She pointed to a paperback of The Hobbit with a dragon on the torn remains of the cover. "Maybe you like crazy."

  I rolled my eyes.

  "Seriously," she said. "Reading that stuff would depress me. People like us, we're not in those kinds of books. They're not for us."

  I stared at her. It might have been the worst thing anybody had ever said to me, because no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't make it feel any less true.

  But when I was around Zachary, it had seemed possible that those stories were for me, as if it didn't matter where I came from, as if there were something heroic and special and magical about living on the street. Right then, I hated him for being crazy—hated him more than I hated Tanya, who was just pointing out the obvious.

  "What do you think really happened?" I asked finally, because I had to say something eventually. "With his mom? Why would he tell me a story about a unicorn?"

  She shrugged. She wasn't big on introspection. "He just needs to get laid."

  Later on, while Bobby Diablo tried to put his hands up Tanya's halter top before her boyfriend came back from the store and I tried to pretend I didn't hear her giggling yelps, while the whiskey burned my throat raw and smooth, I had a black epiphany. There were rules to things, even to delusions. And if you broke those rules, there were consequences. I lay down on the stinking rug and breathed in cigarette smoke and incense, measuring out my miracle.

  The next afternoon, I left Tanya and her boyfriend tangled around one another. The cold gray sky hung over me. Zachary was going to hate me, I thought, but that only made me walk faster through the gates to the park. When I finally found him, he was throwing bits of bread to some wet rats. The rodents scattered when I got close.

  "I thought those things were bold as hustlers," I said.

  "No, they're shy." He tossed the remaining pieces in the air, juggling them. Each throw was higher than the last.

  "You're a virgin, aren't you?"

  He looked at me like I'd hit him. The bits of bread kept moving though, as if his hands were separate from the rest of him.

  That night I followed Zachary home through the winding urine-stained tunnels of the subway and the crowded trains themselves. I was always one car behind, watching him through the milky, scratched glass between the cars. I followed him as he changed trains, hiding behind a newspaper like a cheesy TV cop. I followed him all the way from the park through the edge of a huge cemetery where the stink of the zoo carried in the breeze. By then, I couldn't understand how he didn't hear me rustling behind him, what with the newspaper long gone and me hiking up my backpack every ten minutes. But Zachary doesn't exactly live in the here and now, and for once I had to be glad for that.

  Then we came to a patch of woods and I hesitated. It reminded me of where my foster family lived, where the trees always seemed a menacing border to every strip mall. There were weird sounds all around and it was impossible to walk quietly. I forced myself to crunch along behind him in the very dark dark.

  Finally, we stopped. A canopy of thick branches hung in front of him, their leaves dragging on the forest floor. I couldn't see anything much there, but it did seem like there was a slight light. He turned, either reflexively or because he had heard me after all, but his face stayed blank. He parted the branches with his hands and ducked under them. My heart was beating madly in my chest, that too-much-caffeine drumming. I crept up and tried not to think too hard, because right then I wished I were in Tanya's apartment watching her snort whatever, the way you're supposed to wish for Mom's apple pie.

  I wasn't cold; I had brought Tanya's boyfriend's thick jacket. I fumbled around in the pocket and found a big, dirty knife, which I opened and closed to make myself feel safer. I thought about walking back, but if I got lost I would absolutely freak out. I thought about going under the branches into Zachary's house, but I didn't know what to expect, and for some reason that scared me more than the darkness.

  He came out then, looked around, and whispered, "Jen."

  I stood up. I was so relieved that I didn't even hesitate. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he had been crying. He extended one hand to me.

  "God, it's scary out here," I said.

  He put one finger to his lips.

  He didn't ask me why I'd followed him; he just took my hand and led me farther into the forest. When we stopped, he just looked at me. He swallowed as if his throat were sore. This was my idea, I reminded myself.

  "Sit down," I said, and smiled.

  "You want me to sit?" He sounded reassuringly like himself.

  "Well, take off your pants first."

  He looked at me incredulously, but he started to do it.

  "Underwear too," I said. I was nervous. Oh boy, was I nervous. Mostly I had been drunk all the times before, or I had done what was expected of me. Never, never had I seduced a boy. I started to unlace my work boots.

  "I can't," he said, looking toward the faint light.

  "You don't want to?" I took one of his hands and set it on my hip.

  His fingers dug into my skin, pulling me closer.

  "Why are you doing this?" His voice sounded husky.

  I didn't answer. I couldn't. It didn't seem to matter anyway. His hands—those juggling hands that didn't seem to care what he was thinking—fumbled with the buttons of my jeans. We didn't kiss. He didn't close his eyes.

  Leaves rustled and I could smell that rich, wet storm smell in the air. The wind picked up around us.

  Zachary looked up at me and then past my face. His features stiffened. I turned and saw a white horse with muddy hooves. For a moment, it seemed funny. It was just a horse. Then she bolted. She cut through the forest so fast that all I could see was a shape—a cutout of white paper—still running.

  I could feel his breath on my mouth. It was the closest our faces had ever been. His eyes stared at nothing, watching for another flash of white.

  "Do you want to get your stuff?" I asked, stepping back from him.

  He shook his head.

  "What about your clothes?"

  "It doesn't matter."

  "I'll get them," I said, starting for the tree.

  "No, don't," he said, so I didn't.

  "Let's go back." I said.

  He nodded, but he was still looking after where she had run.

  We walked back, through the forest, and then the graveyard, back, back to the comforting stink of urine and cigarettes. Back to the sulfur of buses that run all night. Back to people who hassle you because you forgot your work boots in the enchanted forest where you cursed your best friend to live a life as small as your own.

  I brought Zachary back to Tanya's. She was used to extra people crashed out there, so she didn't pay us any mind. Besides, Bobby was over. That night Zachary couldn't eat much, and what he did eat wouldn't stay down. I watched him, bent over her toilet, puking his guts out. After, he sat by the window, watching the swirling patterns of traffic while I huddled in the corner, letting numbness overtake me. Bobby and Tanya were rolling on the floor, wrestling. Finally Bobby pulled off Tanya's shorts right in front of the both of us. Zachary watched them in horrified fascination. He just stared. Then he started to cry, just a little, in his fist.

  I fell asleep sometime around that.

  When I woke up, he was juggling books, making them seem like they were flying. Tanya came in and gave him a tiny, plastic unicorn.

  "Juggle this," she said.

  He dropped the books. One hit me on the shin, but I didn't make a sound. When he looked at me, his face was empty, as if he wasn't even surprised to be betrayed. I felt sick.

  Three days he lived the
re with me. Bobby taught him how to roll a joint perfectly and smoke without coughing. Tanya's boyfriend let him borrow his old guitar and Zachary screwed around with it all that second day. He laughed when we did, but always a little late, as though it were an afterthought. The next night, he told me he was leaving.

  "But the unicorn's gone," I said.

  "I'll find her."

  "You're going to hunt her? Like one of those guys in the unicorn tapestries?" I tried to keep my voice from shaking. "She doesn't want you anymore."

  He shook his head, but he didn't look at me, as if I were the crazy one, the one with the problem.

  I took a deep breath. "Unicorns don't exist. I saw her. She was a horse. A white horse. She didn't have a horn."

  "Of course she did," he said and kissed me. It was a quick kiss, an awful kiss really—his teeth bumped mine and his lips were chapped—but I still remember every bit of it.

  That fall, I took my stuff and went back to my foster home. They yelled at me and demanded to know where I'd been, but in the end they let me stay. I didn't tell them anything.

  I went back to school sometime around Halloween. I still read a lot, but now I'm careful about the books I choose. I don't let myself think about Zachary. I turn on the television. I turn it up loud. I force my dinner out of cardboard boxes and swallow it down. Never mind that it turns to ash in my mouth.

  Pride And Prometheus

  John Kessel

  John Kessel was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1950 and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he is professor of American literature at North Carolina State University. A writer of erudite short fiction that often make reference to, or are pastiches of, popular culture, Kessel made his first sale in 1975, and is best known for early stories "Another Orphan" and "Buffalo." He has published a series of constantly impressive short fiction, including a series of screwball comedies featuring series character Detlev Gruber, the most recent of which is "It's All True," and a series of science fiction stories set in the same world as recent Sturgeon Award nominee "The Juniper Tree." Kessel's short fiction has been collected in three volumes: Meeting In Infinity, The Pure Product, and The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories, and he has published three novels: Freedom Beach (with James Patrick Kelly), Good News from Outer Space, and Corrupting Dr. Nice.

  Had both her mother and her sister Kitty not insisted upon it, Miss Mary Bennet, whose interest in Nature did not extend to the Nature of Society, would not have attended the ball in Grosvenor Square. This was Kitty's season. Mrs. Bennet had despaired of Mary long ago, but still bore hopes for her younger sister, and so had set her determined mind on putting Kitty in the way of Robert Sidney of Detling Manor, who possessed a fortune of six thousand pounds a year, and was likely to be at that evening's festivities. Being obliged by her unmarried state to live with her parents, and the whims of Mrs. Bennet being what they were, although there was no earthly reason for Mary to be there, there was no good excuse for her absence.

  So it was that Mary found herself in the ballroom of the great house, trussed up in a silk dress with her hair piled high, bedecked with her sister's jewels. She was neither a beauty, like her older and happily married sister Jane, nor witty, like her older and happily married sister Elizabeth, nor flirtatious, like her younger and less happily married sister Lydia. Awkward and nearsighted, she had never cut an attractive figure, and as she had aged she had come to see herself as others saw her. Every time Mrs. Bennet told her to stand up straight, she felt despair. Mary had seen how Jane and Elizabeth had made good lives for themselves by finding appropriate mates. But there was no air of grace or mystery about Mary, and no man ever looked upon her with admiration.

  Kitty's card was full, and she had already contrived to dance once with the distinguished Mr. Sidney, then whom Mary could not imagine a being more tedious. Hectically glowing, Kitty was certain that this was the season she would get a husband. Mary, in contrast, sat with her mother and her Aunt Gardiner, whose good sense was Mary's only respite from her mother's silliness. After the third minuet Kitty came flying over.

  "Catch your breath, Kitty!" Mrs. Bennet said. "Must you rush about like this? Who is that young man you danced with? Remember, we are here to smile on Mr. Sidney, not on some stranger. Did I see him arrive with the Lord Mayor?"

  "How can I tell you what you saw, Mother?"

  "Don't be impertinent."

  "Yes. He is an acquaintance of the Mayor. He's from Switzerland! Mr. Clerval, on holiday."

  The tall, fair-haired Clerval stood with a darker, brooding young man, both impeccably dressed in dove-gray breeches, black jackets, and waistcoats, with white tie and gloves.

  "Switzerland! I would not have you marry any Dutchman—though 'tis said their merchants are uncommonly wealthy. And who is that gentleman with whom he speaks?"

  "I don't know, Mother—but I can find out."

  Mrs. Bennet's curiosity was soon to be relieved, as the two men crossed the drawing room to the sisters and their chaperones.

  "Henry Clerval, madame," the fair-haired man said, "and this is my good friend Mr. Victor Frankenstein."

  Mr. Frankenstein bowed but said nothing. He had the darkest eyes that Mary had ever encountered, and an air of being there only on obligation. Whether this was because he was as uncomfortable in these social situations as she, Mary could not tell, but his diffident air intrigued her. She fancied his reserve might bespeak sadness rather than pride. His manners were faultless, as was his command of English, though he spoke with a slight French accent. When he asked Mary to dance she suspected he did so only at the urging of Mr. Clerval; on the floor, once the orchestra of pianoforte, violin, and cello struck up the quadrille, he moved with some grace but no trace of a smile.

  At the end of the dance, Frankenstein asked whether Mary would like some refreshment, and they crossed from the crowded ballroom to the sitting room, where he procured for her a cup of negus. Mary felt obliged to make some conversation before she should retreat to the safety of her wallflower's chair.

  "What brings you to England, Mr. Frankenstein?"

  "I come to meet with certain natural philosophers here in London, and in Oxford—students of magnetism."

  "Oh! Then have you met Professor Langdon, of the Royal Society?"

  Frankenstein looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. "How is it that you are acquainted with Professor Langdon?"

  "I am not personally acquainted with him, but I am, in my small way, an enthusiast of the sciences. You are a natural philosopher?"

  "I confess that I can no longer countenance the subject. But yes, I did study with Mr. Krempe and Mr. Waldman in Ingolstadt."

  "You no longer countenance the subject, yet you seek out Professor Langdon."

  A shadow swept over Mr. Frankenstein's handsome face. "It is unsupportable to me, yet pursue it I must."

  "A paradox."

  "A paradox that I am unable to explain, Miss Bennet."

  All this said in a voice heavy with despair. Mary watched his sober black eyes, and replied, "'The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.'"

  For the second time that evening he gave her a look that suggested an understanding. Frankenstein sipped from his cup, then spoke: "Avoid any pastime, Miss Bennet, that takes you out of the normal course of human contact. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for simple pleasures, then that study is certainly unlawful."

  The purport of this extraordinary speech Mary was unable to fathom. "Surely there is no harm in seeking knowledge."

  Mr. Frankenstein smiled. "Henry has been urging me to go out into London society; had I known that I might meet such a thoughtful person as yourself I would have taken him up on it long 'ere now."

  He took her hand. "But I spy your aunt at the door," he said. "No doubt she has been dispatched to protect you. If you will, please let me return you to your mother. I must thank you for the dance, and even m
ore for your conversation, Miss Bennet. In the midst of a foreign land, you have brought me a moment of sympathy."

  And again Mary sat beside her mother and aunt as she had half an hour before. She was nonplused. It was not seemly for a stranger to speak so much from the heart to a woman he had never previously met, yet she could not find it in herself to condemn him. Rather, she felt her own failure in not keeping him longer.

  A cold March rain was falling when, after midnight, they left the ball. They waited under the portico while the coachman brought round the carriage. Kitty began coughing. As they stood there in the chill night, Mary noticed a hooded man, of enormous size, standing in the shadows at the corner of the lane. Full in the downpour, unmoving, he watched the town house and its partiers without coming closer or going away, as if this observation were all his intention in life. Mary shivered.

  In the carriage back to Aunt Gardiner's home near Belgravia, Mrs. Bennet insisted that Kitty take the lap robe against the chill. "Stop coughing, Kitty. Have a care for my poor nerves." She added, "They should never have put the supper at the end of that long hallway. The young ladies, flushed from the dance, had to walk all that cold way."

  Kitty drew a ragged breath and leaned over to Mary. "I have never seen you so taken with a man, Mary. What did that Swiss gentleman say to you?"

  "We spoke of natural philosophy."

  "Did he say nothing of the reasons he came to England?" Aunt Gardiner asked.

  "That was his reason."

  "That's not so!" said Kitty. "He came to forget his grief! His little brother William was murdered, not six months ago, by the family maid!"

  "How terrible!" said Aunt Gardiner.

  Mrs. Bennet asked in open astonishment, "Could this be true?"

  "I have it from Lucy Copeland, the Lord Mayor's daughter," Kitty replied. "Who heard it from Mr. Clerval himself. And there is more! He is engaged to be married—to his cousin. Yet he has abandoned her, left her in Switzerland and come here instead."

  "Did he say anything to you about these matters?" Mrs. Bennet asked Mary.