Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy

by Marie Hodgkinson

  “That’s Alice!” I cried. “Oh, please don’t eat her!” The owl blinked solemnly, making no attempt to reply. If it had opened its beak to do so, I could have dashed across the clearing and caught Alice as she fell. I turned towards Trusty. “Why is she so small?”

  “Your little friend has more curiosity than is advisable in one so young,” said Trusty. “She has eaten two of my silver berries, and as a consequence has diminished quite considerably. Indeed, she is now too small to furnish a satisfactory dinner for an owl. Let her go!” This command was intended for the owl, and the bird was startled into obedience. Alice plummeted towards the ground; I dived and caught her, rolling to land in a pile of snow. My shoulder hurt, but Alice was safe. Or as safe as a creature the size of a mouse can be. Those silver berries were indeed powerful. I must make sure my dog ate no more of them or she would be shrunk to the proportions of a flea.

  Holding Alice between my cupped palms, I took a closer look at Trusty. The silver berries were all on his left side. On the right were berries of rich deep purple. “What happens if someone eats the purple berries?” I asked.

  “A foolish question.” The owl’s voice was undeniably female. “Use your powers of logic and deduction, infant. Tut, tut, whatever do they teach children in school these days?”

  “I don’t go to school. I have a tutor.” I failed utterly to keep the wobble from my voice as I spoke these words. Froggy would be back tonight, and I still had no lock on my door.

  “This tutor has not taught you much,” said the owl. “Why not feed your animal a purple berry and observe the result? That way you answer your own question.”

  “Because I love Alice, and I would rather have a mouse-sized dog than a dead one. How do I know those are not poison berries?”

  “Did you not name me Trusty with a T?” It sounded as if the bushy creature was smiling. “Feed her one purple berry, as the bird suggests. You may require two, since she took two of the silver. She can eat them safely.”

  Alice was shivering hard. She’d had a terrible fright. I could only hope this would teach her a lesson. I plucked one purple berry and set the tiny fruit before her on my palm. “Wait,” I said, and counted to five. “Crunch!”

  “Oh, very good!” exclaimed Trusty, as Alice snatched up the berry on command and devoured it as if she had not been fed for weeks. She was immediately larger. But not big enough; she had grown only to the size of a small kitten. I waited a little, wanting to be sure a second berry was necessary. It seemed it was. I put it on my palm. To do so, I had to move Alice to my other hand. I kept her within reach of the fruit.

  “Alice, wait.”

  “One, two, three, four, five,” chanted Trusty and the owl in unison.

  “Crunch!”

  The berry was gone, and Alice was back to her normal size again, the size of a puppy just old enough to leave its mother and go to a new home. “Thank you!” I said, curtseying first to Trusty and then to the owl. “It has been good to meet you. I had best take Alice back to … to the place where we live.”

  “Oh, so soon?” The owl sounded mournful. Yet she had given no sign of taking any liking to me. I eyed her, wondering what life would be like in this world beyond the blue door, and what parting gift might be appropriate for a bird whose meal I had, in effect, snatched from her jaws, or rather, beak. I wanted to leave my new acquaintances on good terms.

  “May I know your name?” It had worked before; perhaps it would again.

  “My name is Madame Eye.” The owl spoke in a grand tone, as if she had been reading too many dramatic plays.

  “That is unusual,” I said. “But then, your eyes are quite remarkable.”

  The owl turned her large orbs on me. “I for Inevitability. I am Inevitability J. Moon-Fleet.”

  “Oh! That is a magnificent name! Does the J stand for Justice?” With the scales in one eye and the clock in the other – is not the passage of time inevitable? – this seemed likely.

  An owl cannot smile, but I sensed a softening in Madame I’s expression. “That was well deduced,” she said.

  There was a silence. Both of them were looking at me, expecting something. After a little, the owl asked, “And what is your name?”

  I really had forgotten my manners. “Dorothea. It means a gift from God. Only … sometimes I think God has forgotten to watch over me. Maybe He has fallen asleep.” I held back the words that wanted to spill out. How could these two possibly help? “I must go now. I must take Alice back.” My voice trembled.

  “Dorothea,” said Trusty, “I see tears in your eyes. Why are you afraid?”

  The owl shifted on her branch, staring down at me. “Trust. Inevitability. Justice. Now is the time to speak, child.”

  So I did. About Froggy – Master Frederick – and the strange pictures he showed me late at night when he came tapping on my door, and his clammy hands, and what he had said he would do when I was a big girl of eleven, and how I couldn’t tell Uncle Bart or Mrs Manifold or anyone because I couldn’t make myself say the words. And how even if I had a lock for my bedchamber it wouldn’t be enough because I had lessons with Froggy every day, and sometimes in the middle of a lesson in French or Mathematics he would say something that made my flesh crawl. When I got to the end, I wiped my eyes and said, “Thank you for listening. But there’s nothing you can do.”

  “You could stay here,” said Madame Inevitability. “Unless this Froggy is a very small man indeed, he could not fit through our door.”

  I would have been happy never to see Froggy again. But I would miss William, and I would miss Uncle Bart. And Uncle Bart would miss me. He would be lonely. “I don’t think that would do. I need to go back, and so does Alice. Is there any other way?”

  “Wait,” said Trusty, stretching out his twiggy hand to pluck a small harvest of his own berries: five of the purple ones and five of the silver. The owl flew down with a large dry leaf in her beak. Trusty dropped the berries carefully into the shallow receptacle. “This task is for you, Dorothea.”

  “But how…?” I imagined growing so large I would be unable to get out of my bedchamber, or so small that I would fall down a crack in the floor and never be found. That would be a terrible fate, but almost better than waiting for Froggy’s tap on the door.

  Madame Inevitability passed me the leaf. “The solution is in your hands,” she said. “Use your powers of logic and deduction. And take care not to drop these on the way.”

  I balanced my burdens carefully: Alice supported by one hand, the leaf and berries cupped in the other. In my mind, an idea began to form itself. “You mean…”

  But the owl had flown back to her perch and was using her beak to tidy her feathers, and Trusty said nothing.

  “Goodbye. And thank you. I am very grateful.” The idea was getting bigger. It was getting monstrous.

  “Don’t mention it,” Trusty said. “Just as well your dog is a tidy eater.”

  *

  Froggy did not come back until the rest of the household was abed. I was watching from my window, with a candle alight on the old chest, and when I saw him come through the gate I took out the berries. The silver ones were in a small china bowl and the purple ones in an eggcup. There must be no confusion in the dim light.

  He let himself in by a side door; Uncle Bart had given him a key. When I heard his footsteps on the stairs I spoke to Alice, who was hunkered down on my bed.

  “Alice, wait.” A count of five. “Crunch.” And again. After the second berry, I moved Alice into the shadowy corner near the wardrobe. “Alice, wait.” I counted. “Crunch.” And twice more. The five purple berries were gone.

  A familiar tap on the door. In my stomach, a familiar sinking dread. I blew out the candle. In the faint glow from the banked-up fire, I sat down on my bed and wrapped my shawl around me. “Alice, ssh,” I murmured. “Wait.”

  The door creaked open
, and there was Froggy. “Sitting in the dark, my little scholar? You must be lonely all by yourself.”

  He closed the door behind him, then took two steps forward.

  “Crunch!”

  Alice came out of the dark. Master Frederick’s mouth opened wide, but she gave him no time to scream.

  The old sheet I had spread over the carpet absorbed much of the blood. When I had bundled it up, along with various oddments of tweed, hair and leather, Alice gave the place a thorough going-over with her large tongue. I stowed the sheet in the wardrobe. In the morning, before anyone was stirring, I would take it outside and bury it in the stack of rubbish James had ready for burning. When all was to rights, I fed Alice the five silver berries. “Good dog, Alice,” I said, giving my little friend a special pat. We snuggled into bed together and were soon fast asleep.

  *

  For a short while, Master Frederick’s disappearance was the subject of local conjecture. He was known to have attended his examination and set out for home. A heavy snowfall overnight had obliterated any clues as to his later movements. The constabulary came to Wraithwood Hall and spoke to James, who was tending his bonfire. They questioned Mrs Manifold and Uncle Bart. But nothing came of it.

  I have a governess now. Her name is Miss Flora Buchanan. She speaks four languages and knows lots of games. In her free time she writes stories about monsters. Miss Flora is nineteen years old, but she is a small person: only a little taller than me. I think she might enjoy escapades.

  And Alice? She is growing a great deal, but no more than is usual for a King Charles spaniel. She has learned to roll over and to shake hands. I always knew she was clever.

  Inside the Body of Relatives by Octavia Cade

  It’s a state house, or was. Low-income housing, built decades ago by the government and I rented for years before being able to buy. It’s not big, it’s not flash, but it’s mine – and the state, when it built, built well. There’s features here you’d never get nowadays, in a new build.

  All the floors are made of kauri. It’s protected now and fair enough – those trees are too big and too beautiful to be logged, and that bloody dieback disease is doing it for them, no matter how much the Department of Conservation cordons off the reserves, puts out disinfectant stations so people can scrub their shoes off and not spread the spores. Seems like a losing battle some days, and I suppose if we lose the species I’ll feel worse about treading it all underfoot, but there’s a part of me that’s good for gloating because the wood is warm and lovely and you could only match it now with recycled timber, which costs a fortune I don’t have and wouldn’t waste on wood if I did.

  There’s also two bedrooms. The house is always telling me I should use one of them for visitors. “Companionship is vital for maintaining mental health in the elderly,” it says.

  Do-gooder programming.

  It was a new addition, one I didn’t particularly want but since I had that bad fall two years back, broke my hip on those lovely floors, well. It was better than a bracelet or one of those little button alarms or moving to a home. I was expecting it to be worse, actually – I’ve been a science fiction fan all my life and artificial intelligence always ends up wrong in the stories. It goes insane or turns into some sort of nanny tyrant but this one’s pretty good, for all its emphasis on socialisation. When I tell it to shut up it does, which is more than I can say for most.

  There’s a reason I don’t have a lot of guests – or worse, a tenant, for all the rent would round out my super. I like my house quiet.

  “Quiet as the toooomb,” says the house, in response. It gets sarcastic when it’s worried. “I don’t like to think about you getting depressed,” it says.

  “I’m not depressed.”

  “Loneliness can be a trigger for depression,” says the house. “You are lonely, and I am not a substitute.”

  “I go out every day.” Chess matches, coffee dates, I volunteer at the library teaching English to migrants. The house know this. “What more could you possibly want?”

  “Don’t you miss your family?” says the house. “You never see them anymore.”

  Truth is I see them too often. They’re nice enough kids, but the young are exhausting and all my relatives are young now.

  “A home should have a family in it,” says the house, plaintive.

  It’s a conversation we’ve had before. At first I thought the thing was trying to encourage me into a home of a different kind, one with common rooms and drooling and detergent, the incipient stench of decay. I thought perhaps it was hoping for a more interesting replacement – a young couple with a new baby, for instance, people who would enjoy its fussing. But that was anthropomorphising, and foolish. The house is a programme. It doesn’t want anything but what it’s programmed for, which is the health of the inhabitant. And I’m healthy enough, the hip’s healed well, I get my yearly flu vaccinations and all it has to worry about now is my state of mind.

  “I know you’re lonely,” says the house.

  “I’m not lonely.”

  “Your vital functions change when you lie,” says the house. It’s even programmed to sound regretful, as if the airing of a painful truth causes sadness in the both of us.

  There’s nothing I can say. Nothing that won’t sound like an excuse. The house won’t understand that there’s pleasure in loneliness, sometimes – that living for so long with absence fits you to it, curls you round the hollow of it so that your entire self is shaped around space, spiralled around it as if you were a seashell, or a cell full of vacuole. That any attempt to rid yourself of it is a destabilising force, as if the space that fills your form has become a structural thing, and necessary.

  There’s so many things that can’t be explained to a programme. I’d like to say it’s exhaustion that keeps me from trying, but the truth is that shape comes with shame, and it’s hard to admit to being so structured. As if you are a defect to your species, and one that stands outside of community, or at its fringes. And there are chess matches and coffee dates and library readings, but these have lost their attraction, and increasingly they are a difficulty and a chore and my fantasies these days, such as they are, involve just not going.

  I feel less lonely at home.

  But it’s shameful to admit that, and exhausting, so I scoff at the house, just loud enough for it to hear and then I disconnect the system so I can forget the conversation in silence. If loneliness is a structural thing that structure is self-created, and creation is good at blocking off and branching out, but none of these things matter when three days later I slip again on those gleaming, hardwood floors and break the other hip.

  The house can’t hear me, because I turned it off, and it’s another three days before neighbours hear the screams.

  *

  The screams. I say it distanced, as if they’d come from someone else. They were my screams, mine. I choked on them, burst the blood vessels in my eyes for them, wept for them.

  I thought I was going to die. At home, alone, and with that glorious, beautiful floor smooth under my face.

  *

  Sometimes I dream I did die. That it was months before anyone came, years, which is unrealistic but dreams never have much sense of time, at least the good ones don’t. And this was a good one. I died on the floor and my flesh melted away, not a sticky, stinking mulch of a melt but a slow and clean dissolving, and then my skeleton, my clean pale curve of bones are pressed against the straightened skeleton of kauri that’s spread over the floors, and with my cheekbone pressed against the floor I can feel the faint vibration of sap.

  *

  Only a dream. The sap’s all dried in those floorboards, and the ghost of them that lives in the unconscious is only that – a relic of imagination and construction, but the image is one that stays with me. My bone and kauri bone, all mixed up together, and the longer I dream of our mutual remains, the more po
lished the wood becomes, until my bones are mirrored in them as if the wood were the surface of water.

  I’m in the hospital for three months this time. The healing goes slowly – much more slowly than last time, and although everyone is very kind I can sense what they’re not saying: that if I’d left the house on, I would have been found sooner and my recovery wouldn’t have been inhibited by the wait, the hip exacerbated by prolonged shock and dehydration.

  I admit to the social worker just how very foolish I’ve been. This is necessity as much as truth. I want to go home, but if people think my mind is slipping, that I can no longer care for myself, then they’ll look for other alternatives. And I’m sure a rest home is deadeningly pleasant, in its own saccharine and superficial way, but it’s the beginning of the end and if my end comes I’d rather it came with silence.

  “I’d rather it came with company,” says the house, when finally – finally! – I’m allowed to go home. “You are so alone. I’m frightened for you.”

  Truth is when I shuffle across that gleaming floor, bare-footed for I’ve never liked the feel of socks, I can feel the vibrations, again, of sap. I don’t think I’m hallucinating, though it’s certain that the ghost of the tree that was is an unreal thing. But if it’s not real it’s not threatening either, and this isn’t something I can say to the house. I think it would have to call the nurse, poor thing, report on delusion and mental ill-health. It’s so worried about my solitude.

  “I’ve got you,” I say in reply, but if the misdirection works it’s a poor attempt at flattery.

  “I’m not a substitute for connection,” says the house. “I’m not a living thing. I’m a programme only. You can’t even touch me, and touch is important.”

  I can touch the house, its floor and walls and windows, the furniture in it, but I know what it means. With the floor echoing life underfoot it touches back … or part of it does. The seeming-intelligence of the programme, its monitor call-and-response, is a separate thing from structure.