The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015

by Paula Guran

  When it got to the part where they showed the charred bodies—the tiny little bones of children’s hands and feet, the blackened remains—the mothers wept and blew their noses. Some swore. Others prayed. It was up to Emily to point out what it meant. “They are not going to make that mistake again. As long as they think we still have the babies, we are safe. And so are our babies.”

  Before that night, Maddy didn’t know a thing about Waco, Texas, and she’s still not sure how it’s connected to the mothers. But the mothers are convinced that they must stay locked behind boarded-up windows and doors; that this is the best thing they can do for the babies. Maddy isn’t even convinced that the babies all got away, but she hopes they did. She walks through the house, trying to stay behind Emily, since she has the gun, keeping out of the way of Elli Ratcher, who sort of haunts the place—though she’s not dead, of course.

  Lately, Maddy has gotten so hungry she’s begun eating the house. She pulls off little slivers of wood and chews them until they turn into pulp. She has to be careful to peel the slivers off just right. She’s cut her tongue and lips several times. Maddy thinks she never would have guessed she’d start eating a house, but she never would have guessed she’d give birth to a baby with wings, either. When Maddy thinks about JoJo, she stops peeling a sliver of gray wood from the upstairs hallway and stares at the yellow flowers in the wallpaper, trying to remember his face. “Please,” she whispers.

  “It won’t do any good to pray,” Elli says.

  Maddy jumps. Of all the people to find her talking to herself, why’d it have to be Elli Ratcher?

  “I ain’t praying,” she says.

  “That’s good. ’Cause it won’t help.”

  Elli stands there, staring at Maddy until she finally says, “What are you looking at?”

  “Did you know I had two babies?”

  Maddy shrugs.

  Elli nods. “My dad killed one of them. And the other is in my closet.”

  “Well, it’s been great to have you visiting us on Planet Earth for a while, but I got some stuff I gotta do.”

  “You better be careful. If Emily finds out you’re eating the house, she’s going to kill you.”

  “I ain’t eating the house,” Maddy says. “Besides, you’re the one who should be careful. The mothers know you keep stealing the notebook.”

  “What notebook?”

  Maddy rolls her eyes.

  If Emily knew how afraid everyone was of her, she would be insulted. Even Shreve is nervous around Emily now. She didn’t know, she honestly didn’t know: if Emily found them in the kitchen, would she shoot all of them, or just Lara and Jan, who were the ones wasting the jelly? “Maybe you should put that away,” Shreve said, but they ignored her. It’s like I’m not even real, she thought. It’s like I’m the illusion. Shreve wondered if this was what was meant by being enlightened. She looked at her surroundings: the dark little kitchen with the boarded-up windows and door, the bullet holes, Sylvia sitting in the straight-backed chair, Lara painting with jelly, and Jan Morris licking the wall in her wake, pausing once to say, “This is true art.”

  Maybe I have never been here, Shreve thought. Maybe my entire life was an illusion: the death of my fiancé, the birth of my winged child, the couple who died in the barn, the babies, everything. Maybe everything is nothing at all, including me. Maybe I never existed. She felt like she was being swallowed, but not by something dark and frightening, not by a beast, but more like something with wings, something innocent she’d always been a part of but only now recognized. She wanted to tell the others what she was feeling, but she worried that speaking would break the spell. Instead, she closed her eyes, until Cathy Vecker came into the room and said, “Have you all gone crazy? What do you think Emily’s going to do when she finds out?”

  When Emily walked past the kitchen, she quickly looked the other way. She hoped the mothers would get their act together and clean up the mess. The last thing she wanted was to have to confront the issue. If she did, they might wonder why she didn’t shoot anyone, and that might cause them to become suspicious that there were no more bullets. She heard Cathy say, “We have to clean this up before Emily finds out. Do you want to die?” That got their attention. They all started talking at once about how, since the day Elli threw their babies out the window, they didn’t really care if they lived or not.

  Elli

  We are such stuff as dreams are made on. That’s what I whispered to each one, as though I was a fairy godmother, as I pushed them out the window, the mothers standing behind me, crying.

  “You do it,” they said. “Please. We can’t.”

  “Why don’t you ask Tamara? She’s got a dead baby, too.”

  “She’s writing about all this and interviewing everyone. She doesn’t have time to actually do anything; she’s too busy chronicling us.”

  “But I hate all of you.”

  “That’s why it has to be you,” they said, using their crazy mother-logic on me. “You won’t let your emotions get in the way.”

  They were wrong. All those babies with Timmy’s dimples, and Timmy’s little round body, and Timmy’s eyes looking at me. I saw him in every one of them, and I felt the strangest emotion of all: a combination of love, hate, envy, joy, and sorrow. The more I dropped Timmies out the window, watching them sprout wings and dart across the starry sky, the more I felt my own wings—small, fluttering, just a tremor at first—sprouting from my back. I kept waiting for the mothers to notice, but they were too busy holding their babies tight, kissing them all over, crying on them. More than once, the baby was soaked and slippery by the time he was handed to me. Even though I wore my mother’s old winter gloves, there were several babies I did not toss, but dropped. They did not get to hear my blessing, though I whispered it into the air.

  The mothers handed me their babies, sighing, weeping, blowing kisses; or the mothers had their babies ripped from their arms as they screamed or threw themselves to the floor or—in one case—down the stairs.

  We are such stuff as dreams are made on. I whispered it into tiny pink ears shaped like peony blossoms. I whispered it into wailing wide-open mouths (with sharp white teeth, already formed), and I whispered it into the night. It was amazing how they seemed to understand; even those who were crying, even those who plummeted towards the earth before unfolding their wings and darting over the cornfield, following their brothers.

  I breathed the dark air scented with apple, grass, and dirt, and I felt the air on my arms and face, and I was happy and sad and angry and loving and hateful, and I thought, as I tossed Timmies out the window, We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

  Emily, with the gun hanging from the scarf my dad bought mom last Christmas, handed her baby to me and said, “Maybe later we can bake cookies.”

  Sylvia handed her baby to me and said, “I hope he goes somewhere wonderful, like Alaska, don’t you?”

  Lara was one of the mothers who would not release her son. She stood there, crying and holding him, as the mothers reminded her how they had all agreed this was the best thing; the babies’ best chance of survival. So far, this seemed to be true. No shots were heard. Even though Rod Stewart continued his singing, somehow the officials out there slept, or at least were not watching the sky at the back of the house. This was our chance. It was everything that had already been said and agreed on. But they still had to rip the baby from Lara’s arms. She ran from the room, crying, and I thought, Well, now you know how I feel.

  At least their Timmies had a chance. Mine had had none.

  The last Timmy was Maddy’s. She was hiding in the closet, actually. The mothers had to pull her out, and she was doing some serious screaming, let me tell you. She was also cussing everyone out. “I never agreed to this!” she yelled. “I hate all of you!” She held her baby so tight that he was screaming, too. You know, baby screams. Maddy looked right at me and said, “Don’t do it. Please don’t do it.” Even though the mothers told her it’s not like the babies were
dying or anything; hopefully they were flying somewhere safe. I didn’t answer her. That wasn’t my job. Besides, I was sort of distracted by my wings. I couldn’t believe no one had noticed them.

  Maddy was the worst. They had to hold her shoulders and her legs, and then two other mothers had to pull on her arms to open them, and another mother was standing there to grab her Timmy. By the time she handed him to me, everyone was freaking. I held Maddy’s Timmy out to the sky, like I did with all the others, and I opened my mouth to say, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” but he tore away from me and flew straight to the cornfield. Just in time, because right then there was a shout and all the police guys came around to the window, screaming and pointing. I shouted and waved to distract them. The mothers pulled me away from the window, then put the boards up and nailed them shut.

  Later, when I go to my room, I undress in front of the mirror. My body looks different now. My nipples are dark, I have a little sag in my belly, and my hips are huge. But the biggest change has got to be the wings. When I take my clothes off, they come out of their secret hiding place and spread behind me—not gray like the babies’, but white and glowing. Unfortunately, they seem to be for cosmetic purposes only. I jump off my bed and try to think of myself as flying, but it doesn’t work.

  The mothers are crying. Rod Stewart sings louder, trying to get the eternally sleeping Maggie to wake up. Some man on the loudspeaker begs us to come out, and promises that they won’t hurt our babies.

  We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

  I sit at the edge of my bed and think about how things have been going lately; my parents both dead, and my baby too.

  We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

  I lie back on the bed, which is sort of uncomfortable because of the wings, and stare at the pimply ceiling. I am having a strange déjà vu feeling, like I’ve figured this all out once before, but forgot. I hope I remember this time.

  The Mothers

  The worst days of our suffering were reports of winged children being captured and shot. We crowded into the dark living room and wept in front of the TV set; turned it on full volume, so we could hear the gloating of marksmen and hunters over Rod Stewart’s singing.

  Oh, our babies! Our little boys, shot down like pheasants, tracked like deer, hunted like Saddam Hussein.

  The worst of these worst days were when the camera panned over the little corpses, lingered on the dark wings, always at some distance. Artful, you might say, but torture all the same, for us, the mothers.

  We could not identify them. There was solace and madness in this fact. Sometimes a mother became certain that the baby was hers. For some, this happened many times. There are mothers here who have been absolutely sure on several occasions that their babies have just been killed. They walk about the house, weeping and breaking dishes. Other mothers haven’t suffered a single fatality. These mothers are positive their sons have escaped, alive. They are the ones who insist we maintain this charade, though, frankly, the jig is almost up.

  After the film of murdered babies and hunters grinning broadly beneath green caps, the news anchors raise neatly manicured eyebrows, smile with bright white teeth, joke, and shake their heads.

  “What do you think, Lydia, about the standoff in Voorhisville? Do you think it’s time for authorities to move in?”

  “Well, Marv, I think this has gone on long enough. It’s clear these mothers have been taking advantage of decent folks’ good intentions. Who knows, perhaps they’re even sending their babies out to be shot, hoping to generate more sympathy, though I would say their plan is backfiring. It seems to me that the authorities have taken every precaution to safeguard innocent civilians from being harmed. The fact is, even if there are children in that house, they are not innocent. We’ve seen the bodies with their dangerous wings. Homeland Security has taken several into custody. My understanding is that they are holding them on an island off of Georgia. My point being, these are not your average little babies, and we have a right to protect ourselves. The authorities need to go in there and deal with this mess before it drags on into Christmas. It would be nice if they could do it without anyone getting hurt, but that just might not be possible.”

  The house is getting smaller. Maddy Melvern is eating it. She thinks no one has noticed, but we have. Sylvia Lansmorth and Lara Bravemeen are having an affair. Cathy Vecker paces through the rooms, weeping and quoting Ophelia. Some of the mothers think she is trying to seduce Elli Ratcher, but the rest think not. At any rate, Elli does not seem to care about Cathy, or anyone.

  We have noticed a strange smell coming from Elli’s room. There are rumors that she nurses the decomposing corpse of her firstborn baby there.

  We have let Elli keep her old bedroom all to herself. This is a tremendous act of generosity, given how the rest of us crowd into the small rooms of this old house, but we thought it was the least we could do, considering what happened to her family. None of us want to investigate the odor. It is getting worse. We know that soon we will have to deal with it. But for now, we simply hold our breath when we are upstairs; and, frankly, we go up there less and less.

  They have shut the power off. We no longer know what anyone is saying about us. Those of us with husbands or lovers no longer get to watch them being interviewed and saying incredible things about how much they love us, or how they never loved us, or how they’ve had to get on with their lives.

  We have lost track of the calendar. It is cold in the house all the time now. The apple tree, which can be viewed through the bullet holes in the left panel of wood over the kitchen window, is bare. Jan thinks she saw a snowflake yesterday, but she isn’t sure.

  We will not last the winter. We may not last the week. This could very well be our final day. We don’t know if we’ve done enough. We hope we have. We hope it’s enough, but doubt it is. We are disappointed in ourselves. We are proud of ourselves. We are in despair. We are exultant.

  What we want for our babies is the same thing all mothers want. We want them to be happy, safe, and loved. We want them to have the opportunity to be the best selves they can be.

  Rod Stewart no longer sings. The silence is torture. They are coming for us. We will die here. But if any babies, even one baby—and all of us hope that the one left is our own—was saved, it is . . . well, not enough, but at least something.

  We do not know what our children will grow into. No mother can know that. But we know what we saw in them; something sweet and loving and innocent, no matter what the reporters say, no matter what happened to the Ratchers. We saw something in our children that we, the mothers, agree might even have been holy. After all, isn’t there a little monster in everyone?

  WE WANT TO WARN THE WORLD! Be careful what you do to them. They are growing (those who have not been murdered, at least). And, whether you like to think about it or not, they are being raised by you. Every child must be reined in, given direction, taught right from wrong. Loved.

  If you are reading this, then the worst has already happened, and we can do no more.

  They are your responsibility now.

  CLAUDIUS REX

  John P. Murphy

  «Turn left here,» said my new Jeeves 5 artificial intelligence. I’d have happily done it, too—with a spring in my step, even—except there was a manhole open with a robot working in it, and I didn’t care to dirty my interview clothes.

  I crossed the street instead.

  «Confound you, turn left!»

  Now, if I’d been creamed by that car while standing slack-jaw surprised in the street, this would be a very different story. As it was, it was a near thing. I now cherish the memory as only the first time Claudius Rex nearly got me killed.

  «Or keep going and then turn left, I don’t care. Just move.» I hied to the curb and set myself to figuring out what the heck was going on. One expects a certain standard of behavior from a program called Jeeves: more “Very good, sir” than “Confound you,” if you take my meaning. On
the other hand, I’d been out of things for a year. I thought maybe this was the new fashion in artificial intelligence. A few years before, it’d been Australian accents. Maybe now it was rudeness.

  “Jeeves,” I subvocalized, “Confirm that you are operating within normal parameters.”

  «Of course I am. Your destination is north and west of here, approximately six hundred meters. Go there.»

  Like I said, I’d been out of it for a while, so that was good enough for me. Let nobody say Andy Baldwin is unsophisticated. But I’d like some credit for having been suspicious.

  I was in among MIT’s constellation of children along the Red Line, hoofing it toward Fujiwara and Klein Associates, the kind souls who’d offered me a job two days out of the clink despite my revoked PI license. I’d decided to catch some fresh air instead of taking the subway that morning. I knew Boston just well enough to keep track of where I was relative to the transit stops and I’d passed a virtual sign for Central Square a few blocks back, which meant I was in the right general place already. So I wasn’t too worried. But I did not intend to mess this up, screwy AI or no.

  Said screwy AI delivered me to a big glass door marked TuriTech.

  “Confirm destination,” I subbed.

  «We’re here. Go inside.»

  “I beg to differ,” I said, the very model of suspicious patience. “We are not at Fujiwara and Klein. Please recalibrate and direct me there.”

  I smiled politely at all the fine people giving me funny looks as I waited like a chump blocking the sidewalk while the faithful Jeeves recalibrated. I realized as I stood there that I hadn’t seen any virtual ads in a while: usually they’re overlaid on storefronts or cars or any flat clear surface. Instead, the buildings across the street from TuriTech just showed blank masonry, weirdly still without any animated pigs selling me junk. Of course, without any virtual signs, I was completely dependent on Jeeves.

  «Just go inside, this will only take ten minutes.»

  As you might imagine, that was not the response I had been hoping for. Fortunately, there was a coffee shop next door in which I could sort it out. I was glad I’d left myself plenty of time.