The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2014 Edition

by Rich Horton

  “What?”

  I chipped off one of the outer husks of my metal teeth—a harmless red triangle glinting in the sun—and gave it to Melisande. She was as entranced as I’d been when my mother’d done the same for me. I covered the whorls of Melisande’s ears so she wouldn’t hear what I was about to say. “Mottle. Melisande’s caught the mottling. Purla, we . . . ”

  I couldn’t finish the thought. Of everything I expected to have to deal with—not being able to find Purla, her refusing to talk to me, even both of them being dead—I wasn’t prepared for this.

  I cradled Melisande in my arms, savoring the smell of pine and almonds from her silverlaced leaves. No sign of mottling on Purla, or in the Oasis Orchard, but everywhere on my little girl, from the muzzle of her mouth to the twiggy tips of her toes, a mottling web so dense, I’d at first mistaken it as the bark of her skin.

  “How long?” Too long, I knew already, but I had to ask.

  “It’s only been visible the last two weeks, but I think it started before. She’s never made a sound since we left Loblolly. Could it have started as long ago as that?”

  “I don’t know.” But I was afraid. Holding my only precious child, cradling her as if she were still that slippery, perfect newborn, I knelt. I was scared to try, and yet I knew I must. I extended my killing sieve.

  “Petech, don’t—”

  “Purla, by all the curses, I promise I won’t hurt her. But I have to assess the mottling.” I placed the tip of the smallest twig of her arm in my mouth, and very, very gently, bit down. Nothing, no taste, no mottling siren cry, just tacky resistance and then, a snap.

  My heart shattered into its own mottled web with the sound of that snap. Melisande was the mottling and the mottling was Melisande—there was no separate curse to kill.

  “Petech!” Purla swept her lower boughs towards me, trying to knock me back, but I pivoted away.

  “Purla, I won’t hurt her! Now let me think.” With every ounce of my heart and mind, I thought.

  Was the mottling due to her not learning to kill her own pain, like the curse-killer she was supposed to be? Or was it an inevitable outgrowth of my and Purla’s match? Or of our fighting at her birth? More to the moment, could I kill her curse without killing her? How quickly her little twigs crumbled. Could I risk trying? Could I risk not?

  All the questions circled around, as if the tempest in my mind could somehow change the choice: How could I choose between killing my own child and letting her kill the watersheds?

  Damn the curses. Damn them all. My eyes stung and I told myself it was the damn smoke from the Oasis. Damn smoke. Damn milky smoke. Where had I seen smoke like this before?

  Maybe there was a way to beat this horrible spin, and these stupid, damnable facts. I took a deep breath. “Purla, is there a Quixote in the Oasis?”

  Her aspen leaves shimmered, milky smoke curled up around her trunk. “What are you talking about, Petech? Quixotes are extinct. There hasn’t been one seen for generations.”

  “Then he and I must both be lost on a caught-heart quest.” Harsh laughter scraped my throat as I heard my momma’s voice telling me to count my curses and wipe that foolish grin off my face. My laughter flared into a forest fire threatening to burn me down where I knelt, holding my wooden daughter, trapped in her own mottling curse.

  “Stop laughing, Petech. Do you smell something burning?”

  Not my laughter. The redwood grove. Midas. The echo of an idea trying to surface deep within my mind.

  Some choices only take a breath to make.

  “Come Purla, we haven’t much time.”

  We ran, Purla’s leaves streaming behind us, maple, aspen, oak—a trail of foliage reminding me of the day Melisande was born. Melisande’s bright green gaze never left my face—the only sign of life in her mottling-strangled face.

  The redwood grove was ablaze.

  “Hurry!” Midas was halfway up the laddered redwood. I pushed Purla up a nearby tattooed giant; her exposed roots wrapped themselves tightly around the trunk. She climbed to safety above the flames, but I knew she wouldn’t leave without Melisande.

  I had only one idea, strange and perhaps impossible, but my momma’s mouth itched and I hoped it knew something I didn’t know.

  “Midas, I need you to come down.”

  Thank the curses, he didn’t question me, but hurried down.

  “There isn’t much time. Take her.” I thrust Melisande into his arms before he could object. Curses forgive me, I knew I shouldn’t ask, but with the fire blazing all around, my wife crying, my daughter’s life at stake—I didn’t know what else to do.

  “You still want that resurrection?”

  “Killing-curse-reverse. About time. But don’t you think you’d better hurry?” He grinned his unmistakable grin, waved his arms at the approaching fire.

  “This may hurt. Close your eyes, and give me your free hand.”

  He closed his eyes.

  I extended my killing sieve. I placed his thumb in one corner, one of Melisande’s small boughs in the other. I bit down. With both in my mouth, his recently mottled blood, her nearly bloodless wooden flesh, I twisted open the old tooth that ached of Midas touch—a trickle filled my mouth—gold burnished beyond sunlight fire hue of a fresh cut peach dark stars you see when you close your eyes at night—and as my mouth filled, I counted the curses we can’t kill, the ones I’ve survived—birth, breath, touch, sight, sound, smell, taste, love, thought, death—and with every breath I willed them to my daughter, so that she might have the chance to survive them too, win the long shot of being alive.

  What a froth.

  I never expected dying to take so long. But after the blended resurrection, the shared transfusion, the dual killing-curse-reverse, what will you, I lingered on in the blaze, my own limbs shining golden and I wondered if somehow I too had become a Midas, until the fire crackled, and dark smoke rose before my eyes. So thoroughly had I learned to kill pain that, moments from death, burning alive, all I felt was numbness.

  “Quest complete!” An old impossible voice cried, as milky smoke curled down from the aqueduct. A steely cataract gushed down the redwoods, followed by drifting clouds of coconut and figs, as my Quixote and his watery steed splashed down, his cirrus lance sweeping across the blazing grove, dousing the flames.

  He’d come—if he’d come at all—too late for me. My jaws still worked and words still formed, but I didn’t know how. “Purla said you were extinct.”

  “Extant indeed. As you see, at your service, caught-heart quest complete. Triumphantly I return; the wrong of your death righted, my debt discharged, and now, with your permission, I’ll be off to travel the waters, right wrongs not yet wrung.”

  Talking to a wet madman, who kept dripping on my skull, was actually rather peaceful. “May I join you in your quest now that I’m dead?”

  “No, no, no. Not dead. Right the wrong of your death, that’s what we agreed. If we right the righting, we’ll feel wrong. Besides, other quests await.” He galloped off on the roiling river of his steed, his oasis following.

  I would miss him. He always made so little sense.

  His watery departure quenched the last of the fires that had sprung up around the redwood grove. Seemed impossible that he could be the master of that much water. Where had all that water come from?

  Another echo rang through my too-slow mind.

  Damnable drought.

  Clear as curses, my momma’d died from that drought.

  If I weren’t dead, I’d have to hunt him down.

  I looked down at what had to be my corpse. The fire had incinerated my tunic, no surprise, but how odd to see my amber-freckled limbs free of burns. My mouth itched. I shouldn’t be alive, but it seemed I was. Clear as curses, no matter what else, I owed the Quixote my life. Course, even so, once I’d recovered, I’d hunt him down.

  Around me, smoke sputtered and steam rose from an ashy landscape, burnt and black but for a duo shining in the twilight. Midas and M
elisande both, shining golden bright—bright as fire embraced, survived—honeyed into a bearable curse.

  The resurrection had worked. Midas shone in his former glory as he cradled my daughter Melisande—her mottling transformed into a beautiful, but harmless, gold filigree, a shade darker than the rest of her golden skin. My gorgeous daughter. Alive. But what a cost. At least Midas would get to hold her skin-to-skin.

  “Petech?” The welcome surprise of my wife’s voice brought new tears to my eyes. I had not yet dared to think if the Quixote had been in time to save her as well.

  Purla was gingerly making her way down the charred disembarkment redwood, her branches singed, only a few leaves and fruit having survived the fire, but thank the curses, alive.

  “Purla! I thought the fire had you, for sure!” Midas stepped clear of the redwood’s trunk, making space for Purla to enter the grove. Two perfect footprints of golden grass showed where he had weathered the fire, and warned how perfectly his curse had returned.

  “The aqueduct broke. Saved us all, thank the waters,” said Purla, reaching for Melisande.

  “No, Purla!” I forced myself to my feet, staggered towards them. “Don’t touch her! She’s a Midas now.”

  “What?”

  “He’s right, Purla. You should keep clear for now. Not for long though, right, Petech? You can kill her Midas curse, just like your momma killed mine.” He danced a quick soft-shoe, turning a patch of ash gold. “Happy for my resurrection, but this little one has another fate, I’m sure.”

  “No, Midas.” I spoke slowly, for all our sakes. “Melisande will have to remain a Midas, or else the mottling will be released again—its strangling curse, killing everything she touches, until it finally kills her. This was the only way I could save her and the watersheds.”

  “I never caught the mottling.” Purla’s bare branches snapped close to my face.

  “Yes, but you’re her mother, and so immune. The rest of the watersheds are not so lucky,” I said.

  “Well, fine then. I’ll become a Midas too.” She reached out.

  “No, Purla!” I staggered between them.

  “If you touch her, you won’t become a Midas.” Midas was the one who spoke, a trail of gold ash marking his retreat to the edge of the burnt grove. “You’ll turn to gold.”

  “Fine then, I’ll be a golden walking tree.”

  “You’d walk no longer.”

  “But . . . I don’t understand.”

  I picked a golden blade of grass from Midas’ footprints, and snapped it in two. “Gold is dead.”

  “Why its kiss is so exquisite,” said Midas.

  “I’m so sorry, Purla. Sorrier than I’ll ever be able to tell you. But not much is immune from the Midas touch besides the waterways and its water. It was the only way, Purla.” I meant it as an apology, but even to my ears it sounded like a defense. “We can . . . we can hold her through silks, right, Midas?”

  “That’s right, or cotton, burlap, leaves—really anything, once she turns stuff gold, it’s safe for you to touch. Soon as we get home, we’ll get her swaddled close, then you can hold her. The gold protects you from each other.”

  “Protects us from . . . each other?” Chunks of Purla’s bark buckled.

  “It’ll be okay, Purla. Watch.” I picked another blade of glass, ran the gold along one of Melisande’s golden feet.

  Melisande laughed.

  A strong, joyous laugh that made me—well, I wouldn’t call it happy, but I couldn’t call it sad.

  “You wanna try, Purla?” I offered her the golden blade of grass.

  “No, I—I . . . ” Purla’s evergreen eyes clouded, shriveled leaves falling from her eyes. “You should never have come to Tatouage. You should have left us alone!” She whirled, her limbs and roots trembling, burnt bits of bark and fruit cascading as she fled the grove.

  Melisande whimpered.

  I started after Purla, but Melisande’s whimper turned into a howl, stopping me.

  “Petech. Petech, what should I do?” Midas held my bawling daughter on his shoulder, patting her back, trying to calm her down.

  Damn how love played roulette. I loved them all—my golden friend, my newly minted daughter, my fled wife, but mixed up in all that love was so much loss. How to go on?

  “Petech?” Midas asked.

  Melisande screeched louder.

  “Try putting your pinky in her mouth.”

  He reached around her, nuzzling his pinky into her little golden lips, but Melisande was having none of it. I thought her awful howls would surely call Purla back, but as Melisande howled and the sun slipped out of sight, no one joined us in the grove.

  I knelt on the ground, picked up the remains of a burnt fruit fallen from Purla’s boughs, and bit through the blackened skin. A plum or peach, I couldn’t tell, but some juice left. Didn’t know if its taste or comfort would survive the Midas touch, but we had to try something.

  “Give her this.” I tossed Midas the fruit.

  The fruit turned golden the instant it hit his palm, and I thought, well, that was that. But he squeezed the fruit above her wailing, open mouth, and golden juice oozed out from its now golden flesh and, thank the curses, Melisande quieted.

  Her soft suckling filled the grove, and after a moment, Midas spoke. “Never thought I’d be lucky enough to feel gold’s kiss skin-to-skin. Your daughter, she’s, she’s . . . ”

  An old tooth itched salt copper fury misspent . . . pricking regret—jealousy gone wrong. Not surprising, really, seeing my dear friend hold Melisande, knowing I would never again be able to touch my daughter skin to skin.

  But at least she was alive, I reminded myself. And so long as I didn’t succumb to the first curse I’d learned to kill, Melisande would have her own chance to count the curses, sneak the peach, win the long shot of being alive.

  This is this.

  My curse-killing sieve whirled, grievance dried sweat blood ill will . . . and three times I pureed that curse, making sure I sifted out every little bitter drop of jealousy gone wrong, before I spoke. Oh it hurt worse than any curse I’d ever learned to kill, but I was strong enough, thank the curses. “I think you mean she’s bee-yoo-ti-ful.”

  Midas almost smiled. “But motherless.”

  “Not for long. Once Purla realizes Melisande doesn’t have to be a curse-killer, she’ll think some good came out of this whole thing, and come back.” I had to hope.

  “What now, Petech?”

  Unsure what to say, I whirled and unwhirled the metal sleeve of my curse-killing mouth. Hints of coconut and fig lingered amidst the smoke. I needed to hunt the Quixote down—cut short his quest and its consequences.

  But first, there was my daughter to think about.

  “We go home. Do the best we can.” I smiled at him and Melisande and, thank the curses, none of my teeth ached.

  My hands caked with wet ash as I climbed the scorched ladder to Tatouage’s aqueduct. Beneath the sooty bark, fresh sap ran, but not a whiff of anise—the mottling had been routed. The grove would come back. Above, the golden light of the rising moon and soft gurgle of the waterways beckoned me home to Loblolly.

  One day I’ll tell Melisande about what happened tonight—who sacrificed what for her golden life, how the watersheds were threatened, and how many curses her grandmomma and I killed. Or maybe I won’t.

  Maybe instead, I’ll spin her a story of being watershed born, and how in every life, no matter where we wander, the moon drenches us in peach-hued beauty—fresh cut and familiar—lighting our way home.

  Firebrand

  Peter Watts

  It had taken a while, but the voters were finally getting used to the idea of spontaneous human combustion.

  It wasn’t, after all, as if it were really anything new. Anecdotal reports of people bursting into flame dated back to the Middle Ages at least. And if it seemed to be happening a bit more often in recent years, it was doubtless because—as the pundits pointed out—the new administration’s policy of
scrupulous and transparent record-keeping was simply more efficient at detecting those events when they occurred.

  Here for example was Ryan Fletcher, igniting in front of his whole family while watching an after-dinner episode of Death Row Death Match on his recliner. According to eyewitness reports he had lit up the single Benson-and-Hedges Gold he permitted himself each day, brought it to his lips, and breathed a sudden surprising jet of fire into the room—“just like a dragon!”, as eight-year-old Sheldon Fletcher had put it to the police not twenty minutes later. He must have belched. There was no explicit mention of that in the report, but it was the only way that oxygen could have backwashed into Fletcher’s GI tract where an estimated two-and-a-half liters of dodecane was sloshing around with the usual mix of bile, methane, and prefecal lumps.

  The resulting explosion had occurred in two stages. The first had blown open the stomach and exposed the anaerobic environs of the intestine to oxygen, catalyzing a secondary detonation that left cauterized bits of Ryan Fletcher stuck to the mirror at the end of the hall, five meters away.

  Fletcher had had no professional connection with the biofuel industry. He had, however—according to the GPS log recovered from his Subaru—passed downwind of a GreenHex facility two weeks earlier, during the time when a gasket had failed on one of their bioreactors. Fortunately, no one would ever make that connection.

  Instead, Dora Skilette decided, people would the blame the Poles.

  According to media reports, the Polish alcohol-industrial complex had experienced an unexpected renaissance of late. It was impossible to regulate. The EU had tried, with their ever-widening definitions of “toxic waste”. Exorbitant licensing fees made it all but impossible to purchase the product even in the restaurants and hotels of Poland itself— and yet it persisted, wound inextricably through the very DNA of the culture. Meaderies plied a hundred types of hooch on rickety tables in town squares; unmarked crates crossed national boundaries in search of more-forgiving environmental standards; homemade stills bubbled and dripped in every basement. Alcohol even played a prominent role in Polish justice; a traditional form of capital punishment back in Medieval times had involved forcing wine down the condemned’s throat through a tube until his guts exploded. (Some whispered that the practice persisted even now, in the remote woodlands of Lubelskie.)