The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (best romance novels of all time TXT) 📗

it hoped would be its final attempt. Certainty glowed in its stomach like a swallowed ember.

It had been a long time since Byam had left its cave. It had chosen the cave because it was up among the mountains, far from any human settlement. Still, Byam intended to minimize any chance of disaster. It was going to shoot straight for the skies, making sure it was exposed to the judgement of the world for as brief a time as possible.

But the brightness outside took it aback. Its eyes weren’t used to the sun’s glare anymore. When Byam raised its head, it got caught in a sort of horrible basket, full of whispering voices. A storm of ticklish green scraps whirled around it.

It reared back, hissing, before it recognized what had attacked it. Byam had forgotten about trees.

It leapt into the air, shaken. To have forgotten trees… Byam had not realized it had been so long.

Its unease faded as it rose ever higher. The crisp airs of heaven blew away disquiet. Ahead the clouds glowed as though they reflected the light of the Way.

*

Leslie almost missed it.

She never usually did this kind of thing. She was indoorsy the way some people were outdoorsy, as attached to her sofa as others were to endorphins and bragging about their marathon times. She’d never thought of herself as someone who hiked.

But she hadn’t thought of herself as someone who’d fail her PhD, or get dumped by her boyfriend for her best friend. The past year had blown the bottom out of her ideas about herself.

She paused to drink some water and heave for breath. The view was spectacular. It seemed meaningless.

She was higher up than she’d thought. What if she took the wrong step? Would it hurt much to fall? Everyone would think it was an accident…

She shook herself. She wouldn’t do anything stupid, Leslie told herself. To get her mind off it, she took out her phone, but that proved a bad idea. This was the point at which she would have texted Jung-wook before.

She could take a selfie. That’s what people did when they went hiking, right? Posted proof they’d done it. She raised her phone, switching the camera to front-facing mode.

She saw a flash in the corner of the screen. It was sunlight glinting off scales.

Leslie’s mouth fell open. It wasn’t – it couldn’t be – she hadn’t even known they were found in America—

The camera went off. Leslie whirled around, but the sky was empty. It was nowhere to be seen.

But someone up there was looking out for Leslie, after all, because when she looked back at her phone she saw that she’d caught it, it was there, it had happened. There was Leslie, looking dopey with her red face and her hair a mess and her mouth half-open – and in the background, arced across the sky like a rainbow, was her miracle. Her own personal sign from heaven that things were going to be OK.

*

leshangry Nature is amazing! #imugi #이무기 #sighting #blessed #여행스타그램 #자연 #등산 #nature #hiking #wanderlust #gooutside #snakesofinstagram

THE TURNING OF THE WORM

‘Dr Han?’ said the novice. ‘Yeah, her office is just through there.’

Sure enough, the name was inscribed on the door in the new script the humans used now: Dr Leslie Han. Byam’s nemesis.

Its most recent nemesis. If it had been only one offence, Byam wouldn’t even be here. It was the whole of Byam’s long miserable history with humans that had brought it to this point.

It made itself invisible and passed through the door.

The monk was sitting at a desk, frowning over a text. Byam was not good at distinguishing one human from another, but this particular human’s face was branded into its memory.

It felt a surge of relief.

Even with the supernatural powers accumulated in the course of three millennia of studying the Way, it had taken Byam a while to figure out how to shapeshift. The legs had been the most difficult part. Byam had kept giving itself tiger feet, the kind dragons had.

It could have concealed the feet under its skirts, since no celestial fairy ever appeared in anything less than three layers of silk. But Byam wouldn’t have it. It was pathetic, this harking back to its stupid dreams. It had worked at the spell until the feet came right. If Byam wasn’t becoming a dragon, it would not lower itself to imitation. No part of it would bear any of the nine resemblances.

But there were consolations available to imugi who reconciled themselves to their fate. Like revenge.

The human was perhaps a little older than when Byam had last seen her. But she was still alive – alive enough to suffer when Byam devoured her.

Byam let its invisibility fall away. It spread its hands, the better to show off its magnificent sleeves.

It was the human’s job that had given Byam the idea. Leslie Han was an academic, which appeared to be a type of monk. Monks were the most relatable kind of human, for like imugi, they desired one thing most in life: to ascend to a higher plane of existence.

‘Leslie,’ crooned Byam in the dulcet tones of a celestial fairy. ‘How would you like to go to heaven?’

The monk screamed and fell out of her chair.

When nothing else happened, Byam floated over to the desk, peering down at the monk. She had ended up on the floor.

‘What are you doing down there?’ began Byam, but the text the monk had been studying caught its eye.

‘Oh my God, you’re—’ The monk rubbed her eyes. ‘I didn’t think celestial fairies descended anymore! Did you – were you offering to take me to heaven?’

Byam wasn’t listening. The monk had to repeat herself before it looked up from the book.

‘This is a text on the Way,’ said Byam. It looked around the monk’s office. There were rows and rows of books. Byam said slowly, ‘These are all about the Way.’

The monk looked puzzled. ‘No, they’re about astrophysics. I’m a researcher. I study