The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (Best SF & Fantasy of the Year)

by Jonathan Strahan

  The tales varied as to why the well was outside the village rather than inside. Some say that an earthquake and rockfall destroyed the original town site and the survivors rebuilt the village at a safer distance, leaving the now-dry well where it was. Others say that a saké-addled farmer relieved himself in the well one night, so offending the spirit of the well that it had moved itself and had been dry ever since. Whichever version one believed, the well was where it was, and nearly every evening the boy called Hiroshi came to stare down into the darkness, and listen.

  The well was full of music.

  "Hello," Hiroshi said to the unseen musician, as was his habit. There was no answer. Hiroshi was never quite sure what he would have done had the darkness answered him. There was a spirit in the well, of course. His uncle Saito, the priest, said there were living spirits in everything, and Hiroshi believed that. Still, the darkness did not answer him.

  One fine spring evening his uncle Saito walked out of the village to where Hiroshi sat by the well. He had been a soldier and was now a priest, but it was as Hiroshi's uncle that Saito came to speak with Hiroshi that evening. "Greetings, Nephew," he said, and sat down beside the boy.

  "Hello, Uncle. Is there something the matter?"

  "I'm not certain. I would be grateful if you would help me decide, so I must ask: what is your fascination with this well?"

  "Is Father worried? He's raised no objections so long as I do not neglect my obligations."

  "My brother is a practical man, and you are a dutiful son to him. However, my question was not to my brother."

  Hiroshi blushed. "Forgive me, Uncle. I sit here because I like to listen. There is a sound coming from the well, from down in the darkness. It's almost as if the music is being played just for me; almost as if I've heard it before. I don't understand that, but that's how it feels."

  Saito sat down beside him and leaned forward just a bit, listening. After a while he pulled back the sleeve of his robe and picked up a pebble. He dropped it over the side.

  "What do you hear now, Hiroshi?"

  "I hear the pebble rattling against stones... fading. Now I hear nothing."

  "No splash? Not even a small one?"

  "No."

  Saito nodded. "Nor will you ever. This was a well. Now it is not. Now it is just a hole down deep into the underground. The underground is the province of dead things, and dead things should not concern the living. Look around you now. What do you see?"

  Hiroshi did as his uncle directed. He saw children his age flying kites in the waning light, running along the ridges of the flooded rice fields, playing games with tops and hoops, laughing.

  "It all seems childish," Hiroshi said.

  "Is it inappropriate for children to do childish things? Or the living to do what nature decrees that the living must? This is your world, Hiroshi. There is nothing in that well that should be of concern to you. Will you think about what I have said?"

  "I will, Uncle," Hiroshi said. His uncle looked back once but not a second time as he walked away.

  Hiroshi, being an honest boy, did what he had promised to do. He thought about what his uncle said, and he studied carefully, for a moment or two, the activity, now fading with the day, around him.

  "I've played those games," he said to himself. "Time and again. They do not change – the kites pull on the wind as they always have, as they will for anyone. This song is for me."

  All this was justification, and pointless. The only justification Hiroshi needed was the song he still heard, coming from the depths of the well.

  The next evening Hiroshi joined his playmates at their games for a time to appease his uncle, but when play time was over and all his friends had gone home, he returned to the well. He moved quickly, with furtive glances all about to see if anyone was there to see. He carried a long rope coiled over one shoulder and a small knife in his sash.

  "The rope was a sensible idea, but that blade may not be enough," his uncle said. He sounded sad.

  Hiroshi froze as his Uncle Saito stood up from his hiding place behind the well.

  "How did you know, Uncle?"

  "It serves a priest well to know how to look into a person's eyes and see clearly what plagues them. You are plagued by discontent, Nephew. Unfortunately, unlike other spirits and minor devils, this one bows to no spell of exorcism. You must cast it out yourself."

  Hiroshi hung his head. "How do I do this, Uncle?"

  "Perhaps by doing what you want. I still advise against it, but this devil shows no sign of leaving you." Saito took the rope from Hiroshi's shoulder and made one end fast to a post beside the stone rail marking the well. He threw the other end down into the blackness. "Do you still hear music, Nephew?"

  Hiroshi listened for a moment. "Yes, Uncle. I do."

  "Then follow it down and satisfy your devil. Then perhaps he will leave and you will come back to us. I hope so, else I must explain your absence to your father, and I would rather avoid that duty."

  Hiroshi put his hand on the rope. He stared into the forbidding blackness as he often had, but he barely hesitated. "I will come back, Uncle. I promise."

  "Do not promise. I merely ask that you be careful. Powerful kami are drawn to such places, and most are not likely to be friendly to you. Take this." Saito held up the shorter of the two swords he'd carried as a soldier. "Remember what little I taught you of the Way of the Gods. Most of all, remember who you are. I think that is the important thing, no matter where a person may go."

  Hiroshi took a deep breath and climbed over the side of the well. The last thing he saw before darkness closed in was his uncle peering sadly down at him from a circle of daylight.

  That daylight quickly faded as the well shaft made an abrupt turn at the bottom into what looked like an ordinary cave.

  Hiroshi listened very closely, but now he didn't hear the music at all.

  "That's very strange. It was a most persistent sound when I heard it from the side of the well. Persuasive, I think," he said, though Hiroshi still couldn't fit words to what the argument was supposed to be.

  Now all was silent except for a faint rush of air, as if the winds of the underground could not wait to escape past him and up the well to sunlight. Hiroshi's hair blew about his face and tickled his forehead. The scent carried by the wind was of damp and mold, and a faint hint of a spice that Hiroshi could not identify at all.

  There was darkness about, as he had expected. Indeed, he'd brought a small lantern along but found he didn't need it. Once his eyes adjusted, there was light there, of a sort. He could make out where to walk, where boulders lay in his path and where not. The only thing left to do was to choose which direction to go.

  Where is the music?

  He listened very intently, trying to hear around the moan of the wind in his ears. There had been a promise in that music, something wonderful beyond Hiroshi's imagining. Familiar, too, though he could not say how.

  After a few moments he thought he heard it again. He wasn't sure. He wondered if there had been a concentrating effect from the well itself, like wind through a reed flute; the music was much harder to hear this much closer, presumably, to the musician. Hiroshi finally took his best guess and started walking.

  He soon came to what had clearly been part of the underground river, now dry and full of stones. An old woman was waiting for him there, looking impatient. At least, Hiroshi thought it was an old woman; that was what he told himself when he saw her. She was more a collection of rags and bones than anything, but there was a face, and wrinkles, and a thin toothless grin.

  "Give me those!" she said. Her voice was like dead leaves blowing across stones and her eyes glittered like black pebbles.

  Hiroshi blinked. "Those? Those what?"

  "Clothes! Give them to me!"

  Hiroshi thought this very rude, but he was more confused than offended. "Who are you and why do you want my clothes?"

  She ignored that. "You must give your clothes to me before you cross this river. Now!" />
  Apparently, to the old woman now meant now. She reached out with one clawed hand, snatching at his sleeve. She managed to tear off a strip of his sleeve and gouge a line of red across his wrist.

  Hiroshi took a step back. "Here, now, Grandmother! Stop that!"

  She stopped for a moment, but she was looking at the blood on Hiroshi's wrist. "You're alive!" It sounded like an accusation.

  "Of course I'm alive! What did you think?"

  "That you were not, of course. Now I think you're a fool." She blinked, and for a moment Hiroshi saw some kind of recognition there, something beyond the cold darkness he had seen before. It didn't last. The cold, relentless stare returned. "Clothes. You don't need them. Not where you are, not where you are going. Mine!"

  The last came out in a shriek of rage and malice. For Hiroshi's part he didn't know what she was, but he knew she wasn't human. A kami, or perhaps a demon in – somewhat – human form. When she came for him again he had his uncle's wakazashi out and ready. "Stay back, monster!"

  She hissed like a snake and struck at him. Hiroshi dodged and struck back. It was only the feel of the blade as it struck something solid that told him of the hit. The rag and bone creature did not cry out. It merely stepped back, confused. "Mine!" she repeated.

  Hiroshi took a deep breath and a firmer grip on his sword. "You've been in the dark too long, Grandmother. Don't force me to strike you again!"

  She looked at Hiroshi, or rather at his clothes, then looked at the sword again. "Mine," she said again, "soon enough. I can wait."

  She cackled with laughter and then spread out her arms like a kite. In answer the breeze there swelled into her rags and she lifted off into the darkness. In a moment she was out of sight in the deeper black of the caves.

  Hiroshi waited for a bit, sword at the ready, but she did not return. He finally put the blade away.

  "Well," he said. "That was very strange."

  He didn't like to think of himself as a fool, despite what the creature had said. He had already met one monster on his short journey, and it seemed likely that there would be others. He wondered if the beautiful music was being played by another monster to lure him down.

  "If so, it worked. But for what purpose? And why is the music fainter now than when I kneeled at the well?"

  "Because it's farther away, of course."

  Hiroshi's previous encounter with the clothes thief must have left him more shaken than he'd thought, because he immediately reached for his sword. After a moment he took his hand off the hilt, feeling foolish. The speaker was a small man in the robes of a Buddhist monk. He sat crosslegged on the stones, tending a small fire upon which steamed a small kettle. Before him were cups and a ladle and a bamboo whisk for making tea. A traveler's bundle served as a rest for his back.

  Hiroshi bowed. "Gomen nasai, Honored Sir. I did not see you there."

  "Obviously. I was about to have some tea, young man. Would you care to join me?"

  The mention of tea made Hiroshi realize he was starting to get hungry. "Yes, thank you."

  The monk prepared their tea in silence, though perhaps introductions would have been more in order. Hiroshi shrugged and pulled out two of the rice cakes he'd brought with him and offered one to the monk, who politely declined. Hiroshi then ate both of them, though he remembered his manners enough to let the monk take the first sip of tea before he began.

  He also studied the man as closely as manners would allow without staring. His initial impression of small stature was on the mark. The man was tiny, even shorter than Hiroshi himself, though otherwise looked more or less human. Part of Hiroshi was wondering if the monk would suddenly grow fangs and attack him, but mostly he wondered what the man was doing there in that place, and what he knew about the music. He held off asking for as long as he could, but that wasn't very long at all.

  "Excuse me, but what did you mean about the music being farther away?"

  "Just that it is. You're much farther from it than you were."

  That wasn't very helpful, though Hiroshi didn't say so out loud. It was more than a little irritating.

  "I don't understand. Will you explain?"

  The monk didn't say anything for a while, but merely sipped his tea. Hiroshi's annoyance faded. The monk seemed very tired, and very sad, as if the whole subject pained him.

  "When you dream, where do you go?" the monk asked finally.

  Hiroshi frowned. "I-I don't know. Some say the spirit wanders, aimless. Others say you don't go anywhere, and dreams are just stories you tell yourself while you sleep."

  The monk nodded. "Men believe many things. Some of them are true. Now then, where do you go when you die?"

  "The River of Souls. Perhaps to be reborn."

  The monk nodded. "Now, then – where are you now?"

  Hiroshi looked around, but the scene had not changed. He was in a cave far underground. His reasons for being there were perhaps not as clear as they could be, but he did know that much, and said so.

  "You know less than you think. Go home, Hiroshi."

  Hiroshi blinked. "How do you know my name?"

  The monk sighed gustily. "How do you not know mine?"

  Hiroshi just stood in silence. "I don't understand. You haven't told me your name. I should have asked, but I didn't mean to offend you –"

  "I am not offended. I do regret the time you're going to make me waste." The monk carefully packed away his tea supplies and hoisted his bundle. "Shall we go?"

  "I can't ask you to come with me."

  "You can't ask for me not to come with you. I choose what I do, as do you. I hope in time you will choose better."

  Hiroshi had no answer for that, because he didn't understand a word of it. He merely picked up his sword and set out once more in the direction of the music, or as close as he could discern. The monk walked a few feet ahead, his staff making a rhythmic jingling sound from the small bell attached to it. Hiroshi thought at first that the sound would interfere with the music, but the jingle of the bell was so steady and constant that it was soon as lost as the sound of his own heartbeat.

  This is a very strange cave, Hiroshi thought, even as he realized how foolish a thing it was to believe this place a simple cave. Hiroshi thought of stories he had heard about the Dragon Palace, where a simple fisherman once dallied with a princess in ageless luxury for centuries under the sea while his true home and all he knew turned to rot and dust. Except this was not under the sea, so far as Hiroshi knew, and the monk was certainly no princess.

  The music was still faint, but by long practice at listening, Hiroshi was beginning to hear it better. "It's a koto being played," he said. "It's lovely."

  The monk nodded, looking glum. "Yes. Akiko is very gifted."

  Hiroshi was so surprised he stopped walking. The monk merely glanced at him over his shoulder, waiting patiently for him to catch up.

  "You know who's playing the music?" Hiroshi asked.

  "Of course. So do you."

  That was just more nonsense from his odd companion, so far as Hiroshi could see, and he didn't dwell on it. Something he did dwell on was the simple fact that the music was getting louder. Another strange thing, since Hiroshi was certain they hadn't traveled more than a bowshot from where he and the monk had taken tea together. He mentioned it to the monk, who seemed even more dispirited.

  "We're much closer now."

  "How can that be? We haven't walked very far."

  "It's not in how far you travel. It's in deciding to make the journey."

  "I'd decided that when I climbed down the well!"

  "If you say so. I think rather that you were traveling away as much as toward. You didn't know where you were going. Now you do."

  "Akiko? And you say I know her? How?"

  "You grew up together."

  "But I haven't grown up yet," Hiroshi said, though the admission pained him a bit. "And there are several girls in my village but I don't know anyone named Akiko."

  His companion merely gru
nted. "Nor did she know anyone named Hiroshi."

  "Sir, I don't understand any of what you're saying."

  "You certainly don't. Else you wouldn't be here."

  Hiroshi didn't know if he'd been insulted or not, but he rather thought so. He gritted his teeth but kept his voice level. "Then, Honored Sir, would you be so kind as to tell me where I should be?"

  "Home, of course."

  "Very well – as soon as I find the music, I'll go home. I have to know what it is and why it calls to me, else I'll never be content."

  The monk nodded. "You're not seeking music; you're seeking an answer. I wondered if you understood that. Very well then, I will help you find Akiko. Yet whatever happens, afterwards you will leave this place. You don't belong here. Do I have your word?"

  Hiroshi hesitated, but he saw no good alternative. "Yes."

  "Well, then. You have mine. Only time will tell what either is worth."

  They walked for hours across what looked like the bones of a longdead river. Hiroshi was amazed at how large the field of stones was and wondered if they would ever see the end. Now and then they came to a pile of white stones, standing alone in the flat rocky nothing of that place. He asked about them, but the monk merely said "stones" and nothing else.

  Also, now and again, Hiroshi could have sworn that he heard the sound of children playing. He asked about that too, but the monk merely said that the children were always there. Hiroshi saw no children, but he let the matter drop. It was enough to know that what had appeared to be a cave was now a vast empty riverbed of stones, and overhead was a darkness that might have been stone or might have been a night sky without stars.

  In fact, neither said anything at all for the rest of their walk, until the monk pointed to something rising from the stone field in the distance.