The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four (24 page)

Three days later, Lord Trevelyan died. The valet, Master Thorne, came himself to the cottage to tell them.

"Should I go see Crispin?" Richard asked.

Thorne fingered the frayed rushes of a chair back. "Maybe. I don't know. He's doing his best, but it's hard on him. Any man grieves when his father passes; but Crispin's Lord Trevelyan now. He's not himself, really; none of them are. The lady's distracted. I didn't know it would be this bad. You never know till it happens, do you?" He sipped the infusion Octavia gave him.

"So should I go now?"

"You might do that." Master Thorne nodded slowly. He looked ten years older. "Yes, go ahead; I'll just sit here for awhile and drink this, if you don't mind."

Richard walked softly through the halls of the Trevelyan manor. He'd known it all his life, but it felt different now. Not the lord's death, exactly—but the effect it had on everyone. The people that he passed were quiet; they barely acknowledged him. The sounds of the hall were all wrong: footsteps in them too fast or too slow, voices too gentle or too low. Richard felt lost. It was as if the shape of the hall had changed. He closed his eyes.

"What are you doing here?"

Lady Trevelyan stood before him, dressed in black, her long bright hair bound back behind her, falling like a girl's. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her face had the same pulled look as Master Thorne's.

"I came to see if Crispin was all right." She just stared at him. "I'm Richard St. Vier," he said. He wanted to fidget under her gaze. But something about the focus of her stare now kept him still and watchful.

"Yes," she said at last; "I know who you are. The swordsman. That peculiar woman's son." She was grieving, he reminded himself. People were said to go mad with grief. Maybe this was it.

"I'm Crispin's friend," he said.

"Well, you mustn't see him now. He's very busy. You can't see him, really. It's not good. He's Lord Trevelyan now, you know."

He wanted to retort, "I do know." But she felt weirdly dangerous to him, like Crispin on one of his dares. So he just nodded.

"Come with me," she said suddenly. Without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked away. The swirling edge of her black skirt struck his ankle.

Richard followed her down the silent halls. People bowed and curtsied as she passed with him in her wake. She opened the door to a little room, and beckoned him in with her, and shut it behind them.

The walls of the round room were heavy with fabric, dresses hanging on peg after peg.

"My closet," she said. "Old gowns. I was going to sort through them, but now it doesn't matter, does it? I may as well dye them all black, and wear them to shreds."

"They're pretty," he said politely.

She fingered a green and gold dress. "I wore this one to the Halliday Ball. I was going to have it cut down for Melissa . . . Children grow up so fast, don't they?"

She looked up at him. She was a tiny woman. Crispin's bones hadn't come from her. "Would you like to see me in it?" she asked wistfully.

What kind of a question was that? He licked his lips. He really should go.

A swoosh of icy blue hissed across his skin. "Or do you think this one's better?"

The cold and cloudy thing was in his arms. It smelt metallic.

"That's silk brocade, Richard St. Vier. Blush of Dawn, the color's called. It's to remind you of early morning, when you wake up with your lover." She brushed the fabric over his lips. "Thus. Do you like it?"

He looked over at the door. Silk was expensive; he couldn't just drop it on the floor. Maybe there was a hook it went back on—

She followed his gaze to the wall. "Do you like the pink silk better?" She held a new gown up against herself, the glowing pink cloud eclipsing the black of her dress. "This becomes me, don't you think?"

He nodded. His mouth was dry.

"Come closer," she said.

He knew the challenge when he heard it. He took a step toward her.

"Touch me," she said. He knew where he was, now: walking the fallen tree, climbing to the topmost eave . . . .

"Where?"

"Wherever you like."

He put his hand on the side of her face. She turned her head and licked his palm, and he started as if he had been kicked. He hadn't expected that, to feel that again here, now, that dangerous thrill at the base of his spine. He shuddered with the pleasure he did not like.

"Hold me," she said. He put his arms around her. She smelt of lavender, and blown-out candle wicks.

"Be my friend," she whispered across his lips.

"I will," he whispered back.

Lady Trevelyan laughed low, and sighed. She knotted her fingers in his hair, and pulled his head down to her, biting his lips as she kissed him. He shivered, and pressed himself against her. She lifted her inky skirts, and pulled him closer, fingering his breeches. He didn't even know where his own hands were. He didn't know where anything was, except one thing. His heart was slamming with the danger of how much he wanted it. His eyes were closed, and he could hardly breathe. Every time she touched him he tried to think what a terrible thing this was, but it came out completely different: he had to stop thinking entirely, because thinking it was dangerous just made him want it more. She was saying something, but he couldn't hear it. She was helping him, that was what mattered. She was helping him—and then suddenly it was over, and she was shouting:

"You idiot! Pink
peau de soie
—ruined!" She shoved him away. His sight came back. He reached for his breeches, fallen around his knees. "What do you think you're doing? Who do you think you are?" Her face and neck were flushed, eyes sharp and bright. "You're nobody. You're no one. What are you doing here? Who do you think you are?"

He did up his buttons, stumbled out into the hall.

The door was closed; he couldn't hear her now. He started walking back the way he'd come—or some way, anyway. It wasn't a part of the house he knew.

"Richard!"

Not Crispin. Not now.

"Richard!"

Not now.

"Richard, damn you—you
stand
when I call you!"

Richard stood. He had his back to Crispin; he couldn't look at him now. "What?" he asked. "What do you want?"

"What do I
want
?" Crispin demanded shrilly. "What the hell's wrong with you? What do you think I want?"

"Whatever it is, I don't have it."

"No, you don't, do you?" Crispin said bitterly. "God. I thought you were my friend."

"I guess I'm not, then. I guess I'm not your friend."

Crispin threw a punch at him.

And Richard returned it. He didn't hold back.

It wasn't a fair fight, not really. They'd never been even in this game.

It was, Richard reflected after, a good thing they'd neither of them had swords; but he still left Crispin, Lord Trevelyan, a wheezing mess crumpled on the floor.

Then he went home and told his mother what he'd done.

She had known that it would come someday, but this was so much sooner than she'd hoped.

"You have to go, my love," she said. "Trevelyan's dead. His lady won't protect you, and Crispin certainly won't."

Richard nodded. He wanted to say, "It's only Crispin," or "He'll get over it." But Crispin was Trevelyan now.

"Where should I go?" he said instead. He pictured the mountains, where bold men ran with the deer. He pictured another countryside, much like this; another cottage by a stream, or maybe a forest . . . .

"To the city," his mother said. "It's the only place that you can lose yourself enough."

"The city?" He'd never been there. He didn't know anyone. The house with no air was there, and the place of last resort. But even as he thought it, he felt that curious thrill down his spine, and knew he wanted it, even though he shouldn't.

"The city," he said. "Yes."

"Don't be frightened," his mother said.

He said, "I'm not."

She pulled out the book on Toads, opening to the hollow where the money was. "Here," she said. "Start with this. You'll earn more when you get there."

He did not ask her, "How?" He thought he knew.

Karen Joy Fowler was born in Bloomington, Indiana and attended the University of California at Berkeley from 1968 to 1972, graduated with a BA in political science, and then earned an MA at UC Davis in 1974. She sold her first science fiction story, "Praxis", in 1985 and has won the Nebula Award for stories "What I Didn't See" and "Always". Her short fiction has been collected in
Artificial Things
and World Fantasy Award winner
Black Glass
. Fowler is also the author of five novels, including debut
Sarah Canary
(described by critic John Clute as one of the finest First Contact novels ever written),
Sister Noon
,
The Sweetheart Season
, and
Wit's End
. She is probably best known, though, for her novel
The Jane Austen Book Clu
b, which was adapted into a successful film. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, with husband Hugh Sterling Fowler II. They have two grown children and three grandchildren.

For her birthday, Norah got a Pink CD from the twins, a book about vampires from her grown-up sister,
High School Musical 2
from her grandma (which Norah might have liked if she'd been turning ten instead of fifteen), an iPod shuffle plus an Ecko Red t-shirt and two hundred dollar darkwash 7jeans—the most expensive clothes Norah had ever owned—from her mother and father.

Not a week earlier, her mother had said it was a shame birthdays came whether you deserved them or not. She'd said she was dog-tired of Norah's disrespect, her ingratitude, her filthy language—as if fucking was just another word for very—fucking this and fucking that, fucking hot and fucking unfair and you have to be fucking kidding me.

And then there were a handful of nights when Norah didn't come home and turned off her phone so they all thought she was in the city in the apartment of some man she'd probably met on the internet and probably dead.

And then there were the horrible things she'd written about both her mother and father on facebook.

And now they had to buy her presents?

I don't see that happening, Norah's mother had said.

So it was all a big surprise and there was even a party. Her parents didn't approve of Norah's friends, (and mostly didn't know who they were) so the party was just family. Norah's big sister brought the new baby who yawned and hiccoughed and whose scalp was scaly with cradle-cap. There was barbecued chicken and ears of corn cooked in milk, an ice-cream cake with pralines and roses and everyone, even Norah, was really careful and nice except for Norah's grandma who had a fight in the kitchen with Norah's mother that stopped the minute Norah entered. Her grandmother gave Norah a kiss, wished her a happy birthday, and left before the food was served.

The party went late and Norah's mother said they'd clean up in the morning. Everyone left or went to bed. Norah made a show of brushing her teeth, but she didn't undress, because Enoch and Kayla had said they'd come by, which they did, just before midnight. Enoch climbed through Norah's bedroom window and then he tiptoed downstairs to the front door to let Kayla in, because she was already too trashed for the window. "Your birthday's not over yet!" Enoch said, and he'd brought Norah some special birthday shrooms called hawk's eyes. Half an hour later, the whole bedroom took a little skip sideways and broke open like an egg. Blue light poured over everything and Norah's carebear Milo had a luminous blue aura, as if he were Yoda or something. Milo told Norah to tell Enoch she loved him, which made Enoch laugh.

They took more of the hawk's eyes so Norah was still tripping the next morning when a man and a woman came into her bedroom, pulled her from her bed and forced her onto her feet while her mother and father watched. The woman had a hooked nose and slightly protuberant eyeballs. Norah looked into her face just in time to see the fast retraction of a nictitating membrane. "Look at her eyes," she said, only the words came out of the woman's mouth instead of Norah's. "Look at her eyes," the woman said. "She's high as a kite."

Norah's mother collected clothes from the floor and the chair in the bedroom. "Put these on," she told Norah, but Norah couldn't find the sleeves so the men left the room while her mother dressed her. Then the man and woman took her down the stairs and out the front door to a car so clean and black that clouds rolled across the hood. Norah's father put a suitcase in the trunk and when he slammed it shut, the noise Norah heard was the last note in a Sunday school choir; the
men
part of
Amen,
sung in many voices.

The music was calming. Her parents had been threatening to ship her off to boarding school for so long she'd stopped hearing it. Even now she thought that they were maybe all just trying to scare her, would drive her around for a bit and then bring her back, lesson learned, and this helped for a minute or two. Then she thought her mother wouldn't be crying in quite the way she was crying if it was all for show. Norah tried to grab her mother's arm, but missed. "Please," she started, "don't make me," but before she got the words out the man had leaned in to take them. "Don't make me hurt you," he said in a tiny whisper that echoed in her skull. He hand-cuffed Norah to the seatbelt because she was struggling. His mouth looked like something drawn onto his face with a charcoal pen.

"This is only because we love you," Norah's father said. "You were on a really dangerous path."

"This is the most difficult thing we've ever done," said Norah's mother. "Please be a good girl and then you can come right home."

The man with the charcoal mouth and woman with the nictitating eyelids drove Norah to an airport. They showed the woman at the ticket counter Norah's passport, and then they all got on a plane together, the woman in the window seat, the man the aisle, and Norah in the middle. Sometime during the flight, Norah came down and the man beside her had an ordinary face and the woman had ordinary eyes, but Norah was still on a plane with nothing beneath her but ocean.