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

by Rich Horton

  I flinched, fell back against the loblolly trunk. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not be turned to gold, Midas. I like my life.”

  Oh how he laughed. He picked up a pinecone, did something reminiscent of a pirouette, and tossed me the pinecone—which, in spite of myself, I caught. Its brown petaled scales were touched with golden hues, like any loblolly cone, but no hint of gold metal to be found.

  “Don’t worry. How’d I recognize that metal trap of a mouth if I hadn’t been freed of my curse before now?”

  “You . . . who killed your curse?”

  “Oh, I don’t know her name.” He squinted up at the sun. “But she sure had some mighty crooked teeth.”

  “Where was this? Here?” The questions flew out.

  “Naw, over in Tatouage. But she was from here all right.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Loblolly’s the only watershed had a curse-killer for at least a generation. I liked her, in spite of those crooked teeth. Liked her enough, I almost let her talk me out of having my curse killed.” He scratched his chin, looked down at the open bottle.

  I’d forgotten my manners. “Please, sit down.” I plopped down in the needles, leaving the trunk open for Midas. “You care for some strawberry wine?”

  “What a bee-yoo-ti-ful idea. Here, oasis fruit.” With a face-shattering grin, he untied his knapsack, spilled out coconuts, apricots, plums, citrus-seeds, figs. He took a long pull from the bottle, settled in against the tree.

  “What brings you to Loblolly?” I tossed a grapefruit citrus-seed in my mouth, the tart zest welcome after the wine.

  “Drought’s closed a lot of tributaries down, fewer folk coming to see the Oasis, or visit Tatouage. Thought I’d take a look for myself in the open waterways. Figure I’m old enough to want a wife, best go and find her—might die waiting if I wait for her to find me!” He laughed. “A toast. To finding wives!” He tipped the bottle back, drank deep, passed the wine to me.

  I hesitated.

  “Come on, curse-killer, no need to frown, you wouldn’t be sitting all alone drinking this wine by yourself if you’d found a wife already, and sharing wine will share our luck.”

  “To finding wives.” I sipped, passed the bottle back. I licked the sticky sweet off my lips, forcing myself to patience. “What did you mean, about Loblolly’s curse-killer talking you out of killing your curse?”

  He took another long pull, then sighed. “Before the killing, she told me I’d miss my curse. Said I’d miss the touch of gold, its kiss, every day of my life once I grew old enough to really know what missing meant. I didn’t listen. All I knew was I didn’t want to be a Midas anymore. My mother died in labor, and I’d never known my father. My aunt did all she could to raise me right, but she wasn’t a Midas. I longed for human touch. So very, very much.”

  He popped two figs into his mouth.

  “My aunt knew something about that, for she missed holding me, I know. Being held through golden silks and thin cottons is better than nothing, but it’s not skin-to-skin. So I said I was sure, and the curse-killer with the crooked teeth killed my Midas curse.” He tipped the wine back, and the red juice burbled in the bottle, gurgling out with a soft sigh.

  “When she was done, the curse-killer had tears in her eyes. Said when I missed the gold, I should look for it elsewhere. Then she said if I ever changed my mind, to come find her, she’d give me a resurrection. I’ve never forgotten her advice, or the tears in her eyes.”

  I’d had too much wine, or not enough, for one of my teeth ached sharp and bright, filling my mouth with gold, burnished beyond, sunlight, fire, hue of a fresh cut peach, dark stars you see when you close your eyes at night . . . I swallowed, bit down. The taste disappeared, but I knew what it meant, surprising as it was. “She was my momma. Your curse-killer.”

  “Figured as much.”

  My turn to tip the bottle back. A resurrection made for a trickier curse-killing, and I wondered why my momma’d bothered. Something in his story didn’t make sense. “But, you call yourself Midas now.”

  “Well. Your momma was right. Once I was old enough to understand what missing meant, I changed my name back. Helps to find gold. Look. Ta-da!” He tossed me another golden-hued pinecone. He smiled, a wide-open foolish grin, and even though his eyes smiled wide with his grin, they also shone bright and wet. “Took me a while to figure out ‘resurrection’ was just a fancy way of helping me remember who I’d been.”

  “Midas.” I squinted in the strawberry-tinged sunlight. “The resurrection’s more than a way to remember who you were—it’s dangerous, but I wear my momma’s mouth, and I think I could resurrect your curse for you, if you wanted.”

  For a moment his eyes pooled wide, but then he smiled, “Naw. I have my heart set on finding a wife. Holding my own baby. Living skin-to-skin. Maybe years from now, if I can’t find a wife, I’ll take you up on your offer. What’s your name anyway?”

  “My friends call me Petech.”

  “Petech. If we’re going to be friends, seek wives and the like, I have to ask you a question.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t you ever smile?”

  And even though I was a curse-killer, even though I still wore my momma’s metal mouth, and wanted to make her proud, in the warmth of newfound friendship, tasting of strawberry wine, on that sunny afternoon, I confess I smiled.

  Oh then how I lived. Thank the curses for those years of laughter and friendship and looking for wives—half the fun the looking, and half the fun the friendship, and loneliness only something to remember, not something to bear. The drought receded, and while we heard of a case of mottling here and there, those were joyous years of peace and water.

  Year after year, I killed curses and he sought a woman’s kiss sweeter than the kiss of gold. We celebrated our successes and mourned our failures with feasts of oasis fruit and Tun Grier’s strawberry wine—until the year Grier died, and his vines died with him.

  We sent him to his peace in the waterways, as befit any watershed-born, and though I lingered to see if a Quixote would come to pay his respects, none did.

  But I was glad I’d lingered, for late in the night a wonder of a walking-tree came to pay her respects to our Dionysus.

  We met, and once met, never parted. My beloved Purla.

  That was that, I thought, remembering the Quixote’s words, but this is this. As I fell heart-first into her verdant eyes, I felt like I might be embarking on a caught-heart quest of my own.

  And thank the curses, she and Midas got along bee-yoo-ti-fully. Everything was simple and sweet as fresh syrup, until the night honey gathered over Purla’s branches as our baby girl Melisande struggled to be born. Oh how the curse of love plays roulette.

  Hours passed in a riot of foliage and fruit—pine, magnolia, honeycombed maple, cottonwood, cherryfern, golden aspen, sour plum, coconut palm, giant redwood—just a few of the varieties that emerged from my beloved Purla’s limbs through the long hours of labor. As I held her trunk tight through every contraction, every new orchard burst, my skin was transformed too by sap and loam, wood and leaf, bud and bloom. Except for my metal mouth, which resisted the leafing upheaval, my skin reeled with every forest seeded since the world began. Never have I loved my wife so much.

  A final long groan of wood splitting, and then out of Purla’s birthknot, into my hands, slipped a sappy, beautiful mess of a perfectly formed baby girl. Except for the sap, the miniature twigs of her fingers, tightly curled leaves instead of wisps of hair, she looked ordinary enough. Ten toes, two legs, two arms, two eyes, two ears—perhaps a slight lignin feel to her almond-shaded skin. All in all, a better curse than I’d feared. But she was awfully quiet. Too quiet.

  I pinched her, hard, to make sure she was breathing.

  “Petech!” My wife slapped my hand away with a maple branch as Melisande began to wail.

  “I had to be sure, Purla. Sure she was alive and real. She’s supposed to cry.”

  �
�Well, now she’s crying.” Purla rocked Melisande in her lower willow boughs, comforting her with a cherry blossom bud. Melisande suckled greedily at the bud and its sweet sap.

  “Now she’s not.” I reached to take the cherry blossom bud away.

  Purla uprooted herself, moved away from me. “Enough crying. She’s my daughter too.”

  “Mother’s son, father’s daughter. You may be a walking tree, but she’s bound to me, to be a curse-killer. A curse-killer must know the curse in order to learn how to kill it.”

  “She’s a baby. She doesn’t need to know how to kill anything.” Thick sap was running from her birthknot, and I worried at her being uprooted from the ground’s sustenance this shortly after giving birth.

  “Purla, please. To make another curse-killer is the whole reason we wed.”

  “The whole reason? Petech?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?” The bark on her sapling boughs roughened.

  “Purla, you know how I feel about you. Never felt like a curse, falling in love with you. But you know as well as I do the need for a new curse-killer presses against all the watersheds, not just ours.”

  “What I know is that our child is bound to me as well as you, and that life will make her cry soon enough. To make her cry is cruel. What she needs now is love.”

  What could I say? I only had the truth to offer her. The only truth I knew then. “The sooner she cries, the sooner she’ll learn to kill the pain herself. To not prepare her for what she has to face, in the name of love, now that would be cruel.”

  Purla’s exposed roots trembled, and a cascade of maple, oak, and aspen leaves fell from her eyes. Something of her mother’s distress must have scared Melisande, for she cried again, a full-lunged colic cry. The sound killed me and made me proud, all at the same time. I reached for them both, to comfort and hold them, as I’d held them all through the long hours of labor. But Purla wheeled away, sending a spray of wet earth into my everyday eyes and metal mouth. The shock stopped me before the pain. Choking on mud, blinded by grit, I stumbled after my crying child and wife.

  By the time I cleared my eyes, and could breathe again, they were gone. I uprooted every ordinary tree in the orchard that day and night, searched all Loblolly watershed. Everyone I asked shook their heads no—in fear or denial or plain ordinary ignorance, I couldn’t tell—when I asked them if they’d seen my wife or child. The only one who might have known was Midas, but that night, he was nowhere to be found.

  Three months later, Midas went nowhere again. He and I were supposed to have one of our oasis feasts by the dipping pool—we’d promised each other we’d eat and drink until we didn’t care about our missing wives. I didn’t know which of us to feel sorrier for—me, having so recently lost a wife, or him, never having found one.

  But when the sun rose high above the inky waves and he still hadn’t shown, I worried. He’d been bothering me for several months about trying a resurrection—or “killing-curse-reverse” as he liked to say—but I’d been putting him off, out of fear and my own concerns. Perhaps he’d been more desperate than I realized. When the sun began to sink, I went to search for my friend. He’d been headed for Tatouage and the Oasis, so that’s where I started.

  Tatouage’s entry point to the waterways was an open-air aqueduct, running through a canopy of tattooed redwoods. No sign of drought, thank the curses. But at the top of the disembarkment redwood, the scent of burnt anise dizzied me, and I nearly slipped. Mottling, here? I inhaled through my mouth, gripped the carved handholds, and let my fear focus how I put one foot below the other.

  The anise reek increased as I descended, troubling my breathing, but finally I reached the ground, only to find an unconscious Midas passed out beneath the laddered redwood, surrounded by spilled oasis fruit.

  Across his neck splayed the characteristic green-grey web of wormwood mottling. I knelt by him, pushing aside the hard coconuts and citrus-seeds, turned him on his back, grateful to hear him groan and find his face mottle-free. Not too late, I could still save him. But what of Tatouage? Fear iced my metal mouth, as I examined the grove.

  Mottling laced several of the tattooed redwoods. Were the mottling to reach the tops of the trees, the aqueduct would be vulnerable, and through the aqueduct, all of the watersheds. As soon as I saved Midas, Tatouage would have to be quarantined.

  I spiraled the metal sleeve of my mouth open, teeth interlocking and extending into the pinwheel form of my individual curse-killing sieve. Placing Midas’ thumbs in the sharp corners of the metal pinwheel, I put my knee on his chest, gripped his arms to have better control, and then bit down.

  Far off I heard Midas scream, but I was caught in the killing, sinking into its bloody immediacy as the mottling filled my mouth—anise languor, strangling, trade your death for eternal green, growing dreams—an old tooth ached with gold, burnished beyond sunlight, fire, hue of a fresh cut peach . . . and for a moment I was distracted, remembering my momma’s mouth had killed curses for Midas before—but then the mottling gushed again and my killing sieve snapped shut, sifting the curse from Midas’ blood. One heartbeat, two.

  His bleeding, but intact, thumbs dropped from my mouth, as the sharp pinwheels of my sieve sped up, spinning faster and faster as I killed the curse. My momma’s metal mouth whipped though anise, almond, grey webs, mushroom longing, smoke, parasitic clawing, regret—even an odd trace of honey. Finally, the killing puree frothed, the world whirled, and I fell backwards.

  “Petech, are you okay?” Midas knelt now, while I was the one prone.

  I swallowed—nothing left but my own tasteless spit. The purification killing was complete. “Small puree, but potent.”

  I sat, picked up one of the nearby citrus-seeds. “What a costly feast. I’m sorry, my friend, but I must quarantine Tatouage, close off its waterway.”

  “But—” he bowed his head, his silver bangs hiding his expression.

  “But what?”

  “I promised not to tell, but Purla and Melisande are rooted in the Oasis.”

  Some decisions only take a breath to make.

  “Burn the grove, Midas.” It might not save Tatouage, but it would keep the waterways safe until I returned. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Can you find fire?”

  “Fire’s just another word for gold.” Some spirit of his usual joy flared up in the words, made me think everything was going to be all right. He smiled his bee-yoo-ti-ful grin. “My name’s not Midas for nothing.”

  I ran towards the Oasis.

  As if nothing had ever been wrong anywhere, anytime, ever, the Oasis shimmered its garden of tiered pleasures—fresh blue water, neck-high wheat and millet fields, lush fig, plum, and apricot trees, all perpetually shaded by towering palms. No visible sign of mottling, thankfully. And while the palm trees and fields of grain swayed their dance of green and gold, they didn’t shimmer with milky smoke. I hoped it would stay that way—easier to find my wife and child if the Oasis didn’t move.

  I plunged into the fields, following the river—if they were here, they’d be rooted near water.

  Thwack, scratch. The boughs of cherryfern and fig scratched my face and limbs, snagging my tunic, closing me out. The risk of quarantine was fresh in my mind, so, after asking politely, and being denied, I extended a few metal teeth and bit the sapling bough of what I hoped was an ordinary cherryfern. Its creaking cry brought tears to my eyes. The orchard of trees thickened, circled me, boughs menacing. The Oasis still smelled of paradise—sweet apricot, fig, coconut, and through it all the clean burble of fresh water—but smoke rose from the trees in front of me. If ever I was to find my wife and child, the time was now.

  I fell to my knees. “Purla! Please! Don’t leave! Please, I only want to talk!”

  The smoke subsided, falling to a low mist on the ground.

  The Oasis orchard parted, and through it walked my once wife.

  She walked as a willow, aspen barked, with cherryfern boughs trailing
behind her in a thick red and green train—her oh so human mouth and eyes peering out. Such evergreen eyes, amidst the wooden beauty of sap and sun, break a man’s heart.

  “What do you want?”

  “Tatouage is going to be quarantined. Come with me back to Loblolly where I know you’ll be safe.”

  “Why quarantined?”

  “Wormwood mottling, in the redwood grove that hosts the aqueduct. I can’t risk all the watersheds, even if it means losing Tatouage.”

  “Thank you for your concern, but we’ll stay in the Oasis.”

  “But if Tatouage is quarantined, you’ll be trapped.”

  “The Oasis is never trapped, have you forgotten? We walk wherever we choose.” As if to remind me of this, smoke curled around her lower boughs. “Besides, the Oasis is our home now. More so than any of the watersheds. Leave us alone.”

  With great dignity, she turned and walked away, as if having dismissed some rude stranger, not her once-husband. The shame of it drove me to my feet, and I grabbed a handful of her cherryfern train. Through the lifting canopy of her retreating train, peeked a pair of bright eyes, blinking beneath a crown of silverlaced leaves.

  “Melisande?” I reached out.

  “No! Don’t—” Purla whirled, but too late—Melisande had already crept free from her mother’s train, and was exploring my pale, freckled arms with the stiff twigs of her darker, barked limbs.

  Reunited with Melisande, joy rose in my throat, and I thought I might blossom into a walking tree myself. But something was very wrong. Melisande was too small, far too small. And quiet—too quiet—grey webbing covered her mouth. “Purla, what’s happened to her mouth?”

  “Mother’s son, father’s daughter. She’s growing a curse-killer’s mouth.”

  “No, Purla.” Ice curled around my heart as I felt the rigid strictures of what I feared were not my daughter’s bark. My heartbeat slowed, as if by force of will I could reverse time. “A curse-killer’s mouth is red not grey, and comes only after rites. This is something else.”