The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-II

by Jonathan Strahan

  The story that follows, which first appeared in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's anthology The Coyote Road, is a typically enchanting Link tale of ghosts, family, and con artists.

  They left Abal in a hurry, after Ozma's mother killed the constable. It was a shame, too, because business had been good. Ozma's mother had invitations almost every night to one party or another in the finest homes of Abal. Rich gentlemen admired Ozma's mother, Zilla, for her beauty and their wives were eager to have their fortunes told. Ozma, in her shiny, stiff, black-ribboned dress, was petted and given rolls and hot chocolate. The charms and trinkets on the ends of the ribbons that Ozma and her mother wore (little porcelain and brass ships, skulls, dolls, crowns and cups) were to attract the attention of the spirit world, but fashionable ladies in Abal had begun to wear them too. The plague had passed through Abal a few months before Ozma and her mother came. Death was fashionable.

  Thanks to Ozma's mother, every wellborn lady of Abal strolled about town for a time in a cloud of ghosts—a cloud of ghosts that only Ozma and her mother could see. Zilla made a great deal of money, first selling the ribbons and charms and then instructing the buyer on the company she now kept. Some ghosts were more desirable than others of course, just as some addresses will always be more desirable, more sought after. But if you didn't like your ghosts, well then, Ozma's mother could banish the ones you had and sell you new charms, new ghosts. A rich woman could change ghosts just as easily as changing her dress and to greater fashionable effect.

  Ozma was small for her age. Her voice was soft and her limbs were delicate as a doll's. She bound her breasts with a cloth. She didn't mind the hot chocolate, although she would have preferred wine. But wine might have made her sleepy or clumsy and it was hard enough carefully and quietly slipping in and out of bedrooms and dressing rooms and studies unnoticed when hundreds of ghost charms were dangling like fishing weights from your collar, your bodice, your seams, your hem. It was a surprise, really, that Ozma could move at all.

  Zilla called her daughter Princess Monkey, but Ozma felt more like a beast of burden, a tricked-up pony which her mother had laden down with secrets and more secrets. Among Ozma's ghost charms were skeleton keys and tiny chisels. There was no magic about how Ozma got into and out of locked desks and boudoirs. And if she were seen, it was easy enough to explain what she was looking for. One of her ghosts, you see, was playing a little game. The observer saw only a small solemn girl chasing after her invisible friend.

  Zilla was not greedy. She was a scrupulous blackmailer. She did not bleed her clients dry; she milked them. You could even say she did it out of kindness. What good is a secret without someone to know it? When one cannot afford a scandal, a blackmailer is an excellent bargain. Ozma and Zilla assembled the evidence of love affairs, ill-considered attachments, stillbirths, stolen inheritances, and murders. They were as vigilant as any biographer, solicitous as any confidante. Zilla fed gobbets of tragedy, romance, comedy to the ghosts who dangled so hungrily at the end of their ribbons. One has to feed a ghost something delicious, and there is only so much blood a grown woman and a smallish girl have to spare.

  The constable had been full of blood: a young man, quite pretty to look at, ambitious, and in the pay of one Lady V____. Zilla had been careless or Lady V____ was cleverer than she looked. For certain, she was more clever than she was beautiful, Zilla said, in a rage. Zilla stabbed the constable in the neck with a demon needle. Blood sprayed out through the hollow needle like red ink. All of Ozma's ghosts began to tug at their ribbons in a terrible frenzy as if, Ozma thought, they were children and she were a maypole.

  First the constable was a young man, full of promise and juice, and then he was a dead man in a puddle of his own blood, and then he was a ghost, small enough that Zilla could have clapped him between her two hands and burst him like a pastry bag, had he any real substance. He clutched at one of Zilla's ribbon charms as if it were a life rope. The look of surprise on his face was comical.

  Ozma thought he made a handsome ghost. She winked at him, but then there was a great deal of work to do. There was the body to take care of, and Zilla's clothes and books and jewelry to be packed, and all of the exceedingly fragile ghost tackle to wrap up in cotton and rags.

  Zilla was in a filthy temper. She kicked the body of the constable. She paced and drank while Ozma worked. She rolled out maps and rolled them back up again.

  "Where are we going this time?" Ozma said.

  "Home," Zilla said. She blew her nose on a map. Zilla had terrible allergies in summer. "We're going home."

  On the seventh day of their journey, outlaws shot and killed Neren, Zilla's manservant, as he watered the horses from a stream. From inside the coach, Zilla drew her gun. She waited until the outlaws were within range and then she shot them both in the head. Zilla's aim was excellent.

  By the time Ozma had the horses calmed down, Neren's ghost had drifted downstream, and she had no ribbons with which to collect trash like the outlaws anyway. Zilla had made her leave most of her ghosts and ribbons at home. Too many ghosts made travel difficult: they frightened horses and drew unwelcome attention. And besides, it was easy enough to embroider new ribbons and collect new ghosts when one arrived in a new place. Ozma had kept only three favorites: an angry old empress, a young boy whose ghost was convinced it was actually a kitten, and the constable. But neither the empress nor the little boy said much anymore. Nothing stirred them. And there was something more vivid about the constable, or perhaps it was just the memory of his surprised look and his bright, bright blood.

  She's a monster, the constable said to Ozma. He was looking at Zilla with something like admiration. Ozma felt a twinge of jealousy, of possessive pride.

  "She's killed a hundred men and women," Ozma told him. "She has a little list of their names in her book. We light candles for them in the temple."

  I don't remember my name, the constable said. Did I perhaps introduce myself to you and your mother, before she killed me?

  "It was something like Stamp or Anvil," Ozma said. "Or Cobble."

  "Ozma," Zilla said. "Stop talking to that ghost. Come and help with Neren."

  Ozma and Neren had not liked each other. Neren had liked to pinch and tease Ozma when Zilla wasn't looking. He'd put his hand on the flat place where her breasts were bound. Sometimes he picked her up by her hair to show how strong he was, how little and helpless Ozma was.

  They wrapped Neren's body in a red sheet and wedged it between the branches of a tree, winding the sheet around and around the blankets. It was what you did for the dead when you were in a hurry. If it had been up to Ozma, they'd have left Neren for dogs to eat. She would have stayed to watch.

  I'm hungry, said the constable's ghost. Ozma gave him a little bowl of blood and dirt, scraped from the ground where Neren had died.

  After that, they traveled faster. The horses were afraid of Ozma's mother although she did not use the whips as often as Neren had.

  Ozma sat in the carriage and played I Spy with the constable's ghost. I spy with my little eye, said the constable.

  "A cloud," Ozma said. "A man in a field."

  The view was monotonous. There were fields brown with blight and the air was foul with dust. There had been a disease of the wheat this year, as well as plague. There were no clouds. The man in the field was a broken stalk in a clearing, tied with small dirty flags, left as a piece of field magic. A field god to mark the place where someone had drawn the white stone.

  Not a man, the constable said. A woman. A sad girl with brown hair. She looks a little like you.

  "Is she pretty?" Ozma said.

  Are you pretty? the constable said.

  Ozma tossed her hair. "The ladies of Abal called me a pretty poppet," she said. "They said my hair was the color of honey."

  Your mother is very beautiful, the constable said. Out on the coachman's seat, Zilla was singing a song about black birds pecking at someone's eyes and fingers. Zilla loved sad songs.

 
"I will be even more beautiful when I grow up," Ozma said. "Zilla says so."

  How old are you? said the constable.

  "Sixteen," Ozma said, although this was only a guess. She'd begun to bleed the year before. Zilla had not been pleased.

  Why do you bind your breasts? said the constable.

  When they traveled, Ozma dressed in boy's clothes and tied her hair back in a simple queue. But she still bound her breasts every day. "One day," she said, "Zilla will find a husband for me. A rich old man with an estate. Or a foolish young man with an inheritance. But until then, until I'm too tall, I'm more useful as a child. Zilla's Princess Monkey.

  I'll never get any older, the constable said, mourning.

  "I spy with my little eye," Ozma said.

  A cloud, the constable said. A wheel of fire. The dead did not like to say the name of the sun.

  "A little mouse," Ozma said. "It ran under the wheels of the carriage."

  Where are we going? the constable said. He asked over and over again.

  "Home," Ozma said.

  Where is home? said the constable.

  "I don't know," Ozma said.

  Ozma's father was, according to Zilla, a prince of the Underworld, a diplomat from distant Torlal, a spy, a man with a knife in an alley in Benin. Neren had been a small man, and he'd had snapping black eyes like Ozma, but Neren had not been Ozma's father. If he'd been her father, she would have fished in the stream with a ribbon for his ghost.

  They made camp in a field of white flowers. Ozma fed and watered the horses. She picked flowers with the idea that perhaps she could gather enough to make a bed of petals for Zilla. She had a small heap almost as high as her knee before she grew tired of picking them. Zilla made a fire and drank wine. She did not say anything about Neren or about home or about the white petals, but after the sun went down she taught Ozma easy conjure tricks: how to set fire dancing on the backs of the green beetles that ran about the camp; how to summon the little devils that lived in trees and shrubs and rocks.

  Zilla and the rock devils talked for a while in a guttural, snappish language that Ozma could almost understand. Then Zilla leaned forward, caught up a devil by its tail, and snapped its long neck. The other devils ran away and Zilla chased after them, grinning. There was something wolfish about her: she dashed across the field on all fours, darting back and forth. She caught two more devils while Ozma and the ghosts sat and watched, and then came strolling back to the camp looking flushed and pink and pleased, the devils dangling from her hand. She sharpened sticks and cooked them over the campfire as if they had been quail. By the time they were ready to eat, she was quite drunk. She didn't offer to share the wine with Ozma.

  The devils were full of little spiky bones. Zilla ate two. Ozma nibbled at a haunch, wishing she had real silverware, the kind they'd left behind in Abal. All she had was a tobacco knife. Her devil's gummy boiled eyes stared up at her reproachfully. She closed her own eyes and tore off its head. But there were still the little hands, the toes. It was like trying to eat a baby.

  "Ozma," Zilla said. "Eat. I need you to stay healthy. Next time it will be your turn to conjure up supper."

  Zilla slept in the carriage. Ozma lay with her head on the little pile of white petals and the constable and the empress and the kitten boy curled up in her hair.

  All night long the green beetles scurried around the camp, carrying fire on their backs. It didn't seem to upset them, and it was very beautiful. Whenever Ozma woke in the night, the ground was alive with little moving green lights. That was the thing about magic. Sometimes it was beautiful and sometimes it seemed to Ozma that it was as wicked as the priests claimed. You could kill a man and you could lie and steal as Zilla had done, and if you lit enough candles at the temples, you could be forgiven. But someone who ate little devils and caught ghosts with ribbons and charms was a witch, and witches were damned. It had always seemed to Ozma that in all the world there was only Zilla for Ozma, only Ozma for Zilla. Perhaps home would be different.

  Ozma thought that Zilla was looking for something. It was four days since Neren had died, and the horses were getting skinny. There was very little grazing. The streambeds were mostly dry. They abandoned the carriage and Zilla walked while Ozma rode one of the horses (the horses would not carry Zilla) and the other horse carried Zilla's maps and boxes. They went north and there were no villages, no towns where Zilla could tell fortunes or sell charms. There were only abandoned farms and woods that Zilla said were full of outlaws or worse.

  There was no more wine. Zilla had finished it. They drank muddy water out of the same streams where they watered their horses.

  At night Ozma pricked her finger and squeezed the blood into the dirt for her ghosts. In Abal, there had been servants to give the blood to the ghosts. You did not need much blood for one ghost, but in Abal they'd had many, many ghosts. It made Ozma feel a bit sick to see the empress's lips smeared with her blood, to see the kitten boy lapping at the clotted dirt. The constable ate daintily, as if he were still alive.

  Ozma's legs ached at night, as if they were growing furiously. She forgot to bind her breasts. Zilla didn't seem to notice. At night, she walked out from the camp, leaving Ozma alone. Sometimes she did not come back until morning.

  I spy with my little eye, the constable said.

  "A horse's ass," Ozma said. "My mother's skirts, dragging in the dirt."

  A young lady, the constable said. A young lady full of blood and vitality.

  Ozma stared at him. The dead did not flirt with the living, but there was a glint in the constable's dead eye. The empress laughed silently.

  Ahead of them, Zilla stopped. "There," she said. "Ahead of us, do you see?"

  "Are we home?" Ozma said. "Have we come home?" The road behind them was empty and broken. Far ahead, she could see something that might be a small town. As they got closer, there were buildings, but the buildings were not resplendent. The roofs were not tiled with gold. There was no city wall, no orchards full of fruit, only brown fields and ricks of rotted hay.

  "This is Brid," Zilla said. "There's something I need here. Come here, Ozma. Help me with the packhorse."

  They pulled out Ozma's best dress, the green one with silver embroidery. But when Ozma tried to put on her dress, it would not fasten across her back. The shot-silk cuffs no longer came down over her wrists.

  "Well," Zilla said. "My little girl is getting bigger."

  "I didn't mean to!" Ozma said.

  "No," Zilla said. "I suppose you didn't. It isn't your fault, Ozma. My magic can only do so much. Everyone gets older, no matter how much magic their mothers have. A young woman is trouble, though, and we have no time for trouble. Perhaps you should be a boy. I'll cut your hair."

  Ozma backed away. She was proud of her hair.

  "Come here, Ozma," Zilla said. She had a knife in her hand. "It will grow back, I promise."

  Ozma waited with the horses and the ghosts outside the town. She was too proud to cry about her hair. Boys came and threw rocks at her and she glared at them until they ran away. They came and threw rocks again. She imagined conjuring fire and setting it on their backs and watching them scurry like the beetles. She was wicked to think such a thing. Zilla was probably at the temple lighting candles, but surely there weren't enough candles in the world to save them both. Ozma prayed that Zilla would save herself.

  Why have we come here? the constable said.

  "We need things," Ozma said. "Home is farther away than I thought it was. Zilla will bring back a new carriage and a new manservant and wine and food. She's probably gone to the mayor's house, to tell his fortune. He'll give her gold. She'll come back with gold and ribbons full of ghosts and we'll go to the mayor's house and eat roast beef on silver plates."

  The town is full of people and the people are full of blood, the constable said. Why must we stay here outside?

  "Wait, and Zilla will come back," Ozma said. There was a hot breeze and it blew against her neck. Cut hair pricked where
it was caught between her shirt and her skin. She picked up the constable on his ribbon and held him cupped in her hands. "Am I still beautiful?" she said.

  You have dirt on your face, the constable said.

  The sun was high in the sky when Zilla came back. She was wearing a modest gray dress and a white kerchief covered her hair. There was a man with her. He paid no attention to Ozma. Instead he went over to the horses and ran his hands over them. He picked up their feet and rapped thoughtfully on their hooves.

  "Come along," Zilla said to Ozma. "Help me with the bags. Leave the horses with this man."

  "Where are we going?" Ozma said. "Did the mayor give you gold?"

  "I took a position in service," Zilla said. "You are my son and your name is Eren. Your father is dead and we have come here from Nablos. We are respectable people. I'm to cook and keep house."

  "I thought we were going home," Ozma said. "This isn't home."

  "Leave your ghosts here," Zilla said. "Decent people like we are going to be have nothing to do with ghosts."

  The man took the reins of the horses and led them away. Ozma took out her pocket knife and cut off her last three ribbons. In one of the saddlebags, there was a kite that a lady of Abal had given her. She tied the empress and the kitten boy to it by their ribbons, and then she threw the kite up so the wind caught it. The string ran through her hand and the two ghosts sailed away over the houses of Brid.

  What are you doing? the constable said.

  "Be quiet," Ozma said. She tied a knot in the third ribbon and stuck the constable in her pocket. Then she picked up a saddlebag and followed her mother into Brid.