The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

I puff, scramble to my feet, and move closer.

Now I see what he’s pointing at: a broken tooth standing out of one of the holes.

A broken tooth: a biologic proof. An obscura stone full of undeveloped pictures: a visual proof. Nyradur and I: two witnesses with the same report.

I burst out laughing and pat my assistant on the shoulder. ‘We got it! The cryptid has been Seen. Now we head to Reykjavik and shove CWRC’s doubts down their throats. The Lagar Serpent exists, it’s a wonderbeast and we can prove it!’

*

When we have presented our findings and have the support we will return and do more thorough research with much better equiment. The serpent might have threatened us with his gaze but it will all be to his advantage as well. By proving the existence of the country’s most famous cryptid, the Cryptozoology and Wonderbeast Research Center could lobby the government so they will spend assets on cleaning the Lagar River and Lake and the surrounding area, thus restoring the flora and the fauna, renewing the serpent’s habitat. They might even finally investigate the Kara Peak dam and the Reydar Fjord aluminium plant.

When this place has regained its attraction, tourists will likely flock here anew, which profit-seeking people will rejoice about, because when it comes to the self-evident conservation or preservation of nature and the supernatural no arguments seem to suffice to the influentials other than promises of profit.

In spite of them thinking they will be sitting on a gold mine, the serpent will continue to sit on its own gold, hopefully outliving them all.

The Bank of Burkina Faso

Ekaterina Sedia

Russia

I’ve been a huge fan of Ekaterina Sedia’s work for years, and I adore her short stories. I had the chance to publish her in The Apex Book of World SF 2, and during one of our e-mail exchanges she showed me ‘The Bank of Burkina Faso’, a story I found wondrous but which the genre editors at the time could not quite wrap their heads around. I determined then that I would publish the story one day, and I finally have my chance!

One knows that one was a good ruler when, even in exile (accursed, dishonored), one still has a loyal servant who remains, despite the tattered cuffs and disgrace, despite the wax splotches covering the surface of the desk like lichen on tombstones, remains by one’s side and lights the candles when darkness coagulates, cold and bitter, outside of one’s window.

The deposed Prince of Burundi nodded his gratitude at Emilio, the servant with a dark and hard profile, carved like stone against the white curtains and the shadow of sifting snow behind them, like a restless ghost. The prince then carefully perched his glasses, held together by blue electrical tape, on the vertiginous hump of his aristocratic nose, and turned on his computer.

The Wi-Fi in most Moscow apartment buildings was standard but spotty during snowstorms, and the prince hurried to get out as many emails as he could before the weather made it impossible to send anything out. He saved reading of his email for the very end, until after his messages were hurtled into the electronic ether and he could have the leisure to read through the hundred and twelve messages in his inbox.

None of them were replies – he was not surprised; daily, he steeled himself, preparing for just such an outcome. After all, wasn’t his own inbox filled with desperate pleas, cries for help he had neither wherewithal nor opportunities to answer? The best he could do was read them all and let his heart break over and over.

However, after so many years of reading, of writing those letters himself – because what else was there to do for those exiled and dishonored but to reach for the unknown strangers’ kindness? – he found himself growing weary, and the words flowed together in a soft, gray susurrus of complaint. So it was surprising for him to click on a name that did not look familiar and to be jolted to awareness by the words, so crisp and true.

*

‘My dearest,’ the unknown Lucita Almadao started, ‘it is in great hope that I reach out to you. I am the widow of the General Almadao, an important figure in my country’s history. However, after the military takeover and the dismantling of our rightful government, my husband was given to a dishonorable death. To this day I weep every moment I think of the cruelty of his fate.’

The storm intensified and the draft from the windows hissed and howled, and the candles in their tarnished candelabra guttered. The prince hurriedly downloaded the letter onto his Blackberry – cracked screen, half-dead battery – because he just couldn’t bear the thought of not finishing it that night. The electricity cut off at that very moment, and the prince sighed.

Emilio took the candles to the dining room, further away from the offending window and the drafts, to the comfortable chair where the prince could wrap his feet in a blanket and read on the handheld screen, its light blue and flickering and dead.

‘Imagine my horror,’ the honorable Lucita Almadao wrote, in words that betrayed the genuine emotions of one who had suffered deeply and sincerely (the prince had an eye for such things, since like knows like), ‘imagine the paralyzing terror of one caught up in a dream, unable to wake up, as he was taken to the cobbled courtyard. I remember the white linen of his shirt in the darkness, fluttering like a moth, its wings opening and closing over one sculpted collarbone; I remember the rough soldiers’ hands on his sleeves, patches of darkness cut out of the fabric, and the yellow and red of their torches, long sleek reflections on the barrels of their rifles – at least, I think those were rifles.

‘I apologize, my dearest one, my unknown friend, for my mind wanders when I think of