The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25 (Mammoth Books) (37 page)

“Not me.”

THE DALA HORSE

Michael Swanwick made his debut in 1980, and in the thirty-one years that have followed he has established himself as one of SF’s most prolific and consistently excellent writers at short lengths, as well as one of the premier novelists of his generation. He has won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the Asimov’s Readers’ Award poll. In 1991, his novel
Stations of the Tide
won him a Nebula Award as well, and in 1995 he won the World Fantasy Award for his story “Radio Waves”. He’s won the Hugo Award five times between 1999 and 2006 for his stories “The Very Pulse of the Machine”, “Scherzo with Tyrannosaur”, “The Dog Said Bow-Wow”, “Slow Life”, and “Legions in Time”. His other books include the novels
In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, Jack Faust, Bones of the Earth,
and
The Dragons of Babel.
His short fiction has been assembled in
Gravity’s Angels, A Geography of Unknown Lands, Slow Dancing Through Time, Moon Dogs, Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary, Tales of Old Earth, Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures, Michael Swanwick’s Field Guide to the Mesozoic Megafauna,
and
The Periodic Table of Science Fiction.
His most recent books are a massive retrospective collection,
The Best of Michael Swanwick,
and a new novel,
Dancing with Bears.
Swanwick lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter. He has a website at
www.michaelswanwick.com
and maintains a blog at
floggingbabel.blogspot.com
.

Here’s another SF story that starts out reading like a fairy tale but widens out to reveal itself as a far-future SF story instead, as the young female protagonist finds herself gradually caught up in a war between entities wielding immensely powerful superscience technologies on a ruined post-apocalyptic Earth, with her only hope of survival being a seemingly innocuous toy.

S
OMETHING TERRIBLE HAD
happened. Linnéa did not know what it was. But her father had looked pale and worried, and her mother had told her, very fiercely, “Be brave!” and now she had to leave, and it was all the result of that terrible thing.

The three of them lived in a red wooden house with steep black roofs by the edge of the forest. From the window of her attic room, Linnéa could see a small lake silver with ice very far away. The design of the house was unchanged from all the way back in the days of the Coffin People, who buried their kind in beautiful polished boxes with metal fittings like nothing anyone made anymore. Uncle Olaf made a living hunting down their coffin-sites and salvaging the metal from them. He wore a necklace of gold rings he had found, tied together with silver wire.

“Don’t go near any roads,” her father had said. “Especially the old ones.” He’d given her a map. “This will help you find your grandmother’s house.”

“Mor-Mor?”

“No, Far-Mor. My mother. In Godastor.”

Godastor was a small settlement on the other side of the mountain. Linnéa had no idea how to get there. But the map would tell her.

Her mother gave her a little knapsack stuffed with food, and a quick hug. She shoved something deep in the pocket of Linnéa’s coat and said, “Now go! Before it comes!”

“Goodbye, Mor and Far,” Linnéa had said formally, and bowed.

Then she’d left.

So it was that Linnéa found herself walking up a long, snowy slope, straight up the side of the mountain. It was tiring work, but she was a dutiful little girl. The weather was harsh, but whenever she started getting cold, she just turned up the temperature of her coat. At the top of the slope she came across a path, barely wide enough for one person, and so she followed it onward. It did not occur to her that this might be one of the roads her father had warned her against. She did not wonder at the fact that it was completely bare of snow.

After a while, though, Linnéa began to grow tired. So she took off her knapsack and dropped it in the snow alongside the trail and started to walk away.

“Wait!” the knapsack said. “You’ve left me behind.”

Linnéa stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you’re too heavy for me to carry.”

“If you can’t carry me,” said the knapsack, “then I’ll have to walk.”

So it did.

On she went, followed by the knapsack, until she came to a fork in the trail. One way went upward and the other down. Linnéa looked from one to the other. She had no idea which to take.

“Why don’t you get out the map?” her knapsack suggested.

So she did.

Carefully, so as not to tear, the map unfolded. Contour lines squirmed across its surface as it located itself. Blue stream-lines ran downhill. Black roads and stitched red trails went where they would. “We’re here,” said the map, placing a pinprick light at its center. “Where would you like to go?”

“To Far-Mor,” Linnéa said. “She’s in Godastor.”

“That’s a long way. Do you know how to read maps?”

“No.”

“Then take the road to the right. Whenever you come across another road, take me out and I’ll tell you which way to go.”

On Linnéa went, until she could go no further, and sat down in the snow beside the road. “Get up,” the knapsack said. “You have to keep on going.” The muffled voice of the map, which Linnéa had stuffed back into the knapsack, said, “Keep straight on. Don’t stop now.”

“Be silent, both of you,” Linnéa said, and of course they obeyed. She pulled off her mittens and went through her pockets to see if she’d remembered to bring any toys. She hadn’t, but in the course of looking she found the object her mother had thrust into her coat.

It was a dala horse.

Dala horses came in all sizes, but this one was small. They were carved out of wood and painted bright colors with a harness of flowers. Linnéa’s horse was red; she had often seen it resting on a high shelf in her parents’ house. Dala horses were very old. They came from the time of the Coffin People who lived long ago, before the time of the Strange Folk. The Coffin People and the Strange Folk were all gone now. Now there were only Swedes.

Linnéa moved the dala horse up and down, as if it were running. “Hello, little horse,” she said.

“Hello,” said the dala horse. “Are you in trouble?”

Linnéa thought. “I don’t know,” she admitted at last.

“Then most likely you are. You mustn’t sit in the snow like that, you know. You’ll burn out your coat’s batteries.”

“But I’m bored. There’s nothing to do.”

“I’ll teach you a song. But first you have to stand up.”

A little sulkily, Linnéa did so. Up the darkening road she went again, followed by the knapsack. Together she and the dala horse sang:

Hark! through the darksome night

Sounds come a-winging:

Lo! ’tis the Queen of Light

Joyfully singing.

The shadows were getting longer and the depths of the woods to either side turned black. Birch trees stood out in the gloom like thin white ghosts. Linnéa was beginning to stumble with weariness when she saw a light ahead. At first she thought it was a house, but as she got closer, it became apparent it was a campfire.

There was a dark form slumped by the fire. For a second, Linnéa was afraid he was a troll. Then she saw that he wore human clothing and realized that he was a Norwegian or possibly a Dane. So she started to run toward him.

At the sound of her feet on the road, the man leaped up. “Who’s there?” he cried. “Stay back – I’ve got a cudgel!”

Linnéa stopped. “It’s only me,” she said.

The man crouched a little, trying to see into the darkness beyond his campfire. “Step closer,” he said. And then, when she obeyed, “What are you?”

“I’m just a little girl.”

“Closer!” the man commanded. When Linnéa stood within the circle of firelight, he said, “Is there anybody else with you?”

“No, I’m all alone.”

Unexpectedly, the man threw his head back and laughed. “Oh god!” he said. “Oh god, oh god, oh god, I was so afraid! For a moment there I thought you were . . . well, never mind.” He threw his stick into the fire. “What’s that behind you?”

“I’m her knapsack,” the knapsack said.

“And I’m her map,” a softer voice said.

“Well, don’t just lurk there in the darkness. Stand by your mistress.” When he had been obeyed, the man seized Linnéa by the shoulders. He had more hair and beard than anyone she had ever seen, and his face was rough and red. “My name is Günther, and I’m a dangerous man, so if I give you an order, don’t even think of disobeying me. I walked here from Finland, across the Gulf of Bothnia. That’s a long, long way on a very dangerous bridge, and there are not many men alive today who could do that.”

Linnéa nodded, though she was not sure she understood.

“You’re a Swede. You know nothing. You have no idea what the world is like. You haven’t . . . tasted its possibilities. You’ve never let your fantasies eat your living brain.” Linnéa couldn’t make any sense out of what Günther was saying. She thought he must have forgotten she was a little girl. “You stayed here and led ordinary lives while the rest of us . . .” His eyes were wild. “I’ve seen horrible things. Horrible, horrible things.” He shook Linnéa angrily. “I’ve done horrible things as well. Remember that!”

“I’m hungry,” Linnéa said. She was. She was so hungry her stomach hurt.

Günther stared at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. Then he seemed to dwindle a little and all the anger went out of him. “Well . . . let’s see what’s in your knapsack. C’mere, little fellow.”

The knapsack trotted to Günther’s side. He rummaged within and removed all the food Linnéa’s mother had put in it. Then he started eating.

“Hey!” Linnéa said. “That’s mine!”

One side of the man’s mouth rose in a snarl. But he shoved some bread and cheese into Linnéa’s hands. “Here.”

Günther ate all the smoked herring without sharing. Then he wrapped himself in a blanket and lay down by the dying fire to sleep. Linnéa got out her own little blanket from the knapsack and lay down on the opposite side of the fire.

She fell asleep almost immediately.

But in the middle of the night, Linnéa woke up. Somebody was talking quietly in her ear.

It was the dala horse. “You must be extremely careful with Günther,” the dala horse whispered. “He is not a good man.”

“Is he a troll?” Linnéa whispered back.

“Yes.”

“I thought so.”

“But I’ll do my best to protect you.”

“Thank you.”

Linnéa rolled over and went back to sleep.

In the morning, troll Günther kicked apart the fire, slung his pack over his shoulder, and started up the road. He didn’t offer Linnéa any food, but there was still some bread and cheese from last night which she had stuffed in a pocket of her coat, so she ate that.

Günther walked faster than Linnéa did, but whenever he got too far ahead, he’d stop and wait for her. Sometimes the knapsack carried Linnéa. But because it only had enough energy to do so for a day, usually she carried it instead.

When she was bored, Linnéa sang the song she had learned the previous day.

At first, she wondered why the troll always waited for her when she lagged behind. But then, one of the times he was far ahead, she asked the dala horse and it said, “He’s afraid and he’s superstitious. He thinks that a little girl who walks through the wilderness by herself must be lucky.”

“Why is he afraid?”

“He’s being hunted by something even worse than he is.”

At noon they stopped for lunch. Because Linnéa’s food was gone, Günther brought out food from his own supplies. It wasn’t as good as what Linnéa’s mother had made. But when Linnéa said so, Günther snorted. “You’re lucky I’m sharing at all.” He stared off into the empty woods in silence for a long time. Then he said, “You’re not the first girl I’ve encountered on my journey, you know. There was another whom I met in what remained of Hamburg. When I left, she came with me. Even knowing what I’d done, she . . .” He fished out a locket and thrust it at Linnéa. “Look!”