InterGalactic Medicine Show Awards Anthology, Vol. I

by Maxey, James; Beagle, Peter S. ; Roberts, Scott; Stone, Eric James; deBodard, Aliette; Foster, Eugie; Brennan, Marie; Kontis, Alethea

  “When I got so muddled I couldn’t swear to which way was up,” she continued, “I came to a grandfather pine so tall it crowded the sky with sweeping branches thick enough to block the wind. What a blessing to find shelter, I thought. So I worked myself into a hollow space around its trunk and huddled down. Soon as I settled, a fearsome crackle-snap sounded overhead, like someone snapping his fingers by my ear—if fingers were branches. I looked up and saw a young man almost on my head.”

  “What nonsense,” Mama said. “I suppose this young man had wings?”

  “I was as astonished as you, madam. He was in the branches, you see. He leaped down, light as a deer, his garments all silver and pale blues, like a rain of stars. Most lordly he was, with dark eyes and hair as bright and white as milk. I thought him old until I saw that he didn’t have a hint of beard.

  “He didn’t give me a moment to think, only asked me straight away, ‘Are you warm enough, maiden? Aren’t you cold, sitting in the snow?’

  “And next thing, he’s hauled me onto that warm box and draped me in furs. I can’t figure for the life of me where he got them from, but I doubt I would’ve marked it if the Holy Mother came down and asked to borrow a hank of thread; I was that confounded.

  “‘How came you to such a chilly fate?’ he asked me, once I could feel my nose again.

  “When I told him, he laughed.

  “‘Why, my dear, such luck. That box is filled with strawberries and violets. For you, with Morozko’s compliments.’

  “Before I could thank him, he sprang into the tree, and I heard Papa calling.”

  Marfa nibbled a strawberry, face flushed and eyes unfocused. None of us said anything, not even Mama. It was such an extraordinary tale, easier to ascribe to snow delirium than fact. Yet there were the strawberries and violets, the furs and silver box.

  That night, as Marfa and I lay in our sheepskin blankets atop the pech, the wind rocked the izba’s sturdy walls. Beside me, Marfa trembled so hard I felt it through blankets and nightclothes.

  “What’s the matter?” I whispered.

  She breathed an answer, her lips against my ear. “It’s him, Prascovia.”

  “Who?” Although I knew who it must be.

  “Morozko. He wants me to marry him.”

  “Marry?”

  “H-he said, right before Papa arrived, that the strawberries and flowers were his bridal gift. I didn’t tell that part because I didn’t want anyone to worry. But now I don’t know what to do. I can’t marry him.”

  “No one would expect you to wed the lord of winter.”

  Marfa hiccupped, crying. “It’s not that. I-I’m betrothed to Sasha.”

  “Sasha? The baker’s son, Sasha?” I chortled. “The one who makes you eat onion pirogi, Sasha?”

  “Shhh! You’ll wake Papa!” Her whisper burned my ear, the fiercest I’d ever heard her. “Sasha has a great soul. He gives pastries away to the poor widow who lost her husband to the fire a couple summers ago, and he’s always the first to help Father Korolyov when he makes his rounds. He makes me laugh, and he asked me to marry him last spring.”

  “Have you told Steppapa?”

  “Not yet.” Her voice turned from fervent to forlorn in a breath.

  “Saints, Marfa! When were you going to? Before or after you became Lady Morozko?”

  “What am I going to do? Morozko was terribly insistent. I was afraid he’d be upset if I refused, and now he’s angry that I haven’t gone to him.”

  “Well, of course he’s angry! You let winter himself believe you would marry him. Even Sasha might be cross.”

  “Morozko was so kind, how could I tell him ‘no’?”

  “Easy, one syllable, ‘no.’ Or, if you insist, three syllables, ‘no thank you.’”

  The wind smashed against the izba, shaking the cottage like it was mere sticks and pebbles. Another blast and it would surely come crashing down around us.

  “I have no choice,” Marfa murmured. “I have to marry Morozko.”

  I closed my eyes, the blackness behind my eyelids no darker than the black before them. “Listen, you goose, you must promise me two things.”

  “Promise—?”

  “First, you’ll tell Sasha that onions give you a rash.”

  “What?”

  “Second, promise that you won’t let my mother best you. She’ll likely still harangue and harp as the priest offers her the Eucharist for her last rites, but you don’t have to let her wound you, hear?”

  “Prascovia—”

  “You promise me these, and I’ll go to Morozko for you.”

  “You can’t—!”

  “Shush. I can’t imagine that once Morozko catches sight of me he’ll want to whisk me away to his wintry palace. But with the ruckus he’s making, I wouldn’t put it past him to steal you if someone doesn’t settle him, after knocking down the wall first, that is. Now promise.”

  “I promise.” Her fingers found mine, and we clutched each other in the darkness. “Prascovia, he’s perilous as an avalanche.”

  I pulled away and slipped off the stove. “Of course he is. You didn’t think you were fooling me with your ‘lordly young man’ prattle, did you?” I found my boots and pelisse by touch. “I’m not afraid. After all, I’m sure once he catches sight of me, he’ll be only too glad to send me home again.”

  “Sister—”

  “Marfa, I should have stopped Mama from sending you out on a fool’s errand yesterday, and you almost died. I want to do this.”

  “At least take my fur cloak.”

  A warm weight tumbled over my head. I wrapped it around my shoulders and stumbled to the crease of light beneath the door. In the moment before I opened it, I remembered one last thing I needed Marfa to do.

  “If Morozko won’t be reasoned with,” I said, half turning, “will you tell Mama that I’m sorry I wasn’t a better dancer?”

  I stepped out, and the wind almost knocked me down. I lurched, arms flailing, and it shifted, pushing me upright. It was practically a courteous gesture, like offering an apology and a steadying hand to someone you bumped in the street. Except the steadying hand sliced through the warmth of cloak and pelisse, and the apology was a frozen gale that stopped my breath, strangling both pull and puff for several long, panic-stricken heartbeats. The wind stopped, fast as turning a spigot, and my chest loosened enough to let breath pass in thin, gasping pants.

  A less than auspicious beginning. But what else had I expected? I prepared to set off, wiping my eyes so their watering wouldn’t freeze my lids shut. But when my vision cleared, I promptly lost my breath again—this time from wonder. Becalmed and silent, the countryside was stunning, beautiful beyond goodness or trust or truth. The sickle moon poured streamers of silver across the snow, transforming the night into a luminous dreamland. The air was crystalline, the heavens alight with stars, like God had spilled double handfuls of diamonds across a black ribbon.

  I sighed, yearning for a stick of charcoal and a clean page. An ice cloud billowed from my lips and hung motionless in the air, a white veil between me and the sky. Regret that my living heat had marred the clarity, but also a reminder: I had an appointment to keep.

  I hiked into the forest, my footsteps breaking through the crusted snow. I didn’t attend to direction or distance. In every children’s story, the traveler has to get lost in order to find the enchanted princess—or prince, as the case may be. It was easy as falling, losing my way. The night was a foreign province, the splendid landscape unfamiliar, or newly created.

  Although there was no wind to ply it, the cold still cut me. It made short work of Marfa’s fur and sank into my bones. My toes filled with a blunt pain that deadened as it seared, stabbing dull hooks through my feet with each step. And, of course, my nose began to drip. Marfa would have been adorable, her cheeks reddened and the snow glittering in her yellow hair, but I was sure I looked as I felt, like a frozen and foolish lump.

  Time, along with sky and wind, stilled, and I wander
ed aimlessly in a moment stretching long as eternity through an unchanged landscape of snow-covered tree after snow-covered tree. A snap of ice, loud as thunder, jolted me back to myself. Marfa’s grandfather pine, a tree so tall its upper branches joining with starry sky, loomed above me.

  I had arrived.

  As Marfa had done, I pushed past the sweeping branches and into the clearing at the trunk, sheltered by the thick canopy. I curled among its roots, tucking my feet into the fur cloak. Finally, remembering Marfa’s story, I looked up.

  Even half-expecting him, seeing Morozko grinning down at me from overhead spooked me witless. My heart, though sluggish with cold, fairly heaved its way out of my chest, banging and pounding at the cage of my body like a trapped beast.

  As Marfa had said, Morozko had dark eyes and milk-white hair. And he was lordly, yes, with an aristocrat’s features. But Marfa had failed to mention his sharp-toothed fierceness, feral as a wolf, and also his beauty. To look upon Morozko was to drown and fall and fly, all at once. Such inhuman beauty to fill my eyes, flawless as tomorrow and treacherous as luck.

  I turned my head aside, afraid and also ashamed. How had I ever thought myself worthy enough to present myself to the likes of him?

  “I-I know you were expecting my sister, Marfa,” I stammered. “I’m sorry to disappoint.”

  He leaped down, light as a snowflake on the breeze.

  “Th-thank you for your gifts and your kindness, caring for Marfa. She’s dear to us.” My words tumbled out, a torrent of gibberish. “Well, Steppapa and me, although I’m sure Mama would warm to her if she gave her half a second—” I took a shuddering breath. “I’m here on my sister’s behalf, s-sir. She owes you her deepest and most heartfelt gratitude. But, although she is honored beyond my poor telling, she regrets that she cannot marry you. You see, she’s already p-promised to another.”

  Morozko cocked his head, his eyes glinting. “Are you warm enough, maiden? Aren’t you cold, sitting in the snow?”

  I frowned. Had he heard me? Or, for all his splendor, was he feebleminded? It was a ridiculous question. My teeth chattered so hard I could barely speak, an icicle had frozen to the tip of my nose, and when I blinked, snowflakes drifted from my eyelashes to my cheeks.

  Or was it a test? He’d asked Marfa the same thing. Undoubtedly my stepsister, ever obliging and polite to a fault, had denied any discomfort. I could imagine it, “Oh, no, sir, I’m not cold at all,” she’d say through blue lips, “I’m quite comfortable, thank you.”

  Yes, that’s exactly what Marfa would have said.

  If I did the same, could I go home with strawberries and furs, not to mention alive? But if the only way I could stave off a frozen death was to pledge myself in marriage by default, then we’d be in the same straits tomorrow night.

  I bolstered my nerve, not unlike readying myself to withstand a dance lesson with Mama, and faced Morozko. “I’m quite c-cold, actually. As you observed, I’m sitting in the snow. And I’m s-sure you appreciate how bitter a night it is.”

  His eyes darkened, and the air seemed, if possible, even colder.

  “What can I get you, maiden? What do you desire?”

  Talking to Morozko was a bit like talking to Mama. Neither of them seemed disposed to listen to me nor to make much sense. “If I a-ask for strawberries and violets, w-will you conjure up a silver box?” Hard to shape words with a frozen tongue.

  Morozko crossed his arms.

  “I d-didn’t come for treats or riches,” I said. “But I m-might ask for the favor of my life.”

  He sprang into the branches, forcing me to crane my neck to follow him. “Is not to die your sole ambition?”

  “No, of c-course not.”

  “Then answer my question. Tell me what you desire.”

  I hesitated. No one had asked me what I wanted before. Certainly not Mama, and not Steppapa or Marfa, not even Papa when he was alive.

  “Once, I wanted to be beautiful,” I said. “But I don’t expect that’s something you can put in a silver box. And I wouldn’t choose that if you could.” My words slurred, but I kept on. “That’s what Mama wanted for me, and I’d always wonder if it was the reflection of herself she loved instead of me.”

  Morozko lit onto the snow, and it took several tries before I could refocus my eyes. My shivering had stopped, which I knew was bad.

  “Do you think I’m beautiful?” he asked.

  Had he asked Marfa this? I doubted it, somehow. “The most beautiful thing I’ll ever see,” I whispered. “I think, I think I would have liked to have made something truly beautiful.”

  My vision became blurred whiteness, and I tried to blink. But I couldn’t. For I had died.

  My eyes cleared, and I saw a girl wrapped in fur, motionless and encrusted with ice. Morozko spread the wings of his cloak, blocking her from view, and ushered me away.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  He glanced at me, no longer fierce or frightening, but still as beautiful. “Are you comfortable, little one? Are you warm?”

  “Yes.” And I was.

  Morozko escorted me to my stepfather’s cottage. I had no hands to open the door, but where I walked, the frost shaped itself to my will, dancing in the air like music over water. I knew what I wanted to do. Filling myself with the splendor of my lord’s kingdom, I fashioned a paintbrush of frost and began to draw upon the izba’s window.

  When dawn came, and I had finished my sketch, I called to Marfa with my new voice, the tap and rustle of wind and snow, fingernails on glass. She didn’t see me, of course, but I hadn’t expected her to. I’d left my body beneath that pine tree. But she did see what I had drawn.

  I was sad when she cried, although the tears brightened her eyes and made her lovelier than ever. Marfa reached to the outline of my hand on the glass, spreading her fingers over the frosty outline. Her living warmth melted my composition away, but I didn’t mind. It is the nature of my new medium.

  She woke Mama and Steppapa, and I shushed the wind so I could hear them.

  “Prascovia’s gone,” she told them. “She went into the night to demand riches from Morozko.”

  Mama gasped.

  “Are you surprised, madam?” Marfa asked. “Surely you know that she wished to please you above all else. What else could she do when the price you demanded for your affection was as impossible and frivolous as strawberries and violets in winter? You should know that her final words before setting out were, ‘Tell Mama I’m sorry I wasn’t a better dancer.’”

  They took the sled and found the pitiful shell I had left beneath the pine tree.

  Mama sagged to her knees, her ugly, broken sobs loud in the still-quiet.

  Marfa, so new to reproach and anger, reverted to form, unable to hate anymore than I could dance. She sank beside Mama, and a moment later, Mama embraced her.

  Papa had taught me that grief could bridge chasms of resentment. Value her, Mama. Love her.

  I summoned my paintbrush of frost and left them to their grief and reconciliation. There were other windows to adorn and all the glories of winter to explore.

  Blood & Water

  * * *

  Alethea Kontis

  Love. Love is the reason for many a wonderful and horrible thing.

  It was the reason I lived, there in the Deep, in the warm embrace of the ocean where Mother Earth’s crust spread and gave molten birth to the world. Its soul was my soul.

  Love is the reason she came to me in the darkness, that brave sea maiden. I remember the taste of her bravery, the euphoric sweetness of her fear. It came to me on wisps of current past the scattered glows of the predators.

  The other predators.

  Her chest contracted and I felt the sound waves cross the water, heard them with an organ so long unused I had thought it dead.

  Help me, she said. I love him.

  The white stalks of the bloodworms curled about her tail. We had a common purpose, the worms and I. We were both barnacles seeking the same fi
x, clinging desperately to the soul of the world. Their crimson tips brushed her stomach, her shoulders. They could feel it in her, feel her soul in the blood that coursed through her veins. I felt it too. I yearned for it. A quiet memory waved in the tide. I was a maiden, too. Once.

  Patience.

  My answer was slow, deliberate. How much do you love him, little anemone?

  More than life itself, she answered.

  She had said the words.

  I had not asked her to bring the memories, the pain. There is no time in the Deep, only darkness. I could but guess at how much had passed since those words had been uttered this far down. Until that moment, I had never been sure if the magic would come to me. Those words were the catalyst, the spark that lit the flame.

  Flame. Another ancient memory.

  The hollow vessel that was my body emptied even further, pulling me to her. I held my hands out to her breast, and there was light.

  I resisted the urge to shut my inner eyelids to it and reveled in the light’s painful beauty. It shone beneath her flawless skin like a small sun, bringing me colors . . . perceptions I had never dared hope to experience again. Slivers of illumination escaped through her gills and glittered down the abalone-lustered scales of her fins. Her hair blossomed in a golden cloud around an innocent face, a face I remembered. And her eyes . . . her eyes were the blue of a sky I had not seen for a very, very long time.

  She tilted her head back in surrender and the ball of light floated out of her and into my fingers, thin, white and red-tipped, much as the worms themselves. I cupped her brilliant soul in my palms and felt its power gush through me. So long. So long I had waited for this escape. I had stopped wondering what answer I would give if I should ever hear the words again, ever summon the magic. When the vessel was full, when my dead heart beat again, would I remember? Would I feel remorse? Would I have the strength of will to save her, to turn her away? Would I choose the path of the good and brave or the path of desperation and escape?