Year's Best Fantasy 4 by David G. Hartwell

Author:David G. Hartwell
Format: epub

V. Faith, Like a Seagull Hanging in Mid-Air

Berkowitz woke with the sun shining on his face and a headache that made him long for swift decapitation. Seeing no sign of breakfast, he walked to the moss garden. Valentin was standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at the central rocks.

“Sleep well?” said Berkowitz. His voice sounded unnaturally loud, and his tongue was a piece of lead covered with felt.

“No,” said Valentin. “That is, I did not sleep. She was very firm, the petit cochon.” He smiled to himself.

“What do you think the question will be?” asked Berkowitz. He had no desire to learn the details of Pigwoman’s anatomy.

Valentin shrugged and touched a rock with the tip of his shoe. “A little gray stone. Just what one would expect, no?”

Stagman walked into the courtyard. He looked at Valentin and said, “The Ambiguous Threshold.”

“My turn,” said Valentin. “The one of the vowels has already gone.”

“Good luck,” said Berkowitz.

“Mon ami,” said Valentin, “I suspect luck has nothing to do with it.”

When Valentin had gone, Berkowitz walked around the garden, looking at the Outer Islands. Rocks, no different than the ones in the central cluster. Rocks scattered across a carpet of moss.

He looked down at his pajamas. They were badly wrinkled, and one sleeve was spotted with soup. Didn’t that prove this was a dream? Showing up for an exam in pajamas. One of the classic scenarios. Lucky he wasn’t naked. He wondered if Marie de la Roche had been.

“The Ambiguous Threshold.” Stagman was waiting for him. Berkowitz felt a sudden impulse to shake him by the shoulders and beg him to say something, anything, else—to get one real answer in this place. His stomach gave a queasy rumble. They could at least have fed him breakfast.

Instead, he followed Stagman into the garden. They passed between rosebushes that seemed to whisper as he walked by. Berkowitz looked closely and realized, with distaste, that the petals on the roses were pink tongues. They passed a fountain, in which waterlilies croaked like frogs. In alcoves on either side of the path, ornamental cherries were weeping on the heads of stone nymphs that were evidently turning into foxes, owls, rabbits—or all of them at once. He brushed against a poppy, which fluttered sepals that looked like lashes.

Beyond the fountain was a hedge of Featherbushes, with an opening cut into it, like an arch. Berkowitz followed Stagman through the archway.

The hedge grew in a circle, its only opening the one they had passed through. Grass grew over the ground, so soft under his slippers that Berkowitz wanted to take them off and walk barefoot. He had often gone barefoot as a child, but he could not remember what it felt like, walking on grass. The grass was spotted with daisies that were, for once, actually daisies.

At the center of the circle was a stone arch, shaped like the arch in the hedge, but built of the same blocks as the harbor and the castle. Its top and

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