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.
She went out.
To sit in the empty parlor was a luxury Asvi had rarely experienced. She savored it now, knowing it would not last long. The demon eyes stared at her from the glass cupboard. People said their eyes never stopped seeing, even when they were dead, not once they had been wakened by a glimpse of prey. The eyes were Meklos’s pride and glory. People respected him for having the courage to keep such a collection within his own house. He had liked to handle them while wearing gloves, entertaining visitors with ghastly descriptions of how each had been acquired. The physic who had treated him over the last two years had informed the dying man that he’d been poisoned by handling the eyes. Yet toward the end Meklos had whispered, in a tone of thick and almost erotic passion, that even so, this withering and painful decline had been worth it, to have seen what he had seen. These claims were nothing more than the ravings of a dying man, the physic had explained to her, and Meklos had never described his visions.
She never touched the eyes. Once, as a girl, up in the foothills, she’d seen a living demon as it plunged in to attack a herd of sheep, its eyes blazing with a venomous light as an acrid, ashy mist poured from its upper mouth like spilled tea to scald and slay the terrified sheep as well as her favorite brother, boiled alive. Just as its blazing eyes saw her, just as it turned toward her to boil her, too, a dragon had come diving out of the clouds with no warning except a stinging pressure of hot wind. The great beast had marked her with a single, slow look, like honey oozing over a wound. But it didn’t care about her; she was nothing, just a human girl, of no more interest than the bleating sheep. It clamped its gleaming claws over the demon and carried it away into the heavens. If she’d had wings, she’d have flown after it right then, before the weight of the world trapped her on the dull earth.
Through the open door she heard Elilas make polite farewells to the magistrate. The front door closed, leaving the two in the entryway.
In a low voice, barely heard through the open door, Danis said to her husband, “They’re corrupt, the whole lot of them. He’ll pocket half and give the rest to the priest-adjudicator.”
“What can we do? They rule the prince, and the prince rules us.”
“We shall see.”
“Danis!”
“Shhh. You know I’m right. I can’t believe you hesitated like that. Your own mother!”
“It’s a lot of money, and she’s old.”
“ ‘She’s old!’ Is that what you’ll say about me someday?”
“You! Of course not. You’re—”
“I’m splendid and elegant and just disreputable enough to be respected by everyone, not mousy and browbeaten and obedient, and born in the foothills among the sheep, to boot! Your father was bad enough, treating her like a servant and never appreciating the inventive and delicious meals she cooked his whole life. Have you any idea what a treasure she is? I would trade any cook in this city for her. Even the prince’s cook. What do you think of that? And never a word of complaint about having to sleep in that horrible room up in the tower all these years next to the whining, selfish man who complained if she added any scrap of flavoring to his bland porridge.”
“Danis!”
“I’m just repeating your own words, darling. Don’t try to throw them back in my face. He browbeat you, too. No wonder your brothers fled as far away as they could go once they were of age. You’re just fortunate I took a liking to you.”
His voice softened to a teasing tone. “Why did you take a liking to me, my sweet?”
“That would be telling,” she said with a laugh. “Come now. Give your poor mother the bracelet before the magistrate decides to come back and squeeze more coin out of you. He saw your hesitation. You know what they say at the temple. Times are hard, and the dragons need offerings.”
“I would never!”
“You would never, right up until you would.”
“Vesti and Pos would never forgive me.”
“As well they should not. We would lose all face in the community if we let her be taken for the long walk. Did you even think of that?”
“Of course I wouldn’t let her be taken, my sweet. I was just shocked at how much he demanded.”
“Because he is ruled by greed and free to take what he wants because the prince protects the magistrates because they protect him. If we have a fourth boy, I’ll pledge him into the temple and with my tutoring he’ll shake things up!”
Elilas laughed nervously.
“Enough of this, darling,” Danis added. “It’s settled, and she’s safe. Let’s go back in.”
Their footsteps approached. Asvi folded her hands in her lap and said nothing as they came in. She liked for people to assume she was as hard of hearing as Meklos had been the last few years. Elilas entered the room and crossed to her. He stiffly held out a bracelet of polished obsidian and carnelian beads strung together on a silver chain.
“Your family vouches for you, Mother. With this tithe signified by this bracelet, we take on the responsibility of caring for you even though you can no longer bear sons and are too weak to ease the burdens men carry in this harsh world.”
A flash of ire twitched at the corner of Danis’s eyes as she gave a sardonic smile. But she said nothing and made no retort. What retort could there be?
In the entry hall, Herel began admitting visitors who’d come to pay their respects. The first were the neighbors along the street who had seen the magistrate arrive and depart. As word spread, more arrived. Bavira brought a tray of pancakes, quickly consumed, and Danis sent out to a bakery for five trays of rosebud cakes. It seemed blasphemous to Asvi to serve cakes bought at a shop to visitors in her own home. But she was just too tired, and anyway it was no longer her place. Danis would make such decisions from now on. A stronger mother-in-law would have ruled her son’s wife, as Asvi had been ruled for years, but no one ruled Danis. Asvi could not imagine even trying.
Her youngest brother arrived with a pair of actors in tow. While much of the family still lived and herded in the foothills, he was a city man now, a playwright educated with the money brought in by their new trading connections. The bright gold sash slimming his torso and his hair plaited to look like dragon scales gave him the flair of a man of fashion. He greeted Elilas first, of course, then lingered longer, speaking to Danis in bent-headed confidences, before coming over.
“You should do your hair differently, Asvi,” he said with a brotherly kiss to her cheek. “This style is so outdated and never suited you anyway. Let me see it.”
She gazed at him blankly, trying to sort out what “it” was. For an instant she could not even recall his name.
Belek! As a girl she’d had most of the household chores and the childminding to do, with her mother ill for long stretches after each of her pregnancies. Little Belek had just learned to walk when her father had taken her downslope to try his luck with her on the marriage market in the flatlands.
Belek took hold of her wrist and examined the bracelet. “Those are fine-quality beads. They’d have lost face if they’d not paid the tithe for you.”
“He’s my son!”
“Sons have discarded mothers before this. Or lost them through no fault of their own.”
They exchanged a look, for, however little they understood each other’s lives, they shared the knowledge of how their father had lost his own mother in this way, as he had reminded Asvi constantly as she grew into marriageable age. His father—Asvi’s grandfather—had died when her father was still a boy. He’d been the eldest of the surviving children and thus the one responsible, since, at sixteen, he was considered a man. His mother had no surviving brothers or father, and her male cousins lived too far away to care. When he hadn’t had enough to pay the tithe, his mother had been taken by the temple and sent up the long walk into the eastern mountains as an offering to the dragons, who were all that stood between the human settlements and the demons. He’d never seen his mother again, of course. He’d never forgiven himself for not being able to save her.