The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

Her husband died in the night after a long illness. Asvi slept through it, exhausted by two years of his decline into wasted helplessness. Waking, she knew at once he had breathed his last. The bedchamber, with its curtained bed and painted wardrobes, felt one soul emptier, flown to the mountains of everlasting morning.

She didn’t touch him, just swung her legs off the bed and got to her feet. Her body ached the way it always did now in the morning. She shuffled over to the closed window, feeling an almost choking need for fresh air despite the bundles of herbs hanging from the rafters to sweeten the smell of dying.

As she opened the shutters, she lifted her eyes to the horizon with a sense of relief. He’d been a good enough man, as men went. She’d been fortunate her father had arranged a match for her with a man who wasn’t ruled by his temper, although more likely that had been an accident. Her father’s main concern had been sealing an alliance that would worm him securely into the wool trade. Her husband had not complained much, had hit her only twice and even apologized for it once, and had generously allowed her to hire a second maid for the kitchen as she got older.

Dawn spilled light over a cloudless sky. The eastern mountains rose stark in the distance. She stood gazing at them for far longer than she usually had a chance to do. For the first time in her entire married life she had no one she had to tend to, no porridge to cook at dawn and meals to prepare for later, no child’s clothing to mend that had gotten torn the day before, no invalid’s bedpan to empty. No reason she was required to turn away from the splendid vista that had hung beyond her reach for her entire life.

Sparks drew long to become dancing threads of gold and silver and bronze. The dragons were flying over the peaks and spires of the Great Divide, as they did at dawn and dusk, too big not to see and too far away to see properly. But they were always magnificent and deadly. Like the eastern massif, they were a barrier no one could cross.

The latch of the bedchamber door rattled softly before the door cracked open.

Feloa spoke in a whisper. “Mistress? Are you awake? Your son is concerned because you’re not in the kitchen yet.”

Asvi turned as the door opened farther on well-oiled hinges. An older woman took a step into the room. She was dressed in a drab gray-green skirt with a work apron tied over a faded blouse.

“He’s dead,” Asvi said.

“Ah.” Feloa’s gaze flashed toward the bed, whose curtains were tied back for the summer months. The shape lay under the blanket like the topography of a broken hill. A white sleeping cap hugged the unmoving head. “Shall I tell your son? He is the master now.”

A great lethargy settled on Asvi. Even to think of dressing seemed as impossible as climbing the eastern mountains to look over the wilderness of demons said to lie beyond the stony peaks.

Feloa’s eyes widened. “Mistress, you must sit down.”

She steered Asvi to the dressing table and its birch-back chair. Asvi sat obediently. The mirror was shrouded, since vanity could never be tolerated in a house where the master was dying.

“Stay there, mistress.”

Feloa walked to the bed and held the bedside glass with its water over the dead man’s nose and slightly parted lips, now tinged blue-gray. When it was clear he was no longer breathing, she set down the glass and went out. Asvi heard her descending the stairs, heard voices in the entry, heard the front door close. Maybe she dozed, because the next thing she knew, Feloa was back.

“He’s gone to the temple, mistress. Let me help you dress before he returns with the priest-magistrate.”

Asvi pressed a hand against Feloa’s sleeve. Words welled up from an urgent spring.