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

by Jonathan Strahan

  He walked to the back of the shop where the boat was moored at the water’s edge, and he found the dock as empty as the wooden box. He descended to the sandy shores of the lagoon and let the cool water wash over his feet. The wind blew softly against his face, a gentle caress.

  “I lose everything to you,” he whispered to the ocean.

  He strained his eyes into the distance and saw a dark shape disappearing around the curve of the island. He thought he saw two figures on board, one with copper hair. The darker figure waved. Kuwa’i raised his hand to wave goodbye and felt the ties that bound them as father and son pulling taut and finally severing. “A boat is like a knife,” he said.

  The ship would glide past Ahana. And though the administer might see its sails in the distance, no other ship would be fast enough to stop it. His son would see the open ocean.

  There were other islands beyond these.

  Kuwa’i thought of the wedding that would never take place, and then he went back inside to wait for the administer’s wrath.

  Five men climbed down from their horses.

  They hesitated then, lingering, checking their weapons.

  A look was exchanged, and they moved deliberately, men of clay no more. Kuwa’i didn’t trouble himself to unlock the door, so they kicked it down.

  Issac spoke first, “The boat is gone.”

  “It was a fine boat.”

  “You disappoint the administrator.”

  “I expected as much,” Kuwa’i said.

  “He is not a man used to disappointment.”

  “Then I am happy to have acquainted him with it.”

  Issac smiled. “It is you who will be making some old acquaintances today.”

  There was much Kuwa’i might have said then. He wondered if most people pleaded. “Take what you came for.”

  Issac stepped toward Kuwa’i and placed his left hand on his shoulder. His right hand touched the knife on his hip, pulling the long blade slowly from its sheath. He spoke softly, “All he wanted was the boat.”

  “That was too much.”

  Issac lifted his blade to the chest of the man who killed or was his father.

  The steel point dimpled the skin above Kuwa’i’s heart.

  Without turning, Issac said to the other riders, “Burn everything.” Then he smiled Elissa’s teeth, as if to give the old shipwright something familiar to follow him into his final denouement. He leaned forward and whispered, “When you see my mother, give her this message.” The boy’s lips brushed Kuwa’i’s ear. “Tell her she was a coward.”

  Kuwa’i nodded and closed his eyes. “As was I,” he said. “But not now.”

  A moment later there came a sharp pain in his chest, followed by a warmth, and the boy embraced him, like a son might. Then closer, clutching while Kuwa’i shuddered.

  Kuwa’i took a breath, but it hurt to breathe.

  His legs gave out.

  The boy’s eyes burned into him as he collapsed to the floor.

  There were no last words, nothing left to say. Just a yellow curl of light, and then heat, as the men set fire to the boat works. Above him smoke began to fill the room, while flames lit the shadows. Kuwa’i thought of the seeds then, like brown cashews, and he hoped they found purchase in whatever distant soils they came to. A place where they might grow strong, if not tall. A place where they might live and not kill themselves.

  The heat expanded and baked him as the fire raged, and the wood beneath him blackened and charred, until Kuwa’i turned his face at last to the cool ocean spray. He curled his hand around the warm wooden rudder, while the boat lurched in the chop, and the sails luffed for a moment before filling with wind, and Kuwa’i left his island, finally.

  Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls

  Rachel Pollack

  Rachel Pollack [www.rachelpollack.com] is the author of thirty-four books of fiction and non-fiction, including Unquenchable Fire, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Godmother Night, winner of the World Fantasy Award. Her non-fiction includes 78 Degrees of Wisdom, often cited as “the Bible of tarot readers.” Rachel is also a poet, a translator, and a visual artist. Her work has appeared in fifteen languages, all over the world. She is a senior faculty member of Goddard College’s MFA in creative writing program.

  Jack Shade, known in varied places and times as Journeyman Jack, or Jack Sad, or Handsome Johnny (though not any more), or Jack Summer, or Johnny Poet (though not for a long time), or even Jack Thief, was playing Old-Fashioned Poker. That was Jack’s name for it, not because the game itself was antiquated—it was Texas Hold Em, the TV game, as Jack thought of it—but because of the venue, a private hotel room, comfortable, elegant even, yet unlicensed and by private invitation only, in the age of Indian casinos no more than a few hours drive from anywhere. Jack knew that most poker was played online these days, split-screen multi-action, or in live tournaments and open cash games held in the big casinos of Vegas, Foxwoods, or Macao.

  Jack didn’t like casinos. He’d never liked them, though for years he was willing to go where the action was. But after a certain night in the Ibis Casino, a game palace most players had never heard of and would never see, where “All in” meant something very different from betting your entire stack of chips, Jack avoided even the glossiest bright-for-TV game centers, and only played his quaint, private, no-limit match-ups. Luckily for Jack, though not always, luck being luck, there were enough serious money people who knew of Jack Gamble (or Jack Spade, as some called him, though not to his face) that he could more or less summon a game to his private table at the Hotel de Reve Noire, which despite its Gallic name was in New York, on 35th Street, a block from the J. P. Morgan Museum, where Jack sometimes went to sit with the fifteenth-century Visconti-Sforza Tarot cards.

  Jack lived in the Reve Noire (possibly why some people called him Johnny Dream), but no one in the game had to know that. Let them think he came in from—somewhere else. Jack didn’t like people to know where he lived, an old habit that was still useful. The game, sometimes called Shade’s Choice, took place on the eleventh floor, the top floor of the small hotel, where despite the larger buildings all around, the full-length windows looked out to the Empire State antenna (Jack was one of the few people who knew what signal that antenna actually sent, and the messages it relayed back to the Chrysler Building’s ever-patient gargoyles), and in the other direction to a small brick house on Roosevelt Island, where Peter Midnight once played a reckless game of cards with a Traveler who outraged fashion in a black cravat.

  Jack always dressed for poker. Tonight he was wearing a loosely tailored silk suit, deep-sea green, with a yellow shirt and a mauve tie, undone and draped around his neck. His ropy brown hair was cut rough, as if he’d hacked at it himself when drunk one night, or, as someone once said, as if he’d gone to a blind barber. The furniture in the room was old and carved, somehow heavy, graceful, and comfortable all at once, with influences both French and Chinese. The mahogany table and chairs carried so many layers, generations, of lacquer and polish that neither spilled drinks nor the sharp edges of those obscene good luck charms from Laos that some gamblers liked to fondle could possibly harm them. Even the drink stands by each player looked like they might once have held champagne flutes at Versailles (in fact, they’d originally served as writing platforms for a poetry contest a very long time ago).

  Neither the drinks nor the furniture held anyone’s attention right now. It was ten in the morning, twelve hours since Mr. Dickens, the white-haired dealer with the long spidery fingers, had given out the first cards. There were nine players—always nine in Jack’s games—but everyone knew that only two of them counted. Jack Gamble and the Blindfolded Norwegian Girl. Jack thought of her that way because she’d once won an online tournament with a block up to stop her ever looking at her cards, playing the players instead of her hand. The Girl had been playing poker since she was fifteen, and pro almost that long, and yet she looked, Jack thought, all sweet and round, like she belonged more
at a PTO bake sale than a game with a million dollars on the table. There were some who thought she might be that rarest of creatures, a Secret Traveler, but Jack was sure that whatever talent she had was rooted in poker.

  Though he played in the highest stakes games Jack was not a pro. Poker just was not his only source of income. Some years it wasn’t even the largest, though in others it was all that paid the bills. Pro or not, Jack knew something about cards. Right now he held a pair of tens, spade and club, a decent hand in Hold Em, where two cards was all you got, and you had to combine them with five face-up “community” cards on the table to try and make your own best five card hand. The five card “board” had come up ten, king, seven, all hearts, and then a nine, again a heart, and finally a second king, the king of clubs. So Jack had a full house, three tens and two kings, nearly a dream hand, but the Girl had gone all in, and now the nearly was making him crazy.

  She could easily have a straight, or better yet, a flush, all she’d need for that is for one of her two cards to be a heart to go along with the four hearts on the board. Those were good hands, enough really for someone to ship all her money into the pot. But suppose she had a king-seven, or a king-nine? Then she’d have kings full, three kings and a pair, and there was no greater curse in Hold Em than for someone else to have a bigger full house. And she’d put her money in on the king, not the fourth heart. She could have just been waiting, but if he called, and lost, it would leave him with a long haul to get back even.

  He glanced at Charlie, but the old man sat so still he might have been a clay dealer buried with a Chinese emperor. There was no clock for the girl to call on Jack the way she might have done in some casino tournament, but Jack knew she could ask Charlie and he would tell her to the second how long Jack had been deliberating. Jack leaned back in his chair, turned a single black chip over and over.

  He was almost ready to fold—that damn tell seemed too obvious to be real—when he saw something that wasn’t there. Barely visible even to him, and just for an instant, a golden foxtail swept along the first four cards on the board, the hearts, lingering just for a moment on the king. Jack kept his face stone but he could feel a shock like an electric current in the long scar that traced his right jawbone. A flush! The Girl had the ace of hearts, and the four hearts on the table had given her a lock—if all she needed was a flush. She’d gone all in because how could you not, but she knew it was a risk—and now she’d lost.

  Jack was just about to move in his chips when behind him the door opened. Jack’s hand froze no more than an inch from his chips. Just a few seconds more, he thought, just this one call. But it was no use. He knew no one but the hotel owner, Irene Yao, would ever have opened that door without being summoned, and Irene would open it for one reason only. Someone had shown up with Jack Shade’s business card. As if he needed any more proof, her soft voice, its rough edge of age worn smooth with grace, said simply, “Mr. Shade.” It was only Mr. Shade when it was business.

  “Miss Yao,” Jack said, and turned around, and of course there it was, as always, on a small silver tray, a cream-colored card that contained only four lines: “John Shade,” and below that, “Traveler,” then Hotel de Reve Noire, New York, and in the final line no words, only a silhouette of a chess piece, the horse-head knight in the classic design named for nineteenth-century chess master Howard Staunton.

  Jack nodded to the Girl. “I fold,” he said. Just a few seconds more. But the rule was simple: everything stopped when the black knight appeared. He stood up and nodded to the dealer. “Mr. Dickens,” he said, “will you please cash in my chips and hold the money till I return?”

  “Of course,” the old man said.

  Harry Barnett, a pork trader from Detroit, said, “What the hell? You’re cashing in? Just like that? I flew in for this game. I had to wait two goddamn months for a seat. And now you’re just leaving?”

  The Girl stared at him, her apple-pie face suddenly all planes and angles. “Shut up, Harry,” she said, and though Barnett opened his angry mouth nothing came out. To Jack, the Girl said, “A pleasure to play with you, Jack.”

  “You too, Annette,” Shade said, then followed Irene out the door.

  Jack Shade met his clients in a small office on the hotel’s second floor. All that made it an office really was Jack’s use of it. There were no computers or file cabinets, not even any phones. The only furniture was an old library table and three red leather chairs. The only amenity was a cut-glass decanter filled with water and two heavy crystal glasses.

  The client’s name was William Barlow, “Will,” as he said to call him. Mr. Barlow didn’t look whimsical enough for Will. With his thin hair and saggy cheeks and his small nervous eyes he looked about sixty-five but was probably no more than fifty. Overweight and lumpy, despite his expensive suit’s attempt to smooth him, he breathed heavily, as if he’d just run up and down Irene’s polished ebony stairs. It probably was just stress. People were never at their best when they came to see John Shade.

  “Mr. Barlow,” Jack said, “do you mind telling me how you got my card?”

  “It was my wife’s,” Barlow said, and his head turned slightly to the left, as if he might find her standing there. “When she—when I was going through her things—I found it. In a jewelry drawer. It’s not—not a place I ever would have looked when she was…”

  Alive, Jack thought. He asked, “Do you have any sense of just why your wife had my card?”

  “You must have given it to her. Some time ago? Do you teach workshops? I mean, Alice used to go to a lot of workshops.”

  “I don’t teach,” Jack said.

  Barlow squinted at Jack. “What do you do?”

  “You came to see me, Mr. Barlow. May I ask why?”

  Now Barlow seemed intent on studying the grain in the table. “Strange things have been happening,” he said. “Really—” He took a breath. “At first I thought I was dreaming—it was at night mostly—but then it started during the day, and I thought—” He stopped, stared at his hands in his lap. “I thought maybe I was—you know—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but a moment later looked up. “But then I thought, maybe, what if I wasn’t? What if it was all real? Alice was into all this—all this strange stuff. If anyone could find a way—but what if she was suffering? Mr. Shade, I couldn’t stand that.”

  Jack said, “Do you mind telling me about the strange things?”

  As if he hadn’t heard the question Barlow went on, “I was supposed to go first. I mean, look at me. Alice kept fit, she watched what she ate. My biggest fear was always how she would get by, after, after I was gone. And then suddenly—it’s all wrong. But at least, I thought, at least she won’t have to stay on alone. But if she’s suffering—”

  “Tell me about the strange things.”

  Barlow nodded. “I’m sorry.” He took a breath. About to speak again he glanced over at the water decanter, pressed his lips together. “May I?”

  “Yes, of course,” Jack said, relieved he would not have to find a moment to casually suggest his client drink a glass of water. “I’ll join you,” he said after Barlow had poured his glass. Jack poured himself exactly half a glass, which he drank down while keeping his eyes fixed on Barlow. The usual shiver along the spine jolted Jack, and he watched Barlow to see if he felt anything, but the client showed no signs of a reaction. Blissful ignorance, Jack thought, and realized how much time had passed, how many clients, since a man with a knife had called him Jack the Unknowing.

  Barlow looked around for a napkin, then in his pockets for a handkerchief, and finally just wiped his lips with his finger as Poker Jack kept the smile from his face. The client said, “I guess the first thing was the voices. The whispers. That sounds... you know... But they weren’t inside me. Or telling me to do things. It wasn’t like that.” He sighed. “It started a week or so after Alice’s death. I was in bed, still not used to being alone there, and watching the news. Alice used to hate it when I did that, said she didn’t want those
images in her dreams. And there I was doing it, I felt so guilty.”

  “Mr. Barlow. The voices.”

  The fleshy head bobbed up and down. “Right. Sorry. Well, I heard sounds, voices. Like when you’re at a conference, and there’s whispering across the table or something, and you can hear them but you can’t make out the words? I figured maybe it was on the TV, one channel bleeding into another, so I turned it off. And the whispers just got louder. I mean, really loud, like a whole building full of people, all whispering to each other.”

  Not a building, Jack thought, and he wished to hell that however Alice Barlow had gotten hold of Jack’s knight she’d thrown the card away instead of keeping it somewhere her husband could pick it up and get the overwhelming urge to go see John Shade, Traveler.

  Barlow said, “This went on for days, Mr. Shade. Every night I thought I was, you know, that the grief had gotten too much for me. I finally told my doctor and he said it was normal—it sure as hell didn’t feel normal—and gave me some pills. To sleep. It worked for a couple of days but then I woke up, it was three in the morning, and the damn whispers were louder than ever.

  “Then one night I got the horrible idea that they were really there. Not in the house, but in the backyard. I don’t know why, but once I thought it I couldn’t stand it, so I put on my bathrobe and went down to the kitchen. I made sure to make lots of noise to scare anyone away, but when I got to the kitchen everything looked normal. I mean, it was still dark, but the door light was on, and the moon was pretty bright, and I could see the patio Alice had me make, and the flagstones, and it all looked fine. Normal.

  “But the voices! They were still there, louder than ever, but still whispers so I couldn’t make out a word.”