The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2012

by Guran, Paula

  I dig deep into my memories of childhood stories to find the images I’m looking for. I get Uncle Herbert to tell me the ones I can’t remember. Corn mothers. Deer dancers. Cacti spirits. When I do Green Man masks, the trees that come when I shape the leather are sycamore and mesquite, Palo Verde and aspens. I decorate them with Kikimi beadwork and feathers, strips of colored cloth—whatever works.

  We have family lunches and suppers, too. Tom, Alana and I take turns putting them together, but it can get complicated for me, who’s only ever really cooked for myself and Uncle Herbert, because there are almost always guests at those meals. The Hills know pretty much everybody in their community, it seems, and people tend to drop in throughout the day.

  Unless there’s something planned—like a music night when the visitor is a musician—evenings are when we go our own ways. Needless to say, I spend mine with Juliana. Sometimes we go visit Uncle Herbert, but mostly we find things to do around the house or walk through the neighborhood with the dogs.

  At first I’m afraid that she’s going to get bored with me, but that’s never the case. It’s sure not the case with me. More is never enough.

  At night there are visits between our rooms. I’m sure her parents know, but no one says anything. There aren’t even knowing looks in the morning.

  One of the big things I learn is that Juliana can only get easily around the house if things stay the same. So while there’s clutter on tables and the tops of cabinets, all the routes between and through rooms are kept clear. Nothing gets in the way, not even temporarily.

  And there’s more. Lots of little things. Like the kettle’s always in the same place with the handle facing out so that she won’t burn a hand feeling for it, and can heft it to see if there’s enough water inside. The milk’s always in the same place in the fridge. Her toothbrush, toothpaste, comb . . . well, you get the idea.

  But that’s only one routine. We have another on the road because it turns out there are faerie gatherings and Ren Faires all the time. Some are just for a weekend, others run a couple of weeks or even months. Unlike the one where I met the Hills, most of them are outdoors. The Faerie Festivals are the most fun but the Ren Faires are more lucrative. The ones in Maryland are in May and November, but there are others all over the country, throughout the year. They even have them overseas.

  The first year we did a run along the east coast. The second year we hit the West Coast and the badlands: Colorado, New Mexico, and my home state of Arizona.

  Packing up the van and station wagon. Driving to wherever the venue is. Setting up the booth and then our tents in the camping area if they have one. If not, we’re in a motel, which cuts into profits.

  Being away from the familiarity of home makes it a little harder on Juliana. It’s the only time I see her use her white cane. But we all look after her. I also think she’s a bit too touchy on the subject of how people feel about her because everywhere we go there’s lots of care and genuine affection. Though to be fair to her, there are also people who are overbearing. Some even talk louder around her as though she can’t hear well either.

  At times like that, Juliana gets annoyed—I can always tell—and later she’ll talk about going to Bordertown and getting her sight fixed like it’s a real place and it could actually happen. I don’t interrupt her rants because everybody needs to chance to vent. And you know, at the Faerie Festivals I hear about Bordertown as much as I do Faerieland, so it’s not like she’s the only one who believes in it.

  While I still don’t do costumes, when we’re at the fairs I trade in my jeans and Ts for brown pants and the puffy-sleeved white shirts that Alana makes for me. At faerie events, I go as Juliana’s human consort. At the Ren Faires, I’m just Tom’s apprentice.

  That first year along the east coast—New England, New York State, New Jersey—is a real wake-up call for me as to how different my life is now. I get into it, but it takes some getting used to. By the time the next year rolls around and we head out west, I’m an old hand at it.

  I’m looking forward to being on my home turf. Mostly because Juliana and I have a big surprise planned.

  We get married at the Arizona Renaissance Festival. It runs weekends from February through April and it’s a wild scene. The people are all dressed up in medieval costumes and there’s jousting, feasts, the art and crafts fair where we set up, a circus, and a whole bunch of stages that are busy throughout the weekend.

  I use some of the money I’ve saved up to fly Uncle Herbert down. Tía Luba and a couple of their sisters come up from the rez. My dad? I wouldn’t have known where to send an invitation.

  But Tía Luba refuses to dwell on the fact that I only have aunts and an uncle at the wedding and she does a good job of making me forget about it, too. I can tell she likes Tom and she adores Juliana. But her meeting with Alana is a little odd.

  The two of them walk up to each other and hold gazes. Then Tía Luba enfolds Alana in a tight embrace as though she’s comforting Alana. They stand together like that for a long moment. When they finally step apart, their eyes are glistening.

  I’d never seen anything like it before. Tía Luba just isn’t given to public affection—and certainly not with strangers.

  I’m standing with Uncle Herbert and turn to him.

  “What’s up with that?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Some kind of spirit business.”

  I give him a puzzled look.

  “Yeah,” I say, “but Tía Luba would be Kikimi while Alana’s spirits are faeries . . . ”

  “Spirits are just spirits,” he says. “They don’t care about the color of our skin. Just that we give them our respect.”

  I look at the two women. There’s no sign of what I saw a moment ago. Alana is smiling and greeting my other aunts. Even the rare twitch of Tía Luba’s lips is almost a smile.

  An hour or so later, just before the ceremony, Tía Luba surprises me so much I forget to ask about what she and Alana shared.

  “I never saw you on this road you’re on, nephew,” she tells me. “I just knew you could be more than you were. But now . . . all of this. You have embraced life and I am so proud of you.”

  I tell you it’s really something, saying our vows to each other as we stand in the Wedding Chapel in front of all our friends with Uncle Herbert and my aunts beside me, and Tom and Alana beside Juliana. There’s always some crossover between the faerie events and the Ren Faires, but today we have a full contingent from both groups—some people have even come from the other side of the country. There’s a full hedge of Tom’s Green Men, a flood of faeries, and then a bunch of the Ren Faire folk.

  The organizers of the Faire comp us the wedding chapel and also the reception in the Feast Hall. After that, the party moves to the ranch of a friend of Tom’s outside of Florence Junction and there are still people dancing a couple of hours before the sun comes up.

  When you’re around anything long enough, I suppose it just gets in your blood because it comes to the point where I can sit around with the Hills and their friends and talk about faeries and spirits and I’m just as interested as any of them. I think about the guys back in the Kikimi County Young Offenders Correction Facility and what they’d say if they could see me now. I realize I don’t care.

  One of my favorite visitors—to either the house or the campground at one of the fairs—is Seamus Moore, an Irishman who at seventy-four is the oldest of Tom’s Green Men hedge. He’s a wiry little man with blue eyes like sapphires and a shock of white hair. He has a voice that could carry across a battlefield and he’s full of songs and stories and tunes from the Celtic faerie traditions.

  I first met him at the Hills’ house and I totally dug these long rambling stories he had, but then on one visit he pulled a weird set of bagpipes from this long wooden box he’d set by the door when he’d first come in. After telling us the story of how a boy learned “The Faeries Hornpipe” from the faeries themselves, he then played the tune.

  I�
��d never heard or seen anything like it. He strapped himself into the instrument, bellows under one arm, bag under the other, wooden pipes seeming to stick everywhichway and played this gorgeous music that sounded as though three people were playing.

  “What the hell are those things?” I asked when the tune was done.

  “Uillean pipes,” he said.

  “But where did they come from?”

  “Now it’s funny you should ask,” he said, “because there’s a story in that.”

  Tom laughed. “With you there’s a story in everything!”

  “And wouldn’t it be a sorry world if there wasn’t?”

  Magic seems not only possible, but probable, whenever Seamus is around. He’s at the wedding, and he’s at the party after, still going strong when so many younger participants finally drag themselves off to bed. Finally the only people who are still awake are Seamus, Juliana and me, the Hills, Uncle Herbert, and Nikki and Steve Hutchings, who came down from Portland for the wedding.

  There’s a fire pit behind the stables that Tom’s friend has let us use. Sitting around its coals, with the dawn beginning to pink the horizon, Seamus told a new bunch of stories that I’d never heard before and I’d heard a lot of them.

  “Where do you get all your stories?” I ask him.

  “Well, now,” he says. “I’ve lived one or two, and some I got from others who did the same, but most I heard during the years I wandered in the Perilous Realms.”

  “Faerieland,” Juliana whispers helpfully in my ear.

  “You’ve been to Faerieland?” I say, when what’s really going through my head is, Faerieland actually exists?

  Because the thing about Seamus is he makes you believe. You may have second and third thoughts once you’re out of his company, but when he’s telling stories or playing his music, you can almost feel something other sitting right there in the periphery of your vision, listening along with you.

  “Many times,” he says. “There used to be a city that straddled the borders between the two realms—a rare place that made the crossing easy if you were welcome to visit. If you weren’t and somehow made your way across . . . ” He shook his head. “You never got the chance to make that mistake again.”

  “A city . . . ” I say, thinking about the place that Juliana talks about.

  He nods. “I say it used to be, but perhaps it still exists. I only know that these past thirteen years any passage to it from these fields we know is no longer possible.”

  “You’re talking about Bordertown,” Steve says.

  Seamus nods again. “But the borders on our side of the world are no more. Or perhaps the city itself is gone.” His eyes get a faraway look. “I’d always thought I’d make one more trip . . . ”

  That bright blue gaze of his settles on me and he shrugs.

  “But,” he says, “it was not to be.”

  Aside from Juliana, the mention of Bordertown from time to time over the past few years has been much like that of Ys and Brocéliande and Avalon and Lyonesse and all the other places that figure in faerie lore. I always thought of them the way I did the lost mysteries associated with the old pueblo people in the mountains near the rez: good for stories, but not places anyone could actually go. Or if they could, once upon a time, they can’t anymore.

  Bordertown’s supposedly more contemporary, but no more a reality than the any of the others. Except . . .

  Tomorrow morning I’ll probably feel the same way, but right now, at this moment in the morning with Seamus’ steady gaze on mine and the echoes of his music still ringing in my ears, I believe.

  “I’ve been to the Realm in dreams,” Juliana says in a soft voice from beside me.

  I know those dreams. She whispers them to me in the morning when we wake up. As always, the best part is she can see in those dreams.

  “And so it is with me now,” Seamus says.

  His pipes groan as he fills up his bag, right elbow working the bellows.

  “Have I ever told you the story of the left-handed fiddler and the goblin?” he asks.

  We all shake our heads.

  “It’s a good story that gave us an even better tune,” he says, “and what better way to finish off a night as grand and blessed as this?”

  Then off he goes, and we all follow his words into the morning.

  3.

  It seems so small a thing, so pointless. Just a misstep on some concrete stairs.

  But it changes everything.

  I don’t even see it happen. Tom and I are loading the van while Alana and Juliana are inside packing things up. Except for whatever reason, Juliana comes out to where we are, white cane in hand. Halfway between the hotel door and where the van is parked by the curb, she misses a bottom step and falls backward, cracking her head on the top step.

  She never regains consciousness.

  “We’ll be together forever,” she said to me last May.

  We’re in the camping area of the Spoutwood Faerie Festival, lying on the grass and staring up at the stars. There are a lot of stars, but there are always a lot of stars when you can get out of the city.

  “Even when we die,” she goes on. “Whichever one of us goes first will be waiting for the other.”

  “I don’t like talking about stuff like that.”

  “What? Romance?”

  “No, dying.”

  She give me a gentle nudge with her elbow.

  “It’s just another journey,” she says. “Don’t the Kikimi believe that?”

  “Yeah, It’s just . . . I don’t know.”

  I can feel her smile when she cuddles up to me, face pressed against my neck.

  “You’re not sure you do,” she says.

  Her breath is warm on my skin.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I believe,” she says.

  I think about that as I sit in the intensive care unit, holding her hand, praying to whoever might be listening that she not be taken away.

  God. The ancestors. The faerie spirits.

  They don’t help.

  No one can.

  Nothing does.

  I don’t know how I get through the funeral. I can’t go to the wake. I sit outside the hall the Hills rented, off to one side on a bench under some trees, not seeing anything.

  At one point Uncle Herbert sits with me for a while. He puts his hand on my shoulder but he doesn’t say anything. Tía Luba called last night but I couldn’t talk to her, either.

  Whoever goes first will be waiting for the other.

  I want to hit something. Or someone. Instead I go to a bar down the street. I order a double whiskey. I stare at the amber liquid for a long time before I put some money on the bar and leave the whiskey behind, untouched.

  Sometime later the Hills find me sitting in another park not far from the hall, staring at the ground. I have no idea what time it is, just that it’s dark. I don’t know how they found me. They sit on either side of me. For a long time we don’t speak.

  “I knew her life would be short,” Alana finally says. “I didn’t know how or why, but I knew. It’s the curse of this gift of mine. Sometimes you don’t want to see things, but you do all the same. And some things you can’t change. But if Juliana’s life was going to be short, I wanted what time she had to at least be happy. You made her happy, Joey.”

  I get a picture in my head of the first time she and Tía Luba met. Tía Luba saw it, too.

  “Why did no one tell me?” I say.

  “To what purpose?” Alana asks. “Could you have loved her any more than you did? Could you have treated her any better?”

  I shake my head. “But now she’s gone. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

  I said it in the ICU but she was no longer there.

  Tom nods. “But she’s waiting for us in the Summer Country. That’s what I believe.”

  “The Summer Country,” I say. “That’s part of Faerieland, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s beyond Faerieland.”


  “So how do you get there?”

  “It’s not a place the living can visit,” Alana says.

  Our voices—this conversation—seems to unfold in some faraway place.

  “I don’t feel like I’m living anymore,” I tell them.

  “You won’t feel like that forever,” Alana says.

  She doesn’t understand. None of them do. Without Juliana the world’s gone gray. Without her, there’s just no point to anything.

  I let them comfort me. I let them take me back to the hall. It’s almost empty now. The only ones left are the Hills’ closest friends.

  “Go ahead,” I say. “Talk to them. I’ll be okay.”

  I stand at the back of the hall. I’m thinking of leaving again, but then I see Seamus and I remember the campfire on the morning after Juliana and I were married. The stories. What he’d said.

  He looks up, the gleam in those bright blue eyes of his dimmed by the loss we all share. I sit beside him.

  “I’m an old man,” he says. “It doesn’t seem right that I’m still here and she’s gone.”

  I nod. “I’d trade places with her in a heartbeat.”

  “I know,” he says. “I felt the same way when my Emma passed on.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s going to get better.”

  He shakes his head. “I won’t. Because it doesn’t. The loss is always there. The hole in the world where once she was. Mine and now yours.”

  We fall silent. I look across the hall where the remaining people are gathered in small groups, speaking softly.

  “I have to go to her,” I tell Seamus. “I have to find her. Like in the old stories where the guy goes down into the underworld and brings his true love back.”

  “And if she doesn’t want to come back?” he asks. “Your people speak of the wheel of life, how it turns as it must, not how we’d will it. What if she has accepted the turning of her wheel?”

  “Then I’d stay with her.”