Элинор Арнасон - The Year's Best Science Fiction - Thirtieth Annual Collection

Her doubts evaporated.

Several dozen serpents sprang to life, spark and fire streaking across the dry ground, setting tiny fires before reaching the incendiary bombs. The watching post’s tree exploded first, the ancient trunk gouged out and bladders bursting, and then as more trees exploded below, the giant bent and fell, dislodging rocks as well as the explosive underbrush, the shattered mess sliding rapidly downhill.

Fifty breaths, and the hillside quit falling.

No voices were heard. No weapons, no sobs. The drainage below Mercer and the waterfall was jammed with downed timber, and as promised, much of that exposed wood was burning. Bladders had been shattered, soaking the mess with water and fire retardants. But when those desperate measures had done their best, the ancient forest burst into a single consuming blaze, hot enough to create a funeral pyre for every miserable monster trapped beneath.

With the heat, she couldn’t reach Mercer’s hiding place.

But he would be safe enough where he was, she reasoned. In that damp, near-underground place, he would burn only a little and heal those new wounds before dawn, most likely. This creature that never believed in any long future found herself talking to the almost-dead man, telling him the story of his unlikely survival and imagining what he might tell her about his various adventures facing down nearly thirty of the most deadly monsters in the world.

She baked in the fire, and because she wanted to feel sure, she scanned both her slope and the facing slope, in the unlikely chance that one or two of the humans had escaped the others’ fate.

Whole trees detonated, but the opposite, north-facing slope was too wet and far too steep to catch fire.

Every once in a while, she noticed movement. But what she saw was high on the next ridge, and they plainly weren’t human shapes, and it was easiest to believe that tattlers and other animals were running through the forest.

By dawn, the giant fire was reduced to red-hot coals and a thick column of black smoke.

Rifle in hand, she began to walk toward Mercer. But even now the heat was intense. Her flesh threatened to blister, and each little breath hurt her throat and her chest.

She thought about retreating.

But then she saw the Nots braving the furnace. Fifty of them, all adults. And then she realized that no, they were just the first of several waves, and she couldn’t count how many hundreds were climbing down the opposite slope. Some of the Nots carried bladders stolen from the forest trees, busily soaking themselves and their neighbors with the cooling liquid. Like a flood, they flowed into the dried streambed, smelling the air and ground and finally discovering what they knew was somewhere close by.

Mercer was dragged out into the open.

She stopped, standing on her toes, not certain what to think but incapable of feeling much concern. His Nots must have followed the invaders up into the forbidden forest. Unseen, they had watched the last fight and the horrible fire, and now they were dragging their great protector out of his hiding place. There were so many of the tiny creatures crowding in close now. Despite a lifetime of mistrust and paranoia, she couldn’t understand what they wanted from the god they had worshipped for hundreds of generations—not until one Not lifted a stone-tipped hoe over its head, driving the cutting edge into Mercer’s burnt and helpless face.

Twenty other Nots took their swings with the same hoe, and then the pole shattered with a sharp crack.

Sapphire knives were pulled from hidden belts.

A thunderous chorus of cries rose up from the opposite slope.

Suddenly what might have been ten thousand shapes flowed out of the shadows, out from under the trees, fighting one another for the honor to help with or at least witness what was plainly a wondrous, long-anticipated event.

The girl saw nothing that happened after that.

Finally obeying her mother’s wise advice, she ran off those hills and across the summer sea, retrieving her waiting pack before continuing to the south, chasing after her new, old life.

Summer was nearly done when the great ruby door was finally pried open, but even then booby-traps continued killing and maiming, including the sudden release of a wicked green gas that slaughtered dozens of good citizens. After that tragedy, there was fearful talk and fearful thoughts. What if the female monster—that mutilated beast thrown out of the sea—was hiding in the hills, waiting to inflict her terrible revenge? Traps were built and baited with piss fungi, yet nothing touched them. The sharpest eyes and noses examined every piece of the island, but no recent trace of her or any other living Eater-of-bone was found. When the darkest, wettest days of winter descended, the Elders held a council, and it was decided that their enemies indeed had been vanquished. The ancient premonitions were true: With an ocean of patience and a handful of courage, the Nots at long last had won their well-deserved freedom.

Yet even when the monster’s lair proved toothless and empty, it was studied only with slowest possible deliberation. An intricate maze of tunnels had to be measured and marked. Room after room after room was carefully examined. Maps were drawn. Scribes made exhaustive inventories. The monster’s furniture and his elaborate wardrobe brought endless fascination. But those were normal, knowable objects. His home was littered with mysterious wonders that needed to be examined and memorized. Those rare souls with the necessary skills gazed directly at the human-built machines, and they whispered with learned voices, and then only when they felt ready did they give their honest verdict.

“We have no idea what this device does,” was the usual pronouncement.

They were the Hunters-of-unthinkable-thoughts.

At the beginning of time and the world, a lady Not had watched the monster throw rocks into the bay, and from the action, she had somehow discerned an important piece of his greater purpose. She had urged her people to mimic his insanity that next year. And her descendants learned from the monster how to build the dam and drain the bay and then carefully scrape up a white film, vanishingly thin that meant so much to the invincible Eater-of-bone.

It was the Hunters who always studied what refused to be understood. To strengthen their talents, they formed a narrow sect-family, gradually improving their blood line—countless generations of wizard-like savants whose culminating moment was to stand together in the heart of that cave-like home, debating the purpose and merits of this piece of brass and of that broken cylinder of cultured diamond.

At winter’s end, a fleet of raiding Nots landed near the burnt remains of the mineral works. But before they could move off the shoreline, they were struck dead by a rain of aluminum bullets and tiny bombs.

That day, a new force sat upon the world.

Then came the holy first night of summer. Much talk had been invested in the proper best way to mark this event. One young Hunter—a lady Not with an astonishing talent for holding the odd and unimaginable behind her fiery eyes—argued successfully for a reversal of the traditional ceremony. As a nation, the Nots streamed past the uprooted statue of their vanquished god, and they passed through new gaps cut in the barricade, and then holding tight to a respectful silence, they marched up into the hill country. The strongest carried the weakest; no one was left behind. At the lead was the courageous young male who had first struck at their sworn enemy, his only weapon being the common, now famous hoe.

What he carried tonight, nestled in careful hands, resembled a round stone, grayish in color and surprisingly light in weight, decorated with a multitude of folds and little fissures mirroring the ancestral mind of human beings.