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

Hedges sat at the security desk, bald and even more imposing than when Robbie last saw him, decades ago. He signed them in, eying Robbie curiously, then grinning when he read his signature.

“I remember you—Opie, right?”

Robbie winced at the nickname, then nodded. Hedges handed Leonard a slip of paper. “Be quick.”

“Thanks. I will.”

They walked to the staff elevator, the empty museum eerie and blue-lit. High above them the silent aircraft seemed smaller than they had been in the past, battered and oddly toylike. Robbie noticed a crack in the Gemini VII space capsule, and strands of dust clinging to the Wright Flyer. When they reached the third floor, Leonard led them down the corridor, past the Photo Lab, past the staff cafeteria, past the library where the Nut Files used to be. Finally he stopped at a door near some open ductwork. He looked at the slip of paper Hedges had given him, punched a series of numbers into the lock, opened it, then reached in to switch on the light. Inside was a narrow room with a metal ladder fixed to one wall.

“Where are we going?” asked Robbie.

“The roof,” said Leonard. “If we get caught, Hedges and I are screwed. Actually, we’re all screwed. So we have to make this fast.”

He tucked the cardboard box against his chest, then began to climb the ladder. Emery and Robbie followed him, to a small metal platform and another door. Leonard punched in another code and pushed it open. They stepped out into the night.

It was like being atop an ocean liner. The museum’s roof was flat, nearly a block long. Hot air blasted from huge exhaust vents, and Leonard motioned the others to move away, toward the far end of the building.

The air was cooler here, a breeze that smelled sweet and rainwashed, despite the cloudless sky. Beneath them stretched the Mall, a vast green gameboard, with the other museums and monuments huge gamepieces, ivory and onyx and glass. The spire of the Washington Monument rose in the distance, and beyond that the glittering reaches of Roslyn and Crystal City

“I’ve never been here,” said Robbie, stepping beside Leonard.

Emery shook his head. “Me neither.”

“I have,” said Leonard, and smiled. “Just once, with Maggie.”

Above the Capitol’s dome hung the full moon, so bright against the starless sky that Robbie could read what was printed on Leonard’s box.

MARGARET BLEVIN

“These are her ashes.” Leonard set the box down and removed the top, revealing a ziplocked bag. He opened the bag, picked up the box again and stood. “She wanted me to scatter them here. I wanted both of you to be with me.”

He dipped his hand into the bag and withdrew a clenched fist; held the box out to Emery, who nodded silently and did the same; then turned to Robbie.

“You too,” he said.

Robbie hesitated, then put his hand into the box. What was inside felt gritty, more like sand than ash. When he looked up, he saw that Leonard had stepped forward, head thrown back so that he gazed at the moon. He drew his arm back, flung the ashes into the sky and stooped to grab more.

Emery glanced at Robbie, and the two of them opened their hands.

Robbie watched the ashes stream from between his fingers, like a flight of tiny moths. Then he turned and gathered more, the three of them tossing handful after handful into the sky.

When the box was finally empty Robbie straightened, breathing hard, and ran a hand across his eyes. He didn’t know if it was some trick of the moonlight or the freshening wind, but everywhere around them, everywhere he looked, the air was filled with wings.

Margo Lanagan has published three collections of short stories, White Time , Black Juice, and Red Spikes , and a novel, Tender Morsels . She is a four-time World Fantasy Award winner (for best novel, novella, short story, and collection), has also won four Aurealis and four Ditmar awards, and two of her books were Printz Honor Books. Her work has also been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, International Horror Guild, Bram Stoker, and Theodore Sturgeon awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and twice been placed on the James Tiptree, Jr. Award honor list. She attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1999,has taught at Clarion South three times, and will teach at Clarion West in 2011. Margo lives in Sydney. She is currently working on her fourth collection, Yellowcake , and on a novel about selkies based on her World Fantasy Award-winning novella “Sea-Hearts.”

You’d have thought the bread-dough was the Captain’s head, the way I went at it, squashing any mouth or eye that opened. Bringing shame upon us —smush, I smeared that mouth shut. No daughter of mine —punch, that one too. Daughter of his? I was my own self; he did not own me. If I was anyone else’s I was Klepper’s; he owned more parts of me than Father did, than Father wanted to know about. I was married to Klepper in all but name; part of him floated in me, growing slowly into a bigger shame—

Thump, squash—I shook the thought out of my head. Reddy was spinning one of her stories—of a fisher-girl and a kingmaker, this one—to keep Amber and Roper quiet at their needlework, and I began to listen too, to stop from thinking more, from caring, from fearing. And I was almost lost in the poor girl’s story—how insolent she was to the king, and how lucky he did not have her hanged for it!—when the Captain strode in, all leathered-plate and rage. He had his helmet on, even; he was only indoors for a moment.

“Here,” he said. “I’ll show you.” He came for me, and so swiftly I didn’t even flinch away. He grasped my arm; he tore me off the dough and pushed me to the door, my hands all floury claws. “I’ll show you how girls end up, that don’t do as they’re told.”

Reddy was half up, and Amber and Roper turned in their seats, a matched pair, but they would do nothing, only gape there. They would never defy him, or question; they would never save me. Then we were out on the bright street, and me all aproned and floury. I shook him off, but he caught my elbow again, hard, that everyone should see he was in command of me.

“This woman.” He muttered it as if woman-ness itself were an evil. “She worships wooden saints—you’ve seen them. She prostrates herself before those foolish things. Which would be bad enough.”

There was a law, that those people be left at peace in their beliefs. Even if our Aquilin gods were richer and more clearly seen—for their stories and families were all written down strand for strand, and painted on walls for those of us who couldn’t read, and taught in church and school—still we were to indulge the saint-followers, allow them their shrines and mutterings, only jeer among ourselves.

“She was one of ours, from a faithful family, but her nurse impressed her to the saints-belief, corrupted her.” Ah, that was the cause of his bitterness, was it?

“She’s to be punished for that?” I said, because I was not sure what the law was, for our people gone over to the saints’ ways, but I did not think we could call it exactly a crime .

“No!” He pushed me to the right, through the council portico, along the colonnade there, people glancing at us but too important about their own business to accost us. “She refused the King himself, is her offence!”

“Refused him what?” I struggled as much as I could without making a scene. “Let go of me! I will walk with you!”

“You will,” he said, “you will.” And did not let go. “Refused him herself. Her hand, or failing that her body. Wife or concubine he offered her. Wife! Out in the fields with her sheep, she was! Who knows what vermin were on her; who knows what lads had been at her willy-nilly? And our King says I will have you, I will save you, you are beautiful enough to be queen or mistress to me! And No! , she says! She would rather turn to leather out there on the hillside, making her signs on herself, chattering to her pixies. A madwoman, or at the least imprudent! You will see, though.” He shook me, and I staggered. “You will see how imprudence is dealt with, and wilfulness.”