The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2016 Edition

by Paula Guran

  But that way lies madness. We’ll never have complete knowledge. I know what I know, but he refuses to learn what he can. That makes all the difference.

  The police car screeches to a stop nearby. He reaches for my hand to pull me out of the wreck of my car. His hand is warm and dry; it doesn’t feel like the hand of someone who kills by refusing to believe, who takes refuge in the assumed condition of our ignorance, secure in his knowledge.

  A blur that resolves into flashing images. Clarity.

  Through his eyes, I see him regretting not following me in the squad car to be sure I’m put away; I see him examining the drive-through window of the fast-food restaurant and the bank across the street, where the robbers had emerged, his super-vision picking out the bullet holes in the sidewalk and walls and calculating their trajectories; I see him taking in the site of the shoot-out and clench his jaws; I hear the officers apologizing for rushing to confront the robbers without having secured me properly.

  His visions are as orderly and predictable as his clichés.

  Our hands separate. “Goodbye,” he says, that familiar smug smile on his face again. “The city is safer today with you out of the way.”

  I look out the back window. He can’t resist the cameras. He’s going to give another impromptu press conference. The city’s criminals, say, bank robbers, like to wait until he’s on TV before making their moves.

  Perfect.

  The car starts to move. “You hungry?” one of the officers asks the other.

  “I can eat.”

  “What are you in the mood for?”

  I pipe up, “There’s a Pollo Pollo on Third Avenue, across from the Metropolitan Bank.”

  The one in the passenger seat turns to look at me.

  I put on a hungry and pleading look. “I have a coupon if you also get me something. My treat.”

  The officers look at each other and shrug. “All right. You aren’t going to get a chance to use that coupon for a while.”

  “My loss. Say, do you work out or is that a bullet-proof vest under the jacket?”

  I train. I learn to shoot, to fight, to become the super villain he aready thinks I am.

  If killing one man is not enough stop all the abusers, to reverse the momentum of culture, to uninvent the machinery of death, to change the currents of history, then I have to kill more.

  I move from the empty apartments of vacationing couples to houses that had just been moved out of and not yet moved in—a touch on the doorknob is enough to tell me the story. I get good and then better at my craft.

  I kill violent boyfriends in their sleep, poison future gunmen over meals, plot the erasure and destruction of clean, dust-free laboratories where they design weapons that kill while minimizing guilt. Sometimes I succeed; sometimes he stops me. He becomes obsessed, the anticipation of my next move haunting him as my visions haunt me.

  I know a little about many things: snippets from people’s futures, paths that will cross and uncross. I can’t see that far into the fog: every action has a consequence, and consequences have other consequences. It’s true that only when the future has become the past can it be seen as a whole and understood, but to do nothing because you don’t know everything is not a path I can follow. I know that a little girl named Carla is alive because of me. It is enough.

  He and I are not so different, perhaps, just a matter of degrees.

  So we dance across the city, he and I, antagonists locked in the eternal struggle between the scattered knowledge of fate and the ignorant certainty of free will.

  Ken Liu is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other venues He also translated the Hugo-winning novel, The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, which is the first translated novel to win that award. Liu’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, was published by Saga Press in April 2015. A collection of short fiction, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, was published earlier this year. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

  Thigh-deep in the ocean, Billy-Rid crooned a lullaby.

  A SHOT OF SALT WATER

  Lisa L. Hannett

  Accordions unpleated welcoming songs the day the mermaids returned.

  The first notes droned joyful at dawn, played by young men with wool collars unrolled against the wind. Mattress-clouds bulged above land and water, miles of damp cotton dulling the fishermen’s music. As the sky blanched, fiddlers sawed harmonies, horsehairs screeching on weather-warped bows. Bodhráns were rescued from blanket boxes and cupboards, clatter-spoons from the backs of junk drawers. Soon drummers thumb-pounded down autumn-gold slopes from the village. Beats jigged and reeled past the wharves, along the coast, then splashed through froth seething to shore.

  Sparking a cig, Billy Rideout watched the procession from the dunes. Nodded at the lack of flute-wailing. That hollow music wasn’t fit for a homecoming, he thought. Too much like drowning-storms. Like last breaths blown through old bones.

  There’d be singing later, in Ma Clary’s kitchen. And in the tavern. In the shipyards. Up and down the waterfront, men were already warming throats with liquor and oil, preparing for tonight. Mermaids liked a bit of haze in his tenor, or so Billy-Rid told himself, sucking smoke.

  Half a day’s sail away, the first tall masts striped the gunmetal surf.

  “Get your arse down here, Rid,” called Eli Stagg from the strand, carrying an armload of tinned gooseberries. “Grab a basket on the way.”

  Billy-Rid pocketed the half-burnt stub, did as told.

  On the beach, musicians and local b’ys milled. Horsing around between tunes, they swigged from jars while uncles and grandys set up trestles. Ankle-deep in the shallows, ancient sea-salted women supervised, criticizing with squints and scowls but few words. Pointing out which tablecloths needed pinning down. Tsking at the smell of charred griddle-cakes. Snapping knot-knuckled fingers as Billy-Rid made a mess of the buffet, jumbling savouries and sweets on the boards. Between snorts, the matrons snacked on baked haddock. Sucked on bottles of spiced rum, dipper, screech.

  “Full sail,” said the eldest, her white hair still plaited in maid’s ropes. Keen eyes trained on the horizon, she talked around a half-chewed wad. “Fleet’s racing the rain.”

  Innards clenched, Billy-Rid pretended not to see the sharp-nosed schooners spearing closer. Distant fuzz-dots slowly hardening into crows-nests, smudged lines into hemp ropes. Coffin-dark jibs fading to shades of burgundy and mud on approach.

  Beneath the proud sails, tall figures flitted to and fro on deck. They climbed the rigging, easy as flies. They swung the boom. They white-waked it for home.

  Rid turned away, fumbling a plate of currant loaves. Gulls swooped, crammed their gullets with sweet white bread, as rowboats were lowered over gunwales a mile off shore. Ducking to avoid claws and beaks and wings, the b’ys each took up a shot of salt water.

  “Fill yer guts,” they said, tossing it back for luck.

  “Good lads,” said the nans, shooing the squawkers. Smirking when Rid suggested a second shot.

  “Only takes one,” they said.

  “Better safe,” Billy Rideout replied, upending another glass. Failing to drown the squirm in his guts.

  The mermaids far outnumbered their rowboats, neither so many as when they’d first set out.

  Clinker planks and women both were hard-worn from their travels. Hulls were mottled, keels paint-flaked. Otter-skin slickers were ripped and sleeveless, showing off oar-muscled arms. Canvas pants were ragged, storm-chewed at the hems; some hung like skirts, revealing tattooed thighs. Short-straw girls remained out on the ships—so close but still so far from home. Guarding the profits of their time abroad, the yield of raiding and trading. Scoping the waters for ill-omened shadows.

  T
he shore party leapt overboard, hauled tired skiffs from hard-packed to soft sand. Their hair was dreadlocked, rimed with spray. Ten months at sea had staved in their cheeks, chiseled the roundness from hips and breasts. Blubber-treated packs were slung cross-body, leaving their arms free for fighting. Several hefted short-swords, others had daggers—though weapons weren’t needed for this landing. There were no screams at the seafarers’ approach, no terror at the sight of harpoons. Instead a baritone chorus whooped its greetings, singing tunes that beckoned them, one and all, inland.

  Blood-cracks split the maids’ smiles as they ran to their dads, their b’ys, their lovers. Only one made the trip from water to welcome slowly. Concentrating, stepping carefully, she waddled across the flats with buckler-strap loose around a misshapen belly.

  “Reckon your lass is carrying,” Ma Clary said to Billy-Rid, lifting her pipe at the girl he loved. Then the old sailor bent, knees cracking, and palmed a handful of shells off the strand. Whispering a blessing, she threw the lot like confetti. “First time lucky.”

  “Lucky,” said Rid’s mouth, while the rest of him gaped. Sweat pricked his brow, despite the chill air. The sky puckered and began to spit.

  Lord look at her, he thought, fumbling for a stiff whiskey to keep him upright. For nigh on ten months—a whole season’s sailing—he’d packed every minute with distraction. Full days on the wharf, full nights at Kelloway’s pub. Cod-fishing, carousing, pickling his brain. Trying not to think of this moment. Of her.

  Alberta Stagg.

  His Beetie.

  Lord look at you, he thought, lungs floundering. His gaze skimmed the cords of Beetie’s flaxen hair, the many hoops in her ears, the welts around her knees, the mermaid-cut of her calves.

  Just look at you, he thought, and look he did; returning, again and again, to the bulge slung at his girl’s waist. The bundle cloak-shielded from the elements, the spatter now a steady drizzle. She’s carrying, Ma Clary had said—and so she was. Hefting a child Billy-Rid might have given her. A baby she might have gone and got for them both.

  They ate everything the gulls hadn’t scabbed, drank till the rain seemed a joke. Gingham blew off tables, cartwheeled into the waves. Crocks were dropped, broken, buried under the skip and twirl of dancing feet. A waste, potters would say the next morning, but for now these losses were celebrated. They were expected. Annual tributes to the gods of wind and water.

  Rum doubled Billy-Rid’s vision, ale blurred its edges. Swept into the sodden crowd, he swigged from any jar that passed. One minute he was on the sand, numb legs failing to reach Beetie three tables over; a blink later, he was reeling up the path into town, beach at his back. He was battered and tossed onto the road leading to Kelloway’s, a flurry of strong palms beating across his shoulders as the other b’ys tried to slap up some of his fortune.

  “Filled her guts,” they said, all ruddy-cheeked, butcher-built men like himself. Thumping and clapping, the lads passed him shot after shot of salt water, whooping til he threw them down, howling when he threw them back up. Leaving Rid to contemplate the mess on his boots, they stomped up the planks to the pub. The din inside roared when the double doors opened: slurred voices, shrill pipes, the barman shouting out orders. Before they swung to, Billy-Rid heard the b’ys cheering his mermaid. And quieter, but distinct, Beetie’s giggled delight as the babe in her arms started baying.

  Might be they’re right, Rid thought, straightening. The kid could’ve been my doing. It happens. It has happened.

  Stumbling, he took a step toward the pub for each of the land-births they’d had on this rock they called home. Beetie was one, no doubt about it; not a snip or surgeon-scar on her. But that was eighteen-odd years ago, he thought, shaking the rum-fog from his head. Ma Clary’s niece? Yeah, she and the bottleman from Bonnebay had themselves a small brood of landlubbers. No gills, no fins in the bunch. Half a dozen of Rid’s dockside mates were earth-stock, like him; no merchild he’d ever seen could grow their class of beard or bulk.

  Not every babe was fished, Rid thought. He paused on the stoop, listened. This one could be mine.

  Inside, the baby cried, a liquid mewl with a note of whale-song about it.

  Alberta had once been Billy’s alone, his own shy girl who’d beet-blushed at his swagger, his attention, his gut-twisting love. She’d been his long before her summer-ship weighed anchor. And everyone knew he’d been hers.

  As was custom, he’d ringed a reef-knot of silk round Beetie’s finger, making their intentions plain.

  As was custom, he’d knotted his body around hers, morning and night, making the most of spring.

  As was custom, when her bloods kept coming despite Rid’s best efforts, when the tides changed and currents warmed, when the cannery reeked to the high heavens and barley began greening the fields, his Beetie had bodied the very schooner that had carried her back again today, carrying.

  It wasn’t that long ago, Rid thought, pushing into a blue fug, heavy as the clouds outside. The guppy could be ours.

  On the pub’s threshold, he stopped, fought for breath. The air was humid with merriment and music. Standing on chairs near the hearth, Dana and her water-born son added banjos to the fiddlers’ medley. Over at the bar, Vin Clary out-plucked them all on his mandolin. Harmonicas jangoed between verses, competing with the lonesome burtle of uillieann pipes. Between cups and jars, hands pounded stained barrels. Heel-rhythms had the floor quaking, pleasure thrumming across puddles trekked in with the rain.

  At the room’s heart, Beetie was surrounded by cheek-pinchers, back-thumpers, drunken coo-cluckers. Her fair hair browning with sweat. Broad face living up to her nickname. Rawhide jerkin unlaced, revealing a strong collarbone and the kelp necklace she’d made for their tying day. Billy-Rid fancied the links still had some wet to them, though the roe-beads had well and truly dried. The little gems were grey, now, as the pebbles in her gaze.

  Meeting it unsteadily, he flubbed a grin. A tiny hand had reached up from within Beetie’s vest, its blunt fingers groping for the seaweed chain. Hard to tell from this distance if the bluish cast of its skin was more than a trick of grog-tinted light. If its little digits had been tipped with nails, or anemones. If it looked anything at all like him.

  Don’t go, he’d wanted to beg, all those months ago. Beetie had woken hours before dawn. Her gear waited by the front door; it hadn’t taken long for her to dress, to shoulder a hooded harpoon. The weapon had been a gift from her da, the blades vicious, star-shaped. The same one her late mam had wielded. It suited her, Rid had thought, but couldn’t bring himself to mention it. Beside him, the pillow still cupped the space where Beetie’s head had rested. The linens were still soft with her warmth. Billy-Rid had inhaled the beeswax scent of her, refusing to get out of bed, to say goodbye.

  I can be enough, he’d wanted to lie. We have more than enough, with us two.

  Instead, he’d whistled for fair winds and Beetie had turned a pretty crimson, self-conscious in her new skins and leathers. It was her first voyage, her first chance to hunt and shoal and multiply. She would have gone with the mermaids no matter what he’d said.

  He only wished he’d said more.

  “Good on you, lad,” Eli Stagg said now, full-proud with drink. Rid’s teeth rattled as Beetie’s old man threw an arm round him. Nodding thanks, he wriggled free only to be swept away in a current of dancers. The music capered, tempo unpredictable. Suddenly Billy-Rid was gripped under the pits, lifted like a child, then twirled and twirled and twirled. Lanterns pitched overhead, shadows tipsy. Awash in the stench of wet wool, beer and eel, Rid swooned. Clipped his chin on someone’s sharp elbow. Bit his tongue. Saw stars.

  “ ’Bout time,” Beetie said, yanking him straight. Herself nearly tall as he, even barefoot. The hand she’d extended streaked red with rope-burns. Her laugh sun-bleached, voice barnacled. “Thought you were avoiding me.” She glanced down at the gup. “Us.”

  “ ’Course not,” Rid said, barely hesitating.

  Uncertain
ty flickered across Beetie’s face—half a second’s flinch—but she squashed it with a pickled-egg kiss. Almost a year at sea had livened her tongue but sapped its honey. Billy-Rid recoiled.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us,” he said, too stiffly. Trying again, he wiped his mouth and dimpled at the mermaid, his once-darling girl.

  “Go on then,” Rid prompted, as the musicians mopped their brows, drained the dregs of Kelloway’s black ale. A few began packing their instruments, aiming to reach Ma Clary’s before the crowds. “Let me see it.”

  “Her,” Beetie said, pulling back the sealskin swaddling.

  No quick-mustered charm could keep the pleasant in Rid’s expression. His smile-muscles went slack as paste.

  “Gorgeous, isn’t she?”

  Fronds of skin dripped from the bub’s angled jaw, waxen flaps the hue of new leaves. Her chest jutted as she grizzled, the strakes of her ribs visible through a thin smock. The arms were slender but stunted; fern shoots partly unfurled. Rid took in the equine nose and winced at the strange list of her gaze. One deep brown eye turned up at Beetie; the other swivelled its iris ’round at him. Translucent lids blinked independently, or not at all.

  Billy-Rid searched for signs of gills, for coronet bumps on the fry’s skull, found none. Yet.

  Beetie beamed. “Isn’t she the prettiest little thing you ever saw?”

  Around them, mermaids raised jars, bellowing shanties. Kelloway tapped the last keg, uncorked the final two barrels of mash. Tin pipes whistled for all the luck in the world, their empty wind blowing beautifully nowhere.

  “Never seen one quite like her,” he said at last, earning another strong-armed embrace. The stolen bub pipped and squirmed between them.

  Quivering, Rid buried his face in his wife’s brackish locks and wept.

  For a month they called her Guppy, same as every other sea-child. A month for her to earn a name, to thrive on land. A month for Billy-Rid to adjust.