The lights of our house shine bright. Mother has lit the lanterns without me. She stands, wrapped in her shawl, waiting by the front gate of our house. She must hear the sound of my footsteps, for she turns, and relief rushes her face. She holds out her arms and I run straight to her. Only when I’ve buried my head in the soft, dark folds of her cloak do I feel myself shaking.
Mother pulls back and holds me at arm’s length. She slaps my face, which she has not done since the time in my fifth year when I tied a bucket to our goat’s tail and he trampled part of our summer garden in his panic. “Where have you been?” she asks. And then, without waiting for me to answer. “I thought you were gone. I thought it had taken you.”
“I . . . I was hot, so I went up to the olive grove. I fell asleep,” I say. Then her other words seep into my ears. My heart quickens again. “What would want to take me?”
She presses me tight against her. “Nothing. Nothing. Promise me you won’t stray past the borders of the farm. If you do, I can’t protect you.”
“But what do you need to protect me from?”
Mother stares at me. Her eyes look like dark, polished river stones. “There are all manner of evil things in the world, Ourania, that you are lucky not to know about. Let us not change that.”
Day wept as she fled, and her tears flooded the earth. All the beasts cried out and raised their hands to her for mercy, but the deluge swept many under. Then Day felt something move within her. She looked, and found Night’s child growing in her belly. Day dried her tears and went to Man to strike a bargain.
“Man,” she said. “Have pity. I am with child by Night. Only call off your beast so we may raise our child in peace, and I swear Night and I will part forever. We will each take up our course in the sky, as always was.”
“Very well,” Man said. “But should you ever stray again, I will loose my beast and hound you to the ends of the earth.”
Day agreed, saying, “For even if we never meet, Night’s child is dear to me.”
Thereafter, the pattern of days returned to the earth. Man became chief among beasts, and he turned his hand to quelling the earth and seas, and all within his ken.
Seven days pass, but I do not visit the meadow again. The grain is almost ready for threshing, so Mother and I sharpen our collection of scythes. I wonder what kept Aaron from me, if it was the same thing I heard howling, the same thing my mother fears. If my mother fears it, it must be too terrible. I am sick from wanting to ask her what it might want from us, but I don’t dare. I am nearly finished with Darwin, and geometry helps keep my mind from straying to the olive grove and my strange dream. C=2πr; A=πr2; V=πr2h, I think as the sun beats down on the roof of our house. A=1/2 bh; a2+ b2=c2
“I have something for you,” Mother says at breakfast one morning. She dusts breadcrumbs from her hands as she rises and holds up a finger, telling me to wait where I am. I clear our breakfast and wipe the table clean with a wet rag. Mother returns holding an oilcloth package bound up with twine. She holds it out to me. “Open it.”
I cut the twine with my knife and fold the oilcloth away. A nest of fine, creamy linen rests inside. Light from the window catches in the fine weave, making it shimmer like sunshine on a lake. I let out a short breath. This is fabric for a priestess or a bride, not a girl who mucks around with goats and spends her days winnowing grain.
“What’s this for?” I ask, turning from the kitchen window, my arms brimming with cloth.
Mother steps into the square of light with me. Her dark hair has fallen out of its tie. It curls down her back and over her breasts like thick, unchecked vines. The light picks out the thin hairs on her forearms, bleached fair by the sun, and warms her browned skin to gold. She reaches out to touch my face and I swear I feel all the heat of summer brush my skin. “You’ll be a woman soon,” she says. “That brings certain duties and certain boons.”
I feel the air quiver around me, and I open my mouth, a hundred questions ready to tumble from the tip of my tongue. But Mother drops her hand. The air changes, as if something has gone out of it, like the release of tension between the earth and sky after a thunderstorm. I sink into my chair, my legs trembling.
“I thought we might dye the border this afternoon, after your lessons,” Mother says, folding the oilcloth and twine together for safekeeping. She winds her hair back off of her neck, and I see the smudges of soot on her elbows and faded oil spots on her clothes again. She scoops up a water pail in each hand and holds one out to me. “Come on, help me with the pump.”
I still can’t sleep at the midday hour, but I don’t dare scale the hill again. The echo of Mother’s unnamed terror is too real when I wake each morning. I lie on my back in my cot with Aaron’s book open in one hand, and the other cupped over my own breast. If I close my eyes, I can imagine it’s Aaron’s hand, not my own. I press my fingers against the soft flesh of my lips and think of him and his imagined body until the heat from my dream courses through me again. When it is gone, I feel something other than myself. Foreign and hollow, though I don’t know why.
I get up and pace the quiet house with Aaron’s book. I find the stub of red clay Mother uses to mark measurements on cloth and stone, and take it out to the garden. First I stare out over the vegetable rows with the clay poised over a blank page of Aaron’s book. I bite my lip and pull on my ear. The mouser sleeps atop the garden wall, his eyes closed to soft slits and his tail twitching against the stone. I put the clay to the paper and try to imitate the subtle curve of his ears, the ripple of muscles beneath his fur. I block in the balance of stones in the wall, with a thick snake of vines twining up through the cracks and over the top. I hold the paper out. It is not at all neat like Aaron’s drawings. The mouser might well be a toad on a woodpile. Mouser sleeping on our garden wall, I write below my scrawl, so Aaron will know what it is, if he ever sees it.
Still, it is only my first attempt. I assume this skill is like baking bread or math. I must practice my hand at it. I move over to the cone of wooden stakes where our bean plants grow and hunch over its flowers. I record these and label them, then a black, crook-legged maria bug I find resting beneath the late spinach. I wander the garden, taking down everything I find in Aaron’s book until my skin begins to feel tight and hot under the sun. I creep indoors.
Mother lies fast asleep with her back to the wall. Her hair curls around her shoulders. She looks soft, all the drive and hurry wiped from her face. I wonder if I look this way when I sleep. I settle in the chair across from her and begin sketching, trying to spool myself, my life, together again as I go.
I cannot wait another seven days. No amount of mathematics or sketched mimicry can quell the heat flaring beneath my skin or the worry in my stomach. I will go to the hill, and I will not lie down to sleep. I will find Aaron or else leave word for him that I am waiting. My limbs shake as I slip from the house at noon and lift a sharpened scythe from the barn wall. If there is really some terror out there, I will not go unarmed.
I mount the hill again. My trek through the close files of the orchard seems to take longer than usual, but maybe that is the crawling feeling, like ants covering my skin, making time slow. As I step into the meadow, I feel a thrum in the air. The air smells hot, like when Mother works on her conductivity experiments. I adjust my grip on the scythe and step away from the sheltering trees.
I have only moved a few paces into the meadow when my foot strikes something hard and ungiving. It makes a hollow noise. I kneel down in the grass and run my hands over it. A long rail, made of thick, sun-warmed metal. Several feet away, its twin runs parallel, with a neat pattern of heavy wood boards spanning the distance between the two. The rails stretch across the length of the meadow, and now I see a break in the trees on either side where someone has cleared all the growth to make a path for them. I run to the break. Farther off, on the next hill rise, I can make out the dark curve of the track disappearing over its crest.
A low howl fills the air, the same I heard before. M
y chest tightens with horror. A black cloud rises over the hill, cumulating and moving at terrifying speed, faster than I have ever known any beast to run. Beneath the screen of smoke, I make out a flash of dark metal glinting in the sun. It stretches in a sinuous trail over the top of the hill, like an asp or a millipede, gaining velocity as it drops toward the valley floor. The metal thing dips along the swale, then tilts its face toward me and begins to strain up the hill. It beats out a hollow rhythm, metal against metal, with a horrible, tooth-scraping grind between beats.
I drop my scythe and run back along the wooden path. The sound of the thing—is it animal or some kind of machine?—drowns out the slap of my sandals against the boards. The ground rumbles beneath my feet, growing to a constant tremor as the high howl and screech flood my ears, my mouth, my entire body. The noise fills everything. My heart shudders in time with the creature’s unearthly growl, like a bell reverberating, and I throw myself from the path, into the high grass. I huddle, clutching the earth. The world is nothing but rattle, rock, clack, and moan. And then as suddenly as it came, I feel the thing pass. A rush of air sucks at me, leaving the grass swaying as the roar retreats into the distance.
I stand up. The air tastes acrid, like burning rock. I feel grimed. I run my hands over my hair and skin. A fine, gray dust has settled on my neck and arms, and through my hair. I spit and wipe my eyes. I stand mere feet from the track, and on the other side, there is a man. He wears a brown suit, cut in a simpler version of the style I saw on Aaron, and a domed hat I recognize from the book of drawings. A silky piece of fabric hangs in a knot at his throat. His face is older by far than my father’s, more lined and baked by the sun. Drifts of gray hair sweep out from under his hat. But his eyes, those are brown and deep as a cistern.
“Ourania?” His voice sticks and comes out as a croak.
“Do I know you?” I call back. I can hear the waver in my own voice. I hurry forward until my feet meet the rail, then stand back a pace. Who knows if the metal creature might come ripping through the trees again?
He walks toward me and lifts his feet over the track without pause. We stand within a hand’s breadth of each other, only the span of the metal rail separating us. I look up at him. I study the folds of flesh under his eyes and the creases at the corners of his mouth, the shape of his ears and the familiar, broad line of his nose. I know. Oh, help me, I know.
“Aaron.” His name comes out of me in a rush of breath. I want to double over, for I feel as if something has knocked the air from my lungs. I hold out a hand to keep myself upright, and he catches it. He helps me over to a patch of low grass in the shade of the olive trees. I sit, hard. He kneels by me.
“I knew,” he says. His eyes rim with wet. “I knew if I kept coming I would find you some day.”
“Aaron.” I lift my hand to touch his face. His skin feels thin and soft.
“What happened to you? I came to the meadow after seven days, and you weren’t there, but I saw where you carved my name.” My eyes flick across his face. I know of many stories my father tells, where a sorceress or some such casts a spell on a man to make him take a form other than his own.
“Have you been cursed?” I ask. “Who’s done this to you? My mother, maybe she can fix you. She knows. . . . ” I spy the sadness welling in Aaron’s eyes and let my voice trail off.
“Ourania.” He takes my hand and buries his face in it, kisses my work-rough palm. “I’m not cursed. I’m old, that’s all. I’ve grown old, and you’re still young, after all these years.”
“Years!” I snatch my hand away. “It’s only been weeks since I saw you, not even a season.”
He shakes his head. “I came after seven days, and then another seven. I came every Sunday I could for fifty-two years. This is the first I’ve seen you.”
My breath hitches and my vision clouds. I cover my face with my hands. The meadow air is too close.
“At first I thought you couldn’t get away, and then I thought I’d gone mad. That I’d dreamed you altogether.” He pulls my hands softly away from my face. The skin around his eyes crinkles as he smiles. “But you’re here.”
I feel a sob welling up in my chest. I try to tamp it down, but it breaks through anyway. Aaron holds me and we rock together in the dry grass.
“Take me away with you,” I say, finally, pulling back from him. “I wanted to see where you came from, if the things in your book were real. I wanted you to show it to me.” I pull the book from its place at my waist sash.
His mouth opens as he stares at it. He reaches out and brushes his fingers against its leather cover. “Like new,” he says. He takes the book from me and begins paging through, turning each leaf faster and faster, until he reaches my drawing of the garden wall. He stops. Aaron traces his finger over the page, then closes the book. His face looks pale. He stands and hands the book back to me.
“Keep this,” he says.
I scramble up after him. “It’s yours,” I say.
He shakes his head again. “I had forgotten all about it. But you,” he says, touching his hand to my face again. “I can never forget you.” He leans in to kiss me.
I close my eyes. Our lips touch and I see him as a young man, straight and unlined, untouched by age. I would gladly stand here until the sun sinks from the sky. I would gladly follow him to whatever strange land he would lead me, even if it means braving beasts of smoke and metal.
Aaron breaks away and steps back. “Thank you, Ourania.” He turns and begins walking to the line of trees.
Time slows and crystallizes around me. I feel the pump of my own heart and the gentle sway of wind picking at the hem of my skirt. Aaron is walking away from me, but for the life of me, I cannot follow. He reaches the tree line and looks back. He smiles. Then passes through to the other side, and I see him no more.
In the quiet hour when the moon has put itself away, when my father sleeps and my mother wanders far, I gather my worldly possessions. Aaron’s book with the pictures of my home inside, my folding knife, my mother’s copy of Darwin, and the yards of white linen. I pack them away in a leather satchel. I loop a water bladder around my neck. I stow several days’ rations of bread and dried meat, and open the cottage door onto the night. Our mouser watches with eyes glowing like two moons as I turn my feet to the road leading away from our door.
DEAD MAN’S RUN
ROBERT REED
ONE
The phone wakes him. Lucas snags it off the nightstand and clips it to the right side of his face. The caller has to be on the Allow list, so he opens the line. Lucas isn’t great with numbers and even worse reading, but he has a genius for sounds, for voices. A certain kind of silence comes across. That’s when he knows.
“When are we running?” the voice says.
“You’re not running,” Lucas says. “You’re dead.”
He hangs up.
Right away, Lucas feels sorry. Guilty, a little bit. But mostly pissed because he knows how this will play out.
The nightstand clock and phone agree. It’s three minutes after five in the morning. What calls itself Wade Tanner is jumping hurdles right now, trying to slip back on the Allow list. That race can last ten seconds or ten minutes. Sleep won’t happen till this conversation is done. But calling Wade’s home number makes it look like Lucas wants to chat, which he doesn’t. And that’s why he tells his phone to give up the fight, letting every call through.
The ringing begins.
“You know what you need?” says a horny foreign-girl voice. “Fun.”
Lucas hangs up and watches. A dozen calls beg to be answered. Two dozen. Obvious adult crap and beach-sale crap are flagged. He picks from what’s left over, and a man says, “Don’t hang up, I beg you.” The accent is familiar and pleasant, making English sing. “I live in Goa and haven’t money for air conditioning and food too. But I have a daughter, very pretty.”
Lucas groans.
“And a little son,” the voice says, breaking at the edges. “Do you know de
spair, my friend? Do you understand what a father will do to save his precious blood?”
Lucas hangs up and picks again.
The silence returns, that weird nothing. And again, what isn’t Wade says, “What time are we running?”
“Seven o’clock,” Lucas says.
“From the Y?”
“Sure.” Lucas has a raspy voice that always seems a little loud, rolling out of the wide, expressive mouth. Sun and wind can be rough on runners, but worse enemies have beaten up his face. The bright brown eyes never stop jumping. The long black hair is graying and growing thin up high. But the forty-year-old body is supremely fit—broad shoulders squared up, the deep chest and narrow trunk sporting a pair of exceptionally long legs.
“Are you running with us?” says Wade.
“Yeah.” Lucas sits up in bed, the cold dark grabbing him.
“Who else is coming?”
Whenever Wade talks, other sounds flow in. It feels as if the dead man is sitting in a big busy room, everybody else trying to be quiet while he chats. That’s how Lucas pictures things: Too many people pushed together, wanting to be quiet but needing to whisper, to breathe.
Wade says, “Who else?”
“Everybody, I guess.”
“Good.”
“Yeah, but I need to sleep now.”
“Sleep’s overrated,” says Wade.
“Most things are.”
The voice laughs. It used to be crazy, hearing that laugh. And now it’s nothing but normal.
“So I’ll leave you alone,” says Wade. “Besides, I’ve got other calls to make.”
And again, that perfect nothing comes raining back. The sound the world makes when it isn’t saying anything.
Lucas can’t sleep, but he can always drink coffee.
By six-thirty, an entire pot is in his belly and his blood. Fifty-two degrees inside the house, and he’s wearing the heavy polypro top and blue windbreaker and black tights, all showing their years. But the shoes are mostly new. On the kitchen television, Steve McQueen chases middle-aged hit men instead of doing what makes sense, which is scrogging Jacqueline Bisset. McQueen drives, and Lucas cleans the coffee machine and counter and the Boston Marathon ’17 cup. A commercial comes on—another relief plea—and Lucas turns it off in mid-misery. Then he drops the thermostat five degrees and puts on clean butcher gloves and the wool mittens that he’s had for fifteen years. The headband slides around his neck and he pulls on the black stocking cap that still smells like mothballs. His pack waits beside the back door, ready to go. He straps it on, leaving only one more ritual—throwing his right foot on a stool and twisting the fancy bracelet so it rides comfortably on the bare ankle, tasting flesh, telling the world that he is sober.
The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition Page 53
