Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories

“Say something to me in mermaid,” Rosita whispered from behind the barred window of her house. To dance during the village festival was one thing, but addressing a man walking down her street was quite another, and she didn’t want her mother to hear her.

“ For one, we call ourselves merfolk. We aren’t all female ,” I blurted. The old language sounded strange in the air. Without the blending power of water, the clicks were isolated, individual.

Rosita giggled. “How shrill! Not like a man at all.” She blushed behind her fan, probably aware that she might have offended me. I smiled back; no hard feelings, Rosita .

“Rosita, who are you talking to?” Rosa’s mother was nearing forty and sounded like an old woman.

“Just talking to the vecina ,” she said, and winked at me. I inched away: she’d told her mother she was talking to a neighbor girl , and it wouldn’t do for me to be caught in front of her house. Rosita fluttered her fan at me. I knew there was a fan language used by women to communicate with men behind their elder’s backs, but I didn’t know it. I never thought I’d have any use for it.

Rosita shook her head at my ignorance: “Day after tomorrow at three o’clock beneath the big olive tree inVicente’s plot,”she whispered,“I’ll bring my younger sister as chaperone.”

I walked away, bewildered. Just like that, she’d decided that I would be courting her. I wasn’t sure how this had happened. I was twice Rosita’s age, although I doubted she realized it. To her, I must have looked no older than thirty: still marriageable for a man. Still, I was hardly her best choice. She was pretty; she could take her pick from the dozen men her age scattered in the surrounding villages. These girls don’t date lightly; every boyfriend a girl has before marriage lowers her reputation. No decent woman dates more than two men before settling down.

Rosita was throwing a card away, and she wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t thought I was worth it.

That evening, I saw her again. She was standing in front of Severino’s tavern, looking uncomfortable. Her face lit up when she saw me approach.

“Ah, thank God! I thought I was going to have to wait all day. Could you tell Don Severino that my father wants a measure of wine?”

I nodded and stood there for a second, wanting to talk to her but not quite daring. The sun was setting and the evening was taking the worst out of the heat. No wonder she was reluctant to enter the tavern, women don’t do these things in the village and all the grandmothers had brought a chair out to their doorways, the better to chat and spy on the neighbors.

The beads tinkled behind me, enclosing me in the male enclave of the tavern.

“Pedro’s daughter, Rosita, wants some wine,” I informed Severino.

The men smiled into their glasses. They had seen us dancing. I could pretend all I wanted, but they knew Rosita wasn’t just a casual acquaintance.

“What do you want?” I heard Severino asking outside.

Rosita answered in a whisper. Obviously, she knew all eyes were on her. I thought it was indelicate of her father to ask her to fetch him wine in these circumstances. Everyone’s eyes were on her, examining her behavior and trying to find fault. There’s little entertainment in a small village.

“I’m not sure about this,” Severino said. Through the bead curtains, I saw him looking around at the square. His voice lowered: “I don’t want it said I give women alcohol.”

“But my father asked me…” Rosita mumbled. If she didn’t come back home with the wine, the townsfolk would think she’d been asking for it for herself and that Severino, honest man that he was, had refused for her own good. The two of them were making me uncomfortable.

I could’ve gone out and offered to accompany her home with the wine. Severino wouldn’t have been able to argue with that arrangement, but it would be a public signal of a relationship and possibly humiliate Rosita further.

“Aw, Severino, give the girl that wine,” said an old man sitting next to me.

“The comadres are out!” Severino whispered. I felt for him: all those older women, watching to see what he did. Rosita stared at the ground.

“You afraid of a bunch of old women?” the old man asked.

That settled it. Severino puffed up his chest and went to fetch the wine. Gallantly, he helped Rosita hoist the amphora on her shoulder and ducked inside the tavern as she headed back home.

Rosita had chosen a sandy day for our first date. The Sahara dropped its load on us and I stomped my way to the olive tree, burying my face in my arm and trying to see through the dust. The sky was red and it was even hotter than usual. I had an image of myself veering off the road, blinded by the dirt, and falling into the gorge. After that, I dragged my feet and ignored the sand that got under my scales and scraped my skin.

She was only twenty minutes late. When I first saw her, I feared there had been a death in the family. She was dressed in black, a sinister Madonna with a shawl draped around her head. Then I noticed the red chrysanthemum on her lapel and realized she was just wearing her winter coat, which looked black in this red light. If someone had died, color would have been banished from her attire and she wouldn’t have been allowed even that simple flower.

Rosa nodded to me when she reached me under the tree. Two eyes, black olives, stared up at me through the grit.

“Did you try my remedy?” she asked. She glanced at the little bundle beside her and I understood we couldn’t speak freely. I was surprised that the little girl didn’t complain about going out in the dust. But she took her job seriously, knowing that her sister’s honor depended on her credibility as a witness and on her ability to keep her mouth shut.

I nodded, my scales had gotten better, although I doubted anything could heal my skin’s thirst for salt water. We stood in silence for a minute, not know

ing what to say.

“Let’s walk,” Rosa suggested.

We roamed the dry fields with the little girl in tow.

After half an hour, Rosa asked me to turn back towards the tree. Her sister skipped ahead and Rosa used the opportunity to squeeze my hand through the cloth of her shawl. Then she nodded to me and they left. The little girl bolted home, but Rosita walked sedately and I watched her go, wondering if her hips were swinging more than usual. The road, cliff and gorge were invisible in the dust and Rosita, in her black clothes, seemed like a wobbling ghost.

A week later, she was back at Severino’s door, fidgeting. Once Rosita’s father discovered he could send his daughter for wine, he didn’t see any reason to stop doing so.

This time, however, we were dating publicly, so I hoisted the jar on my own shoulders and walked her back home.

“Thank Virgencita you where there,” she said. She seemed upset. She’d probably been anticipating another fight with Severino.

I mumbled something comforting. I had trouble understanding why they made such a fuss about young women and wine. I had a feeling there was a conspiracy to make a girl’s life so difficult that she wouldn’t be tempted to remain a spinster. Judging by the way Rosita clung to my arm, I guessed the message had sunk in.

“Is it like this in the sea? Do the old women also say mean things about people, about girls?” Like everyone in town, Rosita blamed the old women for gossiping. I felt the widows were only the enforcers of a system that everyone supported.

“No. Women do pretty much what they want. My mother, for example, is a dictator.”

“What’s a dictator?”

“It’s someone who has defeated all her political enemies and rules unchallenged. It’s a very hard position to attain because so many enemies have to be dealt with. Most politicians never aspire to anything higher than a democratically elected position.” I noticed her baffled look. “That means that their enemies agree not to attack them for a certain number of years and in exchange they’ll step down from power after their term is up.”