Rich Horton - The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2019 Edition

The aching was in his chest again. He thought of it not so much as an ache as an architecture, an arch in there at the top of his lungs, a dark arch a little too large for his ribs to hold. After a while it eased, and then was gone. He breathed easily. He was sleepy. He thought of saying to her, I used to think I’d want to go into the woods, like Elehal, to die, he meant, but there’d be no need to say it. The forest was always where he wanted to be. Where he was whenever he could be. The trees around him, over him. His house. His roof. I thought I’d want to do the same. But I don’t. There’s nowhere I want to go. I couldn’t wait to leave this house when I was a boy, I couldn’t wait to see all the isles, all the seas. And then I came back with nothing, with nothing left at all. And it was the same as it had been. It was everything. It’s enough.

Had he spoken? He did not know. It was silent in the house, the silence of the great slope of mountainside all round the house and the twilight above the sea. The stars would be coming out. Tenar was no longer beside him. She was in the other room, slight noises told him she was setting things straight, making up the fire.

He drifted, drifted on.

He was in darkness in a maze of vaulted tunnels like the Labyrinth of the Tombs where he had crawled, trapped, blind, craving water. These arched ribs of rock lowered and narrowed as he went on, but he had to go on. Closed in by rock, hands and knees on the black, sharp stones of the mountain way, he struggled to move, to breathe, could not breathe. He could not wake.

It was bright morning. He was in Lookfar . A bit cramped and stiff and cold as always when he woke from the broken sleep and half sleep and quick, quick-vanishing dreams of nights in the boat alone. Last night there had been no need to summon the magewind; the world’s wind was easy and steady from the east. He had merely whispered to his boat, “Go on as you go, Lookfar ,” and stretched out with his head against the sternpost and gazed up at the stars or the sail against the stars until his eyes closed. All that fiery deep-strewn host was gone now but the one great eastern star, already melting like a water drop in the rising day. The wind was keen and chill. He sat up. His head spun a little when he looked back at the eastern sky and then forward again at the blue shadow of the earth sinking into the ocean. He saw the first daylight strike fire from the tops of the waves.

He did not sing the song aloud, it sang itself to him. Then came a queer thrumming in his ears. He turned his head, seeking the sound, and again the dizziness passed through it. He stood up, holding to the mast as the boat leapt on the lively sea, and scanned the ocean to the western horizon, and saw the dragon come.

Fierce, with the forge smell of hot iron, the smoke plume trailing on the wind of its flight, the mailed head and flanks bright in the new light, the vast beat of the wings, it came at him like a hawk at a field mouse, swift, unappeasable. It swept down on the little boat that leapt and rocked wildly under the sweep of the wing, and as it passed, in its hissing, ringing voice, in the true speech, it cried to him, There is nothing to fear.

He looked straight into the long golden eye and laughed. He called back to the dragon as it flew on to the east, “Oh, but there is, there is!” And indeed there was. The black mountains were there. But he had no fear in this bright moment, welcoming what would come, impatient to meet it. He spoke the joyous wind into the sail. Foam whitened along Lookfar ’s sides as the boat ran west, far out past all the islands. He would go on, this time, until he sailed into the other wind. If there were other shores he would come to them. Or if sea and shore were all the same at last, then the dragon spoke the truth, and there was nothing to fear.

A former academic and adjunct, Alix E. Harrowis now a full-time writer living in Kentucky with her husband and their semi-feral children. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, and her first novel— The Ten Thousand Doors of January —is forthcoming from Orbit Books. Find her at @AlixEHarrow on Twitter.

Kelly Robsonis an award-winning short fiction writer. In 2018, her story “A Human Stain” won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, and in 2016, her novella “Waters of Versailles” won the Prix Aurora Award. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, John W. Campbell, and Sunburst awards. In 2018, her time travel adventure Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach debuted to high critical praise. After twenty-two years in Vancouver, she and her wife, fellow SF writer A.M. Dellamonica, now live in downtown Toronto.

Dale Baileyis the author of eight books, including In the Night Wood , The End of the End of Everything , and The Subterranean Season . His short fiction has won the Shirley Jackson Award and the International Horror Guild Award, and has been nominated for the Nebula and Bram Stoker awards. He lives in North Carolina with his family.

Beth Goderworks as an archivist, processing the papers of economists, scientists, and other interesting folks. Her fiction has appeared in venues such as Escape Pod , Fireside , and an anthology from Flame Tree Press. You can find her online at www.bethgoder.com.

Alex Jeffershas been publishing various flavors of fiction off and on since 1976. His latest book is a massive collection, Not Here. Not Now (Lethe Press, 2018). Forthcoming from Less Than Three Press is a sword-&-sorcery romance, The Reach of Their Blades , under the byline Jack Lusignan. He lives in Oregon with a cantankerous, elderly cat and performs tricks for generous supporters at patreon.com/Alex_Jeffers.

Rich Larson(patreon.com/richlarson) was born in Galmi, Niger, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in the south of Spain, and now lives in Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of Annex and Cypher , as well as over a hundred short stories—some of the best of which can be found in his collection Tomorrow Factory . His work has been translated into Polish, Czech, French, Italian, Vietnamese and Chinese.

Yoon Ha Lee’s debut novel, Ninefox Gambit , won the Locus Award for best first novel and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke Awards. Its sequels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun , were both Hugo finalists. Lee’s short fiction has appeared in Tor.com , Lightspeed Magazine , Clarkesworld Magazine , Beneath Ceaseless Skies , F&SF , and other venues. He lives in Louisiana with his family and an extremely lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators.

James Patrick Kellyhas won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. His most recent books are a collection, The Promise of Space (2018), from Prime Books, and a novel, Mother Go (2017), an audiobook original from Audible. In 2016 Centipede Press published a career retrospective Masters of Science Fiction: James Patrick Kelly . Coming in January 2020, King Of The Dogs, Queen Of The Cats , a novella from Subterranean Press. Jim’s fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel, he has co-edited five anthologies. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s . Find him on the web at www.jimkelly.net.