The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Three

by Jonathan Strahan

  The Saturday before graduation, Clementine went over to help Dancy throw all of John Cleary's trash out. He was living down in Myrtle Beach with some girl who had three piercings in her lip and one bad-tempered pit bull. Dancy wouldn't let Lucinda Larkin sleep over there, which meant Clementine was babysitting almost every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night while Dancy waitressed at the Bad Oyster.

  "I don't know what I'm going to do when you go off to Queens," Dancy said. "Lucinda Larkin is going to miss you so much! Aren't you, baby?"

  "No," Lucinda Larkin said.

  Clementine gave Lucinda Larkin a squeeze. "I'll come home every weekend," she said. "You know, to do laundry."

  Dancy dumped out a box. "College essays," she said. "John used to brag about how he didn't write any of these. Just got his girlfriends to write them for him. It's like serial killers, how they keep souvenirs."

  "At least you didn't meet him until later," Clementine said. "You didn't have to write about the theme of loneliness in the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. Or compare and contrast Helen of Troy with Hester Prynne."

  "Like giving birth to Lucinda Larkin was so much easier," Dancy said. She held up a photograph of John Cleary and some girl. Another photograph of John Cleary and another girl. "You know what I wish? I wish I'd never met him."

  Clementine said, "Sorry about that."

  "Yeah, well, I'm sorry about my brother. That he ran off to Romania to count wolves. I kind of thought maybe one day you and he—"

  Clementine waited. When Dancy didn't say anything else, she said, "You thought maybe one day what?"

  Dancy said, "That he might ask you out. When you were out of high school. He said you were a funny kid. You made him laugh. That would have been nice, don't you think, if one day you and I had ended up being sisters-in-law?"

  "That would have been weird," Clementine said. "At least it would have been weird if you were also still technically my aunt. We would have had a hard time explaining it all to Lucinda Larkin."

  "You won't have a hard time meeting guys in college," Dancy said. "If I were a guy, I'd totally hook up with you."

  "Thanks," Clementine said, not sure whether she ought to feel flattered or creeped out. "I feel the same way. Are you going to answer your phone?"

  "It's either going to be the Bad Oyster or you-know-who. And if it's you-know-who calling to say he can't take you-know who for a couple of hours tomorrow, I'm going to you-know-what him with a set of nail clippers," Dancy said. "Hello?" Her voice changed immediately. "Cabell? Where are you?" Pause. "What time is it there? That late? Are you coming home? We miss you so much!" Her face changed. She looked over at Clementine, and Clementine made her face as blank as she possibly could.

  Dancy said, "Married? For real? You're not pulling my leg?"

  When she could speak, Clementine said, "Hey, Lucinda Larkin, you want an ice-cream sandwich? Let me go get you an ice-cream sandwich. You stay here with your momma."

  She went into the bathroom first. Looked at herself in the mirror. She could still hear Dancy's voice, going on and on about something, and so she went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Stared into it, wondering why Dancy had so many grapefruits and hardly anything else. She bent over the kitchen sink and splashed water on the back of her neck. On her face. When she came back, Dancy was still talking and Lucinda Larkin said, "We don't have any more ice-cream sandwiches?"

  Clementine said, "No. They're all gone. Sorry about that."

  Lucinda Larkin said, "Can I sleep at your house tonight?"

  "Not tonight," Clementine said. "Maybe tomorrow?"

  Dancy was saying something. She said, "Hey, Cabell? Clementine's here. She's helping me pack up all John's crap. We were just talking about you." She put the phone down and said to Clementine, "He's married. He got married a week ago. He's going to live in a castle. It's like a Disney movie or something. Do you want to talk to him?"

  Clementine said, "Tell him congratulations."

  "Clementine says congratulations. He says thank you, Clementine. Here," Dancy said. "I'll put him on speakerphone."

  Cabell was saying, " . . . because it's exactly like here. I mean, like home. Everybody knows everybody's business. There's the castle, where Lenuta and her sisters and her family live, and then there's the village, and then there's not much else. Hardly even a road. Lots of forest and mountain. So it's really hard for Lenuta and her sisters to meet guys, and all the locals are really superstitious, and it's not like Lenuta and her sisters can travel very far."

  "Why not?" Dancy said.

  "Two of her sisters are practically babies. Nine years old and eleven years old. They don't go to school. Lenuta home-schools them. Plus their family has got this whole deal going with the wolf population. They're really involved in habitat conservation."

  "So will you come home for Christmas?" Dancy said.

  "Can't," Cabell said. "You know. Lenuta's English isn't that great. She'd have a terrible time. You know how Mom gets. I'm going to give her some time to cool down. You know, about this marriage thing. Besides, I skipped out on bail. Not very cool, you know?"

  "Hey, Cabell," Clementine said. She swallowed.

  "Clementine! How's school?"

  "I graduate next week," Clementine said. "Lucinda Larkin really misses you. She cries all the time."

  "Tell Lucinda Larkin I'm not worth it," Cabell said. "Hey, Dancy? I'll call back later. I'm down at the townie bar and the last bus is about to head back up the mountain. There's no phone at the castle. Get this. I have to go all the way to Râmnicu Vâlcea if I want Internet access. It's like the Middle Ages here. I love it. I left a message on Mom's cell phone. Tell her I'll send an address where she can mail the rest of my clothes and things as soon as I can. Tell everyone not to worry about wedding gifts. Lenuta's got all this family silverware and monogrammed linen and stuff."

  "Don't go yet!" Dancy said. "Cabell?"

  "I think he hung up," Clementine said. She wanted to howl like a dog.

  Dancy pushed a pile of her husband's clothes off the bed. She sat down and bounced. "This is so weird, all of this! I mean, here I am getting divorced and he goes and gets married? To some girl he just met? And he wants me to tell Mom and Dad? I can't stand it. Come here, baby," Dancy said. "Somebody give me a hug." She was laughing, but when Clementine looked she saw that Dancy was crying, too. "It's crazy, right?" Dancy said.

  Clementine sat down beside Dancy and put her head in Dancy's lap. She couldn't help it. She sobbed. Dancy cried even harder.

  Lucinda Larkin gave them a look like they were both crazy. She came over and hit Clementine on the nose with the remote. She wasn't at an age where she understood about sharing.

  L

  Twenty minutes, and Lee parks the van at the very top of Peaceable Mountain. There isn't much of a view. Just trees and more trees.

  "Why are we stopping?" Czigany demands. "What's going on?"

  Parci says, "Shut up, Czigany! You'll fail the Ordeal."

  Bad gets out and slides open the passenger door and Nikki starts up the trailhead. During their planning sessions, Lee has described the place where she is to stop: the old stone wall, the historical marker, the tree struck by lightning where they will leave Czigany and Parci.

  It takes Maureen and Bad and Lee a while longer to get there, guiding the blindfolded, handcuffed Khulhat sisters. "Watch out here," Lee says. "It goes down. Be careful where you put your foot. Okay, good job."

  Parci keeps on laughing. Czigany is saying, "You have to call my mom. Come on, Lee. If we're not home by five she's going to go crazy. At least tell her where we are, okay?"

  "Don't worry," Lee says. "It's going to be fine. We're almost there. You're almost done."

  "It is not going to be okay," Czigany says. "Let me call my mother. So she can come get Parci? Bad, listen to me. If we're not home to take our pills, it's serious. Remember how Parci told you we both have a condition? It's like epilepsy. Take the blindfold off. I need to talk to you." H
er hand clutches Lee's forearm with terrible strength, but Lee says nothing. She is sure she will find the marks of Czigany's fingers there later.

  "It is not!" Parci yells. "We don't have epilepsy. It's something completely different."

  "Shut up, Parci," Czigany says. "We have to tell them."

  "You shut up," Parci says. "You say anything else and Mom will seriously kill you."

  "Shut up both of you," Bad says. "Save your breath. There's a steep bit here."

  At last they are at the summit. They are all panting. Czigany's breath comes in sobs. When she jerks at the handcuffs, Parci stumbles. "Quit it," Parci says. "Just quit it!"

  Here is the tree, and here is Nikki, up in the branches. She grins at Lee and gives her the thumbs-up. She has her iPod, loaded up with several hours' worth of Project Runway, her yarn and plastic needles, her Thermos and a sandwich.

  Maureen says, "Czigany, you can stop. You and Parci sit down here."

  She helps the two sisters sit down with their backs to the tree.

  While Maureen winds the rope around and around Czigany, Parci, the tree, Bad explains. "Most Ordeals are kind of lame. For mine, they put a personal ad on Craigslist and I had to go sit at Rosie's Strong Brew, wearing a rose in my hair, and meet all of these ancient guys. The last three, it turned out, had all been told to show up at the same time, and I wasn't allowed to explain, either. The creepy thing was how none of them were surprised that I was a fifteen-year-old lesbian. So the ad must have mentioned that. Whatever. My point is that I wanted this to be different. So I went and did some research on Ordeals and what I found out is that you used to have one if you were going to be a knight. You had to go into a church and kneel on the stone floor all night long and stay awake to pray, and if you did, they made you a knight."

  "We checked the weather," Maureen says. Maureen's Ordeal was so humiliating that she refuses to talk about it at all. "It's not supposed to get down past forty degrees tonight. Thank you, global warming. The church thing wasn't going to work, but when we talked about it, Lee said that we could come here."

  "You can't leave us here all night!" Czigany says.

  "We'll be back to get you in the morning," Bad says. "And, just in case, someone is going to be keeping an eye on you. You know. So don't try to get loose. It's a long way down the mountain."

  "Call my mom," Czigany says. "Just call her and tell her what's happening. I can't believe you guys are doing this to me! You said we were going home. You said we were going home!"

  When no one says anything, she begins to thrash, horribly. She throws herself against the rope at her chest as if she means to cut herself in half. This is not how the Ordeal is supposed to go. Lee's stomach hurts as if she is the one caught in the ropes.

  "Ow, ow, ow," Parci says. "Quit it, Czigany. You're making it really tight."

  Czigany says, "Take off the blindfolds. At least take off our blindfolds!"

  "Stop whining," Bad says. She sounds exasperated, as if she can't believe how ungrateful Czigany is being. "The whole point of an Ordeal is that it sucks. The blindfolds are just part of the suckiness."

  "Am I going to be a knight, too?" Parci says. "Or whatever? Because it isn't fair otherwise."

  Bad says, "Hear that? Your little sister's a badass, Czigany."

  Czigany's shirt has ridden up as she wriggles in the ropes. Lee bends over to pull it back down. As she bends over, she says, as quietly as she can, "Czigany? Don't worry. We'll be back sooner than you think. Okay?"

  "You lied to me," Czigany says.

  "I know," Lee whispers. "I'm sorry."

  "I'm sorry, too," Czigany says. And presses her lips together tightly.

  "Don't worry about us," Parci says. "We'll be fine." She's grinning like a mad fiend.

  No one says anything on the way back to the van until Maureen says, finally, "Maybe we should call the Khulhats. Just in case. Czigany was really freaking out."

  "You would, too, if you had her mom," Bad says.

  Lee says, "Good luck getting a signal. My aunt has Skype, but we can't call from her account. I don't want her to get in trouble. Maureen, you made Czigany leave the note, right? What did she say?"

  "We had to improvise because of Parci. Something about needing space. And wanting a chance to do some sister bonding. I had Czigany say they might take the train into the city to see a matinee."

  "Solid," Bad says. "It's like you've been kidnapping people for years."

  "Yeah, well, next time let's kidnap somebody who isn't such an ungrateful freak," Maureen says.

  "That's not fair," Lee says.

  "Like the Ordeal is supposed to be about fairness?" Maureen says. She's practically yelling. "Like my Ordeal was cake and roses and champagne? Czigany has no idea. No idea whatsoever. It's like she thinks this is all about her."

  "I've got a rash on my arm," Bad says. "It had better not be poison ivy, is all I'm saying."

  "Probably just goat saliva," Maureen says, calming down. "They ate one of my tennis shoe laces. They're cute, you know, but they're kind of a pain in the ass, too. Like boyfriends."

  It's three thirty when they get back to Peaceable Kingdom, and Maureen complains about boyfriends the whole way down. Dodo is boiling water for pasta salad. "How did it go?" she says.

  "That depends on who you ask," Lee says. "Czigany isn't very happy. Her parents are pretty strict."

  Dodo chops scallions and doesn't ask anything else. When Lee first asked her if they could bring Czigany to Peaceable Kingdom for her Ordeal, Dodo had a lot of questions. What will your mom say? What about missing classes? What's the point of the Ordeal anyway? After Lee described some of the Ordeals she'd heard about, Dodo sighed and said she guessed Lee and the others had everything all figured out.

  "I thought you guys might want to go for a hike," Dodo says. "I thought we'd have an early dinner, then make a lot of popcorn and take it out to the goat barn. We could watch a couple of movies. You guys like Jackie Chan movies?"

  Lee says, "We have to be back up there around eight. I want to get back just a little early, to be on the safe side."

  "Four hours isn't much of an Ordeal," Bad grouses. She's still annoyed that no one else was willing to go along with the full knightly Ordeal, her original plan.

  "The real Ordeal will be when they get home," Lee says.

  "It's going to be kind of an Ordeal for us, too," Maureen says. "We have to ride back with them. Czigany's kind of scary when she's mad. Dibs on the front seat. You get to sit next to Czigany, Bad."

  "Does anyone ever refuse to go along with this Ordeal business?" Dodo asks.

  They all stare at her.

  "Never mind," Dodo says. "Clearly I am out of my mind for asking."

  Maureen and Bad opt for the hike. Lee guesses Maureen wants to complain about the new boyfriend. Lee sits in the kitchen with Dodo for a while, telling her about school. She wonders if Czigany is still trying to wriggle free. Nikki is under strict orders to document the part they are missing.

  Eventually Lee heads back to the Ferris wheel with her book. She isn't sure she understands Clementine, why Clementine keeps hoping Cabell will finally notice her. Lee's never felt that way about anyone, and she's not sure she wants to, either. She reads until it's time to go and call the goats to dinner. Bad and Maureen come back from their hike still talking about Maureen's difficulties with the new boyfriend. Sometimes Lee wonders if Bad has a crush on Maureen. It's how Bad looks at Maureen sometimes. Not that Maureen would ever notice.

  Dodo has made plenty of pasta salad, and garlic bread with goat butter, and iced tea. After the dishes are washed and dried, they all help make popcorn, which it turns out is not for them. It's for the goats.

  After browsing through Dodo's limited selection of movies, they decide on Lawrence of Arabia. Dodo says, "But it's four hours long. You won't be able to see all of it!"

  "We've seen it before," Bad says. "Like four times. It's okay if we don't get to the end. And it seems like the right kind of movi
e to watch with a herd of goats. The only thing that would be better would be if you had camels."

  "It's not like it's a happy ending anyway," Lee says, and Maureen nods in agreement.

  The goats are done with the popcorn before the theme music has even started. They pick their way from couch to couch, never setting foot on the floor of the barn, talking loudly. There's a reason why movie theaters don't encourage people to bring their goats. Dodo has left the barn doors open so that the goats can come and go. "They're always a bit mad when the moon is full," Dodo says. "Little terrors. Little monsters."

  "Hey! Don't eat that!" Lee says, holding her book up and out of reach. The Nubian gives her a haughty look.

  "Good book?" Dodo says.

  "Not sure yet," Lee says. "I'm not finished. Bad's read it."

  Bad grunts. She is pulling clumps of hair from the sides of a very pregnant LaMancha. "It was so-so. You know. There's this girl and she's crazy about this guy and does all these stupid things and then at the end—"

  Lee says, "Shut up! I haven't gotten to the end yet!"

  "I'm going to get more popcorn," Dodo says. "Anybody want anything?" The goats all go trailing after her.

  "This is nice, isn't it?" Maureen says. She comes and leans over Lee's couch, gives Lee a voluptuous hug. "Being here. How come you never brought us here before?"

  Lee says, "I don't know. We're here now, aren't we?"

  "Can we come back?" Maureen says. "Could we come back sometime with Nikki? I feel bad for her, stuck up there by herself. Missing Lawrence of Arabia."

  "Now in stereo with goats!" Bad says. She's lying on the next couch over, and Lee can't see Bad's expression. Only the back of her head.

  "What about Czigany and Parci?" Lee says. Maureen rests her chin on Lee's shoulder. She blows on Lee's hair, garlic and goat cheese. "Quit it, Maureen!"

  Bad says, "Not the same as goats. But sure. There are two of them, so I guess it's in stereo."

  Maureen says, "They're just so weird. I didn't like the way their house smelled."

  "I don't like the way your breath smells," Lee says.