The Long List Anthology Volume 3

by Aliette de Bodard

His gaze tilted to the domed glass ceiling as the first rays of dawn pierced the sky. “It begins.” He lifted his three blades high and Fatma braced for attack. Where was Aasim? She and Siti alone wouldn’t last long against an angel. But Maker didn’t move toward them, instead looking down with those bright eyes and releasing a piteous sigh.

  “Even now, you fail to grasp the strength of my conviction.” And with those last words, he plunged the three blades through his body—one stabbing into his chest, a second ripping apart the armor surrounding his heart, and a third sliding through the metallic links of his neck. Bright fluid like the blood of a star poured from the wounds. He swayed, then toppled to crash upon the ground and was still.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” Siti remarked.

  Fatma said nothing. Her eyes were pinned to an area in front of the clock. A hole had appeared. It sat there in the air, impossible yet all too real—like someone had bored into reality and found only black nothingness on the other end. Wisps of ephemeral vapor lifted from the dead offerings on the floor, all drawn into that nothingness to be devoured by oblivion. And as she watched, the hole grew.

  Fatma recounted the prophecy related by the jann. The Ram, the Harvester, the Builder. Their lives given willingly. Her eyes shifted to the dead angel, now shrouded in that ephemeral vapor. Given willingly.

  “Maker was the last,” she said aloud. “He was the last sacrifice. He intended to die all along. To fulfill the prophecy.” The image of the final glyph came to her, a half moon shrouded in vines. “To open the door.” She had barely spoken the words before the surface of the hole rippled like water, and then the tendrils poured out.

  They were a translucent gray, long fleshy tentacles that emerged from that fathomless black sea. Some were thin as hair, others thicker than a man, spilling onto the ground in a twisting mass and spreading around. They wrapped about the ghul carcasses, which blackened and shriveled under their touch, decaying in moments. The same became of the angel, the light of his body fading until he was left a dried and desiccated husk.

  “That’s. Disgusting.” Siti grimaced behind clenched teeth.

  There was a sudden bellowing from within the hole, a harsh, guttural mashing of tongues that rose as many and fell as one. The force of it was deafening, trembling the palace and sending terror through Fatma that staggered her under its weight. She remembered now the black lake in the mural in Sennar’s apartment, of the ifrit summoning their dark gods. This was the Rising. Whatever thing—things—lived in that primordial darkness were now trying to come through. When they did, these terrible gods would demand no less than death. They nourished themselves on it. They would demand the death of a whole world.

  “We have to close it!” Fatma said, finding her voice.

  Siti nodded stiffly, staring wide-eyed at the groping tendrils that continued to emerge from the hole. “I’m open to any ideas.”

  Fatma’s mind raced, trying to recall her readings in second-year alchemy. Al-Jahiz. The Theory of Overlapping Spheres. This Clock of Worlds worked on his grand formula. What had that jann said? Space and time. She looked at the clock, at its gears that ground inexorably forward like some inevitable countdown. That was it! Time.

  She turned to Siti. “I have to get to the clock!”

  Siti gave a curt nod, readying her long rifle. And Fatma ran.

  Behind her, she could hear the other woman firing off rounds. Bullets streaked by, hitting tendrils, cutting through gray translucent flesh in spurts of black fetid blood that made her want to gag. Another stomach-turning bellow came from inside the portal, this time a howl of pain and anger. Fatma wondered if what she looked upon now were many beings, or merely the appendage of one dipping into their world. She shook off the terrifying thought, concentrating instead on reaching the clock. When a tendril lashed toward her, she pulled her janbiya from its belt and slashed through the tip, which fell squirming to the floor.

  A shout from Siti made Fatma look up in time to see a massive tentacle rushing her way. She went flat, covering her head as it snaked its way over and above, seeking the source of the biting bullets. She turned to see Siti leaping beyond the lashing limb, landing nimbly on top of a table like a cat. The woman had slung the long rifle over her back, and donned those silver talon claws on each hand. Roaring, she slashed at the thick tentacle, raking deep gashes in its flesh. Not a cat, Fatma thought. A lioness! The other tendrils quickly joined the fray, tearing apart the room and flinging furniture in their frustration as the small figure remained just out of their reach.

  Fatma looked ahead, found the path clear, and almost shouted in relief. She pushed herself up, and ran again for the clock. When she reached it she stared up at the complex design of machinery, where iron wheels and pinions all turned in a harmonious union. A loud ticking emanated from within the structure, like the beating heart of some metronomic being. Space and time, the jann had said. That’s how the doorway was opened. This clock was too big to move, but maybe she could do something about time.

  Fatma lifted her cane, searching for a spot between the spinning plates—finding one, she rammed the cane in all the way to the silver lion-headed pommel. The clock groaned with a metal whine, shuddering as the wheels’ teeth ground around the cane. The two gears slowed and for a heartbeat she dared to hope. Then, with a forceful crunch, the iron teeth bit through the cane, pressing forward and crushing it to bits. Fatma’s heart faltered.

  Not enough. Maker had outdone himself. This was a machine created by a being driven to achieve perfection. Every wheel had been cut specifically, each one put in place by exacting hands, with extreme care and an unfaltering will. This wasn’t just a clock, it was a masterpiece of perfect precision. It wouldn’t be stopped so easily.

  Perfect precision. The thought played in Fatma’s head as that rhythmic ticking resonated. Putting a hand to a space in the clock, she hoisted herself up and climbed. This had indeed been Maker’s handiwork. A being not just driven by, but obsessed with perfection. A being that would make certain each piece of his masterful design performed in absolute precision—or not at all. And every clock had a means to keep it precise. She climbed until she reached a place where she could peer inside the clock’s ironwork chassis, past the plates and wheels, searching for that means of precision until she found it. The pendulum—a thick metal bar cut sharp on either end. It swung back and forth to that metronomic rhythm, allowing each tooth of a large central spinning gear to escape in precise timing. The thing was too big to pry it loose. But if she could find something to upset that tempo . . .

  Without another thought, Fatma reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a round bit of gold. Her father’s watch. Praise be to God! She reached her arm inside the clock, lodging the watch between the pendulum and the gear. It ceased swinging abruptly, caught on the small piece of metal. Fatma held her breath, praying that this would work. There was a strained groaning as a terrific tremor ran along the length of the clock. Everywhere, gear wheels skipped or seized, losing their perfect precision. That harmonious movement was replaced by a growing discord as time itself lost precision. Fatma looked to see the gaping hole in the air waver —and slowly begin to close.

  She might have cried out in triumph, but that terrible bellowing came again, this time in fitful snarls. For one heart-stopping moment the hole suddenly expanded. Gazing into that darkness spread out before her, Fatma caught the outline of a monstrous shape she could not begin to describe. And every fear, every nightmare she’d ever had seized within her chest. Then, like a band stretched to its limit, the hole contracted, collapsing in on itself, as reality crashed back together with the thunderous handclap of a god.

  Fatma was thrown from the clock as a concussive roar swept the room. For a moment she was flying, then she struck the ground hard. Air was pushed from her lungs in a gasp, and agony flared where her shoulder impacted with stone. She rolled several times over before her back slammed against something, stopping her momentum. She lay there for a long moment
through a haze of dizzying pain, as a ringing sounded in her ears.

  Then someone was there, lifting debris from atop her. Siti. The woman was covered in dust, and blood flowed from more than a few cuts—including a gash that left her hair slick with crimson on the right side of her head. She extended a hand and Fatma was sure to offer the good arm. Standing, the two surveyed the room, now barely recognizable, with splintered furniture and shattered contraptions. A wall had collapsed and the air was filled with thick, billowing dust. Only parts of the clock were left, a few stubborn wheels somehow still spinning. The doorway itself was gone.

  “Looks like you’ll need a new suit,” Siti wheezed between coughs. Fatma looked down. Her pants were torn and her jacket was little better. There was a pang of loss as she remembered the fate of her cane. And what had become of her bowler?

  “Think this is yours,” Siti offered, holding a bit of gold that dangled from a chain. Fatma took her watch and flipped it open, smiling at the familiar ticking. Scratched and worse for wear, but the damn thing still worked. Closing it, she slipped it back into her breast pocket.

  Slowly, the two women began to make their way through the wreckage. Fatma stopped at sight of gray flesh in their path. One of the tendrils. It had been sheared clean at the base, cut off from the thing—or things—now trapped back in that dark realm. She kicked it. Dead.

  “What do you think that belonged to?” Siti asked.

  Fatma grimaced, remembering her glimpse through the doorway. “We don’t want to know.” Both women looked up at sounds from the distance. Voices. Shouts. One was Aasim.

  “You’ll excuse me,” Siti said. “But Merira prefers we keep our distance from the local constabulary.”

  Fatma caught her meaning. “Don’t worry. As far as they’re concerned, I never spoke to any of you. You were never here.” She paused. “Thank you, Siti.”

  The taller woman beamed, a mischievous look in her eyes. “You can thank me over a nice meal.”

  Fatma raised an eyebrow. “The two of us? Share a meal?”

  “And why not?”

  “You’re an infidel. And maybe a little insane.”

  Siti grinned, not denying either charge. She reached up with dexterous fingers to adjust the loosed knot on Fatma’s tie. “My family owns a restaurant downtown. You’ve never had better Nubian food. I have an aunt who will make us the best fatta if asked, no matter the time of year. And wait till you taste her mulukhiya.” Finishing the knot, she played with the length of the tie. “Just make sure you wear one of these nice little suits.” There was a wink before the woman turned and was gone, disappearing into the dust with that rifle slung over her back.

  Fatma shook her head, turning in time to see three men in khaki uniforms scrambling over wreckage to enter the room—a dumbfounded Aasim in their lead. Holding her injured shoulder, she hobbled over toward the inspector. He was going to hate the paperwork on this one.

  * * *

  Phenderson Djéli Clark’s published works have appeared in such online venues as Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and Fantasy Magazine and several print anthologies including Griots I & II, Myriad Lands and Hidden Youth. His stories were included in the 2016 Locus Recommended Reading List and among the Notable Stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2017. His novelette “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” was originally published on Tor.com in 2016. He blogs on SFF, diversity and more at his blog The Disgruntled Haradrim (pdjeliclark.com). He also tweets stuff: @pdjeliclark.

  Red as Blood and White as Bone

  By Theodora Goss

  I am an orphan. I was born among these mountains, to a woodcutter and his wife. My mother died in childbirth, and my infant sister died with her. My father felt that he could not keep me, so he sent me to the sisters of St. Margarete, who had a convent farther down the mountain on which we lived, the Karhegy. I was raised by the sisters on brown bread, water, and prayer.

  This is a good way to start a fairy tale, is it not?

  When I was twelve years old, I was sent to the household of Baron Orso Kalman, whose son was later executed for treason, to train as a servant. I started in the kitchen, scrubbing the pots and pans with a brush, scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees with an even bigger brush. Greta, the German cook, was bad-tempered, as was the first kitchen maid, Agneta. She had come from Karberg, the big city at the bottom of the Karhegy—at least it seemed big, to such a country bumpkin as I was then. I was the second kitchen maid and slept in a small room that was probably a pantry, with a small window high up, on a mattress filled with straw. I bathed twice a week, after Agneta in her bathwater, which had already grown cold. In addition to the plain food we received as servants, I was given the leftovers from the baron’s table after Greta and Agneta had picked over them. That is how I first tasted chocolate cake, and sausage, and beer. And I was given two dresses of my very own. Does this not seem like much? It was more than I had received at the convent. I thought I was a lucky girl!

  I had been taught to read by the nuns, and my favorite thing to read was a book of fairy tales. Of course the nuns had not given me such a thing. A young man who had once stayed in the convent’s guesthouse had given it to me, as a gift. I was ten years old, then. One of my duties was herding the goats. The nuns were famous for a goat’s milk cheese, and so many of our chores had to do with the goats, their care and feeding. Several times, I met this man up in the mountain pastures. (I say man, but he must have been quite young still, just out of university. To me he seemed dreadfully old.) I was with the goats, he was striding on long legs, with a walking stick in his hand and a straw hat on his head. He always stopped and talked to me, very politely, as he might talk to a young lady of quality.

  One day, he said, “You remind me of a princess in disguise, Klara, here among your goats.” When I told him that I did not know what he meant, he looked at me in astonishment. “Have you never read any fairy tales?” Of course not. I had read only the Bible and my primer. Before he left the convent, he gave me a book of fairy tales, small but beautifully illustrated. “This is small enough to hide under your mattress,” he said. “Do not let the nuns see it, or they will take it from you, thinking it will corrupt you. But it will not. Fairy tales are another kind of Bible, for those who know how to read them.”

  Years later, I saw his name again in a bookstore window and realized he had become a poet, a famous one. But by then he was dead. He had died in the war, like so many of our young men.

  I followed his instructions, hiding the book under my mattress and taking it out only when there was no one to see me. That was difficult at the convent, where I slept in a room with three other girls. It was easier in the baron’s house, where I slept alone in a room no one else wanted, not even to store turnips. And the book did indeed become a Bible to me, a surer guide than that other Bible written by God himself, as the nuns had taught. For I knew nothing of Israelites or the building of pyramids or the parting of seas. But I knew about girls who scrubbed floors and grew sooty sleeping near the hearth, and fish who gave you wishes (although I had never been given one), and was not Greta, our cook, an ogress? I’m sure she was. I regarded fairy tales as infallible guides to life, so I did not complain at the hard work I was given, because perhaps someday I would meet an old woman in the forest, and she would tell me that I was a princess in disguise. Perhaps.

  The day on which she came was a cold, dark day. It had been raining for a week. Water poured down from the sky, as though to drown us all, and it simply did not stop. I was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. Greta and Agneta were meeting with the housekeeper, Frau Hoffman, about a ball that was to take place in three days’ time. It would celebrate the engagement of the baron’s son, Vadek, to the daughter of a famous general, who had fought for the Austro-Hungarian emperor in the last war. Prince Radomir himself was staying at the castle. He had been hunting with Vadek Kalman in the forest that covered the Karhegy until what Greta called this unholy rain began. They had been at sc
hool together, Agneta told me. I found it hard to believe that a prince would go to school, for they never did in my tales. What need had a prince for schooling, when his purpose in life was to rescue fair maidens from the dragons that guarded them, and fight ogres, and ride on carpets that flew through the air like aeroplanes? I had never in my life seen either a flying carpet or an aeroplane: to me, they were equally mythical modes of transportation.

  I had caught a glimpse of the general’s daughter when she first arrived the day before, with her father and lady’s maid. She was golden-haired, and looked like a porcelain doll under her hat, which Agneta later told me was from Paris. The lady’s maid had told Frau Hoffman, who had told Greta, and the news had filtered down even to me. But I thought a Paris hat looked much like any other hat, and I had no interest in a general’s daughter. She did not have glass slippers, and I was quite certain she could not spin straw into gold. So what good was she?

  I was sitting, as I have said, in the kitchen beside the great stone hearth, peeling potatoes by a fire I was supposed to keep burning so it could later be used for roasting meat. The kitchen was dark, because of the storm outside. I could hear the steady beating of rain on the windows, the crackling of wood in the fire. Suddenly, I heard a thump, thump, thump against the door that led out to the kitchen garden. What could it be? For a moment, my mind conjured images out of my book: a witch with a poisoned apple, or Death himself. But then I realized it must be Josef, the under-gardener. He often knocked on that door when he brought peas or asparagus from the garden and made cow-eyes at Agneta.

  “A moment,” I cried, putting aside the potatoes I had been peeling, leaving the knife in a potato near the top of the basket so I could find it again easily. Then I went to the door.

  When I pulled it open, something that had been leaning against it fell inside. At first I could not tell what it was, but it moaned and turned, and I saw that it was a woman in a long black cloak. She lay crumpled on the kitchen floor. Beneath her cloak she was naked: her white legs gleamed in the firelight. Fallen on the ground beside her was a bundle, and I thought: Beggar woman. She must be sick from hunger.