The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Three (95 page)

The boyfriend was an idiot and Clementine was an idiot, too. She wished she could have figured out how to dump the boyfriend before they'd got to Bucharest.

The road went over a stone bridge. What about here? the boyfriend said. We can follow the stream.

They left the car beside the road.

Raspberry canes grew up along the bridge. The boyfriend picked a handful and then threw them away. Sour, he said. I don't think we should drink the water. It's probably snow melt, but you never know.

When they stepped under the trees, Clementine held her breath. She felt that she was listening for something.

So he saved your life when you were a kid, the boyfriend said. Everything that he said came filtered through a great cone of silence.

"Twice," Clementine said. "Can you believe it?" She could not tell if she was whispering or shouting.

If you save someone's life you're responsible for it ever after. So the reason you wanted to come find him is to save him? Because nobody's heard anything from him in years?

"I don't know," Clementine said. "It's just that we're over here. It just seemed like maybe I'd run into him somehow. And you seemed like you were into it."

Yeah. I was. Hey, do you think that's the castle up there? Through the trees? We're on some kind of trail. Maybe if we just keep on going?

"Yeah. I see it. I think I see it. Are you sure it's really a castle? It might just be a rock formation."

No, it's a castle. I think it's a castle. It's not very big, the boyfriend said. How do they decide what's a castle and what's not? Like, how do you decide that something's a castle? Just because it's made out of stone and because it's old?

"I don't know," Clementine said.

Maybe we should stop and have lunch first, the boyfriend said. Then go back to the car? And drive up? I don't know if we're trespassing or not.

Far above, the canopy of leaves was shaken and shivered by a wind, but under the trees the air was heavy and cool and unmoved. The leaves underfoot smelled richly of rot. Little white mushrooms clustered in rings.

In his backpack the boyfriend was carrying the bread and cheese and beer they'd bought at the gas station. There's a clearing up ahead, he said. We can stop and eat there.

But when they came into the clearing, the boyfriend halted so abruptly that Clementine walked into him. The boyfriend stumbled forward.

Less than a yard away, two preadolescent girls lay half under a thorny bush with their arms around each other. There was blood smeared around their mouths. They were naked.

What the hell is going on here? The boyfriend put down his backpack and took his camera out. Are they okay?

There was something about the two girls that made Clementine think of Lucinda Larkin. She could see their narrow chests rising and falling. How their legs twitched, as if they were running in their dreams. Closer, much closer, here, almost at her feet, under a tree, was Cabell. He was naked and so was the woman beside him. They lay sprawled as if they had fallen from a great height. There was blood on their faces and on their bodies and there was blood matting the woman's dark hair, but she was still very beautiful.

"There's been some kind of accident," Clementine said. She couldn't imagine what had happened here, but what she felt was a kind of joy. Here was Cabell, bloodied and unconscious and alive, and here she was to rescue him. This time she would rescue him. Whatever had happened, she was meant to be here.

Clementine? the boyfriend said. He had his hands out, as if to stop from falling into the thing in front of him. A deer, she realized. Its hide peeled back in strips, the ribcage forced apart, blood and bits of entrails sticking to dirt and leaves.

Cabell's eyes opened. Clementine could have bent down and put her hand on his long, tangled hair. The bark on the tree above him was silver. It hung down in tattered flags. The woman beside Cabell, Cabell's wife, flung her arm out, as if to catch something.

It wasn't their blood after all.

Clementine said to the boyfriend, "Did you ever have an idea of how your life was supposed to go, except that you were wrong about everything?"

Clementine, the boyfriend said. He'd put his camera down at last. Clementine, I think we're in real trouble here.

Lee turns the page, but that's the end of the story about Clementine. Not an end at all. Although you can guess what's about to happen to Clementine. Or maybe, Lee thinks, she's wrong. Maybe Cabell will save Clementine again.

Lee puts the book down for one of the goats to eat.

She thinks: It's like watching one of those horror movies, where you know the person is doing something stupid and you can't stop them from doing it, you just have to go on watching them do it. Where you know that the monster is about to show up, but the person acts as if nothing is wrong. As if there is no monster.

Peter O'Toole is blowing up trains. Which makes him a bad guy even though he's a good guy, too, right? Out in the night the full moon is caught in the black spokes of the Ferris wheel. It leaches all the meadow to silver. All the goats are staring in the same direction as Lee. As if even they think the moon is beautiful. Or maybe they're wondering how to climb the Ferris wheel so they can eat the moon.

Maureen says, "I have to go to the bathroom."

"You know where it is," Lee says.

"Someone needs to go with me. It's too far away."

Dodo says, "There's a flashlight up on the wall over there."

"Bad?" Maureen says.

"Sure," Bad says. "I'll go." And if that isn't true love, Lee thinks, it's true friendship, which is probably something better.

Dodo says, "Lee? When they get back you'd better head out."

"Is it that late already?" Lee says.

"It's almost nine." Dodo shoves a goat off the couch and stands up. "I thought you knew. I'll go make some coffee. I'll put some of the pasta salad in a container. For the way back."

"Thanks," Lee says. Once again, she feels a strange reluctance to get up, as if when she leaves Peaceable Kingdom she won't be coming back for a long time. The book has put her in a strange mood. She wishes she hadn't read it. She almost wishes she hadn't brought Bad and the others here.

The goats are sneezing emphatically.

"Bless you," Lee says. "Bless you bless you bless you too."

Dodo grunts. "There must be a coyote out there."

"A what?" Lee says. "Your goats are allergic to coyotes?"

"It's like an alarm system. Goats sneeze like dogs bark," Dodo says. "Haven't I taught you anything about goats? They think there's something out there."

"You're kidding me," Lee says.

"Well," Dodo says, "sometimes they're playing around. If it's not playing around, it's probably coyotes. If it's coyotes, I go out and shoot the rifle and they take off. Hear that?"

"Hear what?" Lee says, but then she hears it. A howl, melancholy and terrible and not particularly far away.

"Hey!" someone yells from far off. Is it Maureen or Bad? Lee can't tell. "There's something out here. We're in the outhouse. It's scratching like crazy to get in. Lee? Dodo?"

"Hang on," Dodo yells back. "I'll be there in a sec."

"I'll come with you," Lee says.

"No," Dodo says. "Stay here." She kneels down and sticks her arm under the sofa where Lee is sitting. She pulls out a shotgun and a box of shells. She adds, "Don't worry. I just use the shotgun to warn them off. It's just buckshot."

Lee and the goats follow Dodo to the barn doors. "I'm going to shut these," Dodo says. "Just to keep the goats inside."

Neither Lee nor the goats are happy about this, but Dodo shuts them in anyway.

"Is someone coming?" Definitely Bad this time. "There's something out here. It's making a lot of noise."

"Hold on, ladies," Dodo calls. "I'll be there in a minute."

The goats are sneezing like crazy. "Bless you," Lee says again. She stands by the barn doors and listens. She can hear Dodo walking away from the barn. Now she hears something padding stealthily along the side of the barn. Not two feet. Four feet. Something whines and scratches at the wall, its nails clicking and catching on the flattened Coke cans.

"Dodo?" Lee yells. Her chest feels funny. Her hands are cold. Once or twice a year she has to take a pill. When she gets overexcited. Her prescription bottle is in her purse in Dodo's kitchen.

She hears Dodo say, "Shoo! Get away." There is the sound of things hitting the ground and Lee realizes that Dodo is throwing rocks. Something growls and Dodo curses. "Get away from the door, Lee, or else I can't shoot. Get the goats away from the door."

"I can't, " Lee calls. "They won't go." All of the goats are now standing at the door, bleating and sneezing and calling excitedly for Dodo to come back. They take little runs and butt at the door with their heads. "What is it?"

"Not a coyote," Dodo says. "A wolf. Between me and the barn now. There's another one here as well. Trying to sneak up on me."

"What should I do?" Lee says. Bad and Maureen yell something about coming out of the outhouse.

"Everybody stay where they are!" Dodo says loudly.

The thing at the side of the barn is scratching and pawing and digging now. Lee can hear its excited breath. There is a loud report from outside, Dodo has pulled the trigger, and inside the barn all four Tennessee Fainting Goats fall over. If only Bad were there to see them. There is a snarling and growling, a bereaved, furious howling.

"I don't like this part," the girl on the bed says. Her sister, sitting in the chair beside the window, stops reading and puts down the book.

Let's call the girl on the bed by an initial. L. Let's call the other girl C. They're sisters and they are also best friends, possibly because they don't have many opportunities to meet other girls their age.

There isn't much to do here, except walk in the woods and then read to each other in that space between twilight and when the moon rises. They order a package of books every month from an online bookseller. They spend a lot of time choosing the books. This book they chose for the cover.

Except you can't judge a book by its cover. Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl. A girl or a monster or both. Not everyone in a story gets a happy ending. Not everyone who reads a story feels the same way about how it ends. And if you go back to the beginning and read it again, you may discover it isn't the same story you thought you'd read. Stories shift their shape.

The two sisters are waiting for the moon to come up, which is not the same thing as waiting for the sun to go down. Not at all.

"It's not like you don't know what happens," C tells L. It's the third time they've read this story. C yawns so widely it seems her mouth will crack open. The tip of a long tongue pokes out between the teeth when her yawn is done. "If you don't like the ending, then why do you always ask me to read the same story?"

"It's not the ending," L says. "It's the part where I don't know who Dodo shot. I like the ending okay. I just don't like this one part."

"We don't have time to finish it tonight anyway," C says.

"If it were my ending, they would all stay friends," L says wistfully. "Czigany and Parci and Lee and everyone else. They would leave the goat farm right after lunch, and Czigany and Parci would get home in plenty of time for dinner and the moon wouldn't come up until everything was all prepared. That would be a better story."

"That wouldn't be much of a story at all. Why do you care what happens to Lee?" C says. C prefers Czigany because she is an older sister, too. "I thought you were worried about Parci getting shot, although I still don't understand why you were ever worried about it in the first place. Even when we read it the first time. It's just buckshot. It's not like Dodo's got a rocket launcher or an ax or silver bullets. I mean, come on. The only thing Dodo gets right is when she tells Lee that it's Lee and her friends who are the monsters. They are! They aren't any better than Czigany and Parci."

L thinks about this. She scratches at her arm, ruthlessly and without pleasure, as if she is itchy underneath her skin in a way that cannot be helped. "But I like Lee! And I kind of like Bad, too. Even if they are totally irresponsible. Even if they totally screw up Czigany's life."

C is out of her chair, stretching toward the open window as if she can reach out and touch the moon. L watches, feeling the change come over her, now, too. It's agony and relief all at once, itchiness so unbearable it is as if you must shrug off your whole self. Once they set up a movie camera, but their mother found it afterwards and there was terrible trouble.

"What I really hate," C pants. "Are those damn goats. Goats are vicious." C was kicked by a goat once.

Thinking of goats, L begins to salivate uncontrollably. She licks her chops. Finds whiskers. How embarrassing. What would Lee think? But there is no Lee, of course, no stupid girl named Lee. No girl named Clementine. No unhappy endings for anyone. Not yet.

There were two girls in a room. They were reading a book. Now there are two wolves. The window is open and the moon is in it. Look again, and the room is empty. The end of the story will have to wait.

Introduction

Jonathan Strahan

Exhalation

Ted Chiang

Shoggoths In Bloom

Elizabeth Bear

Uncle Chaim And Aunt Rifke And The Angel

Peter S. Beagle

Fixing Hanover

Jeff Vandermeer

The Gambler

Paolo Bacigalupi

The Dust Assassin

Ian Mcdonald

Virgin

Holly Black

Pride And Prometheus

John Kessel

The Thought War

Paul Mcauley

Beyond The Sea Gates Of The Scholar Pirates Of Sarsköe

Garth Nix

The Small Door

Holly Phillips

Turing's Apples

Stephen Baxter

The New York Times At Special Bargain Rates

Stephen King

Five Thrillers

Robert Reed

The Magician's House

Meghan Mccarron

Goblin Music

Joan Aiken

Machine Maid

Margo Lanagan

The Art Of Alchemy

Ted Kosmatka

26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss

Kij Johnson

Marry The Sun

Rachel Swirsky

Crystal Nights

Greg Egan

His Master's Voice

Hannu Rajaniemi

Special Economics

Maureen F. Mchugh

Evidence Of Love In A Case Of Abandonment: One Daughter's Personal Account

M. Rickert

From Babel's Fall'n
Glory We Fled . . .

Michael Swanwick

If Angels Fight

Richard Bowes

The Doom Of Love
In Small Spaces

Ken Scholes

Pretty Monsters

Kelly Link