Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift (30 page)

It explained everything, really...all of the things that had been left partly unsatisfied by Chaote’s gruesome death. It must have explained those things to Master D’Alendria, too, and in a way marginally more agreeable than the thought of his young wife’s betrayal.

I stood inside, with my African father, who stooped low now from age as he cleaned pots with metal tools in the imported, porcelain sink. I snuck in to help him more often these days, but I knew I couldn’t save him from being found out for his increasing weaknesses much longer. My father had simply gotten too old to perform his tasks at the level of competence needed for an educated man like Master D’Alendria, even without a wife present.

I still felt some measure of debt towards the slave father who had taken me in, along with his wife, for the affection they had shown me. Therefore, I did what I could to prolong that time, in the hopes that my father might be a few years older before they declared him entirely useless. For this reason, I happened to be indoors when the master burst into the kitchen that late morning.

Master D’Alendria’s blue eyes looked wild that day, holding a crazed, far-seeing light that I flinched from, in spite of myself.

My African father might have done the same, but for the fact that his own eyesight had withered a lot over the years. He also had an increasingly pronounced tendency to wander off in his own mind into pleasanter recollections than whatever it was with which his hands might be occupied.

Therefore, only I stared at our master as he stood where he rarely had cause to stand, in front of the large stone fireplace in which most of his meals had been cooked these past seven years.

“Do you need something, sir?” I ventured after a pause, when he hadn’t moved for a few long seconds, nor his expression changed.

Master D’Alendria stared at me, as if noticing me for the first time.

“You are assistant to that magic man, are you not?” he said.

The words sounded like an accusation.

“Indeed I am, master, sir. I was chosen for this role...” I trailed a bit, at the end, feeling like I should apologize for that fact somehow.

But Master D’Alendria only nodded, his blue eyes no longer seeming to see me.

He stared into the low fire in the stone grate instead, once more lost in that faraway place, his countenance as hard as the water-washed river stones that made up the chimney’s blackened face. I noticed again, that, without his wig, as our master was now, his arms browned by sun and the darker skin above the open shirt visible at his collar, he appeared much more of a real man to me than he ever did when he dressed for the other whites in town, with the powder and the buckled boots and whatever else.

Just when I’d thought he had dismissed me entirely, those blue eyes once more found mine.

“Is he a good man?” my master asked, blunt. “This magician of yours. Is he closer to God or the Devil, in your view?”

I could only gape at him, and at the strangeness of the question.

To ask a slave about God, to raise the question of the relative character of one dark-skinned man to another, as though I were a real human being, took me so far aback that I found I could not answer him.

As if realizing the import of his own words in those few seconds of pause as I stared, Master D’Alendria waved them away, making them invisible.

“Never mind,” he said coldly. “I cannot risk it, in any case.”

I could not think of a word to say to that, either.

I only watched as our master turned on his booted heel, leaving the smoke-filled kitchen and myself and my father to our suds-filled bins, where my father still hummed happily away, scrubbing food from the previous night’s meal from the iron, oblivious that anything at all had passed.

***

They killed the magic man two days later.

Unlike with Chaote, I did not witness his being taken.

The whites, perhaps fearing that we would protest given his status among our people, found a time to take the magic man when none of his congregation would be the wiser. We merely went to the religious meeting that day, in the clearing where we had always been allowed to pray by Master D’Alendria. That clearing, as usual, was sheltered from the sun by canvas sheets and lit with candles set on stones, but the magic man did not arrive.

His body was never found.

By now, Chaote’s had fallen to the dirt at the base of the tree, bones picked clean by animals and birds, and scarcely wearing what remained of the rope that finally killed him.

I found myself the unfortunate leader of the next religious service.

The congregation was quiet on that day. Perhaps more of them had seen this coming than I had realized. I certainly could not quite get over my shock at how quickly and seamlessly things had unfolded before my eyes.

I now stood as the magic man for our people, the new
Ndi-obeah
of Christo de Mar. They would look to me now, with my lesser knowledge of plants and bones, to tell them how best to keep their children alive, to keep their wives from dying of sepsis, to birth their babies and read the moon and the stars to tell then what would come. They would ask me to say the prayers for the dead, to pray to the storm gods to spare them, to tell them who to marry and who to punish.

The realization pained me, frightened me and filled me with wonder, all in roughly equal proportions.

They did not know it, for I did not look it, but I turned thirty-eight on that day.

I made it through the ceremony with raised arms and chanting lips, moving in a near-trance that did not connect anything I said with the thoughts that sifted through the darker corners of my mind. I reached the end of the service and not a one of them said a word, or looked anything but grim as their understanding grew that yet another of our ranks had been taken to satisfy the anger and fear of the whites. Not a one of us really believed the magic man had done this thing, least of all me, but no one asked us, apart from Master D’Alendria that morning in the kitchen.

At the end of the service, everyone filed silently out of the clearing, leaving me alone in that oval of packed earth, surrounded by candles...

...but not alone.

Before I could make a move from my place by the stone altar we had constructed all those years ago, when Master D’Alendria first bought land here and began to people it with those of us with dark skin, a voice made me turn, the only one that could still do so, no matter how softly it whispered.

“I know, Ruli,” she told me.

I turned, staring at her.

Her brown eyes were cold, darker than I’d ever seen them. Her hands clenched at her narrow hips in fists.

For the first time, Lara did not hide in any way that she was like me.

I stared at her, feeling the heat rise in my chest as the sight between us sparkled, filling the air with wisps of flame that none of the whites or blacks would have seen, had they been there with us.

The magic man might have seen it, but he was gone now.

“I know what you did,” Lara said. “To Chaote. To me. I know, Ruli.”

“He lay with her—” I began.

“You
made
him do it!” she snarled, her lit eyes boring into me, showing her true race with a force that sucked my breath. “You pushed him, Ruli! He wasn’t like us...but he loved me. He
loved
me, Ruli! I will kill you for this, if it is the last thing I do!”

Before I could think of a single word of protest or denial, Lara turned on her bare heel, stalking out of the tent in her plain cotton dress, those wisps of light and electricity still flowing angrily around her head and lithe body, even as it dimmed from the eyes that now shone with a dark-black shimmer like volcanic rock.

I did not bother to defend myself.

There would have been no point.

I had known the risk, but I did it anyway.

Even now, I cannot bring myself to feel even a small shred of remorse.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

USA Today
bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo,
Le Prix Imaginales
, the
Asimov’s
Readers Choice award, and the
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Readers Choice Award.

Publications from
The Chicago Tribune
to
Booklist
have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award.

She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.

Her popular weekly blog on the changes in publishing has become an industry must-read.

She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series
Fiction River,
published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own.

To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

FICTION RIVER
: YEAR TWO

Fantasy Adrift

Edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Universe Between

Edited by Dean Wesley Smith

Fantastic Detectives

Edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Past Crime

Edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Pulse Pounders

Edited by Kevin J. Anderson

Risk Takers

Edited by Dean Wesley Smith

Valor
(Special Edition)

Edited by Lee Allred

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