The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year - Volume 7 by Jonathan Strahan

Author:Jonathan Strahan [Editor]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Anthologies, Science Fiction
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2013-04-12T07:00:00+00:00

Laklani’s tendency toward silence devolved into a kind of verbal longhand. They communicated only about boats, and only if the boats were projects they worked on. Their lunch times became studies in quiet bereavement, and Kuwa’i chose eventually to work straight through the day. The boat works prospered, and Kuwa’i’s reputation began to eclipse that of his master. People came from faraway places to gaze at the ships.

One evening, a rich man from Motoa visited old Laklani in the boat yard, bringing with him a tall, long-haired daughter who hung back from the business talk of men, instead wandering to inspect the half-finished boat. She caressed the tools with a delicate index finger. “You’re the craftsman my father talks about,” she said. And Kuwa’i stopped his hammering and turned his head in search of whom she might be speaking to. She laughed, mistaking his ignorance for humor, but astride him later that night, she explained why buyers were drawn to his work above others. “Your boats are beautiful,” she said. And then she lay back on his sheets while he slid above her, and she showed him what action to take so no dishonor would come of it. Afterward, as they lay in the stillness of his bunk, she asked, “How is it that boats can sail against the wind?”

“Not straight against it,” he said. “But only at an angle.”

And he told her that the minor god Kulipali had bequeathed his tongue so that men may make keels. And he told her about the steel hulls of ships he’d seen in the harbors, and about the humble outrigger that had conquered oceans, and he told her that in the old language, which he could not speak, the word for horse was canoe-which-walks-on-land.

It was nearly seven months later that Laklani spoke to him regarding something other than work. The broken silence was shocking as a thunderclap, and Kuwa’i could not, for a moment, pry understanding from the words.

“What did you say?” Kuwa’i asked.

“Elissa has a baby.”

Kuwa’i stood perfectly still for a moment. Then without taking off his work belt, he climbed down from the launch, scrambled up the shoreline and set out at a dead run for the town of Ahana.

He found the town larger than he remembered, but not so large that people might be strangers to each other. Still, oddly, it took him nearly half an hour to find someone who knew of a young girl named Elissa with wide perfect teeth.

The man said only, “I know who you’re talking about.” And there was an irony in his voice Kuwa’i would recognize only later while he sat behind bars and went over the events again and again in his mind.

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