The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016

by Paula Guran

I rushed to Dora Rose and shook her. Nothing happened. No response. Reaching out, I tackled Nicolas at the knees, yanking him to the ground and pinning him down.

  “Is she dead, Nicolas?” I seized the lapels of his motley coat and shook. “Nicolas, did you kill her?”

  “I?” he asked, staring at me in that dreadfully gentle way of his. “Perhaps. It sounds like something I might do. This world is so dangerous and cruel, and I am what it makes me. But I think you’ll find she breathes.”

  He was correct, although how he could see so slight a motion as her breath by that weird fruity light, I couldn’t say. I, for one, couldn’t see a damn thing. But when I got near enough, I could smell the life of her. Not yet reduced to so much swan meat. Not to be salted and parboiled, seasoned with ginger, larded up and baked with butter yet. Not yet.

  Oh, no, my girl. Though filthy and broken, you remain my Dora Rose.

  “Come on, Ladybird. Come on. Wake up. Wake up now.” I jostled her. I chafed her ragged wrists. I even slapped her face. Lightly. Well, not so hard as I might’ve.

  “Maybe she’s under a spell,” Possum’s scratchy voice suggested. “She told us it might happen. She’s a princess, she says. She has to play her part.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I might have known my present agony was due to Dora Rose’s inflexible adherence to tradition. Stupid swan girl. I could wring her white neck, except I loved her so. “What are we supposed to do about it, eh?”

  I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the blind girl shrug. She did not move from the shadows of the Heart Glade into the juniper’s feral light. Froggit at her feet sobbed like he would never stop.

  Greenpea rolled her wheelchair closer to us.

  “She said that Nicolas would know what to do.”

  I looked down again at Nicolas, who blinked at me. “Well?”

  “Oh. That. Well.” His face went like a red rose on fire. “You know, Maurice.”

  I’d had it. Time to show my teeth. “What, Nicolas?” I hissed. “Spit it out, wouldja? We’re working within a three-day time frame here, okay? If today turns into tomorrow, she’ll be gone. And what’ll all this be for? So say it. How do we wake her?”

  “True love’s k-kiss,” Nicolas answered, blushing more deeply and unable to meet my gaze. “It’s pretty standard when one is dealing with, with . . . royalty.”

  “Oh.” I sat back on my heels. A mean roil of jealousy and bile rose up inside me, but my next words, I’m proud to say, came out flat and even. Who said I couldn’t control my basest urges? “Okay then, Nico, hop to it. But no tongue, mind, or I’ll have it for my next meal.”

  Nicolas scooted away from me, scraping up moss in his haste. “Maurice, you cannot mean it.” He ran nervous brown fingers through his hair.

  “Nicolas,” said I, “I’ve never been more serious. No tongue—or you’ll be sleeping with one eye open and a sizeable club under your pillow the rest of your days.”

  “No, no!” He held up his hands, blocking me and Dora Rose from his view. “That’s not what I meant at all. I only meant—I can’t.”

  “You . . . what?”

  “I can’t k-ki . . . Do that. What you’re saying.” Nicolas shook his head back and forth like a child confronted with a syrupy spoonful of ipecac. His hair stood on end. His skin was sweaty and ashen. “Not on your life. Or mine. Or—or hers. Never.” He paused. “Sorry.”

  I sprang to my feet. Wobbled. Sat down promptly. Limbs, don’t fail me now. Grabbing him by the hem of his muddy trousers, I yanked him back toward me and pounced again, my hands much nearer his throat this time. “Nicolas, by the Captured God, if you don’t kiss her right this instant, I’ll . . . ”

  “He can’t, Maurice,” Greenpea said unexpectedly. She fisted my collar and pulled me off him, wheeling backward in her chair until she could deposit me, still flailing, at Dora Rose’s side. That girl had an arm on her—even after fishing drowned rats out of the Drukkamag all day. Her parents were both smiths: she, their only child. “He can’t even say the word without choking. You want someone to kiss her, you do it yourself. Leave him alone.”

  Nicolas turned his head and stared up at her, glowing at this unexpected reprieve. If he could have bled light onto his rescuer, I don’t think Greenpea’d ever get the stains out.

  “We’ve not been introduced, Miss . . . ? You are Master Froggit’s cousin, I believe.”

  “Greenpea Margissett.”

  “Nicolas of the Hill.” His mouth quirked. “Nicolas of Nowhere.”

  She frowned fiercely at him. She looked just like a schoolmarm I once knew, who laid a clever trail of crumbs right up to a rattrap that almost proved my undoing. She’s how I ended up in that pickle jar, come to think of it. Unnerving to see that same severe expression on so young a face.

  “Nicolas,” she said, very sternly, “I am not happy about the rats.”

  All that wonderful light snuffed right out of his face. Nicolas groaned. “Neither am I.” He slapped a hand hard against his chest, driving the pipe against his breastbone. “I am not happy.” Slap. “I will never be happy again.” Slap.

  With that, he crumpled on the ground next to Froggit and Dora Rose and began to retch, tearing at his hair by the fistful. Me and Greenpea watched him a while. Froggit, meanwhile, crawled over to the juniper tree and hunkered down by the roots to cry more quietly. Nothing from Possum, lost behind us in the darkness.

  Presently, I muttered to Greenpea, “We’ll get nothing more out of him till he’s cried out. It’s like reasoning with a waterspout.”

  Greenpea studied the Pied Piper, her brow creased. “He’s cracked.”

  “Got it in one.”

  “But you used him anyway?”

  I bared my teeth at her, the little know-it-all. Show her I could chew through anything—metal spokes, bandaged leg stumps, leather coat, bone.

  “Yeah. I used you, too, don’t forget. And your friends. Oh, and about half a million rats. And all those children we murdered here tonight. I used the Mayor herself against herself and made a puppet of the puppet master. I’ll tell you something else, little Rebel Greenpea—I’d do it again and worse to wake this Swan Princess now.”

  Resting her head on the back of her chair, Greenpea whispered, “It won’t.” I couldn’t tell if it was smugness or sorrow that smelled so tart and sweet on her, like wild strawberries. “Only one thing can.”

  “But it’s not—” I drew a breath. “Seemly.”

  Greenpea’s clear grey gaze ranged over the Heart Glade. She rubbed her eyes beneath her spectacles. “None of this is.”

  In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to . . .

  Not her lips, at least. That, Dora Rose’d never forgive, no matter what excuse I stammered out. No, I chose to kiss the sole of her foot. It was blackened like her mask, and webbed and beginning to curl under. If she later decided to squash me with that selfsame foot, I’d feel it was only my due. I’d let her squash me—happily. If only she’d wake.

  Beneath my lips, the cold webbing warmed. The hard toes flexed, pinkened, fleshed back to mortal feet. I bowed my head to the ground and only dared to breathe again when I felt her stir. I glanced up to see Dora Rose wholly a woman again, Greenpea putting the Pied Piper’s motley cloak over her nakedness and helping her sit up. Nicolas scrambled to hide behind the fortress of Greenpea’s wheelchair as soon as Dora Rose was upright.

  Then Dora Rose looked at me.

  And I guess I’ll remember that look, that burning, haughty, tender look, until my dying day.

  She removed her sole from the palm of my hand and slowly stood up, never breaking eye contact.

  “You’re wrapped in a dog blanket, Maurice.”

  I leaned on my left elbow and grinned. “Hellfowl, Dora Rose, you should’ve seen my outfit when they fished me outta the Drukkamag. Wasn’t wrapped in much but water, if I recall.”

  She turned a shoulder to me, and bent her glance on Greenpea. It brimmed with the sort of gratitude I’d worked my tail to the bon
e these last three days to earn, but for whatever reason, I didn’t seem to mind Dora Rose lavishing it elsewhere. Probably still aquiver from our previous eye contact.

  “You did so well, my friend.” She stooped to kiss Greenpea’s forehead. “You three were braver than princes. Braver than queens. When I hung on the juniper tree, I told the ghost inside it of your hurts—and of your help. It promised you a sure reward. But first . . . first I must hatch my brothers and sisters from their deaths.”

  Dora Rose moved through the tree’s shadow in a beam of her own light. She lifted an exhausted Froggit from the ground and returned him to his cousin. He huddled in Greenpea’s lap, face buried in her shoulder. Possum crept toward them with uncertain steps, feeling for the chair. Finding it, she sat down near one of its great wheels, one hand on Froggit’s knee, the other grasping fast to Greenpea’s fingers. She was not a big girl like Greenpea. Not much older than Froggit, really.

  They all patted one another’s shoulders and stroked one another’s hair, ceasing to pay attention to the rest of us. There was Nicolas, huddled on the ground not far from them in his fetal curl. At least he’d stopped crying. In his exhaustion, he watched the children. Something like hunger marked his face, something like envy creased it, but also a sort of lonely satisfaction in their fellowship. He made no move to infringe, only hugged his own elbows and rested his head on the moss. His face was a tragedy even I could not bear to watch.

  Where was my favorite Swan Princess? Ah.

  Dora Rose had plucked the first fruit from the juniper tree. I went over to help. Heaving a particularly large one off its branch (it came to me with a sharp crack, but careful inspection revealed nothing broken), I asked, “Now what would a big silver watermelon like this taste like, I wonder?”

  “It’s not a watermelon, Maurice.” Dora Rose set another shining thing carefully on the ground. The silver fruit made a noise like a hand sweeping harp strings. “It’s an egg.”

  “I like eggs.”

  “Maurice, if you dare!”

  “Aw, come on, Ladybird. As if I would.” She stared pointedly at my chin until I wiped the saliva away. “Hey, it’s a glandular reflex. I’ve not been eating as much as I should. Surprised I’m not in shock.”

  As Dora Rose made no attempt even at pretending to acknowledge this, I went on plucking the great glowing eggs from the juniper tree. Soon we had a nice, big clutch piled pyramid-style on the moss.

  Let me tell you, the only thing more tedious than a swan ballet is a swan hatching. You see one fuzzy grey head peeping out from a hole in a shell, you’ve seen ’em all. It takes hours. And then there’s the grooming and the feeding and the nuzzling and the nesting, and oh, the interminable domesticity. Swan chicks aren’t even cute like rat kits, which are the littlest wee things you did ever see and make the funniest noises besides. Swan chicks are just sort of pipsqueaking fluff balls.

  But Dora Rose’s silver-shelled clutch weren’t your average eggs.

  For one thing, when they burst open—which they did within minutes of being harvested—they all went at once, as if lightning smote them. Up from the shards they flew, twenty swans in total, of varying aspects and sexes.

  But all a bit, well, weird.

  When they finally came back down to the ground, in a landing that wanted nothing in grace or symmetry, I noticed what was off about them. They had no smell. Or if they did, it wasn’t a smell that matched my notion of “swan” or even of “bird.” Not of any variety. Second, as the disjointed moonlight shone through the tree branches to bounce off their feathers, I saw that though the creatures were the right shape for swans, that flew like swans and waddled like swans, there was something innately frightening about them. Impenetrable. As if a god had breathed life into stone statues, and that was what they were: stone. Not creatures of flesh and feather at all.

  It hit me then. These swans were not, in fact, of flesh and feather. Or even of stone. They were covered in hard white scales. Their coats weren’t down at all, but interlocking bone.

  Even as I thought this, they fleshed to human shape. Ivory they were, these newborn Swan Folk. Skin, hair, and eyes of that weirdly near-white hue, their pallor broken only by bitterly black mouths: lips and teeth and tongues all black together. Each wore a short gown of bone scales that clattered when they walked. Their all-ivory gazes fastened, unblinkingly, on Dora Rose.

  She reached out to one of them, crying, “Elinore!”

  But the swan girl who stepped curiously forward at the sound of her voice made Dora Rose gasp. True, she was like Elinore—but she was also like Ocelot, the gravedigger’s daughter. She wore a silver circlet on her brow. Dora Rose averted her face and loosed a shuddering breath. But she did not weep. When she looked at the girl again, her face was calm, kindly, cold.

  “Do you have a name?”

  Elinore-Ocelot just stared. Tentatively, she moved closer to Dora Rose. Just as tentatively, knelt before her. Setting her head against Dora Rose’s thigh, she butted lightly. Dora Rose put a hand upon the girl’s ivory hair. Nineteen other swanlings rushed to their knees and pressed in, hoping for a touch of her hand.

  I couldn’t help myself. I collapsed, laughing.

  “Maurice!” Dora Rose snapped. “Stop cackling at once!”

  “Oh!” I howled. “And you a new mama twenty times over! Betcha the juniper tree didn’t whisper that about your fate in all the time you hung. You’d’ve lit outta the Heart Glade so fast . . . Oh, my heart! Oh, Dora Rose! Queen Mother and all . . . ”

  Dora Rose’s eyes burned to do horrible things to me. How I wished she would! At the moment though, a bunch of mutely ardent cygnets besieged her on all sides, and she had no time for me. Captured God knew they’d start demanding food soon, like all babies. Wiping my eyes, I advised Dora Rose to take her bevy of bony swanlets back to Lake Serenus and teach them to bob for stonewort before they mistook strands of her hair for widgeon grass.

  Tee hee.

  Shooting one final glare my way, Dora Rose said, “You. I’ll deal with you later.”

  “Promise?”

  “I . . . ” She hesitated. Scowled. Then reached her long silver fingers to grab my nose and tweak it. Hard. Hard enough to ring bells in my ears and make tears spurt from my eyes. The honk and tug at the end were especially malevolent. I grinned all over my face, and my heart percussed with bliss. Gesture like that was good as a pinkie swear in Rat Folk parlance—and didn’t she know it, my own dear Dora Rose!

  Out of deference, I “made her a leg”—as a Swan Prince might say. But my version of that courtly obeisance was a crooked, shabby, insolent thing: the only kind of bow a rat could rightly make to a swan.

  “So long then, Ladybird.”

  Dora Rose hesitated, then said, “Not so long as last time—my Incomparable Maurice.”

  Blushing ever so palely and frostily (I mean, it was practically an invitation, right?), she downed herself for flight. A beautiful buffeting ruckus arose from her wings as she rocketed right out of the Heart Glade. Twenty bone swans followed her, changing from human to bird more quickly than my eye could take in. White wind. Silver wings. Night sky. Moonlight fractured as they flew toward Lake Serenus.

  Heaving a sigh, I looked around. Nicolas and the three children were all staring up at the tree.

  “Now what? Did we forget something?”

  The juniper tree’s uppermost branches trembled. Something glimmered high above, in the dense green of those needles. The trembling became a great shaking, and like meteors, three streaks of silver light fell to the moss and smoked thinly on the ground. I whistled.

  “Three more melons! Can’t believe we missed those.”

  “You didn’t,” Nicolas replied, in that whisper of his that could break hearts. “Those are for the children. Their reward.”

  “I could use a nice, juicy reward about now.”

  He smiled distractedly at me. “You must come to my house for supper, Maurice. I have a jar of plum preserves that you may eat.
And a sack of sugared almonds, although they might now be stale.”

  How freely does the drool run after a day like mine!

  “Nicolas!” I moaned. “If you don’t have food on your person, you have to stop talking about it. It’s torture.”

  “I was only trying to be hospitable, Maurice. Here you go, Master Froggit. This one’s singing your song.”

  I couldn’t hear anything. Me, who has better hearing than anyone I know! But Nicolas went over, anyway, and handed the first of the silver eggs to Froggit. It was big enough that Froggit had to sit down to hold it in his lap. He shuddered and squirmed, but his swollen eyes, thank the Captured God, didn’t fill up and spill over again.

  To Possum, Nicolas handed a second egg. This one was small enough to fit in her palms. She smoothed her hands over the silver shell. Lifting it to her face, she sniffed delicately.

  Into Greenpea’s hands, Nicolas placed the last egg. It was curiously flat and long. She frowned down at it, perplexed and a bit fearful, but did not cast it from her. Each of the shells shivered to splinters before Nicolas could step all the way back from Greenpea’s chair.

  Possum was the first to speak. “I don’t understand,” she said, fingering her gift.

  “Hey, neat!” I said, bending down for a look. “Goggles! Hey, but don’t see why you need ’em, Miss Possum. Not having, you know, eyes anymore. Can’t possibly wanna shield them from sunlight, or saltwater, or whatever. For another, even if you did, these things are opaque as a prude’s lingerie. A god couldn’t see through them.”

  “That is because they are made of bone, Maurice,” Nicolas said. “Try them on, Miss Possum. You will see.”

  Her lips flattened at what she took to be his inadvertent slip of the tongue. But she undid the bandage covering her eyes and guided the white goggles there. She raised her head to look at me. An unaccountable dread seized me at the expression on her face.

  “Oh!” Possum gasped and snatched the goggles from her head, backhanding them off her lap like they were about to grow millipede legs and scuttle up her sleeve. “I saw—I saw—!”

  Greenpea grabbed her hand. “They gave you back your eyes? But isn’t that . . . ?”