Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2019 Edition

by Elizabeth Bear

  The wind falls quiet here, in the embrace of the cliff arms. The slope up is steep; the island looks like a god reached down with a hand and scooped out the middle of a mountain. Seonag doesn’t know what a volcano is. This one has been hibernating for a long time, and will not wake in any lifetime soon.

  She walks for an hour into this bowl of trees, past elm and birch, alder and yew. They are the trees that make up the alphabet in Gaelic. She wonders what stories they will tell here.

  The figure is among the trees, in a circle of them, on spring grass both thick and green like a bed.

  Seonag longs to lie down on that grass and sleep in the circle of these trees. She might never wake if she does.

  Someone is here.

  Seonag is confused by this. Of course someone is here; she is standing right in front of the figure, which she cannot bring herself to look at. She hears rather than sees the rustle of seaweed. Beyond that, a low, rumbling growl that seems to come from all around her.

  And beyond that, a crackle of underbrush from the direction she’s just come from.

  * * *

  My feet are heavier and heavier as I help drag the boat onto the shore of the island. Seòras and Dòmhnall Dubh help me secure it, with Seòras turning toward the cleft in the cliffs where Dòmhnall Geur vanished and muttering “Craobhan” over and over, so shocked is he by the presence of trees.

  My feet are heavier, or perhaps it is my heart. Urgency creeps up my spine, using each ridge of my vertebrae for a ladder. There is a need to hurry.

  Almost before I have tied off the ropes, I start to pull away toward where Dòmhnall Geur left.

  Seòras catches my hand. “Duilich, a ghille.”

  I don’t understand why he is apologizing to me until Dòmhnall Dubh catches the other.

  Before I can react, Seòras stuffs a rag into my mouth. It tastes of fish and sweat, and I almost vomit. They wrench my hands behind me and tie me to the boat.

  In the distance, a wolf howls.

  * * *

  Seonag is not surprised to see Dòmhnall Geur striding into the clearing with no hint of wariness about him. She is not surprised by the gun in his hand, an old hunting rifle that belonged to her own father, who by now is far from the sight of land and crossing the Atlantic forever.

  “You must have hidden your boat well,” he says.

  “I swam,” she says.

  He laughs.

  Seonag is still naked except for the crust of sand on her right side, which itches. His laugh has always been a spiteful laugh, one that made her skin into bumps as if ready for anything that might follow.

  “I’ve been wanting an excuse to come here for a very long time,” he says. “When I rid the islands of wolves once and for all, everyone will know my name.”

  He does not seem to see the figure behind Seonag, or perhaps only Seonag can see them.

  “And you will be put on the next ship to Canada where you cannot pollute my island any longer.”

  “Your island?” Seonag hears all of his words distantly, like the waves barely audible over the whispers of the leaves around her. But that bit stays. “You are born to a place and believe you own it more than others who are the same as you.”

  “You are not the same as anyone.” His voice is low and thick with disgust.

  “Why do you hate me?” Seonag truly wants to know.

  Dòmhnall takes a breath to answer, but before he can speak, a wolf howls behind him.

  He raises his rifle and fires.

  * * *

  I hear the shot ring out through the air. Seòras and Dòmhnall Dubh are out of sight already, following after with their own rifles.

  There is another shot, then another. Closer—without reloading time. The others are shooting at whatever Dòmhnall Geur shot at. The sound of a distant snarl.

  I jerk at my bonds. The rope is rough and made of heather. It digs into my skin like a flail. My father and I make this rope together. We may have made this one.

  I let out a scream of frustration and rage.

  The sound of breathing greets me when my scream dies away.

  I turn.

  A wolf stands at my right, soaking wet and staring at me with liquid amber eyes. In its jaw is a cod, still twitching.

  The wolf looks at me. I forget to breathe.

  They are real. The story my father told was real. It is large, far larger than the working dogs we use to herd the sheep on our island. It comes up to my waist.

  I can smell its wet fur, full of brine and warmth and the manky smell it does have in common with the working dogs. I can smell its breath, hot and fishy.

  It melds with the taste of the cloth in my mouth.

  The wolf drops the fish, and fear spikes from my bound wrists up the nerves of my arms. My nose is half-stuffed, and my breath enters in gaps around the gag as much as through my nostrils.

  The wolf stalks closer, close enough for its breath to glance off my skin and my still-damp clothes.

  Its muzzle is cold and wet, its nose colder and wetter.

  When it ducks behind me, between me and the boat, I almost cry out. Warm breath hits my wrists, then the wolf’s powerful jaws clamp down on the rope, pulling and gnawing. My skin warms with the animal’s saliva.

  Another shot rings out. The wolf flinches against me, but does not stop.

  When my hands pop free, I pull the spit-covered rag from my mouth.

  “Taing,” I say, trying to thank the animal, but it has already taken its fish and gone.

  I go after it.

  * * *

  Around Seonag, a dance of chaos swirls.

  Wolves partner with hunters, at least two fur-covered bodies to each of the three men. In its center, Seonag stands like a maypole, her body warm from something she cannot place. The figure recedes behind her, waiting, not intervening.

  Seonag feels something well within her. She is certain of it, even though it comes to her without words, without voice. It is like the waves that lifted and dipped beneath her as she swam. It is like the impulse that made her turn and run from the ship the day before, an age before, and hide in the glen.

  She has to make a choice.

  She feels it again, then, as she decides. Her feet hold to the grasses she so longingly admired a short time ago. Toes dig into their young growth.

  Seonag stands taller. Perhaps she is taller.

  It comes upon her like the tide, creeping with every breath closer. The smell of leaves around her. The scent of seaweed and kelp. The grit of sand against her skin … and something else.

  Her skin is flesh and not.

  Her body turns with the swirl of air and breath and grunts around her.

  She says one word: stad.

  Everyone in the clearing does. They stop. They turn to stare at her, men and wolves alike. There is blood on the wind, human and canine.

  “I told you, I told you,” Dòmhnall Geur says, stumbling backward. “She is not of our world, she is not—”

  “I was,” Seonag says softly. She looks at Seòras, at Dòmhnall Dubh. “Go.”

  Seòras looks over his shoulder once. He sees a glimpse of the figure beyond Seonag herself. Whatever he sees, it is enough. His face goes so white that it is he who will be named Bàn when he returns, though he will never tell anyone why.

  This is the scene I come upon when I enter the clearing.

  Seòras is half-dragging Dòmhnall Dubh with him. He does not look even to the side to see me. They stumble away.

  What I see is this:

  Seonag, and not Seonag.

  Her arms are no longer pale flesh but the soft, sun-bleached grain of driftwood that curves with her muscles, her joints, her neck. She is naked, but her nakedness is no longer human nakedness. Where her black hair reached past her hips is now seaweed, lustrous and shining in the first rays of the early morning sun. Her eyes are obsidian, their whites abalone.

  Behind her I see a figure like her, smiling with seal bone teeth. This figure leans against a y
ew.

  Seonag walks to Dòmhnall Geur, who stands rooted to his place on the earth.

  When I step closer, flanked by two wolves I hardly notice, I see that rooted is not a metaphor.

  Where Dòmhnall Geur’s feet were, now his toes have entered the earth, punching through the leather of his boots and digging deeper by the second.

  He writhes where he stands, but he does not scream. I think he cannot scream.

  When Seonag touches his face with gentle nails of shining scales, he flinches away.

  “You will stay here, like the others before you,” she says absently. I cannot tell which language she is speaking, if any.

  I look around me at the trees, so many different kinds.

  “Dair,” Seonag says. “Darach.”

  Dair is the name for D, the first letter of his name. He will become an oak.

  Already his hair has sprung free of its tie.

  Seonag has an acorn in her hand. She places it in Dòmhnall Geur’s open mouth.

  It sprouts before his lips close, a sprig of green reaching out, another sprouting from his nose.

  A wolf howls, so close to my side that I jump, a stick cracking under my feet.

  “A Chaluim,” Seonag says, looking over her shoulder at me. Then, sadly, “You shouldn’t have come.”

  Like the others, I cannot seem to speak.

  The figure behind Seonag moves forward. Slowly. I think I hear the brittle crack of wood.

  “Who are you?” Seonag asks.

  The figure is like her, like this new Seonag, and not. Where Seonag’s seaweed hair hangs straight and glossy in ripples, the figure’s is wild, covered in barnacles and fragments of shell and motes of sand embedded in the leaves that sparkle in the sun.

  Perhaps this figure is simply older.

  “A guardian,” says the figure. “I was.”

  I understand before Seonag seems to.

  “Was,” she says. “Of what?”

  The figure gestures around her. “Of whom do you think?”

  Those who are hunted.

  For the first time, I see a dead wolf. The figure gazes sadly upon it. There is a knife in its side, and a cod by its mouth.

  I cannot make words, but a strangled cry escapes me.

  The figure seems to understand.

  Seonag goes to the wolf and pulls the knife from its chest. She walks to the new oak tree, now reaching up higher, higher. Flutters of fabric wave in the wind. Seonag tears away what was Dòmhnall Geur’s shirt.

  She wraps the knife in it, blood and all. She walks to me. “Carry this home.”

  Before I can try and ask her how, she pushes it into my chest. In through my shirt and in through my skin and ribs. I feel it, harsh and heavy and sharp inside me, against my heart that beats so quickly.

  Seonag looks at me once more. If she is sad, I cannot tell.

  Her sudden smile is fierce.

  I blink once, and she is gone. I hear the beat of wings above my head, in the branches of a tree.

  The figure remains.

  My voice works again. “Who are you?”

  The words sound strange in the air, like they are not words at all.

  “Old,” says the figure. “Tired.”

  I look upward. My hand massages my chest. I can feel the knife there. It feels like panic just out of reach.

  “Tell your father thank you,” says the figure.

  When I jerk my gaze back down, they are also gone.

  * * *

  You will wonder, I suppose, how I made it home. Seòras and Dòmhnall Dubh returned, days after I did, silent for days after that, jumping every time they saw me.

  The wolves swam me out past the breakwater, the pack leading me around the riptides and into the open sea with yips and broken notes. Some peeled off to hunt on a small chain of rocky islets; others waited until we reached a place I could never find again no matter how I tried. Hiort appeared in the distance.

  Oh, how the fear gripped me then. It coated me more heavily than the water, ready to pull me under with its weight.

  I swam, though. I swam through the length of the day. They say the journey back is shorter than the journey there. I think in this they are wrong.

  When I arrived on the shore of Uibhist a Deas, I collapsed and lay for hours before one of the crofters found me and carted me home, naked and shivering, on the back of his horse.

  I did not hear what he said to my father.

  Father built up the fire and closed all the shutters and when the heat from the peat warmed me enough, I rose to my hands and knees and began to heave, spots swimming in front of my eyes and a terrible ripping feeling in my chest and when tears stung at me, I heard a thud, and to the floor fell the knife that had killed the wolf.

  My father picked up the small parcel and opened it. The blood appeared as fresh as if he had stabbed me with it himself.

  “Dòmhnall Geur killed the wolf that freed me,” I told my father then, unthinking of how absurd my words would sound in any language. “He became an oak.”

  “A life for a life,” was all my father said in return.

  I think of the many trees on that island sometimes.

  I think that is why I am telling you this now.

  When Seonag came to me not so long ago, she came with a warning. I do not think it was meant for me.

  Perhaps it is meant for you.

  There are no mic-thìre left in Scotland, but there are madaidhean-allaidh. They are wild and they are free, and they found that freedom in the sea.

  Their hunters are the ones to fear.

  Sometimes, when the winds are still and the tide pulls back far, far from the shore, I hear their song echo across the waves. I am not the only one who hears them; perhaps Seonag as their guardian strengthened them after the strength of their old guardian flagged.

  On those nights, it is whispered that Seòras and Dòmhnall Dubh hide with their pillows over their ears, but no matter how they try, they cannot escape the sound. They forgot her, but they still remember that sound.

  I am old now, and Seòras and Dòmhnall Dubh are older still. But you are young, and the young have the chance not to repeat the mistakes of their elders.

  If you look around you, you might see someone like Seonag, who wants so desperately to belong. Let her sing at the cèilidhean. Invite her to share your meals.

  You know who I mean and who I do not. Those someones like Seonag are not like the hunters who prowl for something they decided was their own, to take, to steal, to kill.

  Someday perhaps someone else will take that swim to relieve Seonag of her duties. I have thought sometimes that it might be me, but I am still a coward.

  Sometimes, on those nights, I think of her.

  Sometimes, on those nights, I walk the glen.

  Sometimes, on those nights, I hear her singing again.

  There are hunters among the sheep of the machair, a ghràidh. But there are wolves, too.

  About the Author

  M. Evan MacGriogair

  Copyright © 2019 by M. Evan MacGriogair

  Art copyright © 2019 by Rovina Cai

  Any Way the Wind Blows

  Seanan McGuire

  A Tom Doherty Associates Book

  New York

  New York City spreads out beneath us, gray steel and gleaming glass from our aerial perspective, virtually stripped of the color and chaos that almost always fills its streets, and everything about it is familiar, and nothing about it is familiar, and I am so very far away from home.

  I’m tired of this. They warned me when I started that one day I’d be tired of this, and I thought they were ranting and raving the way hidebound old fools always rant and rave when there’s a scientific advancement at hand—it’s as much a part of the process as the grandiose declarations of showing them, showing them all, and the ceremonial passing of the adventurer’s compass. Turns out they were right. There are only so many wonders you can see before you start thinking longingly of your own bed in your o
wn room in your own home, of the pillows battered into the shape of your head, the mattress that knows every curve of your body better than a lover ever could, the heater that rattles in that way that turned into white noise years ago, unremarkable, soothing, memorable only in its absence.

  I don’t think I’ve had a decent night’s sleep in five years, and I still have two more to go, and I hate this.

  “Helm, report.”

  My current helmsman is a green-skinned nymph from a parallel where the gods of the Greeks never faded from power. Instead, they continued doing what they did best—fighting, fucking, and feasting—until ninety percent of the population could trace their lineage directly back to one god, demigod, or mythical figure or another. Not that they called them “myths,” since, y’know, when you’re one of the eleven million families whose Solstice dinners Zeus is required to drop in on, the situation isn’t very mythical anymore. She looks up, nods once, and goes back to studying her instruments.

  “Mammalian,” she says finally. “There are representatives of other populations, but they’re all at what we expect from the human-dominated Manhattans. The avian clusters match my pigeon data, and the insects match up with cockroaches. Mostly. There are a few outliers.”

  “Are the mammals moving slowly and with confidence, or are they cowering in the subway tunnels?” We once found a parallel where the pigeons had somehow turned carnivorous and bloodthirsty. A flock could pick the flesh off a human’s bones in under a minute, the piranhas of the sky.

  We lost two interns on that stop, and we didn’t even manage to collect any of the flesh-ripper pigeons. Which is a much bigger pity. No one signs on as an intern for a trip like this one unless they have a massive death wish or a family that’s desperately in need of the survivor’s benefits. It’s sad and it’s tragic and it’s the reason we have such a high death toll every time we cruise the parallels. Everyone needs to get by. Flesh-ripper pigeons, though …