The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013

by Linda Nagata

  “Yes,” he said, but after that neither of them spoke, just concentrated on walking.

  He knew there was more to the story he’d told Greta. Not just later, not just the forgotten ending; he had vague memories of a reason the girl had been trapped, reasons her captor was evil that had nothing to do with her being a witch.

  And he kept seeing the strange knight’s face hovering before his own, terrible and sad. He knew that if the knight returned home there would be war and bloodshed and that whatever madness had seeped into his soul was not God. But even when he had been telling Greta the story he had heard a woman’s voice behind his, and it was the heartbreak in her voice that told him that the knight was lost and that he should pity the poor man who must never return home.

  And perhaps because of the knight’s face, or because he was remembering the woman’s voice, he pictured her again. She wore deep brown silk cut with a blue that brought out her eyes, and she looked straight at him and said, “She has no idea, and if he keeps on like this I’m afraid—” But then she turned and smiled at one of the bears, and never finished the sentence.

  It took Jack a moment to realize Greta had stopped. She was consulting her compass, and he asked, “Did we get off course?”

  “No . . . just making sure.” But she was frowning at the little piece of metal and glass.

  Something made him reach out a hand. “May I?” he asked, and after a second’s hesitation she handed it to him. It took him a moment to decipher the markings, but then he read: A— In case you lose North, and something he decided was meant to be a heart, and then G.

  “Is G for Greta?” he asked at last, confused why she would have the compass if it were.

  She nodded. “It was a joke,” she said. “It took me forever to find my way around, and he couldn’t figure out why. Finally he realized that I couldn’t just tell which direction was North and know from that where I was, so then I showed him my compass. It fascinated him so much that I ended up finding something to carve that with and giving it to him. And then he— and the compass and I got left behind.”

  Jack watched her as she spoke, saw the smile tugging quietly at one corner of her mouth and the light that came on in her eyes when she spoke and disappeared abruptly when she stopped. He looked once more at the compass and then handed it back to her.

  They were both quiet the rest of the day. Even setting up camp and building a fire they barely spoke except to say “Goodnight” when Greta crawled into her sleeping roll. Jack sat, his back against the largest log they’d found, and closed his eyes—not to sleep, but to remember.

  Immediately he pictured the woman again. A different memory this time, if it was even memory—he couldn’t be sure. But he saw her standing at the top of a hill, bronze curls dancing in the wind and a worn maroon shawl wrapped tightly about her body. She’s too thin, he thought, her shoulder blades shouldn’t stick out like that—but then she turned and for a moment he couldn’t even think around the joy of seeing her again after so long.

  Only for a moment, though. Then he noticed the faint creases lining her forehead and the dark circles under her sky-blue eyes. Fear struck him as suddenly as happiness had, and he knew that he should know why she was so thin and tired and sad, but he couldn’t remember. He tried to step backward, but his legs refused to move, and he knew all at once that they’d been turned to stone, and it wouldn’t be long before he was stone all over.

  Frantic, he looked around for some clue, but all he could see was the sky, shadowed now by the pain in his love’s eyes, and then away below them a partly finished building—a castle, he realized suddenly, made of glittering white stone, and just as he recognized the castle he knew that the tiny figures working there must be bears . . .

  He turned back around, but the woman had disappeared, and he woke with a question, half-formed but unasked, melting away to nothing on his tongue. Only one small sweetness remained, but it made the dream and the question bearable: Nancy, he breathed when he first opened his mouth, and smiled a small, quiet smile to himself. Nancy. He remembered her name.

  Greta cried softly in her sleep, and Jack moved automatically to comfort her. His body was too stiff, though, from having sat on the ground all night, and the rustle of leaves as he fell sideways was enough to wake Greta. Her eyes snapped open; Jack thought they glittered strangely, and he heard her breathe in quick, shallow gasps, but she blinked rapidly and her breathing slowed and by the time he righted himself he couldn’t be sure quite what he’d seen or heard.

  Still, after a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Strange dreams,” she said, frowning absently. “I saw him . . . he was sleeping, and I tried to wake him up, because if I could wake him up then everything would be all right. But he wouldn’t wake and he wouldn’t wake and the wax had turned red and kept growing, like a wound, but he wouldn’t wake up . . . ”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Jack murmured, but already he was thinking of a young man with some strange, waxy substance that poisoned anyone it touched growing across his chest—a young man he had first met as a bear . . . The wind was playing with Greta’s hair. She tucked a strand of it behind her ear, but the wind tugged it out and tossed it in her face again almost immediately. “Who couldn’t you wake?” Jack asked.

  Greta opened her mouth, but no sound came out. At first Jack thought she simply couldn’t decide how to answer, but then anger swept over her features like a sudden storm and she muttered a string of curses too quiet for him to follow. Finally she spat out. “My friend. The one I’m looking for. But it was just a stupid dream, because I will find him and I will make things right.” More quietly—quietly enough that he shouldn’t have been able to hear her, except that the wind carried her voice to him—she added, “Even if he doesn’t forgive me, I can at least make things right.”

  Jack thought again of Nancy’s eyes, and the shoulder blades sticking out of her too-thin frame, and he wished that he knew what it was he needed to make right, let alone how to go about doing so. He pictured her again, wind playing with her shawl and hair, but through the memory of Nancy he still saw Greta: packing up her sleeping roll and getting ready to travel, and all the while tucking her hair behind her ear just in time for the wind to pull it free again.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” Jack heard himself ask suddenly, not entirely sure why but knowing that the answer was somehow important, if only he could make it make sense . . .

  Greta glared at him for a second, but then she seemed to recognize him again and her expression softened a little. “I can’t tell you that.”

  What was it? He felt like he was grasping at dust motes and dandelion seeds that he couldn’t even see. “You can’t tell me?” he asked, “Or you won’t tell me?”

  “I can’t,” Greta said, “though I’m not sure I ought to tell you even if I could.”

  Jack frowned, ran a hand through his hair (and felt a sudden shock of memory at the gesture; it seemed his old habits were coming back to him along with his memories), and sighed. Frowned more, and took a long, slow breath. There. He knew that smell. It was the north, and stone dust, and berries and hazelnuts and the occasional raw fish with baklava for dessert, carried to him by the same wind that had carried him Greta’s words, had led him to her in the first place, had forced him out of the scarecrow . . . had brought him Nancy . . . had brought Greta her friend?

  He had heard rumors, when he was working for the bears, that their prince had fallen in love with a human girl, and that she had been the one to betray him. The prince, the young man who should have been a bear, was the reason why the castle must never fail, the reason why Jack must never speak. Who knew what the girl might do next, or who might be helping her? And with Bernadette, next in line for the princedom, itching to take over and lacking only the proof that Auberon was human or dead to make herself prince instead of regent . . .

  He heard Nancy’s voice again: “She has no idea, and if he keeps on like this, I’m a
fraid—” And he remembered all the times later that Nancy would frown at something the bears said and whisper to him, “I can’t believe it. I refuse. I saw the way they acted around each other, and I swear she loved him back.” Saw Greta in a red dress, in a hall full of bears, a hall he had not designed but had visited, once, with Nancy . . .

  She doesn’t know where he is, he realized suddenly. She’s got some sense of which direction to look, but that’s all, and if I wanted to I could lead her to him right now, or I could make sure that she never, ever reaches him.

  “Are you all right?” Jack started, and saw Greta looking at him expectantly; the fire was out and all her things were packed. “Where did you go just now?” she asked.

  “Nowhere,” he said, and shook his head as if that would clear it. It didn’t.

  “Well, if you’re ready—”

  “I am.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  They walked all day, and all day Jack watched Greta. Here was, he thought, the one the bears always referred to as “the betrayer,” and right now she was his only friend in the world. He wished he could remember more, or that Nancy were here to help him choose . . .

  After an hour or so Greta changed direction slightly, and Jack heard himself say, “No.”

  Greta stopped and turned, confused. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I’m not . . . ” Something was drawing him, tugging gently at his stomach, and he thought in panic, but I’m not supposed to give away the secret! I should make sure she goes the wrong way!

  She loved him. He had to believe that she loved him. Not just because of what she said about the compass, or what he remembered Nancy saying about her, but because of how real her fear had been when she was still caught in the dream, “It’s this way,” he said, though still unsure.

  Greta frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  Jack took another deep breath, and said, “The castle I built for them. To hide him. It’s this way.”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t argue, just gestured for him to lead.

  Nancy, he thought, let me have chosen right. And he let the castle draw him to it.

  They arrived with the sunset; the forest had grown thicker all day until suddenly they stepped through and the white stones shone red before them like they were burning. Greta stared up at the huge, glass-smooth structure for a moment before she murmured, “What now? They’re not just going to let us walk in.”

  “No,” Jack said, half to himself, “I don’t imagine they will . . . ” Something felt off about the castle, something not as he’d built it, but he couldn’t put his finger on what . . .

  “Well, is there some sort of side door, or a secret entrance that wouldn’t be guarded?”

  Jack shook his head. “It wouldn’t make a difference whether it’s guarded or not, except to me. The things I build . . . they know, somehow, who should be there and who shouldn’t, and the people who shouldn’t never find a way in.” As he spoke he walked hunched-over along the edge of the woods, studying the castle wall until he spotted what he was looking for: a hair-thin crack he couldn’t see but knew was there; the door leading to an escape passage. He smiled slightly. “But I can.”

  They moved slowly, crouched as low to the ground as they could manage, and he hoped that the combination of tall grass and deepening dusk would be enough to hide them from any watchful eyes. The closer they drew to the castle walls, though, the more Jack felt in his bones that something was very, very wrong here. He didn’t understand until he placed a palm beside the secret door and felt a sudden, sharp pain.

  “What’s wrong?” Greta asked.

  “I don’t know, it—” He held out his hand a couple of inches away from the wall and thought he could almost hear the stones speak to him in their sleep. Intruders, they rumbled, invaders, thieves, murderers, spies, little rodents trying to creep in through the cracks, but we won’t let them, no, no matter how they might gnaw or dig with little teeth and paws, we will not move and we will not fade, we will stand for centuries without tiring . . .

  Jack frowned and drew back his hand. “I don’t understand,” he whispered.

  “Don’t understand what?” Greta hissed back.

  “It’s . . . I’ve never been shut out by one of my buildings before. And I’ve never felt one so . . . awake, and lively.” He held out his hand again and thought, it’s me. Don’t you recognize me? I built you, I’m a friend, please let us in, we mean no harm . . .

  The rumbling felt louder, and Jack had just enough time to see Greta’s eyes widen and to wonder if she felt it too before he heard, liars, too, trying to convince us they made us! We made ourself, with help from the bears. We directed our own creation—we remember it—and we will not be fooled into betraying our friends who helped us to grow so tall and strong!

  “But I am you,” Jack whispered, letting his hand drift just a little bit closer to the wall. “Don’t you remember me?”

  You cannot be us, the stones replied. We would know. We would remember.

  Slowly, Jack drew away from the wall again and just sat for a few seconds, thinking. He’d expected to get in without any trouble, but now . . .

  “Can you convince it to let us in, or not?” Greta asked, eyeing the castle warily.

  “I think so,” he murmured.

  “So do it now before someone sees us!” she hissed.

  “But—”

  “Jack!” she interrupted. “Please. I don’t know if he’s all right, or if I have time to . . . Just please, whatever you have to do, if you can get me in there I’ll do whatever else needs doing.”

  He studied her for a moment, the intensity of her gaze and her body crouched to spring into action the moment the door opened, and he realized that any lingering doubts didn’t matter. He believed her when she said she loved her friend, and once he believed that, there really wasn’t much else to consider.

  Jack pressed both his palms flat against the wall and tried to summon the same rumbling voice within himself. You do know me, he thought to the stones. You do remember. You just need a reminder. Poke around all you like until you find what you need, but once you do you’d better start behaving yourself!

  The castle took him at his word: the skin of his palms melted into the stone so that he couldn’t have separated himself if he’d tried, and suddenly he could feel all the minerals in his body—calcium in his bones, iron in his blood, bits of other things he couldn’t identify—and his ribcage felt as if it were made of marble and breathing might crack it, but he breathed anyway, and he almost thought he could feel his veins branching out into the walls and the floors and the ceiling and his own blood pumping through all of it, and he could follow it from his own heart to the castle’s, where Auberon twitched and whimpered in pain and the waxy, translucent something spread across his side, spreading so slowly the movement itself was invisible but he could sense it, could sense the man’s pain and couldn’t do anything to stop it, and he cried out—

  “Jack!” Greta screeched in his ear and tugged at his shoulder, but he could barely hear her, and he couldn’t let go.

  Let her in, he thought to himself. Let us in. He needs us. We can help.

  But we are helping!

  Yes, we are, but we’re only helping to keep him safe until she comes. We’ve kept him safe and we’ve found her, and now we need to let her in so she can do her part. Our job is done; we can sleep now.

  But what if she’s false?

  She isn’t.

  But how do we know?

  We know. And they did, all the different parts of the Jack-castle, and the invisible door swung open beside him.

  “Go,” Jack croaked. His voice felt like sharp rocks and stone dust, and Greta hesitated, but only for a moment—“Go!” Jack shouted, and she was off into the passage faster than a hare running from the dogs.

  Jack waited several heartbeats before he tried gingerly to pull his hands from the wall. He had expected them to be stuck, but they came awa
y easily. His palms were raw, though, and covered in blood, and he watched as his two bloody hand-prints sank into the stone and disappeared. He didn’t want to think about what that meant.

  He couldn’t think how to wrap his hands when both were so badly injured, so he just crossed his arms, pressed his palms against his sides, and—as he stumbled in just before the door swung shut—hoped for the best.

  The first wave hit Jack when he was about halfway down the passage and could no longer hear Greta’s footsteps ahead of him: groping his way gingerly in the dark, between one step and the next, he suddenly felt the full weight of his body; his stomach churned with hunger; he remembered designing this passage and walking through it after it was built, checking it for the last time. And he remembered when his hands were smaller and chubbier and he could just barely grip the wooden blocks that he placed one on another to build castles and houses and towers almost as tall as he was. He remembered the smell of Nancy’s hair, and the way it felt to kiss her, and the mixture of love and fear and pride that filled her eyes and her voice when she looked at his plans for a castle—this castle—and said it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever designed.

  All at once, all between one step and the next. He stumbled a few steps, but by the time the next wave hit him his feet were steady under him again, and it hit him just as hard but he recovered faster. Another few steps, another wave of memory, and he didn’t stumble at all, even though his body and mind raced to keep up with all the parts of him that were suddenly no longer missing.

  The passage surprised him by ending, dumping him out without warning into a bright, open chamber. He stopped short, dazzled by the sudden light, but even before his eyes and mind adjusted he heard voices, all familiar (though only one was human), and as the room and the stooped, shaggy figures before him came into focus, so did their words.

  “I’m telling you it was an accident but I can fix it, you have to let me—”

  “—don’t know how you broke in, but—”

  “—doesn’t matter, you shouldn’t be here—”