The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  Jack said, “We agreed—”

  “No! You agreed. You gave the order. The great Jack Shade the Traveler. I won’t live like this anymore. My husband and my daughter don’t get to boss me around in my own kitchen.”

  Jack turned to Eugenia. In that same steady voice he said, “Genie, I need to talk to your mother. Please leave the kitchen.”

  His daughter laughed. “Whatever,” she said, and moved from the doorway. Then, “Nah, I think I’ll stay,” and she went back to where she’d been standing. “This is too much fun.”

  Layla said, “Goddamn it, do what your father says. I don’t care what thing you’ve got inside you. You’re fourteen years old and he’s your father. If he tells you to do something you do it.”

  “Please,” Jack said. Later he would wonder if he’d been speaking to his wife, his daughter, or the “thing.” It didn’t matter. None of them was listening.

  A pot flew past Jack’s head to hit the wall opposite the stove. Hot tomato sauce spilled down to cover a framed photo of the three of them at Disneyland when Eugenia was seven.

  Layla screamed. Eugenia jumped up and down and clapped her hands. “Good one!” she said. “Let’s see what else we can do.”

  “Genie!” Jack cried. “This isn’t you. You can fight it.”

  “Why?” she said. “It’s fun.”

  Then the knives started. They came at Jack, all different sizes, end over end or straight toward him. He flailed his arms like a windmill, spraying blood even as he batted most of them away. It was the smaller ones that got through his defense. Two small paring knives and a long-tined fork caught his right jaw and the side of his neck.

  And then it was over. Jack was on his knees, his left hand pressed against his neck to stanch the blood. He saw his daughter first. She stood frozen in the doorway, ludicrous in her cheerful red dress, her mouth open but unable to make a sound. He looked at her for a long time, afraid to turn his head. When he finally did he saw his wife, and there she was, his beloved Layla, on the floor in a thick puddle of blood. The vegetable cleaver that lay next to her had cut right through her jugular. He crawled over to her and cradled her empty body.

  “Daddy,” Eugenia whispered. “I didn’t—it wasn’t—”

  “I know, baby,” Jack said. “It wasn’t you. It’s not your fault.”

  Eugenia said, “Help me. I don’t think I can hold it.” The knives had begun to swirl around her legs, a few inches from the floor.

  “I know,” Jack said again. His voice wet, he called out, “I, Jack Shade, invoke my vow. I demand payment!”

  “Daddy?” Eugenia said. “What are you doing?”

  Ignoring her, Jack said, “Take her somewhere. Somewhere safe, where she can’t hurt anyone.”

  For months afterward Jack would wonder—did he want what happened? Was he trying to punish her? He would lie in bed and try to bring back that exact moment. He could never decide.

  A door appeared in the room. Stone, unmarked. “Oh my God,” Jack whispered. Then, “No! That wasn’t what I meant.”

  Eugenia just stood there, looking up at the door that somehow stood taller than the room. Jack called out, “Genie. Get away from it. You don’t have to go there.” But she didn’t move, and neither did her father, though he fought to get up against an invisible hand that pressed him to the floor, even as he yelled to his daughter to run.

  The door swung open, and Jack heard the Forest before he saw it—wind first, then voices, swirls of hushed voices. As it opened wider, so that his daughter stood framed in clouds of trees, Jack tried once more to move, but now he couldn’t even speak, not to tell Eugenia to fight, not to try once more to take back his vow. He could only watch as his daughter walked, robot-like, into the world of whispers.

  And then the door closed, and a moment later vanished, and he was all alone, Jack Shade with his dead wife in his arms—Johnny Lonesome, on the floor of a kitchen covered in blood.

  TWO HOUSES

  KELLY LINK

  Kelly Link [www.kellylink.com] published her first story, “Water Off a Black Dog’s Back,” in 1995 and attended the Clarion Writers Workshop in the same year. A writer of subtle, challenging, sometimes whimsical fantasy, Link has published close to thirty stories which have won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, British SF, and Locus awards, and been collected in 4 Stories, Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. Link is also an accomplished editor, working on acclaimed small press ’zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and publishing books as Small Beer Press with husband Gavin J. Grant, as well as co-editing The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series with Grant and Ellen Datlow.

  Wake up, wake up.

  Portia is having a birthday party. The party will start without you. Wake up, Gwenda. Wake up. Hurry, hurry.

  Soft music playing. The smell of warm bread. She could have been back home, how many houses ago? In her childhood bed, her mother downstairs baking bread. The last sleeper in the spaceship House of Secrets opened her eyes, crept from her narrow bed. She rose up, or fell, into the chamber.

  The chamber too was narrow and small. It was made up of soft pink light, invisible drawers, bed and chambers, all of them empty. The astronaut Gwenda stretched out her arms, scratched her head. Her hair had grown out again. She dreamed, sometimes, of a berth filled with masses of hair. Years and decades and centuries passing while the dreamer slept beneath that strangling weight.

  Now there was the smell of old paper. The library where Gwenda had spent summers as a child, reading fairy tales. Maureen was in her head, looking at old books with her. Monitoring her heart rate, the dilation of her pupils, each flare of her nostrils. Maureen was the ship, the House and the keeper of all its Secrets. A spirit of the air; a soothing subliminal hum; an alchemical sequence of smells and emanations.

  Gwenda inhaled. Stretched again, then slowly somersaulted. Arcane chemical processes began within her blood, her nervous system.

  This is how it was aboard the spaceship House of Secrets. You slept and you woke up and you slept again. You might sleep for a year, for five years. There were six astronauts. Sometimes others were already awake. Sometimes you spent a few days, a few weeks alone. Except you were never really alone. Maureen was always there. She was there with you, sleeping and waking. She was inside you too.

  Everyone is waiting for you in the Great Room. There’s roasted carp. A chocolate cake.

  “A tidal smell,” Gwenda said, trying to place it. “Mangrove roots, and the sea caught in a hundred places at their roots. I spent a summer in a place like that.

  You arrived with one boy and you left with another.

  “So I did,” Gwenda said. “I’d forgotten. It was such a long time ago.”

  A hundred years.

  “That long!” Gwenda said.

  Not long at all.

  “No,” Gwenda said. “Not long at all.” She touched her hair. “I’ve been asleep…”

  Seven years this time.

  “Seven years,” Gwenda said.

  The smell of oranges, a whole grove of them. Other smells, pleasant ones, ones that belonged to Mei and Sullivan and Aune and Portia. Sisi. All of their body chemistries altered, adjusted for harmonious relationships. They were, of necessity, a convivial group.

  Gwenda threw off the long sleep. Sank toward the curve of the bulkhead, pressing on a drawer. It swung open and in she went to make her toilet, to be poked and prodded and injected, lathered and sluiced. She rid herself of the new growth of hair, the fine down on her arms and legs.

  So slow, so slow, Maureen fretted. Let me get rid of it for you. For good.

  “One day,” Gwenda said. She opened her log, checked the charts on her guinea pigs, her carp.

  This is why you are last again. You dawdle. You refuse to be sensible in the matter of personal grooming. Everyone is waiting for you. You’re missing all of the fun.

  “Aune has asked for a Finnish disco or a Finnish bar or a Finnish sauna. Or the Northern Ligh
ts. Sullivan is playing with dogs. Mei is chatting up movie stars or famous composers, and Portia is being outrageous. There are waterfalls or redwood trees or dolphins,” Gwenda said.

  Cherry blossoms. The Westminster dog show. 2009. The Susex Spaniel Clussex Three D Grinchy Glee wins. And Sisi is hoping you will hurry. She wants to tell you something.

  “Well,” Gwenda said. “I’d better hurry then.”

  Maureen went before and after, down Corridor One. Lights flicked on, then off again so that the corridor fell away behind Gwenda in darkness. Was Maureen the golden light ahead or the darkness that followed behind? Carp the size of year old children swam in the glassy walls. Gwenda stopped now and then to watch.

  Then she was in the Galley, and the Great Room was just above her, and long-limbed Sisi poked her head through the glory hole. “New tattoo?”

  It was an old joke between them.

  Head to toes Gwenda was covered in the most extraordinary pictures. There was a Durer and a Dore; two Chinese dragons and a Celtic cross; there was a winged man holding a rat-headed baby; the Queen of Diamonds ripped into eight pieces by a pack of wolves; a green-haired girl on a playground rocket; the Statue of Liberty and the State Flag of Illinois; passages from Lewis Carroll and the Book of Revelations and a hundred other books; a hundred other marvels. There was the spaceship House of Secrets on the back of Gwenda’s right hand, and its sister House of Mystery on her left.

  Sisi had a pair of old cowboy boots, and Aune had an ivory cross on a gold chain. Her mother had given it to her. Sullivan had a copy of Moby Dick, Portia a four-carat diamond in a platinum setting. Mei brought her knitting needles.

  Gwenda had her tattoos. Astronauts on the Long Trip travel lightly.

  Hands pulled Gwenda up and into the Great Room, patted her back, her shoulders, rubbed her head. Here feet had weight. There was a floor, and she stood on it. There was a table, and on the table was a cake. Familiar faces grinned at her.

  The music was very loud. Silky coated dogs chased white petals.

  “Surprise!” Sisi said. “Happy birthday, Gwenda!”

  “But it isn’t my birthday,” Gwenda said. “It’s Portia’s birthday. Maureen?”

  Today is your birthday, Maureen said.

  “But it was my idea,” Portia said. “My idea to throw you a surprise party.”

  “Well,” Gwenda said. “I’m surprised.”

  Come on, Maureen said. Come and blow out your candles.

  The candles were not real, of course. But the cake was.

  It was the usual sort of party. They all danced, the way you could only dance in micro gravity. It was all good fun. When dinner was ready, Maureen sent away the Finnish dance music, the dogs, the cherry blossoms. You could hear Shakespeare say to Mei, “I always dreamed of being an astronaut.” And then he vanished.

  Once there had been two ships. It was considered usual practice, in the Third Age of Space Travel, to build more than one ship at a time, to send companion ships out on their long voyages. Redundancy enhances resilience. Sister ships Seeker and Messenger, called House of Secrets and House of Mystery by their crews, left Earth on a summer day in the year 2059.

  House of Secrets had seen her twin disappear in a wink, a blink. First there, then nowhere. That had been thirty years ago. Space was full of mysteries. Space was full of secrets.

  Dinner was Beef Wellington (fake) with asparagus and new potatoes (both real) and sourdough rolls (realish). The experimental chickens were laying again, and so there were poached eggs, too, as well as the chocolate cake. Maureen increased gravity, because even fake Beef Wellington requires suitable gravity. Mei threw rolls across the table at Gwenda. “Look at that, will you?” she said. “Every now and then a girl likes to watch something fall.”

  Aune supplied bulbs of something alcoholic. No one asked what it was. Aune worked with eukaryotes and Archaea. “I made enough to get us lit,” she said. “Just a little lit. Because today is Gwenda’s birthday.”

  “It was my birthday just a little while ago,” Portia said. “How old am I anyway? Never mind, who’s counting.”

  “To Portia,” Aune said. “Forever youngish.”

  “To Proxima Centauri,” Sullivan said. “Getting closer every day. Not that much closer.

  “Here’s to all us Goldilocks. Here’s to a planet that’s just right.”

  “Here’s to a real garden,” Aune said. “With real toads.”

  “To Maureen,” Sisi said. “And old friends.” She squeezed Gwenda’s hand.

  “To our House of Secrets,” Mei said.

  “To House of Mystery,” Sisi said. They all turned and looked at her. Sisi squeezed Gwenda’s hand again. They drank.

  “We didn’t get you anything, Gwenda,” Sullivan said.

  “I don’t want anything,” Gwenda said.

  “I do,” Portia said. “For starters, a foot rub. Or wait, I know! Stories! Ones I haven’t heard before.”

  “We should go over the log,” Aune said.

  “The log can lie there,” Portia said.

  “The log can wait,” Mei agreed. “Let’s sit here a while longer, and talk about nothing.”

  Sisi cleared her throat. “There’s just one thing,” she said. “We ought to tell Gwenda the one thing.”

  “You’ll ruin her birthday party,” Portia said.

  “What?” Gwenda asked Sisi.

  “It’s nothing,” Sisi said. “Nothing at all. Only the mind playing tricks. You know how it goes.”

  “Maureen?” Gwenda said. “What are they talking about, please?”

  Maureen blew through the room, a vinegar breeze. “Approximately thirty-one hours ago Sisi was in the Control Room. She performed several usual tasks, then asked me to bring up our immediate course. I did so. Twelve seconds later, I observed that her heart rate had gone up. When I asked her if something was wrong, she said, ‘Do you see it, too, Maureen?’ I asked Sisi to tell me what she was seeing. Sisi said, ‘House of Mystery. Over to starboard. It was there. Then it was gone.’ I told Sisi I had not seen it. We called back the visuals, but nothing was recorded there. I broadcast on all channels. No one answered. No one has seen House of Mystery in the intervening time.”

  “Sisi?” Gwenda said.

  “It was there,” Sisi said. “Swear to God, I saw it. Like looking in a mirror. So near I could almost touch it.”

  They all began to talk at once.

  “Do you think—

  “Just a trick of the imagination—

  “It disappeared like that. Remember?” Sullivan snapped his fingers. “Why couldn’t it come back again the same way?”

  “No!” Portia said. She glared at them all. “I don’t want to talk about this, to rehash all this again. Don’t you remember? We talked and talked and we theorized and we rationalized and what difference did it make?”

  “Portia?” Maureen said. “I will formulate something for you, if you are distraught.”

  “No,” Portia said. “I don’t want anything. I’m fine.”

  “It wasn’t really there,” Sisi said. “It wasn’t there and I wish I hadn’t seen it.” There were tears in her eyes. One fell out and lifted slowly away from her cheek.

  “Had you been drinking?” Sullivan said. “Maureen, what did you find in Sisi’s blood?”

  “Nothing that shouldn’t have been there,” Maureen said.

  “I wasn’t high, and I hadn’t had anything to drink,” Sisi said.

  “But we haven’t stopped drinking since,” Aune said. She tossed back another bulb. “Maureen sobers us up and we just climb that mountain again. Cheers.”

  Mei said, “I’m just glad it wasn’t me who saw it. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore either. Not right now. We haven’t all been awake like this for so long. Let’s not fight.”

  “That’s settled,” Portia said. “Bring up the lights again, Maureen, please. I’d like something fancy. Something with history. An old English country house, roaring fireplace, suits of armor,
tapestries, bluebells, sheep, moors, detectives in deerstalkers, Cathy scratching at the windows. You know.”

  “It isn’t your birthday, you know,” Sullivan said. “Not anymore. It’s Gwenda’s.”

  “I don’t care,” Gwenda said, and Portia blew her a kiss.

  That breeze ran up and down the room again. The table sank back into the floor. The curved walls receded, extruding furnishings, two panting greyhounds. They were in a Great Hall instead of the Great Room. Tapestries hung on plaster walls, threadbare and musty, so real that Gwenda sneezed. There were flagstones, blackened beams. A roaring fire. Through the mullioned windows a gardener and his boy were cutting roses.

  You could smell the cold rising off stones, the yew log upon the fire, the roses and the dust of centuries.

  “Halfmark House,” Maureen said. “Built in 1508. Queen Elizabeth came here on a progress in 1575 that nearly bankrupted the Halfmark family. Churchill spent a weekend in December of 1942. There are many photos. Additionally, it was once said to be the second-most haunted manor in England. There are three monks and a Grey Lady, a White Lady, a yellow fog, and a stag.”

  “It’s exactly what I wanted,” Portia said. “To float around like a ghost in an old English manor. Could you turn gravity off again, Maureen?”

  “I like you, my girl,” Aune said. “But you are a strange one.”

  “Of course I am,” Portia said. “We all are.” She made a wheel of herself and rolled around the room. Hair seethed around her face in the way that Gwenda hated.

  “Let’s each pick one of Gwenda’s tattoos,” Sisi said. “And make up a story about it.”

  “Dibs on the phoenix,” Sullivan said. “You can never go wrong with a phoenix.”

  “No,” Portia said. “Let’s tell ghost stories. Aune, you start. Maureen can provide the special effects.”

  “I don’t know any ghost stories,” Aune said, slowly. “I know stories about trolls. No. Wait. I have one ghost story. It was a story that my great-grandmother told about the farm in Pirkanmaa where she grew up.”

  The Great Room grew dark until all of them were only shadows, floating in shadow. Sisi wrapped an arm around Gwenda’s waist. Outside the mullioned windows, the gardeners and the rose bushes disappeared. Now you saw a neat little farm and rocky fields, sloping up toward the twilight bulk of a coniferous forest.