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Decision Point (ARC)

Page 37

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt


  pulled up around them. The house would be proof against

  anything but a direct hit or near miss. Then the bricks would go

  from being protectors to projectiles.

  David was back, but then gone, like he’d blinked into

  existence then left. Then he was back again. Then gone. Then it

  was as if he was blinking. There, not, there, not, but the time

  between slowly decreased and then there was a David-shaped

  hole and water flooded out of it in all directions, fast and furious,

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  like a river torrent after a heavy rain.

  Even up the hill, it washed all the way up to Xareed’s knees,

  warm water, not too cold, and then it flowed away, into the

  gullies and down the hill.

  There was one more mortar flash from the bottom of the old

  lakebed before the rushing water arrived. The rush of the water

  drowned out most noise but he thought he heard distant shouts

  and cries.

  He and Millie backed further up the hill until they reached

  dry ground, then sat. Millie turned the flashlight off but the sound

  of the water was overwhelming. Xareed could even feel it

  through the ground, a thrumming vibration against the soles of

  his feet and the palms of his hands.

  The smell of it, wet and rich, permeated the air, turning the

  normally dry, searing air into a moist and heady mix of half-

  familiar smells.

  “It smells like … like rain.”

  “Yes,” agreed Millie. “Like rain after a long dry spell.”

  *

  Xareed woke to the morning light, which, magnified,

  reflected off wavelets on the surface of a lake stretching two

  kilometers to the far shore.

  He sat up and looked around. He was above the shoreline,

  barely, and his head had been pillowed on a rolled up jacket. It

  was Millie’s, he realized, but he did not remember falling asleep.

  He wondered if they’d taken him someplace far away, but

  when he looked around, the sleeping camp was stirring. People

  stood at the edge of the camp, staring at the water, taking a few

  tentative steps forward, as if they thought it was a mirage that

  would vanish when they walked toward it.

  Maybe it was. He reached out a hand and trailed his fingers

  through the water, then held them up and let them trickle into his

  mouth. An empty mortar casing bobbed on the wavelets, a few

  feet out from the shore, and he remembered the night before. He

  imagined the rebels trying to get up the wet slopes weighed down

  by their guns and mortars and ammunition, and, though he hoped

  they’d made it out, he felt confident they’d had to leave the heavy

  metal tools of war behind.

  He got up and went to see how his family was.

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  *

  It could’ve been far worse. The mortar had hit in the square,

  a stretch of empty dirt where people with things to trade or sell

  sat in the morning and where the men sat in the evening

  discussing the Qur’an. There was a small crater and shrapnel had

  killed a woman across the way, but the nearest structure was

  Xareed’s house.

  “She’s fine,” his mother said, though she kept her arm around

  his youngest sister and wouldn’t let her go play with the other

  girls.

  Xareed nodded. Awrala really was fine. She’d woken from

  the loud noise and the weight but it really hadn’t even frightened

  her. She’d been far more worried by her mother’s frantic cries

  and when her mother and grandfather had pulled her from under

  the pile of collapsed bricks, her mother had run her hands over

  and over her arms and legs and back and front, looking for some

  hurt, some wound.

  Awrala was fine but it would take some time for his mother

  to believe it.

  They were making bricks. They’d separated out the unbroken

  ones from the collapsed wall and the rest they’d thrown into the

  mortar crater. Xareed spent his time walking back and forth to

  the lake, carrying water and mud for the crater. His sisters trod

  and stirred the sludge and his grandfather formed the bricks and

  set them out in neat rows. It would take a few weeks but the wall

  would be good as ever and they were making enough bricks to

  add another room.

  He was on his way back to the lake, his back sore and the

  buckets light and empty, when Millie fell into step beside him,

  looking cool and comfortable in the heat, her eyes shaded by

  gleaming sunglasses. “Hallow,” she said, trying to say it like they

  did locally, but she still sounded foreign-alien.

  “Hello.” He tried to act relaxed but he couldn’t help looking

  at her from the corners of very wide eyes.

  “I wanted to thank you, for the other night. For helping us.”

  He shrugged. “I have been thinking that maybe, perhaps, you

  did not need help.”

  She smiled. “You didn’t know that. I don’t know that, for that

  matter. Who knows what would have happened?”

  Xareed snorted. He knew what he thought. “You are kind.”

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  “We are grateful. We could take you out of here. There is a

  large community of your people in Minnesota. In the United

  States.”

  He had heard this. It was cold there. “How many could you

  take? Could you take my sisters? My mother and grandfather?”

  Millie licked her lips. “Yes.”

  “How long would it take? The journey?”

  She half-smiled. “No time, really. A few minutes for all of

  you and your things.”

  “Then you could take all of us, yes?” He sketched his arm

  around in a large circle, encompassing the entire camp.

  She frowned. “No. I don’t think we could. People would

  come and stop us. We have enemies.”

  “The rebels? The government troops?”

  She shook her head. “Ah … no. That’s local. Our enemies

  have a very long reach. We could take your family, though.”

  He looked around. The water had changed things. There were

  waterfowl on the lake. Someone had seen fish. An NGO had

  gotten a food convoy through and, hearing of the lake, they’d

  included seeds: maize, beans, and wheat. All over the camp

  people had started gardens, putting children to work scaring off

  the birds who might eat the seed. The wells were no longer dry

  as the water from the lake seeped into the water table.

  “We are here. This is where we have come and, thanks to

  you, there is hope now. As long as the lake does not dry up

  again.” He glanced at her again and raised his eyebrows.

  She looked at the lake, her hands on her hips, and smiled.

  “Perhaps that can be avoided.”

  She flicked away and he blinked, surprised. He thought she

  would’ve said goodbye.

  He bent down to drag the buckets through the water and she

  was back. She had a Chinese parasol, bamboo and bright blue

  paper wit
h a sprinkling of red and pink flowers, and she held it

  out to him. “To replace your old parasol.”

  He took it without thinking, then said, “No.” He tried to hand

  it back to her but she stepped back and put her hands behind her

  back.

  “No, it’s yours.”

  His face contorted. He wanted the parasol with all his heart.

  He ran up over the rise and handed it to the first person he saw,

  a young girl carrying a baby on her hip.

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  He went back to the water buckets and Millie looked at him,

  then disappeared again, coming back immediately with another

  umbrella.

  This one was pink with white hyacinths. He took it from her

  and gave it to an old woman washing clothes at the water’s edge.

  He began walking with the buckets back toward the center of

  camp.

  Millie walked out from behind a tent and held out a green

  umbrella. Xareed gave it to a boy chasing a grasshopper. Millie

  stepped out from another corner with another parasol and Xareed

  gave it to a woman weaving mats out of plastic and cardboard.

  By the time they reached Xareed’s house, he’d given away

  twenty-three umbrellas and a long line of people was following

  them.

  Millie shook her head. “You are very stubborn.”

  He smiled.

  “All right, you win,” she said.

  “No more umbrellas?”

  “Not exactly.”

  *

  The word spread quickly and the lines formed at the edge of

  the square. There was much scrambling to keep the new bricks

  from being ground into the dirt. His entire family stood there,

  taking the umbrellas out of the cardboard boxes and handing

  them out and giving the boxes away, too, when they were empty.

  Then they would go into the mud brick house and bring out more

  boxes.

  “Where are they coming from?” asked his friend, Yahay.

  “Your house could not hold a tenth of those boxes.”

  “Where did the water in the lake come from? Where did the

  water in the tanks come from?” he asked back. “It is as the poet

  said, God’s Blessing are more numerous than those growing

  trees. ”

  *

  He saw Millie one more time after the crowds had been

  shown that the “miracle house” was empty once more. She was

  sitting by his grandfather, helping him pat the bricks into shape,

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  accepting feedback; laughing as the old man make invisible

  corrections to every brick she’d formed.

  Xareed crouched on his heels and watched.

  Millie looked sideways at him, “Did you take one for

  yourself?” She lifted her arm and gestured around. As far as you

  could see, the camp had blossomed with color. People were

  laughing, people were singing, and people were dancing, bright

  canopies of color twisted and whirled.

  Xareed smiled and stepped into the house and then came

  back. The shaft was from one of the broken umbrellas—you open

  enough crates and you run across some breakage—but the top

  was a circle of cardboard, cut from one of the boxes.

  Millie stared at it, her mouth dropping open. Then she fell

  onto her back and laughed and laughed.

  He stood there and watched, dignified.

  In the shade.

  Steven Gould is the author of Jumper , Wildside , Helm , Blind Waves , Reflex , Jumper: Griffin’s Story , 7th Sigma , Impulse , and Exo as well as short fiction published in Analog , Asimov’s , and

  Amazing , and other magazines and anthologies. He is the

  recipient of the Hal Clement Young Adult Award for Science

  Fiction and has been a Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, Locus List,

  and Compton Crook finalist, but his favorite distinction was

  being on the ALA’s list of Top 100 Banned Books 1990-1999.

  Steve lives in New Mexico with his wife, writer Laura J. Mixon

  (M. J. Locke) and their two daughters, two dogs, and three

  chickens. He has practiced aikido and Japanese sword for the

  last two decades, and has recently served two terms as president

  of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He can

  be found on Twitter as @stevengould and on Facebook at Steven

  Gould .

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  Our last original story written for this volume is a charming

  fantasy about a young girl who innocently rescues a fairy

  godmother and receives a wishing stone with one wish, which

  she must then decide how to use …

  G R A N T E D

  By Jody Lynn Nye

  The tiny woman leaned against the trunk of the beech tree,

  gasping. Water ran from her fine blue dress and long golden

  tresses, pooling around her delicate little shoes. She looked up at

  Abigail with green eyes larger than any woman had a right to

  have. In fact, she was downright beautiful.

  “You saved my life!”

  Abigail Baker wrung out her own skirt and the ends of her

  camisole’s sleeves. The sturdy maiden’s clothes were caked with

  flour, now turned to paste by the water. Her mouse-brown hair

  looked like the tail of a water rat, and her hands were chafed from

  climbing over the stone banks of the River Avon with the woman

  in her arm. Lucky it was a warm spring day. She’d dry quickly

  enough. She slipped her wooden clogs back on.

  “It’s all right. Thank God I saw you fall. That bridge is

  slippery, and the weir’s sucked many to their doom. Not all can

  swim. I can,” Abigail added proudly.

  “Well, you must be rewarded, girl!”

  Decision Points

  No one with any sense turned down a reward. Abigail put out

  her hand for a coin.

  Let it be silver, she thought fervently. To her outrage and

  dismay, what the petite lady placed on her palm was a blue glass

  sphere the width of her thumb.

  “What’s that? I can’t spend that!”

  “It’s a wish, my dear,” the lady said, kindly. “It’s worth more

  than any coin.”

  “Go on!” Abigail said, snorting. “Like in my nan’s stories?

  I’m not a child any more. I don’t believe in wishes.”

  “Oh, yes. You can have whatever you wish for.” The lady

  flourished her hands, and her silken gown became as dry as a

  bone and spotlessly clean. Her hair waved and flowed over her

  shoulders. “I’m a fairy godmother. I was on my way to the earl’s

  mansion to bless his new daughter.”

  Now Abigail gasped. Magic, that was what it was! She’d

  listened close to the tales, and knew all the ways of getting the

  most out of a pixie, a leprechaun or a fairy. She grinned.

  “Then, I wish for seven more wishes,” she said. Seven was a

  lucky number. But the pebble remained cold in her hand.

  “No!” the lady said, lowering her bright brows. Evidently,

  she knew all the ways, too. “One wish. That is what you may

  have. Don’t be greedy. That’s all the earl’s daughter will have,

  too. You can have anything you ask for.” />
  Abigail felt a pang of disappointment.

  “Just one thing?”

  The lady laughed, crinkling her beautiful eyes. “You can

  make the wording as complicated as you like, as long as you

  remember that everything you say will come true.”

  “What’s ‘complicated’?” Abigail asked, frowning. Sounded

  like a word the dean of the cathedral would know.

  The fairy godmother sighed.

  “Never mind. If you can say your wish in one breath, I’ll

  grant it. Now, I must go. The others will be waiting.”

  Abigail watched the fairy shimmer her way past the masons

  carving decorative capstones and segments of pillars for the new

  nave in Salisbury’s grand cathedral, where she had just brought

  bread from her father’s bakery for the men’s midday meal. More

  than one of the workers had tried to pinch Abigail. But not one

  looked up at the passing lady’s marvelous beauty. They must not

  be able to see her! Magic again! Abigail clutched her marble in

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  her fist.

  What to do with it, what to do? she pondered as she started

  toward home.

  The men could see her, all right. They leered and laughed.

  Big, black-haired Pieter Harwood tried for a kiss as she passed.

  “You’re wet as a fish,” he said.

  She pushed him back and sashayed away, swaying her hips.

  The men cat-called behind her. Pieter would be a master mason

  one day, then maybe she’d marry him. He was good-looking

  enough.

  Ah, but with the marble, Abigail could look higher than a

  mason! The earl had a son, Gwillim. He looked like a frog, but

  he’d be earl in his turn. If she wished for lots of gold, she could

  attract Gwillim’s eye. No, that wouldn’t do. Her father would

  just take it away and spend it as he chose. She might get a handful

  of silver for her dowry. She’d have to be cannier than that.

  Wishes at christening! Noblemen got so many better things

  than ordinary folk did. Abigail threw the marble into the air and

  caught it again. Here was her chance to live like a lord. The

  possibilities tumbled over and over in her mind, like kittens in a

  basket.

  Tall, narrow, fine stone houses rose on either side of the

 

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