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.
Asvi clambered to her feet, even as she knew she had no weapons that could defeat this creature standing beside her and chatting with her in the most unremarkable and yet utterly astounding way. “I have heard its name spoken in passing, but I don’t know it. Do you?”
“I grew up there. I lived there and worked there as a weaver. I was sent on the long walk. I crossed into dragon country, thinking I was meant to die there. I lived for a time in the company of others like me.”
“In the village I saw? The one that those I came with were being led to?”
“Yes. When I was ready, I went into the sands. Now I am as you see me.”
“So you do eat us!” She took a step away, caught herself retreating—do not run!—and held her ground.
“We do not eat you.”
Having flown with a dragon and seen the edge of the habitable world had given Asvi a new and exciting tincture of bravery. She thrust out her chin boldly. “This woman you claim to have once been. What was her name?”
“Merea.”
“If I called you Merea, would you answer?”
“I am Merea.”
“You are a dragon.”
“I am Merea, and I am a dragon.”
“But the woman named Merea is gone. You consumed her, did you not? Devoured everything of her except to use her form to speak to me. Is that what the sands are? A nesting ground?”
“The sand is what remains of the ancestors, the grains of their flesh and the sparks of their memories. Your bodies and your minds cook within the heat, if you will. And out of this, we are transformed and reborn.”
“So it is no different than it ever was. After our labor and our lives are used up down there, we are sent up here. You use up the last scraps that are left of us.” Anger made her heart ache. Disappointment bit like betrayal. Maybe it would be better to leap off the cliff and dash herself to death on the shores of the demon wilderness. At least that would be her choice.
The woman looked at the ground with a sigh, then up again. “Shall I tell you of my life? How my family sold me to a weaving shed when I was still a child? How I sat on the ground chained to a loom for years and years, never seeing daylight except through the open shed door? Was fed too little? Abused by those who owned me? How my hands became broken by the work so I was no longer useful to them? Or to any family, because I was too ill to bear sons and keep a husband? How I hobbled, in pain, up the long walk? I did not weep, you know. I believed I deserved nothing more. And yet the sky amazed me. I had forgotten the world could be beautiful.”
Asvi bowed her head. Her breath felt tight in her chest, and she wiped away a tear. But it would not do to let sentiment obscure her vision. “And then what happened?” she asked coldly.
“Do you know what I found in the village? I found peace. I found people who treated me with respect. I was happy there for many years. I sat in the sun when I wished. I took on such work as I could with my ruined hands.”
The woman held them out now, strong dark hands with a glimmer of scales and dusted with the dry, flaking residue of the demon she’d just killed. Yet they were human hands, too. Hands that had labored for long years to enrich someone else. Hands used up until they could give no more, and thus discarded.
“And then,” she said, meeting Asvi’s gaze with the hard, challenging light of her luminous eyes, “then I chose the sands.”
“Chose them? Or was forced to choose them?”
“Do you think we force your kind to join with us? That any dragon wishes to be born out of coercion and captivity? Those who come to our country may live out their lives and die by their own rites. If that is what you wish, Asvi, then the village’s peaceful round of life will be the end of your journey.”
Asvi raised her eyes to the west, as if she could see back into the room where she had woken up with her husband dead beside her, as if she could look down along the promise to her father fulfilled through all those years. Sparks drew dancing threads of gold and silver and bronze over the peaks and spires of the Great Divide, where dragons flew.
“What if I want wings?” she whispered.
Merea smiled sadly, softly. “Sister, you have always had wings. They were stolen from you long ago. Now they wait here with us, when you are ready.”
A. T. GREENBLATT
One Time, a Reluctant Traveler
If you must know, I left because if I stayed in Nat’s house one night longer, I was going to unravel, like a tragic traveler in one of my family’s tales. And that was a story I didn’t want to be.
My bike was already packed. Had been for a few weeks. It was waiting for me on the trail like an old faithful steed. Soft mulch shifted under my boots as I made my way toward it, a pack on my back, a helmet under one arm, and two jars of ashes under the other. The forest was hushed. Silent except for the chittering of squirrels and bot birds. It smelled like compost and impending rain. My parents always told me rain was lucky.
Except, I’d grown skeptical of the things my parents said. Especially their stories.
I wondered if they’d think the rain was lucky if they had to ride thirty kilometers in it, when everything gets shiny and slick and dangerous even at modest speeds. I glanced up, trying to assess the clouds between the gaps in the forest canopy. A big, swollen raindrop landed smack in the center of my forehead.
Just my luck.
Screw this. I’ll leave tomorrow, I thought and turned to go back to the house. I’d always been a reluctant traveler.
Through a cracked window, I could see Nat, her hair still sleep-mussed, her cybernetic hands pressed against the window, her breath fogging up the pane, like a little kid.
It made me smile. I had fixed those hands for her.
Then she slapped a note to the window and my smile faded. It read: Go! Go! Go!
She was right, of course she was. I’d promised I would find the ocean at the top of the mountain, and it haunted me.
So, I left because if I stayed one more night, I’d see the ghost of my mom again. She’d look around Nat’s sparse house, at my nest of blankets on the floor, and she wouldn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. Her sadness and disappointment would be so clear.
I was 95 percent sure my ghost mom was my imagination. My subconscious telling me to go, go, go too. But that 5 percent made me wonder.
Reluctantly, I tucked the jars of my parents’ ashes in the panniers on the bike. They clinked against the six other jars of ashes already packed in the side bags. I slid on my helmet and took one last long look at Nat in the window.
She gave me a warm smile. Though it was full of sadness too.
So, I left because a few weeks ago, my hometown got hit by a mudslide and my parents’ house almost collapsed on me. And I realized as I fled that if I died, I wouldn’t leave any stories behind.
As I started pedaling, it began to rain.
My parents used to tell endless stories about the impossible ocean on top of the mountain and the travelers who took the path. But if there was one thing the stories taught me, it was this. Always this.
No one who took this journey ended up happy.
One time, a coughing sickness killed her family, and the widow packed her bags for the cursed path. She knew the stories; she’d listened carefully to every whispered version for years. They said there was an ocean at the end of the trail where, if you wanted to survive in this terrible world, you needed to bring your loved ones’ ashes and drink its bitter water. The ocean was magic. It was haunted. It was impossible. It would only make her feel worse.
The widow didn’t care. At dawn, she left her gray, deadbeat town for the cursed path. In her pack there were eight jars of ashes, one for each of her two husbands, five children, and one loyal dog.