The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 9 by Jonathan Strahan

Author:Jonathan Strahan [Strahan, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781083093
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2015-05-12T19:00:00+00:00

AFTER SHABBAT, THERE was no point in separating Ruth and Mara anymore. Abba told Ruth she could go wherever she wanted. He asked where she wanted to sleep. “We can put a mattress in the parlor,” he said. When she didn’t react, he added, “Or the studio…?”

She knew he didn’t want her in the studio. Mara was mostly too tired to leave her room now, but Abba would want to believe that she was still sneaking into the studio to watch Ima’s videos.

Ruth wanted freedom, but it didn’t matter where she slept.

“I’ll stay in the basement,” she said.

When she’d had no choice but to stay in the basement, she’d felt like a compressed coil that might spring uncontrollably up the stairs at any moment. Now that she was free to move around, it didn’t seem so urgent. She could take her time a little, choose those moments when going upstairs wouldn’t make things worse, such as when Abba and Mara were both asleep, or when Abba was sitting with Mara in her room.

Once she’d started exploring, she realized it was better that she was on her own anyway. Moving through the house was dreamlike, a strange blend of familiarity and alienation. These were rooms she knew like her skin, and yet she, as Ruth, had never entered them. The handprint impressed into the clay tablet on the wall wasn’t hers; it was Mara’s. She could remember the texture of the clay as she pushed in her palm, but it hadn’t been her palm. She had never sat at the foot of the plush, red chair in the parlor while Ima brushed her hair. The scuff marks on the hardwood in the hallway were from someone else’s shoes.

As she wandered from room to room, she realized that on some unconscious level, when she’d been Mara, she’d believed that moving into a robotic body would clear the haze of memories that hung in the house. She’d Imagined a robot would be a mechanical, sterile thing. In reality, Ima still haunted the kitchen where she’d cooked, and the studio where she’d danced, and the bathroom where she’d died. Change wasn’t exorcism.

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