The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
“Where do we sleep?” I asked.
“Wherever we want,” Yamila said, her voice bell-clear. “Want to see my favorite?”
I nodded. Yamila and Diana led me to the shore, their feet leading the way, their eyes fixed on mine. The ancient pull in their gaze told me I could trust them.
There were no houses along this stretch of shore, and the only sources of light were the stars and the moon, refracted off the water in a million glimmering threads. The waves were gentle, beckoning, the air cool and fresh.
“Ready?” Yamila said.
They took my hands and led me into the water. Pulling me gently into its depths until I took a deep breath and plunged.
Diana gave me a thumbs-up under water. I could see and breathe as easily as I could on land. They taught me how to catch a fish and eat it raw, without ever rising to the surface. They led me to a series of underwater caves and I claimed a small one. I had never slept so well, or felt so safe.
Ciguapas can only be captured in a full moon, and only by a hunter accompanied by a black-and-white polydactyl dog. In captivity, ciguapas die of grief.(It won’t surprise you to learn that this does not deter the hunters.)
With a small but passionate membership, the Ciguapa Hunters of the Dominican Republic (CHDR) advertises tours of the Dominican countryside in search of the elusive monster. The group’s mascot, an Australian shepherd with an extra phalange on its front left paw, is present on every full-moon tour.
Few successful captures appear in the CHDR’s records, but hopeful hunters commission, in advance, special display boxes for their trophies, designed to preserve a specimen and slow the decomposition process.
The club attracts local men and tourists in equal numbers. Members say that they enjoy most the male comradery and friendship they find on the hunts, outings in which they say they can truly be themselves.
I visited my son at night so that Ignacio wouldn’t know. I would climb in the window and help him into bed and tuck his curly dark hair behind his ears. He would smile at me. I told him my story so that he would not forget me. How handsome my Javier was.
On one of these nights, I spoke to Javier and he began to cry. He couldn’t understand me anymore. I held his big head in my arms and tried to tell him, tried to tell him, how much I loved him.
As he grew bigger, I became even smaller. One evening, I approached the window and heard Ignacio saying to Javier, “You shouldn’t need to open the window at night, but if you do, this is where the latch is.”
I waited until he was gone and then showed my face at the window. I could see Javier in his bed. I tapped the glass. He turned his back and lay with his face against the wall until morning came and I had to go away.
I have become a sort of animal. If the books are right, my voice sounds like braying or mewling now. Some words whip around in my mouth and leave my tongue bloodied.
I am choosing, more and more, not to speak at all. But you and I, we understand each other.
Though the ciguapa can breathe comfortably under water, she is best known for her diminutive size and superhuman speed on land. This extraordinary speed not only helps the monster elude capture, it also makes her a formidable predator.
Historians disagree about the genetic provenance of the ciguapa. The written records are vexingly imprecise on the subject of ciguapic genealogy, though there have been reports of typical human women giving birth to daughters who, on reaching adulthood, transform into monsters. It is assumed, in these cases, that the women carried a recessive ciguapic gene. Some folkloric sources indicate that they are born ciguapas, while others hypothesize that ciguapas have procreated with human men, and that their descendants continue to exist among us.
Some books say that ciguapas steal newborn babies from their cribs, such is their desire for motherhood and connection to the human race.
See also: oread (mountain nymph); napaea (woodland nymph).
See also: Genu recurvatum (medical condition in which knees are in reverse position, causing a deformity in which the afflicted appear to walk backward).
See how they translate us?
Though he never let me in again, I stood at Javier’s window every night for years. I like to think my presence was a comfort to him. In nightly increments, I watched him grow up to be a quiet, sad boy, big for his age.
When my husband announced that I had run away, no one questioned him, not even my friends. Heartsick, I listened at their windows. By then, they were married, too, and kept their own houses neat. Benigna was pregnant and Laryssa was trying. She visited Benigna often, as if attempting to pick up pregnancy through osmosis.
From time to time, I hoisted myself up to the window and watched them stir sugar into their espressos. The sound of their spoons against the cups made me miss coffee. The delicious, bitter mundanity of it. The power was out, and with only a few candles lit, Benigna’s living room looked cozy and welcoming.
“It seems unlike her, doesn’t it?” Laryssa said once, after a long silence. “To leave Javier behind?”
“She really did love her baby,” Benigna said, one hand on her swollen belly.
“But Ignacio would scare anyone off. That man was a drunken brute toward the end.”
“Just the end? I’ll never forget that wedding.”
“Poor Celimena,” said Laryssa.
“What could we have done?” said Benigna, folding a paper napkin into smaller and smaller pieces with nervous fingers. “We were just girls. Her parents wanted to marry her off.”
“But so young?”
“You heard the rumors.”
“They obviously weren’t true.” Laryssa drained her cup, and placed it upside down on its saucer. “We grew up with her, Benigna. We know her. She wasn’t crazy.”
“Her grandmother disappeared, too. Whatever happened to her? I heard she lives in the woods, runs around naked, eating berries at night.”
Laryssa laughed. “Crazy like a fox. Sounds better than cooking and cleaning all day.” She lifted the coffee cup and examined the rivulets formed by the coffee grounds.
“What do you see?”
What did I tell you? We look for magic everywhere.
“I see anger,” said Laryssa slowly, as she turned the cup in her hands and examined the dregs. “A group of women. Tragedy. I don’t know what it means.”
I slipped away from the window as my best friends searched for the future in their coffee cups. I wanted to tell them that my grandmother had been captured by a hunter and that she had died of grief. But this is the saddest part of the change, losing the ability to speak.
Within a few years, Ignacio remarried to a wiry busybody named Gladys who painted her toenails neon green on my terrace every Sunday.
Together, they had two little boys and Javier seemed out of place. It was decided that he would go to New York to study English and live with Ignacio’s sister. I crouched in the bushes and listened as Ignacio made the arrangements to fly him to LaGuardia. I clawed my nails into my palms until I drew blood.
The night before Javier left, he came to the window for the first time in a long, long time and we studied each other in the moonlight. He put his palm on the glass and I put up mine.
Then he closed the curtains, but through the sheer fabric, I could see his shoulders shaking as he packed his suitcase.
Did I mention that we love riddles? Adivinanzas? Here’s one:
The one who makes it does not use it.