The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2014 Edition

by Rich Horton

  “We don’t have names,” said one. “Mother just calls us by numbers, but she always gets us mixed up.”

  “I’ll have to give you names,” said Ivan, although he was afraid that he would get them mixed up as well. “Let’s at least go in. Blanchefleur and I are tired, and we need to rest.”

  But once they stepped inside, Ivan found there was no place to rest. All of the furniture in the parlor had been piled in a corner to make a fort.

  “If I’m going to take care of you, I need to learn about you,” said Ivan. “Let’s sit down—” But there was nowhere to sit down. And the lizards, all seven of them, were no longer there. Some were already inside the fort, and the others were about to besiege it.

  “Come out!” he said. “Come out, all of you!” But his voice was drowned by the din they were already making. “What in the world am I supposed to do?” he asked Blanchefleur.

  She twitched her tail, then said in a low voice, “I think it’s the Siege of Jerusalem.” Loudly and theatrically, she said, as though to Ivan, “Yes, you’re right. The French are so much better at cleaning than the Saracens. I bet the French would clean up this mess lickety split.”

  Ivan stared at her in astonishment. Then he smiled. “You’re wrong, Blanchefleur. The Saracens have a long tradition of cleanliness. In a cleaning contest, the Saracens would certainly win.”

  “Would not!” said one of the besiegers. “Would too!” came a cry from the fort. And then, in what seemed like a whirlwind of lizards, the fort was disassembled, the sofa and armchairs were put back in their places, and even the cushions were fluffed. In front of Ivan stood a line of seven lizards, asking, “Who won, who won?”

  “The Saracens, this time,” said Blanchefleur. “But really, you know, it’s two out of three that counts.”

  Life in the Lizard household was completely different than it had been in Professor Owl’s tower. There were days when Ivan missed the silence and solitude, the opportunity to read and study all day long. But he did not have much time to remember or regret. His days were spent catching insects and spiders for the lizards’ breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner, making sure that they bathed and sunned themselves, that they napped in the afternoon and went to bed on time.

  At first, it was difficult to make them pay attention. They were as quick as seven winks, and on their outings they had a tendency to vanish as soon as he turned his back. Ivan was always afraid he was going to lose one. Once, indeed, he had to rescue Number Two from an eagle, and Number Five had to be pulled out of a foxhole. But he found that the hours spent working on the Encyclopedia of All Knowledge stood him in good stead: if he began telling a story, in an instant they would all be seated around him, listening intently. And if he forgot anything, he would ask the pen he had made from Professor Owl’s tail feather to write it out for him. Luckily, Dame Lizard had left plenty of paper and ink.

  He gave them all names: Ajax, Achilles, Hercules, Perseus, Helen, Medea, Andromache. They were fascinated by the stories of their names, and Medea insisted she was putting spells on the others, while Hercules would try to lift the heaviest objects he could find. Ivan learned to tell them apart. One had an ear that was slightly crooked, one had a stubby tail, one swayed as she walked. Each night, when he tucked them in and counted the lizard heads—yes, seven heads lay on the pillows—he breathed a sigh of relief that they were still alive.

  “How many more days?” he would ask Blanchefleur.

  “You don’t want to know,” she would reply. And then she would go out hunting, while he made himself dinner. Of course he could not eat insects and spiders, or mice like Blanchefleur. On the first night, he looked in the pantry and found a bag of flour, a bag of sugar, some tea, and a tinned ham. He made himself tea and ate part of the tinned ham.

  “What in the world shall I do for food?” he asked Blanchefleur.

  “What everyone else does. Work for it,” she replied. So the next day, he left the lizards in her care for a couple of hours and went into the town that lay along the road Dame Lizard had taken. It was a small town, not much larger than the village he had grown up in. There, he asked if anyone needed firewood chopped, or a field cleared, or any such work. That day, he cleaned out a pigsty. The farmer who hired him found him strong and steady, so he hired him again, to pick vegetables, paint a fence, any odd work that comes up around a farm. He recommended Ivan to others, so there was soon a steady trickle of odd jobs that brought in enough money for him to buy bread and meat. The farmer who had originally hired him gave him vegetables that were too ripe for market.

  He could never be gone long, because Blanchfleur would remind him in no uncertain terms that taking care of the lizards was his task, not hers. Whenever he came back, they were clean and fed and doing something orderly, like playing board games.

  “Why do they obey you, and not me?” he asked, tired and cross. He had just washed an entire family’s laundry.

  “Because,” she answered.

  After dinner, once the lizards had been put to bed, really and finally put to bed, he would sit in the parlor and read the books on the shelves, which were all about travel in distant lands. Among them were the books of Dame Emilia Lizard. They had titles like Up the Amazon in a Steamboat and Across the Himalayas on a Yak. He found them interesting—Dame Lizard was an acute observer, and he learned about countries and customs that he had not even known existed—but often he could scarcely keep his eyes open because he was so tired. Once Blanchefleur returned from her evening hunt, he would go to sleep in Dame Lizard’s room. He could tell it was hers because the walls were covered with photographs of her in front of temples and pyramids, perched on yaks or camels or water buffaloes, dressed in native garb. Blanchefleur would curl up against him, no longer pretending not to, and he would fall asleep to her soft rumble.

  In winter, all the lizards caught bronchitis. First Andromache started coughing, and then Ajax, until there was an entire household of sick lizards. Since Ivan did not want to leave them, Blanchefleur went into town to find the doctor.

  “You’re lucky to have caught me,” said the doctor when he arrived. “My train leaves in an hour. There’s been a dragon attack, and the King has asked all the medical personnel who can be spared to help the victims. He burned an entire village, can you imagine? But I’m sure you’ve seen the photographs in the Herald.”

  Ivan had not—they did not get the Herald, or any other newspaper, at Dame Lizard’s house. He asked where the attack had occurred, and sighed with relief when told it was a fishing village on the coast. His father was not in danger.

  “Nothing much I can do here anyway,” said the doctor. “Bronchitis has to run its course. Give them tea with honey for the coughs, and tepid baths for the fever. And try to avoid catching it yourself!”

  “A dragon attack,” said Blanchefleur after the doctor had left. “We haven’t had one of those in a century.”

  But there was little time to think of what might be happening far away. For weeks, Ivan barely slept. He told the lizards stories, took their temperature, made them tea. Once their appetites returned, he found them the juiciest worms under the snow. Slowly, one by one, they began to get better. Medea, the smallest of them and his secret favorite, was sick for longer than the rest, and one night when she was coughing badly, he held her through the night, not knowing what else to do. Sometimes, when he looked as though he might fall asleep standing up, Blanchefleur would say, “Go sleep, Ivan. I’ll stay up and watch them. I am nocturnal, you know.”

  By the time all the lizards were well, the marsh marigolds were blooming, and irises were pushing their sword-like leaves out of the ground. The marshes were filled with the sounds of birds returning from the south: the raucous cacophony of ducks, the songs of thrushes.

  Ivan had forgotten how long he had been in the marsh, so he was startled when one morning he heard the front door open and a voice call, “Hello, my dears! I’m home!” And there stood Dame Lizard, with her suitcases strapped to her bic
ycle, looking just as she had left a year ago, but with a fuchsia scarf around her throat.

  The lizards rushed around her, calling “Mother, Mother, look how we’ve grown! We all have names now! And we know about the Trojan War!” She had brought them a set of papier mâché puppets and necklaces of lapis lazuli. For Blanchefleur, she had brought a hat of crimson felt that she had seen on a dancing monkey in Marakesh.

  Blanchefleur said, “Thank you. You shouldn’t have.”

  Once the presents were distributed and the lizards were eating an enormous box of Turkish Delight, she said to Ivan, “Come outside.” When they were standing by the house, under the alders, she said, “Ivan, I can see you’ve taken good care of my children. They are happy and healthy, and that is due to your dedication. Hercules told me how you took care of Medea when she was ill. I want to give you a present too. I brought back a camel whip for you, but I want to give you something that will be of more use, since you don’t have a camel. You must raise your arms, then close your eyes and stand as still as possible, no matter how startled you may be.”

  Ivan closed his eyes, not knowing what to expect.

  And then he felt a terrible constriction around his chest, as though his ribcage were being crushed. He opened his eyes, looked down, and gasped.

  There, wrapped around his chest, was what looked like a thick green rope. It was Dame Lizard’s tail, which had been hidden under her duster. For a moment, the tail tightened, and then it was no longer attached to her body. She had shed it, as lizards do. Ivan almost fell forward from the relief of being able to breathe.

  “I learned that from a Swami in India,” she said. “From now on, when you give pain to another, you will feel my tail tightening around you so whatever pain you give, you will also receive. That’s called empathy, and the Swami said it was the most important thing anyone can have.”

  Ivan looked down. He could no longer see the tail, but he could feel it around him, like a band under his shirt. He did not know whether to thank her. The gift, if gift it was, had been so painful that he felt sore and bruised.

  After he had said a protracted farewell to all the lizards, hugging them tightly, he and Blanchefleur walked north, along the river. He told her what Dame Lizard had done, lifting his shirt and showing her the mark he had found there, like a tattoo of a green tail around his ribcage.

  “Is it truly a gift, or a curse?” he asked Blanchefleur.

  “One never knows about gifts until later,” said the white cat.

  Marmalade met them at the front door. “I’m so sorry, Miss Blanchefleur,” he said, “but your mother is not home. The King has asked her to the castle, to consult about the dragon attack. But she left you a note in the solar.”

  Blanchfleur read the note to Ivan.

  My dear, Ivan’s third apprenticeship is with Captain Wolf in the Northern Mountains. Could you please accompany him and try to keep him from getting killed? Love, Mother.

  This time, there was no banquet. With the Lady gone, the castle was quiet, as though it were asleep and waiting for her return to wake back up. They ate dinner in the kitchen with Mrs. Pebbles and the ladies-in-waiting, and then went directly to bed. Blanchefleur curled up next to Ivan on the pillow, as usual. It had become their custom.

  The next morning, Mrs. Pebbles gave them Ivan’s satchel, with clean clothes, including some warmer ones for the mountains, and his horn-handled knife. “Take care of each other,” she told them. “Those mountains aren’t safe, and I don’t know what the Lady is thinking, sending you to the Wolf Guard.”

  “What is the Wolf Guard?” Ivan asked as they walked down the garden path.

  “It’s part of the King’s army,” said Blanchfleur. “It guards the northern borders from trolls. They come down from the mountains and raid the towns. In winter, especially . . . ”

  “Blanchefleur!” Tailcatcher was standing in front of them. He had stepped out from behind one of the topiaries. “May I have a word with you?” He did not, however, sound as though he were asking permission. Ivan gritted his teeth. He had never spoken to Blanchefleur like that—even if he had wanted to, he would not have dared.

  “Yes, and the word is no,” said Blanchefleur. She walked right around him, holding her tail high, and Ivan followed her, making a wide circle around the striped cat, who looked as though he might take a swipe at Ivan’s shins. He looked back, to see Tailcatcher glaring at them.

  “What was that about?” asked Ivan.

  “For years now, he’s been assuming I would marry him, because he’s the best hunter in the castle. He asked me the first time on the night before we left for Professor Owl’s house, and then again before we left for Dame Lizard’s. This would have been the third time.”

  “And you keep refusing?” asked Ivan.

  “Of course,” she said. “He may be the best hunter, but I’m the daughter of the Lady of the Forest and the Man in the Moon. I’m not going to marry a common cat!”

  Ivan could not decide how he felt about her response. On the one hand, he was glad she had no intention of marrying Tailcatcher. On the other, wasn’t he a common man?

  This journey was longer and harder than the two before. Once they reached the foothills of the Northern Mountains, they were constantly going up. The air was colder. In late afternoon, Ivan put on a coat Mrs. Pebbles had insisted on packing for him, and that he had been certain he would not need until winter.

  Eventually, there were no more roads or paths, and they simply walked through the forest. Ivan started wondering whether Blanchefleur knew the way, then scolded himself. Of course she did: she was Blanchefleur.

  Finally, as the sun was setting, Blanchefleur said, “We’re here.”

  “Where?” asked Ivan. They were standing in a clearing. Around them were tall pines. Ahead of them was what looked like a sheer cliff face, rising higher than the treetops. Above it, he could see the peaks of the mountains, glowing in the light of the setting sun.

  Blanchefleur jumped down from his shoulder, walked over to a boulder in the middle of the clearing, and climbed to the top. She said, “Captain, we have arrived.”

  Out of the shadows of the forest appeared wolves, as silently as though they were shadows themselves—Ivan could not count how many. They were all round, and he suddenly realized that he could die, here in the forest. He imagined their teeth at his throat and turned to run, then realized he was being an idiot, giving in to an ancient instinct although he could see that Blanchefleur was not frightened at all. She sat on the dark rock, amid the dark wolves, like a ghost.

  “Greetings, Blanchefleur,” said one of the wolves, distinguishable from the others because he had only one eye, and a scar running across it from his ear to his muzzle. “I hear that your mother has sent us a new recruit.”

  “For a year,” said Blanchefleur. “Try not to get him killed.”

  “I make no promises,” said the wolf. “What is his name?”

  “Ivan,” said Blanchefleur.

  “Come here, recruit.” Ivan walked to the boulder and stood in front of the wolf, as still as he could. He did not want Blanchefleur to see that he was afraid. “You shall call me Captain, and I shall call you Private, and as long as you do exactly what you are told, all shall be well between us. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Ivan.

  The wolf bared his teeth and growled.

  “Yes, Captain,” said Ivan.

  “Good. This is your Company, although we like to think of ourselves as a pack. You are a member of the Wolf Guard, and should be prepared to die for your brothers and sisters of the pack, as they are prepared to die for you. Now come inside.”

  Ivan wondered where inside might be, but the Captain loped toward the cliff face and vanished behind an outcropping. One by one, the wolves followed him, some stopping to give Ivan a brief sniff. Ivan followed them and realized the cliff was not sheer after all. Behind a protruding rock was a narrow opening, just large enough for a wolf. He crawled through it and emerg
ed in a large cave. Scattered around the cave, wolves were sitting or lying in groups, speaking together in low voices. They looked up when he entered, but were too polite or uninterested to stare and went back to their conversations, which seemed to be about troll raiding parties they had encountered, wounds they had sustained, and the weather.

  “Have you ever fought?” the Captain asked him.

  “No, sir,” said Ivan.

  “That is bad,” said the Captain. “Can you move through the forest silently? Can you tell your direction from the sun in the day and the stars at night? Can you sound like an owl to give warning without divulging your presence?”

  “Yes, Captain,” said Ivan, fairly certain that he could still do those things. And to prove it to himself, he hooted, first like a Eagle Owl, then like a Barn Owl, and finally like one of the Little Owls that used to nest in his father’s mill.

  “Well, that’s something, at least. You can be one of our scouts. Have you eaten?”

  “No, sir,” said Ivan.

  “At the back of the cave are the rabbits we caught this morning,” said the Captain. “You may have one of those.”

  “He is human,” said Blanchefleur. “He must cook his food.”

  “A nuisance, but you may build a small fire, although you will have to collect wood. These caverns extend into the mountain for several miles. Make certain the smoke goes back into the mountain, and not through the entrance.”

  Skinning a rabbit was messy work, but Ivan butchered it, giving a leg to Blanchefleur and roasting the rest for himself on a stick he sharpened with his knife. It was better than he had expected. That night, he slept beneath his coat on the floor of the cave, surrounded by wolves. He was grateful to have Blanchefleur curled up next to his chest.

  The next morning, he began his life in the Wolf Guard.

  As a scout, his duty was not to engage the trolls, but to look for signs of them. He would go out with a wolf partner, moving through the forest silently, looking for signs of troll activity: their camps, their tracks, their spoor. The Wolf Guard kept detailed information on the trolls who lived in the mountains. In summer, they seldom came down far enough to threaten the villages on the slopes. But in winter, they would send raiding parties for all the things they could not produce themselves: bread and cheese and beer, fabrics and jewels, sometimes even children they could raise as their own, for troll women do not bear many children. Ivan learned the forest quickly, just as he had at home, and the wolves in his Company, who had initially been politely contemptuous of a human in their midst, came to think of him as a useful member of the pack. He could not smell as well as they could, nor see as well at night, but he could climb trees, and pull splinters out of their paws, and soon he was as good at tracking the trolls as they were. They were always respectful to Blanchefleur. One day, he asked her what she did while he was out with the wolves. “Mind my own business,” she said. So he did not ask again.