The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four by Jonathan Strahan Page A

you . . . " the king hesitated. "I know that story. You're the goddess Sovranty, whom the king meets disguised in a village, who spends one night with him and confirms his sacred kingship."
    She laughed. "You still don't see me. I'm no goddess. I know that story though. We'd have our one night of passion, which would confirm you in your crown, and you'd go back to your palace, and nine months later I'd have a baby boy. Twenty years after that he'd come questing for the father he never had." She took up a twist of straw that was on the table and set it walking. The king saw the shape of a hero hidden among the people, then the straw touched his hand and fell back to the table in separate strands.
    "Tell me who you are," the king said.
    "I'm the girl who keeps the cows and makes the cheeses," she said. "I've lived in this village all my life, and in this village we don't have stories, not real stories, just things that come to us out of the twilight now and then. My parents died five years ago when the fever came, and since then I've lived alone. I'm plain, and plainspoken. I don't have many friends. I always see too much, and say what I see."
    "And you wear grey, always," the king said, looking at her.
    She met his eyes. "Yes, I do, I wear grey always, but how did you know?"
    "When you're a king, it's hard to get away from being part of a story," he said. "Those stories you mentioned aren't about us. They're about a king and a village girl and a next generation of stories. I'd like to make a new story that was about you and me, the people we really are, getting to know each other." He put out his hand to her.
    "Oh, that's hard," she said, ignoring his hand. "That's very hard. Would I have to give up being a silver salmon leaping in the stream at twilight?"
    "Not if that's who you are," he said, his green eyes steady on hers.
    "Would I have to stop being a grey cat slipping through the dusky shadows, seeing what's to be seen?"
    "Not if that's who you are," he said, unwavering.
    "Would I have to stop being a grey girl who lives alone and makes the cheeses, who walks along the edges of stories but never steps into them?"
    "Not if that's who you are," said the king. "But I'm asking you to step into a new story, a story that's never been before, to shape it with me."
    "Oh, that's hard," she said, but she put her hand on the king's hand where it lay on the rough wooden table. "You've no sons, have you?"
    "No sons, but I have two younger brothers," he said, exhilaration sweeping through him.
    She looked around the room. "Your fine bard is singing a song, and your master of the hunt is eating cheese. Your counselor is taking counsel with the innkeeper, and no doubt hearing all about the affairs of the village. Your lords and ladies are drinking and eating and patronising the villagers. If you really want to give up being a king and step into a new story with me, now is the time."
    "What do I have to do?" he asked, very quietly, then she pulled his hand and for a moment he felt himself falling.
    It was a little while before anyone noticed he had gone, and by then nobody remembered seeing the two cats slipping away between the tables, one grey and one a long-haired black with big green eyes.
     

THE NIGHT CACHE
Andy Duncan
Andy Duncan was born in South Carolina. He studied journalism at the University of South Carolina and worked as a journalist for the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., before studying creative writing at North Carolina State University and the University of Alabama and serving as the senior editor of Overdrive , a magazine for truck drivers. Duncan's short fiction, which has won the World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards, is collected in World Fantasy Award winner Beluthahatchie and Other Stories . Upcoming is a new short story collection, The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories . He currently lives with his wife, Sydney, in Frostburg, Maryland, where both teach in the English department of Frostburg