The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 7

by Jonathan Strahan

  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 University of California Riverside, specializing in science fiction and fantasy. Her sixth novel, Sister Mine, will be published later this year.

  Oh, 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.

  Millie’d thought the bottle would shatter. But maybe the glass was too thick, because though it whacked Max’s back with a solid thump, it didn’t break. Max dropped to the floor like he’d been shot. Jolly put her hands to her mouth. Startled at what she herself had done, Millie dropped the bottle. It exploded when it hit the floor, right near Max’s head. Vodka fountained up and out, and then Max was whimpering and rolling around in the booze and broken glass. There were dark smears under him.

  “Ow! Jesus! Ow!” He peered up to see who had hit him. Millie moved closer to Jolly.

  “Max.” Citron’s voice was hoarse. He reached a hand out to Max. “Get out of the glass, dude. Can you stand up?”

  Millie couldn’t believe it. “Citron, he just tried to kill you!”

  “I shouldn’t have talked about growing up. Jolly, can you find the candles? It’s dark in here. Come on, Max.” Citron pulled Max to his feet.

  Max came up mad. He shook broken glass off his leather jacket, and stood towering over Millie. Was his chest thicker than it had been? Was that hair shadowing his chin? Millie whimpered and cowered away. Jolly put herself between Millie and Max. “Don’t be a big old bully,” she said to Max. “Picking on the one-hand girl. Don’t be a dog.”

  It was like a light came back on in Max’s eyes. He looked at Jolly, then at Millie. “You hurt me, Millie. I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said to Millie. “Even if…”

  “If…that thing was happening to you,” Jolly interrupted him, “you wouldn’t care who you were hurting. Besides, you were choking Citron, so don’t give us that innocent look and go on about not hurting people.”

  Max’s eyes welled up. They glistened in the candle light. “I’ll go,” he said drunkenly. His voice sounded high, like the boy he was ceasing to be. “Soon. I’ll go away. I promise.”

  “When?” Millie asked softly. They all heard her, though. Citron looked at her with big, wet doe eyes.

  Max swallowed. “Tomorrow. No. A week.”

  “Three days,” Jolly told him. “Two more sleeps.”

  Max made a small sound in his throat. He wiped his hand over his face. “Three days,” he agreed. Jolly nodded, firmly.

  After that, noone wanted to play Loup-de-lou any more. They didn’t bother with candles. They all went to their own places, against the walls so they could keep an eye on each other. Millie and Jolly had the best place, together near the window. That way, if anything bad
happened, Jolly could boost Millie out the window. There used to be a low bookcase under that window. They’d burned the wood months ago, for cooking with. The books that had been on it were piled up to one side, and Jolly’d scavenged a pile of old clothes for a bed. Jolly rummaged around under the clothes. She pulled out the gold necklace that their mom had given her for passing French. Jolly only wore it to sleep. She fumbled with the clasp, dropped the necklace, swore under her breath. She found the necklace again and put it on successfully this time. She kissed Millie on the forehead. “Sleep tight, Mills.”

  Millie said, “My wrist hurts too much. Come with me tomorrow to see if the kids two streets over have any painkillers?”

  “Sure, honey.” Warrens kept their distance from each other, for fear of becoming targets if somebody in someone else’s warren sprouted. “But try to get some sleep, okay?” Jolly lay down and was asleep almost immediately, her breathing quick and shallow.

  Millie remained sitting with her back against the wall. Max lay on the other side of the room, using his coat as a blanket. Was he sleeping, or just lying there, listening?

  She used to like Max. Weeks after the world had gone mad, he’d found her and Jolly hiding under the porch of somebody’s house. They were dirty and hungry, and the stench of rotting meat from inside the house was drawing flies. Jolly had managed to keep Millie alive that long, but Millie was delirious with pain, and the place where her hand had been bitten off had started smelling funny. Max had brought them clean water. He’d searched and bargained with the other warrens of hiding kids until he found morphine and antibiotics for Millie. He was the one who’d told them that it looked like only adults were getting sick.

  But now Millie was scared of him. She sat awake half the night, watching Max. Once, he shifted and snorted, and the hairs on Millie’s arms stood on end. She shoved herself right up close against Jolly. But Max just grumbled and rolled over and kept sleeping. He didn’t change. Not this time. Millie watched him a little longer, until she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She curled up beside Jolly. Jolly was scrawny, her skin downy with the peach fuzz that Sai said came from starvation. Most of them had it. Nobody wanted to grow up and change, but Jolly needed to eat a little more, just a little. Millie stared into the dark and worried. She didn’t know when she fell asleep. She woke when first light was making the window into a glowing blue square. She was cold. Millie reached to put her arm around Jolly. Her arm landed on wadded-up clothing with nobody in it. “She’s gone,” said Citron.