Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

Onions and potatoes sizzling in bacon fat was a smell to wake any hungry youngster, however deeply asleep. The children pressed close to him at either side, staring lustfully into the pan. The baby made to stick tender fingers right into hot popping grease; he caught that hand. “Whoa there, pumpkin.”

“I’m hungry though.”

“We’ll be eating in two shakes.” He chopped up most of the remaining ham for the hash and stirred the pan. Still, supper could use some more stretching. He tapped the baby’s nose and pointed. “You see that bent-over tree, the little’n? Just looky at all that good dandelion growing under it. How about you go pull us two big ole handfuls for the pan? And make sure to shake off all the bugs and dirt. You know how.”

“But I’m hungry , Papa.”

“Soon as I get me some greens, you get your supper.”

After the baby jumped up, he said, “And, buddy, will you gather up everybody’s canteen for me? Just a few steps thataway, over behind the big boulder you see right there, I judge it’s a nice spring of water just bubbling up –”

Sassy, and with voice raised: “I know already, Papa.” The boy shouldered up the baby’s canteen beside his own.

“Well, all right.” The outburst surprised him. It wasn’t a tone the boy would ever dare take with his mother, and so neither should he with his father. But a bit of backtalk was, in this case, good news. Trekking twenty kiloms everyday kept the boy so doped with fatigue, the sun could rise and set without him showing any glimmer of personality or preference, much less temper. So, yes: shout at Papa if you would! “Go on, then. Pour out the old water, and rinse them canteens out good, you hear? Top ’em all back up full too.”

“I know.” The boy stamped a foot, holding out his arm to receive the last canteen strung up over his shoulder.

“Best not be super long about it either, buddy. Or me and the baby might get so hungry we gobble up your supper too. Whew , don’t this pan just smell wonderful?”

“You better not, Papa!” In their leather sleeves, the winebottles under his elbows and pinched to his sides, the boy hurried round the boulder toward the stream’s source.

While they ate he told the children that this was the night Mama would fight the kaiju. Strategic, this timing; for very little news was so upsetting it could ruin a good hot supper, served up right now. “The big one?” said the baby. “Yes, pumpkin.”

“The maximus ?” said the boy. “Yes, buddy.” And that seemed to be that, for at least so long as they scraped their forks into the pan.

After supper he found himself taking in anew their grimy little faces, all smeared and content, and he heard his mother’s voice. When you fixing to wash these babies, man? Been three weeks now. It’s cold and windy out here, Mama. I can’t wash them in this weather. Boy, it’s getting into the fall. Ask yourself: is it gon’ get warmer and warmer, or will you be breaking ice to get at the creek soon? They’ll cry, Mama; that’s how cold it is. I don’t want my children hating me. Well, all right – keep doing what you doing, then. I’m just sorry I musta not taught you anything about where sickness come from, or the kind of infections won’t nothing cure. Myself, I’d just build up this fire good, and see the babies get nice and warm afterwards... but you grown! Do it your way.

“Y’all,” he said, “it’s been a long time now, right? I think we all might need a bath.”

There was an uproar, and tears to break your heart. Possessing nothing like the necessary fortitude, he pretended to be his own implacable mother, and dug out the little cake of soap, everyone’s change of underthings, and after doubling the fire marched himself and the children round the boulder to the near-freezing gush of mountain spring.

“I can do something,” the boy screamed. “The fire underground, Papa.”

Children spoke wildly at bathtime, and you learned to harden your heart and pay no attention. He put hands on the boy to undress him for soap and water.

“Wait,” said the boy. “I can make the water hot. I can, Papa.”

He let the boy go and sat there on a rock beside the stream. Sucking her thumb, the baby leaned heavily against his side, as she did when upset. “What do you mean, buddy?”

“There’s... fire in the ground, Papa. Real deep down,” said the boy. “And there’s steamwater sitting on top of it.” His hands swooped and gestured to map these geologic interrelations. “I can ask that hot water to mix with this cold, so the spring comes up here feeling nice.”

“Can you, buddy? I never heard of such a thing. My own papa couldn’t... Well, go on; let’s see.” He watched the boy’s face go demented with effort, with concentration, and his heart sank realizing the son he thought he knew was in fact unknown to him; but it lifted up too, for the boy had genius. The candlelight of his dowsing gift blazed high into roaring flames. And, oh, how had he ever forgotten this? – how the twenty-times-brighter gift of his father at work on some feat used to cast illumination by which he himself could plumb depths, discerning subtleties ordinarily far beyond him? From some superheated pool a full subterranean mile down, the boy caused geothermic steam to vent upwards through intervening strata, and that terrifically hot water to temper the icy flow of the mountain stream warmer, and warmer still, until even bloodwarm –

“ There , buddy,” he said. “That’s hot enough.”

White plumes of vapor were emerging from the cracked boulder’s underside with the cascade of water. He quickly got off his own coat and sweater and all the baby’s things and ducked her into the balmy waters. While his son stood there with face set, eyes squinched closed, body all a-tremble, he bathed his daughter.

Soaping her feet a second time, he tore open a fingertip on some errant shard of glass – but, no; for apparently this glass was somehow in his daughter’s foot, or on it. He asked the baby to sit down there in the water and let papa see that foot. It gave him a nasty scare, seeing what he saw. By the campfire’s dim filterings from the boulder’s farside, and by the guttering embers of sunset: the baby’s toenails had all gone black and strange-shaped. Then, gingerly pricking his thumb against the sharp downcurved points of them, he understood that his daughter wasn’t taken ill at all – indeed she was soon to transcend the question of illness altogether. The lusciously heated water delighted the baby and she wanted to linger and splash. But the fires of the boy’s gift were by now dwindling fast, and the spring beginning to cool. “Can’t play in the water, pumpkin.” He soaped her hair and rinsed it squeaky. “Bud’s working real hard to keep it warm for you. We gotta hurry.”

The boy said, “Papa...”

“It’s all right, buddy.” He lifted the baby out, towel-swathed. “Let go.”

The spring resumed its arctic flow, the steam dispersing at once. The boy took weary seat upon a rock nearby.

He had the baby dry and in her change of longjohns and fresh socks, all snugly bundled up and booted again, in about a minute flat.

“Well, buddy,” he said. “My dowsing’s nowhere near as good as yours. So we’ll just wait till morning” – what optimism , the apocalypse scheduled for tonight! – “and you can have a bath when you feel strong enough to call up more hot water. Okay?”

“Okay, Papa.”

“Hey, pumpkin – hey there – you come back here! What you running off for all by yourself, like you don’t know better than that? Mmhmm, you just sit down right here beside your brother. Buddy, you hold my baby’s hand, you hear?”