The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015

by Paula Guran

“Fair enough.” Bast took a deep breath. “When you say fae, you’re talking about anything that lives in the Fae. That includes a lot of things that are . . . just creatures. Like animals. Here you have dogs and squirrels and bears. In the Fae, they have raum and dennerlings and . . . ”

  “And trow?”

  Bast nodded. “And trow. They’re real.”

  “And dragons?”

  Bast shook his head. “Not that I’ve ever heard. Not any more . . . ”

  Kostrel looked disappointed. “What about the fair folk? Like faerie tinkers and such?” The boy narrowed his eyes. “Mind you, this isn’t a new question, merely an attempt to focus your ongoing answer.”

  Bast laughed helplessly. “Lord and lady. Ongoing? Was your mother scared by an azzie when she was pregnant? Where do you get that kind of talk?

  “I stay awake in church.” Kostrel shrugged. “And sometimes Abbe Leodin lets me read his books. What do they look like?”

  “Like regular people,” Bast said.

  “Like you and me?” the boy asked.

  Bast fought back a smile. “Just like you or me. You wouldn’t hardly notice if they passed you on the street. But there are others. Some of them are . . . They’re different. More powerful.”

  “Like Varsa never-dead?”

  “Some,” Bast conceded. “But some are powerful in other ways. Like the mayor is powerful. Or like a moneylender.” Bast’s expression went sour. “Many of those . . . they’re not good to be around. They like to trick people. Play with them. Hurt them.”

  Some of the excitement bled out of Kostrel at this. “They sound like demons.”

  Bast hesitated, then nodded a reluctant agreement. “Some are very much like demons,” he admitted. “Or so close as it makes no difference.”

  “Are some of them like angels, too?” The boy asked.

  “It’s nice to think that,” Bast said. “I hope so.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  Bast cocked his head. “That’s your second question then?” he asked. “I’m guessing it must be, as it’s got nothing to do with what the Fae are like . . . ”

  Kostrel grimaced, seeming a little embarrassed, though Bast couldn’t tell if he was ashamed he’d gotten carried away with his questions, or ashamed he’d been caught trying to get a free answer. “Sorry,” he said. “Is it true that a faerie can never lie?”

  “Some can’t,” Bast said. “Some don’t like to. Some are happy to lie, but wouldn’t ever go back on promise or break their word.” He shrugged. “Others lie quite well, and do so at every opportunity.”

  Kostrel began to ask something else, but Bast cleared his throat. “You have to admit,” he said. “That’s a pretty good answer. I even gave you a few free questions, to help with the focus of things, as it were.”

  Kostrel gave a slightly sullen nod.

  “Here’s your first secret,” Bast held up a single finger. “Most of the Fae don’t come to this world. They don’t like it. It rubs all rough against them, like wearing a burlap shirt. But when they do come, they like some places better than others. They like wild places. Secret places. Strange places. There are many types of Fae, many courts and houses. And all of them are ruled according to their own desires . . . ”

  Bast continued in a tone of soft conspiracy. “But something that appeals to all the Fae are places with connections to the raw, true things that shape the world. Places that are touched with fire and stone. Places that are close to water and air. When all four come together . . . ”

  Bast paused to see if the boy would interject something here. But Kostrel’s face had lost the sharp cunning it had held before. He looked like a child again, mouth slightly agape, his eyes wide with wonder.

  “Second secret,” Bast said. “The Fae folk look nearly like we do, but not exactly. Most have something about them that makes them different. Their eyes. Their ears. The color of their hair or skin. Sometimes they’re taller than normal, or shorter, or stronger, or more beautiful.”

  “Like Felurian,”

  “Yes, yes,” Bast said testily. “Like Felurian. But any of the Fae who has the skill to travel here will have craft enough to hide those things.” He leaned back, nodding to himself. “That is a type of magic all the fair folk share.”

  Bast threw the final comment out like a fisherman casting a lure.

  Kostrel closed his mouth and swallowed hard. He didn’t fight the line. Didn’t even know that he’d been hooked. “What sort of magic can they do?”

  Bast rolled his eyes dramatically. “Oh come now, that’s another whole book’s worth of question,”

  “Well maybe you should just write a book then,” Kostrel said flatly. “Then you can lend it to me and kill two birds with one stone.”

  The comment seemed to catch Bast off his stride. “Write a book?”

  “That’s what people do when they know every damn thing, isn’t it?” Kostrel said sarcastically. “They write it down so they can show off.”

  Bast looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head as if to clear it. “Okay. Here’s the bones of what I know. They don’t think of it as magic. They’d never use that term. They’ll talk of art or craft. They talk of seeming or shaping.”

  He looked up at the sun and pursed his lips. “But if they were being frank, and they are rarely frank, mind you, they would tell you almost everything they do is either glammourie or grammorie. Glammourie is the art of making something seem. Grammarie is the craft of making something be.”

  Bast rushed ahead before the boy could interrupt. “Glammourie is easier. They can make a thing seem other than it is. They could make a white shirt seem like it was blue. Or a torn shirt seem like it was whole. Most of the folk have at least a scrap of this art. Enough to hide themselves from mortal eyes. If their hair was all of silver-white, their glammourie could make it look as black as night.”

  Kostrel’s face was lost in wonder yet again. But it was not the gormless, gaping wonder of before. It was a thoughtful wonder. A clever wonder, curious and hungry. It was the sort of wonder that would steer a boy toward a question that started with a how.

  Bast could see the shape of these things moving in the boy’s dark eyes. His damn clever eyes. Too clever by half. Soon those vague wonderings would start to crystallize into questions like ‘How do they make their glammourie?’ or even worse. ‘How might a young boy break it?’

  And what then, with a question like that hanging in the air? Nothing good would come of it. To break a promise fairly made and lie outright was retrograde to his desire. Even worse to do it in this place. Far easier to tell the truth, then make sure something happened to the boy . . .

  But honestly, he liked the boy. He wasn’t dull, or easy. He wasn’t mean or low. He pushed back. He was funny and grim and hungry and more alive than any three other people in the town all put together. He was bright as broken glass and sharp enough to cut himself. And Bast too, apparently.

  Bast rubbed his face. This never used to happen. He had never been in conflict with his own desire before he came here. He hated it. It was so simply singular before. Want and have. See and take. Run and chase. Thirst and slake. And if he were thwarted in pursuit of his desire . . . what of it? That was simply the way of things. The desire itself was still his, it was still pure.

  It wasn’t like that now. Now his desires grew complicated. They constantly conflicted with each other. He felt endlessly turned against himself. Nothing was simple any more, he was pulled so many ways . . .

  “Bast?” Kostrel said, his head cocked to the side, concern plain on his face. “Are you okay?” he asked. “What’s the matter?”

  Bast smiled an honest smile. He was a curious boy. Of course. That was the way. That was the narrow road between desires. “I was just thinking. Grammarie is much harder to explain. I can’t say I understand it all that well myself.”

  “Just do your best,” Kostrel said kindly. “Whatever you tell me will be more than I know.”

  N
o, he couldn’t kill this boy. That would be too hard a thing.

  “Grammarie is changing a thing,” Bast said, making an inarticulate gesture. “Making it into something different than what it is.”

  “Like turning lead into gold?” Kostrel asked. “Is that how they make faerie gold?”

  Bast made a point of smiling at the question. “Good guess, but that’s glammourie. It’s easy, but it doesn’t last. That’s why people who take faerie gold end up with pockets full of stones or acorns in the morning.”

  “Could they turn gravel into gold?” Kostrel asked. “If they really wanted to?”

  “It’s not that sort of change,” Bast said, though he still smiled and nodded at the question. “That’s too big. Grammarie is about . . . shifting. It’s about making something into more of what it already is.”

  Kostrel’s face twisted with confusion.

  Bast took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. “Let me try something else. What have you got in your pockets?”

  Kostrel rummaged about and held out his hands. There was a brass button, a scrap of paper, a stub of pencil, a small folding knife . . . and a stone with a hole in it. Of course.

  Bast slowly passed his hand over the collection of oddments, eventually stopping above the knife. It wasn’t particularly fine or fancy, just a piece of smooth wood the size of a finger with a groove where a short, hinged blade was tucked away.

  Bast picked it up delicately between two fingers and set it down on the ground between them. “What’s this?”

  Kostrel stuffed the rest of his belongings into his pocket. “It’s my knife.”

  “That’s it?” Bast asked.

  The boy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What else could it be?”

  Bast brought out his own knife. It was a little larger, and instead of wood, it was carved from a piece of antler, polished and beautiful. Bast opened it, and the bright blade shone in the sun.

  He lay his knife next to the boy’s. “Would you trade your knife for mine?”

  Kostrel eyed the knife jealously. But even so, there wasn’t a hint of hesitation before he shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s mine,” the boy said, his face clouding over.

  “Mine’s better,” Bast said matter-of-factly.

  Kostrel reached out and picked up his knife, closing his hand around it possessively. His face was sullen as a storm. “My da gave me this,” he said. “Before he took the king’s coin and went to be a soldier and save us from the rebels.” He looked up at Bast, as if daring him to say a single word contrary to that.

  Bast didn’t look away from him, just nodded seriously. “So it’s more than just a knife.” he said. “It’s special to you.”

  Still clutching the knife, Kostrel nodded, blinking rapidly.

  “For you, it’s the best knife.”

  Another nod.

  “It’s more important than other knives. And that’s not just a seeming,” Bast said. “It’s something the knife is.”

  There was a flicker of understanding in Kostrel’s eyes.

  Bast nodded. “That’s grammarie. Now imagine if someone could take a knife and make it be more of what a knife is. Make it into the best knife. Not just for them, but for anyone.” Bast picked up his own knife and closed it. “If they were really skilled, they could do it with something other than a knife. They could make a fire that was more of what a fire is. Hungrier. Hotter. Someone truly powerful could do even more. They could take a shadow . . . ” he trailed off gently, leaving an open space in the empty air.

  Kostrel drew a breath and leapt to fill it with a question. “Like Felurian!’ he said. “Is that what she did to make Kvothe’s shadow cloak?”

  Bast nodded seriously, glad for the question, hating that it had to be that question. “It seems likely to me. What does a shadow do? It conceals, it protects. Kvothe’s cloak of shadows does the same, but more.”

  Kostrel was nodding along in understanding, and Bast pushed on quickly, eager to leave this particular subject behind. “Think of Felurian herself . . . ”

  The boy grinned, he seemed to have no trouble doing that.

  “A woman can be a thing of beauty,” Bast said slowly. “She can be a focus of desire. Felurian is that. Like the knife. The most beautiful. The focus of the most desire. For everyone . . . ” Bast let his statement trail off gently yet again.

  Kostrel’s eyes were far away, obviously giving the matter his full deliberation. Bast gave him time for it, and after a moment another question bubbled out of the boy. “Couldn’t it be merely glammourie?” he asked.

  “Ah,” said Bast, smiling. “But what is the difference between being beautiful and seeming beautiful?”

  “Well . . . ” Kostrel stalled for a moment, then rallied. “One is real and the other isn’t.” He sounded certain, but it wasn’t reflected in his expression. “One would be fake. You could tell the difference, couldn’t you?”

  Bast let the question sail by. It was close, but not quite. “What’s the difference between a shirt that looks white and a shirt that is white?” he countered.

  “A woman isn’t the same as a shirt,” Kostrel said with vast disdain. “You’d know if you touched her. If she looked all soft and rosy like Emberlee, but her hair felt like a horse’s tail, you’d know it wasn’t real.”

  “Glamourie isn’t just for fooling eyes,” Bast said. “It’s for everything. Faerie gold feels heavy. And a glamoured pig would smell like roses when you kissed it.”

  Kostrel reeled visibly at that. The shift from Emberlee to a glamoured pig obviously left him feeling more than slightly appalled. Bast waited a moment for him to recover.

  “Wouldn’t it be harder to glamour a pig?” he asked at last.

  “You’re clever,” Bast said encouragingly. “You’re exactly right. And glamouring a pretty girl to be more pretty wouldn’t be much work at all. It’s like putting icing on a cake.”

  Kostrel rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. “Can you use glamourie and grammarie at the same time?”

  Bast was more genuinely impressed this time. “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  Kostrel nodded to himself. “That’s what Felurian must do,” he said. “Like cream on icing on cake.”

  “I think so,” Bast said. “The one I met . . . ” He stopped abruptly, his mouth snapped shut.

  “You’ve met one of the Fae?”

  Bast grinned like a beartrap. “Yes.”

  This time the Kostrel felt the hook and line both. But it was too late. “You bastard!”

  “I am,” Bast admitted happily.

  “You tricked me into asking that.”

  “I did,” Bast said. “It was a question related to this subject, and I answered it fully and without equivocation.”

  Kostrel got to his feet and stormed off, only to come back a moment later. “Give me my penny,” he demanded.

  Bast reached into his pocket and pulled out a copper penny. “Where’s does Emberlee take her bath?”

  Kostrel glowered furiously, then said. “Out past Oldstone bridge, up towards the hills about half a mile. There’s a little hollow with an elm tree.”

  “And when?”

  “After lunch on the Boggan farm. After she finishes the washing up and hangs the laundry.”

  Bast tossed him the penny, still grinning like mad.

  “I hope your dick falls off,” the boy said venomously before stomping back down the hill.

  Bast couldn’t help but laugh. He tried to do it quietly to spare the boy’s feelings, but didn’t meet with much success.

  Kostrel turned at the bottom of the hill and shouted. “And you still owe me a book!”

  Bast stopped laughing then as something jogged loose in his memory. He panicked for a moment when realized Celum Tinture wasn’t in its usual spot.

  Then he remembered leaving the book in the tree on top of the bluff and relaxed. The clear sky showed no sign of rain. It was safe enough. Besides, it w
as nearly noon, perhaps a little past. So he turned and hurried down the hill, not wanting to be late.

  Bast sprinted most of the way to the little dell, and by the time he arrived he was sweating like a hard-run horse. His shirt stuck to him unpleasantly, so as he walked down the sloping bank to the water, he pulled it off and used it to mop the sweat from his face.

  A long, flat jut of stone pushed out into Littlecreek there, forming one side of a calm pool where the stream turned back on itself. A stand of willow-trees overhung the water, making it private and shady. The shoreline was overgrown with thick bushes, and the water was smooth and calm and clear.

  Bare-chested, Bast walked out onto the rough jut of stone. Dressed, his face and hands made him look rather lean, but shirtless his wide shoulders were surprising, more what you might expect to see on a fieldhand, rather than a shiftless sort that did little more than lounge around an empty inn all day.

  Once he was out of the shadow of the willows, Bast knelt down to dunk his shirt in the pool. Then he wrung it over his head, shivering a bit at the chill of it. He rubbed his chest and arms briskly, shaking drops of water from his face.

  He set the shirt aside, grabbed the lip of stone at the edge of the pool, then took a deep breath and dunked his head. The motion made the muscles across his back and shoulders flex. A moment later he pulled his head out, gasping slightly and shaking water from his hair.

  Bast stood then, slicking back his hair with both hands. Water streamed down his chest, making runnels in the dark hair, trailing down across the flat plane of his stomach.

  He shook himself off a bit, then stepped over to dark niche made by a jagged shelf of overhanging rock. He felt around for a moment before pulling out a knob of butter-colored soap.

  He knelt at the edge of the water again, dunking his shirt several times, then scrubbing it with the soap. It took a while, as he had no washing board, and he obviously didn’t want to chafe his shirt against the rough stones. He soaped and rinsed the shirt several times, wringing it out with his hands, making the muscles in his arms and shoulders tense and twine. He did a thorough job, though by the time he was finished, he was completely soaked and spattered with lather.