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

“When I told her, she screamed at me and beat me with her fists. Then, she wept for a long time. And then she went back to Malo. I asked your father to take her—there was no train back then, they went in a carriage and the journey took two days. She wrote to me, once. The letter said only, Thank you. I am better now. And there I thought she would stay, until your father decided that his ambitions for you were more important than her life. Why she would agree to come back for a pup like you—”

“Not for me,” said Rudolf. “For Malo. She cares about Malo—” He felt as though he had been hit, by something he could neither understand nor name. The street seemed to be reeling around him.

“Why do you think I’m here?” asked Friedrich. “To take her back. I don’t know if she feels about you as she felt about Andrassyi, but I’m fairly certain that if you walk into that apartment, if you tell her that you want her, she will not leave. She values her life, and knows that staying will kill her. But that’s what it means, to be what she is—she would stay for you and die.”

“I—I love her. I would never hurt her.”

“Then let her go. Do you know what love is, young Arnheim? Ordinary, human love. It’s when you see another person—see her as she is, not as you would like her to be. Have you seen her?”

Her pallor, these last few days. The dark circles under her eyes. The sharpness of her rib cage under his hands. Rudolf looked up at her window. What was she doing now? Packing, no doubt. She had accomplished what she came for. He thought, I hope she weeps for me, a little.

Then, he turned in the direction of Szent Benedek’s and began to run.

Gustav caught him just as he was about to step through the door to the courtyard.

“Where are you going, so early?”

“Hunting,” he said, as though the answer were obvious. He wore his flannel hunting coat and carried a rifle.

“I think I’ll go with you,” said Gustav.

“You’ll ruin your shoes.”

“They’re more appropriate than boots, for a funeral.”

The grass was still wet from the night’s rains. They walked over the lawn, away from the house that had stood there for fifteen generations, looking, with its battlements and turrets, like a miniature medieval fortress. They passed the privet maze and rose garden, then the herb garden where bees were already at work among the lavender, and followed the road that led to the old chapel.

“Once,” said Gustav, “this forest used to stretch across Sylvania. That’s why the Romans called it Sylvania—The Forest. There was plenty of room, then.”

“For what?” asked Rudolf.

“For whatever you’re hunting.”

They walked in silence. The sky was growing brighter, and the birds in the trees were filling the air with a cacophony of song.

“Mary, mother of God!” said Gustav suddenly. He surveyed one of his shoes, which was covered with mud. He had stepped into a puddle.

“I told you,” said Rudolf.

“You know what that reminds me of?” asked Gustav. “Karl. He always insisted on wearing his city clothes in the country. You should have seen him when he visited me last year, at Gretz! But I knew that if I stopped to change, you would leave without me. Have you talked to him lately?”

“Karl? We don’t talk anymore. He believes in the Reich. He thinks it will unite all of Europe. There will be no more war, he says, when Europe is united. He says we must all be international—under a German flag, of course. I don’t believe in peace at that price.”

“Well, perhaps he is a realist and we are the romantics, clinging to our old ways, our country houses and the lands our parents have farmed for generations. Perhaps in his new world order there will be no place for us.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Rudolf. “Any German who comes to Malo will get a bullet through the head, until I run out of bullets. And then they can shoot me. There are worse things than dying as a Sylvanian. My father said that to me before he died. He could barely speak after the stroke—but he was right.”

“What about Lotta and the baby?”

“They leave for France next week. My mother will take them. If there’s going to be a war, I want them out of it.”

They stopped. They had come to the chapel. It had been built of the same gray stone as the house, but was now covered with ivy that was starting to obscure even some of the windows, with their pictures of saints and martyrs. It was surrounded by a graveyard.

“We used to come here on Sunday mornings,” said Rudolf. “The family and all the laborers on the estate, worshiping together. Karl would call it positively feudal. But now everyone goes to the church in Dobromir. No one comes here anymore.”

Nevertheless, among the gravestones stood a priest, beside a fresh grave, reading the burial rites. Around him stood the mourners, their heads bowed.

“So she died,” said Gustav.

“She died,” said Rudolf. “I would have taken her to a doctor, but she sent me away. And when I heard that she was sick, here at Malo—I wrote to her twice, but she never answered. I could not go to her without her permission—she would not have wanted that.”

“What could a doctor have done?” asked Gustav. “Given her medicine? Who knows what it would have done—to her. Or cut her open, and found—what? Would she have had a heart, like a woman? Or would she have had—what a tree has?”

“He could have done something,” said Rudolf.

“I doubt it. How do you save a fairy tale?”

“And so we commit her body to the ground, as ashes return to ashes and dust to dust. The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make his face to shine upon her, the Lord give her peace. Amen ,” said the priest. The funeral was over.

The mourners lifted their heads and looked at the two men. Later, when Gustav described it to his wife, sitting by their fire at home in Gretz, he shivered. “It was as though someone had thrown cold water at me. A shock, and then a sensation like water trickling down my back, as long as they continued to look at me. So many of the mat once.” Girls from the cafés and dancehalls of Karelstad, some in silk stockings and fur stoles and hats that perched on their heads like birds that had landed at rakish angles, some in mended gloves and threadbare coats. Girls who acted in films, or modeled for artists, or waited tables until a gentleman friend came along. Slim, pale, glamorous, with dark circles under their eyes.

They walked out of the graveyard, passing the two men. Several nodded at Rudolf as they passed and one of them stopped for a moment, put her hand on his lapel, and said, “You were good to her.” Then they walked away along the muddy road in their high heels, whispering together like leaves in a forest.

“Good morning, Baron,” said the priest. “Would you like to see the stone? It’s exactly as you ordered.” They walked over and looked. There was no name on the stone, only the word

Fairest

“I’m surprised, Father,” said Gustav.

“Why, because she lies in holy ground? God created the forests before He created Adam. She is His creature, just as you are, my son.”

“Then you believe she had a soul?” asked Gustav.

“I wouldn’t say that. But I’ve worked with these—young ladies for many years. We have a mission for them in the city. They go there, like moths to a flame. They can’t help themselves. It’s something in their nature. The priest that served here before me—your father knew him, Baron, old Father Dominik—told me that once, when the forest was larger than it is now and the cities were smaller, it was not so dangerous for them. A farmer would come upon them and they would force him to dance all night. He would find his way home the next morning, with his shoes worn out and no great harm done, although his wife or sweetheart might be angry. But now the forest is logged by the timber companies, and the cities glow all night like gems. They go to Karelstad and the theater managers hire them, or the film directors, and eventually they become sick. It’s as though a cancer eats them up inside, draws the life, the brightness, out of them. They die young.”