Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016

by Charlie Jane Anders

  * * *

  When Karis vanishes three days later on one of her rare trips into town, Father slaps me. “It should have been you. Your brazen words made that monster look our way.”

  I stand staring at him. There are no words, no argument, no defense I can offer. My sister is dead—or will be soon—and it’s my fault.

  I do not resume classes when the new week dawns. I pick out the most worn of my sister’s dresses and let out the seams so it fits my curvier body. Dress held tightly in hand, I go to the garden where Amina is watering the ground with her hidden tears and taking her anger out on the weeds that dared invade her territory.

  “I need beets,” I announce.

  She glances at the dress in my grasp. “That’s…”

  “My new work dress,” I finish. “It should be red for the blood on my hands.”

  My often-silent sister sighs before saying, “Oh, little gem!”

  The childhood name stings, although I’m sure that’s not her intention. I shake my head. “I need beets,” I repeat.

  My sister accepts my choice, not speaking to me of shame or guilt, not arguing that I am innocent. She simply pulls the plants.

  I take up Karis’ tasks as my own. The soup I make is no better or worse than hers. The stitches I sew in Father’s remade clothes are no straighter or more crooked. The meals I take are of the portion that Karis would have ladled into her bowl.

  Unlike my now-dead sister, I do not sing in the kitchen.

  Father rarely speaks to me, and when he does, it’s only the most necessary of words. I am not sure I’ve heard my name on his lips since the day Karis vanished. He does not need to tell me that he blames me. It’s obvious in his every unspoken word.

  * * *

  The death of my sister has changed me, but half a year later, spring still comes, and with it, my old habits start to return. I cannot help but look for the bones of the dead in the freshly turned soil.

  “Verena, she’s not here.” My remaining sibling catches my eye as I scan the garden. “Wherever she is, it’s not here.”

  I’m outside with her, turning the soil by hand. It’s hard work, but like everything else, I aim to fill the hole left by the loss of Karis. It’s harder than I expected, both on my heart and on my body. I was at school in prior years when the bulk of the garden was broken. Still, I carry on as if I have strength and experience at the hours of back-breaking work. To do otherwise is to insult the dead.

  “Maybe she’s alive,” I say, my gaze steady on the worn blade I force through the ground. “Maybe they all are.”

  I want to understand the Maiden Thief. I want to prove my own theories wrong, and so for the first time, I find myself hoping that the reason no bodies are found is because the stolen girls are actually alive.

  For several moments, Amina says nothing. I hear birds, the calls of spring insects, and the rustle of new leaves on the tree. My remaining sister’s voice is silent.

  I risk a glance at the window, and I take small comfort in the fact that my father is not watching. At least he trusts that my sister is safe with me at her side. I have no illusion that I am strong enough to defend her, but he counts my presence as enough to walk away from his post at the window.

  Either that or he cannot bear to watch me overlong. That, too, is a possibility. I no longer have the heart for such answers. I’ve tried to replace Bastian, learning so I could be of use to the family in business. I’ve taken my sister’s role in the kitchen. Nothing I do changes the fact that the most useless of his children is one of the only two remaining.

  “They’re not alive,” Amina says finally, her words coming so long after mine that I can almost forget the context. I want to forget it. I want to forget so much.

  “They could be,” I insist. In that moment, I feel like the girl I once was, back when weaving flowers into crowns and reading tales of fantastical creatures was all that I had to do.

  “It isn’t your fault,” Amina tells me. It is far from the first or even the sixteenth time she’s said those words. She and Karis said them when Bastian and Mother died in the accident coming back from picking up my new dress. She and Karis said them when I saw how badly mangled our father’s leg was from that same accident. We all said them when Father risked the rest of our savings on an order of goods that sank into the ocean. Now Amina says the words to me again and again since Karis vanished.

  “What if it’s all my fault?” I look at my sister and ask for answers to a question that has plagued me for years. “They die with my birthdays. Mother and Bastian died fetching my dress. Karis was stolen after my theories on the killer.”

  “The sun rose on those days,” Amina begins. She leans on her garden hoe for a moment. “There was a fox in the garden the morning Karis disappeared, possibly the day that the accident happened too. I sneezed those days. What ripples we see are not always causes.” She shakes her head. “We can look for patterns, and we might even find them. There were a lot of acorns this year, and the snow was heavy. Are they related? A fawn died of hunger after I chased it from the garden, and our sister died. Were they related?”

  I let out a sound of frustration. “That’s not the same. I wrote the words on the killer, and Karis was taken.”

  Amina sighs. “No one knows why he takes the girls he does. Did the other families do something to cause their daughters to be chosen? Is it their fault?” She stares at me in such a way that I can’t help thinking of Mother. Those are her eyes, her peering-into-my-soul stare. “No one knows, Verena. Do not presume to understand a madman.”

  Mutely, I nod. I believe her. For the first time since Karis was taken, I believe that I may not carry the full burden of her death. I do not return to school, but sometimes, I sit in the darkened house with a candle at night, and I read.

  When Amina starts sharing the chores, I do not send her off to her bed with a stern word, and when she slips into the sitting room and asks to read the book I have just finished, I hand it to her. Together, we are not as whole as we had been with Karis, or with Bastian and Mother, but we are healing. Like the other families who have lost their daughters, we are moving on—guiltily grateful that come autumn, we will not be among the families worrying that one of us is next. The Maiden Thief has never taken two daughters from the same family. That, at least, gives me a horrible comfort.

  * * *

  By the time autumn finally comes, I realize that Father no longer watches Amina in the garden. He even smiles once. It is not much, but at least we know that we will be spared. No one speaks it aloud, but Karis’ loss has spared us from the pall that hangs over every other family with a daughter in Charlestown.

  Amina has even been talking to a man. He is closer to Father’s age than to mine, but Father cannot reprimand her because he doesn’t know. Jakob is a secret.

  Not long after she tells me of him, I hide and study the man who has drawn smiles from my sister. He is older but still handsome, dark of eye and hair, light of skin and spirit. He travels for his work, passing through small towns like ours. He does not speak of his work, telling Amina only that it is not a woman’s place to worry over such things. It may be unwomanly of me, but I wonder all the same. Jakob dresses in rags, but it doesn’t take me many afternoons of secret observation to realize that these ragged clothes are a ploy to make her feel comfortable. His nails are short and clean, and he has the scent of herbs about him. I think he might be a doctor; I am certain he is a man of learning. His words when he speaks reveal more education than the simple clothes he wears. If we weren’t fallen so low, he would be exactly the sort of man Father would’ve selected as a groom for his daughters.

  Jakob is not meant to be mine. No groom is. All that can be mine is the penance for causing the Maiden Thief to steal my sister. Amina deserves happiness. She has lost too many siblings, and she’s paid for others’ mistakes with too many years of work.

  “He’s so kind,” Amina says one evening after Jakob has left. Her voice is filled with a softness I
’ve not heard for years.

  “Do you think he’s going to offer for you?”

  She looks down at her ragged nails. Every night lately, she scrubs to get as much dirt from her hands as she can. It isn’t enough to remove the years of ground-in earth. “I couldn’t leave home. I’ve told him as much. I don’t even go into town. How would I leave?”

  “With only Father and I, we don’t need much,” I point out. “I could grow enough to earn what we need to pay the bills and add meat to our meals sometimes.”

  Amina meets my eyes. “Maybe.”

  A new part of me is burning with jealousy, not of Jakob but of what he can give her. If Amina leaves, if she finds freedom, I will never be able to do so. In truth, I may not have that option, anyhow. Father needs someone to mind the house, to cook his meals, to suffer for the loss of almost everyone he’s loved. He has become colder and crueler every year. Gone is the man who would heft me onto his shoulders when I was a small girl. Gone is the man who brought me a rose when he returned from his business trips. The man left in his place has a stone where his heart once resided.

  I want my sister to find happiness, to have cause to laugh and smile, to not spend her years toiling for Father and me. I shove my envy down so far that it hurts to breathe, and I assure my sister, “He’d be a fool not to want to marry you, and you’d be a fool not to take his offer when it comes.”

  * * *

  Those words haunt me when the leaves begin to turn and fall. Jakob has always been cautious to avoid Father’s eyes, and his visits tend to coincide with when I am not at the window. I still watch them surreptitiously sometimes, but I have avoided even being glimpsed by the man who will probably marry my sister.

  When Amina slips out to meet Jakob, I feign sleep as I do often. It’s been a full year since Karis was taken, but the nightmares of her abduction and presumed murder weigh heavy enough that sleep is often hard to find. A cry outside startles me, and I am out the door with only my nightdress on. My knee-length hair hangs mostly free of its confining braid, proof of my restless thrashing, and my feet are bare despite the autumn chill.

  “Meeny!” I call out as I run into the yard, clad in only my white nightgown.

  I stop suddenly, my eyes widen as I take in the unexpected scene before me. My sister, her bright hair glowing in the light of the nearly full moon, is caught up in Jakob’s arms. He has a hand splayed across her back, and her nightdress is pushed up to her hips. Her legs are bare, quite indecently so, and as I stare at her, I see that her body is pressed tightly to his. Her back is to me, and for that I’m grateful.

  My hand flies to my mouth as Karis’ always did when she was in shock. I bite down on my own skin to keep my sounds of surprise hidden.

  I start to turn to creep away, feeling foolish for mistaking her cry for pain, but before I can escape, I realize that Jakob sees me.

  I would apologize if the words could be kept from Amina.

  I would run if it could erase the embarrassment of this moment.

  Instead, I stand still, unable to move as Jakob meets my eyes … and smiles. Moments drag by as I study his smile, unsure of what to do. Then he closes his eyes, releasing me from his stare.

  I run.

  Later, when Amina stealthily returns to the house, I again pretend to sleep.

  The next morning, I wait for her to tell me her good news, prepared to feign surprise at her pending nuptials.

  The following day, I wait again.

  By the week’s end, I am forced to ask, “Where is Jakob?”

  Amina offers me a weak smile and says, “He had to travel for business. He’ll return next month.”

  And it is then that I understand that what I saw was a goodbye. I hug my sister. “It’s only a single month,” I tease. “Father was often gone that long.”

  She nods and holds me tighter. “Maybe if he returns, you could come with us. He says … he says he loves me, Verena.” She smiles then. “He says he’ll take me away to a castle where I’ll be his perfect wife. He told me that he’ll cherish me, and I’ll live like a queen as long as I’m faithful and good!”

  “You deserve it,” I tell her.

  I mean it.

  Yet, that night, when I sleep, it is not Karis I dream of. In my sleeping mind, I see Jakob smiling at me as he had held Amina. I wake, and I hate him for giving my sister the life that Karis and I will never have. I lie awake, and I hate myself for envying my sister.

  * * *

  Only three weeks later, Amina is gone without even a goodbye. I will never see that castle. She is gone, and I am left alone with Father.

  “What did you do?” he roars at me. His words are followed with a fist.

  I shake, staring up at him, afraid to stand. “Nothing.”

  “She’s gone. You did this. They are all dead because of you.”

  When I open my mouth to tell him that it was not the killer who took Amina, he puts his weight on his good leg, and then he hits me over and over with his cane.

  I decide then and there not to ease his pain by telling him Amina left by choice. Let him think that she was stolen. Let him suffer. I am bruised and bleeding, and the man who was my father is nowhere to be found in this shell before me.

  “Better dead than here with you,” I tell him as I crawl out of his reach.

  He stares at me, chest heaving with the exertion of beating me, and for a flicker of a moment, I see the man I once knew. Then he says, “Get up. The blood will stain the floor if you let it stand.”

  And I am left alone to clean my blood from my father’s floor.

  * * *

  The townsfolk look at me with equal parts fear and pity when I go to sell the vegetables over the next weeks. I want to tell them the truth, that the Maiden Thief has not yet taken this year’s girl, but they turn their backs or look away quickly the few times I open my mouth to speak.

  They will know when this year’s girl is taken.

  But days pass, and no girl vanishes. It worries me. Maybe the Maiden Thief has stopped. Maybe he visited another town this year. I wish Amina had told me where the castle was. I would feel better if I could speak to her.

  Weeks pass, and one day, I am picking apples when Jakob stops at the orchard.

  “Did she come too?” I look past him, expecting to see my sister, wondering why he still wears such ragged things when he’s already taken Amina to his castle. There is no need to feign poverty now.

  Jakob stares at me. “Who?”

  “My sister.”

  “Amina?” he asks.

  I try to recall if he would have met Karis, but she was dead by the time he started visiting Amina. Something about the way he watches me sets fear racing through my body. “She left with you, didn’t she?”

  “Why would you think that?” He folds his arms and studies me.

  “But Amina…”

  “I was looking for something, and I thought I’d finally found it. I was wrong again.” He gives me a sweet, sad smile. “I came back. I’ll have to try again.”

  “She’s not with you?”

  “No.”

  If not for his arms coming around me, I would have tumbled to the dirt. I am limp in his grasp, upright only because he holds me so. My sister is dead. I’ve envied her for escaping this wretched drudgery, this poverty, this life.

  But she did not escape.

  She was stolen.

  Like my eldest sister.

  Like the other girls before her.

  “She’s dead,” I tell Jakob in a voice made weak with the tears I cannot stop. “I thought she went with you, that you married her, but if she’s not with you … she’s dead. My sister is dead.”

  Jakob cradles my head and holds me to him.

  “It’s my fault,” I say between sobs. “Both Karis and Amina were taken. It’s my fault. I should never have asked the townspeople to catch the Maiden Thief.”

  “True.” He looks down at me and asks, “Will you atone?”

  For a thick moment
, anger that he’d ask anything of me makes me want to strike him. I have lost two sisters. I have lost any chance of happiness. But then the weight of my own culpability squashes fear and anger. I caused this. I did not steal their lives, but I drew the madman’s eye to them. I owe penance.

  “I will,” I promise Jakob.

  I’ve stepped into my siblings’ duties so often that is has become like donning a nearly fitting coat. Perhaps this time it will be for the best. Jakob loved my sister, and she is gone from him. I can replace her.

  “You will love me as she should have,” Jakob murmurs.

  I’m not sure if it’s a question or an order, but I swear, “I will. I promise I will.”

  * * *

  Months pass, and Jakob visits me in secret as he once visited my sister. He wears nicer clothes, though. With me, he doesn’t hide his wealth.

  “You’ve known all along that I was not poor,” he says one evening. “Yet you said nothing.”

  I nod.

  And he rewards me with a kiss.

  In my life of silence and toil, he is my light. My father no longer speaks to or looks at me. My sisters are lost. My studies have ended. All I have in this world is Jakob. I cannot bear the thought of ever losing him—and he knows it.

  Since that day, I feel like he is often testing me, trying to see what I think, checking to see what I observe of him and the world around us. He makes me feel things I hate sometimes, prodding me until I share my ugliness with him. He rewards me with kisses or kind words when I do as he wants.

  “Be truthful, Verena. I want to know what you really think.”

  “I almost hated my sister for the way you spoke to her,” I admit.

  “Your sister had a kind heart,” he says. Then he brushes his lips over mine. “But she was not as brave as you or as smart as you.”

  There is little I crave more than affection these days, and Jakob gives it to me without asking much in return. He asks for confessions of my sins, my flaws, my weaknesses. He asks that I tell no lies and that I swear not to talk to any other man. It is a small fee for the joy he gives me; his praise and his small kisses are treasures I once coveted. Now they are mine. They will always be mine.