by Borderland
She hears a rush of water, the opening of the bathroom door, and Big Will emerges, Little Will at his heels muttering about breakfast. Big Will is yawning. “You just get back?” he says pleasantly.
“Doesn’t anybody ever sleep around here?” She kicks on the Magic Fire. She is never warm enough these days.
“Meaning why can’t you sneak home after a night carousing without anyone noticing, am I right?” Will is grinning. He doesn’t care what she does. Little Will jumps into his lap, kneads his pants, and settles down, staring with unblinking eyes at Gray all the while. “Fancy boots, babe,” he comments. “What elvin lord did you steal those off of?”
Sammy looks up at that, and she thinks he is going to say something at last. But he picks up his tea, goes into his room, and shuts the door.
“Said the wrong thing, didn’t I? I oughta know better than to talk before my first cup of tea . .. pour me some, will you? Sorry ’bout that.”
“Don’t be. I don’t care what he thinks.”
“Oh don’t you now? Since when?”
“Since he decided he could run my life! I’m not part of the Pack; he can’t tell me what to do. He’s just a goddamned townie bigot, he’s worse than some of the folks out in the World.”
“Look, babes—I’m not a ‘townie bigot.’ But even I know you gotta be careful around the blood. They’re not bad, they’re just not like you and me. They don’t think like you and me. I seen plenty of babes go elf-struck, getting crushes on anything with two legs and silver hair . . . but I ain’t seen many of them romances work out. Now me, I don’t care how many nights you spend with your elf friend, I figure you can take care of yourself . . . but Sammy, he worries, even though he don’t let on.”
“He doesn’t worry, he just can’t stand the thought of a human being friends with an elf, pure and simple. And my friend happens to be just that, a friend. And a girl.”
Will’s eyebrows shoot up at that. “That’s not what Sammy thinks.”
“Well, 1 don’t give a bucket of bloody river water what Sammy thinks,” she says, loud enough for Sam to hear behind his closed door. Then she takes her own cup of tea into the room where the Devinish girls lie sleeping and shuts her own door behind her.
! did nothing< Absolutely nothing. When the police came to our door, I stood by, the meek little wife, and let them take Archer and the others away.
Warran denied it all—not that he knew them or had gone into partnership with them, but that he’d ever known they were from, the Elflands or known the brocades and embroidered cloths that had become all the rage up and down the Pike were smuggled across the Border. His reputation was barely tarnished from the scandal, quickly hushed up. His elvin partners, of course, were ruined. The police conf iscated everything they owned, the goods and gold that represented six months’ worth of trading, six months’ worth of stealth in a dangerous world.
I have had many years to brood on this, and I am certain it was the steward who did it, who found the association between a Haugh and the fey distasteful and put a stop to it, u>ho blamed the wife brought back from the Borderlands for leading innocent Warran astray. I’m certain he was the one who tipped off the police and who told Warran about Archer and me.
I am certain he thought the matter done with, successfully swept under the rug, and was as surprised as Warran that night two weeks later when the three of them stood at our door once again, looking silver and chillingly beautiful in the moonlight, no need of human disguise now. They’d been let out of the county holding cell with only the clothes on their backs, and given one-way train tickets to a town at the edge of the Borderlands. But before they left, they had a final visit to pay to Warran and me.
The steward did not want to let them in, but what is one elderly man against three elves and their rage? The woman swept past the steward and up to Warran, sparing a cold, contemptuous look for me, standing in Warran’s shadow, my hands folded protectively over my large belly. / remember thinking, in spite of my fear, that she was beautiful to behold, like the angry Fairy Queen from one of the songs my people sing back in Bordertown. Warran was sputtering, trying first to smooth it all over with politeness, trying next, ineffectually, to insist they leave; she simply ignored him, pointed a slender, imperious finger at him. And cursed him.
“As you have taken all that is precious to us, so will we take what is precious to you,” she said in the high elvin language that Warran could not understand but that I still remembered from the streets of my childhood. She made a sign with her hands and said some words I did not know. And then she left, like a chill wind blowing through the hallway. The pretty young man with the bracelets smiled a mocking smile, then turned and followed at her heels. I turned to Archer, expecting that same smile, the cold stare that I deserved . . . and found only sorrow. There was a question in his eyes; 1 answered it by looking away.
It was Warran, seeing that look pass between us, believing then the rumors he had tried to deny, who adopted the mocking smile, the cold stare, which he reserves for me still.
He says a curse, like elvin magic, is meaningless in the human world. He proves this by pointing out that his business suffered not at all, his fortunes have taken no turn for the worse. Yet he has lost that which is precious beyond measure; his faith in his wife. And his only child.
The word has hit the streets. A new band at the Dancing Ferret. A band no one has ever heard before. A band with humans and halfies and elves. Crazy Wicker Leaf-and-Tree is at it again, as unpredictable as ever. At the Ferret, tonight.
The gangs are there, in force. The Pack is out on the avenue, and the parking lot is crowded with bikes. The Bloods are conspicuous in their river-red jackets, silver hair tied up with black bands. Even Dragon Fire—the gang from the Hill that no one can take quite seriously— is out tonight, looking uneasy as they lounge on the sidewalk in front of Farrel Din’s club.
As Wicker waits backstage, she can feel the tension and excitement in the air. It is a drug, preparing her for the performance. Eadric is across the room putting on eyeliner, surrounded by the other members of his band and his pretty halfie girlfriend—but even that doesn’t bother her now. Last night’s rehearsal was terrible, so bad that poor Gray left halfway through. She doesn’t care. That tension and excitement is enough for her. Tonight will be magic. She can feel it in her blood.
The kitten had turned up again, after last night’s depressing rehearsal. She’d decided it was a good sign.
She’d left it in the back room with a dish of cream and some cheese, for clearly it preferred the Dancing Ferret to her comfortable flat in Fare-you-well Park. Now it is gone again, or hiding under some pile of costumes. No matter. It will come back. Everything will be okay if just please, gods, this gig goes right. She grins at Gray, who is painting a band of black across Raven’s closed eyes. Then it’s time to go on.
It happens every time: the bad rehearsals, the mediocre performances in front of an empty house, her voice strained and off pitch so that her band members begin to worry and even she begins to wonder if she hasn’t lost it for good this time. But then, when the audience is there, a glittering crowd of kids all dressed up and hyped up and ready to hear whatever she has to give them, the magic happens.
They start slow and quiet, as traditional a tune as ever Gray’s mother sang, with just the ripple of the harp and the skin drums marking the beat.
I was but seven years old
When my mother she did die;
And my father he married the worst woman
That e’er the Borderlands did see.
For she has made me the laily worm
That lies at the foot of the tree;
And my sister Maggie she has made
The mackerel of the sea....
The electric guitars start soft and slow, the fiddle joins in and quickens the beat. Then in a rift straight out of the New Blood Review, Raven comes in with synthesized thunder, a bass roar echoing the quieter throbbing of the skin drums.
> Seven knights have I here slain,
Seven lie beneath my tree,
And were you not my own true father The eighth one you would be . . .
When the song ends, no one is dancing. No rowdy kids are bickering at the bar, no action is going on in the darkest corners. The club is eerily still as the kids wait, quiet, enchanted, for the next song. Gray is right, they are going to need dance music between the ballads, and Wicker signals to the band to break into a heavy metal jig, “The Road to the Border” performed with an electric beat on a fiddle played as though possessed by demons and the synthesized harmony keeping up all the way. The kids aren't quite sure how to dance to this, so Wicker shows them how, silver skirts swaying, high-heeled boots stamping the floor, the gem-stones woven in her hair catching the light and flashing fire as she spins across the stage. Then she picks up her electric harp and joins into the tune, keeping it going as breaths become ragged and faces flushed and sweaty. By the time the song ends, the kids are more than ready to stand quiet, listening to another tale of magic.
As Wicker sings of a king who follows an enchanted deer deep into a forest, there is the slightly smokey smell of elvin magic in the room, and then the rustling of leaves, the smell of a dark wood, the pounding of hooves in flight.
The deer she ran,
The deer she flew,
The deer she trampled brambles through.
First she’d melt,
Then she’d shine,
Sometimes before and sometimes behind.
Oh what is this?
How can this be?
Such a deer as this he ne’er did see.
Such a deer as this Was never born;
He feared she’d do him deadly harm.
All in a glade The deer grew nigh;
The sun grew bright all in his eye.
He lighted down,
His sword he drew,
And she vanished ever from his view. ...
The club is still, but for the rustle of shadowy leaves, an illusory wind that lifts silver and dyed hair from elvin shoulders, dries the sweat off human brows.
All around
The grass was green,
And in the wood a grave was seen.
He sat him down Upon its stone,
And weariness it seized him on.
Great silence hung From tree to sky;
The woods were still, the sun on fire,
As through the woods A white dove came,
As through the woods it made a moan. ...
They could see the shadow of wings among the stage lights, hear the soft cooing of a dove.
The dove he sat Upon the stone,
So sweet he looked, so soft he sang,
“Alas the day
My love became
A serving man unto the king.”
The blood-red tears They fell as rain,
And still he sat,
And still he sang,
“Alas the day My love became
A serving man unto the king. . .
Crimson tears seem to fall from the stage lights, dissolving at the touch, as Wicker sings about the dove who was once a slain knight and his true love who had gone to court in man’s clothing to serve the king . . . and the king who loves her. There is no applause at the end of the song, just a breathless silence, .an enchanted wonder, and they plunge immediately into the next, about a girl who journeys to the Elvin Hall beneath the Hills to save her brother from the King of Faery. They finish the set with “Thomas the Rhymer.”
“Oh see you not that bonny road Which winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland Where you and I this night must go. . . .”
The song ends with a flourish of harping, an echoing drum, a shower of fairy-dust, and then they are gone and the stage is empty.
From the back room, limp with exhaustion, Wicker can hear the thundering applause. Magical Madness is heading for the stage, looking sour at having to follow up such a set, and Eadric is looking at her over his shoulder with something of that old glint in his eye. She smiles back at him but she is thinking, delightedly, Forget it, buster. You had your chance.
“But where is Gray?” Raven says, and Wicker realizes suddenly that her friend is not there.
“She must be out front still,” she says to Raven. “C’mon folks, let’s go find her and get a bottle of something good off old Farrel and celebrate!”
She spots Gray’s spikey hair as the human girl threads through the crowd toward the back exit. Where is she going? Wicker forces her way through a press of bodies, smiles at people who want to congratulate her but does not stop. Raven and Maggie are close at her heels, and it is Raven who reaches Gray first, puts a hand on her shoulder as she is about to slip out the door. She looks up with a strange, almost frightened look in her eye. Wicker pulls herself away from the Hill boy who wants to detain her and puts her arms around Gray.
“We did it, kid!” she says. “We did it! Come have some Brigot With us, we’re going to celebrate.”
Gray is making some protest that Wicker can’t hear above Magical Madness; she is probably feeling shy, suddenly, with all the attention. Raven has a firm grip on her so that she won’t slip away; Wicker slips her arm through Gray’s and they propel her toward a table in the front of the bar.
“But I have to go,” she hears Gray say clearly.
And suddenly there’s a young punk in front of them, a member of the Pack judging by the grease-covered black T-shirt, the menacing stance. “Let her go,” he says.
There are more gang members behind him, and
Bloods pushing through the crowd toward them, and Farrel Din saying agitatedly, “What’s going on here? Wicker, what’s going on?”
Damned if she knows.
The punk is taking Gray away from them, and Gray doesn’t seem to want to go with him either, is shrinking back from him and glancing frantically back toward the exit door.
“Leave me alone, Sammy,” she is saying. “Look, everybody, just leave me alone, I’ve got to get out of here.”
“C’mon Gray,” Wicker says, “we’ll leave. Let’s get you some air, okay?”
But Gray shrinks away from her touch as well, and someone from the Pack says, “Keep your bloody elvin hands off her,” and that is enough to start it all. There are chairs flying and kids shrieking and she follows Gray to the exit door as fast as she can, the punk right behind her.
The punk is faster than she is; he reaches Gray in the rain-drenched alley, grabs her by a shoulder, and spins her around. “Look Gray, it’s me, Sammy. It’s okay now.”
“It’s not okay! You don’t understand!”
“Yes I do. I do! It’s some spell, some enchantment like they put in the music. You can’t help it—”
“Now wait a minute—” Raven begins.
“You keep out of this, you elvin faggot,” Sammy says, “and you, too,” glaring at Wicker. “You just stay away from her from now on!”
Raven is cursing, but Wicker doesn’t say anything. She is staring at Gray. The girl is trying to twist out from under the punk’s arm, and as she twists there is a shimmer of magic, the smell like candles burning that means some spell is indeed being worked.
Gray grimaces as if in pain, tears leaking from eyes squeezed shut. Her fingers turn into claws against the punk’s chest, tearing clothing and flesh. He lets her go suddenly, cursing, and she sinks to the ground. And is gone.
Gray’s clothing lies in a puddle at the punk’s feet. From beneath it scrambles the bony, tabby-colored kitten. With panic and something like the glitter of human tears in its eyes, it vanishes into the shadows and the rain.
“What have you done to her?” Sammy breathes, his voice choked.
Raven looks frightened. "Did the music do that, Wicker?”
Wicker bites her lower lip. “I don’t think so,” she says softly, and follows the kitten into the dark of the alley.
Warran never believed me. Whether it was magic or not, out here in th
e World, the curse worked. The elves stole Warran’s child from him as effectively, as completely, as in the old songs where an elvin changeling is left in a human crib— for Warran never again believed the baby was his own, in spite of the somber blue eyes that were so much like his, the salt-and-pepper hair the color of his own.
That is why, my dear Gray he was never kind to you with more than a distant kindness, why he never acted as a father to you, why he watched you with that suspicous gaze as if waiting for you to sprout wings or breathe fire or otherwise manifest your supposedly magical ancestry. Perhaps it is because of this that you grew up so fey, in spite of having no drop of the true blood in you. Or perhaps it is because I am of the Borders, and it is true what they say, that Border blood is tainted with magic.
I should never have encouraged it. I shouldn’t have sung you the songs my mother taught to me or talked to you so much about the elvin poets in Bordertown . . . but I was lonely.
Warran had turned from me again and—oh my fickle heart—I missed Archer. I didn't realize that the Border would call to you as it has always called to me.
Warran was not sorry when you ran away. I was not sorry either, though for different reasons. For too many years I have ignored the call—/ am too old to dream of Elfland.
But I wish you well, my dear one. I hope you find the magic you seek; I hope you made it to the Borderlands. And when you find your magic, do not do as I have done. Do not turn your back and run.
She finds her on the docks. It is a simple spell that allows her to track Gray through the city, and Wicker is glad she has this advantage over the punk Sammy. She is glad she is the one sitting there, looking lazy in the early-morning light, leaning against a rotted pillar and chain-smoking cigarettes as Gray Changes.
“Here, put this shirt on,” she says to the shivering girl. Gray looks bewildered and a little frightened, but she takes the Wheat Sheaf sweat shirt and spangled trousers and puts them on. Then she sits down on the dock beside Wicker and stares out over the red water.
