My Real Cousin Ruby

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

For as long as she can remember, she has had two cousins named Ruby. Her so-called cousin, who lives in this world and whom she can't stand, and the cousin she meets in her dreams—her Real Cousin Ruby.

Her siblings all dream about Real Cousin Ruby, too. But why?

In "My Real Cousin Ruby," World Fantasy Award winner Kristine Kathryn Rusch challenges the border between reality and the land of dreams. And what crosses that border leaves serious consequences behind on both sides.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Aug 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386412083

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

My Real Cousin Ruby

My Real Cousin Ruby

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing Inc.

Contents

My Real Cousin Ruby

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About the Author

My Real Cousin Ruby

MY COUSIN RUBY is forty-seven years old and obese. She’s been married a million times and has more children than I can count. She never went to college. She didn’t even go to trade school until she turned forty. Then she learned how to be a hairdresser.

I’m sure she’s a changeling child.

I’ve been sure of that since I was a little girl. Even before I had the words to confirm how I felt about Ruby, my actions confirmed it. I ditched her in the most creative ways. I told her we were playing hide and seek, then left her in the attic for an entire day. I locked her in my backyard playhouse and threw away the key.

I didn’t get punished too heavily—I’m only a year older, and when you’re five, that year doesn’t count for much. But because of that slight age difference, I was always supposed to bring Ruby along, a task no one but me seemed to realize was impossible.

No one but me and my Real Cousin Ruby.

My Real Cousin Ruby appears to me in dreams. She’s the same age as the person I’ve been told to call my cousin Ruby, but otherwise they’re nothing alike.

My Real Cousin Ruby is short and dark-haired and thin. She walks slightly hunched over, probably from all that reading she’s done, and her Birkenstocks slide across the ground, making a shush-shush sound wherever she goes.

She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, got into Harvard Law, hated it, graduated anyway, then immediately registered at the University of Wisconsin for a Masters in Physics. She’s on her third post-doc, this time in bioengineering. No children, of course—how could you study that much and bring up hordes?—and only one or two boyfriends.

She’s bitterly funny, but only my side of the family understands her jokes—my college educated parents who raised a Rhodes scholar (my brother), an award-winning physicist (my sister), a world-renown playwright (my other sister) and me. The disappointment. The housewife with two children, one grandchild on the way, and a bucketload of ambition that gets foisted off on the PTA.

We all dream about her—everyone on my side of the family. My siblings don’t talk about her much any more, but when we were kids, we compared notes.

We all dreamed of my Real Cousin Ruby winning what was then called the GE/Westinghouse science competition, kicking butt at