Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 91 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: clarkesworld, dark fantasy, fantasy, fantasy magazine, Hugo Award, magazine, novelette, science fiction, science fiction magazine, semiprozine, short stories, short story, weird
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2014-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, May 2010.

About the Author

Susan Palwick is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. She has published four novels, all with Tor–the most recent is 2013’s Mending the Moon–and a story collection with Tachyon, The Fate of Mice. Her work has won the IAFA Crawford Award and the ALA Alex Award, and has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Awards.

Shining Armor

Dominic Green

It was close to dawn. The sun was a sliver of brilliance just visible over the mass of canyons on the western horizon. There was no reason why the direction the sun rose in should not be arbitrarily defined as East; the only reason why the sun rose in the West on this planet was that, if looked at from the same galactic direction as Earth, it span retrograde. Even at this number of light years’ distance, men still had an apron-string connecting them to their homeworld.

The old man was still doing his exercises.

The boy didn’t realize why the exercises had to take so long. They didn’t look hard to do, although when he tried to copy them, the old man laughed as if he were doing them in the most ridiculous manner possible. The old man used a sword while he did the exercises, but not even a real one—it had no edge, and was made of aluminum which could not even be made to take one. He held the sword-stick ridiculously, not even using his whole hand most of the time; usually he held it with only his middle finger and forefinger, some of the time with only the little and ring fingers. Both of his hands, in fact, were held in that peculiar crab claw, with the fingers separated.

Finally, though, there were signs that the old man was coming to the end of the set, stabbing around him to right and left with his stick. The boy now had something to do. Gradually, he scurried out among the rusting steel shells, carrying the basket of fruit. It was, of course, spoiled fruit, fruit the old man would not have been able to sell at market. There would have been no point in wasting saleable produce.

The boy arranged a marrow to the west, a pineapple to the east, a durian to the north, and a big juicy watermelon to the south. Each piece of fruit sat on its own square of rice paper. He was careful to leave the empty basket in a spot where it would not interfere with the old man’s movements. Then, just as his elder and better was turning into his final movement, facing into the sun as it blazed up into the sky, the boy ran to the long half-buried shelf the old man called the dead hulk’s ‘glacis plate’, and unwrapped the Real Sword.

The Real Sword was taller than he was. He had been instructed to unwrap it carefully. The old man had illustrated why by dropping a playing card onto the blade.

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