The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  There was no jauntiness about him now, no mocking gaiety. “You are no witch. I would know. What are you?”

  I wanted to go over and comfort Father, hold him and make certain that he was unhurt, but Great-Grandmother had her own plans. She said, “I am a member of this family, and I have come to get my great-granddaughter back from you. Release her and I have no quarrel with you, no further interest at all. Do it now, Borbos Tresard.”

  For answer, Borbos looked shyly down at the floor, shuffled his feet like an embarrassed schoolboy, and muttered something that might indeed have been an apology for bad behavior in the classroom. But at the first sound of it, Great-Grandmother leaped forward and dragged Father away from the bed, as the floor began to crack open down the middle and the bed to slide steadily toward the widening crevasse. Father cried out in horror. I wanted to scream; but Great-Grandmother pointed with the forefingers and ring fingers of both my hands at the opening, and what she shouted hurt my mouth. Took out a back tooth, too, though I didn’t notice at the time. I was too busy watching Borbos’s spell reverse itself, as the flying kitchenware had done. The hole in the floor closed up as quickly as it had opened, and Jashani’s bed slid back to where it had been, more or less, with her never once stirring. Father limped dazedly over to her and began to straighten her coverlet.

  For a second time Borbos Tresard said, “Well, my goodness.” He shook his head slightly, whether in admiration or because he was trying to clear it, I can’t say. He said, “I do believe you are my master. Or mistress, as you will. But it won’t help, you know. She still will not wake to any spell, except to see my face, and my terms are what they always were—a welcome into the heart of this truly remarkable family. Nothing more, and nothing less.” He beamed joyously at us, and if I had never understood why so many women fell so helplessly in love with him, I surely came to understand it then. “How much longer can you stay in the poor ox, anyway, before you raddle him through like the death fever you are? Another day? A week? So much as a month? My face can wait, mother—but somehow I don’t believe you can. I really don’t believe so.”

  The bedchamber was so quiet that I thought I heard not only my own heart beating but also Jashani’s, strong but so slow, and a skittery, too-rapid pulse that I first thought must be Father’s, before I understood that it belonged to Borbos. Great-Grandmother said musingly, “Patience is an overrated virtue.”

  And then I also understood why so many people fear the dead.

  I felt her leaving me. I can’t describe it any better than I’ve been able to say what it was like to have her in me. All I’m going to say about her departure is that it left me suddenly stumbling forward, as though a prop I was leaning on had been pulled away. But it wasn’t my body that felt abandoned, I know that. I think it was my spirit, but I can’t be sure.

  Great-Grandmother stood there as I had first seen her. Lightning was flashing in her empty eye sockets, and the pitiless grin of her naked skull branded itself across my sight. With one great heron-stride of her naked shanks she was on Borbos, reaching out—reaching out…

  I don’t want to tell about this.

  She took his face. She reached out with her bones, and she took his face, and he screamed. There was no blood, nothing like that, but suddenly there was a shifting smudge, almost like smoke, where his face had been…and there it was, somehow pasted on her, merged with the bone, so that it looked real, not like a mask, even on the skull of a skeleton. Even with the lightning behind her borrowed eyes.

  Borbos went on screaming, floundering blindly in the bedchamber, stumbling into walls and falling down, meowing and snuffling hideously; but Great-Grandmother clacked and clattered to Jashani’s bedside, and peered down at her for a long moment before she spoke. “Love,” she said softly. “Jashani. My heart, awaken. Awaken for me.” The voice was Borbos’s voice.

  And Jashani opened her eyes and said his name.

  Father was instantly there, holding her hands, stroking her face, crying with joy. I didn’t know what those easy words meant until then. Great-Grandmother turned away and walked across the room to Borbos. He must have sensed her standing before him, because he stopped making that terrible snuffling sound. She said, “Here. I only used it for a little,” and she gave him back his face.

  I didn’t really see it happen. I was with my father and my sister, listening to her say my name.

  When I felt Great-Grandmother’s fleshless hand on my shoulder, I kissed Jashani’s forehead and stood up. I looked over at Borbos, still crouched in a corner, his hands pressed tightly against his face, as though he were holding it on. Great-Grandmother touched Father’s shoulder with her other hand and said, impassively, “Take him home. Afterward.”

  After you bury me again, she meant. She held onto my shoulder as we walked downstairs together, and I felt a strange tension in the cold clasp that made me more nervous than I already was. Would she simply lie down in her cellar grave waiting for me to spade the earth back over her and pat it down with the blade? I thought of those other bones I’d first seen in the grave, and I shivered, and her grip tightened just a bit.

  We faced each other over the empty grave. I couldn’t read her expression any more than I ever could, but the lightning was no longer playing in her eye sockets. She said, “You are a good boy. Your company pleases me.”

  I started to say, “If my company is the price of Jashani…I am ready.” I think my voice was not trembling very much, but I don’t know, because I never got the chance to finish. Both of our heads turned at a sudden scurry of footsteps, and we saw Borbos Tresard charging at us across the cellar. Head down, eyes white, flailing hands empty of weapons, nevertheless his entire outline was crackling with the fire-magic of utter, insane fury. He was howling as he came.

  I automatically stepped into his way—too numb with fear to be afraid, if you can understand that—but Great-Grandmother put me aside and stood waiting, short but terrible, holding out her stick-thin arms. Like a child rushing to greet his mother coming home, Borbos Tresard leaped into those arms, and they closed around him. The impact caught Great-Grandmother off-balance; the two of them tumbled into the grave together, struggling as they fell. I heard bones go, but would not gamble they were hers.

  I picked up a spade, uncertain what I meant to do with it, staring down at the tumult in the earth as though it were something happening a long way off, and long ago. Then Father was beside me with the other spade, frantically shoving everything—dirt and odd scraps of wood and twigs and even old wine corks from the cellar floor—into the grave, shoveling and kicking and pushing with his arms almost at the same time. By and by I recovered enough to assist him, and when the hole was filled we both jumped up and down on the pile, packing it all down as tightly as it would go. The risen surface wasn’t quite level with the floor when we were done, but it would settle in time.

  I had to say it. I said, “He’s down there under our feet, still alive, choking on dirt, with her holding him fast forever. Keeping her company.” Father did not answer, but only leaned on his spade, with dirty sweat running out of his hair and down his cheek. I think that was the first time I noticed that he was an inch or so shorter than I. “I feel sorry for him. A little.”

  “Not I,” Father said flatly. “I’d bury him deeper, if we had more earth.”

  “Then you would be burying Great-Grandmother deeper, too,” I said.

  “Yes.” Father’s face was paper-white, the skin looking thin with every kind of exhaustion. “Help me move these barrels.”

  THE EASTHOUND

  NALO HOPKINSON

  Nalo Hopkinson [www.nalohopkinson.com], a Jamaican-Canadian writer, is a recipient of the World Fantasy Award and of the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her novels include Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, The New Moon’s Arms, and The Chaos, and her short fiction has been collected in Skin Folk and Report from Planet Midnight. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the Univer
sity of California Riverside, specializing in science fiction and fantasy. Her sixth novel, Sister Mine, will be published later this year.

  O h, Black Betty, bam-ba-lam,

  Oh, Black Betty, bam-ba-lam.

  “The easthound bays at night,” Jolly said.

  Millie shivered. Bad luck to mention the easthound, and her twin bloody well knew it. God, she shouldn’t even be thinking, “bloody.” Millie put her hands to her mouth to stopper the words in so she wouldn’t say them out loud.

  “Easthound?” said Max. He pulled the worn black coat closer around his body. The coat had been getting tighter around him these past few months. Everyone could see it. “Uck the fuh is that easthound shit?”

  Not what; he knew damned well what it was. He was asking Jolly what the hell she was doing bringing the easthound into their game of Loup-de-lou. Millie wanted to yell at Jolly too.

  Jolly barely glanced at Max. She knelt in front of the fire, staring into it, re-twisting her dreads and separating them at the scalp where they were threatening to grow together. “It’s my first line,” she said. “You can play or not, no skin off my teeth.”

  They didn’t talk about skin coming off, either. Jolly should be picking someone to come up with the next line of the game. But Jolly broke the rules when she damned well pleased. Loup-de-lou was her game, after all. She’d invented it. Someone had to come up with a first line. Then they picked the next person. That person had to continue the story by beginning with the last word or two of the line the last person said. And so on until someone closed the loup by ending the story with the first word or two of the very first line. Jolly was so thin. Millie had saved some of the chocolate bar she’d found to share with Jolly, but she knew that Jolly wouldn’t take it. If you ate too much, you grew too quickly. Millie’d already eaten most of the chocolate, though. Couldn’t help it. She was so hungry all the time!

  Max hadn’t answered Jolly. He took the bottle of vodka that Sai was holding and chugged down about a third of it. Nobody complained. That was his payment for finding the bottle in the first place. But could booze make you grow, too? Or did it keep you shrinky? Millie couldn’t remember which. She fretfully watched Max’s Adam’s apple bob as he drank.

  “The game?” Citron chirped up, reminding them. A twin of the flames of their fire danced in his green eyes. “We gonna play?”

  Right. The game. Jolly bobbed her head yes. Sai, too. Millie said, “I’m in.” Max sighed and shrugged his yes.

  Max took up where Jolly had left off. “At night the easthound howls,” he growled, “but only when there’s no moon.” He pointed at Citron.

  A little clumsy, Millie thought, but a good second line.

  Quickly, Citron picked it up with, “No moon is so bright as the easthound’s eyes when it spies a plump rat on a garbage heap.” He pointed at Millie.

  Garbage heap? What kind of end bit was that? Didn’t give her much with which to begin the new loup. Trust Citron to throw her a tough one. And that “eyes, spies” thing, too. A rhyme in the middle, instead of at the end. Clever bastard. Thinking furiously, Millie louped, “Garbage heaps high in the…cities of noonless night.”

  Jolly said, “You’re cheating. It was ‘garbage heap,’ not ‘garbage heaps.’” She gnawed a strip from the edge of her thumbnail, blew the crescented clipping from her lips into the fire.

  “Chuh.” Millie made a dismissive motion with her good hand. “You just don’t want to have to continue on with ‘noonless night.’” Smirking, she pointed at her twin.

  Jolly started in on the nail of her index finger. “And you’re just not very good at this game, are you, Millie?”

  “Twins, stop it,” Max told them.

  “I didn’t start it,” Jolly countered, through chewed nail bits. Millie hated to see her bite her nails, and Jolly knew it.

  Jolly stood and flounced closer to the fire. Over her back she spat the phrase, “Noonless night, a rat’s bright fright, and blood in the bite all delight the easthound.” The final two words were the two with which they’d begun. Game over. Jolly spat out a triumphant, “Loup!” First round to Jolly.

  Sai slapped the palm of her hand down on the ground between the players. “Aw, jeez, Jolly! You didn’t have to end it so soon, just cause you’re mad at your sister! I was working on a great loup.”

  “Jolly’s only showing off!” Millie said. Truth was, Jolly was right. Millie really wasn’t much good at Loup-de-lou. It was only a stupid game, a distraction to take their minds off hunger, off being cold and scared, off watching everybody else and yourself every waking second for signs of sprouting. But Millie didn’t want to be distracted. Taking your mind off things could kill you. She was only going along with the game to show the others that she wasn’t getting cranky; getting loupy.

  She rubbed the end of her handless wrist. Damp was making it achy. She reached for the bottle of vodka where Max had stood it upright in the crook of his crossed legs. “Nuh-uh-uh,” he chided, pulling it out of her reach and passing it to Citron, who took two pulls at the bottle and coughed.

  Max said to Millie, “You don’t get any treats until you start a new game.”

  Jolly turned back from the fire, her grinning teeth the only thing that shone in her black silhouette.

  “Wasn’t me who spoiled that last one,” Millie grumbled. But she leaned back on the packed earth, her good forearm and the one with the missing hand both lying flush against the soil. She considered how to begin. The ground was a little warmer tonight than it had been last night. Spring was coming. Soon, there’d be pungent wild leeks to pull up and eat from the river bank. She’d been craving their taste all through this frozen winter. She’d been yearning for the sight and taste of green, growing things. Only she wouldn’t eat too many of them. You couldn’t ever eat your fill of anything, or that might bring out the Hound. Soon it’d be warm enough to sleep outside again. She thought of rats and garbage heaps, and slammed her mind’s door shut on the picture. Millie liked sleeping with the air on her skin, even though it was dangerous out of doors. It felt more dangerous indoors, what with everybody growing up.

  And then she knew how to start the loup. She said, “The river swells in May’s spring tide.”

  Jolly strode back from the fire and took the vodka from Max. “That’s a really good one.” She offered the bottle to her twin.

  Millie found herself smiling as she took it. Jolly was quick to speak her mind, whether scorn or praise. Millie could never stay mad at her for long. Millie drank through her smile, feeling the vodka burn its trail down. With her stump she pointed at Jolly and waited to hear how Jolly would Loup-de-lou with the words “spring tide.”

  “The spring’s May tide is deep and wide,” louped Jolly. She was breaking the rules again; three words, not two, and she’d added a “the” at the top, and changed the order around! People shouldn’t change stuff, it was bad! Millie was about to protest when a quavery howl crazed the crisp night, then disappeared like a sob into silence.

  “Shit!” hissed Sai. She leapt up and began kicking dirt onto the fire to douse it. The others stood too.

  “Race you to the house!” yelled a gleeful Jolly, already halfway there at a run.

  Barking with forced laughter, the others followed her. Millie, who was almost as quick as Jolly, reached the disintegrating cement steps of the house a split second before Jolly pushed in through the door, yelling “I win!” as loudly as she could. The others tumbled in behind Millie, shoving and giggling.

  Sai hissed, “Sshh!” Loud noises weren’t a good idea.

  With a chuckle in her voice, Jolly replied, “Oh, chill, we’re fine. Remember how Churchy used to say that loud noises chased away ghosts?”

  Everyone went silent. They were probably all thinking the same thing; that maybe Churchy was a ghost now. Millie whispered, “We have to keep quiet, or the easthound will hear us.”

  “Bite me,” said Max. “There’s no such thing as an easthound.” His voice was deeper than
it had been last week. No use pretending. He was growing up. Millie put a bit more distance between him and her. Max really was getting too old. If he didn’t do the right thing soon and leave on his own, they’d have to kick him out. Hopefully before something ugly happened.

  Citron closed the door behind them. It was dark in the house. Millie tried to listen beyond the door to the outside. That had been no wolf howling, and they all knew it. She tried to rub away the pain in her wrist. “Do we have any aspirin?”

  Sai replied, “I’m sorry. I took the last two yesterday.”

  Citron sat with a thump on the floor and started to sob. “I hate this,” he said slurrily. “I’m cold and I’m scared and there’s no bread left, and it smells of mildew in here—”

  “You’re just drunk,” Millie told him.

  “—and Millie’s cranky all the time,” Citron continued with a glare at Millie, “and Sai farts in her sleep, and Max’s boots don’t fit him any more. He’s growing up.”

  “Shut up!” said Max. He grabbed Citron by the shoulders, dragged him to his feet, and started to shake him. “Shut up!” His voice broke on the “up” and ended in a little squeak. It should have been funny, but now he had Citron up against the wall and was choking him. Jolly and Sai yanked at Max’s hands. They told him over and over to stop, but he wouldn’t. The creepiest thing was, Citron wasn’t making any sound. He couldn’t. He couldn’t get any air. He scrabbled at Max’s hands, trying to pull them off his neck.

  Millie knew she had to do something quickly. She slammed the bottle of vodka across Max’s back, like christening a ship. She’d seen it on tv, when tvs still worked. When you could still plug one in and have juice flow through the wires to make funny cartoon creatures move behind the screen, and your mom wouldn’t sprout in front of your eyes and eat your dad and bite your hand off.