The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 23

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Ian McDonald, who has lived in Northern Ireland for most of his life, works in program development for an independent television production company. His most recent book is River of Gods, from Simon and Schuster (UK). The novel is set in a kaleidoscopic India one hundred years after independence. He tells us, “It was while researching River, on a side-trip up into Nepal, that I first encountered, and was fascinated by, the Kumari Devi.”

I remember the night I became a goddess.

The men collected me from the hotel at sunset. I was light-headed with hunger, for the child-assessors said I must not eat on the day of the test. I had been up since dawn; the washing and dressing and making up were a long and tiring business. My parents bathed my feet in the bidet. We had never seen such a thing before and that seemed the natural use for it. None of us had ever stayed in a hotel. We thought it most grand, though I see now that it was a budget tourist chain. I remember the smell of onions cooking in ghee as I came down in the elevator. It smelled like the best food in the world.

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