The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-II

by Jonathan Strahan

  Lady Fralix said, "It's considered holy in some places to release birds. People free them on holy days because it pleases the gods. Perhaps I should. Perhaps your mother is right to ask."

  "Why do the ghosts come back again and again?" Ozma said. She was far more interested in ghosts than in birds. All birds did was eat and shit and make noise. "What do you want to wear today?"

  "The pink dressing gown," Lady Fralix said. "If you let me keep your ghost in my pocket today, I'll give you one of my dresses. Any dress you like."

  "Zilla would take it away and give it to the poor," Ozma said. Then: "How did you know I'm a girl?"

  "I'm old but I'm not blind," Lady Fralix said. "I see all sorts of things. Ghosts and girls. Little lost things. You shouldn't keep dressing as a boy, my dear. Someone as shifty as you needs some truth now and then."

  "I'll be a boy if I want to be a boy," Ozma said. She realized that she didn't really think of herself as Ozma anymore. She had become Ozen, who strutted and flirted with the maids fetching water, whose legs were longer, whose breasts did not need to be bound.

  Be a girl, said the constable, muffled, from inside her pocket. Your hips are too bony as a boy. And I don't like how your voice is changing. You had a nicer singing voice before.

  "Oh, be quiet," Ozma said. She was exasperated. "I've never heard so much nonsense in all my life!"

  "You're an insolent child, but my offer stands," Lady Fralix said. "When you're ready to be a girl again. Now. Let's go down and do some work in my collection. I need someone with clever fingers. My old hands shake too much. Will you help me?"

  "If you want me to," Ozma said, ungraciously. She helped Lady Fralix out of bed and into a dressing gown and then she combed what was left of Lady Fralix's hair. "How old are you?"

  "Not as old as your mother," Lady Fralix said, and laughed at Ozma's look of disbelief.

  There was no door to the room in which Lady Fralix kept her collection, but Ozma felt sure she had never noticed this room before. There were four or five ghosts brushing against the door that wasn't there. They stayed on the threshold as if tethered there. "What are they doing?" Ozma said.

  "They want to go inside," Lady Fralix said. "But they're afraid. Something draws them. They want it and they don't know why. Poor little things."

  The room was very strange. It was the size of a proper ballroom in Abal, only it was full of paintings on stands, altars, and tables piled high with reliquaries and holy books and icons. Along the far wall there were gods as large as wardrobes and little brass gods and gods of ivory and gold and jade gods and fat goddesses giving birth to other gods and goddesses. There were bells hanging from the ceiling with long silk ropes, bells resting on the floor so big that Ozma could have hidden under them, and there were robes stiff with embroidery, hung about with bells no bigger than a fingernail.

  Where are we? said the constable.

  Lady Fralix had stepped inside the room. She beckoned to Ozma. But when Ozma put her foot down on the wooden floor, the board beneath her foot gave a terrible shriek.

  What is that noise? said the constable.

  "The floor—" Ozma said.

  "Oh," Lady Fralix said. "Your ghost. You had better tie him up outside. He won't want to come in here."

  The constable trembled in Ozma's hand. He looked about wildly, ignoring her at first. She tied him to the leg of an occasional table in the hallway. Don't leave me here, the constable said. There's something in that room that I need. Bring it to me, boy.

  "Boy!" Ozma said.

  Please, boy, said the constable. Ozma, please. I beg you on my death.

  Ozma ignored him. She stepped into the room again, and again, with each step, the floor shrieked and groaned and squeaked. Lady Fralix clapped her hands. "It's almost as good as going to see the orchestra in Oldun," she said. She walked in a quick odd pattern towards an altar carved in the shape of a winged fish.

  "Why don't you make any sound when you walk?" Ozma said.

  "I know where to place my feett," Lady Fralix said. "I keep my most precious relics here. All the things that belong to gods. There. Put your foot down there. There's a pattern to it. Let me teach you."

  She showed Ozma how to navigate the room. It was a little like waltzing. "Isn't this fun?" Lady Fralix said. "An adept can play the floor like a musical instrument. It comes from a temple in Nal. There's an emerald somewhere, too. The eye of a god. From the same temple. Here, look at this."

  There was a tree growing out of an old stone altar. The tree had almost split the altar in two. There was fruit on it and Lady Fralix bent a branch down. "Not ripe yet," she said. "I've been waiting almost twenty years and it's still not ripe."

  "I suppose you want me to dust everything," Ozma said.

  "Perhaps you could just help me go through the books," Lady Fralix said. "I left a novel in here last summer. I was only halfway through reading it. The beautiful gypsy had just been kidnapped by a lord disguised as a narwhal."

  "Here it is," Ozma said, after they had hunted for a while in companionable silence. When she looked up, she felt strange, as if the room had begun to spin around her. The gods and their altars all seemed very bright and it seemed to her that the bells were tolling, although without any sound. Even Lady Fralix seemed to shimmer a little, as if she were moving and standing still at the same time.

  "You're quite pale," Lady Fralix said. "I'd have thought you wouldn't be susceptible."

  "To what?" Ozma said.

  "To the gods," Lady Fralix said. "Some people have a hard time. It's a bit like being up in the mountains. Some people don't seem to notice."

  "I don't care for gods," Ozma said. "They're nothing to me. I hate Brid. I hate this place. I hate the gods."

  "Let's go and have some tea," Lady Fralix said. She did not sound in the least bit perturbed to hear that Ozma was a heretic.

  In the hallway, the constable was tugging at his ribbon as if the room was full of blood.

  "What is it?" Ozma said. "There's nothing in that room, just boring old gods."

  I need it, the constable said. Be kind, be kind. Give me the thing I need.

  "Don't be tiresome," Ozma said. Her head ached.

  Before she could put him in her pocket, Lady Fralix took hold of Ozma's wrist. She picked up the constable by his ribbon.

  "Very curious," Lady Fralix said. "He's so lively, such a darling. Not the usual sort of ghost. Do you know how he died?"

  "He ate a bad piece of cheese," Ozma said. "Or maybe he fell off a cliff. I don't remember. Give him back."

  "It's a good thing," Lady Fralix said, "that most people can't see or talk to ghosts. Watching them scurry around, it makes you dread the thought of death and yet what else is there to do when you die? Will some careless child carry me around in her pocket?"

  Ozma shrugged. She was young. She wouldn't die for years and years. She tried not to think of the handsome young constable in her pocket, who had once thought much the same thing.

  By the time Zilla and Jemma returned from the temple, Lady Fralix had made up her mind to let the birds go, as soon as possible.

  "I only kept them because the house seemed so empty," she said. "Brid is too quiet. In the city of Tuk, the god houses are full of red and green birds who fly back and forth carrying holy messages."

  Zilla and Jemma and Ozma carried cage after cage out onto the street. The birds fussed and chattered. Lady Fralix watched from her bedroom window. It was starting to rain.

  Once the birds were free, they seemed more confused than liberated. They didn't burst into joyful songs or even fly away. Ozma had to shoo them out of their cages. They flew around the house and beat their wings against the windows. Lady Fralix closed her curtains. One bird flew against a window so hard that it broke its neck.

  Ozma picked up its body. The beak was open.

  "The poor little things," Jemma said. Jemma was terribly tenderhearted. She wiped rain off her face with her apron. There were feathers sticking out of her hair
.

  "Where do the ghosts of birds and animals go?" Ozma said quietly to Zilla. "Why don't we see them?"

  Zilla looked at her. Her eyes glittered and her color was high. "I see them," she said. "I can see them plain as anything. It's good that you can't see them, Ozen. It's more respectable not to see any kind of ghosts."

  "Lady Fralix knows I'm a girl," Ozma said. Jemma was chasing the birds away from the house, flapping her own arms and her sodden apron. The rain fell harder and harder but Zilla didn't seem to notice. "She said something about how I ought to be careful. I think that perhaps I'm becoming a boy. I think she may be right. I stand up when I piss now. I'm shaped differently. I have something down there that I didn't have before."

  "Let me take a look at you," Zilla said. "Turn around. Yes, I see. Well, it has nothing to do with me. You must be doing it yourself somehow. How enterprising you've become. How inconvenient."

  "Actually," Ozma said, "it's more convenient. I like standing up when I piss."

  "It won't do," Zilla said. "It's not very respectable, that's for certain. We'll take care of it tonight."

  I liked you better as a girl, the constable said. You were a nice girl. That girl would have given me what I wanted. She would have found what I needed in that room.

  "I wasn't a nice girl!" Ozma said. She stood naked in the attic room. She wished she had a mirror. The thing between her legs was very strange. She didn't know how long it had been here.

  Ever since we came to this house, the constable said. He was sitting in the corner of the grate on a little heap of ashes. He looked very gloomy. Ever since your mother told you to be a boy. Why do you always do what your mother tells you?

  "I don't," Ozma said. "I kept you. I keep you secret. If she knew about you, she'd sweep you right out of the house."

  Don't tell her then, the constable said. I want to stay with you, Ozma. I forgive you for letting her kill me.

  "Be quiet," Ozma said. "Here she comes."

  Zilla was carrying a small, folded pile of clothes. She stared at Ozma. "Get dressed," she said. "I've seen all that before. It doesn't particularly suit you, although it does explain why the housemaids next door have been mooning and swanning around in their best dresses."

  "Because of me?" Ozma said. She began to pull her trousers back on.

  "No, not those. Here. Lady Fralix has lent you a dress. I've made something up, although only a liar as good as I am could pull off such a ridiculous story. I fed Jemma some confection about how you've been dressing as a boy as penance. Because a young man had fallen in love with you and committed suicide. You're handsome enough as a boy," Zilla said. "But I don't know what you were thinking. I never cared much for that shape. It's too distracting. And people are always wanting to quarrel with you."

  "You've been a man?" Ozma said. The dress felt very strange, very confining. The thing between her legs was still there. And she didn't like the way the petticoats rubbed against her legs. They scratched.

  "Not for years and years," Zilla said. "Gods, I don't even know how long. It's one thing to dress as a man, Ozma, but you mustn't let yourself forget who you are."

  "But I don't know who I am," Ozma said. "Why are we different from other people? Why do we see ghosts? Why did I change into a boy? You said we were going home, but Brid isn't home, I know it isn't. Where is our home? Why did we come here? Why are you acting so strangely?"

  Zilla sighed. She snapped her finger and there was a little green flame resting on the back of her hand. She stroked it with her other hand, coaxing it until it grew larger. She sat down on one of the narrow beds and patted the space beside her. Ozma sat down. "There's something that I need to find," Zilla said. "Something in Brid. I can't go home without it. When Neren died—"

  "Neren!" Ozma said. She didn't want to talk about Neren.

  Zilla gave her a terrible look. "If those men had killed you instead of Neren," she said. Her voice trailed off. The green flame dwindled down to a spark and went out. "There was something that I was supposed to do for him. Something that I knew how to do once. Something I've forgotten."

  "I don't understand," Ozma said. "We buried him in the tree. What else could we have done?"

  "I don't know," Zilla said. "I go to the temples every day and I humble myself and I light enough candles to burn down a city, but the gods won't talk to me. I'm too wicked. I've done terrible things. I think I used to know how to talk to the gods. I need to talk to them again. I need to talk to them before I go home. I need them to tell me what I've forgotten."

  "Before we go home," Ozma said. "You wouldn't leave me here, would you? You wouldn't. Tell me about home, oh please, tell me about home."

  "I can't remember," Zilla said. She stood up. "I don't remember. Stop fussing at me, Ozma. Don't come downstairs again until you're a girl."

  Ozma had terrible dreams. She dreamed that Lady Fralix's birds had come back home again and they were pecking at her head. Peck, peck, peck. Peck, peck. They were going to pull out all of her hair because she had been a terrible daughter. Neren had sent them. She was under one of Lady Fralix's bells in the darkness because she was hiding from the birds. The constable was kissing her under the bell. His mouth was full of dead birds.

  Someone was shaking her. "Ozma," Zilla said. "Ozma, wake up. Ozma, tell me what you are dreaming about."

  "The birds," Ozma said. "I'm in the room where Lady Fralix keeps her collection. I'm hiding from the birds."

  "What room?" Zilla said. Her hand was still on Ozma's shoulder, but she was only a dark shape against darkness.

  "The room full of bells and altars," Ozma said. "The room that the ghosts won't go in. She wanted me to find a book for her this afternoon. The floor is from a temple in Nal. You have to walk on it a certain way. It made me feel dizzy."

  "Show me this room," Zilla said. "I'll fetch a new candle. You've burned this one down to the stub. Meet me downstairs."

  Ozma got out of bed. She went and squatted over the chamber pot.

  So you're a girl again, the constable said from behind the grate.

  "Oh, be quiet," Ozma said. "It's none of your business."

  It is my business, the constable said. You'll go and fetch the thing that your mother needs, but you won't help me. I thought you loved me.

  "You?" Ozma said. "How could I love you? How could I love a ghost? How could I love something that I have to keep hidden in my pocket?"

  She picked up the constable. "You're filthy," she said.

  You're lovely, Ozma, the constable said. You're ripe as a peach. I've never wanted anything as much as I want just a drop of your blood, except there's something in that room that I want even more. If you bring it to me, I'll promise to be true to you. No one will ever have such a faithful lover.

  "I don't want a lover," Ozma said. "I want to go home."

  She put the constable in the pocket of her nightgown and went down the dark stairs in her bare feet. Her mother was in the vestibule where all the gods were waiting for dawn. The flame from the candle lit Zilla's face and made her look beautiful and wicked and pitiless. "Hurry, Ozma. Show me the room."

  "It's just along here," Ozma said. It was as if they were back in Abal and nothing had changed. She felt like dancing.

  "I don't understand," Zilla said. "How could it be here under my nose, all this time and I couldn't even see it?"

  "See what?" Ozma said. "Look, here's the room." As before, there were ghosts underfoot, everywhere, even more than there had been before.

  "Filthy things," Zilla said. She sneezed. "Why won't they leave me alone?" She didn't seem to see the room at all.

  Ozma took the candle from Zilla and held it up so that they could both see the entrance to the room. "Here," she said. "Here, look. Here's the room I was telling you about."

  Zilla was silent. Then she said, "It makes me feel ill. As if something terrible is calling my name over and over again. Perhaps it's a god. Perhaps a god is telling me not to go in."

  "The room is full o
f gods!" Ozma said. "There are gods and gods and altars and relics and sacred stones and you can't go in there or else the floorboards will make so much noise that everyone in the house will wake up."

  Bring me the thing I need! shouted the constable. I will kill you all if you don't bring me the thing I need!

  "Ozma," Zilla said. She sounded like the old Zilla again, queenly and sly; used to being obeyed. "Who is that in your pocket? Who thinks that he is mightier than I?"

  "It's only the constable of Abal," Ozma said. She took the constable out of her pocket and held him behind her back.

  Let me go, the constable said. Let me go or I will bite you. Go fetch me the thing that I need and I will let you live.

  "Give him to me," Zilla said.

  "Will you keep him safe while I go in there?" Ozma said. "I know how to walk without making the floor sing. The ghosts won't go in there, but I could go in. What am I looking for?"

  "I don't know," Zilla said. "I don't know, but you will know it when you see it. I promise. Bring me the thing that I'm looking for. Give me your ghost."

  Don't give me to her, the constable said. I have a bad feeling about this. Besides, there's something in that room that I need. You'll be sorry if you help her and not me.

  Zilla held out her hand. Ozma gave her the constable. "I'm sorry," Ozma said to the constable. Then she went into the room.

  She was instantly dizzy. It was worse than before. She concentrated on the light falling from the candle, and the wax that dripped down onto her hand. She put each foot down with care. The ropes from stolen temple bells slithered across her shoulders like dead snakes. The altars and tables were absolutely heaped with things, and all of it was undoubtedly valuable, and it was far too dark. How in the world did Zilla expect her to come out again with the exact thing that was needed? Perhaps Ozma should just carry out as much as she could. There was a little wax god on the table nearest her. She held up the hem of her nightgown like an apron and dropped the god inside. There was a book covered in gold leaf. She picked it up. Too heavy. She put it back down again. She picked up a smaller book. She put it in her nightgown.