The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (33 page)

“So you wish to be young again,” said the wet gentleman, and he took her hand. Music came out of the well, pipes and strings.

“No,” said Ma Tathers, but the wet gentleman spun her, and ice-cold water ran down her arm, and her feet felt light, and her joints did not ache, and her back was straight, and she knew the steps to the dance he led her on.

“For selfless reasons,” he said. “So you might live long enough to care for them until they can care for themselves.”

“No,” said Ma Tathers, but her hips swayed and did not pop or creak.

“How much easier would it be to raise two young men if you no longer hurt just from standing? If you could wash a pan and not feel like lying down and sleeping for a week, after?”

“No,” said Ma Tathers, and she broke his grip. Her body sagged as the weight of years fell upon it again and pain settled back in her bones. “I know your tricks and I know your bargains, so whatever the price for my wish, it must be laid on me and not on my boys.”

Even though he had been out of the well for some minutes, and even though he had spun with Ma Tathers, the water dripping from the gentleman's clothes had not slowed. The wet gentleman said, “Tell me, Joanna Susanne Tathers. Tell me your wish.”

“Make sure my grandsons are fed. They can figure out the rest. I've taught Theo to sew, and the house is mine, and theirs when I am dead, the sole property of my family. Make sure they have enough to eat until they are able to earn food for themselves.”

“And what price do you think I will ask? Have you not paid me my penny?”

“You will weave spells full of deceit. You will make something good into something evil by your trickery. Instead, I say you can take anything of my body. A meal for a meal. I have heard of your appetites, how the butcher leaves you offal so you will not eat his daughter.”

“Some stories are just stories,” said the wet gentleman. “But very well, I will feed your grandchildren, and I will not ask any payment of them for those meals.” He held out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”

She took his hand and shook it firmly, and then she quailed and began to shiver. “What,” she said, “what will you do to me?”

The corners of the wet gentleman's mouth twitched upward.

When Ma Tathers wandered back out of the woods in the morning, she could not recall the village, or her house, or her grandsons, or even her own name. The wet gentleman ate all those memories.

Her grandchildren brought her home and asked her if she felt ill, but when she opened her mouth, all that came out were stories about the wet gentleman who lived in the well. The boys fretted and cried, uncertain and afraid, and hungry from only having three pennies' worth of food that day. But then a knock came at the door, and when they opened it, they found a basket full of brown bread and hard cheese and cured sausage and even two apples. With a meal in them, and with a few morsels coaxed down their grandmother's throat, the future seemed ever so slightly less frightening.

The boys went on, as people do, and ate their meals, and cared for their grandmother, who did nothing but tell stories about the wet gentleman until she died.

One of the stories she told was the story of Miser Horton, a man so mean with his pocketbook that when he went down to the well, he stole the penny to pay the wet gentleman from the shoe of a boy who had left it behind to climb trees with his friends. Miser Horton strode through the woods holding up the hem of his cape so it would not get dirty and need to be cleaned, or snag and tear and need to be mended. The cape was velvet and very old, taken as partial payment for goods Miser Horton had sold decades earlier. He would proudly tell you the story of that deal if you asked, and maybe even let you touch the cape in question.

Miser Horton knew Little Susanne's story, but he, like all the rest who have heard stories and have followed the moonlight path with pennies in their hands, did not expect the wet gentleman to climb out of the well. Miser Horton recovered quickly from his shock, thanks in part to his immediate disdain for the wet gentleman's lack of care with his clothes. Did the man not know what water did to silk?

“How does this night find you, sir?” asked the wet gentleman.

“Jealous,” said Miser Horton, getting directly to his business.

“
You
are jealous?” said the wet gentleman. “I have been down this well since the oldest tree in these woods was just a sapling, in the cold and wet and dark while above me people live in warmth and dry comfort, and I only get to visit when someone drops a penny on my head. But I forget myself, a gentleman never complains. Tell me more about your troubles.”

“My wife has made me a cuckold,” said Miser Horton. “Me. Even though I gave her a house and an allowance and children, she has been sneaking out of my bed when she thinks I am asleep.”

“So you would like to be handsome,” said the wet gentleman, and he reached out to place a hand on Miser Horton's shoulder. Horton stood taller, his stomach receding while his chest and arms strained the seams of his shirt. His scalp itched, and thick locks of hair drooped down over his brow. From the well came the voices of women, calling to him, sighing his name.

“No,” said Miser Horton.

“To win back your wife,” said the wet gentleman, “or make her jealous when all the other girls throw themselves at your feet and beg to take her place in your bed.”

Miser Horton said, “No,” and knocked the wet gentleman's hand from his shoulder. He sagged, his chest and arms draining into his belly, which expanded until his belt cut into it, and his scalp crawled as the hair slid back under the shiny skin. Miser Horton brushed at his cape, hoping the water would not stain the velvet. He said, “What good is being handsome? No one pays to look upon a pretty face.”

“Yet you have paid to look upon mine,” said the wet gentleman. “Let me earn your penny. Tell me your wish.”

“Punish whoever stole my wife from my bed,” said Miser Horton. “Make him poor, make his family poor. Make any children he may have poor for the rest of their lives, and their children, too, with nothing to their family's name but the meanest sort of shanty for a home until the end of his bloodline or the day of reckoning, whichever comes first.”

“Very well,” said the wet gentleman, and he offered his hand.

Miser Horton regarded it suspiciously. “This is no small service you offer me. What price must I pay?”

“You have paid me my penny,” said the wet gentleman. “If I cannot deliver, you will have only lost the penny you already threw down a well, and you may find some other way to punish the man responsible for your wife's infidelity.”

Miser Horton took the wet gentleman's hand, and then felt a chill on his shoulders. He reached up to pull his cape close, only to discover it was gone, and his shirt had turned from fine cotton to rough wool.

“What have you done?” he asked, and looked into the wet gentleman's face, where he saw the corners of that wide mouth flick upward.

“Do you not see, Horton Tathers?” said the wet gentleman. “
You
are responsible for your wife's infidelity, you with your petty jealousy and greedy character. Now go home to your shanty and tell your children the cost of doing business with the wet gentleman in the well.”

Horton did just that, and one of the stories he told his children about the price you must pay the wet gentleman for a wish was the story of Little Susanne. Little Susanne lived in a cottage in the woods near the village with her mommy and daddy and her cat, Tugs. She loved Tugs very much. When Mommy and Daddy filled the cottage in the woods with terrible shouting, Little Susanne would pick up Tugs and take him outside and lean against a willow and hold him and pet him until he purred, then press her ear against his chest so all she heard was his warm, soft rattle and not the terrible shouting.

One day her daddy threw a chair at her mommy and it missed and hit Tugs instead, and Tugs yowled, and scrambled about with his front legs, his hindquarters dragging on the floor. Daddy grabbed Tugs by the neck and took him outside, and when he came back he didn't have Tugs with him. Little Susanne asked where Tugs had gone, and Daddy said he'd tried to help Tugs but Tugs had run off into the woods.

After crying for a week, Little Susanne decided to go to the wishing well. Maybe she knew about the well from even older stories, or maybe from exploring the woods, from taking children's paths over the ground and through imagination. Maybe you would know about the well too, even if you had never been told.

Little Susanne took a penny from her daddy's coin purse while he was snoring, and tiptoed through the door, careful not to let it creak or slam, and walked down to the well. She threw the coin in, and almost screamed when the wet gentleman's top hat poked out over the edge, followed by his shadowed eyes and wide, downturned mouth.

The wet gentleman bowed to her and said, “How does this night find you, miss?”

“Scared,” said Little Susanne, being truthful. “And lonely. And sad.”

“I understand,” said the wet gentleman. “I have been down this well since your holy books were only dreams and firelight tales. That is a long time to be lonely, and sad, and scared.”

“You're very wet,” said Little Susanne. “Would you like me to bring you some clothes? My daddy has three shirts, and he might not miss one.”

“That is very kind of you,” said the wet gentleman, “but it would only get wet again, because I must go back down the well once I grant your wish.”

“Oh,” said Little Susanne. “If I don't make a wish, can you stay up here?”

“That is not the way the story goes, Susanne Joanna Smyth,” said the wet gentleman. “I must tell you that a gentleman never complains, and you must tell me your wish.”

Little Susanne tucked a toe into the dirt and mumbled something under her breath.

“You are scared, I understand that,” said the wet gentleman. “Would you like to be grownup, so you can be brave and sure like your mommy and daddy?” He knelt down in front of her and took her hand in his and she grew, and her hips and breasts swelled, and she stood looking down at the wet gentleman, kneeling and holding her hand.

“No,” she said.

“You can leave your parents' home and find a man to marry and live with him and never be lonely or scared again.”

Little Susanne felt something else. She felt a stirring inside of her that was hot and safe and terrifying and awesome and hopeful and fearful all at the same time. From the well came the sound of a babe, crying for its mother. “No,” she said, and she pulled her hand free. She shrank back into childhood until her eyes were level with the kneeling gentleman, water dripping from his hat and from his jacket, and the corners of his mouth twitched downward even further.

“I want Tugs back,” she said. “I want him to purr to me and keep me company until I die. An. . . .”

“Yes?” said the wet gentleman.

“And I want Mommy and Daddy to stop fighting.”

“Two wishes?” said the wet gentleman, standing so that he towered over Little Susanne. “Have you brought two pennies?”

“No,” said Little Susanne. “Do I have to choose?”

The wet gentleman tilted his head back and considered the stars through the leaves of the trees. “You do not have to choose,” he said at last. “One wish will be yours, and one will be mine. You shall have your cat, and your parents will fight no more.”

“Thank you,” said Little Susanne, and she hugged the wet gentleman round his legs, which were stick thin and hard as rocks inside his suit, and she got all wet up the front of her nightclothes.

“Thank
you,
” said the wet gentleman, “for the penny. Now go home.”

As she walked home, Little Susanne saw a flickering orange glow through the trees. She heard a roaring, a snapping and popping. She smelled wood smoke, and something else, something oily and black, like when Mommy burned the bacon. Her house was on fire, and the heat singed her hair and dried her nightclothes. As she watched the house burn, Tugs stalked out from the woods and twined himself around her legs. She picked him up and held him to her ear, but even though she could feel the shudder of his purring, all she could hear was the fire.

That's how the villagers found Little Susanne when they ventured into the woods to investigate the fire. A family took her in, and she grew up in the village, always with her ageless cat at her feet or in her arms, and she married a good man with kind hands and a sharp mind, and one day she felt the stirring inside her, and remembered looking down at the wet gentleman on his knee at her feet, and knew she was pregnant.

She had many children, and told them about the wet gentleman in the well, that he was very powerful, and very dangerous, and not to be trusted, except maybe sometimes, because after all, Tugs stayed with her and purred for her until she died, whereupon he climbed onto her still chest, turned around three times and curled up and died as well, and was buried with her.

Her family's fortunes rose over time, until Horton Tathers inherited the estate. Then the family was poor. But the family never stopped telling stories about the wet gentleman. Horton told them, and Joanna told them, and Theo listened to his grandmother but did not believe her, at least, not until the day Theo and his wife could no longer pretend she was anything but barren, and Theo went into the woods.

He took the path between the moon and the burned-up cottage, and he threw a penny down the well, and the wet gentleman climbed out of the well and said, “How does this night find you, sir?”

The wet gentleman said, “
You
are troubled? I have been down this well since before you people learned to bake bricks.”

He listened to Theo's troubles and said, “So you would like a new wife, one who is young and fertile.”

When Theo finally refused him, the wet gentleman said, “No? Very well, tell me your wish.”