Nebula Awards Showcase 2018 Page 10

  Burn his bear skin, said her mother. Perhaps that is his curse. Perhaps he longs to be a man day and night but is forbidden to say so.

  When she returned to her husband, he seemed to have missed her, and was kind and sweet with her. In the night while he slept next to her in his man’s shape, she gathered up his bear skin as quietly as she could, built up the fire, and threw it in.

  The skin did not burn. But it began to scream.

  It woke her husband, who flew into a great rage, saying she had broken her promise to him. When the woman wept that she had only wanted to free him from his curse, he picked up the skin, tossed it over her shoulders, and threw a bag of iron shoes at her feet. He said that the only way to make him a man day and night was to wear his bear’s skin while wearing out seven pairs of iron shoes, one for each year of their marriage.

  So she set out to do so.

  * * *

  Amira’s eyes are wide and rimmed in red, and Tabitha flushes, picks at a burr caught in her husband’s fur.

  “I knew marriage was monstrous,” says Amira, “but I never imagined—”

  Tabitha shrugs. “It wasn’t all bad. And I broke my promise—if I hadn’t seen my mother, I would never have thought to try and burn the skin. Promises are important to bears. This, here”—she gestures at the glass hill—“this is monstrous: to keep you prisoner, to prevent you from moving or speaking—”

  “Your husband wanted to keep you from speaking! To your mother!”

  “And look what happened when I did,” says Tabitha stiffly. “It was a test of loyalty, and I failed it. You did nothing wrong.”

  “That’s funny,” says Amira, unsmiling, “because to me, every day feels like a test: Will I move from this hill or not, will I grasp at a bird or not, will I toss an apple down to a man when I shouldn’t, will I speak too loudly, will I give them a reason to hurt me and fall off the hill, and every day I don’t is a day I pass—”

  “That’s different. That’s dreadful.”

  “I don’t see the difference!”

  “You don’t love this hill!”

  “I love you,” says Amira, very softly. “I love you, and I do not understand how someone who loves you would want to hurt you, or make you walk in iron shoes.”

  Tabitha chews her lips, trying to shape words from them, and fails.

  “I told my story poorly,” she says, finally. “I told it selfishly. I did not speak of how good he was—how he made me laugh, the things he taught me. I could live in the iron shoes because of his guidance, because of knowing the poison berry from the pure, because he taught me to hunt. What happened to him, the change in him”—Tabitha feels very tired—“it must have had to do with me. I was meant to endure it until the curse broke, and I failed. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  * * *

  Amira looks at Tabitha’s ruined feet.

  “Do you truly believe,” she says, with all the care she pours into keeping her spine taut and straight on her glass seat, “that I had nothing to do with those men’s attentions? That they would have behaved that way no matter what I looked like?”

  “Yes,” says Tabitha firmly.

  “Then is it not possible”—hesitant, now, to even speak the thought—“that your husband’s cruelty had nothing to do with you? That it had nothing to do with a curse? You said he hurt you in both his shapes.”

  “But I—”

  “If you’ve worn your shoes halfway down, shouldn’t you be bending your steps toward him again, that the last pair be destroyed near the home you shared?”

  In the shifting light of the moon both their faces have a bluish cast, but Amira sees Tabitha’s go gray.

  “When I was a girl,” says Tabitha thickly, as if working around something in her throat, “I dreamt of marriage as a golden thread between hearts—a ribbon binding one to the other, warm as a day in summer. I did not dream a chain of iron shoes.”

  “Tabitha”—and Amira does not know what to do except to reach for her hand, clutch it, look at her in the way she looks at the geese, longing to speak and be understood—“you did nothing wrong.”

  Tabitha holds Amira’s gaze. “Neither did you.”

  They stay that way for a long time, until the sound of seven geese’s beating wings startles them into looking up at the stars.

  * * *

  The days and nights grow warmer; more and more geese fly overhead. One morning Tabitha begins to walk her circle around Amira when she stumbles, trips, and falls forward into Amira’s arms.

  “Are you all right?” Amira whispers, while Tabitha clutches at the throne, shaking her head, suddenly unsteady.

  “The shoes,” she says, marveling. “They’re finished. The fourth pair. Amira.” Tabitha laughs, surprises herself to hear the sound more like a sob. “They’re done.”

  Amira smiles at her, bends forward to kiss her forehead. “Congratulations,” she murmurs, and Tabitha hears much more than the word as she reaches, shaky, wobbling, for the next pair in her pack. “Wait,” says Amira quietly, and Tabitha pauses.

  “Wait. Please. Don’t—” Amira bites her lip, looks away. “You don’t have to—you can stay here without—”

  Tabitha understands, and returns her hand to Amira’s. “I can’t stay up here forever. I have to leave before the suitors come back.”

  Amira draws a deep breath. “I know.”

  “I’ve had a thought, though.”

  “Oh?” Amira smiles softly. “Do you want to marry me after all?”

  “Yes.”

  Amira’s stillness turns crystalline in her surprise.

  * * *

  Tabitha is talking, and Amira can barely understand it, feels Tabitha’s words slipping off her mind like sand off a glass hill. Anything, anything to keep her from putting her feet back in those iron cages—

  “I mean—not as a husband would. But to take you away from here. If you want. Before your suitors return. Can I do that?”

  Amira looks at the golden apple in her hand. “I don’t know—where would we go?”

  “Anywhere! The shoes can walk anywhere, over anything—”

  “Back to your husband?”

  Something like a thunderclap crosses Tabitha’s face. “No. Not there.”

  Amira looks up. “If we are to marry, I insist on an exchange of gifts. Leave the fur and the shoes behind.”

  “But—”

  “I know what they cost you. I don’t want to walk on air and darkness if the price is your pain.”

  “Amira,” says Tabitha helplessly, “I don’t think I can walk without them anymore.”

  “Have you tried? You’ve been eating golden apples a long while. And you can lean on me.”

  “But—they might be useful—”

  “The glass hill has been very useful to me,” says Amira quietly, “and the golden apples have kept me warm and whole and fed. But I will leave them—I will follow you into woods and across fields, I will be hungry and cold and my feet will hurt. But if you are with me, Tabitha, then I will learn to hunt and fish and tell the poison berry from the pure, and I will see a river raise its skirt of geese, and listen to them make a sound like thunder. Do you believe I can do this?”

  “Yes,” says Tabitha, a choking in her voice, “yes, I do.”

  “I believe you can walk without iron shoes. Leave them here—and in exchange, I will give you my shoes of silk, and we will fill your pack with seven golden apples, and if you eat from them sparingly, perhaps they will help you walk until we can find you something better.”

  “But we can’t climb down the hill without a pair of shoes!”

  “We don’t need to.” Amira smiles, stroking Tabitha’s hair. “Falling’s easy—it’s keeping still that’s hard.”

  Neither says anything for a time. Then, carefully, for the hill is slippery to her now, Tabitha sheds her fur cloak, unstraps the iron shoes from her feet, and gives them and her pack to Amira. Amira removes the three remaining pairs and replaces them with a
pples, drawing the pack’s straps tight over the seventh. She passes the pack back to Tabitha, who shoulders it.

  Then, taking Tabitha’s hands in hers, Amira breathes deep and stands up.

  * * *

  The glass throne cracks. There is a sound like hard rain, a roar of whispers as the glass hill shivers into sand. It swallows fur and shoes; it swallows Amira and Tabitha together; it settles into a dome-shaped dune with a final hiss.

  Hands still clasped, Amira and Tabitha tumble out of it together, coughing, laughing, shaking sand from their hair and skin. They stand, and wait, and no golden apple appears to part their hands from each other.

  “Where should we go?” whispers one to the other.

  “Away,” she replies, and holding on to each other, they stumble into the spring, the wide world rising to meet them with the dawn.

  NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE

  NOVELETTE

  EXCERPT FROM

  THE JEWEL AND HER LAPIDARY

  FRAN WILDE

  Fran Wilde’s work includes the Andre Norton and Compton Crook Award–winning and Nebula-nominated novel Updraft and its sequels Cloud-bound and Horizon. Her short stories appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nature, and more. The Jewel and Her Lapidary has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards.

  Fran’s interview series Cooking the Books—about the intersection between food and fiction—has appeared at Strange Horizons, Tor.com, iTunes, and on her blog, franwilde.wordpress.com.

  She writes for publications including the Washington Post, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, io9, and GeekMom. You can find her on Twitter @fran_wilde and Facebook @franwildewrites.

  Visitors to the Jeweled Valley should expect rustic accommodations and varying degrees of adventure, as the area is both remote and not under protection of any State or Commonwealth.

  There are two inns of varying reputation (p. 34) and attractive scenery, including walks to the Ruins (p. 30), the Variegated Riverbank (p. 29), and the stone formation colloquially known as the Jewel and Her Lapidary (p. 32).

  The best place to find a guide is at the Deaf King, a tavern by the river (p. 33).

  Local guides can become verbose on matters of history and legend. Indeed, some cannot discern between the two. Many locals will gladly inform you their forebears served at the Jeweled Court long ago. More than a few will declare their ancestors were Jewels—royalty who wore the region’s ancient gems—or their assistants. This is likely untrue, as the last Jewels were murdered in a palace coup after six generations of peaceful rule.

  . . . from A Guide to the Remote River Valleys, by M. Lankin, East Quadril

  * * *

  Strips of soft cloth bound the Jewel Lin’s hands behind her back, knotted as if they’d been tied in a hurry. When her head cleared enough for her to think of it, Lin slid her hands back and forth until the bindings loosened and she was able to bend her wrists and tug at the ties.

  Her mouth felt dry as a stone. Her legs and feet tingled, as if she’d been sitting on them for hours at a strange angle. Sima, she thought. Where is Sima? Lin could not see anything. What happened? Sima would know. Or Aba.

  An elbow pressed Lin’s side in the darkness. Lin heard her lapidary grunt and wriggle, trying to release herself. Sima’s kicking dislodged something heavy and dry that rattled like bones across the floor.

  When Lin had freed her hands, she touched the cloth that covered her eyes and ears, then pulled at that knot too. The blindfold fell into her hands. It was strips from the veil Lin had worn since she was eleven.

  On the rough ground nearby, the ancient bone Sima had kicked stared at them: a skull turned to opal, eye sockets stuffed with raw yellow topaz.

  Lin knew where they were now. Far from her private quarters, where they’d drunk their evening tea and gone to sleep. They were below the moonstone hall, in the pit beside the throne. Where Aba had always threatened to put her as a child when she misbehaved.

  Lin bit down on her fist, stifling a scream. She looked around the pit, expecting to see the rest of the Jeweled Court similarly bound. Light flickered through the grate above her head. Sima still wriggled beside her in the dark. But beyond Sima, she saw nothing but darkness and more ancient bones.

  She reached for her lapidary’s hands. She felt the cloth that bound them and discovered that it had been looped around the metal cuffs and chains that marked Sima not just as a gem-speaker but as a lapidary—Lin’s own lapidary: the bound courtier to a royal Jewel. Sima had been blindfolded too, with cloth ripped from her blue lapidary’s cloak. She’d been gagged as well.

  Lin worked at the knots. We have been betrayed. The court. The valley.

  No one else sat in the pit with them. Above, the muffled sounds grew louder. Lin heard running feet. Shouting. Someone howled.

  Lin wanted to stuff her hand back in her mouth. She wanted to go back to her room and see her father in the morning. To tell him about her nightmare. Lights flickered through the grate over her head.

  “No,” Sima whimpered, panic edging her voice. “A lapidary must not—” She was looking up, through the grate. She had not addressed her words to Lin.

  Must not do what? thought Lin. Which lapidary? Her thoughts were slow and muddled. The tea must have been drugged. What had happened to her family? They had ordered wine in the hall while they discussed matters of state, and she’d been told to retire.

  Above them, a voice shouted, “Shattered! We are shattered. You should have listened to me!”

  The voice was barely recognizable as belonging to the King’s Lapidary. Sima’s father.

  “Stop,” Sima begged, climbing to her feet. Tears ran down her cheeks, turning diamond in the moonlight. She put a hand against the wall to steady herself. “Let us out, let us help you. Father.” Her last word was a wail.

  The screams continued above their heads, wave after crashing wave of them.

  Father. Lin called out, “Help us!” She shouted for the king while Sima called to the lapidary. Two daughters below. Two fathers above.

  Sima looked at Lin with wide eyes. “He is gem-mad.”

  The King’s Lapidary howled in answer. His words came faster and faster, tumbling through the grate. Their meaning was nearly drowned by his laughter. Lin caught her name. She heard “bargain” and “promise.” The lapidary’s voice rose to a high pitch and cracked.

  Sharp metal struck stone. Sima grabbed her ears, holding tight to the metal bands that wrapped her earlobes. Through clenched teeth, she whispered, “A lapidary must obey their Jewel.” The first vow a new lapidary took. Sima repeated the vow like a chant as a shriek pierced the room above them. Her face was white, but she pushed Lin away from the grate, whispering, “He’s going to break the diamond; he’ll break it and death will come. Cover your ears!”

  When the stone shattered it made a noise like a mineshaft collapsing, and a scream, and a fire all at once. Sima’s eyes rolled back and Lin scrambled to keep her courtier’s head from hitting the hard pit walls. “It’s all right,” she whispered. Nothing was right. Where was her father? Where were her sisters and brothers? And their lapidaries?

  The pit and its metal walls seemed to protect them from the gems, and from Sima’s father. Above, a cry of pain reverberated through the hall. Then something like rain. Then weeping. She heard the clatter as the palace guard dropped their weapons en masse and tried to flee, feet pounding, across the great hall’s moonstone tiles. She heard them fall, one by one.

  Metal struck again. Sima threw up at Lin’s feet.

  “Father!” Lin shouted, hoping her voice would pass up through the grate. “What is happening?”

  Instead of the king, the lapidary returned to kneel on the grate. His hands gripped the bars, charred black. His eyes looked bloodred in the moonlight. “Awake,” he muttered. “Awake too soon. The commander has not yet come and you must cover your ears. You will be no good to me mad.” His voice singsonged as he stood and laughed, then lurched away.

  “Si
ma,” Lin whispered. “What is he doing?”

  Her lapidary whimpered. “He is breaking his vows, my Jewel. He has broken gems. Couldn’t you hear? The Opaque Sapphire. The Death Astrion. The Steadfast Diamond. He is about to break the Star Cabochon. We have to stop him.”

  The Opaque Sapphire. The Jeweled Palace was visible to attackers without that gem. And she and Sima were trapped in the pit beside the throne. The astrion and the diamond. The borders were undefended.

  All her life, Aba had made Lin recite the valley’s legends. How the first gems had enslaved those who found them; how they had maddened those who could hear them. How the first Jewel, the Deaf King, had set a cabochon-cut ruby with metal and wire. How he’d bound those who heard the stones as well and named them lapidaries. Made them serve him instead of the gems. How the gems had protected the valley better than any army.

  She’d made Lin learn what could happen if a lapidary broke their vows.

  The screaming had quieted above them. Sima knelt and cupped her hands so that Lin could stand on them. Lin pressed on the grate with both hands. The heavy door lifted an inch, but little more. Lin climbed to Sima’s shoulders.

  “Here—” Sima handed Lin a long bone from the pit floor. They wedged the grate open and Lin pulled herself out. Looking around, she could not see the King’s Lapidary. But as Sima pulled herself up using a stretch of Lin’s robe, Lin saw her own father, lying on the ground. His eyes were clouded like ruined opals. His breath bubbled in the blood-flecked foam at his mouth. An amber goblet rolled on the floor near his fingers. The bodies of the rest of the court lay scattered. Sisters. Brothers. Aba. Lin bound her heart up with the words. Saw their lips too: blackened and covered with foam. Poison.

  Sima crossed the hall, following a sound. A voice. In the courtyard beyond the throne, the King’s Lapidary stood on the high wall. He pointed at Lin, before Sima moved to stand between them. “The Western Mountains are coming—I’ve promised them a powerful gem and one very fine Jewel to marry!” He began to laugh and shout again. “They are strong! Our gems are fading. Soon their only power will be to catch the eye. The Jeweled Valley must be protected. He wouldn’t listen. I protected you!”